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The cops look up, see me.

“
Halt!
”

I ignore the order, scramble down the metal steps and slip through the window. The apartment is empty. I slam the window
shut, lock the latch and walk away. I hear them pounding on the window, “
Open this window!
” I give them the finger and run out the front door.

The moment I step into the hallway, two coppers walk up the left stairwell. I turn right. Spider-Boy’s wrist unspools web. In free fall, I drop down five flights.

Ground floor. I stand outside the emergency exit. I realize I hold something in my hand: Anita’s purse. She needs it. I need to warn her. I owe her that.

I open the basement door. It shuts. I walk into the dark.

T
he door shuts. I’m back. The place I said I’d never return: the basement. I step down. The wood creaks. I hope Anita’s down here. I step off the wood. My bare feet touch cold concrete.

Click. Click. Click.

Rats? Lighter? I pray it’s Anita.

Click.

My hair stands on end. I pretend I’m Hansel looking for Gre-tel. I pretend the
click-click
’s the sound of crumbs landing on concrete.

Click
.

I focus, trying to source the sound. It could be coming from here. Or, over
there
.

Click. Click. Click.

The sound’s a pack of rats, nails skittering on concrete. In seconds, they’ll swarm over my body, thousands of fangs digging into my flesh.

Click
.

“Who, who’s there?”

Click. Click
.

No answer.

Click click click.

“Hello? Hello?
HELLO!?!
”

No answer. I know I’m going to die here, in this awful basement. I escaped from Serenity Ridge, survived assault,
and
my parents. For what? Flesh-eating rats and Death. Something furry brushes over my foot.

“Ahhh!”

Click click click.

I put out my hand. My palm touches a … wall?

I use the flat, rough surface to guide myself toward the sound.

“Motherfuckin’ lighter!”

I exhale. I’m safe. Well, for the moment. Rats don’t bitch about lighters.

“T
hey gone?”

“Yeah.”

Ahead, light. I creep forward, look around the corner. The lighter sparks, and I see her. She sits on the floor holding a glass pipe. Her lips are wrapped around its end. She suck-suck-sucks
hard
. Her cheeks collapse, craters. She looks ancient. She holds her breath. The pipe slips out her lips and she looks up, seeing me but not.

Silent, she waves me closer.

Click click
.

The flame pops, flickers, trembles and sputters. Dark, Death, it’s all the same. I’m trapped in the black. I can’t get out.

“What the fuck brought you down here, child?”

Anita, the animated Buddha. She exhales. Thick white smoke pours out her head. It swirls, circling her head like dragon’s breath. Or, fog. The air reeks. I stick out my tongue, curious to taste. Tacky-heavy on my tongue, it tastes like lead. I feel lightheaded.

“What are you smoking?”

“Between you and me?”

“I don’t see anyone else here.”

“See, don’t see that, is—” The light blue flame dips, gone. “Shit!”

“I brought your purse.”

“Oh, baby, thank you! Gimme that, would you,” she says. Dead lead smoke blasts my face. I cough. “Sorry, baby.”

“Here.” I hand her the purse. She opens it.
Zip.
Plastic compacts clink against metal lipsticks.

“There!”

A blue flame explodes against the black, a mini–blow torch. It speaks, too.
Ssssssshhhhhhh
.

“‘Nita, what’re you doing with a blow torch two inches from your face?”

“Sweetheart,” she says, using her G-L-A-M-O-U-R-O-U-S voice. “What does it
look
like?”

“Um.” She sticks the glass pipe between her lips. “Smoking crack?”

She sucks, inhaling, filling her lungs with more dead lead. She holds it in. Exhales, tilts her head up and aims her mouth. The white blast drifts up, toward the ceiling.

“Oh, baby boy,” she says, and shakes her head, No-No-No. “Crack’s
so
eighties. Girl, I wouldn’t even know where to get that shit.
Lies
. ’Course I would. This here’s—” She hacks, spewing out smokey leftovers. “Tina.”

“Whatever, Anita Tina Fixx, it smells awful.”

“Speed, crank, meth, tweak—all the same.”

“Crack and speed are the same?”

“Here,” she says, offering the pipe. “Why don’tcha take a hit. Decide for yourself.”

“Thank you, but no,” I say. “There’s more for you.”

“Riiight?” She smiles. She holds the blue flame under the pipe, warming the glass. “You remembered.”

