Intrepid_A Vigilantes Novel

by Keri Lake

  “Hey, Jack Kerouac used to stay at the Hotel Savarine,” Bea said. She passed the cig back to Simone, and a blast of cool September air, mingled with the sour sulfur scent of the city, hit my face as she rolled the window down and made a piss-poor effort to blow out the smoke. “Pretty rad, huh?”

  Again, deferential vulnerability. As a suburbanite, I’d had no idea until after we’d left the dorm, that the place we were headed was an abandoned hotel about eight miles east of the college. And why would I give a shit that Jack Kerouac had once stayed there? In his lifetime, the place likely hadn’t been a rundown hellhole, teeming with homeless junkies and kids looking to get blitzed out of their minds.

  I’d somehow imagined Bea’s idea of fun to be an underground coffee house, where all the art majors cheered on slam poetry, and that the only hangover I’d suffer would come from sipping espresso past nine o’clock at night.

  I should’ve known better.

  “So … there aren’t, like, any gangs hanging out, right?” I hated sounding like a naive white girl whose every fourth word was ‘like’, but the fear was real. It was Detroit, after all. Even the suburban kids knew there were places in the city we didn’t belong, where we’d stick out like chopped tuna in a pool of pitiless sharks.

  “I cannot guarantee that you won’t run into a gang member at this party, no. But I can, without a doubt, guarantee you’re going to have a fucking blast, so relax freshie. You’re in good hands with Bea.”

  In an hour-long conversation, about ninety percent of which was about her, I’d found out that Bea was a fifth year fine arts student, working as an apprentice for some bigwig artist who’d been contracted by the city to design a massive mural made of thousands of small tiles. She hailed from the suburbs, too, but the significantly less posh Hazeltucky side of town. Which meant the abandoned building scene was probably the norm for her.

  A silver object flashed in my periphery, and I glanced up to find a flask shoved in my face. Behind it, Bea offered a wink.

  “Calm your nerves. You look pale.” Her slur waned between sharp and slurrier, making it hard to tell how deep into her high she’d fallen.

  I shook my head, gently pushing the flask away. “No thanks. Not a fan of whiskey.” More like, not a fan of giving up my wits when the stupid decisions were stacking up.

  But I wasn’t a total idiot, in spite of my brain telling me so. I’d heard enough stories about girls getting trashed at college parties, and guys doing things to them, posting it on social media. Much as I’d have loved to muddy the preening and pruning my father had put into his little garden of lies for the public, I didn’t need to martyr my innocence to do it.

  “We’ll have to harden you up, freshie. You haven’t lived the collegiate life until you’ve had your head buried in a nasty toilet, puking your guts out.”

  So much for slam poetry and coffee houses.

  Simone turned the Prius into an empty grass lot behind a boarded up brick building, just off Jefferson, where dozens of vehicles had packed in together.

  Stepping out of the car, I stared up at the ominous building that stood about ten stories high, reaching toward the moon above it. Something about it seemed sad. Lonely. Violated by decades of break-ins and vandalism, evident in the broken glass and gray blotches of chipped brick. Graffiti tattooed onto its skin, meant to deter passersby, spelled ‘Stay Out’, along with various symbols that I assumed were gang related. Even so, an inexplicable draw tugged at my feet, pulling me toward it. I wanted to see more of it, more of the destruction, more of its story. Like catching the tail end of a news report about some horrific murder, I wanted to know how it died. “How do we get inside?”

  Simone led the way, flicking her cigarette into one of many patches of grass over the frost-cracked dirt. At a busted-out window, she hoisted herself up and into the small frame, with the same ease as if she’d done it a hundred times before, and disappeared inside.

  “C’mon, Bloomfield, you’re next.” While making her dig at the city I’d come from, Bea jerked her head for me to follow.

  I gripped the bricks as Simone had done, hoisting myself upward. “Don’t call me that.” I pushed the words out on a grunt as the windowless frame slammed into my stomach with a sharp thump. I’d spent eight years amongst the elitist rich, trying to hide the fact that I didn’t belong, contrary to my father insisting I did, which made me hate the association with a place from which I’d made a point to entirely dissociate myself.

