“I love you, too.”
I could die in his eyes right here and now, but Lyla’s waiting for me. Matthew thumps the roof of the car again and goes back up the hill toward his house. I regain my senses enough to start toward South-880.
Matthew loves me, and we’re going to join the Herons together.
Tonight is destiny, I think, remembering Lyla’s words. Tonight is fate.
I lean back in my seat as San Francisco whizzes by me. I recount all the facts about the Wars I’ve spent the past years memorizing, as if that will align the stars in my favor. There’s a “fan” site and Twitter accounts filled with internet denizens who keep tabs on the Wars from the safety of their screens. I follow them all and did research of my own.
The Herons were the first of the gangs. From what I’ve read online, it was originally a club for burgeoning tech start-ups—a place where they could meet up, exchange ideas, and swap condolences when projects failed. Matthew’s dad, Richard Weston, was one of the founding members.
Then came the dot-com boom of the nineties. Having the connections—rather, the right money in the right pockets—was everything. Herons funded some of the first supercomputers. Matthew’s parents met Steve Jobs and Woz long before they were household names.
Over time, being a Heron went from a bragging right to a point by which people defined themselves. The Herons got so popular that there was a fee to join. The fee doubled then tripled overnight, quickly entering into the hundreds of thousands. Some resisted the change, but most scraped at the pearly gates that was the Heron Club with eager hands. Every company would bring their device, website, and software to the Heron Club altar—aka their investing board.
Tech moguls either were Herons or not Herons—which didn’t matter to everyone, of course. But when it did matter, it really did. Families grew into dynasties, and people like Matthew have never known otherwise.
The second gang, the Boars, started off as a joke—an “everyman’s” club without the snooty air that the Herons had. Where the techies in the Herons come from the South Bay or out of state, the Boars pride themselves on being true San Franciscans. Anyone born in SF can be a part of it. From what I can tell online, they don’t really do much except petition against the Herons’ new building projects and shout at them on the streets.
Then around ten years ago something changed, and the two groups went from arguments in town halls to beatings on the street, armed robberies, and storefronts being burned or broken into. People stopped joking about being in the Boars: if you were one, you were dangerous and proud of it.
Neighborhoods were claimed by one gang or another, the bus stops and trash cans emblazoned with Boar or Heron insignias. Fights started, escalating until the police got involved, and the Boars shrank down to almost nothing. A reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an op-ed suggesting that the police give the Herons more leeway because so many of them donate to police programs. I don’t doubt it.
It’s not hard to spot the Herons out and around town. They always dress in pristine ivory clothes like they’ve just walked off the pages of a Ralph Lauren catalogue. That’s the Heron color—white. Clean as they want the public to think they are. The public members of the club—at Facebook, Twitter, and the rest—maintain an ironclad stance that they are not at all affiliated with the group of misguided teens calling themselves the Young Herons. It’s the latter that actually take to the streets and butt heads with the Boars.
Where Herons wear white, the Boars’ uniform is gray hoodies with red stripes down the side. I’ve seen folks on BART board a train only to get off when they see a Boar in the same car. People would rather miss their meeting or be late coming home than be on the same train as a Boar.
No one knows much about the third gang, the Stags. The Stags wear black—but then again, so does every other North Face–wearing city dweller. They’ve only been around a few years. Dad doesn’t even think they’re real. “Just a bunch of wannabes,” he says.
I slam my hand down on the radio dial, shutting it off. In so many ways, the Boars ruined my life—without them, I wouldn’t know any of these facts. I’d be like everyone else: worrying what colleges I’ll get into, what I want for Christmas, or what color my prom dress is going to be. Maybe I’d still be planning the vacation to the one place I want to go to more than anywhere else. Fortunate as I was to grow up in a house where we took regular vacations, there was one place I had always wanted to go but never figured out how: the Philippines, where my mom grew up.
I envisioned Mom, Dad, and Leo walking with me down dirt paths, breathing in the tropical humid air and catching glimpses of the sea between patches of dense trees. I wanted to experience the chaos of city life, but also the quieter regions and even those that cater to tourists. My phone screen background was a picture of the blue jewel waters of Cebu.
