City of Savages Read online

  “You’re a lousy shot, Sky, everyone knows that,” I try to help, thinking back to the first and last time she entered the census celebration’s junior archery competition. But when I look up, Sky’s face is all mashed up, like she’s going to cry again. Damn it, I hate it when my words just slip out and cut her. “I mean, your knife is more your style. A more personal weapon. If you ever had the guts to use it, of course.”

  My sister shoots me a look more lethal than any knife.

  “Phee,” Sky says, “I really can’t stand you sometimes.”

  She stomps off to the bedroom’s bathroom, edging her way around her old crib. She slams the door behind her.

  “Why do you say things like that to her?”

  “I was trying to help.”

  “I’m serious, Phee,” Mom pushes. “Try to walk in her shoes. If you two don’t have each other, you don’t have anything.”

  I look down at the worn carpet, and a warm wave of shame flushes my cheeks. I hate feeling like this, so I try to ignore it. “Come on, can’t I hold the gun?”

  Mom sighs. “This isn’t a toy. I was debating even giving it to you.” She fiddles with it, opens its chamber. So much power, potential, in her palms. “I thought Sky would be more careful with it,” she says. “But I knew if you ever needed to use it, I mean really use it—”

  “I’d be able to pull the trigger,” I finish her sentence. I don’t have to add that Sky would not. We both know. We all know.

  “I can’t protect you forever. This gift is a sign of trust. That you’ll keep it hidden and only use it if you and Sky are in trouble. That you’ll respect it. Do you understand that?”

  I nod, but my heart and mind are racing. I want to be outside, firing this thing. Pow. One pull of a trigger and lightning comes out of my hand. Pow.

  “Are you listening to me?” Mom’s blue eyes bore into mine.

  “Yes. I’m listening.” And then I hug her, for the gun and for the trust, and take the gift out of her shaking hand. The shiny revolver fits into mine like a puzzle piece. Like it was made for me to hold it.

  “Can I try it?”

  Mom takes the weapon again, then digs back through the contents of the safe. She pulls out a small red box, torn around the edges, and shoves it into her pocket. “You get one shot. One blank. I don’t want to make too much commotion before we travel uptown.”

  She pushes back the little lip of the gun. “That’s the safety. Always keep it on.” She fumbles with the chamber again, opening it. “And always keep the bullets separate from the gun.”

  She dumps the pile into my hand. “Keep them safe. It’s not like my BB. This is all the ammo I have. And once it’s gone, it’s gone. Do you understand?”

  I nod, totally fixated on the weapon.

  “Come on, let’s make sure it still works.”

  I follow Mom to the window, a nervous energy creeping up my spine. She opens the glass pane that hasn’t been touched in over a decade, and we step out onto the fire escape.

  2 SKY

  The walls of this dark apartment are as thin as paper, and I hear them laughing outside as they climb onto the fire escape. Cackling and howling like two wolves. And I’m the black sheep who’s locked herself in the bathroom. The bathroom of the apartment I grew up in. Where I was a baby. God, I played in that bathtub.

  The tiny room is claustrophobic compared to the one in our apartment along the water—a small tub, a muddy-green-colored toilet that I don’t dare lift the lid off of. I wish I could remember something, anything, about this place, from before. But like so much from the past, it’s a stranger.

  A sliver of a window casts a hazy glow onto the grimy floor, lets me see myself in the mirror. My face is still flushed from watching Mom give Phee that totally inappropriate gift, and I wish I could just turn the sink handles on. Let water run over my hands and face and cool me down. But of course, there’s no water here, no water in any faucet. They’re all teases, empty promises. So instead I study myself in the glass, look so hard that my features start to become foreign.

  No wonder I’m the oddball of the family.

  I’m small and frail-looking. Tiny. Phee’s my younger sister and yet she has two inches on me, has towered over me for as long as I can remember. I’ve got limbs that tire easily, skin that doesn’t like the sun. I poke at my white face and get up close to the glass. Delicate, my mother says when she’s defending me to myself. Girls of the old world would have killed to look like you. I know she means to cheer me up, but it just makes me feel even more like an island on this small and terrible island—a relic of another time.

