The buzzing in my ears faded as I let the memory go. “I am helping you,” I said as firmly as I could, prying Rain’s hands away. I held her and stroked her hair for what seemed like hours as she fidgeted, kicking the covers off one minute and then pulling them up, shivering, minutes later.
At one point she jumped up, stomping her feet, saying it felt like ants were biting her. Another time, she bolted out of my arms, leaned over on her hands and knees, and dry heaved into a plastic bag, her back contorting in spasms. I rubbed her back, trying to soothe her. I lost all sense of time. Every once in a while, I drifted off to sleep for a few seconds before jerking back awake.
Long after the sun came up, seeping through the slits at the side of my makeshift sheet curtain, the soft sounds of snoring filled the room. Relief flooded through me. I huddled on the floor next to the futon and closed my eyes.
I woke to whimpering sounds. Rain was rolling around on the floor, clutching her stomach, crying and moaning.
“It hurts. It hurts so bad. Help me, please.”
Her eyes were red and she looked around wildly, jumping at slight sounds. Panic zipped through me. Should I ask someone to call 911? Did people die from withdrawals? I didn’t know. I grabbed her and held her, stroking her hair, trying to calm her. Slowly, she relaxed in my arms, her face wet with tears and perspiration. She slept for a while and then woke up, reaching for me.
“My granny said she wouldn’t leave me, but she did.” Her voice was small, like a child.
Last night the person in my room had seemed possessed, not like a twelve-year-old girl. This morning, I saw that girl again as she pleaded with me.
“Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me like she did. Please let me stay here.” She looked up, searching my face. “I don’t want to do the drugs. Please help me. I don’t want to be on the streets. I just want a normal life. Do you understand?” Tears were streaming down her face. “I just want a normal life.”
I nodded. I just wanted a normal life, too. But it was too late for me. But maybe not for this girl. Although part of me wanted to run away and never look back, I took a deep breath and looked her right in the eyes. “Okay. I won’t. I promise. You can stay with me. I’ll help you stay off drugs, okay?”
Rain nodded, wiping her tears on her sleeve.
I meant it, too. My mother had begged me not to leave her, but I had. I left. And she had died.
BY THE THIRD day, my room smelled like death.
My neighbors on the fourth floor had pooled their money to buy an extra futon and sleeping bag, so now Rain and I each had our own beds. I didn’t know how I could possibly ever repay them for their kindness. Every once in a while, I thought about that band boy, Taj. I’d met most people on the fourth floor, but hadn’t seen him since that day he was on his motorcycle.
My fourth-floor neighbors had also brought us water and food, though Rain never ate more than a sip or two of broth before she puked into the tiny trash can I’d washed out a dozen times already. I was most worried about her getting dehydrated so I tried to make her take a sip of water or juice every hour on the hour. As a result, I hadn’t really slept for three days and it showed. My hair was tangled and smelled like throw up.
But that morning, Rain actually drank about a cup of soup and kept it down before she fell into a deep and seemingly peaceful sleep. I lay down beside her and was surprised when I woke and it was already night. I sat up and noticed the empty futon across the room. I jumped up, but a small voice behind me said, “I’m over here.”
Rain was kneeling at the window with the sheet I used as a curtain drawn aside. Her shoulder blades stuck out from her back like little bird wings.
“How you feeling?”
“The people across the street are having a party,” she said.
“Yeah. Those are the lofts. All the rich artists live there.” I narrowed my eyes. “You hungry?”
She let the sheet fall and turned to face me. “I ate your crackers. Do you think I could get a Hershey bar?”
I nodded. She turned back to the window, pulling the curtain back open. The orange streetlight illuminated her. She was watching the neighbors, concentrating, with a wistful look on her face. Did she feel that same yearning and longing that I did watching the loft people living their vibrant, seemingly perfect lives?
Rain bounded into our room, chased by Danny. Both collapsed in a heap on her futon, giggling.