Even though my Tagalog is spotty at best, for a long time I’ve known that I’m not going to be complete unless I visit. A lifetime of school projects about “what countries are you from” had only fostered that desire to go.
But all my dreams of new horizons died with Leo.
My eyes start to tear up, but I blink it away. Don’t, Val. Focus.
I come to a stoplight, and the car behind me flashes its lights. My body tenses—I’ve heard the horror stories of people stopping for a weird reason and getting kidnapped—or worse.
But what if it’s the Herons?
The stoplight turns green and I keep an eye on the car behind me. It flashes its lights again. This time, someone waves, a white sleeve out the window.
It’s got to be them, I think. How did they know where I was? Doesn’t matter—it’s finally happening.
The speeding lights of the freeway beckon ahead of me, but I pull over onto a side street. This time, the car behind me blinks its lights repeatedly, which I take as a good sign. When I come to a stop, the other car does, too.
Almost immediately, another two cars swerve out from around it, cutting in front of me and blocking my side. Figures burst from the cars, and none of them are wearing white. Even the first driver I spotted seems to have disappeared into the throng.
“Fuck.” I start my car again. This is for sure how people die. “Oh my god.” I shift the gear with a hand that’s already sweaty from panic. Pressing down hard on the gas pedal, I lurch out of my parking spot only to slam on the brakes—instinct alone saves me from running over the third figure who steps out in front of me.
Someone taps at my window. A pair of mean eyes peers at me from above a red bandana covering the guy’s nose and mouth. His hood is up. His gray hood.
He taps the window again just as another Boar tries to open the passenger side, but it’s locked. Every part of me trembles.
“This doesn’t make any sense.” The Boars would never recruit me. Not after Leo.
The guy who first approached me pounds the window then twists his hand twice. When I don’t react, he slams a gun into the window so hard I am amazed it doesn’t break. He makes the motion again. Turn the engine off. I nod to show I understand.
Reaching for the key, my car shudders into silence. I check the rearview, looking for a Heron in white to step out, challenge the Boars, and take me to my new home. The irony of my angel-seeking isn’t lost on me.
“Come on, Matthew,” I whisper. “Please.”
The first Boar opens the driver’s side door. “Get out.”
“What do you want?”
“Out!”
When I don’t move, he grabs my hair, undoes my seat belt, and yanks me sideways. He tosses me to the ground like I’m nothing, and my knees scrape against the concrete through the fabric of my jeans.
“Okay, okay!” I shout, raising my hands over my head. I turn to run—but I’m surrounded. The ghostly gray-and-red figures watch me, grinning and nodding toward each other. I tense my muscles to keep them from shaking, but it’s no use. “I decline your offer to join,” I say. “I do not accept.”
The Bo
ars explode into wild, raucous laughter—I’m the funniest person alive. The first Boar-guy steps up, reaches into his waistband, and pulls out a black handgun. He points it at my chest, and I stagger back, screaming.
“No one said this was an offer to join,” he says. “Get on your knees.”
“Please, don’t. W-what did I do? Why me?”
“On. Your. Knees.”
“Why my family? What have we ever done to you?!”
He cocks the gun to the side like they do in the movies. My breath skims in my lungs as my mind flashes through a jigsaw puzzle of memories: a little body splayed on a sidewalk, a nice family dressed all in black, a neighbor who brushed away tears …
I’m so sorry, Leo.
There is a gunshot.
The Boar screams and clutches his arm as blood gushes from his shoulder.
The Boars scatter. Moments later someone grabs me, lifting me from the ground. My ears ring, and I look at him—he’s not wearing white, but quite the opposite.
“The Stags?” I wonder aloud.
The guy holding me sets me down behind a parked car. “Stay here,” he says, pushing a lock of gelled hair back into place. He grips my shoulders as if I didn’t hear him. “Don’t. Move.”
