and smoke.
This was northeast Philadelphia, where I got an accent
that I slip into when I go back there, but I rarely do.
We all knew
about the Jardel gang—named after the nearby community recreation center where they played basketball.
I still remember being at the neighborhood carnival when there were gunshots
and young men chanting its name.
But Jardel was where the courts were.
This was back when I was fourteen
and still walked around in a black trench coat despite Columbine.
While looking at mine,
Jay remembered that he had just gotten a long black coat for his birthday,
and his cousin also had one inside,
and Nicky dug his father’s out of storage, and Lance, well, he just looked the part despite his dark windbreaker.
All five of us walking at one in the morning, like a mafia,
with this attitude
of absolute certainty, that to this day,
I don’t know
if I was the only one who was terrified.
There was one light still lit
over the half-court,
and part of a chain-link net dangling off the hoop,
and we played
like we were dancing
on hot coals.
War Paint
I want to remember this,
my dad and I together in war paint,
in the desert outside of San Diego.
A photographer dressed us.
He had his glasses off and I had not yet gotten them.
We looked serious for the camera,
I had more red around my eyes
and he had green,
but we both had dark blue battle lines on our cheeks.
The powdered paint covered our faces and bare chests,
my dad said something about me being an Indian
The warrior
like him.
I want to remember this,
I want to quit my job
and run over to my dad’s house—
down into the basement
and pull him off the couch,
away from the TV
and tell him that I remember that power again
and we would track down that photographer back in San Diego
We would take our glasses off
We would demand that she get her powdered paints
We would tell her to dress us again
In the warrior colors.
But this time
there would be no camera.
Jade Shames is a screenwriter, fiction writer, and poet living in Brooklyn. He is the grand prize winner of the 2013–2014 Fresh Voices screenplay competition and the recipient of a creative writing scholarship from The New School’s MFA program for poetry. His work has appeared in a variety of publications, including The Best American Poetry blog, H.O.W. An Art and Literary Journal, and LA Weekly.
Website: jadeshames.com
Twitter: @JadeShames
* * *
Corazón Oscuro
RACHEL CAINE
* * *
There were probably lots of things worse than a road trip with Mom through a no-cell-signal West Texas desert in the middle of the night, but honestly, Zen couldn’t think of any. It was too dark to read the book she’d brought; she tried to use the flashlight, and her mother snapped at her to turn it off—it was messing with her night vision.
“You have headlights,” Zenobia said without looking up. “Why does it bother you?”
“Headlights are out there, you’re in here—turn it off.” Her mom sounded really tense, which wasn’t a surprise. They were both exhausted and cranky, and that fifth cup of coffee for her mother had obviously been a super bad choice. “Check the map. How much farther to Pecos is it, anyway?”
“A billion miles.”
“Zenobia, por el amor de Dios, just tell me!”
“Do you have to pee? Because I’m pretty sure the last gas station was back in Monahell.”
“Monahans.”
“Did you see it? God. My name is so much better.” She hated this. Hated leaving El Paso and her school and her best friends. Hated leaving the boy that might have been the love of her life, if he’d ever asked her out, and she knew he’d been about to do that, she knew it.
This was ruining her life. It wasn’t her mother’s fault, but she couldn’t help but blame her too. Blame Dad, because he’s the one who made this happen. That was true too, and she knew he was the bad guy, the one who’d screwed around, the one who had leaped at the chance for a divorce, who’d left them with nothing.
And her mom was brave for starting over. She knew. She just hated it, all of it, and she wanted to get lost in a dark, dystopian world where at least you could fix the things that were screwing up your life.
She’d only gotten a paragraph in when her mom sighed and said, “I’m not going to tell you again. Turn the light off!”
