I’ve been trying to save my buck seventy-three for an emergency, but I’m starting to really need food and my throat’s so dry it’s sticking to itself. I can’t afford the taco stands so I walk west on Santa Monica, knowing eventually I’ll hit a 7-Eleven, where microwave burritos are eighty-nine cents and I can get a soda too. Once my stomach is calm I’ll be able to think; then maybe I can stick out my thumb like in the movies and some old guy will take pity on my plight and drive me back to Venice.
By the time I push through the door, past the magazine racks full of
Variety
and
Hollywood Reporter
, I’m dizzy enough that it’s hard to find my way around the store. I know burritos are always back by the Big Gulps, but my eyes are blurry and sped-up enough that I go the wrong way and brush into a tower of chips. The guy at the counter’s eyes flick up from
People
magazine as soon as I knock into the chip bags, and they stay on me. When I finally find my way through the plastic junk food maze, he hollers back at me to pay before I microwave and I have to say “What?” twice before I understand because he’s from Pakistan or someplace. I feel stupid for not deciphering his accent, like I might offend him; my face gets hot and I know it’s turning pink. I bring the burrito up to the counter and a big Mountain Dew for caffeine. I can’t look at him but I can tell his eyes are still stuck to my face and hands. They dart back and forth as I count out my change on the scuffed white Formica.
He rings me up and it comes out to a dollar ninety-three. Even before I’m done counting I know I don’t have it, but I keep sliding nickels and dimes across from one hand to the other so I can act like it’s a surprise. Finally I get to the end and go “Oh shit!” and look up and blink like
Oops, I forgot the rest of my money in the car
or something. He just looks at me and says “One dollar ninety-three cents.”
“I’m short. Twenty cents. Can I owe you?” I say and make my eyes as wide as I can without twitching.
“One dollar ninety-three cents,” he says.
“Come on,” I go. It’s not like it’s going to kill him. There are spots in front of everything and I’m starting to feel like I need to eat like
right now
.
“Sorry.” He shrugs.
“Come on!” I say. “It’s twenty cents!” He looks at me like a concrete wall and raises his eyebrows. I wait for him to answer.
“Sorry,” he goes again, in the exact same identical monotone as before.
I’ve never gotten mad at a stranger or especially a grown-up, but the empty in my stomach has spread to my head. “It’s twenty fucking cents!” I go. “I’m hungry! Just let me have it!” and I’m kind of yelling.
“Please quiet down, sir,” he tells me and his voice is like a rock.
“Don’t call me fucking sir!” I yell louder, and I can feel hot tears rolling down the dry of my cheeks and all of a sudden my nose is full of snot. The guy and the counter and the cigarettes and the hot-dog machine on the counter all go blurry and I can’t even read the red numbers on the register anymore; I’m just crying and swearing and I don’t even know why or what I’m saying.
Then the guy is around on my side of the counter and he’s got his big hand in the middle of my back, covering my spine, and his spread-out fingers reach almost across both my shoulder blades. My bones feel like a bird beneath his hand and I feel like if I fell back it’d catch me except he’s pushing me toward the door hard enough to make me trip over my feet and if I don’t watch out I’ll fly right into the glass. “Don’t come back,” he says and now his voice is mean and a new wave of tears and snot comes up from my chest. I shove into the door with my shoulder and stumble away from the hot push of his hand.
On the pavement the first thing I realize is I left my fucking change on the counter, all seventy-three cents, and my ribs jerk in and out again and I crumple down onto the pebbly gravel of the parking lot.
“Hey,” someone says above me, and I can hardly even lift my head to look—I can’t take one more thing. If it’s a cop or some guy hitting on me I think I’ll break into a million pieces and turn to dust. I nod just enough to let him know I heard him, though, so nobody can call me rude. “That guy never cuts anyone a break. I saw through the window. You hungry?”
His voice is nice enough to make the crying wear off for a second; I rub my eyes and look up. It’s just this kid. He’s my age I think and about my height, five eight or so, but bigger. He’s got the opposite body of me: instead of straight-up-and-down skinny, he’s broad through the shoulders and solid, almost stocky, with dark brown hair cut really short and freckles—and he’s dressed like a whole other world. His T-shirt and shorts are faded black like they’ve been in the sun for a year and he’s got patches sewn on everywhere and a knife strapped to his belt loop in a leather case that looks like he made it himself. Down by his boots there’s a big army bag, and tied to the bag is a piece of long dirty rope, and at the end of the rope is a brown pit bull, panting. He smiles at me. “I’ll be right back. You watch the dog?”
