by Olivia Samms
“Yeah, they’re keeping it clean. Now that it’s all lit up, it’s hard to hit. The secret’s underneath.”
“Underneath?”
He jogs across the wooden slats to where the three arms connect—waves me over. “Pull down your ski mask and put this on.” He tosses me a flashlight headband.
“Cool.” I strap it on.
“It’s going to get dark under there.”
“Under where?” I ask through the itchy knit of the mask.
He points at the underside of the bridge above. “Only rule? Don’t fall. If you do, you’ll end up in the water. It won’t kill you—it’s pretty shallow, but the muck and weeds will take you down, fast.” He hoots. “I can’t swim, and I don’t wanna have to jump in after you.”
“You’re friggin’ kidding me, right? We’re going to tag the bottom of the Cross Street bridge?”
“Yup.” He hops on the outside of the wooden railing as if he’s on a balance beam, reaches for the support girder on the bridge above, and hoists himself up, lifts his legs, wraps them around a chunky box beam, then pulls his body up and around. He sits straight up, straddling the beam, like he mounted a horse five feet above me. “You got that?”
“Could you do it again? But this time in slow motion?”
He snickers. “It’s not that hard. And once you’re here—if you make it this far—you’re all set. It’s a piece of cake after this. There’s a sizeable ledge, and scaffolding that spans the length of the bridge. Don’t worry. I’m here to spot you.”
I clamber up onto the railing, crouch, holding on tightly with my hands, and make the mistake of looking down. The water is about twenty feet below; even though we don’t have them in Michigan, I think I spot an alligator swimming downstream. It could be a crocodile, but I’ve never known the difference, and it really doesn’t matter—they’d both eat me.
I raise my arms super fast in the air, grab the girder, and then stand on my tiptoes, allowing me to hug the hard metal edges of the beam—hanging on for dear life.
“That’s it.” Archie cheers me on. “Now you just have to get your legs up and around.”
I close my eyes, and drop my legs, dangle them one at a time, pulling hard with my upper body, hoping, praying, that the biceps I’ve never asked much from in my life will somehow do me a solid and kick in. I struggle to get my right foot around the beam.
“Almost there,” Archie says. “Then hoist the other one up to meet it.”
With a grunt, my leg somehow makes contact with the other foot, and I find myself hanging upside down. “Okay, now what?” I ask, out of breath.
“Look up.” He shines a heavy-duty flashlight above our heads and illuminates intricate, bold-colored graffiti saturating the cast concrete of the bridge in both directions, like an “out-of-this world,” colorful, inspiring mural that would put that neo-expressionism chapter in my art book to shame.
All of a sudden I think of my mom and wish she were here with me. She’d get this, my mom. She would. A warm, fuzzy feeling whooshes over me, like how the tree in my front yard makes me feel—grounded, safe—even though I’m dangling twenty feet over a river. “You were right, Arch; it’s friggin’ beautiful.”
“Told ya.” He smiles with his voice. “But you gotta pull yourself up now so we can do our thing and add to it.”
I suck in my tummy, flex my legs, pull with my arms, try to scramble up and around the beam—but nope, doesn’t happen. I try again, grunting, hoping the sound effects will somehow flip me.
“Lemme help you.”
I have no choice but to let him. It’s either that, falling, or living my life as a bat, upside down under a bridge.
He reaches down, wrapping his arm around my waist, brushing slightly across my unbound breasts, oh god, and helps me twist around till I’m upright. I calm my breath, sitting across from him, and see his laughing eyes behind the woolen mask.
“What?”
“Nice rack you got there, boy.” He slaps his thigh. “Like you really thought you were foolin’ anyone? I knew from day one.”
I bunch the ski mask up on my forehead. “Holy crap, how?”
“Well, for one, you left your tampon wrapper in the stall.”
Do I jump now?
“And you smell too good to be a guy.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t say anything.”
“I wanted to see how far you’d go. Shit, Reyna thinks you’re all about the bi scene. We were all making bets. But I don’t know; I don’t pick up on that.”
“What d’you pick up on, then?”
He pulls off the hat and clears his throat. “I’d like to see you with chick clothes on. . . . Betcha you’re cute, Boy.”
