Xoey is in danger, is all I can think, and I’m not sure she’s looking in the right direction to see it coming.
Someone is watching me. I can feel it. On the back of my neck and in my heartbeat, which is skipping along faster than my feet on wet pavement. I turn a corner and hear footsteps echoing across the empty alley I’ve just left. Running footsteps.
Why did I take a short cut?
Because I’m in a hurry to get back to our rented room, to share the bag of food clutched under my arm with Reed, to hear about his long shift at The Rose.
To find out if he’s finally made contact with Lexie.
But does it matter which way I came?
No. Not in this place.
Slick City is dark at night. So much darker than the Sand—especially at street level. Only dim lights flicker in upper windows. Some of it is electric, but mostly it’s candlelight, and the overall effect is scarce warmth and safety, randomly splattered on a threatening canvas. They have no police force either. And even though police officers in the Sand were often just as dangerous as the criminals, sometimes they would take your side, if it suited their purposes. Here, there’s no one to help. Except for a few wealthy individuals who hire their own security, we are defenseless in the Red Zone.
Total control versus total anarchy. I’m still not sure which I prefer.
I hurry across another street and duck through a narrow alley. People are always loitering around trashcan fires in this district, so why are the streets so empty tonight? The alley is long and littered with trash. I have almost reached the end and no longer hear footsteps behind me. Maybe I lost him?
Of course not. I turn the last corner and come to an abrupt start, face to face with a thin man with white-blond hair, a nasty smile, and foul breath. I back away, bumping into someone else who grips my arms and holds me in place.
“Come on, sweetheart. Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
His words are oily against my ear. I shudder and try to swing away. “Leave me alone.”
His grip tightens and he pushes me toward the other man, whose leer only widens.
“Not a chance, little girl.” He looks me up and down. “Mr. Sokolov will like the look of you.”
The other one presses against me from behind. “Oh, yes. She’ll draw a pretty sum, Milo. And who knows? She may even enjoy herself.”
“Enjoy myself?”
My fear evaporates in a cloud of rage. I am tired and hungry, and I want to go home. I have been looking forward to tonight all day—waiting anxiously for Reed to get back from work and tell me all about his evening at The Rose—especially if he has finally seen Lexie.
Even if he hasn’t, I have more strategies I want to share—ideas for freeing her that involve me doing more than waiting behind every day, washing teacups, sending non-updates to Sam, and budgeting our scarce income so we can pay our rent without starving.
Instead, I’m supposed to go without a fuss with these two losers, just because they work for Sokolov, one of Slick City’s most notorious cartel leaders?
I don’t think so. They messed with the wrong girl.
The man behind me leans in close again, laughing as he makes disgusting snorting noises against my neck. I step back quickly, stomping on his foot and whipping my head back against his sharp nose.
He screams in pain and releases me. My head feels like it has cracked open in the back, but I don’t stop to check. Instead, I swing my bag at Milo’s head. He winces and bats at my bag. I take advantage of his misstep, turning to run past him. It doesn’t work. He grabs my bag by its straps and pulls. I try to find traction on the slick street, but my shoes are old, the soles worn to smooth rubber. It probably wouldn’t matter anyway. He is so tall and I’m so short, it’s not much of a tug of war. He laughs, dragging me toward the other guy, who is still covering his bloody nose, cursing and looking murderous.
I have only one option. Let go of the bag. Still, I hesitate. It’s stupid, I know. But I worked hard for the meal inside it. Besides, I’m still hungry.
“Please,” I whisper.
Maybe I’m speaking to God, maybe not. I don’t have time to think about why the word escapes my lips. I only know that I’m not begging for mercy from this thug who is now uttering the vilest threats I have ever heard, but from Someone greater. Someone big enough to help.
“Stop. Not another move, theek hai?”
