The knock came shortly after sunset, but he didn’t open the door because it wasn’t the secret knock. Was it too hard to do the secret knock? Two short, three fast. It could damn well save their lives one of these times.
“Hawk, you there?” The flimsy door did little to muffle the voice of his—friend? Yes, friend, best friend, only friend, and that was all. Hawk stayed silent and listened to the shuffling on the other side of the door.
“Maybe he’s not here.” It was Rhonda.
“Oh, he’s fuckin here, he just wants me to use his secret FUCKING KNOCK!” shouted Nine. He must have had his face planted against the door. BAM! BAM! “Hawk, open up!”
“You jackass. I got it. Move.” It was a boy’s breathy falsetto: knock—knock—knock knock knock.
Hawk turned the deadbolt and opened the door. Nine, a head taller than him, strode boldly into his one-room apartment, followed by Rhonda wafting the strong scent of flowers, followed by Spike wearing a big grin—he’d changed his hair. He gave Hawk a fist bump as he passed. His skateboard strapped to his backpack displayed a worn middle finger stencil blazed with the motto
grind this
asshole
Hawk poked his head into the dismal hallway. Nobody—just a vodka bottle set against the wall. He closed the door and reset the deadbolt.
“See, I told you I’d remember the knock,” said the twelve-year-old boy, puffing his chest up with pride. “Can I use your phone?”
“Sure. Probably no Wi-Fi.”
“Thought you were busy.” Nine picked up one of his uncle’s notebooks piled on the narrow bed in the corner. “You know.” He made the motion of a cock going into his mouth and pushed his tongue against his cheek.
“Shit, Nine,” said Rhonda. “How ya doing, Hawk?”
Rhonda was Nine’s girl. Her long coat covered her swollen belly.
Hawk shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”
“You miss school?”
“Fuck no.”
Of the four of them, Rhonda was the only one still in school. She loved school and got perfect grades. Just couldn’t keep her legs closed around Nine—but then, who could?
“You should put these on the internet, get a few clams. Folks are into weird shit these days.” Nine threw the notebook back on the bed and pushed his little brother, who was standing on the sofa, holding the phone up trying to steal internet from the air.
The building had free Wi-Fi, but slow as shit and rarely reached the top floor.
“Stop it, asshole,” said Spike, kicking out distractedly at his big brother.
The lights dimmed and blinked out. Spike whipped around, and Nine tensed up. They listened, but all they heard was the rev of a car engine on the street below, and a faint song from some distant alley in the labyrinth of the city.
“It’s alright,” Hawk said. “The power’s been going off and on all day.”
Spike went to the window and drew up the shades. The blue and red glow from the neon sign of the Chinese soup kitchen across the street filtered in.
“It must get freezing in here,” said Rhonda. She leaned against Nine, and he put his muscular arm around her.
“You know you can come stay at our house,” said Nine. “Isn’t it kind of creepy being here alone, you know, where he died?”
“Christ, you have like zero filter,” said Rhonda, punching her boyfriend’s solid chest. He stole a kiss.
Hawk shrugged. That would be awkward, being in the presence of Nine, seeing him and Rhonda all the time. But mostly, the thought of their mother up in that room made him queasy. He was done with spinners.
“So, uh, did ya get the money, man?”
Hawk went to the TV on the wall—the screen was shattered—and reached behind for the envelope. He tossed it to Nine.
“Fuck yeah! Thank you, bro! Thank you!” He thumbed through the cash. “Five Gs, on the dime. I knew you could do it.” He slapped him on his shoulder, and Hawk winced. “The fuck, dude?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Let me see.”
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“I said it’s nothing.”
“Shut up.” Nine lifted the sleeve of his t-shirt to reveal the white bandage covering his shoulder. “Dreams?”
“Yeah,” said Hawk.
“Let me see.” Rhonda carefully peeled back the gauze to reveal a deep gash. “Did you disinfect?”
“Yeah, peroxide and antibiotic cream.”
“Do it again before you sleep. This time, no peroxide, just alcohol. You got that?”
“In the bathroom.”
“You okay, Hawk?” Spike approached with wide eyes.
“Lil’ nigga had his first dream this week,” said Nine, tousling the boy’s loppy dreads.
Hawk’s heart jumped into his throat. Their eyes met. The ever-so-slight shake of Spike’s head, imperceptible to all except for him, his eyes saying the rest. He hadn’t told his brother. The thought of the hunters coming for Spike infuriated him, but there was no fight, just helpless despair. Hope that it was just a passing, and they weren’t on his trail.
“Show him, Spiky.”
“I’m fine,” said the kid, slapping the offending hand from his hair, “Asa! Der it iz, signal, signal!” shouted the boy. He was already flicking through posts on his social.
Nine grabbed the hem of his little brother’s hoodie and lifted it. Across his chest was an angry scratch, jagged with an upward swoosh at the end. In the light cast from across the street, he examined the mark. A scratch but not a cut. A warning. A marking. He knew that sadistic flourish, the signature of that hunter.
“Just those stupid fucks passing in the night. He’s alright,” said Nine, to encourage the boy, to encourage himself.
