Danny gives a sharp shake of his head. He passes a hand over his scarred lip. “Pinchón is coming. Anyway”—he motions to the guys approaching—“they’ll just follow us onto the train.”
Words I do not want to hear.
The five guys who want to fight Danny, and now me, stop paces away. Waiting for the train. Waiting for no witnesses. They separate to block our path should we try to escape.
Feather-beard is chanting lyrics about hate and death and blood. His hand goes to his waist. To his pocket that’s a sheath for a blade.
We can’t stay here, Danny and me. We can’t fight them if they’ve got knives. If we get on the train, maybe we can run through it to another car. If we’re fast, we can jump out again closer to the overpass.
I try to tell Danny what I’m thinking without using words, without using signals they can read. I position myself in front of a door that will open. Feather-beard grins.
The train moans to a stop. Metal doors fly open like shutters.
I’m ready to dash in. To weave through people and push through cars.
The revving in my heart chokes.
Isa stands in front of me.
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 23
ISA
At 168th Street we rise from our seats. My foot is throbbing again. Merrit frowns at the effort it costs me to take the ten steps or so to the door. He swears softly as he removes his Santa hat from his pocket. He pulls it down over his wet hair.
“You hurt your ankle again, didn’t you?”
When I nod, he swears once more.
He readjusts Santa’s hat. “I’m so stupid,” he mumbles. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s OK,” I tell him.
“No. No, it’s not. I’m selfish. I didn’t think what could happen to you.” His arm comes around me and his hand grips my shoulder. “I never wanted to hurt you. Yet that’s all I seem to do.”
“That’s not true.” I almost tell him how I hurt him. By not watching out for him when I was with Alex, like I should have.
Merrit stares at his reflection in the window, hat tipping again to the side. “I’ll take you to urgent care before our session. Dr. Peterson can wait.”
“No, he can’t.” Merrit staying stable is most important. “Anyway, I know what my ankle needs. We’ve got ice and bandages at home, plus crutches.” I want to believe what I say. I don’t want to think it’s anything more than a sprain.
“OK. But we’re taking a taxi home. I can carry you up the stairs to the elevator, even.”
I’m telling him no, that I just need to lean on him, when the doors fall open.
Alex is in the doorway. His hands are clenched. The dark slash of his brow is pulled low. His body’s angled forward, his knees slightly bent, like a sprinter ready to run.
An uncomfortable prickling works up my spine.
Alex straightens when he sees me. The hard determination falls from his face. His eyes widen, catching the subway’s flickering light. His eyes round even more, confusion replaced by what I can only call horror. He stumbles back, out of our way.
He probably hasn’t checked his phone yet. He hasn’t read my message. He remembers how I ran away from him outside the Academy. How I wouldn’t tell him why I left. I’ve become a nightmare to Alex, something for him to run from.
I was holding on to Merrit pretty hard already. Now my fingers dig into his arm so much he winces. He’s looking at me and then at Alex. He saw my phone. He saw photos of me and Alex together. He isn’t stupid. Please just let him not say anything. Not now.
Merrit helps me off the train, his arm still around my shoulder. I almost jump when I see Danny on our other side, his back against one of the arches. He catches my gaze, gives a faint shake of his head. He flicks two fingers as if tossing a gum wrapper. I deserve it, the look, the dismissal, all of it.
There are too many steps to the stairs for me to count. The pain in my ankle echoes like a hammer inside my head. Three other guys are in front of us. They look through us as if we’re invisible. Their faces are drawn with the same cold intent I saw on Alex, their gazes locked on him and Danny. They’re all here together, that’s for sure.
Merrit stops when we’re only halfway to the bridge. His frown has turned thoughtful. “That’s him, isn’t it?” he asks. “That’s Alex?” Merrit snakes his arm out from under mine, and before I can tell him to wait, he’s striding back toward Alex and Danny. “I’ll talk to him for you.”
“No—Merrit!”
Two other guys come up alongside my brother. There’s a whole group of them now.
“Hey, Santa,” one of them says. He says something else I can’t hear that makes Merrit stop.
The train pulls out, sucking air with it down the tunnel. The last of the passengers are crossing to the elevators.
Danny and Alex have moved closer to each other. Alex’s gaze sweeps from my brother to me. He looks at me like he’s about to either yell or be sick.
Something’s wrong. These guys, they’re not friends of Danny and Alex’s.
Merrit turns and looks back at me. He takes in the three guys between me and the stairs, not that I could climb them by myself. His Santa hat has fallen over one of his eyebrows. He doesn’t fix it. He just moves his head, surveying the platform, taking all of us in.
“Who’s this?”
I stiffen as one of the guys behind me drapes a hand across my back.
“She yours?”
I don’t know who he’s speaking to. The whiplash from my emotions—my relief from talking to Merrit, my shame at seeing Alex, and now my fear that something is very, very wrong—makes me dizzy. I feel like I might be sick too.
Danny puts out his hand, low, as if to block Alex or steady him somehow. Merrit raises his hand into the air, like the first-row, straight-A student he is. He doesn’t wait to be called on. He shouts out, “She’s mine. That’s my sister. Though the implication that she’s an object to be possessed by another person is not just anachronistic but also rather discourteous, to her mostly, but also to me.” He steps from between the two guys as casually as if he knows them from school. One takes hold of his elbow, but Merrit shrugs it off like a suggestion he’s not going to even consider. “I also object to the nature of this encounter. I mean, what is this? A game of urban chess?” Merrit’s voice speeds over the words. His eyes take on the fevered glow I dread. The one that tells me he believes he can fix this. He believes he can fix anything the world throws at him.
“Who is this guy?” one of them asks. “What’s he talking about?”
“Pero ese tipo está loco,” another adds. They move closer to Merrit, away from me.
It’s getting harder to breathe. The air seems too thin. I tell them quickly in Spanish that Merrit’s not well. That he doesn’t know what he’s saying. I don’t look at Alex as I say this.
Merrit frowns just a bit. He doesn’t stop or acknowledge me or my claim. He says the next line in perfect Castellano, accentuating the accent from Madrid where he spent a summer, so different from the DR or Cuba.
“What? You guys’ve never heard of human chess? She is the queen.” He gestures at me. “I presume he is the king.” Merrit points at Alex and then at Danny. “That would make you the knight. But what would that make me?”