Ruthless Rival (Cruel Castaways)

Past

Like all things born to die, our relationship started at the cemetery.

That was the first time I met Arya Roth. On the fifth or maybe sixth time Mom dragged me along to Park Avenue over summer break. Administration for Children’s Services had been raiding apartments in Hunts Point the previous winter, removing neglected kids from their households, after Keith Olsen, a boy down my street, had died of hypothermia in his sleep. Everyone had known Keith’s father traded the family’s food stamps for cigarettes and women, but no one had known just how bad the Olsens were doing.

Mom knew ACS was a bitch to handle. She wanted to keep me, but not enough to ask Conrad and Beatrice Roth to let me stay in their apartment while she worked. This resulted in Mom leaving me outside their building six days a week to fend for myself from eight to five while she cleaned, cooked, did their laundry, and walked their dog.

Mom and I developed a routine. We took the bus together every morning. I drank in the city through the window, half-asleep, while she knitted sweaters she would later sell for pennies at the Rescued Treasure thrift shop. Then I would walk with her to the arched, white-brick entrance of the building—so tall I had to crane my neck to see the full height of it. Mom, clad in her uniform of yellow, short-sleeved polo shirt with the logo of the company she worked for and blue apron and khaki pants, would lean down moments before the jaws of the grand entrance swallowed her to squeeze my shoulder and hand me a wrinkled five-dollar bill. She would hold the note for dear life as she warned: This is for breakfast, lunch, and snacks. Money doesn’t grow on trees, Nicholai. Spend it wisely.

Truth was, I never spent it at all. Instead, I’d swipe stuff from the local bodega. After a few times, the cashier caught me and said I was welcome to the expired stash in his storeroom, as long as I didn’t tell anyone.

The meat and dairy stuff were nonstarters, but the stale chips were okay.

The rest of my schedule was wide open. At first, I loitered in parks, burning time people watching. Then I realized it made me really angry seeing other kids and their siblings, nannies, and sometimes even parents spending time together on the lush park lawns, swinging from monkey bars, eating their prepacked lunches with their star-shaped sandwiches, smiling toothlessly at cameras, collecting happy memories and stuffing them into their pockets. My already profound sense of injustice expanded in my chest like a balloon. My poverty was tangible and palpable in the way I walked, talked, and dressed. I knew I looked shit poor and didn’t need a reminder by seeing the way people eyed me. With detached concern usually reserved for stray dogs. I was an eyesore in their pristine existence. A ketchup stain on their designer outfit. A reminder that a few blocks away, there was another world, full of kids who didn’t know what speech therapy, time-shared vacation houses, or gluten-free brunches were. A world where the fridge was mostly empty and getting spanked every now and again filled you with a sense of pride, because it meant your parents gave half a shit.

The first few days were soul crushing. I counted down the seconds until Mom got off work, ogling my cheap wristwatch like it was purposefully slow, just to see me sweat. Even the gummy hot dog Mom bought me from a street food vendor once we got back to our neighborhood, out of guilt and exhaustion from a day of fawning over another family, didn’t soften the blow.

On the third day of summer break, I found a small private cemetery, nestled between the edge of Central Park and a bus-tour booth. It was hidden from view, was empty most hours of the day, and offered a vantage point of the Roths’ building entrance. It was, ironically, heaven on earth. I barely ventured out of the cemetery in the days that followed. Only briefly, when I needed to find a tree to pee behind, looked for cigarette butts to smoke, or raided the expired stash at the bodega, padding my pockets with more than I could eat so I could sell the remaining food for half price in Hunts Point. I would take the food and hurry back to the cemetery, where I would lean against the gravestone of a man named Harry Frasier and stuff my face.

It wasn’t a morbid place, Mount Hebron Memorial. To me, it looked like everything else in the neighborhood. Neat and impeccable, with roses that always bloomed, carefully trimmed bushes, and paved pathways. Even the gravestones shone like the leather on a brand-new pair of Jordans. The few cars that were parked by the office cabin were Lexuses and Porsches.

The cemetery was like an invisibility cloak. Sometimes I’d pretend I was dead and no one could see me. No one did see me. That knowledge comforted me. Only stupid people wanted to be seen and heard. To survive in my world, you had to slip off the grid.