Milo stops, which confuses me until I see the flash of metal against his throat—a switchblade held by someone so narrow, his entire body is hidden behind the blond man. Whoever it is, he’s not alone. I see a flash of movement behind the man with the bleeding nose.
“Let her go.”
Another knife presses into his throat, drawing a thin line of blood. The effect is immediate. Milo lets go of my bag and I stumble with the momentum, dropping it in the process. It doesn’t slow me down. I don’t stop to retrieve it, or to check on my rescuers. Instead, I spin on my bald heels and run, dodging this way and that, barely noticing which streets I take, which alleys. Finally, I see a trashcan fire in the distance and lean in, my legs burning as I skid to a stop just inches from the blaze.
“Nǐ hái hǎo ma?”
I don’t know what the little Chinese woman is asking me, so I skirt the fire, finally brave enough to look back into the dark alley behind us. My attackers are nowhere to be seen.
“Chen’s Cháguǎn?” I ask.
If I can find Chen’s Tea Shop, I can find my way home. The woman nods her head and beckons me to follow her to the end of the alley, where she points down the street.
“Five block,” she says.
“Xièxiè,” I answer, adding a short bow to my thanks before turning away to follow her directions, this time sticking to the middle of each street and running through every dark turn. By the time I enter our building, climb the stairs to our narrow room, and unlock the door, my heartbeat has returned to normal.
Reed has beaten me home.
“Where’s dinner?” he asks.
If I still had my bag, I would throw it at him. Instead, I bolt the lock and dip my head against the door.
“Riley?” Reed jumps to his feet. “What happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
He touches my shoulder, but I shake him off and walk to the window, peering down at the dark street below. I can’t see anything, of course, but I’m suddenly concerned. What if they followed me here? What if they lie in wait and try to grab me again?
“Riley?”
I hear him come up behind me and I flinch, but he doesn’t touch me. Instead he steps back, lowers his voice.
“Riley, you’re bleeding.”
I touch the back of my head and find the split where I connected with my attacker’s nose. My hand comes away covered in blood. I turn around. Reed’s eyes are dark. Angry like mine but scared too. He doesn’t know what happened. I open my mouth to tell him and a great, embarrassing sob escapes. By now, I can tell Reed is afraid of touching me, so he just stands there like an idiot with his hands shoved in his pockets, and I stand there like an idiot and cry, wishing he knew I need him to try again. It’s no use. I always send the wrong message.
“Come on,” he finally says, grabbing a towel. “Let’s clean it up.”
We go down the hall to the bathroom, where Reed locks us inside and helps me wash the wound, his hands firm but gentle as he moves my hair and allows the warm water direct access to my scalp.
“It’s not as bad as I thought it would be.” His voice is soft, deflated.
“Head wounds bleed a lot,” I say.
He hands me the towel and we return to our room. Reed locks the door and I go back to the window to stare down at the dark street.
No one’s down there, I tell myself. No one’s coming for you.
“Are you ready to tell me what happened?”
I nod and swallow the knot in my throat. “Two men jumped me. I head-butted one and threw our dinner at the other.”
“Where was it?”
I shrug. “In an alley near the mall.”
I’m glad he doesn’t ask any more questions. Instead, he offers to go get us some food. I don’t want to be alone, but I don’t want to go out again either, so I nod and lock the door as soon as he leaves before taking up my position again by the window. I watch Reed dart across the street and disappear to the west. For the next few minutes, I focus on the street, scanning it for trouble, praying for Reed’s safe return. Few people are out this time of night. I see Zhi Ruo, who also works at Chen’s Tea Shop, dragging a bag of trash toward the alley. I suppose she is too old to be prey for men like my attackers, but I watch her anyway, for as long as I can. A few other people pass our building, huddled against the rain. Two of them pause for a moment, their heads tilted toward our building for the briefest moment before they continue on. My heartbeat quickens for a minute, but they are not my attackers. One is a woman, wearing a hijab. The other is a skinny man…
So skinny, he could have been the man wielding a knife in the alley. The man who saved me. I lean against the glass to get a better view as they walk down the street. Right before they turn the corner, he looks up toward the building again. Moonlight shows me his face.
