Messenger 93

by Barbara Radecki

The old people at the police station had told me where to find him: Today at two. The march for missing girls.

  Krista’s message had told Boyd where to meet her: Owl, Fri at 2.

  The City Hall statue. Celebrate Your Fears. My stupid name for it.

  The old man saying, I guess you gotta go.

  The next eastbound bus rolled up. Adrenalin pumped through me so hard, I half-expected to lift off the ground and gain flight. The door squealed open and I stepped up.

  Messenger 93. Follow him. HE IS THE FALL. HE IS THE WAY.

  4

  I ENTERED THE WIDE plaza in front of City Hall and looked around for the statue. A giant screen blinked at me from the far side. Its digital display of announcements and ads flashed obnoxiously — new cars, stale TV shows, supposedly exciting upcoming events. But the blinking lights also illuminated the owl, its bronze shape, its flared wings. Celebrate Your Fellows.

  I bought a grilled cheese and a bag of chips from one of the food trucks and ate on a bench behind a row of potted cedars so I could hide and watch the owl at the same time. It was noon — still a while before the march was supposed to start. I hoped the boy would arrive early so that I could —

  I had no idea what I was going to do with him.

  I was going to wait and see. Literally.

  It was a warm day and the plaza was full of people coming and going. Tourists, shoppers, suited business types. They crossed the square, or sat around eating takeout, or skateboarded over concrete slabs, or threw coins into the long reflecting pool.

  Time disintegrated as I watched them. A force inside me radiated. Everything was brighter. Colors popped. Edges sharpened. I could imagine their lives, their secrets. I could see them being sent on their own missions by their own crows.

  I had no memory of ever feeling that way before. No name for it — whatever it was.

  It felt almost as if — as if I loved everyone. Like the possibility of saving one of them, any of them, all of them, made each person suddenly and intensely real.

  And then it was two o’clock. Time was back, and now it was ticking down with cold determination.

  I noticed that people had begun to gather for the march. Like the boy, they were holding signs and placards scrawled with messages over photos of women’s faces: Where Are Our Women? Too many missing girls! A lot of posters were only names — long lists of names. Tara. Polly. Catherine. Regina. Rita. Leanne. Francis. Glenda. Too many names.

  The dizziness inside me fell away and was gone. I braced myself and focused hard on finding the boy. Something was going to happen. I had to be ready for it.

  More and more people arrived and crowded together. Some of them started to call out, “Save our lives!” “Find our sisters!” They brought out instruments and played music — drumming, jingling, singing, chanting. It was sad, but also powerfully beautiful.

  There were suddenly hundreds of people in the square — almost like a gate had been opened — all of them rallying together, crying out, chanting. A bunch of people linked arms and started to dance around the reflecting pool. Everyone wanted to join the loop, so hands unlatched and re-latched and soon they were circling the whole center of the square.

  Police officers arrived and gathered in small groups off to the sides. I pulled up my hood and tucked close to a group of tourists so I could keep an eye on the area around the owl. When there were too many people for clear sightlines, I struggled through the crowd to get closer. Placards stabbed the spaces around me. Calls and chants echoed in my ears. Tourists and suits blocked my way as they stopped to watch.

  Then I saw him. Standing apart from the crowd. In front of a potted cedar, outside the circle of dancers. Tweed cap, black hoodie, over-stuffed backpack strapped to his back. A knife holstered underneath his sleeve.

  He took his backpack off and slid the rolled poster out so he could root inside. When he stood up again, the mask he’d bought at the surplus store was dangling from his finger. He adjusted the mask under his cap, over his face.

  A white faceless mask hiding his identity.

  He unfurled the poster board and raised it high over his head, directing it at the crowd like he’d done at the police station. Showing his girl to everyone: Have you seen Jocelyn? Missing for 27 days.

  He turned to face my way. I don’t know if it was my imagination but the mask’s eyes seemed to find me through the crowd. Seemed to stare directly at me. Danger rose like a demon and howled at me. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.

