by Wendy Heard
Her cheeks go white. She gasps, trips over her feet and starts to fall. He jumps forward, heroic, and grabs her by the throat. She writhes in his grip, which makes her cleavage jiggle appealingly.
“No,” she screams. She thrashes, makes an animal sound, frees a hand and scratches at his face. Her eyes are wild, panicked. He ducks from the clawing fingernails. She wrenches herself sideways, topples to her knees. He dives down, scrabbles to catch her wrists, her waist, but she spins away. Her shoes go flying. She launches to her feet and explodes through the exterior door, another scream tearing the moment apart. He jumps up and bursts through the bathroom door a half second behind her.
One of her hands grips the door frame and she takes a hard, graceful leap into the arcade. She pushes through a crowd of boys surrounding a basketball game. Devin follows. Blind fury. Rage. Bella doesn’t run from Edward. Bella loves Edward.
A foot sticks out and Devin crashes forward, bashing his chin on the linoleum floor. He rolls onto his back, hands clutching his face, bleeding, groaning in pain.
“The fuck you doing?” A group of Latino teenagers towers over him. The one talking wears a bandanna around his shaved head and has a neck full of tattoos that snake up onto his cheeks. The clang and clash of arcade games echoes against a loud background pop song and the smell of popcorn.
“You chasing that white girl?” The boy’s eyes are black in the colorful light.
“No,” Devin says.
“Looked like you were.”
“She’s my girlfriend. We got in a fight.”
“Uh-huh.” The boy glances at the front entrance, where Amber has disappeared out onto the pier.
Devin pulls the neckline of his T-shirt up, presses it to his bleeding chin. “It’s fine. Everything’s fine.”
“Everything is going to be fine when you get your ass up and walk calmly out the back door and let your lady go on with her business.” The guy points back the way Devin came, which is bullshit. It’s going to be so hard to catch up with Amber if he goes out the back.
He glares up at the guy, assesses the group of friends with face tattoos and says, “Fine. Can I go now?”
“Go on, then.”
Devin gets unsteadily to his feet. His chin isn’t bleeding that much, but it hurts. It hurts. This is Amber’s fault. How could she? How dare she?
The bandanna guy shoves him away. “Don’t be a fucking psycho” are his parting words.
Furious, humiliated, bloody, Devin shoulders his way through the arcade. He turns right out the back door and heads toward the Ferris wheel, which towers overhead, heavy with lights and laughter. Shoulders crowd him on all sides—did he accidentally get in line for this thing? “Excuse me,” he growls. He pushes through tourists and teenagers.
“Hey,” protests a young woman whose breast he’d accidentally elbowed.
Someone pinches his back, hard. He cries out and claps a hand to it, but it’s like someone is stabbing him with a pencil. “What the fuck,” he roars, but the world tilts sideways and all the oxygen is sucked from his lungs.
The middle-aged woman from the bar. She’s right beside him. She’s the one poking him. She gives him a cold, dangerous look, and the sharp thing stabs deeper into his back. He tries to grab at it, but his hand doesn’t work. His legs go limp. He grabs someone, clings to a young woman for help. She cries out. He drags her down with him, gasping like a dying fish. His body is in a vacuum; his lungs are being vacuumed out of his chest.
Pain sears his stomach and wraps around him like a snake. He opens his mouth to scream and vomit explodes from it. The vomit is frothy, dark with blood. He digs his nails into the splintered boards beneath him. His hand closes on a small, waxy paper cardboard rectangle. His eyes blur. Pain sucks his vision into a tiny pinprick. Voices swirl around him, panic and fragments of sound.
“He’s not—”
“Call 911!”
“I think he’s having a heart attack. What do you do for that? CPR?”
“What’s he holding?”
Someone yanks the rectangle from his hand. “It’s a playing card.”
MONDAY
3
JAZZ
THROUGH A LAYER of beige smoke high up in the atmosphere, the sun filters hot and hazy down onto the asphalt, and the air smells like burning plastic and stale campfire smoke. I almost get trampled by the horde of preteens stampeding out of my old middle school, a Spanish-style monument to the former opulence of East LA. A line of cars inches past, all of them covered in a fine layer of white ash.
