Growing and Kissing

by Helena Newbury

  My voice was so raw, so tight with guilt, that I barely sounded like myself. “No.”

  She didn’t say anything. She just mashed herself into me as hard as she possibly could, scrunching her eyes shut and trying to find comfort in my warmth, in the bigger, stronger body that was meant to protect her.

  I’m sorry, I thought. I’m so, so sorry.

  And then I let her go, turned and walked out of the apartment.

  I knew what I had to do.

  Downstairs, I walked straight past my car and towards the street. I’d failed as a sister and as a stand-in mother. There was only one thing I could do now, one way I could make things right. I had life insurance—not nearly enough for Switzerland, but it would ensure Kayley had the best possible care for her last few weeks.

  All I had to do was make it look like an accident.

  With the rain pounding down, it wasn’t difficult. Big semi-trucks thundered right past our apartment and, in the wet, they wouldn’t be able to stop. I’d run across the street at the last minute, pretend to trip...it would all be over in a heartbeat.

  The next truck approached. I took a deep breath in.

  Headlights turned the street into a shining silver strip. Visibility was down to maybe fifty feet. He’d barely have time to see me, never mind stop.

  I exhaled. Inhaled…

  And ran. Don’t look. Don’t look. Headlights blazed across my vision from the left. The asphalt was slick with rain. I barely had to twist my foot and then I was sprawling, hands scraping on the street, knee going numb as it banged down hard. I rolled onto my side, rain filling my mouth, headlights turning my vision pure white. An airhorn blared—

  Something huge and solid grappled me under the arms and dragged me out of the way. We sprawled together on the sidewalk as the truck roared past and I looked up, blinking rain and tears, into Sean’s face.

  “You stupid bloody mare!” he spat through the rain coursing down his face. And then he pulled me to him and hugged me like he meant to never let me go again.

  “It’s over,” I sobbed into his ear. “It’s over. I screwed it all up.”

  He pushed me back to arm’s length so he could glare at me. “You need to learn some stuff. You came to me because I was a criminal—right?” When I didn’t answer, he shook me. “Right?”

  “Yes!”

  “Yeah, because you don’t know a fuckin’ thing about it. You know what we do when someone steals our stuff? We go and get it back.”

  “How?” I asked. “It’s Malone! He’s got an army!”

  “That’s why I can’t do this without you.” He swept my sodden hair back from my temples and then sank his fingers into it, his skin warming where the rain had chilled me. “I need that big fucking brain of yours. I need us to be a team. I need you because I’m in fuckin’ love with you. I did it all for you!”

  My sobbing stopped but the tears kept coming, welling up and making my vision swim. “I—I’m in love with you, too,” I croaked, knowing the truth of it the moment I said it. “But I can’t—Sean, once this is over, I can’t have all this in my life.” I imagined people like the Serbians, coming to our apartment in the dead of night. “I can’t have it in Kayley’s life.”

  He gripped my shoulders. “We sort this out and save Kayley,” he said, “and I’ll go fuckin’ straight. I’ll leave all this shit behind, if that’s what it takes to be with you.”

  I gaped up at him. “Wh—What? But that’s who you are! You said you didn’t know anything else!”

  He lifted his head just a fraction, challenging me. “Thought you said I could learn?”

  I felt my jaw drop open and then I was grabbing hold of him and pressing my soaked body against his, sobbing with relief and fragile hope into his chest.

  Louise

  Sean took me back to my apartment so I could comfort Kayley. When I thought of how I’d broken down in front of her, my stomach knotted. I was supposed to be her mom, unshakeable and stoic. “I’m sorry,” I told her. “Sorry you had to see me—”

  She punched me surprisingly hard in the chest. “You idiot,” she said. “Whoever said you weren’t allowed to cry?” And she hugged me, the warmth of her body chasing away some of the rain’s chill.

  When she let me go, she scrunched up her forehead and said, “So now you two have to go and fix things?”

  Sean and I looked at each other. “Yeah,” I said. “We have to come up with a plan.”

