Don't Breathe a Word (16 page)

Chapter 31

Creed didn't ask me about shelters again, but finding somewhere safe to sleep was foremost on both our minds. Besides, the shelters would separate us, boys and girls. And I didn't want to be separated from Creed again.

There weren't many other options. Music and invisibility weren't much help when it came to finding someplace warm and dry. We staked out new possible squats, but it could take weeks or even months for us to find something without a prior claim. Abandoned buildings were hard to come by unless you had a gang to fight for them, and we were down to just three people—sometimes, just two. There were bridges to sleep under, parks until we were chased out by cops, Dumpsters behind buildings—all of them soaked with the relentless Seattle rain.

My cough was getting worse. When I couldn't mask it any longer, Creed accepted my explanation—I told him I had a cold, which was common enough on the streets. Besides, he was focused on looking for somewhere to live. Spainging enough money to get a carton of french fries here, a muffin there. Avoiding Maul, who could change his mind and hunt us down. Stench was back on the scene and grinned at me from afar with my old backpack on his shoulder. He seemed to sense the tilt in his favor.

We saw May on the streets one evening as the clouds threatened to burst. She looked thinner and yellow. Bruises? Drugs? She pretended not to see us as she strutted past in a new jacket and pants hanging off her hips.

Before Creed could stop me, I called her name.

The heels of her boots clicked to a halt. She spun around, her face dead except for the hatred burning in her eyes. “Just go home, 'Burbs. It's unbelievable you haven't gotten yourself killed yet. Don't talk to me again.”

She swiped at her nose, exposing her wrist dotted with tiny puncture wounds. I opened my mouth to say something, but Creed spoke up first.

“Don't worry. We won't bother you anymore. But you know where we are.”

“Under a bloody bridge by now,” she scoffed. “Well, I guess I made the right choice then.” She looked over her shoulder, and her entire posture changed—from defiant to broken in one ripple. “Just leave me alone,” she whispered. Then the heels clicked again on the pavement, faster and faster until she was across the street and down the block, headed toward the clubs.

Without May, Santos seemed adrift. “She can go screw herself, or Maul or whoever she's doing these days,” he said, but that didn't change his haunted expression or the way he started avoiding me and Creed and our newest safe place, which changed almost nightly—under the University Bridge or the trestle, tucked behind old brownstone apartments. We had a plastic tablecloth Santos stole from some restaurant on Broadway, plus the latest issues of
The Stranger
or
Seattle Weekly
to shield us from the cold until we could find something permanent.

One night Creed and I shivered under the Olive Street bridge. I unzipped the potato coat and his coat from New Ho's and slipped my arms around his ribs—thinner now than ever. He had begun coughing, too.

I put my lips close to his ear, hoping my breath would warm him. “From the beginning, you kept telling me to go home. What do you think now?”

“I still think you should go home. If I could, I would take you there myself. It has to be better than here.”

My old life seemed so far away—everything that was here, now, had taken over. That girl I was then, Joy, didn't exist anymore. Was Creed's reason for being on the street any better than mine?

“What about you?” I asked huskily, taking small breaths to avoid another cough. “Why don't you go home?”

Creed pulled me closer to him so our coats closed around us like blankets. Our faces were touching, forehead to forehead, almost making everything around us disappear under this tent of plastic and newspaper and hair and breath.

“I've thought about it,” he said. “I could go home and live with that
asshole
and my mom and everything would go back to how it was before, and I would probably go off to school and play in my spare time until I ended up an asshole, too, who plays guitar in cafés on the weekends and beats up his wife for kicks. Then someday I could have a little kid to kick around and treat like shit who can grow up to be just like me.”

He stopped. Held his breath, and I held mine. Underneath the coats, our hearts were pounding together with the same wild rhythm as the traffic vibrating overhead.

“Or.”

“Or what?” I whispered. His words tickled my lips.

“Or . . . I could stay here and change everything. With you.”

That's when it happened.

Everything and nothing like I'd imagined—like that first time I saw him and the future all rolled into his flesh against my flesh, lower lip, upper lip, skin, tongue, all together and urgent and searching and deep and going where we had never gone before.

