by Julia Swift
“Why, so she can call the police? You’ve never been to jail. You wouldn’t like it.”
I can tell Pitbull is contemplating how to knock me out, beat me up, kill me.
The guy with the green eyes knows if he does nothing, I’ll end up hurt. I can see it in his face. He wants to help me.
He grabs Pitbull, but Pitbull easily knocks him into the metal edge of a display case. The guy with the green eyes can’t stand. Pitbull runs out the back exit, his wad of cash in hand.
The guy with the green eyes looks at me. Guilty, confused... and scared to death of me. He knows I could send him to jail. No one’s ever been scared of me. I don’t like it.
“Close the back door so he can’t get out.”
It’s Will. I forgot he was even there. Because hey, where the hell has he been? He’s walking with his cell phone in front of him taking pictures of the guy with the green eyes. Click. That’s what I heard earlier. He was taking pictures while Pitbull was grabbing me? I’m definitely not doing what Will tells me to do.
The guy with the green eyes tries to run, but his right leg is injured and he falls. I help him stand. He’s a little wobbly.
“Do you want to take off?”
Will is horrified.
“He just tried to rob the place and hurt you.”
“He didn’t take anything and he tried to save me. Where were you?”
“Taking pictures, getting proof. Journalists can’t get involved.”
In my head I’m almost screaming. I want to make sure Will can hear me because he must not have heard earlier when Pitbull was trying to hurt me and he didn’t budge from his hiding place.
“The police should do the interviewing.”
The guy with the green eyes still thinks we’re crazy. We are. What are we doing here? I pull the guy with the green eyes out of the store.
“Sasha, wait.”
I slam the door shut behind me.
“This way.”
The guy with the green eyes gently takes my arm and I follow him down the alley. What was that I was saying about the difference between being bold and being stupid?
But taking chances is about risk. That’s why I used to sit silent in the corner before the accident, I didn’t want to risk getting hurt, so I missed everything. And that hurts more than anything. Watching everyone else living while you’re standing by, afraid, alone. Talking isn’t enough. Okay, so now I talk at school to someone besides Lisa. But the rest of the school doesn’t hear me or even see me. Sometimes I walk by the mirrors in the crowded girls’ bathroom at school, and it’s always crowded because those girls are always staring at themselves, primping. I do not want to be them. But sometimes I catch a glimpse in the mirror of all the girls and then walk out and realize I didn’t even see me. If I could see the mirror, then the mirror could see me and I should have seen my reflection. But I didn’t. I must have been in the background, or maybe my eye followed one of the other girls because she was talking or looked more interesting. I don’t need to make noise or wear tons of makeup to get noticed like some girls. But I’m invisible even to myself. That’s not good.
I’m not trying to be seen by the guy with the green eyes. That’s not what this is. This is about being felt in the world. Making a difference sounds so cliché and that’s not really it anyway. He needed help and I could do something about it. I can, I know it. Just like I know he’s not going to hurt me. He’s supposed to be in my life in some way or I’m supposed to be in his. To turn him around a little maybe. Give him a different eye view so he won’t end up where my brother is, on the other side of a mistake he can’t undo. I can undo this. I did. He’s out of the store, he’s away from the cops. I can tell he feels like he should say something to me, but has no idea what to say.
“My friend’s going to worry about me.”
I don’t know why I called Will my friend instead of my boyfriend. One date doesn’t make him my boyfriend, and I hate that word anyway. It sounds so third grade. But I don’t want to mislead the guy with the green eyes, not that I think he wants to go out with me. It feels like I should tell him the truth because I’m trusting him with, well, a lot I guess. But I’m not sure what the truth is. Will and I went on a date, we made out. A lot. Thinking about it makes all the blood rush to my lips. I wonder if the guy with the green eyes can tell?
“What’s your name?”
He thinks for a minute. I was trying to be friendly, but now I realize he shouldn’t tell me. I saw him committing a crime.
“Ricky.”
He trusts me, too.
“I’m Sasha.”
“I know, I heard your friend say it.”
Hearing him call Will my friend makes me feel even more like I lied.
The farther we walk, the shorter the buildings become. There are no banks, anywhere. Put together where I walked with Will and where I’m walking now, and it’s miles with no bank, not even an A.T.M. No wonder they robbed a game store, there’s no bank to rob.
Some of the streets are lined with one-story houses like at home, but they’re nothing like home. The front steps are crumbling. Instead of a wood or brick fence, there’s wire and no golden retrievers here, only pit bulls and Rottweilers. The paint is chipping into what was probably grass decades ago, but now is just dirt mixed with what the Rottweilers leave behind. Where is he taking me?
He walks quickly into the trees. They aren’t really woods, not this close to the city. More like trees and bushes and trash, but we’re kind of on a hillside so it feels like no one can see us. He lets go of my hand and stares at me. For a second, without his gentle hand in mine, he’s a stranger and there’s no intensity coming off of him. Everything is real time and normal color, except my breathing, which is fast and short because I’m scared. Maybe a little.
