by Aric Davis
“Alright. How will I know you?”
“You won’t. I’ll know you. If there is any foolishness, there will be consequences.”
“I understand.”
“Be sure that you do.”
I heard him rattle the phone and punch out of it. I sat down next to the pay phone and let the receiver just hang by my head. I had a place and a time; now I just needed some luck. I left the gas station after hanging up the phone and walked home.
I was restless that night, letting plans formulate and then fade in my head, making my brain a machine, plotting for war and vengeance. Return fire for Shelby, for Arrow, for myself. For Nick and Eleanor, for every kid hurt by an adult. I was going to make these men pay off as much of that debt as they were able, and no matter how much they suffered, it would never be enough.
Chapter 43
I put the bike back together the next morning, more out of necessity than desire. People say they’re out of food all the time, but I literally was. I worked the bike back into form as quickly as I was able, which really wasn’t all that quickly. Disassembly is one thing, construction another. If my last bike had failed me, I’d be dead. Construction has to be perfect. If it was going to fail me, then it wasn’t going to be my fault.
Once the last bolt was tightened and the thing stood upright and as beautiful as it could be after my alterations, I tested my weight on it. Things were just fine. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought it was my old one. I went in the house and grabbed my backpack, checked to be sure it was empty, and rode to the grocery store. I checked my watch on the way there—school was out, so I was good to shop.
I ended up buying some pizza rolls, a sack of cheese-filled chicken nuggets, a bunch of those little precut carrots, Carnation instant breakfast, milk, laundry detergent, two loaves of white bread, five boxes of macaroni and cheese, the kind that comes with the cheese pre-made in a foil bag, a jar of peanut butter, two kinds of cereal—not Captain Crunch, I was still recovering—and a pack of trash bags. The lady working the checkout wanted to talk, and I let her go for it, telling her when I was supposed to talk what my mom needed milk for and how my dad would really appreciate it if I could get his beer, too. She laughed and said she couldn’t do that, and I said that I knew that, he just seemed to think it would make life easier. We both laughed, and I paid her and took my stuff and hoped I acted enough like a kid. Acting, that’s a funny thing. I must be a heck of an actor.
Everything just fit into my backpack. I had a funny feeling the bread probably wouldn’t come out looking as nice as it had when it went in, but otherwise it was all in there. I shouldered it and tested the weight before climbing on the bike. If there were a way I could make myself like powdered milk, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
I rode home, and I have to admit, it felt really good. Maybe this bike wasn’t exactly like my old one, but it was close. Maybe just a little more tuned, but I knew better than anybody that had nothing to do with my reassembly job. Somebody over at the factory must have figured a way to shave a few more ounces off and reapply them somewhere else. It’s a fascinating technology, makes me really interested to wrench on a car. That would be a great summer project in a couple of years, building my first one from the ground up. The trick would be staying alive and free that long. Building the car would be easy by comparison. Even if it came completely disassembled, it would still be easier to construct than my endless stream of charades.
I put away the groceries slowly, killing time like a regular kid assigned some menial task. Lucky for me, I wasn’t frustrating some rolling-pin-wielding, ugly-eyed mother with a mean streak. Of course the other side of that coin was kind of a wreck too. I stopped, preheated the oven, and put the rest of the crap away. Already into the pizza rolls—God, I’m so freaking predictable. I’d even promised myself I’d have mac and cheese. Screw it, pizza rolls sounded pretty good. And maybe I was a little worried if I didn’t have them now, maybe I never would. I pushed that coldness away. Yeah right.
The oven dinged a few seconds later, and I realized I’d been standing in the kitchen staring at nothing for almost twenty minutes. My head was buzzing. I grabbed an oven mitt and took the pizza rolls from the oven, got a spatula, plated. Let them sit there on the plate—I don’t know how they do it, but the filling in those things gets hotter than should be scientifically possible. I’ve actually researched this, trying to see if there’s anything to it. I think it’s a big cover-up. The scientists making pizza rolls are using some lava technology to try and burn holes in the roofs of hungry kids’ mouths. All I’m missing is a motive. I have a feeling that motive might never get found, and the secret of nuke-temp snack food will never be uncovered.
