Hooligans

by Chloe Garner

  It had an odd shape to it, right-angle bends that could only have been intentional, like a piece to a novelty puzzle box. She frowned at it, then looked around.

  If there was a secret box, there had to be a space where it was hidden. She’d looked in the toilet tank, at the bottom of the clothes hamper, everywhere he’d hidden them as a teen. And then she saw the false drawers under the sink. She’d given them a tug, of course, but they hadn’t budged. She opened the cabinets and looked up under the sink and found four half-drawers there, just shaped to fit without hitting the sink. With a little more fidgeting, she found that the pin slid along a slot at the bottom of each of them, and when she got it to the middle of the drawer, there was a click, and the drawer slid open.

  Here, she found all kinds of things. Stimulants, sedatives, exotics that she had to look up on the database on her computer, and more ordinary things like prescription painkillers, a bag of weed, and Robbie’s actual prescribed meds. She finally got a shopping bag out of the trash and went through the rooms again, finding more secret stashes of bottles, and ultimately taking them out into the living room and putting them on the table there to go through them.

  There was no way he was taking this cocktail and avoiding interactions or toxicity issues. Just no way.

  The door opened and she watched Trevor as he let himself in.

  “Afternoon,” he said, noting the pills without saying anything about them. “You sleep well?”

  “Robbie freaked out when I told him you came over yesterday,” she said. He nodded.

  “He’s a good brother.”

  “Said I should stay away from you,” she said. He grinned.

  “You should. Absolutely.”

  “Lara let him keep an awful lot of drugs in the house,” she said. Trevor nodded.

  “She did.”

  “I didn’t know what half of these did,” she said. Trevor nodded.

  “Do you know what Lara did?” he asked.

  “Did?” she echoed, and he nodded.

  “Not many of us can hold down a job, but she had a degree and a career. She was a sales rep.”

  Lizzie shook her head.

  “No. She wasn’t his dealer.”

  Trevor shrugged.

  “There are controls on stuff like this,” Lizzie said. “She couldn’t just make them disappear.”

  “But she could find a friendly doctor and get him discounted products.”

  “That’s unethical,” Lizzie said. “They don’t let it happen.”

  Trevor grinned wider. His eyes were playful.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Lara wouldn’t let him do all this,” she said. “If she had a degree, she knew better.”

  Trevor nodded.

  “I don’t think he uses them in great quantities. But when you need something…” He shrugged.

  “I’m going to throw them away,” Lizzie said.

  “Up to you,” Trevor answered. “But if you do, he may not be able to get any more of them, and… Well, Lara thought he needed them.”

  “Then she’s as crazy as he is,” Lizzie said, looking at the array. “Even someone with a real medical degree couldn’t navigate all of this. If she was just a sales rep, she wouldn’t have the training.”

  “Sure,” Trevor said.

  “You really think I shouldn’t throw them out?” Lizzie asked. What was she saying?

  “I think you should give both of you a few days to figure things out before you do things you can’t undo,” Trevor said.

  “It’s what you’re supposed to do,” Lizzie said. “Eliminate supply any time you can.”

  “And how well has the ‘supposed to’ playbook worked for him?” Trevor asked.

  She could put them in her car.

  The street value of what she had on the table in front of her was astonishing, though, and it wasn’t a good neighborhood.

  “I’m going to get a locker,” she said. “At a gym.”

  Trevor nodded.

  “That’s a good plan. Get them out of here so he can’t get to them, put them someplace else until you figure things out.”

  “How much of this is he taking?” she asked. Trevor shook his head.

  “That’s his business. I don’t ask.”

  “How are you so calm about it?” she asked. “You, of all people, have to see what it’s doing to their lives.”

  “It isn’t the drugs that did it to them,” he said. She frowned, and he shrugged. “That’s why I came today. See if you wanted to come see what we do.”

  “What?” she asked. “What do you mean what we do?”

  “Just that,” he answered passively, standing. “I bet Robbie keeps telling you that you don’t understand.”

  “I don’t,” she agreed.

  “Then come with me,” he told her. “It’s not going to make sense all at once, but you’ve got to start somewhere.”

  “He said to stay away from you,” Lizzie said. Trevor nodded solemnly.

  “He’s probably right,” he said. “You should go home and not spend any time around us at all. He’s a good brother. But if you’re staying, and if you want to understand, I’m offering to take you.”

  “You know where he is?” she asked, uncertain.

  “I know where he is,” Trevor told her. She sighed, then dumped all of the pills back into the bag.

  “I’m driving,” she said.

  “Obviously,” Trevor answered, following her to the door. “I don’t have a car.”

  ***

  The driveway was empty save Lizzie’s car.

  “How did you get here?” she asked.

  “Bus stop at the end of the street,” he pointed.

  “Bus,” she said. He nodded.

  “Not really the fastest way to get around, but it’s not like any of us have money, other than Lara.”

  “How is Robbie going to keep up with the mortgage?” she wondered aloud, looking back at the house.

