Play dead

FORTY-ONE

Lilly had spent the night at a cheap, noisy place that was really nothing more than a hostel. It was only fifty dollars. A chunk of money to her, but not to her wallet, a wallet recently fattened by Mr. Mushroom Teeth.

She was out of bed at 6:30 AM, courtesy of the traffic noise and the rolling boom boxes. Didn't this place ever sleep? She supposed not.

Welcome to the road, Lilly.

The girl from Wisconsin had heavy metalwork in her lips, her nose, and ears. Her name was Tatiana. Or so she said. She had a foreign accent, so maybe it was her real name after all. She was hefty in the upper body, but had nice legs, legs wrapped in thick black tights.

They were all sitting in the back of a tricked-out Escalade. Lilly had met them near Reading Terminal Market. They asked her if she wanted to get high.

Duh.

"It was like God sneezed, grabbed a tissue with me in it, and threw us both away," Tatiana said.

They all looked at each other, four pairs of eyes meeting for a moment. They'd all had experience with really religious types. If you didn't buy in, you tolerated, nodding your head, agreeing when it was possible. No one really knew what the hell Tatiana was talking about.

After leaving the market they drove around the city for about an hour. The driver was a young Jamaican guy named Niles. He had amazing pot. Two-toke. Lilly was flying.

"I mean, what are you supposed to do? You can't apply for a job, because you can't use your real name," Tatiana said. "The only way to eat is to steal something or go on the game."

Lilly knew what she meant. The first time she had run away from home, at the ripe old age of twelve, she was gone for three weeks. The first few nights were great. She had a few dollars to party, met some cool kids. After that it was hell. She slept behind a grocery store on Wallace Avenue. She got up at 4 AM, just before the delivery trucks would roll in. She got day-old bread and brown vegetables from the Dumpster, half-smoked cigarettes from the gutter. Who says life on the road ain't glamorous?

Then one morning she woke up with a flashlight in her eyes. It was the cops.

She refused to tell them her name. She refused to say anything.. She spent four days in Juvie, and they had no choice but to let her go. The entire time, she didn't say a single word. But they did fingerprint her and take a few pictures, so she knew that everything had changed there and then.

This time it was different.

She looked out the window. Because they had cruised for a while, she wasn't quite sure where she was. It seemed like South Philly. She couldn't be sure.

"My dad is such a fucking Cro," Tatiana said. "I swear to God, if I stayed around, I would have caught him chewing on his toenails one day."

Lilly assumed she meant "Cro-Magnon." Who could tell with these people? She wasn't from around these parts. She wasn't insufferably hip.

Niles fired up another joint, passed it back. It was time to start asking questions. Pretty soon these people would be circling Saturn.

"Can I show you guys something?" Lilly asked.

They all looked at her; stoned, wondering, waiting, as if to say, Why not?

Lilly reached into her bag, pulled out the photo. It was pretty wrinkled by now. It was kind of fuzzy to begin with. She smoothed it out on the seat. "Anybody ever been here?"

She passed the photo around. Everyone nodded at the sheer magnitude of the place. Nobody copped to knowing it.

"Dude. Who lives here?" Thom asked. "The Addams Family?"

Thom was from Akron, Ohio. He really was kind of cute-curly brown hair, long lashes, pug nose. He reminded her of Frodo, but without the big hairy feet. In another life she might have let him make a move on her.

"I don't know," Lilly said, thinking that it might have been the first thing she'd said in a long time that wasn't a lie. "I really don't know."

For the rest of the morning she hung out at the Greyhound Station at Tenth and Filbert. She bummed a cup of coffee from a pair of kids from Syracuse, smoked a little weed in an alley. She spent a half hour or so on the Net at a nearby cybercafe, until she was kicked out.

She asked a lot of questions, showed the picture to everyone. Some of the kids were suspicious, as if Lilly were a narc.

Through the course of the morning she talked to more than twenty street kids, swapping horror stories, triumphs, near misses, jail time, cops. Always the cops. If you were a runaway you knew all about cops.

One girl she met-a runaway from Buffalo, a girl who called herself Starlight-told her of an experience she'd had in New York City. Starlight was a force of nature, all hands and hips and flying red hair when she told a tale, a story about how she was almost gang-raped. Lilly hoped for the best for her, didn't expect it. Starlight said she'd been on the street in Philly since last Christmas.

