Maybe all of the above.
I sneak into our house around two a.m. and find my mom asleep in front of the late-night news with our dog at her feet. The television is sending flickering rays across her face, illuminating the open spaces between her thick swatches of dark wavy hair. I catch the glint of her tiny nose ring. Here she is, ladies and gentlemen, the most hip and tragic forty-five-year-old woman you’ll ever meet. Strangely, she looks more like me when her hair is wild like this, a little dirty and in need of washing, or maybe I look more like her. She once held my face between her hands, scrutinizing me, before calling it raw grunge meets feminine. The description wasn’t meant as an insult. My mom sees everyone and everything through an artistic eye. That’s the one intangible thing she’ll never lose.
I leave my backpack on a kitchen chair and glance around for hints of what she’s been up to while I was gone. There’s no sign of Special Agent Blake Jones having made his presence known tonight, just page after page of charcoal drawings laid side by side. The gigantic rectangular bowels of whatever dystopian creature inhabited the world inside her head. Her three-point perspective is masterful. I couldn’t do it. I’m a street artist and don’t have her chops or her training, but that’s not the point. The point is the walls in her art studio are covered with obsessive drawings. There’s not an inch of bare wall space left in the room. For a while I was worried she might paper over the windows and block out all signs of life in there. Not unlike the post-apocalyptic subject matter she’s been drawing for the past year.
That’s the one room in our house Jonesy hasn’t seen in the five years they’ve been dating. Mom calls her studio off-limits, but it’s more like off the wall. I wonder what he’d make of her overlapping scenes of military personnel, mass destruction, and strange, eradicated landscapes. Maybe nothing at all, since they’re in alignment with the threat of nuclear attacks being spewed on television for all to see by the current POTUS that struts and frets his hour upon the stage. The fact that he’s actually in office is often harder to accept than the potential nightmares we can all see brewing, told by an idiot full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing.
Thank you, Macbeth. I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Mom’s artwork these days is nothing like the colorful, Shakespeare-inspired paintings that once paid our bills and got her into galleries in New York, Los Angeles, London, scoring her interviews with prestigious art reviewers. I doubt it ever will again. That work was inspired by how she imagined her children might look when grown, playing out Shakespearean scenes in today’s modern but equally tragic and laughable world. At least, that’s what she said during old interviews when she was Evie Ellis, rising artist. She hasn’t made a sale in years yet still persists like a woman possessed. Searching for the same truth through her art as me.
The aluminum take-out tray I brought home from Nikko’s, where I work double shifts to help pay the monthly bills, sits untouched on the TV tray next to the couch. Moussaka is her favorite. She must have been in a hard trance tonight if she didn’t touch a bite. One of her arms hangs over the edge of the couch. Smudged like a coal miner’s, her fingers are covered to the second knuckle with charcoal dust, like she went digging for something that will explain how her life became upended, but failed and was too tired to wash away the effort. Today must have been a bad-memory day.
I study my own spray-paint-saturated forefinger and puff out a breath of awareness through my nose. We’re not so different on the inside, either, she and I.
“I should have stayed home,” she murmurs in her sleep.
That’s true.
“Toby should have stayed home, too.”
Also true. I’m no doctor to Lady Macbeth, but he nailed it when he said, Infected minds to their deaf pillow will discharge their secrets.
I let her sleep, let her admit our guilty truth in her dreams, while I head to the kitchen. I pull out my phone and review my photo of the message I threw up on a wall across from the police station. Location is everything. Call it vandalism if you like. I don’t care. You deal with your shit your way and I’ll deal with mine.
The message is loud and clear for all parties involved. YOU NEED TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE. I use stencils that I make at home with an X-Acto knife. Occasionally, I’ll echo something my mom drew and cut that into the mix, especially when she draws badass teenage girls. I tag everything with the nickname I had as a kid and put it up using this extended Pigpen cipher my best friend Sebastian and I learned when we were seven. If Jonesy isn’t a good enough detective to figure out who’s tagging the buildings around the police station, I can’t help him any more than he’s been able to help us.
