SHOUT - Adopted by Lin Manuel Miranda

FORT APACHE

I swear Jeremy has a vendetta against me. He calls the Miranda's phone four times before Vanessa answers from her office. To get revenge on me for refusing to attend the January meeting, he schedules the February meeting on the first weekend of the month. This is the crap I won't miss once I leave for Pakistan.

I have to leave for the Bronx straight after school. That means I have to go to Hope House in my Wilmington uniform, so everyone can see what a swank I've become. Before I leave for the subway, I stuff a few handfuls of toilet paper into my underwear. I can't ask Lin and Vanessa for pads, because I am long past my cycle and they will become suspicious and ask me questions that I can't bring myself to answer. I leave the apartment with my metro card and a change of underwear in my backpack.

The more I visit the South Bronx, the more I understand why I turned out so vile. No child should be brought up in that warzone. The Hope House area should be quarantined from tourists who could easily be duped into a gang fight or drug exchange. There should be warning signs outside the neighborhood. Here be gangstas.

Hope House smells like the plumbing broke down. Jeremy meets me in his cubicle. He doesn't say hello when I sit down.

"Alright." He grunts when he reaches for his notepad. "Let's get this over with."

A phone rings in the office next to his. The furnace clicks on. I hear a BANG on the second floor. Ah, memories. Getting the snot beaten of me, then growing up and beating the snot out of someone else. I don't want to be here. At all. I don't know what it is-- the stinging in my abdomen, or the brawl unfolding upstairs-- but I know I can't survive two hours of questions. "This place smells like shit," I tell him. "Can we go somewhere else?"

Jeremy never listens to me, which is why I'm surprised that he walks with me to Ricardo's deli down the road. I never considered that Jeremy might be sick of Hope House, but he probably hates that place more than I do. We've both spent a good hunk of our lives in the group home. We know what goes down. Jeremy has a scar on his forehead from one of the younger girls slashing his skin with her fingernails. It occurs to me now that he touches the wound whenever he gets uncomfortable-- probably to remind him that no matter what hell he is experiencing at the moment, it could be worse. He orders two cokes from the counter and we find a table in the corner. "Are you happy, now, Vidya?"

I'm furious, actually. Jeremy knows all about the rift I have with Ricardo. The deli itself is more of a dump than Hope House. The room is the size of a storage unit, but packed with twenty-something frantic customers. The cooks in the back scream orders back and forth. The fluorescent lights are too bright, and the heat doesn't work. Jeremy slides his palm over his hairline and sighs. "You have to talk to me eventually, Vidya."

"What do you want to talk about?"

"Your living situation." He winces when an angry customer shrieks something in Russian from the back of the line. "How is everything with the Mirandas?"

"Fine," I say.

Jeremy twists a bud of dry skin beneath his elbow. "You sure about that?"

"You don't usually doubt me like this. Something wrong, Kalinowski? Did you fall in love? Did your mother die? Did you realize how awful you look with that goatee?"

He opens his mouth to answer but shuts it when the waitress stops at our table with two cokes. She sets them in the middle of the table and wavers for a moment before disappearing behind the counter. I remember her. She witnessed me robbing them, once, and let me get away with it. I can't believe she's still here. Jeremy snaps his fingers in my face. "Earth to Vidya."

I flick open the coke and let it fizz for moment before bringing the can to my lips. The liquid is warm, and tastes stale. Particles of sugar float in clumps at the top, like algae. I look at the expiration date on the bottom. I guess the waitress remembers me, too.

"So. The Mirandas." He sips his coke. "Are you going to tell me about them?"

"What do you want me to say, Jeremy? I'm alive, so they must be doing something right."

A man at the table next to us drops his fork onto the floor, picks it up, and resumes eating his macaroni salad. A police car zooms by, sirens blaring. The wind howls against the windowpanes. What if I told him about Operation Pakistan? What would he say? He'll throw a party when the plane takes off. Jeremy watches me for a moment before rimming the top of the can with his forefinger. "I talked with Mr. Miranda on the phone last week."

I almost spit out the coke in my mouth. I swallow and set the can on the table. "What?"

"He was the one who called me," he says. "He's worried about you."

"Why?"

"He thinks you're going downhill," he says. "He says you do nothing but sleep, and when you're awake, you're miserable." He turns to watch the angry Russian woman place her order, then turns back to me. "He says you're wonderful with Sebastian, but that your grades are horrendous, and that you completely shut down after you went back to school." He pauses to adjust his shirt collar. "He definitely thinks there's some depression there."

I take a long, slow sip of my stale coke and try not to gag when I swallow. "I'm okay."

"Are you?" Jeremy taps the side of his head with his index finger. "I think there's more going on in here than just 'okay'."

"I told you, I'm okay."

"Well, something must be wrong if your foster father is calling me about you."

Of course he called. Everyone who sees me from the outside thinks I'm mental. Lin doesn't know what real depression is. I'm sure he's never felt hollow, or numb, or so miserable that it felt like someone was carving holes in his chest.

Jeremy leans across the table and whispers. "Do they know about... you know...?"

I look at the floor. He shouldn't care. Everyone has secrets, even the Precious Babies. The smiles, the good grades, the uniforms— they're all part of the act. There's the AP students on anxiety pills. The supermodels who cut themselves where the scars won't show. The Manhattan salesmen who start their days off with a shot of vodka to get through the morning. Everyone is a little angry at the world, but where are the people who are way past angry? Jaded? Numb? I'm torn. Part of me wishes people like me came with signs, but another part of me wishes to be brutally murdered so I won't have to wish for anything, anymore.

Someone slams their hand on the counter and makes everyone in the restaurant jump. I turn. It's Ricardo, staring me dead in the eye. If looks could kill, I'd be rotting in the morgue. "You!" Ricardo bellows. "I remember you, you twisted bitch."

I stand to run out the door, but I slip when I stand and bang my hip into the corner of the table. I freeze. Jeremy watches from his seat. Ricardo walks out from behind the counter but stops dead in his tracks when he sees it: the searing hot red string of blood leaking out from beneath my Wilmington skirt and trickling down my thigh.

I don't dare move a muscle. Please let someone murder me. Please let someone murder me. I take in the sensation of the blood running down my leg, the pop and the sick warm feeling— and when I will myself to look down, my legs wobble and the oxygen leaves my head. Every single person in the deli stares straight at the deep red line creeping down my leg. There's a knife twisting holes through my flesh. My heart stops pumping. My lungs stop working. The earth stops spinning.

Jeremy stands and starts to say something, but I duck around Ricardo and sprint down the hall toward the bathroom before he can speak. I trip over a chair and my chest slams into the ground. It feels like an ax murderer pounded a bloody hole into my pelvis. Before anyone can reach out to help me, I jump up from the ground and sprint into the bathroom and lean against the other side of the door to breathe, breathe, breathe until my lungs work again.

Footsteps, then Jeremy pounding on the door behind me. "Vidya!" He yells. "Vidya, cmon, get out here. What's wrong with you? Do you know the guy at the counter? He keeps calling you pendeja. Are you hurt? Should I call someone?"

He pounds on the door four more times. "What the hell was that about?"