Authors: Wynne Channing
He read my face and his shoulders
sagged. I knew he was giving in.
“I don’t think…”
“Don’t worry. It’ll be
fine.”
The girl standing behind a
pyramid of oranges grinned and blinked at me with her spiky false
eyelashes. She greeted me with a nasally, high-pitched, elongated:
“
Ni hao
!”
“Hi,” I said with a
smile.
I should have asked Lucas for some
general phrases: Excuse me. Thank you. How are you?
I continued strolling through the
market. The street was steeped in the smell of sweet juice. The
on-coming crowd stared at me but I didn’t care; I was too busy
marveling at the street life. Four people sat at a stall, wrapping
minced meat into dough and then rolling the finished balls across a
floured stainless steel table. At the next stall a man marinated
steak in plastic vats. A car came down the street. Pedestrians,
many carrying umbrellas for shade, meandered to the side, and the
vehicle just fit in between the food stalls and the bodies. I had
to turn my shoulder to avoid getting hit by the side
mirrors.
I wished I had my camera;
there was so much life to capture. I wanted to touch everything. I
thumbed through a rack of scarves, stopping at a white pashmina
with black swirls. I ran my hands over the fine wool.
Oh my God, Tiffany would love this.
The thought was followed by an ache in my chest.
I could mail it to her from an anonymous admirer, but she might
assume it was me, and that would cause my family such
turmoil.
The shopkeeper, a man with
exaggerated, thin facial features and spindly limbs, came out of
his store. He pointed to the scarf and spoke to me. I smiled, shook
my head, and retreated. As I tried to disappear into the crowd, he
followed me with his eyes and kept trying to wave me back. Looking
around I saw that I was the only one wearing black.
I had wanted to walk around as a
distraction. A pause for my soul. But things kept reminding me of
what I had lost. Suddenly, I felt empty and alone. I placed my hand
over my abdomen and it gurgled in response. My mouth tasted sour
and my stomach felt like it had begun to rot. I was so hungry, so
thirsty.
All around me I saw people and food. I
walked up to the nearest food stall, unsure of what I was looking
at, and the elderly woman standing behind the steaming cart grinned
a toothless grin, her face folding like an accordion.
Feet. Lucas said food would taste like
feet. But how long had it been since he’d tried?
The woman pierced a single beige ball
and presented the stick to me. When I hesitated she pushed it
toward me, babbling and nodding. I felt like Snow White facing a
poisoned apple. The glistening morsel, the size of a ping-pong
ball, smelled fishy.
Just one bite. How bad
could it be?
I took the stick and
smiled.
“Thank you,” I said. The
woman grinned, gesturing with her hands, miming the action of
eating. I put it to my lips and took a nibble. The flesh was soft
and the salty juice gushed over my teeth. It didn’t taste like
feet. It tasted like fish. I put the whole ball into my mouth and
smiled at the woman while chewing through its rubbery texture.
Lucas didn’t know what he was talking about. I swallowed the
mouthful. I thought of a girl who had walked by earlier holding a
crepe filled with ice cream.
I’m so having
ice cream. Like right now.
I took three steps away from the stall
and felt a stab of pain in my stomach. Gasping, I grabbed my
abdomen. It was as if I had swallowed a capsule filled with acid
and it had just burst. It tore at my insides. I stumbled down a
street, leaned against a green fence, and retched.
I vomited so violently that
tears came to my eyes. I spat onto the pavement and dabbed my mouth
with the back of my wrist. Then I wiped the blood from the corner
of my eyes.
Oh God.
Sniffing, I straightened up—the pain had subsided—and looked
around. People were staring.
“Bad fish ball,” I said and wandered
off.
***
I pushed against the slow-moving crush
of pedestrians on the narrow sidewalk as the sky dimmed. The last
time I lost track of time, I met a boy and he killed me. You’d
think I would have learned my lesson.
People lounged on patio furniture on
the sidewalk, eating steak and eggs sizzling on hotplates. The
smells made me nauseous and my stomach groaned. Hunger was doing
violence to my gut.
I passed a group of
students skewering fish balls out of a paper bag and I scrunched my
face. Their laughter rang in my ears, as did the chime of bells
from a nearby stall selling doughnuts. A man behind a counter
chopped up chicken parts; the rhythmic pounding of his cleaver
rattled my brain.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Thump.
It was like a heartbeat. And then
the sounds of human heartbeats bled into my consciousness.
Squinting, I tried to block the noise attacking my ears. It sounded
like a high school band practice with everyone banging on
instruments and talking. I stared at the ground, focusing on the
grit on the street, the cracks in the concrete, and the noise
faded, as if I’d gone into another room and was slowly closing the
door.
I needed to get back to
Lucas.
Then I heard a scream. It had sailed
over the market’s clamor, striking me like an arrow. I froze. I
searched the faces of the crowd but no one reacted. The teenagers
around me were giggling, and the butcher was grunting at a customer
while dropping animal parts into a plastic bag.
I thought I had imagined it but there
it was again. A girl’s voice, now a muffled whimper. Further down
the street, over to the right. I followed it, shouldering past
people into a tight, empty alley. The market din was just white
noise now; all I heard was the girl’s crying. I stood on the
pavement for a moment, focusing beyond where I could see down the
curving street.
Men’s voices. The girl’s snivel. Her
heels scraping on the concrete. As I walked farther, her quick
breath and her pounding heartbeat grew louder.
At the alley’s dead end I saw her,
struggling with two men. One pressed his body against her with his
hand clamped over her mouth while the other held her wrists behind
her back. Three others stood in the corner, watching, yelling,
laughing. The stench of alcohol permeated the air.
