Guess I’m about to find out.
Pope knocks on the bathroom door again. “Yo. You fall in, man? Come on, I need to do my hair for school.”
I went into juvie with a little brother and I came out with a little sister. “Fuck your hair, I’m getting ready.” He knocks again. I open the door faster than he was expecting and he stumbles forward. “You alright?”
“Fuck off.” I can tell he’s feeling himself this morning. My pretty-boy little brother who’s used to being the baby of the family. He knows I’m not going to flatten him the first day of school in front of Mom, so he’s pushing his little brother limits with me. “I know you’re used to getting ready for your busy days of hanging out in the yard and trying not to get shanked, but you weren’t in that long, you remember actual school right? People care how you look.”
“What people, Pope? The ones who look at Mom like she doesn’t belong in the hallowed halls of their fucking grocery store? Who are you trying to impress?”
“I don’t know, Preach, how about the teachers in all the Advanced Placement classes I’m taking who I need to write letters of recommendation for law school, or the principal who probably already has our whole family pegged as criminals. Or, imagine this, actually trying to make some friends. Crazy, right?”
“You’re such a little kiss ass.”
“It’s called networking, genius. You know, building relationships for what you want in the future. Ever heard of it? I have plans for my future, Preach, and they don’t include getting into brawls and smoking weed all year. Someone has to maintain the family’s dignity.”
Pope’s mad also, he just hides it better. Truth is we clash because we’re similar in a lot of ways. Both tough as nails, both with a chip on our shoulder, both of us ready to throw fists and middle fingers at the world whenever necessary. But we’re also different in a lot of ways. He has all these ambitions about the future—he’s always been in all advanced classes in school. Since middle school, the kid has talked about being a lawyer and going to an elite college. Inside, he has to resent me for what happened.
“Finish up, will you? Some of us still give a shit about how we look.”
I let him get ready. In the kitchen Mom is making scrambled eggs, and the smell of bacon is filling up the entire room. It’s the only good thing about the morning so far.
“Hungry?” she asks.
“You know I don’t do breakfast. Except for the bacon, I’m gonna need a few pieces of that.”
“Help yourself. I made enough for all of us.” She really did. Eggs, toast, bacon, you name it. She’s doing this for us. She blames herself for what happened even though it’s my fault. Since we got here in the summer, she’s tried to make like an episode of Leave it To Beaver. “Where’s your brother?”
“Changing his tampon.”
“Hey!” she snaps. “Be nice. It’s the first day of school.”
“Trust me, Ma, I’m well aware of that fact. And based on the amount of product my little sister is probably putting in her hair as we speak, so is she.”
“Would you stop riding Pope? He’s trying his best, just like all of us.”
I eat my bacon standing. I’ve got a lot of energy and I’ll be doing enough sitting today, listening to lectures I could give a fuck about while those kids stare at me like I’m the poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks.
If only they knew.
The counter is a mess of dishes that need cleaning, random things we still haven’t put in the correct places in the house, and lots of mail. I rifle through some of it. “Mom, we gotta clean up a little.”
“Go ahead,” she tells me. “You have two hands.”
As I shuffle through all the junk mail envelopes, I come across a loose check sandwiched inside. I pull it out of the pile. “What’s this?” Mom practically jumps out of her seat like she doesn’t want me to see.
“Give me that.”
I take a step back and look at it. “Is this? This is all? Are you serious?”
“Just give it here.”
But I don’t. I won’t. It’s the wrong morning for me to see what I’m holding in my hands. I’m not sure there would have ever been a good time, but definitely not now.
“Are you kidding me?”
Mom looks around frantically. “Lower your voice, please. Pope is going to hear you, and give that to me, it isn’t yours.”
“God forbid Pope is actually exposed to the truth for once, right? And I can’t believe what I just saw.”
“Well, believe it,” Mom says coldly. “Because that’s all there is. We’ll just have to stretch a little, you know? Fool George Washington into thinking he’s Benjamin Franklin. We can do it.”
We shouldn’t have to do it.
Child support and alimony were part of their divorce settlement, but the number on that check is barely enough to cover what we need. “I bet that prick is counting the days until I turn eighteen so he can cut this off. Asshole won’t have to wait very long. My birthday is coming up soon.”
“Hey!” she yells. “That’s still your father you’re talking about.”
That almost sets me off. I can’t believe she’s still finding a way to defend that monster. “He deserved what he got Mom, and this proves it. We’re nothing to him.” What that man took from us—from me—can never be repaid. I did what I could to get some of it back.
“Is this really how you want to start the day? You don’t need to worry about this, yet. You’re still a kid, and your job is to go to school and stay out of trouble. Do you think you can do that?”
The first half, sure. “Yeah. I can do that.”
“Thank you,” she says, running her hand along the side of my face. “Leave the adulting to me.”
It’s a fair request, even if I know I can’t fully honor it. Pope comes out looking the same as he did when he went in. I look at our mom who gives me the “don’t mess with your little brother” stare.
