Narc by Crissa-Jean Chappell Page A

door neighbors.
    To be totally honest, I was kind of lonely. My little sister had more of a social life than me. During the past few weeks, I’d seen less and less of Mom. She left Post-It notes all over the apartment in her jittery handwriting:
    Toilet is on the fritz. Jiggle chain in tank. Make sure everything goes down.
    Keep air conditioner on 75. Call me if it freezes up.
    Her latest:
    We need to talk about your grades.
    I crumpled it up and threw it away.
    Nothing left to do except practice my magic. I tried the levitation trick, but my feet wouldn’t stay balanced. I ended up falling on my ass over and over again. After a while, I gave up. I really needed to get a life.
    I jogged downstairs and threw my dirty laundry in the machine. Someone had already taken my jeans out of the dryer and tossed them in a wrinkled pile. Nice. I scooped up my faded Levis and smoothed them out, but they’d shrunk beyond recognition, the hole and worn part enlarged and clearly visible. This is what my world had become: shrunken laundry. How sad is that?
    The machine thumped like a metronome, putting me into a trance. After a while, I couldn’t listen to it anymore. I climbed the stairs and stumbled over the chewed-up carpet. I hadn’t explored this part of the building yet.
    At the top of the stairway, beside a fuse box with a mess of wires snaking out of it, a door dangled on its hinges. The other side was draped with Christmas lights. I stepped onto the roof. Airplanes roared overhead. Pigeons clustered against the railings, tucking themselves in for the night. I searched for my favorite pigeon, Wendy, in the flock, but I couldn’t find her black-and-white cookie pattern.
    This place was kind of chill. Somebody had even set up a little table and a deck chair. I sank into it. There was a six-pack of Presidente nearby. What the hell? Since I didn’t see anybody around, I cracked open a can. Then I saw something that blew me away. Mom’s earrings, the ones shaped like teddy bears to match her wacked-out scrubs. Had she been sneaking beers on the roof? The idea was so freaking weird, I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Guess I wasn’t the only one with a secret.
    I closed my eyes and listened to the surf sounds of traffic. I hadn’t been sleeping well, for obvious reasons. Now my internal clock was totally screwed up. Just as I started to drift off, my cell phone vibrated against my skin.
    “It’s starting. Where are you?” Morgan asked, her voice buried in a swirl of cackling laughter and car horns.
    “On my way,” I told her.
    I glanced across the roof, which was littered with empty beer cans. The Christmas lights blinked on and off. As I headed toward the door, I spotted something crumpled in the corner. A rag. Peering closer, I realized it was a pigeon. The wings were splayed above its head, and the feathers, dappled with blood, were black and white.

12 : The Ringmaster
    Maybe gulping down a warm Dominican beer and hopping on a ten-speed wasn’t a smart idea. As I squinted into the bleary distance, I tried to concentrate on the buildings ahead of me, the cartoony, hand-painted signs advertising everything from car parts to human hair.
    I pedaled faster.
    Morgan’s directions made no sense. She said to meet at a place on northwest Twenty-third Street, but all I saw were junkyards. Something hard and sharp bounced off my shoulder. I winced. On the corner, a pack of kids on low-riding bikes took turns chucking rocks at me. None of them looked bigger than my little sister.
    “Hey, man,” said a boy with a Marlins cap. “You got a flat.” He grinned, showing the spaces between his teeth.
    “Thanks,” I said as another rock sailed over.
    I ducked and lost control of the bike. Then I tumbled onto the pavement, scraping my knees and elbows. The kids clapped and laughed. They were still laughing when I twisted my handlebars back in place, hopped on, and veered down a side street just to get away.
    I had shredded a hole in