Saturday, June 21, 2008 Rae
The old barn, creepy enough even in broad daylight, seemed crawling with mystery in the glow of a flickering candle. The barn stuck out like a sore thumb in the middle of the crowded city; the story was that it had been in Old Mr. van der Mevrou since the Dutch settled the area in the sixteen hundreds. Of course it had been renovated since then, but it had the same quality of a trip into some long-ago age. The three of them sat on the pile of burlap sacks, which belched up a cloud of dust.
Rae looked around at the little triangle and smiled. It had been nine months getting here, nine months of planning and wishing and dreaming. And here they sat, poised on the brink of a new chapter in their lives. Nine months ago, three misfit freshmen looked up at the doors of the big blockish high school and knew that if they wanted to survive, they had to become the best of friends.
“Read the contract,” Rae said to Annie. Somehow Rae felt that disturbing this peace, the stillness of the barn was a terrible crime, but they needed to start before someone caught them trespassing.
Annie leaned back and pulled the pieces of folded notebook paper from her side pocket. Rae looked away as Annie began to read the contract they had written up a few days earlier. “The world is covered in evil. This evil comes in many kinds, but the driving force behind the spreading evil is America. On this day, we three vow to make the world a better place by destroying the old to make way for the new. We will take turns so that every day one small thing will occur to help bring about a more peaceful world. We are the Alliance. Signed, Annie McFarthing, Derek Alloy and Raven Foxbury.”
Rae looked at Derek, sitting cross-legged and slumped over. He was smiling, though. He was happy, too. It was a big responsibility she realized suddenly, to lead these two to the better world she envisioned. They were her disciples and she was their messiah. And, like all those who sought a revolution, Rae knew she would face opposition from those too close-minded to see beyond their little spheres of comfort. She touched Derek’s arm. “Are you okay to go first?” she asked. Perhaps she had been a little abrupt when she told Annie to read the contract.
He nodded and pulled a kitchen knife wrapped in a dishtowel from the backpack behind him. He sterilized the blade in the little candle flame between them. “God . . .” he muttered, more a curse than a prayer, and pressed the knife into the pad of his thumb. “Shit shit shit . . .” he whispered. Rae took the knife and nodded to Annie, who pulled out the big American flag and unfolded it on the floor behind her as Rae sliced her thumb as well. Hot red blood welled up and dribbled into the floor. “Hurry, Annie,” Rae said through gritted teeth. She had to stay strong for the other two.
Annie almost didn’t do it. Her had hovered as she brought the knife closer to her thumb. “Guys, I don’t think I can,” she said, panic in her voice.”
“Do it!” Derek cried. His thumb was bleeding so much that he was gathering the fallen blood in his other had.
Annie moaned and made a face but pushed the knife into her thumb. She closed her eyes and bit her lip, but maintained perfect, stony composure.
Rae nodded. “Alright. Let’s do it.”
All three pressed their bloody thumbs onto the flag. Tomorrow, fluttering atop City Hall, would be a big American flag. And on that flag, written in blood, would be the word “EVIL.”
Sunday, June 22, 2008 Derek
The thing Derek didn’t understand was why he had to go first. Rae had all this passion or whatever. Let her get arrested on the first day.
But he had a plan. He rolled out of bed at nine in the morning, long after his Mom and Dad had gone to work and long before his older sister Trina would be up. He took his little blue bankbook and, after scarfing down a bowl of Lucky Charms, headed downtown. In the city, everything he needed was relatively close. As he walked, the words “They’re Magically Delicious” pounded through his consciousness with every step. It was hot out ad he was sticky and sweaty when he pushed into the air-conditioned bank.
“I’d like to withdraw all the money and close my account,” Derek said. He stood a bit taller, impressed with himself for playing so cool.
The teller, a well-manicured woman in her thirties, looked at him over the top of her horn-rimmed glasses but made the transaction. As he headed out with his pockets full of fifties, she called him back and gave him a lollipop. Her eyes, behind those glasses, were colder than the Arctic Circle. Derek scowled, snatched the lollipop and left.
The Ship Shack, three streets over, was the sort of place that served onion rings, fish and chips, terrible pizza and not much else. One of the light bulbs had blown out months ago, so the whole back of the place was dark. The patrons of the place were mostly high school kids and druggies, since it was the cheapest place this side of 42nd Street and the onion rings were actually not half bad. Plus, the guy who owned it didn’t mind when people loitered around and didn’t buy anything. It was that kind of place.
Derek, Annie and Rae came here a lot for their iced tea, but Derek liked to come alone, too. He often sat on the little bench in the window, looked out into the street and watched the people going by. Sometimes he planned whole life stories around why they were wearing what they wore, or what might be in that strange blue briefcase.