  The garbage-littered dirt floor caught my fall, a plume of moldy dust kicking up as my shoes hit the ground. A streak up my black tights marked a snag alongside my knee, ending just below my ripped up shorts. “Damn it,” I muttered, sliding the red flannel shirt off my shoulders, and tying it around my waist in an effort to hide it. Decked out in a beanie cap and Chucks, I could’ve been classified as hipster punk, a style my father detested and tried to smother with J.Crew sweaters and loafers.

  Clothes I’d burned alongside my uniform.

  I twisted to find Bea pushing through the window, teetering on its frame like a seesaw out of balance.

  How the hell they planned to get Mister Whiskey Breath through the thing was a question I didn’t stick around to watch. Maybe his breath would carry him on a steaming cloud of Jack Daniels.

  The incessant thump of bass reached my ears, a steady heartbeat that echoed inside the mostly hollow core of the building. Seemed strange to hear music while my eyes wandered the surrounding annihilation. Piles of splintered wood, rusted iron pipes and exposed wires, drywall crumbling over rotted studs. The rancid stench of mold and age crinkled my nose, as I followed Simone toward the sound. For a moment, my mind attempted to construct a scene, set in the early part of the century, when the place might’ve been a stately and respectable hotel. Nearly impossible to imagine. As I took in my surroundings, I found myself mentally snapshotting the details inside the building. The art buried beneath the destruction.

  A faint breath of voices up ahead grew louder as we neared, until they filled the building’s lungs in a cacophony of conversation, none of which happened to be discernible over the music.

  Through a rust-hinged doorway, we reached what appeared to be a courtyard encapsulated inside the four walls of the building, where bodies shuffled and crowded around strategically-placed kegs in buckets like ants on a fallen box of Cracker Jacks. A sea of red Solo cups littered the floor. Floodlights sliced through the surrounding darkness with an uneven light. A DJ had been set up at the south end of the wall—nothing fancy, or elaborate—just a computer with some speakers. At either side of the DJ booth stood two gables with busted out windows that, once upon a time, might’ve peered down into the lower level of the building.

  I could see why the party planners had chosen the place. It was unsuspecting from the outside, completely unseen from the road.

  “Let’s grab a drink!” Simone’s voice only just carried over the bass thumping against my ribs, but I followed after her, mostly because I didn’t know where else to go.

  The crowd closed in on me as we weaved our way toward the kegs, and as the heat of the adjacent light beat down on my face, my instincts urged me to tuck my chin into the neck of my T-shirt. A half dozen surgeries over eight years couldn’t entirely hide the destruction of one split second that changed my life forever. I’d had to train myself not to hide the shit souvenir fate had given me as a token of my crap luck.

  Fifty-three degrees of early September melted into the warmth of moving bodies, as I waited for Simone and Bea to fill their cups.

  The crunch of plastic hit my chest, and the cold, wet slosh of beer saturated my favorite Nirvana tee. “Drink, freshie!”

  I pushed the cup away, scrambling to wick the sour beer from the front of my shirt with my sleeve. “No thanks!”

  More liquid seeped into the cotton, as she adamantly held the cup to my chest, until I had no choice but to take it. Although, holding something kept me from smacking her for soaking my shirt, so there was
that.

  A tall guy sidled up beside Simone, and she hugged him like they knew each other well. “Dax! How goes, my brotha’ from another motha’?”

  The guy sported a dark, short crop, olive skin, and a tight pinch of his brows that made him look pissed off. Blowing smoke from his vape off to the side, he squeezed her tighter, then planted a kiss at the top of her head.

  “Where’s your drink?” she asked, holding up her cup to him.

  The beefy-looking male pushed away her proffered drink, eyes scanning over top of me, as if looking for someone. “I’m here on business, not pleasure.”

  “Ah, then, tell me about some Hedonic.” She lifted up onto her tiptoes and whispered something into his ear, to which he shook his head.

  “Nah. I don’t do that. Stay away from that shit.”

  I’d only heard of the newest date rape drug on a special news report, and from what little I’d gathered about its crazy side effects, I couldn’t imagine why the hell she’d want anything to do with it.

