New to the story or need a refresher? Begin with the prologue:
Jaden, Sabrina, and Tank crept out from behind the boarded-up house. The other hiding spots exhaled as kids from their group convened on the cracked pavement.
Everybody was accounted for and edged up the street, moving as a cluster. On the corner of the block, a familiar figure lay motionless on the ground. The man who was posted up against his car that morning, talking with some girls across from Jaden’s porch, now lay in an eerie stillness.
Jaden sensed an unnameable something—a sense of hunger, of menace—hovering above the body. But he couldn’t see anything except the corpse. And the sight of it churned his stomach. He tried not to stare for too long, but sometimes it’s hard not to stare at gross things. He was not sure why, but it was true.
Adults gathered on the periphery, some peeping out from the safety of their windows, others coming to pluck and usher away their kids. Even Tank and Sabrina scattered off to their own homes before giving a knowing wave to Jaden. Perhaps they sensed what he had forgotten, but the crowd remembered and parted when his mom rolled through.
If Jaden were to describe her, he would say she was like a great moving wall of rose bushes. But the kind with no fragrance and chock-full of thorns. Oh, and murderous bees buzzed around her petals.
However, for the first time in a long while, Mom was docile. She was quiet—channeling a perplexed pause that you may find in a speech when someone forgets a word.
Jaden looked at her. Who was this woman?
To his relief, the tenderness only lasted a moment.
“You better get on somewhere!” she yelled to those gathered.
Jaden watched the crowd recoil and thin out. If he squinted hard enough, he could also sense a faint silhouette flutter back from the dead body and retreat too. But he wasn’t sure what he could trust anymore.
“Jaden!”
He swiveled toward his mother.
“Get your ass over here!”
He got it over there.
They didn’t discuss the incident. They only held hands while Jaden listened to their feet shuffle on the pavement, his mom squeezing his palms the entire walk home. Steady but tender.
Most unusual.
The front door shut behind Jaden, and now he was alone, at home, with his mom.
She gave him an enormous, rib-breaking hug. It was a glimpse of the person she used to be—the one who didn’t twist her words into verbal projectiles. Nearly smothering him, she asked, “You alright?”
“Yeah, I’m okay,” Jaden said. But that was his mistake.
She released him abruptly and faced the other way. “Boy, you think you slick or something?”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
She turned. “You know exactly what I mean.” Jaden was struck by the speed of the dark confusion that shrouded her eyes. “I told you to stay by them fences. What the hell were you doing down the street?”
“I’m sorry,” Jaden said. “I made some new friends and forgot the rules.”
“You forgot?” She shot back. “You better not forget again.”
“Yes, Mommy Lady,” Jaden said, hoping to appease her. Saying those two words was often the best way to survive. Then again, so was doing what he was told.
“Don’t you ‘Mommy Lady’ me. You’re grounded for two weeks.”
And from there, Jaden spent fourteen summer days locked inside. Every time Mom left for work, she would say, “And remember, Jaden. I’ll find out if you leave this house. You know that, right?”
“Yes, Mom.”
Good. Now I left a list of chores for you to do.”
The first few days inside were definitely the hardest. The grizzly image of a dead body still lay freshly constructed in his mind. The haunting scene had erased all the other strange occurrences from that day—the bullets ricocheting off his skin, the fleeting sight of a phantom-like figure circling the corpse. Those things had happened, didn’t they? He was sure they had, but nobody else had acknowledged them.
Possibly, the only good to come out of his chores was that they offered him a welcome distraction. One of his favorite things to do was to wipe down the woodwork. He loved wiping it down. The grim around the doorknobs surrounded to warm water and a little bit of elbow grease. Most things did, if you rubbed long enough.
Even memories.
As he cleaned, the other kids played. In Davis Court, friendships were made outside, no matter how musty the heat of a Virginia summer was. Besides, some adult always shooed them out and said not to come back till sundown. And not a minute past either. Hence, boys and girls alike stripped down to the bare minimum, played basketball, rode their bikes, and shot off bottle rockets they had mysteriously acquired in the street.
Once his playground, the outside world became a distant scene beyond the window, a muted television of neighborhood games and laughter. None of his new friends dared to visit Jaden during his imprisonment. Except for the one time Tank ventured to knock on the living room window.
Jaden eagerly hoisted the window open.
“Is your moms home?” Tank asked, looking back every so often to view the street. Even he only had the courage to check in from a distance.
“No.” Jaden propped against the sill. “Coast is clear. You can come in if you want.”
