Rebel, Bully, Geek, Pariah (29 page)

The dealer was on his feet, his gun aimed and freshly fired. I barely had time to register the thugs backing away, Boston still standing—shell-shocked and silent now, but unhurt—and York jumping blindly in front of his brother before the second bullet exploded from the gun.

The first shot had missed. This one found a target.

 

38

I'VE HEARD THAT the world moves in slow motion during traumatic moments like this—that pure terror can drag an instant out into an hour.

It wasn't like that for me.

It all happened very fast—blink-and-you-miss-it fast. For a second, all I knew was blood. Blood splattering over the campfire and onto my shoes; blood blooming on York's shirtsleeve; blood on Boston's hands as he gripped York's shoulder, trying to slow his brother's fall to the ground.

Then I was on my feet—
How did I get to my feet?
—and a bony shoulder was slamming into me, knocking me back to the ground. One of the thugs had run into me on his way out of the line of fire. He stumbled over my body and fell into the dirt, puking.

I guess blood and meth will make a guy a little queasy.

I rolled onto my back in time to see the dealer giving Andi a piggyback ride.

Wait, what? Did I hit my head when I fell?

But I wasn't hallucinating. Andi was on the guy's back, but it was no ride. Her black fingernails clawed at his face, and she wrapped her legs tight around his waist, one foot kicking repeatedly at his groin.

To my left, Boston pressed his hands against York's shoulder, crying, “What do I do? What do I do?”

My vision swam at the sight of the blood and the sound of the meth-head puking behind me. Only seconds had passed.

Andi screamed a guttural war cry, and I turned my head just in time to see her fingernails draw blood on the dealer's cheek. In the falling night, it looked like his face was bleeding black. Blood from every angle. There was nowhere to look that didn't make me sick.

From across the fire pit, the second thug leaped into the fight. He was trying to peel Andi's hands away from his boss's face, but the dealer was blind, and he lashed out at what he must have thought was a new enemy. He pressed the barrel of his gun into his own minion's chest and fired.

The thug fell still, then slumped forward, causing the totem pole of Andi and the dealer to collapse backward.

The gun thudded to the dirt in front of me, its open end gaping right at my eyeball. I didn't stop to think; I swallowed the bile that had crept into the back of my throat, took the gun in my hand, and stumbled to my feet.

Two shots into the air, and the chaos finally, mercifully, came to a standstill.

I was the last man left standing—literally. Bodies were sprawled all around my feet. York, flat on the ground and gasping, with
Boston kneeling at his side; Andi and the dealer in a tangle of arms and legs on the ground, both crawling out from under the dead body—
Holy shit, a dead body
—of one of the meth-heads; and the other druggie cowering behind me.

The coward druggie was the first to move. He skittered backward like a crab away from me.

I aimed the gun in his direction, shocked to find my arm steady, unwavering. I guess I was doing all of my shaking on the inside. He froze in midcrawl and began to cry. For a moment the near-dark played tricks on my eyes, and I imagined Mama trapped like a turtle on her back, Mama's eyes swirling wildly in their sockets, Mama's tears spilling down those cheeks.

“Go,” I whispered fiercely.

He didn't need to be told twice. He scrambled to his feet and pulled a set of keys from his pocket, but to my surprise, he didn't turn to the truck. He spun around and ran straight for the speedboat. Pushing it with all his drug-induced adrenaline, he got it into the water and then hopped behind the wheel. Seconds later, the sound of the motor was fading down the Mississippi, and the only noise was the soft slap of water hitting the shore in the boat's wake.

I swung the gun back toward the campfire, careful to keep my gaze above the body on the ground. That could have been Mama, too. Dead, for running with the wrong people. Dead, for being too weak to fight a disease. Dead, just for trying to scratch an uncontrollable itch.

I pitied the dead.

But not the dealer.

I turned the gun on him, still on his ass in the dirt.

“Stand up.”

At the command in my voice, they
all
stood up.

