Finding Me (5 page)

We drove for about a half hour before Sniper slowed down to a stop. He got out and started talking to a group of men. I could hear them speaking fast in Spanish, but I couldn’t make out a single word. He popped open the trunk and gave one of the men a large package.
Must be weed
, I thought. After about twenty minutes he got back in the car and looked over his shoulder at me.

“You still all right back there?” he asked. I nodded. “Let’s get outta here,” he said. We drove for a while before we pulled into a driveway.

When we got out of the car, Sniper walked me up his driveway and unlocked the front door. I stopped for a minute.
I still don’t know this guy. What will happen inside his house?
But I decided to take a chance. I figured it couldn’t be much worse than what I had gone through during the first fifteen years of my life. I took a step inside.

“Welcome home,” he said.

I looked around the living room. The place was totally pimped out. He had a waterfall and a fish tank. His walls were bright white, and it smelled like he had just put on a fresh coat of paint.

“Let me take you upstairs to the room where you’ll be staying,” he said. “I’ll sleep on the couch and give you my room.” At the top of the stairs he pointed to a door on the right. “Another kid named Roderick stays in my second bedroom,” he said. “He’s a runner too. I’ll introduce you to him later.” I didn’t know exactly what a drug runner would do, but I could see that I was going to get one thing out of it—a warm place to sleep.

Sniper’s room was just as pimped out as the rest of the place. His bed had a zebra-print comforter and white silky sheets. A large ceiling mirror hung over the queen-size mattress; I could guess what he used that for. The bathroom just off the bedroom had a big round tub with a red and black shower curtain.

“Get yourself cleaned up,” he said. He handed me a towel, a new bar of soap, and a pair of women’s pajamas that he said his little sister had left there. I wondered if he’d had another girl runner at some point and what had happened to her. “Do you need anything else?” he asked.

I could feel my face turning red as I pointed down between my legs. He gave me a weird look. “Oh, I get it,” he said. “I’ll be right back.” A few minutes later I heard him pull out in the car. He returned with a box of tampons and gave them to me; I assumed he’d made a quick run to the twenty-four-hour drugstore.

After he left the room, I stripped off my nasty jeans and that T-shirt with the wolf printed on the front. Then I turned on the shower, stepped into the tub, and stood directly under the head. For about an hour. When you haven’t been able to really clean yourself up for weeks, a whole lot of dirt builds up. The hot water that slid off my body and swirled into the drain was totally black for at least the first twenty minutes.

“Are you okay in there?” Sniper yelled from the room.

“I’m fine,” I shouted back. “Just filthy.”

“All right. I’ll be downstairs if you need anything.”

Once I pulled on the polka-dotted PJs that were way too long for me, I crawled under his fluffy comforter. The mattress felt unbelievably soft; I hadn’t slept in a bed in weeks.
Is this real?
I thought.
Am I really here?
Is this guy going to keep treating me this nice, or is he going to turn on me and attack me?
Even though I was nervous, I was so exhausted that I sank down into the mattress and went right to sleep.

The next morning I woke up to the smell of sizzling sausage. Sniper thumped up the stairs and tapped on my door. “Good morning, Michelle,” he said. “Come down when you’re ready for breakfast.” Once I went down to the dining room I saw a boy with dark hair already sitting at the table. His skin was walnut brown, and he was wicked thin. I figured he must be Roderick.

Roderick said something to me, but I had no idea what. His Saudi Arabian accent was so thick that at first it was hard to make out his words.

“He’s asking your name,” Sniper cut in with a chuckle.

“I’m Michelle,” I told the boy. “Nice to meet you.” When he responded, I managed to catch what he said. “Hi, Chapo.”

“That’s what we’re going to call you around here—Chapo,” Sniper added. “That’s Spanish for
little
.” I didn’t mind. In fact, the nickname stuck.

Over breakfast Roderick filled me in on a little of his story. I had to ask him to repeat himself a few times, but after a while I got used to his accent. He was sixteen. He’d been surviving on the streets since he was thirteen. Back then his mother had kicked him out of her house because he’d refused to return to his family’s homeland in Saudi Arabia. He might have said why he didn’t want to go back, but if he did, I didn’t catch that part. A few months after he’d become homeless, Sniper had come up to him in the same way that he had me. He’d lived with Sniper and worked for him every day since.