My phone pings with a text from Bash, giving me props on the work I did tonight—a girl in a bulletproof vest pointing a rifle at the viewer with the message coming through the barrel. He must have seen it on his way home from his job at The Chicken Coop. This piece is definitely one of my favorites. I appreciate his praise. But whenever I return from tagging a building, deep-rooted feelings churn my gut for a few hours, and I don’t want to talk to anyone. Not even Bash. My mom is the same way, switching between wanting complete solitude and needing company, depending on her mood. Bash accepts this about me and doesn’t take offense. Good thing, because otherwise I wouldn’t have any friends. I grab a soda from the fridge, take the moussaka Mom didn’t eat for myself, and open my laptop. It’s not the first time I’ve poached her uneaten dinner and I’m sure it won’t be the last.
My phone pings again.
Are you working the dinner shift tomorrow night? Wanna meet up and trade?
Bash means trade dinners. Free food is a perk of working at a restaurant. Sometimes we trade, my Greek for his gourmet fried chicken. This might be hard to believe, but you can get sick of eating either one of those things if you eat it often enough. Bash gets sick of his faster than me because Nikko’s has a broader menu selection. Right now, I have a different choice to make. I can keep ignoring him and get aggravated by the next series of pings, or answer quickly. A therapist once told me childhood amnesia stops at age seven. Every memory prior is blank. Everything after is up for total recall. Lucky me. Bash has been my best friend since third grade. He’s been through everything with me that matters. I don’t know what I’d do without him.
I type, Yeah. OK, on the food trading thing and wait for his response.
Cool. Cool. Get me the deluxe gyro plate if your douchey manager with the signet ring doesn’t object.
That makes me laugh. Stavros isn’t a douche. He just keeps a close eye on profit margins and doesn’t allow our friends to loiter. He likes me because I’m Greek and pronounce the menu items correctly. Like year-oh with a rolled R, the way it’s supposed to sound. Not gyro, like gyroscope, or hero, even though the pita-wrapped sandwich is our bestseller and worthy of a gold medal.
The animated dots tell me Bash is typing. I turn off my phone and do the same thing I do most nights, contemplate whether or not to look for my sisters. I always come to the same conclusion, and within seconds I’m searching for pictures of Cassandra online. Because not only do I like to spray-paint graffiti on brick walls, I like to bang my head against them, too.
ASAP
AS SOON AS POSSIBLE
I STOP DEAD in the air shaft when I pick up a metallic thump-thump-thump heading straight for me. For a second, I think it’s my own echo, only it keeps clanging. There’s no way it’s the scurry of a rodent or anything smaller than me because the steady movement is too loud. My heart matches the beat as I wait for who or whatever is responsible for the noise to materialize. Someone escaping the situation just like me, preferably from my own coalition. But if it’s not, I have a simple you-got-busted plan ready. Play dumb and fearful of whatever situation is taking place.
I just got scared, Principal Weaver.
I wanted to be with my sisters. We’re very close and my mother told me watching out for them has to be my top priority.
I suppose that’s more o
f a plea than a plan.
Truthfully, I am scared for my sisters’ safety, because that did sound like gunfire. And we are very close.
The thumping grows quieter, moving away from me. I keep crawling forward. I’ve lost thirty seconds or more. Less than a full minute, but that amount of time moves like pond water when you’re on your belly in a steamy air shaft waiting to find out what’s going on.
I exhale when I spot Ansel thirty feet ahead of me, ready to drop into a classroom.
“Ansel,” I whisper-yell his name, but he doesn’t flinch.
He must not have heard me. It’s not like I can shout, Hey! What’s going on out there? I can’t risk giving up my position, not even for someone I consider a friend. Just a friend, despite what Birdie says about him.
