Lana’s face paled. But Tyler knew her too well. The horror on her face wasn’t for Brandon. He could practically see the wheels in her brain whirring, fueled by fear that this would mess up everything and unsettle the delicate balance of her hard-won plan.
“And there’s more. These rough, gang-type kids came by yesterday looking for him. Brandon said he met them at some party or something.”
“Gang-type kids? They came here? What did they want with Brandon?”
“I don’t know. He claims not to know. The police are looking into it. I didn’t want Celia and Micah in the house last night in case they came back. And then today, I needed Mom and Dad here to help in case Brandon comes back. And I sent Katherine home with her mother. It’s been a case of musical houses. Just—everything’s a big mess, Lana. Before I picked you up, Christina and I spent two hours out in the snow hanging up posters with Brandon’s picture.”
Lana’s face was blazoned with anger. “I blame Christina for the way that kid is. With her crazy life, and the way she’s shuffled them back and forth between two houses, it’s no wonder.”
“Let’s not waste time placing blame,” Tyler said. “I’ve got to see if Josh still wants to take me out in this weather to look for Brandon.”
Lana grabbed his hand. “This is all going to be so much better once we’re in California.”
Was she nuts? Had she not heard a word he’d said? He tried to keep his voice calm. “I’m sorry, Lana. But I really can’t talk about California right now.”
Her face drooped and she let go of his hand. The room fell silent as he walked to the closet, pulled out the heaviest wool sweater he could find, and slipped it over his head. Maybe the roads were pre-treated early enough that they wouldn’t be so bad. And Josh had a four-wheel-drive truck...
“Maybe I can go out there early with Micah and Celia and get settled. Then you can join us after all of this is resolved.”
Tyler turned to look at her, shocked. He shook his head, a sardonic laugh punctuating his words. “You have got to be the most self-centered woman.”
Lana’s eyebrows shot up. “Excuse me?”
“Have you heard a word of what I’ve just been telling you?”
“Yes, I have. But our plans are set. And I’m sure Brandon will show up again.”
The lines of his face melded into firm, angry edges of stone. He whipped a hand through his hair, grabbed a handful and pulled until his scalp hurt. A growling, guttural sound of frustration exploded from his throat. “You’re living in La-La Land, Lana! I don’t know what planet you’re on. My son is missing. Don’t you understand that?”
Lana’s mouth compressed into a hard line and the look in her eyes seemed to defy him as she walked into the en suite bathroom. The door slammed behind her.
16
Kaki
Wednesday, December 14
The roads were finally clear enough by Wednesday for school to resume. Three full nights of being snowed in with her grandparents and her little brother and sister had afforded her a little glimpse of normalcy. Three full nights of not seeing Damien and only stealing a little vodka from Lana’s stash or popping a pill or two just to get a little lift, and she could actually think pretty clearly. Even so, Damien’s text messages never stopped.
Keep ur mouth shut.
Don’t forget how much I love u.
Remember u belong to me.
I bought u a new phone.
I bought u a new mp3 player for ur car.
U better b quiet.
Brandon was gone.
That reality played over and over in her head like a song that got stuck in her brain. Brandon is gone. Brandon is gone. Brandon is gone. Something had happened on Saturday night. Something that had caused him to run. But she couldn’t remember enough of the night to piece it all together. And of course, she hadn’t been able to tell the police she knew anything at all. If Damien found out she’d told anyone…
“If you ever tell anyone—your mom, your dad, anyone at school…we’ll kill your whole family.” When he’d said the words, he’d spoken them in the same tone he’d used when he first told her he loved her.
Kaki hated what she was doing, and she hated herself for doing it, but she didn’t have any choice. Some of the guys in the MOS gang were killers, and she knew they didn’t make idle threats. But that wasn’t the only thing that kept her shackled to this life. No matter how much he scared her, she was just as addicted to Damien and the ebb and flow of his love as she was to the drugs he gave her. Even so, Damien made it no secret that Kaki was one of about five other girls in his “stable.”