Today he ordered a Pepsi and looked out the window as usual, but he wasn’t watching people. He was looking for a specific person, a little homeless boy he saw hanging around here sometimes. He ran his finger over the smooth, crisp fifty-dollar bills in his pocket.
“Derek! What are you doing here?”
It was Rae. She bounced through the door and pulled a chair up beside him. She plopped a plastic bag onto the table. Derek slurped his Pepsi and waited for Rae to explain herself.
“You know that guy who always does that picketing for peace thing on Sundays, over by the theaters? Well, I sort of always wanted to talk to him, so I did today because I was over that way anyway, and he turned out to be really cool. He’s involved with this organization in Iraq, bringing home all these kids orphaned by the war and stuff? He gave me all these flyers and buttons and bumper stickers and stuff. You should go see him. He’s probably gone home by now, actually. It’s like eleven, right?”
“Yeah,” Derek said. He nodded squished his mouth over to one side and let it go to take another sip of soda.
Rae leaned forward. “So?”
“So what?” Derek asked.
“So, what are you doing today? For the Alliance, I mean.”
Derek shrugged. “I was gonna give all my money to this little homeless boy I see around here sometimes. He could use it to help his family, and he’s tiny so I know he won’t use it all on drugs or something.”
Rae stopped the little bounce he had been doing since she sat down. “Derek, that’s not anarchy. That’s charity. You have to do something gutsier. No offense. Like, kidnap a druggie and handcuff them to a rehab center. That’s not really anarchy either but it’s different, you know?”
Derek deadpanned. “You’re kidding, right?”
Rae considered that. “Nope! Want me to help you do it?”
Derek let his head fall to his chest. “Shit, Rae, you’re insane,” he said quietly. He drank the rest of his soda in one gulp and followed her out, dropping his empty cup in the garbage on the way. It was day one and they were already kidnapping people. Derek let out a sigh. It was the Alliance, after all. It was war against America. Asking nicely doesn’t win wars.
Derek and Rae walked through the back allies, through abandoned buildings people were probably using as squats. Derek smelled piss and shit everywhere and he saw little drug bags in every gutter. “Aw, man . . .” he muttered.
At last they found a guy in his twenties, slouched against a big blue dumpster. He had visible heroin tracks running up his arm and his face was the sullen, sunken look of an addict. “Can you carry him?” Rae asked Derek. He nodded and went to heave the guy over his shoulder. He was dirty and sticky and his clothes reeked of alcohol, cigarettes and weed.
“Are we gonna do this in broad daylight?” Derek asked once the guy was slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. “I mean, we look wicked conspicuous.”
“Just act normal,” Rae advised.
Rae said she knew of a rehab place a ways away, out of the alleys that were dark even in daylight and into the crush of tourists and businessmen. The people looked at them strangely, pointed and whispered, but they kept going as if none of it mattered.
For lack of handcuffs, they tied the unconscious druggie to the door of the rehab center with some twine. Finally, as they headed back down the street, Derek relaxed. Rae gave his a one-armed hug from the side and congratulated him.
It felt good, Derek decided, doing the right thing.
Monday, June 23, 2008 Annie
What am I doing? Annie thought. She stood outside City Hall, staring up at the foreboding building. She wasn’t Rae. Destruction of public (okay, well, state) property wasn’t her thing. She much preferred to write a story about someone doing those things than actually do them. “Fire truck,” she swore, and started.”
It was three A.M., long before anyone would be at work, but security would probably be worse while the sensors and cameras were on. She figured she had about a minute and a half once she broke in to do her thing and get out. She went around to the fire escape and climbed in, clutching her length of piping with white-knuckled hands. At the top of the fire escape she stopped and rubbed her forehead. Last change, Annie, change your mind now, she told herself. No. She was doing this for Rae. She had promised.
She whacked the metal pipe against the window. For a moment, it stayed perfectly intact as a spider-web of glass fragments, and then it shattered inwards. The alarm began to blow, a loud, wailing scream that cut straight to Annie’s bones. She swore, a rare event indeed.
She ran into the darkened room inside. It was an office, which was perfect. She wrapped her fingers tightly around the pipe and smashed it into a computer screen. Sparks flew in the darkness. The alarm continued to cry.
It felt amazing. Shy little Annie, who peed her pants when asked to give a demonstration in science, had destroyed an important state computer. But she wasn’t done yet. She took off out the broken window, broken glass pushing into the rubber soles of her sneakers. She tore down the fire escape and ran into the dawning light that was rising over the still city. She was an anarchist.
____________________ _____
She met Rae at the barn where they had performed the rite beginning the Alliance only two nights before. They collapsed into the burlap sacks, which belched out their usual cloud of dust. They laughed about this guy Andy Grove, whose terrible haircut made him look more like a squirrel than usual, and then they fell into companionable silence.
