Chapter One of The Road to Nowhere
The hope was stale. It tasted like it'd been stored in a hot trunk
for weeks.
“That
twisted jerk Scarlet's been giving us old stuff again,” Denim
said, gulping.
“Old
hope's better than no hope,” Cobalt pointed out, snatching the
actuator out of the younger boy's hand before it was offered to him.
Denim regarded his friend with narrowed eyes but said nothing. He
knew better than to challenge anything Cobalt said or did.
The older boy blew all the air out of his lungs, put the actuator in
his mouth, pressed the button at the top, and sucked in. His eyes
fluttered closed as he waited. The seconds stretched out for minutes,
the minutes for hours. His lungs burned. The tinny ringing in his
ears grew into a roar. Then, finally, he gulped, exhaled, and the
hope settled into his chest.
Quiet, cooling, calm flooded him. But still...Cobalt opened his eyes.
Denim smiled his crooked smile and said:
“See
what I mean? Stale.”
“Yeah,”
he agreed.
This was probably the weakest hope Scarlet had ever given them. But
even weak hope was something. Cobalt knew he could never live in
Nowhere without hope.
A pair of thunderous footsteps ran into the abandoned parking garage
where the two boys sat huddled over the contraband. They looked at
each other and laughed. Navy never could enter anyplace quietly.
The boy burst around the corner first, followed a few seconds later
by a girl.
“HA!”
The boy said. “Caught you twisted sonsabitches! We knew you'd
scored some hope.”
Navy was skinny—way skinnier than the other two boys—with
hollowed-out cheeks and a shaved head that somehow accentuated the
smallness of him. He wore an oversized pullover sweatshirt that fell
to the patched-up knees of his corduroys and Vans that he outgrew
months ago. Navy took care of that by cutting slits in the front of
the shoes, to make room for his toes. The result was ridiculous: his
shoes looked like open mouths, laughing at everyone they saw.
The girl slid up next to Denim with a shy smile. “Hi,” she said.
“Hey
Azure,” the boy mumbled without looking at her.
Azure was fourteen, a year older than her loud-mouth friend.
Nevertheless, she was maybe half Navy's size, a fact she hated. If
you saw Azure from a distance, or caught a glimpse of her out of the
corner of your eye, you'd no doubt mistake her for a little girl.
Sitting next to Denim—the largest of the group by far—she looked
like someone's kid sister. Still, she was pretty: big brown eyes,
rosy cheeks only partially obscured by the layer of grime she earned
living on the run, and shiny black hair she wore pulled back into a
sloppy ponytail.
Navy held out his hand to Cobalt, who tossed him the actuator.
“Get
what you can,” the gang's leader said. “It's stale.”
Navy exhaled, inhaled deeply, passed the actuator to Azure, and said,
“So what're we doing today?”
Cobalt flipped back his too-long bangs, momentarily revealing the
chicken pox scar above his right eyebrow and shrugged. “Dunno,”
he said.
Navy looked at Denim, but he wasn't paying attention. He'd doodled
numerous grotesque caricatures of Mayor Blue on the garage's concrete
wall and was now slashing through them all with his Sharpie. The
unfortunate Mayor bled black ink.
Navy passed the actuator to Azure. “There's just enough left for
you, little sis.”
“I'm
older than you, and I'm not
your
sister, moron,” she said.
Navy laughed. His cheeks were flushed with the hope that now rushed
through his veins. “Let's do something bad-ass!” He said.
“Like
what?” Denim asked, sounding bored.
“I
don't know,” Navy said. He thought for a moment. “Yeah, that's
it! We'll send a message to Scarlet!”
“What
do you mean?” Cobalt said.
Navy's eyes were wide with excitement. “We'll send him a message.
You know, to tell him we won't be pushed around. He can't keep giving
us stale hope 'cause we won't take it.”
“You
wanna write an angry letter?” Denim frowned. “'Cause that's not
bad-ass at all. That's more like PTA mom.”
“I
don't think Navy meant a literal
message,”
Cobalt said in a disappointed teacher tone and then turned to the
younger boy, “did you?”
“No,
of course not. I meant we should do
something
to show him he can't mess with us.”
“Like
what?” Denim said, sounding interested for the first time.
“We
could make a, uh,” Navy said and sighed in frustration. “What's
that thing where you make a life-size doll of a person?”
“An
effigy,” Azure supplied.
