Don't Breathe a Word (15 page)

Chapter 28

The living room was in total chaos. A bloody clump of fur lay in a heap by the wall, not moving. Maul held Creed down while one of the others punched Santos in the stomach. Another gripped May while she kicked and shrieked. Money was everywhere—under Creed, on the floor. A thin girl with stringy brown hair—the one Maul hit?—was gathering it, dollar by dollar, into a wilted stack.

“Ah—look who's here,” Maul said when he saw me. A chill crawled over my spine. Had we led him here? The thought made me gasp with fear.

“I told you,” he said softly, “you should have come when I asked nice. Now you're gonna have to be broken first.”

“Stay the fuck away from her!” Creed shouted—he was all arms and legs and wiriness, trying to get up off the floor like an overturned crab, but he was no match for Maul's sheer bulk. Maul raised his fist and brought it down hard against the side of Creed's head. I felt the pain in my gut.

Before I knew it, I was charging—straight for Maul, like a ninja warrior girl ready to kick him in the head. Someone came out of nowhere and caught me midjump, but the surprise of it was enough to knock Maul off balance. Creed wriggled out from under him and picked up a board from the mess of shrapnel on the floor.

Wham
. It hit Maul's head with a terrible crack.

He staggered from the blow, but he was like a tree struck with only a branch. “You shouldn't have done that,
Creed
.”

The guy holding me tightened his grasp, pressing the chains on his jacket into the grooves of my spine. I suddenly felt numb, like my brains were rattling right out of my head. A blast went off above my ear and into my eye, my skull, my jaw. He'd hit me. Blackness gathered at the edges. Any second I was going to pass out from the shock. My vision became a shaft of light and sound, spinning.

Creed was watching me. I held his gaze to force the darkness away, even though I was feeling a warm trickle now through the explosion.

Don't let go,
his eyes said to me. I listened.

Vaguely, I made out Santos wrestling with some other Maul rat and screaming
puta madre
, but even his dexterity couldn't help him escape. May went limp as a rag doll in the arms of her captor. Maybe she wasn't even trying to get free anymore.

Maul's raggedy girl finished picking up the money, all that was left of Asher's hold on me. Maybe it was better to get rid of it entirely.

“You can have the squat,” I heard someone say. “Just let them go.” It was Creed. Still trying to protect us, even when he was utterly helpless.

Maul laughed—a wicked cough. It made the thrumming in my brain constrict. “Yeah, we'll take the squat, but you're not gonna get off so easy.” One more violent blow and Creed was on the ground, holding his head. The pain in my own became the low roar of panic.

“That should hold you for a while.” Maul sauntered over in my direction. “You think you're so tricky. Yeah, it's going to be fun breaking you, invisible girl.”

I resisted the urge to bite off his finger. The liquid from my forehead rolled down to my chin and dripped onto the floorboards.

“Your hair is pretty. Did May do that for you?” Maul's voice was like a rusty nail scraping my skin softly. “She's good at that.” He laughed. “There are so many things May is good at. Or maybe you didn't realize. Maybe she's turned over a new leaf, hanging out with you posers. Especially you,” he spat in Creed's direction.

Creed was still on the floor—knocked out? Planning an attack? I couldn't tell. There were four of us and five of them, but one was just the girl. I knew she wouldn't put up much of a fight. The others, each of them pinning one of us, were as big as Maul.

Maul touched me on the cheek. “May only comes to me when she wants something now—which is more than you realize, Miss Sunshine. I'm not so sure I have her loyalty anymore, now that you're here.”

“Are you for real?” May's voice sounded hard, like the night I first met her. Sarcastic. One by one, she lifted the guy's arms off of her haughtily while he let them drop to the ground. “I'm through with these dipshits. In fact, you can have the fucking house—I'd even stay with you.”

“May,” Santos warned.

“Shut the fuck up, Pantsos! I'm sick of your fucking self-righteousness when you are
so
full of shit it's not even funny. You're as bad as Creed. You make me
sick
, that's what you do
.
So don't even try to boss me around.”

Through the thick tunnel, I saw Santos's face—the pain rippling in my head reflected in his eyes.

“What are you doing, May?” It was my voice, small and insignificant.

May snorted. “Now that's funny, 'Burbs. You sticking up for someone besides your own pathetic fat ass.”

She turned to Maul, who was watching her with a grin, and gave him a slow, deadly kiss. “Please tell me she's not going to stay. She's got to be the most annoying fucking person I've ever met in my life. If she stays . . . seriously, Maul, you've gotta get rid of her. She's a damn parasite.”

He kissed her back, hungrily, and then smacked her across the face. Hard. “Don't you tell me what to do.”

