Fire in the Streets (23 page)

Cherry rubs that one off and puts on another. “Oh, this is even better.”

Yes, it is. My stomach starts churning. “I can't actually buy anything, you know.” It hurts to admit it. It was an impulse, coming down here. I didn't really think about how I couldn't follow through.

Cherry reaches for her purse. “Pick your color. Like I said, I recommend one of these two, but it's up to you.”

“I don't have any money.”

“Well, I do. So pick.”

“No, I couldn't.” My hand strokes the edge of the countertop mirror. The reflection there isn't me; it's only who I want to be. Untouchable. Unreal. And about to disappear.

Cherry sighs, picking up a tube of her favorite shade. “I always meant to thank you for not saying anything about that night.”

“What happened?” I ask her. The color on my lips makes me bold. For a moment, I am the girl in the mirror. “You didn't seem . . . like yourself.”

Cherry's body stills. Our eyes meet in the mirror. Maybe she only sees the unreal me, the grown-up me, because she doesn't push away the question like before. “There's this guy,” she says. “He wants something from me that he can't have. Tries to take it sometimes.”

“Is it because you look so pretty?”

“No.” She slides her arm around my shoulders, hugging me against her. “It's because he doesn't know how to treat people nice. Don't be afraid of looking pretty.”

We look at each other in the mirror, two pretty girls, one real. Then Cherry releases me. “It's a small token. One lipstick, and I'll throw in one mascara. With your complexion that's all you really need anyway.”

“Wow,” I say. “Thanks.” I should be torn, but I'm not. I want it, and Cherry wants to give it. Mama says we don't take charity, but then Raheem tells me I got to learn to accept a gift. I like Raheem's logic. It's more polite.

Cherry shows me with the sample how to roll mascara onto my lashes without making too many clumps. I'm not sure I've got the hang of it, but she says it'll come with practice. A cashier rings us up.

“This is really neat,” I tell her. “Thanks.”

The clerk puts the items in a little brown bag with a stiff
handle. It all seems so expensive and I stretch myself tall because Cherry thinks I'm worth it.

We go back onto the street, and I feel like a pretty person. A person people might notice. I know I'm no match for Cherry's looks and Cherry's body, but I suppose I'm one step closer.

“This is a good shop,” she says, stopping halfway down the block. “I'm going in for some smokes, but you have to wait here. They won't let in someone your age.”

So what else is new? “Can I sit in the park?” There's a little green across the street. It looks like a nice spot to wait, to watch things.

“Sure. I'll be along in a few minutes.”

I'm standing on the corner waiting for the light to change when I notice a familiar face a little ways down the block. What in the world is Sam Childs doing all the way downtown?

S
AM'S TALKING TO A WHITE MAN IN A SUIT.
I start to go toward him, but I stop short.

It's the man from the car, the one I saw parked in front of the clinic. I have to do a double take to be sure, but it's him. The guy I reported to Leroy as probably a spy for the pigs. Why is he talking to Sam?

The man gives Sam a thick yellow envelope. They shake hands. Sam tucks the envelope in his jacket and glances around. I duck behind the building. I don't think he saw me. Then again, why shouldn't he see me? I don't have anything to hide. So I pop into view again. The man in the suit is out of sight, but Sam's coming toward me.

When he sees me, he freezes, caught in the act of something. “What are you doing here?”

“Who was that?”

Sam shuffles his feet. “Doesn't matter.”

“Yeah, it does.”

He starts walking again. “Look, I can't tell you that, okay?”

“Why not?”

“I just can't.”

“Why not?” I'm scared now, because there has to be an explanation. There has to be something other than the only thing in my mind. Sam wouldn't. Sam couldn't. But my mind burns with what I saw.

He's annoyed, crossing his arms over his chest. “Did you follow me or something? Nobody was supposed to see us.”

I'm thinking of Slim and Rocco. Little pieces of information floating in the air. Landing where the pigs can pick them up.

“Sam.”

“Stop asking me,” he says. “It's a Panther business thing.”

Heat rises in my stomach. “What's that supposed to mean?” I'm a Panther too. It's one thing for Jolene and Leroy to look at me different, but Sam, Sam's supposed to be on my side. There aren't supposed to be secrets between us. “I tell you everything.”

He kind of laughs. “No, you don't.”

“Why won't you tell me?” The thought keeps sinking in, terrible and deep. There's only one picture to be painted
here. Sam with a cop. Sam with a cop and an envelope. Sam with a cop and an envelope, Sam knowing all that he knows.

“Maxie—”

Sam, the traitor.

“I saw him before,” I blurt. “Spying on us. I know he's a cop.”

Sam spins toward me. “What?”

I dive at his chest, trying to get at his pocket. My vision is suddenly blurred by tears. “What's in the envelope? Money? Did he pay you off?” My fingers brush the corner of it, thick and full and smooth.

Sam catches my wrists, trying to stop me from pawing at him. I'm crying out loud now, locked in place in front of him. My hands are spread flat over his heart. His good, kind heart. I want to take it back, every bad thought. Every word I've spoken without thinking. How can it be true?

“I can't believe you would even say that to me,” he whispers. His eyes, too, fill with tears.

“Rocco and Slim are in jail,” I cry. “Don't you care about that?” I'm on a roll and I can't stop myself, even though I'm wrong. I have to be wrong. But I felt the edges of the bills, crisp and neat, through the gap in the flap of the envelope. My fingertip is bleeding, sliced in tiny parallel lines.

Sam just stares at me. “My brother
died
. How could you
think that I would ever—” He releases me and steps back.

