CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Not a Safe-House
It took Prissi another twenty minutes before she found the energy to launch herself into the air. Being careful to favor her right wing, she flew north to Spicetown. Although it made her nervous to be just a few blocks from where the creepy Richard Baudgew lived, she figured that Spicetown was the best neighborhood she knew to do what she needed to do. As soon as she landed, she began walking as fast as she could along the crowded streets. Lots of people looked at her wings, but she ignored them. After three blocks, she darted into a narrow store selling ethno-clothes. Inside, the lights, oozing like an oil spill, made it almost impossible for Prissi to tell what color of clothing she might be buying. Between glances to see if anyone was staring through the windows, Prissi pawed through racks of brightly dyed poorly made clothes until she finally found two tops and two pairs of yurskins dyed a polluted river brown. She handed the clerk, who looked to be Ethiopian, cash, then vibrated while he processed her purchases in African time. Six blocks away she found a pair of used brown lightweight flight shoes. Two blocks closer to the river, Prissi bought socks and underwear. Still walking toward the river, she stopped at a CiVViS and bought a pak of bubble tags. A block from the river Prissi ducked into a run-down KaffeeKiosK and ordered a Turbo-kona. She walked out through the back of the store and into an alleyway. Turning right, she trotted toward the river. She made her way through the maze of quayside debris until she found a relatively isolated spot. She drank her coffee and downloaded her mypod to two of the bubble tags as she listened to two Jamaicans crooning Carib gospel while they filleted fish from two big blue bins. When the download was complete, Prissi walked back to 139th Street and made a bee-line toward a store she had noticed earlier as she had done her other shopping.
A half-dozen young boys, with weak tea to double espresso-colored skins, were fardin and goophin in front of the run-down electronics store. For the third time in a row it was the shortest boy—Prissi was beginning to think that she might have discovered one of the immutable laws of males teenerz tnature—was the one started the confrontation by leaping in front of her just before she reached the door. When she stopped, two other boys began sliding their hands down her feathers. Prissi shivered dramatically in revulsion, which encouraged the boys to do more. The one on the left began flicking a long chopstick thin finger at the tips of her pinions. Prissi bent forward and emitted a sob. The assailant in front of her started to laugh, but stopped short when Prissi leaned her right shoulder into him, then swept his legs out from underneath him with her left leg. He sprawled on the sidewalk with a smear of blood on his cheek where it had smacked into the concrete. Prissi thanked her African elementary school for its mandatory courses in self-defense as she snapped an elbow into the chest of the boy to the left while he was staring at his vanquished friend. She flared her wings as she stepped toward the shop door.
An extremely tall black stick man, who Prissi guessed must be Masai, laughed a distant rolling thunder as Prissi pushed her way through the door.
“Warrior woomahn.”
Prissi salaamed as she greeted him.
When Prissi told the shop owner what she wanted, his hands began to move in a way that reminded her of a crane walking along the shore. The offer and counter-offers went back and forth as regular as a metronome. Prissi listened to the words, but paid most her attention to the man’s hands. When she was sure she had done as well as she could, given that she wasn’t in a Burundian bazaar where competitors could see one another and there was no such thing as a two-party negotiation, Prissi conceded. Frowning, as if disappointed that an agreement had been reached so quickly, the stick man disappeared through a faded polka-dotted curtain, which, Prissi guessed, probably had begun its life hanging from a cheap shower rod. While she waited, Prissi walked toward the front of the store to see if her tormenters were still hanging about. Even though she couldn’t see them, Prissi was not reassured that they weren’t close-by.
Stick man returned with a mypod so old and battered that his customer laughed in wonderment at the price he was demanding. Flighty hands flicked away her concerns as easily as winter flies. Prissi took out the bubble tags she had used to download her mypod. Despite the incredible amount of data, the relic loaded in seconds. Prissi scrolled and found her files and folders in place. The download bit counter total matched the upload. The GPS was accurate when she switched that on. There was no way to check to see if the altimeter would read accurately. She keyed in the address for the NYPD and the correct flight plans popped up.
As Prissi fiddled with the device, the stick man’s fingers stopped their dance. When she looked up, the smile he gave her with the few teeth he still owned showed brilliant white against watermelon red gums. His teeth looked so healthy that Prissi knew that it wasn’t disease that had caused the loss of the others. Sadness dropped over her like a shroud. A second later, she flung it off by deciding to be happy that whatever malign African force had coveted the man’s teeth wasn’t malignant enough to take his smile.
