She stands up and heads for the stairs, her bare feet scraping on the floor. Rage swells up in me, tears out of me toward her, and I push. I push so fucking hard I knock her to the ground. Then I grab the paper bag and throw it at her crumpled body.
“I don’t need shit from you,” I spit.
She pulls herself up and shuffles to the stairs.
“You’re gonna miss me,” I hiss. “You don’t know.”
Her foot on the step.
“Ain’t you even gonna ask me where I’m going?”
She stops. Turns. “Can’t nothin’ be worse than here,” she says. “You smart, Michelle.” And then, “Not like me.”
Her thin body struggles, step by dirty step. A door closes softly. A lighter clicks, and then the smell of smoke.
What do you do if you’re in trouble?
I got fifty-one dollars and an address.
Pink Houses.
That’s where I will go.
7
GREYHOUND BUS TERMINAL
10th and Filbert Streets, Philadelphia
The bus station’s crammed with every possible kind of person, rushing and standing and waiting in lines. A woman with shiny blond hair and tight dark blue jeans talks on her cell phone and sips a cup of coffee with whipped cream on top. A guy with a huge duffel bag and red sweatshirt that says UPENN dashes to the line at the ticket counter. A mother pushes a sleeping baby in a stroller. An old woman sits in a wheelchair by the door, dozing off under a blanket.
My heart pumps hard. It’s nine thirty a.m. Overhead, a giant schedule flashes the names of places I’ve never been to.
Atlantic City, New Jersey 9:45 a.m.
New York City 10:00 a.m.
Norfolk, Virginia 10:30 a.m.
Boston 11:15 a.m.
I hug my pillow and step into line behind the boy in the sweatshirt.
“Next!” yells the woman behind the counter. The boy steps up, flips open his wallet, pulls out a credit card, and taps it absentmindedly on the counter.
“Round trip to Boston,” he says. She types something into her computer.
“A hundred twenty-nine fifty,” she replies without looking up. My face flushes and I grab my pillow tighter. I don’t have that kind of money. What if a ticket to New York costs more than what I got?
The boy swipes his card, signs his name, takes his ticket, and strides off into the crowd.
“Next!” she calls. I clench my fifty-one dollars in my hand. Above my head, the names of cities scroll by.
Toronto, Canada 9:50 a.m.
Columbus, Ohio 11:45 a.m.
Orlando, Florida 12:00 p.m.
“Next!” she repeats, raising her eyebrow at me.
I glance behind me. There’s a long line of people. An older woman in a big red hat puts her hand on my shoulder.
“Your turn,” she says gently. Her face is soft, and she’s wearing red lipstick that leaks into the wrinkles around her mouth.
“You can go,” I say, trying to sound casual. My hands start to sweat, soaking the money in my tight fist.
“You sure?” she says. “Do you need help?”
“Yeah.” I nod and force myself to smile. “I mean, no. You can go ’head.”
She smiles and walks to the counter.
“One way to New York,” she says.
“Forty-three seventy-five.”
One way to New York. Only forty-three dollars. I glance around, almost expecting to see the cops or Calvin or my mother coming for me. But nobody’s there. Just strangers.
The woman swipes her card and steps aside, smiling at me. She must have kids, the way her eyes get soft like she wants to make sure I’m okay. I smile and sigh. My heart slows down a little.
“Your turn,” she chirps.
“C’mon!” someone shouts behind me.
I step up to the counter. “One way to New York,” I say carefully, trying to sound like I’ve done this before.
“That’s forty-three dollars and seventy-five cents.”
I hand her my damp, wrinkled bills. She watches me, then types into the computer and hands me a ticket.
I follow the woman in the red hat outside to where the buses are lined up on the street. Their engines roar and spew black smoke into the air. Someone bumps my shoulder, sending my pillow into a dirty puddle.
“Hey!” yells the woman in the red hat. “Watch it!”
My pillow’s soaked. So is red bear blanket, stuffed inside the pillowcase.
“You okay?” she asks me.