“How’d it go?” Rae asked. She didn’t need to say any more.
“It was okay,” Annie said. She wanted to scream and tell her about it and exaggerate every little detail to make it a better story, but she decided to play it cool in front of Rae. “I broke into City Hall and mashed this computer. I bet it was important.”
“We should kiss or something,” Rae suggested.
Annie’s stomach dropped right through the floor of the barn. “Uh . . .” she said too quickly. “Why?”
Rae waved her arm. Neither of them looked at the other. “Well, I’m gay and you’re bi. We’re like, best friends. We should probably kiss.”
Annie coughed and swore in her head. “Just because I’m a girl and you’re a girl and we’re both attracted to girls doesn’t mean we have to be girlfriends,” Her heart was pounding. “Why? Do you, like, like me?”
“The silence was so uncomfortable that Annie thought her head might burst like a squeezed helium balloon. Rae shifted on the pile of burlap sacks. “Yeah. I guess I do.”
Annie needed fresh air, badly. She stood. “Wanna get some fries? See if Derek’s around?”
“Sure,” Rae said, standing. “I’m down for fries.”
Tuesday, June 24, 2008 Rae
Rae sat up in bed, rubbed her chin and realized that it was her day to do her part for the Alliance. And then, immediately after this thought, came the memory of talking with Annie in the barn.
She sighed. Annie was so much more beautiful than Rae, and not even in the literal way. Annie burned with this inner fire that seemed so different from Rae’s own fire. Annie seemed so human, so attached to the beginning of everything. Rae didn’t care about other girls She didn’t think about which actresses were especially hot, or fantasize about touching them. She thought only of Annie, Annie and her humanity.
But Rae knew. To Annie, Rae was nothing but a friend.
Rae got dressed and tried to focus her mind of her ultimate challenge, something bigger than the small, angst-filled world of fifteen-year-olds. She, unlike Annie, was chosen to lead the world to something better. Soon, when she was finished growing up, she would move on to bigger thing. But for now, she had to be content with helping the world in smaller ways. She went to the park.
______________________ _____
She had to be careful. She had to play safely because the plan wasn’t to get arrested until August of September, when the others were strong enough to continue without her.
The park in the middle of the city was teeming with moms and toddles, kids Rae recognized from school and older men in jogging shorts way too tiny by any measure. Rae gathered dry sticks and twigs in the center of a big field and, when she had enough, built a little pyramid. She struck a kitchen match she had brought with me and sat back to watch.
The park-goers seemed unsure of what to do with a little fire going right in plain sight. Rae got worried when ten minutes passed and nothing happened. The she understood why.
The fire wasn’t big enough
While she gathered more sticks and twigs she had time to think about Annie again. Annie was bisexual, which Rae had always thought was sort of weird. Once, when she was twelve or thirteen, Rae had promised herself never to go out with a bisexual girl because that was twice as many people she could cheat on Rae with. Did Annie like Derek more? Of course not, Rae told herself. Annie had told her many a time that she thought Derek was kind of weird and had only made friends with him at the beginning of ninth grade because they were loners together. So that begged the question, why not make out with Rae anyway? What did Annie have to lose?
“Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
She ripped my gaze from my roaring fire and saw none other than a park warden. The fellow looked shocked. Rae was sure he had ever seen anything like this before.
“Sorry,” Rae said. “I forgot my S’mores stuff. My total bad.”
The warden, Rae decided, looked like a Geoffrey, spelled the funny way in honor of his funny-looking nose. Geoffrey the Warden gaped and blinked and in the split-second it took him to pick the right words my mind jolted back to Annie. Focus, Rae, she reminded herself. Geoffrey rubbed his extraordinary nose. “Look. I’m not gonna report you to my supervisor or call the police on you, but I’m giving you a warning, okay? Don’t ever, ever, do somthing like this again.” Geoffrey looked like the Hulk, only purple, and not big or buff. “I’ll need your name?”
“Raven Foxbury,” Rae said proudly.
Geoffrey took a mental note. “I’ll be back to put this out. I expect you to be gone.” He turned and walked stiffly away. Under his brown uniform, his butt cheeks were clenched tightly.
Rae didn’t leave. Geoffrey came back ten minutes later with two big buckets of water, struggling under the weight. The fire had mostly burned itself out anyway.
“I thought about what you said,” Rae told him as he tossed one of the buckets over the fire. It sizzled and belched up a big cloud of steam and smoke. “I don’t thing I sould get a ‘warning’-“ here she accentuated the word with hand quotation-marks-“as you called it, because I wasn’t doing anything wrong. This fire was perfectly safe. The grass is too wet to catch, there are no trees around . . .everything is up to Boy Scout-standards.” Geoffrey looked at her strangely as he tossed the other bucket onto the remains of the fire. There wasn’t so much sizzle that time. “No, seriously,” Rae continued. “People are sensible, Geoffrey. They should be allowed to build fires.”
