Compromised (23 page)

I
wait, hugging the bag tighter, afraid to go through it.

No heat comes from the sun. A bitter chill settles in.

I wait.

An ambulance arrives. The EMT wears thick gloves and a hat. He takes his hat off for a second and whispers something under his breath, making the sign of the cross, then gently cradles Klon in his arms, laying him on the gurney.

The other EMT, a woman, touches Klon's forehead and sighs, shaking her head.

I feel better knowing they care. Klon isn't just another statistic to them. He's a kid. I want to go to them. Maybe they can help me, give me something for this throat. Maybe
they'll help me find Nicole.

But I know they can't. I'll be swept away to some shelter, pumped with medication, and given a bed to sleep in. And I'll sleep. For days. They'll tell me they're looking for Nicole, but they won't find her. Because she's a runaway. She's invisible. And she wants to die. All she's got is me.

They drive away, siren and blinking lights off. No hurry now.

I stare at the pile of leaves where we laid Klon, shaped around where his small body lay. Klon's gone. Nicole's gone.

I finally open Nicole's bag and flip through her notebook. On the last page it says: “Chicago—Yerington; San Francisco—Yer; New York—Yer; Honolulu—Yer; Detroit—Yer. No famly. Lies.”

The eyeglasses I stole for her are shattered next to the notebook. Everything in her life has been a lie. And I'm no different from anybody else, because I didn't have the guts to tell her the truth. I didn't have the guts to stand up to her and get help for Klon. I took the easy way out, the path of least resistance.

And now…

I hold the postcards and notebook in my trembling hands.

I dump everything on the ground and search through it.

They're gone.

She took Plan B with her—the pills.

No, I shake my head. She wouldn't. She'll be back. She probably went to sell them, get money. We should've sold them long ago. Maybe that's her Plan B, because she has to come back. Rule number three: We stick together. Nicole doesn't break her own rules.

But then mobsters don't lie to one another.

I lied.

I huddle up, clutching Nicole's worry dolls. She took the money. But I have my box. My stupid box of dumb photos and letters of people who are dead—of people who don't matter. I take off the locket and stare at the picture in the gray light. Another whole day has passed.

“There's no place like home,” I whisper. But I don't even know what home is.

Tears burn my eyes. Night returns.

Nicole doesn't.

She's gone.

I go through the postcards and notebook again. Something else is missing.

Her stupid Mafia, glory death, ace of spades garbage.

I can't believe I'm irritated. But I am.

And I am alone.

I walk the streets until I find a group of teens. I recognize Bambi. Her eyes are glazed over; she's too high to hold her head up. “I need to find Rhodes,” I say.

One points down the street. “Twenty blocks or so.”

“How will I know when I get there?” I ask.

“Are you stupid?” he asks.

“No,” I say.

“Then you'll know.” He ties a dirty rag around his arm, his vein pulsing with pressure. He pulls out a filthy needle and shoves it in the blue, the yellow liquid pumping out. His body jerks, then he smiles. He's gone, too.

I walk the streets—eerily empty. The warm glow of yellow light spills from behind people's curtains. I stop in front of a small brick home with neatly painted green trim, the curtains open. A family sits around a beautifully set table saying grace. A fat turkey lies in the middle of the table—its skin crispy brown.

Happy Thanksgiving.

I stare at them sitting in their fall sweaters, the lovely glow of candles on their faces. A chubby lady wears an apron and passes a big knife to the middle-aged man. The family claps. A rosy-cheeked little girl looks out the window and locks eyes with me. She taps the man sitting next to her, and I leave.

Normal.

That's what normal people do. They sit together around a table on Thanksgiving Day. They eat together. They pray together. They don't spend the holiday in a cheap diner ordering hot turkey sandwiches hoping the latest scam will get them through the holidays. And they definitely don't spend Thanksgiving looking for a friend who's possibly already dead.

Normal people don't let their friends die.

I wonder if Aunt Sarah is normal. Part of me wants to figure out a way to find her. And never turn back.

But I'm done running. I'm done not caring. I'm done with procedures and hypotheses and science. That's what I've done my entire life. I have to make things right. Somehow.

I get to Rhodes before midnight. The scene in front
of me is surreal. Small groups of homeless people huddle together under an overpass. No trees. No grass. Just concrete, asphalt, and chain-link fences. Skateboard paths and jumps. No life.