Sydney was Damien’s bottom girl. She’d been around the longest, and she did a lot of work for him and some of the other guys in the gang. She recruited new girls, prepared them to work, and set up the parties they attended.
The night before the party, Kaki had tried to talk to Sydney about how horrible she felt doing this, how much she wanted to stop…had Sydney ever known anyone who had stopped?
Sydney just brushed her off. “Why would you want to stop? Damien takes care of you, doesn’t he? We’re like a family.”
Kaki was tired of hearing these empty assurances from Sydney. “Does your family make you do this kind of stuff?”
Sydney had laughed in response. Her face hardened and her eyes took on this cold, dead look. “How do you think I got started with all of this? Honey, I’ve been doing this since I was fourteen…when my mother pimped me out to her boyfriend’s friend.”
Looking at her then, Sydney was a totally different person. Sydney wasn’t the cool girl who recruited her friends into the trap of prostitution. Sydney was a girl in trouble. Sydney was in even worse shape than her.
She’d tried to contact Sydney since Saturday, but her texts were never answered and her phone went straight to voicemail. And Kaki had a sneaking suspicion that something bad had happened that night that involved Sydney as well, but she couldn’t remember. Her memory was all flashes and fuzzy images. Usually that was a good thing following a party where she’d been one of the items for sale, but this one…she wanted to remember. She needed to remember.
~*~
Saturday, December 10, the party date. Kaki remembered because it was her mother’s birthday. She got dressed and ready to meet Damien, silently talking to herself. Don’t look at them. Don’t think about them. Numb. Numb. You feel nothing. You are nothing. You’re not even here.
Her mom’s name appearing on her cellphone interrupted her attempts to convince herself that she didn’t exist.
“Hey. It’s supposed to snow. Eric’s got a whole birthday thing going on for me, so I’m just going to stay at Eric’s this weekend. So if you need me, I’ll be over there. Are you out tonight?”
“Yeah.”
“Is your dad at home tonight?”
“Lana’s out of town. I don’t know about Dad. I guess he’s going to be at home.”
“Well, remember that your brother’s going through a tough time right now. He really needs someone with him at all times. I don’t trust your dad to really watch him, so promise me you’ll come home at a decent hour.”
How could she promise that? She didn’t know what time she’d actually be home—or if she’d be home. Brandon might be alone all night if it were up to her. Kaki rolled her eyes. “Mom, Brandon’s all right.”
“No, Katherine, I do not want him left alone. Do you understand? And he is not to leave the house.”
“Yeah, OK, Mom. I gotta go.” When she hung up the phone, she called out to Brandon through the open door of the upstairs bathroom. “She thinks you’re going to kill yourself or something, you know.”
“Are you crazy? I’m not going to kill myself,” he said as he came out of his room.
Kaki believed him. Brandon was a weird kid, moody and sneaky, but she didn’t see him as suicidal. She hadn’t been at all surprised about the sexting. She knew exactly what he was doing when he came home and got on his computer—when he pretended
he was looking up stuff for his history class. There was nothing even remotely historical about those sites.
She also wasn’t surprised about the fight at school. This year in the eighth grade he was in some classes with kids who were much rougher than he was used to. In fact, she knew a lot of them—and they weren’t the sort of people she wanted her little brother hanging out with. Her life was a lost cause, but his didn’t have to be.
Kaki hurried to gather her stuff and put on the rest of her makeup. Standing in the upstairs bathroom, cringing at her own reflection in the mirror, she heard Brandon’s voice from the open door of his bedroom.
“By the way, I know what you’re doing.” His voice was low and it sent a chill through her.
“What are you talking about?”
“I know what you’re doing with those guys.”
Kaki’s fingers shook, and her eyeliner fell into the sink. Brandon moved to stand in the hall, his arms crossed as he watched her. Kaki turned sharply and stared at him. “Who told you that?”
“Some guys at school.”
Slowly, she picked up the eyeliner, turned back to the mirror, and tried to finish the cat-eye line across her eyelid. “Yeah. Like your friends would know.”
