The Elephant of Surprise (The Russel Middlebrook Series Book 4) (9 page)

"Wade?" I said.

But right then the doorway to the warehouse squeaked open. It was so much louder than I ever would've expected, like a hundred seagulls squawking. A new ray of sunlight flashed across the floor, lighting the swirling dust that we'd kicked up just by walking across the warehouse.

My eyes met Wade's.

"I know you're in here!" said a voice. "I saw you break inside!"

Wade held his finger up to his lips. Then, not hesitating at all, he whispered, "Follow me."

"Where?" I whispered back, a little frantically. "He'll see us!"

"No, he won't. It'll take a minute for his eyes to adjust to the dark. Trust me." This sounded like exactly the kind of thing that someone who spent a lot of time breaking into abandoned buildings would know. So I did trust him.

Easing the cabinet closed behind him, Wade stepped out into the main warehouse. He moved so smoothly, like a train on a track, like a duck gliding across a lake. The floor barely creaked under his feet, but it sounded like the wailing of sirens under mine—and, of course, the pigeon and/or bat poop crunched. How had I not noticed before how loud it was to walk across this floor?

Wade quickly strode—floated?—straight to that rusted metal barrel and ducked down behind it. I followed behind, but not like a train or a duck. We both peeked out around the same side of the barrel. I could smell the sweat from Wade's smooth brown neck. He smelled like salt and blackberries with just a hint of pine—real pine, not some fake cologne. How in the world did someone smell this good without deodorant? And what in the world was I doing noticing a thing like that at a time like this?

"I know you're in here!" said the voice. All I saw was a silhouette standing in the doorway, but I could tell that Wade's plan had worked: his head was looking over at the office where we'd been, the place where we seemed most likely to be, not at the rusty barrel where we were hiding now. Who was this anyway? One of the neighboring business owners charged with keeping an eye on the warehouse? And what if he had a gun?

Wade looked back at me and once again, held his finger up to his lips. I said I'd wanted adventure, but not like this. I'd been thinking more of the bare-feet-in-the-surf kind.

The figure in the doorway started across the floor of the warehouse, his steps squeaking even louder than mine. But he was walking for the office, not for where we were hiding.

"I mean it!" the voice said. "I know you're in here!"

As the man traversed the floor, Wade and I instinctively maneuvered our way around the barrel, always keeping him on the opposite side of us. I was sort of proud of myself for picking this up so quickly, but even now, the floor under Wade was barely squeaking, but the floor under me still was.

Once the man was halfway to the office, Wade nodded to me again, then bolted for the closest wooden pillar.

The man stopped once and glanced over our way. The pillar was narrower than the barrel, and presumably the man's eyes had adjusted to the dark by now, so Wade and I pushed ourselves even closer together, trying to conform to the shape of the wooden post.

His musk was even stronger now, and his body was lean and hard. I'd held lean and hard guys before—both Kevin and Otto are lean and hard. But there was a different kind of hardness to Wade's body. Everything wasn't just in the right place, it was also slightly exaggerated, bigger than I was used to: wider shoulders, thicker arms, rounder ass (which I, of course, made a point not to touch with my crotch). But the waist was just as narrow, maybe narrower.

The man hesitated for only a second, just sort of glancing over at us. Then he started toward the office again.

"Come on!" he said. "Show yourselves!"

Wade nodded to the next pillar closest to the open door. On one hand, I understood the predicament we were in—like I said, this man could have a gun. But on the other hand, I confess I was enjoying the feel of Wade's body and the smell of his musk. (I was enjoying it a little too much, if you must know. I was worried Wade was going to back into me, and let's just say that was no banana in my pocket. Again, I ask: how could I be thinking of a thing like that at a time like this?)

Breathlessly, we reached the next pillar. Now we were a lot closer to the open doorway than we were to the guy over by the office. He wasn't looking back at us at all now.

So with one more nod, Wade and I ran for the open garage door. But Wade stopped. Now he was the silhouette, at least from the perspective of the guy back in the warehouse.

"You there!" he called in a deep, scary voice that didn't sound anything like the one I knew. "Get out of that warehouse right now!" I knew right away that the whole point of this was to distract the man from the office, so he wouldn't find Wade's things in the cabinet.

Sure enough, the man turned.

"Go!" Wade said to me, and we ran toward our bikes in the trees. Fortunately, they were still there, so we jumped on them and rode. I was all set to ride off down the street, but Wade said, "No! Here!" He pulled his bike off the road and onto one of the legs of the abandoned rail line. It was an awkward, bumpy ride over weeds and rail ties, but almost immediately I saw the point of it: if the man in the warehouse had a car, he couldn't follow us here. I wished I'd thought of it.

The adrenaline kept pumping through me long after we were away from the warehouse (it even took a long time for me to lose that banana in my pocket!). I couldn't remember the last time I'd felt so alive. Turns out I wanted more than bare-feet-in-the-surf after all.