I shrug and stare at the ground, suddenly wishing I was back in my house in my closet. I didn’t say good-bye to Chuck. I should’ve brought my pajamas. I cannot cry. Not in front of this woman, who might realize I’m running away and turn me in.
“You here by yourself?”
“Nah,” I lie. “My grandpa—he dropped me off. I’m going to see my mom.”
“You goin’ all the way to New York by yourself?”
“She’s gonna meet me there. Where the bus drops us off.”
Her forehead wrinkles. “At Port Authority?”
“Yeah. Port Authority.”
She sighs. “How ’bout we sit together?”
I hesitate.
“C’mon,” she says with a smile, reaching out a hand to me. Her nails are red and neat, like her hat and her lipstick and her clean coat. “You can tell me all about your mom. I’m Betty, by the way.”
“Sarah,” I reply, and step onto the huge coughing bus.
For three hours, I find myself talking to Betty. I can’t stop the words from tumbling out of my mouth. My grandpa’s a doctor, I tell her, a cancer doctor. I’m going to stay with my mom. She’s an actress. In New York City. She’s pretty and she can’t wait to see me. Betty nods and doesn’t say much. When she pulls out a bagel from her bag, my stomach growls so loudly that she gives me half. I devour it, licking the cream cheese from my fingers, and keep talking. I’m going to be an actress when I’m older, just like my mom. Someday I’ll be pretty too.
“It must be hard, living so far away from her,” Betty says, handing me a paper napkin.
“Yeah,” I say. “She misses me all the time.”
The New York skyline grows larger and larger in the window, the buildings like strangers standing in line, waiting for me to get there. We plunge into a long, dark tunnel and then we’re surrounded by skyscrapers. They go on for blocks. We inch along slowly, crawling down a wide street clogged up with cars and taxis and bicycles and people swarming the sidewalks.
The bus hisses to a stop in a huge underground garage. My heart hurries. New York City. They make movies here.
In the bus terminal, me and Betty glide up an escalator. Hundreds of people flow by, an ocean of strangers. There are stores and restaurants, the smell of food everywhere, and subways rumbling deep underground.
Betty grips my arm tightly. “Let’s find this mother of yours,” she says, but her voice sounds different. Harder.
“She’s probably late anyway. I’ll just wait for her here. Thanks. For everything. Really.” I try to pull my hand away, but Betty won’t let go.
“Why don’t I wait with you?” she says, and her eyes look right into me. My hands start to sweat. Two policemen stand by the front doors. She glances at them, then back at me. There’s someone else too. A guy in a crisp white T-shirt and dark blue jeans. He’s watching us. He smiles and nods his head, like he knows who I am. Like he’s waiting for me. Our eyes meet and though I’m not sure why, I smile back.
“Who’s that?” Betty asks in a firm voice.
“I’m sorry,” I say, yanking my hand away.
“Wait! Sarah!” she yells, but I’m already gone, running through the crowd, past stores and benches and people racing to work or home or to families that miss them. It’s not hard to disappear here, with so many people.
I duck into a store and hide between the racks of shirts and stuffed animals. I throw on my hoodie and keep my head down. After ten minutes, I walk back out into
the main terminal. Betty’s still there, talking to the cops. I turn back to the store, but the woman behind the counter glares at me.
“Can I help you?” she snaps.
I take a deep breath and fish out Erica’s address from my backpack.
“Do you know how to get here?” I say.
The woman looks at the address. “This in the city?”
“What?”
“Is this in the city?”
“Yeah. In New York.”
She hands the address back to me. “I never heard of Crescent Street. Maybe it’s in Queens. Or the Bronx. You gonna buy something?”
“Nah. Thank you,” I say, and I step back out into the main terminal.
And then he’s there again, the guy in the white T-shirt, leaning against the wall with a toothpick in his mouth.
“You shouldn’t run,” he says in a low voice, as if we’re sharing a secret. “You’ll draw attention to yourself. The cops are lookin’ for you now.”
“I’m meeting my uncle,” I say quickly.
