Isn’t any sign of any of it now, except what the tour guides say.
Some of those cameras are clearly pointed at us, the local color, a group of joker kids hanging out in the park. Splat stands up and points both middle fingers at the tourists, scowling. Some of them look startled, eyes widening. Most just keep taking pictures. And won’t that look nice in the family album? The tour guide hustles everyone back on the bus a moment later.
“We might as well be zoo animals,” Splat mutters. “Stick us in a cage, put us in the zoo.”
Funny he should be the one to say that, seeing as how he looks basically normal when he isn’t splatting himself. It’s me and Beastie, with his pelt of hair and canine face, who look like animals. It’s Kris who hides under a hoodie. I think about saying something, but it’ll just twist a knife. Into whom, I’m not really sure.
“It’s a free country,” Beastie says. Out of us all, he looks like the monster, but he’s the calmest. The most sensible, even. He only scares people when they deserve it. “We’re not in a cage. We can go anywhere we want.”
“Yeah, right,” Splat says, laughing.
We all know what he means: Sure, it’s not like there are any laws that say a bunch of joker kids can’t go walking up Broadway and then buy a hot dog and hang out in Times Square like anyone else. But hardly anyone actually does it. People would stare. We might not be able to find someone to actually sell us a hot dog. Splat would do okay; so would Kris. But Beastie? Me? A cop or two would start tailing us, and maybe even stop us and ask questions. What’re you kids doing so far from home?—because they wouldn’t have to ask where we’re from. And if we were lucky, the encounter would end with them saying, “Maybe you kids ought to get on home before you get in trouble,” and there’d be just a little bit of a threat in the statement.
We have Jokertown; we’ve had Jokertown for sixty years, so people like us don’t bother the rest of Manhattan. Things like that don’t ever change.
But right now it makes me angry. Maybe we’re not really in a cage, but then maybe we are.
“Yeah, right,” I say firmly, looking straight at Splat. “I’ve lived in New York my whole life and you know where I’ve never been? Central Park. Have you been to Central Park? Have you? And you?”
I point at each of them in turn and they all shake their heads. Suddenly, the fact makes me furious. Why haven’t I been to Central Park? It’s literally just up the road. Why didn’t my folks ever taken me to Central Park when I was a little kid? Not even to the actual real zoo that’s there? Why?
Too much hassle, I suppose. Not just because of the subway ride uptown, but because of the stares, the awkwardness. The cops suggesting that maybe you ought to get on home now.
I stand, hands on hips. “I want to go to Central Park.”
“Now?” Kris says, frowning.
“Sure. Why not?” They’re all looking at me like I’m crazy, but that just makes me more determined. I can’t back down now. Why not go to Central Park? We can even walk. Might take all day, but we can do it. “You guys don’t have to go. I’ll go by myself.”
Beastie lumbers to his feet. It’s like watching a mountain move. “I’ll go. It’s a nice day for it. It’ll be fun.”
I smile a quick thank you at him for backing me up.
Patting his arm, I say, “Come on.” We start across the park to the sidewalk, him with his big, slow giant’s stride, me with my quick, jittery one.
We haven’t gotten far when Splat calls out for us to wait. He and Kris trot to catch up, though neither looks happy. Splat is surly and Kris is huddled deeper into her hoodie than ever. Her chin has gone sort of green.
“I’m bored,” Splat explains. “Might as well see what happens.”
“Real supportive there, jerk face,” I say.
“You’ll change your mind before you get to midtown,” he shoots back.
Which makes me absolutely determined that I won’t.
* * *
We decide to take the subway.
This has a lot of pros and a lot of cons. Pro: We’ll get there faster and with a lot less effort. On a warm summer day like today it’ll be a lot more comfortable than walking in the sun, especially for Beastie. Cons: It’ll be a lot less comfortable, especially for Beastie, being cooped up in a tiny metal car with people crowding in around him. If we get into a situation we need to get out of—well, we couldn’t. The thing about walking is that no matter how long it takes or how tired we get, we can always bug out if we need to.