“Yes,
that!
And
then we'll hang it from a noose at the drop-off point. That'll show
him! Except I don't know what we'd make it out of.”
“I
do,” Azure said.
All the boys turned to her wearing identical looks of surprise. She
grinned. “I know where we can get a bunch of men's clothes. We can
stuff the clothes with leaves and grass and crap—you know, like a
scarecrow. Then all we need is the rope to hang it with.”
“Can
we get the clothes now?” Cobalt said.
“Uh-huh,”
Azure said.
“Cool.
I know where to get the rope. Let's do this.”
Cobalt
stood and the others followed their leader outside, but not before
Denim scrawled one word below his doodles of the mayor: Outlawz.
Azure took her friends to a house at the Southern edge of Nowhere
near the place all the kids called Gruesome Point. They walked down
the middle of the street beneath a featureless slate gray sky,
passing quiet storefronts and empty playgrounds and houses full of
kids who were far less adventurous than them. No dogs barked. No
birds circled overhead.
Azure pointed out their destination. It was a gray, shabby little
one-story dwelling. The shutters hung crooked on the windows. Paint
peeled off the front door. The grass grew high enough in the
neglected front lawn to brush the bottom branches of the one brave
tree that still struggled to survive.
Azure marched up the front steps and entered the house without
knocking. Cobalt, Denim, and Navy followed.
If
the outside of the house spoke of neglect and abandonment, the inside
spoke of perseverance. The children who lived in the house had done
their best to fill their home with cheery decorations and personal
touches. In defiance of the lack of color outside, the inside of the
house was filled with riotous colors. The walls were covered in
drawings of hearts and flowers and animals and remembered loved ones.
A fingerpainting near the front door showed a smiling mom hugging two
smiling kids. In careful childish script above their heads was this
hopeful declaration: My
mommy is coming back for me!
“This
way,” Azure called over her shoulder and pointed to a narrow
hallway that curved off to the right.
More
sketches lined the walls of the hallway along with two assurances
inked in tall colorful letters: We
Are All Loved and
None
of Us is Alone.
Navy snickered when he read the statements. Cobalt eyed the
decorations thoughtfully.
Three tiny bedrooms opened off the hall. Azure entered the second
one. The rest of the Outlawz were right behind her. Inside, a
whisper-thin little girl with white-blonde hair was playing with a
rag doll. She looked up when she heard the older kids enter and broke
into a smile at the sight of Azure.
“Hi,”
Azure said.
“You
came back!” She jumped up and threw herself onto the older girl.
“I'm
just visiting, Periwinkle,” Azure said.
The smile disappeared off the little girl's face. Azure knelt down so
she was eye-to-eye with Periwinkle.
“Actually,”
she whispered, “I was hoping you could help me with something.”
Periwinkle's gray eyes opened wide with curiosity. “What?” She
whispered back.
“I
need to borrow your dad's clothes,” Azure said.
Periwinkle looked worried. “But if he comes back he'll need them,”
She whispered.
“I'll
be careful,” the older girl said. “I won't hurt them, I promise.
And I'll bring them back in a day or two. He won't know a thing.”
Periwinkle looked from Azure to the boys and then back again. “You
swear?”
Azure smiled. “I swear.”
“OK,”
the little girl said and left the room. She was back a moment later
with an armload of men's clothes: shirt, slacks, hat, tie—even
shoes.
“Thank
you so
much,”
Azure said. “You're the best!”
Periwinkle handed her the clothes with a proud smile. “You're
welcome.” They hugged.
An angry voice called from the doorway: “What's going on here?”
The boys turned around to see who it was, but Azure already knew.
She'd known at once. She straightened up and faced her old friend
Cerulean.
“Nothing,”
she said. “We were just leaving.”
“Look
Cerulean: it's Azure! She came back to visit me!”
“I
see that,” Cerulean said. “But I wonder why.” She crossed her
arms and frowned. Her trademark blue-and-blonde braid hung down over
her shoulder. “Are the Outlawz recruiting now?”
“Do
you have a problem with us?” Cobalt said, advancing a couple of
steps toward the older girl.
“As
a matter of fact, I do,” Cerulean retorted. She uncrossed her arms
and planted her hands on her hips, squaring off against the boy and
resembling nothing so much as an indignant mother—although at
eighteen she'd be a very young indignant mother.
