by Ash Parsons
This year it was an AP History class they put me in. They said I didn’t have to take it for college credit, but that I should try anyway.
Which was maybe why Michael Springfield was talking to me, because I sit in front of him in class.
“Jason,” he repeated. He gunned the engine as he popped it out of gear.
I didn’t speak. Just waited.
Michael stopped smiling. I guess he isn’t used to silence when he speaks to a nobody. If he stayed at the curb much longer, snot-nosed kids would steal his hubcaps while he idled.
Cyndra curled forward, clasping her hands between her knees. She has to know what that move does to her breasts.
“Listen,” Michael said. “I want to talk with you about something. I’ll pay you for your time.” He sounded like a bad movie and looked like one as he laid a fifty on the dashboard. “Cyndra—”
She tilted her cleavage toward her boyfriend.
“Get in the back, baby. Jason’s going to ride up front.”
She popped on all fours and slowly climbed between the seats.
I pulled a cigarette out of my coat. I know, I know, smoking is lame. But it’s not like I’m going to be an old man on a ventilator. I’ll be dead long before then.
I ignored the fifty and peered in through the open window.
“What time is it?”
“Six o’clock,” Cyndra said.
I let the cigarette dangle from my lip and pulled a hand through my hair. Janie won’t cut it as often as I’d like—she says it looks tough longer. Personally, I think the last time I asked her to cut it she just went through the motions, but if that makes her happy, I guess I don’t care.
The Mustang idled like a predatory cat, purring. I ran the time in my head. If it was only six, then there was a little more than an hour, probably, before my dad would make it home. Time to burn. Besides, I was curious. And I thought of what I could get with that fifty.
Cyndra might give me a few more glimpses, too.
I could feel the eyes of the neighborhood on me. To his credit, Michael didn’t rush me.
“Fine.” I took a deep drag before letting the smoke fume slowly out of my mouth. “But you bring me back here by seven fifteen at the latest. No games, no waiting.”
Cyndra laughed. “What? Don’t tell me you have a curfew.”
What an idiot.
It must have showed on my face, because she stopped smiling and for the first time looked away.
“Sure, no problem.” Michael leaned across the car and popped the door open.
I climbed in. The bucket seat molded to my back. The fifty slid into my pocket like it belonged there.
Michael peeled out, leaving twin black streaks behind us. I thought he was going to drive like an ass, but once he had his bucking bronco moment he settled down and drove cautiously.
I relaxed a little.
The Mustang carried us into the hills.
CHAPTER TWO
Damn, baby. I can’t concentrate,” Michael said as he drove higher into the subdivisions that surround the city. He smiled into the rearview mirror.
“Well, hell.” Cyndra groaned, pushing her knees into the back of my seat. “It’s so boring. Don’t you talk?”
I ignored her. She was one of those girls used to attention. If you’re male and have a pulse, then she expects you to be into her. Assumes that you will be, accepts it as tribute.
Her hand brushed my earlobe. “Gimme one of those.”
Even though I knew what she was doing, I shivered as the warmth of her hand hovered over my ear. My fingers fumbled for a cigarette.
“Thanks, Slick.” She gave my ear a tweak.
“Don’t touch me.”
“Whooo,” Cyndra replied, fake scared.
“What do you want?” I asked Michael as he eased past a gatehouse. A security guard waved as we passed.
“Let’s just wait till we get there,” he said.
“Where?”
“My house.”
Cyndra’s hand hovered by my ear again. “Light this for me? I won’t bite. I promise.”
I didn’t want to twist to face her, so I flipped the visor down and stared at her in the small mirror.
“Damn, X-ray Eyes! Stop glaring.” She licked her teeth. “You know, you have really blue eyes?” She made it sound like a question. “They’re, like, startling. Like a dog’s. You know—a wolf-y dog.” Cyndra’s fingers hovered by my hair.
I jerked my head away. “Don’t.”
She pouted. “Touchy.” She waved the cigarette over my shoulder.
I lit it. The filter tasted like her lip gloss, like berries. I handed the cigarette back. Cyndra took a drag.
“Mmmm.” She sighed.
She wanted me to look at her again, so I flipped the visor up.
The car prowled along the top of a baby mountain. I knew the area by reputation—rich people lived here, one mansion after another. I tried not to look at the houses. I tried not to think about things that aren’t mine and never will be.
Instead, I thought about my little sister. Imagined her in our room at home, waiting for me to get there. Pretending like she’s not worried when I walk in. Succeeding in not saying anything about me cutting it close for all of five seconds. Like she’s going to tell me something I don’t already know.
The car zigzagged along the ridgeline. Houses, huge and commanding impressive views of the city below, competed with each other to be bigger.
“Here we are.” Michael whipped a smile at me and turned into a winding driveway that led to a mansion. It looked like it had to have at least fifty rooms.
Janie and I share a room. I put up a piece of Sheetrock in between our beds, so we each would get a little privacy. But there’s no hiding the fact that it’s one room. I didn’t even want to think about how spacious and private Michael’s room was.
