Wings From Ashes Trilogy

by Linda Nelson

  Karla watched on. She could not believe what she was seeing. She didn’t think that Max was into drugs. He didn’t seem like it to her.

  “Come on Karla. It will make you feel better.” Carol waved her to come closer and held the joint out for her to take.

  Karla found she couldn’t resist any more as Carol held it in front of her face expecting her to take it from her. She had never smoked the stuff before, but she would give it a try since her friends were doing it, especially Max of all people. She burst out chocking before she held it out for Rod to take, but he passed it on to Carol.

  “You took too big of a hit.” Carol chuckled, “Take small hits, like this.” She demonstrated to Karla.

  “Next time, I can’t do this right now” Rod explained as he waved his turn with the joint on to the others. He looked at his watch. “Though I would really love to, but I have to go now anyway – got to be to work in fifteen minutes.”

  Carol was surprised and asked, “You work?”

  “Yeah, I started yesterday at the Citgo station on Krodal Street.”

  “Cool.” Carol’s head was feeling much lighter. “Will I see you tomorrow?” She knew that she probably could steal Max away from Karla but why should she? Rod seemed like an all right guy, and he was as good looking as Max was, maybe even better looking, at least to her. Plus he had a job.

  Rod smiled. The day was actually looking up for him even though he just had a visit with the local PD. “Sure, how about I meet you here at ten in the morning.”

  “Sounds great,” replied Carol. She finally had a date, and it was about time. Maybe she would finally be able to forget about Heath even though she still had some feeling for him.

  Things were beginning to look up for her and Karla too. It appeared that she was beginning to forgive her for what had happened at the party. What a shame that Karla’s mom was no better than her own mother. Now she knew that they both had more in common than they thought. It is hard to go through life thinking that you are the only one with a dysfunctional parent.

  Carol hung around for another hour before calling it quits. That was when the cold air began to get to her. She didn’t have a warm jacket on like the one Karla was wearing. At least she didn’t have it with her. Normally she didn’t wear a coat, she didn’t like wearing it. She hated the color, it wasn’t her. Pink just didn’t look good on her, and she wondered why her mom had gone out and bought it for her. Didn’t she know that she didn’t like wearing pink? Pink was for fairies and prissy girls.

  The sun was setting, and the street lights had long since come on. Carol left for home a little after seven, which was her curfew for the past month assigned to her by the courts. They never seemed to enforce it, but if she was caught she could wind up with doing more community service or worse.

  This left Karla and Max alone on the court for the next hour.

  Alone time – Karla had never had a boyfriend like Max. He was decent looking and touched her tenderly. She obviously could tell that he liked her by the way he looked at her

  They met earlier this week on the way to school. From then on he began meeting her at the basketball court after school to give her a few dribbling lessons. At first he just showed her, and she watched. Then she graduated to him giving her the lessons with his arms about her waist.

  After Carol left, they sat on the bench together, side by side. The closeness of his body warmed her keeping the cold away. She found herself leaning closer to him as they sat in silence.

  Neither one of them felt like talking. He could tell that Karla needed her space, but she didn’t want to be alone. If only he could comfort her, make her feel better after the way her mother treated her earlier. Good thing his mom wasn’t like that, he would tell her where to go.

  Finally, Max draped his arm around her pulling her closer and laid his lips against her hairline giving her a soft kiss. Feeling her body against him made him think about other ways he wanted to spend his time with her. A growing sensation in his loins told him so.

  Karla knew she should be feeling better by having Max there with her. If only she could forget about what happened with her mother, earlier. That was all she could think about.

  Max’s arm felt warm around her as he pulled her closer. She had to admit that. It even made her feel better when he kissed her forehead and the little bit of pot she had just smoked made her oncoming tension headache less noticeable.

  If only this moment didn’t end. If only she didn’t have to go home, if only… Karla continued to dream of different scenarios her life could have taken on instead of the way things were now.

  She was still puzzled by the fact that Carol wanted to reestablish their friendship after the party incident a couple of months ago. Was she up to something? Should she trust her after the last time?

  Karla and Max kept one eye on the street, watching for her dad’s car.

  As soon as he spied it coming down the street he pulled his arm from around her trying to not to appear to be romantically involved with the man’s daughter. She was grateful for that. Her dad didn’t need to be questioning her about boys, not at this time.

  “Your dad’s coming – I’ll see you tomorrow morning…”

  Karla hated to see him go, but she knew it had to be that way. She watched him slowly walk down the street passing her dad along the way.

  “Who was that?” Her dad asked her as she got into the car.

  “Max, he’s a new kid at school – he just started this week.”

  Mr. Centon eyed the boy thru his rearview mirror as he drove on drown the street. Seeing another boy enter his daughters life concerned him after what had recently had happened to her a few months ago, shortly after moving here. She had almost died from an overdose from some sort of substance. The doctor never was able to identify the substance, but they had their theories.

