Up in Smoke

by T. M. Frazier

  Rage is processing, looking to the ceiling, deep in thought. This isn’t the time to try and shake her out of it unless you want to be on the bloody end of her crystal studded blade.

  I take another swig of whiskey and decide I’m glad Rage came today.

  Frankie enters the room and pauses when she sees Rage sitting on the counter. Frankie’s eyes widen in surprise, and she looks to me. “Who’s that girl?”

  “That ain’t no girl,” I say setting down the whiskey. “That’s Rage.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Sit,”Smoke says, sliding out one of the chairs from the dining room table.

  “Is she okay?” I ask, not taking my eyes off the blonde with the white shorts and matching flip flops. She’s gorgeous. Weird with that unblinking robotic look in her bright blue eyes, but gorgeous none the less.

  “Depends on what your definition of okay is,” Smoke answers.

  “Why is she here?” I ask, wary of this new person in the room.

  “To watch you. I’ve got some shit to do in town.”

  “She’s going to watch me?” I ask.

  A knife, no, a dagger, spirals through the kitchen and lands with the blade in the table less than an inch from my arm, its white, crystal handle sparkling in the sunlight.

  I look up.

  “Yeah, I’m gonna watch you,” Rage says, her eyes now focused. “We’re gonna be BFF’s, I’m sure.”

  There’s no emotion in her voice and something off about her words. About her.

  About the way she just threw a fucking knife at me.

  “Is she your…” I start to ask.

  Rage laughs, her head thrown back. “Negative, crime fighter.”

  “Can’t I come with you?” I ask Smoke, not taking my eyes from Rage who’s now staring at me again.

  She’s not blinking.

  “No,” they both answer in unison.

  “She’s pretty, Smoke. Even all banged up. I like her hair. And she’s got cat-colored eyes,” Rage says, as if I’m on display at the zoo and not in the same room.

  “More like fire,” Smoke says, staring at me for a few seconds before looking away.

  Rage tosses him something that isn’t a knife.

  Smoke drops to his knees on the floor and tugs my leg so my calf is lying against his thigh.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “Do you always have to question everything?” he groans, adjusting a thick black bracelet around my ankle.

  “What’s this?” I ask.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” Smoke says.

  The bracelet has a black square attached to it slightly smaller than a pack of cards.

  “This, is insurance,” he explains. “An ankle monitor,” he checks to make sure it’s secure.

  “Like for someone on house arrest?” I ask, remembering seeing it in movies when the convict gets sentenced to time at home instead of jail. They’re monitored by the police and used to make sure the criminal remains at home for the duration of their sentences.

  “Yes, the same concept.”

  “Except,” Rage sings, pressing her lips together and swinging her legs off the counter. “This one’s waaaayyyyy more fun.”

  “How is it more fun?” I ask, dread pooling in my stomach.

  Rage’s eyes go wide. She smiles maniacally.

  Smoke locks the device in place and tucks the little key into his pocket. He stands.

  “Mostly, because it’ll explode,” Rage squeals with joy, staring with an uncomfortable amount of interest at the little box now tethered to my leg.

  “It’s a bomb?” I exclaim, jumping up like I can somehow distance myself from the thing, but it’s too late.

  Smoke continues, “I’ve set the perimeter guidelines to the fence which goes around the prison. Zelda’s house is included. If you go outside the perimeter, it’ll give you a warning beep then you’ve got yourself ten seconds to get back inside before it goes off. Same goes if you try and fuck or tamper with it in any way.”

  “Boom,” Rage whispers, making an exploding motion with her hands.

  Terror dances up my spine.

  “You put a bomb…on my leg,” I whisper. I sit and look down at my new explosive ankle jewelry.

  Smoke smirks. “You can look at it that way.” His eyes meet mine. “Or, you look at it like I’m giving you some freedom.”

  “Freedom…with a bomb on my leg.”

  Smoke nods.

  Rage whistles.

  “But I thought she was here to watch me,” I say.

  “As I said. Insurance,” Smoke answers.

  He was giving me what I asked for. Some freedom during my last few days.

  Never in my life did I ever think I could be grateful for a bomb strapped to my leg, but I am.

  Smoke holds up something that looks like a controller for a DVD player. “I can also set it off remotely,” he says, tucking it into his back pocket.

  “Oh, can I have it?” Rage asks, making grabby hands in the air.

  “No,” Smoke and I both answer.

  I close off the part of my brain freaking out over the explosive factor of my situation and instead focus on the tiny bit of freedom aspect. I begin to dance around the kitchen, the weight of the ankle monitor making me feel freer than I have in days. Smoke watches me expressionlessly until I dance myself right into a cabinet. The monitor vibrates on impact, and I freeze, looking up to meet Smoke’s eyes.

  Smoke covers his mouth, and I realize it’s to hide a smile. I’m disappointed because I would like to have seen it.

  Rage leaps off the counter.

  “It’s sturdy,” Smoke crosses his arms over his chest. “It won’t go off if you kick it around or knock it into things. It doesn’t work like that.”

  I exhale. “Thank God.”

  “No. Thank Smoke,” Rage corrects.

  “Thank you, Smoke.” I say, and I mean it.

  For a few moments, we just stand there, staring at one another silently until Rage clears her throat.

  “I gotta go,” Smoke says. “I’ll be back in the morning.”

  Smoke leaves the kitchen and heads into the back bedroom where I hear him rifling through the storage containers.

  “So,” I say. “Your name is Rage.”

  “Yep. It’s short for Ragina.”

  “No, it’s not,” Smoke says, crossing back through the kitchen with a bag in his hand. He pauses at the door and looks at me, then Rage.

