YOU WANT TO KNOW WHO I AM AND HOW I GOT HERE?
Reality Girl is the name my mother gave me but Real’s what I’m called. I’m fourteen and until one day, a week or so back, my ambition was making it to fifteen. What I want to tell starts that day.
Me and Dare—my girlfriend and partner—led our boys, Nice and Not, Hassid, and Rock, down to the river for this appointment I’d set up.
It could have been any October afternoon: hot orange light and the sun hanging over the smashed towers on the Jersey Shore. Like always, rumors ran of everything from a new plague to war between the Northeast Command and the Liberty Land militia.
But I could see planes coming in and taking off from Liberty Land Stronghold in Jersey like always. And along the waterfront little ferry boats took people on, unloaded freight.
The world that day was the way I was used to: broken cement under bare feet, bad sunlight that’d take off your skin if you let it, the smell of rot and acid on the water. Mostly I was trying to get control of this thing inside me. I wasn’t sure I owned it or it owned me.
Dare looked all ways, kept her hands inside her robes so no one knew what weapon she was holding, ignored the boy babble.
Hassid told Rock, “You look too much at who’s watching you dive instead of on the gold.”
“I gotta take this from a loser midget?”
“Listen to the lovers,” Nice said.
Dare stood tall with that crest of hair like a web singer or some photo you see and know is of a hero. “Look tough,” she told them, and they formed a front as we moved down to the waterline.
Me, I just stared around, looked downtown where black Hudson tide water was over the banks and in the street. Anyone looking maybe would guess I was Dare’s useless little girl trick. In truth I was seeing through her eyes, which was part of the thing inside me.
When I was a little kid I had flashes where I was inside someone else’s head for a second. It began to happen more often once my monthlies started. It scared me till I saw it as a weapon and tried to take control.
This summer was me and Dare’s second together and we fit like a knife in a fist. At first she hated it when I began slipping into her brain, and we fought. Then she saw how no one would know I was studying them, and went along.
That day I saw what Dare could see: used-up diving boys with the skin coming off them in clumps, and scavenger ladies with bags of garbage, all turned toward us snarling. But Dare saw fear in their eyes, knew they were looking for ways to back off, and she gave them the chance.
For what was left of the afternoon, we owned that stretch of the shore. But even here some water spilled over the walls onto the walkway. And barefoot kids don’t ever want to touch river water unless there’s gold in the air.
Then Dare and me caught sight of a long ground car with tinted windows and double treads coming down the highway, dodging the holes, bouncing over the rubble. According to the deal I set up with Depose, this was a party of tourists who wanted to see New York diving boys.
The car stopped, the doors opened, and Depose’s people jumped out holding their AK474’s ready. One kept an eye on Dare and the rest of us—cradling the rapid-fire in her arms. Two covered the other directions, on the alert but not tense. One stayed at the wheel.
When Depose runs things there’s no reason to worry. You don’t cross her and you’re okay unless she’s been given the contract on you or she sees some reason her life would get better without you. In those cases you’re dead. Simple, the way not much else is in this world.
Next the tourists in their protective suits and helmets got out of the car. A pile of wreckage juts out from the walkway and into the water. Security escorted them up there so they could see the show, then stood guard.
Dare and the boys looked up at them. Not said, “Aliens,” and spat into the water, but Dare signaled him to cool it. Not and Nice became partners that summer, and Nice rubbed his back and whispered something. They and Hassid, who’s single and older than any of us—eighteen—stepped out of their shorts and moved right to the edge of the cement. Rock, our fourth boy, was new and not at ease with us yet, but he did the same.
Tourists get off on American kids staring up like starving dogs. Tourists want to see us bare ass and risking our lives. Dare and me hated them as much as Not did, but this was the cleanest way we’d come up with to get money out of them.
At first this bunch seemed the usual: half a dozen figures with white insulated helmets to keep the sun off their faces, conditioned coveralls to make them comfortable, shields to protect their eyes, and masks so they breathed clean air.
Under all that protection, you can’t even tell what sex they are. They could be alien conquerors built like insects, soft and lovely ladies in silk from China where everyone is rich, kings and queens from Fairyland. You hear stories of creatures like those coming to see how New York got laid low. I maybe could have gone into their brains, but I didn’t want to give away that secret until I really knew what I was doing.
Then the tourists shifted and one who’d been hidden by the others stepped out front and showed me something very different.
This one didn’t wear coveralls, helmet, or mask, and was female with copper skin and hair not so different from mine. She wore goggles and took breaths out of a tube she carried while someone held a metal shade above her.
