by Gin Price
I liked Haze’s approval because he was the first person who said anything positive about my lock of blue hair. Still, for goading my brother, his sanity was in question.
“Thanks,” I said lamely.
My gratitude came out more clipped than I intended, but I was glad it didn’t come out like a sigh.
Past his limit, Warp pushed me out of the way and stepped up to bat, grabbing the front of Haze’s shirt in his fists. “I said stop eyeballing my sister!”
“Get your hands off me before you get hurt,” Haze warned.
Dropping his paint cans, he grabbed my brother’s wrists and looked as if he were going to do something of a karate nature. My brother’s position sucked, to say the least.
“Warp! This is getting absurd. No one’s going to think you’re the big bad, picking on someone who’s clearly outnumbered.”
The air around Haze and Warp trembled with suppressed testosterone. Neither looked ready to back down. I knew sooner or later someone was going to pop. “Surge, do something.”
Standing up straight, Surge rubbed his thumb over his nostrils and sniffed, collecting himself. “My cousins always say, never interfere in a cockfight.”
I glared at him.
“A’ight, a’ight. Come on, Big W. You’re making your sister freak.”
“Then take her outta here!”
I folded my arms over my chest, hoping I looked pissed with a dash of violent intent. “I’m not going anywhere!”
A door in the alley slammed open, banging against the wall, and a dark silhouette appeared in the archway. “Ya’ll better get off my damn property!”
I squinted at the intruder but couldn’t make out more than a lump for the head. The gun, though—crystal clear.
Four
Funny thing about teens who are constantly accused of being trespassers—we all know the sound of impending death when we hear it. Like cockroaches exposed to light, the second we heard the familiar pumping action of the shotgun, we scattered.
“Surge,” my brother yelled.
“Got it,” Surge answered, claiming responsibility for me while Warp and the rest of the boys ran up the side of the apartment building to take the attention off my escape.
I scaled the brick wall and teetered on the top, irrationally concerned for Haze, who was left behind to collect his paint cans. With a speed that said this wasn’t his first criminal excursion, I saw him drop the cans into his antique doctor’s bag, snap it closed, and sling the homemade shoulder strap over his back. He then ran at the wall and leapt, his quick feet and forward momentum carrying him up the face and close enough to the top to vault over the ledge to safety—all without taking buckshot to the ass. Nice.
Not that he couldn’t stand to learn a few tricks—
“LL! Let’s go.”
I brought my attention back to Surge as he took my hand, and we jumped.
***
Livia Menesa stood in my kitchen a week or so later, munching on the last bite of her Pop-Tart while waiting for me to walk with her to school. As I entered the room, I caught the tail-end of my father’s explanation/rant as to why I didn’t attend the first week of classes and winced. Poor Liv and her bleeding ears. Pops could go on for hours on any topic, let alone one he felt strongly about.
I poured two cups of coffee and handed one to her.
“And I was right, too!” Pops was saying. “Two shootings last week before they put metal detectors at the doors and security in the parking lot. What if one of my kids had been killed? I’d go Rambo on that damned school board! You can trust me on that.”
“Pops.” I groaned, as I grabbed the coffee cup from his hand and set it down. I’d cleaned up enough sloshed coffee after the arm-waving tirade he performed for me an hour earlier—a performance I didn’t wish to repeat. “Rambo? Really? You need to watch your blood pressure.”
I had no idea if he had a blood pressure problem, but if he didn’t, he would soon if he kept working himself up so much.
“Hey Liv,” I added.
She acknowledged my greeting with a smile and winked before turning her attention to her cup of coffee. I could tell by her pinched face after each sip that Pops brewed it. Puts hair in your nose, he’d say. Why anyone would want that was beyond me.
“My blood pressure is fine. It’s my anxiety that’ll put me into an early grave.”
“The gangs are targeting each other, not random people. And the school is better prepared now for any violence. It’ll be fine.” I sipped from my cup and gulped. Yup, he made the coffee. I longed for Warp’s mud.
“And you can’t get caught in the crossfire?”
“I could get caught in the crossfire anywhere. But I’m quick and I’m smart and I have two older brothers who are well respected.” Though I wasn’t so sure about Warp anymore. The more he changed the more worried I became that one day he’d make enemies with one of the gangs on the other side of town. The gun-toting kind.
Pops sighed, his shoulders slumping over his coffee mug. “What kind of father can’t take his kids away from danger?”
Livia shifted uncomfortably, and I smiled to reassure her that things weren’t going to get too sappy. “A good, hardworking father. Three Rivers isn’t so bad. And besides, I’m sixteen. By the time the streets are overrun with criminals and the cops become trigger-happy and jaded, I’ll be in college like Ander.”
He snorted, but patted my hand to let me know he appreciated my “go Pops” cheerleading.
I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and squeezed. “I’ve got my cell, Pops. Call if you get worried.”
***
“Your dad’s really freaking, huh?”
Liv and I walked to school together every day at the end of last year, and though I missed out on the first week this year, our routine picked up as usual. Which was good. Without Liv, I’d have to hang out with my brother and his friends.
