“Never, Bro. Just a glimpse, you know? One glimpse and school is worth it. All the pain and anguish and early mornin’s. All worth it.”
“You’re pathetic,” I said, trying to make the statement as light as I could.
“Oh, like you don’t look forward to seein’ Carina!” he shot back.
“What are you talking about? We’re just friends.”
“You’re not foolin’ anybody, Bro.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
“Of course you don’t,” he replied. “Oh hey, look there she is now.”
“I don’t care,” I said, but looked anyway.
Sure enough, she sat on a brick wall outside the main entrance talking to her friend, Lindsey. I tried hard not to notice how her brown, wavy hair waved in the light breeze.
“Man, you got it bad.”
“I don’t have anything,” I insisted, ignoring the way her smile lit up the overcast sky.
I shook my head. I had no clue why I had such strong feelings at that moment. No idea why my chest tightened and my palms became gushing geysers of sweat. I blamed it on my extreme emotional state. And puberty. Puberty is always to blame.
“Right, you don’t,” Nathen said with sarcasm.
“At least I don’t stalk her.”
Carina caught sight of us, waved, and hopped down from the wall. She said goodbye to Lindsey and headed our way.
“This is more stalkerish than what I do. At least I let Clarissa know how I feel about her.”
“Whatever,” I growled.
He leaned in and said in a loud whisper meant to carry beyond my ears, “Maybe I should just tell her for you.”
“Tell who what?” Carina asked brightly.
“Nothing,” I said with a glare at Nathen.
“Oh, I wasn’t going to say anything,” Nathen said with an exaggerated roll of his eyes. “Get over yourself.”
I felt heat build on my face. “Just drop it.”
“Been dropped, C-Dawg.”
“What’s dropped?” Carina asked, her perfectly shaped eyebrows drew together in confusion.
“Well, you see, your boy here—”
“Just shut up, Nathen,” I interrupted. “And stop calling me C-Dawg.”
“Man, you are freakin’ grumpy today,” Nathen said.
“Well I just had to listen to you ramble on and on about nothing for the past half hour,” I snapped. “Who can blame me?”
“Conor...” Carina said.
“Ain’t no thing,” Nathen said. “It’s his time of the month, don’t you know?”
“Still,” she said.
“No sweat here. Besides, I spotted fairer skies over yonder.” He stepped around Carina, heading in the direction of Clarissa. “Good luck, C-Dawg.” He stopped briefly to turn and give me the biggest, cheesiest smile and two thumbs up behind Carina’s back. “Yo, Clarissa!” he called out.
The girl’s shoulders slumped ever so slightly.
“What in the world was that about?” Carina asked.
I shook my head. “You know how he is. Just not in the mood for it this morning.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“My time of the month, I guess.”
“Ugh. All boys should just stop making jokes about that,” she said. “Seriously, if one of you ever had to go through just one, you’d probably spend four days in bed crying nonstop and whimpering for your mommies.”
“You’re probably right,” I agreed. I was pretty sure I’d take getting shot in the shoulder over menstruation any day. The first bell buzzed and we turned to head inside.
“Are you going to be okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just a rough morning.” To say the least.
“Okay,” she replied. “Well, you know I’m here for you if you need me.”
I glanced sideways at her, trying to ignore the fact that her dark skin made her brilliant green eyes shine while she looked at me. I had known her for several years now, and I still found myself caught up in them. “Yeah, I know. thanks.”
4:02 p.m.
I was lucky Nathen and I were pretty good friends. He took me snapping at him in stride. He had already shrugged it off when I saw him later in class.
The rest of the day, he acted like I hadn’t been a complete jerk and even gave me a ride home after school. He talked nonstop about whatever came to his mind as he ground the car’s gears into place. I didn’t listen because I didn’t want to snap at him again. It was pretty solid of him to ignore my morning outburst, but I didn’t want to test our friendship with another.
He dropped me off in front of my house. As soon as I closed the passenger door, thumping bass filled the neighborhood. I turned to the car. He grinned at me, waved, and took off down the street. And by took off, I mean, he puttered, nearly died shifting into second and disappeared, leaving waves of bass in his wake.
I shook my head and turned to go in. I pulled up short when I saw Jonas sitting on his front step, digging through his book bag. I stepped to the fence. “Hey, J.”
He glanced up from the bag and stared right at me for a moment. At least, I thought it was a moment. It felt like an awkward eternity. Without a word, he went back to digging through his bag.
“Can’t find your house key?” I ventured.
He stopped digging and with agonizing slowness, he lifted his head to look at me again. Another awkward eternity passed before he lifted a hand out of the bag and flipped me off. He stood, hopped up the steps to the front door, and promptly kicked it in. Without a look back, he went in, leaving his backpack on the front walk and the door wobbling on bent hinges.
