I gave her the directions.
“Got it. Be safe, okay? I’ll see you in a bit,” she said.
By the time I walked back to the apartment and stopped at an ATM for cash, I only had a few minutes to throw a few jeans and T-shirts into a duffel, along with clean boxers, an extra pair of sneakers, Morgan’s crumpled self-portrait, my school stuff, and a toothbrush.
When I came outside, Haylie was sitting on the front step.
“You made Mom cry,” she said, and I felt like scum, just like the spray painted words on the truck said I was. “Why are you ditching us?”
I wanted to explain everything. I wanted Haylie to know that I was leaving to keep our family safe. Instead, I asked, “Who’s the guy that called last night? Was he your friend?” I cringed, thinking of the lead officer’s term for me.
“Oh, my god. You told Mom, didn’t you?” Her eyes were red-rimmed and sleepy. She was wearing lip-gloss. Her mouth looked like a bruise.
“Since when did you start using makeup? I just want to know—”
“You ratted me out.” Haylie sobbed so hard, she began to hiccup. “Just go. I don’t want you here. I wish you were dead instead of Dad.”
“Me too,” I said. And that was the truth.
Haylie stomped back inside the apartment. I didn’t even get to hug her goodbye. Skully pulled up within seconds, driving a silver Hummer. I piled everything in the back.
“That’s all the stuff you brought?” she asked. “Geez. I bring more suitcases when we go to Disney World.”
I jumped in the front seat. Skully spun the car around, knocking over the garbage can as we back out.
“Whoops,” she said. “That’s what bumpers are for.” She glanced up at the apartment building. “Isn’t that your mom?”
In the window, Mom watched us leave. She was clutching a beer and her face had tightened into a frown.
“You’re right,” said Skully. “She really is crazy. But she seemed nice.”
“She is.”
Skully stared.
“I mean, she’s a mixture of both,” I said.
“Right,” Skully said. “Isn’t everybody?”
“That’s the truth.”
And I meant it. Every word.
Status: UNSENT
To: LadyM
From: Metroid
Subject: 21 Guns
Dear Morgan,
This morning, I was at the Spirit Shop and Brent was behind me, talking shit about you. For real. You should stay away from him. No joke. He’s a tool. One time, he stole a Coke from this seventh grader and threw it out the window. And today he had a little freakout in Art. How is that even possible? It’s, like, the easiest class in the universe. You paint a horse or a flower or whatever and Mrs. Garber gives you an A and writes, “Good!” on the back. (I bet she puts the same thing on everybody’s papers, it’s probly a stamp or something).
Anyway.
Brent got mad for some unknown reason. He started throwing paint at Nolan Struth. Then he shoved his desk across the room. Mrs. Garber actually looked scared. She gave Brent a lunch detention and he tore it up.
That kid has serious anger management issues. Did you really go out with him? It makes me want to puke, just thinking about it.
I hate when people slam their books on the table. I’m in the library, trying to type this stupid e-mail, but my mind is a TV that keeps changing channels. You’re probably in Geometry right now. You’re in the second row, third seat from the left (Is it just me or do you always sit in the same spot?). You’re wearing that awesome dress with the butterfly buttons again and your hair smells really good, like a forest or something.
I’m totally creeping you out, right?
Last year, I used to hide in the library. Pretty lame, I know. (Not to mention, totally unoriginal). I wasted so much time, reading weird stuff on the Internet. I remember this moment exactly, the day I learned about string theory. Maybe you’ve heard of it? Scientists believe that every choice we make...it’s like, already been done in some other dimension. This basically means that we have no free will. Everything that could happen has already happened.
I keep trying to wrap my head around it. (Ever try to imagine infinity? It looks like a bunch of zeros that go on forever). If string theory is real, there’s another dimension where assholes like Brent don’t exist. And I’m just Aaron Foster, not Informant Number blah blah blah. And this entire year hasn’t even started yet. It’s a clean slate. “Tabula rasa,” as Aristotle would say.
I want to zap myself into another dimension.
—A.
20 : Big Cheese
Soon I was hanging with Skully and Morgan every weekend. This is what I should’ve done last year instead of playing Halo3 on the Xbox and stalking girls in chatrooms.
Skully took good care of her guests. She brought her little brother orange juice in the morning, which she squished with her bare hands into a soup bowl. Sebastian went to some Catholic junior high school where they memorized Bible quotes for homework. Their grandmother watched TV all day in the “maid’s quarters” (although I’d never seen a maid there), and a stream of nameless people flowed in and out of the garage at all hours.
I was sleeping on a pullout bed that unfolded from a leather couch upstairs. Each morning, I shaved with Skully’s pink plastic razor, which she used to sculpt the back of her neck.
She told me to lose the goatee.
“You look more like yourself without it,” she said.
I lathered up and scraped it off. My chin itched all day. When Morgan saw me at school, she said, “I’m glad you finally nixed the soul patch,” and I couldn’t stop smiling.
