The Shadows in the Smoke

“It’s always like this isn’t it?” she huffed out with a flail to her arms. Her hair had been done this morning but the sweat that laid across her brow had dampened and disheveled it. Now it was merely a brown stringy flop and wisps of hair had clung themselves to her forehead. “I’m always the one royally messing up and I drag you with me, Nick.”

We were sitting outside the market waiting for one person to walk out, then the next, and another. Each time the doors opened a gust of air escaped. With no money on our persons, we couldn’t just walk around inside. The security guards put a stop to that a while back. After what had just gone down we definitely needed to chill out and here was the perfect place. No one would bother us.

“What are we going to do Nick?”

I hadn’t thought too much about how we would handle things. I was still caught up in what happened and why. Everything was in a constant replay in my head. “There’s only one thing we can do.” I managed.

*

The other day seemed like too much of a blur and yet I remembered every little detail.

“But did you see him though?” I choked out in the midst of laughter. “He didn’t know how to react. I swear people never stand up to him and they’re missing out on pure comedy gold.”

We had just gotten off the bus and I couldn’t hold my amusement any longer. Ezra, a boy who went to our school had been tormenting a freshman. Normally I would pull a teacher aside or something and let them handle it but we were on the bus so It was up to me. He’s in our year so I knew quite a bit about him and his bullying escapades. Mostly I knew about it because I had been one of his targets for about a day. He found easier pickings like this one.

He and his friends mocked her appearance, grabbing and sneering at the jacket she had on. They called her ugly and fat as he in particular pinned her to the seat and tried to take it off of her. He reached his hand in her pockets, violating her personal space and stealing her student ID. 

When I walked up to him I didn’t say a word at first. I was analyzing the situation. Then I started in on him. One thing about him is he doesn’t like to be challenged in public. First I asked him was he so deprived that he needed some right then. Next, I offered up one of his groupies to help with his urges and motioned to one of the other guys. With every breath I took, he glared at me with a nasty grimace on his face. But I had to stand my ground. I had started something and I was going to finish him. I questioned if maybe he was just bored and had no life to get on with. I even said maybe his package was so small he had to do this to make himself feel more manly. Two things guys value a little more are their package and the ego that follows suit. I was talking so loud that some of the elder ladies in the front had turned to listen. While I spoke, the freshman freed herself and got off the bus and Ezra tried to refute what I said. He couldn’t because when I’m determined I push through. A couple of stops later Kate and I get off the bus and Ezra is on his phone… in the back… hood on… fuming.

“Yeah yeah,” Kate responded. I guess she wasn’t all that amused. She pulled out a cigarette, popped it in her mouth, and started to fiddle with the lighter. She said something else but it was muffled by the cigarette and the click of the light.

“Why the mood?” I asked.

We walked out into the street to cross stopping midway for some idiot that decided to speed up. After crossing she glanced in my direction.

“That could’ve taken a turn for the worse genius”

“Yeah true but it didn’t. The girl got away plus I got to tell him off.”

“I just feel like maybe that little escapade back there” She waved her arms in the direction of the bus “was maybe more about embarrassing him than helping her. If something went wrong you could have put a target on our backs.”

She drew in a long breath watching the edge of her favorite pass time draw closer and burn bright. Embers and ash flit to the sidewalk as she tapped the edge. We walked in almost complete silence aside from the sound of our footsteps and the cars rushing past until her phone started ringing. I took it out of her pocket and read the caller ID.

“It’s your mom… video chat.”

In what seemed like one movement she threw the cigarette to the side and answered the call.

She talked in a string of yeah ma’s, uh-huh, and m’kay’s before she ended the call and we turned the corner. 

I’m assuming that’s when the fire started because a bad 15 minutes later I heard sirens and horns. Loud horns. At first, I didn’t think too much of it because the station was nearby but then the sound didn’t leave. In fact, it had increased threefold with a different type of wailing. The police.

