Thank you, Macbeth. I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Mom’s artwork these days is nothing like the colorful, Shakespeare-inspired paintings that once paid our bills and got her into galleries in New York, Los Angeles, London, scoring her interviews with prestigious art reviewers. I doubt it ever will again. That work was inspired by how she imagined her children might look when grown, playing out Shakespearean scenes in today’s modern but equally tragic and laughable world. At least, that’s what she said during old interviews when she was Evie Ellis, rising artist. She hasn’t made a sale in years yet still persists like a woman possessed. Searching for the same truth through her art as me.
The aluminum take-out tray I brought home from Nikko’s, where I work double shifts to help pay the monthly bills, sits untouched on the TV tray next to the couch. Moussaka is her favorite. She must have been in a hard trance tonight if she didn’t touch a bite. One of her arms hangs over the edge of the couch. Smudged like a coal miner’s, her fingers are covered to the second knuckle with charcoal dust, like she went digging for something that will explain how her life became upended, but failed and was too tired to wash away the effort. Today must have been a bad-memory day.
I study my own spray-paint-saturated forefinger and puff out a breath of awareness through my nose. We’re not so different on the inside, either, she and I.
“I should have stayed home,” she murmurs in her sleep.
That’s true.
“Toby should have stayed home, too.”
Also true. I’m no doctor to Lady Macbeth, but he nailed it when he said, Infected minds to their deaf pillow will discharge their secrets.
I let her sleep, let her admit our guilty truth in her dreams, while I head to the kitchen. I pull out my phone and review my photo of the message I threw up on a wall across from the police station. Location is everything. Call it vandalism if you like. I don’t care. You deal with your shit your way and I’ll deal with mine.
The message is loud and clear for all parties involved. YOU NEED TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE. I use stencils that I make at home with an X-Acto knife. Occasionally, I’ll echo something my mom drew and cut that into the mix, especially when she draws badass teenage girls. I tag everything with the nickname I had as a kid and put it up using this extended Pigpen cipher my best friend Sebastian and I learned when we were seven. If Jonesy isn’t a good enough detective to figure out who’s tagging the buildings around the police station, I can’t help him any more than he’s been able to help us.
My phone pings with a text from Bash, giving me props on the work I did tonight—a girl in a bulletproof vest pointing a rifle at the viewer with the message coming through the barrel. He must have seen it on his way home from his job at The Chicken Coop. This piece is definitely one of my favorites. I appreciate his praise. But whenever I return from tagging a building, deep-rooted feelings churn my gut for a few hours, and I don’t want to talk to anyone. Not even Bash. My mom is the same way, switching between wanting complete solitude and needing company, depending on her mood. Bash accepts this about me and doesn’t take offense. Good thing, because otherwise I wouldn’t have any friends. I grab a soda from the fridge, take the moussaka Mom didn’t eat for myself, and open my laptop. It’s not the first time I’ve poached her uneaten dinner and I’m sure it won’t be the last.
My phone pings again.
Are you working the dinner shift tomorrow night? Wanna meet up and trade?
Bash means trade dinners. Free food is a perk of working at a restaurant. Sometimes we trade, my Greek for his gourmet fried chicken. This might be hard to believe, but you can get sick of eating either one of those things if you eat it often enough. Bash gets sick of his faster than me because Nikko’s has a broader menu selection. Right now, I have a different choice to make. I can keep ignoring him and get aggravated by the next series of pings, or answer quickly. A therapist once told me childhood amnesia stops at age seven. Every memory prior is blank. Everything after is up for total recall. Lucky me. Bash has been my best friend since third grade. He’s been through everything with me that matters. I don’t know what I’d do without him.
I type, Yeah. OK, on the food trading thing and wait for his response.
Cool. Cool. Get me the deluxe gyro plate if your douchey manager with the signet ring doesn’t object.
That makes me laugh. Stavros isn’t a douche. He just keeps a close eye on profit margins and doesn’t allow our friends to loiter. He likes me because I’m Greek and pronounce the menu items correctly. Like year-oh with a rolled R, the way it’s supposed to sound. Not gyro, like gyroscope, or hero, even though the pita-wrapped sandwich is our bestseller and worthy of a gold medal.
The animated dots tell me Bash is typing. I turn off my phone and do the same thing I do most nights, contemplate whether or not to look for my sisters. I always come to the same conclusion, and within seconds I’m searching for pictures of Cassandra online. Because not only do I like to spray-paint graffiti on brick walls, I like to bang my head against them, too.
ASAP
AS SOON AS POSSIBLE
I STOP DEAD in the air shaft when I pick up a metallic thump-thump-thump heading straight for me. For a second, I think it’s my own echo, only it keeps clanging. There’s no way it’s the scurry of a rodent or anything smaller than me because the steady movement is too loud. My heart matches the beat as I wait for who or whatever is responsible for the noise to materialize. Someone escaping the situation just like me, preferably from my own coalition. But if it’s not, I have a simple you-got-busted plan ready. Play dumb and fearful of whatever situation is taking place.
I just got scared, Principal Weaver.
I wanted to be with my sisters. We’re very close and my mother told me watching out for them has to be my top priority.
I suppose that’s more of a plea than a plan.
Truthfully, I am scared for my sisters’ safety, because that did sound like gunfire. And we are very close.
The thumping grows quieter, moving away from me. I keep crawling forward. I’ve lost thirty seconds or more. Less than a full minute, but that amount of time moves like pond water when you’re on your belly in a steamy air shaft waiting to find out what’s going on.
I exhale when I spot Ansel thirty feet ahead of me, ready to drop into a classroom.
“Ansel,” I whisper-yell his name, but he doesn’t flinch.
He must not have heard me. It’s not like I can shout, Hey! What’s going on out there? I can’t risk giving up my position, not even for someone I consider a friend. Just a friend, despite what Birdie says about him.
The second he drops from the shaft, I crawl faster to see where he’s headed, ignoring the sharp pain in my knee. It’s a supply closet. As good a meet-up point as any, maybe better than mine. I’m surprised he didn’t screw the vent cover back in place. That’s sloppy work and not like him, at least from what I’ve seen during training modules. Then again, those have all taken place on the compound.
I poke my head through the opening like an upside-down gopher and say his name louder. This time he glances up, eyes shadowed by spidery lashes. His normally readable expression is completely blank. He shakes his head, telling me no, and splits.