The Honest Truth

by Dan Gemeinhart

  “What’s your problem, you little punk? Why won’t you talk to me?”

  The face was pinched and pale and angry. It’s all I saw. Dark, watery eyes. Eyebrows squeezed down and together. Red pimples on white skin. A mean mouth, smiling like a shark. Sharp little teeth. His friends were lurking shadows behind him, moving to surround me. They were stupid laughs and shoving hands. They were everything bad and ugly and inescapable. I was alone, with them all around me.

  Tears sprang hot and salty to my eyes. It was too much.

  “Leave me alone.”

  The kid snorted. “Leave you alone?”

  “Please.” My voice, squeezed through my tight and clenching throat, sounded high and whiny.

  “Please,” the kid said in a squeaky voice, mocking me. His friends laughed.

  “Whatcha got in your backpack?” the kid asked, his voice dropping lower and getting more dangerous. I breathed out through my nose and closed my eyes. “You got any money?” I shook my head and tried to say no, but it just came out as a weak moan. My body was so tired. “Oh, I betcha do,” the kid sneered. A hand tugged on my backpack. In the duffel at my feet, Beau growled. No one seemed to hear it but me.

  The hands pulled harder on my backpack. The straps dug into my shoulders. Mean chuckles and barks of laughter rang out around me. I tried to stand still, to stay on my feet. My stomach turned over and kicked. I swallowed.

  “Come on,” the kid in front said. “Give it.”

  I took a deep breath to slow down my lungs.

  “No,” I said. My anger, chased away by fear, came slinking back. “Go to hell.” I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes to hold down the puke.

  The first fist hit me in the ribs. I doubled over, my breath gone. Two hands pushed me, hard, from the side. I tripped into two more hands, which pushed me back.

  No, I tried to say, but nothing came out.

  There was a final, wrenching tug on my backpack.

  Another punch, hard and round and sharp, hammered my stomach.

  The world fell apart.

  I fell.

  The sidewalk was hard and sudden, concrete sandpaper that rushed up and smashed pain into my body. A foot crashed into my stomach, another into my back. I started to rise up onto my hands and knees but a fist slammed into my cheek and shot the light out of my eyes.

  I didn’t cry. But only because I was too scared and sick and hurt to.

  My backpack was ripped from my back. I didn’t try to stop it. I felt with my feet for the duffel. It was still there. I didn’t want them to open it. Beau was a small dog. I knew what they could do to him. I heard the zipper of my backpack buzz open.

  “Nothing,” the kid’s voice said. “Just a bunch of clothes and ropes and crap. Loser.”

  “What about his other bag?” another voice asked.

  “No,” I mumbled. Not Beau. “My money. In my pocket.” My face was pressed to the sidewalk, but they heard me. Hungry hands felt through my pockets. I felt the lump of my money slip out and away.

  “Holy crap,” the kid’s voice whispered. “There’s like a hundred bucks here.”

  “Leave me some,” I croaked, my voice hoarse and my breath short.

  “What?”

  “Don’t take it all. It’s mine. Leave me something.”

  The kid snorted. “I’ll leave you something,” he said. A hand gripped my shoulder and turned me over onto my back. I opened my eyes in time to see the darkness of the night sky, then the fist flying toward me. It connected with my mouth with a meaty crunch that flashed bolts of pain through my body. My feet kicked out. My shoulders hunched. Blood, warm and thick and salty, ran down into my throat.

  The pale face glared down at me, the glow of the streetlight behind it. I saw the eyes drop down to my camera, still around my neck. My hands shot up and grabbed it.

  The kid pulled at my fingers, tugged at the camera. I held tighter.

  “Give it.”

  “No.” I don’t know if I said it or just thought it. My body was alive with pain. The kid pulled harder. I held tighter. He shook and yanked and my fingers turned to steel. I wasn’t letting go.

  He gave a last rocking jerk, and my hat tumbled off. I felt the cool night air on my head.

  The kid, his fist clenched back for another punch, froze. His eyes shot up to where my hat had been.

  “God,” he said. “What’s wrong with you?”

