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“Been there the whole time. He followed you.”

My mouth flies open. I’m about to scream. Her hand clamps down and covers my mouth.

“They’re waiting for you upstairs by the side of the building,” she says, voice urgent and low. “And this is what you’re gonna do. Walk up those stairs, walk past the pigs and walk out the side door marked EXIT.”

“But—”

“Sweetheart, if you act like it’s the most normal thing in the world, they won’t even see you.”

“What about you? Won’t he—”

“Go on, I’ll take care of myself.”

I step up. I look back. There’s just enough light to see her hand reach and dip into the purse.

Click.

The gun.

I scramble up the steps, escape the basement for the final time. At the top of the stairs, I reach for the doorknob. I turn, and look down.

Anita looks up, her beautiful face framed by the dim light.

“Santa Anita,” I whisper, giving her a small wave and choking on my tears.

“Not everybody has the same key!” she shouts, loud enough for Blue-Eyed Bob to hear. “Cuz they don’t have the same lock. My motto’s always been—”

I hesitate, reluctant to turn the doorknob and step out, into the hallway. I may be the last person who sees Anita before the Angel of Death comes to take her away.

I turn the knob.

“Honey, I always said, if you can’t find the key,
bust down the fucking door!
”

She steps back into the dark and her fate as I step out into the light and mine.

T
he basement door closes. No click. Right in front of me, the exit.

Noise. Cops or immigration officers, it doesn’t matter, they smell blood. Their voices filter down from upstairs. Maybe the side door’s a magic portal. I sure as hell don’t remember seeing that green, glowing EXIT sign.

I push the bar, open the door and peek outside. Two cops sit in a patrol car. I can’t tell if they’re chatting, jerking off or looking at Internet porn. Down the alley, the Impala’s trunk. It’s parked on Market Street. The back door’s open. I run down the street.

“Get in!” Marci grabs my arm and pulls me inside. The door slams. The car peels around the corner.

“They almost got you.” The driver’s the same boy who drove the VW beater van. He holds up headphones. “The audience
is
listening.”

We’re moving. I look out the window, at the city. Day for night. I see everything I missed the first night, and on Halloween.

I consider his words. Fact is, I almost
let
myself get caught. I almost gave in to my fear. I turn forward. I won’t look back.

T
he new safe house is temporary. Kidd calls it “a
fucking
flophouse!” He’s right. I’d describe it as a roach-infested nightmare. The walls are peeling, the carpet’s tattered with torn-up bald patches and the front door hangs off the frame. It makes the old safe house look like a five-star hotel.

Everyone—except J.D. and Anita (and Pony, but he doesn’t count; he left on his own)—escaped.

I’m overwhelmed with guilt. I don’t dare tell anyone or write it down. J.D. saved me.

He really loved me … and I doubted him.

N
ight.

Marci and I lie on a bare mattress. The fabric’s shiny from overuse. The surface feels exhausted from fucking and sleeping. She offers a cigarette. I wave it off.

“Why’d you come back for me?”

“I didn’t realize,” she says, taking a drag, “I had a choice.”

“Weren’t you afraid of being caught?”

“If I get caught and put in jail,” she says, blasting white puffs, “I can use the phone to call someone and post bail. But if
you
get caught, they’d send you back. No phone, no bail.”

“What about J.D.?”

She looks away. I don’t ask why. Not that it matters. I don’t have a rescue plan.

I close my eyes and “sleep.” I can’t really call it sleep. Every morning, I’m the first one up. I live in a panicked state. I’m a roiling cauldron of feelings. Nervousness, excitement, dread. My heart races. Even though the room is freezing, I’m always hot. My body burns.

The next morning, I sit on the window ledge, peering out the filthy pane. After months of hiding, I thought I’d be curious about the world. But I can’t see anything through the glass. The grime is too thick. I’m not even hungry, and it’s been ages since I ate. A shape appears in glass.

“J.D.?”

“No,” Marci says. She sits on the mattress and lights a cigarette.

I turn back. Fist to glass, I wipe away the grime and look through the spot. There’s a girl down on the street. She’s young, maybe fourteen, and stands on the curb.

“You miss him?”