  Kayley nodded firmly. “Then sit down,” she said. “I’ll get you towels and coffee.”

  I started to gently push her into a chair. “No. I can do that.”

  “Damnit, Louise, let me help! I get why you won’t let me be involved. But I can make a freaking cup of coffee for you while you think! Why do you never, ever, let me do anything?”

  I stood there opening and closing my mouth for a few seconds, then looked at Sean. He was no help—he just exchanged a look with Kayley and then nodded at me firmly.

  I sat down. “I guess...I just wanted you to be able to be a kid,” I said in a small voice.

  “Well...thanks. Really. But I think you need all the help you can get today. Okay?” And she stomped off into the kitchen.

  “God…” I said, stunned.

  “She reminds me of someone,” rumbled Sean. “Now let’s sort this out.”

  I sighed and shook my head. “Even if, by some miracle, we can get the drugs back off Malone, what the hell do we do with them? No one’s going to want to touch them once they’ve been stolen from him. And he’ll be after us.”

  Sean put his hand on mine. “One thing at a time,” he said. “First, we need to find out where our drugs are.”

  “How do we do that?”

  Sean thought about it while we toweled ourselves dry and changed clothes, then sipped the coffee Kayley brought us. “Malone’ll want to split up the crop and sell it. He’s probably already called the bigger dealers. I could ask them.”

  “Why would they tell you?”

  Sean looked at me seriously. “Because I’m going to be fuckin’ persuasive.” That same look came into his eyes, the one that scared the ever-living-fuck out of people. The one that had scared the hell out of me, when I first met him. But now, knowing that cold rage was fueled by me, by the need to get justice for me...was it wrong that it made a little flash of heat go through me?

  I stood up and headed towards the door. “Okay. Let’s go.”

  Sean blocked my path. “Where are you going? I’m going to talk to him. I’ll call you.”

  “No way. You’re not sidelining me now. We’re in this together.”

  “This’ll be dangerous. I’m not having you hurt.”

  “I’ll stay close,” I told him. “I’ll do what I’m told—”

  “That, I fuckin’ doubt.”

  “—but I’m not staying here.” I stared him down, even though it meant looking up.

  He sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “Alright,” he said at last. “Let’s go break stuff.”

  Louise

  I gazed at the house, astonished. “I knew dealers had money,” I mumbled. “But….”

  The place was huge. Seven or eight bedrooms, a pool, and there were three cars outside: a big old Lincoln town car, a Porsche and an SUV.

  “This whole business is soaked in money,” Sean told me. “And Lennie’s only a dealer. Think how much Malone makes. But the money falls off fast after the top few rungs.” He opened the trunk of my car and took out his sledge hammer.

  I looked up at the iron gates. The place wasn’t just big, it was tasteless. Everything was fake: reproduction stone columns that were vaguely Roman mixed with lion statues straight out of Japan. It was as if Lennie had browsed a catalog and stabbed his finger at anything he thought represented wealth. But none of that made the gates any less solid. “How do we get in?” I asked.

  Sean raised the hammer. “We knock,” he said. “Stay behind me.”

  And he swung the hammer at the center of the gates
as hard as he could. They probably would have stood up to a car trying to ram through them...but they couldn’t cope with all that energy concentrated in exactly the right place. The lock shattered and the gates creaked inward. Sean was marching forward before they were fully open and I scuttled after him.

  An alarm started to sound. The first guy, a blond heavy in a suit, ran out to meet us as we got to the front door. Sean swung the hammer low, catching him in the ankles with the shaft and knocking him face-first to the ground, then giving him a good whack on the back of the head with the handle to keep him there.

  As we reached the hallway, two more guards appeared. Sean swung the hammer’s handle up, catching one of them under the chin, then punched the other one right in the face. They dropped to the floor almost at the same time, landing in one crumpled heap.

  A shot rang out, and a chip of wood flew from the door frame a foot away from Sean. I screamed.

