Blackbird

by Anna Carey

  He closes the door, locks it. He keeps his face to the peephole, forehead resting against the wood. They’re sitting in the car. It takes them a few minutes to start it, to pull away.

  They don’t know anything, Ben reminds himself. They were just checking in. You’re fine; it’s fine. But as he stares out at the empty street his breaths are still shallow. His hands feel numb. Then two questions consume him, one after another:

  Where is she? Where did she go?

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF–NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  WHEN BEN ANSWERS the door the Dodgers game is on in the background. He’s in sweatpants and a T-shirt, his hair messy, as if he’d just rolled out of bed. Behind him, two boys are on the living room couch. They’re scrawny, their chins covered with stubble. One has a backward hat on and acne on his cheeks. The other is rolling a joint. They barely look up.

  Ben’s eyes squeeze shut, as if you’ve just thrown water in his face. Before you can say anything he pulls you away from them, into the dining room, shutting the door behind him. You know it’s better if they don’t see you.

  “Where were you? Do you know the cops are looking for you?”

  “They’ve always been looking for me.”

  Ben shakes his head, points out the front window. “No, they were here. This morning. They came here and wanted to know if you’d called me.”

  “Shit.” You let out a deep breath, thinking of the receipt they found in the backpack. You wanted to warn Ben they might contact him, but after you ran from Officer Alvarez you were trapped on the hillside above Franklin Avenue, police cars trailing the street below. You hid behind someone’s shed, waiting until the streets were clear to make your way back east. All you have now is the notepad, the folded picture of Ivan, and the T-shirt and shorts you’ve been wearing for days. “What did you say?”

  “I said you never called me, which . . . was the right answer? What was I supposed to say?”

  He goes to the front window, looking out on the street. You can’t help but second-guess yourself now. You knew they would call him, but it’s another thing for them to show up asking questions. You’d watched the street before you approached the house. Is it possible you missed a parked car with someone in it? Is there someone outside now, watching?

  He glances over his shoulder, listening to his friends in the other room. “I’m sorry,” you say. “I had nowhere else to go.”

  He looks down at your ripped shorts and sneakers, which are still filthy. Orange dust coats your skin and hair. “Where have you been? Where’s your backpack?”

  “It’s gone.”

  Ben brushes his hair off his forehead and you can tell he’s thinking it through. He sucks in a breath before he speaks. “You left me alone on a beach in Malibu. I woke up and I had no idea what happened to you, I had no idea where you went. Now you’re back . . . because you need somewhere to crash? Is that it?”

  “No, that’s not it.”

  “That’s what you just said. . . .”

  You consider it. There’s no more money, no more supplies—everything you had is gone. But you didn’t have to come here. You walked an extra mile and a half, past a park and a schoolyard you could’ve hid in, kept going even when two police cars pulled onto the street in front of you.

  “I came because I trust you,” you say.

  Ben rests his hand against the doorframe. He stares at the carpet for a few breaths and you wonder if there’s something more you can say. You’re not trying to convince him—it’s the truth.

  After a long silence he opens the door a crack, looking into the hall. Then he points to one of the chairs around the dining table. “Just give me a few minutes to get them out of here.”

  He disappears back into the living room. You sit and wait, listening to the television turn off, to the boys’ quiet, confused questions. It’s not until they’re outside, the door shut behind them, that Ben waves you back in.

  The living room is a mess. The coffee table is covered in potato-chip crumbs and empty Doritos bags. There are a few Red Bull concoctions in glasses, the electric-yellow liquid mixing with half-melted ice cubes. A few plastic containers filled with pot.

  You sit down on the couch, letting the cushions envelope you. Ben moves around you, picking up the empty cans on the floor. A minute passes, maybe two, before he says anything. “Come on, I know you probably don’t want to talk about it, but you have to. You disappeared on me and the next thing I know the cops are at my door. What the hell? What am I supposed to think?”

  You lean in, cradling your head in your hands, not sure if you can bring yourself to do it. If you tell him what happened—today, yesterday, the day before—it makes it more real.

  “I went to the police . . . and they didn’t believe me.”

  The words stop him. “Did you tell them about the man who followed you? And your memory?”

  “Everything,” you say. Much more than I’ve told you.

  “Why didn’t they believe you?”

  Ben is standing there, waiting, wondering how they could possibly turn you away. His eyes are so kind, so willing to see the best in you, that you know you can’t stay here another minute without telling him everything that happened. He deserves to know the danger, to weigh it as you have. You owe him that much.

  You look down as you say it, telling him about the woman with the gun, how Ivan killed her beneath the freeway. About the tracking device and why you needed to leave him that night on the beach. About the house and the man who followed you from the park. You finish with the conclusion you’ve come to, the way you’ve connected the dots. You’re a pawn in some real-life game, a piece of prey, a target to be killed.

