Flight

Two

MY ZITS GIVE ME superpowers.

After I cuss out my new foster father, I put on my cape and fly right through the roof of the house.

I am Zit Man, master of the Universe!

Okay, I don’t fly. I dodge the foster father’s angry slap at my head, shove my foster mother against the wall, and run out the front door.

I run the city streets, randomly turning left and right and left and right, because it just feels good to run. I used to dream that I could run fast enough to burn up like a meteor and drop little pieces of me all over the world.

I run (and burn) until a police car pulls up in front of me. I’m an absolute genius, so I turn around and run the other way.

Come on, fuzz boys, you can’t catch me. I’m an orphan meteor.

Two cops jump out of their cruiser. It takes them only thirty-five seconds to catch me.

They crash into me and send me sprawling to the sidewalk.

They try to grab my arms, but I punch one of them in the ear, and I bite the other cop on the hand. They hold me down and handcuff me.

I’m fighting and kicking because that’s what I do. It’s how I’m wired. It’s my programming. I read once that if a kid has enough bad things happen to him before he turns five, he’s screwed for the rest of his life. So that’s me, a screwed half-breed who can’t do anything but spit and kick and bite and punch.

“Zits! Zits!” one of the cops yells. “Calm down! Calm down! It’s me! It’s me!”

I recognize his voice. I know this guy. He’s arrested me a few dozen times. He’s always been pretty cool. I trust him not to hurt me, so I calm down a little.

“Officer Dave,” I say. “It’s good to see you again.”

The cops laugh. I’m a funny kid, even in handcuffs.

“Zits, why you think you’re so bad?” Officer Dave asks me. “How come you always punch the moms and never the dads?”

“I just punched your partner in the ear,” I say. “And he’s a dude, I think.”

“You punch like a girl,” that cop says.

“Fuck you,” I say. “I didn’t punch that foster mom. I pushed her. Look in the dictionary. There’s a big difference between punch and push.”

“Tell that to Judge Ireland,” Officer Dave says. “I’m sure she’ll appreciate the vocabulary lesson.”

Dave is a big white dude. But he’s got one of those gentle voices like he’s talking you down from the ledge of a tall building. Most cops are pretty cool, I guess. It’s a tough job. And most of them just keep quiet and do the work.

I don’t like cops, okay? I just have respect for them. A tiny bit of respect. I think a lot of them had drunk, shitty, or missing fathers, just like I did. I think many of them endured chaotic and brutal childhoods, so they become cops because they want to create order in the world. And those cops, forever reminded of their troubled youth, often try to rescue kids like me. Good cops are lifeguards on the shores of Lake Fucked.

Like Officer Dave. He’s never said much about his life, but I can tell he’s scarred. And he knows I’m scarred, too. The wounded always recognize the wounded. We can smell each other.

“You and me aren’t so different,” Officer Dave has said more than once. “We’re like the sun and moon, kid. Different bodies, but we’re orbiting in the same sky.”

Yes, Officer Dave is a poet. He even formed a police officer poetry slam team and metaphorically battled against teams of firefighters, judges, defense attorneys, and homeless kids.

Dave is okay.

Of course, plenty of cops just like to be assholes, and having a badge means you get to be a professional asshole.

“You think you’ll get Russell as your lawyer?” Officer Dave asks me.

Russell is a public defender, the tallest, skinniest, whitest lawyer in Seattle. And man, oh, man, does he talk fast. I maybe catch every third or fourth word. He’s crazy good, I guess, but I wonder why he doesn’t go make tons of money at some corporation or something. I guess he’s yet another lifeguard who likes to save drowners like me. I bet you anything that Russell has about twenty-nine stray cats stinking up his house.

“I’m an Indian,” I say to Officer Dave, “and we hate lawyers.”

The cops laugh. They keep laughing as they drive me to kid jail in Seattle’s Central District. The CD used to be a black folks’ neighborhood. Now it’s filled with rich white people who like to pretend it’s still a black folks’ neighborhood. But the kid jail is still here, right across the street from a fancy coffee shop.

Starbucks can kiss my shiny red ass.

They put me in a holding cell with a black kid and a white kid and a Chinese kid. We’re the United Nations of juvenile delinquents.

“Where you from?” the black kid asks me, because he wants to know what gang I run with and if he should fight me or not.

“I’m from a little town called Eat Me,” I say.