  Something terrible was going to happen.

  There were so many people in the square. Old people, young people, some in wheelchairs, some hobbling on canes. Little kids holding their parents’ hands, babies being pushed in strollers. A lot of them had joined the large ring flowing in one direction around the pool. Drummers and singers underscored the shuffled steps. All of them too small, too defenseless. They had to be saved.

  I girded myself and went after the boy, drawn to him like a zombie to brains.

  The ring of dancers blocked my way, streaming past me, an elastic wall that I couldn’t join. I skirted them, pushed past the owl, past the giant screen, through crowds of advocates and onlookers, moving as fast as I could.

  On the opposite side of the square, the boy moved away from the potted cedar and trailed behind the circle dancers. He was jabbing the Jocelyn sign over his head in time to the drumbeat. No one seemed to notice him. Even though he looked packaged, packed with aggression. A guy in a mask, carrying an overstuffed backpack.

  Someone had to stop him from doing what he came here to do.

  It swarmed me in a cathartic rush: HE IS THE FALL. I was Joan of Arc. Driven by purpose. Protected by armor. Marching into battle. I was doing what I was called to do.

  The force of knowing drove me forward. I wound around bystanders, focused only on him. But the boy was moving farther and farther away from me, sidestepping behind the circle dancers. Soon the crowd was just a blur and he was a flashing signal light.

  I charged forwards, gaining on him. And then I was behind him, and his backpack was the only thing between us.

  My hand was twitching to reach out, to yank him away from the others. To make itself known to him.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off the back of his head. The way the tweed cap fit around it. The short, ordered hairs outlining his skull. The sharp rim of the plastic mask against his cheek. The curve of his ear, the ear I could see as I walked on his right side.

  I jerked forward to catch his arm. Jerked back to stop myself.

  Below his ear, there was a tattoo: a hyper-delicate feather inked onto his neck. Each teeny barb along the vane had its own style — stiff or soft or spent. A crow, the old people had said at the station. Dropped a feather on his neck. I had a feather too, found in my room and secured inside the back pocket of my jeans.

  The longer I stared at it — the fineness, the sweetness, of that tattoo — the more everything changed. It was as if the feather was threading inside my mouth to latch onto something beating and vital. I didn’t understand what it meant. But I spoke. “Don’t do it.”

  His head twitched in my direction and away again, as if he’d heard then dismissed me.

  I moved in closer as we stepped in time behind the circle dancers. I put my mouth as close to his ear as I could without making contact. My heart was beating incredibly fast, my breath tight and shallow enough to almost strangle me. “Don’t do it,” I said as firmly as I could.

  This time he pulled away from the circle and rounded towards me. The hardness of the mask’s plastic features and empty expression was terrifying. I lurched back.

  “Who’re you talking to?” His voice was muffled by the mask.

  I didn’t want to cause panic in the crowd — unreasonably polite while defending humanity.

  “I’m talking to you,” I said. “Please don’t do it.”

>   He stepped towards me and I stepped back.

  “Don’t do what?” He took another step towards me and I stepped back again.

  Joan of Arc disappeared. I was myself again — pitiful and pathetic. A target.

  He took another step and another, and so did I. We kept taking more and more steps away from the crowd, somehow avoiding demonstrators, somehow moving farther and farther into obscurity. I tried to steel myself as we moved, tried to measure where the closest cops were, tested my resolve about getting — or not getting — their attention.

  “I saw you buy the knife.” I made my voice husky with defiance. “It’s strapped to your arm.”

  In an instant, his forearm was pressed against my chest and he was pushing me backwards. I didn’t cry out. Didn’t scream or fight him. I’d always imagined I’d be a model victim — I’d yell and flail loudly enough to get people’s attention. Or the adrenalin rush would fill me with super-human strength. Or exactly the right words would come so I could change my attacker’s mind: “There are cameras everywhere.” “I’m sorry the world has hurt you.” “My ghost will haunt you till your dying day.” But nothing. I was a bug under his heel and all I could do was watch my own death in horrified silence.

