by Frances Raybaud
“I don’t want your phone, man.”
The guy’s dying for God’s sake, knife in the abdomen, the blood gushing out—and he wants to give you his phone. A trade for medical aid? Not happening. You’re just standing there, watching him die. You have a real up close view. Shot a man in Reno and all that, although you doubt anyone’s listened to Johnny Cash in a long while. (Not since the first bomb maybe? Doesn’t fit the ambience. Doesn’t go well with explosions.) Only you didn’t do this. Were you gonna rob the guy? Sure. But not kill him. Someone else did that. And the idiot is still holding out his phone.
“Man, I said I don’t—” Your stomach growls. One granola bar (chocolate chip—you can taste it if you close your eyes) in three days. Hell, the meat you can see in his wound is starting to look pretty good. But you haven’t sunk to that yet.
“My sister.”
“What?”
“My sister. You have to find her,” he grates out.
“Do I look like Dora the Explorer to you?” It’s the backpack. Damn stupid pink backpack. The second you find something better it’s getting ditched.
“You have to—” He breaks off into a gurgle, teeth stained red.
You step backwards. Don’t corpses shit when they die, or something? “I don’t have to do anything. Put out an Amber Alert. If any cops still exist around here, I’m sure they’d love to go looking for a missing white kid.”
Your joke goes without a laugh, and the phone slips from his slick grip. Right in the wound. “Aw come on, man, you can’t die with dignity?”
It’s just in the—covered all in—oh, he’s dead. Alright, time to take his supplies and go. You don’t need to find a dead guy’s sister, who’s likely dead too. Who cares if love is a battlefield when life has become a raging warzone?
~~~
The phone has turned the rice (20 grams) red. But it turns on when you press down on the button. You should’ve left already. Your hands still hurt from the shovel, and you’ve never seen callouses form this quick. An hour and frozen soil will do that to you. Good to know for next—well, hopefully, you’ll never be stupid enough to do this again.
Grandma had three rules. Well, four if you count stop calling me Grandma like an American, I’m your halm-un-i. Don’t be stupid, don’t be savage, don’t be sorry. It’s all you have left. That, and the clothes on your back.
Why haven’t you left? And wasting the rice (20 grams)—unless you can eat it—you will not stoop to that level, not yet. Not until all the food’s gone.
You chew on the last piece of jerky (bag: 140 mg) and swallow hard on a sandpaper throat. Unlocking the phone, you find three new messages.
Colin im worried u wont find me
Colin r u there
Colin
With aching palms and frozen fingers, you type back:
im here
~~~
No service again. Not that you know the girl will reply. For all you know, she’s dead like every other woman. Dead, or raped, or raped and dead…you’re lucky your mother had cut your hair short after lice, and that you haven’t developed. You drop the phone in your backpack, and-
What was that?
You take a deep breath through lungs that are begging you for better air, and duck. When a bullet whizzes over your head, you think, thank god for loud boots. Face close to the floor, you peer under the shelves.
Is that-
No-
Fucking Rice Krispies, man!
You inch ever so slightly over to the shelf, praying for quiet, praying the woman moves on, but…
Screech.
The soles of your sneakers squeak as you shift, and you hear her call out. Hear the safety click off her rifle.
“Hello?”
You stay silent. Slow your breathing, close your mouth and breathe through your clogged nose.
That’s when it happens.
A flash of something in your backpack.
Is that the-
She-
She texted back.
There’s service on the floor of the grocery. Good to know.
“Hello?”
Please just go away, please just go away-
Shots ring out outside the window, shattering the glass. Shouts, heavy gunfire. The military’s here. Whoever’s in the store with you curses and runs.
You listen for a while, waiting.
But the army never comes inside the store. Fair, it’s been ransacked. Carts overturned, food boxes ripped apart and skeletal.
But the Rice Krispies have survived. It’s a good day.
You crunch on them as you pull up the message.
thx god u had me worried. where r u
Very slowly, and with your heart beating a mile a minute, you type it out.
Virginia.
~~~
You look down at the city below, legs dangling over the edge of the roof. Everything is on fire. The government doesn’t care about this part of the country. At least the bombs stopped dropping. But the city still burns.
You look at the phone, the little bars indicating a cell tower that still works for whatever reason.
You’ve texted her four times since the first reply. And she’s been radio silent. But now the texts come in, one, two, three, four—eight messages.
im not far now ill find u
colin i miss u
so glad ur ok
the army came 4 us
but i got out
mom and dad
theyre gone
i wish i was too.
Well, yeah. You begin to type back, but then you hear the horns. Army coming through. Time to go. You drop the phone in your backpack. You can text her back another time. If you were smarter, you’d have taken the time to eat (half an apple, rotting fast). But it’s good to know she’s okay.
Whoever the fuck she is.
