Jerome shook his head. “It’s … it’s … unique. Is all.”
“That’s for sure,” Izzy said.
The remaining spirits around them, who had been observing the shenanigans with occasional nods and maybe even chuckles, all perked up at once and whirled toward the far entrance to the park.
Izzy squinted into the darkness. “What is it?”
“Someone’s coming,” Jerome said. “A few someones.”
The dark figures moved toward them at a jog. They were wearing baseball uniforms, Izzy realized.
“Trey?” Jerome said. “Whaddup, man?” He crossed the distance and traded a pound with the guy in front, a light-skinned dude with a goatee.
“We lettin’ the whole hood know,” Trey said, then he stopped to catch his breath. “It’s Cortez.”
“What about her?” Izzy asked.
“She missin’,” said another kid, his high-pitched voice holding back a sob. “My sister.” Two boys came up beside him and patted his back.
“It’s alright, Bean,” one of them said. “We gonna find her, man.”
“Day and a half now,” Trey confirmed, still panting. “Ain’t nobody seen her. We got creamed last night by the Baker’s Dozen and —”
“Y’all let the Baker’s Dozen —” Jerome started. Izzy smacked his arm and he shut up.
“Last we saw her was yesterday ’round noon,” Bean said. “She had lunch with me and Mama, and it was weird she missed the game, but we thought she was spending the night at Butt Jenny’s. Neither of ’em were answering their phones. Turns out Jenny was off with Gary and hadn’t seen Lani either and then Lani didn’t show up at the game tonight.” He shook his head, his frown widening across his face. “And now she’s nowhere.”
Nowhere. Izzy felt the truth of that expand inside her like a slow flood. She didn’t know Lani well, but the city around them suddenly seemed impossibly huge, a forest. How could anyone hope to find anyone else in this mess?
“Dios mío,” María said. “Did anyone go to the cops?”
“Just now,” Trey said, “but they said there’s a forty-eight-hour minimum waiting period before they can file a report.”
“Comemierdas,” María muttered. “¿Y ahora?”
“They ain’t gonna help us, Mrs. Santiago,” Trey said. “We already know. So we got all the summer league teams organized into search crews and folks out there scouring the Stuy tonight. That’s the best we can do.”
María nodded briskly. “Sierra, call your godfather. Bean, where are your parents right now?”
“They with one of the search crews — the Marcy Projectiles, I think.”
“Call ’em. Tell ’em to meet us by the precinct. Sierra, Nydia, you two come with me. Jerome, join the search crew. Izzy —”
“I’m with you,” Izzy said. “Let’s roll.”
“I’m asking you to say exactly what you said to me again.” Neville’s voice was calm, but Izzy could hear the hell it promised.
“Look,” the officer said for about the twentieth time in as many minutes. Izzy adjusted her phone slightly to make sure the angle was right. She was livestreaming to about twenty thousand very agitated viewers on Hoozit, and Neville had told her to make sure she got every minute and as clear a shot as possible without being seen. “I already told you guys that we can’t do anything tonight. I’m sure Miss …” His voice trailed off.
Neville stared at him for almost a full minute. Behind them, a group of searchers combed Von King Park. Lani’s mom and dad and brother stood on one side of Neville, with María, Sierra, Nydia, and Izzy on the other. “Cortez,” Neville finally said, his voice cold steel. “Lani Cortez.”
“Right. She’s probably at a friend’s house or with a —”
“She ain’t!” Bean yelled. “All her friends are out looking for her like y’all should be doing!”
“Our daughter doesn’t have a boyfriend,” Lani’s dad said, “Officer …” He peered over Neville’s shoulder at the cop’s chest. “Buford.”
Officer Buford held up both hands and raised his eyebrows. “Look, kids these days, you never know wha —”
“¡A carajo!” Mr. Cortez yelled, shoving forward and winding his fist back. Neville was faster, though; he threw his long body between them, catching Mr. Cortez’s right arm and holding him off.
“Easy, easy …” Neville said. “We need you out here lookin’, not in there facing felony assault charges, my man.”