“Forget
it, Cerulean,” Azure said. “Just let us go.”
“Fine,”
she said and stepped aside. “But don't let me catch you bothering
the kids again.”
“She
wasn't bothering me!” Periwinkle said.
The Outlawz filed out.
“Azure's
my friend!” Periwinkle said to her caretaker.
“She
was
your
friend,” Cerulean said. “Now that she's an Outlaw I'm not so
sure.”
A voice piped up from beneath Periwinkle's bed:
“Are
they gone?”
“Yes
Indigo,” Periwinkle said with a laugh and dropped to the floor. She
peered beneath the bed. “You can come out now. Besides, Azure's not
scary. She's my friend.”
Indigo slid out from under the bed. She was so small she made
Periwinkle look big. “I don't like those boys,” she said.
“You
shouldn't trust any of the Outlawz,” Cerulean said. “Promise me,
both of you, that you'll tell me if they come back.”
“We
promise,” Indigo and Periwinkle said together.
The Outlawz gathered everything else they needed—leaves and grass
to stuff the effigy, rope to hang it with, and poster board to make a
sign—on their way to the drop-off point. They scooped up the leaves
and grass wherever they saw it. The rope and poster board came from
the abandoned Piggly Wiggly where they got most of their food and
water. Their spirits flagged because the hope had worn off, but all
were determined to show Scarlet that they weren't little kids he
could screw over.
Azure laid the clothes out flat on the ground and they all stuffed
the leaves and grass inside.
“How
did you know them?” Cobalt asked.
“I
used to live there,” Azure said.
“You
did? When?” Navy said.
“When
I first got to Nowhere. Cerulean met me at Gruesome Point just like
she meets everyone else. She told me I could stay in the house with
her as long as I wanted.”
Cobalt frowned. “I've never met her before.”
“No?”
Azure said.
“Me
either,” Navy said.
“You?”
She asked Denim.
He nodded and flashed Azure the crooked smile that most people found
suspicious. It woke up the butterflies in her belly. “I've known
her since I was twelve.”
Azure
swallowed to quiet the butterflies and turned to the other boys.
“Well,
maybe you two got here before she did.”
“Maybe,”
Cobalt said and scratched at the chicken pox scar on his forehead.
Denim shrugged.
“I
was born here,” Navy said.
“You're
a dumbass,” Denim said. “No one's born in Nowhere.”
“I
was,” Navy said defiantly.
“Can't
admit that your mommy and daddy abandoned you here?”
“Shut
up!” Navy said.
“Mama's
boy,” Denim snickered.
“All
right, just leave him alone,” Cobalt said. There was an
authoritative finality in his tone.
“Whatever,”
Denim said.
They finished stuffing the clothes and molding a crude head, neck,
and shoulders.
“Lemme
borrow your Sharpie,” Cobalt said to Denim.
Denim handed it over and set to work himself on fashioning a noose
around the effigy's cloth neck.
“There,”
Cobalt said when they were done, “I'd say that sends a pretty clear
message.”
“Agreed,”
Azure said.
“Hell
yeah!”
Navy said.
The effigy hung from a huge, dead oak tree. Pinned to its shirt was a
sign that read:
Stale hope kills, Scarlet
--The Outlawz
***
A
full-page ad ran in the Sunday edition of the Somewhere
Times:
On
the left side of the page was a picture of a man lying awake in bed
with a worried expression on his face. On the right side a little boy
lay awake looking terrified. Above them was the message: Trying
to get rest with excess emotions left inside you can be tough. For
adults it can lead to hours lying awake worrying about bills, work,
or loved ones. For kids it may cause nightmares. Below
them, in bold typeface, it read: Use
your actuator! Sweet dreams! At
the very bottom of the right-hand page, in tiny type, was the
disclaimer: Paid
for by the Friends of Somewhere's Recycling Committee.
Alex Hughes, the author of the award-winning Mindspace Investigations series from Roc, has lived in the Atlanta area since the age of eight. She is a graduate of the prestigious Odyssey Writing Workshop, and a member of the Science Fiction Writers of America and the International Thriller Writers. Her short fiction has been published in several markets including EveryDay Fiction, Thunder on the Battlefield and White Cat Magazine. She is an avid cook and foodie, a trivia buff, and a science geek, and loves to talk about neuroscience, the Food Network, and writing craft—but not necessarily all at the same time!
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