Preacher: The East End Boys

by Christopher Harlan

  My sister doesn’t raise her eyebrow much—that’s more my move—but she does when I mention our sperm donor. “How the hell did you get there from what Lucien told you?”

  “I guess it’s the therapist in me—I’m trained to look for explanations—things in people’s past that leads them to behaving in certain ways in the present. Once I saw where the story with Lucien was going, I thought of how two of the most important men in my life both left me. It made me even more mad.”

  Then Jess does something she never does—reaches over and takes my hand in the most gentle, comforting way imaginable. “Listen. You’re my sister and I love you. And I know you’re hurting right now—a lot—but you need to hear what I’m about to say. That comparison is for shit.” And there she is!

  “Why?”

  “Yes, they both have penises and they both came and went in your life. They probably each owned a pair of sneakers and liked pizza also—but that’s where the similarities end, Lyric. You’re ignoring the most important part—which is why each of them left. Dad left because he couldn’t keep it in his pants. He made a choice that ruined his whole family. Lucien had to leave to protect his family. Did he do it the right way? Probably not. But I’m not even sure what the right way is when you’re being threatened with jail time and a civil law suit.”

  “So that makes it okay?”

  “No, I’m not taking a position on whether it’s okay or not—that’s for you to decide—all I’m saying is you have to at least consider the motivation of someone’s actions. Lucien didn’t cheat on you, he didn’t leave just you—he left Arkham to protect the ones he loved besides you—your relationship was just collateral damage, but his intentions were honorable. Hate him if you want to, but there are worse things in this world than a man—a boy at the time—who was willing to sacrifice the girl he loved to protect his mom and baby brother.”

  I hate when Jess is right—and she’s usually right. I want to just think the worst of Lucien—to see what he did as evidence of what a mistake the past few weeks has been. But now I have this new perspective to consider, and I don’t like it at all. “Do you realize that you referenced dad’s penis twice in one conversation? It freaked me out a little, not gonna lie.”

  She laughs. “I know. I heard it also and it made my skin crawl. Sorry.”

  We sit and order food to go with the gallons of coffee I’m drinking. I have to get back to New York and think about everything that’s happened.

  Forty-Four—Preacher

  The Present

  I left Arkham the morning after Lyric stormed out.

  There’s nothing left for me there. I’ve known that for a long time, but that isn’t why I hopped a flight back to JFK so quickly.

  I got a call from Pope about an hour after Lyric left saying that I had to check the news. I don’t think a text like that has ever ended well.

  I checked. I saw the story. I booked a flight for the two of us and now here we are.

  Of all the meetings I imagined having when I got back from my mother’s funeral, the fire investigator isn’t one of them. While we were gone someone set fire to the building we’re working on. The damage was minimal, but it’s fire damage. That means investigation, clean up, redoing everything that was damaged—in other words, it means delays.

  The fire marshal tells us it looks like arson since none of the electrical was up and running, but that he has to do a full investigation to be sure. When he leaves, I’m about ready to lose my shit.

  “Breathe, man. It’s just hardball. Just delays. Nothing we can’t overcome.”

  Pope’s trying to be rational—he’s usually the calmer of the two of us—when he’s not causing property damage and getting me run out of town, that is. “Hardball? Did you say hardball?” He nods. “This isn’t a tough negotiation in the boardroom Pope—this is guys lighting our building on fire. If someone hadn’t called the department in time, it might have burned to the ground.”

  “I’m sure that was the goal of whoever did this.”

  I raise my eyebrow. “Don’t say ‘whoever’ like we don’t know. It insults both of our intelligences.”

  “We don’t know anything,” he says, getting up and nervously walking around the room. “We’re just speculating based on circumstantial evidence.”

  I’m getting annoyed. “Would you stop being a fucking lawyer for two seconds and just be a Carter. Listen to you—circumstantial, speculation—you think we’re in an evidentiary hearing right now? We’ve been fucking attacked Pope—not figuratively, but very fucking literally. You think we can just sit on this and wait for an investigation to play out over the next few weeks?”

