CHAPTER 10 — LOOKING UP
The next day, the alleys feel smaller.
Same Marrow wind. Same cracked sidewalks. Same trash that never quite makes it all the way to the bins. But ever since I walked back from the market with stolen bread in my hoodie and a vendor shouting about missing stock, the space between the walls has been buzzing.
Too many angles. Too many places to get trapped.
Lunch at St. Mary's wasn't much better than breakfast yesterday. Thin soup, no seconds. My stomach is still running on the memory of those rolls. The kids looked better than they did, though, and that has to count for something.
I pull my hood up against the cold and cut along a side street instead of the main road. It's quieter this way, less traffic, fewer people. That should make me feel better.
It doesn't.
Footsteps scrape behind me, off-beat from my own. Not loud. Not rushing. Just… matching.
I glance at a shop window, get a warped reflection of myself in the glass. Gray hoodie, hands in pockets, head down. A shape a little ways back in the distortion, too bulky to be a kid.
Could be nothing.
Could be the vendor I stole from. Could be someone he shouted to later, "Find the hoodie that walks like he's casing the block."
I cut right between a nail salon and a shuttered laundromat, into a narrow alley that runs parallel to the main drag. It's the kind of space you use when you want to avoid attention.
Or when you want to corner someone.
There's brick on one side and the blank flank of another building on the other, patched with old posters and graffiti. Dumpsters, milk crates, a stack of broken pallets leaning like a tired fence. The alley hooks left near the end.
I'm three steps in when the footsteps behind me speed up.
"Hey!" a voice calls. Young, male, angry in that brittle way that sounds like it's borrowed from older people. "Yo, hoodie!"
I keep walking. If I stop and it's nothing, I look paranoid. If I stop and it's something, I'm choosing the ground. My brain runs geometry. Distance to the corner. Distance back to the street. How long it would take to turn and—
Something hits my shoulder. Not hard enough to knock me down, but solid enough to say you're not walking away from this.
I pivot, weight on the balls of my feet, back already seeking a wall.
The guy in front of me is maybe twenty. Hoodie under a puffy jacket, jaw tight. His eyes flick over my face, then to my hoodie pocket, like he's physically tracking the shape of memory.
Behind him, another kid hangs back at the mouth of the alley. This one wears a beanie and a bandana with jawbone teeth printed on it, pushed down around his neck. Marrow Boys-lite. Aspirational.
"I know you," the first one says, breath puffing in little white bursts. "You were at the market yesterday."
"Lots of hoodies at the market," I say. "It's Gotham."
"Yeah, but I got eyes," he snaps. "You think you're slick? My uncle's missing stock. Bread. Four, five bags. He loses money, I don't eat. So if you're walking around with the balls to come back through here, you better have cash, or I'm checking your pockets."
So the vendor's family. Great.
"I don't have anything," I say. It's technically true. Today I didn't steal anything.
He steps in closer, trying to loom. He's only an inch taller than me, but he's broad. Been eating more regularly until recently, probably. The bandana kid at the alley mouth shifts, restless, peeking past him.
"Don't play," he says. "Hoodie, skinny, that face—yeah, that's you. You knew what you were doing. You think you can just jack from family and walk?"
Left side: brick. Right side: brick. Behind me: deeper into the alley, bend coming up, no guarantee of exit. In front of me: angry guy, hands starting to curl.
"Look," I say, keeping my voice flat. "I'm not trying to start anything. But you're wrong if you think I walked out of there with my arms full. I don't have what you're looking for."
"Then you won't mind if I check," he says, reaching for my front pocket.
His fingers brush fabric.
My body doesn't like that. Not the contact, not the idea of someone else's hands in the same space as my tools. My stomach is empty, but my chest is full of static.
"Don't," I say quietly.
He grins like he won something. "Oh, you do got something."
His hand closes around the edge of my hoodie pocket.
We're in a bad shape. Corridors, not options. Ground level is all chokepoints, and I walked into this one with my eyes open. Stupid.
…or maybe not completely. Behind him, up the wall, there's a rust-stained ladder hanging down from a fire escape. The bottom rung is just out of reach if you stand flat-footed, but there's a stack of crates near the wall. A drainpipe runs up beside it, bolted in place.
Vertical line. Possible.
My heart punches once, hard, and then gets quiet. Time doesn't slow, but the pieces settle.
Ground: one dimension.
Up: second.
He tightens his grip, trying to drag me closer. "Come on, man—"
I step in as if I'm going with it, then twist, letting his pull spin me past him. I slap his wrist off my hoodie and use the momentum to put my shoulder into his chest just enough to knock him off step.
He stumbles, swears, grabs for me again.
I'm already moving.
Two strides to the crates. One foot on the closest one—wobbly, plastic complaining under my weight—second foot up, pushing off. Hands reach for the bottom rung of the ladder.
My fingers catch cold metal. The crate slides away under me with a squeal.
For a moment I'm hanging there with my feet pedaling air, shoulders screaming. If my hands slip, I'd hit the ground wrong. Break a wrist. Crack a rib. Easy.