  “Isn’t one,” Trevor said, waiting as she got out her keys and unlocked the car.

  “What?” she asked. He nodded.

  “Wedding present. Her parents have money, and Lara made good money, too. If he can keep it together, Robbie’s set.”

  Lizzie frowned, looking at the house.

  Sure it wasn’t a great neighborhood, but property around here was expensive. Lizzie rented a one-bedroom apartment and felt like she was working for her landlord.

  “Wow,” she said. Trevor nodded.

  “The rest of us get as we can,” he told her, getting in and shifting his seat back, leaning it further until she couldn’t actually see him out of her peripheral vision any more.

  “You comfortable?” she asked, raising an eyebrow and he grinned.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  She shook her head and started the car, then pulled out her phone to find a gym.

  “Don’t suppose you know any gyms with locker rooms where they wouldn’t mind me dumping a bag of drugs for a few weeks,” she said.

  “Because I look like the sort who hangs out lifting weights,” Trevor said. She smiled despite herself and set the phone down on the console so she could follow directions.

  “Have you eaten?” she asked.

  “Nope,” he said. She looked at him.

  “Really?”

  He shook his head.

  “Truth, Lara fed us a lot more often than she should have had to. Not a lot of money among the rest of us. Robbie’s doing good, working twelve or sixteen hours a week.”

  “Robbie has a job?” Lizzie asked, shocked. She didn’t think he’d ever had one.

  “Yeah,” Trevor said. “Runs stuff around at the farmers’ market here in town. One of the organizers was a friend to Lara, and figured as long as Robbie turned up and was clean, they could use him. And he does show up. Worked this morning.”

  “Huh,” Lizzie marveled. “The day after she died.”

  “He wants to hold onto it as much as you want him to,” Trevor said. “He re
ally does.”

  “Then why does he hang out with them?” Lizzie asked. “He could make better friends.”

  “Hey,” Trevor said.

  “I’ve already asked why you’re with them,” Lizzie said, and he put his hands behind his head, looking up at the ceiling.

  “You need training on how not to be insulting,” he said cheerfully. “You know this, right?”

  She laughed.

  “You know that’s what I do for a living,” she said.

  “Insult people?”

  “Put together training and services for people who are dealing with mental illness.”

  Her mood was dimmed.

  “No kidding,” Trevor said. She nodded.

  “I’m not clinical or anything, but, yeah, I work with a team that that’s what we do.”

  “I never wondered what my sister does,” Trevor said. Lizzie looked back at him.

  “You have a sister?” she asked.

  “Nope,” he answered, letting his eyebrows drift up before he grinned at her. She gave him a mock-sour look and went back to following directions.

  “So, I’ve always wondered,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ve been around a lot of addicts,” she said.

  “Ooooh,” he said. “A lot, huh?”

  “A lot,” she agreed. “One thing I just don’t get.”

  “Only one?”

  “The four day beard,” she said, looking at him again with just a little smile. “How do you pull that off? I mean, obviously you didn’t shave it four days ago. You’d have been clean-shaven, and you weren’t. You had a four-day beard. How in the world do you keep it like that?”

  He laughed at the ceiling, shifting lower in his seat.

  “Well, my dear, I’m afraid I can’t help you,” he told her. “That is a closely guarded secret, and if I told you, something very quite bad would happen to you.”

  “Ah,” she said. “Well, at least that explains it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “There’s a code,” she said.

  “Hmm?”

  “I’d always thought maybe there was, but no one gave it away until just now.”

  He laughed.

  “Blast your discerning insights,” he said. She nodded.

  “The game’s up now.”

  ***

  She came back out of the gym and got into the car.

  “What do you want for lunch?” she asked.

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  “When was the last time you ate?”

  “Um.”

  “Uh huh. What do you want?”

  He picked a chain of fast-food burgers that she approved of, and she went and ordered a large meal for each of them.

  “I know you ate,” he said.

  “Rude to let you eat on your own,” she said and he shrugged.

  “Do it more than I don’t.”

  She laughed.

  “So where are we going? I want to see whatever it is you say Robbie is into.”

  “We have a little time,” Trevor said, sitting up to look out the window for a moment. “A little.”

  “You want to go find someplace to sit and eat?” she asked.

  “Ah, now there’s something I’m a master of,” he said. “I know every good park bench between here and the coast.”

  “That’s depressing,” Lizzie said.

  “That’s what Lara would have said, too,” Trevor said. “And I would have told her that it’s better than not knowing them.”

  “You’re not wrong,” Lizzie said, peeking in her bag. “Where am I headed?”

  “Turn here,” he pointed. He gave a few more directions and then she parked and they got out, walking through tall trees on a stone path.

  “This is pretty,” she said.

  “You don’t get time to appreciate it, when you’ve got so much going on in your life,” Trevor told her. “But it is pretty.”

  They went and sat down on a bench next to a stand that sold ice cream, where kids went by quickly on wheeled objects that didn’t resemble any of the options Lizzie had had as a child. She said as much to Trevor and he grinned.

