Not even a little bit.
It wasn’t the first time I’d gotten into it with one of my mom’s boyfriends, and had I not been arrested it sure as shit wouldn’t have been the last. She had a talent for picking the bad ones out of any crowd, and from my understanding, had been that way her whole life. She ran away with my dad when she was only fifteen years-old and moved to the pits of Detroit. He got shot, collateral damage in a drive-by, right after she found out she was pregnant with me. She never bothered to contact her parents for help and took my dead dad’s last name for the two of us.
I am truly, completely alone in the world. And somehow it feels better than looking over my shoulder for my mom’s latest fuck up to come get me.
The water slowly cools as my mind drifts, fading from the pits of Hell to the arctic tundra. I reach up and turn the faucet off. My 4am phone alarm hasn’t gone off yet to warn me I only have three hours before I need to get up and ready for work, so I still have time to skulk around. Besides, I’d never leave this corner if it weren’t for my roommate and his determination that I continue existing.
In prison, I could blame the restlessness on my cellmates snoring, or the worry someone would rape me, or kill me, or fuck knows what else. Here, I’ve got no excuses. Just the memories, playing over and over in my head on some sick never-ending loop.
The DA offered Man Two, with the minimum sentence. Five long years of my life sacrificed in the interest of avoiding the death penalty at trial. In hindsight, I should’ve taken my chances with the jury. I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t deserve the hand I was dealt. But I was sixteen, afraid to spend the rest of my life behind bars, or meet the end with a needle, so I caved.
Cancer took Mom two years into my sentence.
Back in Michigan, there’s a tombstone with Patricia Sanders, beloved mother engraved on it. I wonder if my grandparents are still alive, if they know their little girl is dead.
Five years gone, the rest of my life ruined to save hers, all for her body to fuck her over in the end.
I turn the water back on. The heater kicks on and it burns down my chest, the steam choking me back to the present. If all my focus is centered on surviving hellish waters, I can’t dwell on the past.
And besides...I can pretend I don’t feel the tears streaming down my face. It’s just the shower stream.
Bullets fly through the air, the reverb of the gun vibrating back up my arms and down into my soul. The bottles and buckets on the fence shatter apart, glittering in the twilight sun as they fly through the air into the tall grass below. They shine like shooting stars, and I can’t keep the smile off my face as I take them out, one by one.
The last target, a muddy old shoe we found in the city, leaps off the fence when the bullet pierces it, and my dad hoots behind me. “Hell yes! That’s how you do it!” he cheers. He claps me hard on the back, his eyes alight with excitement.
“Dad,” I chuckle. “I’ve been doing this since I was five. I think I’ve got a good grip on it by now.”
He waves me off. “Take some credit for once, kid. You’ve got a spark inside you, let people admire it.”
Warmth floods my cheeks and I turn my eyes downward, dismantling the revolver in my hand. It’s not my gun of choice, strictly for the lack of ammo, but Dad believes if you’re gonna be a shooter, know how to use ‘em all. One of these days I want to get back out here with the AR. The neighbors bitched about the noise recently, so we’re keeping it to handguns. Less likely to get the cops called if you’re merely teaching a hapless little girl how to defend herself.
I’m no princess, I don’t need the protection. And frankly, I don’t think my dad would care either, if it weren’t for every time the cops get called, it’s his boss that shows up.
“I think that’s enough for the day,” my dad says, bent over and fishing for what items we have that could be shot up a few more times.
My shoulders slump. “Already?”
He looks back at me with a grin. “We’ve been out here all day.”
“Yeah, but...” I swallow down my protest. He’s not wrong. We’ve been fucking around all week long, getting ice cream and going from range to range before finally landing on Uncle Mike’s property in Elizabeth. I knew I was being selfish with him, but I couldn’t care less. He works so much, I never get to see him, and it kills me. And our brief week together is almost over.
He grips my shoulder and gives me a gentle shake, pressing a kiss to my hair. “We’ll come back out next time. How ‘bout we go see a movie?”