  “We need to come up with some place else for you to wait for me on days like this. I don’t like you waiting out on the street and hanging out with strange boys.”

  “Dad, it’s no big deal. I’m staying out of trouble and Max is a decent guy. He was keeping me company so no one would bother with me.”

  “I’m just saying – I would feel better about the whole situation if you weren’t on the street – especially after dark.”

  “Make mom stop drinking and I won’t have to hang out at the basketball court –, and I’m fine there – Max watches out for me.”

  Mr. Centon knew he just lost the argument. There was no way in hell he was ever going to get his wife to stop her drinking.

  They drove home the rest of the way in silence.

  Karla was relieved to find that the house was quiet when they entered. Her mom was already in bed. She went about finding something to eat for supper and took her plate to her room to eat by herself and work on her homework.

  Her dad was fine with all this. He had some paper work to do for work anyway.

  Just before Karla turned into bed, she got an unexpected text message from Max.

  He said he loved her.

  Karla grinned and texted him back – she loved him too.

  Chapter 4–Crash and Grab

  Rod showed up for work five minutes late. He figured no one would notice.

  But the guy who was working the shift before him did. He had been getting a bit frantic when he watched the clock hit the five minute past mark and knew he had to leave – his shift was over.

  He was about to call the boss to report a no show when Rod walked thru the door.

  “Where the hell have you been? I was beginning to get worried that maybe you quit or something,” he said to Rod.

  “Eh – I was playing a game of ball and forgot about the time. I got here as fast as I could.”

  The coworker tossed the set of keys on the desk. “Lock up before leaving. You do know the procedure with the alarm?”

  “Yup – I do.”

  “All right then, I will see you tomorrow.”

  Rod waved him off and too
k a seat in the chair behind the desk. He was sure it would be a slow night. How many people would actually pull up to get gas anyway?

  He soon found out as the cars began to line up outside.

  “This is nuts,” he muttered to himself, “I’ve got to find me a different job.”

  He bounced back and forth from one car to the next, never actually having time to stop to have a smoke out back or take a bathroom break, which he tried to do once.

  He had cars tooting their horns while they impatiently waited for him to pump their gas.

  “Damn, nobody can go to the bathroom around here, can they,” he muttered.

  Some of the people were quite nice to him. One even gave him a small tip after he washed her windows. The old woman said no one seems to do that anymore.

  Then there was this guy at the end of the night. He was Rod’s last customer, and he turned out to be the worst ass-hole of the day. The guy cranked at him to pump the gas and was mad at him when he went five cents over.

  Rod couldn’t understand what the problem was with going over by five cents, but the guy was rip roaring mad.

  All Rod could do was reach into his pocket and fish out five cents. He threw it at the man and almost hit him in the face with it. Then the guy threatened to step out of his car and take him on, saying, “You want a piece of me? Come on, I can take you – let’s do it.”

  Rod backed away from the guy and went inside the station. He waited a moment with his hand on the phone receiver to make the call if the driver decided to give him any trouble.

  Instead, the driver started the car, appearing to have forgotten all about the five cent thing.

  Rod watched him start to drive away, but then he turned his car around and headed straight for the station. He narrowly missed the pumps and slammed his car into the front of the building.

  Rod jumped out of the way just in time.

  The car was badly damaged by the crash, and the driver had smacked his head on the steering wheel, leaving a bad gash on his forehead. He was out cold.

  Rod was stunned by what had happened. He thought about calling the police and reporting it, but he was afraid of what the driver would tell them about the five cent ordeal and he would lose his job. Then he got to thinking about how he most likely would lose his job even if he didn’t report the incident. There was no way he would be able to set the alarm now. Most likely it would go off immediately.

  What should he do?

  What the hell, he thought. He was going to lose his job anyway. Why not make it worth his while?

  The cash register was still full of money. He could take what was in it without even going into the safe. There was a couple hundred dollars in that register. He could be set for a few weeks.

  He looked over at the car. The driver was still out cold. Rod quickly opened the cash register and emptied out all the money – stuffing it inside his shirt.

  Once again the safe crossed his mind. Why not?

  He put on his gloves and opened that too, taking the contents.

  The keys – what to do with the keys?

  Rod knew someone would be calling the cops soon. He looked at them in his hand – tossing them in the air and catching them. He knew what to do with them.

  He walked over to the driver’s side of the car and tossed them on the passenger seat and grabbed an old rag and gripped the door handle of the car with the rag and opened it all the way. He figured the rag would give extra fingerprint protection on top of the gloves he was wearing. This was his way of attempting to make it look like the passenger of the car was the one who had robbed the station.

  Quickly Rod slipped out the door of the station, locking the door behind him. He was trying to make it look like he had already left the station before the accident had happened. But then he realized that he had tossed the keys to the station in the car so it would look odd to the police if they began to thoroughly investigate the scene.