The kids don’t spare me a glance; I look like many of their parents, tattoos and all. A pair of girls brushes past me so close one of them jostles my shoulder.
“Watch it,” I snap. The girl gives me a dirty look.
A stocky man pushes a refrigerated cart through the crowd, beads of sweat rolling down his face. “Paletas!” he calls to the kids. A Popsicle sounds amazing in this nasty heat, but I’d never eat something sweet in front of Joaquin. I always tell him if he can’t have it, I won’t eat it, either.
Where is this kid? I pull my phone out of my back pocket to dial Joaquin. It goes straight to voice mail, which is what it’s been doing all weekend. At the beep, I say, “Where you at? You better not have lost your phone. I have your insulin and I’m out in front of Hollenbeck.”
I shove my sunglasses on, fix my bangs and search the sea of dark-haired heads for Joaquin’s. I spot Miguel and Antonio and wave at them. I expect Joaquin’s face to materialize between them, but when they approach me, he isn’t there.
“Hey, Jazz,” Miguel says. I pull him into a hug and rub his shaved head. Grinning, I say, “Damn, you’re getting tall. What’s your grandma been feeding you?” Antonio gives me a faux punch on the arm, and I kiss him on the cheek. He’s a serious soccer player and is small, dark and wiry.
“Where’s Keenie?” I ask. It’s the name we torture Joaquin with.
“He’s absent,” says Miguel. “I figured you were here to pick up his homework or something.”
“Absent? Why?” I look back and forth between them. They shrug. A vague foreboding takes root in my stomach, and I get my phone out to text him. I ask, “Did you talk to him this weekend?”
Antonio says, “We think your mom took his iPhone. We haven’t talked to him since Friday at school.”
I look up from the screen. “Wait—really?”
He nods solemnly. It’s clear this is a fate hardly worth contemplating.
“She can’t do that. I pay for that phone.”
They give me sympathetic looks. The injustice is not lost on them.
I heave a frustrated sigh. “She’s gone religious again. That’s probably why. She took his posters down and stuff.”
“Ohhhhh,” they groan.
A horn beeps. A man beckons impatiently from a double-parked Ford. Antonio hefts his backpack. “That’s my uncle. I got soccer practice.”
“You’re practicing today? It’s not healthy to exercise in this.” I gesture to the dirty brown sky.
“Got a game next weekend. Can’t take a day off!” He runs to the car and I say goodbye to Miguel. I return to my truck for a sweater to cover my tattoos and button it up as I weave through groups of kids congregated on the sidewalks. I catch a whiff of bad weed as I hurry up the stairs and through a high arched entryway into the administration hallway. A familiar stretch of rust-brown linoleum leads me to a glass-windowed door at the end of the hall. Above the door, a sign reads Administration. It’s silly, but this office still gives me the heebie-jeebies.
Inside the main office, a grumpy-looking white lady behind the counter regards me over a set of turquoise reading glasses. “May I help you?” She obviously does not relish the prospect.
“May I speak with Mrs. Galleguillos?”
“Mrs. Galleguillos retired. We have a new assistant prin
cipal. What is this regarding?”
“My little brother. Joaquin Coleman. I’m supposed to drop his insulin off, but he was absent today, so I thought I could leave it for him in the office to pick up tomorrow. I’ve done it before with Mrs. Galleguillos.”
“And your name?”
“Jasmine Benavides.”
“Take a seat.” She heaves herself up from the desk, pushes off and limps toward a hallway on the left.
I sink into the proffered plastic chair with my purse on my lap. Inside is the white CVS bag containing Joaquin’s prescription, my precious cargo. A teenager occupies the chair next to me, a baby on her lap and a little girl in a stroller sucking on a chili mango lollipop. I flex my fingers, and the blurry skull and crossbones on my ring finger stretches.