Lilly realized they all had a story of alienation or neglect or mistreatment, a fear of the future. To a person, they all had a saga of woe- abusive mothers, abusive fathers, abusive siblings, abusive life.

They had no idea how bad life could get.

"Hey," the kid said.

Lilly turned around but not too quickly. They were standing near the corner of Ninth and Filbert, outside the BigK.

The kid was a street rat. Lilly didn't like the looks of him. Tall and skinny, dirty blond hair, greasy skin, red Tony Hawk T-shirt. Skateboard grunge had never been her thing. She ignored him, glanced at her watch. A few moments passed. He didn't leave.

"I said hey, bitch."

Here we go, Lilly thought. Fucking boys. She'd been here before, of course, stuck on a street corner, harassed by some punk. They all had a line they thought was magic, a smile they felt God-given. Then it turned ugly. But it was always on her turf, her hometown. This was an alien landscape.

She tensed, glanced over her shoulder. She was less than a block from the bus station. She could make it back inside in a few seconds. She was that fast. But there was a principle at work here. She wasn't about to be run off the street by some low-rent spod. She turned to face him.

"I'm sorry, what did you call me?"

The kid smirked, took a step closer. Lilly now saw that he was not all that skinny after all. He was muscular. "I think you heard me, Snow White."

He grabbed her arm. She tried to wrestle free. She couldn't. He was strong.

"Let go of me!"

He laughed. "Or what?"

Lilly planted her left foot, shifted her weight. It was a familiar move. She tried to knee him but he turned, blocking it. He laughed again.

"Damn, girl. Why would you want to go and do something like that?" The kid grabbed her other wrist. "You don't want to make me mad."

"I said let go of me!"

Lilly tried to break free. She could not.

The kid glanced up the alley, smiled again. He was going to drag her up there. She couldn't let him do that.

But before he could make a move a shadow fell across the sidewalk. They both turned. There was a man standing there. He seemed to appear out of nowhere. He was in his thirties, maybe, wearing a dark blue suit and a burgundy tie.

What was this about?

"I thinkyou should leave," the man said, soft-spoken, authoritative. Lilly's head spun with this weird development. The board boy let go of her arms. She backed up a few steps, but she didn't run.

"I'm sorry," the kid said, turning fully to deal with the man. "Are you addressing me?"

"I am."

The kid planted himself. He racked his shoulders. "What did you say? I mean, you know, exactly."

"Exactly?" the man asked. "Would you like that verbatim? Or would you like me to distill the essence?"

The kid smirked, but there didn't seem to be a lot of confidence behind it.

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"I believe the young lady would like you to leave."

The kid laughed. Psycho shrill. "And who are you, her father?"

The man smiled. Lilly felt a little charge run through her. It wasn't that the guy was so good-looking or anything, but there was something about that smile that said she had nothing to worry about.

"Just a friend."

"Well, I'm gonna fuck you up, friend-o. I'm gonna fuck you up big time. This is my corner."

The man made a move, a quick shift of his right hand, almost too fast to see. To Lilly it was a like a bird had flown between them, flapped its wings, then flown away. Time stood still for a few seconds. Then, in the next instant, Lilly felt a rush of warm air.

She glanced first at the man. He was still standing there, hands at his sides, his blue eyes sparkling in the afternoon sun, his expression unreadable. She then looked at the kid, and saw something she never expected to see, something horrifying.

The kid's face was on fire. But just for a second. Lilly instantly smelled singed flesh and burnt hair.

"What… what the fuck, man!" The kid recoiled, his hands to his face. He took five or six steps backward, out into the street. A car almost hit him. When he pulled his hands away Lilly could see that his face was bright pink.

"What the fuck did you do to me?" the kid yelled. "What did you do?"

"I asked you to leave," the man said.

The kid pulled a bandanna from his back pocket, began to blot his face. His nose was runny, his eyes were tearing up. Lilly noticed that his eyelashes were gone.

"You are a dead man," the kid yelled. "You are… you are so fucking dead."

Lilly watched in stunned silence as the kid backed up, turned, ran the length of the block, then disappeared around the corner. She discovered that she hadn't taken a breath in maybe a minute or so.

What the hell had just happened?

She knew the basics. She had been hanging on the corner. A board rat had approached her, threatened her, grabbed her. A man appeared out of nowhere and set the kid's face on fire.

Somehow. Like magic.

She looked up Filbert Street, saw a police car trolling. It looked like they hadn't seen what happened. She turned to ask the man his version of the events, to say thank you, but he had vanished.