Kate texted me asking if we could go check it out. She was probably bored and didn’t want to finish her homework and I was in the same boat so I agreed. When we got down there to the sound we froze in our tracks. The house was almost crying with glass shattered and spout out into the street from the windows. Soot around the windows like running mascara. There was broken furniture to the side of the house as if someone had pushed it through its wailing mouth. Two stone pillars held up the awning that threatened to fall to pieces. And it was all ablaze. Firefighters rushed in and out of the house, still gutting it and fighting the flame as best they could. A cop walked past yelling something into his radio over the sound of the sirens and shouting around us.

“They found a cigarette butt which may be the cause of the fire. It’s been taken into evidence.”

“Copy” escaped over the sound of static.

As if it couldn’t get worse, “There’s a man inside-”

and with those words escaping his mouth Kate pulled at my arm urging for us to leave, panic set in on her face and fear sat in our hearts.

*

Fear still hadn’t budged. They didn’t put out the fire until around this morning. That’s when the wailing stopped. There was a man inside. Now he’s gone. His mother has to hear about it and relive the moment she found out as she sits down under one roof to call a sullen meeting with her sisters, brothers, children, grandchildren, and her mother to break the news. They’ll wrap each other in suffocating tear-filled hugs for comfort and tell each other it’s alright. In that same house, his niece will stare at a tv screen, yet not really watch it. She will be fighting oceans all the while calling herself weak for crying. Her family will look at their last messages and reminisce about their last conversations.

Kate stared me in my face looking for some sign of an answer or a conclusion to my statement. “We gotta run right?”

My eyes darted to the door of the markets as some guy with dreadlocks carried some bags out then back to her.

“No” I responded, “We have to tell them the truth.”

“We can’t come clean. You know that.” Her eyes scoured my face for any indication of my joking.

Kate scoffed and looked at me appalled by my choice. We argued back and forth a few times, stopping when someone walked out of the store and resuming once out of earshot. She was clearly upset, her face red, and it almost looked like I could see steam escape from her ears.

As she got up off of the red pole she was sitting on she flashed me a look of worry and said “Go right ahead, Nick. You aren’t the one who threw the cigarette.” She walked toward the street and turned the corner but that’s as far as I could see from my spot.

*

Standing outside Kate’s door I tasted a sip of reality. I had been standing here for a good fifteen minutes and finally, I got a text.

<Im gone. Don’t look for me.>

Maybe that’s why her brother or dad hadn’t answered the door. They must be worried sick

I peeked through the bars outside their window to see how they were. Josh lounged on the couch with a female I assume is his girlfriend due to the proximity of their faces. My eyes darted over from the living room back to the kitchen where her father sat at the counter on his laptop. his rim-less glasses pushed halfway up the bridge of his nose and his stringy short-cut hair combed to one side of his head; he had to be in the midst of a business meeting. He was wearing an ironed white button-down shirt and had on some boxers that I regret seeing. Her mom ran down the stairs to the kitchen and pulled something out of the oven.

They either didn’t know she was missing or didn’t care as much. I have to find her.

*

The police have been asking around the neighborhood for anyone who may have seen or heard anything suspicious. They came to my house this morning. A man stood at the bottom of our stairs, one of his hands positioned at an angle near his hip. Near his gun. Yet his face wasn’t hostile. His lips, crooked nose, and sad eyes rested on his face as the useless information my mom spat transferred from one ear to his notepad, and out the other. She stood there crossed armed, not noticing my presence as usual.

I walked down the steps and past the two conversing strangers into the kitchen.

Static and then a voice croaked through the little radio he had perched on his shoulder. There was new information down at the precinct. One of our neighbors had provided some insight as to who they could be looking for. Sadly in this neighborhood, they were either spot on or way off, and I don’t know which is true. They began to describe a suspect seen at the house beforehand. “A young man, oval face, lanky-”

Shoot. They’re describing me.

I snatched up my phone and crept sloth-like toward the back kitchen door slipping out as quietly as I could.

“-black hair, a green backpack.” With that last piece of information, the officer’s head whipped toward my backpack. He had to have connected the dots but I couldn’t be sure because I took off. I really had to find Kate.

*

My picture is out there.

Not on milk cartons like a lost child or wanted posters from some old western, but on every widely known news channel, I have my police sketch and last known whereabouts splayed on screen.