Her brow furrows and she sucks, hard, like she’s trying to pull the last drops of a chocolate milkshake up, off the glass bottom. I want to look away, but I can’t. It’s so dangerous. And exciting. And a little bit depressing. No. A
lot
depressing.

“You swear,” I say. “Your face looks like Buddha when you do that.”

“I’m guessing, but Buddha prolly didn’t smoke Tina. Ganja, maybe. Or heroin.”

“‘Nita, why do you smoke that stuff?”

“At this point, it’s—” She moves the torch’s blue flame away from the pipe and exhales. “So I can act normal.”

I stare. At her. The pipe. And I totally get it. They feed off one other. PipeAnitaPipeAnita.

“Bring it on,” she says. “Here’s your big opportunity.”

“Oh, no, thank you but—”

“Got it. More for me. I see you have
quesssstions
. Might as well, you know,
ask
. You sit with a real live drug ad-dick!”

“Questions? Like what?”

“Somethin’ real Oprah. ‘So
tell
me, Ah-nee-tah,
why
are
you
smo-king speed?’”

“Oprahtobehonestwithyou,” she says, back to herself, taking a quick hit, “an’ allIcandoisbehonest’cuzyouOprahIswearcan youhandme some tissues?’ And then, you know, I’d stop, slow it down, you know, like how they do.”

“She doesn’t have issue shows anymore,” I say. “We were just watching her and—”

“Okay, so Old Skool Oprah. Early Oprah.
Rerun
Oprah. Greatest Hits of Oprah! Crack pipe in one hand, microphone in the other Oprah. ‘Yo! Oprah! Lady! It be
true!
I am the world’s
original
Crack Baby. I’m whatchacall Crack Baby Numbah One.’ Yo, Ben, yo mama smoke crack?”

“My mama’d get upset it didn’t smell like French perfume,” I laugh, imagining Haifa with a crack pipe. “Is that you asking? Or Oprah?”

“You talking to me? Or Oprah?”

“You! Ben! You! D’Oprah in d’crack house!”

“
My
stepmother’s hair would melt.”

“First time I smoked, oh,
honey
, it was
on
. I found
it
. The answer. Whatever wasn’t there before, suddenly it was! How you do, Miss Tina. See you brought your BFF, too, Miss Addicktion. Yes, Ben, I was hooked. Love. I did it once and, baby, I
never
looked back!”

“That’s what Kidd said,” I say, absentminded. “About running. Never looking back.”

“Honey, that’s what we all say. You too, you—”

She turns her attention back to the pipe. Blue flame, torch to end. She suck-inhales like a baby on a mama’s breast. Her physical need is intense. Desperate. No shame. I don’t look away. I want to see what she’s doing. I mean,
really
see it. I want to see what it is so I’ll never need to look at it again.

“Why do
you
like drugs? Why
don’t
you?” She waves the blue flame. I step back. The flame looks like it could melt skin. Anita’s so caught up she doesn’t notice.

“I still don’t get it. Why you do that when you’ve got so much going for you?”

“Can you sit there,” she says, “and honestly tell me
you
love yourself?”

“Well—”

“Sweetheart, it’s either a Yes or a No,” she says, leveling those dead-crazy-alive eyes at me. “You don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?”

“If
you
love you. Forget”—her hand flies up, waving away invisible insects—“
him
. Do
you? Love
you?”

I don’t. I don’t know if I do.

“Sometimes I don’t ’cause …” Maybe Kidd was right about me. That I hide behind questions. “Sometimes—sometimes, I wish. No, more like … I keep wondering what would my life be like if I was straight. Nobody would have noticed me. I’d have started dating girls. Everyone, they would have
encouraged
me. But ’cause I’m different, I’m forced to live through
this?
”

“Girl.” She puts down the pipe and drops the attitude. “Now, before we say good-bye, it’s time for us to get real.”

“O
ne day I remember,” Anita says. The G-L-A-M-O-U-R-O-U-S voice is gone. “I came home from the waffle shop. Someone seen me, you know,
dressed
. They told my grandparents. Who sat me down and said, ‘Chil’, long as you live
here,
you will
dress
like a boy.’ And I told ’em, ‘I just spent the last five months learning how to act like a girl!’”

“That’s how they found out?”

Maybe her story holds a clue. Maybe I’ll learn that I’m not really as alone—or, damned to shame and loneliness—as I feel.

