GIRL, UNPLUGGED
YA Novel Chapter 25 | 15 Minute Read
This is Chapter 25 of a YA novel. To see where the story began, check out the GIRL, UNPLUGGED table of contents post, or head to the GIRL, UNPLUGGED section of the Story Hoarder Substack page to see all the chapters.
This chapter is an 15 minute read.
CHAPTER 25: No Deed
As Janice promised, our group was split up. There were even more tents than I imagined needing our help. I was happy I was working with Janice because some of the other tent people looked miserable, at least from afar. Rose and Daria were kept in the medical area longer than the rest of us, as was expected. They were brought inside the store where there were cots set up inside the front window. It looked like they gave Rose ice packs for her head, but I also heard someone was on a quest to find some medication that might be able to help her.
“She should be in the hospital,” Janice said to me when she saw me looking at Rose. We were setting up a barbecue someone had just rolled in.
“She wasn’t that bad this morning,” I told her.
“You’d be surprised what kind of pain people can hide in stressful situations,” she said shaking her head. “You kids didn’t have a chaperone with you?”
“We did, but our teacher got hurt yesterday,” I told her. “The police took her somewhere to get help.”
“And they didn’t take you all?” she asked with a sideways glance.
“There was a lot going on,” I said, thinking about how not only the police left us, but Murph did too. “I’m not sure they realized we were all together, you know?”
“Well, I’m happy you guys found your way here.” Then she smiled, “I think Chief Grady has a soft spot for lost causes.”
An officer walked over, “Excuse me, Ma’am, we got some keys, are you Janice?”
“That’s awesome. Yeah, I’m Janice. Who’d we get?” she asked.
“Juniors, Red Lobster and the deli on the corner of 45th and 8th,” the officer said.
“A deli?” Janice said, “You’re not shitting me?”
The officer smiled, “That’s what they told me!”
Janice grabbed the keys, hugged the officer and told me to go with her. We walked right past the tents and barricades on 45th and Seventh. No one seemed to have a problem with us leaving the blocked off area. People at that barricade were more orderly and calm than the one my group had come through. The tent they were on line for was taking and giving names and addresses. I guessed it was so people could see where their families and friends were. The crowd was only about five people deep. None of them seemed interested in getting into Time Square, just getting information and moving along. We walked right through and down to Eighth Avenue. When we got there I was once again struck by the new silence of the city. I began to notice things, not because they were there, but because they were not whole, they were missing the natural sounds that defined them. As we passed a subway station I glanced down into the shadows and yearned for the roar of a passing train. When we walked over the grates in the street, I missed the rumble that usually struck a tiny spark of fear in my heart as the subways passed. The structures of the city looked the same, but they were hollow, missing the sounds that filled them up. As I thought about what “filled up” the subway, a new question terrorized me.
“Are they all out?” I asked Janice as we passed.
“Who?”
“The people in the subways.”
“Jesus,” she said, “ I hope so. This place was cleared and set by the time I got here this morning, so I’m gonna guess the chief made sure of that, at least.”
At the door to the deli, Janice fumbled with the three sets of keys she was given. There was a large padlock holding down the metal gate covering all of the windows. I looked down Eighth Avenue — it was like some sort of freeze-frame — I couldn’t get used to all the cars stopped mid-trip, without any drivers. However, for the first time I also noticed broken glass in the street. Cars had been broken into. It reminded me of the gunshots, the chaos, the fear we heard the day before. Everything was quiet now, but maybe before the cops took over Times Square this was a different scene. I took a deep breath, thought of Chief Grady, Officer Avery, and all the police officers a mere block away and what it might have taken for them to “clear the area” the way Janice said. I looked at Janice as she shuffled through her new keys without a glance in the direction of the evidence of previous horrors. My fear dissolved. Even with all this evidence of horror, I recognized that I felt much safer than I had at the museum, or at least more confident in my safety.
I saw two men — one older and one younger, maybe a father and son — down the block at another store, pulling large boxes out on a hand truck. I imagined it was their family store, because it looked like they were trying to bring their inventory home where they could store it, or maybe even use it, before it went to waste or was taken. They looked as calm and at ease with the scene around us as Janice. The younger guy, probably about eighteen or nineteen, saw me looking at him. I waved so he wouldn’t think I was suspicious. I can only imagine what Janice and I looked like as she still wrestled with the lock. He smiled back and gave me a thumbs up.