His hands ran through my hair, smoothing over my skin and the lobes of my ears while I touched him, face and neck and hair, all the places I had been waiting to see, to feel, to taste. I could feel him letting go of the thing he carried with him, stringing him tightly to his past the same way I was strung to mine. He was no longer trying to protect me—even from himself.

We were both letting all of it release, like balloons into the sky, popping like the kisses he gave me again and again and again.

Under the bridge, traffic above us and coats around us, hearts thudding with the steady perfection of this moment, I thought of every word I had never before dared to think about him.

Future. Hope.

And love, as the rain slowed to a misty trickle through the long and beautiful night.

Chapter 32

After that night, everything about being here, being on the street, fell into place. Maybe we were sleeping under bridges and behind Dumpsters. Maybe we were freezing and my lungs were getting worse, but I could feel my layers of protection falling away.

Creed was different too. Kissing me had brought down the final wall he'd kept between us. As we became more entwined, I could no longer hide the words that were burned into my flesh just months ago, even though it was an entire lifetime away.

ASHES.

He discovered it first with his fingers. He gently traced the letters, now pink against the backdrop of my skin tone as I held my breath, waiting for him to pass judgment.

And then.

And then, he kissed them, each letter softer than the last, until every scar had been touched by him.

I let him believe that someone did this to me because it was too painful to tell him the truth.

He didn't ask me where they'd come from, only said, “There are scars you can see, and the ones you can't. I knew you had them, Triste.”

Then he gathered me into his arms, and I cried.

I woke to Creed's cheek pressed against mine, bodies entangled and warm amid clothes and coats. It was Saturday. We knew what we had to do.

On the weekends, we haunted the club scene—Neumos, Chop Suey, even the old Crocodile Café, a legendary club that had launched a bunch of Seattle bands before it closed and then recently started back up. Creed could get a gig striking the band equipment here and there, and when he was really lucky, the club let him fill in for someone. The word on the street was that Creed could fake his way through any song after only a few notes—like my friends muddling through Rock Band songs to unlock the next batch, but for real.

I hid in the shadows of the clubs, afraid of seeing Asher again and yet desperate to know if he had done something to Neeta.

We ran into Santos, all oozing excitement, at the Croc. “Hey,” he said excitedly, “have you found somewhere to crash for Halloween? I heard there's gonna be this huge party down in the warehouse district—some rented space with a DJ and bands. Maybe we can sneak in—Creed, you got any contacts?”

Halloween. These days store windows along Broadway had everything from red afros to bondage in the windows—Christmas for freaks and weirdoes. It hadn't even crossed my mind, except the wetter and colder it got outside, the crazier Capitol Hill would get and the more dangerous life would be for me. Santos had gotten me more drugs, but I didn't know if that would be enough to stave off bronchitis, or worse, pneumonia.

During the day, Creed gathered intelligence and scoped out the scene while I spainged for a few bucks to get us food until the next gig—a house party, where we could crash for the night, or one of the club trailers, with cushions holey and permeated but a thousand times better than sleeping in the rain. Weeks passed this way.

Santos came with us sometimes, but mostly he found somewhere else to crash. “You guys go ahead,” he told us one night. “I'm going to the shelter.”

Creed said nothing, only watched him darkly.

“What?” Santos shouted. “Don't fucking look at me like that. I'm outta here.” He shoved his hand in his pocket, and a small packet, a hot pink square, came tumbling out.

I picked it up and read the slogan:
Protect America. www.plannedparenthood.com.
I blushed a little thinking about Creed—kisses and skin and closeness, yet still innocent. He hadn't pressured me at all. Nothing like Asher.

Santos snatched it out of my hand, and I grinned. “So that's it?” I teased. “That's why you haven't been hanging around us? You have a girlfriend? What about May?”

I remembered the way she looked, the last time we'd seen her. Thin and strung out, but dressed to the nines. She'd abandoned our family. Blood was thicker than sex—or at least, I'd thought it was.

Creed's eyes locked with mine, as if he was giving me a warning.