The second he drops from the shaft, I crawl faster to see where he’s headed, ignoring the sharp pain in my knee. It’s a supply closet. As good a meet-up point as any, maybe better than mine. I’m surprised he didn’t screw the vent cover back in place. That’s sloppy work and not like him, at least from what I’ve seen during training modules. Then again, those have all taken place on the compound.
I poke my head through the opening like an upside-down gopher and say his name louder. This time he glances up, eyes shadowed by spidery lashes. His normally readable expression is completely blank. He shakes his head, telling me no, and splits.
I hear the door to the closet open and close as I whisper-shout his name again. Was he holding bolt cutters? He didn’t raise one caterpillar-thick brow or bat a green eye before taking off. We all have our own protocols to follow. Maybe he heard someone coming and couldn’t stop. I can’t waste any more time guessing and risk getting caught.
I’m above the vestibule that connects the academic building to the gymnasium within a hundred feet, the vent cover left open for me. My sisters are probably waiting, wondering why I’m late. I can see it now, Birdie with her arms crossed and Blue chewing the end of her hair. I crawl past the opening and lower myself into the void, feet first. Once I’m dangling and supported by my forearms, I stretch one arm out for my EDC, resettle, and throw it down. I take a nice deep breath before dropping lower, hanging five feet above the floor by my hands before I let go and land less than gracefully next to Blue. She’s wearing her Kevlar vest. Seeing it makes my thoughts fly to Birdie’s typical comment this morning.
“You’re bleeding,” Blue says, staring at my knee.
I pull on my matching Kevlar vest. “I’m fine. It’s a surface wound.”
“That’s more than surface.”
I shrug it off. My knee is the least of our problems. “Those sounded a lot like gunshots. Where the hell is Birdie? Her classroom is the closest one to this meet-up point.”
“She’s hiding,” Blue says matter-of-factly.
“What? Why? What makes you say that?”
“I just know. If Birdie’s not here, she’s hiding.”
My youngest sister is weird. Let me just put that out there. There’s no denying that fact. I don’t particularly like when people refer to us as those weird Juniper sisters, but when Blue spouts her opinion, it’s always absolute. There’s never a maybe or perhaps or possibly. I used to think she was a know-it-all when we were younger, but I’ve learned to trust her. She has a stronger gut response to situations than anyone I’ve ever met. If Blue thinks Birdie is hiding, she’s probably right. It still sends a sinker into the pit of my stomach. But dreadful thoughts of Birdie being hurt or worse will only incapacitate us.
We need to change our plan, but not the goal. Meet up, confirm everyone’s intel, assess, and move out. Fast.
“We can’t wait around,” I tell Blue. “We have to find Birdie ASAP.”
This is one of many situations where having more than one cellphone among the three of us would be helpful, but we have to share. It’s for us to call home only, and it was Birdie’s turn to carry it. In the event of an EMP, the electromagnetic pulse would render cellphones useless anyway, so we train to get by without the conveniences most people take for granted. That’s why we prepare plans for different situations.
“Come on,” I tell Blue. “Let’s cut through the gymnasium. Maybe her teacher made it too hard for her to leave. You know how Ms. Pennick can be.”
Pen-cap, as everyone calls her, is the worst pseudo drill sergeant in the history of physical education. I bet she’s never run a mile for time in her life. That doesn’t stop her from loving two things above all else: her stopwatch and calling out kids with a crappy mile time. We aren’t those kids. Ever. We’re the well-under-ten-minute milers. The ones coaches are desperate to have on teams we’ll never join. Team Survival. The Nest. Those are our only affiliations.
“Did Birdie mention what they were doing in her PE class today?” I ask Blue. “Maybe they were outside on the field.”
“She was too focused on finding her EDC to talk about anything else.”
“True. Come on, then.” I grab Blue’s arm and she steps into a jog beside me.
The gymnasium is completely empty when we get there, save for the sweaty stench lingering like a million scent ghosts. We’re halfway across the basketball court when we hear, “Go in! I’ll flank you.”