  Girls of the old world.

  I was born to be one of those girls.

  I unlock the door and walk back into the bedroom, where shadows of Mom and Phee dance like puppets on the carpeted floor. Mom’s behind my sister on the small landing outside, guiding her hands, showing her how to point and shoot. I taste something vile in my mouth, and I want to scream as loud as I can, let them know that I’m here.

  But of course, I won’t. You’re better than that, Mom’s voice echoes through my mind. You’re stronger than Phee, in a different way. Balance. Patience. Control.

  Sometimes I get so tired of being stronger than Phee in a different way.

  I start to poke around the room, carefully open an old bureau caked in dust, and rummage through the narrow closet. There’s very little in either, and I figure out pretty quickly that Mom must have been here already on her own, has picked the place empty like I’ve seen her pick the meat off her prey. Where were we, while she was making a secret visit to the Lower East Side?

  Knowing our mother, we’ll probably never find out.

  I remember the safe and wander over to the far wall, where its door is still open. This little door in the wall feels magical, like if I touch it, will it, I can shrink and step inside, channel myself to places I’ve read about. Wonderland. Narnia. Another time. It’s childish, I know, but I try. I place my hand inside the silver vault and hold my breath, waiting for a transformation.

  But nothing happens.

  The safe is just a home to papers: Small blue books with official seals on them, envelopes torn and ragged, stuffed with faded pink papers and hard plastic cards. I shuffle through them, not sure what I’m looking for, growing angrier the longer I look. What did I really expect to find in here? Three golden tickets to another life? The secrets of time travel?

  I’m about to shut the safe in disgust when my fingers brush against something soft and worn, most definitely unpaperlike. I carefully dislodge what feels like a leathery box from the shadows of the safe.

  A book. Without a title, without a name, just a book bound in the most unnatural color of leather I’ve ever seen. I open the soft, bright-blue cover carefully. Instead of what I expect to find inside—a title page, a few words large and bold in cold type, like my collection we’ve scavenged from libraries and apartments—there’s lush writing by hand. Loops and bubbles and dips, ink racing across the page in a fever.

  The title page reads Property of Sarah Walker Miller. Sarah Miller?

  Mom.

  A roar rips through my eardrums, jerks me out of my trance, and I jump, bang my head against the safe’s tiny door. The boom echoes and echoes, until finally the aftermath of the gunshot is bullied over by Phee’s confident cackling. She and Mom will be back any minute.

  I know I should store the book away behind the fortress of papers, as Mom wouldn’t want me looting through here. But I flip to the next page, can’t stop myself.

  January 4—Every year it’s the same. I swear that I’ll finally give the stories that circle around in my mind a page on which to land. But now, with Sky’s diapers and feedings and nonexistent naps, my dream feels even more indulgent. Ridiculous, even: Sarah Miller’s trying to be a writer!

  More of a burden on my family than anyth
ing else.

  But I need something of my own, and the days keep blurring together. And I’m terrified I’ll wake up one day and decades will have passed.

  So I need to start small, with you.

  Wait, so this book was written by Mom? The year’s not marked, but obviously it was written when I was a baby.

  I flip through it. Most pages are covered in that same ferocious ink. The markings look like they change: flowing handwriting, tight scrawls, shaky printing. But the pages are almost all full. So wonderfully full. What do I have in my hands?

  I hear feet shuffle on the fire escape, and I know that I’m going to be caught any minute. I should throw the blue book back into the dark of the safe and forget it exists. If Mom wants to tell us about it, she will.

  But I know she won’t. There’s so much she doesn’t tell us. And I can’t let the safe swallow this book whole. Whatever it is, it’s about our mother. Things we don’t know, things maybe she can’t say out loud.

  Before my mind knows what my hands are doing, I’m rooting through my backpack, digging for my own book collection. Great Expectations. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Charlotte’s Web.