“You’re really stupid, you know that? You let me drag you out here into the middle of nowhere. I could do a lot of things and no one would ever know. No one could hear you if you screamed.”
The intensity is back, like after the accident when I was lying on the street seeing flashes of all the people who were special to me. The colors are deeper. The trees aren’t just light green and dying brown. There’s red and purple and lots of deep blue. Everything, including my breathing, is slower. Like how I imagine a whale must breathe as she dives deep into the dark ocean. Slow as her metabolism slows so she won’t need oxygen. And I know these feelings about people are real and suddenly I’m the most powerful girl I know. Person I know. I can see into people, know if they are good or bad or somewhere in between and maybe I can help them lean to the right side. Use my heavy whale weight to apply subtle pressure, not that a whale leaning on you would be subtle. Not that anyone has ever called me subtle. That’s one thing I’m proud of about myself. Maybe no one ever saw me except when they had to, like my family who got stuck with me and my teachers who are paid to see me and Lisa for who knows what reason. But when people had to see me, no one ever called me subtle or cute or pretty or funny. I’m like how I saw the world in those moments right before I died… intense. That’s always been me. Maybe I’m just more me now. Living this new full life.
I can’t help but smile wide. It’s nice to like me for once, even for half a second. Be proud of something about me.
“You won’t hurt me. Even saying that, you’re trying to protect me, make sure I don’t make a habit of running off with dangerous strangers. But you’re not dangerous. I know you’re a good guy. But I don’t know why you were in the store or with the guy with the pit bull tattoo. He’s not so good.”
“You want me to say I have some sick grandma or ten little brothers and sisters.”
“Either one would work. The truth would be better. I could run away, but then I’d always wonder what happened to you, why you did it and would you rob again and get caught?”
“Without you there to save me.”
“I don’t want to save you, okay, maybe I do. But it’s more like, you know how people watch strangers and co
me up with stories about their lives? That always bugged me. I don’t care about made-up stories, I want to know the truth. I try to get clues from who they are with or what they are wearing or carrying. I really wish I had tenth generation Google-vision glasses I could wear that would hook up to some master computer somewhere and whoever I looked at, their vital statistics would download into my brain. Not trivial information like height and weight but the important facts, like how they feel and who’s hurt them or loved them and what they really want.”
“You are really weird.”
So that would have really hurt the old me, but not the new me. Partly because Will thinks I’m good in a weird way, not that I should care what he thinks after what he pulled. But look where I am now. Taking chances brought me somewhere I’ve never been but always wanted to be. I’m smack in the thick of life, not wondering what everyone else is doing. I bet Will’s wondering what I’m doing now.
16
Will
“I’m telling the truth, I was the one who called.”
The white cop who’s right behind me in the game store doesn’t believe me. He’s making me stand spread eagle against the wall.
“Don’t you mean the chump who got left behind?”
The cop pats me down, finds my cell phone.
“Can’t have you calling Mommy from the back of the car.”
Right now, she’s the last person I’d call. Wait a minute, back of the car? He’s taking me to the station?
He finds the train ticket in my other pocket.
“Why don’t you tell me the real reason you got off the train? Were you looking to score drugs? Needed some cash for the buy?”
“I already told you what happened.”
“Hey, I’m giving you a chance. I’m trying to look out for you.”
Somehow I don’t think he’d say the same thing to someone who lives in this neighborhood.
“Kid, even if your story is true, which I doubt, it’s not up to me anymore, it’s up to the owner to decide whether to charge you with trespassing.”
The cop handcuffs me. My mom is going to kill me. This isn’t like where we live now in Palmdale bad, this is North Philly bad. They have real crime here, people who aren’t afraid to break into other criminals’ houses. I’m dead meat.
“Sure there wasn’t someone else here with you, something you wanna tell me before we go to the station?”
I can’t do it. I’m mad at Sasha for taking off with that guy, for leaving me here hanging. But I can’t give her up as my alibi, they might think she’s guilty, too. Dad always said, never reveal your sources and protect your story at all costs.
The officer leads me outside and into the squad car. I keep reminding myself, there is a story here.
17
Sasha
Ricky and I climb up to the top of the hill. From here you can see rooftops for miles. I see some girls my age painting their toenails and singing. Why is their life so different than mine? If I was with them, I bet all the laughing would stop. I have that effect on people, especially girls my age. When I was in elementary school, my mom would try to find me on the playground at the end of the day. She would watch the other girls play as the boys chased and teased them. But she didn’t see me. So she’d keep looking and finally, way off under a tree, she’d discover me reading by myself. I don’t remember that. I remember trying to play with them, but even when I thought for days about something funny to say and finally made them laugh, it would all come crashing down. Like the time I ate a fly. The girls were laughing, so I started laughing and then a fly flew into my mouth. I didn’t want to scream and make a big deal about it, so I swallowed. I thought maybe they wouldn’t notice. But they all stared. And every time I tried to walk up to them after that, they’d all get really quiet. So I stopped trying.