“We raced all the way from the gas station and I won,” Rain announced triumphantly, dumping a brown paper bag full of Hershey bars on the floor.
“Only ’cause this old man smokes too much,” Danny said, panting and fake coughing.
“You owe me a poem. You promised!” Rain said, sitting up and ripping open a candy bar.
“Hey, don’t you worry, hija, I’m a man of my word. I’ll write it tonight. Oh, but I forgot, you have to give me all your candy bars, though,” he said, reaching out toward them teasingly.
“No way.” She erupted into laughter and shielded the candy bars with her body. She took a big bite of one bar and when she was done chewing, said, “You have to write the poem tonight and then you have to put on it that it’s for Rain. And then you have to hang it on your door like all the others.”
“Okay, okay, Miss Mini Drill Instructor,” Danny said, saluting. “Now I need to take a nap. You wore me out.” Danny buried his face in the sleeping bag. Soon, loud fake snoring noises sent Rain into another fit of giggles. “Get up, goofy.” She pushed his shoulder, trying to roll him off the futon.
Rain had been living with me for a week. We had quickly established a routine. We spent the mornings taking long walks through downtown L.A., taking pictures, visiting the Contemporary Temporary Museum around the corner, or browsing the thrift store for books. When I was at work, she either read in our room or hung out with Danny playing Crazy Eights. I worried a little bit about leaving her alone—that she might go looking for that guy in the black car—but she promised not to leave the American Hotel without me. She wasn’t telling me everything and it worried me. The other day, Danny and I had been smoking in front of the café when a black car turned onto our street and slowly drove past.
“It’s him. The guy Rain knows.”
“Pendejo.” Danny swore under his breath. “That guy is bad news. I feel it in my bones.”
“Who is he?” I tried to see through the dark tinted windows, trying to spot a glimpse of a big white mane of hair. Rain claimed it wasn’t the Big Shot Movie Director, but was she lying?
Today, sprawled on my bed, Danny gave up the fake snoring and was dealing a game of Crazy Eights when Eve came in bearing day-old bread from the café downstairs, a butter knife, and a jar of Nutella. We dug into the food and washed it down with instant coffee I made on my hot pad.
After everyone left, Rain and I moved out into the hallway near the windows so we could smoke sitting in the golden beams of sunset pouring across the wooden floor. I tried asking Rain once more about the guy in the black car.
She blew her hair out of her eyes and picked at her blue toenail polish. Finally, she looked up. “He needs to keep it secret because he’s very important. He’s famous, okay? I’m not supposed to talk about him. I told you.”
Giving up, I asked Rain if she was angry with her parents for abandoning her at Tent City. She was quiet for a minute as if she was really thinking about it before she shook her head. “Not their fault. They’re free spirits. They don’t mean to hurt anyone else. They just do their own thing.”
We sat there for a few minutes silent and smoking. Then she leaned her head onto my shoulder. It took a minute for me to realize she was crying.
“What’s wrong, Rain?” I pulled back and tried to see her face.
She hid her face in her hair and shook her head.
“What is it?”
“Thank you,” she said. “Thanks for taking care of me. Thanks for being the big sister I never had.”
I looked away so she couldn’t see my face
. She didn’t know. I’d never told her about my sister dying. I’d never told her that calling me her big sister might be the one thing she could say that would reduce me to a puddle of tears. I pretended to rummage around in my bag for another cigarette and my matches until I had gained control of my emotions.
We sat there tapping our feet, listening to Danny down the hall playing guitar with his amp cranked and his door open.
The sun had nearly set and shadows had grown long when the building’s cranky old janitor appeared with his frown and bucket and mop. He talked to himself and was always glaring so I usually tried to avoid him. Today he charged over to where we sat, ferociously swabbing the wooden floor, not waiting for us to get up and move, but splashing gray mop water all over us as we scrambled to our feet.
“Dirty whores,” he mumbled. “Don’t you have homes? Go home. This is not your home.”
