Messenger 93

by Barbara Radecki

  There was a statement below my photo on the police screen, but it was too far off and I couldn’t read the words. The headline above it was clear though, stamped out in bold black font: Missing Teen.

  It had never occurred to me that I would be missing too.

  The old man pointed his gnarled finger from the screen to my face. “Sure looks like you.”

  “No, no,” I said, pulling my hood over my head. “That’s my sister. The one I’m looking for.” I hopped off the bench and hunched my way out of there before he or anyone could say another word.

  THE BOY WAS RUNNING to catch the bus. He was fluid, athletic. Striding down the sidewalk, then leaping from the curb onto the inner step. My arrival was clumsy and stupid — missing the bar on the door and rearing in head-first, plunking down too hard on the step, breath grunting out. But he never turned, didn’t see me.

  I adjusted my hood over my head, hiding my face with my hand when I passed him. I went to the last bench and pretended to look out the window. He stuck earbuds in his ears. The metronome rock of his head in time to some song was mesmerizing. I wondered what the song was. If it was calming him down or ramping him up or making him feel better. If it reminded him of some blissful moment with Jocelyn.

  It was a message, right?

  Reassuring me that I was supposed to be there, behind him, on that bus.

  We’d been cruising for about ten minutes when the boy got up and stood at the exit doors. I jumped up and hung back behind some other passengers. When the doors opened, I stepped out after him.

  We were in a neighborhood famous for its thrift shops. I was tempted to check out the shop windows. Before that day, in another reality, I might’ve been content browsing indie vinyl and waving-cat figurines.

  As he navigated the sidewalk, he kept up a strong, long-legged stride. His overstuffed backpack never slowed him down. The rolled ends of the poster stuck out of the top flap and I remembered Jocelyn’s graceful smiling face. I couldn’t see it because the backpack was strapped over it, but I thought about the fluorescent crow on the back of his hoodie, and how crows were everywhere, leading me.

  He turned a corner and then another and we ended up in a back alley. It was secluded and quiet, and I reared back so he wouldn’t see me, peered around the corner to watch him from the main street. He went halfway down the block, then stopped and looked in through an open back door. After a few seconds’ hesitation — was he nervous? — he ducked in through the door and disappeared from my view.

  I took a deep breath and went after him. There was no sign above the door, which was propped open with a large recycling bin. Behind it, barely lit with one Edison bulb, was a narrow corridor. Its walls were glazed coagulated-blood red.

  I took a tentative step into the gloom. I could hear someone talking, the pulsated echo of words coming at me, garbled and bass, from the far end. Every step I took towards the voice felt like I was getting sucked into a slippery vacuum.

  The hall ended at a soft wall of black velvet curtains. Through the split in the curtains, in the space beyond, small fairy-lights winked from the walls and ceiling.

  The voice was clearer now. A deep voice talking in rhyme. The boy.

  Except he wasn’t talking. And the beat was good. Chills pricked over me. Like someone was hovering fingers over my shoulders and neck.

  I fumbled in the dark for the crooked seam of light and peered through it. There was a small music hall on the other side. The seats in the audience were empty, so it wasn’t a performance, but the boy was performing on a makeshift stage. His tweed cap was balanced on his backpack, which was on the floor beside him. His back was to me, and now I could see his fluorescent crow again. It was staring at me with its ferocious eyes.

  I scanned the shadows and found another person — a man, red bandanna tied around his forehead, long single braid down his back. He was leaning against a wall, listening, his eyes closed, nodding in time to the beat.

  The words to the boy’s song became clear to me.

  You rip me from my home, write words that make it law.

  Call your act a gift. “Don’t ask for more, boy, it’s impossible.”

  I didn’t only hear lyrics. The words appeared, bright and sparking, in front of me.

  I wanna fight you, but you don’t pretend to give a shit.

  Don’t bother to loose your tie. Don’t bother to raise your fists.

  You got other things to do, man, somewhere else to be.

