by Myna Chang

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You’re never gonna believe what happened on the garbage run today. First, there was this gorgeous girl, then there was a car crash, and a crazy crackhead tried to kidnap me, but I got away and tackled this thieving hipster dude and shoved a glove in his mouth before a giant guy kicked my ass and I lost my job, and I gotta tell you, it was freakin’ awesome.

I guess that might be a little confusing, so I’ll slow down and start at the beginning.

See, I’ve been working on the trash truck for about a month. Yeah, it’s gross. And some of the stuff people put in the dumpsters? Nasty. But the pay’s good. My uncle helped me get the job. He says someone like me can’t expect much out of life and I should consider myself lucky to be employed by the esteemed Washington Waste Corp. Whatever.

So, anyway, we were about halfway through our shift. We cover the business district near Capitol Heights, you know? I work the back of the truck, and Mr. Esposito, he drives. We’d just turned the corner toward that chowder restaurant on Fourteenth. Yeah, that rotten fish stink’ll make your eyes water. I was busy trying not to gag, and then I saw her.

Prettiest girl in the neighborhood. Sometimes she wears this bright pink sweater and, I swear to god, that sweater was sweet talking me today, saying Hey Tony! Look over here! I couldn’t stop staring. Yeah, sorry, I know that’s rude. But that’s when it happened—this random hipster-looking dude bumped into her and snaked the phone out of her pocket. And then he just absconded with it! Absconded’s a pretty good word, isn’t it? I learned it from one of those police shows my mom watches. Not that I still watch TV with my mom. Anyway, the thief hightailed it down the street, and Pretty Girl didn’t even know it’d happened. I couldn’t let that dirtbag rob my girl, now could I? So, I jumped off the truck and ran after him.

Mr. Esposito must have been surprised because he stomped on the brakes. Oops. Morning rush is brutal in D.C.—those idiot drivers always follow too close behind the truck, riding up on our bumper. So, of course, this little silver Prius slammed into the back of the garbage truck. The crunch of vegan plastic on the stainless-steel lifter did not sound pretty. Then the cursing and honking started.

Mr. Esposito yelled at me, but I don’t know what he was saying. Honestly, I can’t understand half of the stuff that comes out of that man’s mouth. It’s like his cheeks are stuffed with rocks. Oh, come on, don’t give me the stink eye for saying that. I love the old guy. I just can’t figure out what he’s trying to tell me, most of the time.

Like I was saying, I was about to catch up to the hipster pickpocketer—gotta be a better word for that—when the racket from the fender-bender got his attention. He saw me tearin’ after him, and then he poured on the speed. He knocked one of the Movie Emporium’s trash bins over, the asshole—somebody’s gotta clean that up—and took off. I hurdled the trash can, but almost bought it when I landed on a flattened Starbucks cup. I got my balance just as Pickster—yeah, that’s a good word—just as Pickster ran across the street. Bastard was fast.

I bounded into traffic after him just as the light changed. A red Mazda almost nailed me, but I slid across its hood and grabbed a light pole, swung around, and ended up only a few steps behind the thief.

Little Mrs. Rosa picked that moment to step out of her herb shop right in front of Pickster. She’s kinda scary, always yelling and waving her arms. And her garbage! I can’t even tell you how queasy I get when we pick up her trash on Friday mornings. It’s fetid. You like that word? I had to look up some new ones to describe the unholy grossitude of Mrs. Rosa’s dumpster. Still, I didn’t want the thief to run over her.

“Look out, Mrs. Rosa!” I yelled, but she shook her fist at me. Figures. She might be a short stack, but she comes with extra mean syrup. Pickster must have sensed her menacing aura, because he dodged way far around her and raced on, weaving through a clump of pedestrians. Graceful jerk. He was like some kind of ballerina-dude. Gotta remember to look up the right word for that.

Anyway, I had to shove my way through the crowd, and for a second, I thought I’d lost him. Then someone up ahead screamed, and a business suit bounced off a newspaper stand and belly-flopped into the gutter. Ha! Maybe Pickster wasn’t so nimble after all.

He was still a couple of steps ahead of me, but I’ve got these really long arms, see? My hand just brushed the back of his ugly flannel shirt when the crackhead that sleeps in the doorway of the boarded-up bookstore lurched into me. I tried to avoid him, but it was too late, so I spun around and crashed into a street sign. I think it said No Parking.

Now, this is weird, but a split-second later, a delivery truck almost ran over me. It was one of those unmarked white jobs that are always zipping around. The driver must have been in an extra big hurry; he bounced halfway onto the curb. I made a wild dive and managed to escape, rolling back into motion, but Pickster had gained a lot of ground.

Luckily, he doesn’t know the neighborhood as well as I do. He darted into the alley, headed toward Molly’s Massage Parlor, and I knew I had him. That alley is skinny, and it’s a dead end. We have a hell of a time trying to reverse the garbage truck out of there, every Tuesday and Friday at ten a.m., right on schedule. Mr. Esposito runs a tight truck; we’re never late.

I rounded the corner into the alley, barely losing any speed on the turn. Pickster was already backtracking, coming right at me, too fast to stop. We crashed into each other, but I’m bigger, see, so I bulldozed him.

I guess it knocked the air out of him because he didn’t put up a fight. Or maybe he was too grossed out by my grimy rubber garbage gloves. I shoved one in his mouth, then I grabbed the phone and took off, leaving Pickster flat on his back outside Molly’s.

