Sugar was the one there to pour alcohol on my bleeding, aching knuckles. I was the one in a seedy motel room in a town we didn't know using tweezers and a cheap sewing kit from a convenience store to pluck a bullet out of his flesh then stitch him up. He pulled my unconscious body out of a bad situation by the back of my shirt. I hauled his battered body over my shoulder like a soldier in a war to escape a hailstorm of bullets.
That was our life for years.
Then Phil had a heart attack when we were in our mid-twenties.
A year later, while Sug and I were out of town doing one job, my father caught a bullet on another, taking his life before I could get a chance to say goodbye, to thank him for taking me in when he didn't have to, for giving me a life free of hunger, for giving me skills as a kid that would help me as a man.
"I'm sorry," Freddie said, voice a little thick, reaching across the table to put her delicate-looking hand over my big, scarred one.
"It was a long time ago," I hedged, not liking the feeling that came up at those words. I'd never heard them. Not even right after his death. Sug had clamped a hand on my shoulder, and we had both bowed our heads in silence when we got the news.
If someone had apologized, it would have implied something bad happened. Dying for the brotherhood, that was seen as something to be proud of.
By the time we got back to the club, the body had been buried, the booze had been poured. It was business as usual.
"Still. That couldn't have been easy," Freddie insisted, only pulling away because the waiter came back to the table with our entrees.
"Life usually isn't," I agreed.
"So what happened then?"
It was life as usual. We stayed in the club that was home for all intents and purposes, that was the only family we had left.
Or so we thought.
Until the betrayal.
Sug and I had been left at the clubhouse while most of the other members went to a biker rally that they were doing security at. I remembered feeling relieved, glad to be able to hang back for a change. We'd been on so many jobs for the months leading up. The idea of doing more traveling filled me with dread. So when we got to stay behind to hold down the fort, we were glad for some downtime.
We didn't even know some shit went down until we got a call from the hospital.
Most of our men were dead or in prison.
With no central leadership, the club fell apart.
We did what we had to do. We took what we could and left, traveled around, trying to find a new club.
That was when we got word about The Henchmen having an open house, looking for new members after their own numbers got decimated.
You weren't in the one-percent lifestyle without knowing about them. They were one of the most prominent arms-dealing MCs in the country period. And they were - since Reign took over after his father - notoriously particular about their members.
We went to the open house with low expectations.
Because there was one other thing known about Reign.
He fucking hated drugs.
His men weren't allowed to use.
It went without saying that they also didn't sell.
And we figured that once he heard about our first two MCs - about the heroin and the cocaine - he would get rid of us quick.
But we'd managed to get a positive vote from his men at the time - Pagan and Renny and Duke and the list went on and on. It got us a meeting. Where we were given the chance to explain.
Reign, as it turned out, was the kind of man who let you tell your story, gave it thought, and didn't hold things out of your control - like the decisions of your fathers - against you. I guess coming from the shithead father he and Cash had growing up, he knew a thing or two about the sins of the fathers.
After a promise that our old connections held no loyalty anymore and that we never touched drugs ourselves, we were allowed to prospect.
"Is it as bad as TV makes it sound?" Freddie asked as she twirled spaghetti on her fork.
"Prospecting? Depends on the MC."
Compared to our previous MC, prospecting for The Henchmen had been a breeze. The guys simply weren't the bastards we were used to. Sure, we got all the dirty work. We cleaned the clubhouse, did the shopping, washed the bikes, did the oil changes, took the worst of the guard shifts. But we weren't deliberately made miserable. We were treated like brothers almost immediately. Which was likely due to the small number of men left in the group.
It was a shorter prospecting period too, not the years we had needed to endure when we were young.
"Are you happy here?" she asked, surprising me.
That wasn't something you got asked much. As a man in general. As a criminal in particular. A lot of society didn't exactly think you deserved to be happy if you operated on the wrong side of the law.
Hell, I never thought much on happiness myself.
I had brothers who didn't generally get off by beating each other. I made good money. I got the security of knowing we had good leadership. The women were a different aspect I had never known in my life. They created a family feeling I had never really experienced.
The lifestyle was a little more tame.
But as I got older, I found myself content with that.
"Yeah, I think I am happy enough here," I decided.
"Your story is kind of crazy," she told me when I was done.
I hadn't given it much thought. My story seemed almost average in this lifestyle. When you were surrounded with men who had stories similar to yours, you forgot how out there they seemed to people who didn't live a life like yours.
"Maybe a little," I agreed. "So, I told you mine," I told her, watching as she stiffened a little, knowing what I was about to say. "Now it's time to tell me yours. How did you end up in prison?" I asked, point blank, knowing it was a sore subject for her, figuring it would be better to launch into it, not try to eke it out of her.