“Yeah. Pops has been hard on himself since Mom died, but with this school merger, it looks like his guilt is getting worse. He’s got a job that has him gone for awhile, so that’s not helping. God. You shoulda seen him last week when I came downstairs dressed for school.”
“Of course there had to be a few punk wannabes shooting each other in the parking lot. I bet that really helped put him at ease.” Liv switched her book bag to her opposite shoulder, almost taking out a kid speeding by on his bike. “Whoa!”
“I woulda laughed if you clothes-lined him with your pack.”
“Wouldn’t be the first person this bag has defeated. I practically keep my locker in here.”
I grinned. “And an entire beauty salon.”
“School violence is no excuse to slouch on appearance.” She threw a lock of gold over her shoulder and posed. “What d’ya think?”
“Pfft. Like you need me to add a puff of breath to your inflated ego.”
“Ouch, bitch.” She elbowed me and I laughed.
Livia was one of the most sought after girls in our old school. With her long wavy blonde hair, Mexican mix-breed tan, and pale blue eyes, she was the perfect example of the hotness that blended ethnicity brought to the humanity table. Which also meant every girl secretly hated her because their boyfriends made fools of themselves in her honor.
Me? I knew having her as a friend probably meant any boyfriend sneaky enough to get around my brothers was in danger of falling prey to his baser instincts where Liv was concerned. But it’d be a good way to sift out the little wormies wiggling around in my flour bin of life.
I looked in the direction the bike-rider went and noticed an antique doctor’s bag bouncing on his back.
“Oh, hey! You know who that was? That’s Heather’s brother! I ran into him last week.”
I felt like a moron the instant I brought Heather’s name up. Last year, Livia told me the two of them used to hang before H
eather was killed and that’s why she didn’t have too many friends. She’d withdrawn to escape all the morbidly curious questions she got every day.
I couldn’t blame her. And here I was digging up the buried bone.
“Gah. I’m an idiot. Sorry, Liv.”
She laughed a little and dismissed my apology with a shake of her head. “It’s sad that she’s gone still but I’m okay to talk about her.” A serene memory visited her face but I didn’t want to pry my way into it. “You would’ve liked her. She was a lot like you. Adventurous to a fault.”
“No such thing as being adventurous to a fault.” I snorted.
“Heather wanted to be a writer, like her brothers, so she went out on her own to some dark alley to practice and wound up dead. I would say that’s a huge fault.”
Going out on her own had been insanity, not adventure. But it’s considered unkind to speak ill of the dead, so I let it go.
I watched Haze turn a corner and ride out of sight. Not for the first time over the last week, I puzzled through the few facts I knew about him, obsessing over each little word he’d said.
“I wonder if he blames himself. If that’s why he’s got that white patch of hair,” I said, thinking aloud.
“How hard was this run-in you had with him?”
I shrugged. “My brother harassed him, and he taunted Warp by saying how beautiful he thinks I am all poetic-like.”
“Wow.” Liv seemed to mull that over for a minute. “And Warp didn’t hit him?”
I laughed and hooked my arm through hers as we walked up the sidewalk toward the entrance to the school. “I know right? Too much to hope that Warp’s growing as a person?”
Liv made a noise filled with doubt and changed the subject, but I wasn’t listening.
***
“Hey, Vertigo!”
My brother caught up to Liv and me in the hallway and draped an arm over each of us.
“It’s Liv.” She corrected and brushed Warp’s hand off with a dramatic sigh.
Ever since Liv and I started hanging out, my brother had been trying to hook up with her, and to my amusement she dodged his every attempt. The male version of Liv, Warp could’ve had anyone he wanted back at Kennedy High, too…except for Liv. I think that’s why he tried daily to get her, switching between blunt proposals and kindergarten antics. He obviously picked the latter for the day.
We found out Liv was afraid of heights the first time we took her out with us. She turned a little green on the roof of our apartment building when we showed her how to jump one story down to the housing complex beside ours.
Ever since, Warp called her by her new “street name”. I guess he thought it was cute.
“I’ll see you in art class, Ellie.” She waved.
“What? No love?” Warp asked. Liv rolled her eyes before jogging down the hall toward her locker.
“I love how you choose to ignore the fact she’s not interested and keep going for it. It’s a little brave and a lot pathetic, Warp.”
“Whatever, Ellie,” he teased, and I winced. My brother knew how much I disliked being called that.
My full name, Emanuella, sounded very Sexy-Latina-Hotness; except I don’t have an ounce of Latin American in my blood. My mother was half black, half English and my father was all purebred Southern-cracker-white. I took after Pops, except more tan, which prompted my mother to often say how much my name fit me. “My best friend was a Latina super model,” she’d say. “The name will make you great, too.”
When I won my first trophy in gymnastics Mom gave me the biggest hug and said, “See! I told you, Emanuella, a great name for a great girl.”
Without Mom around, it was hard to hear my full name without feeling pain.
“Liv doesn’t like the name LL, said it reminds her of the rapper guy, so we compromised with Ellie. For her. You start calling me Ellie, and we’re going to have issues.”