York leaned weakly on Boston. “You saved me,” he said, but he wasn't talking to his brother. His unfocused gaze was aimed across the fire pit at Andi.

“I tried,” she rasped through tears.

Once upon a time I would have envied those tears, the release they must have provided. But now I was thankful for my dry eyes. I didn't want a release. Everything that was pent up inside me was now keeping my gun arm taut.

Boston nodded once at Andi. “If you hadn't jumped on him . . .”

“Quiet!” I said. I didn't want to think about what would have happened to York if Andi hadn't altered the dealer's aim. Right now I needed to focus on the guy who wasn't talking.

He wasn't paying much attention, either. The dealer's eyes were combing the ground, probably looking for another weapon. He glanced at the gun a few times to confirm it was still pointed in his direction, but he ignored the girl holding it.

As if the gun were just floating in midair.

As if I were invisible.

“Look at me,” I ordered him.

His eyes only searched the ground faster.

“LOOK AT ME!” I screamed.

And everyone did.

Everyone except York, whose eyes slipped closed as his knees gave out. Boston slumped under the weight of his brother's limp body, a sight that filled me with a quiet fury.

He won't be sitting on a golden toilet at the end of the world, because his world might end right here.

My eyes slid to the blood clotting at York's shoulder and the hands pressed tight against it. Boston had been more afraid than any of us to get his hands dirty, and look at them now. My anger stretched, running the length of my arm to the gun in my hand. I tightened my grip, and both Andi and the dealer, standing just feet apart, put their hands up.

It wasn't Andi holding her arms in the air as if I would shoot her that unnerved me so much as the look on her face that showed she believed she deserved it. Yes, I would probably be angry with her when the dust settled and my emotions caught up to me, but that anger wasn't part of this fury that filled me now. It burned in every cell of my body, leaving no room for fear or doubt or anything other than blind rage.

I now aimed that rage at the dealer. Blood dripped from his cheek to the corner of his mouth, and he tasted it with his tongue, licking his lips and smiling at me with teeth stained red.

“You gonna waste more of my ammo, or you gonna put the next bullet somewhere that counts?” he taunted.

I hated that he didn't feel the same fear my friends had at the end of his gun—hated the reckless disregard he'd shown for the life of the only boy to ever hold my hand. I hated that he'd lured my friend Andi into what seemed like a harmless crime for easy money; hated that he'd wasted his partner to
save his own skin. But mostly I hated that smug smile on his bloody lips.

He wasn't just a dealer. And he sure as hell wasn't some cop who stole my mama away for a couple of nights in jail.

He was the devil who stole my entire childhood.

“Andi,” I said, my voice cool. “Put your hands down.”

She obeyed.

“Check his pockets for keys to the truck.”

He twisted away as she came near him, but I held the gun straighter and stepped forward. He stood still then, the smile falling off his face.

Good.

Andi found the keys in his front pocket and held them up.

“Okay, let's get out of here,” Boston said, struggling to support York's slumping form.

“Take the truck and go straight to the police,” I said to Andi. My voice was ever steady, my rage focusing into something calm and absolute. “Tell them to send an ambulance here immediately. Tell them someone's been shot.”

“No! We're going with her,” Boston protested. “I'm taking my brother to the hospital!”

“Yes, you are,” I said. I looked at Boston and Andi in turn, then at the pale, half-passed-out face of York. “That's not the gunshot victim I meant.”

I took a deep breath and leveled the gun at the man—the devil—in front of me.

“Go,” I told my friends. “Now.”

 

AFTER

MAMA HAS FINALLY stopped crying, and I'm relieved, because I wouldn't want to mistake her tears as sympathy for that scum.

“Stop talking,” she orders me. “Stop right there. They can monitor this conversation.”

She twists around anxiously in her seat, checking to make sure the guard is still tucked away in the far corner of the visitation room.

I almost laugh. “Mama, I know how it works. I've been here before, remember?”

“Not on that side of the table,” she says.

