The Young World Read online

  As the chains go taut, they rattle like snakes. Out of breath, I reach my arms under Red’s, keeping him from reaching down for my legs. This feels, and probably looks, weirdly like a hug, and I’m suddenly staring into Reddy’s freckled face and blue eyes.

  He head-butts me, and I turn my face just in time to avoid getting my nose broken, with the result that he hits me on my left eyebrow. I feel the skin split open, and blood starts to trickle down into my eyes.

  I push him off, and he stands back and watches as I start to go blind.

  CHAPTER 24

  THE KID’S GOT HEART; you’ve got to hand it to him. Jefferson looks like some kind of really elaborate Halloween costume, say “sweaty boxer zombie.” Blood’s running down his face and into his left eye, and he keeps on smearing it across his cheek as he tries to clear his vision.

  Problem with your cuts from blunt trauma, like punches, is that they go down to the bone. Now, if I had some Avitene flour or some thrombin, I could do something about it. As it is, I’m trying to figure out what the hell’s wrong with SeeThrough’s arm. The bicep is spasming, which means she can’t get the arm straight again. So I won’t be able to tell for a while.

  Meanwhile, Jeff is getting his ass whipped. The redheaded kid realizes that he can’t see much, so he’s in no particular hurry. He’s playing to the crowd, smacking Jeff around with sharp jabs and kicks.

  Maybe this is the part where I’m supposed to go all gooey and boo-hoo. But what I’m figuring is, For Christ’s sake, Jeff, take a dive and let’s go home. Let’s just go home and die in peace.

  “I’m going back in,” says SeeThrough.

  “Like hell you are,” I say. “Peter, will you keep this idiot from reinjuring herself?”

  “Okay,” says Peter. I jump up to the edge of the ring where Ratso has positioned himself. Meanwhile, Jeff takes a kick to the stomach.

  “Ratso, throw in the towel,” I say.

  “What towel?” says Ratso.

  “Let’s end this before Jeff gets really hurt.” Red nails him with a jab-straight-hook combination, then steps back as the crowd urges him on.

  “I can’t,” says Ratso. “Only your boy can call it. That, or get knocked out.” Jeff barrels toward Reddy and has his left hook blocked.

  “Jeff!” I shout. “Jefferson!”

  They’ve circled around, and he can see me. He shoots a glance over.

  “It’s okay, Jeff. You can stop! Stop this! Just quit! Just—”

  And in that little bitty snippet of a moment, before Jeff turns back to face the guy who’s beating him into a pulp, I see a look of such deep hurt and disappointment that my heart actually skips a beat. I stop in midsentence as his eye asks me, How could you say that?

  He lowers his head. He looks beaten.

  Then he looks angry.

  Red is enjoying himself, clowning around for the animals. He goes into an exaggerated windup, and Jefferson rushes at him, cocks his arm back across his body, and elbows him in the face.

  Like that, Red is on the ground. He’s conscious, but the fight is gone out of him. A couple of teeth on the canvas. Blood and spit pouring from his mouth. He flops onto his front and starts crawling for his partner, Baldy, who reaches his hand out for a tag.

  The crowd is silent.

  Before Red can get anywhere, Jeff grabs him by an ankle and pulls him into the center of the ring.

  Red tries to cover himself as Jefferson, sitting on Red’s back, hammers his head again and again, leaning over and tucking his fists to reach his face.

  After a few blows, Red stops moving. He doesn’t even have the strength to tap out.

  Jefferson keeps going at him.

  The crowd loves it.

  The referee rushes in and grabs hold of Jeff. Peter jumps in, and I follow. We hold him back as he lunges toward the kid on the floor.

  “Stop it!” I say to Jefferson. He’s crying now, spitting blood.

  “Jeff, stop. Stop it, honey. You won. Stop it. We won.” I hold his head, and he quiets down, bends over, and starts sucking air.

  As Red gets pulled from the ring, we help Jeff down. People reach out to touch him. Yeah, bro. Good fight. Way to go.

  Ratso goes to collect our money, and the crowd starts talking about the next fight.

  Turns out Baldy and Red were certified badasses, and we weren’t supposed to stand a chance, so the odds were hella long. SeeThrough and Jefferson’s appearance on WWE Raw got us two thousand bucks. Our money back, times ten.

