SICARII: Part III

by Adrienne Wilder

  “Don’t cry.” ’Cause it made Sam want to cry, and Sam did not want to cry. At least not because someone cared about him.

  Roshan did, steps scuffing the floor. “I’m sorry.” It burst out on a sob.

  Sam’s eyes burned. Do not cry. Do not cry. He swallowed against the ache blooming under each ear along the side of his throat.

  “I’m okay.”

  “But I ran away.”

  “No, you called for help.”

  Roshan would have kept running if he’d run away. Which was what Sam told him to do. But instead, he’d stayed, putting himself in danger. According to Sam’s mother, Roshan used Sam’s phone and called 9-1-1. And she knew that because she’d been at work when the call came through dispatch.

  It could have gone so much worse. Stan could have gotten up and finished what Karl started by turning his rage on Roshan. But Sam had been lucky and made just the right kick at the right time. Otherwise, Roshan could have been lying in the hospital with him.

  Or the morgue.

  Sam forced the thought from his mind.

  “I was really scared that…” Roshan wiped his eyes again.

  “I’m okay, I promise.”

  Roshan skipped his gaze from the top of Sam’s head to his face, to the cast on his arm. “You don’t look that okay.”

  “Well, thanks to the drugs they gave me, I feel great.”

  Roshan laughed through a cascade of tears.

  “I promise. I’m fine.”

  Roshan nodded.

  “Now, I have a really good excuse for not studying for my Chemistry exam. I’m pretty sure tromping around in the pond wouldn’t have qualified.”

  “You went to the pond instead of studying?”

  Aw, damn. That secret was out. Apparently, feeling really good had some downsides.

  “Yeah.”

  “But you would have failed.” And Roshan said it with all the horror of an honors student facing the possibility of a B on a test. A very low B.

  Sam shrugged, and a dull throb shot through his shoulder. “It was worth it.”

  “But your grades are important.”

  They were, but not half as much as the rest of life had to offer. For so long, Sam’s world had revolved around Joe, being with him, being there for him, sharing every aspect of his life.

  And now?

  Sam’s world simply revolved, and he suddenly had choices he’d never considered before because they meant Joe-less moments.

  Looking back, he felt pretty dumb for thinking that way.

  “I wouldn’t have failed. I might not have made an A, but I wouldn’t have failed, and a B or even a C every once in a while won’t kill me.” Sam picked up the bear with its silver planets on its fur. “Besides, I’ve never gotten a bear for making an A on a test.”

  “You don’t think it was silly?”

  “If it is, I don’t care.” Sam tucked the bear against his stomach.

  A knock sounded at the door. The handle turned. Then after a long moment, it opened for the last person Sam thought he’d see slip inside.

  Joe stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets. Droplets of rain collected in his hair and shoulders. The cuffs of his jeans were dark enough to suggest he’d walked farther than the length of the hospital parking lot.

  “Uh, I heard you were in the hospital and thought…” Joe curled his shoulders inward. “Can we talk?” His gaze almost came up. “Alone. Please?”

  Defeat passed through the sorrow on Roshan’s face. “I should probably get going anyhow.” He smiled, but it didn’t erase the rest.

  “I don’t want you to go.” Sam put his hand over Roshan’s. “So unless you have to, please stay.”

  Roshan’s wide gaze softened, and he wove his fingers between Sam’s.

  Sam gave his attention to Joe.

  Footsteps, voices from the intercom, the click of carts came from the hall in muted increments.

  Joe swallowed. “I…”

  Roshan tightened his grip but still watched Joe.

  Joe scrubbed a hand over his head, scattering droplets. “Yeah, I’ll just…catch you back at school.” Crimson colored Joe’s cheeks, and his Adam’s apple bobbed. Whatever he wanted to say pinched his expression and darkened his eyes. Maybe it was, I’m sorry, I was wrong, I made a mistake, can we still be friends. And maybe it was none of those things.

  He opened the door.

  “Joe,” Sam said.

  He froze.

  “I understand. And don’t worry about it.”

  For a second Sam thought he’d turn back around, but then Joe slipped out the door, and it clicked shut behind him.

  “Maybe I should have left so you could talk to him.” Roshan chewed his bottom lip.

