“Five-oh, five-oh,” someone yelled out, and everyone scattered.
FLIP
“What’s the charge this time, officer?” I teased as a gruff, no-nonsense woman slapped cuffs on me.
Second time I was arrested in one week.
And for the second time, Bizzy was waiting outside when they released me on bail I didn’t post. I attempted to walk by like I didn’t see her, which of course failed.
“Come back,” she said. I stopped, rubbing a hand down my face before turning to face her.
“Bizzy…”
She held the family photo we’d taken, fingers white.
“You left. You just left.” I never should’ve been there in the first place. They never wanted me. With Tweetie gone, there was no reason to stay. I massaged my neck, hating this.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “You push people away because you’re scared of being abandoned.” I sucked in a breath. Bizzy never sugarcoated anything. “You’ll feel their love, though, Flip. You’ll feel it like King felt it.” I looked behind Bizzy, at the police station.
Yeah, I was feeling it all right.
So was the rest of our state.
All the parks were closing down and at the rate the new laws were being passed, there wasn’t going to be a safe place left for any skater.
I gave Bizzy a soft smile and headed to leave.
“They’re not going to let this go,” she yelled to my back. “First King and now you. Their hearts are broken and they’re out for blood.”
I doubted they could make me hurt anymore than I already did. My days consisted of getting arrested on behalf of the Ayers, bouncing from couch to couch, and trying to get Tweetie out of my head.
I kept her bracelet with me at all times, saying I was moving on while simultaneously feeling the rough chain in my pocket as the months faded into one another.
She was the only thing on my mind.
I paused outside a shop a few blocks from our town square. Inside the glass window was a brilliant deck made up of a patchwork of pinks. It screamed Tweetie.
I kept walking.
“Yo, do you know a guy named Nick?” A guy with blond dreads grabbed my shoulder as I crossed through the square, stopping me at the clock tower. “Supposed to hang around here.”
“Sorry, no.”
“I don’t think that’s his name, dude,” his friend said.
“It was,” dreads insisted. “It started with an N.”
“I think it had a T in it,” the other guy said. “Matt? Ryan? Or maybe, fuck, Joe?”
“Yo, what the fuck? How do you get Joe out of Nick?”
“I don’t know anyone around here,” I interrupted. “Sorry.”
Flip is 24, Tweetie is 19
Two years had passed since we agreed to leave Tweetie alone. I sat at the bottom of Devil’s Hill, back against the tree Tweetie’s dad crashed into, staring into the street I’d pulled her from all those years ago.
The street that started and ended everything.
The sun was setting in cotton candies and creamsicles. My new tattoo stung, fresh on my ribcage, the pain all at once fitting and not enough. The words I’d inked into my skin simply putting words to a fate already sealed.
A single flower bloomed on a lonely branch above me. Pink. Tweetie’s favorite color. An early spring bloom—too early. It would probably die in a late winter snowstorm.
I hadn’t lived at Patchwork in years, but I always thought I would go back. In the back of my mind, it was an inevitability. King’s parents had been going hard on both of us, trying to force Patchwork down and us back. Until one day it was just eerily silent. No more arrests. Nothing.
“This isn’t over,” I said. “They’re going to go all out on us when we least expect it.”
“All out on us,” King clarified, pointing at him and the house. “Not you.”
Now I saw the real inevitability was our divide.
I let Tweetie’s bracelet fall like water between my fingers, focusing on the glinting gold, the street fading away.
I tried to date and get her off my mind. Move on. Each one ended in failure. So I figured as long as I stayed away, that’s all that mattered. I’d grab my shit from Patchwork, maybe even move out of Heaven Falls, and keep living like this. Forever stuck loving her.
So long as I didn’t see Tweetie, everything would be fine. Like the words I’d inked into my flesh, I would stay in the dark. Always her shadow. I curled my fist around the bracelet, pressed a hand to my rib.
Always your shadow.
I couldn’t destroy something I didn’t have.
TWEETIE
With my legs on either side of my board, I stared down the windy road of Devil’s Hill, twirling the crane in my fingers. The sun was setting in a wicked array of vibrant neons. Nearly two years had come and gone since I left Patchwork. I kept holding out hope I would find that mysterious boy who put me on this journey. I would get the answers, a conclusion.
All I’d found were more questions.
I was almost out of money. Almost out of will.
I was surrounded by trees still mostly barren from winter, but one branch bloomed. One lonely pale orange bloom that would no doubt die. It reminded me of Patchwork. Of the blossoms outside my window.
I missed Patchwork. I missed King, Daniel, and Romeo. Living on my own was exhausting and depressing. I’d had a family, and now I had a collage of couches and anonymity.
How did I go back to Patchwork? Knowing the truth of my dad, knowing that the boys around me carried a guilt I was certain didn’t belong to them.
But I had nowhere else to go.
I balanced the crane on my pointer finger, holding it up to the sky so it looked larger than life against the sunset. Maybe if I went back, I’d find Nate.