  An arm snaked around my neck and had my muscles straining, as a guy with a stubbled beard and thick ear gauges slid between Bea and me. His tongue glided across her cheek, and she chuckled, offering him a kiss on the lips. When his brown eyes landed on me, chin jutting toward me with the same intent, I looked away.

  “Hey, who brought Scarface?” He snorted a laugh that was cut short when Bea slammed her elbow into his ribs.

  “Disengage asshole mode. This is my new roommate. Show some respect.”

  Not even her chiding could shield me from the feeling that all eyes had shifted onto me. Even the one named Dax interrupted his watchful scan with a quick downward glance my way. Not that I was anywhere near as sensitive about it as I’d been in high school, but I had an aversion to pricks, and the one beside me had met my prick quota for the night.

  I threw the guy’s arm off my shoulders and stepped back, mentally dogging him in some impressive 8 Mile-esque string of insults that’d have made Eminem proud.

  Dax slammed his hand into the asshole’s chest, kicking him back a step. “Get the fuck outta here, shithead.”

  “Dude, I’m just fuckin’ with her.” Asshole turned to me and tipped his head, offering his palm. “I’m sorry. I’m Theo. You forgive me?”

  “I said get the fuck out of here, Theo,” Dax warned, his arm sliding from Simone’s shoulders as he stepped forward.

  Tail tucked, the guy walked off, dragging a stumbling Bea behind him through the crowd with her cup to her face. Sorry, she mouthed over her shoulder with an upturned brow, before disappearing into a sea of drunks.

  “Don’t mind him. Kid’s a fucking socialtard.” Dax’s voice croaked as he blew another plume of smoke off to the side.

  “No kidding.” Must’ve been something in the water. My scars had thickened my skin over the years, though it didn’t lesson the disappointment of finding that college was no different from high school. Guess I figured I’d finally find my tribe of misfits, like me. Turned out, the misfits were assholes, too.

  His gaze lifted past mine and I followed the path of his stare to the entrance of the courtyard, where, beyond the crowd, a figure stood in the shadows. The outline of a drawn-up hoodie was all I could make out in the dim light, and Dax stepped around me, grabbing my shoulders.

  “Excuse me, I have to go talk to someone.” The scent of his cologne trailed after him, as he made his way toward the entrance.

  “I fucking love when she runs off with the first dick that swings her way.” Simone chugged back the cup of beer, the harsh glug banging out a pissed off admission that Bea wasn’t exclusive with her. “Then Dax ditches me. Fun night ahead. I can fucking feel it.”

  “How do you know him?” I watched Dax approach the hooded figure, the way they exchanged a brotherly handshake, and how the two of them rivaled in height. After a minute of waiting for Simone to answer, I spun around to find someone else had taken her place—a brunette with a disapproving expression stamped across her face as she filled her red cup.

  Choking back a surprised gasp, I trailed my gaze over the crowd, catching sight of those gray braids in the back corner, where Simone stood amid a group of women huddled around a trashcan bonfire.

  Complete strangers filtered in around me, as I remained in proximity to the beer. They swarmed, bumping into me in all their eagerness to get to the alcohol, and another splash of my drink saturated the front of my shirt.

  “Damn it!” I bopped back and forth like a bumper car, snapping my head back and forth to find both Bea and the guy she took off with were nowhere in sight.

  The tightness in my chest clinched my lungs and the claustrophobic sensation from before closed in around me, smashing me into a tiny suffocating box. I’d always had a hard time in crowds, particularly the larger ones.

  “Hey, wanna fin’ a quiet corner some’ere?” The kid who’d sat in the backseat with me stumbled backward, his half-mast eyes and slurred vocab telling me he’d become fifty shades of shitfaced.

  I needed air. Quickly, judging by the way my periphery shrank and vertigo settled over me. I must’ve looked drunk myself as I weaved through the crowd, searching for an out while trying to block out the unbidden memory flashing through my head.

  Pounding against the roof. The scent of gasoline burning my nose. A tight throb in my lungs.

  Through a door-less entrance, the cool air hit my skin, lifting the smog filling my lungs and the visuals seeping in from the fringes. As I took three deep breaths, the empty space allowed me to settle my head, setting the world upright again.

