For my husband,
thank you for your love, support and enthusiasm … and
for finally convincing me to let you read this before I
destroyed it. I couldn’t have written this without you.
About Taking Risks
Chapter Eleven:
Fun and Games
Chapter Twelve:
A Dark Place
Chapter Thirteen:
Therapy
Chapter Fourteen:
The Proper Kind of Diversion
Chapter Fifteen:
Flying High
Chapter Sixteen:
Scar Tissue
Chapter Seventeen:
Different Worlds
Chapter Eighteen:
Heated Moments
Chapter Nineteen:
Expecting the Expected
Chapter Twenty:
Terrorized
Chapter Twenty-One:
INever Said It Was a Good Plan
Chapter Twenty-Two:
Fitting Pieces Together
Chapter Twenty-Three:
Normal?
Chapter Twenty-Four:
A New Calling
Chapter Twenty-Five:
Broken
Chapter Twenty-Six:
Deadly Risky Business
Chapter Twenty-Seven:
Old Emily
Chapter Twenty-Eight:
Giving Up
Chapter Twenty-Nine:
The One Who Holds the Gun
Chapter Thirty:
Passing on the Crazy Torch
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my Mom and Dad for encouraging (i.e.,
bribing) me to read as a child by intensely quizzing me on
the books that I would read, and then paying me; though, it
still seems a bit unfair that Ididn’t get paid for doing chores,
even though I still had to do them! In spite of this, I love you
very much.
I would also like to thank France, Jen, Jess, and Laura,
my book club girls (a.k.a. the baby club and the super fatty
dessert club). Asking you to proofread and critique my
manuscript was a tremendous favor, particularly when we
don’t have much time to ourselves any more. Unfortunately,
you are now on my fictitious payroll to read the next books
in the series. I’ll make sure to bring dessert.
“The man who desires something desires what is not
available to him, and what he doesn’t already have in his
possession. And what he neither has nor himself is—that
which he lacks—that is what he wants and desires.” Plato,
Symposium
Prologue
The motor of my 1989 Chevrolet Capri was thumping
against the hood, making the whole car jitter. We sat in
silence, stuck at another red light while the oversized
muffler gurgled.
For the sixth time in the last five minutes, I checked my
watch and sighed, aware that my left leg was impatiently
shaking with the rest of the car. I stepped on the gas about
a half second before the light turned green, trying to coerce
the old lady in front of me to react a little faster—honking,
swearing when she didn’t react at all. The old lady woke up
and finally stepped on it.
My bumper practically rubbed hers, but I only had one
thing on my mind. Colors. Would it be green or blue today?
Maybe white—my favorite. A dark voice in the back of my
mind offered no color at all as an alternative. I smothered
that voice. The days of no color were simply too hard to
bear. I needed color today. My cohort in the backseat
echoed my edginess with a whine.
When the traffic came to Finch Road, the old lady veered
off with everyone else. Finch was the line that separated
city life from no man’s land—that good people like the old
lady ahead of me pretended didn’t exist and steered away
from as quickly as possible, lest it suck them in to the point
where they would be forced to acknowledge its existence. I
couldn’t blame them—Iwouldn’t want my loved ones to ever
come near this hellhole. This thought made my knuckles
strangle the steering wheel.
As soon as I passed the Finch threshold, I switched the
music on and turned up the volume until the tinted windows
of my Capri were vibrating. I was definitely in the projects
now. Rusty, souped-up beaters were lined up on the street,
some half-parked on the crumbled sidewalks, others sat
tireless on cement blocks. Men and boys amassed in the
doorways of the decrepit apartment buildings, watching as I
drove by. A place that even the police avoided, and one of
our best moneymakers. I had nothing to fear here, so long
as I made sure to pay my respects before disappearing
into the crowd.
I drove up to the last building at the end of the street
where a small group of choice gangbangers was waiting
for me—a reminder that I was on their turf. This last building
was their headquarters, providing them with a full view of
the business and goings-on of the street. I parked illegally
next to a fire hydrant, threw my baseball cap on, and pulled
my hood up. I took the revolver out of the glove box and
tucked it into the back of my jeans, making sure that just
enough of the handle could be seen by those who would be
looking for it.
I then stalked out of the car, and Meatball pounced from
the backseat, following me out.
In a motion that had become second nature, I scanned
the area and gathered an infinite amount of information in a
few short seconds: shadowed doorways, quick exit points,
how many thugs with guns were staring at me, how many
were avoiding staring at me. Basically, I spent my life with
my stomach in a fist and my teeth clenched like I was
already locked away, looking at the world through the steel
bars of my cell.
But all was well in the projects today—as well as the
projects could be.
The leader of the pack strutted over to me. He ordered
his men to stand down, away from us, before he leaned in
with a voice that only he and Icould hear. “Afternoon, sir.”
He was known as Grill—paying homage to his fully gold-
plated smile, financed with his illegal fortunes. I nodded to
Grill. Though he was a low-ranker—a much lower-ranker—I
was required to acknowledge him before entering his turf.
This would ensure my safety, reassure him that my
presence didn’t mean that the leaders were trying to oust
him.
