Wally

by Rowan Massey

  I reached into my shirt and pulled out the chain around my neck. He looked at it, then at me.

  “You should be mad,” he said.

  “I’m not.” And I didn’t really know why. When I tried to hate him, my mind just went to the fact I wanted to dance to make that hate go away, then I could feel the same about him as I had before. That was all I wanted because I couldn’t change things anyway. I knew it probably made me a bad person. I didn’t care. Everyone around me was being a bad person. Maybe I was giving in and becoming a bad guy too.

  Nando scooted close and kissed me softly again. I was careful not to put pressure on his face. It was nice anyway. He pulled away. I could tell he was in pain. I kissed his jaw very carefully.

  “Listen,” he said, rubbing my back. “You’re so sweet. I’ve never met anybody like you. And…I just feel like I never apologized right. I know what I did to you was…I know what it was. I’m so fucking sorry. I didn’t know I was crazy, and I’m sorry as fuck about everything.”

  “Stop,” I said, feeling my face scrunch up in that horrible way that told me I was going to cry. I didn’t want any more crying moments. I couldn’t handle that. “I don’t care about it. You weren’t in your right mind. We should pretend it didn’t happen. That’s all I want. Okay? Just pretend with me we only kissed. And pretend the rest was somebody else.”

  “Okay, we only kissed,” he agreed. His voice was low and choked up.

  “Good.”

  We laid down, both of us exhausted, and we cuddled and talked, but mostly just rested. He told me how Rydel had been doing. Nando had been spending all his time in his best friend’s room except when the family was visiting him or when Nando had to go work on the field. He told me someone else had already started working next to him right away, and about how wrong it felt. I could only imagine somebody replacing Spitz.

  “It feels fucked up when you’re not there too,” he said. “I’ve been saying hey to your friends, and I asked if they’ve heard from you, but they didn’t expect to hear from you. Once they knew you weren’t texting me, they seemed a little worried, but not really. I think because they don’t like me and are hoping you dumped my ass. I don’t blame them, I guess.”

  “Spitz wasn’t worried?” I asked. That was surprising.

  “I don’t know,” he said, shrugging. “Like I said, they don’t like me, so I couldn’t really tell what they were thinking.”

  “I’ll tell them you’re cool,” I said, but he didn’t answer.

  We stayed quiet for so long that I started to doze off, but he moved and woke me up.

  “I can’t stay still for long,” he said. “Makes my stomach nervous. Let me go check on Rydel, then we can go get your friends.”

  “You know where they are?” I felt guilty for not having asked that yet.

  “I know where they’ve been working the past couple days,” he said.

  “Working?” My voice went up into a squeak. That couldn’t be right.

  “Yeah, somebody who was a hoarder left their landlord with a mess, so he hired some kids off the street to clean it out. They get to sell whatever they find when it comes to garbage.”

  “Wow.” I’d never heard of that kind of thing happening before. Nobody hired fielders for anything. It had never happened before Doc. I hoped they found a lot of good plastic.

  We pried ourselves out of bed, Nando took some pain pills, washed them down with booze, and we headed out. I waited on the stoop while he went up to see Rydel and get the bike. The sky looked low, but I doubted it would do anything more than drizzle.

  When he came out, he had a smile on his face. I was starting to see the difference in his smile, but I wasn’t sure if it was from pain or from his feeling like his brain was damaged.

  “Rydel said his sisters scored some antibiotics,” he said.

  He went down the stoop steps and put the bike down.

  “Oh wow,” I said, following him.

  “Yeah, they tracked down this weird guy who sold it to them for whatever they had, which wasn’t much. I pitched in though. We all did. The guy also said that if Rydel gets worse and can’t work anymore and loses his place to live, he could get him a place. Not sure what that’s about. Sounds fishy.”

  I climbed onto the spokes of the bike, and Nando pushed off. As we bounced down off the curb into the street, I looked up at the windows of Nando’s building and saw Rydel looking down at us. I waved, and he waved back.

