Cry Baby

by Ginger Scott

  “I know you do,” she says, moving toward the counter and picking up the cookie I dropped. She hands it to me and rolls her eyes. “You broke it anyways, so you might as well just eat it.”

  I grin, then push the warm chocolate dough into my mouth where it melts and coats my insides with something happy for just a little while. My mom never bakes her cookies all the way. It’s her secret, she says. I’ve never broken it to her, but the diner serves a plate of hot cookie dough with ice cream. They’ve been doing it for years, so I’m pretty sure they’re onto her.

  “The sheriff’s office is searching, but it’s been slow. I wonder how hard they’re looking.” Her eyes settle on mine and I read her double meaning. When the law thinks a kid is in a gang, they sometimes look at a missing-person report as one less arrest they’ll need to make down the road.

  My phone buzzes at my hip again, and I know it’s Dub wondering where I’m at, so I grab one more cookie and my mom’s keys before I lunge just out of her reach. I’m about to lie to her, and it has to be solid.

  “Where do you have to go now. It’s bedtime for a lot of people in this county, you know,” she says, teasing me with her words but grilling me with her eyes. I laugh at her joke, and I make it sound genuine.

  “I’m not seven, Mom. It’s still early. I’m just going to drive around a little. I’ve been doing it every night,” I say, which is mostly true. I take her car a lot without asking, sometimes from the street right outside Joker’s house, but most of the time I just walk or find a place where I can sit and wait for him to show up. Joker would have texted me by now. He’s not good on his own—he needs people in his life...caretakers. Every day the fantasy that he’s on some bender grows thinner, and last night I started to wonder if he really ran—somewhere far.

  My mom’s mouth twists with uncertainty, but she buys into my story, snapping her fingers and turning her head for me to kiss her cheek.

  “How do I know you’re not just trying to take away my cookie?” I joke, hesitating before I step into her.

  “Because I would never lie to you,” she says. I die a little inside, and I think that was the point. I somehow keep my smile in place though and play the role of dutiful son, kissing her and breathing in the scent of her sweet perfume.

  “I won’t be long,” I say, burning in my chest because I know I will.

  I don’t text Dub until I get into the car and have pulled up next to the park. I’m careful not to even glance at Riley’s house as I pass. He sent me an address, but it looks more like cross streets so I’m not entirely sure where to go or what I’m looking for.

  Are you at some party here?

  I wait for him to reply, and it takes several minutes. Lotus spots me from the court and nods hello, so I pull up to the next block and kill the lights. I don’t need to be seen.

  Check out that corner. Right by the trash bin. I had car trouble. Keys under the can.

  Car trouble means it’s hot. I’ve done this job before, and I wonder if Dub stole this one himself while he was high and is panicking now that he’s coming down. Stolen cars are an easy way to get nabbed. There are too many computer chips and shit inside, and they’re easy to trace. He makes me move them because he’s too worried about getting caught. We used to have a shop to take them to that chopped the right parts then I’d abandon it, barely running, somewhere at least ten miles away. The shop got busted a few months back, though, so I don’t even know why Dub bothered other than he must have wanted something that was inside the car.

  Got it.

  I head south to One-Seventy-First. It’s a two-lane road that eventually cuts out into nothing and dead-ends. Warehouses hug both sides of the road most of the way, and half of them are empty. Miller County is one of those forgotten parts of the country where jobs are few and businesses left long ago.

  I slow to a cruise around the last building, turning right on Carson. The tail of the car sticks out beyond a huge dumpster, and the ground is wet and littered with trash. I pull my mom’s car behind the can and kill the engine, then sit behind the wheel for several minutes trying to drum up the energy to do this again. My palm flattens on the wheel’s center and my vision blurs while I get lost in my thoughts. This isn’t the middle of nowhere; it’s just not a place anyone wants to go. I could be found here. Someone could catch me. My arm flexes as I lean into the horn, my palm depressing the center and letting the blare echo off the buildings and die into the night air, traveling across the abandoned field of weeds and grass all the way to the highway.

