Joey had left the Uber car back at the vintage merry-go-round and asked directions to the old zoo from a group of high-school kids decked out in varsity jackets. She felt like she was inside a CW show. Everything outside was beautiful and night-lit. But inside she was a jumble of raw emotion.
Connor, the skateboarder she and Evan had bumped into outside the safe house, had said that he hung here most nights with friends. She wasn’t sure why she’d thought to come here. She just wanted to be out.
To feel like she was normal.
She made her way up the hill, leaving the lights of Griffith Park behind. The farther she got upslope, the sketchier the surroundings. Homeless men rustled in bushes, and tweakers swapped crumpled bills for tinfoil squares. At last she reached the brink of the abandoned zoo.
An empty bear exhibit shoved up from the ground, a rise of Disneyesque stone slabs covered with spray-painted gang tags and fronted by a handful of splintering picnic benches. It looked haunted. She wound her way into the heart of the place, passing rows of cages, the bars vined with ivy. Stone steps led to fenced-off dead ends. A groundskeeper’s shack had been turned into a squat house, laughter echoing off the walls, a campfire stretching dancing figures up the walls. She peeked inside but saw only druggies. She kept on, peering through the darkness. Syringes and used condoms littered the narrow path between the cages.
And then she heard the drawl of his voice.
He was inside one of the cages with his friend, the one who’d fallen off the longboard. A few skinny girls around their age were in there, too, their eyes glazed.
Connor looked up through the bars and saw Joey. “Hey.”
Her smile felt forced. “Hey.”
“Hold this, Scotty.” Connor handed off the water bong to his friend and pointed to the back of the enclosure. “Go around. There’s a hatch back here.”
She circled in the darkness and ducked to squeeze through the narrow opening. As she entered the enclosure, Connor and Scotty held out their fists, and she bumped them.
“This is Alicia,” Connor said. “Tammy and Priya.”
Joey held up her fist, but the first girl just stared at it. Her lipstick was smeared. “Who’s the little girl?” she drawled.
Her friends didn’t laugh, but they shook their shoulders as if they were, the effect creepy and detached.
“Forget Alicia,” Connor said. “She’s fucking wasted.” He gestured at Scotty. “Give her the bong. She needs a hit.”
“I’m good,” Joey said.
Connor smiled, his man bun nodding at the back of his head. Though he was clearly several years older than her, his handsome face was still padded with baby fat. His cheeks looked smooth and white, like he barely needed to shave. The smell of bud and Axe body spray wafted off his untucked shirt. “Okay. Give her a beer.”
Scotty passed Joey a beer, and she cracked it and took a sip. It tasted skunky, but she didn’t make a face.
“S’good,” she said.
“Then tell your face,” Alicia said.
Joey wondered what was wrong with her expression. She was too aware of it now, wearing it like a mask. The bottle suddenly felt large and silly in her hand, a prop. The girls seemed so much older, their frail frames and drugged high lending them an otherworldly aura, as if their feet were floating an inch above the dirt. Joey felt clumsy and common by comparison, a flightless bird.
Scotty enabled the light on his iPhone and rested it on a concrete ledge by a pile of rusted beer cans. Graffiti covered the walls and ceiling, the bubble letters and vulgar sketches made menacing in the severe light.
“Alicia,” Connor said, “that was the last beer. Wanna grab the other sixer from the cooler?”
Alicia’s lips peeled back in a smile. She ran her hand up her throat as if feeling her skin for the first time. “Sure, Connor.”
She held up a pale fist to Joey. “I was just kidding earlier,” she said. “C’mon, gimme knucks.”
Joey lifted her hand, but Alicia lowered her fist and turned away, the other girls snickering in a matching low key. Alicia slid an anorexic shoulder along the wall to the hatch, the other girls trailing her, so pale and insubstantial they looked like shades. They slipped through the cramped space without slowing.
As soon as they vanished, Scotty stepped over, blocking the way out. Joey sensed Connor sidle up behind her.
Blocking her in.
All of a sudden, Joey felt her awkwardness lift. She was aware of the scuff of Connor’s shoe in the dirt, the distance to the concrete walls around her, the latent power of her muscles. Her heartbeat ticked in the side of her neck, as steady as a metronome.
This part wasn’t scary or intimidating, not like drinking beer or bumping fists or figuring out how to smile the right way.
This part felt like home.
As she started to turn, Connor grabbed her belt in the front and pulled her close. She let him. He was big enough to bow her lower back, her face uptilted to his. His breath smelled like tea leaves.
His hand curled over her belt, knuckles pressed into her lower stomach.
“You know why you came,” he said.
Joey said, “Let go of me.”
He kissed her.
She kept her mouth closed, felt his stubble grate her lips. Behind her she heard Scotty laugh. Connor pulled his face back but kept the front of her jeans clamped in his fist.
She said, “Let go of me.”
Connor loomed over her. “I don’t think I want to just yet.”
She stepped away, but he tugged her buckle, snapping her back against his chest.
“Oh,” she said sympathetically. “You think you’re in charge.”
Calmly, she chambered her leg high and pistoned her heel through his ankle.
The snap sounded like a heavy branch giving way.
Connor stared down at his caved shin in disbelief. His foot nodded to the side, ninety degrees offset from the ankle.
Joey said, “Three … two…”
He screamed.
Scotty yelled, “Crazy bitch!” and charged her, lowering his shoulder for a football tackle. Sidestepping, she took his momentum and redirected him into the wall. His face smacked the concrete. It left a wet splotch. He toppled over, his legs cycling against the pain, heels shoving grooves in the dirt.
Joey placed her hand on Connor’s barrel chest and shoved. He fell hard, landing next to Scotty. He was still making noises.
She squeezed through the narrow hatch, emerging from the cage. As she stepped out, she sensed the world opening up all around her. Starting back down the hill to civilization, she felt a part of her flutter free from the trap inside her chest and take flight against the canopy of stars.