The Kids Table: 2

Nessie meets someone new, and Tayo tries out life in a gang.

In the meantime, Nessie threw a blanket and a pillow onto the couch in the living room where she’d be sleeping. It was too dark to aim well. The sheets ended up partially sprawled out on the floor.

There were a couple of places to sleep around the house, as claustrophobically small as it was. She could choose between the two couches, a pile of blankets on the floor, or the spare bed. She liked switching it up, though. It kept her from feeling bored. She had dropped all the leather and metal she was wearing onto the floor and left herself in her day clothes. Then she let herself collapse onto the makeshift bed, arms crossed on her chest, eyes shut, about to nod off. She would have if it weren’t for a quiet clanging noise that came from the back door.

            It must have been past three o’clock at night, so it wasn’t anyone Nessie wanted poking around behind the house. There were just pipes back there. She got up and kicked around in the dark until her foot found her gun.

            There wasn’t a trace of light coming from the sky, and the cold drying out her eyes made it even harder to see. But there was a little light attached to the wall, put there for some reason she forgot about, activated by movement. When Nessie twisted the lock of the back door and shoved it open, gun aimed toward the light, she saw a boy there, faced toward the pipes. He looked younger than most of the gang kids�"fifteen or something. He was dressed in a thick, oversized, bright red trench coat long enough for him to trip over. Under that, there was a faded grey dress shirt and sweatpants. His hair was flat, short, and black, and his face matched that. He had the sort of smooth, round, bucktoothed face a fly would have.

            “Hands up.” Nessie said, inching closer with the gun aimed for an eye-level circle around his skull.

            So he turned around, hands in the air. His wrists were so thin that they might snap if he bent them too quickly. When he spoke, his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, creating a high-pitched, meek voice which cracked.

            “Don’t shoot,” he said.

            “Who the hell are you?” asked Nessie.

            He sighed. A smarmy grin appeared on his face and Nessie was about to shoot him just for that. His voice got lower too, in way that made it sound entirely like someone else’s. “Name’s Jackrabbit. What’s it to you?”

            “What are you doing at my house so late?”

            “Just followed the blood trail coming from the dead Pavement Ghosts under Oakland Bridge. I hope no one calls the cops or anything.”

            “You’re new to this city, huh?”

            “Yeah.” He took a step forward into the barrel of Nessie’s gun. It was nearly enough to make her float back a tiny bit. There was another reason to shoot him. This lanky-a*s, gap-toothed m**********r�"

            “I’ll tell you the first rule of Hillborough,” said Nessie.

            “What’s that?”

            “Stay the f**k away from my house.”

            “Come on,” Jackrabbit scoffed, dropping his hands and stepping off toward the side. “I’m new, I’m just trying to make friends.”

            “I’m not looking for friends right now.”

            “Enemies, then?”

            “If it kills me sooner.”

            “Oh!” It seemed like that was enough to make Jackrabbit leave. He was starting to wander off out toward the field. There was a little skip in his step which Nessie didn’t like. “I’ll remember that. Well, it was nice meeting you. See you around, lady.”

            After a moment, he was far enough away that Nessie could think he wasn’t coming back. “Little f****r.” She turned back to the pipes he was facing. It looked like he had stolen a few screws to sell or whatever. No big deal. She could wander back to sleep, at least. Before her usual time at five o’clock AM too.

=====

Libra and Nessie lived in a cube-shaped, wood-and-brick condo at the very corner of a condo community the gang’s boss used to house all the kids. It was free for them, and it cost nothing for the gang since the community had been abandoned when they claimed it as part of their territory. In each one, there was a bedroom, a living room with a window, and the bathroom, but nothing other than that. Everything else was done in the front yard. That was where Nessie went to have a smoke in the afternoon, hidden from the fresh sun by the shade of the house. She stood against the wall and lit her cigarette. When she turned back around, the front door seemed to open at the same time, and the footsteps were too quick to be Libra’s.

            It was Tayo. He had been up for hours and wanted to go but just didn’t want to be the first out of the house. The nerve pain streaming through his limbs had spiked, but not enough to keep him from his walk. He was clutching his cracked rib to try and control his breathing. The crisp air punched him in the throat, but the way it dripped into his lungs was soothing.

            “Hey.” Nessie called out to him. Tayo had tried to keep his eyes on the ground and out of sight, but she had still barrelled through.

            “Morning,” said Tayo.

            “Where are you going?”

            He paused. “Just wanted to go for a walk.”

            She nodded with a doubting curve in her brow. “Okay. Are you gonna be back before dark?”

            “Yeah, promise.”

            She shrugged and put her cigarette back in her mouth for a moment. A cloud of smoke was blown out with her next words. “How are the ribs feeling?”

            He sighed. “I’ll manage.”

            “That’s good.”

            “I never said thank you for yesterday,” said Tayo. “You risked your life for me.”

            “Always looking for an excuse to risk my life.” Nessie took a step forward out of the shade. There was still a good amount of space between them, but they could at least look each other in the eye. The dark circles showed though. “Booze preferences for tonight?”

            “I don’t have any.”

            “Whatever, then. See you.”

=====

Tayo stayed far away from the border of the Neutral Zone. It wasn’t smart to go at all, but he was so used to going on walks in the morning that he might have burst without the exercise. He strayed in a direction he hadn’t gone before�"farther into gang territory than he’d ever been. There were three crime lords in Hillborough, he thought. There could have been more, or perhaps some of them had died somehow. Of course, one of their underbosses would take their place. There were countless underbosses, and each had their own capos trying to overthrow them, not to mention all the self-contained gangs rising to power. That was why Tayo hadn’t wandered too far inland. Until he could comprehend it all, it was just a mess and he was in danger of stepping in it.