  My hand doesn’t ease up for almost a minute. I don’t flinch once, and I’m never afraid. If someone hears this, if someone comes to stop me, then that’s what’s meant to be. I want out, and this is the way. If nobody comes, though—I am doomed.

  I sit back and let my hand drop to my lap as I exhale. I’ve left the headlights on, so I watch as the moths dance in the beams of light. They look like they’re fighting, tossing through the air into one another with no direction in mind. They just follow the light…blindly. They’ll let it take them anywhere, even if it means death.

  That’s what I’ve done.

  After ten minutes of nothing but my own thoughts, I pull the keys from the car and flip the lights out. Nobody is coming for me. I’m on my own.

  I kneel on the ground and ease my palms onto the dirt, glass shards from broken bottles, needles, soiled clothes, urine—the homeless and the users come here. They aren’t here tonight, though. The keys aren’t very deep under the metal, so I reach in to my elbow and drag them out. He must have taken this from someone’s driveway, or maybe the valet at one of the restaurants in the city. Maybe it belongs to someone he knows. Dub normally tells me to hotwire, or he’s left the car running somewhere or with a screwdriver shoved in the ignition. To have keys is rare.

  It’s unusual.

  I stand and dust my jeans off at the knees, a single key and a key fob dangling from a ring on my thumb. This isn’t just a car. I cock my head and look at the key fob in my palm and press the unlock button, bringing the car to life. It’s an older model Chevy. The body is familiar. It’s been stripped of hubcaps and symbols, but why? Nothing on this car is worth anything, which means it must have been about what was inside.

  My feet drag forward slowly, a steady crunch of debris under my shoes. My pulse is picking up, and the closer I get to the car, the stronger the beat. It begins to hurt, like my heart wants to run and abandon me here. By the time my fingers wrap around the door handle, I’m shaking and sweating. I’m holding my breath and it’s making my stomach grow sick. I see Joker’s fucking sweater on the passenger seat before I get the door open. I step back as I fling the door wide.

  “Fuck!” I scream the word, my voice vibrating and my eyes burning, blood vessels dyeing the white red. I can feel the pressure.

  I wrap my arm around my mouth so I can moan loudly into the crevice of my elbow. That Goddamn sweater—was a gift from his mom! I breathe hard into my sleeve, my breath puffing out fog from the cold. I’m begging for hope somewhere in this, but I know there isn’t. This isn’t the only thing I’m supposed to find in this car.

  My throat retches with the burn of bile, and I spit the foul taste out again and again as I force myself to move forward, to see more. My eyes scan over the emptiness inside the car—a few papers in the backseat that have nothing to do with anyone I know, an umbrella with a broken handle, and a pair of bowling shoes. This car is hot, and I don’t know if Joker was just hiding in it or was forced inside, if they found him here or if…

  It’s that last if I can’t finish because deep down I know.

  …if he’s still inside the car.

  My body is trembling and my legs feel weak as I move to the back and run my hand along the edge of the trunk, curling my fingers underneath slowly and pausing at the latch. I blow out heavy breath after heavy breath with the determination of a man about to walk through the fire.

  I am that man.

  The trunk barely opens b
efore I see my friend’s face.

  “Ohhhhhhh no, no, no, no…”

  I stumble back and land on my ass, crawling several feet more backward, my fingers getting cut from the dirty ground and my eyes burning with the scorch of hot tears. I wail loudly, my chest heaving as I gasp for air. I can’t form words, but my mouth shapes out “Why” through every sob.

  He wanted me to see this. To live this! This is a lesson, just like the tattoo. Dub is punishing me for not being loyal. He knows my thoughts, and he took my friend away; he punished him!

  I snuff hard, snot dripping down my face, tears soaking my cheeks, drool stringing from my parted lips. He’s broken me with my own damn heart, and I know this is a test. If I hide this—Paul, my sweet and stupid best friend—then I’m in for life. This is the line I’m supposed to cross to prove I’m worth the X on my arm…that I’m not like my dad.

