Free Skin in the Game by Sabrina Vourvoulias Page A

kid among the zombies.”
    Her nose twitches. If it’s possible for Yoli to feel disdain for another human being—and I’m not sure it is—it’d be for the zombies. It’s not the drug use (she herself carries old scars from addiction), but the fact that most of them have an open future and decent schooling and still choose to live lit.
    Despair Yoli understands, boredom not so much. Those are her words. I know it’s not just boredom that drives the zombies, but why argue with her? Yoli is one of the few truly decent people I know, and when I argue I tend to alienate.
    â€œHelp me distribute food first,” she says. Her eyes are wide, full of entreaty and the type of pain that makes me want to reconfigure the world.
    I raise my eyebrows to let her know I’m on to her. She’s got magic—all of us do—and she’s apt to use it when she’s asking for the ghosts.
    She gives a little laugh and lets her eyes slide away from mine. “It is such a pain in the ass that you’re resistant to el embrujo,” she says.
    â€œYou know I wouldn’t be here otherwise,” I say.
    Long ago I learned that if you reveal one ugly story people will leave off asking for more. They’ll think they’ve gotten to the core of what makes you who you are. Yoli knows that my resistance to magic was born from an act of violence, but she doesn’t know any of the rest. And just as well.
    â€œI’m hearing things from the tents,” Yoli says by way of explanation for her attempted manipulation. “There are new folks in la Boca del Diablo. Almost every ghost I speak to is haunted and in fear and it’s not the usual. I could use your help figuring out what’s going on.”
    â€œLater,” I say. “I have only a short window of opportunity before the missing kid gets caught up and can no longer leave. But if you need help carrying those bags down…”
    She shakes her head. I’ve put some ten feet of busted-up asphalt between us before she says anything.
    â€œJimena.”
    Her use of my proper name stops me, spins me around to face her again.
    There’s a beat, or two, before she says anything. “Are we caught up? Can either of us really leave?”
    â€œWe’re not in thrall to anything,” I say.
    She gives me a smile weighted by doubt.
    *   *   *
    To Spell It in Spanish, End at I
    I think about Yoli’s smile as I climb down the Devil’s Mouth, to the heart of Zombie City. A scan of the tracks is all I need: the zombies cluster under the overpass, busy at their table of floored girder, heating powder on aluminum bowls made from can bottoms before shooting the stuff into their necks, because their arms are already shot to shit.
    One look isn’t enough to tell me whether the teen I’m searching for is in any of the tents that wing out from that central hub under the bridge, but it isn’t likely. The ghosts and zombies may share this eight-block stretch of rail bed, but the ghosts are families with children, and they don’t let anyone else near their tarps. Only Yoli.
    Still, I do a quick check down the alleys between tents, and plod through a carpet of used syringes as I walk the tracks. Nothing catches my attention. Except a needle almost makes it through the thick sole of my shoe, and I’m thankful—as I am at least once a day—that the department requires the clunkiest, heaviest mother of a shoe. I would already have the Hep alphabet flowing through my veins if not.
    I meet up with Yoli again as she’s hauling her garbage bags full of food down into la Boca and I’m climbing out. “I heard one of the Biblicals mention a new house,” she says when she stops to catch her breath.
    The Biblicals are two Boricuas and a Cuban—Ismael, Ezequiel, and Zacarías—who started as lowly bagmen in the eighties and are now kings of whatever makes it onto