Magic Time: Angelfire by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, Marc Zicree Page B

“But it’s been a long time since I’ve been out for a lark in the woods.”
    I can’t help but smile. “Not since last night, huh?” “Goldie, if that’s your idea of a lark, you really are crazy.”
    Sticks and stones… “You called me ‘Goldie.’ ”
    She shrugs. “You called me ‘Colleen.’ ”
    An unexpected turn of events: Colleen the Self-Possessed is venturing out on an adventure with Goldie the Strange and Unpredictable, notwithstanding she thinks I’m a raving loon.
    We cross the meadow and enter the woods, with her silent as a post and me trying to sniff Purpose on the wind. We have wandered for some time without me sniffing a damn thing, when she says, “So, Goldman, what was all that about your probation officer? Were you just putting me on?”
    “I’d never do that. You’re not my size,” I say, and add, “Ms. Brooks.”
    She mumbles something under her breath that rhymes with duck doo and then louder, “Don’t be a dipshit. Do you really have a probation officer?”
    “Not anymore. He converted. To something unpleasant and slimy, I suspect.”
    “Do you ever give anybody a straight answer?”
    Why am I being so ornery about this? “I got into a little trouble a while back.”
    “Trouble,” she repeats.
    “Assaulting a peace officer.”
    Her head swivels around and big green eyes skewer me. “Whoa. You? Assaulted a cop?” Beat. “What happened? Were you drunk or something?”
    “I don’t drink. I don’t do something , either. Not without a prescription, anyway. I was living in a tunnel community—”
    She cuts me off. “Tunnel community ?”
    “Subway tunnels. Train tunnels. Under New York.”
    “Yeah, yeah, ‘mole people’—I get it. But community ? Isn’t that a bit highfalutin’ a word for a collection of losers and misfits?”
    “Present company excepted, of course?”
    “Sorry.” She sends me a half-apologetic glance out of the corner of her eye, then turns her attention back to the ground, looking for signs of passage.
    “No, you’re right. Guilty on both counts. I put myself underground. But everybody’s story is different. Some folks got put there. They… fell through the cracks, I guess.”
    “Into the sewer.”
    “Subway tunnels. Not a bad place really. There were about fourteen of us in this one compound—under Grand Central. Mostly guys, some couples… a family.”
    She’s surprised. “A family? Mommy, Daddy, and kids?”
    “Kid. Rachel. She was about four. Her dad worked in a body shop aboveground, saving money to afford first and last on an apartment. One night this cop showed up and started busting up the place.”
    The memory, I find, is still painfully sharp. It was late. Agnes and Gino had just put their little girl to bed; Gino was reading to her by Coleman lamp, and in came Officer Jordan on little cat feet. None of us heard him. He was just there, flashlight and nightstick and attitude.
    Usually Officer Jordan was a pretty cool guy, a mensch, by any standard. We called him “Petey” and joked with him and talked baseball. Sometimes he’d bring sandwiches and cans of soup, and sometimes we’d invite him to join us for a meal. He even helped a few of our more chemically dependent fellows ease back into some sort of life.
    But that night he got his first glimpse of Gino with his family and that big, friendly man turned into something Other.
    He was going to take them in, but they couldn’t let him, because they both knew that if he did, they’d lose their little girl to social services and their chances of getting her back would be slim and none. He knew that, too, of course, which made his actions even more inexplicable.
    Some of us tried to get in his way, to give the family a chance to disappear. Things got ugly, and he pulled out his service revolver to subdue us, but by then Gino, Agnes, and Rachel were gone. Jordan came unglued. Fired his gun into the roof of the tunnel, over and over. Then he started breaking up the place,