Boise. Middle America. Benign. Bourgeois. A place where most people would say, “Hey, that's a great place to raise a family.” While the normal population sleeps off their turkey overdose, we gather at Rhodes afraid, cold, hungry—alone.

I hate being alone.

I walk through the area, looking for Nicole in the haunted faces, but she isn't there.

“Jeopardy!” I turn and see Charity skipping toward me in a lime-green spandex body suit and platform heels to match. “Jeopardy! We heard.”

“Heard what?” I ask. My voice feels so small.

Charity grips my upper arm and pulls me toward him. “Honey, you shouldn't be out here alone. Come with me.”

Charity takes me to another abandoned building. But this one seems a lot more organized. He opens the door to an apartment. Hanging blankets divide everything into small compartments. People sleep on soiled mattresses. No matter. People sleep. And I sleep.

I wake up at the first light of day. Cockroaches scurry
across the floor into cracks in the wall, holes in the mattresses, and piles of clothes. One wriggles its way up some guy's shirt. But the guy doesn't move. Nobody does.

Charity snores. His breath smells like a nasty cadaver-putrescence combo. I try to jiggle him awake, but he doesn't even move for another couple of hours. When he finally does, he opens one eye, his false eyelashes sticking to his cheek, and says, “Breakfast?”

I follow him to the kitchen. Filthy dishes are piled in the sink. An old refrigerator hums in the corner—sitting crooked on broken feet. Charity opens it up. I cover my nose and concentrate on holding down anything my stomach might have in it. Charity pulls out a couple slices of cheese. He hands them to me. They're covered with green mold and white fuzz. Then he guides me through the living area until we get to his corner.

Everything smells musty and fishy.

He yawns, wiping the mold off his pieces of cheese before putting them in his mouth. That would explain the halitosis. He looks at me, “Ah, honey. You get used to it.” He eyes my cheese.

I hand it over to him and tap my throat. “Too sore,” I manage to say.

“Long night. Goddamn religious fanatics. Always
wanting to do freak things.” He shrugs. “I'm all for whatever, but they gotta pay, right?”

I nod.

“We heard about the little one,” he says. “Sorry. Cool kid—obscene little shit—but okay.” He shakes his head. “You looking for your friend?”

I nod.

“Where do you think she went?” he asks.

I clear my throat and try to keep my voice steady. “To die. I need to find that place. The place where we go to die.”

Charity shakes his head. “No way, honey. Nohow. I don't do the mass graveyards gig.”

I try to control the ache that burns my stomach and pricks at my eyes. Don't cry, I think. She might not be dead. Not yet.

I can't help but picture Mom's empty prescription bottle next to her whiskey. Her languid body looking so peaceful.

But the smell. The smell of death is sickly sweet.

I have to get to Nicole on time. “I thought you didn't believe in that stuff,” I finally say. “Please,” I whisper.

“You ever been to Hell, baby?” he asks.

I shake my head.

“It's right next to Heaven. Just one wrong step, and ‘Bye-bye.'”

I try to swallow but my throat is too closed to do anything.

He caresses my face. “She worth it?” he asks.

The tears finally spill down my cheeks. “Yes,” I whisper.

“M
ay I ask who's calling?”

“Maya. Maya Aguirre,” I say trying to control my breathing.

“Dancing Queen.” Again.

“Baby, is that you?” His voice sounds strong. Like I remember. I can picture his smile and the way he looks before he thinks up a new scheme. I kind of think he likes doing what he does just to see if he can pull it off.

But he didn't pull off his latest scheme. And Klon is dead and Nicole…And I am standing in a phone booth in Garden City, Idaho, with a drag queen getting ready to go find my friend. My family. The only person who matters right now. I lean my head against the booth, cooling my
forehead on the glass.

“Maya? Maya, I love you so much.”

The words get caught in my throat and swell too big to come out. Words. They stay stuck. Deep down inside. They hurt.

“It's okay. You don't have to talk. Are you okay?”

No. No I'm not okay. And I don't know what to do.

“I'm just happy to know you're there, baby. I'm just so relieved. I've been so worried.” He pauses. “You're strong, baby. I know that. But it's okay to need help. It's okay to ask for help.”