“Out for a stroll?” he asked, and then he hopped back
when Meatball stepped forward.
I tugged Meatball back, and then I looked around us … I
didn’t need any trouble today.
Grill finally relaxed and cocked his head to the side. “You
alone again today, sir?”
I checked my watch again. Then I waved him off and
walked away. The look of indignation on his face told me
that he didn’t appreciate being dismissed in this way in
front of his troops. But Ihad no time for ego-stroking.
Meatball shepherded us through the hoards of families
that had gathered in the nearby clearing to enjoy the rest of
the sunny May afternoon. He tugged ahead, and we quickly
worked our way deeper into the clearing. I recognized
some of the faces. From their stares, they recognized me
too. There was no love lost there—I was the face to their
problems; I couldn’t hide the blood that stained my hands.
But I wasn’t trying to either. All I wanted, needed, today
were a few seconds of peace.
We found a vacated picnic table and hid in the crowd,
waiting. Ipulled my shirt over my gun.
After a few minutes, Meatball’s head shot up, and his
ears went flat to his skull. My breath quickened, the fist
inside me loosened a quarter of an inch, and the dark voice
inside my head was made null and void, finally.
Chapter One:
Forever Freakish
By the time the instructor called time, I had already
meticulously gone over my exam paper five times. It must
have been at least two hundred degrees in that auditorium,
like the school needed to make sure that absolutely no one
would be spared the sweat of exam week. The crevasse,
dug into the back of my neck by the steady stream of
sweat, was proof that Itoo hadn’t been spared.
The few students that lagged behind left the stifling
auditorium. Callister University was not an Ivy League
school. It had probably never even been in the running for a
top one hundred, top one thousand, any list of any schools
in the country. But I still needed to maintain anA average to
keep my full scholarship. So I took an extra second to
check the dotted line at the right hand corner of my paper,
on the off chance that Professor Vernon was one of those
profs who still gave students an extra point just for spelling
their names correctly. Emily Sheppard. My name was
spelled right, though Istill cringed, just a little.
Then I put my pencil down, turned my exam paper over,
and had to let a very small sigh escape me. At the very
least, I had survived one year of college, which meant that I
was temporarily free of cramming for exams, of listening to
endless lectures … school was such a great way to kill
time. Iwould miss that.
I rushed back to the house and stepped into complete
chaos—then again, when you share a three-bedroom hole
with six other roommates, everyday is chaotic. You just
learn to measure in degrees of chaos. In our house, chaos
ranged anywhere from the morning run through the obstacle
course of empty beer cases to get into the one
bathroom … to keep your head down, and hope that
nothing with sharp edges was within reach of the couch.
Making it out the door in time for your next class was a
challenge, to say the least.
Today was in the range of controlled anarchy. All of my
roommates were moving out for the summer. There were
hampers and garbage bags bunched at the door, most of
them filled to the brim with dirty laundry—a common end-of-
term gift for the parents. Everything was being packed—
thrown really—into whatever container they could find, while
their parents were shouting orders, trying to get out of our
hole as quickly as possible.
Everyone who could escape Callister did so at their
earliest opportunity. I was the only one of my roommates
who wasn’t going home for the summer break. Burt and
Isabelle, my parents, were spending the summer in France,
where Isabelle was born and over-bred. Europe was a
regular retreat for the Sheppard family. I had put an end to
that too—even a hot summer in a dead city was better than
that torture.
My roommates were rushed with their good-byes and
have a great summer. And then they were gone, and I was
left standing in the living room, alone with the abandoned
school books and empty pizza boxes.
The house had been dubbed by some—mostly of the
parental origin—a dump. I loved it. New and interesting
stains appeared on the living room carpet, unrecognizable
smells emanated from the basement, the kitchen housed a
family of ants, the sole bathroom with the tub that often
doubled as a beer bucket was booby trapped with rotting
plywood. These were but a few of the marvels of this
student housing. And I would have it all to myself for four
glorious months.
I basked in silence for a few minutes more and then ran
upstairs to my bedroom before Iran out of daylight.
My bedroom was the one at the end of the hall. Except
that it wasn’t really a bedroom, but a broom closet that had
been converted into a “rentable” space. In other words, if it
was big enough for a semi-grown person to lay in, the
landlord could charge student rent for it. It had no windows,
no lights, no electrical outlets, and a curtain hung in place of
a door because my single bed took up all of the floor
space. I’d had to run a fire-hazard electrical cord from one
of my roommates’ room into mine just to be able to plug in
a lamp and an alarm clock.
What my room lacked in square footage it made up in
character. My doll-sized bed, squeezed between three
walls, stood on three-foot high stilts made of milk crates
that had been secretly borrowed from the corner store. My
clothes, my shoes, and my schoolbooks were stacked in
Rubbermaid bins under the bed, and two-dollar Van Goghs
hid most of the holes in the walls. The best part: it only cost
me a hundred bucks a month—all inclusive.
I closed the curtain door, switched my jeans for
sweatpants and ran back down the stairs.
