Chapter Six:
Pinch Me
Max was standing outside when Jondy rolled the bicycle out the door of Jam Pony. "Pinch me, 'cause I know I hafta be dreamin'."
"Sorry, baby sister. I didn't mean to startle you like that. Hey, at least you got your job back, right?" They began to pedal down the street, riding side by side.
"It just doesn't make sense, and now Normal knows, and he's cool with it. I don't even know where to start with that." She was talking more to herself than to her sister.
"Don't worry about Reggie. He's trustworthy. Your secret's safe with him."
Max glanced over at Jondy's bike. "He let you take out a company bike? And you don't even work there? Now I know I'm dreaming." She shook her head and was silent for a moment. "So he knows about us. How did he find out? How the heck did you meet Normal, of all people?"
"Well . . . it all started on a cold winter night many years ago when I caused a rather large dent in his front bumper." Max slammed on the brakes, stopping her bicycle to stare incredulously at her sister.
"You're kidding me. That was Normal?"
"Bet you never knew your boss was hiding from the same people as you, huh?" Max just stared. "Come on, Max. No parent could possibly be so cruel as to name their child 'Reagan Ronald.'" She shrugged. "Of course the flip side to that is that no one in their right mind would ever choose that name voluntarily." She grinned. "I told him he should have let me choose his new name. I think he'd make a good 'Bjorn,' don't you?"
"The hell with being pinched. I think I need to be smacked up side the head," Max mumbled to herself. Jondy grinned.
"It is a little much to take in, isn't it?"
"You can say that again."
"I am sorry about that." Jondy sobered for a moment before continuing. "So you call him 'Normal,' eh?" She laughed as she began to pedal down the street. "I bet he absolutely hates that."
Max reached over and pinched herself on the arm as she began to follow. "Ouch." Damn.
"So he took me to this convent and left me with a group of nuns."
"Nuns? You've got to be kidding." They'd been pedaling for a while and were only about two blocks away from the delivery point. Though the area was dangerous, neither had seen anything to make them worry. Package delivery persons were often used to deliver the goods in some of the illegal trades that went on in these areas, so they were generally left alone. Killing, harming, or even frightening too many package deliverers lessened the number who were willing to travel into these areas, and losing the means of transporting goods could kill business quicker than anything. Of course most of the people who worked at Jam Pony were too terrified of the area to realize that, for them, it was possibly one of the safer areas of the city. Unless, of course, you rode your bike into the wrong drive-by shooting.
"No, seriously, nuns. I can still remember looking out the window and seeing the statue of the Blue Lady. I thought it was a sign or something. Then again, I guess it was."
"'Pre-pubescent transgenic killing machine hidden by group of nuns,' that's a new one on me."
"Tell me about it, only in America."
They stopped in front of an old brick building, and Max checked the address. "258 Clemson. This is it."
Graffiti lined the front of what appeared to have been an old office building. Jondy didn't even want to hazard a guess at what it was used for now. Painted in hues of the gang colors, the walls were covered in the symbols used to mark their territory, but there were a few obscenities and doodles mixed in. Here and there mortar had chipped from between broken bricks. One section of the front wall looked as if it had survived a shoot-out, which was quite likely exactly what had happened. "We'd better not leave these out in the open." They rolled their bikes down an alley to the right of the building. Hopefully they would be less visible to anyone who might be walking down the street out front.
"On second thought, I'd better stay out here and keep an eye on our transportation," Jondy said, leaning against the wall.
"Probably a good idea." It wasn't as if they couldn't easily run down anyone who was brave enough to try to steal their rides, but it was always easier to just avoid trouble in the first place. Max walked out of the alley, turned the corner, and climbed the broken concrete steps out front. Jondy walked forward to the corner of the building and looked out onto the street. They'd passed two children playing with a bag of marbles about three blocks down. Definitely not somewhere I'd want to raise my kids, she thought. The pain came then, almost enough to cause her to double over. Tears suddenly stung at the backs of her eyelids. Don't think about it now. Just don't think about it now.
She glanced across the street to the faces of other buildings, trying to find something to take her mind off her own heartbreak. It was hard to believe that there were families and children living in some of them. But I guess there are worse places to grow up, she thought. She had personal experience with that one. At least here they have a chance to get out, a small chance, but a chance, at least. We had to break our own way out, literally. Seeing Max walking in her direction, she walked around the corner and out onto the street.
"It's sad, you know? Some of these people st---"
It all happened at once. Her sensitive hearing picked up the soft 'click' at the exact same instant as Max's did. Max yelled, "Get down!" and dove around the corner, pushing her sister with her, but not before Jondy's acute eyesight caught a glimpse of the face in the window of a warehouse diagonally across the street.
"Shit!"
The sidewalk where they had been a split second earlier was suddenly riddled with gunfire. Crouching back against the wall and moving away from the street, they watched the bullets fly by. Jondy stared out at the spot where they'd just been standing.
"What was that all about?" Max asked as the gunfire stopped.
"It wasn't my imagination," Jondy said, mostly to herself. "Oh God! He's here, in Seattle!"
"What are you talking about? Who's--" but Jondy was already gone, sprinting around the corner of the building and across the street. "Jondy!" She watched her sister bust in the door of the warehouse and disappear inside. She crept around the corner. The gunfire had stopped, and there was no sign of anyone peeking out of any windows with a gun. She followed.
Jondy raced up the stairs, taking three steps at a time until she reached the fourth floor. She located the room and the window where the shooter had been, but it was empty. Nothing remained except for scuffmarks in the dust on the floor. She stared at the room for a heartbeat, then turned and ran down the hallway past her sister, searching for the face that had been haunting her dreams for over a year. She'd be damned if he got away again, but her search turned up nothing. Returning to the room, she found Max looking out the window and waiting for her. So close. So damned close.
Max looked at Jondy, confusion and concern written all over her features. "What's wrong, baby sister?"
But Jondy surprised her by doing the last thing she would ever possibly have expected. She turned and rammed her fist into the wall, breaking through the drywall up to her elbow. Then she slowly removed her hand, looked over at Max, and burst into tears.