Sierra Santiago and the Invisible City

Chapter 1 - T-Minus

Seven minutes to go.

Just seven minutes, by the slow ticking clock on the wall, and summer stretched out like the endless fields of Prospect Park. So why was Mr. Albridge still bumbling along some other droll of a lecture like it matters? Why couldn't the clock move a little faster?

Sierra gazed around the room: in the next seat over, her best friend Bennie bobbed up and down in the endless slow-mo head bang of the unconscious. Ysenia scribbled a note to Emani, who silently mouthed out phrases from her newest rhyme. And Robbie- Sierra allowed her gaze to hang on Robbie for three reverent ticks of the wall clock before looking quickly away- Robbie was drawing as usual, sketching winding swirls and hidden letters into another page of his math notebook. Big Malik and Little Malik were both staring at Mr. Albridge but Sierra could tell they were really plotting out some mischief for the party at Sully's later that night. She shot a timid glance back over to Robbie and noticed he was not drawing now but gazing intently out the classroom window at that monstrosity of a building, looming and windowless, that they called the Vault.

Kids at PS 291 in downtown Brooklyn probably spent more time telling dumb stories about the Vault than doing anything else. All kinds of people were said to have disappeared into its depths and never returned. Both Maliks swore up and down that it had a rocket ship or missile inside it ("That's why there's no windows! It's really a launch pad!") and several people claimed it was guarded by a squadron of blind ex-marines who let out blood curdling howls to alert each other of intruders. Even Mr. Albridge had added to the local mythology of the place, claiming to have once seen an extra tall figure silhouetted against the dark sky late one night after leaving a long-running PTA meeting.

But now Albridge was going on at length on some much more mundane topic, something about the founding fathers and going to bed at a reasonable hour. Sierra let her restless thoughts drift back over the past week. It'd been a strange one that only seemed to get stranger as the weekend drew near. Maybe it was just the excitement of her last days of 9th grade, the smell of pizza, fried chicken, sun on the hot pavement and the sound of smiling people out in the street, but something, something a little off kilter was going on...

First there was the problem with the murals. They just wouldn't stay still. Sierra passed six on her morning skateboard ride to school, some of them memorials to friends and family who'd died, some scenic landscapes, some just tags and abstract shapes. But all of them have been changing, just ever so slightly, from day to day. The faces, one of them Bennie's big brother Vincent who was killed three years earlier, all seemed to be gazing with curiosity towards downtown Brooklyn where Sierra's school was. By Wednesday even the jagged shapes and fluid word loops had begun to gather and point towards the downtown edges of their walls. It reminded Sierra of the faces people make when they're staring down the tunnel on the train platform, waiting for that light to come around the bend.

And then there was the smoke. Late Wednesday night Sierra rounded a corner onto Lafayette on her way home from Bennie's and there it was: a single plume, rising up from about five feet off the sidewalk. Really, if it hadn't been for the whole business of the murals changing around, Sierra would've just ignored it. But the unmistakable smell of Malagueñas filled the air and absolutely no one, not a soul, was around to account for it. The street was empty.

Finally, there was her grand-tío Lázaro. The thick aroma of cigar smoke immediately reminded her of him because his little apartment upstairs always had that smell, as if he had had those little air freshening hangy things made to send out the scent of his favorite tabacos from the island. Sierra's grand-tío Lázaro had always been a kind of mystery to her; a nasty stroke four years ago left him bed-bound and mostly nonsensical. With Sierra's much older brother Jimmy off in Afghanistan and slightly older brother Juan away getting famous with his salsa/thrasher band, their mom had put her in charge of keeping things orderly in Tío Lázaro's apartment. Only thing was that the place managed to stay quite neat and tidy all by itself, so Sierra got used to going up there and half-tidying up for forty-five minutes every other day while her uncle chuckled and sang old Puerto Rican songs to her. But this week- this crazy week, old man Lázaro sat up suddenly and looked Sierra right in the eye, something that hadn't happened once in the four years since his stroke. He seemed to want to say something, almost spoke, but then just chuckled and lay back down. Sierra got completely creeped out, finished her fake clean up early and quickly retreated back downstairs to pretend everything was normal.

She looked up at the clock--four minutes and thirty seconds. She wanted to scream, could almost see herself sailing out the classroom on her faithful skateboard, careening down the hallway, out the school door and into the warm embrace of summer. Summer in Brooklyn was t-shirts and shorts and no more sticky school clothes and boys out on the streets and no waking up at stupid six in the morning and overnights at Bennie's and popsicles from Carlos' corner store and water fights around open hydrants and hours and hours of just skating and skating and skating and nothing else. Starting it all off was a party at Sully's, where Robbie would almost definitely be, even if he'd be shy and withdrawn as usual. Speaking of Robbie, why was he still staring out at The Vault? The boy looked downright fascinated, his skinny braids pulled back into a ponytail, a few stragglers framing his dark brown face.

With a minute and a half to go, Sierra looked down at her black jeans and the crazy screaming face on her t-shirt. She wondered if she was too fat or skinny or goth or boring for Robbie. She tried as hard as she could not to care if she was too dark skinned or light skinned, if her hair was too curly or too fine, if he saw all those bracelets clanking around the leather band on her wrist. She'd never let what other kids thought get in the way of her style, always prided herself on being just herself, Sierra Santiago, and if anyone didn't like it they could walk on by. But then came Robbie. A mid-year transfer from Stuyvesant, he had a skinny butt and loping stride, a Brooklynese mixed with Creole way of speaking, and what seemed like one endless labyrinth of liquidy hip hop letters sketched across all his notebooks, textbooks, pants and backpacks, not to mention any desk he happened to be sitting at or near.

To break the tension, Sierra reached her pen towards her best friend's still-bobbing head and tried to ever-so-slowly place it in her ear.

The sound of a boy yelling came from outside the window. The voice was terrified- the way people holler in horror movies when they're getting eaten.

Bennie's head shot up, Sierra's pen clattered to the floor. After an eerie silence Sierra heard the most horrible howling she'd ever heard in her life.

It sounded human and not at the same time.

It kept getting louder and louder.

It came from the Vault.