She looked familiar as I saw her through Dare’s eyes, and I felt my partner’s surprise at how much the tourist girl looked like me.
This one was the center of the group’s attention and concern. They clustered around like they’d stop bullets for her. Because of the goggles, I couldn’t see her eyes, but I could tell she was staring my way.
Thinking back, maybe I kept my talent too much a secret. If I’d gone inside a couple more heads we’d have been spared a lot of grief. As it was, when Rock turned to look my way, Dare said, “Eyes front,” under her breath, because we didn’t want me drawing attention.
Dare checked the boys one last time, made sure their skin was intact and that they had the safety lenses in their eyes before they hit the water. She took some extra care with Rock. Dare was a diver herself before she hooked up with me. She got out of it in time, but she remembers.
If no one managed divers, tourists would make them compete so they drove each other to death. With murder and the diseases they get, and being drafted to serve in the militias, boys are scarce, and talented ones like ours are rare. Dare and I kept the ones we had healthy.
Then sunlight flashed as a tourist’s hand came out of a pouch. Dare, calm and steady, nodded to the boys to stand right on the edge of the busted pavement in the spaces where there are no rails.
The hand went up, snapped the gold coin into the air, where it turned over as it fell toward the water a bit too far away for a boy to make an easy catch.
Dare had tapped Nice, and he dived forward in an arc, snapped it up as he hit the water. Nice flipped over and swam back and the tourists applauded, laughed. Nice was back up on the pavement with Dare taking the gold out of his mouth as the next coin sailed up in the air.
This was farther away and thrown harder, but Hassid kept his eyes on it as he dived, and was a yard away from where it went into the water. He came up with the coin and headed back as the next coin went farther out, and Not showing his skill and class went under and grabbed it.
The tourists applauded but this is how they always do it, throwing each one a little farther away, watching kids risk skin and eyes in water full of everything from turds to nuclear waste, seeing if their nerve will fail, hoping for the thrill of having one go under and not come up. The girl on the wreckage watched it all intently. It didn’t seem possible anyone from this world could have the wealth and power she did.
Jackie Boy is the legend they’ve heard about. Jackie skimmed over the surface of the water, and no matter how far or hard it got thrown, could catch tourist money in his teeth before either he or the gold hit the river. Maybe he wasn’t human. I’d started wondering if I was.
The tourists that day didn’t work the boys as hard as lots of them do. We got all the coins except for one that Rock missed. But it turned out this was just a test.
One time that afternoon, a plane, a fighter, flew low over the city and we flinched but the tourists paid no attention. This meant that it was nothing important.
Then maybe they got bored, because they started climbing down the wreckage. Right that second, a chimera, the one called Silky, who’s half seal, half woman, and old like they all are, came out of the water a bit farther upstream and caught their attention. Her skin is tough and she doesn’t stay in long, and maybe that or luck lets her survive.
Chimeras come from when things were falling apart but some people in the city still had money and tech and a big need to keep amused. There aren’t any new chimeras; probably no one knows how to make them anymore.
Tourist helmets flashed as they took pictures of Silky. I saw the girl look my way again and say something to one of the guys in protective gear, who took a few pictures of me.
When tourists lose interest, and city smells and poisons start getting in their masks, they go back to the expensive air at hotels in the Security Zone. Seeing the lights from the Zone way uptown always twisted my stomach, made me want to do a lot more than spit in their direction.
We got the boys cleaned off. There’s stuff the UN clinic in Times Square gives to people exposed to the river or harbor, and we rubbed them down. We used expensive pure water to clean out their eyes and mouths.
All of a sudden Depose’s car drove up. She got out and the girl said something to her before the tourist party climbed into their big ground car and took off.
Depose, wide and mean, and her bodyguard stayed behind. Through Dare’s eyes I saw her stride to us. But I didn’t look up until Depose went right past Dare without even nodding to her.
“Real.” Her voice is this low growl and she motioned for me to step away from the others, stood over me bearing down, sticking her face close to mine. “My clients are in the city to shoot a Net episode. I brought you out today so they could look at you and your fags. Mai Kin wants to use you!”
She watched through those heavy lids for a reaction. Depose went through girl- and boyfriends like they were toilet paper, but liked them a little older than me. Otherwise I’d want to stay away from her. I nodded that I understood, shrugged like it was no great matter.
But that was why the tourist girl looked familiar. Mai Kin was a rising star right then, playing Astasia X99, a girl superheroine who’s supposed to be around sixteen and who goes from place to place having adventures, fighting crime and vampires, and it’s so dumb that you can laugh at it.
