The plan was to sneak out with our bikes and meet on the corner across the street from the restaurant at midnight. The first time neither of us showed up because we didn’t wake up. The next day we each came running to the other with a thousand apologies, thinking that we had stood the other up. After we laughed, we realized we could set our cell phone alarms to get us up without waking our mothers. Then, to be sure, whoever got up first would text the other, and neither of us would go to the corner until we were sure the other was on her way.
The second night, we were wide awake long before our meeting time because a thunderstorm hit and neither of us could sleep. I liked thunderstorms, especially in the summertime, but Lexi was afraid of them, so I worried about her. I texted her first.
QueenNicki: No way we goin out there 2nite
Lexiwithani: Word!
On our third try, we made it to the corner by eleven and stayed crouched behind an SUV until we saw Pete, the girl and their parents exit the restaurant. Lexi was so ecstatic. “See, that’s got to be his sister!” she said, punching me in the arm. “Why would she be there so late and leaving with them if she were just a worker or his girlfriend?”
“Ow,” I yelled. “Relax, will you?”
“Shhh.” Pete and his family climbed into a car, and we jumped on our bikes. “Pray for a lot of red lights, Nic.”
“I know, right.”
We lucked out to a point. There were a bunch of red lights and stop signs that helped Lexi and me keep up with the car, pedaling like crazy until my legs burned. But then Pete’s family’s car took a left onto the Cross Bronx Expressway ramp, and it was a wrap for us. No way could we take our bikes onto the expressway. Even if Lexi were that crazy, I wasn’t.
Still, I had to admit that riding down Castle Hill Avenue at top speed in the middle of the night, with the warm summer air flowing through my cornrows, I felt like a superhero. When I just imagined doing these things, my skin grew cold with fear. But then Lexi got me doing them, and all of a sudden in the middle of it all, I felt like I could fly. I became fearless, and nothing could stop me, let alone hurt me.
For a week Lexi and I didn’t try anything because we just had no idea what else we could do. That turned out to be the worst week of our summer. Lexi and I even got into a fight and didn’t speak for a few days. All I remember is trying to cheer her up and Lexi not wanting to be cheered up. So I said something I shouldn’t have. You know, I threw something in her face that she’d confided in me, using it against her. I can’t tell you what it is because I never should have repeated it in the first place, and I still feel bad about it.
The next week I texted Lexi with an apology and a plan to follow Pete.
QueenNicki: Im so sorry. Pls 4give me. I will give u my allowance 4 3 wks. $30!!! We can get a cab to follow Gr8 Wall
Lexi made me wait for a half hour, but she finally responded.
Lexiwithani: I 4give u. Come downstairs so we can plan.
Instead of getting a cab, we bribed this Jamaican girl in our neighborhood named Marcia. People who don’t know us sometimes think I’m Marcia’s younger sister, which is fine by me. She’s sixteen, real pretty and mad cool. Plus, she’s got a cute boyfriend who has a nice car that he lets her drive sometimes.
So Marcia got her boyfriend’s car that night, and we waited for Great Wall to close. As his father was pulling down and padlocking the gate, Pete and his sister were shoving each other. This was how we found out his name was Pete. Their mother broke them up and scolded them in Chinese when his sister yelled, “Tell Pete to leave me alone, then!” She had no accent whatsoever.
“Oh, my God, they know English,” Lexi said. “They speak perfect English.”
“Well, duh,” I said. “They live here, work here, most likely go to school here. They had to know some English.” But the truth is I was just as surprised as she was. Unlike Lexi, I was ashamed that I didn’t know better.
“Okay, that’s not some English, Nicole,” said Lexi. “She sounds just like anybody on the CW.”
Even Marcia laughed as she started the car while Pete’s family walked to theirs. But she stopped laughing when they got off the Cross Bronx Expressway and headed to the Whitestone Bridge. “Where are you people taking me?” she cried. “These people are going to Queens!”
“Go, go, go!” Lexi yelled. “Nicole will give you another ten dollars next week.” I slapped her in the arm, but what was done was done. Marcia paid the toll and continued to follow Pete’s family. And as we crossed the bridge and the beautiful Manhattan skyline cast its reflection onto the river, I was happy that Lexi convinced Marcia to keep driving. Before that night I had only seen the skyline on postcards and TV, and nothing does the real thing justice.
The Great Wall family drove for another fifteen minutes and finally pulled up in front of a brick two-family house just like the ones in our neighborhood. Marcia parked the car a few yards away and turned off the lights and engine. Lexi and I watched from the backseat as Pete, his sister and their parents got out of the car and went into their house.
“Where are we?” I asked Marcia. “In Queens, I mean.”
“This is Astoria.” Then, before Marcia and I knew it, Lexi had opened the door and dashed across the street. “What is that child doing?”
I ran out after her. “Lexi!” She was in their driveway and almost at their front door. “Are you crazy?”
“Shhh!”
“Don’t hush me!” Trying to yell and whisper at the same time hurt my throat. “You’re the one trying to run up to Pete’s door.”
“I am not trying to run to the door,” she said. “I just wanted to see the number.”
