Black (Clashing Colors Book 1)
Read Black (Clashing Colors Book 1) Online
Authors: Elin Peer
BLACK
CLASHING COLORS #1
Copyright © 2016
By Elin Peer
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the author, excepting brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews.
ISBN-10: 1537281402
ISBN-13: 978-1537281407
Clashing Colors #1 - Black
First Edition
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons or organizations is coincidental and not intended by the author. Recommended for mature readers due to adult content.
Cover Art by Kellie Dennis: bookcoverbydesign.co.uk
Editing:
www.martinohearn.com
Books in the Clashing Colors series
The Clashing Colors series consists of five separate stories. For the best reading experience and to avoid spoilers this is the recommended order to read them in.
BLACK - Clashing Colors #1
VIOLET - Clashing Colors #2 (Nov/2016)
GREEN - Clashing Colors #3 (Dec/2016)
BLUE - Clashing Colors #4 (Jan/2017)
YELLOW - Clashing Colors #5 (Mar/2017)
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PLEASE NOTE
This book is intended for mature readers only, as it contains a few graphic scenes and some inappropriate language.
All characters are fictional and any likeness to a living person or organization is coincidental.
DEDICATION
This one is for you, Mom.
As I was writing this story I was reminded how blessed I am to have grown up with loving and supportive parents.
Thank you!
Elin
“It’s impossible,” said pride
“It’s risky,” said experience
“It’s pointless,” said reason
“Let’s try it anyway,” whispered the heart
When I was seven, someone broke into our house. Thinking back, it must have been some really desperate thieves, because it was a shitty neighborhood and none of us had anything worth stealing, even on a good day.
Nevertheless, that break-in stayed with me for a long time and made me afraid of going to bed at night.
I used to hug my Hello Kitty teddy bear and tell her we would be all right. It would have been nice if my mom had offered me a goodnight kiss or a lullaby to make me feel better, but hey, I didn’t have that kind of mom.
My mom, Tina, was seventeen when she had me.
My dad is the asshole who took her virginity behind the bleachers after a high school dance, and handed her a hundred dollars to “take care of the problem” when she told him she was pregnant.
Needless to say, I grew up with my mom, and of all the childhood memories – that for the most part aren’t very good – the one about thieves breaking into our home has played a major part in my career as a criminal.
This might surprise you, but criminals have morals and values too. Some criminals even say they have honor. I don’t know about the last part, but I, at least, have a set of rules.
I don’t commit any violent crimes, and I don’t steal from private homes – because it’s a violation of people’s privacy and can be traumatizing to kids.
Neither do I steal from small mom-and-pop shops with hard-working people who are just trying to make a living.
I also don’t hustle or steal from the following categories: old people, sick people, mentally or physically handicapped people, and of course children.
So who do I steal from? Mostly companies with big fat insurance policies who will get compensated for the shoplifting I do.
Now before you have a moral hissy fit about me, don’t! You’re wasting your energy and my time. I might as well tell you straight up, I’m a lost cause.
People see me walking on the street and look the other way. I dress as I feel, and that’s why my friends call me Black. My hair is black, my nail polish is black, my clothes are black, and most of the time I’m wearing heavy, dark make-up too.
Most likely you’ve seen people like me. And most likely you’ve looked away too.
I get it. And I don’t care.
Caring is a luxury I can’t afford. My life isn’t about caring. It’s about surviving, and it’s been that way ever since I ran away from home seven years ago.
Today is my twenty-first birthday, which means I can officially drink alcohol. The thought alone is laughable. The first time I drank I was ten. The second time I was eleven and got drunk with my mom. That night I puked so hard I thought I was going to die, and as a result I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol ever since.
If watching my mom’s alcoholism taught me anything it was that happiness isn’t found in bottles.
For me, happiness comes in the shape of little white pills with the letters OP on top. In my opinion it should say UP, which would be a good allusion to the high I get from taking them. My friend Daniel gave me my first rush for my nineteenth birthday, and I can honestly say that I’d never experienced anything like it. Never felt so good inside.
My head is usually full of bad memories and fear of the future, but that night – oh man, it was freaking surreal to feel completely free of worries, pressure, and pain. I was on a euphoric high, and it only took that one time to make me want more. I guess you could say that the first pill got me hooked and now, two years later, I’m in a lot of shit because of it.
The first problem is that those Oxy pills are damn expensive. Depending on the supply on the street, it’s between fifty and a hundred dollars for just one pill, and when you’re a street artist like me, you don’t make a lot of cash.
That’s why I have to shoplift, which leads me to my second problem. My looks.
Mostly I do my “shopping” after the stores are closed, because I’m easy to spot with my black Goth looks; shop detectives get automatically suspicious when they see me. I’m good at what I do, and only take what I need to survive.