A shiny mark bloomed on the side of her face, but it only seemed to up her level of cheek. “You want me to stay? Then get them outta here.”

Creed was rising from the floor, barely steady on his knees. “May . . .”

“You shut the fuck up,
Creed
! You're the biggest hypocrite of all of us. You think you're protecting us when you can't even protect your own
mother
. She's there and you're here, pretending like you're the savior on the white horse and leading everybody like you're Jesus Christ himself and screwing with everybody's emotions. You can't even tell the truth because you're too scared. What kind of asshole does that?”

Creed's jaw dropped open like she dealt him a physical blow.

May dragged Maul toward the stairs with a look I recognized—the same face I'd seen on Maul's girls when they camped out on the streets, pouting and smiling. Was it fake or was it real? Every time she left the house, Creed and Santos had worried she would come back high or worse.
She has a history with Maul,
Santos had said. Now I was seeing it firsthand.

Maul's gang stood around like they weren't quite sure what to do with us. The stringy girl leaned against the wall like she was glad it wasn't
her
walking up those stairs.

“Maul, what do you want us to do?” the guy holding Santos shouted.

Maul and May turned the corner into the bedroom with the mattress—the one I had slept on with Creed for the last two months. Now it was gone. Everything as we knew it, gone.

“Get them out of here!” Maul roared. A muffled giggle followed.

“Here, take your shit with you,” May called down the stairs, scooting Creed's guitar case around the corner with her foot.

Maul's hand landed across her face, knocking her head against the wall with a crack. “What the fuck do you think you're doing?”

“Sorry, I—”

“Any of you guys need a guitar?”

The gang grunted. The stringy girl looked up like she wanted to speak. Whatever she wanted to say was lost, because in one swift, merciless movement, Maul opened the case and kicked its contents down the stairs, where it bumped and cracked and finally splintered to a stop.

Creed and I were still staring at the pieces of the guitar when Santos gripped our arms. “What the hell are you waiting for? They're letting us go!”

Sounds of muffled laughing and moaning floated from the bedroom like dust particles, past the stomach-wrenching smell of the shit room and the torn-out kitchen and the rickety stairs leading down to the basement and out of the abandoned house I would never see again.

May's voice trickled after us, and I finally knew her street power.

She just used it to betray us all.

Chapter 29

With Creed between us, Santos and I dragged him somewhere—anywhere—to recover from Maul's brutal beating. His mouth had stopped bleeding, but now a black bruise spread relentlessly across his jaw. Where would we go now?

My head was still throbbing from the blow, but it didn't feel half as bad as Creed looked.

“I'm telling you,” Santos said, “we should take him to New Ho's. He can hang out there for a while—they have a doctor—”

“No,” Creed moaned. “We're not going to the shelter.”

“What the fuck?” Santos tripped and almost lost his grip on Creed, who was as heavy as Santos and me put together.

“No.” Creed coughed like one of his lungs had collapsed. Fresh blood trickled from a cut on his lip. “Triste,” he croaked. “She won't be safe there.”

“Fuck Triste, man! You need help!”

“Creed, listen to me,” I said, hoping he couldn't hear the desperation in my voice. “I don't have to go. Santos can take you, and I can wait for you. I can hang out . . .” Where could I hang out? Did I still have the power to hide in plain sight, now that so many enemies had seen me?

“Maybe you should go home,” Creed whispered.

I ignored him. It wasn't even about home anymore. Now it was about him. Going home would mean losing him forever.

No. It would take far more than getting kicked out of the squat to tear me away. “
You
could go the shelter, at least for a little bit. I can take care of myself.”

I looked at his hands, the same ones that had gently strummed his guitar and wrapped around me only hours ago. They were shaking, as if everything was crumbling in his grasp.

“That's all I need,” he sighed. “First May, then you.”

“Fuck May.” Santos's voice ripped through the rainy air with a sob. “She can go fuck herself, if she wants to stay with Maul instead of us. She can . . .” His voice trailed off, piercing the exact same feeling lodged deep inside of me. What did she think she was doing? Maul didn't care if she lived or died. Didn't she know that?

“She did it for us,” Creed said quietly.

Santos spat on the ground, looking away—but not before I saw the tears he was trying to hide. Faulkner was dead. His best friend, his family, had betrayed him. “That's propaganda, and you know it. She's been sneaking off and tripping with him for weeks now. Maybe you haven't been paying attention. You've been too busy trying to shake the house with Triste here.”

Creed said nothing, only closed his eyes—from pain or embarrassment, I couldn't tell. Nobody knew better than I did how wrong Santos was.

But Santos wasn't finished. “For all we know, May led him right to us.”

“Stop it!” Creed shouted, before falling limply between us.