  Why bother working it, it’s liberating to be free.

  I forgot myself. His music, his voice — smooth and sure — slid into my body.

  Still run the race you want.

  Bills only taste you got.

  Cut your nose ‘spite your face.

  Spills your red blood too.

  The ferocious crow on his back challenged me.

  But it’s okay. Yeah, it’s okay.

  You’re not my nation, not my tribe.

  I’m okay, yeah. On my way, yeah.

  Creator never take a bribe.

  The boy stopped and swung his hand as if to say that’s all he had. I wanted to clap and cheer, but I caught myself.

  The man stepped onto the stage. “Pretty good, bro,” he said. “Try shifting the bars, mess up the rhyme. Play around with it. But, hey, it’s a solid start.”

  The boy slumped. “Do you want it though?” He reached into the back pocket of his jeans, pulled out a folded piece of paper, and tried to hand it to the man. “I can let it go for sixty.”

  But the man didn’t take the paper. “I thought you were looking to perform.”

  “No. Selling it.”

  The man softened. “I’m going to say something, and I don’t want you to take this as a sign you should stop doing what you’re doing — But our audience — They aren’t going to listen to your words if you don’t understand them.”

  The boy hung his head. “Yeah, I get it.” His voice was less strong, less certain, now.

  “It’s a journey,” the man said. “Keep talking to people. Keep your ears open. Listening is good. And you can always come back. Door’s always open.”

  The boy scuffled sideways along the stage. He was taking it in, thinking. He looked back at the man. “I can let it go for forty?”

  “Not buying songs, my brother. Not enough money in the game as it is.”

  The boy scuffled the other way. “It’s just — I need to get up to Deerhead … There’s a search going on. For a missing girl ...” His voice trailed off. But then he tried again. “I can let it go for twenty?”

  The man nodded sympathetically and stuck his hand in his jeans’ pocket and pulled out a thin clip of bills. He counted off a twenty and handed it to the kid. A sorry expression shaded his face. “That’s all I can do.”

  The boy hung his head and took the bill. Then he offered the folded paper one more time. “I’m done with the song,” he said, his voice gruff with disappointment. “Give it to someone who needs a place to start.” He hunched into himself as if he thought the man would reject his music again, but the man took the paper and tucked it into his shirt pocket, then laid a fatherly hand on the kid’s shoulder. Without exchanging another word, they grasped hands and shook.

  The boy leaned over to grab his backpack. He adjusted his cap to his head and heaved his bag over his shoulders, then turned to face the back of the room. To face me.

  I launched away from my hiding spot behind the curtains, and flew down the red plastered corridor and out into the bright glare of the deserted alley. I scooted around the corner, and ran all the way to the main intersection.

  Had the boy seen me? Would he consider me a threat?

  There was a small patio outside one of the main street restaurants. I slid into one of their picnic tables and buried my head in my hands and pretended to be waiting for a meal.


  A minute later, a blur caught my eye. I snuck a look. Someone passing by with a black hood pulled over his head like me. Both of us hiding inside our clothing-armor.

  I didn’t need to see the backpack with the Jocelyn poster rolled under the flap or the tweed cap on his head to know it was him. Everything about him was already familiar.

  He didn’t go far, just a few blocks, when he stopped in front of a storefront. He hesitated for a few seconds, so I also hesitated, kneeling down and pretending to tie my bootlace. When he decided to go into the store, I ran to catch up. I could hear the old-style wood and glass door clang to a close.

  I tried to sneak a look inside, but there was so much stuff packed against the window — camo wear, portable chairs, propane cooktops and lanterns — that I couldn’t see a thing. It’s just a store, I told myself, a public space where anyone can go. I took a chance and slipped inside, making sure the chimes on the door didn’t announce me. Dust and mothball fumes filled my nostrils.