I glance down at my watch. “Don’t you have to be to work at the asscrack of dawn?”
“Language,” he says, which is just comical. He’s foul as fuck, but he gets a pass for not being a lady. Ugh. “Yes, I work at five. I don’t mind—there’s coffee at the station.”
I purse my lips. I should tell him no, that his return to work was a big deal and he needed to be at his tip top mental shape. There were going to be questions, and side-eyes, and plenty of angry people in his path. But still, I nodded. “Deal.”
He throws his arm over my shoulders as we make our way back up the hill. Uncle Mikey is waiting for us by the truck. He’s a rotund man, balding and sour, and sometimes I have to wonder if he’s related to my father at all. My dad is tall and muscular, with a full head of thick, salt-and-pepper hair. He’s fit and able bodied, while Mikey looks like one too many trips up the stairs could put him in the morgue. And Dad’s the older brother.
“Thanks for letting us shoot, Uncle Mike,” I say, putting on my best charming grin. Mikey and I have never been close, and he’s had serious issue with us since...well...
“Yeah, you bet,” he says coolly, his eyes focused on the gun in my dad’s hands. “Always welcome here.”
Dad’s jaw is tight when he smiles. “Might swing by again sometime next week, if that’s alright.”
“Planning on getting suspended again so soon?”
My dad visibly bites his tongue.
I glare at my uncle. “Have a good night,” I say. I hook my hand around Dad’s forearm and pull him past his brother to the truck.
Dad and I only got this week together under tragic circumstances. And, like most everyone who watches the nightly news, Uncle Mikey wasn’t thrilled with what went down.
Late Wednesday night, my dad pulled over a swerving car. He figured it might be someone who’d been drinking too much, coming home from a girl’s night out, but found it to be an underaged teenager driving the car. The kid refused to give his license, because he didn’t have one, and when my father asked him to exit the vehicle, he reached in the center console for a gun.
Dad didn’t have a choice but to shoot first.
He doesn’t like talking about it, which is fine, ’cause I don’t like thinking about it too hard.
I didn’t know about it until Friday, when I came home from school and he was sat in front of the TV in regular clothes. His eyes were red and his voice hoarse when he lamented the whole issue to me, explaining how he was put on paid leave until they could verify his story.
When he told me right there, I believed him. Fully. Without a doubt. He’d never hurt a kid. I could see how torn up he was about putting someone in the hospital. My father had cried once in his life, when my mom died, and never again. Not until that day.
Then I found out the kid didn’t have a gun.
Dad swore up and down he did, that he’d seen one. He said he told the kid to put his hands back on the wheel, and when he didn’t, that’s when he’d shot. He was scared for his life, he’d said. He thought of me, what would happen to me if he were to die?
I found it hard to believe some scrawny, fifteen-year-old child could scare my dad. Maybe three years ago, if I’d brought him home as a boyfriend. But even then, he wouldn’t have shot him.
The real reason I found out from social media—he was a black fifteen-year-old kid.
It took people a hot minute to connect the officer who shot a fucking kid was my dad, but when they did,
all the hate flooded my way.
“Your dad is a monster!”
“Racist pigs!”
“Hope they all burn in hell.”
And a plethora of other lovely messages. I had grown men threatening me, saying they hoped something horrible happened to me so my dad would know the pain he put this kid’s family through. Some were more drastic than others—those I passed on to him. It was the only way we talked about the incident, reporting actual threats to the department and sending squad cars to school with me.
I wanted to defend my dad. There were so many things I wanted to say, but at the same time, my confidence in him was shot. He could’ve told me right at the start, that he thought the kid had a gun, that he made a mistake, that the kid was black. But he didn’t. He kept most of the story from me and only revealed more news as I stumbled onto it.
Every other sentence out of his mouth was “you can’t trust ‘em” about people of color. How could I not possibly think the outcome would’ve been different if it had been a white boy who’d taken his mom’s car out for a joyride?