  That’s a whole heap of cash, so we’re able to load up on tasty vittles and bullets a-go-go. The shopkeepers of the horseshoe bazaar treat us like long-lost cousins. And nobody says boo to Ratso, the chaperone of all this newfound cheddar.

  By some unspoken agreement, each of us is morally allowed to get one silly piece of crap just for the hell of it. Which is great, because there’s actually a whole row of stalls devoted to things that don’t do anything worthwhile. That’s the new high-ticket item: uselessness. There’s fancy earphones that people wear hanging from their ears like jewelry. Ironic T-shirts. Makeup. Toys. Gold rings, dead watches. Video game controllers.

  I get myself an I HOPE I DON’T BLACK OUT, ’CAUSE THIS IS AWESOME! shirt. Peter buys one that says, I TAUGHT CHRISTIAN GREY ALL THAT SHIT. SeeThrough gets a cute little notepad of stationery with WE ARE HAVING A TERRIFIC PICNIC TIME! on it and a fancy gold ribbon for a sling.

  Brainbox, meanwhile, checks out a pile of LEGOs. He picks up a shiny, nubby piece and gives it the good old Brainbox once-over, which involves holding something really close to your face and staring at it like there’s a secret message written somewhere in tiny script.

  “Find something you like, BB?” I ask.

  Brainbox looks at me but doesn’t say anything. He turns to the shopkeeper and asks, “Why is it so expensive?”

  Shopkeeper: “Google it. Couple of weeks ago some kid passes through and says he’ll buy all the LEGO he can. He paid some serious bank. I’m saving this for him. If you want to get it, you’ll have to beat his price.”

  I look at the rest of her stuff, a jumble of crappy plastic toys and supereducational wooden things made in, like, Vermont or something, aka the Kind of Toys That No Kid Wants to Play With.

  Brainbox pays way too much for ten little bricks of LEGO.

  Me: “What’s that for?”

  Brainbox: “I don’t know yet.”

  When the shopping spree is done, we still have a few hundred bucks left, and Ratso suggests we celebrate.

  Peter: “I could use a drink.”

  Jefferson nods. I would have expected him to be pretty cocky after he put a beat-down on that guy; I mean, most dudes are all boasty after a fight, forcing everybody to talk about it and everything. Jeff just seems sad and a little irritable, like he used to be when the Knicks lost. Maybe it’s because a new gun for him is out of our price range.

  Ratso says he’s going to take us someplace special. He leads us up the stairs from the Grand Concourse, into a side passage, up some more stairs. We pay off a couple of bouncers with sweet Heckler & Koch submachines slung under their armpits, who let us past a ratty velvet rope into this place that Ratso says used to be some rich guy’s office a hundred years ago.

  “Ladies and gents,” says Ratso, “the Campbell Apartment.”

  Homeboy lived large. Wood-paneled walls, high ceilings with painted beams, cozy leather couches. Somebody has kept the place up—like, except for the teenyboppers all over the place, it probably looks the same as it used to. There’s music playing over speakers jacked into a little red generator with an exhaust duct leading through an empty pane in a big gridded window. Loads of people are drinking and dancing and smoking up.

  Waiters and waitresses roam around. It could almost be pre-apocalypse.

  “Now we’re talking,” says Peter. He goes to order us a round of drinks.

  Ratso stares at the ceiling, his mouth hanging open.

  Me: “Nice place.”

  Rat
so: “Oh, yeah. I bring all my high-profile clients here.”

  Me: “High-profile clients?”

  He smiles and shrugs. “Actually, they never let me in before.”

  Me: “Well, you’re with the Washington Square Wizards now.”

  Ratso (defensive): “The name wasn’t my idea.”

  We get a nice corner booth, because some kids who saw the fight make way for us. They hold their hands up for high fives, and Jefferson reluctantly complies.

  Peter comes back with a cute, clean-cut boy in a white shirt and black tie carrying a tray of martinis.

  Me: “Martinis? For real, Peter?”

  Peter: “Girl, stop bitching. When’s the next time you’re going to get a decent cocktail?” He turns to the kid carrying the tray. “This is Dominic,” he says meaningfully. “Dominic, this is everybody. Dominic is renowned as the best cocktail waiter in all of Manhattan. Maybe the world.”