Before that smile faded, Prissi asked the stick man for a favor. He immediately agreed and led her past the polka-dotted curtain. The back room was dark, piled high with boxes and smelled of garlic and harissa. The thin man’s worn orange flips slapped against the treads with a sound like soft clapping as he climbed a flight of rickety stairs. Since the stairs were being used more as shelving for another jumble of boxes than as a means of elevation, Prissi was extra careful with her wing tips. Two flights up, they came to a matte black metal door with a chicken wire reinforced window letting in smog-colored light. After unlocking the door and opening it wide to let her through, Prissi’s benefactor murmured a goodbye. Prissi touched his wrist, no bigger than a small white child’s, as she thanked him. Again, the bright gums and handful of teeth emitted their warmth. A second later his face was gone and a half-second after that, Prissi heard the snick of the lock.
Keeping away from the edge of the roof, Prissi carefully reconnoitered the sight lines from the surrounding buildings. After she had decided on the rookery’s most private spot, she shucked off her kanga, and stripped off her old clothes while keeping her wings close to hide her nakedness. She hopped and twisted her way into her new clothes as she tried to blot out the smell of patchouli coming off them in clouds. When the teener was dressed, she wadded her old stuff into a bag and launched herself from the backside of the building. She flew south and west until she saw a re-cyclist. Dropping down, she trailed behind him as he pedaled his cart south down Fifth Avenue alongside the park. When he stopped to collect a pile of shoes in a string bag set out along the curb, Prissi swooped down, dropped her old clothes into the open yellow bin behind the back wheel, before swooping back into the air.
Free from the weight of her past, angry at her future, and ignoring her body’s weaknesses, Prissi beat her wings hard. She climbed and climbed and climbed until, by the time she was at the bottom of the park, she was higher than the top of the Airie—more than five hundred meters higher than her license allowed. She looked down at Joshua Fflowers’ roof-top garden—a maze of shrubbery wrapped around more than two dozen white marble statues of mythical beasts. As she moved closer to take a better look, the security lights began flashing to warn her off. She dipped a wing, swung away from her tormentor’s home and flew west toward the Hudson. From being up so high, the girl was able to glide almost the whole way across the Hudson River to New Jersey. And, even though her shoulder seemed to be popping out every ten minutes, with so much else going on, Prissi never even thought of crashing into the turbid brown water far below. The hydroaerophobia that had bothered her just the day before was crowded out by too many other kinds of more realistic fears.
Despite having no warning of her visit, except for the alarms going off, Nasty Nancy’s parents were gracious when Prissi landed on their roof. Prissi lied that she hadn’t called ahead because her mypod was acting up rather than saying that she was staying off the grid because people were trying to kill he
r. Despite Dutton’s emphasis on honor, Prissi thought that proper etiquette called for the lie. Nancy, who had been out buying clothes, seemed aloof when she returned; however, as Prissi filled her BFF in on what had been happening, Nancy grew warmer. That concern, however, stopped as soon as Prissi, blubbering through a squall of tears, told her about her father’s death. Through the fog of her tears, Prissi watched Nancy’s eyes grow large as she described to her friend what had happened. It took Prissi a minute to understand that it was concern for what danger might be following close on Prissi’s heels, rather than concern for Prissi herself, that had Nancy’s attention. The teener had hoped that her roomie would invite her to spend the night. She assumed, since the Sloan’s were wealthy, that their security systems would keep her safe. When she realized that no invitation was going to be made, Prissi made her goodbyes. As she was walking Prissi toward the door, Nancy’s conscience seemed to override her sense of self-preservation.
“What about your dad? What are you going to do about his services?”
Appalled at Nancy’s naiveté, Prissi barked, “Nothing. What can I do? If I were to show up for anything, like claiming the body, the same thing will happen to me that happened to him.”
“But what about school?”
“Freeieekin A, Nancy, don’t be such a dwoof. I can’t go anywhere I’m expected to go. Whatever I’ve opened up is enormous—and I don’t even have a clue what it could be. My dad said that they had found something, a key of some kind, biological, chemical, something that opened up what turned into a Pandora’s Box.”
“What was it?’
Prissi flapped her hands to keep from hitting Nancy, which seemed to be the only obvious thing which would make her feel better.