He didn’t seem to notice Raes use of his made-up name. Geoffrey, his buckets and his clenched buttocks went off across the field.
Rae lay down beside her steaming ashes and laughed.
______________________ _______
Rae came back to the park later that night to see an entirely different scene. Gone were the moms and toddlers, gone were the old men in sort shorts. There were college kids home for the summer and high schoolers on vacation enjoying a night on the town. Fires were everywhere now. Rae thought, Geoffrey’s butt cheeks would implode if he saw this.
She saw a lot of wine and cigarrettes and weed, but nothing much harder than that. One of last year’s seniors was cultured enough to have a cigar. Rae like this crowd. She liked that they were living the way they wanted to, not the way they were told to.
Rae had never drunk alcohol, nor had she smoked or done drugs. She considered them immature. But now, watching this scene, she saw it n a new light. Doing all that was, well, it was freedom. And that was what rae was all about.
Beside the path, some guy took off some girl’ s shirt.
“Nice ass,” someone called, someone very drunk.
Rae stopped walking and smiled to herself. What was the harm? She smiled and cocked her hip, turning as he spoke. “Trade you my ass for whatever you’re smoking.” She joined the circle of guys and accepted the cigarette the guy handed her.
“I’m Danny,” the guy said. His friends introduced themselves as Goody, Patrick and Joe, but Rae knew she would remember none of their names by morning. He lit the tip of the cigarette.
Rae took a long drag the way she had seen them do in the movies. Her mouth and throat burned with searing heat. It burned up into her nostrils, eating at her flesh like acid. She had to hold it in, she had to show these guys what she was made of. At last, she exhaled smoothly, carefully, promising herself she would not cough. Success. Her whole mouth tasted like death, like ashes. She smiled through the darkness, raised the cigarette and took another drag.
That night, Rae got drunk for the first time. She made friends with a group of people she had never met before. She smoked weed laced with something that made her see a lamp growing out of Danny’s head. She kissed a girl for the first time, and before she knew it their shirts were off and they were lying in the dirt and the pine needles, legs and lips and arms entwined. Rae was so drunk that she thought the girl’s name was Annie.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008 Derek
“Hi, Mom,” Derek said. He slid into his seat and attacked his bowl of Lucky Charms.
Mrs. Alloy watched this display of untamed masculinity mutely, holding her coffee cup and leaning on the counter. “Were you working out?” she asked, surprised. “It’s only eight o’clock.”
Derek let his spoon clatter into the empty bowl. “Just because it’s summer doesn’t mean I should stop training for wrestling next year.”
“Right,” Mrs. Alloy said, nodding vaguely. “The sport where you try to knock out the opponent using the amazing power of body odor.”
Derek cocked his head. It wasn’t too far off. “Hey Mom I have a question,” he said.
“Shoot.”
He knew she wouldn’t like it. “You know how you were living in New York in the eighties?”
Mom sighed and sat in the chair across from him. She looked him in the eye. “What do you want to know, sweetheart? I always knew we’d talk about this sometime.”
What did he want to know? “Well, I guess . . .I mean, what sort of people were you, you know, with? How were you living?”
“Well,” Mrs. Alloy said slowly, “You know I dropped out of law school and your grandfather, my father, wouldn’t let me move back in. I was broke. I got this tiny apartment in the Bronx, but things went from bad to worse and I probably would have ended up dying of starvation or something silly like that if it wasn’t for this guy Ted. He was . . .well, he was basically a good gu, but he was into some bad stuff.”
Ah-hah! This was what Derek wanted. “What kind of stuff?” he asked, as if he was only mildly interested. “Well, honey, he called himself an anarchist, but he was into using violence to prove a point. He’d do stupid things like glue church doors shut because he disagreed with organized religion. I almost married him. But then I realized that he had no future, and I wouldn’t either if I married him. So I got a job waitressing and eventually earned enough to rent an apartment again. Grandpa Joe eventually forgave me and helped me get into law school again. And here I am.”
“Oh. Okay. Thanks.”
That night Derek glued shut the doors of St. Joseph’s Episcopalian Church.
___________________ _________
“Hello?” Whenever Annie answered the phone she sounded so terrified.
“Hey, Annie, it’s Derek,” he said.
“Oh, hey.”
Talking on the phone with Annie was always a challenge. “Tomorrow’s your day, right?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“What are you gonna do, do you think?”
“Dunno,” she said. “What did you do?”
He told her. “Thre hundred and sixty-five days,” he groaned. “What the hell are we gonna do? That’s a lot of days.”
