Compromised (20 page)

W
e hug our coats around our bodies and walk back toward the warehouse—hope of a life in Boise all gone. The box's corners dig into my stomach and I hug it tighter, feeling angrier. More disappointed.

The cold bites at our noses and ears, and after we finally get oriented, it takes us an hour to find our way back.

“I don't want to sleep here again,” Klondike says. “It's been too long. We stayed with him last night, but no more. Buddha. Asswipes.” He lags behind. “It's bad luck they don't find him. Death brings death.”

I grab his hand and pull him up with us, impatient and tired. “We stick together. We'll be okay. One more night.”

We're standing at the end of the alleyway. I see the warehouse is still boarded up. I wonder what the protocol is for something like this? Shouldn't
someone
report it? “Death is near,” Klon says.

“No shit, Klon. Death is in the warehouse.” Nicole sighs. “You guys know about Machine Gun Jack McGurn?”

“No.” Klon shivers.

“And we don't want to.” Klon looks terrified and I try to calm him down. “We have no choice,” I say. “Just one more night. I promise.” We walk to the alley. Some kids gather around a fire they built in a trash bin. Others have already found their places inside ratty cardboard boxes.

The temperature drops. “We'll huddle together tonight. We'll be okay,” I say. “We'll be okay,” I repeat under my breath. We have to be. Aunt Sarah's not here.

And the pain comes back to my chest.

Nicole peeks inside the building and comes out smelling like death. “Jesus, that place is ripe. I can't see too good, but I think the packs are still next to Limp. When do you think they'll find him?”

Klon moves away from Nicole.

“Jesus, Klon. It's not contagious or anything. Anyway, that Jack McGurn really got the raw deal in the end. You
know he was one of the shooters of the Saint Valentine's Day massacre—a top assassin in his day. But he was killed in a bowling alley of all places. Talk about a bum deal. A bowling alley. Who wants to die in bowling shoes? Rented, smelly, athlete's foot bowling shoes? How shitty is that? Anyway, when the feds found his body, they found a note next to the corpse: ‘You've lost your job; you've lost your dough, your jewels, and handsome houses. But things could be worse, you know. You haven't lost your trousers.'”

The Mafia world is surreal. They even take the time to write bathroom-wall poetry after a big hit. Weird. My mind spins. Where will I find Sarah Jones from a bunch of letters and a dried flower? How is it possible?

“Hey. Snap out of it, Jeops.” Nicole tugs on my arm. “Earth to Jeopardy. Are you even here?”

“Oh. Yeah.”

Nicole shakes her head. “Anyway, I'm never going to die wearing a pair of bowling shoes. That's why I don't bowl. What an embarrassment.”

“But bowling's kinda fun.”

“I'm not taking my chances,” Nicole says. “I'm gonna die in style.”

“And how's that?” I ask. I just don't get it. The whole die in style thing.

“I'll die when
I
choose to go. You know? That's what I can control in this fucking shithole. My death.”

Nicole looks angry. Something's off. Her eyes have that dead black look again. I shake off the feeling and figure it's just that we're all feeling pretty sick.

Klon's eyes have a glassy look to them, and it's like he slips in and out of consciousness. He finally says, “It's bad luck—so many days. All alone. That boy.” He sighs. “And his eyes are open. He must be so tired.”

“You can't be tired dead,” Nicole says. “That's the whole point of the eternal rest, right?”

The wind whips up, and cold gnaws into every part of our bodies.

I shrug and shiver. It's weird to think that Limp maybe has a family somewhere. Maybe somebody's looking for him. Maybe not. I look at Klondike and wonder the same.

“Just one more night like this,” I say. “Tomorrow we'll find someplace warmer. Tomorrow we'll get away from here. Maybe get to a library. Get more clues about where to go next.”

Klon sighs.

“Really. It's like an adventure, and we're detectives trying to find Aunt Sarah. It's fun,” I say. The words sound lame. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I was eaten by a wolf and shit out over a cliff.” Klon croaks and squeezes his eyes shut, nodding his head back and forth.

Nicole and I both laugh. “Come lean on me,” I say. I wish I had Klon's cool expressions. We should write them down.

“Okay,” says Klondike. He falls asleep on my shoulder, his breath a raspy whistle.

Nicole sits on the other side of Klon. “I'm feeling pretty crappy, too. All this cold.”

“Me, too,” I say. “He's getting worse. I wonder if his ribs are okay.”

“Ribs heal themselves, don't they?” Nicole asks.

“Yeah. It just takes time.”

“He'll be fine.”