“The name’s Bea. B-E-A. Short for Beatrice.”
“Nice to meet ya, Bea—short for Beatrice.” He high-fives me, almost pushing me off the beam and into the water.
“Whoa . . .”
He takes hold of my shoulders, steadying me.
I pull the mask back down and never want to take it off again. “I am so humiliated.”
“Why the charade? What’s your story?”
I shrug. “The coach just assumed I was a guy, and there’s no way I was going to argue with him.”
Archie laughs. “Good call.”
“Like I said, I’m wandering. The ’rents are splitting up; all the peeps I know and love are skipping town, leaving me.” Unfortunately the truth.
“I know how you feel. Same thing happened to me a few years back. That’s why I love doin’ my art; it’s cathartic as hell, man.” He shines the light to his right. “There’s some virgin space over there. Good place to throw some paint, get it all out.” He scrambles onto the iron ledge and crawls on his hands and knees across the scaffolding. I follow—not as confident, but manage to stay above the water.
Archie sits on his butt and looks up. “Ta-da. Our palate. Lie down, get yourself comfortable. Mark your territory. But don’t bite no one.”
“What?” I laugh to myself, remembering the biter reference with Daniels.
“Don’t steal anyone’s shit. You don’t want war.”
Archie unzips his backpack and pulls out a can of spray paint. A plastic baggie filled with white powder falls out. He quickly snatches it up and shoves it back in the pack like it didn’t happen.
Shit . . . he said he wasn’t using anymore.
He tosses over the paint. “Tag your signature . . . somethin’ original.”
“Sure, I guess I can do that.” I pull off my Pokémon backpack, strap it on the front of my belly, and lie down on my back. I switch on the forehead flashlight, and take note of a rather large gap between the support beams a foot to my right, the wake of the river flickering underneath. A truck rumbles above, sounding like a barreling freight train; the whole bridge vibrates. “This is gnarly up here, Arch,” I yell out. “This must’ve been how Michelangelo felt painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, right?”
“I think I’m more like Leonardo da Vinci,” he calls out.
“What do you mean?” I look over at him through the slits of my mask.
“Da Vinci wrote backward.” He shakes his can of paint, pops off the cap, and sprays out Y-P-S-I.
“That’s your signature, Arch? Ypsi? Short for Ypsilanti?”
“Nah . . . that’s too lame. Read it backward. I-S-P-Y. I spy. Clever, huh? Junior came up with it. Shit, we had some good times under here.”
My body goes numb. It’s not the coach’s tat that Junior was thinking about; it’s Archie’s tag. And he’s lying about being clean; he’s still doing blow. Holy fuck . . . Could Archie be the OG, the kingpin? I fumble my phone out of my back pocket.
“Hey, Bea. Why aren’t you spraying?” Archie crouches now, his arms on his knees.
“I dunno. I’m feeling a little headache coming on. I get them sometimes.” I roll to my side, and punch in Sergeant Daniels’s number, press the speaker button—muffle the rings under my sweatshirt as I fake a few coughs
and then talk loudly toward the phone. “I think that maybe my hat’s too tight. I’m going to turn it around on my head!” I yell.
Archie starts crawling toward me like a crab. “What? What are you talking about?”
I sit up, pull the phone out from under my sweatshirt, and hear the sergeant’s voice; Archie hears his voice, too, on speaker, as he shouts, “BEA! WHERE ARE YOU?”
“Who are you talking to?” he hisses.
I scream into the phone. “The usual place, now!”
Archie leaps toward me. I tuck my arms around the backpack, covering my face, and roll to the right, falling off the edge of the bridge, down, down, down, splashing hard into the water.
I scrape the jagged, rocky bottom of the river—gurgling. I struggle to lift my head, take a breath, and hear a second splash. I immediately feel him grab my right ankle, pulling me back under the water. I try to kick his hand away with my other foot, but he grabs it tighter and pulls me toward him. I snag a slimy, moss-green rock buried in the muddy bottom, twist my torso around, turning onto my back, and crash the rock into Archie’s hand, and my own shin.
