Vassa in the Night (4 page)

“And now my exertions on your dear
sister's
behalf have left me quite famished and moreover deprived me of my rightful pancake. The sacrifices I make! At least get me a granola bar or
something,
Vassa!”

She won't stop griping until I do; I know that from experience. I stop in a bodega and buy one. Erg likes cinnamon almond. Once we're back on the street I say, “You have to get back in my pocket first. I don't want crumbs in my bra!”

“Are we going to SoHo?” Erg asks, clambering down. I'm pretty used to the cold slithery feeling of her grappling inside my clothes, but it still tickles.

“No,” I tell her. “I don't feel like getting on the subway. We're just walking wherever. The cemetery, maybe? I really don't care.”

“I wanted to go to SoHo!” Erg squeaks, so I unwrap the granola bar and stuff it in my pocket. That'll shut her up. For a little while.

The sweet musky stench of rotting flesh on the breeze lets me know, as if I didn't already, that we're getting near the local BY's. I turn the corner so I won't have to see it all tangerine bright and glossy in the morning sun.

BY's does all kinds of public relations campaigns saying that they only behead shoplifters. They say law-abiding consumers don't have a thing to worry about, and deterring theft is what lets them keep their low, low prices. Somehow everyone seems to accept that, more or less, even though you'd think the police or the mayor or
somebody
should really shut the whole chain down. I mean, beheading must at least count as a violation of the health code, right?

But there's a kind of atmosphere around BY's that makes it hard to stick with the idea that they're doing anything wrong. I've seen cops walking toward BY's, and the closer they get the hazier they look, and their eyes start to go out of focus, and they get these quirky little smiles on their faces like they're thinking,
Boy, those darn thieves sure had it coming!
I even used to think that sometimes, though it felt like the words were creeping into my brain through my ears.

But Joel Diallo was about the straightest arrow in my grade and the last time I passed by his head was still up there, though it wasn't all that fresh anymore. His mom was sitting balled up in the middle of the parking lot with tears dripping off her chin. At school everyone said his family couldn't even get his body back. He'll never have a grave. Someone had tied a few pink daisies to his stake, because what else could they do?

It's probably easier for the police to ignore since the people who get offed are mostly on the margins: immigrants who don't know better, tough local teenagers, older women on heavy medication who go shopping in their nightgowns. Chelsea says that BY's would never open a branch in Manhattan, for example, because the potential customers there would be too well-connected to kill. The wrong people would get upset.

Some kids picked on Joel. He was kind of introverted and awkward, an easy target for the jerks. People barely had to look at him to think they knew exactly who he was: that kid who always wore the school uniform, which most of us blow off; who spoke even less than I do; who held doors for teachers. I pretty much went on the default assumption that that stuff summed him up, too. For years. I mean, when I'm all withdrawn and distant, I know it's because I have too many secrets to risk getting close to anyone. But I saw Joel acting basically the same way I do, and for some reason I thought it meant that there wasn't much to him.

So how did I start to understand I was wrong? It was maybe January when we were all squeezing down the hallway between classes, and this guy Andre started harassing him: not pushing him physically, but just pressing sideways to drive him toward the tile wall. In the crowd Joel couldn't get away, and when he stumbled into the tiles Andre laughed. “See, that's the difference between us,” Andre said, like he was picking up some conversation they'd had earlier. “You have to take shit, and I don't.”

I was three rows back, jostling along in the flow of arms and legs and book bags, half-wondering if I should say something. But as it turned out I didn't have to, because Joel actually talked back, though his voice was so soft I could barely make it out. “No. The difference is that you'll always be exactly what you are now. And I won't.” There was something in his tone, self-conscious but also
knowing,
like he could see Andre's entire future right there. It was enough of a surprise that I started straining to hear them over the clamor, because who just comes out and says something like that? “And you'll always belong in the same place, but I'll be far away.” It had a weirdly authoritative sound, like Joel was sentencing him to be boring for the rest of his life. Andre's jaw was hanging, like a bubble of shocked silence was inflating in his mouth and he couldn't speak.

