Never Kiss a Bad Boy

by Flite, Nora

  There was an empty chunk inside of me.

  Once, it had been filled with love.

  Sitting there in the mud, I wished for the rain to soak through my skin until I bloated with water. Let me drown here, right here. Put me in that tiny casket instead.

  I'd give my life if it would bring Daniel back.

  But I didn't drown, and the clouds didn't part to drop my little brother out of the sunlight.

  There were no such things as wishes.

  ****

  I moved upstate, as far away from the rest of the world as you could get.

  Tiny homes and trailers with too much space between them filled the landscape. Everything was rusted, crawling in that thick, damp kind of moss you could lie down on and sleep. Well, if it weren't for the awful spiders.

  Everything about my new home screamed 'forgotten.'

  It was fitting. My own personal limbo.

  Gram had done very little with me since I'd come to stay with her. She'd given me a room, warned me to keep away from the construction sites, and then she'd sat in her faded chair in front of the TV and never budged. She slept there and ate there. It was her throne.

  I'd never been locked away, but I'd also never had so much freedom.

  I didn't know what to do with it.

  I'd spent so many hours, day in and day out, playing with Daniel. Some brothers didn't get along, but not us. I'd adored him.

  With his smiling face in my mind, I left the foundation-sinking house. I learned quickly that in this area, people didn't want to be bothered. I saw almost no other kids.

  I wasn't attending the school here; not yet, anyway. The hope was that my father would recover and take me back to my hometown soon.

  Wandering past a long stretch of gorge packed with bulldozers, I ignored Gram's instructions. She'd told me not to come here; I got it, she was worried I'd get hurt. But I wasn't about to jump into the mouth of a machine or something.

  Standing on the edge of the sloped dirt, I looked down at what was happening. There were men mixed in with the whirring devices, chopping up the ground and churning towards the center of the Earth. They created deep shafts, but for what, I didn't know.

  Looking to my left, I spotted the glimmer of water in the distance. Piles of sand bags and other things kept it at bay. Were they making a bridge here?

  I stood and watched them work. The construction was white noise, both in sound and sight. The sun was fading when I finally left.

  A stiff chill in the air forced me to knuckle my hands down into my pockets. I should have gone back to Gram's, but my legs weren't done yet.

  They wanted to escape something I didn't even understand.

  I'd been told before that I was smart for my age. Maybe I was. Wondering about Daniel, my father, my future and the point of everything... I would have preferred being a slobbering idiot. Then I could have gone digging in the dirt, pretending to be a bulldozer, and maybe actually been happy.

  Kids shouldn't be so morbid. I did know that much.

  Pushing up a hill of cracked concrete, patches of it missing, my ears picked up a sound. Climbing to the top of the battered road, I stood over the smallest, most beat up playground I'd ever seen.

  And there, fitting the scene so perfectly, was a single, solitary kid.

  He sat on a swing, head down and tears rolling down his chin. Other than myself, I'd never seen another boy crying. Daniel didn't count, he'd been a baby. Babies could get away with sloppy tears.

  Amazed, I watched him for a minute. His reddish hair matched his glowing nose. He had been sniffling for some time, the rawness was obvious. Skinnier than me, he had the look of an underfed puppy.

  Something in my chest—something curious and sympathetic—forced me to walk over to him. My shoes on the gravel alerted the kid to my presence.

  His head shot up, charcoal-black eyes fixing on me with fear, then accusation. “What are you looking at?” he snapped.

  Pulling up short, I searched for any cuts or bruises on his glaring face. I couldn't see any. “Why are you crying?”

  “I'm not crying.” Rubbing his eyes furiously, he gripped the swing's chains and hunched lower. He was trying to vanish. I knew what that was like.

  For the first time since Daniel's funeral, I felt myself being pulled towards someone. Ignoring how he flinched, I walked until I was sitting on the swing beside him. “I'm Jacob. Nice to meet you.”

  His frown said he wasn't sure about that. Silence hung between us, his coltish legs digging his sneakers into the gravel. He didn't look at me when he mumbled. “Kite. I'm Kite.”