  Peter says stuff like this all the time, just to stir things up. He’s always like, “This is Donna. Donna is a performance artist.”

  Dominic: (Nods.) “You folks let me know if you need anything else.” Then he shoots a look to Peter before heading back to the bar.

  Folks!

  I raise my glass. “Here’s to SeeThrough and Jefferson. The Harold and Kumar of violence.”

  Everybody raises their glass except for Jeff.

  Jefferson: “Bad luck to toast yourself.”

  Me: “Ugh, Jeff, okay. Here’s just to… violence. Judiciously applied.”

  Clink-clink-clink. Jefferson also won’t toast without meeting your eyes, which slows things down a bit. Everybody laughs as they goggle at each other. When Jeff looks at me, his eyes are all sad and dewy.

  I’ve never actually had a martini. It tastes like decay.

  Me: “Gross. Is this what it’s supposed to be like?”

  Peter (savoring his): “Oh, yes.”

  SeeThrough coughs and spits a mouthful onto the floor. People look over at us like, Who are these barbarians? It’s kind of weird, after everything, to suddenly be someplace with standards. Just sitting here is kind of blowing my mind. I’m still getting used to the idea of a space where strangers congregate and buy stuff. Thought that was all done with.

  SeeThrough is still coughing, so I slap her on the back a few times and sit her down.

  Me: “So, slugger… what’s the deal with you and Brainbox?”

  SeeThrough: “The deal?”

  Me: “Yeah, like… are you guys together or something?”

  SeeThrough isn’t playing along with the whole gossip idea. “He’s over there,” she says, pointing at the huge marble fireplace, which has an old metal safe in it. Brainbox is twiddling the knob experimentally.

  Me: “Never mind.”

  SeeThrough: “Ohhhh. You mean ‘together’ that way.” She thinks. “He talked to me.”

  Me: “What?”

  SeeThrough: “He talked to me. Even when I was FOB.”

  Me: “What’s FOB?”

  SeeThrough (smiling): “Fresh off the boat. When my parents and I came from China, nobody would talk to me.”

  Me: “Brainbox doesn’t talk to anybody except Jefferson and W—except Jefferson.”

  SeeThrough: “He talks to me.”

  Me: “Oh. Well, do you… like… like him?”

  SeeThrough laughs, and it’s like the sun breaking through clouds. I don’t think I ever saw her laugh before. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention. She shakes her head, but she can’t shake off the big smile.

  Me: “You like him!”

  She keeps shaking her head.

  SeeThrough: “You think he likes me?”

  Me: “Who knows what Brainbox thinks? He should like you.”

  SeeThrough: (Holds up her drink.) “Gambei.” Which I guess means “cheers.” She squinches up her nose and swallows it. I do the same.

  Peter does indeed find something to ask Dominic for, which is another round of martinis. Dominic also brings over some pigeon fried rice and a box of Entenmann’s chewy chocolate-chip cookies, which are not chewy so much anymore. Still, this feels like the high life.

  I’m on, like, my tenth cookie when Jefferson sits down opposite me. He’s been leaning against the wall, looking gloomy.

  Me: “Looking good out there, champ. I think we can get you a title shot.”

  He touches the strip of duct tape over his eyebrow.

  Jefferson: “I got lucky.” He scowls as he sucks down some martini.

  Me: “Don’t like your drink?”

  Jefferson: “I don’t like this place.”

  Me: “Dude. Live a little.”

  Jefferson: (Snorts.) “That’s a slogan for our times. Live a little.”

  Me: “You know what I mean. You won. We’re, like, rich. We’re all stocked up. And nobody carded us. This is a good time. Savor it.”

  Jefferson: “I won by beating a total stranger’s face in. And this place?” He looks around. “The moment there’s a tiny bit of stability, people just start copying the way things were. Velvet ropes. Bouncers. Waiters. It’s pathetic. Like there wasn’t any other way to do things. It’s all the same. The strong eat the weak.”

  I have a flash of dinner at the library.

  Me: “You think people are doing it better anyplace else? Like, they’re living it up in Europe or something? Well, let’s go.”

  Jefferson: “It’s probably the same everyplace. Because everyplace had become the same.”