After I ate, I went to the office and thought about fishing. I’d taken a serious hit money-wise on the bike, and I hadn’t been working nearly as much on my scams as I ought to have been. It breaks my heart to think of all the pervs waiting for the right boy and knowing that the perfect boy had been too busy to help them have a nice time. I’d make time, just as soon as this was finished.
I left the office, went to the garage, and hopped on the bike. Eighteen pizza rolls shared space with a severe cramping in my belly. If somebody asked me to roll when I got to Rhino’s, I was going to explode on them. I wonder if Rhino teaches that? I know it would probably get me to slow down on twisting a limb. Not Rhino, though. He’d probably just eat the sick with a smile on his face. Guess I won’t ask him about teaching me that new move.
Chapter 44
I pulled into Rhino’s with a smile on my gob. I had to sell a normal boy on helping me look into a monster’s face. It would have been nice if I could have asked Rhino, but I can’t even imagine the response—the bodies would be stacked like cordwood. Beat one of his fighters in the ring, Rhino would smile, tell you how good you did, no matter what. If you hurt kids, well, that was a whole other story. I’d heard rumors of a couple of different situations involving parents paying to have their kids train in the gym. One of the dads got his arm fully dislocated—arm and shoulder. Like Rhino said, he didn’t know the rules, he didn’t tap. There are a lot of things I wish for, and one is that I never make Rhino mad.
He’s one of the only people who knows the real truth about me, or at least a part of it. He’s the only adult I’ve ever met who not only wouldn’t try to help me out, but doesn’t think I need to be helped out. He’d been younger than I was when the streets of Curitiba got a taste of him, and he’d never forget it.
I walked in and gave a look around. Jeff was working in the cage and on the ground with Ricardo. Across the gym a couple basketball teams’ worth of girls smaller and younger than me by a good bit were dressed in gis and working a nasty Muay-Thai kata. Rhino probably billed it as a Tae-Bo class. All I saw was a thick swarm of smiling, pigtailed killing machines. Two instructors ran the drill, and you could see the murderous force in their hands more clearly than in those of the beaming eight-year-olds. Not that I’d wish any help on the kind of scum that would go after one of them, but the way these girls were training, they could do some serious damage close quarters to throat, groin, or temple. Good.
I crossed the rest of the gym quickly. Rhino’s was a good spot to let your eyes wander, but today I wanted to ask Rhino’s permission to talk to Jeff, and if he said yes, get out before he could ask me why. I won’t lie to him, but he knows when not ask questions. Today he might get those sensors going; maybe I should be asking him. That wouldn’t serve the purpose I needed served, though. Violence was one thing, but Rhino’s violence would be like bringing a hippo to an art showing at some high-end gallery.
I walked to the door, scanned the gym for him again, and knocked. From inside I heard, “Come in!”
Rhino was sitting behind his desk with an enormous plate of vegetables and raw tuna in front of him. He waved a paw of a hand at the chair. The chopsticks in his fingers looked like my matchsticks by comparison. “Hey, Nickel.”
“Hey. I need to ask a favor.”
He set the chopsticks down and waved his hands to tell me to speak.
“I’d like to use Jeff on a job tomorrow night. He thinks he owes me something, and I need the transport to get out there. A cab won’t work for this.”
“You don’t ask me for help. Why?”
“The people I’m dealing with, I want them to get in trouble with the police. If they get dead, then the people they deal with will still be free.”
He nodded and said, “Dangerous?”
“Yes. But not for Jeff. He’s just the wheels.”
“Alright. But Nickel? You be careful, really make sure it worth it to get these men to the police instead of, well, instead. They hurt kids, they maybe want to hurt you.”
“That’s the idea. It’s worth the risks.”
He smiled and picked up the chopsticks, piled a huge chunk of zucchini into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed it. He said, “You be careful. Come roll soon. You no practice, you lose it, quick.”
