“Stop it!” I yelled.
The three boys, college athletes according to their letter jackets, stopped kicking the guy and turned around.
One of them, a beefy guy with slicked-back brown hair and piggish eyes, leered at me. “You sixteen?”
“No,” I squeaked, holding up my wrist for him to see. That’s when I realized the danger I was in, all alone in a secluded area of Lincoln Park facing three ’letes who were primed for trouble. My being underage wouldn’t matter to them. ’Letes could do whatever they wanted. There was no way I could outrun them, so I stood my ground, hoping the meanest glare I could muster would hide my terror.
The tallest of the three yanked on Pig Eyes’ sleeve. “Come on, Coach’ll bench us if we’re late again.”
Pig Eyes shook off his grasp, and locked eyes with me. Then his gaze traveled downward. “Oh, baby, I’d love some of that.” He grabbed his crotch and thrust his hips at me before turning to follow his friends. I wanted to vomit.
On their way past the guy on the ground, Pig Eyes kicked him one more time.
They finally disappeared behind the trees. I was shaking so hard I was afraid if I tried to walk I’d collapse in a sobbing heap. The homeless guy still lay there like a giant tattered baby. I should have gone; anyone else would’ve left him.
Homeless are no better than river rats, maybe even worse. They get beaten and killed without anyone noticing. No one in their right mind has anything to do with them. But I guess at that moment my mind wasn’t quite right. Even though my knees were like rubber bands, I took a deep breath and scrunched through the leaves to the moaning heap of ragged clothes.
“You okay?”
All I got back was a grunt.
“Hey, can I do anything?”
Rolling onto his back, he groaned.
“Shit.” He spat out some blood and touched the split on his lip from where it was flowing. “How stupid am I?”
“I dunno.” I stared at him. He looked almost as bad as Ginnie after one of Ed’s rages. “You look more hurt than stupid.”
I was surprised—the face that glanced up at me wasn’t a man’s, old or otherwise. He was a boy, my age. “That was rhetorical,” he snapped, dabbing at his lip with a filthy sleeve.
“Here.” I offered him a rumpled napkin from my pocket, ignoring his attitude.
Holding it on the cut, he squinted in my general direction. “You’re not afraid to talk to me?”
“No.” That wasn’t entirely true. I was terrified. “You homeless?”
He sat up, clutching his stomach. “Man, that really hurts,” he muttered, not to me in particular, so I didn’t comment. Shading his eyes with one hand, he looked up at me. “Does it make a difference if I am?”
“Well… uh… I, ah…”
I couldn’t shake the impulse to help him. It seemed that the older I got the more I believed that everyone, homeless or not, deserved to be treated at least like a human. I knew it was my mom’s influence. She always says everyone has a right to live. Just because the homeless don’t want to take handouts from the government because of what they have to do in return doesn’t mean they’re subhuman.
This guy looked so vulnerable, all I could think of was Ginnie after a go-round with Ed. For ten years I’ve seen this—I’d try to help her clean up afterward, but she looked so awful I would cry and that would upset my little sister, Dee. I’d choked back so many tears, they’d become a lake of sadness in my belly.
“Well?” His voice brought me back to the present. “You got a problem with that?”
“No.”
“Yeah, right, Little Miss Burbs.” He looked me up and down, but not the way Pig Eyes had. “I bet you don’t.”
My jaw dropped. As if I would lie to some guy I’d risked my life to help? And the slam about the suburbs? It hadn’t been my choice to go from our tier-five apartment in the city to our tier-two existence in Cementville. Any compulsion to help him flew right away like a swirl of autumn leaves.
“Seems like you’re fine now.” I stepped around him “Keep the napkin.”
A tiny part of me wanted to kick him, too, not because he was homeless, but because he was a judgmental asshole.
“Hey,” he called after me. “Sorry. I’m not usually… well… the circumstances, you know.”
That stopped me. I did know. Sometimes when Ginnie’d come home beat-up, she would lash out at me. Not ever physically, but she’d say mean things. She needed to share her pain, so I took some of it. I’d do anything for her, no matter how much it hurt. I turned around.
I sat on the ground across from him. “Where do you stay? Is there someone I can call?” I pulled my PAV receiver out of my pocket. “Do you need—”
“I’m not homeless. I live over there.” He jerked his head to the west. “Ow!” He grabbed his neck and rubbed it. “I’ll be fine, it’ll just take a sec.” He wasn’t homeless? I started to ask him why he looked like he was, when he said, “What about you? Where do you live?”
My cheeks reddened, remembering his earlier slam. “I do live in the suburbs.” I held my chin up. “But I used to live here, on Wrightwood.”
“What’s your name?”
“Nina.”
“Nina what?”
Why did he want to know? I wasn’t sure I should tell him my last name. The earlier terror I’d felt had subsided, but this interest in me made me nervous. I shook it off. What would it hurt for him to know my name? It’s not like he could get my PAV number. (I shoved the receiver back in my pocket, just in case.) “Oberon.”
“Oberon?” He dropped his hand from his neck. “Nina Oberon,” he repeated, scrutinizing my face, which made me even more uneasy.
“What’s yours?” I felt the heat rising up my neck again. Damn blushing. I averted my eyes.
“Sal Davis.”
I glanced back at him, and he looked away. A bit of napkin clung to the blood that had dried on his lip. Even though he was sitting, I could tell he was taller than me, and he was skinny, but not in an unhealthy way. Thick dark lashes rimmed his eyes. His longish black hair was wavy and there were leaf bits randomly sticking out of it. He’s kind of cute, I thought, which didn’t make me any less uncomfortable.
“You’re a mess.” I pointed to his head. As he reached up, I took a deep breath and asked, “How come you’re dressed like that if you’re not homeless?”
“No one notices me that way.” He brushed the leaves off his head.
“Why don’t you want to be noticed?”
Sal leaned back and looked at me. “You sure do ask a lot of questions. What’s up with that?”
Me? He’d asked just as many questions, maybe even more. Whether it was his attitude again or the stress of the whole situation, a stupid tear chose that moment to trickle down my cheek. I wasn’t fast enough to wipe it away before he noticed.
“I’m hurt and you’re crying?” He started laughing.
“You know what?” I jumped up and jabbed my finger at him. “I came down here to help you. I was trying to be nice.”
I marched to the top of the mound, and looked over my shoulder, at not-homeless Sal Davis, leaves stuck to his ratty clothes, eyes shaded by a hand that was still clutching the tattered, bloody napkin. “Thanks, Nina Oberon.”
I kept on walking until I got to Michigan Avenue. I was almost glad to hear the verts, “Celebrate Moon Settlement Day on the Dark Side. Only Four hundred and fifty round-trip… ,” “Maria Corcoran fashions, straight from the runway in Milan…,” “… Stacy’s latest hit, ‘City of Tears’…” They drowned out Sal’s voice saying my name.
VI
“You gotta listen to this one, Neens.” Mike dragged me toward a sporting-goods store. “They’re talking about how balls feel—it’ll crack you up.”