“I heard it from a guy who knows your friend.”
Her heart pounded. No one knew anything about this other side of her life except Sydney and Damien. “What friend?” she growled, trying to pretend she didn’t believe what he was saying.
“Your friend Sydney. They know her.”
“How?”
“You know how.”
She swung around and glared sharply at him. “You’re telling me that your thirteen-year-old friends—”
“They’re not thirteen. They’re older. One of them’s like, nineteen. He’s failed a bunch of times, but he’s special ed so he can stay in school until he’s like twenty-one or something.”
“Why are you hanging out with those kind of guys?” Her chest felt tight. She knew those guys from Runnymede who were already adults and still attending classes. They were gang members.
“Why are you?”
A knot formed in the pit of her stomach, but she had to be tough. She couldn’t show any shame or fear. She was a Masters of Sin girl now. Moving toward him, she grabbed the neck of his shirt, and twisted it so hard he pushed at her.
“Ow!”
“Brandon, no one—no one can know about this. Do you understand?”
“I won’t tell anyone.”
“Good.” She let go of his shirt and pushed him away as she returned to the mirror. “And stay away from those guys.”
Numb, numb. Feel nothing. You are nothing. You’re not even here.
~*~
Originally the party was supposed to take place at The Diggs, a cinderblock shack out in the middle of a field. This was where they usually brought “the new girls”—the gang’s term for very young girls who had recently arrived from Honduras or El Salvador. Girls who didn’t speak much English and had no idea what was happening to them until it was too late.
Kaki and Sydney had ridden together, and when they arrived, Damien and two other guys were standing in front of the cinderblock shack waiting for them. Damien tapped on the hood of her car and walked around to her window. “There’s been a change of plans. We’re moving the party to Gio George’s house.”
“Why?”
“Better venue,” he said, rapping the ledge of the driver’s side window with his knuckles. “Leave your car here. You two can ride with me.”
“No,” the words burst from her mouth in a rush of panic, and his eyes darkened. She would much rather leave directly from the party. Then she could go straight home and not have to risk any secondary stops. “I mean, I’d rather drive. I need to make sure my car makes it home.”
“You probably won’t be able to drive from the party anyway.” Damien pulled a plastic bag containing blue pills from his pocket. “I’ve got your favorites.” He turned and walked toward his own car, and Kaki knew there was nothing else she could say. She had to ride with him.
“Just pull over there and park.” Sydney pointed to a space behind some large bushes. “No one’ll bother it.”
Sydney was well schooled in the operations of the gang. She knew how they worked, and how far and how hard to push. Sometimes she fell under Damien’s wrath, but not very often these days. She’d learned to stay on the sunny side of his street.
“I think we’re under Hubby’s watch tonight anyway. Damien has new girls to break in, so I wouldn’t mess with his head too much.”
With what they were doing, there was never really a good night, but at least with Damien, they knew his expectations. When they got passed along to other guys in the gang tasked with minding the stable, they never knew what they were in for. It was hard to know when they were doing something wrong, when someone might go off on them. Kaki didn’t know much about Hubby, except that he was the big, tall guy who hung out with the football players.
“He used to play on varsity for Runnymede,” Sydney said. “He graduated last year, but he still hangs with Gio and those guys.”
Gio was star varsity football player, homecoming king, and an honorary member of the Masters of Sin. He was Italian and very good looking, but an egomaniac, and one of the most popular boys at Runnymede Secondary School. He was also a fledgling pimp with a stable of four girls and looking to add more. Damien was down to five girls after Vera’s family moved to New Mexico. Lucky her. She’d escaped through default. The rest of them had no out.
Gio was one of those guys who got a kick out of power and wielding it over women. He liked being in control and he liked the danger of being a pimp on the down low. He didn’t need the money, that was for sure. Gio’s father was a successful businessman and sat on the town council; Gio’s mother came from big money. His family lived in a gargantuan mansion off of Route 7 that looked out of place sitting just off the main road. A turret and archway connected the four-car garage with the ten-bedroom, eight-bathroom house.