“For what?”
“So that maybe I can send him a card or something.”
“You didn’t have to run out the car. All we had to do was ask Marcia to back up.”
“Well, I didn’t think of that,” Lexi hissed sarcastically. “Sorry!” That’s when we heard her giggling. We were so into our stupid argument in the driveway that we didn’t realize Pete’s sister was looking down at us from her bedroom window.
I don’t know what got into me, but once I was over the shock of being busted, I said, “I want to know what’s so funny!”
Lexi finally had a turn at being embarrassed. She grabbed my arm and tried to pull me toward the car, which Marcia had backed up right in front of the house. “Let’s get out of here before she calls her parents or something,” Lexi pleaded.
“Bad enough y’all think you too good to live in our neighborhood,” I said, “but then you front like you don’t know much English. That’s wack!”
“Hey, it’s not like I got a say in where I live. Do you?” Before I could answer, she added, “And you wanna know what’s wack? You two chasing after my brother like he’s all that. Dude’s like a complete tool.”
“You’re just saying that because he’s your brother,” said Lexi.
“Doesn’t mean it isn’t true, though,” she said. “ ’Sides . . . Pete’s already got a girlfriend.”
Now Marcia was in the driveway. She grabbed both of us and steered us back to the car. “Enough, you two.” She looked up at the girl and said, “I’m sorry, we’re leaving.”
“Whatever.” And almost as if she could hear Lexi’s heart break from her second-story window, she yelled, “You’re way too pretty for him anyway.”
Lexi and I climbed into the backseat of the car, and as we waited for Marcia to get to the driver’s side, Lexi called out the back window, “And what’s your name?”
“Molly,” said the Chinese girl. “Like the black fish in our tank at the restaurant.”
“I’m Nicole, and this is Alexandra,” I said. “But everyone calls me Lexi.” Then she added, “Lexi with an i.”
We waved to her as Marcia drove away. Lexi didn’t ask her to stop at the corner so she could get the name of Pete’s street. Nobody said a word, and I don’t think any of us was thinking of Pete at all. Molly wasn’t anything like we had ex
pected. The way she laughed at and teased us even when she didn’t even know our names. The slang she used to express herself whether standing up for herself or dishing on her brother. The way she went from sassing us for following Pete to making Lexi feel better about the fact that he already had a girlfriend. Just because she was Chinese, none of us thought she would be just like us.
I wished even more that this was not the way things were, even though things did not seem bad. When you hear in the news about neighborhoods where people do not get along, we seem lucky to live in a place like Castle Hill, where so many different kinds of people can be at peace with one another. But meeting Molly made me understand less why the people in our neighborhood could be at once together but still be divided. We could eat each other’s food and paint each other’s nails, but we did not go to each other’s homes or learn each other’s language. Why did we settle? I didn’t only feel sorry for Molly, who was just like the black fish at Great Wall, swimming without a school in her own tank. I felt bad for all of us, tetras and catfish, too.
I managed to slip back into my room without waking my mother. I crawled into bed without changing from my T-shirt and shorts. I couldn’t fall asleep, so I texted Lexi.
QueenNicki: U got in OK?
She never answered because her mother caught her sneaking into the apartment. Lexi never told her just how far she went that night, and she never mentioned that I was with her. Her mother put her on punishment for the rest of the summer. Lexi wasn’t even allowed to go outside no matter how hot it got. I would sit on the stoop of our building and text her.
Lexiwithani: Go 2 da park or da movies or sumthin n txt me fm there. Nic u livin 4 us both now!!!!!
I used to be afraid to go to those places without Lexi, and I didn’t even understand why. But after our Great Wall adventure, the fear was gone, so I wondered if maybe the ride to Astoria broke me of the spell of together-but-divided that had been cast somehow over our neighborhood. Now I only hesitated because I felt guilty leaving Lexi behind while she was on punishment. I never would have gotten over my fear if not for her. She was my spell-breaker, so it didn’t seem fair. This is one of the downsides of having only one BFF, even a magical one like Lexi, who never came under the spell in the first place.
Then one day I was on the stoop texting Lexi about an argument that Marcia was having with her boyfriend when I saw someone coming toward me on a bike. It was Molly. “What’s up?” she said, stopping her bike at my foot.
“Hey.” She handed me a paper bag. “I didn’t order anything.”
“I know. It’s for you and Lexi with an i,” said Molly. “Haven’t been to the restaurant in a while.”
“Yeah, ’cause I’m broke and Lexi’s grounded.”
“Me too, if I don’t finish these deliveries. Had to bribe Pete to let me do them, too, ’cause if my parents knew I was doing them instead of him, it’d be both our hides.” I wanted to ask her why her parents didn’t want to let her do deliveries, but Molly hopped back on her bike. “But I’ll come through on my way back to the restaurant.”
And that’s when I knew that I would have plenty of chances to ask Molly that question and more. “Cool. And thanks!” And just like that, she was gone again. On the order slip stapled to the bag, Molly had written her cell phone number. When I opened the bag, I found two egg rolls, a pint of pork fried rice and some fortune cookies. I broke open one of the cookies, and the fortune read, Your greatest fortune are your friends. I popped the cookie in my mouth and took out my cell phone.