Ricky doesn’t want me to look at the girls, that’s not why he brought me up here. He points to another roof, there’s a ten-year-old boy. He’s playing a handheld video game. When a car below starts up, he jumps a little, looks up and I can see the scar on the side of his face. A long red line stretches from his eye to his chin. It’s still raised, red and bumpy, like it happened long enough ago to heal, but not nearly long enough ago to blend into his features. I don’t think the scar will ever become part of this kid’s face. He scratches at it like he doesn’t want it there, but also like he’s not ready to forget. The scar on my neck itches. I turn away from Ricky so I can rub it and he won’t see. He thinks I’m different because it’s who I am. He doesn’t know I got help, I cheated. I didn’t do anything, I was in an accident. But it’s who I am now, and it inspires me to act now, so he doesn’t need to know.
“I don’t want to look at him either, but I can’t help it.”
He thinks I don’t want to see the kid. I do. I’m always attracted to people who show you everything about them by the way they move and look and don’t look. Really sexy, confident people are like that. So are shy, scared people like Scar Boy. Only they can’t help it. But it makes them attractive, too. This kid will be a heartbreaker one day. I wish I could tell him, but I bet he wouldn’t believe me.
“Is he your brother?”
“No, I’ve never met him. But Carlos, the guy with the pit bull tattoo…”
“I remember.”
“Carlos has been my best friend forever. I know he seems evil, and he does really, really stupid stuff, but he’s my best friend. If I don’t hang with him, he’ll get into trouble, more trouble. Last time we got in a fight, he broke into that kid’s house. He didn’t know anyone was home. That scar was Carlos. He did time and came out different. I have to hang out with him or who knows what will go down.”
“He made you rob the store this morning?”
I know the answer and that wasn’t really fair because I know what it’s like to have a friend and not remember how you ever became friends.
“I was only going to grab a few games, and if I wasn’t there… let’s just say you’re lucky I was.”
“Or you’re lucky I was.”
He knows I’m right, and I know he’s right. Right about the fact that Will and I could have gotten really hurt, not right about breaking into the store. No way you make that right. His logic is all twisted. He needs me. And I need him. A project. Something I can actually do. Untwist his mind. I can tell there’s something good in there. And something tells me he comes here and stares at that kid a lot. I bet that kid spends most of his time alone on the roof, so I know where to find Ricky.
“My friend must be really freaking now. I gotta go.”
I realize I don’t know where to go. It’s not like he’ll be waiting in front of the game store, but I was kind of in a daze on the way over here. I don’t even know how to get back to the train station.
“The cops probably took him to the station. I’m not going anywhere near there, but I’ll show you the way.”
From the top of the hill, he shows me how to go. Four big blocks down there is one shiny, huge building. It’s surrounded by a big stone wall and so many police cars, I can’t count them all. The police station doesn’t match anything else in town. It’s new and slick and expensive. The houses around it still have the thin roofs that look like flat carpet, but the lawns are green in patches and the paint isn’t falling off as fast. It’s like being near the alien spaceship infected the houses around, but in a good way. I walk fast. I’m a little scared walking in a place I don’t know, but more than that, I’m starting to think about Will and the police and my mom… Oh no, did they call my parents?
*
I’m standing outside the police station. I can’t get myself to open that door. I made it through the door at the game store. This is less dangerous, or it would be if my dad’s car wasn’t sitting there in the parking lot. I remember my dad’s face the day my brother went to court. I thought my dad would go, but he stayed with me in the hospital the whole day. He only left for a minute to call and find out the verdict. When my dad left, he was rushing aroun
d, nervous, worried, but when he came back he was slow. He didn’t say a word. Back in Russia, if you hear a guilty verdict, there’s no hope because hope only exists if you have lots of money and can bribe someone so you never go to trial. Tonight he gets to bring me home, but I know he’s going to be beyond angry and, even worse, beyond disappointed that he even had to enter a police station. And maybe I am in trouble, even though I didn’t do anything.
*
I see Will first.
“Sasha, are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
He’s squeezing my arms the way you squeeze a dog that has been in an accident to see if there are any broken bones. Suddenly I think maybe going off with Ricky wasn’t quite fair to Will. He seems worried, really worried. Maybe my brain is the one all twisted.
“Where were you?”
Before I can answer, his mom approaches with a policeman. She’s wearing all black and she’s thin, East Coast thin. Everyone always says that people in California stay in shape because they all want to be actresses, but no one is as thin as hyper New Yorkers. She physically pulls him away from me like I’m contagious. The policeman seems concerned.
“Did the kidnappers hurt you?”
“No. He helped me. I helped him. There were no kidnappers.”
The policeman is confused and the concern is shifting quickly.
“He who? The guy who robbed the store? Did you get his name, see where he lived?”
“No. And he didn’t rob the store. Everything he took, he left there. I left with him, I should know. He didn’t steal anything.”
“Well, his partner sure did. Over five-thousand dollars. Do you know where he is? Did he force you to go with him?”
“No. We helped each other.”
“For two hours?”
I don’t like the implication of that. Neither does my dad who’s now standing behind the cop. Yes, now he’s a cop, like those potbellied guys on television who think everyone is evil. His concern is gone, well my respect is gone.