Astasia has the power of disguise. She’s totally different in each episode. The last time I saw her she was in a big city in Africa and she was dark with wild black hair, infiltrating a revolutionary group.
What I just saw, I guessed, was the way she’d look here in New York. Pictures of Mai Kin before Astasia X99 show an okay-looking Asian girl who’s maybe twenty.
“The one called Caravaggio is going to direct this thing,” Depose told me. “He’ll get in touch. I trust you not to screw this up. Remember, Real, you owe me. You’re smart. You don’t need these dumb kids.” She indicated Dare and the boys.
And I nodded, kept my face straight, my eyes right on hers.
Depose was a power. When the militia at Liberty Land needed something done in the city, she was the one they hired. Somewhere down the line she’d want me working for her, but I didn’t want to get close and didn’t want to have to find out what was inside her brain.
In October the sun starts going down fast. We bought food and water at the Red Crescent kitchen before we headed back to our place, making a tight group with the boys on the outside and Dare and me and the gold in the center.
I told Dare what Depose told me, and she said, “If that’s Mai Kin, she tried to make herself look like you. Why did that happen?”
I shook my head because I didn’t know. “If what Depose told me means anything, there’ll be money.”
Dare said, “I don’t want that bull to think she owns us.”
Old people who remember twenty-five years back talk about how hot it is now, but winter when it comes can kill if you can’t stay warm. “We both felt cold a couple of nights ago,” I said. “It’s still okay in the days, but that’s what’s coming. Things are jumpy lately and we may need lots of gold to survive.”
Dare listened and said, “Okay, you’re right,” and I reached up and kissed her. Dumb girls have boyfriends; smart girls have other girls. And smart girls and gay boys are natural allies.
The street we were walking on had a lot of burned houses and an old railroad overhead that had mostly fallen down. Eighth Avenue when we crossed it had people. An open market about ten blocks uptown was breaking up; people loaded carts and trucks. Downtown, a UN Peacekeepers armored car was crossing the avenue.
On the next block a bicycle boy whizzed past, turned a hundred feet away, and looked us over. Another bike boy was on the other side of the busted street, then a third and a fourth. All of them thin with faces like the vultures you see sometimes near the river. They knew us and that we were coming back with gold; they called us faggots and dykes.
But the Peacekeepers shoot people like them if they see they have guns, and we’d handled these guys before. Our boys had their knives out, Dare had her hand on the jump pistol under her caftan, Not and Hassid yelled that the bike boys would starve soon. We never stopped moving, and they kept circling but never closed.
Then because it felt like the right time, I looked one in the face and caught sight of us in his eyes, caught the way he saw us: we were gold, we were sex. Then he knew something was inside him and freaked, almost fell off his bike before he and the rest of them faded away.
My mother knew some stuff about getting by. When there were still parties, when there was the thought of getting close to the ones running things and running with them, my mother was on the job. But wherever I got this skill, I didn’t get it from her.
I never met my father but she told me he was someone who traveled in important circles. He must have been some kind of prospect, because I think the reason she had me was to try and make him marry her.
People my mother’s age were big on names. When there’s no money, people do things like that. Dare’s mother named her only daughter Virginia Dare, after the first European baby born in the USA. The Virginia part got discarded since anything you hear about Washington and Virginia sounds worse than here.
But she kept the Dare. It’s an old word meaning tough, which is what she is: tough and beautiful. “Real!” she said, and I looked where she was looking. We were almost at our place. But on the next corner a building had fallen down last winter and blocked most of the street, and on the wreckage were Regalia and her crew.
Regalia was a six-foot-tall queen with paint on her face and an ax in her hand. A couple of years ago she had this giant boy Call who followed her like a stray dog, and her crew was IT.
But Call was dead white and got too much sun, which did him in. They say his face is partly gone and he’s a skeleton. I haven’t heard he’s dead but I haven’t seen him either.
In the last few weeks the city seemed to go desperate. For the second time in two blocks a gang wanted to take us on for a few gold coins. Again Dare took the lead and we came on like they weren’t even there. Her blade was in her right hand and her left was under her robe. Two steps more and she’d have drawn the jump gun and put a slug in Regalia’s stomach. I was reaching for Regalia’s brain.
It would have been better if we’d gone in and snuffed Regalia right then. Instead a truck with guys standing on the back and packing rifles came out of the twilight.
Regalia’s people saw this, and a couple started to back away. Then out of the cab jumped this bear, looking mean and huge in that light. One of Regalia’s crew yelled and started to run, another followed him, and Regalia went back howling at all of them.
