Fif15teen

  Chapter 3

  Law 28

  Leave What’s Left Behind, It May Be a Trap

  They stood in the center of the road and stared down at a golden box. The box was seamless, without a single mark or engraving to mar its smooth surface.

  “What is it?” Aly asked.

  “It’s a box,” Quinn stated.

  Akeem picked it up. “No, it’s a cube, a golden cube. Wow, this thing is heavy,” he said before passing it to Quinn.

  “How can it weigh so much and be so small,” Quinn mumbled as Aly pried the box from her hands. It was far too heavy for the little girl; she held it for a second before it slipped through her fingers. It fell to the ground, just missing her little toes. It banged across the concrete, leaving groves and gouges as it went.

  “You’re gonna break it, burra!” Quinn snapped.

  “No soy una burra, puerca!” Aly snapped back.

  “Hey! If you’re going to argue, do it in English so I’ll know what the heck you’re saying!” Akeem interrupted as he picked up the cube and examined it. He couldn’t find a single scratch. “Where’d the lady go? We should give this thing back.”

  The girls ignored him. “Finders keepers, losers weepers! It’s ours now,” Aly chanted.

  “How do we get it open?” Quinn asked. There was no sign of an opening or distinction between the top and bottom of the box. Each side was identical, shiny, and flawless.

  “It’s such a pretty box,” Aly said, stroking it as if it were a puppy.

  “It’s not a box, it’s a cube. It has six identical sides that look about three inches wide, which would make it about twenty-seven cubic inches in diameter. It’s a cube,” Akeem snapped nervously, causing the girls to stare at him in amazement.

  Quinn sighed. “Okay, Einstein, relax. It’s a cube, we get it.”

  “A cu-u-u-be,” Aly sang.

  “Let’s get this cube back to the basement and crack it open. I want to see what’s inside its cubey interior,” Quinn mocked.

  Akeem smiled. He loved it when they teased him. “One of us has to have the brains around here! She’s the cute one, you’re the warrior princess, and I’m the smart one. Deal with it,” he joked. Quinn smirked at him and punched his arm while Aly giggled.

  “I want to see what’s inside the pretty cube. Let’s go!” Aly demanded, grabbing Akeem’s hand and dragging him down the street.

  They rushed back to Quinn’s basement and used everything in her father’s unused workbench to open it. They attacked it with a saw, vice grips, and a drill that skittered off the smooth surface and left a hole in the basement floor. Nothing put the slightest dent in the golden cube. They dropped it from the roof of the house, but it didn’t open. They smashed it with a hammer, tried to blast it open with M-80s from Akeem’s firework stash, but nothing worked. The cube was impregnable. Hours later they were sprawled in the basement, dumbfounded and staring at the cube in frustration, when they heard footsteps upstairs. The three of them looked up. That was Akeem’s cue to leave. Aly wrapped her body around one of his long legs and hung on tight.

  “Don’t go, Keemi,” she whispered desperately. He walked around the room, swinging his leg and the clinging girl in the air as he went.

  “Do we have to go through this every time? Let him go, little burra; they’ll be calling us for dinner soon.” Quinn sighed. Akeem pried the girl from his leg and swept her up into a hug. She covered his face in wet kisses before Quinn snatched her off and tossed her onto the couch. Aly landed in a giggling heap. Quinn turned back to Akeem and realized his arms were still open. She had taken a step toward them before she realized what she was doing and stopped. Their eyes met. Quinn opened her mouth but closed it again when he raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “Quinn wants a hug too, Keemi,” Aly said excitedly.

  “I do not!” Quinn snapped before plopping down on the couch next to her sister. Akeem smiled, winked at Aly, and silently waved good-bye. He disappeared into the back room of the basement, where he slipped through the window, under a fence, and headed home. As he walked he pulled out his cell phone and checked the time. He noticed several texts but ignored them; they were most likely from his mother. He sighed with relief when he noticed that she would have left for work a half hour ago. He was relieved he wouldn’t have to deal with her tonight. It was still sweltering hot, and his shirt and shorts stuck to his skin as he trekked the long walk to the subway. He planned to take a shower as soon as he walked through the apartment door. Then he would fix himself something quick to eat and head to bed early. She got off work at 7:00 a.m., and he planned to be long gone by then.

  When he arrived he was horrified to find her home. She must have taken the night off just to catch him. His heart dropped to his knees when he walked into the kitchen and found her at the stove. Cooking was a job normally left for him. He couldn’t remember the last time she made a meal or shared one with him. Even on holidays he ate alone. When she smiled at him, bile rose to his throat and he nearly gagged. But when she told him to take a shower and relax until dinner, the warning bells in his head went berserk. He didn’t say a word, nor did he turn his back on her as he slipped past her and down the hall. The real shocker came when he entered his room to find it spotless. She had vacuumed and washed his sheets. Neatly folded laundry was placed in piles upon his freshly made bed. His heart nearly jumped out of his chest. The last time she cleaned up the house was right before the people from social services stopped by to question her about his broken arm.

  “She’s gonna kill me; she’s really gonna do it this time,” he said to himself. It was by chance that he chose to look through the window at that moment. A second later and he would have missed the police cars pulling up. He knew they were there for him. On numerous occasions, she had threatened to call the cops to come and take him away. Each time he would pray that someone would really come, but his prayers were never answered. He learned early that God was not a genie that granted urgent wishes, and he also learned that most cops don’t really give a damn about kids from the hood. These cops looked angrier than usual, most likely because they had to venture into this neighborhood. They kept their hands on their guns as if itching to shoot something or someone. He wondered what story his conniving mother told them to get such a response.

