One Day Soon (32 page)

Bug sat down, kicking his foot in the dirt, his mouth in a pout. “Fine. Be that way.”

I nudged his shoe with mine. “Maybe later, Bug,” I told him, not wanting to hurt his feelings.

Bug instantly brightened. His moods were in constant flux. Happiness, sadness, anxiety, excitement, they flowed over him quickly, never staying in place long enough for us to figure out what was really going in his head.

Yoss said it had to do with the drugs.

I often wondered what Bug had been like before he became hooked.

“You’ve got to stop encouraging him,” Di scolded me but I waved away her comment.

“She’s the sweet one, Di. It’s why Yoss treats her like she’s made of fucking glass,” Karla sniffed, her lip curling.

Karla and I would never be friends. She barely tolerated me and I had many a fantasy about connecting my fist with her face. But we had the same friends.

We loved the same boy.

And that made dealing with each other a necessity.

Even when that particular boy wasn’t around.

Shane took a long drag from his cigarette. A trunk honked somewhere, the sound reverberating off the cement uprights around us, like an echo.

He rubbed his hands together, blowing on them. “Fuck me, it’s as cold as a witch’s tit out here.”

Karla pulled her sleeves down over her hands, tucking them between her thighs. “Maybe we should head back to The Pit,” she suggested.

“It’s not too bad out here,” Di immediately countered.

None of us wanted to go back to The Pit. Even though it’s where we slept at night, it wasn’t a place we liked to spend too much time.

Bad things happened there. Even during the day.

Just last week two guys, that had shown up only weeks before, raped a girl. Police had descended. Arrests were made. Yet we didn’t feel any safer.

Then two nights ago, a man was found dead in the old warehouse of an apparent overdose.

Again, we had had to take off for most of the day while the police combed over every inch of The Pit, arresting known drug dealers, intimidating the runaways. Yoss kept us all away until they had cleared out. And when we returned, Yoss’s CDs were gone.

I was upset, but he told me not to worry about it. Holding onto things was next to impossible in The Pit. If it was important, you had to carry it with you.

“I would give anything for a mocha latte right now,” Karla said, shivering slightly.

Shane, noticing how cold we all were, pulled an empty trashcan over, filling it with litter off the ground. He spent several minutes trying to get it to light.

“Here. This will probably help,” Bug said, pulling a small bottle of brown colored liquid from his coat pocket.

Shane took it and opened the lid, sniffing. He made a face. “What the hell is this shit? Lighter fluid?”

“It’s homemade hooch. Not bad either,” Bug said. Shane dumped it on top of the garbage and put the lighter to it. It immediately went up in flames.

“Yeah, if you don’t mind your insides rotting,” Shane muttered, handing the bottle back to Bug, who took a long swig, coughing afterwards.

The five of us huddled closer to the small fire, holding our hands out, trying to get warm. “Okay, Imi, if you could be anywhere right now, where would it be?” Di asked, starting the familiar game.

When we didn’t have food in our bellies, we fed off dreams.

Off possibilities.

It sustained us when we had nothing else.

“The beach. It’s what she always says,” Karla interjected before I could say anything.

“I didn’t ask
you,
Karla. So shut up,” Di snapped. Karla snorted, not put out by Di’s attitude towards her. It was their dynamic.

“Well since I’m so
predictable,
I’ll pick something different this time.” I picked at the skin around my thumb while I thought about my answer.

“I think I’d like to be skiing. I’ve always wanted to learn,” I said after a while.

“Yeah, because being cold is
so
much fun,” Karla griped. Everyone ignored her.

“I went skiing a few times. I was really bad at it,” Bug piped up, surprising all of us. No one knew much about Bug’s past. He never talked about it. None of us did really. But Bug was more secretive than the rest of us. I hated to admit that I didn’t spend a whole lot of time really thinking about it.

“
You’ve
been skiing?” Shane asked incredulously, lighting another cigarette.

Bug twitched, blinking nervously, a sign he was starting to come down from whatever high he was currently on. He chewed on his bottom lip until it started to bleed. Tearing at the skin until it looked painful. He picked at the back of his hand. “Yeah, a few times. My dad used to have a timeshare at Seven Springs in Pennsylvania.”

He seemed uncomfortable talking about his family. His hands were shaking and he scratched at his hand relentlessly.

“Is that where you’re from? Pennsylvania?” I asked him gently.

“Mhmm,” Bug mumbled and I couldn’t tell if it was an acknowledgment or a denial.

“Okay, so you wish you were skiing. I think a nice ski chalet and a hot tub sounds pretty fucking magical,” Di cut in. I noticed that she took Bug’s trembling hand and gave it a squeeze. He held onto her.

“Okay, I can get behind the skiing thing,” Karla agreed.

“What about you, Di? If you could be anywhere right now, where would it be?” I asked.

“She’d be listening to really shitty music at a concert, trying to sneak backstage to meet the band,” an amused voice piped up.

“Yoss!” Karla squealed, getting to her feet so she could give my boyfriend a big hug.

I didn’t bother to feel jealous. Not when my eyes met Yoss’s over Karla’s shoulder and that look of love was only for me.

“Hey guys, sorry to interrupt,” Yoss said, sitting down beside me, dropping a large knapsack on the ground. He leaned into me.

“You weren’t interrupting anything. We were just trying not to freeze our asses off,” Shane said, throwing more trash onto the fire. It flared up and we all reared back.

“So…” Yoss began, pulling the bag over and unzipping it. “I found some shit for you guys.”

He pulled out a wooden jewelry box with the lid missing. It was a nice one at some point, with velvet lining and ornate detail on the small drawers. He handed it to Karla who smiled as though he had handed her a diamond.