He understood.
Janice found the right key for the lock and needed help getting the gate up all the way. I never realized how heavy those things are. The other key on that same ring opened the door, thankfully. While there was an alarm system with a code to deactivate, those were among the things in this new freeze-framed world that were no longer reliable. We walked right in.
The store was your typical bodega with a deli. Janice was thrilled with all of the refrigerators. “Do not open these yet,” she said, “They may still be cool. We don’t want to let any of that out yet, but man don’t those all look good!”
She was right. Even though it was Fall and the weather was pleasant, the sun was hanging on to its warm shine — the longer you stood out in it, or walked in it, the more it pressed upon you. I could really go for an ice cold bottle of Sprite.
When Janice got to the back of the store she screamed, “Yee-Ha!”
“Yee-ha?” I mean did she think we were in the rodeo or something?
“Natalie, we’ve got ice!”
The back wall of the store was devoted to a long freezer that was split in two between ice bags and ice cream.
“It’s funny Janice, you scream for ice, and I would have screamed for ice cream.” The ice cream sandwiches were screaming my name.
“You can have all you want.” Apparently Janice could care less if I ate everything in the store at that point. “But we need this ice. In fact, if we are really lucky...” she said as she made her way into the storage room, “Oh Natalie you are my lucky charm!”
I followed her back to find another freezer in the back packed with even more ice. I can’t even begin to think why so much ice was necessary, but if it made Janice happy, it made me happy.
Janice looked around wide-eyed. It was as if she didn’t know where to begin. Then all of a sudden like a switch was flicked in her head, she snapped back into action saying, “Okay, we need food, but we need ice more to keep the food longer. People will need ice so they don’t lose the food they already have…” she was talking as if I wasn’t even there, like she was going through a mental list she had prepared for this exact situation. “We need to secure this location before it gets looted,” she looked up at me and nodded.
I flinched. Looting couldn’t happen here. Not so close to all the officers. Right? Looting was par for the course when the city went unplugged for too long, but this place was protected. I had just finished convincing myself that looting could not happen here, in this store that we needed keys to get to, through a huge, heavy gate. Why was Janice suddenly worried?
In Staten Island, during Hurricane Imelda looting was something that happened to people’s homes, not to stores. As I stood there I wondered how ignorant I had been. Those guys down the street were probably worried about their place too. They weren’t calm, they were being cautious.
Janice said, “Why don’t you start bringing all these bags of chips to the front of the store? Then see if you can start bagging up the other stuff in the store — not the drinks — don’t open the fridges! I should be back long before you are done with that. It’s my fault I didn’t think to steal another one of your classmates for help right from the get-go.”
“Wait. You’ll be back? Where are you going?” I asked. With this reminder of doom my security felt tenuous at best.
“I’m going to get us some help. We could do this. I don’t doubt that. Girl power,” she said with a punch into the air and a smile. “But with the ice I want to move fast, so the more hands, the better. Just keep the door locked and stay out of the window as much as you can,” she said as she walked out.
Staying out of the front window became my primary goal. No one needed to know I was in this store, until I had a bunch of other people with me. I’m okay on my own most of the time, but this felt weird. I went back to the ice cream freezer, reached in and grabbed my ice cream sandwich.
That was an epic fail. It was more like two chocolate cookies soaked in ice cream soup. After further investigation, I discovered that the various ices held up better. I found a chocolate ice cup, grabbed one of the wooden spoon-sticks, sat on the floor and enjoyed.
That was until the rat showed up.
I nearly lost my mind when a rat, the size of my forearm, came bursting out from under the freezer. I threw my ice in the air, screamed bloody murder and climbed on top of the freezer. I had no idea where the rat went, but I wasn’t too keen on finding out. I sat atop the freezer until I heard a knock at the door.
Through the window I could see the two men from down the block. I waved and opened the door, “You guys finished your store already?” I asked.
“We took everything we needed,” the younger one said, “What do we have here?”
“Well Janice went basically ape-shit over all of the ice,” I said.
“There’s ice?” the older man, who looked previously unenthused about being at the store lit up.
“So how do you want to do this?” the younger man said, looking at me very seriously, as if I were running the show.
“I don’t know if Janice has a method to her madness,” I shrugged, “but since you guys have already done this, I say it’s up to you until she tells you different.”
