Schizo by Nic Sheff

Author:Nic Sheff
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-09-09T05:00:00+00:00

21.

OUTSIDE THE FOG HAS settled in over the city, so the streets and skies and buildings and cars and people walking with their heads down and the crows and pigeons and everything are gray and muted silver.

After stealing that list of suspects and being so close to finding Teddy, you’d think the clouds would’ve parted and the sun would be shining down like a goddamn golden halo all around me.

That’s how it would work if this were a movie.

But there is only gray and fog and trash and a thick layer of black sludge ground and beaten into the sidewalk. A bus goes lumbering past, rumbling and shaking, the men and women crowded together inside, sitting and standing.

I run across the street and then go fast up a couple of blocks to get away from the police station, just in case Detective Demarest notices part of my brother’s file is missing. Not that he will. He’ll stuff the folder back in with all those others as part of his “system.” Then he’ll forget about it. He’ll forget about Teddy, like everyone else has. I’m the only one left who can help him. And so I need to get home as soon as possible to look over what I have.

I hike up the hill to the bus stop on Grant next to Caffe Trieste. I turn to see someone waving at me from inside the coffee shop.

“Miles!”

Of course, it’s Eliza. She comes out the swinging door not set right on its hinges.

I say of course only because fate or karma or whatever fucking else clearly has it in for me.

So it has to be Eliza.

Looking beautiful as always—dark hair pulled back, her face pale, her eyes flashing green-blue against the gray. She’s wearing tight jeans and fur-lined boots and a hooded parka. It’s cold outside, and she rubs her small hands together.

“Hey!” I say to her, still moving—wanting to get away.

But she immediately starts talking.

And she asks me to sit down.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

She smiles. “Homework. I’m so far behind.”

Those pages I stole are stashed in my backpack, and I want so badly just to go home and read through them. But now Eliza is saying to me, “Come on, Mie. Come sit down for a minute.”

I follow her in and order coffee and then I ask her if we can go back outside so I can smoke. She grabs her books and backpack, and we go sit at one of the unsteady tables.

Across the street there is a white church with steeples like pulled sugar stretching up above the white marble steps. There is a pack of street kids huddled together beneath the vaulted arches wearing army gear and wrapped in tattered wool blankets. They have some sort of off-white pit bull mix tied to a long piece of rope.

“Aww, what a cute dog,” Eliza says, exhaling the smoke a little theatrically from the cigarette I gave her. “Did you know my mom and I brought a puppy back from New Orleans?”

“Awesome.

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