  Ben just sits there, staring at a spot behind you, quietly processing everything. After a moment he gets up and starts pacing back and forth behind the couch. Finally he speaks. “So you told the police all of this, and what? They think you just made it up?”

  “They still think I’m responsible for that robbery downtown. They don’t believe me, because they don’t trust me. And they don’t trust me because apparently I have a record. Arson.” You don’t look at him as you say it. “I don’t know all the details. I need your computer. . . .”

  Ben nods, still looking numb. He seems to be glad to be doing something, anything, as he retrieves the laptop from downstairs. He hands it to you without a word. You sit down on the couch, flipping it open, glad to have something to look at other than his shocked, confused face.

  You open up a search and type in Club Xenith, San Francisco. There are five links just on the first page.

  Fire Was Arson, SFPD Says

  Fire at Club Xenith Ruled Arson

  Homeless Teens Might Be Responsible for SF Arson Case

  You immediately go to the third link down, clicking through to an article on the fire. It mentions that it was set with alcohol. A group of teenagers who’d been living in Golden Gate Park are suspected, and a few have been arrested before for thefts around Haight-Ashbury, though no names are mentioned.

  You turn the screen to face Ben, waiting for him to read through it.

  “They knew this,” you say. “The people who are running this thing. They know I have a record, and that’s why they set the fire at the house the way they did. They made it look like some party, knowing that if I went to the police they’d find my record. They’d just assume it was more of the same.”

  You keep staring at the last headline, Homeless Teens Might Be Responsible for SF Arson Case. You’ve been waiting to find out something, anything about yourself, but the relief you thought you’d feel doesn’t come.

  “I’m nobody,” you say. “A homeless teen. No one is looking for me. There’s no family waiting for me at home. Was that why they chose me? They thought they’d kill me, and no one would ever know or care?”

  Ben doesn’t respond.
You can feel his eyes on you, but you can’t look at him, not yet. Just saying it tightens your throat. As you stare at the table, the cans, the crumpled candy wrappers, the room is uncertain through a wash of sudden tears.

  He takes a few steps toward you, sitting beside you on the couch, lowering his head until he’s in your view. “That’s not true. I care.”

  He pulls you to him and it feels so good and easy, your arms wrapping around his shoulders, slinging your legs over his lap. You tilt your chin up toward him, your lips just inches apart. His eyes meet yours. It’s the feeling of falling, the same weightlessness you knew when your feet left the cliff. Nothing you can do can stop it now. His hands are in your hair, slowly slipping down along your jaw.

  Two breaths, then three. His grip tightens. You can feel his body tense, can hear his lungs beneath his ribs, the shortness as he takes in air. In an instant his mouth is right against yours. He kisses you hard, his tongue running along your bottom lip. Then he buries his face in your neck.

  You lie back, stretching out along the length of the couch. He sets himself beside you, one arm resting beneath your head. Your shirt comes off with just a few tugs. Your sports bra peeled up and over. Your skin is exposed. Then you feel his hands on you. They slide up your stomach, lingering for a moment on your ribs.

  Your lips find his. You pull away and he is watching you, letting his gaze drop to your collarbone, to your chest, to your stomach. His hair falls over his forehead, his cheeks are flushed. His mouth on yours, and everything is a reminder that you are here, with him. There’s no where else you want to go.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF–NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  THE BOY IS there, lying beside you, his fingers against your chin. He brushes his thumb over your bottom lip, leaving it there. He studies your features, his brown eyes scanning back and forth, taking everything in.

  Light streams down through the leaves. His upper lip dips in a deep V. He has two tiny beauty marks on his right cheekbone, just below his eye. His forehead is scraped and bruised, but somehow he still looks perfect.

  He moves his thumb away, pressing his lips to yours. At first he kisses you gently, barely touching you as his fingers sweep over your cheekbone, your eyebrow, your hair. He shifts on top of you. His elbows rest on either side of your head and he kisses you again, harder this time, pushing you deeper into the leaves and moss. He is saying something you can’t hear, his words muffled on your skin, lost in your tangled hair.

  You move your hands over his bare back, feeling the muscles above his shoulder blades. You lift your head, stretching toward him, but everywhere you go his lips find you, touching down on your cheeks, your neck. “I won’t let them hurt you,” he whispers. “I can’t lose you.”

  When you meet his gaze his eyes are wet. He pulls you up, into his lap, your legs wrapping around his waist. “I won’t, I can’t,” he says.

  It’s hard to breathe, your mouth on his, your hands holding on to his shoulders, pulling yourself closer.

  When your eyes tear up it’s not because you’re not safe with him, and you never will be. It’s not because you’ll die beneath these trees. It’s because you know now that it doesn’t matter. He is here and he loves you, and because of that you are no longer afraid.

  “He’ll be here soon,” you say. “You have to go, you have to—”

  Someone grabs your shoulder, startling you. The room comes into focus around you. Sunlight floods in through the window as you take in the clutter on the coffee table from the night before.