Buford had taken two large steps back and had his hand on his service revolver. “Disperse from this area immediately,” he yelled. “I could book you right now for attempted assault on a —”
“Alright, alright, alright,” Neville said, holding Mr. Cortez away from the doorway with both hands. “C’mon, man.”
“You find my daughter!” Cortez yelled over his wife’s sobs. “Do your damn job!”
“Goddammit!” Neville shouted once he and Izzy had rounded a corner away from the others. He kicked a scrunched-up soda can, ricocheting it off the wall of the precinct. They’d split up into twos to comb the neighborhood, and it was only now that Izzy realized how much effort Neville had been exerting to hold it together over the past half hour. He dragged those long fingers down his face and punched the air once before leaning on a recycling bin and massaging his temples.
Izzy had never seen Neville even mildly vexed, let alone throwing a complete shit fit. The man’s entire body was a coiled weapon, and while she believed he would never do anything to hurt her, she kept an arm’s length between them. Neville shook his head, pulled out a Conejo, and lit it, offering Izzy the pack without looking at her.
“Nah, man. Cigarettes are filth; why the hell would I wanna put that in my body?”
Neville nodded with a severe frown. “You right, you right.”
“You wanna … you wanna talk about it?”
He shook his head, pressed his eyes shut. Shook his head again. Squeezed the top of his nose. When he opened his eyes they were watery and red. He gave Izzy one of the most haunted looks she’d ever seen, then startled her even more by smiling.
“I ain’t gonna hurt you, Iz, damn. Can Uncle Neville have some emotions too?”
Izzy took a step closer. “Yeah, but … damn.”
He smiled again, wiped his eyes. Shook his head one more time. Izzy pulled herself up on the recycling bin next to him. Her sneakers dangled over the pavement where his shiny alligator skins were firmly planted. Neville took a drag and sighed it out into the night. His long face tensed, then settled back into the easy, unfazed demeanor she’d always known it to bear — his mask rebuilding itself.
“You know what’s wild? This searching thing ain’t gonna find her.” He shook his head, the lost look from a few moments ago vanished entirely. “And I ain’t sayin’ we shouldn’t do it. I’m glad we are. But it’s for us more than Lani, is all.”
“Whatchu mean?”
“This ain’t Maine. We ain’t in the woods. Lani ain’t gonna be in a tree or lost, you know? But folks need to do something when tragedy hit, otherwise we lose our minds. I get it.” He smoked and sighed. “I ain’t knockin’ it, Iz, believe me. But we gotta get the word out there too. Whole neighborhood, hell, all the surrounding ones too, gotta know this girl missing. And even then …” He looked away. “Even then.”
He stood, flicked his cigarette at the precinct, and headed down the block in a mean long-strided saunter. “You gotta keep hittin’ up that little social e-network you on, Iz.”
“Already on it!” Izzie jogged to keep pace alongside him and took out her phone. She pulled up the Hoozit app and started broadcasting in one smooth motion.
“Let the people know,” Neville said. “We gotta find this girl and we gotta find her now, you feel me? Gotta tell folks to hit the streets, talk to each other, exchange information. All these social networks can save lives, and I don’t just mean them little e-lectronic ones y’all love so much, although those help too. Feel me?” He looked down at Izzy and j
umped back. “Whoa, babygirl, I didn’t realize you was filmin’! Damn. I woulda cleaned up some.”
Izzy flipped the camera on herself. “Y’all heard that? Lani Cortez missing. Family ain’t seen her since noon yesterday. Noon! If you on my feed, you already seen what PD plan on doing, aka not a damn thing, aka business as usual, which means we gotta hit the streets and make moves, like Uncle Neville said. Aight? Imma post a pic in a moment. Spread it everywhere, y’all.” She stopped recording and closed out the app, then hurried after Neville.
“Anyway,” he went on, “it’s just like it was when I was a youngen. Ain’t nothin’ changed ’cept the tools at our disposal and theirs. But if the police won’t do they job, we gotta do it for ’em. ’Cept hopefully without the killing people part. I hate killing people.”
Izzy had no idea if he was kidding or not. He flashed a wily grin at her that did nothing to clear up the situation.
“So, yeah, search teams, Internets, all that. And we gotta —”
Izzy stopped short. “Poster!”
