I shiver awake and see Care’s eyes already open. She’s alert. Her ears breathe in the surroundings.
“Wakey wakey,” she whispers in child-voice. “Let’s take off before this truck does.”
She peeks from the truck bed like a baby chick in a nest. “Yeah,” she signals, and we hop out in turn.
We walk down the streets and ruffle together in the early morning cold, the sun just barely shedding light on the earth. “Frosty,” she says, looking around. “Lucky there’s not a lot of early birds in this neighborhood.”
“It’s Saturday.” At least I think that’s right.
“Must be.”
We walk wooded roads of quiet suburbia, bewaring every wind, listening for a pin drop. The silence is almost more worrying than not.
“I don’t know what you’re feeling,” Care goes, “but I’m beat. I say we get off the streets, back to the tent. Chances are if we get stopped, they’re not gonna worry about our Amendment rights or whatever. If they find this bag of E and stuff they’re gonna search every other part of our bodies, till we’re dead or wished we were.”
“Jesus. Are the cops really that bad here?”
“Bad as the rest of them, and you’ve seen how fucky that is. I might’ve lived a ‘sheltered’ life, in my own special way, but I’ve read enough books to know it ain’t supposed to be like this.”
“No kidding... Well, I’m with you.”
She looks over and winks. “I know.”
I blush and look down.
“Let’s just see if I can find our way back.”
“I think I might know the way.” I’m as surprised as she is by my sureness.
“Yeah?” she asks puzzledly, as we see the main road past a fork in the distance. “Which way from here then?”
“We take a right. But off the road, out of sight.”
“Yeah, right,” she hums. “I just don’t get you, girl. You act like you’re from another planet, don’t know your head from your ass, don’t know what two plus two equals. Then half the time you know things you shouldn’t know. You sure you’re not a local that got conked on the noggin?”
My head is all static and electric smoke suddenly, the back of my head throbbing. “I don’t know. I know this town... but I don’t think I’m from here... I don’t know where I’m from.”
“Fell from heaven, ya ask me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like an angel.” She grins. “You’re definitely not human.”
I’m inclined to agree with her that I’m not entirely human, though that is hardly reassuring. Somewhere between before and now, I started feeling a little more like a person, even if every moment was tense with fear, fleeing from danger or fighting to survive. Is that what being human is? Death’s face grinning and laughing at every turn? It sure feels like it.
But surviving with her feels like something different. Our friendship is like a little fire in the dark cold. I watch her hair tossing in the cool breeze as we walk, oily and a little matted from being on the lam. But I find myself happy we’re dirty and free, rather than clean and chained in some deviant’s nightmare. She looks back with a pretty smile as if hearing my thoughts. The moment feels more real than any I’ve felt in a long time.
(...)
“I think that’s it up here,” Care says. “Thank God it’s light out.”
“I thought you don’t believe in God.”
“God, K, it’s an expression.” She slaps her head.
“K...?”
She groans, laughs.
The olive green tent lies ahead like a fairytale den, nestled in new-fallen twigs and October leaves. It looks barren and beaten from whatever soldier or camper may have once used it, but inside...
“Home sweet home!” She unzips the front flap. “Careful not to break the zipper or our little camping trip will turn into us shivering in a big ol’ cold trash bag in the middle of the woods.” I wonder if that isn’t already what it is.
“Ah, God, beds,” she yawns, pointing at ruffled sleeping bags. There’s nothing more than a thin layer of tent floor between them and the hard ground. “Come on!”
I peek my head in, look back outside warily. I kick off my boots and practically fall in, exhausted.
“Tall bitch! Close that door. You’re letting out delicious heat.” She throws off her sweatshirt.
There’s no heat to speak of yet, but I zip the front shut. I walk on my knees next to her in the center of the tent, noticing her take another little bump from one of the powder bags.
She slides her bottom half inside a sleeping bag and starts rubbing her hands together rapidly. “Look, you gotta wrap up first. Start rubbing your hands. Saw some soldiers do this in a flick, World War 2 movie or something. Bunch of dirty soldiers rubbing their hands over a fire, bitching in some other language. But we can’t do a fire now, especially after the mess back in that rich neighborhood. Too much smoke, you said, right? So we gotta be the fire, ya know? Be the fire.”
I rub my brittle hands and tell her I’m still cold.