  “You’re following me?” He was still pushing me and I was throttling backwards, all the way to City Hall. My back came up hard against the concrete wall. I gasped for breath. “Why are you following me?” His voice was muffled but audible. “Who are you?”

  An answer came out of my mouth before I could stop it. “I’m Messenger 93, and I have to stop you from bringing harm to these people.” Even as I said it, I cringed. Had I stepped out of my brother’s manga?

  “Messenger 93?” he repeated.

  I didn’t know where to look — the mask was too creepy and lifeless.

  He dropped his arm from my chest. “What harm am I bringing to these people?”

  “The knife. The backpack. I have to stop you. That’s all I know.”

  “My backpack?”

  I felt suddenly sick. I tried to look into the holes that hid his eyes, but I couldn’t see through them. What had I done?

  He laid the poster on the ground and pulled off his backpack. Jocelyn stared up at me, her features distilled in black and white on printer paper. Wide eyes, sweet smile, a dimple in one cheek. A better person.

  “I seriously gotta do this for you?” He unzipped the backpack and tugged the sides open, jerking the nylon flaps a couple of times for effect.

  I could’ve run then. There was nothing stopping me. But I looked inside the unzipped parts. Compact bagged tent and sleeping bag, rolled clothes, packs of freeze-dried food. For the first time I noticed water canteens in both side pockets. Camping equipment.

  “But the knife.” At the store, in his hands, it had looked like a weapon.

  He was zipping the bag closed again, quietly grunting because too much was in it and the teeth would barely join. A tiny droplet of sweat trickled from under his cap and trailed the edge of the mask. “The knife is for the woods,” he said. “For food.”

  Of course you’d need a knife for camping, for food.

  Shame burned me up. He was just a kid, worried and searching for someone who meant something to him.

  What had I done? What had I done?

  And how did I look coming at him? Wound up, aggressive, hiding inside my hood?

  I bent to pick up his Jocelyn poster — it seemed rude to leave her lying on the dirty pavement. I brushed my hand across her face.

  “Can I go now?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but heaved the backpack over his shoulders, grabbed the Jocelyn poster from me, and trudged away.

  I could’ve left then, forgotten all about him. But I ran after him. “I’m sorry!” He kept striding away. “You have to believe me!” He didn’t have to believe me. Of course, he didn’t have to believe me.

  He was heading back towards the circle dancers and the crowds around them, waving the Jocelyn poster in the air. Calling out from behind his mask. “Has anyone seen this girl? Help us find Jocelyn!” But we were in a pretty empty part of the square, not close to the advocates, and it made him stand out. People started sizing him up — the backpack, the mask. A few of them exchanged whispered comments. A woman clutched a small child to her legs.

  “Have you seen this girl?” His voice shouted louder. “Has anyone seen her?”

  Suddenly a dark blur scooted past me and landed on him. It was a short bleached-blond woman wearing a dark, too-tight suit with a security badge stitched to one sleeve. She yanked the boy by the arm. “What the hell are you doing?” she yelled at him.

  He didn’t resist her like he had me. He stood obediently in the spot she’d chosen and tilted his head down to see her through the mask.

  She jabbed her finger at him. “Take that thing off right now.”

  He did as she asked. The mask dangled by its elastic from his neck. Even from where I stood, I could see sweat droplets on his cheeks and across the bridge of his nose.

  “You trying to get yourself shot?!”

  “No, ma’am.” He was composed. Careful.

  “So why the hell you wearing that?”

  “For the invisible girls who disappear off our streets every day. If they’re nobody, I’m nobody.”

  Oh, I thought, sinking deeper into myself. Right.

  “Sweet Jesus,” the security guard said. She switched back to attack-mode. “Get out of here.”

