by Ginger Scott
I shift my bag so the straps are over both shoulders, and I start to sprint, cutting through yards and alleyways—anything I can do to cut the six miles from school to my home down just a little. I slip through traffic, weaving around cars and taking in the honks and shouts that come at me. I make it only two miles before I feel sick from running, and I walk along Miller’s busiest road while holding my side and pushing back against a burning cramp.
My mom’s church is close, so I exchange four more miles for a few blocks. Within minutes, I’m standing at the driver’s side door of her car, keyless and scared. My breathing is ragged and uneven, and the urge to throw up keeps crashing in my stomach in waves.
I’m scared.
I’m afraid to walk into the church and ask my mom for her keys. Afraid of the disappointment I’ll see in her eyes because I’m not in school, and because I’m panicked over my best friend. I’m terrified of seeing Joker’s mom inside, of having to lie to her or look into her own worried eyes. I’m scared of what I’m going to find out next, of what I know, and of what I’m imagining.
My eyes closed, and my hand on the scratched metal door handle that I’ve broken into so many times before, I breathe in deep and will myself to choose the easiest path—the one that spares me some of the pain and judgment and gets me to the answers I need faster. I lift up hard and work my fingers under the metal casing, feeling for that familiar weak spot I know works. With my other hand, I push my fingertips inside and press on the metal lever, unlocking the door and slicing my finger as I pull my hands away.
I wince and suck away the blood while I slip into my mom’s car and lean to the right, the wires still exposed from the last time I had to do this. I jump her car and pull out slowly, my finger in my mouth again to keep my blood off her car.
I’m shocked nobody notices me, but at the same time I’m not. This is the kinda thing that happens daily in this town—cars getting jacked. Nobody has to race away with a stolen vehicle because the victims are too afraid to run someone down. It’s always one of us behind the wheel. And when it’s not, we’ll catch the driver because nobody steals shit in this area without Dub saying it’s okay to do it.
Unless it’s me…in my mom’s car. Racing home, hoping to prove myself wrong, but knowing that I won’t.
She’s going to see that her car is gone soon if I can’t get it back in time, so once I’m far enough away from the church, I gas it until the wheels squeal into my driveway. I leave the motor running and race to the back yard, cutting my way through the tall, overgrown bushes, grass, and weeds. It’s not hard to spot the place where Joker buried the knives I gave him. He didn’t bury them well, and I’m glad my mom hasn’t had time to come outside. She would have found these easily, and then she would have cried.
I pull the canvas material the knives are wrapped in from the dirt, loose soil easily falling away. The material unrolls as I tug it free from the ground. I don’t even need to bother counting to know some of the knives are missing.
I fall back on my ass and stare at the pile of evidence resting between my feet. My palms dig into the moist grass and dirt beneath me. I can’t look away, no matter how badly I want to. Nothing I do is going to change the fact that I gave Joker seven blades, and I’m looking at four.
“Goddammit, Joke…what did you do?”
I lean forward and rest my arms on my knees, running my arm along my nose and covering my mouth with my forearm for several seconds while I work through the disbelief pouring through my body.
My friend talked. My best friend told secrets that could get him killed to people that could take us down. Dub mentioned the ATF, but I don’t think that’s who it was at all. The FBI and Miller County have been trying to get inside the Fifty-Seven for months. Years, really. A new governor and a lot of bad press for the state of Ohio sort of amped things up lately, though. The good people out there want us gone. They’re not wrong to. But three knives covered in a little DNA isn’t going to be the thing that takes us down. It’s just going to get my best friend killed…if he hasn’t been already.
Chapter Ten
Riley
* * *
Lauren palms my head as she takes a seat on the bleacher row behind me. Her fingers roll across the velvet that is now my hair, pushing against the grain then working with it again.
“I’ve decided to make wishes on your head,” she says, rubbing a little quicker for another second or two, then closing her eyes.
“What’d you wish for?” I ask.
“Can’t tell you. Won’t come true if I do.” She pulls her leg up to tie her shoe while she smiles at me with tight lips.
“You know what I wish?” I begin, waiting until she glances up at me with a raised brow. “I wish I didn’t have to depend on a moody boy just to play basketball. That’s what I wish.”
My tone is pretty transparent. I’m worried about Tristan, because he left in a rush, and he looked scared. I’ve only known him for a week, but in that time, I’ve become certain of one thing—he isn’t afraid of much.
“Welcome to the world of disappointment and broken promises,” Lauren says, squeezing my shoulders as she stands, laughing quietly, and moves down to sit next to me sideways, one leg tucked underneath the other.
I roll my eyes and shrug.
“I know, men will disappoint you, blah blah blah,” I say.
“Not all of them,” Lauren interjects.
Her eyes grab onto mine and she blinks slowly, her mouth tight and curved with what I assume is a history of disappointment.
“My dad and Tristan’s dad used to be really good friends,” she says, picking at her fingers, her hands folded on top of her knee. She tucks her chin deep into her chest, her fingers stopping their movement while she sits completely still for a few long seconds. “They’re both dead, Riley. They both died in these horrible, awful, brutal, disgusting and…totally preventable ways.”