“Chil’, they didn’t find out
once!
” she says. “No, more like they
kept
finding out. Till they couldn’t pretend no more.”

She lights up, sucks, smokes. I’m mesmerized by her ritual. How she holds the blue flame to the end of the pipe. How she sucks it. How she holds it in, how she exhales. How her mood tick-tocks with each puff.

I’m tempted. I’ll try it! Take the edge off. Nothing wrong with that, right?

The blue flame lights up Anita’s face. She sweats and her hands shake. N.P. (Not Pretty.) No, thank
you,
there’s more for you. And, oh, yeah, ’Nita, don’t meth rhyme with death?

“I was little. Five? My dad walked into my parents’ bedroom,” she says. “Dancing! And, girl, I was
all
dressed up. In my mom’s clothes. I even had on one of her wigs. He scared me.
I saw him and jumped under the covers. Like I could hide from him. He stood over the bed and said, ‘What’s that you have on?’ I said, ‘Nothing!’ Then, you know what he does?”

“No, what?”

“He drags me off the bed, marches me out the house and drives me to school.”

“
Damn!
That’s hard.”

“I loved it. I thought, ‘Now all the people can see how pretty I look!’” The blue flame cuts out. She puts down the torch. We sit in the dark. She rummages around in her purse and pulls out lipstick. “So, sweetheart, what’s your story? I know you’re dying to tell it.”

“I don’t have one. I’m the victim of extraordinary circumstances.”

“I know
exactly
how you feel. Fact, I feel you so deep, I thought you might like—”

Crack-pop, the blue flame comes back to life, illuminating our cave. Ladylike, she holds up a homemade cigarette. She lights its white tip on the blue flame.

“What’s that?”

“Somebody didn’t graduate D.A.R.E.”

“Yeah, I did. You’re holding a gateway drug.”

“Maybe?” She takes quick, short puffs on the joint. “Don’t believe everything the government sells. One puff and—boom!—you’re an addict. You’re not like me.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“You didn’t grab this out of my hands, for one. You didn’t open my purse, for two. You didn’t open my purse and
run off
with my purse to some alley and get high by yourself.” She exhales, a fine line of sweet-smelling smoke. “Remember the first time we dyed your hair? I asked you if you wanted a nip, you said, ‘No.’ You didn’t think about it. No, ‘Hey, ’Nita, gimme a toke.’ It’d have been like, ‘Yeah, gimme the bottle. And what
else
you got?’”

“Okay, I see.”

She offers me the joint.

“Listen, your head’s not gonna explode if you take one toke.”

Cautious, I take the joint. I pinch it in-between my thumb and index finger. I don’t know what the hell she’s talking about, but I don’t want to sound like a total dweeb.

“Speed? I mean, if you want to stay
up
, why would you smoke
this?
Doesn’t it make you sleepy?”

I raise the joint, take a little puff and hand it back.

She shakes her head. “No, no, sweetheart, take a
toke
. Suck in real deep, hold it long as you can and let it go.”

I follow her instructions. Inhale. Hold. Cough on the funny bunny smoke.

“Good.” She laughs. “Coughing’ll get it down there real good.”

Unlike the ecstasy, I feel the pot right away. But it’s a different feeling from the pill. Pleasant, but not euphoric. More foresty than exploding heart chakras and galaxies. Calm. A spacey feeling settles in. Like I’m sitting on the moon and my ass is about to slide off the surface. I stare at the red tip, mesmerized.

“Wow, check it out.”

“Huh.”

“How the embers chew up the tobacco and white paper.”

Anita polishes off the joint. Turns out, she was “sharing,” but only out of politeness. More for her …

“You think it’s a gateway drug?”

“One time? No. Here,” she says, puts out a hand. I help her stand. Her palm is rough with big fingers and long, curved nails. My hand disappears in hers.

“What’re we doing?”

“You’re leaving.”

B
lind, without light or lighter, Anita leads me out the basement labyrinth.

“’Nita, are you part bat?”

“Shhh,” she whispers, and pulls me close. “Be
real
quiet!” She inches us forward. Stops.

Click. Click.

Dress shoes on concrete. I know that sound. Twenty? Thirty? Steps. We stand at the bottom of the stairs. The dress shoes halt. I look up. A sliver of light’s forced its way through the basement door’s crack. I stop and pull her to me.

“He’s here!”