Feast of Weeds (Books 1--4) Page 4

  A sniffling sound came from his direction.

  “It’s going to be okay, Jimmy,” I said.

  Spencer looked away. So did Ricker, Ano, Gabbi. No one wanted to make him feel bad for crying. We all cried sometimes. We all did our best to hide it.

  The metal rollers screeched as the door opened. Leaf stood in semi-shadow, the sign lights casting an eerie neon line around his body. He was only fifteen, but had been a throwaway for two years. One day he told his mom he was gay and she told him never to come back.

  The parking lot was empty, the sky now a dull imitation of its earlier colors. Leaf looked at Spencer and something passed between them that none of us could read. They did that sometimes. They’d been together for awhile now.

  “We’re good.”

  Steam filled the bathroom with curtains of damp air. The tile was slippery, cold, welcoming. Female voices bounced off the ceramic walls and created a sort of chaotic foundation of noise that soothed me. Gabbi and I stepped into different stalls, having left the boys to their side of the bathrooms.

  I blasted the shower on full and let the lavender shampoo and hot water wash away the sweat, the blood, the dirt. The pain of the heat mixed with the pain in my leg. The wound was fiery, red, puckered. But it was my eye that burned like a black widow bite, the poison creeping through my skin and muscles, entering my blood stream, poisoning my system along the way. The leg bite had only added insult to injury. I told myself if I wasn’t feeling better in two hours I would make them dump me at the closest hospital.

  The water drummed on my back like the rhythm of a train on the tracks. Hopping a train was always a rush. Like when you get your first tattoo. That kind of rush. It’s like the best movie screen. You just sit there and maybe you’re high or drunk, or not, it doesn’t matter. You see these places, these dark forests and blue-black nights and stars and mountains and there is no other way to see them.

  The water cut off with a whine and a trickle.

  I dried myself off with a towel, scrubbing my skin until it flushed red, breathing in the clean scent of the cotton. Blood trickled in two rivulets down either side of my ankle. The flesh had swelled enough I thought the bite would stop bleeding soon.

  I tied a strip of cloth tight around my calf and dressed in the purple outfit I was still stuck with.

  Our phone rested on the bench next to Gabbi’s clothes. I sat down with it and texted out everything I could think of about how to run away and keep from making my same mistakes. The post felt jumbled, unconnected, but I felt better when it was all down.

  I decided to make it go live, right then. Just in case.

  The app’s progress bar moved, then stalled. I stared at it, willing the bar to move just a little more, but there wasn’t enough signal. An error message popped up and said it would try again every five minutes until it completed the connection. That would have to do.

  I locked the phone and waited for Gabbi and thought about what to do next.

  We were all together now, we had been together, watching out for each other for years. We could rely on one another to get out of scrapes and mistakes and danger. We had plans to get off the streets and then we’d be safe for good and no one would stop us. We’d get out of town and then visit some random med clinic. I’d tell them a homeless guy had bitten me and they would pump me so full of antibiotics I’d have the runs for weeks.

  End of infection. End of a crazy story I would then write about for days, but only as fiction. Otherwise no one would believe it.

  Four women entered the bathroom, their voices sharp and loud and full of derision. One of the women looked at me, just looked at me. She wore yoga pants and a tight-fitting tank top, black on bottom, bright pink on top. Her face said she knew I didn’t belong there. Two of the women dropped used towels on the tile floor and kept walking. The pitch of their voices slapped the walls and then my ears. My head flared with pain and red washed over my vision.

  She spoke even though her mouth didn’t open. She looked right at me and said, “You’re a whore and your mother is a whore and no wonder your stepdad beat you. Leave now while you still have the chance.”

  I curled my fists and a low growl crept into my throat. How dare she. I paid my dues. We paid and we didn’t come in here acting like we owned the place, acting like we could do whatever we wanted, dropping towels on the ground for someone else to pick up.

  “Mary?”

  I whirled, readying a punch.