“I hope so,” I say. My eyelids feel like lead and my head bobs forward. I'm too tired to worry about Klon right now.

“Are you okay?” Nicole asks.

“What do you mean?” I say.

“Are you, um, okay that we didn't find Auntie Em?”
Nicole says. Her voice sounds strained.

I nod. “Sure.” I try to sound convincing. At least the pain in my chest has eased up. “We'll be fine. We'll just find her somewhere else. And she'll take us in.” It's the first time I say that—“us.” And I realize it's what I want.

“Right,” Nicole says.

“Really,” I say.

“Well, if not, we've always got my dad.” She half laughs.

“Plan B,” I say before I catch myself.

“Plan B,” she mumbles.

“Oh yeah!” I say. “Ta-da!” I hand her the glasses. The one accomplishment of the day. It wasn't a total loss.

She slips them on her nose and squints. “Hey. That's kinda cool. Everything looks like I'm staring into a fish bowl.”

“Most likely they're the wrong prescription, but maybe they'll help. You should try them in the light. Tomorrow.”

She puts the glasses in her coat pocket. “Thank you,” she says. “Really.”

“You're welcome. Though technically you can't consider that shoplifting,” I say.

“Nah. That's just outright stealing.” Nicole laughs.
“Maybe we're going wrong with you and should focus on pickpocketing instead of shoplifting.”

“Ha. Ha.”

“Really, though. Thanks.” Nicole smiles. “So what's the theme of the day?” she asks. “We should stay awake.” We listen to the wind and the rustle of papers in the alleyway. “This place creeps me out.”

“Night creeps me out.”

“Yeah.”

Talking would help keep me awake, even if it means my throat hurting more. “Theme of the longest day on the planet,” I say. “What's the first thing you're gonna read when you get good at reading?”

Nicole pats her chest. “My postcards. The glasses should help.”

“I hope so. Do you, um, want me to read one to you? Just because.” Nicole, except for that first day, has never even let me hold them. “Just to pass the time, anyway.” For some reason I want a connection to somebody real. And postcards from a real dad seem like the best thing we've got. “I can read a couple of these stupid letters out loud, too. We can share family secrets or something lame like that. Just to kill time.”

She nods. “Okay. Maybe if you read letters, we'll find more clues.”

I shrug. “Maybe. Unless you want to practice reading.”

“Nah. I don't really feel like concentrating so much tonight. My head's killing me. Read a few postcards.” She hands me Chicago and two others behind it.

“Okay,” I say. “Here goes. ‘You'd love it here. The city has the biggest skyscrapers I've ever seen. And great pizza. I hope to see you soon.'”

“And the postmark?”

“Why the postmark?”

“Maybe it'll be a clue. You know, for Plan B. Besides, it's kind of cool to think that these pieces of paper began somewhere and ended up in Reno. And are now in Boise. All for”—she looks at the stamp—“twenty-eight cents. Way cheap travel.”

“Not as cheap as hitchhiking sand from Chad.”

Nicole smiles.

I read the postmark. Yerington. My stomach hurts, and that familiar burning churns up my esophagus. “Chicago,” I say. I flip over the other two postcards she handed me. All of them have Yerington on the postmark. Was it her mom? It must've been. I guess she wasn't all
bad. I read the postcards aloud. They all say basically the same thing.

“Pretty generic,” she says.

“Yeah. But that's the point of a postcard. You don't write anything really important on one.”

“How many have you sent?”

I think about it. “None. Not that I remember.”

“If you take the time to buy someone a postcard and send it, you should write something better than ‘You'd love it here. Great pizza.'”

“Okay. Will do.”

“Okay,” she says, “now read one of Auntie Em's letters. The flower one. I like it the best.”

“You haven't heard the others.”

Nicole shrugs. “I don't need to.”

So I read the one with the dried flower. The alley is so dark, it's hard to make out the tiny handwriting on the crisp paper even though I've practically got it memorized by now.

“Now that's a real letter. Sure beats the hell outa ‘great pizza,' ‘great food,' ‘Hollywood walk of fame.'”

I shake my head. “Nah. Your dad is just more to the point,” I lie.

Nicole smiles and takes back the postcards. “You know,” she says, “I'm not really sure what I'll say to him when I finally find him. You know what you'll say to your aunt?”

I shake my head. “Not a clue.” And at this point, I'm not even sure if I'll ever find her. My one solid clue was a dead end.