I stared with my mouth hanging open, much like his front door.
Chapter 7
Day 3
12:19 a.m.
My dad wasn’t kidding when he said he’d be home late. I sat in my room growing more anxious as minutes ticked by one at a time. The vision of those red sneakers poking out from under the white sheet stuck to my mind like somebody had paused a murder mystery movie on the key evidence of the crime.
I had thought about it all day and came to the decision that I would go out that night. This time there’d be no backing down. No mercy. Crime had been on the rise for the past few nights and I set my mind to end it. At least helping, anyway. I couldn’t be everywhere at once, but after months of running across a crime every couple of weeks, finding trouble hadn’t been a problem lately.
I grabbed my ski mask—which Mom had been kind enough to throw in the dryer with the other clothes—stuffed it in a pocket, and sat on the bed, my leg bouncing like my dad’s had that morning. Just after 11:00, I heard him come through the front door. He and Mom talked briefly in hushed tones before going to bed. I sat through another hour of torture I gave them enough time to fall asleep.
By the time midnight rolled around, I couldn’t wait any longer. I slipped quietly out the window and ran towards downtown.
It was still early and there were cars on the street, but it didn’t take long to find my first crime. A guy climbed out of the broken clothing boutique window with a mannequin tucked under his arm. I stopped and blinked, not quite sure I saw that correctly. I glanced around to make sure we were alone and yanked the ski mask out of my back pocket. I pulled it over my head and jogged down the sidewalk.
“Hey!” I called out.
The guy kept walking without turning.
“A mannequin?” I asked. “Really?”
He didn’t even acknowledge my existence.
I ran to catch up with him, grabbing his shoulder. He spun, swinging the plastic person at me. I threw my arm out, blocking the mannequin melee with a forearm. The cheap collection of plastic parts fell apart in the thug’s arms. He looked at the pieces, dropped all of them except an arm and looked up at me.
“What are you, fifteen?” I asked, a bit stunned by how young he looked.
He swung the arm at me. I bent out of the way. Five plastic fingers whizzed past my face.
The last thing I needed was to be pimp-slapped by an inanimate object.
“What were you going to do with a manne—”
He swung again. I dodged again.
“Look, kid, drop the arm and go home before you get hurt,” I said.
I caught the fake arm by the wrist as it swung at me a third time. I snatched it out of his hand and threw it down the street.
“Now, as I was saying, it’s time for you to go home.”
He screamed an obscenity and rushed me, throwing wild off-target punches. I stepped back, avoiding them with ease.
While he tried to take me down, my emotions had a fight of their own. In one corner stood the guilt of hurting that kid to the point that it led to his death. In the other corner, the anger of failing to save that man’s life the previous night. That was two deaths squatting on my conscience. I wanted to stop this kid, but I really didn’t want to hurt him.
One of his punches landed. I barely felt it physically, but it was definitely a solid hit for my anger. Guilt staggered, dazed. Anger started to press its advantage.
“Look, kid, I’m not going to ask you again,” I growled through the mouth hole. “Go home.”
He kept throwing punches. He didn’t land anymore, but every potential punch bent my anger like a twig until it snapped.
“You asked for it.” I grabbed his wrist mid-swing—much like I had the mannequin’s—and twisted.
He collapsed to a knee, his arm turned at an odd angle in front of him and his fingers wiggling towards the overcast sky. I could have busted this kid’s arm to pieces, but guilt managed to land a couple of blows of its own on anger.
“I’m going to let you go,” I tried again. “You’re going to go home and go to bed like a good little boy. Got it?” I twisted his hand a little further.
He grunted in pain and cursed at me.
“And wash that dirty mouth out while you’re at it,” I added.
The sound of a window breaking followed by a woman’s scream pierced the night and brought my head up from the mannequin thief. Two blocks down, four thugs crawled over a car at an intersection. Two walked around it with baseball bats, slamming them into random parts of the car. Another hung out the driver side window. The third stood on the roof, bouncing up and down.
“Oh, man,” I muttered. “Are you going home?” I asked the kid in my grip.
He swore again.
“Didn’t think so.” I gave his chest a swift kick and he collapsed on the sidewalk with a wheeze, arms wrapped around his torso. I was pretty sure I cracked a few of his ribs, ending his night of mannequin thievery.
I tore down the sidewalk, covering the distance in a flash. The guy dancing a jig on the roof turned just in time to see me, but it was too late. I planted a foot on the butt of the dude half hanging out the window, using the posterior to boost myself up and over the car. I caught the dancing idiot in the midsection with my good shoulder. Any NFL linebacker would have been proud of that tackle.
The episode went something like this.