Her head dipped, gaze on the tabletop for a long time, long enough that I was sure she wasn't going to tell me, feeling a stab of disappointment, not just because I shared my story expecting her to do the same, but because I genuinely wanted to know more about her, something new to me.
Her breath sighed out of her, and her head lifted, chin going up, shoulders going back.
And then she gave it to me.
EIGHT
Freddie
I wish I could say I wasn't your typical teenage girl.
There were girls like that in my school, unique for their own reasons. The compulsive overachievers, the ones who were in every single club in school to increase their chances of getting into the best colleges. Then there were the girls who, even at seventeen or eighteen, had decided to dedicate their lives to causes, who always had flyers or pamphlets they were handing out, spent their weekends at marches or rallies. Hell, there were even just the punk or goth girls with their dark makeup and 'fuck society' mindsets that set them apart.
I was not one of those girls.
In hindsight, I wished I had fallen into one of those crowds. Even if I very much doubted I would look good with thick black eye makeup or spiky, colored hair, and I didn't think I had strong enough arms to carry picket signs all the time.
But being a typical girl certainly didn't work out so well for me.
I didn't know at the time, though, that being average would lead me where it did.
All I knew was Thad and Colson had worked almost nonstop after they graduated the year before, got themselves a clunker of a car, then moved out of our aunt's house.
Left behind was a bit of a silly way to feel, I guess, since of course they needed to grow up and start their lives. But it was how I felt. My aunt's focus, usually cast in three directions, was suddenly squarely on me. All the chores that used to be split three ways were now my responsibility.
And I had no one. No brothers to sit with in those precious hours between when school let out and when our aunt came home to sit and commiserate, to make plans for the
future.
I was, for the first time in my life, lonely.
Loneliness and a teenaged girl usually meant one thing.
Boys.
I wasn't allowed to date. It hadn't been a double standard in the household. Thad and Colson weren't allowed to date either. We'd heard the lecture a thousand times over the years.
There will be plenty of time to date after college and after you get your careers started.
We'd once even - maybe cruelly, I would think in hindsight - wondered if she had ever had sex. We'd never seen her spend the night out or have a man over.
It wasn't even that her advice was bad, to try to teach us to prioritize education and a secure future over dating.
The problem was, it was simply unrealistic. I mean, even our schools told us that abstinence-only approaches to dating and sex generally didn't work. Hormones were strong, primal drives. People as a whole wanted connections. Especially those with the opposite sex.
Maybe if my aunt had been more lax about it, had allowed me to date around, maybe I would have gotten a taste of it and decided it wasn't what I wanted, not really. I just wanted companionship, someone to talk to, share my time with, share my stories with.
What I got instead of some casual dates with a few different guys was Tanner.
"Tanner," Virgin cut in, brows raised, looking amused.
"Yeah," I admitted, wishing I was able to smile about it.
"Alright," he said, letting it slide even though there was a smile in his voice.
Tanner was everything I hadn't been at the time. Popular, outgoing, a little edgy. And older. Only by two years, but older was older, and when he used to come to pick me up after class, all the girls would tell me how envious they were.
Everywhere we went, he seemed to know everyone, seemed important. And as a girl who had felt altogether invisible and wholly unimportant, I thrived on being attached to that attention, on the attention it got me just for being at his side.
And Tanner was everything a lonely, needy girl could ask for. He made time for me. He called me pretty. He told me I was smart and interesting and that he couldn't wait until I finished school so I could move out with him.
To this day, I still wasn't sure how honest any of that was. If he, at the time, meant those words or not.
"Why was he so popular?" Virgin asked, dragging me back to the present.
"Hm?"
"He wasn't in school. Why was he so popular? Most people grow past that shit once they leave high school."
That was true.
But at the time, I hadn't given the idea much thought.
I never thought to ask. I was just charmed by it, by him, by our potential as a couple. Because, despite my aunt's best efforts to try to turn me into some girl hellbent on being a career woman, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, if I was going to college. So hearing from Tanner that he would take care of me, help me get on my feet, let me take time to figure out my future gave me a sense of security.
The woman I would become, the woman sitting across from a really attractive man, telling him about her young naivety, was immeasurably embarrassed that I had ever believed such grandiose, unrealistic promises from my first boyfriend, someone only slightly older than I was.
"He didn't even really have a career of his own," I admitted, shaking my head at myself.
"What did he do then?"
"Sold mixtapes."
"He was a rapper?" Virgin asked, eyes dancing. "Grand ideas of being the next Eminem, huh?"
I snorted at that. "Eminem," I scoffed. "Please, he made Paul Wall seem like a lyrical genius."
"Paul Wall, huh?" Virgin asked, big smile on his face. "Baby girl, we gotta update your musical references."
"If what the guy across the hall from Thad plays is what today's music has to offer, I will happily stay stuck a decade in the past."
"Fair enough," Virgin agreed. "Go on. Didn't mean to interrupt you."