When we got out, Cyndra flicked her cigarette into the bushes. Mine was already rolling down the driveway.
She came and stood too close, sizing me up.
She smiled at Michael, so I couldn’t tell if she really liked what she saw or if she was playing a role for him.
“C’mon,” Michael said. He shielded a keypad with his body and punched a few buttons. The keypad blipped, and the door opened with a slight suction smack.
Inside, it was freezing, like a museum or a theater. We passed rooms that looked like advertisements in a magazine and ended up downstairs at a bar or den or something.
I tried not to touch anything.
“Sit down.” Michael gestured to a large sofa.
“What do you want?”
Cyndra padded in with three sparkling glasses on a tray. When she walked by I could smell the rum mixed in with the Coke.
“Help yourself,” she said, leaning over Michael.
He stared down her shirt, but did it cold, like he was checking an investment.
I took the drink and leaned against the wall. “So?”
Michael took a huge swig. “I need a favor. It’s nothing, really, not for a guy like you. It would only be for a couple of weeks.”
I waited.
Michael drained his glass.
“It’s like this.” He talked through his teeth like the alcohol had a bite. “I need you to hang around with my crew.”
He made it sound like it was some big crime syndicate or something. I pictured his jock and prep friends, imagined them pissing themselves if they ever stood in front of my dad and his juice-head buddies.
Michael gave his glass a little shake. Cyndra left to refill.
“Why?” I asked.
He scrubbed his head and beamed a lopsided grin.
“It’s stupid,” he said. “Does it matter? All you need to know is I’ll pay you. You’ll sit with my crew in classes, if you can,
join us at break and at lunch, and show up out at a few places where we hang.”
“Why?”
Cyndra brushed past me again. She curled next to Michael on the sofa.
“Think of it like a bet,” she said.
“Yeah, like that.” Michael smiled at her. “Like I made a bet with some people. About my connections. About things I could deliver or supply.”
I didn’t think I let anything show on my face, but Michael stopped talking.
I put my drink on the table. “I don’t deal. I can’t get you anything.”
Which wasn’t really true.
Michael held up his hands. “I don’t want anything. I mean, I can get whatever I want. I mean, just listen. Sit down, okay?”
I stayed leaning against the wall and waited.
“You don’t have to do anything. It’s what people think you can do.” Michael smiled. “It’s the school and the grapevine, right? The gossip. You’re practically a contract killer, you know? There are all these stories. Remember that fight? The one with the black belt?”
What a stupid question.
“He wasn’t a black belt.”
“Whatever. The martial arts guy, right? Well, it’s like that. You laughed, and that’s part of it. There’s a rumor you brought a gun to school. That locker check? That was all because of you. Where you live. People think you deal or your parents are in prison or something. You don’t hang out, you don’t talk, and in eighth grade you punched that teacher.”
I guess when you’re a rich man’s son, you feel like you can say anything. Maybe you can. Maybe Daddy can get you all lawyered up if you go too far.
Michael held out a hand toward me. “See? Look at you! I say all this crap, and who knows what’s true and what isn’t, and you don’t say a word. You’re golden, man.”
I shrugged. What’s the point of explaining? Or the truth? People believe what they want to believe. You can’t fight it.
Cyndra frowned at me. She twisted a piece of auburn hair around a finger and yanked it. “What’s true?”
I thought about it. The laughing during the fight everyone knew about—although there were alternate versions where I spat on the idiot or had to be pulled off him.
I guess there was enough truth to all of it. Enough to make simpleminded people in need of a distraction happy. There are drug busts in Lincoln Green all the time. My dad has been to jail.
And when I punched that teacher he deserved it. And I went to juvie.
Cyndra yanked at her hair again. “Well?”
I felt my eyes go tight. My fingers curled, and I took a step forward. “Yeah, it’s all true. Does that make you happy?”
“Easy, easy, killer.” Michael walked over to me. He laid a hand on my shoulder. I slapped it away.
“Don’t touch me.”
“Sorry.” Michael looked at me, and there was something strange in his eyes. Almost like he didn’t know what to do. Like he, Mr. Movie Star, was uncertain, or wanted something, or was somehow . . . hungry.
It was a stupid thought. The look was gone in an instant.
“Well, what do you say?” Michael asked.
“You still haven’t told me why.”
“For some specific people and occasions, I need your presence to project a certain image of me. That we’re friends.”
“And?”
“All you need to know is I’ll pay you fifty dollars a day. That’s just for the school stuff. Extras will be another fifty, per occasion.”
“That’s a lot of your dad’s money you’re prepared to spend,” I said.
His eyes narrowed as threads of muscle noose-tightened around them. His voice was low and intense. “Well, it’s a good thing he gives me so much, isn’t it? About the only thing he’s ever done for me, in fact.” He leaned back, but it wasn’t relaxed, more like a performance, pretending to be casual. “Something you should know about me, Jason. There are only two things that matter: what I want. And what I have to do to get it.”
