Chapter Two
See Dizzy Fly
Dizzy throws open the door and rushes toward me.
“Stop,” I yell, holding my arms out.
“I won’t!”
The street-lamp-of-a-guy flips me over his shoulder and barrels into the house. I laugh when he tosses me onto a couch that may or may not harbor the Ebola virus. He places one long, skinny finger on my nose. “Where have we wanted to go for the last two months?”
I slap his hand away. “I don’t know. Where?”
He taps his temple and bobs his head, dark curls bouncing against brown skin. “Think, Buttercup. Think.”
So I do. My brain goes tick, tick, tick. And then my face pulls together and I crane my neck to the side. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
Dizzy jumps onto the makeshift coffee table we constructed and pretends to pound the surface with a king’s staff. “Here ye, hear ye. I pronounce tonight the night we wreak Havoc.”
“Havoc?” I say quietly. “No one gets in that club.”
He nods and his curls kiss his long lashes. “I met someone who knows someone who said he could do something for someone like me.”
“We’re going to Havoc,” I say again, because saying it again makes it real.
Dizzy raises his arms into the air, and I know that’s my cue to react. I stand up and spring onto the couch. Then I jump up and down and he grabs my hands. He leaps onto the crusty couch beside me and we go up and down screaming that we’re going to Havoc. That we’re going to party like beasts, because we are beasts. I throw my arms around him before I remember that we don’t do that. I hate being close to people and he hates being confined and this isn’t okay.
“Gross. Get off me,” he yells. “I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe!”
I let go, gladly, and Dizzy leaps back onto the floor. He looks like a spider doing it, all arms and legs. He’s certainly as thin as one.
His brown eyes spark beneath thick, caterpillar eyebrows. “Get ready,” he orders. Then he dashes up the stairs, each step burping from the weight.
I step down from the couch. Going to Havoc isn’t that big of a deal for most people. I get that. But this is my life now, has been for the last year. Sometimes going somewhere new—somewhere that’ll let people like Dizzy and me in—is everything. It’s a shiny penny fresh off the press, a black swan among white. It’s nothing groundbreaking. But it is.
I wash my hair and body as best I can using the bottles of water and bar of soap Dizzy stole from the gas station. The drain slurps it down and sighs as I massage my scalp. Next to me on a rusted towel hook, my pink wig waves hello. She’s ready to go, she tells me. She can’t wait to be worn like the crown she is.
I tell her to hold her damn horses because I’m washing my hair in a sink.
Wrapping a towel that’s seen better days around my head, I step out of the bathroom and into what’s been my room for the last ten months. Ten months. I’ve lived with Dizzy for nearly a year, and I could count the things I know about him on my pencil-thin fingers.
When he was sixteen, his mom put him and his older brother on a plane from Iran bound for America. The pair landed in Philadelphia, and eventually Dizzy ended up here. He never talks about his brother, and I don’t ask. I know he enjoys Twizzlers and blue ballpoint pens and crisp, white shoelaces. I know because he steals those things most often.
I’ve never seen anyone steal something the way Dizzy does. Once before, when I was at a department store, I spotted a pair of kids working together to pinch a yellow Nike hoodie. One kid distracted the associate, asking for help to get something down off the wall, while the other slipped the hoodie inside his leather jacket. They got away with it. I remember wanting to follow them. See what they did next.
Dizzy doesn’t work that way. He doesn’t distract or scheme. He just slips by what he wants like a ghost, and it’s gone. Anything he wants, gone. Dizzy never takes more than he needs, but he needs a lot.
I met him at an arcade. I was playing Pac-Man when I saw him across the room. He was almost as thin as I was, and his nails told me everything I needed to know. He was like me—homeless. I’ve met homeless people who try to scrub away the streets. It never works. The human body has too many crevices, too many places for grime to settle. You can see it in the small lines of their faces and in their palms and elbows. And you can see it in their nails.
Dizzy’s nails were atrocious. He didn’t try to scrub away the street. He embraced it. I needed someone like that. As I watched, the long-legged, dark-skinned man-boy swiped a red can of soda from the bar. The soda was there. The soda was gone. If I hadn’t been watching closely, I might have believed he was made of magic—Dracula strikes Detroit.
That day in the arcade, Dizzy met my stare with a boldness I admired. I eyed the place where the soda had been, and he smiled. Then he turned and swept out the door. With the rang-tanging of arcade games behind me, I followed him. I followed him then, and I follow him now. He’s my person. Not that I need one.