“Hell, yeah.”

A station wagon pulls up. The door swings open. The girl slips in and the car pulls away. My body shudders. Is the driver Blue-Eyed Bob? Or, some other creep? What will happen to her? I’ll never know. She’s gone.

“I found a new place. I’m going back to the old one and pick up some stuff. What’s the
one
thing you want?”

“My journal. I left it under the futon. It’s blue.”

She drops the cigarette, grinds it under her heel and leaves. I fall back on the mattress and look up, at the ceiling. It’s endured thousands of eyes: awake, shut, surrendered.

Mine grow heavy and I slip into a deep, dreamless sleep.

“G
et up!”

A hand shakes my shoulder.

“What?” I sit up. Outside, it’s dark and so cold my teeth chatter. I look around. The room’s empty. The door’s open.

“Where is everybody?”

“Hurry up!” Marci tosses me a jacket. “We’re leaving. Here, put this on.” She hands me a red wig and green fabric.

“A dress?”

“Your picture’s all over the news. You’re an Amber Alert.”

“No way.”

“Way. Put it on.”

“You’re kidding.”

“It’s your disguise.”

I claw at my clothes. I know all about disguises. I’m a quick-change artist.

“No, pull it on
over
what’re wearing. Girls do that now. Wear dresses over jeans. And don’t forget the wig.”

I follow her out, looking less like a girl than a nutty boy who didn’t know the difference between a skirt and pants. We run down a dimly lit hallway, passing a series of open doorways. People fucking or shooting up. Angry people. Crazy, high, dead people. The air reeks—rotten food, vomit, speed.

We’re halfway down a narrow flight of stairs.

“Wait by the door,” Marci says. “I need to get the car.”

“Alone?” I shake my head and look up. Her eyes follow. A figure stands at the top of the stairs. His pants are crumpled at his knees. His hand moves, jerking off.

“C’mon, girls, cum up here an’ suck Daddy’s cock—”

Marci grabs my arm, pulls me out the door and onto the street. She threads her arm through mine. “Look down and pretend we’re girlfriends.”

“
Hey! Hey! Bitchs I’s talkin’ to you!
”

A hand clamps down on my shoulder. I turn, look. It’s E-Gore, the masturbating ogre from the top of the stairs. Marci spins around, holds up a canister and shoots pepper spray in his face.

“
Get the fuck off us!
”

“
You fucking bitches! I’ll fuckin’ kill you!
”

We run. A siren wails.

“Stop!” A cop’s voice.

Marci ignores the command. We dash down the street. I look to the left and see—No! Yes! Blue-Eyed Bob? Am I imagining things? Magical thinking. If I look to the right, he’ll disappear. I see the Impala. It’s parked by the curb.

“Wait!”

“No, we can’t!”

We run past it and down a stairwell.

“
Run!
”

I lose the wig and rip off the dress. We run down steps.

“
JUMP!
”

We hop a turnstile and tumble down more steps. The train waits, parked at the platform. She pulls me inside, the doors close and the car lurches. We’re moving forward.

“‘Scuse, ’scuse us.” Marci pulls me through the crowded car to another exit. The car gathers speed. “Hang on!”

Bam!
She slams her fist against the emergency button.

Shreeaaaaakkkkkk

The trolley’s wheel screech and stops. The lights cut out. Marci forces the door. It opens. She leaps into the dark.

“Jump!”

I leap, landing on the platform connecting the cars. The tunnel air’s stale. Below, I see a blur. Ground, track.

“Get off!
Down! Down!
”

I jump off the platform, shoes crunching on gravel. We run down a tunnel. Toward flashing lights and through echoes. Train wheels squeal, screech and groan. Headlights, bright and white, barrel toward us. I knew it. We’re going to die, crushed between metal wheels and railroad tracks.

“
UP! UP! CLIMB UP!
”

I climb up a ladder and crawl onto the floor. My face meets a million questioning eyes. I look back. Marci struggles to pull herself up, onto the platform. I put out a hand.

“Hey—”

WHOOSH

“Marci?”

She’s gone.

I stagger away from the scene. Dazed, I trudge up the stairs, elbowing my way through the crush of bodies moving, gushing, down like a river.

