“Hey!” I say too brightly. “Let me get to work and you go get those blankets, okay?”
She bobbles her head in a relieved nod and smiles through her tears. “Of course. Anything. Thank you,” she murmurs as she starts toward the house. The genuine gratitude in her voice only ups my level of discomfort. “Thank you so, so much.”
She’s nearly at the door when I toss the syringe into the bag. It takes everything in me to wait until she’s inside before I scramble for the gate. In my rush I knock over a lawn chair. A dog barks. Inside the house, a light goes on upstairs.
I’m out the gate and running full tilt down the street long before she knows I’m gone.
Ploy
There’s a hole in my sneaker. Right in the sole, near my toes.
A few train cars back, I’d stepped in a puddle and now water squelches with every step I take. The shoes are held together mostly with duct tape anyway, but I don’t know when I’ll come across another pair. They’ve got to at least last me the rest of the summer.
“Perfect,” I mumble as I head into camp.
Grabbing the bottom of my grey undershirt, I mop sweat off my forehead. The humidity from the rain earlier hangs in the air. Everything’s saturated and steaming. A metallic tang sits in the back of my throat. When it’s wet, the rusting metal of the boxcars smells like blood.
The train’s not moving—it hasn’t in over a decade, the derelict cars abandoned by the city in a station no longer used. But just because the city abandoned them doesn’t mean the rest of us have.
I concentrate on the crunch of the gravel, listening to be sure no one comes up behind me. A marsh bird calls from the swamp beyond the yard and my skin crawls. It’s not the bird though.
It’s the quiet.
I keep my eyes on the weeds sprawling from behind the orange-colored iron of the wheels. The thinnest trace of a moon lights my way.
On a normal night, at least a few campfires would be burning. Small, just a cluster of sticks and coals to warm up a can of something scrounged for dinner, not enough to draw attention. Tonight the place seems empty. I’m not stupid enough to believe it actually is. Eyes are on me as I pass each car. The mood means one of two things—either the cops were here busting up the place again or something bad happened.
I don’t bother checking for my knife; I can feel it on my hip. A quick move and it’s in my hand. The camp is a dangerous place. Muscles don’t matter when you’ve got a shiv buried in your spine and paranoia will get you much farther than strength. Tension drizzles down, soaks my skin like the sudden rainstorm an hour ago. I try to remember to breathe.
Mostly, the boxcar camp branches off into two groups—the vets and hobos down at this end and my group, the younger generation of gutter punks and street kids, at the other, split into junkies and those of us who haven’t gotten caught up in that stuff yet. A hunchbacked man sits swinging his feet in the open door of one of the train cars. I’m barely able to make out his shadowy figure. The old man doesn’t acknowledge me. I return the favor.
I hike up the fifty pound pack I’m wearing and tighten the straps. The sleeping bag, in its makeshift black garbage bag of a cover, scrunches plastic against my neck with each step. I’d adjust it, but I’ll be taking it off soon. It’s a waste to bother with now.
I trudge on, leery. I’ve got close to twenty bucks in tattered ones and some change in my pocket. In my pack is a paper-wrapped sub I gaffled from a small outdoor café while whoever ordered it was in the bathroom. They hadn’t even taken a bite.
Any other night, I’d be around a cook fire, splitting the sub up in exchange for a cup of stew made from whatever everyone else contributed. You don’t share, you don’t eat. But with the eerie calm in the camp, I’m thinking it’d be safer to tear Brandon off half and call it good. Finally, I reach our boxcar.
I unclip the belt of the backpack and swing it up into the car. The bang of the metal reverberates through that damned hole in my sneaker as I jump up and in.
“Brandon?” I call. “Get your ass up, I brought you food.” I drop to one knee and loosen the drawstrings holding my bag shut. It’s too dark to see. Searching the pocket I usually keep my headlamp in, I come out empty-handed. “Brand!”
I give the silence a second to see if I can hear him stretch and wonder if he might not be here. We’ve gotten to be decent friends in the two months we’ve been splitting the boxcar, both of us more bark than bite. He plays the part with tattoos and more metal in his face than change in his pockets. His piercings make the gauges in my ears look tame. A look and a drawn blade get the job done just as well in my book. Over the winter, I’d added a bar through my eyebrow with a safety pin heated to a molten red. Bad idea, infection-wise. Plus, I don’t wanna mess with my face much. Sometimes looking like trouble invites trouble.
“You here?” I ask, though I have a feeling I’m alone. Brandon has a thing for taking off at night, long walks he doesn’t tolerate questions about. He has heavy secrets. Soon enough, though, he’ll spill them. Part of getting people to tell you what you want to know is convincing them you don’t give a damn.
When there’s no noise from the general area of Brandon’s bedroll, I go back to digging in my pack. My fingers snag the headlamp. I click it on, hold it in my mouth by the strap and grab the sandwich. The scent of fresh French bread wafts through the car before I can even peel the paper away. My stomach rolls, greedy. I can’t remember the last time I ate.
Transferring the headlamp to a hand, I shove the food into my mouth, take an enormous bite of bread, shrimp and lettuce. My moan’s pleasure-filled enough that it would be embarrassing if I could be bothered to care. The only worry I have now is getting the sandwich into my stomach fast enough that I won’t feel guilty when Brandon shows up and there’s nothing left. I dry-swallow the bread and go in for a second bite, the paper wrapper crinkling loudly. Almost as an afterthought, I flick the light around the corrugated inside of the car.
Brand’s curled up in his bedroll.
I chew once more, and then slip the light around my neck to free up a hand. There’s no way he didn’t hear me talking to him. Not only that, but he’s not in the normal spot. Instead, he’s in the back corner, pressed against the wall. My spot.
My fingers drift across the handle of my knife. He’s not even between the blanket and sheet. They’re both draped over top of him. I creep closer, the sandwich clutched in my hand. Nights like this, the blanket’s only cushion; it’s far too hot for him to be using it. The headlamp swings with each step, casting cold bluish light to deepen the shadows inside the car.
In a single move, I drop the sandwich and grab for the blanket and sheet, rip them aside.
“Jesus.” The word comes out a breath. He’s on his side, turned toward the wall. I move to roll him over and my foot crunches down on a layer of congealed blood and lettuce. Gore is puddled beneath his body. The skin that should be covering his stomach drapes to each side in ragged flaps. He’s carved out. Hollowed.
Whoever killed him took his guts with them.
I grab my bag and jump from the car, the sandwich forgotten, the body uncovered. I’ve already passed half the boxcars before I can stop my hands from wiping furiously against my jeans.