  “Kite?” I asked, trying to make him look my way by sheer force of my stare. It wasn't working. “Does that mean you can fly?”

  Jerking his head around, he gaped at me. “What are you talking about?”

  The smile on my face felt strange. It had been so long. “You know, kites can soar in the air. Didn't you ever see one?”

  “I know what a kite is,” he said, wiping absently at the dampness on his shirt sleeve. “Don't make fun of my name.”

  “I'm not. I think it's cool.”

  Kite didn't blink. He watched me, trying to decide if I was serious. The tension in his face started to melt. “Thanks,” he said under his breath.

  We sat there, swinging gently and kicking the dirt. The chains were brown from years of rain, the playground so pathetic I imagined few people came here. So why had Kite? And why had he been crying like that?

  “Sometimes,” he said, almost to himself. “I like to pretend I can fly.” He glanced at me, his eyebrows knotting tightly. “I know that's stupid. You don't have to say it.”

  A flicker of compassion ratcheted around in my chest. “I wouldn't. Not ever.”

  The side of his lip went up. It was a frail smile, I wanted to nurture it, to see him feel better. He was reminding me of Daniel, even if that made no sense.

  “How old are you?” I asked.

  “Nine, my birthday was back in May.”

  He's six months older than me, I realized in shock. Kite had the fragile look of a scared animal. By default, he just felt younger. “Me too,” I said softly. “Nine, I mean.”

  Kite nodded, like my age solved everything and we could now become friends. “I haven't seen you around here before.”

  “I'm staying with my grandma. I used to live an hour off that way.” I pointed, trying to picture my warm home. My head swelled with laughter and smiles from two people who couldn't do either of those things anymore. “Where do you live?”

  Peering off to the right, his scrawny neck tightened. “That way. With my uncle.”

  Kite said the word uncle like it was a rotten piece of food he wanted to get out of his mouth. “What about your mom and dad?” I asked, curiosity making me blunt.

  He leveled his stare, daring me to mock him. There was a lot of frustration in Kite, I could feel it in waves. “I don't know. Guess they didn't want me.”

  Burrs inched into my guts. Leaning over, my voice flooded with empathy. “Mine are gone, too. Both of them.” And Daniel. I couldn't say that last part out loud.

  Kite's eyebrows floated up. He was smiling nervously. If I didn't know better, I would have thought he was happy that I was alone, that I could understand what he was feeling. We were similar, that must have been a first for him.

  It was for me.

  His smile split wide open. “Do you want to—”

  “Kite!”

  The shout startled us both. Across the concrete, an older man was stomping our way. It was dark, but I could see the rage in his face... and the terror in Kite's. I didn't even ask.

  I knew this had to be his uncle.

  “What the fuck did I tell you?” He was nearly on top of us.

  I shot a wary look at Kite, wondering what we should do.

  He was crumbling into the swing, a ball of skinny arms and legs. “Sorry, Uncle Nick,” he whimpered. “I was just... just...”

  The man slowed down, seeing me for
the first time. I wondered what he would have done if I hadn't been there. “Who are you?” he asked.

  Pushing off the swing, I got ready to run. There was a wickedness in this man's stare that unsettled me like nothing else. I couldn't put words to it, not then—I was too innocent in those days. “I'm Kite's friend.” I didn't dare say my own name. I had the paranoid idea it'd give him some kind of power.

  I'd never felt so scared, and he hadn't even lifted a hand towards me. There was a vibe here. A cloying, disgustingly slick hunger in how this scarecrow-man watched me.

  “Uncle Nick,” Kite said loudly.

  It was intentional, meant to draw his uncle away from me. It worked, the man glaring down at Kite now. This wasn't better.

  I witnessed Kite transforming into a broken excuse for a boy. His eyes were down, his posture nervous. I knew in my heart that this was the source of Kite's tears.

  This man was to blame.

  Grunting, Nick put a giant hand on Kite's pointy shoulder. “Come on. It's time to go.” With a final look at me—so intense it gave my goosebumps—Nick guided Kite down the hill.

