Narc

by Crissa-Jean Chappell

  I stared out into the dark. I couldn’t see anything without my glasses, not even trees. Just blurry nothingness. At that moment, my life felt just as empty.

  My scraped-up arm was stinging, but not as badly as when Jim dumped a bottle of peroxide on it. I’d groaned as it fizzed and bubbled, and he called me a baby. I’d been called worse. On top of that, I’d lost the rubber band. I couldn’t even remember how or when it happened. It was just gone.

  I grabbed my cell phone and tried calling the lead officer. No response. I sent him a text message:

  It’s over.

  Minutes passed.

  Still no response.

  This was really weird. He always had his phone. I went back to my blanket on the floor. Morgan had stretched out in one of those oversized cartoon T-shirts, which she’d borrowed from Jim’s wife. It was Spiderman. I brushed the bangs out of her face and traced my finger along her body, following the slope of her back.

  What was going to happen to us? Would she freak if I told her, “Look. I messed up big time. I can’t stick around here anymore.” Maybe I could apply for college next year. It was time I started living my own life. Doing what I wanted to do. Not that I had it figured out yet. I was just so tired of trying to please everybody else.

  Carpe diem.

  I got under the covers, but I still couldn’t fall asleep. My Spidey senses were tingling. For a while, I tossed and turned. Just as the room started to brighten, I heard multiple footsteps scuffling outside the front door, and the dog began to bark.

  The cops found us.

  One text message. That’s all they needed.

  They thought this was the “take down” signal.

  Shit.

  I tried to shake Morgan awake, but she just mumbled something and rolled over.

  “Let’s go,” I hissed.

  She opened her eyes. “Aaron?”

  The room shimmered. I wiped my eyes and tried to stay calm. “Get up. Please, just move. Goddamn it. You want to rot in jail?”

  She still didn’t get it. “Aaron, why are we going to jail?”

  The door banged open and slammed against the wall. Somebody hollered a command. The room exploded with noise. The guy at the head of the line busted into the place and tossed in a “flash-bang,” a harmless grenade meant to create confusion. And it did.

  Morgan screamed as the foot soldiers dropped down, huddling in each corner of the room. They were dressed in riot gear: vests and shin pads, faces hidden under wasplike helmets.

  Haylie knelt on the floor, clutching her head, as if fending off a nuclear bomb. The men kept telling her to stand with her arms in the air.

  “Leave her alone. She’s just a kid,” I shouted, the words like an echo from the traffic stop months ago. But nobody listened. The dog wouldn’t stop barking. Then Jim and Sarah were in the room and their mouths moved, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying. I just saw their panic-stricken faces. Only Brent stood with no expression as the foot soldiers clamped the handcuffs over his wrists and herded him outside.

  The girls crouched in their borrowed pajamas. I watched, in horror, as a foot soldier pointed his gun at Morgan and told her to “move, move, move.”

  I shoved my way between them.

  “Get away from her,” I yelled.

  The foot soldier pushed me aside. Another one wrestled me against the wall and yanked back my arms. I could feel things tearing inside my muscles as the handcuffs tightened. The cold metal burned.

  As he squeezed the cuffs tighter, I glanced at the faces of my friends, then slumped to the floor.

  28 : Sincerely/You

  Status: SENT

  To: LadyM

  From: Metroid

  Subject: Angel And The Jerk

  You will probably hate me forever, but I wanted to write things down from my own perspective. I spent a lot of time, trying to explain what really happened.

  I got the feeling nobody wanted to hear it.

  Finch belongs in jail. So does Brent. Once the cops got hold of that video, those guys didn’t have a chance. The judge could’ve thrown the book at you, but I stood up for everybody in court.

  I stood up for you.

  That’s the truth.

  If you were here in front of me, what would I do?

  I’d take you down to the boat dock. We’d sit on that chimney by the hermit’s house and dangle our feet in the tide. I’d kiss you, just as the rain clouds start to gather—charcoal smudges shaped like wings. No secrets between us. Just the water, which never stays still.