  Realizing he was wasting valuable time, he jumped into action. He had to get out of there quick. He grabbed his backpack and stuffed it with clothes. He raced around his room, grabbing things he thought he would need. He snatched a flashlight, a couple bottles of water, and some power bars he had squirreled away in his desk drawer. He added the rest of his fireworks stash and, as a last thought, some matches. He took the old coffee can from under his bed that held his life savings of $23.76 and emptied it into the bag as well. He was wondering what else he should take when he heard a knock at the apartment door.

  Akeem peeked into the hallway and saw his mother headed for the door. He strapped on his backpack, clipped it snuggly around his waist, and slipped silently out of his room. He locked and closed the door behind him before dashing across the hallway into his mother’s bedroom. He ran to her open window and looked down six stories to the ground. Even though the sun was setting, the air was still thick and hot. He heard sounds from a television, cranked to the highest volume, blasting through his neighbor’s open window. Why couldn’t the fire escape be outside this window instead of the living room window?

  He looked down at the tiny ledge that traversed this side of the building and took a deep breath. He had contemplated escape using this ledge many times in the past but never had the guts to do it. Today he had no choice; he’d never make it past the cops and through the front door. This was his only way out. He would do it or die trying. He had a sinking feeling he would most likely achieve the die trying part, but death was probably better than life as he currently knew it. He gripped the windowsill and stepped out onto the ledge. He was horrified to find that his shoes hung over by at least three inches. The ledg
e looked much bigger from inside the apartment, but there was no turning back now. He could hear his mother in the living room talking to the police; he had mere minutes before they discovered him missing. His neighbor’s bathroom window was just sixteen inches to the right—he had measured the distance more than once during his years of planning escape routes—but from where he stood, it seemed like miles. He turned toward the wall. Unable to let go of his mother’s window without falling, he gulped then stretched one arm over as far as he dared and was relieved when his fingers found the rough stone sill of his neighbor’s window. He took a few timid steps before his cell phone fell from his pocket. His eyes followed it until it smashed into a million pieces on the sidewalk. He pictured himself falling and the air left his lungs. His chest pressed against the bricks between the two windows, a windowsill gripped in each shaky hand was all he had to hold on to. He was in a sticky spot, standing on the tips of his toes with his heels dangling precariously over the ledge. He needed to pull himself over to his neighbor’s window, using only the strength of his fingertips and a bit of momentum, but his feet refused to move. His heart raced. One slip and he would be a splat on the asphalt, next to his cell phone. He was wondering if Quinn would cry at his funeral when he heard his mother talking louder, putting on a good show.

  “He came home a few minutes ago. The little runaway had me up all night worried sick. He does this all the time; he’s completely out of control. I think he might be on drugs. There was money, and I’m worried he might have a gun,” she said and sniffed. He heard the sound of metal on leather as weapons were removed from holsters.

  “Don’t worry, Mrs. Black…”

  “That’s Ms. Williams. I never married his worthless father, thank the Lord.”

  “We’ll take him to a place where they’ll teach him some respect, Ms. Williams. Boy’s like yours need a firm hand,” said a gravelly voice. They were walking down the hallway now.

  “Akeem?” his mother said softly before tapping on the door to his empty bedroom. Akeem shook his head in disgust. That’s the first time she’s ever knocked on my door, he thought as he hung precariously between windows, trying not to look down. “Akeem!” She rattled the locked doorknob. She’ll probably kick the door down at any moment. When they don’t find me her bedroom will be the next place they’ll look and they’ll find me, cowering in fear on the window ledge. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

  He remembered being six years old, staring up at a basketball hoop from where he had thrown himself down on the blacktopped court. “I’m too little,” he had whined, defeated. Big hands lifted him up, turned him around, and placed the ball back in his hands. “You can do it!” his father’s voice whispered in his ear and strong hands nudged him forward…

  It was as if those hands were nudging him now. His eyes flew open as he swung toward his neighbor’s open window, with nothing but the tips of his toes touching the narrow ledge. He lunged and hit hard. Elbows banged against windowsill, knees crashed into rough bricks as his arms shot through the open window. His shins smacked into the marble ledge and his feet dangled in the air. He reached for anything to stop his fall and his searching hands found the radiator. He gripped it for dear life, and it creaked in protest. He dug the tips of his sneakers into the brick and inched his way up, hoping that his burning arms would stay in their sockets just a bit longer. With the last of his strength, he struggled through the window and flopped onto the bathroom floor with a crash that could have raised the dead.

  It was a good thing Mr. Harris was as deaf as a doorknob. He did a quick inventory of himself. His shins were badly scratched and bleeding. The palms of his hands were scraped raw and his elbows throbbed with pain. His chest ached a bit from smashing into the windowsill, but he wasn’t concerned. He knew what broken ribs felt like, and he was certain they were still intact. He would be in a world of pain tomorrow, but he quickly put the thought out of his mind. Tomorrow was just another day, and for the moment, he was glad to be alive. He pictured the scene that might have played out if Mr. Harris had been on the toilet just now. He would have given the old guy a heart attack right there on his porcelain throne. He chuckled as he cracked the bathroom door and peeked out. Mr. Harris was sound asleep in his recliner snoring loudly and drooling all over the shoulder of his crisply ironed blue shirt.

  “Thanks,” Akeem whispered in the old man’s direction before tiptoeing out of the apartment.