Twelve (4 page)

Chapter Fourteen

IT IS VERY
late when Chris goes to the bathroom and finds Jessica passed out on the floor by the toilet. He looks at her for a long time. Jessica is his friend, but he never gets to stare at a live girl like this. He likes it.

Chapter Fifteen

IN WHITE MIKE'S
tenth-grade year, there was a rapist at large: the Upper East Side Rapist. Some girl named Megan in his ethics class told White Mike that, “But no, seriously, being raped is like my greatest fear. I'm, like, so seriously afraid of being raped. Just two days ago, the rapist walked into a store in the middle of the day, locked the door, and raped a clerk. Will you walk me home?”

White Mike just shrugged and started walking with her toward her house at Ninety-eighth and Fifth Avenue. He told her that she had nothing to worry about if she was alert. When they were just getting to Engineer's Gate leading up to the Reservoir, they stopped and looked at the runners.

“It's not scary here,” White Mike told her, “there is probably no place in the world where you're safer.”

On his way back downtown, White Mike stopped in a deli for chocolate milk, and there was a flyer with a sketch of the suspected rapist on the wall. White Mike thought it looked like every other sketch of a criminal
he had ever seen. A nondescript young black man in a hooded sweatshirt, like the one he wore under his overcoat. He pictured that man holding down Megan (who was, like, so afraid and screaming) and ripping her plaid-skirt school uniform and probably just raping her right there in the middle of Fifth Avenue. He suddenly felt real bad for both of them.

Part II

Saturday, December 28

Chapter Sixteen

A BLACK KID
and a white kid with fake IDs from Ohio and Oregon, fucked-up dead on 117th Street.

God I hate drugs
, thinks one of the detectives investigating the double murder at the Jefferson Houses housing project. He is now at the Rec. He spoke with Nana's mother, and she told him that's the last place her son was. Of the kids there the night before, only Arturo is around. So when the detective asks if anyone knows this kid Nana, they all say yes, but only Arturo says he saw him last night.

“Were you his friend?”

“Yeah, we were tight.”

“Was he ever in any kind of trouble?”

“No, that kid was great, man, straight.”

“How was he last night?”

“I'll tell you, this punk kid, Hunter, just started fuckin' with him. I think he was racist or something like that, Detective. One of them Nazis.”

“What happened?”

“Well, they fought, you know, and I broke 'em up,
but Hunter was pissed that I stopped it and took off. But you know I was just looking out for my boy.”

The other players on the sideline roll their eyes as they overhear. The detective doesn't notice.

“You think this kid Hunter might have messed with Nana some more?”

“Yeah, man, you never know with guys like that. He was crazy.”

The detective thanks Arturo and heads downstairs. He looks up Hunter's mailing address in the Rec's files.

As the detective arrives in the McCulloughs' lobby, so too does Hunter, finally tired from hours of wandering the streets. After he went out at three, he walked all the way down to the Village and sat through part of a movie on Fourteenth Street. After it was over he strolled up Sixth Avenue and across the park. He has a bag of doughnuts he bought somewhere. The detective sees the dried blood and asks him if he is Hunter. Hunter says yes, and the detective says he's bringing him in for questioning. The doormen don't know what to do. The detective can't believe this, it's too easy, but the kid is covered with blood.

In the police car, Hunter thinks about how his father is on a plane to Europe and his mother is already there, and how he doesn't have any phone numbers for them. If it weren't Saturday, he could call his father's office to get them to track him down. As soon as he was off the plane. He could call White Mike, but White Mike
is a drug dealer and what kind of idea is that. He thinks about the other numbers he knows by heart. Not many, and none seem to fit. But he does have this kid Andrew's phone number with him. Andrew went to a different school, and they knew each other only because their fathers work together, but they had hit it off. Hunter figures that maybe Andrew's father will be able to help.

By the time Hunter gets to make this call, a sample of the blood on his shirt is on its way to the lab.

Chapter Seventeen

WHEN THEY WERE
all little kids, Hunter and White Mike and Warren and White Mike's cousin Charlie went to the Central Park Zoo. Warren's nanny, an excellent tiny woman named Dorine, took them regularly throughout the fall and spring when they were in the second and third grades. All of them were precocious children, and the trip was always an adventure. There was the grouchy duck who barked at them: “That duck barked at me,” shouted Warren. “Ducks don't bark, ducks quack,” shouted back White Mike. “Yes, Michael,” said Dorine, who was paid $350 a week. And then she started making quacking noises that sent the boys into peals of laughter.