  Gabbi’s eyes widened and she raised her hands to block a blow. Her hair rested in wet tendrils around her shoulders, dampening her shirt.

  But I would never hit her.

  Conversation stopped. The silence deafened me.

  I realized the woman hadn’t said a word to me. I’d imagined it, but it had seemed so real.

  I opened my hands and forced my arms to my sides. The sound of shower water filled the space.

  Gabbi glared at the women. They looked away. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  We went from the shower stalls to the locker area. Side by side, like I hadn’t been about to attack her. The women laughed at something, probably us.

  “Did they ask for your ID, too?” One of the women said, her words almost lost in the way it slapped around the tile.

  We both froze.

  “Right after class. They aren’t letting anyone out until they check your ID.”

  “Did they say who they’re looking for? What would they be doing here?”

  “Lots of weird stuff in the news these days. I’m just glad I got my mother-in-law to take the kids for an hour. I can’t bother to keep up with much else.”

  Gabbi grabbed my sleeve. I walked to the bathroom entrance and looked out. The cool air conditioning was a shock after the humidity of the bathroom. The suits had arrived. One currently waited outside rooms opposite from us. Two more moved around treadmills and weight benches, pausing to look at faces and then moving on.

  “How did they know we were here?” I said.

  “Does it matter?” Gabbi said.

  We shrunk into the shadow of the bathroom entrance. I pressed myself into the stone wall and looked back into the women’s bathroom, and then out to the men hunting for us. “I’ll get the boys.”

  “Mary,” Gabbi hissed.

  I slipped across the open space separating the two sides. The humidity hit me like a wet blanket. A young guy sat on the bench, toweling his hair, another small white towel around his waist. He looked up and raised an eyebrow at me.

  I smiled and said, “Sorry, just looking for my friends.”

  “It’s all right.” He smiled back.

  “Spencer!” I shouted loud enough for them to hear but not loud enough to draw attention from outside. “Food’s getting cold!” Which was our fancy secret code for it was time to get the hell out.

  The boys tumbled out of the shower area in various states of dress and wetness, but done up enough to go in public. Ano looked good dressed in loose pants and bare chest that showed off his tan and dozens of white scars.

  I didn’t say anything, just forced a smile at Spencer’s look so he would know we were in real trouble.

  Leaf grabbed a pile of stuff from the bench and headed past me out of the bathroom. I turned to walk alongside him.

  “Bad?” he said.

  “Not good,” I said.

  “How’s the leg?”

  “Not so good either.”

  He wrapped an arm around my shoulders. For a moment, a half breath, a millisecond, this spark lit up inside of me, it told me to hurt him because he wasn’t allowed to touch me without asking, and I would teach him a lesson so that he would never, ever touch anyone again.

  Bile stung my throat. I pushed myself away and walked into the center of the main workout space, veering for one of the suits.

  Leaf was the kindest, gentlest, most brotherly person of all the people I had ever, ever known. He would never hurt me, he was only offering the comfort I had often sought out from him. What was wrong
with me?

  My stomach twisted. Pain flared in my calf. I stumbled, knee touching the cushioned floor. I looked up and locked stares with one of the suits.

  “Hey.” He stretched out his arm. “Stay where you are.” He pulled out a phone and spoke into it.

  The two other suits turned like robots. I felt their gaze on me, evaluating me, undressing me. I would make them pay. I would—

  “Mary!” Gabbi hissed. She grabbed me on one side, and suddenly Ano was there and he lifted me off the ground.

  The fire alarm went off. The ringing covered the dance music. A strobe light flashed. People streamed from the rooms, the treadmills, the pools. The women rushed out of the bathroom.

  The suits yelled and waved their hands and pushed people aside, but no one heard them over the alarm. Their pushing only made people freak out more.

  A family of five ran for the front doors, two women followed, and the chaos grew and bottlenecked at the people-counter. The suits tried to stop the tide. An older man must have been shouting because his face turned purple.

  Finally the suits stood back and opened the door. The alarm continued its piercing tone. A middle-aged woman slapped her hands over her ears. Two teenagers tried their headphones.

