Wanted

by Heidi Ayarbe

  There’s nothing to bet on this weekend. There won’t be anything for a couple of weeks. Between Super Bowl and NCAA basketball games, there’s a bettors’ lag—like a kind of black hole of nothingness in sportsbook. Kids at school don’t usually bet on golf, cricket, or horses. It’s my equivalent of a post-Christmas slump. And it sucks. I have too much time to think.

  That night Josh calls. “Do you want me to pick you up?”

  “No. I don’t want to do anything,” I say, feeling the ice creep into my body and throat.

  “Why not?” Josh asks.

  “I just need a break from this stuff. I’m tired. I need to focus, get my head back into classes, AP tests, and all that stuff.”

  Silence. I rub my temples, lying on my bed, putting the phone on speaker. Tears trickle and pool in my ears.

  “So we’ll hang out tomorrow,” Josh says.

  “Josh. The game’s over. I can’t do this.”

  “What’s this?”

  “Pretend it’s okay. It’s not. Nothing we do can makes any of this better. I can’t play make-believe like you.”

  “I wasn’t pretending,” Josh says. “About anything.”

  I feel a tightening in my chest that swells and creeps up my throat. I wipe my arm across my eyes and click my phone shut.

  A couple of weeks go by. Lagging. Purposeless.

  PB & J reports about the toxicity of the Olé lunch specials and the probability of the health department shutting the school down. There are some really good articles about our fragmented student body, a Czech cuisine recipe section, and a series that compares University of Nevada’s flailing basketball program with a woman going through rehab in The Real Housewives of Washoe County.

  The freshmen stage a sit-in—parallel rows of kids singing “The Rivers of Babylon”—demanding the Coke machine get put back. We were something—meant something. They totally missed the point.

  Babylonia is a distorted memory.

  Moch comes to school, off and on. I always bring his homework to his home, leaving it on the porch. The house feels empty—lifeless.

  One night, I find Mr. Mendez eating a chicken pot pie. It looks so out of place on his plate. The smells I so loved before are almost gone. Microwaved cardboard has replaced eye-burning chili powder, shredded beef, and the sweet smell of crushed corn to make tortillas.

  “Mr. Mendez, what about the restaurant?” I ask. He was going to be head chef. Mrs. Mendez always said she would be his assistant. “You can still do that. For Mrs. Mendez.”

  Mr. Mendez shakes his head. I don’t think, though, it’s about the money anymore. It’s like Mrs. Mendez was the only thing keeping the family together.

  At school I avoid Josh. Thinking about him makes me anxious and lonely and angry and tired. I try to nudge the memories aside, to go back to the way things were; the way things should be. I twirl the silver dice on my bracelet, glad it’s cold so I can hide it under the sleeves of my sweaters. I wear it every day.

  Seth comes up to me one day and says, “Hey, Mike. What’s up with you and Josh? He’s the poster boy for dejection these days.”

  I shrug. “Nothing’s up. Or ever was. We’re friends. It’s just I got behind on homework and stuff and need to keep focused on what’s important.” But I’m not sure what’s important anymore. It should be U-Dub. Getting out of here. Never looking back. It’s just hard to make sense out of anything.

  Seth reads through my lies and nods. “Give the guy a call sometime, okay?”

  It’s dark. Lillian’s at the clinic. I’ve done my homework, cleaned the house twice, and constructed a teepee in my room by hanging a blanket from a hook in my ceiling and attaching it to my bed posts with rubber bands.

  I think I’m going crazy.

  My phone beeps—my social phone. Josh’s name flashes on the screen. I turn it off. Nobody else calls me on it anyway.

  Then I hear tapping on my window. “I know you’re in there!”

  If I’m quiet, he’ll think I’m asleep. I hold my breath. Then exhale. Just breathe. It’s not like he can hear breathing through walls. My bookie phone rings—the ring tone about as subtle as our school fire drill. He bangs harder on the window. “Get up! Get dressed! Now!”