Unfortunately, today I got impatient and went to Bartell Drugs to help myself to a few Oxy pills.
I would have never done it, if my after-dark field trip to Costco last night hadn’t failed. There was no way I could have known that the night guard at Costco got a new badass Rottweiler. He used to have an old German shepherd that slept most of the time and was practically half deaf, but this new dog – shit, I’m a fast runner, but that black devil chased me down like a rabbit on the run, and I only barely escaped.
Sneaking out a few bottles of pills isn’t rocket science, so I’m a bit ashamed that I got caught red-handed today.
It’s a damn shame too, because I had already stuffed my backpack with several bottles of Oxy pills. I could have made a fortune on the streets with that many and kept a good portion for myself.
I’m sure I would have made it out, if not for my stupid walk through the store to get a bottle of whiskey.
I wanted to surprise Daniel with one for his birthday next week, but that won’t happen now, since my little walk landed me in police custody. That’s what I get for being a good friend.
There’s a pay phone on the wall in my holding cell, but I have no one to call. If my mom is even alive, I still would rather stab my eye out than call her for help.
My dad… well, I’ve only seen him once. The night I ran away from my mom when I was fourteen, I went to his house thinking he would take me in once I told him about the horrible things that were happening at my mom’s place, but I never got that far. He wouldn’t even let me into his fancy house or listen to me.
He had a new family with a wife and three small children, and the only thing I got from him that night was two hundred dollars and the message that he had been right to give Tina money for an abortion; he had known she wasn’t mom material and he felt sorry for me, for being born.
Sure, he had been right about her, but she had been right about him too; Brent was a cold bastard without a heart.
Still, it’s not like I’d have anything to lose by giving him a call. He has money, lives in a fancy house, and if anyone could afford to bail me out of this hole, it would be him.
I hadn’t spoken to Brent in seven years, but that only meant there was a slim possibility that he had found Jesus or grown a conscience since I last saw him, so I reckoned I might as well try it.
I had his number on a scrap of paper in my hand. The police officer had been nice enough to look it up for me, and it turned out that Brent still lived in the same place.
As I was listening to the sound of the phone ringing, part of me was hoping that he wouldn’t pick up. I didn’t want his help. I didn’t want to owe him anything.
“Hello.” His voice was slightly nasal, like someone with a cold.
“Hey, this is Black… I mean Darcia, your daughter.”
Silence.
“I need your help… Dad.”
“How did you get this number? I told you to leave me alone.”
I sighed. “I know, but I was arrested.”
“You were arrested?”
“Yes.”
“What did you do?”
“I stole a few things.”
“Where are you?”
“Downtown at the police station. They told me I’ll see a judge within a few hours. I think it’s basically just to charge me and set the bail.”
I waited for him to say something, but there was only silence.
“Could you come down here and help me get out? The bail shouldn’t be more than a few hundred dollars.”
He was still quiet, so I swallowed my pride and added a soft “Please…”
“I don’t think so,” he said in a low voice. “You caught me in the middle of an important family celebration and I can’t just leave. I’m sorry, but you know what they say: don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.”
That arrogant bastard! I squeezed the phone hard enough to make my knuckles white. “So you’re just going to let your own daughter rot here, while you celebrate with your
real
family?”
“You know I don’t think of you as my daughter,” he said in a cold voice.
What an absolutely redundant thing to say. The man hadn’t been in my life for twenty-one years. The fact that I was his dirty secret and biggest regret didn’t come as a shock and, yes, I know I should have just hung up and cut my losses, but I give as good as I get, so of course I had to have the last word.
“You know,” I said sardonically, “talking about crime and time… you shouldn’t have made a child if you aren’t prepared to be a father.”
“That’s not the same thing,” he said.
I kept my cool. “No, in your book, stealing a bit of medicine is a much bigger crime than leaving your baby to an alcoholic and abusive teen mother, and later sentencing that same child to a life on the streets.”
I didn’t give the shithead a chance to say more after that. I hung up, plunked myself down on the steel bedstead that held the thinnest mattress in history, curled my legs up to hug myself, and, yeah, you guessed it – I felt fucking sorry for myself.
My dad comes from a large and rich family. The kind that sends their kids to summer camps, goes on vacations, celebrates Christmas, and gets into colleges. They are my family too, even though I’ve only seen them from afar. I know I have two younger half-brothers and a half-sister, grandparents, aunts, and uncles, and apparently they were having a family celebration, right now.
With a pout I rested my chin on my knees, and imagined them all laughing and sharing jokes, while I sat here, alone and unwanted. The outsider no one cared about. And it fucking hurt!