I clasp my hands together, the metal cuffs digging into my skin. “I already told all of this to the lawyer,” I say.

For once I had told the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I plan to do the same on the stand, if it comes to that. And my attorney is pretty sure it
will
come to that. He's planning to claim temporary insanity—except he calls it the “duress defense,” something about me being under extreme pressure and
traumatized by fear. Whatever. Sounds like temporary insanity to me.

He says I'm lucky the guy isn't dead.

I'm not so sure.

I've seen firsthand how easy it is for attorneys to knock down drug charges to lesser offenses, and according to the news reports, they might let him off for the murder, since he shot his minion while under attack. He'll probably be in the hospital longer than he's in prison, and then he'll be back on the streets, selling his poison to someone else's mom.

A part of me wishes I had better aim.

And a stronger stomach. I'd passed out after the first shot and the sight of the blood—so much more than had poured from York's wound, and a lot messier. I'd woken up in the back of an ambulance, but I hadn't been able to see my friends at the hospital—not with the police officer stationed outside my room.

“Any word on the others?” I ask Mama.

She shakes her head. “You need to worry about you right now.”

“Please.”

Mama sighs. “The boy who was shot—”

“York.”

“Right. He's out of the hospital. They said his wound was minor; the bullet just skimmed his shoulder.”

Something tight in my gut releases all at once.

“Charges are pending,” Mama says. “Leaving the scene of an accident.”

Okay, that's not bad.

“He's lucky it's not aggravated assault on a police officer.”

“Mama, it was truly an accident.”

“Well, fortunately, the county attorney agrees. And the other one isn't going to be charged with anything. The little one.”

“Boston.” I smile. “He hates being called ‘the little one.'”

“But that girl—Andi . . .” Mama points at my bench. “She's the one who should be sitting there.”

It's hard to argue with Mama about Andi. I guess trouble knows trouble when it sees it.

“They're practically calling her a hero,” Mama goes on. “She gave the police all kinds of information—rolling right over on her whole crew.”

“They're not her crew. They're just some guys she got mixed up with.”

We're her crew.

“I don't like her,” Mama says. “I've been listening to your story, and she—”

“If you've been listening,” I interrupt, “then you know things aren't always what they seem.”

Mama falls quiet. She knows I'm handing her a free pass right now.

She already told me all about how the pills she took the night I went missing were nonaddictive and preapproved by her doctor for anxiety. And she made a big point of reminding me the reason for the anxiety was waking up at 1:00 a.m. to discover that I hadn't come home from work. But she failed to say how many of these preapproved, nonaddictive pills she'd taken or what she'd washed them down with.

She knows I don't believe her. I want to—desperately, I want to. She has four years of sobriety backing up her story, after all, but Mama's lies don't work on me. She slipped that night; I'm not sure how far, but I know it happened, and she knows I know. And so she blames herself for all of this.

But in this moment, I'm telling her I trust her. Mama holds my hand. She thinks I'm giving her a gift, but the gift is for me. I will always worry about Mama, but I can't be her keeper anymore. If she slips, it won't be
my fault, my fault, my fault
. It will be
her
fault. I squeeze her hand.

“I love you, Mama.”

She sniffles.

“Oh, don't start that again,” I warn, and we both laugh.

“I'm working on your bond,” she says, serious again. “But if we can't post it, at the very least we can get you moved to juvie. You shouldn't be in here with the adults.”

“They said the juvenile facility was overcrowded.”

“They can make room for one more. I'll talk to someone—”

“Mama, I'm fine here.” I give her a half smile. “Thanks to you, I already know most of the guards.”

She flinches. “That's nothing to be proud of.”

“Cherie?” A man's booming voice interrupts from the other side of the room, but he bellows it as “Cherry.”

Mama and I give an identical eye roll and answer simultaneously, “Sherry.”

“Sorry,” the guard says as he approaches. His hand is outstretched, and in his fingers I see a tiny key. He reaches down to fit the key into a tiny hole on one of my cuffs.