Santos wouldn't look at either one of us. “Yeah. That's it. Just don't tell May, okay? 'Cause we're kinda . . . fuck it. I'm outta here.”

Creed and I cruised around on Broadway for a couple of free coffees and day-old Starbucks lemon bread, my favorite on the street or not, and we trudged down toward Chop Suey to check out their lineup. Gravity Echo, Universal Hall Pass, Symbion Project.

Since the weather had turned, social services and church people were out in full force with toiletries and food packs, scarves and those lame stretchy gloves. Saturdays were the best—there was always somebody giving out water bottles and cans of tuna. When he still lived at home, Jesse would have been among them.

“I'm gonna go up to the college and see if I can sneak into the showers,” I told Creed, taking a huge bite of my lemon bread.

Some crumbs landed on my lip, and he kissed them away.

“Yeah. Just stay out of Maul's way, okay?”

I nodded.

“Hey, I saw some people giving out socks and soap up there—maybe you could stop by and get us some? Big group. Church kids or something—they looked pretty straight edge.”

I narrowed my eyes and took another bite. “Yeah, like you're not. You act all tough, but underneath I know
exactly
what you're about.”

“Oh yeah? What's that?”

The same thing he'd always been about, since the moment I first saw him. The thought of it flustered me, how much I trusted him.

“Well,” I responded, “right now you're all about getting the Croc gig. So break a leg.”

I headed toward the school, bundled in the potato coat, which had now taken on a blackish-grey sheen. I suppressed a cough, knowing what it meant. It would start with bronchitis, and eventually it would become much more.

The thought of approaching the group terrified me. My brother wouldn't be with them, but there was still the possibility one of his old friends would recognize me. I'd never mastered quickness like Santos, or disguise like May, but I had to try.

A police car zoomed around the corner, sirens blaring. Cops clumped around the youth group.

“He's got her backpack!” a boy shouted. He must have been one of them, because the cops were actually listening. A homeless guy had fallen to the ground, rolling around and shouting, “I don't know nuthin'! Leave me alone!”

People were looking at him—normals and street people and cops and everyone—so no one paid any attention to me, a ghost girl weaving among them. There was a familiar smell of sweat and urine and some unidentifiable combination of chemicals and rot.

As I got closer, I realized who it was: Stench, splayed on the sidewalk and surrounded by cops. With my backpack clutched in his arms. The little Lego driver tumbled out and split in two. The boy kept shouting as normals and street people looked on with interest.

I knew that voice. It was the last voice I expected.

What was he doing here? What was he doing home from Western?

J1.

My brother Jesse.

Chapter 33

Jesse, who was supposed to be two hours north of here, stood only a few feet away.

Waves of who I was crashed against the undertow of who I'd been, swirling in a heady vortex. Would he notice me? Would I be invisible to someone who had known me since birth? Should I run? And what was he doing here now, after he'd turned me away when I needed him most?

If I had been alive and present, I would have used my street power to disappear. But I was frozen, fused to a spot in the concrete, with Stench's shout a muted rumble in my ears. The cops started shooing everyone away. “Step back, give us some room here.”

One of the cops held his knee in Stench's back, pinning him to the ground. He flailed wildly until the cop clipped his wrists into a pair of handcuffs. Another cop was trying to calm my brother, who was shouting in a hoarse voice, “Where's my sister? What have you done with my sister?” Everyone watched, spellbound, as more sirens joined the cacophonous whine.

Through the crowd, I spotted the one person who wasn't looking at my brother or Stench.

Santos
. He was looking directly at me.

A wild thought flashed through my head—he'd been there, hadn't he, when the cop first searched the streets with my junior-class picture? Joy's picture, which looked nothing like me anymore. Did Santos know? Had he been keeping my secret all this time?

The cops took Stench in one car and my brother in another. Now that Jesse had calmed down a little, he was on his cell phone, probably calling our parents. My own phone was hidden away. Even Creed hadn't discovered it in our new and frantic explorations of each other.