“I’ll stay out here,” Tank said. Something about him seemed different. His shoulders held higher than usual and his eyes never stayed in one place. “But you okay in there?”
“I’m bored,” Jaden groaned. “There’s nothing to do but clean.”
“You’re lucky you’re in there. You don’t have to worry about the stuff out here.” Tank moved his hand away and showed Jaden how he had been hit by a rock. It wasn’t serious—the wound already clotted over—but there was enough blood to crust over on the side of Tank’s face, which made something ignite in Jaden.
“What happened?”
“Doesn’t matter. But I’m going to get them back with my brother. Don’t you worry.”
“Why?”
Tank stood up a little straighter. “Because if I don’t, they’ll stay talking shit.” It sounded like something Tank had heard before. Something he was supposed to say. “It’s a respect thing. You wouldn’t get it since you’re not from around here.”
Jaden got the feeling that Tank was merely continuing some tension that had been started before him instead of squashing the beef. He knew because even though he didn’t get it, whatever it was, he saw most of it play out from his apartment window. Some of the kids from the area battled with another group from a different part of the neighborhood. The border between the two halves of Davis Court was Grammercy Avenue, and Jaden never understood why the kids down bottom came up looking for trouble up top. Or vice versa.
He didn’t think the kids knew either.
Years later, Jaden would understand Davis Court well enough. He would know who ran which corners and the names of the crews without anyone sitting him down to explain them.
What he never learned was his mother.
Why some days she arrived like a storm and other days like a warning.
He wanted to ask her about a lot of things, but each question was now frozen in time. Because that was the problem with death: it didn’t care about everything you had been planning to do. Only what was, he realized, as he escorted his suitcase and his mother’s ashes out of Apollo’s hall.
With each step away, the memory of the house thinned. Like a dream you’re certain was important but cannot reconstruct by lunchtime.
He would have thought it strange had he been aware of it. But that was the beauty of the security system Hephaestus had installed on all our residences amongst mortals. It’s a safety feature. As you know, Earth has become a breeding ground for freaks, and we gods need our discretion.
However, Jaden did know that he was free. And it was time to move on. How could he have spent so much time there? And all for some god who was more like a child. The very thing that made Apollo so appealing—his divinity—made Jaden realize that Apollo never had to surrender. Things always had to be on Apollo’s terms. And what was falling in love if not a process of mutual surrender?
As Jaden bought tickets to take the afternoon train to Paris, giving him one last day to properly explore Amsterdam, he purged his memory of his divine fling. He was skilled at erasing. The memories he no longer wanted to catalog were like Polaroids left in the sun too long, edges curling, colors bleeding.
So, Jaden’s anecdote of a day in Amsterdam, thoughtfully condensed, as told by three pictures that would replace his time with Apollo:
On a boat tour throughout the city’s inner canals, Jaden saw how beautiful yet buzzing the center was. Everything was in a constant state of motion, with people on bikes, boats sluicing through the waterways, and groups of tourists edging around the narrow streets and clambering for space on the narrower sidewalks. Amid the steady flux, he took a picture of two lovers posted on the edge of one of the canals, the couple enjoying a bottle of wine and the space of each other while the city bustled around them.
After the boat ride, he made his way out of the canal belt and eventually uncovered Museumplein. The public space was where some of the city’s more famous museums met on a well-kept, grassy square. While he certainly admired the Van Gogh or Rembrandt paintings, Jaden could only spend a limited amount of time in a museum. A couple of hours—max. What image stood out the most was a family of three distributed across one bike. A father with a kid snuggled in both the front and the back cruised along the bike lane that cut underneath the Rijksmuseum. The family glided past effortlessly, stating that Dutch people were practically born on bikes.
After his museum fatigue, Jaden meandered over to Vondelpark. At first, he thought himself in the true heart of the city with its open-air theater, people clumped together on groups of blankets to enjoy the company of friends, and cafes and restaurants nestled around the urban park. But he soon realized that this was not the heart but the lungs. Acres of grass and paths filtered hundreds, if not thousands, of people through the city at any given moment. Bikes floated along the paths. Joggers ran and put their athletic bodies on display. It crackled with activity, but it was the golden letters on the stately wrought-iron gate that warranted a picture. They were embossed in his memory as the portal left open to this hive of humanity.
Standing behind the threshold, waiting for him, was a woman with a familiar air.
She would tell anyone who asked that she was simply wandering. But the moment he stepped into the park, something in her stirred, a faint disturbance in the old currents she had been born from.