“Really?” he seemed overjoyed by the newly instilled freedom I bestowed upon him. He looked me up and down and said, “Nice.” I began to wonder how much of a hard ass Janice actually was when it came to this stuff. And then another thought crossed my mind — Where is Janice? This man made me feel incredibly uncomfortable with just a look. I needed a distraction and I needed space between us. I got to work on my half of the job. “Yeah so, I’m supposed to bag up the chips and stuff…” I looked desperately behind the counter for the bags.
When the men walked to the back of the store I found myself wishing for a herd of rats to emerge to distract them — or make them leave — until Janice arrived. I felt queasy, like I was on a rocky boat and starting to get sea sick. Something wasn’t right about the way the guy looked at me, the way he spoke to me, and the way he never even bothered to introduce himself. I told myself I was overreacting. I told myself it was all in my head. With the distance of a city block between us, the two men looked like innocent store owners hard at work in trying to put the puzzle pieces of life back together after the storm, up close I imagined there was an invisible malodorous and sinister slime that washed over them. I positioned myself in between the counter and the deli case. I wanted to be able to add some furniture in between us if the younger guy made his way back up to the front of the store.
I packed the snack foods around the counter to distract myself. I was up to the nuts and trail mix when Janice walked in. “Why is the door open?” she asked, as Russ and Colin walked in passing her, going straight to the back, with coolers piled on a hand truck. Russ gave me a wink and a smile saying, “I found you!”
He seemed so cheery and the men in the back seemed so — I don’t know — dark. I didn’t want the two to meet.
“I opened it to let in those other guys,” I said pointing to the back of the store, “they already got started on the ice.”
Janice’s eyes widened, “What other guys, Natalie?”
But before I could answer, there were sounds of a struggle in the back of the store. Every hair on my body stood on end as my fears came to life. The two men walked to the front of the store, each with a gun held to one of my friend’s heads. Colin’s face was red and his hair was messed up. It appeared he was the reason for most of the noise. Russ’s eyes were on me, screaming Why? They wanted to know why I let these men in the store, why I hadn’t warned them, why I put us in this position.
I had no answer. I trusted these men. I was a fool. I thought they were helpers like us and like Janice. I was never good with people. I forgot about the people who take advantage of disasters. I believed we were past the violence, the horror, the fight. I believed everything was going to be okay for me like it always had been.
The younger one spoke first. “I take it you’re Janice,” he said using his gun to point at her while he sneered.
Janice looked at me and then nodded to them, “Leave the boys alone.”
“Oh we will,” he said, putting his gun down, but still clutching Russ’s arm tightly. “We don’t want anything to do with any of you.” He moved his gun like any normal person would move their hands when they spoke. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. “As long as you all leave, we won’t have any kind of messy problems.”
“Fine,” Janice said, “you let all the kids go, but I want to talk to you about what you are doing. This isn’t necessary.”
The man looked Janice up and down the same way he looked at me, then he looked over to his partner. They both looked amused by Janice’s proposition.
I screamed, Janice NO! They can’t be trusted! They won’t be interested in what is “necessary”! COME WITH US! But none of the words left my mouth. I was too terrified to utter anything. I was mute. I was frozen.
I was a coward.
The older man smiled revealing yellowing teeth which made my stomach turn. The younger man threw Russ’s arm in the direction of Janice as he said, “You got a deal, Lady.” Then he turned his gun on me and said, “You can stay to talk too, if you want to, sweet thing.” As obsessed as I was with the gun while it was on Russ, now I couldn’t look away from the guy’s eyes. They had darkened. It felt surreal or supernatural. I understood, instantly why so many horror movies had used the special effects tools at their disposal to turn an evil creature’s eye completely black, because that’s what evil really looks like, like a shark. In that moment he stepped a little bit further from humanity and became more animal.
Russ grabbed my arm and yelled, “Let’s go!” Then he pushed me through the front door. Colin was right behind Russ. This time I really screamed as I watched the young man grab Janice and drag her to the back of the store while the yellow-toothed monster locked the door behind us. I pulled away from Russ and slammed on the glass door, banging for Janice to at least know I was still there. The monster kissed the glass door right where my mouth was and then licked it. I heard a roar behind me as an arm was thrust around my waist and I was carried away kicking and screaming.