Her head tilts to the side and our eyes meet briefly before she looks back down again. I don’t know how to respond, and I’m not sure I’m supposed to, so I just remain quiet. My breathing matches hers, a slow rise of her shoulders giving me this ominous feeling yet I can’t imagine her telling me something worse than what she just did.
“Tristan…” Her mouth pinches in the corners with her pause, and she shakes her head, closing her eyes. “He is so much like his dad, Riley. His fears…how they make his decisions. He wants to be so different from his legacy, yet every choice he makes is the same ones his dad would have made. My dad made them, too, and these boys…fuck, these boys, Riley. They are so dumb, ya know?”
I shrug when she looks up, and she chuckles lightly then stands, waving a hand at me.
“I just get sick of it all sometimes. That’s all. I’m sure he’s fine, it’s just that I feel like the guys in this town, they don’t learn anything from history. They are hell-fucking-bent on repeating it over and over, no matter how bad the outcome always is.”
She jumps from the bottom row onto the gym floor, two girls on our team walking in behind her, but only two. That makes four of us, not even enough to form a starting squad. All I thought about today was practice, about working on what I did with Tristan into today’s drills and trying them out against my teammates. I looked forward to showing off how quickly I learn. I looked forward to showing off for him, even after the fight we had on the court last night.
I looked forward to making up and asking him questions. I wanted to talk!
“How bad is the outcome?” I ask, standing to stretch before walking down to the floor level to stand next to her. She scrunches her face. “You said they don’t care about the bad outcome. How bad does it get?”
I know this part of the county isn’t pretty. I know there are drugs and overdoses, shooting…gangs. I wasn’t shocked by anything Tristan said on the court last night, but every place I’ve lived has always had so-called dangerous areas. I refuse to give them power over my life, though. Nobody gets to keep me out of some place u
nless they own it, and you don’t get to own it by just saying so. When danger comes, I’ll leave. Not a second before.
“On a good day, you get a life sentence in prison.”
She pauses next to me for a beat then steps forward to pick up a ball. I do the same but don’t dribble right away. She gets a few steps into the court before I ask.
“How’d they die?”
Anyone else might pause, probably even get offended. It’s an incredibly personal and private story, yet Lauren doesn’t flinch. Her reply comes quickly…at least for half of my question.
“There was a shoot-out with the police. It made the national news, which was…well, it was quite a show-and-tell for me the next week,” she says. “They raided our home one night after he’d been out and my dad fought back. They shot him in the chest and he bled out before he got to the hospital.”
Her back is to me while she shares, and she stops at the foul line and takes a shot, her ball missing off the front of the rim. She turns to face me before retrieving it, shrugging one shoulder and offering a sad and distant smile on one side of her face.
“It’s probably better that he died there. They would have just locked him up,” she says.
“Why would they lock him up?” I know I’m brazen with my questions, but as long as Lauren doesn’t seem to mind sharing…
“Because he was a really bad man. And they raided our house for a reason. And because my dad was guilty as fuck…that’s why.” Her tone is more forceful, so I prepare to drop my questions, but I slip one more in before I’m done.
“How do you know?” I ask.
Lauren laughs to herself, jogging toward the hoop for a layup and dropping the ball in before walking away from it completely. She tugs her hair loose from the band holding it out of her face and wraps the material around her wrist instead while she looks to our left, at the large digital clock under the scoreboard that keeps the time.
Her eyes drift back to me and she smirks.
“He was hiding knives and guns in our hallway closet, and between fingerprints and circumstances, it was a pretty slam-dunk case,” she says, letting out a single laugh in her pause. “But I knew he was bad a long time before that. I knew because of all of his broken promises when I was growing up, because of all of the times we made plans that he missed, or that he said he’d pick me up from school and never showed up. I knew the time he was supposed to coach my brother’s basketball team and my mom had to step in and do it instead.”
She holds my stare for a few seconds, reading me while I let the meaning of her words sink in. Practice was supposed to begin thirty minutes ago. Tristan isn’t coming.
“I’ve got a lot of homework, and let’s be real, Riley…there are only four of us here, and not one of us is the coach. Girl, Tristan isn’t even a real coach. I’m just not feelin’ this today. I love you, though. I do love you.”
She sighs, then glances down and nods before moving toward her things on the bench. The other two girls follow her lead, excited to be done so early, and in less than a minute I’m in the gym alone.
I play solo for a few minutes, but I’m distracted by what Lauren said, and by my emotions. It’s making me play sloppily, and I’m not getting anything out of this. Maybe if I can stay here long enough, the boys’ team will show up. Or maybe…someone else.
I grab my things from the bench and stuff them in my bag, kicking open the door, golden rays of sun spilling in and the warmth mixing with the cool air. I find a decent spot on a half wall just outside the door, and I sit with my feet dangling and my shoes untied. The color outside grows more orange with each passing minute, and it dims the longer I wait. The boys’ team isn’t practicing today either.
