You can read a text-only version of this chapter at https://asphaltarcanum.com/chapter-6-text-only/

Zinn checked her phone for the hundredth time that morning.

Still nothing.

She sighed. She’d been seeing Kiana for six weeks now, and she’d thought it was going well! They’d been spending time together almost every weekend—going out to movies and meals and one memorable Drag Queen Brunch, and a few times just staying in, cooking together at one of their places, Netflix-and-chilling in both the literal and sexy sense. She’d even gotten off work early yesterday to spend time with Kiana on her birthday—though her subway ride had ended in disaster and she never actually made it there, they’d agreed to a makeup date later. Kiana had seemed excited to see her.

Then, maybe it was the near-death experience talking, but Zinn fully lost her mind.

She texted “I love you.”

Since then, she hadn’t gotten a reply. And not just that—she got left on read!

After no answer for twenty minutes, Zinn had texted a long apology for moving too fast, explaining that the accident had just reminded her that life was short, and that she really liked Kiana and hoped she liked her too, and that nothing had to change between them, she’d just wanted to express how she felt.

Still nothing. Left on read.

Right before she went to sleep, she texted a simple “good night, see you Sunday.”

That one, Kiana hadn’t even looked at.

She’d had to stop herself from texting again before work. Instead, she’d had a ten-minute voice call with her sister Jasmine that was mostly Zinn ranting about how all her relationships were disasters and how, as the common factor of all of them, that was clearly her own fault—she was too old to be this bad at relationships, and it would never work out for her because the moment things were going well, she did something idiotic and sabotaged herself, and she always knew someone as gorgeous and smart as Kiana wouldn’t want to date someone as ugly and weird as her. Jaz made soothing noises at the right intervals, then cut her off to take the twins to school. She said they’d talk later, over drinks, once Zinn had chilled out a little.

She’d managed not to think about it while she was going through the hand-sorted mail for her route, quickly tossing the stuff the auto-sorting machines had rejected into the proper cubbyholes, one for each stop. She hadn’t thought about it while she was binding up the stacks for each loop with rubber bands, or while she was loading trays of mail and sharpie-numbered packages into her truck. She hadn’t even thought about it during the first loop of the day, hitting all the medical offices and small businesses in a three-story office building, saying hello to the usual receptionists and office workers, complimenting Brenda’s new manicure but keeping her feet moving and escaping before the woman could talk her ear off.

She did think about it during her second loop, the one through the little strip mall with apartments above it. That was because, just as she was handing off a pile of bills and junk mail to Carlos at the liquor store, her phone began to buzz in her pocket—over and over to signal a voice call, not a text.

This was only the first stop this loop—her phone was in her left pants pocket, but her left arm was occupied by a huge bundle of mail. She gave Carlos a nod, then rushed outside and spent a few seconds turning around in an awkward dance as she tried to fish her phone out of her left pocket with her right hand—she finally got it, but by then, the phone had stopped buzzing.

She looked at the missed call notification—it was an unknown number. It said they’d left a message, but when she checked it, the recording was just the sound of someone hanging up.

Just junk.

Dammit.

She continued her route, hit the two office buildings across the street and then the three buildings of the scruffy apartment complex behind it, two bins of mail for each and a random assortment of packages to leave in doorways and hope they didn’t get stolen.

As she was finishing up, her phone buzzed again—just once, for a text.

She dropped the stack of fliers she was holding back into the bin and grabbed her phone.

It wasn’t from Kiana; it was another unfamiliar number. Just in case, she mashed the notification on her screen to check the full message.

Huh. That had to be from one of the people she gave her phone number to yesterday, but the message was pretty vague. After the crash and…whatever the hell had happened after, she’d found some scrap paper in her bag and handed out her number to anyone who’d take it, just as a precaution. They’d all been herded out of the subway by metro workers and shepherded to the hospital, accounts taken by cops and injuries checked by doctors. But you couldn’t trust the powers-that-be to have their best interests at heart if the accident had been caused by, say, neglected maintenance in the subway tunnels, or a terrorist who slipped through police surveillance. She’d wanted to make sure they could talk to each other if they had to.

She typed back a quick message.

Maybe somebody involved in the accident had a warrant out, so now the cops were sniffing around, hoping for an easy arrest. Or maybe the accident was caused by negligence and whoever was responsible was trying to get the victims on their side. Or, hell, maybe some scummy personal injury lawyers had gotten involved. The texter could be talking about a lot of things.

There was one thing Zinn knew for sure, though: they certainly weren’t talking about any spooky pollution-cloud-looking supernatural creatures.

Under stress, the human brain was incredibly unreliable. She’d seen a deadly thing that looked like a sentient smog cloud, a UFC-worthy brawl, a disappearing man…a bunch of stuff that didn’t make sense. But she’d also hit her head and gotten pretty shaken up. No concussion, but the combo of adrenaline, shock, and the dim emergency lights could’ve still made her see things that weren’t there.