He darts back toward the mixing sea of gray and black figures, staying low. I do my best to do the same, flattening myself between the ground and a blue Honda Civic. I scrape my hands on the sidewalk to steady myself.
This is real. This feeling, these sounds. The Boars. The Stags. All real.
An unfamiliar scent permeates the air. I never knew what gunpowder smelled like.
Just as I root myself into the chaos, the sounds fade to nothing. Blood pounds in my ears as I wait for a Boar to find me and finish what they started.
But nothing happens. Then I hear talking.
Scooting forward, I peek around the car’s bumper. The Boar who pulled me out of the car steps forward to meet one of the Stags face-to-face. The rest of the gang members keep still, giving the two a wide berth. The Boar puts away his gun. The Stag doesn’t seem to have a weapon at all. The Stag shoves the other guy’s shoulder, but the Boar doesn’t retaliate.
Someone taps my shoulder. It’s another Stag—a girl—and she looks bored.
“Get up,” she says. “No one’s killing you today.”
A siren wails from around the corner. At the sound, the bleeding Boar and the Stag dart opposite ways, the latter headed right toward me. As he approaches, other Stags emerge from their hiding places, and my head spins as I count them. Five.
“Valerie Simons,” says the first Stag. “I, Jax, do hereby offer you a place in the Wars among the Stags. If you accept, you are inked. You are bound for one year. After one year, you are free to leave if you choose. Do you accept?”
My heartbeat drums in my head. Where are the Herons? I back away from him. “What … what time is it?”
The leader—Jax—is unfazed by my question. He glances at the female Stag behind me.
“Ten fifty-eight,” she says.
Just an hour left. Can I take that chance? I’m trembling again, the worst of Cinderellas, eyes scanning for any sign of the Herons. Blue-and-red lights shine from one street over.
“Do you accept?” Jax shouts.
It’s not the Herons, but it’s not the Boars either. There’s just one thing—
“My brother,” I say. “His name was Leo Simons. He died in a Boar crossfire. Do you know who killed him?”
Jax smiles, slow and sinister. “Yes.”
“Then I accept.”
I don’t have time to process what I’ve just done. The female Stag reaches up around me and covers my mouth with a cloth smelling of acid and heartache.
I black out.
2
When I come to, I’m lying on a couch inside a dimly lit living room that smells like coffee and pot. The furniture looks like it was found on the sidewalk—a pair of sagging, orange love seats, a gray swivel chair unfit for the saddest of offices, and a large papasan. The big-screen LED television is new, however. A tangle of black video game consoles and wires spreads out on the floor.
The only other thing that isn’t sad and worn is the spray-painted beast on the wall to my right.
The giant stag image faces me, its eyes wide and watchful, with antlers curling up toward the ceiling. The one on the right is jagged, even more than it should be. Thorns. The left antler isn’t an antler at all, but a curling feather.
I’ve seen the image before—tags on BART station walls and freeway overpasses. Everyone in the city knows the gang’s signs, even if they pretend not to. The wild slashes of the Boars, the curling wings of the Herons, and the pensive gaze of the Stags.
But this one is different. This is art, exquisite and alive.
I get up and scan the room again, trying to keep calm. My hands go to my pockets.
“Where’s my phone?” The light coming through the glass of the front door is a pale blue, so I’ll safely guess it’s morning. If I had a watch, I’d check it, but Dad noticed my thing about time a while ago and gets upset when I wear one, so instead I just keep my phone on me at all times. I pat my pockets again, my anxiety churning. “What time is it?”
“Seven thirty-one,” a voice answers.
The female Stag from last night stands in the adjacent hallway, a cup of coffee in her hand. Her wavy hair is covered by an army-green bandana, while a white crop top shows off a stomach that would make veteran yogis proud. The tips of antlers poke up from her left hip. Her Stag tattoo—dark ink on dark skin.
“Where am I?” I ask.
“Ingleside.”
I place myself on a mental map of the city. Home is in the Marina District—not too far away, all things considered, though nothing in SF is really that far away. “Where’s my phone?”