  Last time I’d been on the back of Nando’s bike, I’d loved the feeling of his shoulders, the smell of him coming towards me on the air, but I was mostly thinking about Spitz and Fiona and what they knew about Veronica. That had to be the reason they were giving him the cold shoulder. I needed to talk to them in private and tell them everything.

  We were heading towards the field until Nando pulled into a side street. I could see them up ahead loading trash bags into some kind of cart attached to a bike. Spitz was wearing a blue baseball cap I’d never seen. Maybe that meant they’d been doing good. My hand shot into the air in excitement, waving.

  “Hey! Guys!” I shouted, making Nando flinch from the noise. I squeezed his shoulder.

  Spitz and Fiona looked up from what they were doing, looking shocked. Spitz dropped his bag, letting garbage fall out onto the street, and came running at us. Fiona was right behind him. Nando brought the bike to a stop, but I was off before he braked completely, stumbling onto the asphalt.

  “You fucking asshole!” Spitz was saying before he reached me with arms out. I was pulled into a hard hug, squeezed painfully tight, then patted hard on the back and head. “I fucking hate you! What the fuck, dude? What the fuck?”

  Fiona’s arms were around my back despite my backpack. She was laughing her ass off and jumping up and down.

  “I told you,” she said. “He was having a fucking party out there without us!”

  “Nope,” I groaned. It was the only thing I could say being crushed half to death between them.

  Spitz made a sound by my ear like he might be crying, but when he took my face in his hands and gave my head a little shake, he looked pretty happy.

  “I’m never dancing without you again, you adorable little bitch,” he said.

  “What’s been going on?” I asked, looking over at the job they’d been doing, but Spitz’s eyes went to Nando. His expression was hard.

  I looked behind me, so did Fiona, and we were all staring at Nando, who was still straddling his bike. He said nothing.

  “Thanks for the ride,” I said awkwardly. “I’ll see you on the field. Will you be alright?”

  “Yeah,” he said, but I could tell he was disappointed. “Like I said, I’m too restless to stay still anyway. I’ll go back to Rydel.”

  He turned his bike around and pedaled away while Spitz and Fiona pulled me in the opposite direction, but I looked back a couple of times until I caught him looking back too, and we gave each other smiles.

  There was a tall old man in the doorway in front of where they’d been working, watching us. Spitz hurried to pick up the plastic on the ground.

  “I want the cart back in less than an hour,” he said. “Shouldn’t take longer than that.”

  “Yeah, no problem,” Fiona said, giving him a fake smile.

  He went back inside.

  “What’s with all this?” I asked. “Nando said you got a job?”

  “Well, not like you,” Fiona said.

  “I figured if you could make money, we should try to too.” Spitz said, lifting the full bag into the cart. “There’s three of us now, and Fiona needs me to take care of us.”

  Fiona rolled her eyes and turned her head away from him. “I’m not your little woman to take care of,” she said.

  He got on the bike part of the cart with a funny smile on his face. I noticed he had a bandanna wrapped around his wrist when he grabbed the handle bars. I reached out to pull it back and see if he had hurt himself. He jerked away and pulled it back into place.

&nb
sp; “Dude, I’m just covering my tat,” he said. “Get in back. We gotta drive this thing to the recycling and back.”

  The back of the cart, which was just plywood on wheels, was open, and me and Fiona sat with our legs hanging out over the street. It took Spitz some effort to get going, but then he pedaled fast.

  “So, what’s with the tat thing?” I asked, pointing a thumb over my shoulder.

  “Yeah, nobody would hire us if they knew we were fielders,” Fiona told me. “I don’t have anything to cover yet, but somebody loaned him the hat and bingo! We landed some work. Why didn’t you guys do that a long time ago?”

  I shook my head. It had been unthinkable. Hide who we were? Get jobs? I looked over my shoulder and saw that Spitz had also come up with a clean shirt with no blood stains.

  “Where did he get the duds?” I asked.