I startle when I spot my person standing in the bedroom doorway.
His eyes widen as if he just remembered I’m a girl. Tugging the towel around my body tighter, I avert my gaze. “What are you looking at?”
“I forget sometimes,” he says softly. “What you look like.”
He means without my makeup. Without my rainbow wigs and chains and piercings. He means me as I am right now: Domino, in the nude. “Stop staring at me, perv.”
“I know you hate it when I—”
“Stop,” I say. “Just don’t.”
He holds up his hands in defeat. “I’m ready to go when you are.”
I move to my closet—a pile of clothes on the floor that Dizzy stole for me—and bend to dig through it. Behind me, I hear him turn to leave.
“You are so beautiful,” he says under his breath before he’s gone.
I almost charge after him. I almost beat his chest and scratch his face with my dirtied nails. Anything to make him regret what he said. But I just tighten my hands into fists and I count—one, two, three…ten.
Now my blood is even Steven, and everything’s going to be okay. It’s just Dizzy. His words are easy enough to forget. I smile like I mean it and lay a hand against the wall. It’s solid, real. If this wall is treated right, it’ll stand straight as the stars long after I’m dead. This particular wall is white with blotches of gray from God knows what.
But my wall, the one in my future house, will be blue.
I walk back into my bathroom, the one uglied by water stains and years of neglect, and pull on a black skirt and tee, lace-up heels, and green-and-black-striped tights like I’m the Wicked Witch of the West. Then I hook in my piercings—lip, ears, eyebrow, tongue—and swipe on enough eyeliner and shadow to cause anyone’s mama to shiver. Finally…hello, darling…I slip on my pink wig.
My armor is complete. But then I catch my reflection in the cracked mirror. My jaw tightens as I take in what Dizzy saw. The face of an angel, isn’t that what they always said?
They. They.
Them.
I see the same inventory Dizzy does: large blue eyes, soft skin, blond hair kept hidden beneath a wig. But there’s more than meets the proverbial eye here. There’s something else that he doesn’t know about. That no one knows about. There’s a darkness living inside me. A blackness that sleeps in my belly like a coiled snake.
His name is Wilson.
Chapter Three
Monsters
It takes us twenty minutes of walking through the sticky night to get to Havoc. Dizzy leads me to the side of a white brick building and into an alley that reeks of spoiled food.
“What’s going on, creeper?” I ask him. “Why aren’t we going in?”
“We are.” He glances around, searching for something. “There.” Dizzy half jogs down the alley and then approaches a window. “VIP access.”
“We’re going through the window?” I ask, wondering why I’m surprised.
“It’s packed every night. They can pick who they want to let in.”
And that isn’t us. That’s what he’s saying. If bouncers are allowed to pick, they won’t pick us. I stumble toward Dizzy, sure my feet are bleeding from the long walk in my ridiculous heels, and stop when something catches my eye. There’s a man sitting behind the green Dumpster. He’s homeless. A toddler would know this.
His face is mangled in a way that makes my stomach lurch. One of his eyes is missing, a single slash across the space where it should be. His other eye is oozing something yellow. And along his neck is an angry rash that’s slowly climbing its way onto his cheeks.
He attempts a smile. “Evening.”
His voice is gentle, and I try to return the gesture as Dizzy calls my name.
“Have a good time,” the man says sincerely, nodding toward Dizzy.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I dig into my pocket and pull out what little cash I have. I hand it to the man.
“Domino.” Dizzy’s voice holds a warning.
I move away from the man and toward Dizzy. “Let’s go.”
“Why did you give that guy our money? Dude looks like a monster.”
I eye the man over my shoulder. “I’ve seen monsters before,” I say. “They don’t look like him.”
They look like me.
There’s a tap-tap-tap from behind me, and I turn to see a guy standing inside the window, waving. He slides the glass up and reaches out an arm. Music explodes into the alley as if it’s offering a hand, too.
“Hey, big man,” Dizzy says.
“Hurry up,” Window Guy responds. “It stinks of herpes in here.”
Dizzy gives me a boost. Using the guy’s arm as leverage, I pull myself through the window. It’s a perfect opening. My body slides through the square and lightly brushes the frame. I bet whoever put this window here figured it was immune to break-ins, but they never counted on Dizzy and me.
I land in a bathroom that’s covered in magic marker.
For a so-so time, call Trini!