A gust of chilly spring wind blew, knocking the crane from its precarious perch.
I snatched the paper bird before it could float away on the breeze, and paused, watching the sky darken.
Maybe. Maybe I’d find my love.
More likely I’d find more heartache.
Twenty-Nine
Pop: Striking the tail of the board against the ground to propel upwards.
TWEETIE
Present
“As if things couldn’t get worse,” King said.
I sat up straight, listening. The house had been quiet until now, like they were afraid to disturb me in any way. I wasn’t even aware King had come home.
I hadn’t left my room since Flip had sandblasted me to the spot hours ago. My competition was in a day, but I couldn’t eat, couldn’t drink. I just played with my crane and stared at the wall that separated us.
Knock when you need me.
How many times had I lifted my fist to knock on the wall only drop it back to my lap? Too many times to count.
I lifted my fist…and dropped it again.
Outside my window, a pale orange blossom bloomed on a branch still covered in snow. My heart cracked, remembering the two years I’d been gone.
Searching for Nate.
When all I’d had to do was look at my shadow.
Always your shadow.
“What’s the saying? If it pours it rains?” Romeo’s voice carried to the second floor. I left my room, needing the distraction. I tiptoed to the lip of the stairs. A pang of nostalgia wrestled with the hurt in my heart. All three of them stood in the foyer, early memories tumbling in my mind. But Flip wasn’t there, and now I knew he should be.
“That’s…not it.” Daniel shook his head. “And anyway, this is a flood. This is biblical.”
“We knew this was going to happen someday.”
“What’s going on?” Everyone whipped their heads to me, like children caught with their hands in the cookie jar. I wanted to groan. Still? After everything, they’re keeping things from me?
“How are you doing, little girl?” Daniel asked like my question never passed my lips. “Need breakfast?”
I
feel like I’ve been donkey punched in the gut.
I shrugged at Daniel. “Peachy.”
“One more day until—” King started.
“My last competition,” I finished for him. My last shot for the year, my last shot ever, really. I really needed to get my head on right.
If I ever wanted to go pro.
If I ever wanted my dreams to come true.
But all I could think about was Flip.
“What’s going on?” I pressed. “Really?”
Another silent communication, eyes saying words they wouldn’t allow me to know.
Please don’t lie to me. Please.
“I’ll take care of it,” King said as if that answered everything.
“You’ll take care of it,” I repeated numbly. I didn’t think I slept more than an hour the night before. I should have been filled with emotion and worry and fear, but it felt like I was watching this through a snow globe.
Then everyone looked at each other, the same question written across their faces.
“Don’t do that,” I groaned. “Don’t talk in that secret language.” I threw up my hands. “You know what? Whatever. I don’t care anymore. This is me not caring.” I turned, ready to climb back up and dive under the covers, when the unthinkable happened.
“I think it’s time we answered your questions,” King said.
They leaned against my mint green wall, murals come to life. Out of this world, a twisted Greek myth. I felt like I was ten years old again, not twenty.
“You must have a lot of questions,” King said.
A billion. “No.” They gave me a look like they knew I was full of shit. “Fine. What made Romeo cut his hair?”
Romeo laughed.
“Really?” King asked. “That’s what you want to know?”
“It’s weird and it goes against all laws of nature,” I mumbled petulantly.
“She’s got us there.” So much silence passed I thought they would never answer my question. Then Romeo spoke again, this time quietly. Hurt. “Not what, luv. Who.”
My eyes grew, my lips parted. Romeo was always such a playboy. I could barely fathom a reality where he actually cared about someone, let alone enough to cut his hair.
“A leggy blonde?” I joked, trying to lighten the mood. Romeo’s jaw clenched, eyes stark with more emotion than I’d ever seen from him, and I wished I could take it back.
Another long minute stretched where I was forced to feel my own hurt. Flip had only been in my life for a short time—at least…only made himself known for a short time, but his absence was stark and obvious.
A chalk outline inside my soul.
“We’re being condemned,” King said, answering his own question, the real question. He exhaled, rubbed a hand along the back of his neck.
I couldn’t believe they’d told me the truth.
The shock of that almost usurped the shock of his answer.
Almost.
“Condemned?” I sat forward on my bed gingerly. “But you own this house and it’s not even remotely bad enough to be condemned.”
“Patchwork isn’t just a house, it’s a way of life. People want to take away this life. But when you love something, you fight for it.”
That hit me in my gut.
Should I be fighting for Flip?
I thought when you loved something, you let it go, and all that cliché bullshit.
When I spoke again, my voice was low. Soft. “You said you were going to stop it. How?”
King rubbed the muscles in his neck, looking like he really didn’t want to answer my question. “I’m related to those assholes.”
That did me in. I fell back on my mattress with a bounce, staring at my empty ceiling, drunk and dizzy.
He was related to them?
And people wanted to destroy us.
“I knew I heard the name Kingston Ayers when I followed you that night,” I mumbled. There was an entire world they’d kept from me. I knew they sheltered me, but I didn’t realize the extent. I was naive enough to think I’d peeled back any newspaper they’d taped to my window.