  “My dad,” she said with a sly grin. “Might have stolen some shit.”

  I laughed. “So you guys have been fine without me.”

  She snorted. “No. Not even close.” She looked at her shoes and let them drag on the pavement a little. “Are you really still with Nando?”

  “He got fucked up from that battle he was in by the docks. He’s wasn’t himself. He’s been really sweet today, and like, sad about all of it. I know he killed Veronica, but you said you hoped he would.”

  She looked at me sideways. “Yeah, but he didn’t exactly kill her. Not like the other two. She stayed in hiding because of him. He found her already dead out by the docks. She couldn’t do anything to find money for her fielders, and she kept moving to new hiding spots until we lost track of her.”

  I stared at Fiona. Why had Nando said he killed her as if he’d shot or beaten her? Because he felt guilty.

  “I forgave him,” I said. “If he acts violent again, I’ll break up with him, but I think he’s more normal now. I mean, I don’t know what’s wrong with him. He feels like shit, but he’s acting sweet. I swear.”

  “Did Rydel die yet?” Spitz called back to us.

  “Can you hear us?” I asked. The wind in our ears had made me assume he wasn’t listening.

  “Yeah,” he said, and glanced back for a second, looking like he had a lot of questions.

  “No, he’s alive and they bought him antibiotics.”

  “Cool. Did you have fun in Manhattan? You have to tell me all about the food.”

  I turned away from him and looked at the street moving away from me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw them give each other looks. Fiona shrugged at Spitz.

  “After tonight,” I said. “I need to dance.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Two weeks later

  We had a great dance. I’d been inside the guts of a huge beast that had moved through the galaxies like a whale in the ocean. I’d decided at some point it was a she. She had been surprised when I showed up inside her complaining that I was being squeezed to death. She learned to keep her body relaxed around me, and we’d found our way through the cosmos until I got home. We’d talked literally for years, never getting tired of learning from each other. Then I’d looked around and seen that for the first time in so long I was out of darkness, away from her soothing voice, and free to move in my own direction. I looked up at the sky and told her thank you for bringing me back. Already missing her, I knew she missed me too but had to keep moving. I would never run into her again.

  I jogged to the edge of the field and hugged my best friends, who had been watching me dance, waiting for me to finish, then skipped right up to Nando, because he loved when I did that, and planted a big kiss on his mouth in front of everyone.

  When I’d asked for advice from Doc about Nando’s jaw, he’d told me what drug he should take for the pain. Now, he didn’t drink as much and took P instead. He called them his capital P Pain Pills.

  Every night, we all four headed in the same direction. Between the four of us, it wasn’t hard to come up with the money for Spitz and Fiona to stay under the stairs. On that first day back in Emporium, I’d surprised Spitz and Fiona with my money by buying the useful cart with seventy bucks. When we didn’t have money for them to stay indoors, or just wanted to save, they slept curled up in the cart in an alley. It was a lot better for them than the ground.

  “Are you done for tonight?” I asked Nando.

  “Yeah, that batch was a piece of work,” he said. “Everybody danced a long time. Nobody left to sell to. I was just waiting for you. You looked great out there. You were dancing like you were in slow motion.”

  “Let’s eat,” Spitz whined. He’d been getting treated to the food at a nearby hotdog stand every night. A few times, we’d gone back to that place for waffles and even had bacon once. We were still getting jealous looks from other fielders who couldn’t believe we were eating like tourists. It was just the veggie dogs with plain ketchup and mustard though. Meat was expensive.

  All holding hands, it went Nando, me, Fiona, Spitz when we headed through the field, which was emptying out fast. I hoped the hot dog stand wasn’t closed, but if it was, we’d go to the diner. Shit, I’d gotten used to real food so fast. We still ate vitamin stew and bars during the day though.

  “Are you still thinking about what I said?” Nando asked.

  “Huh?”

  “Not you, babe.” He pointed down the row of us to Spitz, who jerked his chin at Nando in a way that told him to shut up. Fiona looked back and forth at the two of them, clueless as I was.