He howls, releases my leg, and our blood mingles around like smoke in the gray-green hazy water. His tiger-yellow eyes blaze as he powers forward—his body stopping suddenly in a tangle of seaweed. Archie struggles, contorts his face, growls, resembling the monster reptile I thought I saw earlier. He yells, “You’re a narc, aren’t you? That’s what this is all about.”
“No, I’m not, Archie! I’m not a narc. I don’t care about you carrying. I really, really don’t.”
“I’m going to fuckin’ kill you.” He lurches toward me.
I thrash toward the riverbank, pulling off my soaked sweatshirt. I flip my backpack on my back, thanking the foam-filled picture of Pikachu for saving my face from crashing into the rocks, and scramble up onto the shore. I feel the blood oozing out of my knee and my shin—the warmth of it. Numbness replaced with pain, strangely giving me strength, and I kick into high gear.
Archie is screaming maybe fifteen feet behind me. I run along the mucky shore, splashing through the water. A mother goose and her babies flap their feathers, quack, yell at me—totally flustered and pissed off, as I run upstream. The weedy reeds wrap around my ankles; I trip over a rock, get another mouthful of silt, cough, spit it out, and keep on running, making my way to the footbridge ahead that will take me to the courthouse.
Archie’s splashing gets closer; I hear his heavy breathing; and then suddenly a blast—a high-pitch whirring—shoots past my right ear, slams, and shatters into the trunk of a young maple five feet from my head.
Fuck. He has a gun.
I spot a concrete culvert to my right and duck inside. Another blast ricochets off the cement. I flinch. My ears ring. I have nowhere else to go, so I crouch and move deeper into the concrete passageway—the flashlight still strapped to my head, shining in the darkness. I bend over; my hands scrape along the side, guide me, help catapult me through the tunnel. Then I hear Archie’s breath echo off the walls and run a little faster, trying to keep my footing on the slimy, slick cement.
The ceiling of the tunnel gets lower and narrower, and I fall to my knees and crawl through inches of muck. The back of my head rubs against the top. The water starts to rise—gets higher, up to my waist now, as the tunnel seems to veer off to the left and slant down. Under the river. The tunnel is taking me under the Huron. The water is now up to my nose.
I can’t turn back. There has to be an end; the tunnel has to lead to somewhere—the river isn’t that wide. I know it can’t be that far. Please, don’t let it be that far.
I stretch my legs out behind me, take a deep breath, and dunk my head, shoot my arms out in front of my body, and paddle my feet as fast as I can in the tight space. The water is dark gray, thick, and stinks, like I’m sludging through a vat of rancid Jell-O. I blink my eyes open and close, praying for the end to be in sight; they sting, and my lungs start to burn. My headache has morphed into dizziness, and I’m feeling as if I might pass out, when something swims alongside my body.
I scream a silent underwater scream as a crayfish the size of a five-pound lobster surges ahead of me. Oh my god, I gotta get the fuck outta here. I see a hint of a light ahead in the wake of the crustacean, kick my feet with everything I have. Suddenly my hand touches a dry stone surface up above my head. I slap my other hand on what feels like a rocky shelf, pull my torso up and out of the water, and gulp the stagnant air as if I were in the crisp altitude of the Alps. The water, diverted, follows the channel, rushes down, off me, past me. I look behind; there’s no sign of Archie. Hopefully, he didn’t follow; he said he couldn’t swim.
The flashlight still strapped to my head flickers on and off, illuminating a stone corridor. I trudge my soaked, battered body ahead and limp past hollowed, empty cubbies, like cells. This must be the old jail . . . I’m below the courthouse! The walls are covered with layers and layers of angry graffiti, and the words, the image of Archie’s tag, I spy, floods my head. I spy you, Bea. I see you. This is where you belong—where you deserve to be . . . down here in this hole. My stomach tightens; my heart flutters—just like it did in the holding cell at the police station.
I hear something behind me, scuffling—squeaking. I slowly turn and see a huge raccoon sitting, fingering, clawing at something . . . probably the crayfish. Its eyes meet the shine of the light on my forehead, and it peers at me like I’m dessert or something. It hisses with its foul-smelling breath. I answer with a scream, scaring it as it scampers away, and up a stairway. The stairs! The stairs to the courthouse!