Dare turned to face the bear, but I already knew what this was about. Caravaggio always had chimeras around him. The bear pulled himself up and said, “I am Ursus. I have a message for Real.” The voice was mostly human and hoarse and old. When I nodded, he said, “Caravaggio wishes that you come with us.”
Dare didn’t take her eyes off the bear and the guards on the back of the truck. “It’s okay,” I said. “This is what Depose talked about.”
Dare said, “I need to come with you.”
“I’d like that too. But we need you to guard the money. To make sure our place is defended. To come get me if something goes wrong.” I reached inside and showed her what we’d do together when I came back.
Finally she nodded, and I climbed into the truck and headed downtown to Studio Caravaggio. I know about the studio and about him.
That name is some artist hero in the past. Lots of old people took big artist names. We still got Mozart in the streets playing the same tune every day on a busted clarinet.
The quarter moon was up so there was some light, people slipping through the shadows where there were buildings standing. We passed a convoy of cars full of tourists and guards. The driver moved the truck around the holes and piles of rubbish in the street. He slowed when a religious crowd from the projects carrying torches and saints’ pictures and chanting crossed town on Fourteenth.
I saw Caravaggio when I was small and he drove by in a big car, had a gray beard and hair and dark eyes that stared out like a hunter’s, and someone told me he was looking for kids, and if he liked you and brought you home, you never worked or went hungry. Someone else said he took your soul first.
Years after that, they had this film festival and he showed a movie against the wall of a building at night. It was pieces of old past century movies with people crashing cars and blowing up buildings, making jokes as they broke glass, gunned down people, and wrecked New York and dozens of other places just for their own amusement.
All the kids watching it screamed and threw things at the stupid grinning twelve-foot-tall guys and women, the destroyers who used up our city and our world. Caravaggio was there nodding approval at our anger.
Studio Caravaggio is downtown on some blocks of old buildings still in good shape with generators and lights. Neighborhood guards with rifles stood on roofs and watched us come down the street. Their guns meant the Peacekeepers respected them like they did Depose.
Ursus went to a big metal gate, reached through that to a brass knocker on an iron door. He slammed the knocker a few times and a spy slot opened. “I brought Reality Girl.”
The spy slot closed, the iron door opened, dim light spilled out, and a feathered chimera in slippers appeared, unlocked the metal gate, and stood aside. We entered this huge space like a warehouse, with old historic furniture, gold Chinese screens, long tables covered with lenses and tools. One wall was painted to look like a faraway city with tall buildings.
The chimera took me past rooms with lights from screens where people watched and worked. Others were dark with humans and chimeras lying on mattresses. Some watched us pass. At a worktable a fox, a cat, and a lizard chimera showed some human kids how to polish models of the old empire building and the statue of the lady that was in the harbor and stuff.
Those get sold to tourists, and the metal they’re made of is supposed to be from the original buildings and statues. And I guessed this studio was where they got made.
A guy was cleaning the floors, and I smelled food cooking. Right then I wanted some of this for me and Dare and our crew.
From somewhere deep in Studio Caravaggio, a voice, hoarse and kind of shaky, said, “Visitors from the Orient encounter visitors from the future and fight it out in the ruins of New York while the natives dive for tourist gold is what it’s about. Where did I get the story? My dear sir, it’s my life. I look out my window and it’s what I see.”
Ursus turned a corner, and down a short hall, bright light shone out a doorway. The bear stopped at the door and we both looked at Caravaggio.
Before when I saw him, he was old but strong and dangerous and needing to be respected. Now he was in a white robe with stains on the front, spilling wine as he drank out of a long glass. His face was thin and he slumped in a big soft chair with a fan playing on him. What I thought was a boy in silk shorts held a bowl of something and a spoon like he’d been feeding him.
Caravaggio’s eyes moved, focused on me, and he said into a tiny disc in his open hand, “That’s the scenario, Assad. As always, I’m interested in financial backing. My health? I’m not going to die before I complete this, I promise you. But now I’ve got to talk to someone.”
When the boy put down the bowl and took a plug-in from behind Caravaggio’s ear, I saw he was maybe pushing thirty, and I recognized him as Tagalong, who was on the street with a gang when I was small. He nodded to me.
“I’ve brought Reality Girl,” said the chimera.
“Depose says you wanted to see me,” I said.
Caravaggio said nothing, just stared at me through eyes that looked like he was crying. But his face didn’t move. Tagalong tried to feed him from the bowl. Caravaggio brushed it away. He drained the glass, picked up a bottle with both hands, and drank out of it. Wine dribbled out the side of his mouth.