A brown-haired woman in black slacks and a crisp white blouse emerges from an office. “Jasmine?” she calls, her eyes searching the waiting room. “Jasmine Benavides?”
I raise my hand hesitantly like a kid in a classroom. “That’s me.”
“Oh.” Her eyes scan me from head to toe as though the sight of me takes her aback. I realize I’m still wearing my giant aviator sunglasses, and I push them up onto my head. She smiles. “Sofia Russo. Come on back.”
I follow her through the short hallway to the office I remember from my own days here. A new placard has been stuck to the door that declares her to be Ms. Russo, Asst. Principal.
I sit in a wooden chair across from the desk, and she sits in her office chair in front of the computer. “What’s your brother’s name?”
“Joaquin Coleman.”
Ms. Russo clicks a few things with her mouse and types some words in. She leans toward the screen. She’s young, around my age or just a bit older, and has pretty Mediterranean features with thick dark brows, high cheekbones, a wide mouth and lots of dark lashes. Her neck and chest are golden-tan against the pristine white of her shirt. She’s one of those women with perfect finishes.
“Here he is.” She click-clicks. “What grade is he in?”
“Eighth. He’s thirteen.”
Her eyes light up. “Oh, I know Joaquin. He came in third in the science fair. He’s a great student.”
“Yeah, he is.” A little prideful smile teases at my lips.
Just a couple of months ago, I walked in on Carol reaming him for mixing household chemicals into a giant dirt volcano in the backyard. “But it really erupts,” he was protesting.
Ms. Russo says, “I have you listed as an emergency contact. Jasmine Benavides. Correct?”
“Call me Jazz. Please. I hate Jasmine.”
“Okay. Jazz. But I don’t have you listed as a guardian. That’s...Carol Coleman? Your mother?”
No. Not a mother. I want to scrub that word from her mouth. “That’s our foster mom. Joaquin’s adoptive mom.”
“Do you want to call her? I can’t dispense medication without her permission, but we can just conference her in, and then I can—”
“Don’t call her.” My head feels light. I don’t like sitting in this chair of judgment and laying out the details of our fucked-up family for this woman’s examination. Old feelings associated with being a foster kid are overwhelming me. Always the charity case, the subject of pitying looks, of disgust when I got lice first, of whispers when my clothes weren’t clean, when I got into fights.
“Are you all right?” Her voice is kind and warm, and I hate it.
I pull it together. “I’ve done this before. Mrs. Galleguillos knew us. Carol isn’t good with Joaquin’s meds, so we kind of worked around her.”
A knock sounds on the door frame. It’s the front desk woman. She hands Ms. Russo a few forms. Ms. Russo scans the forms and shoots her a sharp look. “When did these come in?”
“Counseling office just sent them over.” She exits unceremoniously. Ms. Russo bites her glossy lip and scowls at the pages in front of her. She flips through them quickly, one-two-three, then looks at the front page again.
“What is it?” I ask.
Her eyes flick down to my collarbone, where my chest piece, a set of wings that stretches from shoulder to shoulder, pokes out of the neckline of my sweater. Hesitantly, she says, “I don’t want to upset you. You’re clearly very attached to your foster brother, and you’ve—”
“Just brother,” I correct in a sharper voice than intended.
“Oh. I’m sorry. I assumed—”
“Same mother, fifteen years later. What’s this?” I gesture toward the papers.
She drums her fingers on her desk. “I’m struggling with the confidentiality protocols.”
“Why? What is it?”
“This is disenrollment paperwork.”
I’m confused, and I stare at her blankly for a few seconds. “Like, he isn’t enrolled here anymore?”
“Correct.”
My head spins. “But...why?”
“So he can be homeschooled, or that’s what it says here.”
“Homeschooled by Carol? She’s not a teacher. She can’t do math to save her life. She didn’t even finish high school.”
“I don’t think that’s a requirement to homeschool your children.”
I rack my brain, trying to make sense of this information. “But we already have his high school picked out. It’s a science and technology charter school. He’s so excited.” My heart pounds, panicked, furious.
“Do you think he’s in any danger? If so, we can call DCFS.”