"Hey, you hungry?" Wade said out of the blue.

I
was
hungry, but, um, I wasn't interested in eating out of a garbage can.

Wade laughed at my expression. "That's not what I meant."

"What?"

"You thought I was asking if you wanted to eat out of a Dumpster."

Busted.

"No…" I said.

"It's okay. It makes sense. But I just meant that you could join us for dinner at the freegan house."

"Oh."

"You want to?"

I hesitated, but I'm not sure why. I'd spent the afternoon with Wade. I wasn't worried about not being able to trust him. On the contrary, suddenly I was desperate to smell his sweat again, to inhale that mix of salt and blackberry and pine. I wanted the scent of him on me, wanted it soaking so deep I couldn't wash him out of my clothes or off my skin.

"Come on," he said. "Life is an adventure, right?"

I was already texting my parents, telling them I wouldn’t be home for dinner.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The other freegans were barbecuing in the backyard behind their house, with a grill that looked like they'd made themselves from salvaged bricks and chicken wire.

"Russel!" Venus said, running over to greet me with a bear hug. "You're back! I wasn't sure I'd ever see you again."

"Me too," I said. "But I was hoping I would. Wow, that smells good." I meant the barbecue, which did smell incredible. Rather than briquettes, they were burning actual wood—a broken chair, I think.

"Isn't it great?" Venus said, swaying in the courtyard. "Come on, I'll introduce you."

The first time I'd been here, I hadn't met anyone else. Meeting them now, I sort of expected them to all have off-beat names like Soupcan or Boxcar or, well, Venus. But it turned out they were just Rick, Gilly, Jill, and Matthew.

They greeted me with nods. No one shook my hand even though I sort of expected them to, and I wondered if that was a freegan thing—don't do what most people do, don't give into mainstream expectations.

"Let's eat!" said Matthew, sort of a scruffy geek with dirty blond hair (
literally
dirty). A couple of people left for the kitchen and returned with plates and forks and two big bowls—one with a salad and another with brown rice. Then they dished up the barbecue, which was being cooked on wooden skewers.

"Is this the wild greens salad you promised me?" I said to Venus when she handed me a plate.

"It
is!
" she said, beaming. "Oh! But there aren't any nettles!"

"It's okay. I think that's sort of advance level anyway."

I tasted the salad. It was amazing. It wasn't like one you'd buy in the store or eat in a restaurant. There must have been six different plants, and every one of them tasted different from the others. They were more intense than lettuce—more bitter or more leafy or more spicy, and always more flavorful. Each leaf somehow seemed more
real
, like you could actually taste the exact spot of ground where it had grown. It didn't even need dressing, though someone had drizzled something tangy over it. 

I slid the meat off the skewers. It was still sizzling it was so hot off the fire. It surprised me a little, that they were having barbecue. For some reason, I'd thought the freegans would all be vegetarians.

I tasted it. "It's good. But it's different. Not beef, not chicken. What is it?" It was meaty without being fatty.

"Fox," Mark said.

Was he joking? They were barbecuing fox?

"Where did you get…?"

Wade suddenly squirmed in his rickety lawn chair. "It's roadkill. Ah, I totally should've told you that, shouldn't I? Especially after you said you didn't want to eat out of a Dumpster. I'm sorry, Russel—I didn't even think about that. This is all just so normal to us."

I wasn't sure whether to spit or swallow the bite in my mouth. In the end, I swallowed. "You eat roadkill?"

"It's not what you think!" Venus said. "We only use it when we're totally sure it's absolutely fresh."

"How can you be sure it's fresh?"

"All kinds of ways. The eyes, for one thing. They have to be clear, not white or clouded—that means it just died. But also the smell. And how stiff the body is. Even whether or not it still has fleas!"

"Fleas?"

"Actually," Wade said, still not meeting my eyes, "roadkill can be a lot fresher than the meat you buy in the store. Remember, even meat you buy in a grocery store isn't frozen right away. And it can be weeks or months before it actually hits your table, so they pump it full of chemicals or dyes just to fool you into thinking it's fresh. With roadkill, you can at least judge for yourself whether or not it's fresh."

Was this true? What they were saying did sort of make sense. Or was this just more propaganda from a cult?

"You don't have to finish it," Wade said. His deep brown eyes poured into mine again at last. "Seriously. We don't ever want to force people to do something they don't want to do. That's what the rest of the culture tries to do to us. That's the exact opposite of what freeganism is all about."

I looked down at the meat on my plate. I knew that everyone was watching me even if they were pretending not to, but that's not why I took another bite. 

Wade smiled, and Venus squealed.

"You wanna try the raccoon?" Jill said, over at the grill, holding up another skewer.