“Rae has a plan, I bet. Don’t sweat it.”
“I guess so.” How could someone so nice be so bad with phone manners? “Alright Annie, Bye.”
“Bye.”
Geez.
Thursday, June 26, 2008 Annie
It rained all morning. Annie sat at the kitchen table and worked on a story she’d started in February and hadn’t picked up since March. It was about a fifteen-year old Spanish girl who got across the border riding in a crate on an eighteen-wheeler without the driver knowing a thing about it. Annie was really into the whole thing. The main character Nina was someone she really identified with, and the story was an important one for the time.
Noon rolled around and by one the rain stopped. Annie set down her pen and heated up a bowl of tomato soup. She sat at the kitchen table and wrote a sentence between every bite.
At two, Rae showed up at the door. She didn’t bother knocking. Rae even called Annie’s mother ‘Mom’ sometimes, and no one cared. Now though, it was the first time they had seen each other since their awkward snack at the Ship Shack on Monday.
Rae kicked her flip-flops off and eyed Annie’s empty soup bowl and open notebook. “What crazy thing did you do today?” she asked.
“Nothing, yet,” Annie said to the air to her left.
“Well, get moving!” As Rae swooped in to take the bowl she touched Annie’s breast accidentally. They both froze. Rae recovered first. She plopped the bowl into the sink. “Uh, so what are you going to do?”
“Mm, not sure yet,” Annie replied.
“Rae sat at the table, kitty-corner to Annie and the notebook. “You could sit on the highway,” she suggested.
Annie’s heart actually bumped. “Why the heck would I do that? What great cause does that support?”
“Bringing down globalism. High gas prices. Environmental stuff.”
“By sitting on a road?”
Rae shrugged. Annie could feel her leg jiggling from all two feet away. “Okay, I guess I could do that on one of my days. We could vandalize something with an important message.”
So they took a bunch of permanent markers and walked to the bridge over Saint Street. Underneath it, On Saint Street itself, Annie began to write her message.
Where is America? Is she in the destruction of other people’s rainforest? There is America’s greed. Is our country seen in a global economy? Yes, for here is America’s pathological desire to control, control, control. America lurks in the logging industry, in the fast food industry, in the war industry. America’s bloody stain lies forever across the canvas of the world, a bloody handprint that shall never fade.
But it isn’t too late.
“Hey! What are you kids doing?”
“Shit,” Rae murmured sharply. “Run!”
The policeman put his car in reverse and then jumped out when he got closer to the two of them. Annie and Rae ran across Saint Street and clambered over a fence into some fellow’s back yard. They took off across the man’s yard into the street, dropping permanent markers this way and that, until both girls were thoroughly out of breath. They turned onto another street and abruptly Rae pulled Annie into a bush, where they crouched in silence.
Annie’s legs ached. Her heart pounded. For a moment, their eyes met and they quickly glanced away.
The policeman ran by a moment later, followed by another police car a few minutes after that. Annie wanted to leave the bush; her mouth was sticky for want of water.
Finally, half an hour later, Rae unfolded her legs and got out of the bush. Annie followed, glancing up and down the street. They dusted themselves off and began the long walk back to Annie’s house.
“Can I ask you a sort of personal question?” Annie asked.
Rae snorted. “Yo. We’re best friends. You don’t have to announce a personal question.”
Annie paused, took this as a yes. “Why are you so radical? Why hate America so much?”
Annie saw her friends shrug in her peripheral vision. “It’s that bloody handprint thing you wrote about on the wall,” Rae said.
Silence fell for a block or so. We were exhausted from our run and the panic of being chased by cops. Annie frowned. That was so unlike Rae. Annie had just asked her about her life’s passion and she answered with a bland sentence. She waved a hand. “I have a brother,” she said.
“Oh my God, are you serious?” Rae gasped. “Annie, we’ve been friends for all of ninth grade! How can I not know that? I practically live at your house.”
“We don’t talk about him,” Annie said. Even now, two years after it happened, telling Rae about Perry was ripping her apart inside. Her heart clenched into an icy, lopsided ball even at the thought of that horrible year when everything was dead and slow. “He used to play all these violent video games. And not like a normal person plays video games, he used to play them all the time, I mean twenty-four seven. When he played, it was like his whole body and soul went into the game, you know? Like he wasn’t even there.”
“Yeah,” Rae said quietly. Annie winced. Rae had no idea.
“Shit.” Annie’s eyes were watery and she tried to blink them away. “Yeah. So one day he went out and killed this guy the exact way he killed people in the video game. I saw him do it over and over in the living room. He was practicing.”
“Oh my god,” Rae murmured. There, in the middle of street, she grabbed Annie into a hug, a gentle one, her hand moving up and down Annie’s back. Annie cried onto her shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” she bawled.