“My scouts talked about you,” he said.
“You want to use my boys diving for the tourists?”
“The boys sure, but mostly it’s you I’m interested in.” He moved his hand over a glass surface then pointed at something behind me, wanting me to turn and look. I wasn’t doing that, but I stepped back, kept him and Tagalong in my sight. Tagalong shook his head like he couldn’t believe me.
What I saw was a flat screen. It took a second to know I was watching myself. First I was on the riverfront that summer with Dare and the boys. Then Dare and I walked through the early morning streets before the sun got bad, and we kissed. Next we were at the UN clinic in Times Square getting ointments and medicine.
Don’t get scared, get mad was Dare’s motto and mine. “You and your freaks followed me!”
“If we meant you harm we could have done it many times,” Caravaggio said. “I’ve been thinking of you, imagining you in a film. The tourists you saw today were impressed by these pictures and were impressed by you.” Mai Kin’s face popped up on the screen. “At my suggestion Mai Kin has been redone in your image.” Seeing her again, she didn’t look that much like me.
Next I saw myself in the evening, walking all alone down an empty Fifth Avenue. This was fake; none of us ever went anywhere alone. Caravaggio talked on the sound track.
“Once this was the most famous city in the most powerful nation in the world,” he said. “Then the bombs fell, the earth quaked, the waters rose, the government collapsed. Around the world, cities and nations fell, but none fell further. Mighty Gotham is a ruin at a crossroads, with local warlords like Liberty Land and the Northeast Command fighting for possession.”
He touched the surface again, and I disappeared. Color and faces exploded on the screen. A girl in leather smashed mirrors in some huge bathroom. Maybe it was a party, maybe it was a riot, but the camera spun around in an enormous space. A mob dressed better than anyone in the city is now, poured fuel on chairs and set them on fire, smashed glass doors, shot out the lights high overhead.
“A fiesta of destruction made a ruin of Madison Square Garden,” Caravaggio told me. “Caught for my first full-length film. But places remain on this planet where people are still rich and bored. The films I’ve made have kept the eyes of that world on us, and that’s what I’m still doing.”
The city opened before me. Buildings were down, but ones I’d never seen before stood. The streets were full of people. Cars went by; I saw a bus! It was New York after the bombs but before the quakes. A girl in a silk dress walked arm in arm with a chimera gorilla.
“What did you bring me here for?” I asked.
“I want you in a film. I’ll use you as Mai Kin’s body double. She’s more a prop than an actor. You’ll stand in for her in certain scenes. But it will be more than that. They think to use me to film the New York sequences for an episode of that idiotic series.
“But I’m going to use THEM to tell the story of kids on the waterline. I want you and your crew. Anything can be faked, but what’s true will always stand revealed.”
“I want a hundred gold pieces a day,” I said, because that’s as much money as I’ve ever seen at once and because gold is the only thing everyone trusts. “I want the first day’s pay up front,” I said, because that’s what I know about doing business.
“I created the legend of Jackie, the angel of divers,” he said, like he hadn’t heard me. “Now I want to give the tourists a taste of the desperation of diver kids’ lives.”
I said, “What about the money?”
“Once I dreamed of showing Jackie returning to the city like an avenging angel come to save the place,” he said. “My new vision of the city will be you and your friends.” Again his hand moved over a glass surface in front of him.
A boy in long hair and shorts stood on a pier in the full light of day. Big crowds of people watched as a coin was flung and the boy leaped, seemed to flicker like silver light in the gold sun. He skimmed over the water and caught the coin in his hand. It looked fake.
What got to me was how the riverfront wasn’t all smashed up. The water was lower than the walks. New Jersey was wrecked but not totally. Boats sailed and people didn’t look scared. I remembered some of that from when I was real little, and got angry it was gone.
I wanted to see more but the screen went blank. I got careless and reached for Caravaggio, wanting to see what he remembered. I touched his brain and saw a jumble of faces, heard a tourist talking about a hundred-million-yen deal, tasted the wine he had just drunk, caught the smell of Silken Night, a perfume he remembered.
Caravaggio looked startled and confused. He tried to stand, and knocked over the wine bottle. Tag caught it, stared at me wide-eyed like he had a hint of what just happened.
It was stupid to give myself away. But I just shrugged. Then I remembered what we’d been talking about before Caravaggio started showing me pictures.
“A hundred gold pieces, right now,” I said. “And I’m not going in the water.” I didn’t say that, even if I got as dumb as a boy, I couldn’t swim.