I follow the vermin, picking up speed—taking the stairs two at a time. I duck under the rusted chain, run across the room, and throw my body against the plywood, crawl through the window, and fall onto the damp, cold ground.
The moon is full, bright; the sky clear; and the constellations are weighty, hanging in the sky like the mobile in Mr. Pogen’s Sea of Tranquility class. Breathing hard, I pull my waterlogged cell out of my pocket. It’s dead. I roll up the leg of my jeans. My knee has totally opened up; the shin below is bleeding. I get out the bandana from the drenched backpack, mop up the blood, and tie it tightly around my leg, praying that infection hasn’t set in yet, and then hobble around the side of the building toward the front through dense, prickly bushes. Sergeant Daniels should have made it here by now. The branches on the other side of the building rustle. “Dan? Is that you?” I whisper. Please be you.
He grabs me from behind. His left hand covers my mouth. The barrel of the gun juts up against my ribs.
And I bite him . . . hard.
“Ouch, shit.” Archie throws me to the ground. He checks out his hand, sucks at the wound. I’m on my butt, looking up into the whites of his eyes shining brightly in the moonlight. His clothes are soaked and ripped. Blood drips from the ragged gash on his right forearm. Seaweed dangles in his long hair, and his Glock now points directly at my head.
I cower, cover my face, and wait for the blast.
“Drop the gun.” I hear Sergeant Daniels’s voice behind me. I turn. He stands at the side of the building with his arms straight out, his weapon pointed at Archie, flashing his badge with his left hand. “Put the gun down. Now!” he orders.
Archie flinches; his hands are shaking. He looks at the sergeant and then back at me—the gun staring at my face. “Don’t no one make a move, or the bitch is dead.”
Daniels focuses steadily on his target. “Bea, do what he says. Don’t budge.”
I’m suddenly freezing cold and start to shiver—out of control; then I see movement in the woods behind Archie. The homeless man steps out from the dark gully. “Hey, what’s going on? What are you doing to her?” he yells, and starts toward us.
“Watch out! He has a gun!” I shout out, my teeth chattering.
Everything speeds up in slow motion. Archie swings around. The homeless guy ducks, runs back into the thicket. I rush toward Archie as he fires, charge into his legs, pushing us b
oth down on the ground. The bullet violently skids across the dirt, uprooting the foliage in its path.
“Bea! Roll to your right!” Daniels yells.
I do. Archie starts to swing his gun around at Daniels when the sergeant fires, hitting him in the right shoulder, forcing his firearm to fall from his hand.
Archie wails, thrashes around on the ground, holding his wound. “You shot me. . . . You fucking hit me!”
Sergeant Daniels holsters his weapon, runs up, flips Archie on his belly, and cuffs his wrists behind his back. He starts reading him his Miranda rights, then calls for help. All the time Archie’s blubbering, rolling around, and crying like a baby.
Daniels pulls me into his chest and drapes his jacket over my shoulders. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”
I hear his voice as if I’m back in the tunnel—it’s muffled, distant. I know his arm is around me, but I don’t feel it. He lifts my chin. His eyes, shots of fire, burn through me. His lips move like an animation film, flipping through one cell, one image at a time. But I don’t hear what he’s saying. I bury my head back into his chest and listen for it: the ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump of his heart. I hang on to the sound, the beat, the rhythm. My breath falls in step, in time with the pounding, and I feel as if I am slowly rising back to the surface . . . to what? To where? “Junior . . .” I nod my head fast. “I have to get to him. Let him know I figured it out . . . that we got Archie.” My voice sounds like it’s coming from inside a tin can.
“You can’t, Bea. You can’t. He died. A couple hours ago. I tried to get ahold of you.”
“Oh, fuck, Junior . . .” Archie, hearing this . . . moans.
I pull away from the sergeant. “What? He can’t be dead. That’s not supposed to happen.” And then I barrel over to Archie, still lying on the ground on his stomach. I throw myself at him and start beating his back. “He died!” I scream. “Why did you do it?”
“I didn’t wanna have to shoot ’im. He was my bro. I thought he woulda stayed quiet—wouldn’t have ratted on me,” he cries.
Daniels pulls me off him. “Bea, stop.”
“He wasn’t the rat, Archie. I was!”