Sitting in this hair shop, hood on, eyes down, and feet pointed toward the door I’ve been waiting for Kate to walk through the door. I had already given up hours ago but something compelled me to stay sitting. Whatever it was had went away so I walked until I saw the bus, and hopped on. That is her favorite hair spot and from all of the murder mystery movies we’ve watched, plus the obnoxious amount of NCIS and CSI: Miami recorded on her DVR, I would have thought she’d show up. She always claimed to change her hair first seemed like the best plan of action because a different hairstyle works wonders on how people see you.

I tapped my school ID and walked toward the back to let others on. A bunch of kids sat back there. To my luck (or misfortune) kate was here.

She could have cut all of her hair off and I would still recognize her. She was here, freshly bleached hair and cap on, talking to some guy in a dark hoodie. When I shifted in my place both their eyes shot toward me, one with daggers and the other with sorrow.

“Kate please” I managed to squeak out before I was picked up by my arms and pulled off the bus by them both.

The hooded man knocked me off my feet. It was bad but I knew things would turn for the worst if he kept me down. My brain couldn’t help but go into overdrive, picturing blood. Whose blood wasn’t clear just yet. Then my hand was on his throat, his hands on mine, his elbows crushing, burning pain in my lungs, his weight as pressure, my chest feeling like it’s cracking.

I could hear my blood. It was louder than the screaming around me. I had to find a weapon. I loosened my grip and reached around searching for a shard of glass or rock. Anything. In what felt like a second he was up and he had a blade.

I could almost see my wide-eyed face reflecting off its sharp edge. His blade cut forward, knife ripping my flesh, and I screamed. He just missed my eye and I could feel the cut stinging as I struggled to my feet. I shoved him hard into the street and snatched kate running as far as I could.

When I thought we were far enough I pulled my phone out and dialed 9.1.1. I slipped the phone back into my pocket content with the idea that they could track and record my call.

“Come with me to the station”

“No” Her lips were drawn thin and her eyes shifted away.

“They think I-”

“I know what they think. If I go, they’ll take me for sure”

“Kate-”

“Look Nick, I have my future planned out and you don’t.” She said with a smug look plastered on her face “You told me just last week you’d be surprised if any colleges even glanced at your application”

“That’s beside the point and you know it”

“Take the fall nick” She paused as if for dramatic effect “We both know it wasn’t you but if you do then I can make it up to you when I get somewhere.”

“But you’d have to get somewhere first. That could take years. With each year, instead of celebrating that man’s birthday with him, the family will mourn his death day without him. And they’d have false closure.”

“Nick, I can’t-”

A loud high noise cut through the air. 

*

Everything happened way too fast. I saw kate get spooked as confusion, alarm, and hurt took their turns appearing on her face. She turned to run, there was an ear-splitting horn, the smell of burning rubber, and the clunk on impact.

Now I’m on my way back to the hospital. I guess I hope the walk will help clear my head but it may not work. I left her last night in shock. After they hospitalized her they told me that if she pulled through, then she would be charged.

IF

That moment right after the crash I was frozen. Time had slowed down enough for me to watch her body get propelled over the hood of the car. And it was so quiet. A piercing silence that hung in the air like a stubborn cloud of smoke.

I walked through the double doors, past reception, past patients hooked up to IV bags out in the hallway, and to her door. The smell of get well flowers and bleach took over my senses.

As I walked into the room, my eyes fell onto the bed. Her pale body stained with that familiar dark red fluid. To me, the patch on her bed looked like dried up punch but it was unmistakably blood. The rancid odor overpowering their cleaning agents and flora.

The officer who stood talking to the doctor spotted me and pulled me to the side. He told me they collected footage from the night before. Someone enters her room at precisely 10:08 pm. The video played and a tall heavyset man with a dark hood slipped in and out of her room in a matter of minutes.

“Do you recognize this man?” The officer asked. “One of the nurses-”

I could hear the mumbles of his voice still but couldn’t quite tell what he was saying. I had never noticed before; Fear has a taste. It’s a bitter metallic tang that sits idly at the back of your throat…