Who could I ask?

I'm so scared. Would he understand that?

“I never taught you that. It was stupid of me.” I listen as he talks until the minutes run out. Then I listen to the dial tone, clutching the phone to my ear.

“Hey, honey, you gonna stand and hump that phone all day?” Charity asks. “Christ, it's too Goddamned cold to stand out here.” Charity taps the phone booth with his chipped nails.

It's taken us a few hours to walk here. Every minute counts, I know, but I'm so so tired and my body just hurts everywhere.

I follow him to what looks like the outside of a factory building. Music thunders. Smoke pours out from the doorway. Streams of teens walk inside.

It's early afternoon, and the place booms with music. “A rave? We're going to a rave?” I ask.

Charity shakes his head. “I need cash for a ride back. You can't imagine how much these boots chafe. And you, darling, you are on your own.”

“Where?” I ask.

Charity is distracted by a guy in tight jeans. “Nice nut huggers,” he says.

“Where?” I say again.

He points toward the river. “The Garden. It's all yours.”

I walk past some state fairgrounds and find my way to the river, its icy waters churning. It's late afternoon, and the sun has that orange-sherbet color, like its rays are melting all across the sky. Misty rain starts to drizzle from the sky, turning it a gray blue, blotting out the light.

I sit at the river edge, relieved. I imagined it would be covered in corpses—like some kind of morgue. But it's actually really peaceful. I find a broken Coke bottle on the ground and pick it up, tucking it in my pocket. Find a garbage can. That's normal procedure, not: Find dead friend.

I walk downstream past groups of kids getting stoned. Then I see her jacket. I run toward her, and when she turns around, she's a he. I barrel into him, breathless. “Where'd you get that?” I gasp and grab his shoulders. “Where did you get that jacket?”

“Whoa, psycho chick. Lay your hands the fuck off.” He pushes me away. His friends laugh, and he gets braver. “You lookin' to party?”

“Where'd you get the jacket?” I ask. My voice sounds so small in the wind.

He taps his groin. “Nothing's for free around here.” Some of his friends circle me, and he takes a step forward.

The Coke bottle pushes against my hip bone. I stand up as tall as I can. Being five feet three inches doesn't help. But I stand, my hands trembling, and take out the Coke bottle, cutting my hand on the jagged edge. “You don't know who this has cut. You don't know what incurable communicable disease I've got.” My hand doesn't tremble when I hold it in front of me. I can almost feel what it would be like to sink it into his thigh and grind it around while he screams in pain. “One step closer, you better hope to pull off agamogenesis, because the closest you'll come to sexual reproduction will be internet porn.”

“Huh?”

“Mycrobacterium leprae. Leprometous strain. Your dick
will
fall off.”

“What the fuck is she talking about?” one says.

It figures Nicole wouldn't be around for my prime obscenity hour.

They all back off. I must be too crazy for them to waste their time. “Where,” I repeat, “did you get that coat?”

The guy points toward a clump of trees that juts out into the river. “Jesus, it's not like dead kids need coats, you freak bitch.”

I have to catch my breath. It can't be. I push past him and run through the woods, twigs snapping on my face. I stumble and rocks get embedded in my hands. When I get to the river, there's a path of stones in the shallow river edge out to a big boulder, and I see her. Rain pours on her limp body.

I stumble through the icy waters and scramble onto the boulder. Her eyes are closed. I stare for a moment. And wait for that subtle up and down, up and down movement in her chest but see nothing.

Her lips are blue.

She holds the pill bottle in her hands, some pills scattered on the boulder.

She's dead.

I'm too late.

Again.

I collapse to my knees and start to shake her. “Please,” I whisper. “Please. Please.” I can't hold my hands still enough to find a pulse, and can't see through my tears to see if her chest is moving, so I pull her up and shake her rag-doll shoulders. “Wake up. Please. I'm here. Please. Just. Wake. Up.”

Nicole coughs, her eyes fluttering open. She slurs her words. “Hey, Jeops.”

“Oh God,” I say pulling her to me and putting my arms around her. “Oh God.”

Nicole closes her eyes.

I hit her. Hard.

She jolts awake. “What?” she says. “Where's Klon?” she asks.

“He's okay now, Nicole.”

“Cappy,” she whispers.