I was about to tell him off when Rain jumped up and grabbed his hand with both of hers. My body tensed. But the man stopped what he was doing and looked down at Rain, who smiled up at him. “It’s okay,” she said quietly.
I froze, waiting for his reaction. He gazed off into space for a few seconds, but then shook away Rain’s hand and quietly began mopping, this time slowly instead of frenetically.
Later that night, in our room, Rain was crying in her bed.
When I asked her what was wrong, all she managed to choke out was, “That poor man.”
I had just started to reach for a bag of chips off a shelf at the gas station convenience store when I saw something familiar out of the corner of my eye.
Turning, I froze. I stared at the lean back and stringy blond ponytail just a few feet down the aisle. Chad had found me. I wanted to run, but my legs felt like they were stuck in cement. My face felt hot and then icy cold.
The man turned. It wasn’t Chad.
But it was a reminder that I still had to be on guard. For the first few weeks I’d worked at Little Juan’s, my heart would pound every time I saw the back of a blond or white-haired man in the restaurant. Walking through the streets of downtown L.A., I was constantly alert, darting into doorways whenever I saw familiar silhouettes.
But it had been a month. I’d started to relax a little
This was a good wake up call. I looked for Rain. She was flipping through a stack of magazines near the counter. She seemed to be doing it casually, but I noticed she kept casting sideways toward the clerk who was chewing gum and talking on the phone. Her behavior was so odd. I decided to wait outside and spy on her.
Outside, I found I could watch her by looking at a reflection from the window without her seeing me. She furtively looked around then shoved the magazine under her shirt. I had given her some money so she didn’t feel like she had to ask me for everything. When she walked out, I asked if she’d bought anything. She looked away as she said no. If she was embarrassed to buy it, it was partly my fault. I mocked most magazines at the convenience store, telling her she’d be better off reading The New Yorker or something. Even though she always rolled her eyes, I felt like this was what a good big sister would do—steer her siblings away from trash and be a role model for intelligent reading.
Later, when she was in the shower, I searched through her stuff. Finally, I found the magazine lying flat under her futon. It was some celebrity gossip magazine. I wasn’t sure why she was acting so weird about it. I flipped through it really quickly, wondering if the man in the black car, the famous one, was in this magazine or if she was just embarrassed to buy something that I found so clearly low brow and trashy.
The next day, we were standing in front of the American Hotel’s door smoking when a big black car pulled onto our street. Instinctively, I pushed Rain inside the front door. The car—with its impenetrable dark windows—stopped at the end of the block, idling. I walked into the street and stood facing the back of the car until the ash on my cigarette grew so long it broke off and fell onto the sidewalk. It was the car. The one that had stopped for Rain.
It was like a standoff. I was holding my breath, waiting for something to happen. My heart was thudding in my throat and my legs were trembling. I didn’t know whether to run over to the car and jerk the backdoor open or run inside the American Hotel.
Without thinking, I reached into my bag, took out my Nikon, and started walking down the middle of the street toward the car. Before I had even held it up to my eye, the driver gunned the engine and the car jerked away. My finger kept clicking the shutter release. I continued firing off shots, walking down the middle of the road until the car squealed around a corner out of sight. My heart was racing. I stood for a few seconds in the middle of the street, my chest heaving. I felt a strange exhilaration that I’d been able to scare off the car by myself. Well, my camera and me. Right before I tucked my camera back in the bag, I caught a glimpse of a pink-streaked head quickly ducking back inside the window of our room.
When I got upstairs, Rain was huddled in a corner, her arms wrapped around her legs, her face even paler than normal.
“Who is that man in the car, Rain?” I titled her chin so she would meet my eyes.
“I can’t tell you.” Her lower lip quivered as if she were trying not to cry.
“Is it Kozlak? Is it the director? I need you to tell me the truth. This is very important.”
She shook her head vehemently. “I told you, it’s not the director. I would never lie to you. I promise. You have to believe me.”