The boys liked the monkeys too (“Are they throwing their poop? Dory, are they throwing their poop?”) and the penguins and the seals, and really all the animals they saw, even the snakes.

The trip picked up rituals. No matter what time it was, they would always wait till the next half hour to leave so they could see the clock with the animal statues strike the time.

But the most important ritual, the one that the boys remembered for as long as they lived, was the buying of popguns. The man who sold popguns and plastic swords and balloons from his cart was dark and had a mustache, and once Hunter asked him if he was a pirate, and he said yes. Every week the boys would get new popguns, and the popguns would always break by Thursday, usually because the strings attaching the corks to the barrel would become inextricably tangled in the firing mechanism. Dorine made it clear to the boys that she would not spend her afternoons fixing popguns, and if they broke, too bad. You must take care of your things.

It fell to White Mike, then, to fix the popguns. He was the best at it, had the most patience for the intricacies of the tangled strings. So Warren and Hunter and Charlie would shoot one another bang dead with the popguns, and then they would argue over whose gun was whose when the first one broke, and then White Mike would try to fix them.

Years later, when White Mike was walking in the park, he looked for the man who sold the popguns. He couldn't find the cart or the man, and he realized that, in fact, he had not seen a popgun in years. He realized that he hadn't seen Dorine in years either, and he wondered what had happened to her and if Warren still had her phone number. White Mike started imagining what he would say if he spoke with her.

That he was seventeen now and he got it, he saw
how the adult world was working, and he was sorry he'd been a little shit as a kid. That he got her job and that he remembered being taken to the zoo, and thanks for that because she didn't really have to do it; and it is a good thing you were there to raise me and Warren and Charlie and Hunter, because if you hadn't, I might be like one of those kids I sell to, and do you smoke dope?

Yes, Michael, she might say, at those parties, me and all the other nannies and housekeepers used to smoke spliffs out in the back stairwell and talk about the famous beautiful people at the party after I put you to sleep. And don't you know, Michael, that we really moved like ghosts in and out of all your lives, just the way the good help should.

Yeah, I know, Dory. It's like what I do now, this dealing, it's like that. I move in and out like a ghost, so no one remembers when I'm gone. It is the way the best help is supposed to be.

Yes, Michael, but we had fun at the zoo with Charlie and Warren and Hunter and the Grouchy Duck, didn't we? Remember when the duck barked at Charlie?

Ducks don't bark, Dory, they quack.

Chapter Eighteen

JESSICA GETS UP
at eleven, barely remembering that Chris put her in a cab and told the driver where she lived. She remembers her doorman helping her, though that doesn't matter now because it is almost noon and she feels really shitty, but she has a date with some of her girlfriends to go ice-skating. She hangs around with these three girls all the time, even though she knows she is much smarter than they are. They agree about certain fundamental things, and this holds them together. They agree about who is cool and who is not. They agree that it is okay to give blow jobs but not to have sex until, like, the time is right. They agree that they should never have to buy their own drinks at bars. They agree that chicks must come before dicks. They agree that they are all sexy, but each more so than the other three. They agree that the Hamptons rock and that their parents suck,
even though, like, I tell my mom everything, but not everything everything, you know?
So the four of them are going ice-skating this morning, and
they meet at Wollman Rink in Central Park. They wear tight blue jeans and ribbed sweaters and parkas and nice gloves. They all have good skin and are pretty. They treat guys badly, but the guys don't care, as long as they can get maybe a blow job once in a while. Everyone knows exactly what is going on.

As they put on their skates, the girls talk about how they are repulsed by the sweet smell of nachos and fake cheese, popcorn and hot dogs. This is not their kind of food. But, alas, none of them has her own skating rink, at least not in the city. Arm in arm, they head out onto the ice. They giggle as they go.

Like, like, like, like, like, like . . .

Like, no way.

Three times around and the girls are ready to get off the ice when a gawky kid skating by himself slips and falls in front of them. The girls try to veer out of the way, but Jessica is unable to make it. And one of her skates cuts across the boy's forehead, just under his bangs. He yells in pain and then clutches his head. Blood swirls out on the ice, and the girls all scream as they race for the edge of the rink. The boy pushes his hand on the cut to stop the bleeding. His name is Andrew. He wouldn't have been here to begin with, but he made this plan with his friend Hunter, who can skate like a hockey player. Then he got that crazy call from Hunter about jail, and his father went down there but told Andrew he couldn't come. So Andrew decided to go
skating anyway. People always say Andrew is a little distracted. Ice-skating without girls? Just on his own? Guy's probably gay.