  I blinked at him.

  “You are,” I said through my split lips.

  His mouth hung open. His fist slowly lowered.

  I lifted my camera and took a picture of him.

  “Maybe he’s got more,” a different voice said. I heard a rustling at my feet, where my duffel was. I heard a zipper being drawn back.

  Beau was a small dog. But size doesn’t tell you anything about how important something is.

  Beau came out of that duffel bag like hot burning justice. Like all the right kinds of anger. Like everything the world ever needed. He came out into the darkness and the blood of that cold city street fast and loud and hard, all teeth and bark and bravery.

  There were screams of surprise. Shouts. Curses. Shrieks.

  “Let’s go!” a voice shouted. I heard footsteps slapping quickly away into the night.

  The kid who’d punched me was still looking at me. I felt something flutter onto my heaving chest, and then he was gone, too, his footsteps joining the others disappearing into darkness.

  I lay on the sidewalk coughing, swallowing blood and feeling all the different hurts in my body. There were plenty. Tears dripped hotly down my cheeks. The sidewalk was hard under my head. Rocks and pieces of gravel poked up at my back. I started to sit up but stopped almost right away; I hurt too much in too many places. I dropped my head back to the sidewalk and looked through tear-blurred eyes up to where the stars should be. There weren’t any. Clouds were hiding them, maybe, or they were lost in the lights of the city.

  I heard the click-clack of claws coming toward me. Beau. I hadn’t noticed that he’d left. He’d chased them. Away. And then he had come back to me.

  I felt his breath, his sniffing nose, on my hand. Then on my neck, my bloody mouth, then loudly in my ear. I felt his tongue, soft at first and then stronger as he got worried, licking at the blood and tears on my face.

  He whined, a quiet but urgent whine, and nudged me with his nose.

  I was still breathing. Still staring at where the stars should have been. Still feeling all my hurt, and all my sad.

  And my dog was licking the blood and tears from my face.

  I turned my head to my dog. Saw his eyes looking into mine, worried. One brown and one green. Felt his sniffing breath again, his warm tongue. A fresh batch of tears sprang to my eyes.

  “Oh, Beau,” I said. My voice was as scratchy as the concrete beneath my back. My words were blurry and muffled from the blood in my mouth and my split, swollen lips.

  He whined again, his breath hot in my face. He was on a dark street in a strange city far from his home. And he was worried only about me. He was my hero.

  I reached up painfully, and scratched him behind the ears. His ears dropped and his tail wagged. I brought my hand down to my chest to feel what the kid had dropped there. My hand closed around it and held it close to my eyes so I could see it: a twenty-dollar bill. One of my twenty-dollar bills. I’d had five. He’d left me one.

  Here’s what I don’t get: why people think I need help, just because.

  I shoved the bill into my shirt pocket and closed my eyes again, let the tears burn out through my eyelids and down my face to the street.

  Beau shifted his paws nervously. He whined.

  I knew I should get up. Find a restaurant or some place with a bathroom, get cleaned up.

  But I was just too sick. Too sad. Too hurt.

  I wanted to die, right there on the sidewalk in a city that didn’t care. All of my fight was gone.

  I reached out and grabbed the straps of my backpack and the handles of my
duffel. I crawled away from the street, away from the light, deeper into the shadows, dragging them with me. My neck, my ribs, my head all protested as I scraped along the concrete. Jolts and jabs of pain rocketed around inside me. The taste of blood in my mouth was strong and bitter.

  Finally, I found myself against a brick wall. The lights from the street barely reached me. I didn’t think any cars would be able to see me. Good. I didn’t want someone to find me. I didn’t want anyone to watch me die. I wanted to be alone.

  I curled up on my side, facing the wall. Beau stood for a second and then lay down against my back, watching over me. His body was warm.

  I closed my eyes and let myself die.

  Sleep hid in shadows.

  A friend lost in dark questions.

  Rain and wind outside.