His mouth curls up into a knowing smile. “Then why you runnin’?”
I shrug and clutch my filthy pillow. His teeth are bright white, and he smells like soap and french fries. A thin silver chain hangs from his neck.
“C’mon. I’ll get you outta here,” he continues.
“Nah,” I say weakly. “I’m good.”
He raises an eyebrow. “You don’t look so good.”
I glance down at my dirty blue T-shirt and baggy jeans. My sneakers are ripped and faded. I run my hand through my hair and pull at the front of my shirt nervously. His sneakers are out-the-box red. Not a speck of dirt on them. His hair is cut short, buzzed into a neat curving hairline around his dark, sharp face. His skin shines, waxy like a car.
“You hungry?” he asks. I don’t answer, even though my stomach rumbles. He tosses his toothpick on the floor, shrugs, and turns to leave.
“I wouldn’t go out the front door if I was you,” he says. “Good luck, girl. If you want a burger, I’ll be at McDonald’s over there for a half hour.”
Then he disappears into the crowd.
I don’t know where to go. I walk along the wall and keep my head down. A woman in a loose flowery shirt and red skirt that flips back and forth brushes by me. She looks like she knows where she’s going, so I follow her. Down a set of stairs, then across a platform and down more stairs. She swipes a card and pushes through a turnstile and then she’s gone too.
The subway.
The signs don’t make sense. ACE with blue circles. Downtown. Red circles with the numbers 1, 2, and 3. Crosstown. NR in yellow circles. Queens. There’s a big map on the dirty tiled wall, covered with different-colored curvy lines and a million tiny street names. More numbers, more colors. I search for Crescent Street, for the color pink. A man walks up and checks the map, tracing one of the blue lines with his finger. He’s wearing a suit and shiny black shoes. I pull my hood back, stand up straight, and smile.
“Do you know where Crescent Street is?”
“Crescent? Sounds like it’s in the Village. Maybe ask that guy.” He points to a man in a booth by the turnstiles and hurries off.
I approach the thick glass, suddenly wishing I was back home buying gummy worms at the corner store. I press the address on the glass. The man looks at it, then at me, and shakes his head. “You got a cross street?”
No, I don’t have a cross street. I don’t know what that means. I pull my hood up and walk away fast, past the map that doesn’t make sense, past the people who just keep coming and coming and coming, shoving my shoulders, looking through me for the trains that will take them where they belong. The subways squeal, ding-dong as the doors close, and rattle off slowly while others tear by so fast they make me dizzy.
My head slams with pain. I’m hungry and thirsty and tired and I don’t know to find Pink Houses. I only have seven dollars left. I climb back up the stairs, pushing against the crowd, and walk to McDonald’s.
He’s sitting in a booth in the corner, checking his phone. There are two trays on the table. Two full meals. He smiles when he sees me, his eyes like open doors.
“There you are,” he says. “I was hopin’ you’d come back. Sit. Eat.”
I slide into the booth across from him and ball my hands into fists so he won’t see them shaking. I can smell the salt from the french fries, the burger warm and wrapped up, waiting for me.
“Thanks,” I whisper.
“No problem.” He nods.
I eat in silence, trying to control myself as I suck down the soda, bite the salty fries, sink my teeth into the fat burger, blobs of ketchup plopping on the tray. I wipe my mouth with a napkin and fold it, nervously, in my hands. A wave of exhaustion crashes over me. I want to keep eating. I want to sleep. But the food’s gone and I have no bed.
“You want more?” he asks.
“Nah, thanks,” I lie. I slide the address across the table. “You know where this is?”
He looks at the paper. Something shifts in his face. He sits up straight. “You jokin’, right?”
“What?”
He looks me over. “Who you know at Pink?”
“You know how to get there?! My friend Erica. Erica Davis,” I answer. “That’s where she lives. I gotta get there. I gotta find her.”
He watches me, then looks at the address again. “What building she in?”