~~~
You don’t know her name. Or even if this is the sister he was talking about. All you know, is when you text someone answers. Maybe hours later, maybe days, maybe it’s earlier, but you have to wait till you find the top of a roof…but there’s someone out there talking to you. Even if it’s just words on a screen.
You’re charging the phone (fourth time in four months and counting), huddling in the gas station bathroom. You have to hold it in your palm because the outlet is above the sink, hold it at an angle because the wires are all exposed, rubber worn away and the slightest wrong angle means no battery. You can barely breathe for the stench.
It stinks. There’s something smeared on the wall.
Smells like death. Smells like the backyard where your parents are buried, haphazard, graves marked with x’s in snow that has since melted. Of course, when you were digging you didn’t expect a blizzard. You didn’t expect to live through the night.
But you have, and you will survive.
Smells like the plane you took to get to America years before any of this, crowded and sweaty and full of people who didn’t speak English like you did (Spanish, too, from TV). Their voices clicking in the lilt of your mother’s tongue, scared to look out the window at the ocean below. They told you America was a better life, and six years ago you were all set to believe that. You wore skirts like a lady for six years and you don’t know why you still do it because you’re never going to live that long.
Well, the better life smells like shit.
It stinks like your mother making her kimchee with the door open so all the white people would have it caught in their thin yellow hair, back before the military came knocking on everyone’s doors and told you to head for the shelters.
Smells like something died and came back to life only to crawl to this bathroom and die again. Maybe something did, but it’s gone now and there isn’t even room to lie down in this bathroom. Nothing more than a toilet and a sink. Enough to take away someone’s appetite (a bag of pretzels and Twix).
Your hair brushes against your back and you startle at it, turning to the mirror. It’s getting scraggly, reaching past your shoulders. It’s not as black as it used to be. Months hiding out on rooftops have lightened it to a muddy brown. Only half your face shows in the mirror and you jump to get all of it (flat nose, skinny eyes, cheekbones out to there). Puberty is taking forever to catch up to you. But it’s one less thing to worry about. You wouldn’t know how to deal with that kind of blood.
~~~
This man has you backed up against a wall.
“Give me the food.”
“It’s just a can of beans, man, you have to let me—please I just—”
“Give me that backpack.”
Your mother gave you this backpack and she would balk at the way he reaches out his nasty white hand to grab at it. “I’m just hungry.”
You idiot! Never steal from a man unless he’s asleep or gone. But he had six cans, six cans, in his bag. How could you resist taking just one when you haven’t had—
He comes closer. You shrink back, and he rips the bag off your shoulders, tears the zipper down and upends it.
“NO,” You lurch forward and he backhands you across the face, which hurts like, hurts like the first time you fell off a roof, honestly, only that pain was everywhere and this is localized to only your face so you’ll be fine, just a bruise, forget about the blood pouring from your nose hot and wet and—
“You have a phone? Where did you get this?”
“Please don’t—oh,” You break into heavy breaths, dragging yourself to your knees but not further up. The knife stuck through your underwear digs into your thigh. It’s over. It’s over because he’s holding up the phone and it has a cracked screen. One jagged line going down the center, with striations bleeding out to the edges of the screen. You can see in one corner that the glass has broken off to expose the workings underneath, dark.
“Were you gonna sell this? To the gangs? It’s mine now.”
“No!” The yelp comes out of your mouth strangled, and his eyes darken.
“Why not?”
“Please, please, I need it. I—”
The phone lights up. Both of you freeze.
“Who’s Kayla?”
You falter. “I don’t- I don’t know.”
“You’re texting someone you don’t know?” He doesn’t seem angry at you anymore, just curious.
“Please, take everything else. I just have to—”
“You looking for someone?”
He drops to a crouch in front of you, really looks at you. Puts the phone down next to him.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I—” You falter again. “I don’t know.”
He looks at you for a long time, only breaking his gaze when your stomach growls and you wince. He picks up your backpack, starts shoving things back in (1 notepad, 2 pens, 1 phone, 1 copy of NW, 1…can of beans?). He yanks up the zipper and throws it at you. You catch it but the force sends you back into the wall. You don’t know how much you weigh, but it’s probably less than the backpack.
“Get out of here.”
You don’t stop to thank him, scrabbling to your feet, hoisting up the bag and running. You leave the alley, nearly tripping over a trashcan. The rats run over your feet and you briefly consider catching—but you have beans. You’re not going there yet.
im so scared
says the text when you finally get to check it three days later, but that’s it. Nothing about why. Does she think she’s special? You’re always scared. Who does she think she is? Does she really—
But you find yourself typing back:
me too
~~~
“Who is this savage little bitch?” The man has you by the hair, dragging you out to meet his friends (2 of them, big enough to take you). “I found her rummaging through our…”
His voice is drowned out by the word.
Savage.
Savage.