  Jess lay in bed, the note from her lost best friend clutched tight in her hand. She’d read and reread it enough times now that the words ran through her head without her having to turn on the light to see them. The idea that had tickled and tugged in her mind since Mark’s mom first called was alive and in her room with her. She knew, in some deep kind of way, that Mark was not anywhere on the road to Spokane. He never had been. She could feel where he was heading, and her body shivered at the thought. She reached out, through the miles and the storm that wetted and shook her window; she reached out with her heart to her friend, wandering wherever he was. She could feel him, she thought. That was the kind of friendship they had. She could feel his hurt.

  “Why?” she asked the darkness. She knew, she thought, where he was going. She knew, she thought, what he was doing. The question that growled in the darkness at her was “Why?”

  But there were two wolves growling in the darkness. The one that growled “Why” was followed by a darker, quieter growl that answered. And she liked the answer even less than she liked the question. It chased all sleep out of the room.

  She loved her friend. And she didn’t know how to help him.

  Because the question she wanted to shout back at the wolves in the darkness was this: If she knew where Mark was going, and if she was right about why he was going there — then should she tell?

  She needed to know.

  Would her best friend choose to die?

  What had made him run?

  I woke up to the sound of music.

  I spit a clot of dried blood out of my mouth and listened.

  It was angels, singing. I couldn’t understand the words, but it was beautiful.

  A warm wind, like breath, blew over my face.

  I did it, I thought. I died. I licked at my split lip. It’s about time.

  There was nothing but the angels singing, and the warm wind. And lots and lots of pain.

  My lips hurt. My teeth hurt. My head hurt. My back hurt. My ribs hurt.

  “Crap,” I said. My tongue was thick and dry in my mouth. “I’m not dead.”

  Beau jumped up beside me and panted good morning in my face. He whined and licked his lips and wagged his tail so hard his butt shook. He nudged at me with his nose.

  “Yeah, buddy,” I croaked. My throat was hoarse and scratchy. “Give me a sec.”

  I blinked and tried to prop an elbow beneath me. Jagged slivers of pain shot up from my ribs to my skull. I managed to sit up and look around.

  I was sitting on the dirty asphalt of an alley, tucked into a corner between a brick wall and a green Dumpster. The Dumpster was beat-up and dented, and its smell woke my nose up quick. Somehow I’d managed to crawl behind it. In a sour, foggy flash the whole nightmare came back to me: being followed, the fear, the anger, the rat-faced kid, the beating.

  The money.

  I fumbled quickly through my pockets and found it. One twenty-dollar bill. That was it.

  My hands formed into fists. My breath came hard and fast.

  “It’s not enough,” I said out loud, my voice hard and sharp. Like broken glass. I shook my head. Sickness rose in my belly. My hands went soft. My breaths slowed as I concentrated on not throwing up. I was too sick and too tired to fight back the tears that seeped up into my eyes. “It’s not enough,” I said again. My voice was small and fragile. Like broken glass.

  Beau whined again. His whine opened my ears, and I heard the angels still singing.

  Along with the singing voices came another, better smell. It pushed through the reek of the Dumpster. Frying onions. Cooking beans. Grilling tortillas. The smells were spicy and warm and they poked at my stomach with delicious fingers. It smelled like Jess’s kitchen when her grandma was visiting from Mexico.

  I got on my hands and knees and peeked around the corner of the Dumpster.

  There was a door propped open, across the alley. The singing and smells were coming from inside. I squinted at the handwritten sign hung on the door: San Cristobal’s Restaurante. Please Use Front Door.

  Beside me, Beau whined and licked his lips. We both were smelling that food, and I’m sure both our bellies were saying the same thing.

  I got to my feet and gasped as the pain in my head roared louder, like someone had turned the volume knob as far as it would go. I squinted and gritted my teeth. Beau was pressed into my leg, his tail thumping against me.

  “Stay,” I said. His ears dropped, but he didn’t follow as I limped over toward the door.

  Inside was a narrow hallway crowded with boxes. At its end was the kitchen, noisy and clattering with the sounds of cooking. I could see the backs of three women, stirring and chopping and moving pans around on a couple of giant stoves.