The white kid and the Chinese kid laugh. The black kid doesn’t do anything. He’s already beaten by my words and doesn’t want to get beaten by my fists. I can tell he isn’t a gangbanger. He’s just an ordinary sad black kid. I could steal his basketball shoes right off his feet if I wanted to, but I don’t. I’m a nice guy. And those fancy shoes might be the only valuable thing the kid owns.

“What’s your name?” the white kid asks me.

“Zits,” I say.

“I’ve heard of you,” he says.

“What you hear?”

“I hear you’re tough.”

“Tougher than you,” I say.

There’s no reason to talk after that. Why would we talk? We’re boys. Boys aren’t supposed to talk. So we sit there in our boy silence.

Pretty soon, the Chinese kid’s parents pick him up and spank him like he was five years old, and the black kid gets transferred to another cell.

And then it’s the white kid and me.

He sits on the floor at one end of the cell. I sit on the floor at the other end. He stares at me for a long time. He’s studying me.

“What are you looking at?” I ask.

“Your face,” he says.

“What about my face?”

“It doesn’t have to be like that,” he says. “They got all sorts of medicine now. I see it on TV. They got miracle zit stuff. Clear your face right up.”

I’ve seen those commercials too. The ones where famous people like P. Diddy and Jessica Simpson and Brooke Shields talk about their zits and how they got cured by this miracle face cream made from sacred Mexican mud and the sweet spit of a prom queen. And, yeah, I’d love to buy that stuff, but it costs fifty bucks a jar. These days, you see a kid with bad acne, and you know he’s poor. Rich kids don’t get acne anymore. Not really. They just get a few spots now and again.

“Why do you care so much about my face?” I ask the white kid. “You some kind of fag?”

I don’t care if he’s a fag. I just know that fag is a powerful insult.

“Just talking,” he says. “I’m not looking for a fight.”

And the thing is, I can tell he’s not looking for a fight. He stares at me with kindness. Real kindness. I just met the guy, and I feel like he cares about my skin and me.

His complexion is so clear that it’s translucent. I can see the blue veins running through his skin like rivers. I have to admit, he’s a good-looking guy. In fact, he’s pretty like a girl.

Damn, maybe I’m a fag.

“How come you don’t get zits?” I ask him.

“Because I pray,” he says.

I laugh hard.

“What’s so funny?” he asks.

“You’re one of them fucking Christians, aren’t you?” I ask. Those bastards are always trying to save me, a poor Injun heathen. “Are you going to give me a ticket to Heaven?” I ask.

And now this pretty white boy laughs hard. “Beware of the man whose God is in the skies,” he says.

“What does that mean?”

“George Bernard Shaw wrote it.”

“So what?”

“So it means I’m not Christian,” he says. “I hate Christians. I hate Muslims and Jews and Buddhists. I hate all organized religions and all disorganized ones, too.”

“That’s a lot of hate,” I say.

“I suppose. But hate can be empowering.”

“That’s a big word.”

“You don’t know what it means, do you.”

“I know what it means.”

“Tell me, then.”

This guy probably thinks I’m just another stupid street kid. A dyslexic drone in the social welfare system. But I’m smart. Really smart.

Well, okay, maybe not that smart. I am currently sitting in a jail cell.

People go to jail for a reason. Well, for a couple of reasons. They’re in jail because they’re stupid enough to commit crimes. And because they’re stupid enough to get caught. And so, yeah, maybe I’m smart but I’m also double-stuff stupid. Adults are always telling me I don’t live up to my potential.

I say, fuck potential and anybody who says that fucking word to me.

“You sound like a teacher,” I say to the pretty white boy. “Or a preacher.”

“And you sound like a child,” he says.

“What are you, my grandfather?”

“I’m wise for my age,” he says, and laughs, like he’s making fun of himself, like people have described him that way before and he thinks it’s goofy.

“How old are you?” I ask.

“Seventeen. How old are you?”

“Fifteen.”

“All right, Mr. Fifteen,” he says. “Tell me what it means to be empowered.”

All of a sudden, I feel the need to impress this kid. I want him to like me. More than that, I want him to admire me.

“Empowered means you feel powerful,” I say.

“Well, yes, that’s obvious,” he says. “But how do you obtain that feeling of power? And what do you do with your power after you’ve found it?”

“I don’t know,” I say.

He smiles. I can see all thirty-two of his teeth.

“I can show you,” he says.