  “Cool,” Nando said. “Let me buy your hot dog this time,” he said to me. He was trying to change the subject.

  “Since when do you two even talk?” I asked.

  They shrugged in unison.

  “Jesus Christ,” Fiona said under her breath.

  We were at the hot dog stand, so we let it drop until we were standing and sitting around our cart, having wanted to unload our backs before we started eating. The cart was still the best thing I’d bought us with the money Doc had given me that day. The second best thing was food, obviously, but I’d also given in to the fact that the best shoes we could have were the army boots. Even Nando was wearing them. Doc was also paying me eight dollars a day, more on days I did overtime.

  “So, what are you still thinking about, Spizzy?” I asked.

  “Uh, Nando said, uh…” He picked at his food, then stuffed a huge bite into his mouth so he wouldn’t have to talk. It made Fiona laugh. He was good at making her laugh, but I was annoyed.

  “Dread could use some low level recruits,” Nando said. “Easy money. I could vouch. It’s not a big deal.”

  “Gross,” I said, without thinking, then my eyes went wide at the look Nando gave me. “No, I mean, for you, it’s…You know what I mean. It’s not us. We’re fielders. We can’t be…” I jabbed my elbow into Fiona’s ribs, expecting some help.

  “What would Spitz be doing?” she asked.

  I gave her a look. Was she fucking kidding?

  “They just want numbers,” Nando said. “Stuff is still brewing. They want to free up the regular guys and put them on the border. Upgrades for pretty much everybody. Maybe even me. But that means the boring work either doesn’t get done or we grab guys like Spitz. I told my supplier about the way Wally works his ass off and you guys have been doing jobs around town. Other fielders have been catching onto it and working. People are changing their minds about fielders in general now.”

  “More of us are working?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Fiona said, and Spitz said mm-hmm.

  I wanted to ask who, but Nando cut in.

  “So yeah, being me and Wally’s friend won’t hurt your chances if you decide to. All you would do is follow the whores from Red House around town a little. Leg work. Report what you see. Don’t do anything else.”

  I turned to Fiona, expecting a reaction to that. “You want him around whores all day?” I asked.

  She gave me a double take like I was crazy. “What would they want him for?” she said.

  Spitz snorted food into his thro
at and started coughing and laughing at the same time. We couldn’t help laughing too. After I pounded his back a few times and gave him some water, he was breathing easy again and finished off the last bite of his hot dog.

  “You guys don’t even need to work at all,” I said. “We have enough money.”

  “That’s not fair, though,” Spitz said, his voice suddenly tense. “We should be making an effort too.”

  “What the fuck for? We have it made. Why sign up for a job you can never quit?” The more I thought about it, the more mad it made me that he was really thinking about it. It was stupid. I’d be telling Nando off for the whole thing later.

  Fiona got up all of a sudden and walked away. “You two need to talk,” she said, and turned to wave at Nando to follow her. He looked at me. I shrugged, feeling pissed. The both of them left us and went to lean on a lamp post out of earshot.

  “What is this shit?” I asked Spitz. “We’ve finally got things going for us.”

  “You don’t get it, man.” He took his cap off and ran a hand over his scabby head. There were dried streaks of blood down all our faces, but not much. “When you were gone things were scary for me. Fiona had just started taking fielders. She didn’t know the first thing about living on the street. Still doesn’t. And you’re always the one…” He took a deep breath. “I was never sure what to do without you. You push me to do what needs doing. You know what I mean. I had to start pushing myself without you.

  “When we got that job, it was like a light bulb went on, you know? We’d been doing everything the way everyone thought we should. Because we’re fielders. Because we could die any day. Because we’re kids. But we’re growing up, man. We know better now.”

  “So what? I don’t get it.” I moved closer and got in his face. “This is Dread Red you’re talking about, not working in a stew kitchen or something. What if they want you to do something dangerous? What if you need to quit? And the initiation! You should be thinking about Fiona and me.”