“We’ll talk about that,” he said. “Fifty. Any more will get you and your friends killed.” He was suspicious, maybe frightened after what he felt me do.
We settled on seventy-five, and he said shooting began in a few days. Tag counted the coins out for me in a little room near the front door of the studio. He whispered, “I followed you around and took those shots of you and your crew. I got him interested.” He looked at me, curious and scared, like he guessed my secret. I nodded and kept quiet, but now I knew Depose had nothing to do with my getting hired.
In that huge front room, an owl showed humans how to make posters of Jackie look old and how to tell tourists they had found them in old trunks. I knew that even the ones who said there had really been a Jackie Boy also said Caravaggio kept him chained like a dog and only let him out to make movies, until he escaped.
The bear and the truck waited for me outside. As we drove away I looked back: the lights, the guards, the street with people standing outside their buildings talking, little kids playing after dark, was magic and I wanted all of it.
Riding home I was cold, and the only light ahead of us was the glow from the Tourist Zone way uptown. I thought about the city Caravaggio showed me and remembered how my mom died when the superflu was killing everyone. The UN medics couldn’t stop it. Some of them died. They told me I must have good genes and wanted to know who my father was, but I couldn’t help them.
It was then that I met Dare. Her mother was dead too, so we had that in common and she was tough, took me under her wing, protected me until I got able to take care of myself. She had done gold diving but gave it up when she saw what happened to older kids. Together we worked out the deal with the boys.
The truck stopped in Madison Square, which is semi-wrecked buildings around a park that’s a jungle nobody wants to go near. We have a lair in the cellar of a building that still stands on the west side of the square and has water, and we’ve got the entrances booby-trapped.
Lott, who’s too sick to dive, guards the place night and day. We brought in Rock as his replacement. Ursus made the truck wait while I rattled the gates and said the password, and Lott let me in before they drove away.
The Indians at the clinic say Lott’s got a few things wrong but it’s lung cancer that’s going to kill him. Dare thinks it’s because we got him too late and if we’d been looking out for him sooner he’d be okay.
The boys were behind the curtains at the back of our place, laughing about the way we’d stood down the bike boys and Regalia. I could hear Lott’s heavy breathing.
Dare said, “I don’t much trust any of them.” I didn’t either, but it was the best deal we’d ever had. I wanted to show her the studio, but when I tried, what I found in her was fear that she was going to lose me.
So instead I told her about Caravaggio and Tagalong and the studio, made it funny and had her laughing.
Once we started shooting, I spent more time in the deadly sun with less protection than I had all that summer. One morning I stood on a rusty fire escape ladder just above a flooded street with the tide coming in and waited for Caravaggio’s signal. He and the camera crew were on the roof of the next building.
Three times I’d climbed four stories to the roof of this burned-out factory building where Astasia X99’s boyfriend was being held by alien pirates. Each time, something went wrong and I had to do it again.
Dare was angry at what I was doing, but she tested the ladder herself and cleaned every rung before she’d let me go near it. After each take I got dowsed in purified water. The long T-shirt and shorts clung to me; my hair was wet and flat on my head.
All my life, pimps, militias, and gangs were on the prowl. A lot of any kid’s life in this city is not getting noticed. Now I’d given that up to bring in money.
Earlier in the morning, before the shoot, we went up to the UN clinic in the big temporary building that’s been standing ever since I can remember in the empty space people call Times Square.
Everyone in line was tense but nobody knew anything. Dare told the medicos what we needed. The Indian guy at the counter gave us double orders of salves, lotions, water purifier pills. “Just in case,” he said, but didn’t know much either.
I was thinking about that when someone said, “Action!” Just like before, I grabbed the handrails, held my breath, shut my eyes, ducked under the water, jumped out like I’d just swum there, and ran up the ladder to the roof.
Caravaggio was slumped in a chair but he raised his head and said, “Great!” I knew what was great was me coming out of the poison muck. For my crew I was doing stuff I didn’t know I could do. Up on the roof Dare led me behind a blanket in the shade, got my clothes off, doused me in clean water and oil, and put me in a robe.
Mai Kin stood maybe thirty feet away under a metal awning, surrounded by guys in protective gear. Her character, Astasia X99, gets made over and rearranged in every installment. We watched a bunch of episodes. She has a boyfriend, Anselm, that she always has to rescue.
The actor who plays Anselm spent most of his time coming on to Rock. The other boys were jealous.
