Zhanna Slor - At the End of the World, Turn Left

My hands are shaking so hard it takes me four tries to get the bike lock off, and Tristan is still not out. I get on August’s bike anyway; I decide I will wait one more minute. The dogs are going nuts, and even though the men are off the front porch, I know they’re still close by. It’s quiet outside, but that doesn’t fool me. It’s a tense sort of quiet, not one of calm. The coke has nearly left my system already, and I am pure adrenaline now. I need to get on this bike and move. Right as I’m about to start pedaling, Tristan starts running toward me at full speed, followed by an angry dog nipping at his heels and then the thin man, who is holding a gun. The gun goes off before I have time to even think to duck. A bullet whizzes past both of us and hits the tree across the street. Lights start to go on around the house in windows that were previously dark. I know I should start moving but now I’m totally frozen with fear. I just stare at Tristan and don’t move. It takes Tristan pushing my backpack to get me to notice. I still don’t move, and he keeps pressing me. Finally I start pedaling, to put a stop to the pushing, but almost fall off the bike because my legs are so wobbly. They feel filled with water instead of muscle.

“Anastasia,” he whispers. “You’ll have time to be scared later. Right now, we gotta get the fuck out of here.”

The man shoots at us again, the bullet landing in a different tree. “Don’t you fucking show your face in this town again or I’ll really kill you!”

“I didn’t do anything, man!” cries Tristan.

“José saw you, man,” the guy says. “Fucking dumbass junkie.”

I look at Tristan, a question in my eyes. “He didn’t see shit, don’t worry. Just that I went into the room.”

The guy is still out there, and is getting angrier by the second. But he’s also barefoot and coatless and doesn’t want to walk through the piles of snow that now separates us. He points the gun at his dog, and says, “Get him, Michael Jordan!”

The dog reaches us in a second and starts growling and barking in circles by our feet. Tristan kicks it, but this only makes the dog angrier. I see the dog’s mouth latch onto his ankle.

“Anastasia, go!” Tristan says, trying to shake off the dog. Something about the dog breaks the spell I’m under, and I am no longer frozen in place. I start pedaling again, with more success this time. I don’t look back even once, I just bike. I bike faster than I’ve ever biked before and probably ever will again. I don’t notice the cold gushing against my ears because I’ve somehow misplaced my hat in all this mess. I don’t notice my frozen toes, which are soaked from the snow and slush. I don’t notice that Tristan isn’t behind me. I barely notice the tears rolling down my face. I don’t stop to notice anything, not until I reach Riverwest. Then I slow down. Then I look around. Then I stop. I drop my bike on the corner of Center and Pierce, and sit down on the freezing earth, so out of breath I start hyperventilating. I lie down on the wet ground, trying to catch my breath. I am totally spent, but I am also so relieved I could laugh. I even do start laughing, but because I am lacking in oxygen it only turns into a cough. It is in this state, lying prostrate on the ground in someone’s front yard, when I notice a man standing over me like an angel. His dark hair is surrounded by the yellow glow of a streetlamp, and he smells like sweat. He smells familiar, actually. It isn’t till he pulls me up by the arm that I realize who it is. Not Tristan, coming after me. Not his drug dealing friends.

Liam.

“Anna?” Liam asks, a Camel Light hanging out of his mouth and a forty in his hand. Once I am standing again, he looks at me curiously. “What the hell happened?”

When I don’t immediately respond, he walks me and my bike half a block over to the back of his house where there is currently a show going on. He sets the bike down in the yard, and by then my heart has slowed down enough to realize what nearly just happened to me. “Holy shit, girl,” he says. He reaches around me for a hug. “You’re shaking like a leaf.”

I’m still too in shock to speak. I’m about to take my backpack off my shoulders to look for cigarettes, when I realize I don’t have my backpack. Either I dropped it in the scuffle, or… or Tristan took it from me as I biked away. I guess I can add that to the things I am furious at him about. Whatever, I say to myself. I’m done with him and this entire thing. He can have it. As soon as I regain the feeling in my legs and lungs and heart, I’m getting out of here and never looking back. First, I swallow some air and try to find my voice. Liam takes out two cigarettes from his pocket, one for each of us, and even lights mine. Without asking, I take a sip of his beer. When he doesn’t protest, I drink the entire thing. It’s more out of intense dehydration than anything. I generally detest beer. But my water is in the backpack that’s no longer on my back, like so many other things.

“Are you okay?” Liam asks again, looking at me with genuine concern. I nod at him. He takes a seat on the elevated deck and motions for me to follow so I do. For a moment we sit there in silence and watch while in the yard, someone has started a small bonfire, and people begin gathering around plastic lawn chairs, getting louder by the minute. A typical Wednesday in Riverwest. Well, for everyone other than me.

“So… um…” I start, wondering how I can explain this. And I realize the truth would actually work. “I got robbed, I guess?”

“No shit? Are you okay?” he asks. In his glasses, the reflection of the fire twists and curls, then disappears. My heart soars so high and so low in one moment it turns into some kind of numbness. I take another last sip of his can.

“I will be,” I say. I mean it, too. It’s the worst night of my life, but in some ways it’s the best, because I’ve learned exactly where my line is. And that I don’t have to go down this road just to prove something to someone who isn’t even watching.

“Here,” Liam says, reaching into his coat pocket for a flask and handing it over. I take a long, long sip, feeling it burn all the way down my throat. The whiskey is a better repellent of the coke that is still in my system. It succeeds in taking my heart rate down a notch, but barely. The coke is really potent. I’m so afraid of my own body I never want to do another drug again. Also, now that I’ve seen where it can lead, I am extra done with drugs. If I find a way to do what I want with my life and get meaning from that, I won’t need it. This is all very clear to me in a way that wasn’t before.

“You want to tell me what happened?”

I shake my head. “It’s a long story.”

Liam lets out a little grunt, then continues to smoke his cigarette. He pats me on the leg in a friendly, not sexual, way. “All right.”

“Sorry, thanks.”

We sit there in silence for a while, at least the length of two or three songs, before Liam speaks again. “Where the hell have you been, lately?” he asks. The way he asks is almost shy. He seems uncertain, which is unlike him. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in months.”

I shrug. “Around.”

Liam narrows his eyes. “You didn’t answer my calls.”

“When did you call?” I ask, dumbfounded.

He shrugs. “A bunch of times. I wanted to know what you’ve been up to.”

I nod in understanding. “Melanie left you again.”

“Now why would you assume that?” he asks.

I let out a sigh. I do not have the energy for that conversation. It’s enough that I had to compete with her once already. A month ago it was all I could think about, but now? A relationship with Liam is the furthest thing from my mind. Instead of answering, I watch as a bunch of metal heads in studded leather coats stream into the backyard, drinking cans of beer and smoking something that’s not a cigarette over the bonfire. Liam takes a long sip from his flask, then licks his lips. Two of the punks by the fire look in our direction like they might know us and come over. But I’ve never seen either of them before.