“That’s right.”
“Which means …”
Neville strode across the street to where his Cadillac was double-parked. “Imma drop you off. Gotta take care of some shit on my end. Hop in.”
“Sulaaa,” Akira Ibrahim’s voice wailed into the darkness. “My song slips out for Sula.” A vicious splatter of synth and drone blasts deluged the next set of lyrics, but it didn’t matter. No one ever really knew what he was singing and no one cared. That trembling falsetto and those fierce beats said all that needed to be said.
Tee twirled, one foot in the air. The seven-day candles she’d bought at the bodega spun into a blur around her. She felt her breasts bounce against her chest, the cool basement air on her naked back.
“Ayyyyy, don’t even soooaaaeeeehhhh … aneeeemore, my love … my love my love my love.” Tee leapt through the dim dank air, a kind of busted grand jeté, landed with arms outstretched above her head, twirled again. “Aneeeeemore, my love, nevermore.”
No ghost girl. Well, no, that wasn’t totally true. Tee could still feel her. She was there. That much Tee knew, as truly as she knew the ghost girl wanted to stay a secret. That calm heaviness hung in the air, a presence: unmistakable. But she stubbornly refused to show herself. Or maybe she couldn’t.
“Help who?” Tee had said over and over. “Help who?” It became a chant, a dirge, each word bereft of meaning. But the ghost girl had just stared, mouth slightly open.
Tee had opened the chest again; she’d dug through the clothes, costumes mostly, on the off chance that one would somehow inspire the ghost girl to speak again. She’d tried to ’shape her into the Linotype, into loose line drawings, into the damn printing press.
Nothing.
And then the ghost girl had faded, eyes widening slightly as she went. And Tee had gasped, her mouth repeating “help who help who help who” without permission or pause.
The ghost girl was gone.
And — a tingling certainty that the girl somehow remained there, invisible, notwithstanding — Tee had never felt so alone in her life.
“… who help who help who help who help …”
The phone was where Tee would usually turn when loneliness tried to edge its way in. She’d text with the crew or Izzy or scroll through Hoozit. But she’d turned it to airplane mode hours ago and had no plans of changing that, because why? To see that Izzy hadn’t texted back still, to read her mom’s caustic response to her lie about where she’d be tonight?
Nah.
Music, though … music.
“… whohelpwhohelpwhohelpwho …”
Music would break this barren feeling.
And so Akira Ibrahim’s lilting sob filled the air, and at the first despairing piano chord, the ghost girl had emerged out of the darkness, as if the music itself had summoned her. She swayed gently, her Afropuffs juggling on either side of her head. Tee had crossed the room so fast she was out of breath, but the girl was already flickering back into nothingness when she got there.
“Helpless … helpless …” Ibrahim crooned over the stumbling piano notes as she vanished. “Ain’t seventeen ain’t twenty-two ain’t me ain’t you … helpless …”
That’s when Tee started to dance. It was pure frustration at first: She’d just hurled her body away. But it had become something more as she moved, something with grace. Her clenched fists shook on either side of her face as she bore down, falling to her knees, and the synths exploded into a thrashing cascade. The music moved inside her, erupted from her crown and filled the dark room.
“I am made of glass!” Ibrahim yelled, wrathful. “Glass is my nooo-ahhhh-rrayyyy …”
Tee unleashed herself, let her body propel forward without thought or self-consciousness. Arms raised, then pulled tight; her whole body a fist, then wide open, breathless.
She never moved like this. She barely kicked more than a two-step when music came on, usually just bopped her head on beat and let Izzy do all the fireworks.
This was another thing. This was freedom.
“And everyone knows ayyyyyyy am ma-a-aaade made of gla-aaaaaaaaa … everyone knows everyone knows, darling mine.”
Ghost Girl flickered in and out and then vanished completely when the song ended. In the silence between songs, Tee retrieved the bodega candles; she lit them as the first strains of “Elemental Loss” shrieked out, was dancing again by the chorus.
She didn’t remember taking her clothes off, had no idea when her lips had finally stopped repeating “Help who” into infinity. All she knew was that she felt so alive and so alone and the ghost girl was gone and somehow still there, everywhere, she filled the room, and something, something needed to happen.