“Shh,” Rae whispered. How could a girl as radical as Rae be so comorting? They stopped walking and Rae guided her gently to the curb. They sat together, their hips nearly brushing. Annie cried into her hands, her shoulders heaving, her heart wrapped tight around itself, her mind filled with a head shot of Perry at the police station.
Eventually her tears subsided and she stared blankly at the black pavement between her feet. “That’s when I knew there was something really wrong with America,” she said, sniffling. “We spent about a year getting through all the lawyer crap and the trial. All my friends at school wouldn’t talk to me, like I was a murderer too, and they could catch the disease if they got too close. I didn’t go to school for most of eighth grade. But when Perry got his sentence my parents and I moved away. There were to many memories in our house and town and stuff.”
“It must be hard,”
“I still love him,” Annie said, her voice cracking. “He’s a murderer, and he’s a monster, but he’s my brother. I have to love him. You know?”
They started walking again, back to Annie’s house. Once they got there, Mrs. McFarthing would greet them with dinner on the table. They’d talk about summer plans and her day at work, and Perry’s shadow would loom over them. And the shadow would laugh.
Friday, June 26, 2008 Rae
Poor Annie. She was always so quiet, so worried about what her parents thought of her. Know Rae knew why.
Out of boredom, she looked up ‘anarchy; online. It felt like they weren’t doing enough, or they weren’t doing the right things. The Alliance, as far as Rae was concerned, was a failure so far, and that hurt her deeply. She got a bunch of hits on anarchist colonies, and spent ten minutes reading about this pirate group on Madagascar. But they were peaceful and agricultural and gently opposing whatever their government was. Rae slammed the flat of her hand onto the desk. She wanted them to be radical. An online dictionary said ‘anarchy’ was ‘a social structure without government or law and order’. Oh. Shit. That’ not what I thought it was. I was thinking of punk arsonists in the eighties.
I looked really hard for things anarchists had done. I found information of anarcho-primitivism and handing out fliers and what was on those fliers, but there was nothing online about things anarchists were doing that were actually helping.
Shit.
She closed the internet window and slumped into her office chair, twirling lazily. Then, in a light bulb moment, she called Derek. “Hey,” she said when his dad handed him the phone. She hardly had time for pleasantries. “Derek, let’s run away. We can offer demands to the state in order to get us back.”
“You serious?” Derek had this squint he always did when he was incredulous, and he was doing it now, although Rae couldn’t see it.
“Yeah I’m serious.”
“Rae. The state doesn’t change policies for three kids. They trace your call, bring you home and keep things the way they are.”
I rubbed my eye. “Alright fine. I’ll go myself then, or with Annie if she wants to. Derek, if we’re going to change the world we’re going to have to piss some people off.” Rae knew that Derek knew that, but she let it sit for a moment. “I know a place. The police will come talk to you. Tell them everything I said to you, you don’t know anything anyway. Okay?”
“Rae, don’t,” he pleaded.
Rae hung up. Excitement jabbed at her skin. She packed a bag hurriedly, hands shaking, heart racing. Derek could have called the police as soon as Rae hung up. They could be coming here right now. Of course, Derek wouldn’t do that. He’d be sitting on the edge of his bed, rubbing the ridge of his nose and wondering what he could do to stop her. When her bag was packed, she wrote a hurried letter and stuffed it in an envelope. Then she was off, hurrying to Annie’s house with her bag slung over her shoulder.
Mrs. McFarthing let her in. As she walked up the stairs to Annie’s room, all she could think about were the wrinkles on Mrs. McFarthing’s face. Were those there before Perry’s arrest? She knocked and went in.
Annie lay on her stomach on her bed, writing in the same spiral-bound notebook Rae had seen her writing in yesterday. She was so used to Rae entering unannounced that she barely looked up from whatever world she was immersed in, in the story. “Hey,”
“Hey. Wanna run away with me?”
“No, s’okay,” Annie said, still writing.
“Annie, listen, I’m running away. Do. You. Want. To. Come?”
Finally she tossed her pen down and sat up. “Rae, you can’t just run away. The police et involved, and the FBI, you’re on the news, people get blamed . . .come on. Be reasonable.”
Rae shook her head. “Look. I wanna get a head start. Call the police right away, okay? I don’t want you to get blamed for assisting me, or whatever. This is for you. “ I handed her the envelope.
“Rae, don’t.” Annie begged, exactly the same way Derek had.
Rae stared at Annie obstinately. “good-bye.” It was now or never. Her heart pounding, Rae dropped her bag, leaned forward and kissed Annie full on the lips. It felt amazing. She remembered her night in the park, the girl whose shirt she had removed and who introduced Rae to a whole world of possibilities. Now, with Annie, their shirts were on, their tongues stayed in their mouths and it was still a million times better than that girl had been.