“So what does that mean?”
“I used to live beyond the gates. When I left, I started Patchwork with the rest of the guys, and they’ve been trying to get me back ever since. Whether that’s arresting me, or trying to shut the house down.”
“Why did you leave?’
There was a pause so palpable I wondered if King would ever answer.
“I almost killed the girl I love.”
Love. He said it present tense. I watched King a moment, though he wasn’t looking back, lost somewhere I couldn’t follow.
Romeo cleared his throat, and Daniel spoke, quickly changing the subject back to the house. “It’s okay to be afraid, little girl.”
“I’m not afraid,” I said quickly, sitting back up. The only home I’d ever known was on the brink of being torn down. The only love I’d ever had was living a half-life because of me.
I wasn’t afraid, I was terrified.
I could tell they didn’t believe me, but on this they didn’t call me out.
“We’ll be fine,” King said. “This isn’t the first time Patchwork House has been close to extinction.”
I raised my eyes. “It’s not?”
“You weren’t the only one who had adventures while you were away.” King smiled when he spoke, so I knew whatever had happened couldn’t be so serious.
“Please stop keeping things from me.” I pulled my pillow into my arms, hugging it tight, wondering what else they kept from me.
Romeo put his hand to his heart. “I told you everythin’ the first week you got here.” I frowned, not understanding. “Once upon a time, there was a land ruled by all-powerful and unyielding gods…” My grip slipped a little, silky pillow falling.
I’d always known there was truth to that story—it was about the Corrupt after all—but all of it? He’d spoken in so many convoluted metaphors I assumed most of it was fake.
My Rebel Gods were fighting the Incorrupt.
Silently, they came and sat down on my bed. King next to me, Daniel at the corner of my bed, even Romeo, who I knew hated this kind of thing, sat on the very edge of the foot.
“He paid for the burgers and fries I gave you,” King started, voice low, and I knew we were getting to the meat of things. “He ordered me to take you home. He was always inserting himself where he didn’t belong.”
My heart thudded, all at once wanting to know everything and nothing.
“At the time it made sense for me to take the fall,” King continued. “Now, well, now I don’t know.” I drank in all the information, breath pulled. “I think from the day you showed up at the skate park, he was doomed to love you.” My face must have betrayed me because Daniel immediately shoved King.
“Shite choice of words, mate,” Romeo added.
“I mean,” King rubbed his eyes, looking like he hadn’t slept much either. I wondered where he’d gone last night, what kept him up all night, but I didn’t have the bandwidth to ask. “I was trying to protect you, we all were, but you and him, there’s no point fighting it. And I don’t think we should.”
“He’s probably outside right now, watching your window,” Daniel finished, in a low voice.
Without consent, Flip popped into my mind again.
Slightly crooked, full smile that made his crescent eyes crinkle. Teeth bright with a little gap between the front two that drove me nuts when he ran his tongue over it. I squeezed my thighs and fell back, throwing my elbow over my eyes, as if that would vanish him.
There was a poke at my ribs, and I lifted my elbow, peeking out. Romeo held a joint in his outstretched arm. I lifted a brow when King didn’t immediately take it away.
“We agreed it’s time,” Romeo said. “What with the ass fucking your life is receiving.”
I took it, sitting back up. “Thanks…but this isn’t my first time.”
“You’re not supposed to tell us that, littl
e girl,” Daniel said.
“You keep that stuff from parents,” King said.
That filled me with warmth.
I twirled the joint in my hand, unable to help my smile. It was the first time they’d ever really acknowledged us as a family. We always just existed. But that’s what we were, a family.
And then King ruined it. “Even if they’re terrible and give you an awful childhood.”
I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t.
“You didn’t rip me away from some great, beautiful childhood! It was ugly. My dad was an addict. My mom had already overdosed and died. You—you were my beautiful childhood.”
They paused, faces frozen in What do we say to that?
Then finally King spoke. “Are we who you really want to be telling that?”
No…I fell back against the mattress again with a sigh.
No, they weren’t.
FLIP
I was back outside of Patchwork, in the shadows, watching them through the window. Maybe this was where I always belonged, should never have come into the light.
I watched until the guys left, and Tweetie came to the window. Opened it and stared out into the night like years ago. Her eyes searched, and it was almost like they were looking for me.
Twigs snapped, and I knew I wasn’t alone.
King pulled out a joint, the flame offering meager light.
“I destroyed her life all over again,” I said on an exhale.
It was a moment before he responded. “A few hours ago I might have agreed. I would have said you should have stayed in the dark, stayed away.”
“What changed?” Some minutes passed, and I began to wonder if King was ever going to answer. I tore my eyes from Tweetie.
When he spoke, it didn’t exactly clear up my question. “It’s happening,” he said. “My parents. The shit you warned me about. I went up there yesterday. Thought maybe if I just talked to them we could put it behind us. Finally.”
Skater Boy (Patchwork House Book 1) Page 26
