Broken Arrow by Nicole French

Author:Nicole French [French, Nicole]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Raglan
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I unlock the door to my building with a smile on my face. It’s warm outside, an unexpected fall heatwave before winter arrives. The trees up and down the street are different colors of orange and yellow, but their leaves haven’t fallen yet.

New York looks different today. For the first time in my life, I feel like I see the promise people write about in all those stupid songs. Things just feel...possible. After leaving the hotel, I went to the gym for training and then to the library to finish my math homework before stopping at the food bank. I smiled like an idiot the whole time I moved through the line, loading my duffel bag for the week with cans from each of the cardboard boxes. With any luck, it’ll be the last time I have to do that. I’ve never felt hungrier, but it had nothing to do with food.

I’m still humming one of the songs from the nightclub as I open the door. I’m ready to take whatever my mother has for me––a smack with her slipper, an earful about worrying her half to death, maybe even some tears. But it won’t last long––it never lasts long when one of her kids is really happy. And I sort of feel like I am. Or maybe that I could be.

But that warm feeling ices over the second I step inside my building––it’s silent.

All my life, I’ve been surrounded by noise, even on the rare occasions I was home alone. If it wasn’t Mr. Rodriguez playing his baseball games a little too loud in Apartment 3H, it was the six kids from a family that takes up the three-bedroom corner unit on the second floor racing up and down the stairs until their mom hollered down the stairwell at them. Nine days out of ten salsa or merengue is audible through more than one open door, especially when some of the ladies, like Ma and Alba, are gossiping in the hallway.

The only reason this building is ever silent is when its tenants are listening to something. As the hair rises on the back of my neck, I have to wonder what.

Then I hear her scream. I haven’t heard that sound in years, but I’d know it anywhere.

Ma.

I’m up the stairs two at a time; I don’t even feel the weight of the cans on my back. Her shriek, overlaid with my sisters, even my brother, crying out with the kind of desperation that makes you stop feeling physical discomfort.

“Stop! Stop it!”

“Just wait! Wait until my brother gets here!”

“Get off her!”

There’s only one thing that could be making them do that.

“Callate, Carmen!”

His deep voice booms through the thin door, and I hear a loud thump as I fumble frantically for my keys.

“Fuck it,” I mutter as I finally drop the bag. Another scream––my mother’s? One of my sister’s? I really don’t know––vibrates through the wood door and into my bones.

Finally, I unlock the door. It slams open, banging against

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