  Now what was he going to do. They were sure to know that there was some funny business going on here. He should have come up with a better plan, but there was nothing he could do about it now.

  His plan was that he would tell the authorities that he had forgotten to set the alarm before he locked up and that he never saw the accident happen. They probably weren’t going to believe him, but it didn’t matter anymore. He had taken the money and couldn’t put it back now. He didn’t have the keys to the station. They were sitting in the front passenger seat of the car.

  Still no one seemed to have noticed him as he was leaving. He quickly slipped out toward the back of the station out of sight of the main road and headed home, making sure he kept to all the side streets so no one would see him along the way.

  When he reached the apartment building where he lived he went in thru the back still avoiding being seen by anyone.

  His mom never saw him come in.

  Rod waited in his room a solid ten minutes before coming out to the kitchen to announce his presence. The whole while he was in his room he made a nice hiding area for the money he had stolen just in case the police found out about the incident.

  “Rod, how long have you been home,” his mother asked him as soon as he appeared from his room.

  “Oh about twenty minutes – I left work early, it seemed kind of dead,” he replied.

  “So you don’t know anything about the crash at the station or that it was robbed?”

  “No – why?”

  “Because there are a couple of police officers here, and they want to talk to you.”

  Rod tried not to swallow and look guilty.

  Play it cool, he told himself.

  He followed his mom to the living room where the officers were standing waiting to talk to him. They seemed a bit surprised to see that he was already home.

  “Can you tell us anything about the accident at the station tonight?”

  “Ah – no – what accident?”

  The two officers looked at each other.

  “What time did you close the station up?”

  Rod looked at the clock and thought. He had to make sure he gave the correct time, or they would be onto him.

  “I left at ten thirty. Why? What happened?”

  One of the officers lifted an eyebrow while the other one continued to question Rod.

  “Someone drove a car into the station shortly after you left. Apparently a passenger in the car took all the money from the register and the safe. We don’t know what happened to the passenger.”

  “How could they get in? I remember locking the door.”

  “They drove their car into the station, it didn’t matter if you locked the door or not. But what puzzles us is the fact that the alarm didn’t go off with the crash,” the other officer said.

  “Oh, shit, I must have. I don’t remember if I did or not. I probably forgot to set the alarm.”

  The other officer jotted down a few more notes on his pad.

  “Just so you know, we will be continuing to investigate this incident. You may want to call your boss and check in with him.”

  “I will.”

  “Thanks for your time,” one of the officers said to Rod’s mother before leaving.

  Rod’s brow had developed a thin bead of sweat across it. He hoped his mom did not notice this.

  “What do you think about the accident?” Rod’s mom asked him.

  “I don’t know. Maybe the guy was held at gun point and made to drive into the station to make it look like an accident.

  Is the driver okay?”

  “I don’t know, they didn’t say.” His mom looked a bit skeptical. “I just hope you were telling the truth.”

  “About what, Mom?”

  “About the whole incident.”

  “I am – why would you say such a thing?”

  “Because I never saw you come home.”

  “I got here about twenty minutes ago.”

  “Like I said – I never saw you come home.” She left it at that and walked away from hi
m, meaning this discussion was done and over with.

  Shit – now what was he going to do. The cops were sure to come back soon with more questions, and when he did make the call to his boss, he knew he would be fired.

  Call in the morning – that was what he would do. This would give him time to think things out. He would sleep on it and make his decision in the morning. He had some smack left that would help ease his mind and help him sleep worry free.

  Rod looked at himself in the mirror on the back of his bedroom door. It was a full length mirror that did not quite reach the bottom of it. This prevented him from kicking and breaking it when he would close the door with the toe of his shoe.

  He could see that his face had cleared up finally. A few months ago it had been all broken out with zits and sores of some sort. The doctor had told him it was from his constant meth use. He honestly did not believe the doc. He just figured he was saying that to make him stop using. But just to be sure he switched back to using heroin and this other type of substance he had found that was being sold at a specialty store that sold bongs and pipes of all sorts. They told him the substance was legal for them to sell. Cloud 9 and K-2 both were being sold to the public as incense, but everyone knew they were sold for use in a different way. Or at least Rod knew.

  Well that worked. Maybe the doc was onto something about that stuff after all. He only would use Meth from now on, only if he got into a pinch. No one liked having a face full of zits.

  Rod had continued to use even after about a month ago when his mom threatened to move from Manchester to get him away from the crowd he had been hanging around with. It was only be a matter of time before he found a new source to supply his addiction. Every town – big or small – had its dealers.

  As soon as he was finished up with school he had plans, lots of plans. First off he was going to go back to Manchester to be with his buddies, and he was going to get his own place so he wouldn’t have to listen to his mother anymore. She was always nagging him about paying room and board, saying he was over eighteen, and he was expected to pay her every week, and how she was no longer going to support his ass. If he didn’t start paying she was going to toss him and his shit out into the street.