Zenobia sighed and clicked the flashlight off. Obviously, her third reading of the battered copy of The Forest of Hands and Teeth was going to have to wait until when her mother wasn’t on too much caffeine. “It’s another hour to Pecos, okay? Happy now?” She didn’t wait for her mom to tell her how much she wasn’t. She grabbed the side handle on the seat and pulled up, and her seat leaned backward, faster and harder than she’d imagined it would. Her mother let out a little yelp of fright and frustration and sent her a glare that, by the light of the old dashboard’s red glow, looked more than a little demonic.
Her seat slammed into a box about eight inches back, and she heard something shift inside. She hoped that wasn’t one of Mom’s precious ceramic angels. If something broke, she’d catch hell for sure.
Life sucks enough already. She was stuck in the desert with her entire life stuffed into the back of an ancient old station wagon with the fake wood paneling peeling off the sides, and there was no cell reception. Which meant no social media. No texts. No music. Nothing. And nothing to see, because out here in the desert was like being in outer space, all hard black sky and bright cold stars, and the road only an illusion vanishing just past the headlights. Like floating in a big bowl of darkness. Maybe we’re not really going anywhere. Maybe we’re trapped going around in a circle. With no GPS, how can we tell?
She already knew what her mom would say to that, in that aggravated, superior way old people had. In my day we could use maps. It wasn’t that hard. And phones had dials, games had boards, blah blah blah. She could recite all of the anti-new-stuff rants from memory.
Three more years until she could move out on her own, and she could not wait. She’d get her own apartment. Something tiny and cute, with a big chair. And a dog. She wanted a dog. They hadn’t had one since Alfonse, the greyhound rescue that her dad had brought home one day. Alfonse had been shy and skittish, and limped a lot, but she’d loved that dog. She’d cried for days when he’d died. In fact she felt her throat clench up just at the thought of his sad eyes, that velvety gray coat, the fast, scared beat of his heart when she’d held him for the last time.
She shut her eyes. Her mom punched buttons on the ancient stereo, trying to find some station out here in space. Never happen. Give it up. And even if they’d thought to bring the old CDs (which her mom still had), the wagon didn’t even have a CD player.
Dark Ages. No wonder her uncle had sold it to them for five hundred bucks.
“Are you warm enough, Zen?”
“Sure.” She wasn’t, really, but she knew the heater was already up as high as it would go. The desert got hot, but at night, the temperature plunged. It was so cold out there she felt it breathing through the leaky edges around the passenger door. “I’m going to sleep.”
“Okay.” Her mom gave up the hunt for music with a sigh, turned off the static, and put a thin hand on Zenobia’s leg, a silent affectionate pat of apology. Zen struggled to turn over on her side, but the
seat was more spring than padding. She compromised somewhere in the middle, an awkward lean more than anything else, and wished like hell she didn’t have all her music in the cloud, because she wanted to put her headphones in and drift away, just drift. . . .
“¡Mierda!”
Zenobia had just started to relax when her mother spat the curse out and wrenched the wheel, and Zen lurched hard against the straps and bumped her elbow hard enough to see spots. Ow. The station wagon’s tires screeched as it skidded, and the back end tried to fishtail, but somehow her mom got it under control as she applied the brakes, hard. Zenobia slid forward, yelped, and braced herself with her feet in the passenger well. No air bags in this clunker. They’d better not crash.
They didn’t. Her mom brought the car safely to a stop, and the engine began making a strange, gargling sound, shaking like it was afraid. Zenobia struggled to sit up, but the belts and her reclined seat were holding her back. She fumbled for the lever and slammed the seat up, which only made the straps tighten more over her chest, and for a second she genuinely thought this stupid old car was going to kill her. She yanked on the shoulder strap and got it loosened enough to let her catch her breath.
“Stay here,” her mother said in a tense, focused voice. “I mean it, Zen. Stay here. Do not get out of the car.”