I looked down. I tried not to think of the coffee can at home and its petty roll of cash. Tried not to think of The Plan—my escape with Janie—and how far we were from getting there. I tried not to think about hauling product around the building supply. I tried not to think of screaming and fists and having to sleep outside.
“All you have to do is hang around some. Try to act like you like us. You don’t even have to talk. Just hang around.”
I knew there was more to it. There had to be.
But I figured I could handle it. I thought maybe my part would be just what Michael described. Maybe it was some foolish jock-game, and I’d be the punch line. They’d pick a fight with me or want me to fight someone else. I thought: good.
And I thought that would be all it was.
“Fine.” I glanced at the clock. “A couple of things, though.”
“Okay, what?”
“I may have to turn down some of your extracurricular activities. I may not make it to school every day, and you won’t always know when that is. I won’t stick around if there’s trouble, and I won’t get caught with anything illegal. In fact, if we’re breaking any laws, you better clear it with me first, and the pay rate will be a hell of a lot higher.”
Juvenile hall was a cakewalk, but I couldn’t leave Janie again. And I couldn’t forget The Plan.
“That’s it?” Michael’s eyes were bright. He was all but rubbing his hands together.
“Yeah. And I can quit anytime, no refunds.”
“Sure, but you won’t want to quit. Easy money, baby. But I don’t pay you days you don’t show up.”
“Fine.”
We shook hands. I was afraid for a moment the fool would try to throw some sequence-shake into the number. You know, some kind of I’m-cool-you’re-cool shake. But I guess he had more sense.
In the car on the way back to Lincoln Green, I asked him why he had to take me to his house to tell me about all of it.
“Privacy.” He pulled over to the curb. The kids were still screaming. The weight set in front of our unit was unoccupied. “And so you could see that I’m not a bad guy.”
I wanted to ask him how his house was supposed to show me that.
Then I looked around and saw where I lived.
CHAPTER THREE
Janie thought I should do it. It took her a while to get there, though. She just has to talk stuff out. And if it keeps her from gnawing on her cuticles for five seconds, I guess it’s worth it.
So after about thirty minutes of us talking it out—otherwise known as me listening to her worry—she said okay.
She agreed there was more to it than I was being told, but she said, “You’re right, probably not much more.”
And we both knew the money was too good to walk away from.
She told me about something she’d read online at her school library. About this stupid pact that a bunch of girls made in some school, some junior high school, get that, that they would all get pregnant. Janie said it was proof that kids will get into stupid-ass stuff just to have some event going on. A way to pass the time. She said that Michael’s “crew” had money to burn, so they needed something else.
As for us, we needed the money.
“Maybe it could be good for you,” Janie said, but it was more like a question. A hope. “You should hang out with people more.”
Janie and Clay both bang this drum often. The give-people-a-chance thing. Which makes me want to scream.
It’s not like I’m completely antisocial. I just know the truth: Most people suck.
“You’re going to have to think on your feet,” Janie said. “I bet once you’re not so scary, those cheer girls will climb all over you.”
“Fringe benefit.”
She punched my arm. For a fourteen-year-old girl, she can really wallop. She brought her finger
to her teeth and started gnawing off slivers of skin. “Just keep your head down and your powder dry.”
“Live to fight another day,” I finished.
“Right. You have to watch out for the girls as much as the boys, you know.”
As if I didn’t.
She scooted around the drywall partition to her side of the room. I heard the soft creak of her bed as she lay down. We quit talking. No doubt she was reading a library book, one of those happily-ever-after stories with a couple on the cover gazing at each other intensely. The kind where any problem’s solved by the last page.
Our two-story unit is in the center of Lincoln Green. One of the oldest buildings here. But since it’s one of two stories, Janie and I pretty much have the upstairs to ourselves, at least at night. My dad only comes to the second bedroom upstairs to sleep when the night has passed and gray light tinges the horizon.
I stared at the permanent moisture stain on the ceiling. Sometimes I see different shapes in it—a witch’s profile or something.
Tonight it just looked like a stain.
I thought about Michael’s cold house and the plush furniture. Imagined Michael and Cyndra cuddled in his room, a king-sized bed for a kid with a vintage Mustang. I imagined me in that bed with Cyndra. Her hot breath in my ear and my hand down her shirt or gliding up her impossibly long leg.
I flipped on my side and tried to think of something else.
The coffee can secretly stashed away—filled with a roll of bills. I imagined the roll doubling in size and tripling in value. The future and some city where Janie and I would live. Me with a job, acting as her legal guardian. Her in school and us living in some other government crap land, but not here. Not with him.
The Plan.
Repetitive clangs of the weight bench and grating laughter sounded outside. Music blared through the unit.
“Keep your head down and your powder dry. Live to fight another day,” I whispered. The mantra Janie came up with when I came back from juvie. She read it in one of her books, and neither of us understood about old-fashioned guns and gunpowder. We just liked the sound of it. Then I stopped talking to most people and started living it. I liked the idea of living to fight another day.