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Gibby gaped at him.
Nick looked over his shoulder, but there was nothing of note behind him. He turned back to Gibby. “What?”
“You just… how can you… If I hadn’t made that promise—” She shook her head. “I swear to god, if I’m not there the moment you have the biggest realization of your life, I’m going to cry foul and make you do it all over again.”
“Are you okay?” Nick asked seriously. “Because you’re not making sense. Did you have a stroke? Can you feel the side of your face, or is it numb?”
He reached to poke her cheek, but quickly backed down when she snapped her teeth at his fingers.
They’d made it four blocks when it happened.
Nick said, hey, let’s go down this alley, because it’s a shortcut.
Gibby said that going down alleys when it was dark and raining was never a good idea.
Nick called her a chicken. He might have even folded his arms at his sides and saidbawk bawk,though he wasn’t proud of it.
Gibby threatened violence against his genitals.
Nick demurred.
But then Gibby stomped toward the alley, and later, Nick wouldtell himself that it was all her fault, that if she’d stuck to her guns, they wouldn’t have run into two goons with leather jackets and knives that looked like swords but were actually only switchblades.
“There was a hot dog stuck in the light on the platform,” Nick told her as they made their way down the alley. The rain pounded down around them. “I can’t stop thinking about why it was there.”
“Someone threw it up there.”
“I know that, but not that kind of why. Not the why of action. The why of reason. Why did the owner of that hot dog decide to do that? It makes absolutely no sense.”
Gibby snorted. “Sometimes, people do things just because they can. There doesn’t have to be a reason. It’s all chaos.”
“Anarchists, man. I’ll never understand them.”
“It’s not about—”
“Well, well, well. What do we have here?”
No one who started a sentence withwell, well, wellever wanted to do something nice. Nick turned slowly to look over his shoulder.
Two men stood behind them. One of them had a mustache. It was wet from the rain and hung under his nose like a drowned rat. The other was balding, the strands of his comb-over plastered to his head, rainwater dripping off his earlobes.
Nick froze. They didn’t look like they had a gun, but all he could think about was his mother’s last moments, something he’d stressed over time and time again. He’d never been given a clear picture of what had happened, only being told by Cap that it had been quick, something so uniquely terrible that it didn’t help as much as Cap thought it would. Nick was brave, yes, but he was also in a position to know that sometimes, people didn’t come home no matter what they’d promised him.
He almost tripped when Gibby shoved him behind her, hands curling into fists. He swung his backpack around to his front, going for the mace that Dad had given him. He’d wanted a Taser, but Dad had figured he’d end up electrocuting himself, which—while rude—was probably accurate. But given the way the universe worked, Nick found everythingbutthe mace as he dug through his bag, including lip balms, a used straw, and an old sandwich that needed to be disposed of immediately as it posed a health risk. Hewas panicking, and it was only getting worse. He looked up from his bag out to the street behind the men in the alley. He could see people scurrying by on the sidewalk, umbrellas up, faces down toward their phones.
And itsucked.Even though Nick had lived in the city all his life, he’d never been mugged before. Because he was wired the way he was, he’d fantasized about what he’d do if the situation arose. In these fantasies, he’d be brave, taking no shit from anyone. He wouldn’t need to be saved because he’d save himself. But faced with this cold reality, he could barely function, becoming more and more desperate when he couldn’t find the goddamn mace.
“Everything,” Mustache Man snapped, causing Nick to inhale sharply. “We’ll take the whole bag. Both of you. Now.”
“And if we don’t?” Gibby asked, because she was more of a badass than Nick could ever be.
“No,” he whispered in her ear. “Give them what they want.” He could picture it, clear as day: Dad receiving yet another phone call that would send everything crashing down around him. He couldn’t let Dad go through that, not again.
She didn’t look at him. “We’re not going to give them anything—”
Male Pattern Baldness pulled out a knife, popping out the blade with the click of a button. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t the biggest knife Nick had ever seen. It was maybe five or six inches. Small, really.
But Nick knew it wasn’t the size that mattered.