He’s wrong. You’re not. You’re not savage. You still know how to speak. You can still write, but you’re forgetting how to read. You forgot the letter K the other day and looked at it for ten minutes with no idea how to pronounce “kiss.” Siss, miss, liss, fiss, you whispered to yourself in the apartment (2 cans of dog food and you took them, you’re sorry, you did). When you finally said the sound right you were almost crying. What’s the point? Everyone’s set all the books on fire. It gets cold without electricity. It gets cold in winter.
“Did you hear me?” he spits in your face. His breath is rancid, you expect to see flies coming out of those gums. “I said why did you take our food?”
“I was hungry,” you admit.
“What’s this?”
Another person going through your backpack (almost empty bottle of water, 1 phone, 1 notebook, 1 pen, 1 pocketknife, 1 copy of NW), so dirty now no one could ever guess pink, and he brings out the phone. You wish this skirt had pockets or that you could switch to pants but it’s all you’ve got left. It’s torn and barely protects you from the wind, but they’re focusing on the phone when it blows up, exposing you.
You feel naked even after your skirt goes down, looking at them with your phone.
He has hold of your arm in a visor grip, but his attention is on the phone. “Could we sell that?”
“No,” you say quietly.
“Oh yes? What will you do to get the phone back, huh?” And now he’s noticed the skirt.
You take a deep breath. Not at that level, not at that level. Don’t be stupid, don’t be-
His hand comes for your thigh and you bite down on the one on your elbow, bite straight through the skin. 죄송합니다, Grandma. But it’s between the words of a dead woman and the words of a girl that might still be alive.
As he bleeds and curses, you stumble to your feet—screw the backpack. You came too close—
At the last second, you turn and go for the phone. Spitting in that man’s eyes, you take the phone when it falls from his sweat-slick grip and take off down the street. You find yourself somersaulting head over heels when your shoe catches on the pavement and the sole rips, but you get up and keep going.
Later that night, you squint around the cracks (2 more) to type out your next message.
ask me about my day.
Because you’re dying to tell her.
~~~
The camp is crowded and stinking. But there’s food. And they say in a couple of years, you may get resettled somewhere abroad. Maybe. It’s a long shot, but they say you clean up nice and South Korea is willing to take in ethnic refugees.
“Is that a phone?” The girl next to you asks.
“Yes.” You nod, unlocking and locking it, hoping for another message. It’s been two weeks. They haven’t caught you with the phone yet. You don’t know what they’d do. They’re supposed to help you, right? They wouldn’t take it away, would they?
“Who are you texting? Is your family alive?”
“Is yours?” You answer back sharply, staring at the broken screen so hard you feel your eyes bugging out of your head. Where is she? Why won’t she answer?
“Just my brother.”
Your head snaps up. “What’s his name?”
“Jeremy—”
“Never mind.” You return to staring at the screen.
She continues talking, but once she sees you aren’t listening, she moves away and begins bothering someone else. The phone won’t light up. There’s service, but there’s no new message. Is she okay? You sent her a long message thirteen days ago about how alone you feel, how hungry you are, how much you miss the real world and your grandma and sleeping in your own bed and not being scared. It took you almost an hour to get it all out, typing and deleting and typing again. You had so much to say that clicking on the text sends you to a whole other page.
The screen lights up that night and people look over to you in the tent, but you feign sleep, huddling over it to dim the light until they turn away.
what did u do to my brother
You stare at the message.
She knows.
Fuck, she knows.
And you break the last rule, knowing that you’ll one day look back at this like it’s just part of the bad story, like your nights weren’t softer and warmer with her words on a screen, knowing that she’ll never write you again. It’s been eight months that she’s thought her brother was alive, and now she knows the truth.
You are so stupid.
When you finish the text and see it’s sent, shivering out in the field so you get three bars, you smash it on the ground. You step on it again and again, breaking it into tiny pieces with your wrecked sneakers until it is a mess of wires and metal half buried in the grass. This is on her. Eight months and she didn’t know it was someone else? How could she not know? How old was that guy, Colin, anyways? Thirty? Forty even? Grownups blend together after twenty-five. How stupid could she be to mistake you for him?
She won’t reply anyways. You know the drill. Everyone leaves, or they die. You threw away your food for this phone, your water, your book, your words…you can’t remember words sometimes because you don’t have time to practice or do anything but starve. You threw it all away on a promise you broke from the start. You imagine her now, staring down at her phone with horror, or sorrow, or despair. The last words you had left.
Grandma is a dead woman, and she didn’t know what was coming. And she never knew her baby was a liar and a fraud.
Two words can’t make up for eight months of lies.
But some of it was true.
It’s over now, though.
Somewhere in another city, starving and scared, Kayla begins to type again, but sighs and locks her phone instead. Burying her face in her hands, she begins to cry. The phone slips out of her lap and lights up. It’s a shorter message than the last one, and she will see it. She will see this message from not-Colin on the screen and she will finally know for sure.
I’m sorry.