“Destroyed. We’ll give you a new one.”
“Destroyed?” I repeat. “I had photos on there. Texts. How am I going to call … I mean, you can’t just do that.” Mom. Dad. Lyla. MATTHEW. I need to let them know I’m okay.
The female Stag’s expression clouds into a mixture of anger and amusement. “Jax does whatever he wants. You’d better get used to that or you won’t make it through your year.”
One year. That’s what I’ve agreed to, isn’t it? It’s the same rules that the Herons and Boars have. You serve from the day you turn eighteen to the day you turn nineteen.
“I’m Nianna,” the girl says. She pronounces it slowly—NEE-ann-uh—like I’m too dumb to get it on my own.
“Valerie.” I take a few steps toward her and shake her hand. Another tattoo reveals itself from the underside of her wrist—a slim, finely rendered arrow with feathering at the end. “How long have you been a Stag?”
“Eight months.” She smiles. “Long enough to have seen it all.”
Nianna lets her reply hang in the air as other footsteps sound from the hall. A guy and girl—their disheveled hair and clothes screaming “couple”—step around Nianna. The guy is stocky with tan skin. He’s just a little taller than his companion, though he slouches quite a bit. Locks of black hair stick out from beneath a backward baseball cap.
“Jesus, don’t you sleep?” the guy asks.
Nianna shrugs and sips from her cup. “Coffee’s on.”
“Oh, fuck yes.”
The girl he is with zips up her hoodie. “Valerie, right? I’m Kate.” She shakes my hand. “Nice to meet you.”
Kate has long Rapunzel-style hair—a shiny veil of gold that moves when she moves. It reaches all the way down to her waist but in a light, casual way. Like she doesn’t care, and you can’t make her.
“Nice to meet you, too,” I say.
“That’s Mako.” She points at the guy. “You hungry? Babe, cook us something.”
“What do you want?”
Kate looks to me for an answer.
“Oh, anything. Anything’s fine,” I say. “Actually, what I could really use is a phone.”
“We told
your mom, if that’s what you’re worried about. Your stuff’s here, too. We got it when we drove your car back.”
My car. My stuff. They went back to my house without me.
My heart lurches as I picture Mom in that old robe that she used to let me wear when I was sick—so, so alone—opening the front door and seeing strangers. There’s no universe in which she didn’t cry. No universe in which she did not beg them to change their minds. I suck in my bottom lip. Mom didn’t ask for this. She didn’t ask for any of it.
“Bacon and eggs will do, Mako,” Kate says. “Veggie for me.”
“Fake bacon for the lady.”
Mako gets to work in the kitchen as Kate takes my hand. “Come on. I’ll show you your room.”
She leads me down the short hallway, passing a bathroom and shower. Opening a side door, she starts down a staircase leading into a basement. “You get the den.”
The den is really the garage. It’s about as warm as an icebox and crowded with old lawn furniture and cardboard boxes of who knows what. By the door, there’s a set of heavy weights and a space for working out.
In the corner between two Japanese folding screens is a twin bed with sheets folded on top of it. My suitcases are stacked beside it, a bright orange paper crane resting on top of them. I don’t know what to make of that.
I swallow—I thought I’d be unpacking in a room for a Heron. Clean, safe. Matthew at my side. I push my nails into my palm. The Herons didn’t come for me, but I know they came for Matthew. Should I have turned the Stags down?
“Hey, Kate?”
She frowns, eyes to the ground, as her finger examines a pimple on her cheek. “Yeah?”
“How often do the other gangs, uh, meet up, I guess? Like if I wanted to talk to one of them.”
She shrugs. “All that has to go through Jax. But we don’t usually talk to them so much as fuck with their plans.”
“Oh. Okay. Thanks.”
“No prob. I’ll let you get settled. Ooh.” She leans down and rustles through one of the boxes, pulling out a purple vase. She wipes the dust on her shirt. “Feel free to keep anything you find. I don’t even know where all this came from. Come up in a bit, though. The boy makes a mean breakfast.”
A Thousand Fires Page 2