Me and Skully were always late to school. For the next few weeks, we sleepwalked through class until she drove us back to the McMansion. It sure beat living on crappy Biscayne Boulevard. On Fridays, we met up with Morgan (unless she was grounded) and read magazines and drank bottomless frappuccinos at the bookstore, and made fun of the coffee dude, who always threatened to throw us out and never did.
Just when I’d started to forget about this Halloween business, one of the girls would mention it again. The party was coming up in a couple of days. They called it a “birthday blowout” for Morgan. Since she was turning eighteen, they were making a big deal about it. Morgan spilled the news to Brent, who wasn’t exactly thrilled that his ex-girlfriend heard about the party from me.
The cops hadn’t forgotten either.
I met my “friend” one last time in a rented storage room, not far from the expressway. There was nothing in the place. Just a bare bulb flickering in the ceiling. I leaned against the wall while the cop paced. He seemed more agitated than usual.
“Take this,” he said, handing over my cell, which looked just like new. “When you get to the location, you will send a text message. No phone calls. Understand? This will be the ‘take down’ signal. And the phone signal is how we’ll find you.”
He rambled on about “showtime” and “cranking up the ante.” When I told him about my truck and the DIE NARC SCUM message, he didn’t seem to care.
“You signed that paper,” he said, meaning the substantial assistance agreement. “We treated you like an adult. Now you have to act like one.”
More than anything, I just wanted to run away. Tell my mom the truth. I mean, they made me sign without her permission. But even that wasn’t completely true. I signed that damn paper, all on my own.
“Once the signal is given,” he went on, “you need to remove yourself from the situation.”
“You mean … ditch everyone?”
“Unless you want to go to jail, yeah. Nobody’s going to be looking out for you. Got it?”
I explained about crashing at Skully’s place and he said, “Smart move.” I finally felt like I was do
ing something right. At the same time, I wasn’t completely convinced.
“This makes it safer for my family, right?” I asked.
He grunted. “Like I said before, I can’t make any promises. Until we catch this guy, there’s always a chance that someone will get hurt. You. Your family. The kids at the school. Nobody is safe.”
“And if we don’t catch him?”
“Someone will get hurt. I guarantee it. Now it’s up to you. Make sure all the players show.”
“Okay, okay,” I told him. God. Would he ever get off my back?
“We’ve done our part. Now you need to do yours.”
I thought about my dad’s truck, the words spray-painted like blood. Mom blamed it on our shitty neighborhood. Did she even know what narc meant?
I had the feeling I was just beginning to learn.
On the day before Morgan’s birthday, I couldn’t concentrate in class. As I flipped through the pages in my World Civilization book, I found doodles in number two pencil.
The Greeks=sexist assholes, somebody wrote in Bubblicious handwriting.
I couldn’t help wondering who scribbled in my book, years before I came to this school. Who were they to judge? The Greeks lived a long time ago; they didn’t know any better. Or maybe they knew more.
Turning a chapter ahead, I found more comments in the margins: WTF? Kill me now. I can’t take any more of this torture …
What was so important that this person couldn’t sit at a desk for forty-five minutes and listen to a few ancient stories? I could think of a lot worse places to be.
On the next page, they wrote:
How old is Mr. Pitstick?
a. 40
b. 50
c. 60
d. All of the above, added together.
I busted out a laugh. A girl in the front row turned around. She was sort of cute, despite the constellation of pimples dotting her chin. I turned back to my book and pretended to read. After skimming the same paragraph five times in a row, I realized that I had absorbed nothing. God, I was so out of it.
My phone vibrated inside my bag, making a noise like a dying muffler. Mr. Pitstick got so frazzled, he dropped his marker.
“Whose phone is that?” he called out.
“Sorry,” I told him. “I just got it fixed and I forgot to turn it off.”
“Well, do that,” he said.
The bell rang a few moments later, and everybody grabbed their stuff. Mr. Pitstick yelled, “Stay in your seats. You’ve got an essay due on Monday. Listen up, people.” A communal groan washed across the classroom.
Later I caught up with Skully in the parking lot. Morgan was there, smothered under her headphones. The girls leaned against the dented Explorer, laughing as they shared a cigarette. Looking at them, a spreadsheet unfolded in my head—punk, emo, Goth—but I couldn’t make sense of these labels anymore. I called them the Muses, like the sister-goddesses in Greek mythology.
Morgan flicked the cigarette onto the pavement. I watched it smolder and fizzle, the smoke rising like slow-motion calligraphy.
“Hey, hey, hey,” she said in her wispy voice.
“What do I look like? A horse?” I said, faking a smile.
She smirked. “Yeah. Actually, you do,” she said, kissing my cheek. “What’s up, rocker?”
I leaned in to return the kiss, the standard Miami greeting, but I moved right instead of left, causing a brief collision. I ended up smooching her thick bangs, which smelled like health-store shampoo—rosemary and mint.
Skully snatched my hand and planted a big wet one on it. “How’s it going, Double A? No sugar for me? Don’t you love me anymore?”
I wrapped her into a hug. “Of course I do.”
The girls wouldn’t stop talking about the Glades party.
“My costume is going to be so amazing,” said Morgan.