The crowd dispersed, leaving only Santos and me. I could see it in his eyes—hurt, disappointment, shame. I was back to 'Burbs, the runaway who didn't belong here with Creed or any of the rest of them. My story meant nothing compared to what they had been through. I knew it, and he probably did, too.

But I still wanted a chance to explain. I held his gaze as I walked toward him. “Santos.”

He didn't respond.

“Santos, I—”

“Whatever it is, you shouldn't tell me,” he said.

“But wait,” I said desperately. What would I tell him? “You should know—”

“I told you, I don't want to know. Things aren't always how they look. We're family, that's the only important thing.”

“Even though we're not together anymore? Even though we don't even have a safe place to sleep and May is with Maul? Even though every time you disappear and come back, there's a little bit less of you, and I don't even know why?”

Santos didn't speak for a moment, only stared at me like he'd already vacated a long time ago.

“We all have our secrets,” he said. “You'd better find Creed before yours get a lot worse.”

Santos was right. It did get worse.

Suddenly the entire neighborhood was swarming with police posting my picture and questioning anyone on the street. Had they seen this girl? Had they seen her with a homeless man?

Joy's picture—my picture—ended up on the front page of the
Seattle Times
in every newspaper vending machine from here to the Eastside.

The rest of the story folded into the vending machine, but the picture taunted me from every street corner.

The neighborhood was operating on a heightened sense of excitement as the Capitol Hill Halloween Bash grew closer. Everyone in the Seattle music scene would be there—musicians, bands, groupies, a couple of radio stations, and the multitude of indie record labels Seattle was known for, which was why Creed was so excited. He had an official gig as a roadie and might have a chance to do a couple of songs on his own.

Creed and I huddled under the park bleachers in the pouring rain. If he'd noticed me withdrawing when the police scoured Capitol Hill, he said nothing. Only waited patiently, with as much sweetness as the kisses he now bestowed on me with abandon. We munched on day-old pastries we found in the Starbucks Dumpster—pumpkin currant. Not my favorite, but I wasn't about to complain.

“May will probably come,” Creed said.

“Why do you care if she'll be there?” I demanded. “She abandoned
us
, remember?”

“She was trying to save us.”

“Right.” I didn't want to hear about May's sacrifice. “And that's why she stays with him and takes his drugs and practically spits on your shoe every time she sees you? She was playing you for sympathy all that time, getting you to be the big protector until she found somebody better. I can't believe you didn't see it.” I stuffed more of the muffin in my mouth.

Creed wiped a drop of rain away from my cheek. “What's going on with you? You've been acting like a stranger lately.” He kissed me softly, and I hoped he couldn't hear the rattle in my lungs, increasing every day. “Are you okay?”

No. I was anything
but
okay. It was becoming more and more clear my days were numbered—days of making it through the fall without getting sick, of leaving the past behind me, of leaving Asher. Of any kind of future with Creed.

A light suddenly dawned in his eyes. “You're jealous. You're jealous of May.”

“No, I'm not.” I couldn't look him in the eye as I said it. So maybe I was jealous, even if that was only a tiny drop in the ocean that threatened to drown me. “I can't understand why you want to stick with her when she totally abandoned us—I mean, you and Santos. You talk about family—”

“If you think there's something going on between me and May, then you don't know anything about me.”

“That's not what I meant.”

“What
did
you mean?”

What could I say—that I wanted him to want to protect me and only me? I knew it wasn't fair. It wasn't who Creed was, but it didn't stop me from longing for it. I could sense him straining against my expectations, like that horse in the ocean. It turned a key in me, a muted click only I could feel.

“Maybe May was right,” I said softly. “If you're such a protector, then why didn't you protect your mom?”

The second I said it, I regretted it. What was a key in me was a knife in him. The closeness I had felt from him just moments ago withdrew, leaving a vacuum. His blue eyes went stormy. The soul of him, written right there on his face for me since the first time I'd seen him in the darkness of the club, recoiled and retreated into the locked chamber of his heart.

“Creed, I'm sorry. I didn't mean—”

But it was too late. He was already backing away from me, in body and in spirit. “You don't know anything about my mother. Or May. Or me. Nothing.”