“I love it, Yoss! Thank you!” Karla gushed, her eyes twinkling. I had never seen the surly girl so happy. It changed her entirely. She put the battered jewelry box in her lap, running her fingers along the wood. It was trash. Broken. But to Karla, it was better than gold.

Yoss reached into the bag again and pulled out a Zippo lighter, tossing it to Bug who snatched it with dexterity I didn’t know he possessed. “Thanks, man!” he enthused. Bug had a weird obsession with lighters. He had almost a hundred stashed away.

“It doesn’t have any fluid, but I thought the design was pretty cool,” Yoss told him, indicating the green skull on the side.

“I love when Yossa Claus comes to visit,” Di grinned, taking a pair of old black boots with the laces missing that Yoss handed her. She kicked off the pair she had on and slipped on the new ones. It was obvious someone had thrown them out for good reason. The soles were threadbare and there was hole on the side of the right shoe. But Di didn’t care. And Yoss was smiling at his friend’s happiness.

“They didn’t have size extra douche, so I went with this,” Yoss joked, handing Shane an oversized sweatshirt with some sort of emblem on it.

“No fucking way, dude!” Shane exclaimed, holding it up. He held the dirty shirt to his nose. “It smells like ass, but I’ll wear it with fucking pride! Who the hell would throw this away?”

“What is it?” I asked, not understanding why Shane was so excited.

Shane pulled the sweatshirt over his head. It dwarfed his wiry frame but he didn’t seem to care. “
What is it?
Seriously? Imi, I may have to question our friendship,” Shane scolded.

“Shane has a major hard-on for the Baltimore Orioles baseball team. It’s a personality failing we’ve all come to accept,” Yoss explained.

Shane glared at him. “Just because you’re a fucking Yankees fan—”

“Boys, boys, let’s not bore Imogen with your endless game stats and general ball twisting,” Di stated drolly.

Yoss reached back into his bag and quickly put something behind his back. His grin was huge. Infectious.

“And for you,
birthday girl
.”

My eyes widened and my mouth popped open in shock.

“How did you know?” I gasped.

Yoss tucked a piece of my straggly hair behind my ear, his fingers lingering, as they always did. “There’s not a thing you say, even if it’s only once, that I don’t remember.”

“Wait a minute. It’s your birthday, Imi? And you didn’t say anything?” Di demanded.

I shrugged. “I don’t make a big deal of my birthday—”

“Well, that’s just fucking ridiculous,” Shane interjected. He pulled the sweatshirt Yoss had given him back over his head and handed it to me.

“What are you doing? That’s yours,” I protested, holding my hand up, refusing to take it.

“Yeah, well it’ll keep you warm out here. And if I can’t buy you a gift, then I want to give you
something
. Birthdays are important. Just because we live in a condemned piece of shit, doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate,” he argued, shoving the smelly shirt in my lap.

“Happy Birthday, Imi,” Bug added, wrapping the Zippo lighter he had just been given in a potato chip bag from the ground and laying it beside me. Di took off one of the bangle bracelets she always wore and slipped it over my hand.

“Happy birthday,” Karla muttered.

My throat felt uncomfortably tight. My eyes burned with tears.

“You don’t have to give me your things—” I started to protest.

“We want you to have them,” Di said, talking over me.

I held the gifts to my chest, valuing them more than anything I had ever been given up to that point.

“Thanks, guys.” My voice cracked.

“That’s not all,” Yoss announced, pulling a pair of roller skates out from behind his back. They looked two sizes too big and were an ugly shade of brown. One was missing laces and the wheels were chipped and worn down.

“Roller skates?” I laughed, taking them from him.

Yoss reached into his bag and pulled out another pair. “They had thrown out a few pairs at the roller rink in town, so I took them. I thought we could go roller-skating,” he said with a shrug.

“Where the hell are you going to go roller-skating?” Karla demanded, looking annoyed.

“Right here. Come on, Imi. Will you go roller-skating with me?” he asked sweetly.

“I haven’t been skating since I was six,” I warned, taking off my shoes and shoving my feet into the skates. They were way too big and it was questionable whether I’d be able to stand.

Yoss quickly put his own skates on and got up unsteadily. “Well, I’ve never been. But I figure I can hold my own on a skateboard, so I should be oka—”

He instantly fell on his ass.

“This is going to be awesome!” Shane chuckled and Di gave him a standing ovation.

But Yoss was still grinning like he hadn’t just slammed into cold concrete. It took him a few tries to get back to his feet. When he was more or less steady, he held out his hand to me. “Come on, birthday girl.”

I held on to him tightly and almost pulled him over. Yoss gripped my arms and I used his body as leverage to get myself upright. “If I break something, I’m blaming you,” I teased.

Yoss frowned. “If you don’t want to skate, we don’t have to. I just thought it would be something fun to do for your birthday. But if it was a bad idea—”

I cut him off with a quick kiss to the mouth. My feet slid out from underneath me and I had to grab Yoss so I wouldn’t end up on my ass like he had. “This is fun. Come on. Let’s try to figure out how to do this.”

“This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen,” I heard Karla say.

“You’re just jealous Yoss isn’t roller-skating with
you,”
Di responded. I loved that girl.

Yoss and I slowly made our way to the area where the skaters hung out. No one was around today, perhaps because it was so cold.

After a few minutes, Yoss was able to push himself along, while I still had to hold onto him with a death grip.

“Why is it so easy for you?” I complained.

Yoss laughed. “You’ll pick it up in no time. Though it’s fine if you don’t. I like having you hold on to me so tightly,” he murmured into my ear and my belly flipped over.

“You guys are worse than a grandmother! Come on, do some tricks!” Shane yelled. The rest of the gang had come over and were now perched on a fallen down wall watching Yoss and me skate very, very badly.

“Happy birthday, Imi,” Yoss said as I finally was able to let go of him long enough to take a turn on my own.