“Aww,” he said, ignoring my threat. “You’ve got a new BFF.”
I would’ve argued the title, but Liv and I hung out a lot more lately. I didn’t see her spend as much time with anyone else as she did with me and vice versa. We never said we were best friends but we never said we weren’t either.
“And you scared her away when she was supposed to show me around.” I glanced down at the locker number I wrote on my hand, then to the row of lockers on either side of me. “Great.” I was locker 112 and the lockers near me read 1175.
Warp grabbed my hand and tilted it toward him to see the number. “Back hall. But I think you should have Liv come over later to make a map of the school for you.”
I elbowed his ribcage. “I know where this is going. You’re gonna ask me to have a sleepover and try to get her drunk while Pops is outta town. Not gonna happen, John.”
He glared at me for using his real name, and I matched his look. If he’d been Ander I might have considered folding, but he wasn’t.
“I think you should walk to school with the crew from now on,” he declared.
I blinked like a fielder hit upside the head with a ball he didn’t see coming. “Hello, random. Why? So you can hit on Liv each morning.”
“I think it would be safer.”
“No. I walk with Liv—alone. If you’re going to start trouble this year, then I definitely don’t want to walk with you.”
“Pige—LL,” he started.
“No, Warp. I mean it. I’m not walking to school with you. I feel safer lately when you’re not around, because all I see when I look at you is your self-destruct button.”
The muscles of his jaw tightened and I turned and walked away. I wasn’t sure what happened to Warp to change him so much, but I hated…absolutely hated, what he was becoming.
I’d been so lost to my thoughts, watching each step my feet took, I failed to notice a door beside me opened inward until a hand emerged from the void to wrap around my bicep.
“Whoa!”
Someone tugged my arm and whipped me into a dark closet, slamming the door closed. My assailant and I were in complete darkness.
Who was it? Did he have a weapon? See me talking to my brother and decide to make a statement right away by cutting on me? Shit.
This…was not good.
My heart throbbed in my throat as I thought about the conversation I’d just had with Warp about safety. The irony-bat was in full swing aimed at my head.
Plink!
The light came on overhead and I found myself staring into the amused hazel eyes of Haze. “Scare ya?”
Yes!
“Nope.”
Needing a moment to breathe-out the panic attack, I glanced around with what I hoped was casual curiosity, as though being yanked into a small dark space by a hot guy happened once a week. “This is an art supply closet.”
“Yeah,” he said, without taking his eyes off my face. I tried not to notice.
“Don’t you need a key to get in here?”
“Yeah.”
I frowned. “You stole the key?”
He laughed and I felt it trickle straight to my gut. “No. I’m the art teaching assistant and Mrs. Peris loves me so I’m allowed in here whenever I want.”
So much for the art teacher from Kennedy keeping his job. I wasn’t too broken up about his layoff since Mr. Galan and I hadn’t seen eye-to-eye.
“Well aren’t you cool?” I smiled.
“You’re easily impressed. I should tell you how often I sneak in through the art room window at night and leave you awestruck.”
“Now you’re lying your ass off.”
“True story.” I wanted to ask more about late night B&E but he seemed to have questions of his own he itched to ask. “I haven’t seen you in school. I was afraid you went private.”
He was afraid I went private? Cue the return of the erratic heart-thumping. “Oh. No. My dad�
��s a bit psychotic, that’s all.”
“My parents were freaked, too. They drove me to school every day last week after the shootings. Practically ran over the entire student body to get me as close to the door as possible.”
I grinned, feeling suddenly giddy. Haze talked to me as if we had a long-standing friendship and chatted over lunch instead of him kidnapping me from the hallway and imprisoning me in a closet.
I would’ve been a fool to think he did it because he liked me.
I sensed an ulterior motive coming on.
“I’m not going to tell my brother.”
His forehead puckered. “What?”
“You’re wasting your time if you think I’m going to run to my brother and tell him about this so the two of you can use me as an excuse to beat the hell out of each other.”
He stared at me so long I started to feel uncomfortable.
“Is that what you think I’m doing?” he asked.
He made a mistake assuming I was doing much thinking at all. My brain had been on autopilot the second he turned on the light. “Uh…yeah.”
“Then you’re dumber than I thought.”
“Hey!”
Grinning, he folded his arms across his chest and leaned back against the metal supply shelves lining the wall. “I pulled you in here so your brother wouldn’t find out. So we could get to know each other and figure out if it’s worth making trouble for ourselves.”
“Oh.” The supply closet got smaller.
“There’s a lot going against us. You’re from Kennedy and I’m from Branfort. I’m a graffiti artist…”
“A writer,” I said, letting him know I wasn’t ignorant of his extracurricular activity.
“Yeah.” He smiled. “And you’re into the freerunning? Or do you prefer to call it parkour?”
“It doesn’t matter. You can call it either. Kinda like soccer and football, yanno? And anyone who practices it is call a traceur.”
“Cool.” Haze said. “Good to know. My point is, this school isn’t ready to see us mingling together. Every group of kids is tense and ready to take out perceived competition to gain the true power here.”