  “He’s not ready to talk.” And Sam wasn’t sure Joe ever would be.

  “But he came here.”

  Sam tightened his hold on Roshan’s hand. “If he can’t say what he has to say around the people I care about, then he’s not ready to say it at all.”

  Who could have known Skee-Ball would be so fun? But Jacob was pretty sure it wasn’t just the game but the company.

  Ben stood at the counter with strings of tickets in his hands. The old guy who ran the place took his time counting them out.

  Then Ben looked at Jacob and winked.

  No. It definitely wasn’t the dumb game.

  Ben and the old guy chatted, then the man handed Ben two gift cards, and he headed over.

  “All those tickets, and you got a plastic card?”

  “I’ll have you know, these are the highly coveted two super-duper-special-guest-passes at the golf-n-go.”

  “Super-duper—"

  Ben held up the card. Printed on the front in nauseously happy font: Super-duper-special-guest-pass.

  Jacob took one “The golf-n-go?”

  “The putt-putt course at the corner.”

  “Yeah, I know where it is.” He flipped it over. His name was written across the back. “I just didn’t take you for a golf guy.”

  “Are you saying I’m not sophisticated enough for putt-putt?” Ben headed to the door, and so did Jacob.

  “No one is sophisticated enough for putt-putt.”

  “Which is why I asked for the super-duper pass.”

  Jacob made a face.

  Ben laughed. “The Super-duper pass comes with complimentary bumper car privileges.” He opened the door, and they stepped out into the night.

  Fresh rain puddles captured the glow of the neon signs and halogens in the parking lot.

  Ben bumped Jacob’s arm with his elbow. “You aren’t impressed? You should be impressed. I impressed myself. Took some serious bargaining. I could have had two gold-pogs, a half-dozen kazoos, and some weird jelly octopus things that you can throw at a wall and watch crawl down.”

  “Oh, wow. That’s, like, what, the top three worst toys from the eighties?”

  “Hey, I’ll have you know, I was a pog playing champion.”

  “Liar.” Jacob had to bite the inside of his mouth to keep from laughing.

  “I was.”

  “No, because if you could pop cardboard coins in a designated direction, you would have beaten me at Skee. But since you didn’t…” Jacob hummed. “Now, where should we go, Grass-fed or Grilled Out.”

  “Grass what?” Ben stopped by the curb.

  “Grass-fed, it’s an all-natural foods café.”

  “Jesus, so they what, serve beansprouts and tofu?” Ben scrunched up his nose.

  “If you order from the vegan menu.” Something Jacob rarely did. He might like to eat healthy, but he wasn’t about to completely give up his meat and potatoes.

  “That’s not even food.”

  “Then we can go to Grilled Out. They have steak. Surely that qualifies as food.”

  “Is it made of tofu?”

  Jacob shoved Ben, and he stumbled off the curb, his foot coming down in a puddle. The splash-out swiped Jacob’s shins darkening the fabric of his jeans.

>   “Hey, I just washed these.”

  Ben stomped his foot, tossing up another wave high enough to soak Jacob’s thighs.

  “All right, now you’ve done it.” Jacob hopped off the curb, bringing both feet down at once. Water shot up in a vertical wave, fanning out and slapping them both in the face.

  Grit and mud painted Ben’s cheeks all the way up to his bangs in a perfect mask.

  Jacob spit to get the nasty taste of asphalt out of his mouth. “I think I misjudged that a little.”

  Ben scraped the mud off his eyelids and opened them. “I think a little is an understatement.”

  “You look like a raccoon.” The residual ache in Jacob’s ribs was the only reason he didn’t laugh.

  “And I’m willing to bet they don’t allow wild animals in that fancy café you want to go to.”

  Ben was right.

  “I could go in and get us some takeout,” Jacob said.

  Ben raked a look over Jacob then shook his head. “It’s not fair.”

  “What?”

  “Even muddy, you’re perfect.” The tone Ben used made it sound like an afterthought. A pure and unedited observation. That he might have not meant to say it out loud.

  A lot of people had commented on Jacob’s looks over the years, but it had been a club to demean him.

  Somehow, it never sounded like that when Ben said it.

  Jacob pushed back his mud-soaked bangs. “Maybe we should just order pizza.”

  “What happened to all-natural and no taste?”