  I kept all your drawings.

  There’s so much more I want to say.

  I’m signing this letter, “Love,” but I know you won’t believe me.

  Someday I hope you do.

  Love,

  Aaron

  It thundered every day that following summer but barely ever rained. When it did, it was the hard kind of drizzle that burns your skin. I spent a lot of time skating in those downpours, as if it could soak through all my guilt and make me clean.

  We moved back to Homestead after Mom got a job at the elementary down the street. “Band Aids and boo boos,” she calls it. Then Haylie started her first year of high school. Kind of hard to believe. She’s already bugging me to teach her how to drive. If she’s extra nice, I’ll let her borrow Dad’s truck, now that it’s fixed and there’s primer over the graffiti. Once you learn stick, the rest is easy. At least, that’s what Dad used to tell me.

  I’m taking classes at Miami Dade. Nothing too hardcore. Just your basic community college stuff—biology, English comp, math for dummies. Still, I managed to sneak a photo class into my boring schedule. Dad would’ve laughed about that.

  I’m trying to do better. Honestly, I am.

  The cops helped me get things going. They wrote a letter of recommendation, once I earned my “good enough degree,” the GED (There was no way I could go back to Palm Hammock after the arrests and court stuff.) Don’t get me wrong. It’s majorly weird, being in school again. When I walk down the hall, people stare. Maybe they read the news online. Or heard it on TV.

  People talk about Finch like they knew him. Now that he’s locked up, he’s morphed into the stuff of legend. It already feels like forever ago, like it happened to someone I used to know. My name was kept secret. But secrets never last long, if you’ve got something to hide.

  I don’t want to hide anymore.

  Not long after classes started, I was taking pictures for homework. We were supposed to do a self-portrait. The catch? (Yeah, with teachers, there’s always a catch). You couldn’t include yourself in the picture. At first I was like, How lame is that? The more I thought about it, the more it made total sense.

  On Saturday, I drove to Coral Castle in search of

  inspiration. The castle is just a bunch of rocks that some old guy named Ed carved into things like a heart-shaped table and pair of thrones. They say he did it for love. His girlfriend ditched him, but he never stopped hoping she’d come back.

  I took Haylie along for the photo adventure. I even let her drive around the parking lot. Why not? She’s always been my copilot.

  We got out and headed toward the front gate, where a sign said: YOU WILL BE SEEING UNUSUAL ACCOMPLISHMENT.

  “So he built this place all by himself?” Haylie asked. “Did he have magic powers or what?”

  “He was probably some kind of insane genius,” I said, aiming my camera at a lizard in the grass.

  “Or maybe just insane.”

  While I blabbed about the levitating powers of magnets, I watched a group of people having a Kodak moment near the moon fountain. This one dude was trying to “plank” on the edge. That’s when you stretch out, flat on your stomach, and someone takes a picture of you and posts it online. Pre
tty exciting, right?

  His girlfriend kept telling him to “Hold still,” but she couldn’t stop laughing. Finally, they both gave up. He was making a big deal, like she had ruined his day or whatever, but I knew he was into it.

  Something sparkled on the ground—a penny wedged in the dirt. It probably dropped out of the guy’s pocket. The girl reached for it, then looked at me, and if I really did have magic powers, I would’ve made myself invisible because that girl was Morgan.

  Her hair was pulled back tight, swirled on top of her head like a pastry. I’d never seen her like that—in a tank top and leggings, as if any minute, she might bust out some ballet moves—her bare arms, the scars, right there.

  The penny glinted in the sun.

  Now I had two choices:

  I could walk away. Or I could pick it up.

  I started walking toward Morgan, like we were the only humans left on the planet.

  “Aaron?” she said. Just my name.

  “Do you know this guy?” asked her boyfriend, the planker.

  “Yeah. I know him.”

  We stared at each other, holding the silence between us.

  Morgan turned to her dude and said, “I need a minute, okay?”