Part of me felt like my dad was all those things people said about him, too.
So I don’t think about it. I don’t dwell, or wonder about this kid in the hospital, about the pain his family must be going through. Because my dad is the one person in the entire world I trust with all my life. He works so hard, and he always has my back no matter what the situation. He even got me out of cutting up a frog in biology class sophomore year—who does that?
Deep in my heart, I knew I should be furious with him. I knew I should call him out, but I couldn’t force it. He looked so wounded when his brother went after him, how could I do it, too? How could I turn my back on him when he needed me the most?
I couldn’t.
So I just...
Don’t think about it.
“I’m sorry you’re going through this,” Dad says. His voice is tight with embarrassment, reading my facial expression well enough to know where my mind wandered off to. “None of this should’ve fallen back on you.”
“It’s fine, Dad,” I say. I pat his shoulder and smile brightly at him when he glances back at me. “I know you’d never do anything to hurt me.”
“But I did,” he says. “I didn’t even think about the effect it would have on you, if I...if something...”
I shake my head. “You were thinking long term, about what would happen to me if you weren’t here. Not about people crucifying your child over something you had to do.”
“Not about the media vilification of police officers,” he adds with a snarl. “I can’t believe they’re still on this. My own brother, Riley—and my partner can barely look at me. My boss...”
I poke him in the side. “Your daughter still loves you.”
He softens, if only a little, and gives me a gentle smile. “Thanks, star girl.”
That’s me. His little star. The light in his darkness. His sole purpose for everything he does.
“Take a picture with me,” I say. I turn on the camera on my phone and hand it to him, hugging him around his shoulders and pressing a kiss to his cheek. He laughs and obliges me, taking the selfie with a huge smile and crazy expressions before urging me in the truck.
I post them publicly on all my social media. “Out #shooting with the #BestDadEver today!”
Fuck the haters. I can’t snuff out the only flame he has left, no matter what my reservations about his story are.
He’s had my back all my life. It’s time I had his. My father is a good man. I know that in my bones, all the way into my soul.
And he’s not the bad guy. He’s just not.
There’s nothing that can change my mind about that.
“Man, you need a new pouting ritual.” Rhett throws the door into the wall as he saunters into the bathroom. His dark eyes are heavy with sleep and his mouth is curved into a deep scowl, his glare hyper focused on his untamed pile of hair. He’s one of the brave ones, just lets his curls grow out in a gigantic natural poof. I shave mine down to a manageable length, out of pure laziness on my part. Some days it’s hard enough getting out of bed, let alone taking care of some lion’s mane.
He’s brave or stupid. That seems to be the theme of this kid’s life.
For having lived with him for almost a year, I don’t know jackshit about this guy. We were both drinking ourselves into oblivion when we met. I was trying to drink the image of cold, dead eyes out of my mind. Rhett? Dunno. Wouldn’t tell me then, never has and probably never will. Just some country boy that abandoned his family back in Indiana at seventeen and never looked back. My guess is an ex fucked him over good and his life’s mission is to forget, for how many girls his mattress has been through. It’s a damn cesspool.
I’m not picky, okay? Believe me, I’ve fucked my fair share of nameless chicks. But I don’t even want to know what would have to be done to his sheets to sanitize them—fire definitely won’t do the trick by now. Maybe a grenade or three?
“I’m not pouting,” I growl at him. I’m hiding in the shower at eleven PM on a Friday night, but that’s nothing new. I’ve been in here every day this week. He should be used to this so-called ‘ritual’ by now.
He ignores me. “I’m just saying, brother’s gotta piss sometimes. You might as well just move in here and let Duchess start paying his share of the rent.”
Duke—unaffectionately called Duchess by dear Rhett—is my wayward, willfully selected younger brother. Again, met him on accident when I moved out of the Springs into North Denver, at the community center where I started teaching piano. I don’t know what happened to his family—all I know, his parents aren’t in the picture, he has a fifteen-year old little sister to look after, and he won’t accept help from nobody. They live in a scummy part of town, but no matter how many times I ask, or how frequently he crashes here, I can’t convince him to move in.
