by Jus Accardo
“Your name?” he asked once he’d reached the bottom, the sneakers sloshing and spitting with each step. He had worn them in the shower!
“Deznee, but everyone calls me Dez.” I pointed to the soggy Vans. “Um, you ever gonna take my sneakers off?”
“No,” he said. “I cut myself.”
Maybe something wasn’t screwed on right. There was a mental facility in the next town—it wasn’t unheard of for patients to get out once in a while. Leave it to me to find the hottest guy in existence and have him be a total whack job. “Oh. Well, that explains it all then, doesn’t it…?”
He nodded and began wandering the room again. Stopping in front of one of mom’s old vases—an ugly blue thing I kept only because it was one of the few things still in the house that belonged to her—he picked it up. “Where are the plants?”
“Plants?”
He looked underneath and inside, before turning it over and shaking it as though something might come tumbling out. “This should have plants in it, right?”
I stepped forward and rescued the vase. He jerked away. “Easy there.” I carefully placed the blue monstrosity back on the table and stepped back. He was staring again. “You didn’t think I was going to hit you or something, did you?”
In eighth grade I’d had a classmate who we later found out was being abused at home. I remembered him being skittish—always twitching and avoiding physical contact. His eyes were a lot like Kale’s, constantly darting and bobbing back and forth as though attack was imminent.
I expected him to avoid the question, or deny it—something evasive. That’s what abused kids did, right? Instead, he laughed. A sharp, frigid sound that made my stomach tighten and the hairs on the back of my neck stand straight up.
It also made my blood pump faster.
He crossed his arms and stood straighter. “You couldn’t hit me.”
“You’d be surprised,” I countered, slightly offended. Three summers in a row at the local community center’s self-defense classes. No one was hitting this chick.
A slow, devastating smile spread across his lips. That smile had probably ruined a lot of girls. Dark, shaggy hair, tucked behind each ear, still dripped from the shower, ice blue eyes following every move I made.
“You couldn’t hit me,” he repeated. “Trust me.”
He turned away and wandered to the other side of the room, picking up things as he went. Everything received a quizzical, and almost critical, once-over. The trio of Popular Science magazines sitting on the coffee table, the vacuum I’d left leaning against one wall, even the TV remote sticking between two cushions on the couch. He stopped at a wall shelf full of DVDs, pulling one out and examining it. “Is this your family?” He brought the box closer and narrowed his eyes, turning it over in his hands several times.
“You’re asking me if”—I stood on my tiptoes and looked at the box in his hands. Uma Thurman glared at me from the cover, wearing her iconic yellow motorcycle suit—“Uma Thurman is a relative?” Maybe he wasn’t loony. Maybe he had been at the party. I’d missed the Jell-O shots, but obviously he hadn’t.
“Why do you have their photograph if they’re not your family?”
“Seriously, what rock did you crawl out from under?” Pointing to a small collection of frames on the mantle, I said, “Those are pictures of my family.” Well, except my mom. Dad didn’t keep any pictures of her in the house. I nodded to the DVDs and said, “Those are actors. In movies.”
“This place is very strange,” he said, picking up the first picture. Me and my first bike—a powder-pink Huffy with glitter and white streamers. “Is this you?”
I nodded, cringing. Pink sneakers, Hello Kitty sweatshirt, and pink ribbons tied to the end of each braid. Dad used it on a daily basis to point out how far I’d fallen. I’d gone from fresh-faced blonde with perky pigtails—his sunshine smile girl—to pierced nose and eyebrow with wild blonde hair highlighted by several chunky black streaks. I liked to think if my mom were alive, she’d be proud of the woman I’d become. Strong and independent—I didn’t put up with anyone’s crap. Including Dad’s. That’s how I imagined her when she was alive. An older, more beautiful version of me.
I looked at the scene in Kale’s hands again. I hated that picture—the bike was the last gift Dad ever bought me. The day he gave it to me—the same day the picture was taken—had been a turning point in our lives. The very next day my relationship with Dad started to crumble. He started working longer hours at the law firm and everything changed.
Kale set the picture down and moved on to the next. His hand stopped mid-reach and his face paled. The muscles in his jaw twitched. “This was a setup,” he said quietly, hand falling slack against his side.
“Huh?” I followed his gaze to the picture in question. Dad and me at last year’s Community Day—neither of us smiling. As I recall, we weren’t happy about taking the picture. We were less happy about being forced to stand so close to each other.
“Why not let them take me at the water’s edge? Why lead me here?”
“Let who take you?”
“The men from the complex. The men from Denazen.”
I blinked, sure I’d heard him wrong. “Denazen? As in the law firm?”
He turned back to the picture on the mantle. “This is his home, isn’t it?”
“Do you know my dad?” This was priceless. Score another point for my megalomaniacal Dad. One of his cases, no doubt. Maybe some poor chump he’d sent to the happy house, because that’s clearly where he belonged.
“That man is the devil,” Kale replied, lips pulled back in a snarl. His voice changed from surprised to deadly in a single beat of my heart and, crazy or not, I found it kind of hot.
“My father’s a shit, but the Devil? A little harsh, don’t ya think?”
Kale scrutinized me for a moment, taking several additional steps back and inching his way closer to the door. “I won’t let them use me anymore.”
“Use you for what?” Something told me he wasn’t talking about coffee runs and collations. Acid churned in my stomach.
His eyes narrowed and radiating such hatred, I actually flinched. “If you try to stop me from leaving, I’ll kill you.”
