Bachman lifts her megaphone. “Not one more step!” she shrieks.
And just like that, the world starts spinning again. A cop pushes past us and leaps up the stairs to put the governor in handcuffs. They tighten around her wrists with a click-click-click-click-click-click-click. Then he and another policeman take her by the arms and lead her down the stairs, through the barricades, and into a nearby squad car. As they put her into the back seat, Bachman turns and flashes the crowd a serpentine grin. It lights a fuse that snakes through the mob, crackling and popping as it goes, and with a jarring bang the crowd pushes forward, led by a gang of thugs in bright-red shirts. They toss trash cans into the mob. They smash bottles and tip over a cop car. They are the Coney Island Nine, the Niners for short, and they won’t be satisfied with anything less than a full-scale riot. The police leap into action, bringing batons down on their heads. A melee erupts. Boots grind fingers into the asphalt. Agonized cries rise above the din. There is blood and hate everywhere I look.
“Filthy animals! Go back to where you came from,” the Niners shriek as they hurl dead catfish at us. One slams into the wall next to me, leaving a sticky stain of scales and loose eyeballs. Another one crashes into my face and knocks my sunglasses off, leaving me stunned and blind. Someone shoves me through the front doors, and I stagger into the school alone, tripping over my own feet and falling hard on the marble floor. My hip screams like it’s on fire, but I have no time to recover. I’m in the midst of a stampede of fear and feet. A shoe comes down on my pinky finger, and I cry out but keep crawling, scampering through the mob with my senses failing. Eventually I find a wall and press myself against it, hoping I’m out of the way. I use my shirt to wipe the gunk out of my eyes, only to find all six of the Alpha kids standing over me. The tall boy with the bruises and the blades locks his eyes on me. They narrow with disdain and suspicion, his gaze falling on me like a fist. I am filth to him, a creepy-crawly he discovered under a rock. But then his eyes soften. There’s recognition there, but that can’t be possible. It was three years ago, and the beach was crazy that morning—but still, there’s something in his face that says he remembers me.
I remember him, too.
Chapter Four
People talk about Coney Island’s pre-Alpha days like they were magical, like we all lived in the Disneyland of Brooklyn. They forget our “Disneyland” was really a garishly painted slum in a crumbling neighborhood with rampant crime, a busy sex trade, a methadone clinic, and a school system in the toilet. Sure, the Alpha didn’t help. They turned the place into a police state. But it’s not like we were all out in the streets singing “Kumbaya” the day before.
There’s also this idea that the Alpha caused all the weird racism and xenophobia, too, but whatever. This part of town was always a hotbed of racial sludge, and the various groups never played nice. The Chinese hated the Japanese, and the Jamaicans hated the Koreans, and the Mexicans hated the African Americans, and the Russians hated the Orthodox Jews, and the white people hated all of them. And sometimes, on very hot days, someone got stabbed because of the flag on his car. If America is a melting pot, Coney Island is the overcooked crusty stuff on the bottom of the pan.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that our memories of the place are a little distorted. Back when I had time for books, I read a poem that described memories as being like clay—malleable and squishy and easily molded into whatever you needed. Over time, people sculpt their miserable experiences into something more aesthetically pleasing, stretching the interesting moments and kneading the uncomfortable facts. What they end up with is no longer a memory but a story, and the two rarely resemble one another. The story of the Alpha’s arrival is just as sculpted. Some still call it an invasion, an act of war, even a sign of the end of days. I can’t say that my story is any less convoluted, but I was there when it happened. I saw it firsthand, not on television and not on some Internet site. And I think my version has more merit than most, because I know something that most people do not: the Alpha actually arrived the night before the world went crazy.