  They were the ones singing. They were the angels. A little radio was up on a shelf blaring out some song in Spanish, but their voices drowned it out as they sang along. The song sounded like it was about heartbreak, or hope, or maybe a little bit of both. Their voices rose and fell and rang with emotion as they worked. Their singing and all those sad Spanish words and the sweet spicy smells of the food at their hands all mixed together into something that stuck me right there where I was standing. I leaned my head against the doorjamb and just breathed and listened and smelled. It was something wonderful.

  It kinda hurt my broken face to smile. But I did, a little. And I raised my camera and took a picture of those angels cooking that food that smelled like heaven.

  But then, of course, the pain in my head and my bones and my face reminded me where I was. And who. And why I was there. I swallowed and blinked and tried to clear the wonderful out of my brain.

  There were two doors in the hall, one on either side. Through the one on the right I saw a mirror and a sink and the edge of a toilet. I could feel the dried blood caked on my face. I needed to clean up, and that bathroom would be as good as anywhere else I’d find.

  I looked back at Beau. He was sitting with my duffel by the Dumpster, looking at me with his mismatched eyes. He’d lain tight against me all the long night. He’d chased away the wolves and stood guard over me through all the darkness. I blew my breath out and took a look around.

  Then I patted my leg and whisper-shouted, “Come on, Beau.” He sprang over to my side before I could even smile. “But be quiet,” I added as I squeezed through the open door. The sound of the angels got louder.

  Their backs were to us, but I knew they could turn at any moment. I hurried to the bathroom and ducked inside, Beau walking tight by my leg with his tail wagging. I caught a glimpse through the door of the other room across the hallway. It was an office or something, with a computer and a phone and a messy, paper-covered desk. Then I closed the bathroom door and slid the little locking bolt shut.

  Beau was loving the kitchen smells. He looked up at me, obviously disappointed when the bolt snapped into place.

  “Sorry, buddy,” I said. “We’re not here to eat. We’re just gonna —”

  My voice stuck in my throat when I saw myself in the mirror.

  My face was scratched up. One eye was surrounded by a puffy black bruise. Another bruise showed darkly on the opposite cheekbone. My lips were cracked and bloody. Between them
I could see that one of my top front teeth was chipped. A trail of dried blood trickled out of my nose.

  I looked like hell. That’s the truth.

  I felt things start to crumble inside me. I bit at the crumbling with my back teeth.

  “No,” I said to the bloody wreck in the mirror. “You don’t cry. You don’t cry.”

  And I didn’t.

  But as I wiped at my face with wet paper towels, my hands shook. Even though I told them not to. And my breaths tripped on their way in and out of my lungs. But my eyes didn’t cry. The voices of the angels blew in through a vent above my head and echoed in the room around me.

  I took my hat off to wipe at the dirt and blood high on my forehead. I didn’t put it back on. I let it drop to the floor and stay there.

  I ran my hands over the fine stubble on my mostly bald head. The baldness I was always trying to hide. The baldness that told the world: This kid’s got cancer. It shouted it. I hated that baldness.

  The crumpled postcard was still in the inside pocket of my jacket. The kid hadn’t thought to search there when he was looking through my pockets. I pulled it out with shaky fingers.

  It showed a mountain. Huge and snow-covered, against blue sky. Printed in curly purple along the bottom were the words Mt. Rainier.

  I swallowed. That wild mountain — the very top of it — was what I was traveling toward. I’d always known it was crazy. A sick kid, running away to climb one of the biggest mountains in North America. Alone. Yeah — it had always seemed crazy. But there in that bathroom, bloody and bruised, it didn’t just seem crazy. It seemed stupid. And impossible. Hopeless. I blinked my burning eyes and stuffed the postcard back in my pocket.

  I got all the blood off my face. Even the new blood that came when I wiped the dried blood away. I wiped until my face was clean and the sink was dotted with little droplets of red and the garbage can was almost full of paper towels.

  I looked better. But not that much.

  And all the while, I thought about the money that wasn’t in my pocket. And the food that wasn’t in my belly. And the hurt that was all over me. And the mountain I was supposed to climb.