There was a wreck up ahead. They’d come up on it in the dark, and it had been amazing her mother had been able to stop in time; the car was on its side, undercarriage showing like the bottom of a dead turtle, and it looked crumpled and bashed all over. Must have rolled, Zenobia thought. There was no way to tell how long ago it had happened, but this wasn’t Interstate 10, with steady traffic; they were on the so-called scenic route, which mainly meant lots and lots of desert and nobody else in sight. According to the map, they were on Highway 18, heading for Highway 302, if they were going the right way, which was impossible to tell, and oh God there was somebody lying on the ground next to that car.
“Mom?” Zenobia hardly recognized her voice. It sounded like she was ten years old again. “Mom?” She pointed over the dash at the legs sticking out in the wash of the headlights. Blue jeans and sneakers. “Oh God, Mom—”
“Stay here.” Her mother got out of the station wagon, went to the back, and opened it up. She grabbed a backpack and slammed the station wagon’s door with enough force to make the whole car shudder.
How long had this wreck been here? It had no lights, no headlights or taillights or anything. Was that person a woman? A dead woman?
Zenobia didn’t get out of the car, but she rolled down her window so she could hear her mother. In case she needed anything.
“Ma’am?” her mom was saying as she knelt down next to the body. “Ma’am, can you hear me? My name is Dr. Mariana Gomez, and I’m going to help you, all right? Ma’am?”
That was her mother’s calm, smooth, professional voice, and Zenobia watched as she bent down and did all the things that doctors did to check for life. She must not have found it, because she stopped talking, sat back, and looked over her shoulder at Zenobia. There was an unreadable look on her face.
“I’m going to check for any other passengers!” she called back, and Zen had to resist the urge to tell her No, no, let’s just go, let’s get out of here, because first of all it would be wrong, and second of all there was no way her mom would listen anyway.
Zenobia checked her phone for the millionth time. Still no signal. Where were they, on the fricking moon? “Come on!” she whispered, and shook it. That didn’t help, but it made her feel better. Her mother was up and walking around the overturned car. “Come on!” She held it at arm’s length out the window, and the glowing screen finally showed one tiny, faltering bar. “Mom! I’ve got a signal! I’m calling 911!”
She popped her door and got out of the car, because even though her mom had been very specific, surely she didn’t mean Don’t call the cops, because this needed calling in, and it was just a couple of steps, anyway.
God, it was dark out here, with just the stars and dim headlights; their glow looked fragile in all this darkness, and the silence seemed so big around the unsteady, shuddering idle of the car.
She dialed the emergency number and watched the bar anxiously. It flickered, strengthened to two, then dropped back to one again.
But the call went through.
“Yes?” The relief at hearing someone’s voice was so intense that Zenobia gasped and felt a sting of tears in her eyes. Sure, the voice was young, and weirdly enough sounded like she’d been laughing, but that didn’t matter.
“Um, there’s a car wreck, and somebody’s hurt. We need help here.” She was lying, she realized—somebody wasn’t hurt. Somebody was dead. “We’re on Highway 18, I guess, between I-20 and 302?” She didn’t hear any response. “Hello? Can you hear me?” She checked the bar. Still solid. She could hear the faint hiss of an open connection. It didn’t feel right, though. Not right at all. “Hello?”
There was a strange metallic sound, like a scrape, and then a voice said, “Help. Help.” The drawn out words had a weird electronic sound to them, like Auto-Tune. It sounded like a girl, but somehow, it also didn’t sound like a person.
Zenobia hung up the call and ran forward, around the front of the car. Her shadow, reflected on the undercarriage of the wreck, looked twisted and weird, and for the first time she saw the woman who was in the road—really saw her, and all the blood sprayed around her body.
The woman had been thrown out of the car, and there was no way she was alive. She hardly even looked human anymore. The car must have rolled over her.
“Mom!” That came out as a scream, a full, uncontrolled scream of terror, and she pressed her hands to her chest because her heart hurt with the slamming impact of the world going sick and wrong. Zenobia backed away from the dead woman—she was old, a white woman, with cloudy blue open eyes—and ran around the front of the wrecked car. It was dark beyond the glow of the car headlights, and she fumbled with her phone and turned on the flashlight app. It wasn’t very bright, but she saw her mom crouched down next to another body.
