by Mj Fields
If I were closer, I’d pull back that damn pink headband he is wearing to mess with Dad and let go so the elastic snaps back and bites him in the head, but doing so would be a dead giveaway and, well, I guess it wouldn’t matter. We’re screwed now anyway.
“Been a few years.” Dad steps back.
“Certainly has.”
Justice appears, walking in behind Mom, and kisses her cheek. Then he moves to Momma Joe and gives her the same.
Uncle Jase stands up. “And a few haircuts, too.”
“Jase,” Aunt Carly whisper-warns him.
Manbun chuckles. “Went from the military back to the streets for a bit. Did a stint in Haynesville, and then the show. Kept it tight back then. Figured that might have been the problem.” He reaches over and shakes Uncle Jase’s hand. “So, I’m letting it grow out.”
“I knew he was a criminal,” I whisper to Brisa.
“Don’t judge. We are now, too,” she whispers back, scowling.
“Excuse me?” Kiki whisper-gasps.
“You all might remember Ranger. He was on Convicted Ink’s first season,” Dad says, and we all look at him.
Ranger raises a hand. “Thanks for the invite, and sorry about the face. Had a rough night.”
“Have a seat, Ranger,” Momma Joe says. “You’re just in time.”
“Thanks, ma’am.” He nods.
After he sits, Momma Joe stands and takes the foil off the pans of lasagna. “Joe is fine. Why don’t you all introduce yourselves to our guest?”
After table one’s intros are complete, it’s now our funeral … I mean, turn.
Brand introduces himself, and Ranger asks, “You the kid on the radio?”
Brand nods.
“Not a huge country fan, but I dig your music,” Ranger says.
Brand looks at Kiki and laughs.
“I remember this one.” Ranger points at Kiki. “Tags told us all her name was Jailbait. Looks like someone didn’t get the message.”
Silence falls over the room, and then Kiki raises her finger and flips him off. Everyone laughs.
Brand raises his hand. “That would be me.”
“And you’re still breathing, huh?”
Brand smiles. “Right beside her every day, for the rest of our lives.”
“Cool, man, cool. Hope it works out for you all.”
He looks at me, and I quickly say my name so he doesn’t say he remembers me, “Truth.”
He smiles. “Always prefer that to a lie.”
Fuck, I think but quickly add, “My name. Justice’s sister. Cyrus’s daughter, and Tara’s, too.”
He nods and sits back. “I got you.” Then he looks at Brisa. “And how about you?”
Brisa opens her mouth then shuts it, and then does it again.
We. Are. So. Fucked.
Zandor clears his throat and, in a deep, protective tone, tells him, “My oldest, Brisa.”
“Interesting,” he says, looking over at Patrick.
“Patrick,” he says quickly.
“My boy,” Xavier adds.
“Got it.” Ranger smiles coyly. “Totally got it.”
“We’re missing a couple,” Jase informs. “Our youngest, Max, and Z’s youngest, Amias, and Tris, should be here soon. They wanted to finish their game and walk over from Z and Bekah’s place.”
“You have any kids?” Aunt Carly asks him.
“Never plan on doing so,” Ranger answers, his eyes sweeping around the table, stalling briefly on me, Brisa, and Patrick, before he smiles brightly at Momma Joe. “But I sure do appreciate you allowing me to borrow yours for a Sunday afternoon.”
Chapter Seven
Idiom
It’s a piece of cake.
Truth
Cake has too many calories.
Lying in bed, after the most fucked-up weekend of my life, attempting to emotionally prepare myself for a Monday morning, a Monday morning that I expect to be worse than even the first day at Suckshore, or the first day after seeing shit about Kiki on The Sound, or even the first day after seeing shit about myself, my Snapchat notifications start popping up.
Kiki invited Brisa and I to chat.
I love Kiki, but she has already taken on the momma role, and the little Falcon is still in her basketball of a belly. But she wasn’t wrong; last night could have been so much worse.
Of course, Brisa and I started a side Snap, with me apologizing profusely that I left her side for one second and her confiding in me it was the best two minutes of her life, encompassed by the best night of her life.
She went into great detail about how Patrick basically football held her through the crowd, which happened to be celebrating and not about to riot as I had assumed, following the direction we’d gone. He had deposited her outside the doorway in the hall, told her to stay put and, one second later, Ranger, who we now know as Wyatt Dalton, charged toward her and asked her if she was okay before she planted a kiss on his bloodied lips.
I went on to tell her that it was completely unsanitary to kiss a rando who was bleeding and that she had no idea if he had any diseases that could be transmitted through bodily fluids and that it was totally illegal, to which she replied:
- Okay … Kiki
Again, I apologize.
When little bit Brisa pops up on my screen, a conversation cloud above her head, I watch the jumping dots for a second before getting:
- Unsanitary, illegal, or otherwise, that kiss saved our asses.
She then goes on to send Snap after Snap in great detail about how she:
- Got an airdrop message from Ranger with his number, while you were piggybacking as we left the warehouse.
- I didn’t reply because I read somewhere to leave them hanging, no matter how excited I am to reply so they don’t think I’m clingy or desperate.