“Okay, okay.” I held out my hands in what I hoped was a show of surrender. Something in his eyes made me believe he meant it. Instead of being freaked out—like the tiny voice of reason at the back of my brain screamed I should be—I was intrigued. That was Dad. Making friends and influencing people to threaten murder. Glad it wasn’t only me. “Why don’t you start by telling me who you think my dad is?”
“That man is the Devil of Denazen.”
“Yeah. Devil. Caught that before. But my dad’s just a lawyer. I know that in itself makes him kind of a dick, but—”
“No. That man is a killer.”
My jaw dropped. Forget balls, this guy had boulders. “A killer?”
Arms rigid, Kale began flicking his fingers like he had by the stream. Pointer, middle, ring, and pinky. Again and again. Voice low, he said, “I watched him give the order to retire a small child three days ago. That is not what a lawyer does, correct?”
Retire? What the hell was that supposed to mean? I was about to fire off another set of questions, but there was a noise outside. A car. In the driveway.
Dad’s car.
Kale must have heard it too, because his eyes went wide. He vaulted over the couch and landed beside me as Dad’s keys jingled in the lock on the front door and the knob turned. Typical. The damn thing never stuck for him.
He stepped into the house and closed the door behind him. Eyes focused on mine, he said, “Deznee, step away from the boy.” No emotion, no surprise. Only the cold, flat tone he used when speaking to me about everything ranging from toast to suspension from school.
I used to be sad about it—the fact that his career seemed to have sucked away his soul—but I was over it. Nowadays, it was easier to be mad. Trying to get a reaction from him—any reaction—
was my sole purpose in life.
Kale stepped closer. At first, an insane part of my brain interpreted this to mean he was protecting me from Dad. It made sense somehow. According to him, Dad was the enemy, and I, the one who helped him back by the stream—the one who gave him my shoes and lied to those men—was a friend.
But then Kale spoke; his menacing words were delivered in a cold, harsh tone that obliterated the crazy theory.
“If you do not move aside and let me leave, I will kill her.”
Some friend.
Despite Kale’s threat, Dad remained in the doorway, blocking his path. “Deznee, I’m going to say this one last time. Step away from the boy.”
Everything Kale said about my dad rushed bounced in my head like a bad trip, churning in my stomach like sour milk.
“What the hell is going on?” I demanded, glaring at Dad. “Do you know him?”
Dad finally made a move. Not the kind of move you’d expect from a father fearing for his teenaged daughter’s life, but a simple, bold step forward. One that screamed I dare you.
He was playing chicken with Kale.
And he lost.
Kale shook his head, and when he spoke, he sounded kind of sad. “You should know I don’t bluff, Cross. You taught me that.”
His hand shot out, lightning fast, and clamped down on my neck. Warm fingers brushed my skin and curled around my throat. They were long and callused and wrapped more than halfway. He was going to snap my neck. Or choke me. In a panic, I tried to pry his fingers away, but it was no use. His grip was like a vice. This was it. I was a goner. All the stupid stuff I’d done and survived, and a random, almost-hookup was going to do me in. Where was the fair in that?
But Kale didn’t crush my windpipe or try to choke me. He just turned toward me—staring. His face pale and eyes wide. Watching me as though I was a fascinating first-place science project, mouth hanging open like I’d presented the cure for Cancer.
On my neck, his fingers twitched, and then he let go. “How—?”
Movement by the door. Dad reached into his pocket—and out came a gun? Things had gone from really weird to I-fell-down-the-rabbit-hole-surreal. My dad didn’t know how to shoot a gun! He lifted the barrel and aimed it at us, hand steady.
Then again, maybe he did.
“What the hell are you doing, Dad?”
He didn’t move. “There’s nothing to worry about. Stay calm.”
Stay calm? Was he crazy? He was pointing a gun in my general direction! If anything about that situation said calm, I was missing something.
Thankfully, my normal catlike reflexes saved our asses. Yeah. More like dumb luck. Dad squeezed the trigger and I dropped to the floor, pulling a very surprised Kale with me. I nearly ripped his arm out of its socket in the process, but it didn’t seem to bother him. He wasn’t concerned about the gun either, his attention still fixated on me. We hit the ground as a small projectile embedded itself into the wall behind us with a dull thud. A dart. A tranq gun? Somehow this didn’t make me feel any better. I could console myself with the fact that the dart hit the wall closer to Kale than me, indicating I hadn’t been the target, but still. Bullets or not, a gun was a gun. And guns freaked me the hell out.
“Move!” I hauled Kale to his feet and shoved him through the door and into the kitchen. He stumbled forward but managed to keep himself upright. Impressive considering he still had on my ill-fitting, soggy sneakers.
“Deznee!” Dad bellowed from the living room. Heavy footsteps pounded against the hardwood as he chased after us. No way was I stopping.
Dad had a specific tone he used when mad at me—which was like, ninety-eight percent of the time—and it never fazed me. In fact, I found it kind of funny. But tonight was different. Something in his voice told me I’d gone above and beyond and it scared me a little.
Something shattered—probably the half-full glass of Coke I’d left on the coffee table last night while watching “SNL” reruns. “Get back here! You have no idea what you’re doing!”
What else was new? Truthfully, even if the gun hadn’t freaked me out, it was obvious Kale, despite the badass vibe, was afraid of my dad. He’d been through something brutal—and Dad had somehow played a part in it. I wasn’t sure why this guy’s past was so important, but I needed to find out.
I propelled him out the back door and into the cool night air. We didn’t stop—even when we came to the property line. And even as we put distance between Dad and us at a breakneck speed, I could still hear my father’s angry words echoing in the cold night, “This isn’t one of your goddamn games!”