That evening the three of us chilled on the big red couch in the living room and watched a movie together—something I’d never done with my actual family. It felt so good to be part of a group, even if I still didn’t know what my role in it would be.

“Tomorrow we’ve gotta get you a handgun and show you how to shoot it,” Sniper said as the movie credits rolled. I stared at him. “Now that you’re settled in, it’s time for you to go out on your first run,” he added. Roderick just kept his eyes glued to the TV screen.

Back upstairs in the bedroom, I climbed onto the mattress and pulled the zebra-print comforter up as far as I could. As I lay there staring up at my reflection in the mirrored ceiling, I thought of my spot under the bridge and the trash can I’d left there. I wondered what Eddie, Freddie, and Mikey were doing. I wondered if the choir at the Baptist church would sing my favorite song that Sunday. And, of course, I thought of how it might feel to hold a gun. It scared the hell out of me.

4
______________

On the Run

S
NIPER HANDED ME A
.22 Glock—the first gun I’d ever held. “You need to learn how to protect yourself,” he told me. “I have to make sure you stay safe. I’m going to take you someplace where I can teach you how to use it.” I’m not sure if he noticed, but when he said that, I flinched. Big time.
Does he expect me to shoot people?
I wondered anxiously.

That afternoon we got into his car. In the backseat was a bull’s-eye he’d made from a piece of cardboard. We drove to a wooded area out in the boonies, a place where no one would hear gunshots. We got out of the car and went through the trees to an open area. Sniper tied the bull’s-eye to a tree trunk. He then showed me how to position the gun to hit the mark.

“Hold it like this, with both hands. Make sure you’re balanced on both feet, and then point it directly toward the bull’s-eye.” Then all of a sudden, he pulled the trigger.
Pop!

The sound of the bullet leaving the gun made me almost pee my pants. Sniper didn’t hit the center mark, but he came pretty close. He handed me the gun. “Your turn,” he said.

I stood in the same spot he had and aimed at the target.
Pow!
After several tries I managed to hit the edge of the cardboard.

“Good. Do it again,” Sniper said. He had me practice a few more rounds before we left.

On the way back to his house we went past the area near where my parents lived.
I wonder if they’re still there
, I thought. But I wasn’t about to find out. Even with the tinted windows, I slid down as low as I could to be double-sure no one would see me. The day before, when he’d asked me why I’d been living on the street, I had told Sniper what I’d endured in that house. He had listened without saying a word. When I finished talking, he just shook his head. “I don’t understand how they could’ve treated a little girl that way,” he said. “It wasn’t right for them to put you through all that. They’re lucky I don’t go find them and shoot them right now.” Whenever Sniper talked that way, I didn’t feel like his runner. I felt more like a little sister—safe and protected.

Sniper came from a halfway decent family—his mother at least worked a steady job, and he told me he’d never been physically abused. He hadn’t told his family he was selling drugs, but I’m sure they must’ve had an idea since he never invited them to his house, and he always had a lot of cash. For some reason Sniper had dropped out of school when he was fifteen. But I could tell he was smart by the smooth way he spoke and carried himself. Besides, I figured he had to have something on the ball to run the kind of hustle he was operating.

“You should’ve stayed in school,” I once told him.

“Why would I do that?” he shot back. “I can make a lot more money doing what I do.” I didn’t say anything to that.

That night after my shooting lesson, Sniper told me all about what my new job involved. First, I’d go into a building, a nightclub, or an apartment complex, usually in a part of town where there were a lot of drugs. Once there, I had to identify people who might want a particular drug. I’d then return to the car, where Sniper would be waiting with the goods. I’d tell him what kind and amount of drugs had been asked for, and what price the person was willing to pay. If Sniper thought it all sounded good, I’d return with the dope.

“Whatever you do,” he warned me, “never, ever give a person the drugs until after they’ve given you the cash.” If any kind of problem came up, he said, I was supposed to get the freak outta there as fast as possible. And if the situation got really ugly? Well, that was why I carried the Glock. He also gave me a beeper.

One week later the evening of my first run arrived. I’d tried to get Roderick to tell me what he’d gone through since he’d been with Sniper. But whenever I brought that up, he suddenly got quiet. I think he felt protective of me and didn’t want to scare me. “You’ll be fine, Chapo,” he said. I hoped he was right.

