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  “Seven and four months.”

  “Okay. We’re going to go now. We have to leave you in here, but someone will find you as soon as they get home, okay?”

  “Can I call my mom?”

  Josh and I exchange a glance. “We have to take your cell phone right now. But how about this, why don’t I call her when we get out of the house?”

  The little girl nods and coughs, sounding like she’s been a smoker for fifty years.

  “Do you, um, need any medicine in here? Water?”

  She nods. “My inhaler is in my bedroom.”

  Josh brings her an inhaler, a clean set of clothes, and a couple of stuffed animals. “To keep you company,” he says.

  I look at my watch and flash Josh a zero.

  He nods.

  “Now, can you sit down over there?” I point to a little chair at the end of the closet and flick on the lights. “See. It’s nice in here with the lights on. You’ll be okay. Someone will be home soon. Real soon.”

  Her bottom lip quivers.

  We pull the closet door behind us. I expect a scream but only hear quiet crying behind the door. I pause. Josh shakes his head. “We’ve gotta go.”

  We run down the stairs, out the back sliding door, jumping over the half-dead dog. In the yard, Josh hesitates, then spray-paints BABYLONIA on the fence, and we stick the manifesto between boards. At the bottom of the manifesto, I write a little note to the mom.

  We cut back through the woods behind the house, running up the mountain a little until we’ve circled around, ending up at least a half mile or so from the house. Then we make our way down to one of the side streets. Lakeview is nothing but curvy roads, homes tucked next to the mountains, and thick pines. It takes us another twenty minutes of walking to get to Josh’s car. Sirens roar. I can see the blinking lights between the trees.

  My head burns like someone’s poking it with a cattle prod—inside out. I touch my smooth skin, expecting to feel an upraised scar: Babylonia.

  How can everybody not see who I am?

  When we get to the car, I slouch to the ground and cradle my head between my knees, counting until I can breathe steadily.

  Scared of could’ve beens, might bes.

  Chapter 36

  JOSH DRIVES US OUT TO

  Clear Creek. We sit on his hood, covered in a blanket, watching the stars, sipping on beer. At first, I felt like everything was mine. But then the little girl came and I can’t shake the chill, this feeling of emptiness. Mrs. Mendez and Luis Sanchez are still dead. Caleb Masterson still needs a kidney transplant. He lost his football scholarship to some college in Texas. I almost hurt a little girl. I can still smell that eucalyptus scent she had in her hair, on her cheeks. I almost hurt her.

  And Josh still hasn’t kissed me. There’s got to be some kind of posttraumatic bad kiss disorder. I’ve ruined him for life.

  “The little girl,” I say.

  “She’s okay.”

  “I could’ve hurt her.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “What if she hadn’t stopped screaming?”

  “She did.”

  Silence. Then I say what both of us probably have wondered but never have had the nerve to say, afraid to say. Because who will I be when this is over? Who will we be? “How many more?” The cold just won’t leave. What if I never get that high again? I take a long drink and fight to keep from spitting it out. Beer is gross. “It’ll never be enough.”

  “It’s not only about the money.” Josh looks up at the sky. “Our lives mean something because we’re doing something. We’re helping.”

  Josh leans back on his windshield and pulls me to him, my head settled on his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart against my cheek. We stay there, watching the stars in the indigo March sky for what feels like forever.

  “Ready to go?” Josh says. “Did you finish your beer?”

  I put down my almost-full beer can. “Liquid aluminum with a bitter aftertaste.”

  “You kidding? You don’t like beer?”

  I hand him my can. “No.”

  “It’s an acquired taste,” Josh says, drinking down his can, then mine. His breath smells yeasty. “Crazy Thursday night, huh?”

  I try to keep the feeling of just a couple of hours ago—the feeling of right. It’s so clear when we’re doing it—like we’re doing the right thing. But out here . . . I don’t know. I slip off the hood and stare up at the blue-black sky one more time, trying to push away the weight of insignificance.