  Peeking back, my new friend's eyes glistened in the looming night. They were warning me to run. Those black pupils were dull, defeated. Kite was used to whatever was about to happen to him.

  The details were lost on me. The core of this encounter wasn't.

  Studying how Kite's uncle held him close, how he stroked his grubby fingers over the boy's arm and neck, I grasped that this was wrong. Really wrong.

  Suddenly, I wanted to protect Kite. He was someone I hardly knew, but he'd tucked himself into the hole left by my little brother. Kite needed to be saved in a way I couldn't have managed for Daniel.

  Even if I didn't know the method yet...

  I would find a way to rescue Kite.

  ****

  As time wore on, and my determination to run into Kite at the playground continued, a number of things became clear. For one, he went from a rabid animal eager to bite, to a sweet, shy boy who was amazed to have a friend.

  On my end, as days became weeks became months, I realized my father would not be coming to retrieve me anytime soon.

  Or ever.

  Whenever I asked Gram about him, she would make a face and change the topic. My sadness over the changes in my world, they faded with Kite at my side. He was strangely funny, and when he was far away from his uncle, he opened like a flower. It was delightful.

  It was tragic.

  For my tenth birthday, Gram set up a water sprinkler in the yard. In the hot sun, we ran around screaming, hopped up on Italian ice and our own young blood. The long days were wonderful. They helped both of us forget our demons.

  The difference was that at night, Kite's demon came back for him.

  I knew what hate was, now. Young as I was, this feeling was real. The man who stole my friend away was destroying everything good about him.

  The contrast between Kite's joy when he was with me and his shaking, buckling fear when Uncle Nick appeared... it was stark.

  I didn't believe in wishes, but I still caught myself silently begging every shooting star that fell that summer.

  Save my friend. Please.

  There was never any answer.

  It was a memorable season, we did all the things that boys should do. Even broken kids like us could enjoy fireflies and ghost stories. Kite was especially fond of an imaginary game that he introduced me to.

  In it, we called ourselves the Jackals, pretending to be members of a secret task force that fought bad guys and saved the world.

  The closer we became, the more my destructive anger grew. There was a seething monster in me. It looked at Uncle Nick and wondered how someone like him could be allowed to live, when my little brother had not.

  And so, as our first year passed and we became taller, more spindly-legged versions of ourselves, the rage in me also matured. Kite's terror when he knew he had to be alone with his uncle... it was tangible. It never faded, no matter how he aged.

  One night, I followed him home. It wasn't planned, I just felt myself moving through the dark woods, stalking them back to Nick's tiny little shed of a house. Kite said very little, but his uncle grunted things just out of my range.

  Slipping under the windowsill, I crouched and waited.

  Kite's sobs were bad.

  His screams would haunt me.

  I was only ten, and at the time, sex was an elusive and odd beast. I knew of it, the way all kids do. I didn't need details to know that what was going on inside that house was horrific.

  Years of this. This was what had shattered my friend so deeply.

  He was crying, I heard his uncle scolding him; shuddered at the scratchy, awful groans.

  Unable to take it any longer, I ran off into the humid night and didn't look back.

  What innocence I had left was disintegrating. This was a morbid secret Kite had never shared with me. Maybe he'd had no words for it. More likely, he was scared.

  I was scared, too.

  But of all my emotions that jangled in my skull as I fled through the trees, one bloomed brightest.

  Pure hate.

  - Chapter 38 -

  Kite

  15 Years Earlier

  “I don't want to talk about it.” Though I said it with as much force as I could muster, Jacob didn't even have the courtesy to blink. “Why are you bringing it up at all?”

  He was sitting beside me on a fence, his skin tan and muddy from our constant time spent outdoors. Amazingly, I still managed to be pale.

  It was the best summer I'd ever had. Jacob had become a fixture in my life like no one else. He'd refrained from asking about my uncle for over a year. Never poked into my life.

  Until today.

  Itching his nose, Jacob stared me down. “I heard what he was doing to you.”