After hiding the key under the front mat, I hit the ground
running, literally, and zipped down the streets. I dodged
people and the heaps of garbage that were piling up on the
sidewalks—remnants of all the students who were gradually
abandoning the city. By this time tomorrow, the city would
be bare of the students that gave it life, the heaps would
have been well looted, and only the real garbage would
remain.
This part of Callister was considered the slum of the city
—a stark contrast to the manicured lawns I had grown up
with. What had been—probably a million years ago—a
cute, middle-class neighborhood was now another
dilapidated, though nicely affordable, sore spot on the city’s
good standing. With its proximity to the university, it
accommodated this weird mix of college students,
underprivileged families, and drug dealers. It had a certain
charm—most of the houses were small, wartime wooden
homes built about three feet from the street and barely two
feet apart from each other.
I was sure that the neighborhood must have been pretty
at some point. Now most of the paint was chipping away.
Multicolored layers started peering through spots as if the
houses bared the scars left by the previous owners before
being abandoned for good.
I hiked up one of the busier drags—my least favorite part
of the run. Too many cars were driving by with practically
everyone turning their eyes in my direction, like this was the
first time they had ever seen someone run. I told myself that
it was because of where I was—in this city, someone who
ran was usually running away from something, like the cops
or the barrel of a shopkeeper’s gun.
But somehow I knew it had nothing to do with the bad
neighborhood, and everything to do with me—I was a
beacon for curious stares. My hair was the color of
spaghetti sauce. Not the expensive, gourmet kind, but the
kind that was usually in a can, usually sold in bulk, and
mostly made of carrots. And to say that I was pale was
greatly fallacious. The reddish-brown freckles that speckled
every inch of my ghostly skin were enough color for my
taste. To top it off, I was skinny. Not the “you-should-be-a-
model” type of skinny—but the bony, awkward kind of
skeletal. I held out hope that I would someday add
something, anything, to my bones, but given that I was still
my skinny mother’s carbon copy, hope faded with every
year that passed.
I wasn’t paranoid … but still, I turned up the sound on my
Walkman. It’s easier to ignore people’s stares when you’ve
got music blasting in your ears. Then I ran up the hill and
took a right into an almost hidden alley.
Behind two brick buildings there was a small patch of
trees that towered over the laneway, shedding a carpet of
little white beans all over the street. It was one of the few
areas in the ghetto that had anything green still living. I
veered onto the pathway that led through the cemetery. Like
the rest of the neighborhood, the cemetery had been left
neglected, with weeds growing everywhere—around, and
within the slow cracks of tombstones. Street-gang graffiti,
spray-painted art covered almost every surface of the
graveyard, including some of the stones.
It was among the broken beer bottles, cigarette butts,
and fast-food wrappers that stood the only tombstone that
had been maintained by the caretaker—he must have been
paid handsomely by my parents to keep the weeds and
garbage away from my brother Bill’s grave. I ran this same
route almost every day after school. Some days I would
stop and sit to talk to Bill or just stare at the head of his
stone.
Today I kept running, trying to make the most out of the
lingering daylight, because I was running late, because a
graveyard was definitely not where I wanted to be after
dark. Ihad watched too many movies for that.
The pathway snaked the cemetery and eventually led
through a fence of overgrowth and trees. I ran into the
opening of the field of weeds and into the projects. The
projects were a city within the city, a bouquet of high-rise
public-housing apartment buildings built by the good
people of Callister. What they really were was ugly and, as
far as I could tell, barely habitable. They were built quite
hastily by the city in the middle of a large piece of land—an
unusually large, vacant, removed, industrial piece of land.
The city’s plan was to keep the poor off the streets, or away
and out of sight from the rest of the city. Entering the
projects was like entering another world.
While the cemetery had been virtually deserted, the field
around the buildings was veiled with people. It had been the
first really warm day of the year. The sun was shining, and
the city—even the city within the city—was suddenly coming
out of hibernation. Hard-up kids played and screamed in
the tall grass, families were grouped around tiny
barbeques, rap music was blaring, and foot traffic
congested the walkways. So I made my way through the
crowd, weaving in and out of the foot traffic to the beat of
my breath and Bob Marley on my headphones.
Contrary to one of my roommate’s theory, I wasn’t trying
to be retro with my ancient Walkman. I’d discovered it in our
basement when we first moved into the house. It was free,
and free was all I could afford. Yes, the Bob Marley tape
that was already in there had melted into the Walkman.And
yes, I was forced to listen to the same tape over and over
again. But it didn’t matter—it was all I needed to quiet the
voice in my head long enough to put one foot in front of the
other without tripping.
But when I ran through the crowd today, I started to
realize that something was different, wrong somehow.
People were staring at me, maybe even more than usual. I
stared ahead and tried to keep my mind on my pace, on my
breath, away from my delusions.
Except that I wasn’t being paranoid—people were
definitely staring. And then they were moving. Away from
me. Parting to the sides as I ran past, like the sea in that
book—though nothing about this felt biblical. Was there
something on my face? I brought my hand to my sweaty
face, as coolly as I could, quickly passing my fingers over
my skin. As far as Icould detect, there were no nose bleeds
or anything else that was abnormal—abnormal for me. That
was when I noticed a lady in front of me a few yards away.