When we got onto the bus headed downtown, people made way for three misfits soaked with rain and broken in spirit. Santos sat on his own bench while I huddled with Creed, trying and failing to keep him warm. The shiver was spreading now as I held him, hair streaming with blood and tears.

The shelter was only a few blocks away from the Space Needle and the EMP where Creed had taken me. It seemed so long ago now—even the crazy bright colors and metallic shrine for all things musical looked grey under the autumn sky.

There was a crowd already forming outside the shelter—kids I'd seen on Capitol Hill and others I hadn't, some of them looking like fresh meat. Plump and clean, wide-eyed at the fighting and tripping and the great cloud of smoke rising above the group. Had I looked that naive when I first came?

You could tell who the volunteers were, even though they tried to blend in with their thrift-store clothes and unassuming posture. An adult in a flannel shirt and jeans came over. He looked like he'd seen a fair amount of shit. One of his eyes wandered every which way behind his rockabilly glasses, like it had almost been knocked out of his head and now kept searching around for a place to stay put.

“Hey, Ron.” Creed nodded to him, struggling to stand up on his own. I hid my face before the guy could get a good look at me.

“Hey,” Ron said. “How's the music?”

Creed shrugged. “Going okay.” Creed was a terrible liar. Ron just stared at him, his crazy eye wandering. He was like a cyclops. Nothing much was going to get past him, I could tell.

“You're so full of shit,” Santos said, punching Creed in the arm. “Hey, Ron. You're not gonna believe the shit that's happened to us today.” And Santos launched into his way of fast talking while the guy listened. “Maul . . . and beat the shit . . . Creed knocked him on his ass . . . .and the guitar is smashed to smithereens . . . kicked out of the squat . . . and now he's totally fucked up.” Everything but what happened with May.

But Ron had to know something was up, because here were Creed and Santos with me instead of May. The three of them were inseparable.

“Sandy's inside with clean clothes and food for the girls,” Ron said to me. “You can get in line right over there. She can clean you up, take a look at that cut.”

I swiped at the side of my face and came away with a trickle of blood. “Uh, thanks.” How many seconds would it take for someone to recognize me from my old picture?

I wanted to stay with Creed, but there was nothing I could do for him now.

Santos must have read my thoughts. “Don't worry, I'll take care of him.”

The eye wandered toward me and I shuddered. That eye could see things. I had to get out of there now.

Chapter 30

I went back to Capitol Hill. It was dangerous but familiar. I knew where not to go to stay out of Maul's way. Avoid Broadway, no question—he'd be hanging there and his girls would be out attracting a catch for the night. I shuddered to think of May. Would she be out there, too, or would Maul keep her as his own?

You want me to stay? Then get them outta here.

The hurt was so mixed in with the shock, I remembered every word. She wanted to die—she said it all the time. Was this her way of finishing the job?

The only thing to do was go where Maul would never go.

The church behind the community college was lit up like a Christmas tree. It was Sunday night, Jesus break for churches across the country. My brothers and I had been to church a thousand times, hearing about homeless disciples who wandered around healing the sick and raising the dead.

Those were powers that could actually do something on the street.

There was construction going over in the next lot—almost finished now, and suddenly I realized it had the same New Horizons logo on a sign: future site of teen transitional housing shelter.

Damn
. These people were everywhere.

If I stood close enough to the brick wall of the church, I could avoid the steady trickle of rain. A fierce cough enveloped me. The hood of my sweatshirt wasn't quite enough to keep the dampness and cold from soaking in, but it was enough to shield me from the stream of church people heading in and out of the side door while I curled up for the night.

Creed would be okay,
I told myself. He was almost standing when I left. Santos was talking Ron's ear off, each story more outrageous than the last. Stories were the currency of the street even if truth wasn't, and Santos had an abundance.

A woman came out of the church—a mom type, short with a rounded face and haphazard greying hair—and uncloaked me with one glance.

“Do you want to come in?” she asked with a smile—an irresistible one that would be my undoing if I let it.

I shook my head and coughed. “No, thanks.”

She nodded. “Well, if you decide to stay, there's soup and cookies inside.” Now that she mentioned it, I could smell tomatoey warmth wafting from the open door. She lingered, presumably waiting for me to change my mind. Ron, this church lady, they were the kind of people who would lure me out of invisibility and lead me straight back to what I'd left.
No, thank you.

A few minutes later, she came out with a napkin bundle and a steaming cup. The napkin was full of cookies—chocolate creme sandwiches, Jonah's favorite. The cup was full of minestrone and smelled so good I could cry.

I gobbled down the soup and cookies, but she wasn't leaving yet. My mom would have swept in, dropped off the food and backed out gracefully by now. This mom stood there watching me with a crow's gaze.