All I wanted to do is get behind the wheel and drive, take the girls with me, as far north as 95 will carry us, to a place far away, where the leaves had changed color.
“You can’t be serious about this party,” I told them.
“Oh, we’re dead serious,” says Skully, cackling like a mad scientist.
“Dressing up was always my favorite part about Halloween,” Morgan said. “I could’ve cared less about the candy. Except for the Hershey bars. Or the Butterfingers.”
“I always put those in the fridge. They taste better frozen,” said Skully. “Did you go trick-or-treating when you were little?” she asked me.
“A couple times. I don’t really remember.”
“He’s lying,” said Morgan. “What are you trying to hide? Did your mom make you wear a pillowcase with holes cut into it?”
“Actually, yes,” I said. “But that didn’t suck as much as the actual trick-or-treating. See, we were living in an apartment on base. And there were like, no other little kids around. So we got in the elevator and knocked on people’s doors. They weren’t prepared or anything. All I got was an apple and some old man candy.”
“Gross. What’s that?”
“You know. Those chalky mints you get with the bill in Italian restaurants.”
“Oh, that’s tragic. We have to make up for lost time,” she said, patting my head. “You’re going, even if I have to tie you up and drag you there.”
“Thanks.”
“We’ll even help you pick out a costume,” said Skully.
“He’d look good in a mask,” said Morgan. She talked about me in the third person, as if I didn’t exist. I realized they did that a lot. “He should go as a superhero or something.”
“A superhero in tights,” Skully added.
“Hm,” said Morgan. “It’s my birthday, right? All I’m saying is … I better get lots of presents.”
“Oh, you will. You invited the entire school. Except Danica Stone, who will probably find out anyway. That skank.”
“You invited more people? How?” I asked.
“Online. Duh,” said Skully. “It’s going to be so amazing. And it’s in the middle of nowhere. So who the hell is going to stop us?”
“Enough talking. Let’s get out of here,” said Morgan.
I opened the car door and climbed in the front. Cranked the radio, just to smother the noise inside my head. All the songs about hearts and dreams and tears didn’t do any good.
“It’s freaking hot in here,” said Morgan, switching on a portable fan duct-taped to the dashboard. Her driving skills hadn’t improved. The Explorer groaned and sputtered and finally stalled in the middle of the highway.
“You’re going to wear out the clutch,” I told her.
“Fine. Since you’re the expert, you can drive.”
She threw the keys in my lap. I had no choice except to slide behind the wheel.
The girls screeched at me to drive faster, so I hit the gas. I had to admit, this was a hell of a lot more exciting than driving my dad’s old truck. I was perched so high, I could peer into the smaller sedans beside us, see people messing with their cell phones or munching fries. One woman was actually painting her nails, right on top of the steering wheel.
Morgan rattled off directions. She kind of sounded like her stepmom. “Turn right here. No, I mean left. That’s right.”
I veered into a barren strip mall. There was a military Jeep parked beside an Army Surplus store, and a mannequin draped in fatigues. We got out and the sun drilled into my eyes. As we breezed through the door, a chain of cowbells jingled and slammed against the handle, startling me out of my head.
Skully called, “Hey, Alvaro!” to the dude behind the cash register.
He nodded, and they talked a million miles per hour in Spanish.
“I hate when she does that,” Morgan said, drifting into the guns and ammo aisle. She picked up a pa
ir of aviator goggles and slid them over her face. “Bang,” she said, cocking her finger. “You’re dead.”
“Do you really hate me that much?”
She pushed the goggles against her forehead, making it seem like she had grown another set of eyes. “Don’t flatter yourself, player.”
“Look. I don’t think I’m a player or anything. I’m sorry those rumors about us got spread around. But trust me, I’m not the one who did it.”
“I know,” she said.
“How do you know?”
“Because you’re a nice person.”
I held my breath. “What makes you say that?”
“I’m a really good judge of character.”
“Right. You can’t pull the wool over your ice,” I said.
Morgan smirked. “You’re weird,” she said, ruffling my hair. She grabbed my hand and tugged. I squeezed her fingers, which always seemed cold. “Help me pick out something that doesn’t suck,” she said, squeezing back.
The guy behind the counter said, “Look at Romeo here, surrounded by two beautiful girls. What’s your secret? Just be yourself, yeah? That’s what they say on TV. But it’s bull. Nobody gets laid by being themselves.”
“Stop corrupting him,” Skully said. “Aaron is a pure spirit.”
Morgan snorted. “There is no such thing.”
“I can pretend, right?” Skully shouted, turning the heads of a few people at the register.
Afterwards, we drove to the Big Cheese, a South Miami pizza place. It was packed with college people and screaming kids. Skully’s little brother, Sebastian, was already waiting at the table.
“It took me like, a half hour to skate here,” he said. “Now I’ve got muscles on top of my muscles.”
I slid between the girls. They shouted over my head like a pair of stereo speakers. They were squawking so loudly that the people in the next booth told us to “tone it down.”
Sebastian took out a plastic Circle K bag and tried to unwrap something inside it, but Skully caught him.
“No candy.”
“I’m not doing anything,” he said.
Narc Page 14