Tristan (The Ruins of Emblem #1)

by Cora Brent

  The rambling brick high school building that badly required a long list of renovations was nearly a hundred years old. As I exited the front doors I glanced back with a feeling almost like affection before searching out my car. Aside from a few clusters of students hanging around, most of the parking lot had already cleared out. My blue Honda Civic, however, had some company.

  The boy was broad-shouldered and his dark blonde hair hung in his eyes. He was leaning against my car, blowing smoke out of his mouth and looking bored while a petite brunette energetically sucked his neck. Neither of them made the slightest move to adjust their positions when I approached and cleared my throat.

  I cleared my throat a second time. “I think you’d be better off leaving school property now.”

  The kid focused on me and scowled. “What the fuck do you care?”

  I set my hands on my hips, aware that I was channeling one of my mother’s poses. “I care because you’re getting off to a rather bad start on the first day of school and I happen to be a teacher here.”

  He snorted and blew more smoke. “Like that fucking matters.”

  Meanwhile the girl had taken a breath from her hickey handiwork and slipped her hand under the boy’s shirt, which was covered with peeling red letters that said Emblem High Football. She pressed her body against his and didn’t recognize my existence. The football player continued to glare at me and I couldn’t shake the feeling that he looked familiar. He was likely one of the boys who slouched in the seats at the back of one of my crowded classes.

  “What’s your name?” I demanded, meeting his arrogant stare.

  “Fuck you,” he responded.

  The girl discovered her voice. “Let’s go, Lan,” she whined as she drew out the last syllable, practically grinding on him now. She released an embarrassing moan when he pocketed his vape pen and pressed his palms on her ass. Then he squeezed his prize with both hands while the girl moaned again. It was official now. I was totally grossed out.

  “Who the hell do you think you are?” I shouted, aware that teachers probably shouldn’t speak that way to students, even the ones who tell them to go fuck themselves.

  His answer was to push his big hands inside the back of the girl’s cutoff shorts and for a second I was terrified that he planned to shove her clothing down to her knees right here in the parking lot. Not that she would have minded. She arched her body, her right leg snaking up to hook around his waist, her eyes closed in ecstasy.

  “Stop!” I’d faced a few challenges today but watching teenage porn being performed on the hood of my car was more than I could take. “Get out of here, both of you, before we take a field trip down to the principal’s office and you get suspended!”

  The boy laughed and lifted the girl into his arms. He started carrying her across the parking lot with her legs tightly wrapped around his waist. Her dimpled face peered over his shoulder and our eyes met. Hers were full of triumph and she flipped me off. I wasn’t sure what in the hell she thought the two of them had just won but they could have it.

  I watched them go and wondered if I could have handled the situation better. I shouldn’t have so much trouble understanding them. My own high school experiences weren’t exactly ancient history. Little more than four years ago I might have been that girl, messing around with a hot football player in the high school parking lot and proudly scorning authority. But surely I wasn’t this brazen about it. At least I hoped not. But I said a silent apology to any of the teachers who’d suffered through my rebellion along the way.

  The whir of a helicopter caught my attention and I looked up to see one flying directly overhead. It slid across the sky like a huge ugly bird and finally hovered over the edge of the expansive state prison complex that dominated the view.

  A visitor approaching town would notice the prison first, then perhaps glance at the plain black and white billboard that said Welcome to Emblem, Arizona. That same visitor would inevitably see another nearby sign as well, a bigger one that was bright yellow and screamed an ominous warning while the prison squatted in the background: DO NOT PICK UP HITCHHIKERS.

  “Welcome to Emblem,” I muttered, watching the helicopter fade to a black dot in the distance before entering the suffocating heat of my car.

  Chapter Two

  Tristan

  He was driving me up the motherfucking wall but I couldn’t complain because he might start crying the way he sometimes did. Steve Pike took a pipe to the head last year when he was robbed while drunkenly pissing in an alley. The damage had cost him a few brain cells. It wasn’t like he had a bunch to spare in the first place.