It was all going smoothly until the fourth day. Let the record show I was minding my own business, taking a nap using Harry Frasier’s tombstone as my pillow. It was hot and humid, the temperature engulfing me from all directions. The heat rose from the ground, and the sun sliced through the trees. I woke up with a jerk, a thick layer of sweat coating my brow, light headed with thirst. I needed to find a garden hose. When my eyes popped open, I saw a girl my age maybe six graves down, under a giant weeping willow. She wore short jeans and a strappy shirt. She was sitting on one of the graves, staring at me with eyes the color of a grimy swamp. Her brown hair was out of control. Curling everywhere, like Medusa’s snakes.

Homeless? Maybe. I was going to punch her if she tried to steal from me.

“The hell you looking at?” I crowed, sticking my hand in my front pocket, pulling out a cigarette butt, and placing it in the corner of my mouth. My jeans were about three inches too short, exposing my twiglike shins, but loose around the waist. I knew I didn’t look twelve. Ten, on a good day.

“I’m looking at a kid sleeping in a cemetery.”

“Funny, Sherlock. Where’s Mr. Watson?”

“I don’t know who Mr. Watson is.” She was still staring. “What are you doing sleeping here?”

I shrugged. “Tired. Why else?”

“You’re creepy.”

“And you’re not minding your own business.” I started talking in italics to scare her off. Mom always said the best defense was an attack. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

“I sneak out here to see if my mom figures out I’m not home.”

“Does she?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Never.”

“Why here?” I scowled. “Why not anywhere else?”

“I’m also visiting my twin brother.” She gestured to the grave she was standing above.

Her twin brother was dead. Even at twelve I had a firm concept of what death was. Mom’s parents were dead, and so was Keith Olsen, and Sergey from the deli down the block, and Tammy, the sex worker who had lived in a tent in Riverside Park. Been to a funeral before too. But this girl losing her brother . . . it weirded me out. Kids our age didn’t just die. Even Keith Olsen’s story had made waves in Hunts Point, and we were a pretty tough crowd.

“How’d it happen?” I rearranged my limbs on Harry Frasier’s tombstone, narrowing my eyes at her so she would know she was not off the hook just because she was sad or whatever. She drummed her bare knee, which had a nasty gash. She must’ve flung herself over the gate to get inside like I had. This was a private cemetery, and you couldn’t pick the front lock; you had to call the office to get in. My bad impression of her shifted to reluctant respect. Even the girls in my neighborhood, who weren’t very girly at all, wouldn’t jump that gate. It had wrought iron spikes and was at least eight feet high.

“He died in his sleep when we were babies.”

“That really sucks.”

“Yeah.” She toed the ground with her Chuck, frowning. “Ever wondered why we do that?”

“Die? Not sure it’s intentional.”

“No. Bury the dead?”

“I don’t really think about stuff like that.” My voice hardened.

“At first I thought it’s like planting seeds, so that maybe hope could bloom.”

“And now?” I wiped sweat from my brow. She sounded smart. Most kids my age had the intelligence of a houseplant.

“Now I think we bury them because we don’t want to share the world with them. It hurts too much.”

I continued frowning, contemplating what to say.

I was getting pretty thirsty, but I didn’t want to move. It felt like a test. Or a competition, maybe. This was my territory. My cemetery for the summer. I didn’t want her to think she could walk in here and steal my spot, dead brother or not. But there was also something else. I didn’t know what. Maybe it didn’t feel so bad after all, not to be alone.

“Well? Are you just gonna stand there and stare at me? Do what you came here to do.” I sucked on the cigarette butt, trying to relight it unsuccessfully with a lighter Mr. Van had dropped in the communal hallway the other day.

“Yeah. Fine. Just don’t interrupt, you . . . you freak.” She flung her arm impatiently toward me.

I rolled my eyes. She was weird. Her brother was a baby when she’d lost him, right? It’s not like they were close or whatever. Still. What did I know about siblings? One thing, really: that I wasn’t going to have any. Because, as my mother pointed out every time a toddler threw a tantrum at the Dollar Tree or Kmart, Children are ungrateful and costly. An expensive liability.