Kaki knew their daughter, Gianna, from track. The only relief Kaki experienced on this night was Gianna’s absence from the party. At least she would not see her former track mate while dressed up like the prostitute she was, practically led on a leash with other girls into the basement.
These parties were money-making ventures for the gang. They charged a $30 cover fee, and the guys were let in with access to all the booze and girls. No questions asked. Sometimes other girls from school came, ones who didn’t realize they were part of the money-making equation. Realization struck them, often after it was too late, usually the next morning after they awoke and understood that someone had slipped something into their drink.
No girls ever reported anything. The embarrassment was too great, and they didn’t want to be grouped in with the likes of girls like that.
Mattie, another girl Kaki had gotten to know through parties and the club, was already there when she arrived. Mattie was one of Rocket’s girls. Although they never dared talk about how much they hated this life and themselves, they could read it in each other’s eyes, and it drew them together. Mattie attended Harper Park, an alternative school.
“Only a few more months,” she whispered to Kaki as they waited together in the corner chugging cheap vodka and downing the pills the guys gave them. They waited for the euphoria to kick in—or the numbness, which sometimes was nearly as good.
“Only a few more months until what?” Kaki cleared her glass and poured another.
“Until I graduate,” Mattie said, following suit.
“Yeah. Then what?”
She looked up, her dark eyes sweeping over the room with a determined hatred of the men within it. “And then I’m so out of here.”
“Where you gonna go?”
“I don’t know. Anywhere but here. I have an aunt who lives in Lake Tahoe. Maybe I’ll go there and live with her for a while. I want to go really far away…to make sure they don’t find me.”
&n
bsp; Kaki shuddered. Was there anywhere far away enough for that? “You gonna go to college?”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
Both silent for a few moments, the girls emptied a second glass of vodka and poured a third.
“How long does it usually take for your stuff to kick in?” Mattie asked.
Kaki shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s never fast enough.”
“Yeah, I know, right?” But Mattie’s eyes dilated, and her slow smile said she was already starting to feel it. “I think I’m getting a dog when I move away.”
“I love dogs. One day I’m going to have a dog and name her Hope.”
“That’s nice.” Mattie’s eyes were swimming. “I’ll bet she’ll be really cute. Just don’t ever let Damien know you got one. He kills dogs.”
Kaki’s gut twisted at the image. She’d never seen it happen, but she had heard Damien talk about it. She’d tried to pretend he was kidding. “No, I’m getting one. Sometime this year. I’m going to name her Hope.”
“Yeah, you said that.”
Everything was moving with floating colors and woozy, gauzy textures all around her. “Thank you,” she heard herself say, as her head lolled toward Mattie and her form blurred. “I’m finally taking off.”
Suddenly, Hubby grabbed her arm. “Time to get this party started.” His voice sounded as if he were at the other end of a tunnel. One more glance around the room. Flashing lights and loud, pounding music. And her brother was talking to Sydney. Wait, what?
As Kaki was pushed through the door of one of the bedrooms by some guy she didn’t know, she heard herself say, “Hey, hey—that’s my little brother.”
Maybe she’d hallucinated his face onto someone else’s? Why would her little brother be here? There was no reason for him to be here.
It was hard to remember anything else.
One other blurry scene remained in her mind: staggering out of the bedroom to the sound of shouting and the scene of Hubby and Gio pushing each other. Her brother was nowhere around. She was sure she’d dreamed that she’d seen him.
~*~
Back at school on Wednesday, Kaki’s stomach clenched and nervous tremors ran up and down her arms and legs. Damien’s spies were everywhere. Most likely they would let her know they were watching her, too. While sitting in her math classroom, Sebastian Riviera poked his head into the room and stared at her. He gave her a two-finger salute and puckered his lips. Chills ran down her back and she dropped her gaze. When she looked up again, he was gone.
Suburban Dangers Page 15
