I lean on the mailbox. I got a stitch going in my side from my hip to my ribs. It’s real quiet outside too. And I’m feeling eyes on me but fuck them. I look left. I look right.
I see a car down the block turn the front lights off but I don’t know if it was the car from before or a new car or a neighbor or what. Don’t care either.
When I look up again? Scrappy’s coming at me from the side of the house. She’s got a hoodie on now. And jeans. And she’s coming at me hard.
She’s whisper-shouting, “What the fuck you thinking, trying to come at my pad like this?”
BAM. She gets me good in the stomach with a fist I don’t even see swinging and I go down on where there should be grass but there isn’t. And the funny thing is how it feels good almost. How it’s not so bad as the quakes. It takes my mind off them. And I laugh.
She hates that shit. She kicks out at me and gets me good in the ribs where my stitch was. That I don’t laugh at. I just lose everything I got in my lungs and collapse into the dirt of her shitty front yard. I go into a ball till she gets sick of kicking at me. And she’s trying to catch her breath.
“You fight like a fucking closed envelope,” she says. And she spits next to me.
I pull out a wadded-up twenty and I hold it out to her. Like some flag of surrender.
She scoffs at that shit.
I unwad it. I try to make it flat between my hands before she snatches it and turns like she’s trying to go back inside that house. And you know I can’t let that happen.
“I’ll break the rest of your shutters off. I’ll fuck your garbage cans all up,” I say around some groans.
“You do that shit and I’ll kill your ass, Augie. Dumbass fucking gabacho!”
But she doesn’t step up to me. She’s shaking her head. And me? I hang on her every little move when I see her go into the pocket and rattle out a plastic bag with my name on it. When it’s out in the air, I don’t see anything else. Not streetlights. Not her. Nothing.
Only that plastic. Only that little bit of what’s inside it.
She throws it on the dirt and I go after it hard to get it in my hand. Like it’s a World Series catch and I fucking won the whole thing for making it. I smile so hard after that it’s like my face is gonna fall off.
Scrappy’s above me. Kicking at my foot but not hard.
“Hey. You ever walk up here again and you’re going in the hat. I don’t even care.” She puts both hands in her pockets and turns.
I get another quake where I’m sitting on my knees but I don’t feel it so much anymore. Not when I’m holding.
Because I’m up right after that and I’m walking back the way I came as fast as I can.
* * *
I don’t get too far when I hear some running footsteps and at first I’m thinking how they’re for me and I’m throwing the baggie in my mouth and getting it wedged up against my cheek but then I hear a guy’s voice.
“Scrap!”
That’s all he says. It’s not much. But it’s loud.
And it’s enough to get Scrappy to turn. And I’m turning too. Back up the street to face Scrappy’s house. And that’s when I see two people walking at her and one of them’s raising up a hand and there’s a pistol in it and I’m flinching back quick. But it’s too late.
I saw the guy’s face. It’s Wizard. And I’m fucking mad I just had to see that and mad he’s not covering his face or anything because that’s not good shit for me to be knowing and I’m getting right up behind the wall I had to lean on before when that fire spit comes from the barrel and goes white in the night.
One bang from the sidewalk. And Scrappy spins from that.
One from the middle of the dirt where I fell before. And she’s going down.
One from up close. When she’s already down.
I’m thinking how that was major when the gun’s getting dropped at her feet. Still smoking. My ears’re ringing. Dogs in people’s backyards are barking as loud as they can.
And Wizard and the other guy are running for a car. The other guy with a hoodie on. It’s a yellow Lakers one. The car’s starting. And that girl’s singing again. And then they’re gone. Not fast. Not screeching. Slow. Like they’d done it before. And that makes sense because Wizard’s real cold. He’s done all this before, I heard.
And I got adrenaline buzz all over me. It’s pushing my pains down. It’s making me run to stand by Scrappy and see how she ain’t moving but she’s breathing. So I roll up close to tell for sure.
But when I get there is when the door opens and her mother starts screaming. I try to tell her how there was dos muchachos here just now but that shit gets tangled up in my mouth.
“Telefona ambulanza!”
That’s what I end up saying. I say it twice for her to get me. But it helps with her knowing how I’m just the same dumbfuck from before. I didn’t do this. Couldn’t have.
She leaves the door open behind the screen when she goes for the phone. And I see the kid seeing his mom. He’s holding the popsicle stick. He’s got orange on his mouth. I can see that from the lamplight over the porch. He doesn’t even know what he’s seeing, and that’s good. That’s lucky for him.
Because I’m trying to put myself between him and Scrappy because she’s bleeding here right in front of me. And I’m seeing how she got one in the leg now. And one in the stomach. And one in like the upper shoulder by her neck. She’s got all types of bloody mud around her when I push both her hands onto her stomach.
“Hold there.” It’s like an order when I say it. “Hard as you can.”
A knife’s in the grass by her that she must’ve had and it fell out somehow. I grab that up and cut off some of the lower leg of her jeans and rip it into a strip and from the cuff. Baggies fall out and then I tourniquet the thing onto her thigh pretty good and fast.
“You’ll be okay.” I tell her that.
I count the baggies on the ground. There’s three.
And I tell myself how she doesn’t need them now. Look at her!
She shouldn’t have opened that door up late at night.
“You’ll be okay,” I say again.
She knew better.
And bleeding like that? Look! She’s not needing anything anymore!
But I do.
My heart’s going like crazy. I feel it every other place in my body. In my ears. In my throat. In my toes.
She’s got tears going. She’s closing her eyes.
“Motherfucking Wizard.” She says that.
And that’s making my stomach drop right then. Because of course she had to see him from that close.
“You’ll be okay. This ain’t shit.” I don’t see her react to what I’m saying.
She ain’t gonna be okay but I don’t say that.
And I’m going through those pockets of hers and I’m grabbing up every baggie in there but that’s not enough. My lip has got the itchies. So I bite it when I’m unrolling her other jean cuff and more baggies are falling out and I’m pocketing them till I don’t have enough room anymore and then I’m putting them in my socks.
I’m thinking about how I should’ve gone all up in her underwear to check her for more but there’s no redoing that tourniquet now, so I’m ripping her shoes off and pulling the liner things out and there’s two more baggies each and I’m scanning after that and not really thinking because then I got the gun in my hand.