  Gabbi and Ano helped me hop over the people-counter next to a bodybuilder still slick with sweat and oil. The suits couldn’t see us.

  A dark van and cop car, sirens and lights off, were parked next to our van. The doors were open, shadows were inside. One of them stepped outside, into the parking lot light. Officer Hanley. Even in the chaos, he saw us, shouted, pointed. The other uniforms jumped out.

  Ano said, “Around then. Quick.”

  It seemed like everyone inside the gym was now outside. People milling around, phones out, asking others what was happening. I waited for the groan and growl of a monster to start up. It was too close to what Gabbi and I had just been through. Crowds were bad news.

  Spencer pushed people away and made a path. We rounded the corner. The crowd closed behind us, creating an obstacle course for the uniforms. The alarm faded into a dull ringing.

  Leaf took the lead, making us run behind the dumpsters, through an alleyway, out back behind a grocery store we scored leftover fruit from on Wednesdays.

  We continued silently on foot. Leaf stopped at the next block, a strip mall where people only ordered dinner for take out, never dine in. The greasy smells drifting out of the Chinese hole-in-the-wall made my stomach rumble with hunger and a sudden queasiness. I hadn't eaten since early that morning. A cash advance place had closed for the night, though the entire inside was still lit up and the sign glowed a nauseous green.

  “I did it,” Jimmy said. “I pulled the fire alarm. I did just like you said, Spencer. I really did it.” His voice raised in pitch.

  Ano let go of me and I was suddenly drifting. The building, the lights, the trees, the people, it all wavered, just a little bit. Jimmy shouldn’t be talking so loud. He was going to get us found. We were a bunch of teenagers who looked like they’d just run away from a bunch of trouble. He needed to shut up.

  “Mary, what are you doing?” Ano’s voice came from far away. All I could see was Jimmy’s pinched, young face. Flushed from the run, from the showers, from the pride of pulling the alarm that had kept me from turning myself over to the uniforms and saving them all. It was his fault.

  “Get away, Mary, just back off!” Ano jumped between me and Jimmy.

  I stopped. I didn’t understand why I had stopped. Why had I been moving? Why were my hands in the air, my fingers curled into claws?

  I stood there, swaying on my feet, trying to figure this out. It was ME, I was the one who jumped between oogles and trouble. I was the one, not him, not anyone else. Why was he standing there, looking at me like that?

  “How to Prepare”

  Posted August 10th at 7:46PM on Do More Than Survive: How to THRIVE as a Runaway

  Practice running away before you actually run away. Pretend you’re going to sleep over at a friend’s house for a day or two and then go sleep out in the woods, eat out of some dumpsters, use only public restrooms to wash up.

  Also, put good karma out into the world and leave a note to whoever you left behind—whether or not you think they care about you. I called my mom after I left. She said she was worried about me out here, but not enough to leave my stepfather. But I called, and I was even nice about it, plus, then you won’t get reported as a kidnapping. Let the police spend time and money on finding kids who want to go home. Remember, no one likes a jerk.

  Figure out what you’re going to do with all the extra time once you run away. Other kids your age are going to be in school. Unless you get involved in drugs, or alcohol, or prostitution—not recommended unless you ran away because you secretly want to kill yourself, which was what I wanted at first—you are going to have a lot of free time on your hands.

  This is important because at some point you’re gonna rest your head on your pillow and know that you are sleeping on concrete and you’re gonna start crying. Don’t let anybody see it cause it’ll make you a target. But it will happen. You’ll get so upset about your life and realize that you maybe wished you’d finished the school year or gone to the school swim party at least once, just to know what it would have been like.

  This is when your goal or dream or wish becomes really important to your survival because otherwise there’s no point getting up the next day except for the alcohol and drugs.

  Every street kid has one. What’s yours going to be? Maybe right now, it’s only to get out, to get some adventure, to get free of whatever beatings your stepdad did every night.

  Okay, but now you’re out, so now what?