I wanted to hurry back and return the phone to Pretty Girl. Maybe take the opportunity to ask her out. I mean, I was sure she’d noticed me before. I see her on our route almost every day. Sometimes she’s standing by the bodega, sometimes the low-fat yogurt shop. That stuff tastes like crap, by the way. So yeah, I’ve seen her smiling at me. How could she say no to a date, after I’d rescued her phone?

Then I noticed it wasn’t really a phone. The shape was right, but it was hella heavy and didn’t have any buttons. I slowed down, trying to figure out what the heck I was holding. That’s when a new dude came out of the blue and hit me. Hard. Like a tank. I don’t even remember falling down—I just saw stars, and then he ripped the phone-looking thing out of my hand.

My brain took a second to reset, but then I remembered what was going on, and I got pissed. Who did this new Tank Dude think he was, punching me in the face? I know I haven’t got a modeling career in my future, at least according to my uncle, but I’d still like to keep the facial scarring to a minimum.

He ran down Thirteenth, shoving people out of the way as he went.

I still hoped to return the not-phone to the babe, so I bolted after him. He sidestepped the crowd at the bus shelter, you know the one with all the weird “wanted” notes posted on the side? I don’t see how that one lady has lost so many cats.

Tank Dude kept going, zooming past the barber shop, and wow, he was seriously outpacing me.

I hate to admit it, but I considered giving up. My face hurt. Each one of that guy’s knuckles had left a separate dent in my cheek bone, and my eye was swelling shut. But then I felt the disjangled vibration of a garbage truck coming up behind me. It was the Park View crew, and one of my old high school buddies was riding shotgun.

“Step up, Tony. We’ll catch that sucker-punch bastard!”

“Oh, yeah,” I yelled and jumped on the back step of the truck as it accelerated. The driver, I don’t remember his name, laid on the horn and picked up speed. SUVs and bicyclists scattered, and we made it to the Oakmont intersection in no time.

Tank Dude was directly ahead, so I vaulted off, hitting the pavement at a dead run, and zeroed in on the guy.

“Stop right there, you pike-faced son of a bitch!” I yelled.

In hindsight, that might not have been the best strategy. He turned toward me and, I swear to god, he snorted like one of those angry bulls in the Saturday morning cartoons and charged at me.

At that point, I thought maybe I might die. But then I saw Pretty Girl. Not, like, for real, you know, but in my imagination. I couldn’t let that babe down, so I put on my ugly face and stood my ground.

Tank Dude was coming right at me, and maybe I tensed up because I was scared, but, turns out, I didn’t have to fight him after all. You wanna know why? Because some sneaky coward came up behind me and tased me. Shot me right in the back. It knocked me face-first into the sidewalk, and I’m pretty sure I squeaked on the way down. The hair on the right side of my head spiked up, and then Tank Dude dragged me into one of those sketchy white delivery vans.

I must have blacked out after that because the next thing I remember was waking up handcuffed to a table in a little gray room with a scratched mirror on the wall. Tank Dude was there, along with some other guy, probably the weasel who tased me. They told me I couldn’t leave the facility because I’d messed up their covert op and I’d seen too much and that made me a threat to national security. Can you believe that?

Then I got to meet Pretty Girl, in person. She’s even more beautiful up close. But she’s not really a neighborhood girl. I’m supposed to call her Agent Mendoza—she said if I call her Pretty Girl again she’ll rip my tongue out. I think she meant it. Turns out she’s really a counterintelligence agent. I guess she wasn’t ever smiling at me, like I thought. She was hanging out in different parts of the neighborhood as part of some courier thing, where she handed off secret stuff to the agents working in the foreign embassies down by Dupont Circle. Wild, huh?

It gets even better. You know that pink sweater I told you about? That’s a signal. Kind of like a secret handshake, so her surveillance team will know when she might need lethal intervention. See, I knew that sweater was talking. I just didn’t understand what it was saying.

This next part really blew my mind: that hipster pickpocket guy? He’s really an enemy agent. He thought he was stealing a classified high-tech code thing, but Pretty Girl had tricked him. Her phone’s really some kind of quantum computer thingie, and it was loaded up with bogus stuff. Counterfeit intelligence is what she called it. It’s like a double fake-out, and I am loving all these cool new words!

Anyway, I’ve always said there was some weird stuff happening in the neighborhood. My uncle says I’m too nosy, but Tank Dude says I have keen observational skills. Heh. Kinda like how I noticed that bus shelter with all the notices about lost pets. The phone numbers are part of a cipher. And before you ask: no, a cipher is not one of those little bugs that crawls around in the Metro stations. It’s a funky number thing that their cryptography department makes. You can only decode it if you have the right cheat sheet. So that’s how the spy dudes communicate with their undercover assets.

And you’re never going to believe this, but that crackhead by the bookstore is one of those asset guys. When he ran into me today, he was trying to stop me from chasing the Enemy Pickster, and the delivery van that almost hit me was really the crackhead’s support team. They were supposed to nab me so I wouldn’t blow their op.

Speaking of, Tank Dude was pretty cheesed about how I fouled up their mission. He called me slippery, and said my motor-mouth might be a problem, but also maybe I have potential?

So I asked about Mrs. Rosa, because seriously, she’s gotta be some kind of top-secret ninja assassin, right? But he said no, she’s just a mean old lady.

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