"Seriously?" the guy shouts behind me. "You running up?"
He grabs at my ankle. Fingers brush the sole of my shoe, then lose it as I jerk my leg up and swing. The ladder bites into my palms, but it moves—just a little. Enough.
Rust flakes rain down on his face. He curses and staggers back, wiping his eyes.
I haul myself up rung by rung, arms shaking, hoodie pulling tight across my shoulders. Pockets drag; the micro rig knocks against my ribs, heavier than usual.
The cold air stings my lungs. My boots slam each rung harder than they should. The whole thing rattles like a cheap skeleton.
"Get down here!" the kid yells. His friend at the alley mouth just stares, wide-eyed, like nobody ever considered that direction an option.
I reach the first landing and swing myself over the rail. Knees hit metal with a hollow clang that echoes between the buildings. I roll onto my back, panting.
Below, the angry one jumps for the ladder, fingers scraping the bottom rung. He's taller, but not enough. The crates slid when I pushed off, now sitting at a bad angle, too far back to be useful.
"Come on!" he snarls at his friend. "Help me get that down!"
The bandana kid hesitates, looks up at me, then shakes his head. "Ain't climbing after some dude for bread. Uncle's mad, yeah, but not that mad."
"You little—"
Their argument fades under the pulse in my ears.
From up here, the alley looks different. Same brick, same dumpsters, same cracked concrete. But the angles… change. Sightlines.
Down there, it's a tunnel.
Up here, there are exits.
I drag my back against the wall and sit up slowly, legs still unsteady, hands tingling from the climb.
Ground level isn't the problem, my brain says. The problem is staying on it.
I don't go back down right away.
Once my breathing calms, I get to my feet and test the landing. It's nothing fancy: rusted mesh platform, rails, a second ladder leading up to the next floor. Some old cigarette butts and a crushed soda can. Someone used this once for smoke breaks and then forgot it existed.
The metal creaks when I shift my weight. Too loud for my taste. That's a problem for later.
I step to the edge and look out.
From here I can see the mouth of the alley, the slice of street beyond it, the tops of cars sliding past. If that kid brings friends, I'll see them before they see me. The cops at the corner. The Marrow Boy on his bike, cutting through traffic, jawbone bandana up.
I lean back so they can't catch a reflection. One problem at a time.
The ladder up is fixed to the wall with big bolts that have seen better winters. I give it a hard shake. It groans, but it holds.
Arms still complaining, I test the climb. My shoes scuff the rungs, rubber squeaking when they hit patches of ice. Every move makes some kind of noise: metal rasp, breath, fabric swish.
Not as bad as a yelling vendor, but bad enough.
Noise is information. Information gets people hurt.
I file the thought.
Top of the second ladder: another landing, another platform. From here, I can almost see over the roof edge of the shorter building on the alley's far side.
If I can get there, I don't have to go back down where I came from. I can exit somewhere else, as someone else.
I brace one hand on the wall and step onto the rail, then press my other hand flat against the rough brick for balance. The roof edge is only a small jump away, but the drop between is enough to snap bones if I miss.
I don't like relying on "if I don't mess this up" as a plan. But staying here is worse.
Bend knees. Pick a point. Don't look down, look at.
I push off. For a second there's nothing, just cold air and the weird quiet that happens when your brain deletes everything except movement.
Then my hands slam onto the lip of the roof. Fingers dig into gritty snow and frozen tar paper. My chest hits hard enough to knock air out of me. My legs swing, scrape brick, then hook.
I haul myself up and roll onto my back, stars popping at the edge of my vision.
I lie there for a minute, feeling the thud of my heartbeat in my ears and the sting in my palms where the skin rubbed raw.
Then I start to notice the good parts.
The roof is flat, tar and gravel, with a low parapet. HVAC unit humming in one corner, a couple of metal vents rising like stunted trees. No one else up here. No footprints in the thin crust of snow besides mine.
I stand and move carefully across the surface, testing my balance, listening for anything that sounds like "about to collapse."
It holds.
I walk to the edge facing the street and peek over.
From this angle, the Marrow looks like a layered map. Buildings stacking into each other. Fire escapes zig-zagging down. Streets cutting between them in lines that suddenly matter less, because there are others crisscrossing above.
People are still ants down there. Cars, sound, flashing lights. A bus huffs to a stop three blocks away. Steam curls from sewer grates.
Up here, none of them are really looking.
They don't look up. Not unless something explodes or screams.
I can work with that.
I turn slowly, taking in the connections.
The roof I'm on backs into two others at slightly different heights—short gaps, easy to cross if I'm careful. One has a metal ladder up to a water tank. Another has ductwork I could use as cover. A few buildings down, a taller brick block looms, old sign half-bolted to the side where it faces a main road.
On that tall building, the windows on one stack are dark all the way down. No lights. No flickers of TV. No movement.
Could be empty. Could be something else.
I bookmark it in my head. Dark stack, rusted sign, three buildings over from the shelter's cross street.
