“I bet. No homo, but I would watch that sex tape to see your girl in action. Not you.”
“I’m really uncomfortable right now,” I joke.
“FUCK.”
I turn to see what’s got Brendan wilding out. Deon is coming toward us. We both hop up and separate so he’ll have to choose. I don’t like my odds. Deon is fit from years of being on the football team and once he grapples me, I’m done. (Yeah, you gotta basically bear-hug someone for three beats of “Manhunt one, two, three. Manhunt one, two, three . . .” to capture them.) Deon fakes coming for me and grabs Brendan, setting me up for escape.
I bolt, my heart pumping hard. I skip stairs, slamming open the door. I’m running out of breath but I can’t get caught now, not unless I want to spend the rest of the game figuring out where the fuck Me-Crazy is. We’d all have a better chance finding Bigfoot playing with the Holy Grail. I head to the little alleyway where I can hide inside a Dumpster—hell no, scratch that—hide behind a Dumpster. But the gate is locked.
Upside: I’m skinny enough to squeeze my way through if I can pry the gate open.
Downside: I’m too skinny and lacking the muscle needed to pull this off.
Someone behind me whistles. I almost jet down the block toward Dead Man’s Corner, named so because it’s easy to get cornered if you’re up against two hunters. But it’s not Deon or Brendan. Some stranger-guy with light brown skin and thick eyebrows is standing at the curb. He’s with a short girl with dyed red hair who looks frustrated or sad or both.
“You okay?” he asks me.
“Yeah, playing manhunt,” I manage. “And it’s going to be game over in a sec.” I keep pulling and pulling, trying to squeeze in but am just going to get stuck. “Fuck you, gate!” Eyebrows Guy says something to the girl, turns his back on her, and walks over to me. She looks fucking murderous and finally walks away while he nudges me to the side. He pulls open the gate. “Get in there.”
“Awesome, thanks.” I slide in and take cover behind some cinder blocks since the Dumpster chokes me with its stench of hot garbage. I hear footsteps stampeding our way and I lie flat on the ground, the concrete warming my face and smelling like baked tar.
I hear Eyebrows ask, “You looking for some tall kid?” I can only assume Deon and Brendan nod because he then says, “He went that way.” The footsteps continue on toward Dead Man’s Corner. “Coast is clear, Stretch.”
I get up and approach him, wrapping my fingers around the chinks of the fence dividing us. “Thanks, yo.”
“Happy to help,” he says with a smile that probably bags him a lot of girls. “I’m Thomas, by the way.”
“Aaron,” I say, extending my hand to shake his, but we’re still on opposite sides of the gate. He laughs a little. “So what was going on with that girl?”
“I was breaking up with her.”
“Yikes. Why?”
“She’s not really right for me anymore.”
“Why’s that?”
“Nothing you would care about.”
I’m half nervous Brendan and Deon will sneak up from behind me, but I’m also half curious to know why this stranger-guy named Thomas broke up with his girlfriend. “So our one-year anniversary is today,” he says breaking the silence. “I went to the mall to buy Sara’s favorite perfume. I didn’t remember what it was called, and I know I knew it before. I didn’t think it was a big deal, I knew what it smelled like and I could figure it out from there.” He pulls out a couple movie tickets from his wallet. “Then I saw these ticket stubs. I couldn’t remember if I saw these movies with Sara or my cousins.”
“Okay . . .” I wonder when this story will take a crazy twist, like he slept with her sister or something.
“If I can’t remember, I’m wasting her time. Dragging it out will just lead her on and stop me from finding someone new,” he says.
“Makes sense,” I respond. “I mean, if Romeo and Juliet didn’t think the other could offer ultimate happiness, the both of them would’ve survived.”
He laughs. “So basically make sure I find someone worth downing poison for?”
“Exactly,” I say. “Do you live around here?”
“Yup.” Thomas points to the Joey Rosa Projects.
“Do you want to play?”
“Isn’t manhunt for thirteen-year-olds?”
“Nah. We go hard, like tackle each other and shit.”
“How late you guys going to playing for?”
“Different games throughout the day, I don’t know.”
“I have to head home. Maybe I’ll find you later. It seems like you need someone to watch your back.”
“I’m sure I’ll be fine from here on out.”
“How sure?”
“Bet-my-life sure.”
Thomas points behind me, and there goes Deon and Brendan. They’re winding down, but they’re close. Thomas pries open the gate and I sneak back to his side.
“I should probably run.”
“You should probably run.”
“See you later, Thomas.”
“See you later, Stretch.”
Ten minutes later, after making the stupid move of hiding inside the tunnel slide like an amateur, Deon catches me. Now I’m searching for others in staircases and the garage, when I feel magnetized back to the gate where I just was. No one is there. Not Baby Freddy or Nolan or that kid Thomas. I move on.