  He slunk off toward the gift shop. I could tell he wasn’t cool with the idea of leaving us alone, but I had to give him props—he let us have some space. My sister was off in Haylie-land. It was just me and Morgan and the haunted rocks.

  “You look good,” I said.

  “Thanks.” She tucked a stray hair behind her ear. It killed me, the way something so small could bring back Morgan’s everything. Around her neck, she wore an old-school, point-and-shoot camera.

  “Still taking pictures?” Yeah, I was stating the obvious. What the hell was I supposed to say?

  “It’s my one and only superpower. Documenting reality.”

  “What kind of lens you got? It’s a Holga, right?”

  “Oh, I’m just messing around with it,” she said. “I got the quad lens. It divides the picture, you know? So the frame is, like, split into four parts. Kind of cheesy, I guess.”

  “No, that sounds cool. There’s always more than one way of looking at things.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I mean, it’s awesome that you’re still doing art.”

  “My teacher says it’s cheating. He says you’re supposed to be ‘making your own choices.’ ”

  “But it’s still your choice, right? You decide what to shoot.”

  She smiled. “I’ll tell him you said that.”

  It felt so easy, talking to her again. Almost like we never stopped talking.

  “Actually, I’m still bonding with this camera,” she said. “My stepmom bought it for my graduation. It’s pretty sweet, except you can’t see the pictures before they’re developed.”

  “True. But isn’t it better, not knowing what comes next?” I asked, thinking of Mr. Pitstick, the way he used to go off about the past.

  “Maybe,” she said, dipping her hand in the fountain, where coins of all sizes caught the light.

  “You still talk to Skully?” I asked.

  “Sometimes,” she said. “We take classes at the same school, but it’s like we’re in different worlds. I think she’s trying to reinvent herself. I just wish she wouldn’t shut me out. We used to tell each other everything, you know?”

  I did know.

  We stood there, wiping our fists on our jeans, waiting to say all the things we hadn’t said. Then Morgan kissed my cheek. The standard Miami greeting. I always thought it was so fake; this time, it was the most real thing she could do.

  “Aaron, I read all your letters.”

  When she said it, I half-expected her to chew me out. Tell me I’m no good. Or worse. She read every word and didn’t believe any of it. Instead, she untwisted her hair, letting it spill across her shoulders. She rolled the elastic over my wrist and, of course, it fit just right.

  As she walked away, I couldn’t look at her. On the ground was the dirty penny. I reached down and scooped it up.

  “You can’t go stealing other people’s wishes.”

  My little sister had snuck up behind me.

  “Here,” she said, pressing a different coin into my hand. “Start over.”

  The quarter felt warm and solid. It wasn’t new, but it shined, just the same.

  I turned my back to the fountain.

  Counted to three.

  Then let go.

  About the Author

  Crissa-Jean Chappell (Miami, FL) is the award-winning author of Total Constant Order (Harper Teen). She is a professor of creative writing, and her reviews, short stories, and poems have appeared in many magazines.

  Acknowledgments

  Shout out to my fearless agent, Kate Lee, for believing in this book from the start. To my editor Brian Farrey-Latz, for your wise eyes and thoughtful insight. Big ups to Team Flux: Courtney Colton, Nicole Edman, and Steven M. Pomije.

  Mucho hugs to the Chappell family, the Air Force brats, and especially my mom and dad for all your support. Jonathan, for reminding me that there is no ceiling. Harlan, who stayed on the phone all night. I love you guys!

  Thanks to those who listened along the way: Candace Barbot, Houston Cypress (Otter Clan), Danielle Joseph, my epically amazing students, and Michna, who knows real street magic, including Aaron’s levitation trick (made famous by David Blaine). Also helpful is Mary Dodge’s article, Juvenile Police Informants: Friendship, Persuasion, and Pretense, and its exploration of Chad’s Law, which was created to protect teenage informants. I am incredibly grateful to many people who must remain unmentioned, but were invaluable to my research. This book could not exist without you.