The door creaked open and Tee let out a scream and stumbled backward. A figure poked its head in and then Izzy’s voice said, “Tee-babe?”
Tee glanced at the corner — no ghost girl. Then she looked down and realized she was covering her breasts. But it was Izzy, but who was Izzy to her now? She took a step away from the door, shaking her head. “Iz … what the hell?”
“Literally that’s my question at this moment, Tee. I’m not the one dancing naked in a candlelit church basement to sad boy tech-emo.”
Tee looked at her phone. The music had faded to the background of her mind as soon as the door opened, the spell broken. “Iz … babe … I …”
Izzy’s eyes narrowed; she was realizing something. Tee knew that face, knew that whatever Izzy was about to say would be upsettingly true, cut through all the other bullshit and get right to the heart of everything. That was Izzy.
But she didn’t say anything. She squinted at Tee for another couple seconds, then her face softened. She came down the stairs and crossed the room. Without knowing why, Tee took a step back. “Iz … I …”
Izzy lunged, catching Tee in an unflinching embrace. She pulled her close and then squeezed. Tee gasped, her whole body a shaft of steel, and then she felt herself go liquid in Izzy’s arms. She sighed twice and burst into tears.
“Must be something in the air tonight,” Izzy muttered as Tee’s sobs slowed. “And to think, I’m the one on my period.” They’d slid down the side of a table and now Izzy sat with her back against one of the legs and Tee lay with her head in Izzy’s lap.
“Mine’s on the way,” Tee blubbered. “And what other half-naked bitches crying into your pants, Iz?”
“Don’t act like you care,” Izzy snorted.
Tee sat up. She wiped her eyes and finally looked at her girlfriend for what felt like the first time in years. She took in Izzy’s arms — slender and a little too long for her short body — her music-note tats, and the way her braids rested on one shoulder. Her face, usually so defiant, now seemed wide open, lost. Izzy at a loss for words was the saddest thing Tee could think of. She was just a girl, really, but everything seemed to have gotten so real so quick; who could even be a girl anymore, with everything going on? Izzy’s eyebrows were raised, her nostrils fla
red, her mouth squeezed tight — the wholeness of her caught in some nowhere land between all that strength and all that pain.
“I … I’m sorry,” Tee said, knowing it wasn’t enough. Izzy had come for her. Who knew why she’d shown up just now, but it didn’t matter, not really. She’d shown up in Tee’s darkest, weirdest hour, and instead of judging her or cursing her out, which she had all rights to do, she’d just swept her up in her arms and let her sob and sob and sob.
Izzy on the mic; Izzy lost in her poems; Izzy cursing out her geometry homework earnestly while everyone else laughed; Izzy naked in her arms, gasping for air: a whole other Izzy that no one else saw, Tee’s secret Izzy, the Izzy that was a flower, not a wall, an impossible riddle, delicious verse.
Izzy cocked her head at Tee.
“I’m sorry,” Tee said. She reached up to the table, found her T-shirt, pulled it on over her head. “I been … I been lost, Iz. It’s been me, being lost. That’s all.”
“Ain’t seventeen ain’t twenty-two …” Ibrahim’s voice was a faraway siren in the dim room. The album must’ve started over. “Helpless … helpless.”
Izzy scrunched up her face, trying to steel it, Tee figured. It wouldn’t work. “You … you’ve been gone, Tee. We haven’t …” She shook her head, and then she looked at Tee full-on. “I guess I forgive you.”
Tee sighed a laugh. “Don’t sound so sure of yourself.”
Izzy smirked. “Don’t push ya luck. And anyway, I’m sorry too. I’ve been kinda … well, hurt. And selfish maybe.” She shook her head, then leaned in for a kiss.
Tee took Izzy’s face in her hands and their lips met. After a few moments, she smiled against her girlfriend’s face. “Now who these hoes you got crying to ya?”
“Oh man.” Izzy pulled away, sitting up. Tee missed the taste of her immediately. “I got a lot to catch you up on since you decided to Gollum up in ya little cave.”
Ghost Girl in the Corner Page 5