“Jay-Zee, would I be here fumbling around if I knew? Something with my mom’s science, something happened that made him so ashamed or afraid that when he was talking about it he couldn’t get past metaphors and similes. So, the surviving family member and scientific detective is pretty much clueless. ”
Nancy nodded enthusiastically. “Hubris. Something with hubris. When the pride of man leads him to act like the gods. It’s got to be something like that.”
Prissi shook her head disconsolately, “I don’t know. And I don’t have time to speculate. At least, not here. I’ve got to get somewhere safe.”
“You have to go back to school, Prissi. You can’t stay here, you know you can’t. It wouldn’t be fair. But at school, you’ll be safe. Even if whoever is after you knows you’re there. Think of the kids they protect. I mean if Joe Fflowers can be kept safe, so can you.”
“Pretty delusional for a cynic, Nancy. School doesn’t even start for another two weeks. What am I supposed to do in the meantime? Hide in the laundry room and eat Tofrutos? Even if I made it back to school safely, I’d be fogged in a day or two. I wish I could go back, though. I wish I could talk to Smarkzy to see if he knows what’s going on, but now that I’ve found out that he played a part in it, I’m not even sure whether I can trust him. He was the one who got me started. Did he use me to flush something out? Something that was too dangerous for him to do? I don’t know. I don’t want to think that, but I don’t know.”
“So, don’t go. Just call him. Talk to him.”
“Omagod, you don’t understand anything. Everybody I talk to, my dad, Burgey, the guy in Verona has been killed. If I call Smarkzy and he’s innocent, he gets hurt. If he’s part of what is going on, then I’ve just helped them pick up my trail again.”
Nancy, whose face had indicated while Prissi was yelling at her that she was prepared to respond in kind, suddenly went rigid.
“What does that mean? Everyone you talk to ends up dead, and you come here? You come here and…and…infect me and my parents?”
Nasty Nancy’s short fat arms shot out like battering rams and she slammed Prissi in the shoulder, the same shoulder that had been dislocated earlier in the day.
“Get out! What are you doing to me? Get out! Now!”
By the time Nancy finished her tirade, her voice was high and loud and an umbra of spit mist hung in the air. Prissi started to put a finger in Nancy’s face, but, suddenly, she felt so exhausted, so deprezzed and so defeated, that the idea of just lifting her hand was overwhelming. She made herself walk out the rooftop door, but once she was outside, even though she knew her Nancy would be watching through a gap in the curtains, Prissi stood immobile. She felt too tired to fly at all, let alone to fly safely. And, even if she had more energy, she had no idea where she should go. The fear and anger, which had energized her ever since leaving the hospital so many hours before, that had flared up with her father’s murder and the fight and escape from his killers, that had burned bright with Jack Fflowers apparent betrayal, was gone, burned out, turned to ash. Now, she was neither afraid nor angry. She was only empty, numb, hopeless. Prissi thought that if she were to fall from the rooftop where she stood in the dusk’s bleeding light that she wouldn’t even bother to flap her wings.
Her sobs and their chemistry wracked her chest and burned her eyes and flayed the back of her throat.
She was fifteen. Her mother was a suicide. Her dad murdered. Betrayed by one friend. Abandoned by another. Privy to some secret or crime of which she herself hadn’t a clue. Her home unsafe. School no refuge. She had no idea where to go and not much money to get anywhere even if she did.
Prissi’s whole body trembled.
She wanted someone to tell her what to do and where to go and what to say…and…and…what to eat and wear and when to take her bath and brush her teeth. She wanted to go back. Back before everything was uncertain and dangerous. Back before she knew her parents had been living a lie. Back before she knew anything about Centsurety. Back before she knew Jack and Nancy. Back before Noramica.
Africa.
She wanted to be back in the thick air, sticky dust, rotten smells and open sores of Africa.
And in a split second, Prissi knew what she had to do. To be safe, she would have to get herself back to Africa. Where the water wasn’t safe to drink and the evening shadows were filled with insects that could leave you shaking with chills and glowing with heat. But, a place where the satellites didn’t spy and the phones didn’t work and the current of electricity ebbed and flowed at some unknown force’s whim. She might not be able to put the misery back into Pandora’s Box, but she could run away. Leave the box and the troubles that had escaped and, now, buzzed around her life.
But, before she could run away, she had to run toward something.
A small flick at the edge of her peripheral vision let Prissi know that Nancy still was watching. And, although less than five minutes before she had been too forlorn to care that her former friend was watching her sob, now that she had a goal, Prissi did care. She brushed the water from her face, took three deep breaths, flapped her wings and flew off into the gloam of the New Jersey sky.