“Don’t worry, Ma, I’ll hold his hand to cross the street.”
We get to school a half hour later. I’m gonna last about ten minutes at this place.
Maybe Pope was right, maybe I was institutionalized over at Harmony.
“Holy shit,” Pope says, staring up at the building like a tourist looking at a skyscraper in NYC. “Why didn’t we move to this part of town?”
There he goes again, having the emotional maturity of a fucking ant. “Three guesses, dipshit. Choice A - we obviously couldn’t afford it. Choice B. . . actually, we don’t need a fuckin choice B or C do we?”
“You’re like, a professional asshole.”
“Stupid questions get stupid answers. That’s how life works.”
“No, that’s how you work—other people are actually nice.”
I snicker. “The truth hurts. Not my fault. Don’t say dumb shit.”
I’m hard on my little brother because we don’t have a father around, and when we did, raising us correctly was about number eighty on a priority list of eighty things. There was no money in raising your kids, so why bother putting energy into it.
But Pope knows I have his back and I know he has mine. When we had to handle business with those jock assholes, he jumped in the second I dodged the first punch and started swinging. But if push came to shove—no pun—we’d fight each other just as hard.
Brother shit.
“So, this is where these kids do all their book learning, huh?”
“The rich ones anyhow.” It didn’t take a degree in urban planning to tell that the shithole part of town we were living in and the part Arkham High stands in are in two different universes with two different sets of people.
“This is where we all do our book learning for the next nine months or so.”
“Unless you get your ass thrown out. . . again.”
Pope loves to remind me of the past. It’s the only way he can land a punch on me, so he cheap shots me whenever he can. “I think my first class is sign language,” I tell him. He looks at me
puzzled.
“Sign language? They have that in high school?”
“Yeah, look, I know a little already.” I shoot double middle fingers at him like Stone Cold Steve Austin did to Mike Tyson. “You know what this means?”
“It means I was right—you are a professional asshole.”
“Guilty as charged.”
I go to the office and get my schedule, pretending not to notice the kids staring at me and whispering shit about me. I learned at Harmony how to keep an eye on the people around me while looking like I’m just minding my own business. If a place like that teaches you nothing else—and it doesn’t—it’s how to be aware of your surroundings.
“Mr. . .”
“Carter,” I tell her, too impatient to wait for her incompetent ass to click through the computer any longer. “Twelfth grade.” She keeps clicking for another ten seconds before hitting the print button. My class schedule spits itself out of the printer, and when she hands it to me she all but clutches her purse. “Thanks.” I lean in and she moves backwards just a little. “And don’t worry, not gonna rob you—not today, anyhow, I’ll be late for class.”
I love messing with people.
My first class is on the second floor—Participation in Government. I’m so excited I can barely contain myself. I push my way—literally—through the hallways full of freshmen struggling to find where their classes are. It’s kind of funny. Eventually I get to room 213, and of all the rushing bodies in my visual field, guess who my eyes lock on.
It’s the girl named after music. God damn is she hot.
She must have class next door to mine. There are a group of kids gathered around the door of that room—teacher must be late. It’s the perfect opportunity. I walk up behind her and tap her on the shoulder.
“Lucien.”
“That’s me. But I like to use my fake name when no one knows me.”
“You seriously want me to call you Preacher?” I nod. She makes a face but says, “Okay.”
I lean into her—really close. “Just in public. In private I have other names that you can call me.”
She looks at me in a different way than I’ve seen her look at me before. She’s not scared and she’s obviously stone sober—it’s something else. She looks turned on.
“Well then I guess I’ll have to think of some new names.”
“They’ll come out naturally, don’t worry. Now get to class—I think your teacher just unlocked the door. We’ll talk later.”
She disappears into her class and I should probably do the same. Probably. But what’s the rush? I still have a few minutes.
I look around to get a lay of the land. All I see are little worker bees, running off to do worker bee shit—frantic and faceless. But at the end of the hall I see two faces I know. I think one of them still has marks on his face. He’s staring over here like he’s going to do something, but we both know that he isn’t. The tall one—what did she say his name was?
Draven. Stupid fucking name.
I saw him looking over here, and at first I thought he was mean-mugging me, looking to posture and puff his chest out to save face in front of his friends.
But I don’t think he was looking at me—I think he was staring at Lyric.
Twenty-Two—Lyric
The Present
“I had a dream about you last night.”
“See,” he says, all excited. “Now that’s the proper way to start a dinner. Tell me, was I fucking you, about to fuck you, or had I just fucked you? Any of those is fine, just want to get the visual just right in my head.”
“None of the above,” I tell him. “No sex.” I’m lying. I’m so very much lying.
He snickers. “Well then that dream must have sucked.”
This place Preacher chose is so fancy that I’m suffering from a serious case of impostor syndrome—all of the other patrons seem like they belong. Me? I’m just playing dress up. It’s surreal to be sitting here with my poor boy from the East End. So what the hell are we doing at one of the fanciest places in the city, where the appetizers cost as much as entrees at other restaurants, and the waitstaff all seem like Alfred from Batman?
