The Side of the Building

Prologue

   Gray clouds crowded the skies over the run down, steel blue tenement at the end of the quiet street near the outskirts of Newark. A little girl sat gazing out the barred window of her room.
     "Alex?" called a woman's voice, "Alex get away from the window. You know you shouldn't be there. You could have been seen." Her brown eyes filled with worry over her daughter.
     "Lo siento Mamá. Solo querar a mira al cielo." The little girl stuck her bottom lip out.
   Alexandra Maria Travieso-Stark knew she was different. There were people out there who were looking for her, very bad people trying to use her talents to hurt others. Her gifts could never truly be appreciated by the rest of the world. To her mother stepping outside put Alex in instant danger. Estefanía Jimena Travieso or alternately Jamie Travieso was a black Argentinian woman and the daughter of a desaparecido. She had dedicated the past six years of her life to protecting her child and helping her learn, not that she needed it.
   Alex was learning at an alarmingly fast pace. She was doing college level math by the age of five and could read and speak coherently by her first birthday and Jamie was in the midst of teaching her English. When Alex turned three Jamie started getting her little gears and springs and such for her to keep her hands busy and distract her from the intrigue of the outside world. This didn't last long before Alex graduated to robotics toys and then later actual car parts. Alex never kept still whether it was her knees bouncing, nail biting, hair twirling, or just plain running around the house. Her curiosity was ever growing as she roamed around their home wreaking havoc just to see how things happened and how the world worked and always asked questions. Her favorite and most often asked questions almost always included her father.
She asked so many times that Jamie was running out of things to tell her and god forbid Jamie brought up Alex's father without a string of rapid fire questions following. All Alex knew about her father was that he was very smart and very important and that being his daughter was potentially dangerous. She knew her parents loved each other and that her mother moved cross country to protect her. Her mother would send video tapes, pictures, updated copies of Alex's baby book to him and within a few days he would send some of himself back. Alex would send letters with them describing the things she'd learned that week. His name was Tony, at least that was what Jamie called him, sometimes she would just call him Stark. At the end of each tape she told him to "say hi to Rhodey" for her. She was told he was her uncle and in the military, his title was Colonel James Rhodes. She kept the most recent picture of her father and Uncle Rhodey with their arms around each other smiling in her pocket.
Today looked as if it would be another boring day and Alex hated boring. She wanted to go outside and play with the neighborhood kids in their seemingly endless game of basketball or chat with old Ms. Maggie and her seven cats. She wanted to know what it was like to have friends. Alex hated their house with its squeaky stairs and small rooms and silent halls. She wished she could be outside with people other than her mother. Don't be mistaken, Alex loved her more than anything; more than french fries, more than oatmeal raisin cookies; more than she loved learning. Jamie Travieso was Alex's only human interaction in six years and taught Alex what she couldn't learn from books.
"Al, comida."
"Sí Mamá."
Jamie was an amazing cook and if Alex asked nicely enough she could make anything her heart desired. Alex knew a few recipes her mother had taught her and was learning quickly. Today's lunch was grilled cheese with homemade french fries and red grapes. The two ate in silence and cleaned up the same way before Alex ran down the hall to her room. The apartment below them was currently for rent so she could make as much noise as she wanted running through the hallway.
Once in her room her room she sat on her small wooden, framed bed and began to read. A couple of hours later she fell asleep. Jamie was about to wake her up for dinner when the door bell rang. Jamie new better than to answer the door and continued down the hall. Whoever was outside didn't enjoy being ignored very much because they began pounding against the old door. The unfamiliar noise startled Alex awake and she ran down the hallway into her mother's arms. Jamie ran back to Alex's room with the child in her arms. She placed Alex on the floor before blockading the door with Alex's dresser and bookcase. She told Alex to hide under the bed. Jamie heard the apartment door burst open and prepared herself for a fight.
"Hello?" called a gruff voice,"Estefanía? Come out, come out, wherever you are!" The sound of Jamie's bedroom door slamming across the hall made Alex jump a little. The horrible noise of bodies being thrown against the door rang through the small white room. "Fuck it." said the man. She heard three clicks and then rapid beeping. The door exploded, as did the dresser and bookcase, sending wooden shrapnel and flaming books everywhere. Jamie's arms were covered in cuts and scrapes as she was flung to the ground. "You should have opened the door Miss Travieso. Now, where is she?" he spoke carefully while pointing a gun at the young woman's head.
"She's gone. Don't even bother looking for her."