“Cappy,” I say.

“So thirsty.” She burns with fever.

I open her palm, pills stuck to it.

“Couldn't swallow,” she mutters. “No water. Just wanted
to sleep; not feel anything anymore.”

I sigh. “C'mon.” We slide down the boulder into the water, and I lean her on my shoulder. “I've got you.”

When we get across the river, I put my coat on her. We walk through the dark streets, Nicole slumped on my shoulder. The only thing I can think about is finding a way to help her. I can't let her die, too. It's like everybody who means something to me—

I stop the thoughts that crash through my brain.

She will live.

I just have to find a way to get help.

I look for police cars, ambulances, clinics—nothing. The green neon sign of an all-night drugstore catches my eye. We pass it and walk another block until I find a bench where Nicole can lie down. A couple sits on the bench. They stare at us. They cover their noses with their hands.

Fuck you, I want to say. I was there, too. Where you are sitting on that bench. Was it five weeks ago? Six weeks ago? “Move over,” I say. “She needs to lie down.”

The couple moves away, hunched together to escape what they don't want to see.

I wait outside the drugstore until I see a middle-aged couple go inside and walk in with them. The man holds a
prescription in his hand and walks back to the pharmacist. The pharmacist stares at me and half listens as the man goes on about his colonoscopy and polyps and needing the extra fiber in his diet.

Way too much information.

When they walk by, I bump into the lady and slip some boxes into her purse, hoping she'll set off the sensors.

Bingo!

When the alarms go off, the pharmacist runs to the front of the store and grabs the couple, surprised to see I'm not the one who set off the alarm. They all begin to argue, the man talking about how stress certainly isn't going to help his stool soften, the lady gasping when the pharmacist pulls out the Ex-Lax boxes from her pocket.

Nice touch, I think.

I slip around the metal sensor, leaving the store. I sit Nicole up and crush ten pills of aspirin into a bottle of Gatorade, holding it to her mouth.

“Drink,” I whisper. “Just drink this. One sip at a time.”

She falls asleep, and I shake her awake. “We need to find help. Put your arm around my shoulder.” We walk until the moon hangs high in the sky.

Then I see the sign to the same shelter the police officer
had told us about that first morning in the alley. The Path of Light Home for Women and Children.

I look up at the stars bright in the obsidian sky. The clouds have cleared. “Thank you,” I say. I reread the name of the shelter and pound on the door. “Help us,” I say. “Please.” Nicole slumps to the ground and I sit next to her, leaning my head back, closing my eyes.

The door opens and a man takes Nicole from my arms. They pull on latex gloves, strip her down, and wrap her in blankets, head to toe. Then they do the same to me. Three people come in and ask us what has happened. Nicole is slipping in and out of consciousness, and I force myself to stay awake—stay awake for her.

“I got first shift,” I say, and hold on to her hand.

She smiles. “Don't fall asleep.”

They race us to a clinic, social services in tow. Billie—a psychologist working on her doctorate at the local college—has been assigned our case. “You have names?”

I nod. “Jeopardy and Capone.”

“Okay,” she says. “Where'd you come from?” she asks.

“The Garden,” I say, and stare out the van window at the city; the buildings blur, and I bite my lip, trying to swallow back my sadness, trying to stop trembling. It's like
the cold won't go away. Nicole's head rests on my lap and I lay my hand on her chest, feeling the soft thud of her heart, barely there.

We drive up to the emergency entrance, and nurses, doctors, who-knows-who-else come out with rickety gurneys and lift us onto them. Glaring fluorescent lights shine above. I close my eyes listening to the soft hum of the lights, the ring of telephones, and murmur of muffled voices behind glass windows and closed doors. I hold Nicole's bag of lies in one hand and reach for her with the other, but she's ahead of me.

They shove a needle into a thin blue vein on the top of my hand, hanging a bag above me. Our area is crammed with people buzzing around us carrying machines, tubes, IV drips. “Help her,” I say, and clutch Nicole's bag tighter.

But they don't hear me.

And I don't know if I even speak or if everything's in my head.

“You got a pulse? You got a pulse?” I watch as they plug Nicole into some machine and stare at a green straight line that starts to blur. “Damn it, we're losing her.”

They pull the curtain closed, and I scream.

Or I think I scream.