  “Like you said, we can’t go looking like this.”

  Ben held up the card. “They have hot dogs at the putt-putt, and I’m sure after we take the bumper cars around the track a few times, we’ll be covered in a more impressive layer of mud.” His eyes sparkled in much the same way they had when he’d seen the Skee-Ball lanes.

  Jacob really hated to burst his bubble, but it had to happen sometime. “There are no hotdogs.”

  “Of course there is, says so on the back, hotdogs, onion rings, nachos, and just about anything else that could clog your arteries.”

  “No, there isn’t.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Yeah, I do. There are no hotdogs because there’s no putt-putt. Place burned down a year ago when the kitchen caught fire.”

  Ben stared down at the pass in his hand with far more remorse than a grown man should.

  Jacob put his hand on Ben’s shoulder. “Sorry to break it to you, but your Super-Duper-Pass is Super-Duper-Worthless.”

  “Then why did…?” Ben glared at the building. “That asshole swindled me out of a good five hundred tickets.”

  “Yeah, because you’ve always wanted one of those gooey octopuses.” He tugged on Ben’s arm. “C’mon. We’ll go out and eat tomorrow. Order in tonight. Pizza place does vegan.”

  “Isn’t that like nothing made from animals?”

  “Yup.”

  “Then what the hell is left to make pizza out of?”

  “Shut up and c’mon.” Jacob looped his arm through Ben’s, and somehow his hand migrated down, and they wound up with their fingers entangled.

  “You sure you want to walk? It’s got to be almost three miles.”

  “It’s only one if we cut through the parking lots instead of taking the road.” Jacob turned his face up. “Besides, it’s nice.”

  “It’s wet and cold.”

  “It’s seventy degrees.”

  “It’s raining.”

  “It’s not—”

  A roar of water plummeted from the sky, instantly soaking them both. Thunder rumbled in the distance. A couple of teenagers darted from the building to their car and piled in.

  Ben sputtered. “You were saying.”

  “We’re walking.”

  They were on the other side of the parking lot at the long side of the mini-mall when lightning peeled back the dark, and the next crash of thunder shook the glass in the shop windows.

  “Jesus fucking Christ.” Ben yanked Jacob and dove for shelter. Most of the shops had closed, so there were only the niches where the doors were inset in old brick and canopies covering part of the sidewalk.

  Ben pulled Jacob into the cubby space, barely large enough for one grown man, let alone two.

  Bodies pressed together, every inch of Ben touched Jacob.

  “What were you saying about the weather?” Ben’s words puffed against Jacob’s throat.

  “Well, it didn’t look like it was supposed to get this bad.”

  Wind sliced the air, sucking up rain from the ground and sending droplets sideways. A frigid wall of air obliterated all warmth.

  “Fuck.” Ben ducked, and so did Jacob.

  “That’s the kind of storm that makes tornados.” Jacob had experienced a few in his life, and that was a few too many.

  “Yeah.” Ben curved his shoulders forward, forcing Jacob to take the most sheltered part of the alcove.

  “What are you doing?”

  “You don’t have a coat on, I do.” Ben flinched. Rain droplets smacked the edges of the brick.

  “You’re wearing a jacket, not a coat, and it’s not even waterproof.”

  “Yeah, and you’re wearing a T-shirt.”

  When they’d left the motel, it had still been warm from the afternoon sun.

  Thunder cracked at a high sharp note that left Jacob’s ears ringing. The night he’d wound up in a ditch, it had stormed like that. But through his swollen eyelids, there’d been only flashes of red instead of streaked lightening.

  The cold had eaten him to the bone. And he didn’t even have a T-shirt to fend off the lightest breeze because Franky had stripped Jacob down to his underwear before he’d dumped him.

  Jacob didn’t want to think about that night. He didn’t want to think about the horrible things that had happened before he wound up in the ditch. But the dark, the storm, it forced those memories forward.

  “You’re shaking.” Ben pulled his jacket up, freeing his arms, and covered their heads with the fabric. “Jacob?”

  “Will you hold me?” God, he hated how pathetic he sounded.

  Even the shadows couldn’t hide the unspoken why in Ben’s eyes.