  No, no, no. I can’t let go of these, either.

  But I hear the window to the fire escape being pulled back open, and I know I can’t hesitate. I take a deep breath and whisper a small thank you to E. B. White and his spider for all their stories. I pull the cover off my hardback, drape it around Mom’s book, and plunge it into my bag. Then I take the hardback and thrust it into the safe, camouflage it with the mound of loose papers.

  Good-bye, Charlotte.

  “Did you hear it?” Phee squeals as she scrambles around the bed towards me. “Did you hear the shot?”

  My heart’s pounding out of my chest, but not from the shot. Have I ever kept something from Mom before?

  “Yeah, it was hard to miss. The whole apartment practically shook.”

  “I was aiming for a tin can across the street—if it had been a real bullet, I would have blown the lid right off it.”

  I give my sister a fake smile but don’t answer. Phee’s always making these types of wild, baseless proclamations. And I can’t humor her right now; I’m still kind of mad at her and Mom. Plus, my focus is elsewhere. I study my mother, trying to figure out whether she can sense my nervousness, can tell that my bag’s been ripped open and her secrets are tucked away inside.

  “We should get going.” Mom inches past me towards the safe. “It’s time to hop if we don’t want to miss check-in.”

  My breath catches. Can she tell? Does she notice the switch?

  But Mom only looks into the miniature door once before she closes it and locks the safe.

  And I breathe. For now, the truth stays buried.

  As Mom locks the front door behind us, Phee extends the unloaded red gun out to me and shrugs. “You know, we can share it,” she says. “Or rotate. Mom said I only got it ’cause I’m more trouble in the first place.”

  This is Phee’s version of apologizing; she can tell I’m still mad.

  “That’s probably true. But no big deal, you keep it,” I say, and I’m surprised I mean it. I clutch my backpack, knowing that I now have something far more valuable than a gun. “I’ll just let you know if I need a good shot.”

  * * *

  By the time we leave the town house and start walking uptown, it’s square into the afternoon, but Mom still insists that we retrace our steps back to the East River and walk by the water to get to the Park. It’s definitely out of the way, but she won’t even entertain Phee’s pleas to use Third Avenue. We never chance walking so close to the tunnels. Never. Even now, with a gun.

  As we walk, I look across the river, to the sinking bones of the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, and out to the gray boroughs that fence us in like barbed wire. I cover my eyes from the strong sun and search the horizon for our captors, the Red Allies.

  I’m not sure I can remember the last time I saw a Red soldier on our island. I have slippery memories of men in uniforms with guns marching through our war-ravaged avenues, but these days, they pretty much leave us to fend for ourselves. The only reminders that we’re prisoners of war are the fires and flares across the river from time to time, or messages from the Red Allies relayed by Rolladin and her Council. But today, as we travel to the Park for the annual census, I’m itching to see them. To see signs of life from those who have kept our own contained, imprisoned. Small.

  There’s no sign of the soldiers, though, and it makes me feel angry. And alone.

  We reach the remains of the Queensboro Bridge quickly, but slow to a crawl as we navigate the sky-high piles of shrapnel, cracked cement, and debris that line the East River like tombstones.

  “This is so stupid,” Phee whispers to me, as Mom traipses ahead of us carefully. “When’s the last time anyone actually saw a tunnel feeder?” She hops over a slab of cement. “We should be cutting up the center of the city. Why chance being late to the census?”

  She’s right, of course: If we miss check-in, Rolladin could throw us out of the Park and turn us back the way we came. A winter by ourselves along the water, with no guaranteed heat or food. But I doubt Rolladin would do that. Despite how much Mom hates her, Rolladin sort of has a fondness for our family.

  “You know Mom, safety first.” I study the sky. “We’ll be all right. We’re making good time.”

  A loud bang, like tin on tin, ruptures the silent city, and Phee and I both jump and look ahead of us.

  “Mom!”

  She’s lying in a field of debris and chipped metal, holding her ankle, moaning. We rush to her side and fall down beside her, and she rolls over, breathes a few quick, punctured pants.