"Raccoon?" I said.

"It's not as good as the fox—not by a long shot."

"People actually eat raccoons?" I said.

"You've never been to the South, have you?" Wade said. "Everyone eats raccoons down there."

This time, everyone stared at me openly, curious to see what I'd do.

"Hell, yes!" I said, reaching for the skewer and digging in. Venus actually cheered.

It was gamier and stringier than the fox, but you know what? It was seasoned with a generous shaking of spontaneity.

Okay, that was clunky. The point is it was exciting to be doing something new and different and unexpected. Neurotic, guilt-ridden, self-conscious me was finally cutting loose! Soon somebody was going to have to scrape me down off the ceiling with a broom.

After dinner in the yard, we all went inside to play Monopoly—ironically, with rules that were both hilarious and subversive. You "won" the game by being the first person to give away all your money and houses and hotels, but there were specific rules: (1) you had to be on the same square as someone else in order to give them something, and (2) you couldn't give anything to anyone who had more than you. You also did the opposite of what the little Chance and Community Chest cards told you to do. Oh, and you could also hop trains to any other railroad on the board.

It was surprisingly challenging and a lot of fun (I'm sure the dandelion wine didn't hurt).

But as we laughed and played, I couldn’t help but think about what my parents would do if they found out where I was—that I was playing Ironic Monopoly with a bunch of homeless people in an empty house they were squatting in—er, occupying. Or if they knew I'd spent the afternoon rooting around abandoned buildings and had just finished a dinner of barbecued roadkill.

They'd be totally shocked and appalled. They'd yank me from that house so fast it would pull my ear off.

And it wasn't just my parents. It was
most
parents. They'd totally flip out. I'm not one to paint things in extreme terms, but I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that most adults would take one look at this freegan house and their heads would literally explode—I mean, blood and brains everywhere.

But it was funny. These people they'd be so upset about? They were sitting around playing board games after dinner rather than watching TV. And that dinner? They'd cooked it themselves—roadkill, yes, but also with fresh vegetables, some of which they'd gathered themselves, and
brown
rice
. Have you ever known a teenager to eat brown rice? Except for Min (obviously not typical), I hadn't. And they'd all cleaned up afterward. "We're all in this together," Wade had said, and it didn't just apply to the meals. The freegans had some pretty out-there beliefs, but the fact is they cared about the world and the people in it. They weren't hurting anyone—it sure seemed like they were even helping people. Basically, they gave a damn. And they were living life—that was impossible to deny.

Boy, was I totally drinking the Kool-Aid or what? But honestly, what exactly was it these guys were doing that was such a bad thing?

Before too long, I checked my phone and realized I was already late.

"I should go," I said to Wade.

Venus overheard me. "Really? Noooo!"

"Well, it's a school night," I said, feeling stupid even as I said it. The truth is it felt like the exact opposite of a school night. It felt like no day or night I'd ever spent in my whole entire life.

"I'll walk you to your bike," Wade said, and so he did.

Outside, I slipped on my helmet, but lingered. "Thanks," I said.

"For what?" Wade asked.

"For a really, really great day."

He smiled in the dark. "I'm glad you liked it."

Why did this feel like the end of a date? Because that's what it was, right? Come on, validate my reality here!

"Will I see you again?" Wade said.

"I hope so." I hesitated. "I'd give you my phone number, but…"

He nodded. "I don't have a phone. On the other hand, you know where I live."

"And I know which Dumpsters you hang out in."

He smiled again—a full-fledged grin. The wind blew and I thought I smelled the faintest hint of salt and blackberry and pine—but then it was gone.
Had
it been a date, or had I misinterpreted the whole thing? I wanted to kiss him, but I felt stupid. What if he wasn't out to the other freegans and they spotted us out in the yard? What if he wasn't even gay? And part of me, a stubborn part, thought, "He's two years older than I am—why can't he be the one to kiss
me?
" (Another part of me, I guess a slightly racist part, thought, What's it's like to kiss a black guy? Does it feel any different?)

He hesitated, smiling, and I hesitated, not smiling. But no one made a move. So finally I climbed onto the bike. "Well," I said. "Thanks again."

"Sure thing, Russel. See you around."

I didn't look back, but I could tell he watched me ride down the street.

Night had fallen, and I suppose the air was cold on my bike ride home, but I didn't feel it. I also didn't care that we hadn't kissed. I couldn't stop thinking about Wade and the day I'd had, reliving every moment.

I have no idea how all this is sounding, if the afternoon Wade and I had spent together seems at all romantic to you. I mean, it was mostly just the two of us having a conversation about philosophy, then breaking into an abandoned warehouse with pigeon and/or bat poop, and eating barbecued roadkill with a side of dandelion salad.

So if it doesn't sound romantic, you'll just have to take my word for it, because it totally, TOTALLY was.