  The banging has moved to the front door and I weigh my options. If I ignore him, I’m pretty sure he’ll pound on the door all night. If he keeps it up, someone will call the police. The police means Lillian means explanations means . . . What does he want? “Fine,” I mutter and go to the living room, opening the door a crack. “What do—”

  Josh shoves the door open and pushes his way into the trailer house. “Get your coat on. Now.”

  He shoves my coat at me, grabs my hand, pulling me out of the house, pushing me into his car. “Josh,” I say.

  He holds up his hand. “Just . . . just pay attention.” He doesn’t put on any music. We drive in silence to Stewart Street to a burned-down homeless shelter, the ground scarred and blackened. He drives a little farther north until we’re in a field near the softball fields. “I followed a couple of guys from La Clinica Olé one afternoon. They work construction.” The makeshift homes are much like the ones I saw at the river. Soggy cardboard boxes sag at the top, plastic grocery sacks doing little to keep anybody dry. There’s a small group: three men, two women, four kids, tucked in what little shelter the barren lot offers, their homes in a semicircle under the limbs of a giant elm tree.

  We drive to a trailer park, so worn down and poor it makes Lillian’s and my home look like the Ritz. Trailers totter on concrete blocks, aluminum siding bowing from the number of people who live in each place. I can’t help but picture God with a giant can opener, pulling back on an aluminum ring, peeling open each home. I know some kids who live around here. I’d just never really paid attention.

  Josh pulls into an abandoned gas station off Highway 50. “This place here, this is where the workers wait. They get here before six a.m. and wait for a day’s work. Some stay all day—until four thirty, five. Too late for anything, but they stay until the day ends because leaving early would be like giving up, going home empty-handed.”

  I remember the days Mocho’s dad had to do that, the days Mocho would eat dinner at our house. Lillian insisted on stuffing him until his stomach swelled, a funny sight next to his washboard ribcage.

  We drive to back alleys and motels—like we’re discovering an entire new world within the limits of the city, a world I’ve never seen. A world of scattered lives, piecemeal dreams. Josh hands me a list of organizations including FISH (Friends in Service Helping), Brain Food, Clinica Olé, the Boys and Girls Club, Planned Parenthood. The names blur on the page.

  “You don’t get to do this,” Josh says, his voice steady, hushed. “You don’t get to go back to your safe place and leave me here. Alone.”

  Tears burn my eyes and I blink them back. I bite down on my lower lip. “What does this matter?” I pass the list to him.

  “You act as if sadness is a privilege. Just for you and you alone. Everything matters. They matter. We matter. Babylonia.”

  We. Babylonia.

  “Mrs. Mendez mattered,” Josh whispers. I hate that he says it past tense. Josh turns my face to his and cups it in his hands. “Were you pretending?”

  I can’t catch my breath. I shake my head. He leans forward, lips touching my forehead, soft like raindrops. He tilts my head up, outlining my mouth with his thumb, never taking his eyes from mine.

  I swallow. It’s like my saliva ducts have totally turned off, and if what’s going to happen is what I think is going to happen, my tongue has gone the way of the Sahara and feels like sandpaper. I swallow again.

  He leans forward, pulling me toward him, and I feel his lips brushing mine, then pressing harder, sending a seismic jolt through my body. My teeth clack against his; I taste copper.

  I jerk away, somehow managing to knock his nose with my forehead. “Oh. Oh crap. Crap. I bit you. Oh hell. And broke your nose. Did I break your nose?”


  Josh holds his face in his hands, leaning back against the seat. A smudge of blood on the palm of his hand. He shakes his head. “No,” he says, in a stuffy voice, like Beaker from the Muppets. “I’m just fine. Really. I’m fine. Just give me a sec, okay?”

  God hasn’t been particularly proactive in my life, so I’m hoping this one time, just this once, he might answer my prayer to be struck by a bolt of lightning. I wait.

  Nope. Still here.

  My face burns with shame. My hands feel like hot fields of sticky tar. The butterfly dance in my stomach has turned into a solid knot. Tears brim in my eyes because I blew my first kiss. As soon as I can control my voice without totally going blubbery and stupid, I say, “Do you think we need to go to the ER?”

  Josh’s shoulders shake with laughter, which only makes me feel like more of a freak show. It looks way easier on TV and in the movies. “Can you hand me a Kleenex?” He waves to the glove compartment. “I’m sorry. I’m not laughing at you. It’s just . . .”