“Get in your bag, dude,” she insists. “You’re not gonna be the fire unless you’re all cozied up. Did I ever tell you about one of the first rooms I remember having? Concrete walls, no windows, no heat? Aw man, like a prison cell. Anyway, you’re a beginner, so it’s alright, just learn fast, you know? You do learn fast, but like, just keep learning.”
I snuggle all the way down into my bag, rubbing my hands like I’m trying to start a fire. A little relief seeps in slowly. I start stretching my toes and fingers.
“You know, there was this monk- you know, like an ancient religious dude, and he’d just go into the water to pray for all the people in his village. Like, right in the freezing cold ocean, just praying in cold-ass water for hours for God to have mercy on everyone. Man, that guy was either crazy or he was the fire, ya know?”
“I wonder if anyone in Piercing prays for the souls of this town.”
“Prays for souls? Not like it matters anyway.” She dips two fingers into a peanut butter jar and laps it up. “And that being the fire thing, that was from some book. I can’t remember what it was called, but it was by a guy who’s all, like, uh, spirity? Might be your sorta thing,” she rolls her eyes. “Anyway, just a bunch of stupid life tips that sound like magic or something, but some of it stuck with me. Little things, you know? Which I guess is nice. I was always looking for stuff to understand when I was a kid. The older I got, the more I realized a lot of it was a lot of crap, maybe some good stuff mixed in, but mostly just crap. But it was worth reading for the good stuff. Not like I had a lot else to distract me when I wasn’t... eh, you know... working...”
“Is that what you call it?” I ask. “When you had to do... what they made you do...?”
“I guess. That’s what Matty called it.” Her peanut-buttery finger rested on her lips. “I guess I was like, yeah, this is my work. I saw a lot of books and movies where the characters had shit jobs, so I was like, I guess this is mine. It sucks, but oh well. You work, it sucks, you try to relax when you’re off, hope things get better.”
“Did they ever... get better?”
“Sure. We’re here now, aren’t we?” She pulls out the bag of powder again and dips into it, sucks the peanut butter and drug powder off her fingers.
“You get kinda used to the bullshit after a while. People wanna hurt me bad sometimes to get off. Goes on for years till I say, ‘Hey, Matty old pal, I’m your investment, right? So if one loon pays double or triple to really go at me, I mean really have their way with me, and it basically puts me out of commission for half a week, it’s not really worth wasting your star pupil.”
Her peanut buttery fingers turn and drop as she tells the story. “So I tell him, let’s find a middle road here. I say he’s like a big country and I’m like a little one. Another thing out of a book I read. If I’m under him, he’s gotta give me some protection, for both our sakes.”
“What’d he say?”
“He laughs, of course. But somehow it seems to get through to him. Next time I work a few days later, this brand new client’s gentle as a kitten. I’m, uh, flabbergasted, you know? I didn’t get a lot of treatment like that even when I was a kid. A week goes by without anyone beating me up too bad. It’s amazing.”
I want to say something, but it’s all I can do to hold my sadness. I tell myself it’s for her sake.
“Then this crazy bitch comes in. Man, let me tell you, she’s one of the worst. Has this thing for bottles. Always bottles. Big bottles, bigger bottles, all different shapes and sizes. Hands like a butcher, always wears these big crazy rings. Every time she goes at me, I’m waiting for a bottle to break inside me but it never does. It’s practically a relief when she just uses her whole fist instead, but that’s no fun either. She usually kept the rings on. I cry after every time, when no one’s looking. Big baby. Haha.”
“Jesus Care. That’s horrible.”
“I know. I can’t stand fucking crying. Anyway, she shows up this time and I’m like ‘Well, it was a nice run while it lasted.’ I know she’s gonna tear me apart. But guess what? She doesn’t. Pretty nice about it, at least as far as she’s concerned. I thought maybe she’s fallen in love, haha, ya know? But nope, it’s just Matty’s new rule. Don’t break the merchandise.”
My stomach and soul are churning. She senses my discomfort, sucks the peanut butter off her fingers and puts the jar away.
“Anyway, point is, things get better. They don’t get great, don’t necessarily even get good, they get better- when you make 'em better, right? I finally had enough, but just getting sick of shit doesn’t change what’s fucking with you. So I got angry, I got smart, I sold Matty on making things better for me, because he thought it’d make things better for him. You know what that’s called? Being smart.”
“Yeah,” I wince. “What else could you do?”
“Right. And sure, you know, they started getting rough again after a few weeks, but never as bad as before. And more important, Matty trusted me after that. This was, like, two years ago maybe.” She looks up pensively, lost in the flow of time.