  The boy didn’t get agitated like he had with Detective Stanzi. He stood tall. “But I’m taking part in the march. It’s my right.”

  “So get rid of that mask and stop showboating.”

  “I have a right to look for this girl.”

  “You have no right to harass people.”

  “I’m not harassing anyone.” He showed her his sign. “I’m looking for her.” Photocopied Jocelyn stared angelically from the poster board. “Have you ever seen her down here?”

  “You back-talk me one more time and I’m calling the cops.”

  “I’m not back-talking you. I’m asking if you’ve ever seen this girl.” He aimed the sign at her.

  The woman swatted the sign away. “We’re not babysitters.”

  “A missing girl, ma’am. She needs our help.”

  “That’s it.” The woman wheeled around and pulled out her cellphone. She shoved it in his face and held it there. She wasn’t calling anyone — she was diminishing him.

  “Okay, okay.” He stuck the Jocelyn poster under his arm and held up his hands. Their standoff lasted long enough for me to wonder if I should do something. Run over and tackle the woman. Order her to properly look at Jocelyn’s face. I wanted to scream at her to pay attention to Jocelyn.

  The boy eyed the guard for another moment, then turned and walked away. She marched off too, probably looking for someone else to harass. But the boy was heading straight towards me. At first it was obviously an accidental direction choice — until his eyes met mine through the crowd. Then he narrowed in.

  I didn’t run away. I wanted to talk to him. Wanted to have his attention, even if it was full of rightful loathing. I pulled off my hood, loosened my hair, smoothed it over my shoulders.

  “Is it you who called the dogs on me?” he shouted.

  “No, no, I swear!” I waved my hands in surrender as he charged up to me. “I’m sorry. It was a mistake what I said to you.”

  He stopped. He was only a few feet away. His skin was in touching distance, warm and pulsing. His intent, shining eyes looked at me. Interstellar planets.

  “Are you undercover or something?”

  A burst of laughter escaped me. “No.” And it was gone. “It’s because — It’s because I’m looking for a missing girl too.”

  He used his sleeve to wipe the crystalline beads of sweat from his hairline. “Who is she
to you, the girl you’re looking for?”

  It was too complicated. Too weird.

  Also, I was missing. So I couldn’t be me.

  I blurted the same lie I’d told the old people at the precinct. “She’s my sister.”

  “Your sister.” His body, the muscles of his face, shifted the slightest bit. “She’s been gone how long?”

  “Two days. Since Wednesday.”

  “And you’re following me because you think I had something to do with it?”

  “No!” I almost put my hand on his arm.

  “You’re following me because you think you’re this Messenger 93 and you had a vision that I was going to blow up the crowd?” His eyes were penetrating. “With my camping gear?”

  I looked down at Jocelyn’s black-and-white face. She was still smiling.

  “Or what? That I was going to pull out this shitty knife and stab everyone?” He lifted his sleeve and flashed the holster at me. “And you’re part of some magical plan where you’re supposed to save everyone from me? That by stopping me, you win your sister back?”

  “No!” I couldn’t look at him. “No I —”

  A crow on his back. A feather on his neck. The birds in the alley. Eddie’s little R-less voice, The bird wants you to go, the black bird said the boy will help you. HE IS THE WAY.

  I tried again. “I came after you because you’re looking for Jocelyn and — And there might be a connection.”

  His eyes widened. “A connection? Between Jocelyn and your sister?” He looked at me as if he wasn’t sure he’d heard right. “You know Jocelyn?”

  “No,” I said, confused. I’d forgotten how I’d gotten us to this point. Him, the crowds, messages on murals, they were messing with my head. “But there might be a connection — There might be.”

  “Really?” Hopeful expectation opened his expression. “What is it?” He looked so young at that moment. Like I could see him as a little boy. I could see us playing in a park, on a seesaw, swinging our legs, laughing at each other, not a care in the world.

  But I had to give him an answer. What connection? A good answer. A rational one.