I was shocked at how popular his CDs sold when I had heard his songs, had needed to hold my true opinions to myself about them. But sold them he did. Enough that I started to help him here and there, gleefully accepting the small salary he threw my way for it. With that and my babysitting money, I was sure I would be able to afford my own car in no time. Move on like Colson and Thaddeus did.
"Babe..." Virgin said, tone full of understanding, knowing where this was going.
But I had to say it, get it out, tell someone who would believe me.
One week after my high school graduation, I was standing outside Tanner's apartment building with a stack of CDs, handing them out to the people who came up to me.
It never occurred to me that it was not normal for people to know to come to me to pick up random mixtapes.
I was down to my last five when the police approached.
And I offered to sell them a CD.
"Fuck," Virgin hissed.
That about covered it.
Because they weren't just CDs.
Sure, the CDs were there. Because Tanner was a narcissist. He wanted people to listen to his Godawful raps, believed someday he would be rich and famous. But nestled behind the CDs bought at Staples and burned off his home computer, there were little baggies.
I had been selling heroin for weeks without knowing it.
And while Tanner had been all of fifteen feet away from me when the cops slammed me against the hood of their car and wrapped handcuffs around my wrists, he never tried to take the blame, never even seemed to feel regret over the fact that I took the fall for his crime.
That was what I remembered most, his face as I stared at him, silently pleading for him to save me.
There was nothing there.
He was utterly blank.
Like it was nothing.
Like I was nothing.
If I thought I had felt lonely before, it was nothing compared to how I felt when I was placed in the back of a squad car, too shocked to cry, too scared to find words to say.
The drive to the station was the longest of my life. The short interrogation showed me that no one was going to believe that I was an innocent in the situation, that I didn't know there were drugs in the CD cases. And since Tanner's face wasn't on the CDs, his prints weren't on the CDs, his real name wasn't on the CDs, there was nothing pointing to him, nothing I could use to accuse him.
They put me back in the car, drove me to county.
I got through intake, got my mug shot taken, got my phone call after they threw me into a holding cell with other women.
And with no one else to call who could help, I called my aunt.
Don't ever call me again, she'd told me after the words were out of my mouth. You brought shame on this family again. I should have known you'd turn out just like your mother.
It was painfully obvious that this was it.
I was going to go away.
You had forty-eight hours to post bond.
No one was coming for me.
I sat on the cold, hard concrete bench, staring at the wall, waiting for the inevitable.
Then it happened.
The worst day of my life.
I was led to a back room.
The 'dress in' room it said on the front of it.
I was made to strip.
And I learned there was nothing more humiliating in life than getting naked in front of a stranger who was slipping on gloves, and having to endure a search, feel the most basic right you had - the one over your own body - taken away as you felt hands on you, as you were made to bend over to be inspected for drugs or weapons or whatever else people shoved up their body cavities.
And I didn't cry.
I wanted to, but I didn't.
I didn't know much about jail, had led a relatively sheltered life since my aunt took us in, but I had a feeling that the standard phrases were true.
Like they can smell weakness.
And nothing said weakness like showing up to your first day of jail with swollen eyelids and te
ar-stained cheeks.
So I buried the tears.
I did what I had to do.
I got tough.
My palms were sweaty as I was led out of intake.
I was handed a pillow with a blanket rolled on top, a pillowcase, a change of clothes - one - slip-on shoes, a small bag of travel size shampoo, toothpaste, a toothbrush, and a bar of soap, then a roll of toilet paper.
By the time I actually was led down the hall toward the housing tier, I was actually too exhausted to feel fear.
The unit itself was two floors of long lines of green painted doors, gray walls, gray floors, gray tables in the lower level common area. Everything cold in a figurative and literal way.
I was led to the second floor and all the way to the corner, ignoring some of the questions yelled out at me.
Where are you from?
Who are you with?
What are you in for?
Even if I had chosen to respond, no one would have liked my answers.
The nice side of Navesink Bank.
No one. Absolutely no one.
And possession. Distribution.
My first cellmate was a woman about ten years my senior, in county for the fourth time in five years, awaiting her trial for a drug offense. Luckily enough for me, she didn't want to make connections, had her eyes set on her freedom that she was sure was just a couple months away, that she would get out on time served.
You're going away, baby doll, she had told me, not one to sugar coat things. They like making examples these days. Getting tough on the ones selling drugs. It's not so bad though. Prison will be easier.
I couldn't fathom such a thing.
A cage was a cage was a cage.
But it was something I heard day in and out while waiting for my court date, while trying not to get discouraged about my incompetent public defender since I knew I had no one else, that my aunt would never pay for a decent attorney, that my brothers couldn't afford one, not even if they got together.
"How long were you in jail?"
"Three months. Then I had my trial. Which went exactly as my cellmate told me it would."
It was a first offense for an honor roll student who had just turned eighteen.
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