“Anyway. I proved I could think for myself, which he never really thought of before. Always called me stupid. But he saw potential and started thinking bigger, and the way he treated me slowly got a little better. I got more freedom, more time to myself, more time to read. I got to work less, and he talked to me more, almost like a real person. Talked a lot of bullshit and ideas, a lot of ‘Oh baby girl, you’ll do a lot for me, for both of us. We’ll be bigger than ever.’”
“What ideas?” I ask hesitantly.
Suddenly she is silent, caught in thought. She slunk into her sleeping bag and stared at the ceiling.
“Care?” I go. “What is it?”
“You don’t wanna know. You wouldn’t care. It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing,” I say. “I want to know... if you want to tell me.”
She scoffs, raises up with the little plastic bag in her hand again, snorts a big bump more off her finger and licks it. “Okay, you probably don’t have, like, a good conception of what it’s like living in this type of situation... You know, Sunday you’re getting fucked by six different guys three times your size, like a piece of meat, watching them enjoy doing whatever they want, and making you do whatever they want, watching them walk away with a smile while you just try to float above your body, survive in your own head.”
I want to puke. Maybe I don’t want to know. But who else can she tell?
“Then the fucked up thing is, come Monday, maybe there’s no work. You just sit around bored and in pain. Maybe Matty has me cook or clean, and I think for HOURS about grabbing the steak knife I just put in the drawer and JAMMING it in his neck. But I’m just too damn tired. Always too tired. So I do his housework, then sit around hurting, and maybe if I’m lucky I sneak a book and get left alone for a couple of hours.”
“Jesus...”
“Then maybe it’s Tuesday or Wednesday, and maybe this time it’s a ‘special mission.’ Maybe it’s Bottle Lady with the rings, and he tells me I just gotta ‘do my thing,’ but it’s okay because she pays big, like that means anything to me. Maybe we’re going out of town and I get some time with some special clients. Yippee. I don’t know their names, but I know they’re bigshots. Famous people, political people, rich people, and some people that no normal probably ever heard of, but they’re there. Bigtime drug guys, kid dealers, gunrunners, you name it.”
Her face tightens and her fists grip with anger. My teeth set on edge.
“But here’s a real type of special mission. Real fuckin special. They put me in a room with another kid, and my job is to turn them out and do it right. God knows they know I can do it right.”
“Turn them out...?”
“Show them the ropes. Turn them into little monsters. Yeah, and they’re all kids no older than me.” She scoffs and shakes her head. “Kids, right off the streets or wherever they come from. A lot of 'em don’t even speak English. Every last fuckin shape and color. Variety’s a big part of the business.”
“What did you do?” I regret it as soon as I ask.
“What the fuck do you think? Try to talk to them, tell them it’ll be alright, even though I damn well know it won’t. And I show 'em a few tricks of the trade, just to keep up appearances, and to save their skins when it’s their turns for some sicko to come play. I tell them how to survive.” Angry sweat beads on her forehead.
“I knock on the door, send 'em out, tell 'em it’s done, they’re all ready to go. Do this a few times and eventually Matty comes in, knocks me flat on the floor. He’s pissed. I haven’t been doing my job. Some of them aren’t performing any better, or worse, they told their handlers what I told 'em. Matty’s buddies are pissed, too, and I’m gonna make this right.”
They make her keep going...
“So next time, my head’s throbbing. They send a girl in, this time with her guy watching the whole time, sitting in a chair in the corner of the room. I’m in the bed. It’s dark. She’s a sweet, pretty little thing, long white-blonde hair, blue eyes, twig skinny, scared like a rabbit. Just the type a lot of 'em like. I look at her handler and tell him with my eyes I’d kill him if I had the chance, but his eyes are just emptiness, waiting impatiently. I wave her to come over, say it to her real simple: I got a job to do, it’s her job too. I can make this easy as possible, but she’s gotta pay attention. She starts crying.”
Care notices my mouth ajar.
“That’s just how it is, K. We get to it. And I teach her things in front of that dirty piece of shit fuck that most people die happily never even thinking of. But it’s everyday life for me, and it is for her, too. I whisper whatever I can think to help her down the line. ‘Hold onto yourself,’ ‘It’s not your fault,’ ‘Someday things’ll get better.’ But am I just lying to her? Will they just kill her randomly one day and throw her in a grave in the woods?”