  It was an army surplus shop, rows of open metal shelves piled with new and used gear. The boy pulled off his hood, revealing his cap again and the slender stem of his neck. He chose an aisle and headed down it and I faked a casual amble down a parallel aisle, sneaking glances through the open shelving, idly running my hands over tied rolls of sleeping bags and foam mats.

  He was searching for something specific and, soon enough, he stopped at a banged-up cardboard box and rummaged around inside it. At first I couldn’t see what it was, so I eased aside some sleeping bags for a better view.

  Tumbling around in his searching hands was an assortment of loose hunting knives. Straight blades, curved blades, folding blades, holstered blades.

  He picked up a long knife in a battered leather sheath and pulled it out. It was menacingly curved and pointed at the end. He turned it over in his hands, weighed the leather-bound grip, ran a thumb lightly along the edge of the blade. He tried a quick jab, the steel refined enough to glance a pinprick of dull light.

  I recoiled and pulled sleeping bags in front of me and dumped my head into one of the dusty rolls. A fierce dread ignited inside me.

  The boy took the knife to the cash and pulled out the musician’s twenty dollars to pay for it. I need to get up to Deerhead, he’d said to the musician. For a missing girl. He needed the money to save Jocelyn. Not so he could buy a knife.

  The clerk took the bill and counted out change, while the boy turned the blade left then right. He seemed satisfied and pulled up his sleeve and strapped the holster to his left forearm and slid the knife into the holster. He fixed the sleeve of his shirt and then his hoodie over the holster to hide it.

  He was about to leave when he stopped to grab something off a hook above the cash. I squirmed to get a look through the shelving. It was a cheap Halloween mask. It twirled on the end of his finger from its elastic strap, and I could see that it was one of those blank masks, the kind where the face is so nothing it’s aggressively creepy.

  The boy showed the cashier the mask and threw down another dollar to pay for it. Then he thanked the guy and left the store.

  With a knife and a mask.

  Was this the reason the crow had come to me? Was Krista just a ploy to bring me to this person? Was I supposed to stop something bigger, more terrible, from happening?

  Save her, save us all.

  Joan of Arc must’ve turned over in her sacrificial grave. Because I knew then that I couldn’t step in front of a knife. Couldn’t bleed for a greater good. The crow had picked the wrong Messenger.

  “Can I help you?” said a voice behind me. I jumped and righted myself, but refused to look at the salesclerk. “Can I help you find something?” he said more loudly, stepping closer.

  I shook my head and jerked away. I pulled myself along the shelves all the way to the front door where I yanked the knob and escaped into the cool outside air. The door clanged to a close behind me, its chime singing.

  I took off down the sidewalk. I didn’t want to see the boy, but I searched for him anyway.

  He had crossed the street and was heading down the block towards a side alley. The brickwork on the alley’s corner building had been totally painted over with graffiti-style art. Half of it was a giant color mural of cartoon characters — huge-eared mice with silver fangs, sword-wielding cockroaches, bright green tree-men. The other half was a black-and-white clock that was so big, it circled from roof to street-level. Numbers from 100 to 1 counted down beside the clock. Real-life birds — swallows, maybe, swifts, sparrows — flocked in circles in front of the mural. Looped up to the roof of the building and swooped down again.

  I crossed the street, dodging cars in both directions, and gave chase. My brain was running too: I couldn’t let him disappear. I had to have proof he existed. I pulled out the phone, clicked into the camera, and took photo-bursts of him as he walked away.

  He slowed down. Behind him, the flock of birds flew in unison in low figure-eights through the alley. Against the bright mural backdrop, they looked like a spray of emoticons celebrating his arrival. I slowed down too and took another photo-burst.

  I tried to act innocent — casually aiming my camera in subtly different directions. I was just some student snapping alleyway art for a school project.

  It wasn’t until I heard the hydraulic squeal of a bus settling at a stop that I noticed he wasn’t heading down the alley with the mural, but aiming to get on the eastbound.