I reach the street. Think back. The violent screech. The loud thunk. The flash of arms. Body snatched. And the screams. The screams are nothing like a horror movie.

My knees weaken.

“Hey!”

I look over. My gaze keeps me upright. The Impala, its open door. The boy. He motions. “Get in!
C’mon!
”

“But—”

He reaches across the seat and hauls me inside. The door slams shut, the car speeds away, my head hits the seat and—

I don’t want to see. I need to. I crawl up, turn, look back.

Lights flash. Ambulance sirens wail. I did, I did see it. The accident. The men in white carrying a gurney, head downstairs to—

“She’s dead,” I say. “Dead.”

I don’t think he understands what I’m saying.

Am I saying it?

“Dead.” But he doesn’t stop the car. He keeps driving. He glances at me. His hands tighten on the wheel. He looks away. He doesn’t stop the car.

I turn back, face forward and remind myself.

Don’t look back.

I
look up. Alice / Nadya. She strokes my head. It rests against her tummy. I feel a kick. She’s pregnant?

“It’s Thanks-
fucking
-giving and all I want to do is …”

“Get high?”

Wait, I
know
that voice. Where am I? I try to lift my head, but I’m too weak.

“Is that her?”

“Who?”

“Sugar. What’s she doing here?”

I close my eyes. I must be waking from a long sleep. Or, I’m in another dream. A bad one. Yes, I dreamed what I saw. Marci, hit by the subway car, ground up under—

“No!”

I jerk my head and move my eyes away from the horrible image.

blood ragged flesh death death death

Magical thinking: If I can’t see it, it doesn’t exist.

“What?”

I look over. I
know
him. But I don’t know his name or how we met. Then I remember. He drove the VW beater van. And the Impala.

“Anita’s back for a tryptophan fix?” Marci’s dead, Anita’s gone and he’s joking.

“All—” I struggle to speak. My mouth is dry. Alice / Nadya gives me a sip of water. “I want to go home.”

“I keep remembering the year before I was locked up,” Kidd says.
His
voice, I know, it’s impossible to forget. Why didn’t he get caught in the raid?

“You thought, ‘Maybe if I went home,’” another voice says. “It would all be better.”

“But you forget all the times it was bad. Okay, bedtime!”

That
voice belongs, unmistakably, to Marci.

I cry. I
am
dreaming. None of this is real. It can’t be. I’ll wake on a filthy mattress in an empty room. Alone.

“I know, honey, but—”

I force my body to sit up.

“Marci?!”
I reach out and touch her arm. She
feels
alive. I scootch over so I’m close to her face. I hold my hand out under her nose. “You’re
alive!?
”

“What!” She laughs. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Are you a dream? Or are you alive-
alive?!
”

“Living and breathing.”

“Then what was that?” My voice rises. “Back in the train station?”

“Hey there,” she says. Alice / Nadya eases me down. “Take it easy.”

“But I
saw
you—”

“I crawled up onto the platform. The person you saw—hit, by the train—that was one of the mole people.”

“But what about the ambulance? I saw them going downstairs to get you.”

“For him, honey,” she says, patting my back, comforting me. “For him.”

N
ew bed, new room. I look under the curtains. Night. I let it drop and check the clock. 3 a.m. Halloween’s a memory. We’re traveling through the lost, lonely days that fall between Thanksgiving leading to Christmas. I grab my journal, flip it open and scribble,

I swing my legs over the bed. My feet touch wood. I walk down the long hallway to the kitchen. Marci sits at the table. It’s covered with masses of wrapping paper, ribbons, tape and presents.

“Hi. What’re you doing?”

She holds a felt-tip pen. She writes on tags and ties each one onto a stocking.

“Is there milk?”

“Yeah, I just bought some.”

I stand and touch her shoulder. I need to make sure she’s here. I pick up a stocking.

“Nancy?”

“Stockings have people’s real names written on them.”

“I thought our identities are secret.”

“They are, but it’s a holiday thing. There’s something about writing your real name. I mean, if you think about it, your name separates you from everyone else. It’s part of what makes you unique. So, one day out of the year, we use our real names.”