Tears well up at that thought, and imagining Care dying alone. I’d never let that happen. I helped her get away. She ran with me. Now we just have to get out of town and it’s over.
“So me and the girl are done. I never even ask her name. Maybe they took hers away before she was old enough to remember, like they did me. The guy drags her off. I can’t help thinking of him testing out what I taught her, his big body and her little one. His sick, twisted mind and her innocent one. And just as soon, they send another one in with their handler.”
“Care... I’m so sorry you had to...”
“Don’t be sorry for me,” she waves the thought away. “Those kids are the ones I’m sorry for. And the ones after. And the ones after that, forever. Those fucks made me help corrupt 'em, and those kids will go corrupt even more kids. All because of those fuckers, and me. I didn’t want to get beat. I didn’t want to die. So I did what they said. But I could have just killed myself, ended it. Then at least I’d have been clean. Now...” She breathes in deeply. “I’m just as bad as them.”
“You’re not the same! And you can’t die! Don’t say that! You can’t help what they made you do! You never wanted to hurt anyone!”
“Think so? I tried to be good, but you think I never stepped further than I had to? Think I never roughed up some scared kid just because it felt good to have the power for once? I think about that sometimes when I’m lying awake. Matty was making me into his madam. I’d be his right-hand man, manage myself eventually, then others, take the load off him, probably do it better.
And you know what? I knew. And I was waiting for it. I was tired of being on the bottom of the food chain. It was a ways off, but I knew it was coming, and I’d already decided. Wolves and sheep, he always said. Only wolves and sheep in this world. And I’d rather be a wolf with blood around its mouth than a dead sheep.”
“You don’t have to be a wolf or dead... You got out. It’s a whole different world now. You’ll never have to go back to those places again.”
“Yeah...” She stares off a thousand miles into nothing. “Maybe. Sure hope so.”
“You don’t have to hope. We keep doing this right, keep being smart. We’ll get out of here... together.”
She looks at me with a half smile. “Hah... if you call this smart... Camping in the woods like hobos, surrounded by a crazy murder town, living off peanut butter and speed, no real escape plan, while there’s probably some fat underworld bounty for us.”
“Hey, it’s better than before, right?” I go. Anything must be.
Her eyes flutter. She sticks her fingers into the bag and laps off a clod of powder. “Hell yeah it is.”
“Ever been camping before, either?”
“Hell no, unless you count concrete bunker camping. Had sleeping bags and everything, heh.”
I snicker nervously, aching in my chest. “No, that doesn’t count.”
“Yeah, this is the real deal alright. Shittin’ in the woods like the Pope, and no warm house to run into when the bears come sniffing for my peanut butter. Ah man. I guess stuff like those war stories did sorta make me wanna camp out. I never thought too much about just being outside like this. Just made me sad, knowing I probably never would. It’s not so bad, though. Especially with you here.”
“Thanks.” I wriggle in my bag. “It could be warmer though...”
“Just gonna get colder and colder, too.” She shrugs. “My hands are cold. Damn speed. I’m hot on the inside but cold and sweaty on the outside. Coulda copped a bunch of booze from that party if the cops hadn’t showed, that’d warm me up...”
“There’s tons of bottles in the bag...” I say.
“Oh hell! how could I forget? I must not be thinking right...”
“Should you keep doing that speed powder if it’s going to freeze you?”
“Ah nah, it’s fine, I’ve done it all a million times.” She rummages through the bag of stolen goods from Dryden’s “Only thing I’m wondering is what else we can do to pass the time. I’m pretty awake now, dunno about you.”
I thought she said she was tired. “I’m pretty tired.” Exhausted, truthfully, but I don’t want to leave her alone, not now.
“Boo,” she raspberries, and pulls a bottle of gin from the drug bag and chugs it. She wipes her lips dry with the back of her forearm and gives a greedy grin. “God, what a collection. I’ve seen a lot of shit in my life, but actually touching all this, holding it... It’s ours, dude. You sure we gotta sell it?”
“Yes! We need money more than anything right now.”
“Well, we don’t gotta sell it all, though. Most of the profit is in just a few things. These E-pills, the smack, the coke... well, I’m split on that one, we gotta keep some shit to make us get-up-and-go, ya know? Yeah, they were eating up the E, huh?”
“I guess so.” I half-remember the party. “I just let you handle it...”