  Pope runs his hands through his hair—that’s his move when he’s stressed out. “What choice do we have? We have to let the investigation play out, and if it turns out that the marshal is correct and it is arson, then we’ll have something to use in a criminal case.”

  “Oh come on!” Now I’m really annoyed. I need a soldier right now, not an attorney. “You think they left a trace? You think their guy got caught on fucking camera like you did?” That last one was a kick to the balls, but I’ve had that on my mind since I told Lyric. Anger towards my brother that I’ve never let out is burning in my chest right now, along with anger at the Griffins, anger at Mom’s death, just anger. I’m a powder keg that’s about to explode.

  “How many times do I have to apologize for what happened?”

  “Keep fucking going and I’ll let you know when it gives me back the time I lost—the person that I lost!”

  “Hey, fuck you! Don’t blame me for your shit—no one made you leave.”

  That line went too far. I get in his face and he stands his ground. “What did you say?”

  “I said, no one made you leave. You did that all on your own. You wanna go the rest of your life blaming me for Lyric, have at it. No one told you to fucking vanish for ten years, bro. There are these things called phones, you could have. . .”

  I interrupt his sentence with a left hook. I’m done listening to his revisionist history. He grabs his side and while he’s bent over tackles me and slams me against the wall. We hit with enough force to knock some of my pictures off the wall, and we go to the ground. We each get a few licks in before my secretary, Meghan, rushes in the door. “Stop!” she yells, over and over, but we need to let this play out a little longer.

  “Mr. Carter, please stop. You too. . . other Mr. Carter.”

  We stop. Not because a twenty-two-year-old girl is yelling for us to stop, but because we’re both tired. Angry fighting in close quarters is exhausting, and I think we both got something out we needed to get out. Poor Meghan stands over two giant men, tired, bloodied, and in full suits, and what do we do? We start laughing like psychos—she looks very confused.

  “Don’t worry, Meghan, just our morning workout,” Pope explains.

  I simplify. “Brother shit. Pay no mind.”

  “Oh. . . okay, sir.”

  I get to my feet and extend a hand. Pope takes it and gets up. We fix our ties, which is a strange move considering how fucked up we look. But a straight tie is a straight tie. “Really Meghan, it’s okay. Any mail?”

  “Actually, yes, hold on.”

  She leaves my office and Pope and I look at each other and nod. “You good?” I ask.

  “Good. You?”

  “Same. Sorry about that other shit.”

  “Me too. I’ll always be sorry, man.”

  That’s all I need. That’s enough. And like that we’re back, me taking the mail from a very shaken Meghan with blood on my knuckles and shirt, and Pope catching his breath. “Thanks, Meghan. You know what, why don’t you take the rest of the day.”

  “It’s okay, sir, I have brothers. I get it.”

  I smile. She’s alright. “Okay then.”

  I rustle through some of the envelopes. Mostly it’s crap, but I stumble on a handwritten envelope with the name Preacher scribbled across it in handwriting that’s not familia
r to me.

  Inside there’s a photo. It’s a picture of the float that burned down in Arkham before it burned down. On the back there’s only one letter—“D”.

  “Meghan!” I yell. She rushes back in at the urgency in my voice.

  “Yes, Mr. Carter?”

  “What do I have scheduled for after lunch?”

  “Meetings mostly, sir. Why?”

  “Cancel them,” I tell her. “Cancel them all.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Pope looks at me and sees the rage in my face. I’m grinding my teeth so bad right now it probably looks like my jaw is going to dislocate itself. “What’s going on, man?”

  I look at my brother and hand him the picture. “What’s going on is that I might need that lawyer after all—to defend me for murdering Draven Griffin.”

  Then I leave. No more words are necessary.

  Like they say, actions speak louder than words.

  Forty-Five—Lyric

  The Past

  “You are. . .everything—just everything.”