  Me and my friends, we have a plan. We’re going to save up enough money to buy some land, we’re thinking maybe in Arizona where it’s cheap and warm. Or maybe in the State of Jefferson, in the woods with other people who understand that society has it all wrong. It’s going to be our own place. We’ll grow a garden and brew our own beer and live together and no one can kick us off it just for breathing because we’ll own it.

  Chapter 3

  “We have to run,” Gabbi said.

  “I know,” Spencer said.

  “We have to get out of here. People are going to notice,” she said.

  “I know,” Spencer said.

  I sat hunched over on the curb. I’d puked my guts out after Ano had stopped me from choking Jimmy.

  Jimmy hovered on the far side of the group now, next to Spencer. They talked over me as if I wasn’t even there.

  Gabbi opened her mouth again.

  Spencer held up his hand. “Gabbi, I know it. Just hold on.”

  She closed her mouth and crossed her arms.

  “If they knew we were going to be at the fitness center—how did they know?” Leaf said.

  “They didn’t,” Spencer said. “Officer Hanley knows where most of our regular haunts are. He got lucky we were at the one he checked out.”

  “What are we going to do about Mary?” Ricker said.

  “She’s fine,” Gabbi said.

  “She’s not fine,” Ricker responded.

  “I am,” I said.

  “You are not,” Ricker said.

  “I was chased, almost taken prisoner, beaten up,” I said, my throat croaking from the stomach acid that had burned it. “I think that would make anyone a little wacko. God knows you’ve had your moments, Ricker. Do you need me to remind you?”

  Ricker ignored my jab. “What about the puking? What about Jimmy?”

  “I’ve done more running in the last three hours than in the last three weeks. So I puked. It feels better now. I got angry at Jimmy. Not at Jimmy. I just got angry, and he was there.”

  “You don’t get angry,” Gabbi said.

  “Yes she does,” Spencer said quietly. “She used to.”

  Ano sat next to me and pulled me to his side. I leaned into him and didn’t care that everyone noticed Ano and I were having a moment
.

  “Mary,” Leaf said, a warning note in his voice.

  Six pairs of eyes turned on me as if I had already been convicted of murder. “What?”

  “Your mouth,” Ricker said. “There’s white, leftover puke or something—”

  I swept my hand across and felt something wet, like I’d drooled in my sleep. For a long second I could only think about choking and didn’t know if I was about to choke myself or them. Them, me. It almost didn’t matter.

  “I want to get out of town. That’s all I want,” I said. “Get me out of town and drop me off at a clinic. But not here. Please. Not here.”

  Ricker looked to Spencer and Leaf. They were the unspoken leaders, especially when I was down for the count. The van was a tough loss, our extra clothes, basic supplies, a fast way out of town, all gone. But it was only stuff. This wasn’t the first time it had happened. Though I suspected it would take more than a simple impound fee to get it back this time.

  Spencer raised an eyebrow. Leaf nodded in assent. Somehow they had decided, even though they hadn’t spoken a word to each other.

  I should have been able to guess that decision, would have normally helped make it, but couldn’t think what it should be at that moment. Ano pressed his chin against my hair. I decided I would enjoy that feeling instead of worrying about things I couldn’t control.

  “We might have lost the van,” Leaf said, “but there’s still the bikes.”

  “But you just said they’ll be checking out all our normal haunts,” Ricker said. “We need to hitchhike or catch a bus or jump a train.”

  “The bikes are on the way to the trains,” Spencer said. “If we get to them, we get out of town faster, maybe get some info.”

  “If they’re hot?” Ricker said.

  “Then we’ll keep going, idiot,” Spencer said.

  Spencer broke us up into groups. Gabbi, me and Ano in one. Spencer and the rest in the other. They didn’t dare leave Jimmy with me and this made me want to cry. But they were right to do it. Ano and Gabbi could handle the worst in me, if it came to that. We’d done it for each other often enough. This was one of those hard times that sometimes happened on the street. They would know what to do.