The fact that she was wearing a yellow hat, and had a
plastic yellow purse made me notice her more than the fact
that she was looking right at me. She was mouthing
something, but all Icould hear was Bob’s voice.
Before I could grasp that she was telling me to watch out,
a large black shadow had sped to me. I never had time to
react. Something hard and heavy had rammed into me
from behind, and Iwas brought down to the ground.
I came crashing, face-first, into the pebbled walkway with
barely enough time to pull my hands out in front of me to
break some of my fall. And that was where I laid—pinned.
Then something bounced off my back, and I felt something
hot, wet and sticky on my face. It wasn’t blood.
Glimpsing up, dazed, I saw the cow-sized head of a dog
too close to my face, very big teeth, leash hanging freely
from its neck. I heard a winded voice but I didn’t think that I
could respond. Even if I could, I wouldn’t—afraid the dog’s
tongue would slip into my mouth if Itried to open it to speak.
A man had come to grab the massive beast’s leash and
pulled it away from my now-licked-clean face. I felt a strong
hand on my arm, and Iwas tugged up to my shaky feet.
While I came back to life, I investigated my hands. They
were pretty scraped up. And though I couldn’t see any tears
in my sweatpants, I knew that I would have plum-sized
bruises on my kneecaps tomorrow. On the ground I saw my
prized Walkman, shattered to pieces all the way down the
walkway. I pulled the now useless earphones away from my
ears and let them drop to the ground.
“I’m okay,” I finally answered, though I wasn’t sure if
anyone had asked me.
Glancing up, facing the westerly setting sun, I brought my
hand to my forehead to rim my eyes from the blinding light.
What I could see was the dog’s owner, the shadow of a boy
or a man in a gray sweater. He was tall, and his face was
hidden by the darkness of his gray hood and the ball cap
that was pulled down to his eyebrows.
We stood there, studying each other like boxers do after
they step into the ring.
I was waiting for what would generally come next after a
dog attack, like an apology or an offer to get my clothes
dry-cleaned or his lawyer’s name so that our lawyers could
connect easily when Ifiled a lawsuit.
But the boy remained silent, fingering his watch and
swiftly scanning the scene before returning his darkened
eyes to me.
“I’m Emily.” I extended a hand out and moved in closer to
see his face. Names, I thought, were a good start. But he
stepped back and glanced down.
“Your shoelace is untied,” he told me, almost angrily.
I pulled my hand back, feeling a little like a moron, and
followed his gaze to my feet.
I crouched down to tie my shoelace; this provoked the
dog to bark and lunge to the end of its leash. I couldn’t tell if
it was happy or angry. It didn’t matter—I jumped back, fell
on my behind, wondered how long it would take before the
leash snapped and the dog was back on me again.
“He’s not going to hurt you.” The owner had said this with
irritation—like he was upset with my fear of the beast that
had attacked me a few seconds before.
I huffed and tugged on my thread of a shoelace—of
course, it snapped.
“You need new shoes,” he uneasily commented again.
“My shoes were fine till your dog used me as a
springboard.”
While I struggled to tie what was left of my shoelace into
a knot and try to make sense of this guy’s social
awkwardness, I glared up and watched as his hands
clenched into a fist and his shadowed jaw tightened. We
were interrupted before the hairs on my arms had time to
fully stiffen.
“Hey, girl,” said a voice behind me. “Think you dropped
this.”
I came to my feet and spun around. A man in a baggy
tracksuit handed me my Bob Marley tape: it had finally
dislodged itself from my Walkman, taking pieces of the
Walkman with it. I knew enough about the local gang colors
and teardrop tattoos that this man was showing off to know
that Ishould stay as far away as possible. It was clear to me
that Iwas slowly being surrounded, outnumbered.
“Thanks,” Imumbled.
“What is this thing anyway?” he asked me.
When I extended my hand to meet his and quickly grab
the tape, the Rottweiler went wild again, barking, growling,
almost snapping its leash.
Icame to be very still.
The gangbanger stepped back, but his frightened gaze
was not directed to the hostile dog, but to the dog’s owner.
“Sorry man,” he stuttered, taking a few short steps back
before turning around. I watched him leave and noticed that
everyone around us was doing their best to avoid looking in
our direction. Accidents, like holes in the ground, usually
attract crowds of gawkers and do-gooders—don’t they?
Yet no one else had dared to come near us.
Perturbed, I turned back to the boy and confirmed that he
looked quite plain—no signs of any gang affiliations.
Though his dog had calmed down again, the boy holding
the leash looked as if he were about to spontaneously
combust. When he spoke, I realized it was me that he was
angry with.
“You really shouldn’t be running by yourself in this
neighborhood. It’s a really stupid thing to do.”
With this revelation, I took a moment, and waited for
further enlightenment.
But nothing else came from him.
“Are you serious?” Iprobed after a few seconds.
He stayed silently erect.
I lashed out. “Must I remind you that your dog attacked
me and your dog broke my Walkman? You’re not seriously
blaming this on me?”
