Visitation Street by Ivy Pochoda

Author:Ivy Pochoda [Pochoda, Ivy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Tags: Suspense
ISBN: 9780062249890
Publisher: Ecco Press
Published: 2013-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

No one lets Monique forget that she had seen those two girls the night one of them disappeared. They had been her playmates until Celia explained that Monique and Cree were no longer welcome in the Marino house. Monique ran into them from time to time on the street and, as she got older, she learned how to cut them dead. She didn’t have time for those babies and their make-believe.

Val and June had stopped by the park carrying a big pink raft. Monique was holding court with a crew of older boys. She didn’t bother to break away. That raft looked fun, Monique thought—different than riding the park benches every night. Monique wished the girls would ask her to come with. But June only seemed interested in getting an invite to hop the fence.

Monique had been harsh. But when they walked off, she watched the raft bumping between them and tried to imagine where they were headed.

When the news trickled into the projects that June was missing, Monique felt chilled. She didn’t have to consult Gloria to know that nothing good would come from blowing off a doomed girl. She should have invited June over the fence. It would have been simple.

People kept asking her about June. Some remembered they’d been friends. Even the boys in the park seemed to take note.

That was some icy treatment, Mo. Maybe you should have let her kick it with you.

Sometimes the boys asked her questions. Where your friend hiding out, Mo? The whole neighborhood seemed out to bug Monique about some girl she barely knew.

Talking to the dead was her aunt Gloria’s business, but after a week of getting nagged about June’s disappearance, like she had something to do with it, Monique asked aloud, Girl, where you hiding?

She didn’t expect a response.

The first time it happened, she was listening to her music, headphones on, volume up. At first she thought someone had messed with her playlist, downloaded a bootleg recording—some sped-up amateur street rap. It was a girl mc, that’s about all Monique could tell. Her words were indistinguishable, a mad flow of jibber jabber. Monique took off her headphones. The music continued.

She was at home, lying in bed, trying to make something interesting of the ceiling, waiting for the day to prove itself. She figured one of the local girls was trying to rhyme below her window.

When she looked down into the courtyard, it was filled with old men, none of them dropping beats. She opened the window. The volume of the girl’s voice didn’t change—it just kept on spewing her messy scribble-scrabble style. There was nothing smooth in her rap, nothing complex. She just went on and on, rambling and saying nothing.

Monique put her headphones back on and pumped up the volume. But the girl’s voice conquered all attempts to subdue it. Monique heard her in the shower, in the stairwell, damn, she even heard her when she was talking on the phone.

That afternoon she headed over to the park, hoping for a large crowd to block out the yammering in her ears.

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