The episodes always take place in danger spots like New York. Mai Kin and company go in and shoot for a few days when it’s quiet, then get out and finish the thing somewhere safe. There’s always some other guy Astasia gets involved with before going back to Anselm. But that would get shot somewhere else.
Fighter planes streaked over the city. Mai Kin glanced up, then looked at one of her handlers. His head-shake was so slight as to be invisible. Looking away, I went inside him; found he was getting news every couple of minutes. The UN had Liberty Land and Northeast Command negotiating. Touch and go was the thought on his mind. I got out before he noticed.
Mai Kin wore a silk robe decorated with pictures of the planets. Dare said that up close she looked old and mean and way over twenty. Mai Kin was wired like most tourists, spoke into an implant in her left hand, and shook her head at something she heard. She never spoke to me or smiled, but never took her eyes off me.
I didn’t have to get in her head to know that she hated me for looking like I did, for being alive in the same world she was. She slipped out of her robe and, wearing clothes identical to mine, walked to the spot where I’d come off the ladder onto the roof. Shooting her, Tagalong said, was like filming a robot.
When the light was gone and shooting stopped, we headed home, moved fast in the moonlight. Rock had disappeared.
“Making it with that actor tourist—that whore,” Not said. Dare was pissed but sorry to lose him.
Not far from our place there was an explosion up ahead. We’d heard enough of them to know this was small, a grenade, not a bomb. We sped up and I tried to scan, to find Lott and see through his eyes, but I couldn’t.
Turning the corner we saw our lair with the locks and bars and door all blown off. Smoke drifted out. “Lott!” Dare yelled.
Regalia came out the door with a couple of her crew. She had an AK474 knockoff. The Peacekeepers would have shot her for carrying it, which meant they weren’t around. She leveled it at us and said, “Drop whatever you got—weapons, money—and you won’t get hurt.”
Dare held our gold. She stared back at Regalia and didn’t move. I went into Regalia’s head. The first thing I saw was all of us standing, eyes wide staring at her. She thought that was funny because she was about to shoot us down one by one. For her the sight of Lott’s bloody corpse was funny.
Her trigger finger twitched. I found her right arm and jerked the AK474 up. A burst went into the air.
She tried to get control of her hands. I yanked her to the side, fired a burst at her crew. One went down screaming; the other backed off. A couple more came out the door of our lair. I turned her their way, fired again, caught one in the face. Then the gun jammed.
I found Regalia’s heart and lungs, tried to tear them out of her body. Her eyes bulged. I moved her legs, ran her to the side of the building, and made her smash her head against the wall until the brains came out. All the time she made strangled noises and danced like a headless bird. When life went out of her, I couldn’t make the body move, and she fell to the ground.
The rest of her crew had come out the door. Dare had her gun out, threatened to kill them. Hassid and Not slammed them around, took back the stuff the crew stole. One that had been shot half crawled away. Another was dead. The boys stared at the bodies. Only Dare knew what I’d done. She made Regalia’s crew drag their dead away with them.
We found Lott inside, where the blast had killed him, wrapped his body in blankets and carried him into the park. We had a shovel and took turns digging it deep so the rats couldn’t get him. We buried the AK474 in another place.
Dare talked a little about how much we loved him. All I could think was I didn’t want to die like that. Even Dare was kind of afraid of me.
We huddled together in the lair, knowing we’d never stay there again. No one slept much, but I sat awake on guard. Almost at dawn I started crying and Dare held me, whispering, “You saved all of us. You’re a hero.”
The next morning, Caravaggio was shooting on the waterfront. The crew and I were there because we had nowhere else to go. I looked for a chance to beg him for a place to stay. Our lair was gone. I felt older than Caravaggio, older than anyone. Rock had left us, Lott was dead, and after what I saw and did the night before, I half wished I was dead too.
Nice, Not, and Hassid dived for fake coins tossed by actors dressed in protective gear. The boys’ hearts weren’t in it. We were zombies. They missed the coins and Caravaggio screamed at them, screamed at Dare and me.
Mai Kin and her handlers hadn’t shown up. Caravaggio yelled at Tagalong, who couldn’t contact them. Everyone said the Peacekeepers weren’t around. On the water, scared passengers were cramming onto the ferries. Copters and planes took off from Liberty Land.
This world of mine was tougher now than it ever had been. Tagalong got definite word that the UN had withdrawn from the city. I said we had nowhere to live and asked him if we could stay at the studio until we found a place. He just sighed and looked at Caravaggio, who was yelling about traitors and ingrates.