  I can’t sleep. It’s not late. Lillian’s at the clinic. So I drive up to Saint Mary’s in Reno and slip past the nurses’ station, finding Caleb’s room. The place has that sickening rose/carnation-that-masks-urine smell to it. Flowers, Mylar balloons, and teddy bears explode from every corner. There’s a poster-size picture of him with his best friends in tuxedos hanging up. The place looks like a shrine. Store wrapped and neat.

  “Are you a friend?” a woman asks. I didn’t see her tucked in the 1-800-FLOWERS décor. She’s sitting in an uncomfortable-looking chair near the foot of Caleb’s bed. “It’s late.” She sounds defensive. “He’s sleeping.”

  “Is he okay?” Stupid question. Stupid stupid stupid.

  She doesn’t try to wipe the tired look from her eyes. “No.”

  The answer hangs in the air. No.

  “He will be, though,” she says.

  I nod.

  “Can I tell him who stopped by?” she asks, but I’m already out the door, rushing to the parking lot. I never stopped by Luis’s hospital room—never even bothered to ask Moch if he was okay. I drive home on auto-pilot, don’t even remember going through Washoe Valley, ending up at Moch’s house.

  I tap on his window. “Moch? Moch, are you there?”

  After what feels like forever, the curtains part. He looks at me. “What are you doing here?”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  Moch comes outside. “¡Qué frío tan hijo de puta! Come inside. I’m not going to hang out in this cold.”

  Moch’s house is unusually quiet. When I walk in the door, the familiar smells almost bowl me over. Tears prick my eyes.

  I follow him in the trailer house, though it doesn’t feel much warmer. He plugs in a space heater in the living room and throws me a blanket. “Your lips are purple.” We huddle around it, holding our hands as close to the grill as possible. I listen to the tick tick tick as it heats up, and orange warmth glows on Moch’s face. His silver Saint Pablo hangs from a dog tag–like chain, resting against his sternum. After a while he flips it around—the heated metal burning his bare skin.

  “Lots of bets?” he asks.

  “March Madness. You haven’t been back at school,” I say.

  “Busy.”

  “Are you going to graduate?”

  Moch shrugs. “Does it matter?”

  We both know it does. We sit in silence, listening to the neighbors fight, dogs snarl and bark. A car backfires. A stillness settles in me, one I haven’t felt in a long time. Sitting here, warming up—this fits. Like this home is who I am, my history.

  I lean my head against the couch, smelling her—the cinnamon, baked-crust smell mixed with bleach. Way different from the microwaved cardboard smell from my house. This is warmth. This is what I want back.

  “It was an initiation,” Moch says. “Pick a fight with Garbage Disposal and you can be in la Cordillera.”

  It takes me a second to realize he’s talking about Luis.

  “He died because of me.” Moch twirls his chain around his fingers, not taking his eyes off the space heater.

  His words settle in me like frost. No matter how close I get to the space heater, I can’t get warm. I shiver. Moch looks at me through thick black lashes, like I’m worthy of his confession; like I can make any of it right.

  The house is a decaying limb—a dingy gray place where people barely exist. I try not to breathe in the fading cinnamon smells because it makes her not being here so much harder. We’re
all slipping, falling, and just trying to hold on.

  I stand to go. Moch turns to me. “I’m not sure where to go.”

  I bite my lip before saying, “Babylonia.” I lean over and give Moch an awkward hug. “I miss her. It’s hard to miss someone alone.”

  Moch nods. “I know.”

  Making sense out of senselessness. Futile.

  Chapter 37

  Babylonia Leaves Parent a Report Card: “U”nsatisfactory on All Counts

  NCAA Games Heating Up

  Babylonia and Dental Hygiene

  SETH HAS AN ENTIRE SECTION

  dedicated to what he believes is Babylonia’s dental hygiene routine. In the Sunday Appeal, they reported the little girl mentioned that Babylonia had cinnamon breath and wore ugly ski masks. Seth goes on saying such damning evidence will surely trap the thieves. “Who, I mean, who chews cinnamon gum?” he asks.

  I laugh, glossing over the article about Caleb because the whole thing gives me a sick-stomach feeling. My head hurts. I’m now downing as much Mylanta as 7Up.

