Sacrifices by Jamie Schultz Page A

in that direction.
    She kept walking, thinking she’d forgotten how
flat
everything here was. Nearly everything was a small single-story box, from the Metro PCS store on the corner to the barbershop to the little house wedged in behind them with its green clapboard siding falling askew in places. Despite everything being open to the sky, it made her want to duck her head, to walk hunched over or even crouching.
    â€œYou okay?” Nail asked.
    â€œYeah. Why?”
    â€œDon’t take this the wrong way, but you look like you’re freakin’.”
    â€œI don’t like coming back here.”
    â€œIf it makes you feel any better, I don’t like coming here at all.”
    They walked past a couple of houses, one fenced in with metal bars, and the next with sagging chain-link. Clothes hung in the front yard of one, probably washed by hand or brought home wet from the lavanderia so the woman of the house could save a buck fifty in dryer time. It was easy to remember the rules and rhythms of this place once you got started. Anna didn’t want to get started. This was
supposed
to be alien now. She’d lived in some pretty sketchy apartments with Karyn over the years, but not in neighborhoods where you wondered if you’d be digging stray roundsout of your furniture in the morning, where you could imagine that the Fourth of July happened every month or so if you just pretended that that popping sound was fireworks.
    â€œJesus, I’ve come all the way back to start,” she said.
    â€œWe’ll be outta here in an hour. Two, tops. Don’t sweat it.”
    â€œNo, I mean, this . . .” She wasn’t sure how to say it. This sense that the other shoe was about to drop, that any calm you experienced today was just a breather before the next catastrophe, the next bad news. That was how she lived now. What did the location matter? “It’s still not getting better,” she said. The horrifying thought hit her that maybe the last twenty years had just been a breather. A false alarm. It wasn’t too late to end up like Dana, hooked on whatever she could get her hands on, waiting for the next visit from a boyfriend or the cops, the next beating or the next shakedown, while her kid hid under the bed and prayed a bullet would somehow change things.
    â€œIt’s gonna be fine,” Nail said. He sounded like he didn’t believe it, either.
    â€œWhere are your folks at?” Anna asked.
    Nail looked at her sidelong for a long time. “I don’t do nostalgia,” he said.
    She laughed bitterly. “I get that. Me either. You end up somewhere different from them?”
    â€œYeah. So far.”
    â€œSomewhere better?”
    â€œNow you’re freaking me out.”
    She kicked a plastic bottle into the road. “Just answer the question.”
    â€œI guess so. Different, for sure. Better . . . Man, I don’t know. My pops never had to sit in front of the feds and try to keep outta prison. Course, he swept floors for thirty years, never had two dimes to rub together.” A white car—vintage 1991, or thereabouts—drove by, bottomed out on wrecked shocks. “How about you? Where are your people?”
    â€œMy parents? One’s dead. Wasn’t really another one.”
    â€œI guess you ain’t ended up in the same place, then.”
    She checked his expression, suddenly convinced he was making fun of her, but saw nothing but sincerity. “Yeah,” she said. “‘So far.’”
    They kept walking. At the corner, a fifteen-year-old kid in a Clippers jersey asked them what they needed. Anna just shook her head.
    â€œI don’t need to be thinking about this shit,” she muttered to Nail.
    â€œThen don’t.”
    â€œOh, now, why didn’t I think of that?”
    â€œHey, if—”
    A series of dull pops sounded from somewhere up ahead, the sound echoing off the