  “I wasn’t allowed to have stuff like that when I was their age,” he said.

  “Why was that?”

  He glanced at her, a glint of bedevilment in his eye.

  “Because I wrecked all of it,” he said. “My mother was sure I wasn’t going to see sixteen. And then when I did, she was certain I wouldn’t make twenty-one.”

  “You used?” Lizzie asked. He shrugged.

  “Here and there. Not like the rest of them, I think.” He looked at her. “You know that they spent that time trying to figure out who they were. How they fit. When there’s no place for you, none at all, you find ways to make the alone easier. I always knew what I was.”

  “What’s that?” Lizzie asked, putting down her burger. He grinned and took another wolfish bite.

  “Spoilers,” he said, and she shook her head. She glowered at him and he chewed with cartoonish satisfaction.

  “So… I can’t help feeling like I’m not prepared for whatever is going to happen,” she said. “Will you give me any clue where we’re going or what’s going to happen?”

  “What are you picturing?” he asked.

  “Don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think… No, I don’t even have a place to start.”

  “I thought you’d be picturing an abandoned building full of trash bags and sleeping bags and a bunch of junkies shivering in corners.”

  “Well, now that you say it.”

  He shook his head.

  “We’re going downtown,” he said. “We’ll walk from here.”

  “And what’s going to happen?”

  “It isn’t going to make sense,” Trevor told her. “And Robbie is going to be furious I brought you. Once we’re there…” He chewed for a second and took a long draw on his soda. “Once we’re there, you need to decide whether or not you trust me. Robbie is going to get distracted, and that’s dangerous. For everyone. And you’ll be in danger just because you don’t belong there. I can keep you safe, but with Robbie… He isn’t going to be thinking straight, and if you go along with what he tells you to do, you could put yourself into more danger.”

  “Where are we going?” Lizzie asked. It was broad daylight, the kids nearby were yelling and laughing, the ice cream cart was an absurd palette of pastel colors, and the man handing out cones was wearing a Norman Rockwell apron and hat. It seemed impossible for Trevor to be talking about danger as he ate his crinkle-cut fries and drank Coke.

  “Not far,” he said. “Not far.”

  She frowned and he shrugged.

  “You can still go back to the house if you want. I won’t think badly of you. But if you want to see what we do…”

  “I’m not leaving,” she said. “But you’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you.”

  “Not believe the self-described psychotic?” he asked. “No. I don’t expect you to. But I expect you to remember, when it gets important, later.”

  “How do you know?” she asked. He shook his head.

  “It’s certainly not a gift, some days,” he said, digging into his bag for another burger. She watched him eat for another moment, then leaned back to eat her own lunch. They watched the kids play.

  It was strangely calm.

  Nice.

  ***

  He finally squinted up at the sun and stood, tossing his trash at a trash can. Lizzie chased it down and actually put it into the trash can, calling him an animal in her head and chasing after him.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

  “What doesn’t?” she asked. He motioned back toward the trash can with his head.

  “It’s a nice thing to do, but it doesn’t matter.”

  “It’s a nice park,” she said. “No point trashing it just because you’re lazy.”

  “Is that what you think?” he asked, picking up his pace.


  She matched him easily enough, keeping her head up now as they left the park, watching for anyone that she recognized from the day before. Behind her, she heard a kid scream, and she jerked to look, finding one of the boys in kneepads and a helmet was laying on the ground next to a skateboard clutching his knee. Several other boys were there, and she saw a man stand from a nearby bench and walk toward them, and she glanced back at Trevor, but he hadn’t even slowed.

  The kid was fine, and there were people there taking care of him, when she looked back again. She wouldn’t add anything to it, at this point. She kept on after Trevor.

  “That was kind of heartless,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “The kid on the skateboard,” she said, pointing over her shoulder. He shook his head.

  “What kid?”

  “You didn’t hear him?” she asked. He shook his head again.

  “I’m kind of in game mode now, Lizzie. Things are going to happen fast.”

  She raised an eyebrow, but continued on.

  She needed to know what her brother was into. She reminded herself that she didn’t really trust Trevor. She didn’t know him, and she didn’t know how broken he was, not to mention how reliable he was, specifically, with something like this, since he seemed to believe in it just as much as Robbie did.

  Whatever it was.

  Whatever she wasn’t going to understand.

  He glanced to one side as though he’d heard something and she followed his gaze, but there was nothing there but another sun-soaked building with a palm out front. Pretty. Might have been a little museum, or a civic building of some kind. They were getting into a section of town where a lot of the space was storefront, and there were more and more people around. Bright, normal people doing normal things. It was about the end of the day, and they were out running errands or meeting friends for coffee.

  Everything felt perfectly normal, except the way Trevor was moving.

  He was stalking something, or something was stalking him, she wasn’t sure, but he was moving faster, and he bumped into people on the sidewalk more than once. She apologized after them, trying to keep her head up to see anything that Trevor was seeing. He was reacting to something.