I shake my head. Shaking all over, really. “I don't know,” I say. “So just tell me the truth. Why are you here?”

Sam buttons his jacket carefully, one by one, sealing his secret inside. “You don't trust me at all,” he says. “Why should I trust you?”

S
AM HURRIES AWAY, LEAVING IT ALL
unfinished. Leaving all the wrong things said and unsaid. I stumble toward the park, collapse on a bench. My shoulders shake with sobs. There has to be a reason—a good reason, a normal reason—why Sam is taking money from a white cop in a secret meeting. He can't be the traitor, I know it in my gut, but my mind keeps going back there and I can't get my thoughts off this train.

Cherry finds me, finds my little shopping bag all loose and strewn about me. She sits down beside me. “I wasn't gone that long,” she says. “What happened?”

My response is to start sobbing louder. I can't bring myself to say the truth out loud. Cherry slides her arm around me. “I've never seen anyone this upset to stop shopping,” she quips. I shake my head. I need her to know I'm not an idiot.

Sighing, she reaches into her purse and pulls out a lacy handkerchief. I dry the tears off my cheeks and gradually gasp myself calm.

“You want to talk about it?” Cherry says.

“No.” I jump to my feet. “Let's go.”

It's terrible, what I've done. To accuse Sam of something so awful. After Steve died at the hands of the pigs, of course Sam would never . . . but he didn't give me any explanation. My mind works, trying to fashion one.

Sam lost the money and the man returned it. But why would Sam have that kind of cash in the first place? Even if it was all one dollar bills, it was too thick to be his allowance. And those bills felt crisp and new.

Sam placed a bet and the man is paying him his winnings. But Sam wouldn't know a bookie from a cookie, and anyway no one I know would lay a bet with somebody white.

The man works with Sam's father. The money belongs to him. I can almost sink my teeth into that one.

It wasn't money in the envelope at all, it only felt like it. It was . . . papers cut to the size of money. Tickets? Receipts? Something important and rare that the Panthers might need. Nothing comes to mind.

I can't sleep for worrying about it. I don't know what
to do. I'm Leroy's eyes and ears. I'm supposed to tell him when things happen. Do I share my suspicions, even though I'm sure they can't be true? What if Sam can't explain, and he did do something he shouldn't? How would I feel if I turned him in?

I
'M RUNNING ON PRACTICALLY NO SLEEP. IT UPSETS
me still, thinking Sam might be the informant. None of my alternate scenarios make any real sense.

Before I tell Leroy, though, I want to confront Sam again, and see if his story changes. I'm walking it off, trying to get out from under the pressure I feel. Taking turns around the blocks and hoping the fresh, chill air will clear my mind.

I catch sight of Raheem walking quickly down a side street. He's almost a block away, but I know his walk like anything.

Spontaneously I turn in the direction he's going. Raheem can help me. I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner. Except he wasn't home last night until after I was pretending to sleep. This morning he was out the door before I'd wiped the sleep dust from my eyes.

But the answer is so obvious now. I can trust Raheem
with what happened. I'll run it by him before I do anything else. Ask him if he thinks it's even possible, what I'm thinking of Sam. And if I should tell Leroy just in case, or keep Sam's secret, whatever it might be.

“Heem!” I call. He doesn't hear me. Seems to be in a hurry.

“Heem!” I can't imagine where he's going, actually, because this road dead-ends beneath the highway and there's nothing but alleys to turn off into.

I follow. “Heem!” But he's already around the corner. I dash after him, but I come up short. What I see does not compute.

Raheem stalks toward a parked car on the deserted street. It's a clean gray sedan with city plates. A cop car, unmarked. A cop car I've seen twice before, staking out the Panthers. Today he's parked out of the way of everything, but that falls beside the point as Raheem opens the passenger door and gets inside.

I blink. He
gets inside
. With the cop. If it was anyone else, anyone who didn't know me, I would walk right by that car. My undercover moves.

But it's Raheem, and so I stand frozen. No idea how to proceed.

Moving along to the building edge of the sidewalk, I inch closer. I need to see it up close, need to know for sure.
They are talking. Silhouettes facing each other for five, maybe ten, minutes. It seems like an eternity, but anything would under the circumstances.

There can be no mistaking it. Plain as day, in front of my eyes, Raheem is ruining everything.

T
HE CAR DOOR OPENS. INSTINCT TELLS
me to hide, but I can't get my feet to move. Raheem comes down the alley. Stops short when he catches sight of me.

“Maxie,” he says. My name falls heavy on the pavement between us. “You followed me?”

The words are tripped up on my tongue. A thing that never happens to me. Raheem seems not sure what to say either. “You followed me?” he repeats.

It all came so easy yesterday. I spit so many words at Sam, words I can never take back. Here and now, I'm bereft.

“I can explain this,” Raheem says.

I cross my arms. “Go ahead.” I'm giving him the chance I didn't give Sam. Not jumping to conclusions. I was wrong about Sam. I could be wrong about this, too, I tell myself, but it isn't convincing, even in my head.

Sam is a person who came into my life, a person I've
spent an on-and-off year getting to know. He's new to me. Even when I kiss him, it's like we're still meeting sometimes. With Raheem, it's different. Raheem is a part of me. That thing we have, that unspoken thing, is stronger than either of us and it makes me know for certain things I'd rather not.

“We needed the money,” he says.

I back away from him, shaking my head.

He reaches out his hand. “They knew, and they told me . . . Maxie, you have no idea how much we needed it.”

No. Nononononononono. I turn my back and flee. As far and as fast as I can. All the while knowing, I'll never outrun what has happened.