After Nothing (6 page)

Kane was smart. Like, real smart. Because of his having to earn money, as well as all his K-1 training, he’d miss plenty of school, but he never got any mark below an A. He always did every required reading, every essay and every assignment, and if he missed a test he always made it up. It was pretty much known that the guys in Kane’s shop classes learnt more about cars from Kane than from their teacher. Same went for design. Kane knew computer programs his design teacher had never even heard of, and when it came to art Kane could draw just about anything.

You can tell how good a school we went to by the fact no one ever did anything about all the classes he’d miss. I guess there were just too many students with major problems at our school. Students who threw desks around; students with obvious signs of abuse on their bodies, or in their eyes. Students who weren’t able to plain read or write. There was one guy in my year who couldn’t even spell his last name. Seemed as long as Kane kept doing well in his subjects, and never caused any trouble, the school was happy to turn a blind eye whenever he missed a class or two, or six.

Unlike Kane, I went to all my classes, and was barely managing to pass any of them. I didn’t do homework. I didn’t do the required reading. Math was particularly bad. Somehow I’d managed to pass math at the end of my sophomore year, but now I was failing big time. When Kane found out he became determined to help me, but that never worked out. I didn’t want him tutoring me. If it was just the two of us, I didn’t want to be doing math – and it ended up that I could always persuade Kane away from my math homework.

Everything about Kane was new to me back then. I put him first in just about everything during those first months, but that didn’t mean I didn’t keep some of my life for myself. At least once a week I’d put Kane off and go to Melissa’s instead of his place. And if I felt Dad wasn’t doing so great I’d go straight home after school. Sometimes it was Kane who chose to sacrifice our afternoons together for the sake of his job.

He was working toward being in the chop shop rather than selling and running parts for it. That meant putting in some time for nothing and showing what he could do.

What with training, school and working through the night, Kane got to the stage where he was completely exhausted. So exhausted that sometimes he would miss all his classes and sleep half the day in the storage room of the old gym. Sometimes he was too tired to even come near me. Times like that I felt he needed to reprioritize.

But Kane being that busy made it easier for me to keep part of the new life I’d established during my ‘Lisa’ period. Of course I now turned up as Natalie, not Lisa. No knee-length skirts, button-down cardigans and ballerina shoes. My style was more short skirts or tight ripped jeans. I always layered my tops, and I always bought ones with low necklines, revealing more of my breasts than Kane was happy with me showing.

My black eyeliner was a constant. Apart from lip gloss, it was the only makeup I wore. It was nice to be me, even if on a couple of occasions Melissa looked at the length of my skirt and asked if it was my intention to look like a prostitute. It was Melissa who allowed me to stay friendly with her friends. I knew she must have been doing some work in the background on my behalf, because her friends never made me feel unwelcome around them.

By the same token they never ever asked about Kane. See, the thing was, they were in awe of him, but they didn’t want to know him. From their perspective he was bad news. I can understand it. Kane’s associates at school tended to be the guys with the worst reps. Also, this thing had happened a year earlier where a guy from our school got stabbed as he got off the bus in the city. Someone, who probably wasn’t even there, had said Kane did it, which immediately went around the school and everywhere else. So the police went round to Kane’s, but he wasn’t there because he was out of town that week for a K-1 tournament, which immediately put him in the clear. The thing was, the guy who got stabbed, Stephen, he died. And even though the cops ended up charging the guy Stephen was running drugs for, Kane got tainted by the whole thing. I mean, Kane never even carried a knife. It wasn’t his style. I remember him saying he could take out anyone holding a knife – there was only a chance he might get cut once on the leg or the arm. The other thing he said was that if he pulled a knife on anyone he knew, he was just about guaranteed that they in turn would pull a gun on him.

One day, Kane wanted to meet up at lunch. We hadn’t seen each other the afternoon before, and he was going straight to training after his design class because he had a big fight coming up.

We were on our way to the storage room, and were just about to head past the stands, when someone called out to Kane. Seeing who it was, Kane said to me, ‘I gotta have a word with these niggas.’

Dropping his arm from around my shoulder, he walked off toward a group of guys I didn’t know.

I should have waited for him. But I didn’t want to be the clingy girlfriend hanging around in the background while her boyfriend took care of business. So I left him talking, knowing he’d catch me up.

Rounding the side of the old gym, I walked right into the middle of a group of boys. Freshmen. I could smell the dope they were smoking. One of them immediately closed the gap between him and me.

‘Damn, girl!’ he said, looking me up and down. His gaze came to a standstill on my breasts.

He was skinny and small, and apart from the fact his face was covered in acne, he didn’t look old enough to be at high school. He also looked unstable and dangerous. The pupils in his bloodshot eyes were so big you could see more black than brown.

He turned to his friends, then back to me; looked me up and down again and then reached out a hand to touch my waist. I preempted his movement, and took a step back. Then I kept taking steps back, putting as much distance between him and me as possible.

He followed me, though. This time, he managed to put his hands on me. I was nearly overwhelmed by the smell that hit me. He stunk. He stunk so bad I had to fight the impulse to retch.

‘Don’t leave me, girl?’ he said as I turned my face away from the stench of his breath hitting my face. ‘Damn, you is fine! I know you like me calling you fine. What else you like to be called?’

My eyes went to the other boys, but they weren’t getting involved. One even looked a little fearful.

He pulled me against him, and I immediately pushed him as hard as I could away from me.

‘Don’t touch me!’

I made myself look straight into those bloodshot eyes. They were young eyes to be looking like that, and his long eyelashes seemed to reinforce the fact that he really was just a boy.

What I saw in his expression though was far from innocent. Before, he’d been intimidating, but flirting. Now I could see he’d made up his mind he wanted something, and as far as he was concerned he was going to get it.