My dad has come and gone, another window closed without a chance to see him, so I might as well stay. I have failures everywhere I look, so why not deal with them here. I don’t know where half of our team was today, and not a single college has opened my recruitment page in months—not even after the emails I sent out last night. I checked at lunch, and I could go to the computer lab now to check again, but instead, I hold on to that last little shred of optimism and belief that Tristan is good. He’s the neighbor who helped me unload my truck, who said yes to saving my team, and who, for some reason, I can’t separate myself from. He’s who I’ve pictured before bed the last three nights, and I can’t seem to quench this feeling that something is terribly wrong with him.
He wouldn’t miss this for something trivial. I know people, and I know him. He’s not a liar, and he’s not a quitter. He’ll be here…he’s just late.
He’s just late.
Chapter Eleven
Tristan
* * *
I’ve driven every street. I lied to my mom when she called, told her I came to grab the car right after school let out. She knows I’m lying, but I answered her call so there’s that little pause in her mind that maybe I’m being honest. She lives for those little pauses. It’s part of her faith—that the bad isn’t really happening, and if she prays hard enough, everything will be okay.
I believe in confessions. I believe in repenting. And I believe for some of us, it’s too late. I also believe that my mother’s prayers are low on a long list of more important things for God to get to.
I’m tempted to pray right now, though. I would give anything to have my friend’s car come into view the moment I round the school to pull into the lot reserved for teachers. It’s not there, though. The lot is empty, minus one truck. Riley’s truck. Everyone else has gone home, both practices done an hour ago. I’m not even sure if the girls had theirs since I wasn’t there to run it, not that I have any real role or advice to give.
Circling around the lot, I glance inside her truck to see if she’s waiting in the cab. I pull around both sides and am sort of relieved she isn’t here to see me. A shoe slams against my windshield and rolls with heavy clunks down the side of the car’s hood. I trace back its origin and my eyes meet furious ones. Riley’s gray T-shirt is damp with sweat, her sleeves rolled above her shoulders and the neck stretched low enough to see the top of her sports bra. Her school bag weighs down one arm and her duffel bag hangs from the other. She glares at me as she steps into the lot and begins to walk toward her truck, only one shoe on her feet.
“Dammit,” I hiss as I push the gear into park and get out of my mom’s car to retrieve her shoe.
“Riley, I’m sorry. I had to be somewhere, though,” I start to explain as I walk up behind her, holding out her shoe for her to take. She dumps her bags in the bed of her truck then turns to face me, her eyes moving from mine to her shoe as everything about her scowls.
“I had to run practice. And then they all left because they don’t believe we’re ever going to get to a game, and Lauren told me I shouldn’t count on you. So, tell me, Tristan. Can I count on you for this? Because this is important to me, and I still have time to scramble. I don’t know what I’ll do, but I won’t waste my time if you’re fucking hopeless. Just tell me now.”
Hopeless. That word sticks out. I don’t know how to answer it. I’m more hopeless than she could possibly understand. Guilt feels like shit, though, and for whatever reason, I don’t want to disappoint her. If I do, then all of this fantasy will disappear, and I won’t have a happy little world to play in anymore.
I won’t have her world.
I won’t have her.
“Take your shoe,” I say, completely disregarding everything she just leveled at me.
She stares at me blankly for a second before breathing out a short laugh and looking off to the side.
“Don’t do that. Stop with the eyerolls, Riley. I really don’t need your shit.” I both regret it and want to high five myself for still being the asshole when I need to be. I’m not lost to her—I’m in charge. My missing friend is more important, and I don’t owe her anything.
She rips the shoe from my hand and mumbles under her breath.
“I should just quit.” I catch that last part, and the
guilt stabs again. I work to numb it.
She brushes into me, her body levying a hint of a shove when our arms touch, and I twist from the impact.
“Excuse me.” She actually huffs the words, and as fucked up as my world is right now, this makes me laugh out loud.
“Jesus Christ, Riley! Give me a goddamned break!” I chuckle through my words and thread my fingers together, my palms on my forehead as I take a few steps back. I slowly let go, my hands falling down to my sides in defeat. I’m surrendering to this day—to this life.
I let my head drop forward and I stare at her as she sits in the driver’s seat of her truck, her legs out the side so she can violently shove her foot in her shoe—the shoe she just threw at me.
“Why are you even here still?”
She stops tying her shoe when I speak and slowly twists her head until our eyes meet. Somehow that pissed off look is dug in deeper.
“If you were just going to leave the minute I showed up, why bother to wait around?” I step in closer and she gets out of her truck, meeting me halfway.
“I was just going to practice with the boys’ team,” she says, moving forward an inch at a time, her hips swaying with each small step. It feels like she’s punching me verbally. “I waited and waited, and they never showed.”
Our toes are touching, and she’s so close; I’m not holding onto her with my hands and that makes my arms feel lost and unsure. I hook my thumbs in my pockets to make myself feel stronger, and it works for maybe half a second.
“And then I thought, well maybe Tristan will show up. Maybe…maybe he’s okay. Maybe I’m worried for no reason at all. I bet his friend Paul will come and tell me he just got busy. And then you didn’t show up.”