  Mom’s going to kill me.

  She already thinks she’s raising the town slut after what happened earlier, and now my grades are slipping. That was the only rule when she tried to tell me to stop seeing Lucien—I can’t stop you from seeing some boy, but you’d better keep your grades up.

  Yeah, about that. . .

  My first report card is coming and you can spell boy and car with my grade letters. One or two apples also, but only in the subjects I’m really good in—why the hell did I decide to take Advanced Physics my senior year? Oh yeah, because I hadn’t met Lucien yet and I stupidly thought I’d spend all my free time with my face in review books instead of making out. Hindsight.

  I’ve also been cutting class for the first time ever, which Mom doesn’t know about or she’d freak the hell out and take my phone away. I’ve never been a class cutter—but I’ve never been a girlfriend either, and those two things are messing with my head.

  Lucien is messing with my head.

  Don’t get me wrong, he’s not trying to be a bad influence—he just kind of is. He’s never told me to follow him out the side door in the middle of the day, but I just do. He didn’t force me to try weed for the first time, I just asked for a pull of the joint he was smoking and it made me feel amazing.

  Kennedy and Jessalyn aren’t thrilled with me either, because for a few months I haven’t been the most present friend or sister. Not that Jess cares that much, it’s more Kennedy.

  I’m thinking about all of this right now because I don’t know what I’m going to do when report cards come out on Friday. I’d pull an old school trick and grab the mail before Mom could see, but the school puts everything online for parents to see now, including attendance. Thank God Mom’s too hopped up on anti-depressants to be as much of a helicopter parent as she used to be. But B’s and C’s aren’t gonna cut it.

  And you know where I’m thinking about all of this?

  At Lucien’s place at 12:30 in the afternoon on a Tuesday. I wonder what’s happening in French class right now?

  I ask that out loud, a puff of smoke carrying my vaguely stoned words across the room.

  “Probably speaking French and talking about French shit,” Lucien answers. He’s not wrong.

  “I’ve been thinking,” I tell him. He doesn’t wait for me to finish.

  “Uh-oh. About?”

  I smile. “I think you might be a bad influence on me.”

  His turn to smile. Only his smile is way more complicated than mine—it’s a mix of thinking what I said was funny, plus more than a little sexy deviance to boot.

  “I am absolutely a bad influence. No secret there. Save those brain cells for getting into that fancy college you want to get into so bad.”

  “You mean Columbia?”

  “That’s the one, right. I forgot.”

  He did not forget. Lucien plays dumb. He pretends to be a lot of things, but he’s one of the smartest people I know. And how do I know this? Because he cuts class way more than I ever have, and his grades are higher than mine. He’s that kid who can disappear for two weeks, show up on the day of the test and out score the entire class. Then he’ll get in trouble for telling the teacher to fuck herself (that really happened, he almost got expelled).

  He’s complicated like that—angel and devil—my Preacher.

  I decide to call him on his bullshit. “Didn’t you grow up in the city?”

  He nods. “Yup.”

  “Then you know Columbia University. Ivy League? One of the best schools in the country?”

  “Oh!” he yells, exaggerating and smiling. “Right. I thought you said something else. Yeah, you’re never getting in with these grades. You have to get your shit together.”

  “Get my shit together? Okay, I think step one would be breaking up with you, since you’re taking all of my free time from studying.”

  I’m lying on his bed with him next to me. He drapes his body over mine and I lie still. Leaning over, he puts his hands on my face and kisses me like I’ve never been kissed before—a blend of soft and passionate. “You mean you’d rather study Comparative Government than do that?”

  That’s a big no.

  I push him off. “I’d rather have everything at the same time—you, good grades, and the future that I want.”

  He sits up. “You can have all of that. When are applications due?”

  “Two weeks,” I tell him. “I’m doing early action.”

  “Yeah my brother’s doing that same shit. Here’s what you do. Your teachers like you?”