“And say what? That I don’t think my ex foster mother is going to keep a close enough eye on my brother’s diabetes? That she’s not going to homeschool him well enough?”
“Well, sure.”
“Are you kidding me? Do you think they’re going to—” I’m breathing too fast. Even if DCFS took a call like that seriously, which is laughable, what’s the alternative? Sending Joaquin to some foster home where I’d never see him, where he’d have to start over the way I did, where unknown horrors might be visited upon him? It’s not like they’ll let me have him; it’s not like I haven’t tried.
I can’t be here.
I get up and leave. I pass the secretary, making her jump, and slam through the office door into the hallway, banging it so hard I almost break the glass. I push through a circle of kids milling around a single plate of nachos in the hall, taking the stairs two at a time. “Wait,” a voice calls from behind me. I ignore it. A hand grabs my shoulder to stop me. I spin, muscles tense, and yank my arm away hard.
The hand belongs to Ms. Russo. She steps back, the look on her face wary and a little afraid.
The kids watch us with huge eyes. One of the boys claps a hand to his mouth.
I lift my hands in the air. “I’m sorry. Just don’t grab me. I’m sorry.”
The boy chants, “Fight, fight, fight,” loud enough to set the girls into giggling.
Ms. Russo shoots him a stern look that shuts him up instantaneously. To me, she says, “Let’s go back inside. I want to help you.”
“No. I’m going to Carol’s. I’m going to find out what she thinks she’s doing.”
“All right. I’ll contact social services first thing in the morning. We’ll get this figured out.”
“I’m telling you right now, they’re not going to do shit.”
“Why don’t we take it one step at a time? I’ll call them, we’ll see what they do, and then we’ll figure out what’s next?”
She’s being nice. She’s not mad at me for being angry or for swearing. I feel bad. She’s just trying to help. “Okay. Call them. Thank you.”
“I have your phone number, correct?” she asks. “On Joaquin’s emergency card?”
“Yes. That’s my cell.”
“I’ll let you know how it goes.”
The brown, apocalyptic sky feels like an omen. This isn’t good. It’s not good at all.
> * * *
I clutch the white CVS bag and tiptoe into the bank of knee-high weeds around the side of Carol’s house. Dusk is sinking slowly onto the city, cooling the air before it cools the ground. The thing about smoke in the air is that it makes for a beautiful bloodred sunset. I pause outside the house to watch the ruby turn to purples and grays, and then it’s just a dim, starless sky.
I turn toward the backyard and let myself silently in through the waist-high chain-link gate. As I sneak underneath the kitchen window, my phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out. Andre.
I swipe right and put it to my ear. “Hey, dude, let me call you back,” I whisper.
His voice booms out of the phone. “Where’s the pile of cables we set aside? The extra long ones? Matt can’t find them.”
I turn the volume down. “They’re piled up by Dao’s pedal board.”
“They’re not there!”
“Well then, I don’t know! I gotta go. I’ll see you at the venue.” I hang up on him and return the phone to my pocket.
I creep through the tall grass to Joaquin’s window. This is how I communicate with Joaquin when Carol’s being really unhinged. We cut a flap out of the screen a long time ago. She went through a fasting phase last year and never understood that kids with diabetes can’t go without meals, so I sneaked him food through the bars every day. It was funny; she couldn’t figure out why he was gaining weight. She thought Jesus was feeding him with the Holy Spirit. Nope, it was Jazz, messenger of God, feeding him In-N-Out.
I lift my hand up to knock on the glass, but I stop. The window looks different. It’s a strange shade of dark.
I set the CVS bag down, grip the wrought iron bars and pull myself up to get a closer look. The window looks brown somehow, patchy.
Wait. Is it...is it boarded up?
I jump down, get my phone out of my pocket, turn the flashlight on and shine it up through the bars.
Holy shit. It’s boarded up from the inside.
My body snaps into action. I grab the CVS bag, wade back through the dead grass, slam the gate open and charge up to the front door. I press the bell hard, once, twice, three times.