It was when Vic stopped at an intersection, waiting for the little green person to light up, that her phone went off in her pocket. It startled a few people in the small crowd around her, including herself, as the first line of Chop Suey blasted at full volume, “WAKE UP!” She mindlessly took out her phone to check her messages, assuming to see something from her Aunt or maybe one of her band members asking questions about the rehearsal. Instead, she found a message left by a private number. Nausea bubbled in her stomach and crawled its way up to her throat the moment she saw the first two words,
[Hello, Nobody.]
The green man flashed from the traffic lights above her head, but she didn't notice. People pushed past her to hurry across the road while she stared at her phone. She didn't think she was afraid. She just felt sick. It took everything she had in her to click on the message and read further,
[Hello, Nobody. The Prosperity Bank on Wadley Ave. will robbed tomorrow afternoon. Will pay you to deal with it, without going to authorities. Good PR, too. Have fun, vigilante. -Ρεκαλ]
[Who are you,] Vic began to text, then backspaced and wrote, [How did you get this number?] After a couple more attempts of giving a decent response to the mystery person on the other end of the line, she deleted them all and simply sent back,
[Wrong number, my dude.]
A pitifully cute last defense of her identity. She knew that it wouldn't fool anyone, but it made her chuckle – albeit nervously. She immediately stuffed her phone in her pocket and flipped down her board, skating her way across the road and forcing a car to pull on the breaks. She left the honking and pissed off traffic behind her as she weaved through the people on the sidewalk, her mind distracted by everything that small message entailed for her.
When she got to the skate park, she found it practically deserted. Weird, this was usually the hangout for those kids who'd ditch school to smoke here. They generally hung out in the tunnel, blocking it off from anyone else. Guess that meant it was hers today. She rolled through the tunnel, looking over the ground at all of the cigarette buds and the amateur graffiti sprawled over the walls. Yeah, they could keep their tunnel. She skated back out and began simply meandering up and down the ramps of the park, a bored expression on her face as she did so. A trick every now and again, nothing too flashy (she wasn't amazing), a fall here, a reopened scab there. Eventually she rolled the board to a stop with her hands in her pockets. Her cheeks were tinted pink from effort and her knees were red, in dire need of another band-aid. She turned her head up, looking directly up at the skull-marked face of the monstrous bird that had been watching her.
Vic had known it was there, of course she did, you'd have to be blind not to notice. With her eyes still fixated on the bird, she flipped up her skateboard with her foot and caught it, tucking it under her arm. She walked up to the fence post the bird was perched upon and gulped water down from the drinking fountain near it. She lifted herself away from the fountain with a satisfied sigh and wiped her mouth, eyeing the dark-feathered bird yet again. She came over to lean her back on the fence beside it, taking out a packet of cigarettes and lighter from her pockets. She lit herself up one, drew a breath and let out a thin stream of smoke from her pursed lips. She turned her head back up to the bird, holding the packet out to it.
"Want one?"