“I know. I’ll be careful, and I’ll be back to roll soon. Thank you.”
He nodded and got back to the food. I left the office and walked out, past the killer children, now drilling three-punch combinations with their little fingers made into points. Eye, mouth, throat. Eye, mouth, throat. Just like that.
When I got to where Ricardo and Jeff were rolling, I sat and watched. Ricardo was much stronger on the ground than Jeff, but he was leaving himself open to let Jeff clue in on what openings to look for, when to grab a wrist and control it or when to spin out because you were getting yourself in trouble. It was a ballet of almost-violence. They weren’t going full speed—Ricardo would ruin Jeff on the ground if they were—but they weren’t taking it easy, either. Jeff was getting it.
There are people, Rhino has told me, who boo when a fight hits the ground and yell homophobic insults at the fighters. They’re ignorant. To someone tuned into jiu-jitsu and ground fighting, it looks as deadly as two snakes coiled around one another. You can go from winning to losing in seconds. I read that championship-level chess players can really see the pieces getting killed; watching ground fighting can be a lot like that. In sport fighting, you tap. In a street fight, that chokehold might be the last thing you feel.
I watched them go like that for a while, caught in their own little universe. Every few minutes Jeff or Ricardo would stop the other man, and then they’d disconnect and try the same position again, to result in either a more advantageous position or in a submission. I’d rolled before, but never like this. I’d been taught how to street fight. My stuff would never work against a trained opponent who understood the rules, and it would certainly never work in a cage with real rules and a referee. What Ricardo was teaching Jeff would give him the ability to fight at a professional level, if he kept at it and really put his nose down and worked. If today was any indication, Rhino would have Jeff in an amateur fight before the end of the year. Small successes at that level, and the sky was the limit.
Finally they broke. I was almost disappointed—it had been a heck of a show. They stood, shook hands, and embraced, and then they walked towards me and a well-deserved drink of water. Ricardo waved and split; he could tell I needed to talk to Jeff. Jeff sat next to me on the bench and said, “How’s it going, Nickel?”
“Good. You look like you’re handling yourself well out there.”
He grinned. “It’s coming slowly to me. Ricardo is amazing, and Rhino’s even better. They’re good teachers too. What’s going on?”
“I need a hand with a job.”
“Cool. When?”
“Don’t you want to hear about it first?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
I leaned in a little closer and said, “It could be dangerous.”
“That’s fine.”
“Did you read the paper?”
“Yes. How’s the girl?”
“She’s alright, about like you’d expect, from what her sister says.”
“Are we going after more guys like that?”
“Yes.”
“I’m so in.”
I told him what he had to do, and when I finished we went over it again. I had trouble calming him down, letting him know how it had to be to go off right. It’s hard to get it through to a person training violence every day that they shouldn’t just tear a child molester in half, but Jeff got it eventually. By the end he was grinning, ready to make it happen as easy as I said it would be. If only I could be so sure it would be as smooth.
When we were finished, I told him that I’d meet him at the gas station by my house on the following night. He nodded, letting the plan soak in or marinating more on jiu-jitsu—it was tough for me to say. We cracked knuckles, and I went back outside to my replacement bike. I rode home, the pizza rolls settling at about the same rate as the sun by the time I pulled in the driveway.
I read for a little while when I got home, stayed away from the computer as much as possible. I had a plan locked up—the last thing I needed was to wrap my head around something else that would dull my focus. I thought about Arrow and Shelby, and it made me sad. I made a vow to call them in two days when this was over. If I was able to.
I was restless pretty much all day. I ate macaroni and cheese, read for a while, thought about going shopping again for something to do but dismissed the idea after wrestling with it in my head. Finally I decided that if I didn’t go for a bike ride, I was going to go nuts. I pulled out of the garage and, for once, didn’t go anywhere at all.
