AK47 found me in the parking lot outside of the theater. She sat down next to me on the curb, where it was quiet.
“Hey, I thought you liked action movies?” she asked.
I shrugged. I did. “Why do people buy guns if they aren’t going to do battle?”
“It gives them power, you know?” She put her arm around me. “Hey. What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” I said. But she gave me THE LOOK and I started crying, because I remembered about Toucan and Gert and the gun and the Midterm Exam and everything.
“Something’s going on. You’re doing the thing you do when you’re stressed out.” She touched my hand. “Come on. You can trust me.”
AK47 gave my hand another squeeze, and I felt like if I didn’t tell her I would explode.
chapter twelve
I blurted it out. I didn’t mean to. I said Gert had a gun and hadn’t been going to class and was a liar. AK47 lost her shit and got very angry, which for her meant becoming quiet. In many ways this is scarier than when someone gets angry loud. You do not know what a person who is quiet and angry will do next.
When we got in the car, AK47 drummed the steering wheel and didn’t start the car.
She was giving me THE LOOK.
AK47 is fearless. When it comes to Viking things, she is the person most like the Valkyries. That was one of the reasons why Gert fell in love with her. She could take his shit. Other people are afraid of him, but he is afraid of AK47, especially when she gives him THE LOOK.
“She’s giving me THE LOOK, Zee,” Gert would say. Or: “I know that look.”
THE LOOK is like a missile, which actually didn’t exist in the time of Vikings. A missile goes from one place to another and explodes the villains. AK47 does THE LOOK and like a missile it explodes whoever she shoots it at. Gert is not a villain, but sometimes he does villain things and she needs to explode him back to normal.
I have tried to learn how to do THE LOOK. It is a good way to become powerful in battle, where you have to use every weapon you have.
I liked to practice my own LOOK in the mirror. One of the things that makes AK47 good at sending THE LOOK like a missile is her eyebrows, which are very black and like caterpillars. They bend in the middle when she is angry, and when she is really angry and wants to destroy whoever she’s looking at, they actually bend in a lot of places. Her eyes are brown and sometimes I think when she’s doing THE LOOK they become black.
Even when she did start the car, she was doing THE LOOK the entire ride home, giving it to the road, to the other cars, to the steering wheel.
While she drove I worried that I had done the wrong thing and betrayed Gert. But AK47 was someone I knew I could trust, and I knew that she loved Gert and Gert loved her.
She parked in front of our building, in a place you couldn’t park in for a long time. She didn’t even turn the blinkers on that she used to show people that she was not going to stay long.
She shut off the engine. She didn’t let go of the steering wheel, which she was holding on to like she was hanging off the edge of a cliff and the steering wheel was the only thing she could grab to stop her from falling.
We sat there for a second.
“I’m so frigging pissed, Zelda,” AK47 said. “You have no idea. A freaking gun. In the apartment. Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?”
“I know, which is why I told you.”
“Right. Yeah. You did the right thing.” She patted my leg. “Good work. And this school crap? He has to keep a full course load to keep his scholarship. He can’t just drop a class like that. Especially not a prereq.”
Prereqs are things you need to do before you can do anything else.
We went upstairs, carrying our shopping bags, to our apartment door. I got out my key but AK47 was already unlocking it with hers, which I did not know she still had.
Gert was inside watching TV and eating cereal on his lap.
“Hey, how was the movie?” he said to me. And then he saw AK47. “What’s she doing here?”
“Shut up,” AK47 said.
He ignored her. “Zelda, why is this person in the apartment who I said I never want to see in the apartment ever again?”
When she started giving him shit, Gert told her to mind her own business, which was when I said, “It is her business, because it’s my business too. I am passing her all of the business.”
“Guns, Gert. Seriously?” AK47 shook her head. “And these gangbangers you’ve been hanging around with?”
“Stop being melodramatic,” Gert said.
“You don’t think I hear things?” AK47 said. “Everyone knows you’re dealing.”
I did not know what this meant and asked if someone could explain what was going on.
“I’m not your rescue project,” Gert said. He put the cereal bowl down and got up and went to the door, walking past us and opening it. He told AK47 to get the hell out.
AK47 said she wouldn’t leave until he gave her the gun. When Gert said there was no gun, AK47 pointed at me and said, “She said she found a gun. In the metal box. Are you calling her a liar?”
“Sounds like one of her Viking fantasies,” Gert said.
“Shut up!” I said. “You had a gun in the metal box and two hundred and forty dollars in the envelope in the bag and you lied about the study group!”
AK47 got right in his face and then pushed him.
“You motherfucker,” she said. “You want her to get shot?”
By now she was yelling and pushing him and he was trying to stop her from hitting his face. Gert told her to stop being hysterical and AK47 said, “Oh, you want to see hysterical?” and started trying to punch him. He turned her around and held her in a backward bear hug. Then she bit into his hand and he said, “MOTHERFUCKER,” and then blood came out of his hand.
He pushed her away and held up his hand, while she flew into the wall with a thump.
I could not see the Grendels, but I could hear them, making their noises and clawing from inside of the walls.
I realized that I was crying because suddenly their faces became blurry and snot came out of my nose in a river.
“Stop it stop it stop it,” I kept saying.
Everything was moving very quickly, and I did not like watching them.
I went into the hallway, where it was quiet and where two people I loved from the same tribe weren’t fighting. I closed our front door and sat against the wall. I stayed there and held my head.
Alf had come out of his apartment and asked me what was going on.
“It sounds like goddamn downtown Iraq in there,” he said.
I told him that Gert and AK47 were fighting, and then there was a loud boom and before I could tell him not to go inside, Alf opened the door.
I got up and followed him. He clapped his hands to try to get their attention and to be quiet.
“You guys need to chill the fuck out or I’m going to call the police,” Alf said. “Especially you, Big Man.”
Big Man was Gert.
“What?” Gert said.
“Chill the fuck out,” Alf said, and he stepped between Gert and AK47, who were now on opposite sides of the apartment. AK47 was in the kitchen and Gert was in the living room, and Alf went and stood in the space between them.