I stood out on the seawall and Nice stood with me, rubbed my neck. I had my arm around him for comfort. We heard jets but didn’t see them. Then, over in New Jersey, lights flashed like the sun on a knife blade. Next came explosions, big muffled ones. Caravaggio suddenly shut up. A moment later there was smoke over Liberty Land Stronghold, more flashes.
“Seems like Northeast Command took them out,” someone said softly.
We should have been looking closer to us. I saw the ferries moving fast on the river, trying to scatter, before I heard the copters. Rockets exploded. The seawall slid out from under my feet. Nice got torn away from me. I flew toward a huge wave and hit the water face-first.
It was in my eyes and nose, drowning me. I reached out for Dare, caught other minds. I felt Nice get cut in two. Someone’s legs were crushed. Water was in my mouth and nose. I sank into the filth of the river bottom. I wanted Dare to have her arms around me. Then I was rising, pulled by my hair.
My head broke the surface. Not far away, flames floated on the water. People screamed. Dare hauled me up onto solid ground, pulled the clothes off me. Hassid was there. He washed me off and I let him. They put lotion on me.
Dare held me. She was crying. Nice was gone. They couldn’t find his body. Only when I sat up did I see the gash on Dare’s leg and knew what she risked to save me. She didn’t make a sound when Hassid cleaned and bandaged her wound.
As if he was far away, I heard Caravaggio crying, “When I first came to the city, it was half wrecked but vibrant in its death dance.” I caught images in his brain of destroyed streets with kids in costumes dancing through them. A flickering figure flew into the air, caught a coin in his mouth, bounced off the water. Then there was nothing and I knew Caravaggio was dead.
We went to Tagalong, who stood in tears as Caravaggio got lifted onto the truck. Dare and Not and Hassid were with me. Through Tagalong’s eyes, I saw how sad and ragged we were. Then I showed him what had happened to us and to Regalia, and asked if we could stay at the studio. Scared but impressed, he nodded.
“He loved the chimeras,” Tagalong said a little later when we brought Caravaggio’s body home. More of them than I thought were still alive waited outside the studio. Ursus was there and the bird woman who was in charge of the door, a pony and the cat and the man who was part fox, a cat man and cat woman, Silky the seal, big dogs, a goat, and the owl. I didn’t even know what some of the others were. They howled and moaned when they saw the corpse.
They laid Caravaggio out in the big front room and dressed him like a king in silks and furs. Flowers appeared and candles lighted the place. A hundred and more people came from the neighborhood; a few even came from farther away, risking the streets to see him one last time.
Some brought food. The people in the kitchen cooked more.
Tagalong gave the four of us a large enough room with futons on the floor. We piled them together, lay on them, held each other and cried. Dare made plans to go next day and find Nice’s body. I didn’t want to think.
The chimeras were chanting when I heard engines outside. Tagalong appeared and told me Depose was there with cars full of her people and wanted to come in. I understood that he wanted me to do something and this was why I was here.
So I stood at a peephole beside the door, watched Depose without her seeing me. “We need to confirm that Caravaggio is dead,” she told the doorkeeper bird, who looked scared. “Various of his associates and backers need to know. And we need to find that film he was making. I don’t want to use force.”
I didn’t need to go inside her to know that she was going to use force, and when she got in here, this place would be looted. I looked back at Caravaggio laid out and the candles and the chimeras.
At the same time I found Depose and showed her what I was seeing. For a second she didn’t understand what had happened. Then Depose realized who was doing this and remembered what she heard that morning about me and Regalia.
Still she hesitated, so I showed her a moment of Regalia and the wall. Depose headed for her car fast, and I let her know that if she wanted the film, she’d need to come alone and bring a lot of gold.
I felt shaky when it was over but I waited for the engine sounds to fade. As I went back to our room, everyone in the studio stood and applauded, and I figured we’d won our place here.
We sat on a mattress and leaned against pillows. “Maybe you should have done her like Regalia,” Dare whispered.
“Maybe,” I told her. “But I didn’t have all the anger and fear like I did with Regalia. And I can’t kill everyone, and Depose can be bought.”
Dare understood and put one arm around me. She cuddled Not, and I held Hussein.
That’s how we were when Tagalong came in with a camera and two women who did stuff with lights. He said he wanted to film me talking about what happened. “We need a hero,” he said. “We’ll call this REAL. We need to advertise you.” And I thought about Caravaggio and Jackie Boy.
Dare told him, “Her name’s Reality Girl.”
“Great!” Tagalong said, and with the camera running he asked, “Reality Girl, can you tell us how you came to be here?”
What I remembered first was me and the crew walking down to the waterline a week or maybe ten days ago.