It was Russ. He was crushing me because he was holding me so tight. I punched him in the back screaming and crying that we needed to go back, but he wasn’t listening. He just kept walking with wide angry strides back down 45th Street back in the direction of the barricade. When we passed the subway station I had started kicking Russ too. He finally stopped and put me down. It was the first time I saw his face. His eyes were full of rage and tears, his jaw was clenched and, if his skin wasn’t so dark, I think he would have been as red as Colin was. He scared me silent.
“You are not going back there,” he growled.
“We can’t leave her,” I said.
“YOU ARE NOT GOING BACK THERE!” he yelled as he turned me pushing me back down the block where I saw Colin, up ahead running toward the barricade swinging his arms and screaming. I started running too.
“We need help!” Colin screamed through the crowd. He pushed past the tired pedestrians waiting to put their names on lists. It jostled them awake. I saw a man turn and push Colin back, but Colin kept going without looking back. I tried to make my way around the crowd instead of through it. Colin and I made it to the barricade at the same time.
“Hey kid,” one of the men at the table behind the barricade said to Colin, “you need to wait in line just like everyone else.”
“You don’t understand,” Colin started, but the man just held his hand up.
“Buddy, I understand all too well. Someone’s life is in danger, right?” he stared right at the dumbfounded Colin. “Well then, like I said: get in line.” Then he looked right over Colin’s head calling, “Next!”
When Colin held both arms out holding back as many people as he could, the man stood up and signaled the nearby officers assigned to his tent. I noticed, beyond them, that a number of officers stepped into action when they saw this, including Officer Avery. I screamed, “Officer Avery! Please! We need you!”
She flinched hearing her name, but her eyes couldn’t find me as she ran toward the tent. I waved my arms and screamed again, “Officer Avery! Over here!”
She saw me, then looked over at Colin. I watched her as the puzzle pieces fit together. Colin noticed her too and slid over to where I was standing, dissolving the situation he created. Everyone’s eyes were on us. “Janice is in trouble,” I yelled.
“What kind of trouble?” Avery asked.
“Life or death trouble,” Colin said and shot a glance at the man at the table who had now stopped everything he was doing to listen in on our drama.
From behind me Russ added, “They have guns and they took her,” which was probably not the best thing to say in the middle of a crowd of scared and desperate people. With his single utterance he transformed the numb group into a herd as harried as the first group we encountered on Broadway. Someone from behind shouted, “Active shooter!” and everyone pushed forward on the barricade seeking to be behind its police-protected force field. I was smashed up against the barricade and felt the wood cut my stomach as Russ fell on top of me. Colin was whiplashed over the barricade as well and, in an attempt to regain his balance, he elbowed a burly man standing behind him. The man at the table blew a whistle he had around his neck which brought even more police into action.
“The deli on Eighth,” Russ sputtered over my shoulder at Officer Avery.
She looked over the crowd and then back at us. In her hesitation I could see that she was torn. We were in trouble — all of us at that barricade — but so was Janice. “How many are there?” she asked.
“Two,” I exhaled.
Russ pulled his head up and yelled, “Go!”
Avery grabbed two officers who just reached the tent and ran away. At first I thought that something was lost in our communication, but then another people-surge thrust Russ back onto me and cut me even deeper in the stomach and I could think of nothing else.
“Can you get under it?” Russ asked. I could tell he was trying to whisper, but the strain force amplified him with every utterance.
I put both arms on the barricade and tried to push myself off just enough so I could slide down, but it was no use. I knew Russ was a big guy, but this was much more than his weight and my own that I was trying to pull back. I just shook my head to let him know it was no use.
“Lay down,” Russ said, which confused the hell out of me and Colin, who turned and looked at him quizzically. “I won’t let you fall.”
He could promise all he wanted. I had no idea what he was talking about. I tried again to push back praying, hopelessly, that the blood I saw trickling onto the barricade wasn’t real.
“Oh!” Colin said, suddenly looking much shorter. “Go limp! Stretch out your legs!” Colin’s legs were splayed underneath the barricade as if he was… well… laying down. That’s what Russ wanted us to do. I understood his promise to not let me fall now, too. If I just “laid down” then I would surely crack my head on the floor once I fell completely.
Colin slipped a little bit every time the crowd gave even just an inch, but with every surge he would get pinned again. I tried to put my legs out in front of me and I felt the barricade tear up and saw more blood pour. I screamed from the pain, but my scream was overshadowed by the sound of gunshots down the block. Everyone turned around, giving just enough for us to make our move. Russ had grabbed Colin’s arm just in time to save him from bouncing his head off the asphalt. Since I was trying to pull myself up from my tearing wound, I felt the instant we had some space and I looped myself under the barricade with Russ and Colin.