We leave the decision up to Beastie, and he picks the subway. The trip is a straight shot on the six. If it gets awful we can always get out and walk back.
People clear the way for us as we go down the stairs at Canal Street. They pretty much have to—Beastie fills half the staircase by himself. People take one look at him and arc around, giving him room. Next to Beastie, they barely notice me and my whippet look. The rest of us travel in his wake.
Really, in this part of town we don’t even get too many stares. Pretty much everyone around here lives in Jokertown and has scales for skin or feathers coming out of their ears or too many eyes or something. Even the nats here don’t take a second look. And really, who can say that all these nats are really nats, and not some kind of ace or deuce or whatever, keeping to themselves and trying not to get noticed?
That’s another thing about growing up in Jokertown: You never take anything for granted because so many things aren’t what they seem.
Before too much waiting, the northbound train rolls up and we’re off on our adventure.
Beastie has a method for entering a subway car. Having friends along helps, because we can get in first and kind of stake out space for him at the end, where he can lean up against the emergency door, hunch in under the ceiling and not worry about squishing anyone. As soon as the door opens, the three of us rush in and form kind of a cordon. He comes in next and has to crouch down, tuck himself under the top of the door, and pull himself through. He’s done this before but there’s always a moment when he looks like he might stick—he’s that big. But with a twist of his shoulders, he’ll wiggle his body and hunch down like some kind of gargoyle. The rest of us stand guard and glare back at anyone who might look like they want to give him a hard time. He swiped his card like everyone else, right?
The train rolls on, stopping at stops, and people get off and on. The farther north we travel, the more jokers leave, the more nats board, and the more people look over at us and scowl. Round about the Grand Central stop, a man in a business suit starts to get on our car, sees us—Beastie hunched in the back and the rest of us standing in front of him, glaring out and daring anyone to complain—and turns around to hurry to a different car. Kris’s skin goes a searing red at that, and Splat presses himself as far to the wall as he can—I’m not sure he even realizes he’s doing it. He looks like an ad poster.
I want to pace. I want to run. My feet twitch, and I tap them on the floor, first one then the other. Beastie stays calm, hunched over in a half-crouch, gazing forward with a wry smile.
“It’s kind of an adventure, yeah?” he says. I roll my eyes.
“Remind me why we’re going to Central Park again,” Splat says, peeling himself off the wall to face the rest of us.
“To prove that we can,” I answer.
“Should we have told someone where we’re going?” Kris has on a permanent wince, like she’s thinking this whole idea was bad. Her skin won’t settle on a single color, and I’m getting kind of seasick looking at her.
“Like who?” I say.
“My mom? I should have told my mom,” she murmurs.
“And if she said no would you have just stayed home?”
She shrugs, which means the answer is yes, but she doesn’t want to admit it.
“And this is why we didn’t tell anyone,” I declare. My own parents? They’d be horrified if they knew where I am. Jokertown is safe, and so we stay in Jokertown.
Just another couple of sto
ps and we can get off.
As I’m thinking this, the subway car lurches, wheels screeching on tracks. Emergency brakes. Everybody in the car falls forward, grabbing at seats and poles. Beastie, sitting in the back, not holding on to anything, tips all the way forward, crashing onto the floor—and right on top of Splat.
People look around, trying to figure out why the train stopped. Beastie hurries to pick himself up, rocking back and reaching up for a pole.
“Oh, jeez, Franklin, I’m sorry. You okay?”
Splat has gone flat, compressed to the floor, limbs all splayed out. He re-forms to his regular body shape, inflating like a balloon, starting with his hands and feet, spreading up to his arms and legs, until finally he has enough leverage in his muscles to push up and climb to standing.
Beastie brushes at Splat’s shirt and shoulders, wiping off dirt and grit from the subway floor.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Splat says, sounding tired. “What the hell’s happening with the train?”