The kiss lasted six seconds. Rae pulled away, grabbed her bag and headed for the door of Annie’s room. “Wait!” Annie, said, louder than was necessary. Rae stopped, hoping Annie would come back for another kiss. But no. “How long will you be gone?” she asked.
Rae looked at the carpet. “As long as I need to be.”
_____________________ _________
The place she thought of was a closed-off subway station in a not-so-clean part of town. When they closed it in the early nineties, they had filled in the stairways down but a few blocks away, in an alley, was a hole in a concrete wall that lead down onto the platforms. Rae folded herself through the hole and dusted herself off.
She clicked on her flashlight and did a quick search of the place. She saw benches, maps showing each subway route in a different color and advertisements for various brand-name products. Everything was dirty and dusty and dark, but it was exactly what Rae had hoped for.
It felt like being in a tomb. The air was stale and heavy and stuck to Rae’s lungs like duct tape to duct tape. She shined the flashlight onto her sneakers and saw that every step disturbed a thick layer of grayish dirt. A beer bottle here and a filthy blanket here told her that other people had found this place, too. A shiver ran up her spine.
“Hello?” she called. Better to take an unwanted element of surprise out of her arrival.
WHACK! A dens object hit her in the head. She tumbled to the floor and her flashlight rolled away. She was surrounded by deep dense night. Her eyes closed, her body stilled and she lay unconscious far away from help. And, frozen in her forced slumber, she was not alone .
Saturday, June 28, 2008 Derek
The officer was a short Hispanic woman in her thirties. She cocked her thumbs in her belt and told Derek to take a seat. He did, embarrassed by the disaster I called my room.
“Call me Officer Delgado,” she said calmly. “Now. Let’s get down to business. What exactly did Raven say to you before she hung up? Try to remember exactly if you can, I know it’s tough.”
This wasn’t so bad. He rubbed his hands on his thighs and thought back to their phone conversation. “She called and didn’t really have time to say hi, she was so excited. She said she was running away so she could blackmail the state to do what she wanted. “
“What did she want?”
“She didn’t say just then, but Rae was all about creating a new world. She prob’ly wanted to blackmail you into killing the president or something stupid like that.”
Officer Delgado wrote something in her pad. “And are you into that stuff too?”
Shit, Derek thought. “Well, I think America’s pretty screwed up, but I’m not like Rae. I told her that’s not how it works, you can’t just do that, but she went and did it anyway. God, I hope you guys find her.”
She nodded. “Me too. Okay, do you have any idea where she might have gone? Hangouts, places she always talked about, anything like that?”
Derek nodded. He told her they hung out in this old barn behind Old Mr. van der Mevrou’s house. He felt dirty, betraying their hideout like that.
Officer Delgado nodded. “Thanks a lot, Derek. I know it’s tough to rat on a friend, but you’re doing the right thing. Call me if you remember anything else, okay? Don’t worry about the time.”
He sat on his bed for about eight minutes after she left, thinking about where Rae could have gone. He knew she wasn’t at the barn, that would be stupid. He sighed, grabbed the phone from his bed and dialed the first four numbers of Annie’s house. He decided better of it. He would walk instead.
_____________________________ _______
It was humid outside so I was sticky and sweaty when I knocked on Annie’s door. Officer Delgado answered, eyebrows raised, one thumb still tucked in her belt and the other on the door. “Well hello,” she said.
“Hi. Can I see Annie? I don’t mean in private or anything, I just want to see her.”
Officer Delgado looked past Derek into the street for a moment, clearly torn. Then she nodded. “Yeah. Sure. But I’ll be there.”
“That’s fine.”
In her room, Annie leaned against the wall at the head of the bed, her legs tucked beside her. A spiral-bound notebook lay open beside her and she twirled a pen lazily in one hand. She looked at Derek and at the police officer and back at her pen. “Derek . . .” she said quietly.
“Annie, what’s—what’s wrong?” He wasn’t sure if he knew her well enough to go sit beside her. He stood in the center of the room, just in case.
“She left a letter,” Annie said. Her voice was totally blank. “I thought it would be demands for the state or something, but . . .”
“Well, what was it?” What else could it be?
“It was a suicide note, Derek!” Annie yelled. She hurled her pen at the far wall and it left a little black line before falling to the carpet with a little plop. Derek had never seen demure little Annie get mad before. She tipped sideways and buried her head in her arms. He heard her sobs.
Officer Delgado wouldn’t meet my eyes as she handed me a folded piece of paper. The world slowed and morphed into molasses while I read.
“Dear Annie and Derek,
I know this is the last thing you expected me to do, going away like this. I put on a show for so long, but now it’s time for it to end. I played the part. I was passionate and excited and driven, but it was all a lie.