Gee. Thanks, Mom.

The girl turned her back to me, toward the grave. She caressed the tombstone, which I now noticed was smaller than the rest. Actually, all the graves on that row were small. A chill rolled down my back.

“Hey, Ar. It’s me, the other Ar. I just wanted to check in on you. We miss you every day. Mom has been having some pretty bad days again. She’s ignoring Dad and me hard core. The other day I spoke to her, and she looked right through me, like I was a ghost. She’s doing that on purpose. Punishing me. I thought maybe you could visit her a little less in the next few weeks? I know she sees you all the time. In your room, the couch where we used to nap, the window . . .”

She talked for about five minutes. I tried not to listen, but it was like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall. She was right freaking there. I thought she was going to cry, but in the end, she held herself together. Finally, the girl picked a small rock from the ground and pressed it against the marbled grave before standing up.

She was moving back toward the gate, walking away.

“What’d you do that for?” I blurted out.

She turned to look at me in surprise, like she’d forgotten I was there. “Do what?”

“That stone thing.”

“In Jewish tradition, you place a small stone on the grave to show the person that someone came to visit. That they are not forgotten.”

“You Jewish?”

“My au pair was.”

“So you’re a rich kid, then.”

“Because I had an au pair?” She looked at me like I was an idiot.

“Because you know what the word means in the first place.”

“So do you.” She folded her arms across her chest, refusing to let me win an argument, no matter how small and insignificant. “You don’t look rich to me, though.”

“I’m not an example for anything.” I collected dirt, enjoying the texture of the grains against my finger pads. I consumed the world in larger quantities than the average kid. Read, listened to, and watched things every second of the day. I treated life with the same practicality I did my wristwatch. I wanted to turn it over, unscrew the pins, and see how it worked, what made it tick. I’d already promised myself I wasn’t going to be like Mom. I wasn’t going to be eaten by the rich. I was going to eat them, if need be.

“Guess I’m rich, then.” She picked up another small stone, rubbing her thumb over its smooth surface. “You’re not?”

“Would I sleep in the cemetery if I was rich?”

“I don’t know.” She ran a hand through her uncombed hair. It was full of dead leaves and debris and knots. “I guess I don’t think everything is about money.”

“That’s because you have it. But you don’t look it. Rich, I mean.”

“How come?” she asked.

“You’re not pretty,” I said smartly.

That was her cue to leave. I’d successfully insulted her. Given her a verbal middle finger. But instead, she spun in my direction. “Hey, do you want some lemonade and stuffed cabbage?”

“Didn’t you just hear me? I called you ugly.”

“So what?” She shrugged. “People lie all the time. I know I’m pretty.”

Christ. And she was still standing there, waiting.

“No, I don’t want lemonade and stuffed cabbage.”

“You sure? It’s pretty good. My maid makes them with rice and minced beef. It’s, like, a Russian thing.”

Alarm bells reverberated in my head, all the exit signs flashing in red neon lights. Stuffed cabbage leaves were Mom’s specialty, when we could afford minced beef, which wasn’t very often. And if this girl offered to bring food here, that meant she lived nearby.

“What’s your name?” I asked, my voice deadly calm.

“Arya.” There was a pause. “But my friends call me Ari.”

She knew who I was.

She knew, and she wanted to make sure I remembered where I stood in the food chain. My maid, she’d said. I was just an extension of my mother.

“You know who I am?” My voice sounded rusty, thick.

She flipped her endless hair. “I got a hunch.”

“And you don’t care?”

“No.”

“Were you looking for me?” Did she just want to taunt the boy who waited downstairs for his mother to finish catering to her?

She rolled her eyes. “As if. So. Lemonade and stuffed cabbage?”

Saying no would have been silly. I was a hustler, first and foremost. Emotions weren’t a part of the game. And she was offering me food and drink. Whatever I thought about her didn’t matter. It wasn’t like we were going to become best friends. One meal wasn’t going to douse a six-year-old flame of hatred.

“Sure, Ari.”

Famous last words.

This was the beginning of everything.