  “You get fucked last night?” He’d already asked me that question three times and he kept bouncing on his bar stool like a four year old.

  “No I didn’t, Pike,” I told him. Again.

  He was disappointed. He took a drink and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Then he brightened. “Hey Tristan, did you fuck Shaylee last night?”

  Shaylee was a stripper with lopsided fake tits and an extreme temper. She lived ten miles away in Grande, tried to stab me in the balls with a butter knife once and was the main reason I’d only been romancing my hand for the last five months. A close encounter with that kind of crazy would make any guy be more careful about where he stuck his dick. But I wanted Pike to shut up and allow me to think for a moment.

  “Yeah, Pike. I fucked Shaylee.”

  He got excited. “I bet she takes it good in the ass.”

  Pike emphasized his thoughts by howling like a dog. The bar wasn’t crowded at this time of day but Leah looked up from shining shot glasses and threw us a look. I held up a hand to let her know I wouldn’t let Pike get too out of control. She frowned and returned to her task. Leah Brandeis wasn’t my favorite person. I remembered her from high school and she had a long history of being about as good humored as a bath towel. But she was the daughter of the owner and I didn’t want her whining to her dad that we were causing trouble. The Dirty Cactus wasn’t much to look at but it was the closest thing to a decent bar in the Emblem city limits and I liked coming here once or twice a week.

  I ordered two more beers and plunked down a twenty in the hopes that Leah wanted a tip more than she wanted us gone. She brought the beers and started wiping down the far side of the bar. I hoped that Pike’s blurred mind knew better than to say something foul to her but apparently he could remember to follow protocol now and then. He thanked her for bringing the beers and she nodded, apparently satisfied that we weren’t going to be a problem.

  Pike was busy enough nursing his beer and gobbling up the contents of a nearby pretzel bowl so I had a moment and do some quick calculations on my phone. My last shipment from down south was sold off more quickly than I thought it would be and now I had all kinds of requests for more. My largest client base came from a large senior citizen trailer park on the edge of town. Those old timers sure liked to get it on. Good for them. What the hell else did they have to look forward to?

  While I was thinking I brushed my hand over my jaw and I winced as the forgotten soreness came back to haunt me.

  Pike noticed. “Does it hurt?” he asked, his eyes now puppyish and concerned. Sometimes he could be sensitive for a dimwit.

  I shook my head. “Nah.”

  These days I was renting a room in a crumbling relic of a house with a guy who used to pal around with my older brother long before we became friendly. Aaron Dover was all right. Not too smart, but usually he stayed out of my shit and I stayed out of his. But last night he’d gotten into a bad scene with his girl, Karla. They were making such a racket in the kitchen that I had to investigate, only to discover she was going after him with her nails and screeching about finding someone else’s bra in his trunk. She raked him good across the face and I was afraid he was shit-faced enough to clock her so I stepped between them and allowed him to slam his fist into me instead.

  I had my reasons. The first was because I didn’t want to hunt for another roommate if he wo
und up arrested and jobless. But there was something else too. I would never allow a woman to get hit in my presence, no matter how much of a bat shit nut bag she was. Karla took off in a huff while Dover puked into the sink and then passed out on the couch. I found a bag of peas in the freezer for the swelling in my jaw and helped myself to the pain meds Dover had left over from his kidney stone.

  This morning he mumbled the closest thing to an apology that Dover could handle offering and threw a twenty at me as consolation. It was the same bill I’d just set on the bar to pay for the beers.

  Pike forgot about my bruised jaw and shoved another handful of pretzels into his fat jowls. “You gonna fuck anyone tonight, Curtis?”

  Holy shit, the dude had a one track mind. He also confused me with my older brother now and then, even though Curtis hadn’t set foot in Emblem in years. I understood why Curtis had decided to be allergic our hometown. He had the good life now up in the valley. A decent job, a beautiful wife, even owned a stucco box in the suburbs. And he’d taken on the task of raising our younger brother Brecken after our mother was sentenced to prison for insurance fraud. Yup, Curtis Mulligan had changed his criminal ways and became the poster boy for self-transformation. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was spending his spare time these days rescuing puppies and reading books to cancer patients. But I could remember when my big brother was one of the biggest bad asses around.