“Come out and play,” the dancing fool serenaded the woman in the car beneath him. The dude had a pretty good voice. “Come out and plaaaaa-uhn!”
That sound, that barely heard ‘uhn,’ was the sound of his breath forcibly leaving his lungs. It was one of the most beautiful sounds I’d ever heard.
We tumbled over the other side of the car. He landed on his back and rolled weakly to his hands and knees, trying to get his lungs to work again.
I used momentum to complete a roll and bounce to my feet, twirling to face the two attacking the car with bats. They both had forgotten the vehicle and turned to me. I glanced at the passenger window. The lady inside was trying to crawl across the front seats to escape, but the punk hanging in her window had a hold of her belt. Her blue eyes pleaded for help from under black hair peppered with gray.
I would help her but in a moment. I turned my attention to the bat-wielding thugs, again surprised at how young they were.
“What do we have here?” one of them asked. “You supposed to be, some kind of—ugh.”
That ever so beautiful noise rushed out of his mouth when my right fist connected with his face. He collapsed motionless on the road.
I was in no mood to listen to these jerks monolog bad jokes. The other slugger wannabe obviously wasn’t in the mood to provide any. What he shouted when he rushed me sounded something like this...
“Yaheeeahh!”
I turned on the spot and grabbed the bat mid-swing. The anger faded from his eyes, replaced by confusion. He stared at the fat part of his bat in my hand. Truth told, it kind of hurt to catch the bat like that, but it was too cool of an image to let the pain show.
“Nice bat,” I said. “You play?”
He tugged on it, but I didn’t let go.
“I do,” I informed him. “I’m the team’s slugger. Wanna see?” I snatched the bat out of his hand. He made couple weak grabs at it, but I held it away from him, flipping it around so I held it properly and brandished it menacingly.
The threat his bat being used against him didn’t seem to bother him. Anger flooded back into his green eyes and he rushed me.
“Seriously?” I muttered as he lowered his shoulder to tackle me.
I spun as his shoulder came into contact with my stomach, grabbed the back of his jeans with my free hand, and used his momentum to carry him in a circle. At the last moment, I lifted him off his feet and flung him into the car. He crashed into the passenger side door causing the car to rock violently. The woman inside screamed again. The guy fell motionless to the ground.
I stalked toward the car. “Close your eyes,” I yelled at the woman inside.
She screamed yet again. I wondered exactly how I looked prowling in the middle of the night with a ski mask on. Probably looked like more trouble than these guys.
“Your eyes!” I said. “Close them!” I exaggerated closing my own to demonstrate.
She did. I swung the bat into the window. It shattered, raining bits of glass on the woman and her assailant. I tossed the weapon aside and reached in, grabbing under her arms.
“Take off your belt,” I told her. I could have pulled her out, but I wanted to do so with as little injury to her as possible. Pulling her out with the guy still clutching her would not accomplish that.
“What?”
“Your belt,” I said. “He has a hold of your belt!”
She reached down a hand and yanked at the buckle. Luckily, it was one that snapped closed, so it gave way and I started pulling her out. She made it halfway out of the car when the punk realized he was about to be left holding nothing but a strip of leather. He dropped the accessory and grabbed her ankle. She screamed in my ear and wrapped her arms tight around me.
“Kick him.”
“What?”
“Kick. Him. In. The. Face.”
She looked up and our eyes connected. Even though I was the one who looked like the bad guy with the ski mask, she must have seen something in my eyes that cut through her hysteria. She gave me an ever so slight nod and looked down at her feet.
The man snarled at her. She pulled back her free leg and slammed the soul of her high-end sneaker into the man’s face. He grunted and let go.
I snatched her out of the car and set her on her feet before quickly turning back to the car and reaching inside. I balled my fists in the groaning man’s shirt and yanked him out of the car's window. I pushed him against the car.
“What is going on here?” I demanded.
He only groaned, his eyes a little glazed. A trickle of blood ran down from his nose. The woman apparently had a pretty good kick.
“Are you in a gang or something? How old are you, anyways?” I asked in vain.
A siren wailed from somewhere nearby, bouncing around the tall buildings. Apparently, we had attracted the attention of somebody who called the police.
“Hey,” I patted the man’s face. “Snap out of it. I got some questions.” I pulled him away from t
he car a couple of inches and then pushed him back into it. “Hey!”
Movement reflected in the back passenger side window caught my attention. Standing right behind me, bat held overhead, was our serenader who had retrieved his breath a lot sooner than I figured he would. I dropped the dazed dude and spun to defend myself. Turned out, I didn’t need to. A shoe came up between his legs with a solid thump. The punk’s eyes grew wide as an “eep” escaped his lips. The bat dropped to the street with a clatter, and he followed. He rolled himself up into the fetal position, moaning and clutching himself.
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