“I don’t know. Can you tell me how to get there? Can I take the subway? I got money. I got—”
“Subways don’t run that far out. Pink’s way down by the Belt. You could take a cab maybe, but that’s gonna cost you, like, fifty bucks.”
I look at him. “I gotta get there. You don’t understand.”
He is still, silent in his clean shirt, the empty trays of food between us. In the booth behind him, a little girl smiles at me.
“Please,” I say.
He sighs. “All right. I’ll take you there myself. You don’t want to be gettin’ lost in Pink. You got any cash?”
“Take it,” I gasp, sliding my last seven dollars across the table. “Thank you.”
“You talkin’ too loud.” He glances around us, sliding the money into his pocket. He stands and holds out a hand to me. I grab my bag and pillow and jump up, almost knocking over my half-empty soda.
“Calm down.”
“Sorry! It’s just . . . thank you. Thank you.”
He takes my backpack and slings it over his shoulder. “Don’t get too excited. Pink’s a big place, and you ain’t got an apartment number. Can’t you just call your friend?”
“Her phone don’t work.”
“Well, I ain’t makin’ no promises.”
But I don’t care. He knows the Pink Houses. I can find her. I just need to get there.
“What’s your name?”
“Michelle,” I say.
“I’m Devon. Put your hood down. And smile. Anybody asks, I’m your cousin, all right? Here we go.” He takes my hand and leads me through the terminal, up a staircase, out a door, and into the street. It’s bright and loud and there’s noise everywhere, so I keep my head down and follow him to a glossy black car. He holds the door for me. I sink into the soft leather seats, smiling ’cause I can’t believe it. I wonder if Grandpa can see me. If maybe he sent Devon to make sure I could get away.
I’m okay. See?
The car purrs to life. It smells like vanilla. Like a cookie. Devon slips on a red baseball hat and a pair of sunglasses and pulls into the street, gliding between the million cars that swarm around us.
“You got any family?” he asks as we approach a huge bridge.
“Nah,” I answer. Devon steers and nods to the music and smiles to himself, like he’s as happy as I am. Like he knows exactly where he’s taking me.
8
PINK HOUSES
Crescent Street and Linden Boulevard
Brooklyn, East New York
“Here you go,” Devon says. “Pink Houses.”
Four
huge apartment buildings rise from the cement toward the fading orange sky—eight stories each of dirt-colored brick and small bar-covered windows cracked open to the warm air. Some have wet laundry half hanging out; others are blocked by noisy, dripping air conditioners that sag dangerously, as if they’re exhausted, on the verge of giving up. In the courtyard there’s a rusty playground, patches of half-dead grass, and two cement dolphins half-covered in flaking pink paint, with a warped metal sign in the middle of it all:
WELCOME TO LOUIS PINK HOUSES
A WONDERFUL COMMUNITY
Two young girls run past us, pushing a squeaky shopping cart filled with half-crushed boxes and a baby doll. Three guys stand by the dented metal door of a building marked 1. They nod in our direction. Devon nods back. One of them hollers loudly at us—a sound like a wolf—and Devon hollers back, tipping the rim of his red baseball hat.
“I don’t understand,” I say, staring up at the buildings. People are watching us. A man peers out from a third-floor window and blows smoke into the coming night. A mother on the second floor of a building marked 3 bounces a baby on her knee, its small hands reaching out from the metal bars. “What is this place?”
“The projects,” he says, his arms open wide like he’s inviting me into his home. “I grew up a couple blocks over, in Cypress. Pink’s no joke, though. Must be a couple thousand apartments here.”
“But there’s only four buildings,” I say.
Devon points toward the sinking sun. “Look over there. And there. And down Hemlock Ave.”
The buildings don’t stop. Beyond the courtyard, across another busy street, to my left, to my right, reaching up and out into the darkening sky, there are more and more buildings. Mud-colored brick buildings. Seven. Ten. Fifteen. On and on. I press my face to my pillow. I want to be back in my room.
The man at the window tosses his cigarette. It sparks like a tiny bomb when it hits the ground.