If I didn't know better, I'd think he just found something he'd been searching for.
I rush toward the end of the street, glancing at a nonexistent watch on my wrist like I have somewhere important to be. Behind me, I can feel the guy watching. I don't know why he looked at me the way he did, but I don't like it. Dizzy and I work hard to ensure no one notices us. The tattoos, the piercings, the loud clothing-you'd think it's to attract attention, but it has the opposite effect. It shows the world we're abnormal, and the world looks away.
Twice I look over my shoulder to check if I'm being followed. There's no one there either time, and I begin to feel like an idiot.
No one wants to follow you, Domino.
No one except a particularly determined social worker who's approached me more than once. This neighborhood is part of her territory, and underage strays are her passion.
Just thinking about the woman sends shivers down my spine. Her frizzy blond hair, the way her arms seem too long for her body like she wants nothing more than to snare me in them. Twice now she's followed me as I made my way home, speaking softly in her tweed business suit and scuffed black heels. I could hear what she was saying, but I didn't want to hear it. She's a paper pusher. Someone who pretends to care. In the end, I'd be another tick mark in her body count. Another dog off the streets, shoved into a kennel.
That's when they'd find out who I really am. What I am.
And then the badness would come.
Standing outside our house, I feel relief. Gray paint peels in frenzied curls, and the front light is broken. The grass is dead and half the windows are covered with boards. But the bones are strong. The house stands three stories tall and is an old Victorian build. This part of Detroit used to be glamorous, where all the rich people lived. But they built too close to the ghetto, hoping against hope that this section of the city would turn around. The opposite happened. The slums grew arms and legs and crawled toward their shiny homes and manicured lawns, and then swallowed them whole without remorse.
And now Dizzy and I have a home that used to be beautiful.
"What are you doing?" someone calls from the upstairs window.
I raise a hand to shade my eyes from the sun. When I see Dizzy's face, I have to stop myself from smiling. Instead, I shake my head as if I'm disappointed to be home and head toward the door.
"It's Friday, Buttercup, you know what that means." Somewhere above me, I hear Dizzy howl long and energetic like a prideful wolf.
I want to tell him not to call me Buttercup, that my name is Domino. But I don't. I just curl my hands into tight fists. I open my mouth wide.
And I howl right back.
Chapter Two
See Dizzy Fly
Dizzy throws open the door and rushes toward me.
"Stop," I yell, holding my arms out.
"I won't!"
The street-lamp-of-a-guy flips me over his shoulder and barrels into the house. I laugh when he tosses me onto a couch that may or may not harbor the Ebola virus. He places one long, skinny finger on my nose. "Where have we wanted to go for the last two months?"
I slap his hand away. "I don't know. Where?"
He taps his temple and bobs his head, dark curls bouncing against brown skin. "Think, Buttercup. Think."
So I do. My brain goes tick, tick, tick. And then my face pulls together and I crane my neck to the side. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?"
Dizzy jumps onto the makeshift coffee table we constructed and pretends to pound the surface with a king's staff. "Here ye, hear ye. I pronounce tonight the night we wreak Havoc."
"Havoc?" I say quietly. "No one gets in that club."
He nods and his curls kiss his long lashes. "I met someone who knows someone who said he could do something for someone like me."
"We're going to Havoc," I say again, because saying it again makes it real.
Dizzy raises his arms into the air, and I know that's my cue to react. I stand up and spring onto the couch. Then I jump up and down and he grabs my hands. He leaps onto the crusty couch beside me and we go up and down screaming that we're going to Havoc. That we're going to party like beasts, because we are beasts. I throw my arms around him before I remember that we don't do that. I hate being close to people and he hates being confined and this isn't okay.
"Gross. Get off me," he yells. "I can't breathe. I can't breathe!"
I let go, gladly, and Dizzy leaps back onto the floor. He looks like a spider doing it, all arms and legs. He's certainly as thin as one.
His brown eyes spark beneath thick, caterpillar eyebrows. "Get ready," he orders. Then he dashes up the stairs, each step burping from the weight.