  Me: “So, what did you have in mind? Utopia?”

  Jefferson: (Shrugs.) “Why not? What is there to lose?”

  I take another sip of my martini. It burns like acid. It’s doing something to my brain, letting thoughts drift loose and float to my mouth. I don’t usually talk about Before.

  “You mean if you could have things back the way they were, you wouldn’t do it?”

  His face wrinkles. “Obviously, I wish people hadn’t died. I wish my mom and… and Wash were back. But what was so great about things Before?”

  Me: “Real food? The Internet? Running water? Coffee?”

  Jefferson: “Didn’t you feel like anything was wrong then?”

  Me: “Sure. Lots. But not as much as what was right.”

  Jefferson: “You always complained about everything.”

  Me: “Yeah, well, I didn’t know what I was missing.”

  Jefferson: “War. Racism. Commercialism. Fundamentalism.”

  Me: “I can’t believe you’re making an argument for the end of the world.”

  Jefferson: “It’s only the end of the world if you don’t think there’s a future.”

  Me: “I don’t. We don’t have a future.”

  It comes out a little more aggressively than I had meant, and it hits hard enough, I think, to slop over into another meaning. Like, There’s no future for you and me, either. At least that’s how Jefferson seems to take it.

  I don’t know, maybe that’s how I mean it. I don’t know.

  Jefferson: “Okay. I see.”

  I’m tempted to explain, to, like, extract what I meant from what I didn’t mean, but then I’m not sure if I can.

  Ratso: “Is this great? Is this great, or what?” He slips into the booth next to us. He’s kind of tanked.

  Jeff shakes off the hurt look, laughs, and pats Ratso on the shoulder. “Sure, buddy. It’s great.” He looks around for our people. Peter is helping Dominic deliver drinks. SeeThrough has walked over to Brainbox, and he’s showing her how the generator works.

  Maybe they have a future.

  Ratso continues, “When I saw you people, I knew you were class. I said to myself, ‘Ratso, these people are not a bunch of Johnny-Come-Latelies. They are Top Shelf.’ ”

  Me (laughing): “How come you talk like that?”

  Ratso: “Like what?”

  Me: “Like an old movie.”

  Ratso: “Oh, that. Well, this may seem funny, but English isn’t my first language. My parents moved here from Russia when I was six. I le
arned English from TV and Netflix.”

  Jefferson: “So what’s your real name?”

  “Vitaly,” he says. Vitaly. Emphasis on the middle syllable.

  Jefferson: “I like that better than Ratso.”

  Me: “Netflix was so awesome.” I take another gulp of martini. “That scientist dude oughtta pay for all the good shit he screwed up.”

  Ratso: “What scientist?”

  Me: “Oh. I was just saying, if, like, some scientist was responsible for the Sickness.”

  Ratso: “I thought It Happened because somebody had sex with a monkey or something.”

  Me: “Well, that slutty monkey has gotta pay, then.”

  Jefferson: “The world was a bubble. A bubble inside a bubble. It was just waiting to go off the rails.”

  Me: “You’re mixing metaphors, Debbie Downer. Here’s to bubbles.”

  “Here’s to bubbles.” Ratso clinks his glass with mine. “So…” he says, “what brings you to Grand Central? What are you kids up to, anyway?”

  Jeff and I share a look. He shrugs.

  Jefferson: “We’re going to save mankind.”

  Me: “Wouldn’t we be saving teenkind?”

  Ratso: “That’s why you won the fight. You’re following your destiny. I knew it. I saw you taking that beating, and I thought to myself, Only one thing’s gonna save that kid now.”

  Jefferson: “Which is what?”

  Ratso: “What?”

  Me: “What’s gonna save him now? I mean, then?”

  Ratso: “Oh. The power of Destiny. Like, with a capital D. Did you hear the capital D when I said Destiny?”

  Jeff and I crack up. But Ratso is, like, really intent on being taken seriously.

  Ratso: “Seriously. No foolin’. Take it from a guy who does not have a Destiny. Some have it; some don’t. Me, I’ll probably be stuck running from the Uptown Confederacy for the rest of my brief life.”

  We stop laughing.

  Me: “What do you know about the Uptown Confederacy?”

  Ratso: “Uh, just that they run this place.”