That Friday night Sniper backed his car into the garage and packed his trunk with different-sized bags of pot. “Wow,” I said. “That’s a whole lot of weed.” From what he’d said, there must have been $50,000 worth of reefer in there. We got in the car and drove to a building about fifteen minutes away. I wore a long-sleeved navy T-shirt, gray sweatpants, and a black jacket big enough to cover the huge square fanny pack I’d put on around my waist. My hands shaking, I put the safety switch on the gun and put it down in the side of my cotton underwear. We pulled into an alley. As I got out of the car, Sniper gave me a reminder: “No cash means no drugs.” I gulped and nodded.

That night was very dark. Feeling incredibly nervous as I held the sides of my jacket closed, I found my way to the courtyard of the apartment building. I looked up and saw a dozen people sitting out on their stoops. Everyone seemed to be lighting up; the courtyard was filled with smoke and the smell of pot. When I spotted a scrubby-looking, middle-aged white man rolling a joint, I walked over to him. His pupils were very dilated, and his eyes were red. Forget weed—he looked more like a crackhead than a pothead.

“Hey,” I whispered. “Want some more of that tonight?” He kept right on rolling and hardly even looked up at me. Anxiously I licked my bottom lip.

“Hold on there, kid,” he finally said. He stood on the staircase and disappeared through the front door of one of the apartments. A moment later he came back with a young blonde woman. She held her head to the side and looked directly at me. She seemed even more high than he did.

“We’ll take a big bag,” the man finally said.

“How much can you pay?” I asked.

He paused. “Five hundred dollars,” he said.

Holy crap,
I thought.
Where in the world do these people get that kind of money?

I ran back to Sniper’s car and told him what they wanted. “Okay,” was all he said. He went to his trunk, dug down past all the $25 baggies of pot, and pulled out a much larger bag. He handed it to me, and I stuffed it inside my coat and made my way back toward the stairs where the couple was waiting.

“I’ll take the money first,” I told the man. My voice shook a little.

“Hell, no!” he shouted. Some of the neighbors looked over at us. “Give me the weed, and then you’ll get your damn money.”

My pulse got faster. I could feel the cold handle of the gun down in my underwear. “I can’t do that,” I said softly. “First the cash—then the pot. That’s the way it goes.”

But the man kept asking for the bag, and he got louder and louder. “Just give me the weed!” he shouted. When he stood up and came toward me, I knew there was only one thing I could do: I took off running.

I rounded the corner and jumped back into the car. “They … won’t … give me … the money,” I said, totally out of breath.

Sniper stared at me. “What do you mean?” he said.

“I tried to get the man’s cash first, like you told me to do, but he wanted the weed first.”

Sniper paused. “I’ll handle it,” he said. “I don’t want you getting hurt.” I described the couple to him in detail so he could easily find them in the courtyard. Sniper got out and took the bag from me, and I stayed behind. When he returned fifteen minutes later, he wasn’t holding the bag of weed. He pulled five $100 bills from his coat pocket and showed it to me. “Sometimes you gotta play a little rough,” he said. When he’d appeared around the corner, the sight of him had been enough to scare the bejesus out of the couple. So the man handed over the payment. “Come on, let’s get outta here,” Sniper said, starting the ignition. My heart was still going a hundred miles per hour.

For the next couple of weeks this was how it went with Sniper and Roderick. By night, the three of us did our runs; by day, we functioned like a little family. We played pool, pinball, and cards in Sniper’s basement, laughing until our sides ached. I helped Roderick with his accent (like me, he couldn’t pronounce certain words), and he snickered every time I called him by the nickname I gave to him—Flower. Because of his culture, Roderick was a virgin. He would always tell me, “I’m going to save myself for the prettiest girl in the world!” He was such a sweet guy.

Roderick and I hung out every day, but there was never a romantic spark between us. He was like a brother to me. In fact, when I told him I was part Arabic, he gave me a special gift. “This is a scarf that my mother left with me,” he said. He held up a pretty blue
hijab,
a head covering that traditional Muslim women wear. “In my culture, when a girl starts her period, she is given this scarf. You’re my sister now, so I want to give it to you.” I ducked my head down so he could drape the scarf over my hair. “Thank you, Flower,” I said, and we both blushed a little.