I nod and he goes into the 7-Eleven. The counter guy glares but doesn’t say anything, and I watch through the window as the kid microwaves two burritos and buys them and a Mountain Dew. When he gets his change back he looks at it and says something I can’t hear. Then the counter guy opens the register again and gives him three more quarters.
He comes back out, sits down next to the dog, and says “Thanks.” I must look scared because he goes “Germ’s friendly. He won’t hurt you.” I’ve never heard of a dog named Germ, but okay. He hands me the bag with the burritos. “I thought you could maybe use two.”
All the water that was in my eyes before is in my mouth now. I’m starving. I tell him thanks and take the bag, trying not to snatch it out of his hands and rip it open. He watches me and smiles. “My name’s Squid,” he says.
My mouth is so full I can barely chew, let alone talk. I try to say my name, but instead I make some weird kind of grunty noise and then my face turns red. I’m such a loser. “It’s cool,” he goes, and kind of laughs. “You can tell me after.”
After I choke down both burritos and chug half the Mountain Dew I feel like maybe I can breathe again. I have no idea why this guy is being nice to me. “Thanks” is the only thing I can think of to say, but it seems like not enough. He just smiles at me again. He keeps smiling. I don’t know if I’m funny or what. “I’m Rusty,” I remember to tell him.
“Cool,” he goes. “Where you from?” I tell him Bakersfield. I start to explain more, but then remember that I can’t: Jim always said no one should find out, no matter if they’re someone we know or not. I sort of trail off in the middle but Squid doesn’t seem to notice; he just nods and says “I hear Bakersfield sucks.” He doesn’t tell me where he’s from. Germ pants some more and I pet him.
“Oh,” Squid goes and reaches into his pocket. “I almost forgot.” He hands me three quarters. “This is yours.”
“Thanks,” I go, and take the change; then I realize I haven’t spent any money but I still just ate. “Do you want—” I start to say, but he interrupts me.
“Nah. It’s cool.” I keep watching him to see if he’s expecting something else from me, but he just pets the dog.
We hang out in the parking lot till the sky starts turning pink. Once in a while the 7-Eleven guy comes over and glares at us through the window; when he does, Squid reaches out his arm without even looking and hits the glass hard with the back of his hand. It always makes the guy go away.
That nervous feeling of not having something to do doesn’t happen when there’s another person there. Whenever the silence gets too long you can ask the other person questions and they’ll fill it up for you. After a while Squid says where he’s from, which is Arizona, and that he’s been in L.A. since last year. He’s sixteen. It sort of scares me that someone could live like this for a whole year without anything changing, especially when he asks me how long I’ve been here and I hear myself tell him a month and a half. It was only supposed to be a week.
Before I can think about that too much I ask him how he got here and he says “Trains.” I think he means Amtrak, but then he describes it: he snuck into the backs of freight trains and rode them for free, hidden out with his ex-girlfriend Annabelle. When they ran away they headed toward L.A. instead of Austin because the train to Texas runs near Mexico and INS will take you to jail. It doesn’t matter if you’re American or not; if you don’t pay they’ll come on the train and get you. So they went the other way. She came all the way to California with him, he says, and then a couple weeks went by and she met a guy who took her up to Berkeley. He sort of stops for a second when he tells me that part and I want to ask him about it, but I don’t know what to say.
I can’t believe the train thing, though. I never heard of anyone doing that except in movies, and never a kid. I didn’t even know there were such things as freight trains anymore. All of a sudden his face turns into something out of a storybook and I have about a hundred million questions I want to ask, but he says “C’mon. Let’s go meet my friends” and pulls me up by the elbow. Germ perks up his ears like we’re on an adventure.