  For a long time he was dismayed that I’d embraced the life he’d fought to leave behind and for a few years we hardly spoke. Even now, though we’d gotten in the habit of speaking once or twice or month, he did most of the talking. He told me what Brecken was up to. He talked about his wife, Cassie, and about working at Scratch, the tattoo parlor owned by his father in law. I didn’t tell him much about my life here and he knew better than to ask for details. He wanted nothing to do with Emblem, nothing to do with who he’d been when he ran around with a gang and got into all kinds of wild trouble. That was fine. At least he’d learned to stop expecting that I’d follow his path. Not all of us could wake up one morning and decide to be boy scouts.

  “I probably won’t be fucking anyone,” I said to Pike, because he was still waiting on my answer about what I planned to do with my dick this evening. Most of Pike’s former buddies didn’t have patience for him anymore. He’d moved back in with his mom and wasn’t much use on any job. But before he got brained in an alley he’d stood by my side a few times when it counted and I didn’t forget that kind of loyalty. Even if he didn’t remember who I was sometimes.

  My attention was drawn to the group who’d walked in a few minutes ago and pushed some tables together. I recognized them. I’d attended Emblem High for three years before Curtis tried to get Brecken and me out of here in search of a better life. This morning when I’d driven past the high school I’d noticed that it was a hive of activity so the new school year must have started.

  The group of teachers who had invaded the Dirty Cactus at three o’clock in the afternoon were treating themselves to a little alcoholic refreshment after a hard day of schooling Emblem’s raucous youth. Most of them would recognize me if I chose to go over and say hello. Emblem High wasn’t that big a place and my time there ended less than five years ago. Ms. Campo noticed me and offered a polite nod of acknowledgment. She’d been my math teacher sophomore year. Or maybe it was freshman year. It wasn’t important. I couldn’t remember if I’d been a total prick in her class but chances were high that I was. I’d never been a good student and I had yet to acquire a diploma. Curtis tried to get me to finish high school up in the valley and was gutted when I dropped out for good and returned to Emblem. I still felt bad about that and yet I wouldn’t change a thing. Now I nodded back at Ms. Campo because I remembered that she was all right for a teacher. I’d even managed to pass her class.

  Leah approached the teachers to take their drink order and they all greeted her like she was their long lost daughter. Leah had been a year behind me at Emblem High and was class president or something. Like the rest of her crowd she’d escaped to college but she’d put her career dreams on hold to come back and help her depressed father run the bar after the death of his wife. No wonder the EHS teachers looked at her like she was a saint.

  Mr. Loredo loosened the tie from his fat neck and ran a hand over his sweaty face while shifting his stocky body. He looked the same and I didn’t know why he still bothered with the fucking tie. This was Emblem, not Harvard. Loredo taught biology and was always showing short videos in class so he could escape to the hallway and pass gas. Right now he grimaced and squirmed and looked like he was dying to go find a convenient hallway where he could cut the cheese.

  The volume inside the bar had increased exponentially ever since the teachers arrived. Listening to them babble about class schedules and testing was worse than listening to Pike so I decided to finish my beer and take off. Besides, Pike was bound to make a spectacle of himself in some way and I didn’t want to be attached to that scene.

  I’d just swallowed the last drop in my bottle when the door opened again. The flare of blinding sunshine hit me in the eyes and I didn’t catch a look at who had caused it.

  “Can I have another beer?” Pike asked with his mouth full of pretzels.

  “Why don’t we get out of here?” I suggested.

  He frowned. “I want another beer.”

  “I’ll stop at the gas station and get you a beer.”

  “Come on, Curtis, please.”

  I sighed. I figured he wouldn’t have any cash to pay for it so I tossed some more money on the bar and motioned to Leah. She was busy filling glasses full of fruity drinks with cherries and shit so we’d have to wait a minute.