- We’d been texting for hours, leading up to my life being ruined.
- By answering his questions with all kinds of lies.
Bit Brisa peering up at me without clouds or dots above her head, I tap out:
- What do you mean all kinds of lies?
Bit Brisa and the cloud appear immediately, while I ignore notification after notification from Kiki.
- Age, last name … You know, just little white lies.
I start to type back that they aren’t really white lies when her next Snap comes up.
- He blocked me before I could explain after the ‘Last Supper’ of Steel Sundays.
My response to her uber-dramatic Snap:
- Last Supper?!? A little dramatic, don’t you think? We got off easy, don’t you think?
She comes back immediately with:
- My heart is broken, my soul lost. He was my one true love, I just know it! I’ll die now, never knowing what it’s like to connect body and soul with the man that God made just for me.
I start to tap out a response, considering her feelings and the fact that this was partially my fault for putting her in the situation, but when bit Brisa, the conversation cloud, and dots appear, I delete it.
- Don’t take this away from me. Don’t tell me there are more fish in the sea or something lame like that. I know my heart, and I know I unequivocally am in love with Wyatt Dalton and will be for the rest of my life.
Jesus, Brisa, you are not even sixteen, is what I want to reply, but another Snap comes in.
I open the picture and see a heavily filtered Brisa crying with rain pouring down the screen.
I reply with the only thing I can:
- If it’s meant to be, it will be when the time is right.
I jump back on the Kiki chat to tell her we will be more careful, that I will see her in the morning, and that I love her.
I receive a notification from Brisa next.
It’s a portrait of sorts, albeit a photoshopped portrait, of her merged with a screenshot that she must have taken from Convicted Ink’s website of Ranger, and yes, added a manbun to his then short hair, along with a dog and three kids.
I am so glad we aren’t FaceTiming right now, because I can’t stop laughing at it. God Bless her, I know she actually thinks she is in love with Manbun.
As if my to-do list in life isn’t long enough, and me figuring out what it is I want to do with my life now that dance has a big-ass X over it, I am determined to add searching for an unbloodied, appropriately aged, non-felon with a manbun on the top.
A knock on the door has me looking up.
Mom peeks in, holding a fresh compress.
“Come on in. Just need to say goodnight to the girls.”
“Is Brisa okay?” she asks, pulling the blanket off my ankle, removing the now room temperature compress, and replacing it with the cold one.
I nod as I exit out of the app, lean over, and set my phone on the charging pad. “Yeah, seems so,” I blatantly lie to my mother for possibly the first time in my life.
“Okay, then.” She looks at me with concern as she pushes my hair out of my face, kisses my forehead, and whispers sadly, “I love you, Truth.”
She turns to walk out, and I feel guilt constrict my heart.
“Why do you ask?”
She turns around and cocks her head to the side, looking at my ankle then back up at me. “Your dad and I are just worried about you girls, is all.”
A few months ago, after the incident with my smashed cell phone, because Dad was angry when I got kicked out of Catholic school, and after the epic landing of the Steel toed kick to the overprotective and often times overbearing nuts of our fathers when Kiki revealed she was—gasp—pregnant, I overheard a rare chat between my parents. My mother, the sweetest, kindest being on the planet, and my father, who I’ve seen wage actual war with anything that could possibly harm her, disagreed over his overprotective ways.
Is waging war a slight exaggeration? Not on your life, or the life of any living creature anywhere on the planet.
A few years ago, I was woken from a dead sleep to smashing furniture and Dad swearing like an ex-Navy sailor, which he was, at an intruder.
Terrified, I hide under my bed as I was trained to do in such an occurrence by Sergeant Cyrus, listening to hell and furniture breaking loose just down the hallway. The breaking furniture is the lightbulb moment that this isn’t just a drill … And yes, we’ve had them.
“Cyrus, please don’t shoot him!” Mom cries.
“Fuck that, Birdie. The bastard deserves to die!”
“But my mom’s tea cups!”
What the fuck? I think.
My mother, the sweetest being on the planet, is more worried about tea cups than a life?
Peeking out from under my bed, light is revealed as Justice army-crawls over to me. “Let’s roll.”
“Cyrus, not there, either; the kids’ trophies!”
“Fuck, Birdie, what do you want me to do then?”
“He’s tiny; just catch him and let him go.”
“Fuck that! He’s gonna die.”
Army-crawling down the hall, Justice and I look at each other.
“We can help him,” Justice says as he jumps up and runs toward the living room. I nervously follow suit.
Dad is standing in his boxers, and Mom is in the middle of the dining room table, in her robe, knees to her chest.
When he sees me, he yells, “Get up there with your mother!”
He doesn’t have to tell me twice. I climb up, and Mom holds out her arms and hugs me tight.
“We didn’t mean to wake you, Truth. You okay?”
Talk about being confused. “Mom, where—”
“Justice, he’s under there.” Dad waves his handgun at the entertainment unit. “Kick the side, and when he comes out, I’m gonna kill the motherfucker!”