“Why can’t you tell me who it is?”
“He made me promise. I don’t break my promises.”
I believed her. Her honor code might not make sense to many people, but I believed her when she said she didn’t lie. “What does he want? Why does he keep coming around? I thought you were happy you kicked. You don’t want to get high again, do you?”
She shook her head wildly. “No!”
If the man wasn’t her dealer, what was he? Maybe something more, something even worse.
It totally didn’t feel like Christmas. For starters, it was seventy degrees out. I was used to a bitterly cold and white Christmas.
After waking, I stayed in bed and let myself think of my mom, something I usually didn’t allow myself to do because my thoughts always turned nightmarish. Today, I tried to concentrate on the good memories, the early ones—my mother in her flowered flannel robe hugging me and smiling while I opened presents on Christmas morning. But even remembering that was too much. As soon as I felt hot tears forming, I pushed the memory deep down inside.
And yet for the first time in years, because of these new friends of mine, I was excited about Christmas. We were having a party on the roof later.
I left Rain with Danny so I could shop for presents. Of course, nothing was open on Christmas Day, so I headed to the gas station. I wasn’t sure who was coming to the party. Danny told me that Sadie wouldn’t be there. I was glad. She barely acknowledged I was alive at Little Juan’s and walked right by me in the halls of the American Hotel like I was invisible. I hoped that band boy would be at the party.
Back at the hotel, I passed out my presents early in my room. That way I wouldn’t feel bad if I didn’t have presents for other people at the party. Danny loved the gunmetal-gray Zippo and kept flicking it open in different ways—between his legs, behind his back—being his usual goofy self. Rain was harder to shop for, but as soon as I saw a rack of backpacks, I remembered that man stealing hers in the alley. I grabbed a purple one and filled it with pink lip gloss, packs of gum, and a stack of Hershey bars. I also threw in a few gossip magazines. Because I felt guilty for making her embarrassed to want to read them. She immediately tucked her granny glasses into the outside pocket and hugged the backpack to her chest.
Down the hall, the padlock to the rooftop door was on the ground. Crawling up the small staircase, we emerged onto the roof in time to catch an ethereal sunset. The air was fresh for once. Instead of the heavy smog smell, an ocean breeze had snuck into downtown somehow, bringing with it the salty, br
iny smell of the beach.
“It’s amazing,” Rain said, staring at the sky.
The pinks, oranges, and fiery reds swirled across the clouds on the western horizon. I reached for my camera and was surprised that I had forgotten it in my room. Could I rush downstairs and get it? No. I’d miss this brief magical moment. So instead, I soaked it all in, willing myself to sear the image and this night in my memory forever.
Danny handed me a bottle of red wine and Rain a grape soda. I took a swig of the wine before handing it back to Danny. Rain started talking about getting a cat.
“I’ll get you a little gato,” Danny told her, ruffling her hair. “You stay off the junk until summer and I’ll take you down to the animal shelter and let you pick out any little kitten you want.”
I frowned at him. Why was he assuming she’d get back on drugs?
“Leave me alone,” Rain said. “I don’t want any more H. Why don’t you guys just leave me alone? Otherwise, I’m going to bed.” Her eyes blazed with anger.
“Okay, okay.” Danny held up his palms in surrender. “Don’t leave. I haven’t even shown you my new dance moves. Plus, you gotta check this shit out. It’s a bootleg copy of the new Beastie Boys album that’s not out yet. I got me a friend at Capitol Records who gave me the hook up.”
He pressed play on a ghetto blaster and began wiggling around, doing some old school break dancing on the tar roof, while Rain and I bopped around to the beat, our heads hung low and our hair falling over our eyes.
The sky turned violet and Danny left, saying he had a surprise for us. Rain and I stood looking off into the distance at the skyline. The sight of the tall, looming skyscrapers always sent a thrill of excitement through me that I couldn’t explain.
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