Aiden + Amber = Pimp Juice
Jessika is a LIAR and SKANK
I love it instantly. Just a few more streaks of color and—
Window Guy calls for my help and together we drag Dizzy upward. Halfway through the window, Dizzy gets stuck. In an instant, he becomes a kicking, swinging madman, his fear of tight places overcoming reason.
“Calm down, Dizzy,” I yell as I tug harder. “Just. Calm. Down.”
I pull backward with all my might, and he crashes onto the floor. Then he bounds upright as if nothing happened. As if he didn’t just have a completely unwarranted panic attack. Dizzy throws me a grin, and a girl with short black hair and red lipstick swings through the door.
“What’s going on in here?” she asks. And then, “No. Never mind. Whatever it is, I’m in. That’s how I roll.” Except when she says roll it’s more like roooooooll.
Dizzy slams his hand down on the porcelain sink and points at her. “I like you, girl. I’m going to name you Black Beauty.”
The girl gallops and slaps her butt as if she’s riding a horse. She is, without a doubt, wildly drunk.
Dizzy takes her arm. “I’m also going to let you buy me a drink.”
I’m hurt when he vanishes with the girl. Sometimes I feel like our relationship is a close one, or as close as it can be between two homeless people harboring demons. Other times it feels like I’m standing in place as Dizzy walks away, or perhaps trailing behind as he’s a step ahead.
I’m overthinking it. Of course I am. Who do we have if not each other?
Window Guy glances in my direction. He’s short and thick and built like a closed fist. He smiles with one side of his mouth. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” he says. And then he’s gone, following after Dizzy and Black Beauty.
I quickly recover from being ditched. After all, I enjoy being alone, and there’s no better way to be alone than in a place like this. After straightening my pink wig, I walk through the bathroom door to where the music thumps even louder. The room is dark and the ceiling low. A dozen globes hang overhead, lighting up different colors. It reminds me of one of those Christmas houses that times the lights to the music, each strand taking its turn to shine.
The club, Havoc, is packed. Bodies pulse against one another and, as I pass them by, I am forgotten. It’s a feeling like no other—to be present and invisible at once. I don’t appreciate that the people are so close, that they are everywhere. But they don’t see me so it’s okay.
It doesn’t take long for me to lose myself in the music. I dance alone, and in my head it feels like I’m normal, like all these people are my friends and they give me space, but they care about me, too. My head falls back, and I raise my arms into the air. Music injects my veins and rushes through my body. It takes me away, far away.
Until.
Until someone grows nearer than the others. An arm wraps around my waist and hips brush my rear.
“Back up,” I yell, because there’s no way he’d hear me otherwise.
He doesn’t back up.
I spin around and the guy—tall, broad-shouldered, eyes that remind me of a Sunday school boy but I know better—pulls me tighter. He leans his head down to my ear and tells me I look sexy. Do I want to dance?
We’re already dancing, and the answer is no. It’s always no.
“Let go of me,” I holler. “I won’t say it again.”
The guy grins so that I can see every tooth in his mouth. His cheeks are bright red, and his brow is covered in sweat. He isn’t unattractive, but I can smell what’s beneath his sweet cologne. He is ugly on the inside. And his hands are on me.
He spins me around and my stomach clenches.
I’m being pulled backward toward a corner and oh my God no one is seeing what he’s doing. Or they see and don’t mind. My heart beats so hard it aches, and my breathing comes fast. But I don’t care about that. I care about what will happen if he keeps manhandling me.
I fear what I will do.
The guy pushes me against a wall so that my belly touches sheetrock painted black. His hands roam over my body, exploring the curveless shape of my torso. If he only knew. If he only knew he had an explosive in his grasp.
He runs a finger over my lips.
He pulls the clip off the grenade.
He pushes his mouth against the back of my neck.
He relishes the danger of the bomb in his hand.
His palm slides down the flat of my stomach.
Seconds left until detonation. Take cover!
Inside my head, I scream. Outside my head, I scream. I thrash against him but he uses my weakness to his advantage. I am shy of five feet tall, and I am built of bones.
He is built of steak dinners and whole milk.
His hands move lower and lower, and deep inside the recesses of my brain, something sinister yawns awake. No, no, no! Nothing to see here! Go back to sleep!
It’s no use.
Wilson stretches tall and smiles to himself.
He looks around like he’s amused by what’s happening to us.
Hello, Domino, he says. It’s been a while.