“There's going to be a shelter here soon, across the street. Do you know about it?”

I nodded. “Uh-huh.”

“But until then, there are a couple in the U District and another not far from here.”

I slurped the soup, waiting for her to finish and go away. “Thanks.”

“You could wash up here, if you want. There's a bathroom at the end of the hall.”

Real plumbing—now that was a draw.

I followed her into the building, twenty degrees warmer than outside, and she stopped at a wooden closet for a taupe-colored puff of fabric that looked more like a potato than a coat. “You can have this, too. The bathroom's right there.”

Everything about this was so familiar and almost comforting, turning the other cheek and wondering what Jesus would do. I knew he came to set the captives free.

After escaping the cozy seduction of the church, I huddled outside an apartment dryer vent. The coat was roomy enough to curl up in, with a secret pocket to stash my phone and the one inhaler I'd managed to grab before Maul and his gang showed up.

I fell asleep to the sounds of shouting and sirens and the heady scent of Snuggle freshness, reminding me of J3 and how he would creep into my room after he'd had a bad dream and fill my nose with a mix of sweaty hair and fabric softener. We had clean clothes on Tuesdays and Fridays, like clockwork. Even our laundry served to confine us.

A crow cawed from a swaying phone cable, depositing his filth before dive-bombing a bit of something on the road.
But things have changed,
I silently told the crow
. I've changed.

Some of the homeless jumped trains and migrated, I knew. But it would take hundreds of miles and dollars to go where I would never be found. Where
we
would never be found—me and Creed and Santos. May? She'd made her choice to live with the bad guys instead of die with the good. Maybe she was choosing death either way.

When I awoke, I went back to the New Ho's shelter. It was early enough to watch the red skies of dawn, portent of another stormy day.

Creed sat alone on the curb, his arms held in guitar stance. Without it, he looked like a shadow, pantomiming his former street power. To see part of him missing brought tears to my eyes. I held back another cough.

He hardly recognized me in the potato coat, but when he did, he looked relieved to see me. “Where did you get that?”

I grinned as I sat down next to him. “Some church lady.”

“Giving out free coats? Sign me up. Maybe they've got a spare guitar.” He laughed, a lame attempt to cover the hole left by its absence. “Or you could start singing with me. Because you know people would pay good money to hear someone whose voice is on such a sucktastic level—
ow
!”

He recoiled from my fake punch and rubbed the spot on his ribs. He could fight Stench by himself, but facing Maul and his entire gang was a different matter.

“You okay? Anything broken?”

He shook his head, and I noticed how clean he was—shaved and soapy-smelling. He looked better after a night in a real bed. “Nah. The doc said I just have a couple of bruised ribs—bruised eye, bruised jaw, bruised hand, bruised ego . . .”

He showed me his hand, the black and purple on his knuckles spreading out toward his fingers. “At least I won't have to play for a while, because this hurts like a bastard. Come on, let's get out of here.”

We walked for a few minutes without talking before I realized we were missing something. “Where's Santos?”

Creed tucked himself further into his army jacket. “He left.”

“He left you? After Maul beat the crap out of you?”

“Well, it wasn't crap, exactly—”

“Where did he go?”

“Working.”

I coughed in disgust. “What the hell?”

“Crap? Hell? You're getting so daring with your expletives these days.”

“Shut up!”

“I'm just saying. So where did you spend the night? At the church?” He was resisting a smirk.

“No! No way. Outside someone's dryer vent, actually. An apartment building.”

The smirk turned to a frown. “You can't do that. It's too dangerous. Someone could find you and . . . I don't want to think about what someone might do to you. We could go to a shelter. You could stay here, Triste—it isn't state-run, they don't ask questions. No one's going to turn you in, no one's going to—”

“How do you know that? You don't even know what I'm running from.” As I said it, I felt the guilt tingling at the fringes of my consciousness and pushed it away—I wasn't even certain myself sometimes. “Why is it so dangerous for me? As if Santos going off in the middle of the night isn't? Tell me that.”

“It's different.”

“Why is it different? Where does he go? What would you tell me, if you could?”

“You can't ask me that.”

“Why not?”

“Because.”

“Because why?”

Creed stopped in the middle of the street. Downtown was waking up—cars darting here and there on the maze of one-way streets in Seattle's mass of transit confusion. The smell of fresh coffee wafted from a Starbucks with normals darting in and out of the early morning mist. Creed stared at me, a world of truth in his eyes.

“Because I don't ask you to tell me everything. I trust you. And I'll protect Santos no matter what.” He leaned in closer, close enough for me to feel his breath on my lips. “Just like I'll protect you.”