  I hated crowds, but more than that, I hated being ditched in the middle of a bunch of strangers, inside an abandoned building, in an unfamiliar neighborhood.

  Why the hell did I think going out would be fun?

  A stairwell ahead beckoned, almost calling to me with its enticing curve into the darkness above, and I set the red cup down at the foot of it, before ascending the crumbled concrete. Perhaps higher up, I’d get a better view of where my roommate had wandered off.

  With each step up, the air grew thinner, easier to breathe, while the sounds faded below me. As visibility dimmed to darkness, I shoved my hands into my pocket, fishing out my apartment keys that held a small can of pepper spray and a mini flashlight, which I switched on. A halo of light cut through the blackness, illuminating about three stair lengths ahead of me, as I continued to climb.

  At least ten minutes must’ve passed when I finally reached the top of the stairs. An old steel door sat precariously hanging from its hinges, and I stepped around it, wincing at the streak of fire across my back. “Ouch! Shit!” I reached back to palpate the gritty surface of a nail-head sticking out of the frame behind me. “Great. I’ll probably have tetanus,” I muttered, walking out onto the gravelly bed of the roof, the pain of my scratch quickly forgotten for the colorful lights that greeted me.

  Tall scaffolding sat empty, where, I guessed, the sign at the top of the building once stood. Nothing but the rusted steel still carried the remnants of its name. Ahead of me, Jefferson Avenue stretched on, and I rounded the rooftop’s perimeter, the center of which opened to the buildings foramen like a hole in its skull, revealing the crowd below. Ugh. A nauseous sight, from where I sat almost a hundred feet above them, guarded only by a foot-high safety wall.

  Backing away, I kept on, until I faced what I determined to be the south side of the building. I approached the parapet, and a lump caught in my throat when I peered into the seemingly endless stories that merged into a shrunken darkness below. Only the occasional flicker of metal told me I was looking down at the makeshift parking lot at the back of the building.

  Winds whipped across my face, blowing my long locks into a tangled mess that I gathered to the side and tucked behind my ear. A tumultuous gathering of clouds moved across the moon, like dust kicked up from a stampede. It gave the night sky a sort of dark, turbulent backdrop against the city’s soft lights—very Gothamesque. My new home.

  I dare
d myself to rest my elbows against the ledge, and stared out over the cars tooling along Jefferson, like the miniature villages I once saw at Bronner’s as a kid. Heights had always been a problem for me, coming in at a close second to my fear of confined spaces. Luckily, the edge of the building sat a little further back from the actual edge. Still, one wrong move would have me tumbling to my death—I’d just hit the second ledge along the way.

  “You’re putting a lot of trust in that ledge.”

  The deep foreign voice had me swinging around to find a figure standing in the doorway, his face hidden by the shadows. His hands disappeared into the pockets of his hoodie, which also covered his head. The same mysterious figure Dax had walked off toward earlier. Only, being up close somehow added on another foot to his height. Sort of like those selfies of distant mountains you could pinch with your fingers until you ended up smack in front of the monstrosities, realizing how insignificant you were in the world.

  My fingers curled around the edge of the stone, my heart kicking up at his unexpected intrusion.

  “These old buildings … they just crumble without warning sometimes.”

  I glanced back at the stories below and stepped forward. “I’m sure this building’s survived more than me.” Jutting my chin toward the garbage lying around the ground, I barely took my gaze from him. “I’m obviously not the first.”

  “You could be the last.”

  It occurred to me how sequestered from the rest of the group I suddenly felt, when I heard the distant bass still thumping from the courtyard below. No one would ever hear me scream, if he happened to throw me over the edge, or rape me up here.

  He stepped into the light, and the first thing I noticed were his eyes. Piercing blue and razor cut against the black hood that framed his pale face. Small tufts of his hair stuck out over his forehead, and the dark lines of his chiseled concave cheeks beckoned my eyes toward the sharp angles of his face, a strong, square jaw, and his classic Grecian nose. Magnificently beautiful. He belonged on a billboard, not hidden behind a hoodie with his ripped-up jeans, looking like some kind of street thug.