Two officers lunged on us just as Chief Grady was running our way because of the gunshots, barking questions that, it seemed, only we could answer.
“Officer Avery’s down at the deli with two other officers,” I called to him.
This brought his attention to us and the officers that had grabbed us. “Take your hands off these kids, you idiots. They’re the volunteers!” The officers let go immediately and Chief Grady asked us for everything we knew.
He sent out three more officers directly over the barricade which helped to bring order to the crowd. One of the mounted police trotted over on his horse, with a megaphone and spoke to the crowd, assuring them that everything was under police control, and that they simply should remain where they were until further notice.
It was around that time that Colin noticed I was bleeding, “What the hell happened to you?”
And, as if to bow due to its recognition, the cut burned with a searing pain. I pulled my shirt up revealing a long horizontal red dripping stripe across my abdomen. It looked like the Joker’s smile — not the nice neat one they draw on the Batman cartoons, or the cute semicircular spiky-toothed smile of LEGO Joker, more like the scary jagged disturbing one from those Dark Knight movies. I felt lightheaded when I saw it.
“Holy shit, Natalie!” Russ scooped me up — a romantic move in any other situation — and ran me over to the medical tent.
I was brought inside immediately and put on a cot. Russ paced in between the two empty cots next to me while bumbling questions and apologies at me like they were being shot out of an automatic firearm, “When did that happen? How did that happen? I did it. Oh god I’m sorry. How did I do that? Was it those guys in the store? Did they do this to you? Or no. No. It was me. It was me at the barricade. I’m so, so sorry.”
He didn’t give me time to answer or tell him it was okay; that it wasn’t his fault. He just kept spiraling and as I tried to keep up I felt the room spinning. The people cleaning my wound, those around me and the sounds they were making started to float away becoming more like echoes of themselves rather than the real thing.
I don’t know when I passed out exactly, or how long I was out, but when I woke up my stomach and my two hands were all bandaged up. I felt like I had slept for days, but I could see that the sun was still up, although it had made a pretty long trip since I last checked on it. Despite the passage of time, the room I was in had become even more active. The cots beside me were now occupied. Janice, or at least someone that looked a lot like her, was in the cot directly next to me. The cot next to her was surrounded by people working on someone. I imagined someone else got messed up at the barricade. It really wasn’t that difficult for me to almost get ripped in half.
I looked at Janice. She had been crying, that was obvious, but now she looked numb. I stared at her waiting for her to see me, or say something, but she just laid there staring up into nothing. Slowly, I pulled myself up into a seated position thinking she might notice me then, but if she saw or heard my movement she gave no acknowledgement of that fact.
“Janice?” I said in a hushed tone.
She blinked.
“Janice, are you okay?” I asked, deeply fearful of her answer.
“Didn’t I say to keep the door locked,” she said, still staring at the nothing.
“I’m so sorry, I thought —”
“Didn’t I say to keep the door locked?” she said louder.
“I’m sorry,” I said again.
Then she turned, looking directly at me with wild, empty eyes she screamed, “Keep the door locked!” causing the people at the next cot to turn and grab her. Both of her hands were covered in bandages stained in some mixture of pink and brown, blood and antiseptic, I guessed. One of the people holding her whispered to me, “Get out of here.”
I quickly moved off the cot, grabbing onto its side when the speed brought the spins back. Carefully, hoping I wouldn’t pass out again, I made my way to the door. The person on the next cot was Officer Avery. Her arm was bleeding. She had been shot.
Written in Natalie’s Notebook
Times Square 10/7
I have to stop doing this. Helping may make me feel better, but I am really, really bad at it. I don’t have a job right now and maybe that’s for the best.
I need to get home.
Leave a comment - Question of the Week
Thanks for continuing to read the GIRL, UNPLUGGED. For any of my weekly readers, I apologize for the extended delay of this chapter. This has always been a tricky chapter for me when it comes to this story, and that was compounded by the technical difficulties I happened to be facing in August! Alas, it is here, and the schedule resumes.
What are your thoughts about Janice and what happened to her when Natalie left with the boys? Do you think Natalie was too naive to let the strange men into the store, or can you understand how she made this mistake?
If this is your first time here…
Don’t forget to subscribe so you get all of my story hoard delivered to your inbox every time a new piece is released!