  Lennie, a thin guy with long, greasy dark hair, was standing in the living room, a handgun gripped in his shaking hands. “Stay there!” he yelled.

  Sean marched forward.

  “I’ve got a fucking gun!” yelled Lennie, going pale.

  “I’ve got a fuckin’ hammer,” said Sean. And swung it right at the gun. There was a crack of breaking bones, a scream and the gun clattered against the far wall. Then Sean pushed Lennie into a reclining armchair and tipped it all the way back, until he could rest a booted foot next to Lennie’s head to keep the chair in place. “Where’re our fuckin’ drugs?” he roared.

  Lennie shrank back in the chair...but didn’t speak.

  I came closer and looked around. Like the outside of the house, the inside was all about showing off. There were exotic plants in pots, but all of them were sickly and dying because Lennie didn’t have any idea how to look after them properly. There were vases and statues from around the world, but I had a feeling he’d never been to any of those places. There was even a glossy black grand piano in the corner, but there was no music on the music stand. “Answer him,” I said, trying to make my voice hard.

  “I’m not telling you shit,” said Lennie.

  Sean nodded as if he’d expected this. He stepped away from the chair and looked around, rubbing his stubble—what should I break first?

  Then he seemed to decide: all of it.

  The vases were first. He shattered them two at a time, sending shards flying across the room. The bigger ones smashed where they were. The smaller ones flew across the room like baseballs, staying almost in one piece until they hit the far wall. Lennie winced at each crash, but didn’t weaken.

  Next were the statues. They lost heads, then legs, then crumbled completely under the heavy iron head of the sledge hammer. Then, finally, Sean stepped up to the piano.

  “Shit.” said Lennie suddenly. “Wait! That costs more than my fucking car!”

  Sean brought the hammer back. “Where are the drugs?”

  “Where are the drugs?” I repeated.

  “Malone’ll kill me if I talk!” yelled Lennie.

  Sean brought the hammer down in the exact center of the piano and it crumpled into splinters of wood and ivory with a discordant crash. Then he stepped up onto the chair again, his boot next to Lennie’s head, and placed the cold iron head of the sledge hammer on the man’s forehead. “Talk,” he said warningly.

  “You two are fucking nuts,” Lennie blustered. “You think you’re going to get them back from Malone? You got a private army?”

  “No harm in telling us, then,” said Sean.

  Lennie looked around at the devastation, looked up at Sean’s face, and gulped. But his mouth stayed shut. This could take hours. And we might not have hours. Once Malone split the drugs up and sold them, we were screwed. Kayley was going to die because this asshole was too scared, too proud, too arrogant to tell us what we needed to know.

  I was suddenly tired of being the good girl. Malone didn’t play by the rules. Well, neither would I.

  “Give me the hammer,” I said.

  Sean and Lennie both turned to look at me. “What?” asked Sean.

  “Give me. The hammer.” The blood was pounding in my ears.

  He slowly handed it over. I nearly staggered under the weight. Jesus, how does he swing this thing? Lennie laughed.

  “Duct tape his legs apart,” I said. I’d started to pant, fear and adrenaline sloshing together through my veins.

  Sean gave me a long, steady look...then nodded. He pulled the duct tape from his pocket and grabbed one of Lennie’s legs.

  “Wait…” said Lennie slowly.

  Sean shook his head. “You had your chance with me,” he told him. And wrapped duct tape behind Lennie’s knee, pulled it to the arm of the armchair and secured it there. He did the same with the other knee, so that Lennie was sitting with his legs wide apart.

  I stepped in front of Lennie and heaved the sledge hammer back over my head, like Sean did. For the first time, I really understood the power of it. My heart was thumping like I’d never known it. “Lennie,” I said warningly. “Where are our drugs?” I focused on the crotch of his suit pants.

  Lennie started to pant with fear. “You wouldn’t,” he said, struggling against the duct tape. “You’re the brains. You’re a fucking science nerd.”