The boy once again scanned the grounds and stopped at
mavelle
Arkusze
EBooki 
Julie Hockley iUniverse, Inc. Bloomington
Crow’s Row Copyright ©2011 by Julie Hockley All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. iUniverse books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting: iUniverse 1663 Liberty Drive Bloomington, IN 47403 www.iuniverse.com 1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677) Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them. Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only. Certain stock imagery ©Thinkstock. ISBN: 978-1-4620-0390-7 (sc) ISBN: 978-1-4620-0392-1 (dj) ISBN: 978-1-4620-0391-4 (ebk) Printed in the United States of America iUniverse rev. date: 4/5/2011
For my husband, thank you for your love, support and enthusiasm … and for finally convincing me to let you read this before I destroyed it. I couldn’t have written this without you.
Contents Acknowledgments Prologue Chapter One: Forever Freakish Chapter Two: The Secret to My Excess Chapter Three: Haunted Chapter Four: Chow Mein Chapter Five: The Farm Chapter Six: Cool Kids Chapter Seven: Sand Castles Chapter Eight: Unclothed Chapter Nine: Misery Chapter Ten:
About Taking Risks Chapter Eleven: Fun and Games Chapter Twelve: A Dark Place Chapter Thirteen: Therapy Chapter Fourteen: The Proper Kind of Diversion Chapter Fifteen: Flying High Chapter Sixteen: Scar Tissue Chapter Seventeen: Different Worlds Chapter Eighteen: Heated Moments Chapter Nineteen: Expecting the Expected Chapter Twenty: Terrorized Chapter Twenty-One: INever Said It Was a Good Plan
Chapter Twenty-Two: Fitting Pieces Together Chapter Twenty-Three: Normal? Chapter Twenty-Four: A New Calling Chapter Twenty-Five: Broken Chapter Twenty-Six: Deadly Risky Business Chapter Twenty-Seven: Old Emily Chapter Twenty-Eight: Giving Up Chapter Twenty-Nine: The One Who Holds the Gun Chapter Thirty: Passing on the Crazy Torch Epilogue
Acknowledgments I would like to thank my Mom and Dad for encouraging (i.e., bribing) me to read as a child by intensely quizzing me on the books that I would read, and then paying me; though, it still seems a bit unfair that Ididn’t get paid for doing chores, even though I still had to do them! In spite of this, I love you very much. I would also like to thank France, Jen, Jess, and Laura, my book club girls (a.k.a. the baby club and the super fatty dessert club). Asking you to proofread and critique my manuscript was a tremendous favor, particularly when we don’t have much time to ourselves any more. Unfortunately, you are now on my fictitious payroll to read the next books in the series. I’ll make sure to bring dessert.
“The man who desires something desires what is not available to him, and what he doesn’t already have in his possession. And what he neither has nor himself is—that which he lacks—that is what he wants and desires.” Plato, Symposium
Prologue The motor of my 1989 Chevrolet Capri was thumping against the hood, making the whole car jitter. We sat in silence, stuck at another red light while the oversized muffler gurgled. For the sixth time in the last five minutes, I checked my watch and sighed, aware that my left leg was impatiently shaking with the rest of the car. I stepped on the gas about a half second before the light turned green, trying to coerce the old lady in front of me to react a little faster—honking, swearing when she didn’t react at all. The old lady woke up and finally stepped on it. My bumper practically rubbed hers, but I only had one thing on my mind. Colors. Would it be green or blue today? Maybe white—my favorite. A dark voice in the back of my mind offered no color at all as an alternative. I smothered that voice. The days of no color were simply too hard to bear. I needed color today. My cohort in the backseat echoed my edginess with a whine. When the traffic came to Finch Road, the old lady veered off with everyone else. Finch was the line that separated city life from no man’s land—that good people like the old lady ahead of me pretended didn’t exist and steered away
from as quickly as possible, lest it suck them in to the point where they would be forced to acknowledge its existence. I couldn’t blame them—Iwouldn’t want my loved ones to ever come near this hellhole. This thought made my knuckles strangle the steering wheel. As soon as I passed the Finch threshold, I switched the music on and turned up the volume until the tinted windows of my Capri were vibrating. I was definitely in the projects now. Rusty, souped-up beaters were lined up on the street, some half-parked on the crumbled sidewalks, others sat tireless on cement blocks. Men and boys amassed in the doorways of the decrepit apartment buildings, watching as I drove by. A place that even the police avoided, and one of our best moneymakers. I had nothing to fear here, so long as I made sure to pay my respects before disappearing into the crowd. I drove up to the last building at the end of the street where a small group of choice gangbangers was waiting for me—a reminder that I was on their turf. This last building was their headquarters, providing them with a full view of the business and goings-on of the street. I parked illegally next to a fire hydrant, threw my baseball cap on, and pulled my hood up. I took the revolver out of the glove box and tucked it into the back of my jeans, making sure that just enough of the handle could be seen by those who would be looking for it. I then stalked out of the car, and Meatball pounced from the backseat, following me out. In a motion that had become second nature, I scanned
the area and gathered an infinite amount of information in a few short seconds: shadowed doorways, quick exit points, how many thugs with guns were staring at me, how many were avoiding staring at me. Basically, I spent my life with my stomach in a fist and my teeth clenched like I was already locked away, looking at the world through the steel bars of my cell. But all was well in the projects today—as well as the projects could be. The leader of the pack strutted over to me. He ordered his men to stand down, away from us, before he leaned in with a voice that only he and Icould hear. “Afternoon, sir.” He was known as Grill—paying homage to his fully gold- plated smile, financed with his illegal fortunes. I nodded to Grill. Though he was a low-ranker—a much lower-ranker—I was required to acknowledge him before entering his turf. This would ensure my safety, reassure him that my presence didn’t mean that the leaders were trying to oust him. “Out for a stroll?” he asked, and then he hopped back when Meatball stepped forward. I tugged Meatball back, and then I looked around us … I didn’t need any trouble today. Grill finally relaxed and cocked his head to the side. “You alone again today, sir?” I checked my watch again. Then I waved him off and walked away. The look of indignation on his face told me that he didn’t appreciate being dismissed in this way in front of his troops. But Ihad no time for ego-stroking.