The girl was my age, my size. She was
wearing a caramel knit dress and white sandals. Throwing herself
backward, she head-butted the guy behind her. He cried out,
grabbing his nose. Meanwhile, his friend gripped her throat and
slapped her across the face.
“Hey!” I yelled before I realized what
I was doing.
They all whipped around to look at
me.
Crap. I’m breaking my
promise to Lucas.
Their heartbeats quickened and then
slowed after sizing me up.
A short, stocky man said something to
me, his voice taunting and nasal. He looked at his friends, barked
something at them, and they all snickered. He nodded toward me,
called to me. One of his friends puckered his lips and waved me
over.
I heard a voice in my
head.
Run.
The girl was looking at me. I could
see the whites of her wide, terrified brown eyes and the streaks of
mascara on her cheeks. I thought of Paolo and the church and Uther
coming to my rescue. And I knew. I knew that I couldn’t leave her.
I blinked and took a step forward.
The men were talking, laughing,
whistling. The stocky one, who appeared to be the leader, gestured
to the two men holding the girl. They dragged her back, farther
away from me. The other two goons—one tubby and balding, the other
slim with spiky hair—approached me.
“Let her go,” I said. My low, guttural
voice startled me.
The leader chortled, slapping his
knee. His friends copied him.
I pointed at the girl. “I said, ‘Let
the girl go.’”
“Leddagirlgo,” one taunted.
One of the guys grabbed the girl by
her hair and yanked her head back. She screamed, her eyes squeezing
out tears.
My face burning, I walked toward them
until I was within five feet of the chubby guy and his spiky-haired
friend. The chubby one winked at me, his hands on his bloated
belly. He then dragged his gaze down my body, lingering at my
chest. Laughing, he turned to his friend and slurped spit from his
big purple lips. My fingernails dug into my palms as I balled my
hands into fists.
“Speak In-gu-lish?” he taunted. He
made kissing noises.
“You want boyfriend?” the thin one
asked. He grinned at me with his yellow, crooked teeth. His friend
jabbed him with an elbow.
Disgusting.
The men pushed the sobbing girl
against the side of a building, crushing her cheek against the
brick.
“Stop it!” I shouted. I felt a brief
burn in my gums and then the hardness of fangs against my
lips.
Sneering, the two men ran at me. And I
waited. They moved so slowly. I could measure their steps. I could
hear each breath they took with their strides. Their human bodies
were jiggly and clumsy as they charged the space between us. And I
wanted them to reach me. I wanted to make them stop
grinning.
The slim guy extended his arms to grab
me. I leaned back, placed my foot against his chest and kicked him.
I felt his ribs shatter under my soles, as if I had just stepped on
thin ice. His eyes bulged and veins protruded in his neck and his
temples. He curled around my sneaker as if molding himself to it
and then he was airborne. With his arms and legs trailing behind as
he flew across the street, his body resembled a badminton birdie.
He smashed into a pile of garbage bins, which exploded every which
way.
His friend didn’t even see what had
happened. His fingers had curled around my forearm and he was
growling, drooling like a dog. I slammed my arm into his round
stomach and his mouth made an “oof” sound. One second he was beside
me. The next, he was gone. It was like spiking a volleyball. He
rocketed into the side of a building and collapsed onto the ground.
His body had left a red splatter against the wall.
I couldn’t move. Nothing
was moving. There was no sound. I thought time had stopped.
What is happening? Am I dreaming? Is this a
dream?
Then all of a sudden reality rushed
back at me. My entire body was trembling from rage. Even my teeth
tingled. The girl was blubbering. Her captors were stunned; they
were barely holding her anymore. I stared at the bodies sprawled on
the street and looked at my hands. I did not understand what had
happened. I couldn’t think. Everything was moving so fast now. The
leader yelled at his friends, snapping them out of their stupor.
One guy picked up a stick, a wooden handle of a mop perhaps, and
broke it over his knee. They ran at me, arms flailing, mouths
flapping.
One man swung a piece of the stick at
my head and I ducked. As he brought the other stick toward me, I
caught it. I tried to wrench it out of his hands and I heard a pop.
The man shrieked and dropped to his knees, clutching his dangling
arm. I had dislocated his shoulder. The fourth man had been dancing
around us. He lunged forward and took a shot at my face. I caught
his soft fist in my palm. Without thinking, I squeezed it and the
bones in all his fingers snapped, crackling like a crushed paper
bag.
Gasping, I released his hand and he
fell over, crying.
The leader had grabbed the girl and
was holding her as a shield. Gripping her chin, he exposed her
throat and pressed a switchblade against her pale flesh. He was
screaming at me and I could hear their heartbeats hammering in
their chests.
“Please,” I said. I showed him my
palms. “Please, don’t hurt her. Just put the knife
down.”
I took a step toward them. Yelling, he
pushed the knife against her throat, puncturing the skin. A trickle
of blood ran into her collar. The girl wept.
“Please, stop!” I cried.
Panting, his eyes darted from his
broken friends and then back to me. He reeked of beer and sweat, as
if he’d been marinating in it for hours. I could feel his
desperation. He was cornered. I could tell he was going to do
something stupid.
He reached across the girl, moving his
blade toward her ear.
“No!” I cried.
My eyes fixed on his knife, I rushed
toward them. He brought the knife down under her jaw and pressed
the blade to her neck.
But then I was there, my hand on his
hand. I had crossed the pavement in between two of his heartbeats.
His eyes looked as if they would explode from his head. His lips
pulled back as if to grin but he started to shriek. He was
terrified of me. I yanked him away from her, and it was like
swinging around a sock puppet. Holding him by his throat I pulled
his petrified, purple face to mine. The points of my fangs poked my
lower lip.