They'd stopped dead against the wall so that everyone eddied out around them, and I was shoved against Andre's arm. He saw me there and twitched, then started scrambling to save face. “Yeah, you
don't
belong here. You should try a different planet.”

It would have been a pretty weak comeback even if Joel hadn't smiled, obviously not insulted at all. He smiled like his spaceship was parked right outside and Andre was just too dumb to realize it. And then the moment was over and we all slipped into our classrooms, but after that I didn't look at Joel the same way; I knew now that he wasn't quiet because he didn't have anything to say. It was because in a way he was already somewhere else, reaching for some beyond, and he'd left the everyday crap at our school behind him. When I heard he'd died at BY's it made a queasy kind of sense that he would have wanted to try going in there: it's the closest thing to
beyond
that we have in the neighborhood, even if it's horrible.

But is it possible he tried to rip off BY's on a dare, striving to seem cool? Maybe, though it feels really out of character. Barely.

Or, more like, not really. Or even, I'd say, not at all.

I should have tried to know him better. We should be wandering together now, saying that we truly will get out of here someday. Reminding each other that it's a big planet and if we can just hang in there we'll both see a lot more of it.

We should have been friends.

Our nights drag on endlessly, but our days are just as perishable as ever. My street, like all the streets around here, runs smack into the stone wall that outlines the Evergreen Cemetery. Block after block, if you try to get through that way you bash against a yellow sign that just says
END
. Then on top of the stone wall there's a chain-link fence, letting us look in on the elaborate marble tombs with their columns and swags of stone drapery and their perfectly carved climbing roses: these gorgeous miniature mansions. Around here it's the dead who are living large. On the living side of the fence we have plastic kids' bikes wedged into the balconies of burned-out apartment buildings. Mosaics of garbage and broken glass in the mud. So it's not too surprising that I tend to wind up wandering around the graves. It reminds me that there are always options.

I spend hours walking up and down the cemetery's hills with their ranks of spiky white angels. One tomb has a crack-faced statue of a girl, leaning sideways and sunk in the turf up to her knees; I almost feel like I should try to help her climb out. Below me the train station perches on its mess of tracks, and this tinny synthetic voice keeps echoing up and telling the dead how long they have to wait for the next train. There's a bench where I sit reading, then I walk down to a donut shop in the late afternoon—chocolate glazed and a cup of coffee for me, a heinous pink-sprinkled custard-filled blob for Erg—lingering at my outside table until the twilight starts rolling in and I get too hungry and chilled to ignore it anymore. Going home means facing Chelsea's kindhearted efforts to patch up my leaking psyche and Steph's conviction, I bet, that I'm beyond repair, and Iliana too tired and worried to deal with any of it. “Erg? I don't know if I can go home.”

She jumps in my pocket. “Sure you can! It's dinnertime!”

“Maybe it's time for us to get out of here. Just get on a bus and go.” I hesitate. “I guess you'd have to swipe our bus fare, though. I only have like ten bucks.” I've never asked Erg to steal for me before, but since she started the trouble at home she might as well help get me out of it.

“Oh, no. Nonono, Vassa. Go home. It'll be fine.” Her voice wheedles from my right hip. A few times people have heard her and thought that I had a phone with a really weird ringtone.

“You don't understand what this is
doing
to me, Erg. Every time they look at me I feel sick because I know what they're thinking. I just want to get out and start over, and maybe next time you won't—”

“Vassa,” Erg says firmly, “it's going to be fine. As long as we're together, you'll be fine. And we'll be together forever! So stop worrying!”

“I think you're missing the point here, dollface. Us being together is what's making things totally
not
fine.”

“Vaaaasssaaa.” She practically sings it. “Go home. Trust me. Anyway nobody's home but your stepmom, and she's asleep. Okay?”