  I pull out the box and hand them to him. He shoves a clump against his nose. His lip is already swelling. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m so so sorry. I’m just—”

  He has one hand shoving piles of Kleenex against his nose. He puts the forefinger of his free hand against my lips. It’s like he wants me to implode, frazzle all my nerve endings paperback-romance style. He cracks a lopsided smile. “Wow,” he says.

  “Wow,” I echo, and force myself to smile, which turns into a real smile, then a chortle to full-on snorting laughter. Tears fall. It feels good to laugh and cry and feel something other than anger and hopelessness. Even if it is biblical embarrassment.

  “I missed you,” Josh says. He winks at me. “Maybe we’ll have to try that again sometime.” He taps his lip. “When the swelling goes down.”

  I shake my head. “That’s okay. It was just one of those silly, heat-of-the-moment things. We’re good.”

  “Heat of the moment?”

  “More like beginner’s bad luck. I guess.”

  I notice for the very first time he has a faint dimple on his left cheek—almost imperceptible. I really shouldn’t be noticing things like that. It’s just too distracting. “Babylonia,” I say, looking at the list. “Any ideas on how we can create a more equitable distribution of funds? We’re going to need a lot more than an airplane banner and ten Commandments.”

  “I have a few,” Josh says, wincing when he moves his hand away from his nose, which is swelling as well. Josh squeezes my hand. “Can we go back to your place? Hang out for a while?”

  “Lillian’s at the clinic all night. We’ve got ice.”

  “Ice is good.”

  “Ice is good.”

  Josh drives me home and we go into my room. He doesn’t even think it’s weird that I have a teepee hanging from the ceiling. We lie down together in the teepee, his leg linked with mine. I pull my patchwork quilt over us and plug in my iPod, and we listen to Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “The Sky Is Crying.”

  The sky’s crying. Blanketed in sadness.

  Chapter 28

  I LOOK AT THE TIME. SIX THIRTY-TWO.

  My teepee smells like dryer sheets and pine. Like Josh. My iPod is still playing. I don’t remember falling asleep and don’t want to move. I wish I could be here, in this spot, forever. Josh’s arm is draped over me, his long fingers resting on my hip. He’s lying on his side, and my head is resting in the crook of his other arm. Outside the light is violet. No sign of day.

  I stare at the clock until it turns to 6:33. Okay. Time didn’t stop. Josh has to get out of here, because if Lillian were to catch us like this, she’d make us sit through her eight-hour sex-ed video series followed up by thorough examinations, obligatory oral contraception prescriptions, and a shower of condoms. She’s always ranting about the fact that schools dedicate only one semester to sex ed. It doesn’t help to point out that most of us graduate without even knowing how to balance a checkbook. I look at the time again.

  Just one more minute.

  6:34.

  Okay. Two.

  6:35.

  The furnace clicks on. I exhale. “Hey. Josh. You have to go. Lillian will be here soon.”

  Josh mumbles. His lip is a purple-bluish color, but at least the swelling on his nose has gone down.

  I’m not really sure how to move now, how to wake him up. I finally decide to tap him on the shoulder. Tap. Tap. Semipoke. “Hey. Josh. You really have to go. Really.”

  “Five more minutes,” he mumbles.

  “NOW,” I say, slipping out from under his arm into the cold morning air.

  He groans, pulling himself up to a sitting position, shoving his feet into his shoes. He shrugs on his coat, practically sleepwalking to the door. His hair sticks out all over the place, unruly curls flopping into his eyes. I follow him out onto the porch and flick on the dim yellow light. The quilt hangs over my shoulders. I dance on the aluminum floor in thin socks, wishing I’d pulled on a pair of boots. White puffs of breath hang in the air. I shiver and squint at the thermometer but can’t see the numbers too well without my glasses.

  Josh rubs his eyes. We stand under the faded light. I keep expecting Lillian’s car to come up the drive. Josh leans down and kisses me on the cheek, leaving a burning imprint there. He crunches across frosted blades of grass to his car. He looks back at me over his shoulder when he gets to it, pulling the collar of his black coat high around his neck. I can’t tell where he ends and the car begins—just shapeless shadows.