I found myself going to all of the usual haunts, I just wasn’t stopping. I rode by Riverside but didn’t get off the bike to walk around or anything. Remnants of police tape hung from a tree by where the shooting had happened. It made me feel cold on the inside and like a little kid on the outside. I could feel Shelby on my shoulder, feel the bullets tugging at the wind around us—only in my head, Eyepatch wasn’t there and we were dead on the lawn. I could still call this whole thing off, just not show up and be done with it. Thought about that some more. No, I couldn’t.
I rolled out to Four Oaks, passed by Arrow’s house but didn’t stop. There was a For Sale sign in the front yard. It made my chest feel like my lungs were full of gummy bears. I rode past it, trying not to think about what that meant. I could not deal. I rode home as fast as I could to call Arrow.
“Hello.”
“It’s me. How are you?”
“I was going to tell you. It just happened. Shel…my sister is more messed up than they thought at first. Like, really messed up. We’re going to move to an apartment until the house sells.”
“In town?”
I could hear her swallow thickly over the phone. “No. Milwaukee.”
I didn’t know what to say. My lips worked independently of the rest of me and spoke anyways. The word came out like cold ketchup from a glass jar: “When?”
“Soon. Movers are coming tomorrow.”
“Are you moving tomorrow?”
“No. Probably the day after. Maybe the next one after that. You’d really have to ask my folks.”
My mouth kept working on its own. Nothing I’d ask her folks would be polite. “I have to work tonight. Would you want to come over tomorrow?”
“To your house?”
“Yeah. I could make us dinner; we can just hang out for a little bit.”
“Like a date?”
“I’m too young to date.”
“So am I, but if I say it’s a date, it’s a date.”
“Alright.”
I seriously don’t know how I was even talking—my mouth felt like it was full of cotton, and my blood had turned to molasses.
“What are you going to cook?”
“Steaks. Sound okay?”
“It sounds wonderful.”
“I’ll send Lou over to pick you up from the gas station by your house tomorrow. Five okay?”
“That would be perfect.”
“See you then.”
She hung up.
Crap. Why steaks?
Of all things, why did my dumb mouth put in a stellar performance only to kill it by offering to cook the one thing that I could not cook? I ran to the computer, did a search for steak, how to cook steak, the perfect steak, all kinds of stuff. Every search had the same link at the top of the page for a place called Lobel’s. I broke and checked out the site. According to them, they sold the best meat in the U.S. I ordered two rib eyes for overnight delivery. With shipping, it was just shy of a hundred bucks. I figure if I burn them too bad, I’ll show her the receipt for sympathy. How could I be more worried about that than tonight? Tonight was a war—tomorrow was aged beef. I looked at the clock on the computer. Time to get ready for them. As scared as I was, I couldn’t wait to look in their eyes and see the fear well up.
Chapter 45
Inside, I was ready for war; outside, I looked like I’d just left one. My camouflage was poverty: I wore my most threadbare, tight jeans and had on a hoodie with nothing underneath it. I wanted to look like the kid I could have been if I hadn’t escaped, a sad, used-up little mess of a boy. Even my hair was a little mussed with gel. That had been hard because I don’t have much hair. If they searched me, they wouldn’t find anything but an ink pen. If they really got to work searching, there might be problems. I didn’t think they would. Every factor I could control had been handled; now I just had to let it play. I chewed a matchstick, my third once since I’d gotten to the gas station. It was cold out, and I invited the weather in, let it get bone deep, let it show on my face. I was raw, scraped all the way down, and that was perfect.
Jeff showed up after I’d been there about an hour. He was early. He got out of the car and sat next to me on the curb, and I shuffled the duffle with the money over to him. He grabbed it and set it on his lap. He said, “Are you ready?”
I nodded a response. We sat in silence for about fifteen minutes and stood together. We walked to his car and got in, and a few minutes later we were on the highway, headed south. When I saw a sign for the rest stop, I clambered over the seats to sit in the back. He pulled in and parked at the edge of the lot by the trees. There were two semi trucks parked on the other side and a car pulling out as we’d pulled in, but otherwise the place was a ghost town. Jeff got out and sat on the hood, the bag with the funny money still in the car.