  I never believed the stories, and my mom never spoke of them. Lauren’s the only person who would tell me things that everyone else left as whispers. She believed my dad wasn’t arrested, that he was brought in. Lauren said she heard her mom talking about it once with my mom and Joker’s, and I didn’t want to believe her…mostly because if my dad was really an informant, then my life was a lie. He was sentenced to life, and I always thought it was strange that he wasn’t deported. He’d broken so many rules for his status in the US. Someone doesn’t get to be a refugee and a criminal, but they knew if they sent him back, he’d be killed. Word travels fast that someone’s a narc, and in Honduras the gangs would have set him on fire and left him in the middle of the street.

  He got to stay here, and he got to live in prison. That was the deal he’d made, which is a shitty deal, but one that must have seemed better than the alternative to him at the time. He had something on Dub. He had hate for his so-called friend, just like I do. Maybe it was money, or maybe it was over a girl. It doesn’t take a lot in this world to build a massive grudge. Whatever it was, my dad underestimated Dub’s reach, and he never got to see justice.

  Dub had him killed.

  He had my father stabbed forty-seven times when no guards were watching.

  He owns the prison with bodies all loyal to him. He is the king of this messy land, and his greatest vengeance was turning me into his son. If I get rid of this car—of my friend—then I’m lost for good. He knows that even if I do it out of fear for my own life, it still means I bow down to him. He gets to own me, and I will never break free of it.

  My chest is tightening and I tilt my chin to the sky, opening my mouth wide and gulping air. I can’t fill my lungs, and each time I try, my draw of air grows smaller until everything around me becomes dark as my vision starts to collapse.

  I’m wheezing and clutching my chest as I pull myself up on my knees and lean forward with one hand on the ground. I’ve had this happen before. Lauren says they’re panic attacks, and that all I need to do is breathe, but it seems impossible when that’s the one thing I’m panicking about. I spit out on the ground and shake with a cry. So many things are racing through my mind—all of the things that are bright and possible.

  I focus on the fantasy. My mom and the voices in her church. Lauren’s home, her brother and mom and the meals they make. The school, my counselor, and my notebook. The words I wrote about Riley. My heart, how it beats. Riley.

  Riley.

  I close my eyes and imagine her face, her wide smile and the bubbling sound of her laugh, the way it’s so confident and pure. Her long lashes that shape her eyes and show her happiness and disappointment. Her jump shot, and the way she pushes me. Her bravery in the face of the unknown.

  Riley leaps at life, expecting everything to work out in the end, where all I expect is darkness. I get what I see, and my world is dark right now. When the dark came for Riley, she fought for the light. She’s a reason to fight now. I want to be like her. I want to live like her—do good things, work hard. I want to be with her.

  I want to love her…to get to love her.

  If I do what Dub asks, I’ll still have her. She’ll be safe, because I’ll be able to protect her, but Dub will own me. I won’t get to love her, because he’ll never let that happen. It will be like pressing myself against thick glass just to get a glimpse of her. I might as well watch over her as an angel.

  I’m slow to my feet, pausing with one knee on the ground as I gain my balance and finally stand. My hands and arms are covered in scratches, holes torn in my long sleeves from the glass and metal and rocks on the ground. Dub chose the ugliest place in Miller to leave Joker for me to find. He did this on purpose, too. It’s all symbolic to him.

  I step forward and bend down to pick up the keys to the abandoned car, feeling my pocket to make sure my mom’s is still there. I stare at the roads in front of me, and while there are a few, only one is right. It’s the hardest one, but it’s also the easiest, because if I do what’s right, my heart will feel whole. Any other choice will leave me as a fraction of a man.

  Squeezing my eyes closed hard, I will myself to switch to auto-pilot, to get through this and disassociate with what’s real. I won’t be able to survive it if I don’t. When I open my gaze on the trunk in front of me, I’m as ready as I can be. I step forward and look down at my friend, a crusted and bloody hole in the center of his pale head. His skin shines blue, and his eyes are open. He saw it coming.