A voice comes over the loudspeaker, but it’s scratchy and filled with static, and nobody can make it out. We sit in that dark tunnel between stations for five, maybe ten minutes before the train slowly rolls forward again. So, just a temporary thing. But the whole time I’m thinking, what if we have to get out? What if someone gets mad at us for being here? I want to run.
The next stop, we decide, is close enough. We’ve all gotten claustrophobic, and this whole idea is looking less good by the minute. Besides, Beastie’s legs are falling asleep.
We roll in to the Fifty-Ninth Street station—and the door sticks. All the other doors open, but our car is sealed up, and maybe this has something to do with the emergency stop. We stand by, waiting, penned in by a giant stroller and its owner, a young woman struggling to move forward, if only the door would let her out.
Meanwhile, the baby in the stroller is staring up at Beastie, real quiet, eyes round. I’m sure it’s going to start screaming any minute at the big scary monster, and then the kid’s mother will freak out, and station security will show up, and everything will get terrible—
Beastie starts making faces, stretching open his eyes, puffing up his cheeks, poofing breaths to make the hair on his chin fly out.
The baby smiles. Then its whole face squishes up and it lets out this gurgling little laugh.
Its mother glances over, goes pale for a second. She looks at her baby, looks at Beastie, then back to her baby. I can’t tell what she’s thinking. Like, she seems to want to grab the stroller and run. But the door won’t open.
“Sorry,” she says. “I can’t get it—”
“It’s not your fault,” I reply. “Door’s stuck.”
“Here,” Beastie says, and reaches over all of us. He works his claws into the crack, one at a time, then pulls. Wrenches back until whatever is stuck in the gears pops, and the door slides open like it’s supposed to.
The woman collects herself, arranges the stroller, and smiles nervously. “Thanks,” she says, rolling the stroller through the door and across the platform.
Beastie waves his claws at the baby, who is still gurgling happily.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Splat mutters, and we run.
* * *
We hurry out of the station, the crowd parting in front of Beastie like magic.
Upstairs, back on the street, we all heave a sigh. Kris hunches further under her hood than ever. Beastie stretches, and I shake out my legs. We linger on the corner to get our bearings.
We’re not in Jokertown anymore.
First off, we’re the only jokers in sight. All kinds of people fill the sidewalks, rushing back and forth to wherever. Young, old, men, women, all ethnicities, in suits and skirts and raggedy jeans and workout clothes. None of them are jokers. It’s actually weird, seeing so many people and not a scale or tentacle in sight.
We slow down traffic, with people rubbernecking to look at us. Pedestrians hesitate, look us all over, then keep going, maybe walking a little faster. Nobody says anything. They just look. I almost want somebody to say something so that I can yell at them.
We’re on Fifty-Ninth Street. Way north from Jokertown, which doesn’t even have street numbers. More than sixty blocks. Yeah, it’s an adventure all right.
Across the street stands a wall of trees. Green, for the whole block. And I can’t see the other side of it, like back at Seward Park, where traffic is pretty much visible all the way around. This really is a whole wall of green.
“Well?” I ask the others. “Ready?”
“Lead on,” Beastie says, smiling. If he’s still smiling, things can’t be that bad.
We find a place to cross the street and walk toward the park’s entrance.
The whole time, Splat mutters, “Central Park. What’s the big deal anyway?” He hasn’t stopped complaining. Like, Central Park could be the greatest thing ever but he’ll be damned if he’s going to enjoy it. “A few trees and some lawn and joggers and what else? We got parks back in Jokertown—”
We enter the park. He stops and stares. We all do.
Factually, he’s right. We have parks and lawns and trees in Jokertown. Little ones, squares of green bounded by traffic and buildings on all sides. But this … is different. I can’t even explain it. It’s like as soon as we leave the sidewalk, the traffic and city noises fall away. Trees rise up, lawn stretches ahead, and a calm settles. Sure, people are still around, crowds of them passing back and forth, tourists taking pictures, people with kids enjoying the day. But here they seem more spread out. Everyone, even the women in business suits and headphones and athletic shoes power walking to or from work, seem a little more laid back.