            But then there was the Neutral Zone. It was the dark corner of the city where the mainland gangs never touched. No buses took you there, the train lines stopped at the border, and Tayo remembered hearing some empty political talk about making Neutral Zone visits illegal. There was nothing there but horror. Sweet nothing�"so simple to understand. It was tantalizing.

            He stayed on the road though. Cars shot up and down, letting him hear blasts of music and yelling. There was a gunshot as he took a step around the corner, but he didn’t duck. In Hillborough, guns were always aimed at something, and they were aimed for a reason. There was a puddle of grime he stepped in at one point. He wiped his foot on the pavement and kept going. Who knows what could’ve sprung from that?

            He was staring at Chinatown soon from down the street. That was past the gang’s district and into another’s. It wouldn’t be safe to enter until the ceasefire was called. But the party was being set up. A big, empty space in the town square was already being cleared out by some kids from the Chinatown gang. They were all dressed in red and white as much as could be expected. There were twenty of them, all talking and working together. It wasn’t a sight he was used to.

            It would be time to head back soon. Nessie and Libra would be pissed if he weren’t back in time and he didn’t know when they were going to leave. Unfortunately, he already knew the way back. He had made the trip so many times.

=====

They arrived early. It wasn’t completely dark outside, but it was getting there quickly. Flickering street lamps and garbage fires warded off the night, though.

            The party stretched out longer than Tayo could see. Swathes of kids�"chasing each other, laughing, drinking, making out�"flowed around buildings and down the roads in cacophony. Standing down the street, you couldn’t pick out a single voice or colour or allegiance to anything. It all swirled together into a high-pitched, pulsating roar and a mess of colours and shapes. Tayo, Libra, and Nessie made their way down and it got harder and harder to move without bumping into somebody. Nessie was the only one who dressed up for the occasion. Bright red leather made up her pants and jacket, riddled with silver studs. Purple and black makeup was drawn in over her eyes in a messy way which bled onto her nose.

            “Libra,” said Tayo. His voice was too small for the setting. He needed to scream to get anything out. “I’m not sure about this.”

            She shook her head. Surprisingly, being heard wasn’t taking much effort for her at all. “Just stick with us. You’ll be fine.”

            “I’ll see you guys at home, alright?” Nessie yelled, eyes on the lights and loud music ahead of her. She then poured her bottle of vodka down her throat and sped off into the town, disappearing.

            “I mean I guess you have two options,” said Libra. “But I would stick with me.”

            “I don’t know what to do.”

            “Loosen up? I’m gonna find a drink. There’s usually a little group by the massage place. Very close to the orgy place, if you’re into that.”

            He shrugged, and they plunged into the gathering. Tayo lost sight of Libra for a long while several times but she kept grabbing onto him again eventually. Gang kids in black and red and green and white darted past in ways that might leave bruises and it got difficult to breathe. The volume of the entire place was numbing his eardrums, so she stopped calling out to him or trying to make conversation. The crowd thinned out eventually and it was noticeable that a group in particular was meeting around a building with a neon-red wine glass on the front.

            The bar was barely enough to accommodate all the people inside. The liquor normally in the back was gone but a pile of bottles sat in the corner of the room, being picked away at by screeching teenagers tripping over themselves. Libra grabbed a raspberry vodka.

            “Pour this down your throat,” she said, holding it out to him. He took it and scanned up and down the bottle. Then he took a little sip. His nostrils seared, and his gullet tried desperately to send it shooting back up, but he pushed it down into his stomach anyway. Right away, he looked to Libra, and what he got back was a nod of satisfaction as she took a swig herself. The singular thing which compelled him to take another gulp was the nagging itch from being outdone in this place.

            “How is it?” she asked and punched him in the arm.

            He nodded. “It’s nice.”

            “Have as much as you want�"there’s plenty. Stolen from bad people, trust me.”

            It tasted better the second time around. He swallowed his biggest mouthful yet and it tasted better still. The room was floating a bit now. That, or his eyeballs were floating in the holes in his head. He swore he wasn’t losing too much feeling, but when Libra shook his hand, it felt disconnected from his body.

            “Welcome to gang life,” she said.

            He mumbled, “Thanks.”

            Then, he took another drink. The bottle was half not full now. There was more in the pile, though, that he could take and drink if he wanted. That seemed like fun. It tasted really good, after all.

            “I love this song,” she said, swaying and tapping her foot, in love.

            “Me too.” He’d never heard that song before, but it was okay. Pretty good, actually.

            “Hey,” said someone else. “New guy?”

            “Yep,” said him, Tayo, proudly.

            Wow, he really needed to piss. The bottle was putted on the table so he would not drop it. He took one more drink though, just in case. It might be taken.

            “I love this song!” said Libra, dancing.

            “Me too!” shouted Tayo, loudly and very happy.

            “Let’s see you f*****g dance.”

            “Okay.”

            He danced then, in the part of a room that was not in the back. He was not good at it, but he tried really hard. Too hard.

            “There you f*****g go!” said Libra, dancing also. She was not good. “You’re good!”

“Thanks, y�"you too!”

“I f*****g uh�"”

“Yes!” he cheered, as loud as he could.

“Yes?” she shouted.

“Yes.”

“Yes! Hey!”

            Somebody new�"“What?”

            “You’re pretty. Kiss me.”

            They jumped on each other.

            Oh look, another person!

            “Do you wanna kiss me?”

            “Yeah.”

            They and Tayo kissed.