We're quiet for a while. Somebody in the alley is snoring. Somebody else moans in his sleep. Night is a sad time. It makes us more invisible than we already are. It makes everything more real. I think about all those stupid survivor man shows on Discovery. Who needs to know how to survive in a swamp or desert when the real world is hard enough? I'd like to see those guys set loose in downtown Boise. Survive this, asshole, I think. It feels good. I mouth the word: asshole. Yeah. It feels real good to say that.

I finally say, “That's a good choice. Reading the postcards. Tomorrow you can try. With the glasses and better light.” Even if she can read the words on the card, I doubt she'll be able to read the postmarks. At least I hope not.

“Yep,” she says. “Tomorrow. And you? Now that you're
a professional shoplifter, what would you like to steal? For real.”

I think for a while. “Maybe a phone card.”

“Who do you have to call?”

I pause. “Maybe my dad. Just to hear his voice or something dumb like that.”

Klon shifts positions and opens his eyes. “I'd call Ma. I'd tell her it's not the demons,” he says. “Tourette's.”

“I'll call her with my phone card, then,” I say. “We can call her first.”

Klon half smiles, then drifts off to sleep.

“Let's practice vowels.” Nicole takes out the notebook. “Write bigger, okay?”

“You could've told me that before.”

She shrugs. “Never let on to your weaknesses. Mob rule.”

“Are there any others, besides the whole code thing?” I ask.

“Never lie,” she says.

Figures there'd be some “thou shalt not lie” mob rule. I think of the stupid Yerington postmarks and pray those glasses won't work for her. We've got to find Aunt Sarah before Nicole figures it out.

“Hey, are you listening or not?” Nicole says.

“Yeah. Sorry. Just daydreaming a bit.” I wonder if I can find a way to break those glasses tonight, just in case the prescription is close. Just in case she can read those tiny letters. “But isn't the mob, um, kind of over?” I finally ask.

Nicole laughs. She sounds sad. “Well, they're still around. But it's not the same.”

I look around the alley and see black forms trying to keep warm. Home seems a million miles away. An impossible dream. I pull out a pencil stub and start to write in her notebook.

We practice letters, words, phonics. Nicole scribbles in her notebook writing sentences. It's almost dawn. We haven't slept all night, and the fire in my throat has spread all over my body again. Even my hair hurts.

“Do you think we can sleep a few minutes—just a few?” The night sky has turned lavender. We have another hour before sunrise.

“Good idea. I'm so tired,” Nicole says. We lean against each other.

When I close my eyes, my lids burn against the pupils.

“Hearing your dad's voice isn't dumb, you know. He's
family,” Nicole says just as I'm about asleep. “That counts for something,” she says.

Klondike half opens his eyes. “You and Cappy—you're a good family.” He smiles, croaks, and drifts back to sleep.

Tears itch my eyes.

“C
lear out!” The voice booms in the alleyway.

Startled, I try to jump up but can't move. It feels like my entire body has turned into a Popsicle. My teeth chatter.

“This isn't a hotel. You need to clear out before we haul all of you off to the shelter!” The man speaks into a megaphone. The alley comes to life with people shuffling out of their boxes.

Klondike yawns and leans on me. “I'm too tired. Tits. Asswipe.”

Nicole stands. “I feel like shit.”

Three police officers walk up and down the alley, hitting wooden batons on their gloved palms. A woman officer
comes up to us. She taps me on the shoulder. “You're new around here,” she says.

I nod.

She looks at the three of us. “Your friend doesn't look so good there.” She motions to Klondike. “He sick?”

Klondike's body tenses up. He twitches and lets out a massive croak.

The officer stares at the three of us for a while. “He looks awfully young. I think we should—” she's saying when the guy with the megaphone shouts, “It's in here. Jesus Christ, Lord Almighty.”

She hands me a flyer for the Path of Light Home for Women and Children. “It's a shelter near the university. Much better than the streets, kid. Bring your friends.” Then she follows the policemen into the warehouse.

“Looks like—” I can see the light of the officers' flashlight beams in the building. “Oh, man. It's Limp,” somebody shouts, his voice muffled by the boarded-up windows.

“How many days?”

“From the smell of it, a while,” he says.

With the cops distracted by Limp's dead body, the alleyway clears out. “What about our stuff?” I ask Nicole. She hid our backpacks next to Limp yesterday.

“You got your box?”

I nod.

“I got my map and stuff.”

“Okay.”

“Fuck the other stuff.”

“We can't.”

“Well, we can't very well walk in there and say, ‘Oh. Excuse me. Could you pass me my backpack?'” Nicole helps Klondike up. “What's so important, anyway? All you ever do is collect trash in that stupid pack. We're already wearing all the clothes we have.”