"We won't have to. Eventually, you'll tell us exactly where she is." Three other men entered through the destroyed doorframe. "These two will guard you day and night until she's found. This man will be your interrogator. Behave yourself Estefanía." The guards tied her to a rocking chair and left to stand outside the door. The man with the voice left and she heard a car drive off.
Alex laid shaking on the floor as her mother's pained screams echoed off the walls all through the night and continued for three days. Alex was doing everything to suppress the warbling of her stomach. The stomach noises grew louder and her mother's crying ceased.
"Did you... hear something?"he questioned. Jamie shook her head. "I thought I heard-" A loud growl erupted from Alex's stomach. The man stepped closer to the bed and leaned down. Once his pale, narrow face was level with Alex's she kicked him in the nose out of pure fear. He fell back and howled at his newly broken nose. "Why you little-" he reached under the bed and grabbed her by the hair while yanking her out. She kicked and screamed as he tugged her toward the door. "Tell your boss we've found the girl. She was here all along. It must have been very difficult to stay hidden for so long; nothing to eat, nothing to drink, no where to use the little-girl's-room. That must have been torture for just a little girl, and to hear your mother's screams the entire time, you surely haven't gotten much sleep. How does it feel to be so useless? It's such a shame that she fought so hard for nothing." The interrogator spun Alex around, still holding onto her hair, and she heard the sound of a loaded gun being cocked. Alex looked at her mother mortified as Jamie mouthed 'Te Amo, Alexandra' with the fondest look she could muster. Not a second later the man fired and the bullet travel straight through Jamie Travieso's head and imbedded itself in the wall behind her.
Alex screamed and cried and in a fit of rage kicked the man in the shins before biting his hand so hard he drew blood. As he keeled over in his pained shouting he released his hold on Alex. She picked up one of the charred legged of her dresser, which had been splintered to a point, and started to repeatedly stab him with it until she hit an artery and he bled out. The guards rushed into her room when they heard the shouts, one tripped over the interrogator's dead body. The guards' eyes bulged out of their heads as Alex, still engulfed in rage, split the man on the ground's skull open and proceeded to stab the other guard through the abdomen.
She collected all of their weapons and dragged them into the kitchen on her sheets. She took the weapons apart on the kitchen table before grabbing a backpack, the biggest encyclopedia she owned, and a slingshot while leaving all the windows in the house open. She stuffed her bag with an extra change of clothes and all the snacks they had in the pantry along with some water bottles. Alex then ventured into her mother's room. Underneath a pile of shoes and laundry in the closet was a safe with all the extra cash leftover they didn't use from her father's letters. Alex typed in the five digit code, 7-8-2-7-5, and the safe popped open. She quickly counted all the money from the multiple envelopes. $2,387. She stowed the money in her bag before returning to the kitchen. She set to work and about fifteen minutes and a couple of bathroom breaks later Alex had made herself what seemed to be working leg braces. She snatched a box of matches and some liquified petroleum gas they used for their gas stove and trudged her way outside. She hid her bag in old Ms. Maggie's hedges for safe keeping. After soaking her room in petroleum she ran to the bushes where she stored her backpack and waited.
Ten minutes later, a black, 2007 Toyota RAV4 SUV pulled up into her driveway. One man exited the vehicle with two guards following behind him. The driver still sat in the front seat. She bit a hole in the bottom of the water bottle and fled from the bushes unseen. Alex sprayed the entire water bottle on both the underbelly of the car and the asphalt beneath it and discarded the plastic bottle in the nearest recycling bin. She treaded slowly around the back of the vehicle and walked up to the driver as nonchalantly as possible.
"Excusa me, Señor?" She smiled politely while knocking on his window. He rolled it down.
"I don't want any of ya damn cookies." He was about to roll his window back up.
"Your carro is leak, Señor." His face went slack as he left the door open and ran to the back of the SUV to inspect the damage. Alex entered the car and unzipped her backpack. Placing the encyclopedia on the seat she scooted her butt onto the book. Pressing the button on her leg braces they extended to meet the accelerator and the brake pedal. She slammed the door causing the driver to snap his head up in attention. Alex put the car in reverse and ran the driver over, and then ran him over again as she drove forward and she lit the whole matchbox on fire. She shot the flaming matchbox out the car window with the slingshot at her open window. Running the man over once more she backed out of the driveway for the first and last time, the top floor of the tenement alight with fire behind her as she typed the address into the GPS. Driving off westward with tears forming in her chocolate brown eyes,she didn't look back.