The door unlocks behind me, making me jump.
“I’m back.”
Reed juggles two small containers of noodle soup while he locks the door. We sit on the narrow bed to eat, staring at the blank wall and saying nothing. I think about telling him about the people who helped me get free, and how I might have seen them again on the street below our building, but what good would that do? I don’t know anything for sure, so I keep quiet and finish my soup. When we are both finished, I ask Reed about his shift at The Rose.
“I was going to tell you, but then…” His voice trails off. He reaches for my soup container and carries it to the trash. I notice his hands shaking, but don’t say anything. I am ashamed that I forgot all about The Rose. Every night, my question is the same: Did you see Lexie. Tonight, I haven’t thought about it since I escaped from those thugs in the alley.
“I’m alright, Reed. Really. I just want everything back to normal.”
He nods but stands there for a minute with his back to me, working his hands in and out of fists.
“So tell me,” I say too brightly. “Tell me about your night at work.”
Reed straightens and turns to face me.
“I saw Lexie tonight,” he says.
29
Oliver
Bored, bored.
Sleep, then awake and bored again.
What? You miss being beaten, my friend?
No. But nothing has happened for days. Days that run into nights, then more days that turn into weeks.
Days during which I’ve begun talking to myself.
You’re losing your mind, my friend.
Yeah, maybe, but you would be too. And stop calling me ‘friend.’
The sameness is getting to me. Same walls, same water dish sloshed across the same concrete floor.
Only the food is irregular, but it’s the same food, when it comes.
I am the same.
Are you?
Yes, I insist. I’m healing. Counting new scars. Breathing easier. Getting back to normal.
If you say so.
I turn to the wall and give myself the silent treatment.
It’s been weeks since Kino’s last visit. Good news except Jonah is gone too and I’m worried, bouncing from foot to foot, from wall to wall as the hours pass. Days pass.
Guards pass.
Squeaky shoes, squeaky hinge on my food slot. Open. Close. Food today.
“Thanks, Danny.”
It’s your lucky day, my friend.
Something new. So new, I shake with adrenalin.
Danny takes me from my cell. I stumble to a fenced yard in the middle of the compound to blink at the sun and breathe in hot air.
I’m in the Western Sand, just like I thought.
“Ten minutes,” says Danny, locking me in. Or out?
In the yard, outside. In and out, in and out.
I nod and tuck my hands under my arms to keep them from shaking.
The yard is long and narrow. A meter-wide strip of grass surrounded by gravel. What’s the point? Two walls are solid block with high windows, too small to fit through, though why they designed them like that, I don’t know.
If I am out here, why would I want to get in there? Or if I was in there, why would I want to get out here?
I laugh because it’s funny. Then I realize I’m laughing too long, so I stop.
The third wall has a door—the one I passed through. Here’s where it gets interesting: the fourth wall is almost entirely made of thick glass, giving me a view of a long hallway with bars on both ends and three doors in between. During my ten minutes in the yard, a man comes and watches me from the corridor. He frowns over a tablet, tapping and swiping.
Ah. A UN inspector. That’s why I have been brought here.
But why not ever before?
Danny takes me back to my cell. A week passes. Still no Jonah. I pace like a worried mother.
Is he dead?
He’s dead. I know it.
I try to sing one of his songs, but I’m no singer. Can’t even remember the words.
A guard who won’t tell me his name takes me to the yard again, but there’s no UN inspector this time. I pace from one end to the other, over and over. Two guards pass through the corridor during my ten minutes of fresh air. One of them unlocks the door and takes me back to my cell.
Today I wake up but don’t get up. It’s too much to ask, to go through the movements of counting push-ups, counting pull-ups. Counting down the days until…
Until what?
More days. More lethargy.