Meatball shepherded us through the hoards of families that had gathered in the nearby clearing to enjoy the rest of the sunny May afternoon. He tugged ahead, and we quickly worked our way deeper into the clearing. I recognized some of the faces. From their stares, they recognized me too. There was no love lost there—I was the face to their problems; I couldn’t hide the blood that stained my hands. But I wasn’t trying to either. All I wanted, needed, today were a few seconds of peace. We found a vacated picnic table and hid in the crowd, waiting. Ipulled my shirt over my gun. After a few minutes, Meatball’s head shot up, and his ears went flat to his skull. My breath quickened, the fist inside me loosened a quarter of an inch, and the dark voice inside my head was made null and void, finally.
Chapter One: Forever Freakish By the time the instructor called time, I had already meticulously gone over my exam paper five times. It must have been at least two hundred degrees in that auditorium, like the school needed to make sure that absolutely no one would be spared the sweat of exam week. The crevasse, dug into the back of my neck by the steady stream of sweat, was proof that Itoo hadn’t been spared. The few students that lagged behind left the stifling auditorium. Callister University was not an Ivy League school. It had probably never even been in the running for a top one hundred, top one thousand, any list of any schools in the country. But I still needed to maintain anA average to keep my full scholarship. So I took an extra second to check the dotted line at the right hand corner of my paper, on the off chance that Professor Vernon was one of those profs who still gave students an extra point just for spelling their names correctly. Emily Sheppard. My name was spelled right, though Istill cringed, just a little. Then I put my pencil down, turned my exam paper over, and had to let a very small sigh escape me. At the very least, I had survived one year of college, which meant that I
was temporarily free of cramming for exams, of listening to endless lectures … school was such a great way to kill time. Iwould miss that. I rushed back to the house and stepped into complete chaos—then again, when you share a three-bedroom hole with six other roommates, everyday is chaotic. You just learn to measure in degrees of chaos. In our house, chaos ranged anywhere from the morning run through the obstacle course of empty beer cases to get into the one bathroom … to keep your head down, and hope that nothing with sharp edges was within reach of the couch. Making it out the door in time for your next class was a challenge, to say the least. Today was in the range of controlled anarchy. All of my roommates were moving out for the summer. There were hampers and garbage bags bunched at the door, most of them filled to the brim with dirty laundry—a common end-of- term gift for the parents. Everything was being packed— thrown really—into whatever container they could find, while their parents were shouting orders, trying to get out of our hole as quickly as possible. Everyone who could escape Callister did so at their earliest opportunity. I was the only one of my roommates who wasn’t going home for the summer break. Burt and Isabelle, my parents, were spending the summer in France, where Isabelle was born and over-bred. Europe was a regular retreat for the Sheppard family. I had put an end to that too—even a hot summer in a dead city was better than that torture.