  “You’d be surprised what I’m capable of when someone threatens my family,” I said coldly. I shifted my weight from foot to foot, preparing to swing. “I’ll count to three.”

  Lennie shook his head.

  “One.”

  Lennie’s breathing hitched.

  “Two.”

  His eyes were locked on mine, now, trying to reassure himself that I was just some scared civilian. He tried to find that person I used to be. But he couldn’t. Because she’d stepped out for a minute.

  “Thr—”

  “They’re at the jazz club! Malone’s auctioning them off tonight!” The words came out so fast, it was like he was being sick. “He wants everyone there at ten. I’m going—everyone’s going. That’s all I know!”

  I stepped back a step and let the hammer slide from my fingers. Sean caught it before it hit the ground. Then I watched as he duct-taped Lennie’s arms, wrists and head to the chair so he couldn’t move, then finally stuck tape over his mouth so he couldn’t yell for help. He dragged the three heavies into the room and I helped him duct-tape them, as well. I was still nervous and shaky, amazed at what I’d nearly done.

  “You weren’t faking, were you?” Sean muttered to me as we duct-taped one guy’s wrists.

  I slowly shook my head.

  Sean stared at me in amazement...then grinned. “Good for you.”

  We finished taping and looked at the four bound men, three of them unconscious and one of them glaring at us in rage. “So we know where they are,” I said. “What the hell do we do now?”

  Sean turned to me. “I’ve got a plan,” he said. He reached out and stroked my head. “But I need your big brain to make it work. And it means getting nasty. You ready to get nasty?”

  I thought of Kayley.

  “You’re goddamn right I am,” I told him.

  Louise

  We stopped off at some abandoned buildings Sean knew. When we found one that still had glass in the windows, Sean swung his hammer and sent it crashing down in lethal, razor-sharp shards. Then he picked carefully through them, looking for the right shape. “This’ll work,” he told me at last, holding one up. I nodded silently and watched as he wound duct tape around one end to make a safe handle.

  Then I took him somewhere I knew, a small patch of woodland where my Mom used to take me when we first moved to California. We tramped along the well-worn paths for over an hour before I finally saw what I wanted and crouched down. “This is it,” I said.

  He crouched down behind me, his big body dwarfing mine. “You sure you’re ready to do this?” he asked, looking at it over my shoulder.

  I thought of Kayley again and nodded.

  ***

  We held hands
as we walked down the street towards Malone’s jazz club. I hoped that the guys watching us didn’t see that my knees were shaking, that I was only barely able to keep going even with Sean’s hand to cling to.

  There were a lot of guys. Guys lounging in doorways, guys sitting in their parked cars, one or two even up on the rooftops. Malone had gathered all of the city’s major dealers together and they’d all brought their own security. We were up against an army.

  “What if they just shoot us?” I whispered.

  “They’re going to be too fucking curious,” he told me.

  The club was closed that evening—Malone had given the whole place over to his meeting. When we neared the door of the club, the security guys weren’t even bothering to hide their guns. One of them held up his hand for us to stop while another called someone on the radio—presumably Malone himself. After several seconds, we were waved forward...and made to pass one by one through the metal detector. Sean had left his hammer at the mansion, since he didn’t want to lose it. When the detector didn’t beep, the guards led us inside.

  A table had been brought in at one end of the huge room and stacked up on it was our crop, the plastic-wrapped packets gleaming in the spotlights. Malone—off his couch for once—was leaning against it, scowling. Men with guns surrounded the other three sides of the table. The rest of the room was full of dealers: respectable-looking guys in suits, weasley-looking guys in bright shirts and leather jackets, a few who looked Italian and one or two who could have been Russian. Everyone wanted a piece of the crop.

  Malone was holding up a packet. “You’ve all tried a sample,” he announced in that deep bass rumble. “This is premium shit and it commands a premium price. We’ll start with ten packs.” He hefted them. “What am I bid?”

  Immediately, the dealers began to yell. “Three grand!”

  “Thirty-five hundred!”