  I gag, but work to convince myself that this isn’t real, even though it is.

  I push his eyes closed and slide my right arm under his shoulders, lifting his knees with my left. He’s heavy and his back is still soaked with blood. The smell is almost acidic, pungent like burnt metal and vinegar. I hold my breath as I shift him into my arms and slide him toward my chest, carrying him to my mother’s car. I lay him on the ground next to the back seat and pull the tarp from my mom’s trunk, spreading it out in the back seat. I climb in through the other side to pull Paul’s body up into the car by gripping under his arms. I grunt as I drag him, pulling at his soiled clothes until his body is finally clear of the door, his head resting on one end of the seat and his feet on the other.

  I slam the door shut and walk around to close the other side, ignoring the blood on my body and clothes. I walk to the abandoned car and reach in the passenger seat for his sweater, holding it by the collar carefully, not wanting to get anything on it. I place the sweater in the front seat of my mom’s car, closing the passenger door and climbing inside to drive. Flies have started to collect, and the smell is making me sick.

  Still, I breathe in through my nose and force my mouth to stop watering with the need to vomit. I toss the abandoned car’s keys on the floor of my mom’s car and begin to drive, retracing my route, but careful not to pull up alongside anyone. I take back roads when I get into town, and then I divert toward the government buildings, the streets filled with homeless just outside the Social Security Administration.

  I don’t stop until I get to the dark brown building made of solid brick and glass. I’ve thought about this place often, and my friend was here recently. They’ll recognize him…someone will. I need to find the agent he was working with. I need to confess a lot of things. I need to get Paul’s body to his mom, because her son deserves to be buried.

  I need this all to stop.

  I pull up to the curb, the tires scraping against the concrete, and I shove the car into park and don’t bother to lock it. The streets aren’t busy. Workers have gone home, buildings have closed. This is the only place open. It’s always open in some way or another. They’ll be glad to see me. I have everything they want.

  I’m going to give them my story.

  I push the callbox on the outside of the glass doors and the guard inside picks up the phone.

  “Federal Bureau of Investigation,” he says, his voice serious and his eyes studying me through the window. His hand is on his trigger behind the desk and cameras are pointed down on me from above.

  “My name is Tristan Lopez, and I’m a member of The Fifty-Seven. I want to m
ake a deal.”

  I lift my thumb from the speaker button as my weight falls back on my heels. I know that it’s too late to run. I’m on this path now, and it’s the right one. I just need it to have a destiny—some end that’s different from my dad’s. I don’t want to die.

  The man stares at me for several seconds, his jaw moving with a piece of gum. He’s no doubt trained to take in the details, and I’ve presented a compelling case at his door. My body is covered in evidence, and the motherload is parked in a car behind me. I let my eyes speak for me, pleading, and eventually the man stands from his post, lifting a radio to his ear. I can’t hear him, and I can’t read his lips, but when he’s done talking to someone he comes back to me.

  “Wait right there. Someone will come out to get you,” he says, moving from behind the desk to the center of the lobby. His hand rests on the gun at his hip and his radio is clutched in his other hand, near his ear.

  I let my eyes fall closed. I’m not going anywhere. This is salvation, and I welcome every challenge that will come along with it.

  I hear the men coming and place my hands behind my head. They rush at me and push me to the ground. Knees press into my back, bending it forcefully. My cheek rubs along the concrete, scratching away a layer of skin on my face as they cuff my hands behind my back and lift me to my feet.

  I don’t have a lawyer, so my first request needs to be for one. It won’t be anyone good, but it will help me from completely fucking this up. I keep my mouth shut until they get me inside, and nobody comes to see me for several minutes while I imagine they’re searching through the car and picking apart every single detail. Eventually a man walks in, his tie loosened and his hair disheveled. He was called in for this, which means he’s the right person.

  “Lawyer,” I say and he nods, holding me hostage with his eyes for several minutes before finally getting up and shutting the door to the small, hot room behind him. I don’t see anyone else for hours, but it gives me time to plan my words and know what I need to say.