And everything is green. Even sunlight coming through the trees turns green.
“Whoa,” Splat finishes his observation.
A little ways in, on a winding blacktop trail, the trees open up to reveal a wide expanse of lawn. Here, a few people play Frisbee. Others lie stretched out on picnic blankets, reading books or talking. Farther ahead, the lawn slopes down to the edge of a wide pond where a bunch of ducks swim. Ducks, in the middle of New York City.
People look at us. They stare for a minute. And then they go back to their books and their friends. They leave us alone. After all, this is New York.
We walk for a while, following a path that loops around a hill and reveals even more park beyond. Endless park, that seems to go on forever. The path eventually brings us to a big lake. At the edge, a little kid feeds the ducks that continually squawk and ruffle their feathers. I start to think we’ve left the city entirely.
No one tells us to leave, and nobody stops to take pictures of us. Not that I notice, anyway. After a while, Kris picks out a spot in the sun and lies on the grass. She still wears her hoodie, but she turns her face up, squinting at the sun and sighing. The rest of us sprawl around her, and we just sit there for a long time.
“Good idea, Rikki,” Beastie says, grinning so his lips curl up around his big teeth.
We’ve done it. An actual real quest. It feels good.
Predictably, Splat gets bored and wants to go home first. “I’m hot and tired. It’s late. We walked for hours and we still have to get back home.”
I’m actually thinking how good it feels to really stretch my legs. Maybe I’ll take off at a run on one of those jogging trails. I can run faster than anyone here, I bet. Run the whole length of the park and see it all.
“Maybe we should go back,” Kris says. “I gotta be home before dark.”
So do I, but I’m glad I’m not the one who says it out loud and has to make the decision to go back.
“Ready, Rikki?” Beastie asks. He touches my shoulder with his massive hand—lightly, just a brush, because he’s always so careful with everyone. He’s never met anyone he can’t just stomp into the ground. But he never does.
I take another look around, feeling like I’m in some kind of valley, and the tops of the skyscrapers are mountains. I breathe deep, so I can remember w
hat this smells like. Yeah, this has been a good day.
“Sure.”
Walking back, we get a little bit lost—if you told me I’d ever get lost anywhere in the city, I wouldn’t have believed you. But a path curves away from where we expected it to, and it leads to a road which, it turns out, doesn’t go anywhere. We double back to one of the main paths to find our way out of the park and to a subway station.
We’re just about there when I hear shouting. I stop; the others stop with me and look to where I do—in the direction of uptown, where a white guy holding a backpack is running as hard as he can.
A couple of cops chase him. The shouting is them telling the guy to stop. Well, isn’t this exciting? I wonder what he’s done. Is this a mugging interrupted or something else?
“Why don’t they just shoot him?” Splat says.
I glare at him. We ought to be happy the cops aren’t just shooting in the middle of Central Park on a nice sunny day. The guy is fast, pulling ahead. I can see where he’s headed: to the east side, cutting across the grass. If he gets over the hill, the cops aren’t going to catch him.
But I have a straight shot at him.
I bunch up, clench my fists, preparing. Take a big, huge breath with my oversized lungs, and the extra oxygen lights up my system.
“Rikki, what are you doing?” Kris says warningly.
Beastie adds, “Rikki, wait—”
I launch.
Leaning forward into the speed, my legs pumping hard, I charge across the grass. Wind tangles my hair and presses against the skin of my face. Nothing but open space ahead of me, no corners to turn or obstacles to watch for. I’ve never been able to run like this except on a track. I grin.
I want to cut the guy off. Get in front of him so he’ll have to slow down and stop, giving the cops time to catch up. Tackling him is probably not the best idea, though I’m pretty sure I could do that too if I wanted. Aim for his legs and dive. But no, I want to be smart about this. All I have to do is intercept him, making him stop or change direction, and let the police do their job. I am very proud of myself for thinking ahead and being reasonable and smart and using common sense.