bygones

They come up to the roof twice more, and when they’ve got their legs dangling out over the city, watching it spread out before them, not saying much of anything, Emori gives her a can of something. Murphy turns it over in her hands: it’s cold and kind of wet with condensation. It’s a can of orange soda. Orange Crush, the label proclaims. Emori opens a can herself. Murphy can’t stop turning her own can over and over.

“You’re really into that,” Emori says to her, voice part laughter and part concern. It’s not even a question, although her pitch goes up at the end.

Murphy looks the can over again. I’m orange crushing on you, she thinks, illogically. But she has to say something, and these are the words that pull out of her mouth, without her permission: “We weren’t allowed to have soda in juvie,” she says. “Or anything with caffeine, really.” She is very aware that this is the most information she has ever volunteered about herself, and there’s a gap in between the two of them that she can’t fill with words, so she opens the can and takes a swig. The carbonation goes up her nose and she coughs.

Emori does laugh at her, then, but Murphy can’t even find it in herself to feel awkward. 

—

Later in the week, Murphy encouragingly distracts a driver while Emori steals a cart’s worth of objects from the back of the truck. They get away scot-free, but when Murphy meets up back with Emori, she’s frowning. “I must have gotten the schedules wrong,” she says, obviously piqued. “We aren’t going to be able to sell these fireworks. Not at this time of year.”

“We could bring them back to the Skybox,” Murphy suggests. “Sell them later, when there’s more demand.”

“Sure,” says Emori, but she doesn’t sound convinced.

—

Except. They get back to the Skybox later than they usually do, and everyone is already home, and they don’t have anything for the cash jar, and Murphy is anxious and unsteady and everything is loud. Mbege leans over and ruffles her hair, which doesn’t really help, but whatever. Everyone is starting to get dinner together, and then Jasper and Monty come across the fireworks that she and Emori had tried to hide away.

“You brought home fireworks?” Jasper says to Emori, and she gives a short nod. “Yeah,” continues Jasper, pulling them out, beginning to check them out. “This is my jam,” he says, and starts pulling them out of their packaging, setting them up. Emori looks like she wants to say something, but she doesn’t.

Murphy wonders if she should say something for Emori. Jasper looks over to her, and then his face is brightening up in a grin, and he says, “Hey, Murphy, you like fire. You wanna help out?”

“Uh,” says Murphy. “Well.”

Lighting the cocktail had sent a rush of fear through her. She almost let it burn in her hand, let it eat up her skin. But at the last possible millisecond, she had thrown it: the wood had gone first, it was dry and easy to burn. When she was done, only the bricks were left. 

Jasper isn’t paying her very much attention. He licks the tip of his finger, holds it up to test the wind. “But first,” he says, pulling out a pair of goggles from somewhere on his person. “Safety.”

Murphy is left holding the lighter as Jasper sets about clearing debris away from the edge of the firepit. And then it’s cleared away, and Jasper is on his stomach setting off a firework, and Murphy hardly hears or see it over the rush of blood in her ears, in her heart —

“Come on, it’s easy —“ Jasper is saying.

And. And Murphy sets off a firework, feels the explosion pound in her chest, sees how it seems to take up the whole night sky and the sky looks like — The sky looks like it’s crumbling down on top of her, and then the light dissipates, and she’s shaking, and —

“Come on, Murphy, light another one!” Jasper is laughing, and she turns, and —

And Emori is gone. And somehow she can hardly bring herself to care.

—

When the fireworks are gone, Jasper holds the lighter out to her again. “You wanna keep it?” he asks, and.

It’s very tempting. But she can feel her skin burning still, when the cops come to her door and her mother said, what’d the little bitch get up to now. And the metal against her wrists, against the warm skin of her palms.

“Nah,” she says, bending Jasper’s fingers back over the lighter. “It’s yours.”

—

In the morning, Emori is still gone, and Murphy sits alone on her cot for a long time until Bella says: “Sometimes she just leaves. She’ll be back, don’t worry about it too much. Jasper and Monty are going out today to the computer store to pick up parts, they could use your help,” and Murphy swallows and joins them.

Murphy doesn’t really understand anything about computers, other than they sometimes need parts, but she gets on a bus with Jasper and Monty — and they actually pay the fare, what novelty — and they ride somewhere uptown, where things are fancy and there aren’t street kids like them everywhere. Murphy looks at the clean white lines and the clear windows and feels filthy, even though she washed this morning. 

Jasper and Monty clearly know the owner of the shop, because they stop and make small talk for a while. Bella didn’t specify, but she had assumed she was brought along to steal: but now she knows better. You don’t shit where you eat: that’s just simple mathematics. She runs her hands along the test computers, presses keys randomly, which gets boring very quickly. Then she turns her attention to the wall of demonstrative televisions, picks up remotes, flips through the channels.

She flips past the news, stops, and then flips back. Something had looked familiar, stirred deep in her chest. 

The newscaster is talking about missing youths, and her own face is up there, along with a whole host of other information she’d prefer nobody knew: her crime, her age, her identifying features: her mug shot. There’s a reward if anyone has any information on her, and a number to call. 

Monty slings an arm around her shoulder. “You ready to go?” he asks, and Murphy doesn’t really like being touched, but — that’s a significant reward —and Monty looks up at the television, and he removes his arm, and he says, low and urgent: “Murphy, come on, let’s go.”

She turns off the television. They don’t pay for subway fare on the way back.