But Hawk detected the uncertain vibrato in his friend’s voice.
Spike flexed his muscles. “Ain’t no thang. Fuck.” He pulled down his hoodie and pushed Nine away.
“I guess my lil’ boy’s becoming a man.” Nine swatted his brother’s butt. “Next, you’ll be ringing out your PJs in the morning.”
“Asshole, merdumashiba!” said the boy as he flicked through posts.
“Hey, none of that devil tongue, hear me! We speak English in Montana.”
“Ain’t ‘tana, you in the BAT now, bitch,” spat Spike. He shot a glance at Hawk and did his wink, grin, tongue-tip nipped between his pearly white teeth. The kid had spent enough time in and around the Asiatown ghetto that he’d picked up the sloppy slang dialect like a native, a mélange of half a dozen refugee languages.
“Maybe we shouldn’t go out tonight,” said Hawk. “I feel… we shouldn’t go out tonight. I’ll call Mrs. Olsen and do a pick-up tomorrow.”
“No! Fuck! It can’t wait,” said Nine. “She’s really bad.”
“They’re close these days. This!” Hawk pulled up his sleeve. “I wasn’t even sleeping.”
“You made the deal, right?” asked Nine.
“Yeah, but—”
“We can’t piss those people off. They’re our only source. Shit, bro, you don’t fuckin diss a deal.”
He felt the anxiety building.
Spike was kicked back on the sofa, absorbed in his phone. God, he prayed again the mark on his chest was in passing, that they hadn’t locked onto the trail of the boy’s chant. Nine wasn’t a believer. They’d almost come to blows over the topic before, but he couldn’t hold it in. This was about Spike.
“Let’s find the fuckin’ Maji. Fuck, come on!” Hawk said it for the hundredth time.
Nine’s look was cold. “There ain’t no goddamn fucking Maji! That shit your uncle wrote, he was blissed the fuck out, gone spinning a thousand fuckin’ miles an hour, a fuckin’ million.”
Poor out-of-the-loop Rhonda tried to calm her hunk with the softness of her touch.
“He knew about this,” countered Hawk. “He wouldn’t have made that shit up.”
“You wanna get yourself killed? Get us all killed, going around asking about the Maji?” Nine headed for the door. “Let’s get a move on. She’ll be there in an hour.”
Hawk resigned with a sigh. “Fire exit,” he said. “Keep your comings and goings confusing.”
“Christ,” muttered Nine. “Paranoid much?”
Spike was already climbing the ladder that led up to the roof-hatch on the ceiling, showing off his strength by using only his arms.
They stood on the roof of his building, staring out at the crowded skyline of the Northwest Refugee Project. This strange addition to the Rocky Mountain front had been constructed years ago, long before Hawk or his friends had popped into this world. It had begun on an expanse of unused rail yards and had since crept slowly, mostly in shanties, toward the Yellowstone River, where everything was built on stilts to avoid the floods that sometimes came in the spring.
It was a dismal night. A carpet of clouds hung low, threatening precipitation, perhaps snow. The Crystal Tower shot up and vanished into this foggy morass. He’d never gone into that building. He wondered if it went so high that it pierced the clouds into the thin frozen air, into the night, and that those who walked its uppermost floors could see the stars above.
No one except for the government called it the Northwest Refugee Project—that just sounded pitiful. The BAT (Billings Asiatown) was what everyone who lived in or interacted with the project knew it as, because most of the refugees were Asians escaping from the rapidly rising waters. And like other Asiatowns around the world, the BAT accepted all under the Earth Treaty, a place of dry land and indeed refuge, but you had to follow the rules, and some of the rules you just didn’t talk about. And just because it was a slum didn’t mean there was no money. Towering up out of the shacks and shanties of the lower levels was the great city in the sky, skyscrapers built by the wealth of displaced super conglomerates, chaebols, industry, legal and illegal, technology, luxury apartments that were said to house the super-rich users of the Escape drugs. Elites lucky enough to afford the leaps to the highest levels. There was even a rumor that the penthouse floors of the Crystal Tower were inhabited solely by those who had ascended to the serene enlightenment of Level 21.
The BAT was his home. It was here in this very building, in the apartment they had just left, where he had been born to a prostitute and Escape addict. Her name had been Nhi Ngọc Nguyễn, and he only had two images of her in his memory: one of her sitting at the table eating little dabs of diluted Escape. There was always a candle beside her, and when the nightmares came, she’d light it from a box of matches, put it out, and light it again. The other memory was near the end, her in the bed now covered in his uncle’s mad books and scribblings; fingers curled like claws and the screams of her anguish, night after night, as her mind slowly splintered into a million fragments. And then one night on the street below, the police lights and cries for help, and after that, it was silent, and he was alone… until his uncle came to watch after him, but he was on his own spin… and that was another story.
“Damn, Hawk, you got a great view,” said Rhonda.
“You okay, man?” Nine put a strong hand on his back, a friendly gesture, but it made Hawk flush, and heat sprung up from his toes.
Little Spike took his hand and squeezed. “We’ll find the Maji,” he whispered.
Hawk squeezed back. These were his friends.