Please understand the depth of my fondness for you both. That wasn’t a lie, and it wasn’t the cause of this. Please tell my parents that I love them, and that I’m grateful for everything they’ve done for me. Tell the police I’m sorry for causing them trouble. You won’t need to look for me. I’m killing myself.
I’m just done. I’ve lived. I’ve lied. I’ve loved. Annie, I love you. I love you. I love you! That’s all I needed to do. I’m finished here.
Remember me,
Love,
Rae”
He looked up. Annie had stopped crying and simply lay there, face buried. A handed the letter to Officer Delgado. “Annie, get up.” He said harshly. “Stop crying. You’re acting like she’s dead.”
“She is dead, Derek.” Annie said, face still hidden.
Derek stormed over to the bed and shook her by the shoulders. “Get up! Get up get up get up! Rae is alive and you’re sitting there crying like a baby. We have to go find her. Come on.” He grabbed her arm and tried to move her, but she wouldn’t let me.
She raised her face and looked him square in the eye. Hers were red and wet. “Derek. Stop. Just stop, okay? She’s dead.”
He let his eyes get big and wide. He let go of her forearm and sank to the floor, crumpled in a heap. He counted to nine, said abruptly, “I have to puke,” and ran for the bathroom.
It was brilliant. Annie was brilliant. Rae wasn’t dead. Derek’s mind filled with memories of the ninth grade play, Hamlet, which starred Derek as Hamlet himself and Annie as Ophelia, his love. The show had been the biggest success in years. Derek shook his head in wonder, still struggling to understand the complexities of the improvisation scene he and Annie had just put on.
But he knew with perfect clarity that he was right, that Annie was acting. Rae hadn’t written that suicide note. Annie had. Only a few weeks ago, the three of them had had a conversation about words they simply could not remember how to spell. For Derek, it was ‘apology.’ For Rae, it was ‘grateful’, and there the pesky word had been, perfectly spelled. There was Annie’s first clue to him. Her second had been their handwriting. Although both girls had the expansive, loopy writing of most high school girls, Annie’s ‘e’ was more of an elongated curl whereas Rae’s was a ‘c’ with a line across it.
Brilliant.
But it all raised the question, what did Annie know that she was hiding from the police? Why was she lying?
Derek was poised to flush the toilet to make sure Officer Delgado thought he was really in the bathroom puking when he heard voices outside the door. One of the m was Delgado, and the other was a gruff male voice, probably another police officer.
“Annie ‘s lying,” Officer Delgado said. Derek’s heart sank.
“Why do you say that?” asked the other guy.
“Because Derek told me Rae was running away to blackmail us. She was trying to make a better world or something.”
The other police officer took his time responding. “You don’t think Annie killed Rae, do you? There’s no motive.”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Be careful, Esperanza. Don’t go accusing everyone you see. We’ll keep looking for her body, but we’re treating the investigation as a missing-persons suicide for now. Maybe we can find her before she does it.”
“I’m telling you, Peter . . .”
Derek heard footsteps coming closer. Someone knocked on the door. “You almost done in there, Derek?”
“Uh . . . yeah, hold on,” he gargled. He flushed the toilet, ran the sink for a few seconds and opened the door. “Shit,” he muttered, wiping his mouth on his wrist.
Annie was lying flat on her back on the bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. “Why did you come here, Derek?” she said quietly.
He rubbed his forehead and told the truth. “Uh . . . I dunno. I guess I wanted to see you, is all. See how you were doing.”
“Pissed,” Annie said.
Man, she was a good actress. Ophelia didn’t do her justice. She managed to act grief-stricken and shocked and confused all at the same time. “Derek, before you go, my mom picked up my report card from school today. They’re in. She got yours too. It’s on the kitchen table.” She even managed to say that load of nothing important with conviction and character. Derek decided she must have left him a note or something in the guise of his report card.
“Yeah,” he said. “Bye, Annie.”
Officer Delgado followed him downstairs. A manilla envelope sat on the kitchen table, marked with his name and the school’s address. He peeked inside and saw a pink sheet of paper with teacher’s names all down the right-and column. It was really his report card. Oh.
As he trudged home, he considered the possibilities. Maybe the suicide note was real. Was he kidding himself to think that Annie could pull off such a deception? Ophelia wasn’t all that big a part, really. No, he told himself. The letter was full or words like ‘lies’, ‘show’ and ‘sorry’. Rae would never say sorry for something like that. If she was going to commit suicide, it was somehow be the world’s fault, not her’s.
So what was Annie hiding?
At home, he tossed the report card on top of a pile of comic books, flopped onto his bed and thought about Rae.
Seven days into the Alliance and he would not be fulfilling his duty. There would be no anarchy that day.