It’s frustrating, and heartbreaking, but the harder you push for this kid, the further he moves away.
“Duke wouldn’t move in if we paid him,” I grumble.
Rhett wets his fingers and curls them into his hair, massaging out the tangles best he can without going for the comb. “Yeah, bet,” he says. “He’s out there on the couch waitin’ on ya.”
I push my legs out carefully, my muscles screaming their protest at the shift. My neck and knees pop back at me as I flex, and I bite my tongue to hold back a groan. I’m only the oldest of our trio by two years, but that doesn’t prevent Rhett from making jokes. “What’s he doing here so late?”
Rhett glances back at me, one dark brow raised. “Easy, old man, you’re gonna fracture a hip on me.”
“Fuck off,” I say. “What’s he doing here?”
“What he’s always doing here,” Rhett says, all of his attention back on fluffing his hair. “Avoiding real life, trying to convince you to go out clubbing with him and his pathetic fake ID.”
“I told him last time, I’m not doing that anymore,” I say.
“Yeah, and the time before that,” Rhett gripes. “And the time before that, and the time before that...”
“I meant it last time.”
We almost got caught. We were all real fucked up, Duke more so than Rhett or me. Cops pulled us over ’cause we were all being way too fucking rowdy, and Duke got in their face. They got in his, Rhett got in the middle. Me, I stood there like a dumbass watching a train wreck from the tracks. I can’t stave off the fear around the police anymore in general, let alone when I’m knowingly and willingly smuggling my underaged friend into clubs.
Long story short, Duke had a black eye, Rhett had a spiral fracture, I had a panic attack, we all got stern warnings. Cops acted like they did us a favor for not arresting us all, something about “intoxicated in public” (y’know, like everyone else downtown at three in the morning on a weekend) and “assaulting an officer” (they hit first, but whatever).
I’m not going back to prison ’cause my nineteen year old bud can’t hold his liquor.
“I’ll send him home,” I say.
“With your words or your shrivel stick?”
I glare at him and wrap the towel around my waist. “You wish,” I mutter.
Rhett sneers, the humor evaporating from his eyes. “Fag.”
I pierce him with a glower that he pointedly ignores and swallow down the continuance of that argument for another time. It’s his only flaw—he’s got something against gays. One would think he’d have a little sympathy, considering how often he gets treated poorly for being different—black and loud about it, colorful and empowered—but no. Southern roots run deep in that boy.
“For the last time,” I taunt, “there isn’t enough money in the world to get me in your pants.”
“Thank God for that,” he gripes. “There ain’t enough liquor in the world for me to let a queer hit it.”
Whatever. We’ve had that conversation a million times and, clearly, I’ve gotten nowhere. It’s not like he’s being shitty to anyone in public at least. I guess things could be worse.
The toxic traits we ignore in our friends.
“Duke,” I say, clapping my hand against the top of his head. He’s wearing some heinous white beanie over his shaved head, and apparently trying to grow a beard again from the little patches of fuzz on his chin. He’s got two cheap chains around his neck, too-big blue jeans, and a red tee shirt. “God, you look like a punk,” I laugh.
“Eh, shut up,” Duke grunts. “I’ll have you know, bitches love me.”
I hum. “Oh, I’m sure. That’s why you get all the ladies.”
“That’s right, my nigga,” he chuckles, so full of pride. I don’t know whether I want to laugh or throw up. “Get dressed, fool. We’re going out.”
“Duke—”
“And before you tell me no,” he interrupts. “I know you’re scared of the fuzz. It’s totally chill. It’s just a party, and I know a guy.”
“What kind of guy would let you into a party?”
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to.” He cups his hands over my shoulders and clicks his jaw. “C’mon. Just one more time—”
Fearless Page 2