  Grabbing a rock, I chucked it into the bushes. “You followed me home?” My cheeks were on fire, my belly in a knot that couldn't be undone. “You're an idiot, Jacob. What if he had seen you?” And how much did you see? I was too scared to ask.

  Hopping down onto the grass, he eyeballed me. “I was careful, Kite. He didn't see me, and I swear I didn't peek inside. Please don't be embarrassed, I just want to help.”

  I was burning with shame. “You can't,” I spat. Another rock flew into the woods. “Forget what you heard.”

  Jacob's eyes warmed. I hated his pity. “I can't forget. And I won't.”

  Bile rose up and burned my throat. “Just try to.”

  He waited until I was looking at him. Then he spoke, soft and cryptic. “Can you forget what he's doing to you?”

  Images ripped through my mind. Awful things, dark and twisted and full of cruel words and sweat.

  No, of course I couldn't forget.

  I'd tried since the beginning, I'd struggled in every way to make what was happening bearable. The result was a brittle boy who flinched and ran and hid from everyone.

  “Kite,” he said gently, putting a hand on my arm. I jerked away, but he kept right on talking. “Your uncle is hurting you. You need to tell someone.”

  I shoved past him. Rage was turning my muscles into weapons, I wanted to kick and punch everything around me. “I tried telling people! You don't think I did?” Scowling sharply, I jammed my heel into a log and sent it tumbling. “No one cares! No one around here gives a shit what happens to me.”

  He hovered by the fence, staying back like I'd attack him next. “Who did you tell?”

  “My fourth grade teacher.” Snatching up a branch, I shattered it over a knobby knee. “Know what he did? He visited my house, and my uncle smoothed it over with beer and money. That night, he was worse than ever.” Through my anger, the hot pricks of disgust made me shiver. Another stick snapped violently. “I tried to run away, once. The cops brought me back. He'll never let me escape and there's no proof but my word. Everyone always think I'm lying. Jacob, there's nothing I can do!”

  Stepping my way, my new friend—my on
ly friend—studied me with something strange in his blue eyes. He looked... thoughtful. The face of someone with an idea. “He's been doing this to you for a long time, then. Touching you—”

  I whirled on him. “Not out loud!”

  Jacob was stunned. He looked me up and down. “It isn't your fault! What he's doing is on him, not you.”

  Hugging myself, I sat down heavily. Leaves rustled under me in the mild sun. “This stuff isn't supposed to happen. Not in real life.”

  Jacob crouched beside me. His attention went up to the sky. “Real life is terrible. I kind of hate it.” He watched me from the corner of one eye. “But right now, I hate your uncle the most. Lots of people deserve to live. He isn't one of them.”

  My heart stalled. “What do you mean?”

  He lowered his tone, soothing and calm. “If no one else will save you, I will.”

  Adrenaline began to seep into me. I've heard people brag before.

  Sitting beside Jacob, a kid no different than me, I believed his every word.

  “How?” I asked in a dazed whisper. “How will you do it?”

  Jacob put his chin in his hands. He didn't look like a young boy, he was too calculating. In a way that had been subconscious since the start, I felt myself idolizing him. This kid, this smart, strange kid...

  He was really going to save me.

  “If we do this,” he said. “It will change everything. You understand that, right?”

  I spoke with hardly a tremor. “We're going to kill him. Aren't we?”

  Jacob nodded, fast and brief. “Yeah. But only if you're sure. Once we do this, you won't be hurt by him ever again, but we'll lose everything here. Both of us.”

  Both of us.

  “I have nothing to lose.” My cheeks were wet. The possibility of getting rid of the man who had been touching me in ways no one ever should, it was pushing relief into my body. I wiped at the tears, they kept coming. “What could be worse than this?”

  Jacob didn't smile. All he offered me was a hand. “There'll be no going back. No summers here, no anything here. We'll end up on the streets. It might not be a better life.”

  The seriousness in his stare, the odd patience in his eyes, it was meant to give gravity to the situation. Jacob was offering me a deal; he'd help save me—help rid the world of my putrid uncle—but doing so would change our lives.