I swallow. It's like giving up on the last piece of something that makes us different from other kids on the streets. Without our packs we're just homeless teens—not teens on a trip somewhere.

“Christ, Jeopardy. What's so important that you left in there?”

“What about the dolls? The worry dolls and money?” We have a reason to get the packs.

Nicole pulls them out of her pocket. “I'm not a moron. I wouldn't leave money in there.” Nicole stares at me stone-faced. She's about to say something—I imagine related to some mobster who got killed wearing an REI
pack—when the same police officer pokes her head out of the building.

“You three, why don't you stick around for a couple of minutes, okay?” She points to Klondike. “How old are you, kid?”

Klondike grips my jacket. “No,” he says. “No. I can't go back,” he says, then coughs. Then he clears his throat again, and a massive clump of green phlegm comes up.

“Klon, it's cool. You're with us.” Nicole squeezes his shoulder. “Nice loogie.” She laughs. “Let's go.” She leans into me. “We've gotta get away from the cops.”

“Klon,” I say, “are you feeling okay? Maybe we could go by the shelter. Just for a day or so. Or a clinic. There's got to be a free clinic around here. Just so you can get something to feel better.”

He shakes his head and croaks. “I won't go. Please no. Fuckit. Not with them. Tallywhacker, asswipe, tallywhacker. People don't like deformed kids. People hate me when they see me. I want to be with you and Cappy. Please. Please. Tallywhacker.” He taps my shoulder and squeezes his eyes shut, his body shuddering with the wave of tics.

I look at Nicole.

She pulls me aside. “You know what happens if we take him to a hospital? They call social services. Social services shows up and assigns him a caseworker who has about two hundred other kids filed away in a ratty briefcase. This caseworker finds a home willing to take the social reject—a scarred kid—saying she'll be checking up to make sure everything's okay. Well, her weekly visits turn into every two weeks, then monthly, then every other month because she has a hundred and ninety-nine other kids in shitty homes she has to visit. And before long, his file that was once shiny and new and on the top of this caseworker's to-do list is shuffled to the bottom of that ratty briefcase, and he's forgotten. And his foster parents are happy because they get that fat monthly government check and treat him like shit because of a scar and some tics.” Nicole exhales and sighs.

I don't know where she gets the energy or the air for those kinds of speeches. I shake my head. “He's so sick,” I say.

“We'll get him something. Okay? We'll go to a drugstore and get something. We can do it.”

But I can't. I haven't been able to. And if Klon's health depends on me reading symptom labels and then
shoplifting the right medication…I feel my stomach tighten and the familiar burn shooting acids everywhere. The ache is a constant now. And I think I'm used to it—being hungry, tired, cold, sick. But every part of me wants this all to end. I look at the brochure the police officer gave me and tuck it into my jeans pocket. I don't know how much longer it'll take to find Aunt Sarah. And I don't know if we'll live long enough to do it, the way things are going.

Klon's face is gaunt and pale. Dark circles ring his winter-green eyes. He tugs on my jacket constantly with one hand and covers his coughs with the other. “I'm fine,” he says. “Just a cough. Fuckit. Cough.”

I squeeze his hand, and the three of us leave the alley before the police come back out. Plus I really don't want to see Limp's body. We walk behind three others who have spent the night in the alley. One of them drops a scarf. Nicole picks it up and says, “You dropped this.”

The three of them turn around, and one snatches it out of Nicole's hand.

“Geez,” Nicole says. “Just trying to help.” She has that tough Kids Place attitude. Cappy's gone. Nicole's back.

“Don't,” one girl says, and tucks it into her coat.

“Don't be rude, ladies. Let's introduce ourselves. This is Mario and she's Baghdad.” Mario is the one who dropped the scarf. “And I”—he bows—“am Charity, Boise's queen of the night.”

Charity is as dark as charcoal. He has long curly hair and wears red stiletto-heeled boots. Mario looks like she's Klondike's age. She fidgets and twirls matted greasy hair around her thumb. The right side of Baghdad's face looks like a patchwork quilt of skin sewn together. Her eye is fused shut.

Nicole introduces us. “This is Klondike, Jeopardy, and I'm Capone.”

Charity bats his fake lashes. “As in Al? Trying for the mobster thing?”

Put it that way, it does sound kind of lame. But I've gotten used to Nicole being Cappy.

“Give it out for free, Charity?” Nicole snaps.

I elbow Nicole.