Jonah, Jonah.
I just remembered that there’s a Jonah in the Bible. Xoey told me that. Something about a big fish.
Jonah’s not back. I’m pretty sure he’s dead.
More days pass. I mostly lie on the floor, aching like an old man. I blink at the camera. Blink, blink.
Footsteps squeak in the corridor. Guards, passing my door. Boots shuffling.
Click, goes the lock next door. My heart races. A grunt follows, then the familiar thud of someone hitting the floor. The door clicks again. The guards retreat.
I move for the first time all day.
“Jonah?” My voice is hoarse. There’s no way he can hear me.
Everything hurts, but I cross the floor anyway, putting my mouth near the vent, clearing my throat. “Jonah, you okay?”
He grunts.
Several minutes pass in silence. Me, hurting on my side of the block wall and Jonah, hurting much more on the other. I remember my last beating. How it hurt to breathe afterward. To blink even. How Jonah made me get up. Get up and move.
“Oliver.”
I startle awake. My cell is almost dark now, which means I fell asleep with my face pressed against the vent.
“Jonah?” I rub my eyes, clearing the haze. “I’m here.”
I hear another grunt and the shifting of limbs. Then his voice is closer. I think he is my mirror, pressed up against the vent on the other side of the wall.
“Talk to me, kid. Everything hurts. Distract me.”
“What do you want to know?”
“The woman who comes to your cell. Who is she?”
“Wanda Kino.”
“You the only one she visits?”
“I don’t know.” I blink in the gloom. “But she hates me.”
“Tell me why.”
So I tell him. All about Windmill Bay and the students there. I tell him about being beaten and malnourished. I tell him about the lice and the meaningless UN inspections and the work and the lousy food. I tell him about the thin blankets and our drunk medic, and the kids who were sent to the frontline or labor camps. I tell him about Zak.
I know they might be listening, so I don’t tell him everything.
I don’t tell him about my friends, or about the heist. I don’t tell him I was working undercover for the Resistance.
“She hates you because she never got the best of you. Is that it?”
I laugh. It sounds like a wheeze, or a cackle. A wheezy cackle. I picture myself growing old in here, a beard down to my knees, rotten teeth, wheezing through the years. It’s sad or comical. Not sure which.
“She’s had the best of me several times, but she hasn’t cut me where it matters. She hasn’t seen into my soul.”
I frown. Has she, though? That video of me watching Xoey is the closest she’s come. And the memory of her smile that day is hard to forget.
But Xoey’s safe, I remind myself. Away from Kino, away from here. I try and push away my sense of unease.
“I’m indestructible,” I tell Jonah. My voice cracks.
Jonah grunts. “You think so?”
“I’m tougher than I look. Not that you’ve ever seen me.”
“Be careful, son. A man who thinks he stands should take heed, lest he fall.”
I turn toward the vent, ignoring that he called me son again. “You quoting scripture, Jonah?”
“You know the Bible?”
“No. But I had a friend…”
“And she was a godly girl, huh?”
“I didn’t say it was a girl.”
“You kinda did.” Another grunt reminds me he’s talking to distract himself from the pain. “It was the way you said ‘friend.’”
I shift, uncomfortable again.
“Tell me about yourself, Jonah. Why are you here?”
Another groan. He’s silent for so long, I think he’s not going to answer. “I thought I was here because it’s where God needed me to be,” he finally says. “But today? Today, I’m not sure.”
I nod. Torture messes with your head. Probably messes with your faith, but I don’t know. I’ve never had any faith to begin with.
“You a preacher, Jonah?”
“No. No congregation, no pulpit.” His laugh sputters, turning into a cough. He needs the infirmary, I think. Must not be another UN inspection on the horizon, or he’d have been taken there. “But I’ve shared the Word where I could, trying to spread the Good News to those who need it most. Whether I succeeded or failed, I don’t know.”
Weeping Justice Page 21