  “What’s wrong? What is it?” I inspect her. “What happened?”

  “My ankle,” Mom stutter-gasps. She tries to move her foot but winces and stops. “There must have been a ditch or something, hidden by the rubble. . . . I came down hard.” She waves her hand behind her. A piece of metal sticks out of a small hole in the ground at a sharp angle, like one of the Park’s seesaws.

  “Do you think it’s broken?” Phee shoots me a look over Mom’s head. “Can you walk?”

  “Yes. I can walk.” Mom pushes herself into an all-fours position and begins to slowly lift herself off the ground—“Yes, I can . . . I can . . . ARGHHHH . . . God damn it”—but collapses underneath her own pressure. “It has to be sprained.” Mom rolls onto her side again to get a better look at her ankle. It’s starting to swell and rise like a tide. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she whispers, throwing her head back onto the earth.

  Phee says, “Mom, we have to carry you.”

  “No, I’ll be fine.” Mom starts gearing up to try again. “Just let me get up.”

  “Mom,” I say patiently. But firmly, as Mom would rather drag herself to hell and back than burden my sister or me. “We’re walking you to the Park, okay? Let us do this.”

  Mom looks at me for a long time. Then she nods, reluctantly. “I’ll move faster with a splint.” She points into the rubble. “Phee, find a piece of wood, or metal, about this long.” She holds her hands a foot apart. “Sky, give me one of your scarves. And quickly. We need to get moving.” She runs her fingers through her hair, her trademark move when she’s nervous, and I catch her panic. I’m starting to hyperventilate a little, digging through my bag.

  “It’s all right, honey,” Mom says. But her voice is high and tight. “We’ll make it. We always do.”

  We race against Mom’s watch as the sky turns gray and cold, mocking us as we hobble alongside the East River. Mom winces every few steps, and Phee and I use every ounce of willpower we have not to keep stopping to attend to her.

  We turn off First Avenue, onto 76th Street. We’re all sweating, swearing, and I just try to focus on limping forward. I bite my lip every time I want to say tha
t my shoulders are about to give in, that my neck is so strained I think it might snap.

  “We’re almost there.” Mom pulls her hand around my neck to look at her watch. “We’re going to make it.”

  By the time we reach the front doors of the old Carlyle Hotel, my skin is slippery, and my thin leather jacket’s practically suffocating me. Phee’s face is as red as a cardinal as she huffs and puffs on Mom’s other side. Backpacks bouncing against our backs, we fling ourselves into the dusty Carlyle lobby. Phee bangs on the front desk bell just as one of Rolladin’s warlords, Philip, carefully places a handwritten CLOSED sign on the desk’s ledge.

  “Too late,” Philip mutters. He doesn’t even look at us as he rearranges the raccoon shawl around his shoulders and tosses his thinning blond hair. “Census check-in’s over.”

  “Philip.” Mom tries to catch her breath. “It’s a matter of minutes. My ankle . . . I tripped on the way up here. The girls have been carrying me. We did what we could—”

  “You need to get that Rolex fixed.” Philip purses his lips and rolls his eyes. “Pity there’s no watchmaker left to recommend.”

  Phee and I exchange glances behind Mom’s back. This isn’t good. But Mom’s already after Philip, pulling our shoulders like reins to turn our three-man team around.

  “Philip, wait.” Mom calls after him as he saunters out of the lobby. “It was an accident. We can’t be more than five minutes late, tops. Please—”

  “You know the rules better than anyone. Take it up with Rolladin.” He flings his words like weapons behind him.

  “Please, Philip,” Mom tries again as we hobble after him, her voice this time a desperate whisper. “We’d never say anything. Just look the other way, and the girls will get me upstairs. Rolladin will never have to know. For old times’ sake—”

  “Sarah,” Philip turns abruptly, now with a red-handled knife in hand, so we know the conversation is over. “Check-in. Is. Over. Understood? Go to the Belvedere to plead your case.”