  “Go,” she says to him. “No boys. No parties. No booze and no rated R movies. We got it, Pops. Now, go!”

  Smoke pushes out the door, shaking his head as he leaves.

  I follow Rage onto the porch where we watch Smoke fire up his bike and roll out down the path past a blue scooter parked in the yard.

  Smoke could have left me cuffed. In a cage tied to a bed. Starved me. Tortured me. But for some reason, he’s given me room to run. A babysitter. An ankle monitor.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Rage says.

  “No, you don’t,” I argue.

  “I do. You’re thinking that maybe Smoke isn’t so much of a monster after all.”

  Shit.

  “You’re wrong you know,” she sings.

  “How so?”

  Rage brushes past me back into the house. “The man did strap a bomb to your leg.”

  I look down to the black box around my ankle.

  Shit.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “Doyou mind if I ask you a question?” I’m sitting on the front porch in one of the tattered rocking chairs looking over the landscape of the prison.

  My curiosity has gotten the best of me, and I’ve been wondering something ever since Smoke left.

  “That was a question,” Rage says. She turns the page of the bridal magazine she’s reading and makes a face of disgust. She rolls her eyes and closes the magazine, tossing it on top of a tall pile stacked next to her. She reaches in her bag and pulls out another, opening it and makin
g the same face at the very first page.

  “You’re very literal,” I observe.

  “And Smoke was right. You’re very question-ey,” Rage gives up on the magazine, shoving it aside. She sits up in her chair and folds her feet underneath her body. “So what’s this mystical question you’ve got for me? Spoiler alert, I don’t do horoscopes.”

  “How do you know Smoke?”

  “It’s a tale as old as time,” she says with a sigh. “You might even say a song as old as rhyme.”

  “Are you trying to tell me you’re Beauty and the Beast?” I ask with a laugh.

  Rage wrinkles her nose. “No, why?”

  “Uh, no reason.”

  Rage pauses to think. “I guess you can say that Smoke is the Mr. Miyagi to my Karate Kid, but I haven’t seen him in a long while.”

  “What happened?” I ask.

  Rage lifts her hand, examining her nails. “All was not well in the dojo.”

  “So you guys have never…” I don’t know why I’m asking, but even I realize the question comes off as jealous when there’s no way that’s possible. Curious. That’s all I am. It’s human nature to be curious of those around you and right now those around me are Rage and Smoke.

  It’s as simple as that.

  “THAT is a lot more complicated. We’ve never felt that way about each other, but some shit went down where we were forced to…” she makes a finger in the hole gesture with her hands. “At gunpoint,” she adds.

  I don’t know what I was expecting but THAT certainly wasn’t it.

  “He felt guilty and took off. Today is the first time I’ve seen him in years.”

  “Smoke felt guilty?” I ask, taken aback. I didn’t think he was capable of guilt.”

  “Don’t get it twisted. That man is capable of much more than you or he even knows,” Rage answers cryptically.

  She reaches behind her back, pulling out the dagger she’d thrown at me earlier. The one with the shiny crystal handle. She fiddles with it, rotating it in her hand, pressing the pad of her index finger against the tip, testing its sharpness.

  “You know,” she starts. “I see the way he looks at you. A couple of years back, shit, even a year back I would never have seen it or recognized what it was. Even if I did it would only be an observation, something to mimic while I’m on a job and have to pretend to feel the same way everyone else does.” Rage spins the handle of the blade on the table between us. “But I saw it today. He looks at you like he wants to…”

  “I don’t know what you think you saw—”

  Rage cuts me off. “You’re a smart girl, Frankie. I can tell. But you might be more clueless to what people are feeling than I ever was because Smoke looks at you like he wants to stick a flag in you and claim you for the homeland.”

  I raise my eyebrows in question.

  Rage rolls hers. “I’ve been watching these emotional movies lately. It’s this therapy thing my parents want me to try. The stake a claim thing is from Far and Away with Tom Cruise. He goes out West and…” She stops. “Never mind. I’ve probably got it all wrong anyway.”

  Rage looks down to the blade in her hands.

  Feeling the need to lift whatever burden is sitting on her shoulders I tell her. “I like that movie.”

  After a few moments of silence Rage turns to me. “Be honest. What’s your story? How did you end up Smoke’s captive?”

  “He didn’t tell you?”

  “He told me his side. I want to hear your side.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Because I care about Smoke, and I need to know if I should bury you in the prison yard before he gets back,” she says.

  My eyes widen.

  She rolls hers. “Don’t worry, I’d totally tell him you offed yourself so he wouldn’t blame me. We’d still be buds.”

  “Good to know?” I say. It comes out like a question.

  There’s no doubt in my mind it’s the truth but she says it so casually, like she’s planning what to eat for dinner or talking about the weather.

  I know Rage’s loyalty lies with Smoke, I don’t know if I can trust her. Actually, I know I can’t trust her.

  I tell her everything anyway.

  Well, ALMOST everything.

  I tell her about my father and how he was negligent toward me after my mother died. About taking a false name and re-enrolling in high school to avoid the fallout from my father’s bullshit. The abduction. Smoke. Smoke. SMOKE.

  I toss one truth after another at her like clothes on a laundry heap until there’s a huge pile between us to be sorted.

  “Well, that was…educational,” Rage says, twisting the end of her ponytail in her hand. She pulls up her legs and sits cross-legged on the rocking chair. “But I guessed it.”

  “Guessed what?” I ask.

  “He named the bacon,” she whispers.

  I’m not sure if she’s talking to herself or to me.

  “Huh?”

  “Think of Smoke like a pig farmer,” Rage starts to explain. I