  But instead of voicing the question, he wrapped his arms around Jacob, and he melted against Ben pressing his face against his neck. Each inhale of Ben’s scent pushed back the sour smell of water washing from the street, the bite of winter flavoring the rain, and the memories. Those terrible, terrible memories.

  Ben made a shushing sound.

  For so long, Jacob had bottled up that night, burying it so deep, even Marcel hadn’t tried to pry it out. Maybe because he knew what it would do to Jacob. That it would break him.

  Completely destroy him.

  But for some reason, the festering poison chose that moment to rise to the surface, and Jacob was too tired to keep it down.

  He held Ben tighter.

  “Talk to me, Jacob.” Worry added a rough edge to Ben’s voice.

  Jacob opened his mouth, but only a pitiful whine leaked out.

  “I’ve got you.”

  Jacob wanted to close his eyes, but he feared what he’d see.

  “I won’t let go. I swear to you, I’ll never let go if that’s what you want.”

  “It was a Tuesday.” Jacob choked. “The day Franky tried to kill me was a Tuesday. It was warm that morning, but then it stormed.” The cool front had stripped the sky of blue, leaving behind a sickly green-gray. “I don’t know why I remember that. But I do.”

  Ben ran his fingers through Jacob’s hair.

  “He had a party to impress some people. There were a lot of drugs. There were always a lot of drugs.” By that time in Jacob’s life, the days had melted together, no longer existing as weeks, months, years, but an endless road to nowhere. “Franky had a falling out with one of his big buyers. He had debt, and he needed the money. The people at the party were supposed to buy his drugs.” And when Franky talked business, things always were at th
eir worst. “He’d give out samples. Whatever they wanted… Whoever they wanted.”

  Ben rocked, and Jacob moved with him. Thunder rode through Jacob’s bones, making them throb.

  Every strike had sounded like the storm overhead. Every cracked rib a flash of lightning.

  But unlike Mother Nature, Franky didn’t pause. He didn’t give even a moment’s reprieve.

  “I did what they wanted. I always did what they wanted.” Like some half-starved dog willing to jump through a ring of fire. “I don’t know what went wrong, but—” Jacob fought to inhale. “—they didn’t buy Franky’s dope, and he blamed me.”

  The drugs had dulled the worst of it. Pillowing the pain, muffling the threats, the name-calling. But the fog didn’t last. And when it pulled back, hell rained down on Jacob in the form of ring decorated fists, belt buckles, and steel-toed boots

  “He pushed me down the stairs into the foyer of the apartment building.” The cracks in the tile had filled with Jacob’s blood. He’d dragged himself toward the door while people walked in and out. “He pulled me by my hair out into the street.” Jacob had thought the explosion of thunder was gunfire. “The sky opened up.” Winter fell from the clouds in sheets of melting ice. “It rained, it kept raining, and Franky kept screaming.” Jacob had waited for unconsciousness to take him, but it never did. “He ripped off my clothes. There weren’t many people out there, not with the rain. But there were some. He asked them if they wanted to fuck me. No one did, and it made him even angrier.” There’d been so much trash floating in the rivers, pouring through the gutters. “He told me, ‘see, no one wants to stick their dick in you even for free.’” Jacob swallowed against the vise tightening around his throat. “He found a beer bottle. And they watched. They watched while he…” Jacob inhaled a watery breath. “I begged him to stop. I begged him, Ben, and he wouldn’t. And every time I screamed, he laughed at me. I wanted to die. I begged for him to kill me, but he wouldn’t.” What had begun as a torrential rain morphed into high winds, ripping the water droplets from the clouds and throwing them to the ground with balls of hail.

  “Jacob…”

  Warm droplets pelted Jacob’s shoulders.

  “God, Jacob, I’m so sorry…”

  “The rain stopped. It was dark. I begged for help. For anyone to help. One guy came over, I thought he would, but he pissed on me and walked away. The next morning, the old lady who lived across from us brought her trash out to the curb and tossed it right beside me for the garbage man to pick up.” Jacob hiccupped. “I pulled myself across the road. The ground was wet, and when I tried to stand, I fell. I rolled into the ditch. It was so full of water; I was sure I would drown. I wasn’t afraid, though. I wasn’t afraid because it meant he couldn’t hurt me anymore.” Jacob exhaled a sob. “But he was right. I wasn’t worth anything.”