If it stays dark every night, that's information.
The wind cuts through my hoodie, sharp and insistent. Being up here is no warmer than ground level, but the cold feels different—cleaner. Less crowded.
I shove my hands into my pockets, fingers brushing the fabric of the rig. Tools, weight, familiar shapes. Heavier than any stolen bread, but they never feel like they don't belong.
Alright, I think. Streets are lines. Roofs are nodes. Fire escapes, ladders, drainpipes: those are edges between.
It's just another system.
By the time the sun starts pretending to set—Gotham midwinter "afternoon" more like a long exhale of gray—I've mapped a chunk of the block without touching the sidewalk again.
I don't go far. Not yet. One block, then the next. Up ladder, across narrow gap, down to a lower roof, back up again. Learning what my body can do and what it can't.
I learn fast which surfaces want to kill me: smooth ice near gutters, patches where the tar's bubbled and cracked, metal grates that clatter under my feet. I test ways to step lighter—weight on the ball, roll, don't stomp—but my shoes are not helping.
Every time I cross a metal fire escape, the grating tattles. Clang, scrape, squeak.
Up here, that sound bounces. Down there, someone might just hear "weird noise," shrug, move on.
I still don't like it.
Noise problem, I note. Shoes. Tread. Maybe cloth. Maybe tape.
Add it to the list.
I also learn sightlines.
From a low roof I can see into second-story windows—kitchens, living rooms, one guy sitting alone at a folding table eating noodles from a pot. From a higher one, I can see supermarket trucks inching around the corner, the top of the vendor's stall awnings, the spot where the bread guy's van parks.
I don't go near that stretch. Not today.
I keep to the parts where heads don't usually tilt. AC units, vents, brick lip of the parapet. When I have to cross open roof, I crouch instinctively, shoulders hunched, hood shadowing my face. Silly, maybe, but it feels wrong to stand up straight where anyone could see me.
At the end of the block, I find another fire escape with a ladder that goes almost all the way to the ground. I test its bolts, then climb down halfway and look out through the gaps.
Street below. People passing. A woman with two kids, one whining, the other dragging a broken-wheeled suitcase. A Marrow Boy on his bike, head down, earbuds in. A cop car cruises by, windows up, heat likely blasting inside.
None of them look at the fire escape.
I could drop down right now, walk past as just another kid. If anyone asked, I'd say I came out of that building. Who checks?
Instead, I climb back up.
The route back toward St. Mary's is easier now that I know a couple of anchor points. HVAC unit A to ladder B to low wall C, then cross over the alley with the crates and the vendor's nephew. I glance down as I pass.
The crates are still there, more or less where they slid. The kid's gone. No one's waiting.
From above, the memory of him grabbing at me looks… smaller.
Doesn't mean it wasn't real. Doesn't mean it can't happen again.
It just means it doesn't have to be my only option.
Halfway back to the shelter's block, I find a roof with a better view. Slightly taller than its neighbors, flat, with a big chimney stack I can lean against to stay out of sight. From here, the Marrow unfolds.
St. Mary's cross on the roofline, silhouetted against the bruised sky.
The market row, with its patchwork awnings and drifting steam.
The elevated tracks, rusted ribs cutting through the district like a half-healed scar.
Streetlights ticking on one by one.
If I squint, I can plot paths in my head. Lines between fire escapes, over alleys, around dead drops.
Line One: from this roof to the shelter, entirely above ground level except for the last drop into a side alley.
Line Two: from here toward the market, staying high until the last block, then choosing where to come down so nobody connects Hoodie Kid from St. Mary's with strange vertical exits.
Later, I can add more. Build a grid.
As the sky darkens, windows light up in patchy constellations. Families eating. TV blue-flicker. One building stays dark in that same column of windows I noticed earlier. The tall brick with the dead sign.
Nothing. No one.
That could mean dangerous. Could mean abandoned. Could mean opportunity.
I file it away. If it's still dark every night this week, I'll check.
The wind picks up. My fingers have gone numb, even inside my pockets. My toes aren't much better. I should get back before I lose the ability to climb without showing up at the ER.
I retrace my path, testing how fast I can move without making more noise. The answer is "not fast enough," but it's a start.
At the final fire escape above the shelter's block, I pause on the landing and look down at the alley.
People shuffle below, shoulders hunched, no one thinking about the dark shapes above them. The emergency exit I fixed doesn't scream anymore when someone pushes through it. The heater hum I tuned yesterday leaks out from thin windows, a low, steady note.
I lower myself onto the ladder and climb down the last stretch, boots landing softly on concrete. For one second, I stand there in the alley, head tipped back, looking up at where I just was.
Ground level is where other people decide what happens to you.
Up there… I'm not in control yet. But I could be.
I pull my hood forward, tuck my hands deep into my pockets, and step toward the shelter door, already mentally tearing apart my shoes and putting them back together quieter.
Tools. Routes. Height.
If the city wants to crush people between its teeth, it should at least have to work for it.