The surprising thing is that when Erg says something like this she's always right. Anyway, if I do decide to run away, it wouldn't be a bad idea to pack a bag first. “Okay for
now.
I'm not promising anything for later, though.”

“I can take care of later,” Erg squeaks primly. “I've got everything under perfect control.”

It's true, the apartment is totally dark and there's no sound apart from faint snores coming from Iliana's room. I heat up some leftover pasta in the microwave—Erg leans so far into the bowl while she's eating that I'm amazed she doesn't fall in—then watch some TV in our bedroom. I'm chilled and damp from being out for so long and the warmth starts oozing through me, beginning at my stomach and then bobbing up into my head.

The lights were on when I fell asleep, but when I wake up the only light is a dim staticky flicker. Someone is knocking around the bedroom, yanking drawers and dropping things; I know it has to be Stephanie. Chelsea would at least make an effort to be quiet. “Oh my God,” she almost shouts, “I can't find anything!”

“You can turn on the light if you want,” I tell her. “I'm awake.”

“No, I can't, smartass. You try it!”

I'm confused. “You can't? Which one?”

“Any of them!”

My first thought is that there must be a power outage, but the TV still glows and chatters in front of me, its colors ambling from red to blue. I reach for the bedside lamp and twist the knob, once and then again to be sure. She's right, nothing happens. “What's going on?” Through the window I can see the building across the street, its panes a shining yellow grid against the darkness. Stephanie shuffles back and forth, blotting out the distant glow. One curve of her cheek is outlined in faint gray, but that's all I can see of her face.

“The bulbs have burned out,” Stephanie says with ornate exasperation. “Duh, Vass.”

Maybe I'm still dreaming a little bit because it takes me five heartbeats to realize that there's a problem with this. “All of them? Um, Steph, that doesn't make a lot of sense, does it? Why would they all burn out at the same time?”

“Why is the sky blue? They obviously did! And we don't have a single spare bulb anywhere!”

It's true, I guess, that we've been using all our lights an awful lot, though this still seems like quite a coincidence. “In all the rooms? Did you check Iliana's room? Because we could borrow a lightbulb from her and buy new ones in the morning.”

“You think I didn't think of that? Oh, gosh, I just stumbled around the apartment in the dark for an hour, and it never even occurred to me to check my mom's room! Thanks, Vassa!”

Could this be one of Erg's pranks? Not really; she'd never make it to the overhead fixtures. “Go to bed, then. We'll deal with this tomorrow.”

“So you expect me to just sit here in the dark for ages? It's only midnight.”

“What do you want me to do about it?”

She's closer to me now, enough that her face shows up like an unstable map in the TV light. Terra incognita, an ocean at the edge of the world. Blues and whites squirm across her features; she won't look at me.

“Why don't you go out and buy some? You're dressed.” She's wearing pajamas, and she's right, I fell asleep in my clothes. But if it's midnight …

“All the stores will be closed, Steph.”

“They won't
all
be closed.” Her lips pucker as if she's fighting a smile. “BY's is still open. It's like five blocks away.”

At first I think she's kidding. At first I think she has to be. Her eyes are flickering toward the shadows behind her dresser and waves of gray light go crashing across her cheeks.
There be monsters.
“You aren't serious.”

“Why wouldn't I be? Make yourself useful for once.” Her gaze is shifty, darting, and her mouth twists with what looks like embarrassment.

Where is Chelsea? She wouldn't stand for this.

I still can't quite believe it; I'm still trying to give her the benefit of the doubt. “Stephanie? They kill people at BY's. Remember? People go in for a bag of chips and come out with no heads. Remember?” Though really, there's no way she could have forgotten. No matter how oblivious she is, that kind of thing does tend to make an impression.

But she's right that BY's is still open. It's open always and forever and its lights never go out. Even the tangerine plastic walls give off a glowing haze like radioactivity, and the windows shoot out saw-toothed beams. They never stop gouging huge holes in the darkness.