She probably shouldn’t be working today, honestly, but she’d bullied her supervisor into letting her by shoving the clean bill of health from the doctor into his hands and getting started before he could stop her. Usually she’d love a day off, but not now, when her family and friends were busy and she’d be stuck sitting alone in her apartment, nothing to do but think too much and wait for a text that refused to come.

She finished with the last apartment building and brought the empty bins out to the truck. She tossed them in the back and drove to the next part of her route—two quick stops at either end of a plaza that held a supermarket, two banks, a Dunkin Donuts, and a hardware store.

While she was walking up to the second bank, she realized she hadn’t thought about Kiana in a while—she internally congratulated herself on her restraint. But, of course, that sent her spiraling again. She pulled out her phone, which she’d intelligently put in her right-hand pocket this time.

Her last message still hadn’t even been read. At this point, it had to be intentional.

While she was still holding her phone, it rang again.

Same unknown number as before. She answered it.

“Hello?”

No reply.

“Anyone there? You okay?”

Still no answer, but on the other end of the line she thought she could just make out a young-sounding voice saying something like “Daddy, look, I’m flying!”

Then, they hung up.

Maybe her sister’s twins and their friends were prank calling her? They seemed a little old for that kind of thing, but 13-year-olds could always surprise you—mature as adults one minute, acting like toddlers the next.

Well, a few dumb prank calls on her route were no big deal, and she valued her status as Cool Aunt too much to tell their mom. She put the phone away, secretly hoping they’d be bored of their game now. Every time her phone went off, it sent her stomach into her throat.

Her phone buzzed again, and she just barely avoided dropping mail all over the sidewalk. She steeled herself with a deep breath and looked at the screen.

It wasn’t Kiana—it was a quick series of texts from the same number that had asked her if anything strange had happened. But the texter’s style was totally different this time:

O…kay, that was unnecessary. Zinn put her phone away and got back to work, wondering what the hell that was all about.

She was pretty much done with the commercial part of her route; the rest of her day was mostly spent weaving through residential streets, duplexes and triplexes squashed next to each other with the occasional squat concrete apartment building or convenience store breaking up the monotony.

This part of the city was poor and run-down, and a lot of the buildings were empty. Even many of the occupied places were the kind of rentals where the landlord does the bare minimum upkeep they can get away with, all peeling paint and sagging porches. She was pretty sure that a few of the door slots she shoved bills through had massive piles of old, dusty mail behind them, uncollected and abandoned. But there were still pockets of life, mostly older people who’d lived there for decades or college students who thought the commute was a good trade-off for cheap rent and an escape from dorm living. And there were still a couple busy blocks where people were raising families, bikes and toys scattered all over their small front yards, one slightly bigger corner lot that seemed to have a perpetual barbecue going all summer.

She smiled wryly to herself. Dilapidated or not, dying or not, this was Dogwood, her route, her beat, her home. Best neighborhood in the city, and she’d fight anyone who claimed otherwise, no matter what any stupid online “best and worst neighborhoods in Grisby” listicles claimed, no matter how many newspaper articles went on about the mass exodus to greener pastures, the lack of amenities, the rise in petty crime. They couldn’t see past the scruffy exterior, didn’t know the history, the magic these rows of houses hid.

She knew a lot of it was subjective. Not everyone could know that this was the street she and Lashonda always rode their bikes down to get slushies on summer afternoons. They didn’t recognize this empty lot as the place where local teenagers passed around warm, stolen beers and figured out what they wanted from life. They didn’t care that the bench near the playground was the exact spot where her nephew Jamal first reached up and called for “Thim! Thim!” to lift him up. If they didn’t know, maybe they’d just see another grimy, dying place.

But Zinn secretly believed that there was value in a part of the city having a little more room. She didn’t mean population density, but people having control over their space—the spaces they used and claimed as theirs, whether they technically owned them or not. In Dogwood, there was room to build something new or claim something abandoned, to make choices the neighbors wouldn’t approve of, to give special meaning to things that look like nothing to outsiders, to treat rules like suggestions. She’d been downtown a lot lately—that was where Kiana lived—and everything there felt so cramped and perfect and controlled. Maybe Kiana could walk to two different supermarkets and a subway stop in under ten minutes, but if she played music on her balcony for an hour, she’d probably get a call from the front desk telling her to keep it down. In Zinn’s neighborhood, playing loud music all night might lead to a screaming match in the street if people were feeling unreasonable, but nobody was going to call the cops over it or anything. People dealt with their own shit and did what they wanted without feeling like they were being watched and judged all the time.

As someone who walked down every street of Dogwood five times a week, she liked to keep track of things and look out for the people on her route, especially elderly people and kids on their own. That included her own family—her parents were getting older, and her twin niblings Jamal and Poppy were often home alone while Jaz was working.

She was climbing a set of creaking steps when her phone started to buzz again—another voice call. She dug for it in her pocket with a sigh, fully prepared for another prank, not really looking as she brought it to her ear.