  “They love me.” I’ve always been that girl teachers like—don’t get me wrong I’m not a kiss ass or teacher’s pet—but in high school just being a kid who actually follows the rules is enough to make you the golden child. I go to class on time, always have my stuff with me, and I actually participate in class.

  “Of course they do,” he jokes. “So you’re going to use that to your advantage.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Find them, one at a time, and tell them you need to talk to them privately after school or some shit. Tell them you’ve been struggling with your mom’s issues at home and the stress of what happened, and that you’re sorry for missing class. Ask them if there are any last-minute assignments you can do to bump up your grades. Colleges only use first semester senior grades anyhow, so after that little bump you can fuck off as much as you like.”

  He’s good at that—of negotiating with people, of knowing how to move them like chess pieces so that he can get what he wants. I’ve seen him do it with teachers, other kids, even his brother. It’s like everything else with Lucien—it scares me a little and excites me a lot. Most guys would just tell me to study harder. Not Preacher—he wants me to work the system.

  “I’ll give that a try,” I tell him. “Tomorrow. ‘Cause there’s no way in hell I’m going back to school today. I don’t want to see anybody.”

  “Fuck that, of course not.” He looks around the room and takes a heavy drag on the joint we’re not sharing. “Listen, he hasn’t bothered you at all, has he?”

  We both know who ‘he’ is. I don’t want to lie to him about Draven, but I also can’t be totally honest. If I tell him that Draven texts me all the time trying to get with me, referencing our kiss and everything that happened, Lucien would legit kill him. It wouldn’t be good for anyone, so I tell a little white lie. “Not really, no.”

  He sniffs out my vague non-answer. “Not really? What does that mean? It’s a yes or no question.”

  “Then no, Lucien. He hasn’t been bothering me. Honest.” I don’t think he believes me fully, but he uncharacteristically drops it. “And even if someone—not Draven, but anyone—were bothering me I could handle it myself. You can’t get into any more fights. You’re better than that.” He snickers when I say that. “What?”

  “That’s the same thing the counselor at Harmony House told me right before I got out—'you have potential, son
, you need to stop solving problems with your fists, it’s how you got here in the first place.’ Fuck Columbia, you’re already a good psychologist.”

  It seems strange that someone who I feel so close to is such a mystery to me, but he is in so many ways. He doesn’t like to talk about his past, and the times I’ve tried to bring it up he brushes it off or changes the subject. But I know there’s stuff going on inside him that needs to be let out. Plus, we’re both high right now, so it might be a good time to ask what I’ve wanted to ask for weeks.

  “Why haven’t you ever told me what you did to get you locked up in there?”

  He looks at me differently. More intensely. Even though I know he’s stoned, his eyes are crystal clear. “Because you don’t want to know.”

  I sit up and try to clear my head as much as possible. “No, I actually do. I really do. You can tell me, I won’t say a word to anyone—not my sister, not Kennedy, no one. It’ll just be between us.”

  He hesitates. Nothing scares this kid, and even though he’s not a big talker, he’s never at a loss of what to say—unless I bring his past up. I scooch my body closer to his and cup his hand with mine. “Tell me.”

  “I don’t want you to think less of me,” he says. It kind of shocks me, because Lucien doesn’t say things like that. He doesn’t give a shit what anyone thinks. “You have to promise me.”

  “I promise. Just tell me.”

  “We’re not poor, you know? My family.”

  “Okay?” I say. It’s a weird way for him to start the story.

  “I mean, we are now—but we weren’t. My father is kind of a big deal in the business world in New York City. Like, the biggest deal. He’s loaded.”

  “Oh. I didn’t. . .”

  “But we are poor—me, Mom, Pope. He cut us off and sends a check once a month that barely covers the mortgage on this shit hole I live in.”

  “I like your house, it’s fine.”

  He laughs. “Fine’s a good word for it. Good enough. Barely livable. All because of that piece of shit.”