We go down Hollywood a few blocks to this taco stand Benito’s. On the way I’m nervous and I wish that Jim was here; he always knows how to act and what to do. When we get close, Squid waves at two kids sitting on the dirty orange stools; I fall in step behind him as we walk up to them. The guy’s named Critter and he’s really tall and skinny with a stocking cap on top and has a face like nothing I’ve ever seen before except for on a billboard or a magazine. It’s almost like a girl’s, so beautiful, with all the bones lined up, pronounced and delicate, his long dark eyelashes ringing bright green eyes. I try not to stare. He nods at me and I sort of lift my chin at him but then I look at my feet.
The girl says “Hey” to me, sort of too loud like she’s trying to prove she’s there. She’s short, so I don’t have to raise my head too much to meet her eyes; when I do she looks me up and down in this way that’s supposed to seem brave but is obviously jumpy underneath. She can’t be older than thirteen. She’s got short magenta hair that looks like she cut it herself and a ring through her lip, and she’s chunky. Her clothes are cleaner than the rest of them, and her backpack is the kind you use for school, not camping. “I’m Eeyore,” she goes, and then she leans back into Critter and looks up at him.
“Eeyore just started hanging out with us,” Squid goes. “Right?” he asks her, and she sort of seems embarrassed that it hasn’t been very long. I don’t know why she would be; I just met them today.
“Couple weeks,” she goes.
Squid laughs. “More like a couple days.” Eeyore looks at the sidewalk, mad. “We found her back behind Whole Foods when we were Dumpstering. She like memorized their whole schedule. This kid knows how to get the good shit.” All of a sudden a big grin takes over Eeyore’s face; she sticks out her chest a little and beams up at Critter. Squid shoots me a look like he did it on purpose.
After a couple days, Germ starts to wag his tail when I talk to him. It’s nice being recognized; it hasn’t happened in a while. Not since Bakersfield. It’s exhausting to always only see brand-new faces and corners and sidewalks, to never get to settle on one, rest your eyes and feel like home. It wears you out. When I picture Jim in my head there’s this mad feeling that’s starting to mix in with the worry, but I still keep imagining him anyway, just because he’s the only thing I can really remember, the only thing that lets me know where I am.
But now Germ knows me, and Squid starts feeling familiar to me too: I know what he smells like and the sound of his voice. I have a little place to rest, even if it’s only small. Critter and Eeyore come and go some, but Squid is always there. He never leaves me alone. I memorize him fast; hanging out with him just feels sort of normal and he smiles at me so much I never worry about saying the wrong thing. One time I went off to find a pay phone, but I told him I was going to the bathroom. But everything else I can say.
I’ve done a good job with stretching my last dollar out: Eeyore’s always bringing us free food from trash cans I don’t know where, and Squid taught me to sleep in the alleys. I’d never spend the night out there alone—I’d feel so naked and peeled open I’d never be able to sleep—but with the rest of them around it’s okay. Kind of like camping, except without a tent or a fire or trees. Sometimes we go behind Whole Foods where you can smell the warm sugar of the bakery through the vents, or else in alleys by Benito’s. It’s never quiet enough to close my eyes and imagine Jim like in the hostel, but the rest of them fill the space laughing so usually I don’t feel it much. Eeyore and Critter huddle up in the middle of everyone: she curls into him like a little sister and he keeps her warm. Squid and I say good night to each other over the lump the two of them make and I soak in the heat across them.
After the first few days Eeyore quits talking so loud all the time, and as long as I don’t stand too close to Critter she’s sweet to me. When she’s not trying hard to stand up the tallest, you can see what she actually looks like: really young and like a baby bird, with all these soft spots that aren’t covered up by anything. I know that feeling. I have them too. I want to tell her she doesn’t have to put all that stupid hard stuff over them, that those spots are beautiful and the way to be safe is to find somebody who will touch them, not to cover them up. But she’d probably take it wrong.
It’s been a week of me hanging out with them when Critter goes to meet some guy one night and comes back with a backpack full of junk, which I’ve never seen before.
I’m actually not even sure what kind of drug junk is, although I know it’s something serious. I want to ask him if I can look at it but I know he’ll think I’m stupid, so I don’t. In the morning Critter says he’s gonna go unload the junk at Hollywood and Highland. Squid nods like it’s normal, but Eeyore’s eyes ping-pong up at Critter like she thinks he’ll never come back. Right away he asks her if she wants to come. She jumps up so fast she almost falls back down, and he holds out his hand in case she needs to balance. She doesn’t take it, even though you can tell she wants to.