  Saturday morning, we convened an emergency Sanctuary for round three of March Madness bets—last round before Sweet Sixteen. I had over twenty guys come to place bets and moan about the upsets all around. Duke lost to Tennessee, PSU destroyed Northwestern, and U-Dub came out from under Gonzaga’s shadow, my Huskies, who barely made the bubble, and won in a miracle shot.

  Maybe miracles do happen.

  I won another five hundred dollars. Five hundred dollars. Josh and I won almost seven hundred dollars. Everything was right—just right. We left money at Luis Sanchez’s house in an envelope and donated to the foundation Brain Food.

  I’ve had to make ridiculous excuses not to hang out with Marilyn. Finally, on Sunday, I told her I had to pay attention to the games. “After March Madness, I can shop till I drop.”

  “When does this end?” She sounded bored with the whole madness thing.

  “Two more weeks,” I said. “Then it’s all over.”

  That seemed to appease her.

  I close my eyes and replay the Huskies’ final basket—miracle three-pointer, corner shot over Gonzaga’s defense. I have a moment of invincibility—the “forever” Josh talks about. Peace.

  Still.

  That’s all I want. To be still.

  I watch the rise of Babylonia—how betting and Babylonia have overshadowed normal high school stuff. We’re all kids can talk about. In Mrs. B’s class, Sumi and Dawn did an entire six-word memoir, “Ode to Babylonia.”

  It was freakish.

  Nobody’s talking about next week’s Aloha Dance—a lame attempt by the student council to make up for the ski trip debacle. They can’t afford anything big, so they’re having it in the gym.

  March 22.

  Tickets. Ten dollars for those who don’t have their original ski passes. I think that’s supposed to be some kind of compensation for the sixty dollars the other kids blew. Trinity, Callie, and the other student-council members rotate ticket sales, but their stack of tickets doesn’t look like it’s going down at all. The dance isn’t going to be too big a hit.

  Maybe kids just don’t want to hang out together. Maybe they feel more comfortable in their little social circles that intersect like one of those Venn diagrams, only when they’re instructed to do a group assignment together.

  Nim walks by with a group of friends, his arm wrapped around Trinity’s shuddering shoulders. Medusa wears a painted smile, like she’s totally okay with her boyfriend hugging another girl.

  The pit returns. The hole in my stomach can’t seem to be filled anymore—I get just momentary bursts of release, then the familiar burn.

  In Mrs. B’s class, Moch shows up late, handing her a tardy slip. “Good to see you, Mocho,” Mrs. B says.

  Trinity stands to leave. “I won’t be in the same room as him.”

  Moch’s face turns ashen gray.

  “Sit down, Miss Ross, and cut the drama.” Mrs. B clears her throat. “Listen . . .” Her tone of voice softens. “We’ve talked about violence and what’s going on with Caleb and I know he’s hurting right now. But these kinds of outbursts and accusations really don’t do anything but exacerbate the problems.”

  “Exacerbate the problem? That my boyfriend was stabbed at school by his best friend—” She points at Moch, ugly, angry fingers ready to place blame. “You call that, quote-unquote, exacerbate the problem?”

  Mrs. B sighs.

  “Distorted mirrors. Filtered memories. Everyone’s guilty,” I say, interrupting the debate.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Trinity says, and glares. Her eyes are puffy and red. Is it possible she doesn’t know who Caleb is?

  Or maybe I don’t know him, either. She certainly doesn’t know Moch. How could she know he spent an entire summer interviewing every person in our neighborhood to put together his first newspaper? He called it Twenty Minutes. The idea was that after twenty minutes, you could pretty much know someone.

  Trinity, Caleb, Mocho, and I have gone to school together for ten years. We still don’t know each other.

  Trinity glares. “Well?”

  “It’s just a memoir,” I say.

  “I have one,” says Moch. He pulls out a crumpled page and says, “Bloodied bats. Bloodied knives. Same. Same.”

  Trinity’s face does this really unattractive pinchy, raisin thing. She turns a reddish color and collapses to her chair, sobs coming out.

  Yeah. She knows Caleb.

  I know Moch.

  But I can’t believe they’re the same guy. Moch stopped Comba. Caleb, though, held the bat.

  For the first time it occurs to me that Mrs. B could collect all our memoirs, give them to a court of law, and they’d have a pretty solid case against anyone in this classroom.