  I go inside, the screen door clicking behind me, and stand there until the first rays of sunlight drip into the yard, melting away Josh’s footprints in the frost.

  Carson Tahoe Hospital Reports Rising Incidence of Injuries Caused by Violence

  Carson Athletes to Keep Your Eye On This Spring

  “Hříšná těla, křídla motýlí”: What Does This Mean?

  Seth’s editorial is titled: “Remember Babylonia? Yeah. Me Neither.” He investigates the one-hit-wonder phenomenon, comparing Babylonia’s splash to musical groups like a-ha and Dexy’s Midnight Runners.

  My head is too busy to pay attention to class. Teachers are prepping us for advanced-placement tests this spring. Let the monotony begin. Josh has sent me a thousand text messages, back to his overdrive pace after he probably drank a gallon of espresso. It’s an A-block day. No classes with him or Moch or Mrs. Brooks.

  After school, Josh texts me: Breakfast for dinner? 6:00? IHOP?

  OK.

  He’s waiting for me in the entry, dressed in gray pinstriped pants, a green sweater that looks like it was made to match his eyes, and a soft black leather jacket. “Hey,” he says. “I’m starving.”

  “You look—”

  “Like I’m on my way to Sunday school. My mom’s governor’s mansion tea-party deal.”

  “No. Good.” I’m the female version of Tarzan grunting at Josh. Me Michal. You Josh. Good. “Like, really,” I say, then blush. I feel frumpy in my jeans, boots, and faded T-shirt, and make an extra effort to stand straight.

  “Hey. That’s the first time you’ve ever complimented me. Thanks.” His face lights up, and he smiles a crooked smile, absentmindedly rubbing his bruised lip.

  We follow the waitress to a booth that faces Carson Street. She places a pot of coffee on the table, filling our thick cups first, and takes our order. I watch the stream of cars headed south. The headlights blur together like a glowing string of yellow yarn. “So,” I say, tearing my eyes from the street, turning to Josh. “Do you know where to start?”

  Josh has written a name on a piece of paper and passes it to me. I nod. It’s not a big surprise.

  “Are you ready for this?” Josh asks. “Because there’s no going back.”

  I think about Mrs. Mendez and the communities of people who are treated like trash. I think about Garbage Disposal and la Cordillera and how they only hurt and steal and kill. No purpose. No poetry.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “What else do we need? What are
we missing?” Josh asks.

  “To leave no doubt. So that people won’t wonder why they were targeted. They have to know.” I push gummy pieces of waffle around my plate, then settle on drinking the coffee.

  Josh talks about his family, his clothes, the trips they’ve taken. “Look at this,” he says pointing to his shoes. “Look at all of this.”

  “It’s not like you have to feel guilty because you have stuff. That’s not a crime.”

  “How I got it, though, is.”

  I take out the manifesto I wrote the night before. It’s short. Simple. It leaves no room for interpretation.

  People ask what is the nature of the struggle—who are Babylonia’s targets and why?

  The migrant family is an invisible force. Invisibility has kept them marginalized, living in subhuman conditions. Your employees cannot afford food, shelter, or health—basic human rights. The systematic denial of said rights creates a culture of racism, classism, and fear. It creates a culture of violence and shame, oppression and elitism. The masses remain silent.

  We will not be silent. Babylonia is their voice, their movement.

  Congratulations and welcome to the twenty-first century. Your enlightened stance on modern-day slavery has made you target number one.

  Josh reads it. “This is good.” He takes the last syrupy bite of his pancakes, shoving his plate away.

  I laugh. Nervous. Forced. “Are we really doing this?” I’m getting that same feeling—like when we broke into Mrs. Martinez’s office and Ellison Industries; when we bet on Cuccaro running an insane number of yards; when Josh was going to kiss me. My chest tightens, tummy flutters, the prickly inside feeling like every nerve ending is on fire.

  “We’ll do all the jobs when the people are gone. People have routines. We just need to know the routines and get in and out—twenty minutes. Easy.”