“Cyrus, do not shoot that gun in this house!” Mom yells as I scream, “Daddy, don’t kill a man!”
Dad looks back at me in confusion, and then he starts laughing, really laughing hard, too, which pisses me off.
I start crying, “It’s not funny! You can’t kill—”
“Little bird, it’s a damn rodent. A rat.” Dad laughs.
“Technically, a mouse.” Mom does her best not to laugh.
“The hell?” Justice groans then jacks the corner of the stand up, sending pictures sliding to the lower side.
Dad drops down and says, “Well, fuck.”
“What’s, well fuck?” I scream at him, still pissed and now worried about the poor mouse.
Standing, Dad holds the dead mouse by his tail. “He’s dead.”
“How did he die?” I yell at him in anger.
“Guessing natural causes, little bird,” he says, looking over the mouse dangling from his pinched fingers.
“Probably had a heart attack. We almost did.” Justice lowers the shelving unit then snaps, “Goodnight.”
He walks down the hall and slams his door.
At the time, it wasn’t funny, but thinking about it now, it totally was.
I smile as I look up at Mom.
She cocks her head to the other side, her eyes asking what I’m thinking.
“The mouse at the old house.”
She giggles, and I move my schoolwork out of the way so she can sit.
After she sits, she asks, “Do you miss it?”
“The mouse?” I shake my head.
She smiles. “The old house? Maybe even your old school?”
I shake my head again. “I mean, there are moments, but no, I like it here. Even though our old house was on the beach too, it really seems like we’re on vacation here most days.”
“The house is huge,” Mom sighs and looks around.
She’s right; our old house was small, much smaller than any of my cousins and frenemies.
I lean back on my pillows, and Mom lies on her side, head propped up on her hand.
“You know, the reason we never moved is because of me, right? We should have made a change a long time ago, or at least when Justice became taller than his room was wide.” She smiles. Mom has OCD, which we only learned about four or so years ago.
There are four main types of OCD and, through counseling, she found out that she has what they call Just Right OCD. She counts a lot, gets hung up on the number five, arranges things so they are in order and symmetrical. We learned that, when she was younger, she thought if the pictures weren’t arranged just right, something horrible would happen to someone she loved. We never noticed because Dad was so on the ball and overly protective that he thought of things, even before she did, that might trigger it and fixed the problem before it would even arise.
Dad told us, when she lost her parents in an accident, she needed to feel in control of something, so she chose “things.” Everything had to have its place, and although she never wigged out about a mess, she would be the first to clean it up and put things back where it belonged. Moving would have been the worst thing for her, or so Dad thought.
During one of the conversations before they decided we were moving, Mom told him that, since having us kids, she hadn’t needed it as much and that we deserved to experience life, even if it took her outside her comfort zone.
I’m not saying everything changed. Everything still has its place—books are alphabetized, and even if she and Justice don’t finish their nightly chess game in front of the windows overlooking the ocean, she needs to put the pieces back to starting position, if not in the case.
“I love it here, Truth, truly. I guess I never realized it until we got the house, but it’s like our family as a whole has moved on together, forward together, and by choice, not circumstance. But there are moments you seem to want to be anywhere else, and today was one of them. If maybe you’d be honest with me, I think you lost that excitement when you started this new school.”
“Or maybe it’s because I get questioned for every move I make, because I’m not Justice.”
She blinks a few times and looks down. Her hands knot together, and she begins wringing them.
“I’m just being honest, Mom.”
She nods and loo
ks up. “I know, and I’m sorry. I wish I could tell you it’s going to get better, but you’re his baby girl, and it is who he is. But it’s not just him. I worry about you.”
“There’s no need to.”
She glances quickly at my ankle then back up at me, nods again, and stands up. Then she bends down and kisses my head. “I’m in your corner, Truth, so is your father, but I can’t help thinking you’re hiding something.” She turns to leave me to my thoughts, deep in her own.
If I let them marinate in my lie, it’s bound to get worse.
“I landed on it wrong at the party when we were making TikToks,” I blurt out my second lie. “I knew you guys would be all over the top about it and, at seventeen, I should be able to go to parties without my brother, so I didn’t tell you. Brisa and Patrick didn’t know it hurt until after I fell in the bathroom, because it didn’t hurt that bad last night, so tell Dad not to get mad at them.”
She turns around, relief flooding her face. “I think it needs an x-ray. I’ll take you in tomorrow, so you’ll be late for school.”
“I can wait until after.”
She shakes her head. “I think you’ve waited long enough.”
“Okay. Can I sleep in since I’m going to be late, anyway?” I ask, crossing my finger in hopes of missing third period study hall that three of the four horsemen are also in.
“Sure.” She smiles genuinely then turns to leave.
“I love you, Mom.”
She looks over her shoulder. “I love you, too.”
I grab my phone and send a Snap to Kiki and Brisa, telling them my new “lie” and that I won’t be at school until I get an x-ray, and then I send one to Patrick.
After I set my phone on the charger, I get three texts, all from numbers not saved in my phone. Curiosity gets the best of me, and I open the first.
- Heard you had your phone out last night. Bad idea. Very bad indeed.