QueenNicki: Yo! U not gonna believe this . . .
KAREN HESSE
NELL
I am dying. I have been dying for a hundred years. I fear I will always be dying.
In the beginning it pleased me to be on the verge of death, always escaping at the last moment from one body to another. But now . . . now I wish I could stop. Always is a long time.
And I am always a child. Always twelve. I’ve told so many lies. I’ve taken the identities of so many children. But I think I was born once in the usual way to a man and a woman and the woman died and I was expected to die, too. But I didn’t. I don’t know why.
I survived to the age of twelve. It was a miserable life, that first one. If I can trust my memory at all, it was a life of hunger and pain, a lonely life, with a father who treated me like dung on the heel of his boot. Even before I could speak, he sent me out to beg. On the days I brought nothing home, he would beat me until I turned to fog and lifted out of my body. I think that’s how it began, how I learned to jump.
One winter night in my twelfth year, my father hit me and hit me and did not stop. Once again I felt myself transformed into mist, but this time, when the mist faded, I was inside another body. She had been ill, the girl whose body I now inhabited. But she was gone and I was there. What happened to her I don’t know. What happened to my first body I cannot say. But I learned quickly to adapt to a new life.
And I learned to prolong that life for months, though never for more than a year. And that’s how it continues. The children whose bodies I take are always twelve. I keep them alive as long as I can. But sometime during the year their bodies fail and I lift out of one and slip into another.
I am always dying. I am never dying. I have died and died and died again, but I do not stay dead.
Tonight another twelfth year ends. This time I am an only child, adored by my parents. Of all the parents I have known, these are the kindest. Over the years some could ill afford a sick child; others grew weary of caring for one. In public they feigned love but in private they lost patience. I regret that at times I, too, lost my temper with them.
This time is different. In the twelve months I have been here, these parents have never faltered in their devotion. Never have I longed to remain as I long to remain here. And it feels as if I could remain.
I am so much healthier than when I first woke in this body. And so beautifully cared for. I sleep on soft sheets in cloudlike comfort. My mother brings the scent of lilacs with her when she leans in to kiss me, which she does frequently. Her tenderness elicits such a response. It amazes me to feel myself rise to her love. And my father, he’s so kind. Every day he comes with a present in his pocket. They have spared no expense in finding a cure for me. They have thrown both their energies and their resources into meeting with anyone reputedly wise in the healing arts. Yet they’ve never subjected me to treatments that might cause undue pain.
I don’t know how they will bear this death.
I don’t know how I will bear it, either.
Shutting my door, I take from the shelf a book by the Danish storyteller. The fireplace in my bedroom radiates comfort. Embers make delicate sounds, like fine china splintering. This room, like a princess’s chamber, sparkles. The chandelier bends firelight and sends it dancing across the ceiling. There is a table set with buns and cocoa.
In my hands the book falls open to my favorite story. I make my way to the green silk couch with its soft pillows. Curling up, I pull the fur wrapper over my legs, and begin to read . . .
The Old Year had nearly exhausted itself.
It slept in a doorway in its worn rags.
The New Year struggled to be born, locked in the Old Year’s embrace.
Given the state of its decline, the Old Year held back the New with astonishing vigor.
Sounds of the living reach my ears. A group of holiday revelers, emboldened with drink, defy the storm, shouting to each other on the street beneath my window. My parents host a small dinner party below. I have already put in my appearance. Tomorrow the guests will be shocked to learn of my death.
“But she looked so well,” they will say.
“She seemed so much stronger.”
On this last day of the Old Year
every living thing bowed to the cold,
the cruel cold,
with its blue light,
with its white fangs.
The cold hovered over the town
like some
prehistoric beast.
It beat its wings,
creating eddies of razor-sharp air.
I set the book gently aside, rise, and add more sticks to the fire to counter the cold buffeting the windows. I hear the clock strike eleven before I’ve settled back onto the couch again.
Snow swirled in the cold wind,
not gentle snow-globe snow
but harsh sandpaper snow,
leaving painful red marks on winter-thin skin.
In the gathering dark, snow sprang, brutish,
lashing out at travelers as they passed,
slicing at the gloom with its fierce claws.
How strange, how very strange to have the weather of this story so closely mirror the weather outside my windows. The wind roars like an enraged animal tonight. It reminds me of lions at the zoo.
How many times have these parents taken me to the zoo? In the summer we would go with a picnic hamper. Mother would make certain my straw hat, with its blue velvet ribbons, kept the sun off my face. I remember insisting I could run down the hill and then, halfway down, collapsing. I had been carrying a chocolate bun that flew from my hands. Father gathered me in his arms. I nestled into him. He smelled of cologne and freshly pressed cotton. His beard tickled my cheek. He bought me a new bun and held me as I ate it.
I remember watching that day the caged lions pacing in their enclosures. They stopped and studied me, scenting the air. Now it seems as if those lions have escaped. They pace outside my windows, rattling the panes with their deep growls.
One of those travelers, a small girl,
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