“Don't worry, honey.” Charity keeps up with us at a fast clip, his heels tapping on the asphalt. He primps his hair. “My merchandise ain't free. Quality, baby. One-hundred-percent royal lovin' has its price.”

“Don't those shoes, um, hurt?” I ask. I look down at my
torn-up sneakers and don't feel so bad anymore.

“My trick left me high and dry last night, so I had no way to get home and change,” Charity says.

“You have a home?”

“Baby, the streets are my home.” Charity flashes a crooked smile. Three front teeth are chipped. “But I have a place where I keep my stuff,” he whispers. “I can show you.” He winks.

“I'm okay,” I say. I stare at his shoes.

Klondike croaks and says, “Asswipe.”

Nicole pinches his arm. “He doesn't mean it. He's, um, twitchy.”

Charity's eyes narrow. When Klondike croaks again and taps Charity on the arm, Charity relaxes. “There was a kid like you around here for a while—he had some funky thing going on. Remember Cuss?” he says to Mario and Baghdad.

Mario nods. “Yeah.”

Baghdad shrugs.

“Anyway, he went over about as well as a queer in Texas. You don't look like a bad kid. Just watch out who you call names around these parts. Right, Baghdad?”

Baghdad shoves her hands in her jeans pockets. Her clothes dangle on her like she's a wire hanger.

Charity smirks. “She hasn't talked since I met her. One
of these days I know she's just gonna come down with a nasty case of verbal diarrhea and tell us all what's up. Right, honey?”

Baghdad looks down the road.

Klondike shrugs. “I can't—fuckit—help it. It just comes out, you know. I don't mean it—asswipes, tallywhacker.” Klondike blows on his fingers and blinks. “Sorry.”

I stare at Charity head to toe—especially at the bright red boots. They are raincoat plastic and come up midthigh. He wears stockings, really tight shorts, and a red fishnet shirt under a jean jacket. He has to have been freezing last night.

“Darling, have you ever met a queen before?” Charity asks.

I shake my head. “Actually, no.”

“Well, baby, I don't bite. Unless you pay me to.” He grins that chipped-tooth grin. “But it's not polite to stare, okay?”

“Oh. Sorry.”

We get to one of Boise's main streets. Traffic streams from both ways. Tires spray black water, splashing through the melted snow. “We're going to Rhodes if you want to come,” Charity says.

“Rhodes?” I ask.

“The place to be if you need to hook up with something, someone. Or just be.”

“We're fine,” Nicole says.

Mario mutters, “I can't believe Limp didn't go to the Garden. That's where he should've gone.”

Baghdad looks like she has a tear in her eye. She nods.

“Oh, that's total mumbo jumbo,” Charity says. “All that voodoo just creeps me out. Limp is just fine where he died.”

Mario shoves her hands deep into her pockets and says, “He should've gone to the Garden.”

“What's the Garden?” I ask.

Mario looks at me. “That's where we go to die.”

“Who's we?” I ask.

“We,” she says.
“Us.”

I shake my head.

“The urban outdoorsmen and-women. Bums. Homeless. Hobos, whatever you want to call us, okay, Jeopardy?” Charity raises his eyebrow. “And they call you Jeopardy because…”

“Anyway, that's where we die. That's the safe place to
do it.” Mario is twirling her hair faster now.

“Rubbish,” Charity says. He flips his hair. “It's like when people tell you a body new to sex rejects sperm, because darlings, we all know that no body would reject this package of power. Complete rubbish.”

Mario glares. “Could you cut that weird talk? And it's not bullshit. It's true. The Garden is safe. It's a guarantee.”

“For what?” Nicole asks.

“Heaven,” Mario says. “No matter what you've done.”

Baghdad nods.

Charity sighs. “Or maybe no matter who.” Charity and the others walk on. Charity turns back. “You sure you three aren't comin'? Rhodes is where
everyone
goes when the alley's been raided.”

“Maybe later. Thanks,” Nicole says.

Charity looks at us. “Your friend here's looking a little green.” He motions to Klondike. “Sometimes the Mennonite Fellowship on Twelfth Street gives out soup.”

“What's that?” Nicole asks.

“You know. Banjos, tambourines, ‘Praise the Lord' shit. It's soup.” Charity smiles his sloppy red lipstick smile.

“Which way?” I ask. Soup sounds too good to be true.

“About twenty blocks past Rhodes. We can walk together.” We follow them for a couple of hours. Then Charity points. “Go that way. Twelfth Street. You can't miss it.”

Soup. All I want is soup. I feel like I could walk ten hours to get it.