  “What’s wrong?” Ben asks, leaning over the couch. “You were saying something in your sleep. You looked like you were crying. . . .”

  You rub the tears from your eyes. “What time is it?”

  “Almost noon.” Ben squeezes onto the edge of the couch, resting his hand on yours.

  “What was I saying?”

  “I couldn’t make it out. . . .”

  You sit up, remembering that you’re wearing Ben’s T-shirt and pajama pants. You took a shower late last night, before you went to sleep, and your hair is still damp and tangled in places. “I’m fine; it was just a dream. Give me a minute?”

  Ben kisses you on the forehead, then disappears downstairs. You go to the arm chair in the corner, pulling the notepad from the back pocket of your shorts, a pen that fell on the floor. You fold down a blank page and write.

  - The boy from the island was being hunted

  - The hunter was a man

  You think through the rest of the dream, trying to decipher the details of it, if there was anything identifying about the flowers or the trees, anything to help you know where or when it was. But nothing stands out. The boy was the most vivid thing there.

  You flip back to the pages before, where you’ve written every detail of your encounter with the man with the gun. You’ve copied down the symbol from the liquor bottle. Saint Eustace, one of the patron saints of hunters. Ivan’s photo is tucked beside it, now fogged with fingerprints. You stare at it, hoping he’s still alive. When you set the trap you didn’t know who he was or what he wanted. You didn’t know what would happen next. You know he’s in danger, you’re certain he is, but how can you help him?

  As you search back through the notes on the house, you think again of the room. The tarps, the ladders, the boxes with the logo on the side. An image flashes across your brain. You grab Ben’s laptop where you left it last night and type in Parillo Construction, pulling up an address. It’s less than a half hour away.

  Downstairs, Ben is hovering over one of the pinball machines. He leans in, pressing the buttons on the sides.

  “Have to keep my high score up; you’re inching closer,” he says.

  “I only played a few times.”

  “I know . . . you’re that good.” He smiles, and you know he’s trying to lighten the mood. You lean on the edge of the machine as the ball shoots up and around.

  “I need to borrow your car.”

  “What? Where are you going?”

  “I just realized that I didn’t tell the police everything. There were these construction materials I saw at the house, and they had a logo on them. I can explain it all later.”

  “Okay,” Ben says. His voice sounds breezy enough, but his hands drop to his sides.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll be careful.”

  Ben just laughs as he goes to get his keys. He holds them in his hand, staring at them. You’re waiting for him to pass them over when he finally speaks. “You really think I’m handing my car over to a known criminal?”

  You can’t help the smile that fights its way to the corner of your lips. For the first time, you feel less alone. But you force yourself to shake your head. “That’s a really bad idea, Ben.”

  “Look, you’re going to need someone there to call the police if someone comes after you again, or to—”

  “The police don’t care, Ben.”

  He closes his fingers around the key chain, hiding it. He just stands there, waiting for you to say something. You know it’s a terrible idea. It’s wrong to let him get any more involved than he already is.

  “Fine,” you say. “I guess that means I’m shotgun.”

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF–NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  THE STREET IS a mix of rundown bungalows, strip malls, and empty lots. As you approach the address listed for Parillo Construction, you scan the sidewalk, looking for anything that seems unusual. There’s not a single person outside. The heat is already too intense, the pavement black and burning.

  Ben pulls to the curb. The building is gray and squat, with five garage doors in a row. There’s no sign, and the front window is scratched with graffiti, the glass foggy and gray.

  Ben plucks
the piece of paper from your hand, checking the numbers you’ve written with the numbers on the front of the building. It’s the place.

  “You shouldn’t park here. Keep going—past that tree.” You point straight ahead, to where a few bushes and trees block the view from the office. The car rolls forward, then Ben throws it in park. He’s reaching for the door handle when you grab his wrist.

  “Wait here for me,” you say. “It’ll be easier if there’s only one of us.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Please, Ben. You’re already in this too deep.” You get out of the car and walk away, hoping he won’t follow you in.

  You keep your head down as you approach the building from the side, aware of the front window, knowing that they can’t see you. There’s a security camera on one corner of the roof but it points down and away, toward the front door. You don’t bother with the office. Instead you circle around back.

  There’s a man moving boxes off a truck. He spots you just as you turn the corner, and he immediately drops the crate he’s holding, coming toward you in a few quick steps. He’s not much taller than you. He’s covered neck to wrist in tattoos. You look to his waist, his hip, but as far as you can see he’s unarmed.

  You glance down, pretending to read off the paper. “I was looking for Parillo Construction. Is this it? My cousin told me about you guys and I need someone to repair my—”

  “We’re not taking on any new jobs.”

  The man takes another step, blocking you off. Behind him you can see the first garage door is open six inches. It’s not locked.

  The crates beside the truck are taped shut. You can’t make out any writing on the side and he keeps watching, waiting for you to leave. “I’m sorry, this isn’t Parillo? Do you do construction?”