Chapter Nineteen

THE SKATING GIRLS
are like so totally freaked out that they have to go and have a hot chocolate together at Jackson Hole. But once they all hit Fifth Avenue, Jessica heads in a different direction. She has to make a call.

“Hello?”

“Chris, it's Jessica. Thanks for taking care of me last night.”

“Sure, yeah.” Chris isn't surprised. He helped her when she was passed out, and didn't try to fuck her or anything.

“I mean it,” she says. She wants some more of whatever she had the night before. The high was the best thing she's ever felt. And now it's faded and gone. And some more would be good, before vacation is over. Just another taste before she has to go back to school. She doesn't need much or anything. Just a
little
more. She walks faster. She is sweating under her parka.

“You get your weed from that White Mike guy, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Could I get his number?”

“Yeah, sure. You wanna get some and smoke?”

“Actually, no, I wanted to get something else.”

“Coke?” Chris won't do coke. His brother, Claude, used to do a ton, and it fucked Claude up. Chris doesn't know what to tell Jessica about all that.

“No, what I did last night.”

“I thought you were drunk.”

“No, it's like coke but more like Ecstasy.” Jessica is speaking very quickly. The words tumble over one another. “Then it was like something totally different.”

“What was it?”

“I don't know, it was just called
Twelve
.”

Chapter Twenty

ANDREW MAKES IT
off the ice with blood dripping down his face. The rink manager calls an ambulance, and at Lenox Hill Hospital, a doctor stitches him up but says he has to stay for observation for six hours, because the stitches are so close to his eye. They put him in a room on the third floor with another kid. The two hit it off and are happy for company as they lie there, stoned.

Actually, neither is really happy for company. They are happy that they are rooming with another private school white kid who doesn't smell. It could be a lot worse. Especially for Andrew, who can tell the other kid is on much heavier drugs than he is.

That girl Sara Ludlow comes to visit. Her boyfriend is the other kid, Sean:
captain of the football team, skier at Vail, brown hair, born in the hospital he now lies in, school on Seventy-third Street, father on Wall Street, mother just chauffeured back to Eighty-fourth Street, whatever—
this kid is very high.
And who obeys the street signs anyway
.

Sean was in a car accident coming back from East Hampton in the new PT Cruiser his parents bought him for Christmas. Sara gives Andrew the once-over as she comes in, then looks at Sean's IV and kisses him on the forehead.

“Ohh, how are you? How's your arm?”

“I don't know.”

Andrew is watching and listening from the other bed. He is pretending to be half asleep as he takes in Sara's beauty. She is wearing tight jeans and has her hair in a ponytail. Andrew is horny.

“Where are your parents?” she asks Sean.

“Came and went.”

“So what do the doctors say?”

“I don't even know.”

“You must be on pretty heavy drugs, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I have some?”

“No, those are for when I go home.” Sean sounds suddenly angry.

“It was a joke,” she says.

Andrew laughs, and Sara turns to him but can't seem to decide whether to smile or scowl. She does both. Sean drifts off.

“Sorry. I'm Andrew.”

“Sara.”

“Sara Ludlow.”

“You know me?” as if everybody doesn't. In fact, Sara knows she is famous. She likes being famous. She
wants to be more famous. Here's how you do it. First you're famous in your grade, then you're famous in your school. Then you're famous in all the schools, and then in the city, or at least the part of the city that matters. And then you've got a career.

“Do you know that girl Vanessa who goes to your school?” He asks.

“Yeah.”

“She's friends with my sister.”

“Everybody knows everybody.” She can hear he has the Dave Matthews Band's
Under the Table and Dreaming
in his Discman, and she likes that music. “I've been meaning to get that album,” she says.

“You wanna take this one?”

“No, I couldn't . . .”

“No, really, take it.”
Excuse to see her again
, Andrew thinks,
and Dave Matthews blows anyway
. “Yeah, I've got other CDs. You can give it back to me next time I see you.”

“That's sweet. Thanks a lot.”

“I'll find you through him.” He nods at the other bed.

“Okay, great.”

“All right, I'm leaving, okay?” she says, looking at Sean.

“What about football?” he asks.

“What did the doctor say?”

“I might be out, I don't remember.”

“Good. Okay. Bye-bye.”

Sara walks for the door. Andrew watches the perfect smoothness of the denim on the back of her thighs as she walks away. After a while, he goes back to thinking about Hunter. There is not much he can do, he decides, but think. His father said he couldn't just call all the ritzy hotels in Europe. It would take time. Hunter didn't even know which country his parents were in when he talked to Andrew on the phone.