Blue stops short beside me and one of her Converse squeaks on the high-gloss basketball court, making us cringe. We duck under the bleachers right as the wide double doors open. A portly town cop with gray hair and a mustache enters, followed closely by a younger, slender version of himself. It’s our luck that two out of the six cops we have in this tiny town walked into the gym at the same moment as us.
Blue and I lie as flat as possible under the center bleachers. Tucked deep enough we’re out of sight if we don’t move. I’ve had my fill of cramped, smelly spaces, but there was nowhere else to hide. It stinks under here like chewed gum and sweaty socks. I hold my breath to get a few seconds’ break.
“All clear,” the younger cops yells, his bowstring-tight voice ringing louder than necessary, tainted with the fear of inexperience. “I think the incident was contained to the roof and the west parking lot.”
“Stupid fucking kids,” the older one replies. “Let’s check out a few hallways.”
The walkie clipped to one of their shoulders crackles, allowing an authoritative woman to enter their conversation. “Circle around to the front. We caught one of them and have the point of origin.”
My immediate thought is it could be any number of stupid fucking kids in this Podunk town. As long as it’s not anyone from our group, we’re good. Blue’s eyes widen, but she remains motionless. If she lifts her head, her shock of cobalt hair will give away our position. She knows better than to move, but the spacey look in her eyes tells me one of her Blue-isms is bubbling in her brain.
“Roger that.” Cop One tsks at his partner. “If these kids think this kind of thing is a joke, they’re in for a rude awakening.”
I spread my fingers to indicate five minutes. The approximate amount of time I think we should wait before going to find Birdie. The cops should, if protocol is followed, be checking all the classrooms. And when they survey ours, each class will be short one student with the last name Juniper. Not to mention if one of these cops realizes it’s faster to circle back and cut to the front the way they came in, we’re screwed. Backpacks, cargos, and Kevlar usually make a statement that begs people to assume the worst and ask questions later.
Waiting the full five minutes in silence, though, is another story. I can literally hear my eyelids click when I blink. Have you ever watched water boil? It takes forever. I stare at my watch and try not to get hypnotized by the second hand. When it finally ticks the last second, I’m the first one up and ready.
“Where do you think she is? I saw your face when those cops said they caught someone.”
“In the locker room,” Blue says.
Locker room it is.
Of course, she’s right. We find Birdie pacing in front of a row of porcelain sinks that have been cracked and stained
from years of abuse and clandestine smoking. She’s chewing her nails, looking like she could use a smoke herself. Not that any of us smokes, even though we stockpile tobacco in case we need to use it in trade when money becomes useless. Birdie’s thick bangs are sticking straight up like she’s been running her fingers through them, her wavy, jaw-length bob frizzy from the misty weather.
When she sees it’s just us walking in she sighs, “Oh Jesus,” like we scared her. “You found me.”
“Of course we did,” Blue says. She glances around the floor and under the benches. “Where’s your EDC?”
I was about to ask the same thing. Birdie is never without her bag. She was frantic for it this morning, which might account for her disheveled state.
Birdie shakes her head. “I … I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?” I snip. “We always have them with us at school, so where the fuck is it, Birdie? You know you had our cellphone, right?”
“Swearing won’t help,” Blue says to me. “There’s something wrong with her.”
“Yeah. She’s been acting like a selfish jerk since she took up with Daniel Dobbs.”
There is something else off about our middle sister, if I’m being honest. I’m just too short on patience at the moment to care.
Birdie slumps down a tiled wall until she’s sitting knees up to her chin on the grimy floor. The flyer for the school musical she scraped off the wall sails to her feet. The Taming of the Shrew.
Blue crouches next to her. “What happened? Why didn’t you meet us at our spot?”
Birdie grabs small fistfuls of hair on both sides of her head and repeats herself, staring straight into our younger sister’s eyes. “I seriously don’t know. I think I panicked and blocked it all out. Like right before a car accident. They say people can black out before impact.”
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