  The loudspeakers interrupt the weird silence—spitting news and information at us. We’re all called out for an emergency assembly.

  I can’t help but notice the hallways smell like cinnamon Trident. Some kids wear Babylonia T-shirts—the symbol we used on the ski trip invitation.

  Josh catches up to me as we walk through the gymnasium doors. “Un-freaking-believable.”

  “No kidding.”

  “I’d never thought of the merchandising aspect of the whole thing,” I say, half smiling.

  Josh squeezes my arm.

  We. Are. Babylonia.

  Josh and I shuffle into the gym, working our way up to an empty area in the bleachers. I hear somebody moo and look around to see Nim laughing. He winks at me.

  I can’t believe it. I’m still a joke to him. The sound of Principal Holohan picking up the mic, its screechy feedback, thunders in my ears.

  “Sit down!” some junior ROTC kid says, motioning me to sit. “Yeah. You!”

  Josh tugs on my hand. It’s like everything I’ve done doesn’t matter because nobody knows. They’re all looking at me as if I were yesterday.

  I. Am. Babylonia.

  Principal Holohan stands in the middle of the gym with Police Chief Dominguez. He takes the mic and says, “I’m here to talk to you about Babylonia.”

  Cheers and whistles fill the gym; then kids begin to whisper, “Babylonia, Babylonia, Babylonia.” Hundred of voices whispering. The words, first like scattered raindrops, connect together, floating over our heads, filling the gym, growing like a tidal wave crashing on a shoreline. They get softer again and recede back out to sea. “Babylonia.”

  The gym goes silent, leaving Police Chief Dominguez drenched in sweat—the unforgiving fluorescent bulbs burning overhead. “There are two very confused individuals who believe taking the law into their own hands causes a lot of good.”

  “It does!” somebody shouts.

  “Do not interrupt. I will not ask you again.”

  The gym settles into uncomfortable silence. It feels like Dominguez is looking right at me. Josh slips his hand into mine and I squeeze it. Hard. Not even worried about the fact it’s way past clammy-gross and moving toward corpselike waxy
.

  “These burglars are dangerous. They’ve already shown they’re fearless. And every single Tweet, status update—every time they’re mentioned—we are tracking you. Don’t think Anonymous is all that anonymous. I’m here to tell you that this is not a game. This is not a fad, like some rubbery animal-shaped things you put on your wrist. These individuals are breaking the law, and they will be prosecuted. Nevada burglary, as defined in NRS 205.060, is one of the toughest laws in the country. If you want to be a burglar, Nevada’s not the place to do it. It’ll get you ten years in the pen.

  “We will bring them to justice. And they will do time.”

  “Yeah, just like la Cordillera!” somebody shouts. I look around to see who shouted, but everybody’s looking around at everybody, so it’s hard to tell. I turn back to see Moch. He and everybody else sitting around him are wearing sunglasses. But if they know who shouted it, that kid’s dead.

  “We are well aware of the problems of gang violence in Carson City. As well as a new wave of militia groups targeting certain members of our community. I’m here to talk about Babylonia, the trickle-down effect of vigilantism, and how it affects our community, our safety. It is not a game.

  “That said, we are offering substantial reward money to anybody who can lead us to the perpetrators of these crimes. Because we have reason to believe these felons are young, possibly even members of this school community, I wanted to address the high school personally. I want you all to know that whoever is behind these burglaries will not be doing them for much longer. Mark my word. Any questions?”

  At least half the study body raises their hands.

  “Why do you think they’re dangerous?”

  “They already left a seven-year-old bruised and incredibly shaken up,” Dominguez says. “To keep her from screaming.”

  I think about how hard I held her, squeezing her in my hands.

  “It’s larceny. It’s dangerous. And these burglars have no social agenda except to themselves. They’re a couple of punks on a joyride—one that’s going to end badly.” Dominguez wipes his forehead down with a white handkerchief. “Let me be clear about this. Burglars aren’t like you see in the movies. Hollywood has a beautiful way of romanticizing the most dangerous of things. These two could be drug addicts, part of a local gang—they’re only thinking about themselves.”