My roommates were rushed with their good-byes and have a great summer. And then they were gone, and I was left standing in the living room, alone with the abandoned school books and empty pizza boxes. The house had been dubbed by some—mostly of the parental origin—a dump. I loved it. New and interesting stains appeared on the living room carpet, unrecognizable smells emanated from the basement, the kitchen housed a family of ants, the sole bathroom with the tub that often doubled as a beer bucket was booby trapped with rotting plywood. These were but a few of the marvels of this student housing. And I would have it all to myself for four glorious months. I basked in silence for a few minutes more and then ran upstairs to my bedroom before Iran out of daylight. My bedroom was the one at the end of the hall. Except that it wasn’t really a bedroom, but a broom closet that had been converted into a “rentable” space. In other words, if it was big enough for a semi-grown person to lay in, the landlord could charge student rent for it. It had no windows, no lights, no electrical outlets, and a curtain hung in place of a door because my single bed took up all of the floor space. I’d had to run a fire-hazard electrical cord from one of my roommates’ room into mine just to be able to plug in a lamp and an alarm clock. What my room lacked in square footage it made up in character. My doll-sized bed, squeezed between three walls, stood on three-foot high stilts made of milk crates that had been secretly borrowed from the corner store. My
clothes, my shoes, and my schoolbooks were stacked in Rubbermaid bins under the bed, and two-dollar Van Goghs hid most of the holes in the walls. The best part: it only cost me a hundred bucks a month—all inclusive. I closed the curtain door, switched my jeans for sweatpants and ran back down the stairs. After hiding the key under the front mat, I hit the ground running, literally, and zipped down the streets. I dodged people and the heaps of garbage that were piling up on the sidewalks—remnants of all the students who were gradually abandoning the city. By this time tomorrow, the city would be bare of the students that gave it life, the heaps would have been well looted, and only the real garbage would remain. This part of Callister was considered the slum of the city —a stark contrast to the manicured lawns I had grown up with. What had been—probably a million years ago—a cute, middle-class neighborhood was now another dilapidated, though nicely affordable, sore spot on the city’s good standing. With its proximity to the university, it accommodated this weird mix of college students, underprivileged families, and drug dealers. It had a certain charm—most of the houses were small, wartime wooden homes built about three feet from the street and barely two feet apart from each other. I was sure that the neighborhood must have been pretty at some point. Now most of the paint was chipping away. Multicolored layers started peering through spots as if the houses bared the scars left by the previous owners before
being abandoned for good. I hiked up one of the busier drags—my least favorite part of the run. Too many cars were driving by with practically everyone turning their eyes in my direction, like this was the first time they had ever seen someone run. I told myself that it was because of where I was—in this city, someone who ran was usually running away from something, like the cops or the barrel of a shopkeeper’s gun. But somehow I knew it had nothing to do with the bad neighborhood, and everything to do with me—I was a beacon for curious stares. My hair was the color of spaghetti sauce. Not the expensive, gourmet kind, but the kind that was usually in a can, usually sold in bulk, and mostly made of carrots. And to say that I was pale was greatly fallacious. The reddish-brown freckles that speckled every inch of my ghostly skin were enough color for my taste. To top it off, I was skinny. Not the “you-should-be-a- model” type of skinny—but the bony, awkward kind of skeletal. I held out hope that I would someday add something, anything, to my bones, but given that I was still my skinny mother’s carbon copy, hope faded with every year that passed. I wasn’t paranoid … but still, I turned up the sound on my Walkman. It’s easier to ignore people’s stares when you’ve got music blasting in your ears. Then I ran up the hill and took a right into an almost hidden alley. Behind two brick buildings there was a small patch of trees that towered over the laneway, shedding a carpet of little white beans all over the street. It was one of the few
areas in the ghetto that had anything green still living. I veered onto the pathway that led through the cemetery. Like the rest of the neighborhood, the cemetery had been left neglected, with weeds growing everywhere—around, and within the slow cracks of tombstones. Street-gang graffiti, spray-painted art covered almost every surface of the graveyard, including some of the stones. It was among the broken beer bottles, cigarette butts, and fast-food wrappers that stood the only tombstone that had been maintained by the caretaker—he must have been paid handsomely by my parents to keep the weeds and garbage away from my brother Bill’s grave. I ran this same route almost every day after school. Some days I would stop and sit to talk to Bill or just stare at the head of his stone. Today I kept running, trying to make the most out of the lingering daylight, because I was running late, because a graveyard was definitely not where I wanted to be after dark. Ihad watched too many movies for that. The pathway snaked the cemetery and eventually led through a fence of overgrowth and trees. I ran into the opening of the field of weeds and into the projects. The projects were a city within the city, a bouquet of high-rise public-housing apartment buildings built by the good people of Callister. What they really were was ugly and, as far as I could tell, barely habitable. They were built quite hastily by the city in the middle of a large piece of land—an unusually large, vacant, removed, industrial piece of land. The city’s plan was to keep the poor off the streets, or away