  In the meantime I took another look at the Emblem High teachers. The new arrival had found a seat at the table beside Ms. Campo. She was much younger than anyone else in the group, probably barely old enough to even enter a bar. She still wore an Emblem High ID badge around her neck, which meant she was a teacher like the rest of them. And I knew her. Sort of.

  She was the younger sister of my brother’s wife. I couldn’t remember her name off the top of my head. Candy or Catie or something. Like Curtis’s wife she was a Gentry, part of the large, complicated family that had once been sprawled out all over Emblem. There were still a few of them scattered around and the stories remained about generations of hard drinking brutal ruffians living on the desert outskirts. Whatever their family history, they all seemed to be doing well now that they’d left Emblem behind. And yet here I was staring right at one of their pretty, privileged daughters. She’d never lived here and I had no idea why she’d taken a job at Emblem High at a time when the town was more on the road to decline than ever. Jobs were scarce, drugs were plentiful and about a third of the businesses along Main Street had boarded up their doors. The prison was just about the only place that was thriving.

  The new girl appeared to make herself right at home at the table full of teachers and she was telling a story now, using her hands for emphasis as laughter broke out. I would have thought Curtis might have mentioned the fact that his wife’s sister was moving to town but I’d just talked to him last week and he hadn’t said a word. As for Candy/Catie, the few times we’d been in the same place at family events I’d never said two words to her. She struck me as snobby and conceited and I had no patience for anything that promised to be as high maintenance as that. But I did notice she had excellent tits. I could be unimpressed with her personality and still appreciate the way she looked.

  In fact I was appreciating the way she looked right now. Get her out of that boring schoolteacher wardrobe and she might become all kinds of interesting. I could work with that. In fact I was overdue to work with something like that. The challenge of taking her down a few notches could be fun.

  The idea that my brother might be displeased if I messed with his wife’s sister crossed my mind but I’d worry about that later. Right now I hadn’t even decided if I was going to do anything.

  Some
how she must have felt the heat of my stare because she stopped talking and zeroed in on me. I saw her do a double take and raise an eyebrow. She kept staring for a few seconds like she was expecting me to hop off my bar stool and go running over to her. Then Leah approached the table with a tray of drinks and she shifted her gaze.

  Pike noticed my attention had strayed. “What are you looking at?”

  “Not sure yet,” I said.

  Pike stared at the girl and blinked. “She’s hot.”

  “She’s not bad.”

  He was getting excited again. “You gonna fuck her?”

  I grinned. “Maybe.”

  Chapter Three

  Cadence

  The Dirty Cactus appeared ramshackle and rather seedy on the outside but it turned out to be just an ordinary bar, the dark wood interior projecting the atmosphere of an old fashioned saloon.

  There was a low end rustic kind of charm about the place and as I took a seat at the table with Aura Campo and a pack of other teachers I found it easy to picture a row of leather clad bikers lined up on the barstools even though there were no biker gangs here now.

  No bikers in sight. However Tristan Mulligan was front and center.

  He was the younger brother of Cassie’s husband, Curtis, and I didn’t know a lot about him. At one point Curtis had been his guardian but Tristan had no interest in finishing high school or earning an honest living. When he took off and returned to Emblem nobody could convince him to change his mind. At the time he’d been close enough to his eighteenth birthday that Curtis had no choice but to let him go. Cassie told me it just about killed Curtis to see his kid brother choose the life he’d fought to get away from.

  Finding him at the Dirty Cactus was somehow jarring, like running into your gynecologist in the produce aisle. Somewhere in the back of my head I had realized he lived in town but I couldn’t remember hearing anything about him lately. Tristan did not make regular appearances at family functions and I could only recall encountering him twice before. The first time was at my sister’s wedding to Curtis and the second was a birthday party for the youngest Mulligan brother, Brecken. He was not friendly on either occasion. And he did not look particularly friendly now.