  The bus’s doors closed, the engine throttled down. I pocketed the phone and ran. But the bus was already pulling away from the curb. I stared hard through the side windows. Bodyless heads in profile. None of them his. The bus passed and gained speed. I fixed on the rear window as it drove away. Only backs of heads. None of them his. He was gone, swallowed by a void.

  I ducked into the alley to catch my breath.

  I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t do it.

  I was leaning against the brickwork, against the mural, the part of it with the wall-sized black-and-white clock. The World Clock, it said. The numbers counting down, 100, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, lined up above my head, 30, 29, 28, 27, going along my body, 12, 11, 10, 9, and down to the curb by my toes, 4, 3, 2, 1. The colorful side with the mice and cockroaches and tree-men was no friendlier. This is our mess, their bubbles read. We will not renew unless we reject anger and follow the immaculate light. THE TRUTH IS HIDDEN INSIDE THE FALLACY. THE TRUTH IS THE WAY.

  The birds were suddenly gone and it was eerily quiet and still.

  The boy took hostage of my mind. His intensely focused eyes, his wired body.

  I tapped into Krista’s phone, into the camera-stream. Had I captured him?

  But he was mostly a blur — my hand had been shaking too much. Quarter-profile, half-profile, three-quarter profile, him against the mural, shifting edge-to-edge in the frame, almost a silhouette. The mural was really the star of each shot. The wall-sized black-and-white World Clock counting down from 100. The maniacal cartoon mice and cockroaches and trees. So many bossy orders on how to be a human.

  The flocks of tiny birds — the swallows or sparrows or whatever they were — were blurred in flight in front of the mural. Their wings erased some letters and numbers in the photos, and framed others. It made the images look surreal.

  Or planned.

  I stared hard at a couple of them. Painted letters, words, a number, stood out between parenthetical smudges of movement. Suddenly I could see actual sentences amid the blurs.

  I almost threw the phone across the street.

  What was happening? Why? Why me?

  My thumb tapped into the browser, then typed in a search command. Me. Because, really, why me? And there I was — an instant result. At the top of the Missing Persons list. That horrible photo.

  Police seek 16-year-old girl. Not seen at home since morning April 12. Last seen April 13, early morning, west-end neighborhood. Jeans, black hood
ed raincoat, black work boots.

  Either Remy had offered up that “last seen” information, and/or that morning’s emergency credit card purchase at the pharmacy had been traced.

  At the bottom of the alert, there was a link to my mom’s profile — a post she’d made public. I clicked on it. The same information, the same photo. But also this: She’s looking for a friend from school! And then a link to Krista’s profile. If anyone has seen either girl, please contact us immediately!

  But here was the unbelievable part: even though they’d only put it up a few hours before, the number of shares on the repost-button was in the hundreds. My parents’ friends, Clio’s friends, Krista’s friends, their friends, friends of friends, strangers, all sharing my story. Even Hattie was in on it.

  The messages underneath were unexpected: I was on a beautiful mission to find my missing friend. I was a hero. I was just a kid. I was a shining star. I needed help. Their hearts were with me. Their thoughts. Their prayers. Their light. This was love.

  I read and re-read and re-re-read every single comment, every post, every share. It was staggering.

  Wait — had I really become Messenger 93?

  Could it be possible? Could I actually help people?

  What if it was true?

  I had never done one good thing in my life. What was I doing every day beyond sleeping and getting up, going to school, eating, hydrating, hiding in my room, listening to music, lamenting my fate, and sketching stick figures into storyboard panels about impossibly luminous worlds?

  What would happen if I found Krista?

  The possibility of bringing her back — clutching her hand, everyone cheering, celebrating — played like a triumphant, tear-jerking movie.

  You must find her. Only you can save her.

  Maybe I was powerful.

  Maybe I could do anything.

  I could be homeless, faceless, genderless.

  Save her, save us all.

  The boy popped into my mind again. Hiding his blank mask and an army surplus knife. Heading somewhere fast.