‘Leave her alone, man,’ called out one of his friends.

‘Stay your ass outta it,’ replied the kid, and then lunged toward me.

I didn’t see Kane; I just felt him. His arm coming between me and the kid, and then him moving in front of me. Kane hit that kid hard, right in the stomach, below his ribs. The kid bent over double and then fell to the ground. Kane picked him up by the back of his sweater and threw him back among his group of friends like he weighed next to nothing.

I had never seen Kane like that before. The expression on his face wasn’t just hard; it was mean. Mean, and dangerous. Way more dangerous-looking than the crack kid.

‘You know me?’ said Kane to the group of boys, who were all quickly backing away. Kane zeroed in on one particular boy. ‘I said, motherfucker, do you fucking know me?’

‘Yeah, man, we know you,’ said the kid, scared shitless.

‘You know this is my girl?’

The kid nodded.

‘Can’t hear you,’ yelled Kane.

‘Yeah, we know.’

Kane turned his back on the scared kid and went back to the crack kid, who was still gasping for breath on the ground.

Kane hauled him up, and said right in his face, ‘You think it’s alright to fuck with my woman?’

‘I didn’t know who she was,’ he managed to wheeze out.

‘Everyone know who she is: especially who she is to me.’

‘I swear I didn’t know, just heard she was hot is all. I’m sorry, man.’

‘For what?’ said Kane, still right in his face.

‘For disrespecting you.’

‘That all you got?’

‘I don’t know, man. I’m sorry. I really am.’

‘Sorry for touching what’s mine? Sorry for violating her space when she don’t want you anywhere near her? What? What are you fucking sorry for, motherfucker?’

‘Everything, man. All of it. Shouldn’t have gone near her. Please, man, I’m fucking sorry.’

‘You know what I could do to you? Break you, bitch. You don’t walk, you don’t shit. Nothing. You know why? ’Cause you dead.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Not sorry enough.’

I said his name. Kane. He looked at me. His nostrils were flaring, and the veins in his neck were standing out in relief.

‘Stop.’

I don’t know why I said it. Because the kid deserved what he was getting. But he was also young. Young and small. Kane looked like a giant next to him. And also, the kid was dirty. His clothes, his skin. I don’t think I’d ever smelt anyone who stunk as bad as him. It was obvious no one cared for him.

‘He said he’s sorry.’

Kane immediately released his hold on the kid’s sweatshirt.

‘What’s your name, nigga?’

‘Tyrone.’

‘Tyrone what?’

‘Rivers.’

Kane’s expression tightened. ‘You related to Xavier Rivers?’

Fresh fear spiked in Tyrone’s face.

‘Yes or no, motherfucker?’

Tyrone quickly nodded. ‘He my cousin.’

‘So, you tell X what you did, and then me and him will talk.’

‘I don’t want to tell him,’ said Tyrone, close to a whisper.

‘You think I give a shit about what you want?’

‘X already got it in for me,’ said Tyrone, and those bloodshot eyes of his were showing plenty of white. ‘I ain’t allowed any more mistakes.’

Kane hesitated; seemed to look at Tyrone extra close. Then he glanced at me. I didn’t say anything out loud, but it wouldn’t have been hard to read what I was thinking – that kid knew he’d fucked up, and he was scared as hell.

‘I know you little punk ass nigga,’ said Kane to Tyrone. ‘You think you the man ’cause you got some cred for some shit? You think now there ain’t rules that apply to you. You wrong. I’m gonna be watching you, motherfucker. You ever look at what belongs to me again and you done. Now, get the fuck out of here.’

Kane glanced at the rest of Tyrone’s friends, who were still hanging round, watching. ‘This ain’t your place,’ he said to them. ‘Where you’re standing – you in my house. You come back here again, consider yourself fucked up. Ain’t no one gonna recognize you.’

They went. All of them. Quickly. Tyrone even muttered another ‘sorry’ to Kane. He didn’t even glance at me though.

‘Hey,’ said Kane to me. He was looking at me all worried, like I was going to break or something. ‘It’s alright,’ he said, drawing close to me.

‘I’m okay,’ I said stiffly as his arms went around me.

‘Baby, you shaking.’

‘You looked different just now. Different even to how you are in the ring.’

‘He threatened you. I could fucking kill the little fucker.’

‘You think he’s going to be trouble if I see him again and you’re not around?’

‘Nah, he ain’t a problem no more. That little nigga was shaking more than you.’

I buried my face in Kane’s chest and breathed in the familiar reassuring scent of him.

Kane was right about Tyrone not being a problem. I only ever saw him a couple of times in the hallway, and he didn’t look at me.

Then one day Kane told me he was dead. Xavier Rivers got tired of his crackhead cousin stealing from him, his mom and his aunties. He shot Tyrone in an alley not far from school. He left him there, alone, his own flesh and blood, with three bullets in his chest.

‘I heard X reckons he put him down. You know, like an animal.’

‘I can’t believe that, Kane. What sort of asshole does that? What sort of asshole even thinks that? How do you even know him?’

‘Just do.’

‘Well, stay away from him. He’s the fucking animal. Tyrone was just a little kid.’

Kane just grunted, but he wasn’t happy. It wasn’t that he said anything more; he was just real quiet the rest of the evening, and then made Wayne lend him his pickup truck so he could drive me home.

We didn’t talk during that drive. Didn’t even play any music. I looked out the window and watched the streets roll past, thinking about Tyrone. How come he’d been so dirty? How could he only get to fourteen and then have his own cousin shoot him like that? How could life be that fucked up?

Kane found a smile for me when he stopped Wayne’s pickup outside my house.

‘When am I gonna meet your mom and dad?’