“Forget my dream. Let’s talk about your offer instead.” He looks at me with the kind of what-the-hell look a guy would give you if you stopped in the middle of a blowjob and turned on Netflix.
He grudgingly lets me lead the conversational dance, but only for a second. “What about it? Seems pretty simple. I offered you something, you say yes. What’s there to discuss?”
“See that’s the thing, though, I don’t even know what I’m being offered. But before we even get to a job offer, you have some explaining to do.” The waitress comes over. Preacher orders a bottle of wine that would make a huge dent in my rent if I sold a bottle of it. “See, that’s what I’m talking about.”
“What do you mean?” He’s playing coy, he knows exactly what I mean. This whole presentation, from making an appointment to see me, to the almost-sex we had, to this fancy dinner—it’s all an attempt to butter me up for this job offer. He wants something, that’s the only reason he’s back—not to apologize for what he did, and sure as hell not to make things right. No, he just needs something from me and this is his elaborate way of getting it.
“Fine, I’ll play along, but only once. Then, if you don’t explain yourself I’m going to get up and leave you with two glasses and a very full bottle of expensive wine.”
He folds his hands like an evil choirboy and looks right at me. “Alright. Let’s do this like the end of The Godfather.”
“I have no idea what that even means.”
“You’ve seen it, right?”
What the hell is he saying? “I don’t know, I guess, maybe. I don’t remember. Why are we. . .”
“There’s no ‘I guess’ when it comes to whether or not you’ve seen the greatest American film ever made.” I forgot how much he loves movies. He would always want me to watch these long boring films with him.
“Then I haven’t, no.”
“We’ll put my judgement of you aside for a second so I can explain what I mean. In the very last scene of Godfather 1, Michael’s wife suspects that he’s this mob boss who had his sister’s husband killed, so she asks him about it in his office.”
“Okay. So what?”
“He gives her that famous line — Don’t ask me about my business, Kate.”
He stops there like I’m supposed to get some message from the story. “So. . . is that your low-key way of telling me you became a mafia boss in the last ten years?”
He laughs. “Of sorts. The business world can seem like organized crime, trust me. But that actually wasn’t my point. Later in that same scene Michael caves and let’s his wife ask him one question, one time, about the thing he doesn’t want to tell her.”
Now I get it. But if he thinks I’m stopping at one question just because he likes that scene in a film he’s more arrogant than I even thought. “Okay,” I say, playing along, sort of. “So you’re telling me I get one question?”
“Make it a good one.”
I was going to butter him up—flirt a little, have a glass of wine or three. But screw it, time to jump in with both legs.
“Fine,” I tell him. “My question is why. What motivation would I have to take a job, sight unseen, with a man who disappeared from my life, never told me why, and just showed up a decade later like it was nothing? Why would I possibly consider doing that?”
I didn’t mean to get heated as I said that—I told myself that I was going to stay calm no matter what he said or did, but his demeanor is driving me crazy. That and the fact that I can’t stop thinking about the other day in my office, and what I would have let happen if Sophie hadn’t barged in.
I have no control around him.
He looks at me with those penetrating eyes and says, “That’s an easy one—money.”
“Money?” I don’t know what I was expecting, but not that. Maybe some desperate plea to be with
me, or that he needed to be around me, but no, just cold hard cash.
“Yes. Its usually why people work jobs, from what I hear.” Asshole. “I did a little research. Your practice is in a very high rent area of the city.”
Yeah, tell me about it. “I did that on purpose.”
“You intentionally started a business in a high rent area when you had no clients?”
Well, when you say it like that! “Yeah. I figured higher paying clients might find me and recommend me more easily.”
“Tough to have that kind of overhead so early in a business. Drains your resources, doesn’t it?”
Not sure where we’re going with this. “It does, yeah. What’s your point here?”
“If you agree to work for me I’ll agree—formally, of course—to prepay two years of your rent.” If my jaw could literally hit the floor I’d have to pick it up right about now. “And,” he continues, “I’ll pay off your student debt from college—all of it—I’ve never been to college myself, but I’m sure those payments are burning a hole in your pocket.”
I can’t believe what I just heard. What he just casually offered me over dinner represents literally hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not over the million mark. Who is this new Preacher, and how can he possibly pay for what he just offered to pay for?
“Did I just hear you right?”
“If you heard me offering you a chance to change your circumstances then you heard right.”
“I. . . I don’t know what to say.”
“Say yes, it’s pretty fuckin’ uncomplicated.”
I still don’t know what I’m saying yes to. I know most people would leap at an offer even one quarter as generous as the one he just made to me, but money has never meant the same thing to me that it has to other people. Growing up where I did, I saw money as something that changes, that corrupts, that makes people feel superior to others. I’ve never chased money. But still, the idea of not having to struggle is enticing.
But then something occurs to me. I hear Kennedy’s voice in my head asking that question she asked the other day. Why me? Why would he offer that much to me? There are more established, respected therapists.
Preacher: The East End Boys Page 13