She suddenly remembers the party as well and grimaces. “Yeah... well, it was an alright start, but we gotta be smarter from here on out.” She taps the small wad of cash in her jeans and tosses the gin at me. “ya know, these shrooms are looking real pretty right now... we only gotta sell enough drugs to be able to get out of here, after all. Consider the rest a gift for our troubles, so we don’t have to feel so shitty all the time. That’s important, right?” She smiles.
I sip some of the gin. It tastes like pine needles and rubbing alcohol, in a sort of good way.
“I guess so...” I wonder if ‘getting rid’ of coke and heroin are really moral things to do.
“I mean, without that speed ‘amph’ powder shit, we couldn’t have kept watch the last two nights. I might’ve drowned on vomit or we might’ve gotten caught either night. This booze here’s uplifting our spirits... So a little coke or E could be a good time, ya know? But not the smack, man, that stuff’s no good. Gotta keep our heads on tight.”
I’m quiet. It’s not all untrue.
“Alright, so I’ll take about... this much...” She reaches into the bag of mushrooms. She chomps them up and reaches for the bottle. I hand it to her reluctantly. She washes down the remnants with a mouthful of pine-flavored liquor.
“Phew, nasty,” she blows air out of her nose and grits her teeth. “Next up, you.” She hands me the bag of shrooms.
“Woah, um, I don’t know.” I pick through the ugly, shriveled little fungi, all-white stems and golden caps, stained with brown dirt and faded blue bruises like smudged pen ink. I wonder if the effects will absorb through my fingers just by touching them. I drop the bag suddenly. “I wouldn’t even know how much...”
She crawls toward me with just her arms, lower body still in her bag like a caterpillar, and reaches her little paw in the bag. “Hmmm... About this much should be good for you.”
“You sure?”
“As sure as sure can be,” she grins. “Don’t wait! You’re gonna go out of sync with me!” She falls back to her side of the tent on her stomach, mousing through the drug bag curiously.
I groan. “Sure, yeah...” I look at the small handful of shrooms. They seem surrounded by a mysterious energy that I can’t discern as good or bad. I slowly put them in my mouth, one by one. I’m surprised they’re mild and nutty, a little crunchy. Suddenly they seem innocuous and I wonder what I was scared of. I wave away the gin as Care passes it my way again.
There’s no sudden rush of euphoric energy like the powder, no steady headrush like cigs, no giggles and blood to the cheeks like booze, no altered calm like pot. Nothing but a little anticipation.
“It takes a while to kick in,” she says, reading my mind. “But you’ll know it when it comes. I think in the meantime I’ll try this, too.” She reaches into the big plastic bag of E.
“Wait- do you really wanna combine them? What if you have a reaction or something out here?”
“What, mushies and E and a few drinks?” she laughs. “Been on worse than this...”
“Doesn’t mean it’s good...”
“I’ll be fine. It’s safe, trust me,” she says. “You having one?”
“I don’t think so. Should... see how this goes first...”
“Your loss, suit yourself,” she shrugs, swallowing a pill, then looks back at me. “Uh, I mean, it’ll be good enough anyway, just the shrooms.”
She hands me the bottle back and I take a sip. I’m not sure the gin is so great. I cozy back into my bag and look at the tent ceiling.
“It’s like, really interesting. You’ll feel really different after a while, and then, you know, you just kinda go with it and it’s a blast.”
I hum thoughtfully. We both lie silent for fifteen minutes.
“Ah man, I just can’t rest...” Care breaks the stillness. “But you know, it’s really nice to be kinda free to just do this stuff. Like, no assholes are gonna come around. I can take as much of whatever I want here... but, like, not too much, obviously. And it’s just me and you, so I feel safer than I have in a long time...”
“Mm.” My brain fizzles for any record of the past, except the last few days.
(...)
Ten or twenty minutes later, I’m nearly asleep.
It’s all quiet but for Care’s breathing and the trees and tent fabric shuffling softly in the wind.
A bizarre excitement is rising in me now, pure anticipation. The air is suddenly humming very gently and I imagine that humming as a yellow color. I close my eyes and see a blue pixel cast over the darkness in my mind, sparkling cerulean particles tossed in shifting clouds, quiet flows and scatterings and endless forms. Light whispers of green, yellow, red, orange, white, purple, too, that merge and dissipate into the blue-tinted darkness.
The sensation grows through me from my heart to my root, till slowly the two answer back and forth in some unknown, pulsating inner body language. My heart palpitates, my eyes flash. Weird images, cold alleys.
“I think I’m feeling something,” I finally say.
“Co