and out of sight from the rest of the city. Entering the projects was like entering another world. While the cemetery had been virtually deserted, the field around the buildings was veiled with people. It had been the first really warm day of the year. The sun was shining, and the city—even the city within the city—was suddenly coming out of hibernation. Hard-up kids played and screamed in the tall grass, families were grouped around tiny barbeques, rap music was blaring, and foot traffic congested the walkways. So I made my way through the crowd, weaving in and out of the foot traffic to the beat of my breath and Bob Marley on my headphones. Contrary to one of my roommate’s theory, I wasn’t trying to be retro with my ancient Walkman. I’d discovered it in our basement when we first moved into the house. It was free, and free was all I could afford. Yes, the Bob Marley tape that was already in there had melted into the Walkman.And yes, I was forced to listen to the same tape over and over again. But it didn’t matter—it was all I needed to quiet the voice in my head long enough to put one foot in front of the other without tripping. But when I ran through the crowd today, I started to realize that something was different, wrong somehow. People were staring at me, maybe even more than usual. I stared ahead and tried to keep my mind on my pace, on my breath, away from my delusions. Except that I wasn’t being paranoid—people were definitely staring. And then they were moving. Away from me. Parting to the sides as I ran past, like the sea in that
book—though nothing about this felt biblical. Was there something on my face? I brought my hand to my sweaty face, as coolly as I could, quickly passing my fingers over my skin. As far as Icould detect, there were no nose bleeds or anything else that was abnormal—abnormal for me. That was when I noticed a lady in front of me a few yards away. The fact that she was wearing a yellow hat, and had a plastic yellow purse made me notice her more than the fact that she was looking right at me. She was mouthing something, but all Icould hear was Bob’s voice. Before I could grasp that she was telling me to watch out, a large black shadow had sped to me. I never had time to react. Something hard and heavy had rammed into me from behind, and Iwas brought down to the ground. I came crashing, face-first, into the pebbled walkway with barely enough time to pull my hands out in front of me to break some of my fall. And that was where I laid—pinned. Then something bounced off my back, and I felt something hot, wet and sticky on my face. It wasn’t blood. Glimpsing up, dazed, I saw the cow-sized head of a dog too close to my face, very big teeth, leash hanging freely from its neck. I heard a winded voice but I didn’t think that I could respond. Even if I could, I wouldn’t—afraid the dog’s tongue would slip into my mouth if Itried to open it to speak. A man had come to grab the massive beast’s leash and pulled it away from my now-licked-clean face. I felt a strong hand on my arm, and Iwas tugged up to my shaky feet. While I came back to life, I investigated my hands. They were pretty scraped up. And though I couldn’t see any tears
in my sweatpants, I knew that I would have plum-sized bruises on my kneecaps tomorrow. On the ground I saw my prized Walkman, shattered to pieces all the way down the walkway. I pulled the now useless earphones away from my ears and let them drop to the ground. “I’m okay,” I finally answered, though I wasn’t sure if anyone had asked me. Glancing up, facing the westerly setting sun, I brought my hand to my forehead to rim my eyes from the blinding light. What I could see was the dog’s owner, the shadow of a boy or a man in a gray sweater. He was tall, and his face was hidden by the darkness of his gray hood and the ball cap that was pulled down to his eyebrows. We stood there, studying each other like boxers do after they step into the ring. I was waiting for what would generally come next after a dog attack, like an apology or an offer to get my clothes dry-cleaned or his lawyer’s name so that our lawyers could connect easily when Ifiled a lawsuit. But the boy remained silent, fingering his watch and swiftly scanning the scene before returning his darkened eyes to me. “I’m Emily.” I extended a hand out and moved in closer to see his face. Names, I thought, were a good start. But he stepped back and glanced down. “Your shoelace is untied,” he told me, almost angrily. I pulled my hand back, feeling a little like a moron, and followed his gaze to my feet. I crouched down to tie my shoelace; this provoked the
dog to bark and lunge to the end of its leash. I couldn’t tell if it was happy or angry. It didn’t matter—I jumped back, fell on my behind, wondered how long it would take before the leash snapped and the dog was back on me again. “He’s not going to hurt you.” The owner had said this with irritation—like he was upset with my fear of the beast that had attacked me a few seconds before. I huffed and tugged on my thread of a shoelace—of course, it snapped. “You need new shoes,” he uneasily commented again. “My shoes were fine till your dog used me as a springboard.” While I struggled to tie what was left of my shoelace into a knot and try to make sense of this guy’s social awkwardness, I glared up and watched as his hands clenched into a fist and his shadowed jaw tightened. We were interrupted before the hairs on my arms had time to fully stiffen. “Hey, girl,” said a voice behind me. “Think you dropped this.” I came to my feet and spun around. A man in a baggy tracksuit handed me my Bob Marley tape: it had finally dislodged itself from my Walkman, taking pieces of the Walkman with it. I knew enough about the local gang colors and teardrop tattoos that this man was showing off to know that Ishould stay as far away as possible. It was clear to me that Iwas slowly being surrounded, outnumbered. “Thanks,” Imumbled. “What is this thing anyway?” he asked me.
When I extended my hand to meet his and quickly grab the tape, the Rottweiler went wild again, barking, growling, almost snapping its leash. Icame to be very still. The gangbanger stepped back, but his frightened gaze was not directed to the hostile dog, but to the dog’s owner. “Sorry man,” he stuttered, taking a few short steps back before turning around. I watched him leave and noticed that everyone around us was doing their best to avoid looking in our direction. Accidents, like holes in the ground, usually attract crowds of gawkers and do-gooders—don’t they? Yet no one else had dared to come near us. Perturbed, I turned back to the boy and confirmed that he looked quite plain—no signs of any gang affiliations. Though his dog had calmed down again, the boy holding the leash looked as if he were about to spontaneously combust. When he spoke, I realized it was me that he was angry with. “You really shouldn’t be running by yourself in this neighborhood. It’s a really stupid thing to do.” With this revelation, I took a moment, and waited for further enlightenment. But nothing else came from him. “Are you serious?” Iprobed after a few seconds. He stayed silently erect. I lashed out. “Must I remind you that your dog attacked me and your dog broke my Walkman? You’re not seriously blaming this on me?” The boy once again scanned the grounds and stopped at