“Zen,” she said, and beckoned to her. She’d gloved up from her emergency kit, and her face looked tense and stark in the bluish flare. “Bring the light over here.”
“Mom, that woman—”
“Zenobia, I need you to focus, okay? Just stand there and hold the light.” Her mother got like this under pressure, focused and sharp and commanding, and Zen realized that she was kneeling next to another body. A man. He was still breathing, but she didn’t think he would be doing that for long; he was all busted up, trickling blood onto the dark road, and he was breathing in slow, convulsive gasps. “Did you get the ambulance?”
“I—I tried. Mom. Mom. We need to go.”
“I can’t leave him until an ambulance gets here, sweetheart. He needs a hospital if he’s going to survive. Honey, if you’re scared, reach in the bag, in the outside pocket, and get out the gun.”
“What?”
“There’s a pistol in the outside pocket. I brought it for the trip. I want you to get it out and hold on to it. You know how to shoot. Your dad told me how good you were at the range.”
“You have a gun?” Of course she did, she’d just said that, and Zenobia held the phone out to keep the light shining as she fumbled in her mom’s bag with her other hand, unzipping the outer pocket. There it was, a black automatic. “Is it loaded?”
“Yes. Safety’s on.”
Zenobia thought she should have felt safer, holding the gun, but she didn’t. Her hand was shaking. She felt like she’d forgotten everything she’d ever known, out here in the dark, and she didn’t know how her mom was acting so calm.
“Zenobia.” Her mom was watching her as she put pressure on the worst of the man’s wounds, and incredibly, she smiled. “You’ve got this, querida. It’s just for safety. We’re fine. Everything’s fine. The ambulance is coming. All right?”
“I don’t think it is,” Zenobia said in a s
mall voice.
“What?”
“I think—” She remembered the lazy pleasure in that voice on the phone, and shivered. Her fingers tingled from the chill. “I think I got somebody else.”
“That’s not possible. You called 911, right?”
“Yeah. But—but it was wrong, Mom. Something’s really wrong here. We should just go. This wasn’t just a wreck, somebody . . . somebody did this. What if they’re still here?”
Her mother started to answer, and as she drew in breath, the man whose chest she was tending made a sound like a wet, strangling cough, only it lasted longer than it should have, horribly longer, and then he stopped breathing.
“Damn.” Her mom checked the man’s pulse and put her ear to his chest. She used her hand over his gaping mouth to check for breath. “He’s gone. I can’t do chest compressions—he had a wound too close to the heart. . . .”
“Mom! We need to go!” Zenobia was jittering back and forth, foot to foot, and the light from her phone was dancing all over the scene.
It caught on a pair of reflective eyes, and for a second she thought coyote, but it was taller.
It was on a level with her own height.
Her mother, stripping off her bloody gloves, said, “Zenobia, we’re going to be fine, really. I know this is shocking for you but—”
Zenobia wasn’t even breathing now. She watched those reflective eyes blink. She couldn’t see the actual person, other than as a shadow, and she knew that people, real people, didn’t have those kinds of eyes.
“Stay down, Mom,” she said. All her fear left, just drained out of her, and what was left was a warm, steady sense of concentration. Maybe she got it from her mother.
Focus.
She brought the gun up. Her dad had taught her proper shooting stance, and she slid her feet into place, braced her arm for the recoil, and aimed at the reflective eyes.
They blinked, and disappeared.
Her phone rang.
Her concentration broke, and as she fumbled for it, she almost dropped the device. Thank God her dad had also taught her proper trigger discipline, and she automatically took her index finger away as she lowered the gun, or she might have shot her own mother. Or herself. The screen caller ID said 911. Zenobia pressed the button and raised the phone to her ear. “Hello?”