KILLER T

by Robert Muchamore

  There was a stop for booze. A hobo-looking guy behind a gas station took sixty-eight bucks. He had his underage drinking system all worked out, with clients calling orders in advance and the goods distributed from numbered Walmart bags in the back of an ancient station wagon.

  Standing on a vacant lot with several hundred dollars’ worth of booze wasn’t without risks, and Charlie spotted the gun under the man’s grubby overcoat as two dozen cans of Miller and a giant bottle of no-brand bourbon crashed into the pickup bed in front of her feet.

  This is dumb. Two and a half years fighting to get out, and on my first night I’m driving to a place I don’t know, with people I don’t know …

  ‘Nobody touch my bottle of Jack!’ the driver ordered as Dodge passed beers into the cab.

  ‘Here,’ Juno said, handing Charlie a beer, before sucking the foam bubbling out of her own just-opened can.

  Riding in the back of a pickup is probably illegal, drinking beer in a moving vehicle is definitely illegal. Juno isn’t on early release. She’ll get driven back to OIL by a cop; I’ll get bounced back to White Boulder for three months’ minimum. But it’s dark, and I don’t know my way back if I bail …

  The pickup rattled over a pothole as it turned back on to the highway. Charlie tentatively sucked her first ever mouthful of beer, and while she didn’t exactly like it, it was liquid velvet compared to the potato-and-orange-peel hooch she’d brewed with two pals at White Boulder.

  Juno twisted the cap on the whisky bottle, sniffed, sipped and screwed up her face in disgust.

  ‘Didn’t he say not to drink that?’ Charlie asked, starting to like the malty beer taste.

  Juno smiled as she offered the bottle. ‘He said don’t drink my Jack,’ Juno grinned. ‘But this ain’t Jack Daniels – it’s store brand!’

  If you can’t turn back, you might as well try having fun …

  Charlie grabbed the two-litre bottle, tapping a front tooth as she tipped it up and used the technique they used for the hooch at White Boulder: neck it fast, then flush the taste.

  ‘Whoa!’ Dodge roared as Charlie downed four big gulps.

  ‘Holy shit!’ Juno added while Charlie swished out with beer.

  Less than a mile from where they’d picked up booze, the creaky pickup rolled into a parking lot. There were a few dozen cars, mostly old and tatty, and groups of teenagers vanishing into moonlit parkland.

  ‘You gotta see this girl drink,’ Dodge whooped. ‘My God!’

  Charlie felt the heat from the whisky in her throat as she jumped off the truck, still holding the bottle. ‘It’s not that strong,’ she said. ‘Not compared to prison hooch, anyway.’

  Realising she was the centre of attention, Charlie proved her point by taking another slug. There was a roar of approval. Juno and Brad clapped, and a couple of randoms getting out of a car laughed too. The only disapproval came from the driver, who snatched his bottle and checked the level.

  ‘Give you a ride and you drink my liquor,’ he moaned.

  ‘I’m sorry – I’ll pay,’ Charlie said, reaching down her skirt pocket and pulling a crumpled ten-dollar bill.

  But Brad knocked her hand down and scowled at the driver. ‘Joe’s a tight ass. Charlie just got out of juvie, bro. It’s her night.’

  Charlie felt a glow of approval and wobbly from booze as she followed bodies moving into the desert park. The destination was a large outdoor pool, which had officially closed two hours earlier. Charlie guessed she was committing another crime as she walked over a section of wooden fence that looked as if it had been torn down deliberately.

  There were at least sixty kids around, aged thirteen to eighteen. There were skaters doing tricks over the far side, some dripping from tumbles into the water. A few people sat on loungers poolside, while others paddled in shallow water, surrounded by bobbing beer cans and Pringle tubes.

  ‘I haven’t been in a pool for years,’ Charlie said, abandoning her sandals amidst dozens of others and holding her beer high as she waded out until her skirt almost touched the water.

  ‘It’s freezing,’ Brad said, splashing out behind, as Dodge gave Juno a massive shove that left her soaked and screaming.

  ‘You’re dead,’ Juno screamed, trying to push Dodge back, but just bouncing off his muscly little body.

  Charlie dumped her can and some random guy waded off to get her another. Someone parked a car with a big sound system outside the fence and started blazing EDM. There was drama as a girl cut her foot on broken glass in the bottom of the pool and Charlie got a damp butt as she sat poolside with her feet dangling. She was properly drunk, giggling helplessly as the skateboarders at the far end gave up on staying dry and started riding boards off the diving platform.

  An hour passed. As younger kids drifted home, the crowd got drunker and hornier. None of the attempts to break into locked pool toilets were successful, so Charlie had to squat and pee behind an ice-cream stand. On her way back, two young teens groping passionately made her think about all the stuff she’d missed. She felt like she’d made the leap from ice cream and sleepovers to beer and blow jobs in a single night.

  Charlie wobbled drunkenly as a hairy ginger guy told her she had a nice ass and asked if she wanted another beer. She felt nauseous, and worried that she’d lost everyone. It was less than an hour till the eleven o’clock curfew and she didn’t know the way home.

  Then she spotted Juno necking an Asian guy. The distraction made her trip on the leg of a sun lounger and somehow Brad was in Charlie’s face when she straightened up. His shorts were dripping, but he’d ditched his T-shirt and swiped some other dude’s plaid shirt. He wore it with the buttons undone, so you could see his perfect chest.

  ‘Fun, fun, fun?’ Brad roared, sounding as drunk as Charlie felt.

  ‘Babies making babies back there,’ Charlie said, outraged but laughing too. ‘Little bare ass, pumping in the moonlight.’

  ‘That’s poetic,’ Brad said.

  ‘Uh?’ Charlie said, vision blurring as she moved her head too fast.

  ‘Moonlight,’ Brad slurred. ‘Words of poetry …’

  There was a drunken pause when Charlie and Brad realised they had no clue what the other was saying.

  ‘You’re really sexy,’ Brad said as he closed in.

  Charlie smiled. She knew he was wasted, but nobody had told her she was sexy before and it was good to feel like she was worth something.

  ‘You’ve got …’ she began, thinking of complimenting Brad’s abs, but unable to hold the thought. ‘I want you to … I don’t know the way home. I don’t want to lose you again.’

  A sun lounger sploshed into the pool as Brad moved closer. Charlie’s eyes were level with his chin and his breath tasted of a joint he’d puffed. Charlie didn’t know what she wanted, but Brad’s face was right there and it seemed easier to kiss than back away.

  But Charlie was off balance and after the barest touch of lips she stumbled. Brad thought he’d scared her off and his wounded look made Charlie smile. She stepped forward, and after a couple of seconds of drunken bafflement they started kissing properly. Or they tried, because Charlie didn’t have a clue.

  ‘Relax your mouth,’ Brad said softly. ‘Let me do the work.’

  Charlie had imagined a first kiss to be some Disney thing, but it turned out to be a guy she didn’t know very well sticking booze-tongue in her mouth and it just felt weird.

  It got sexier when he grabbed her butt and lifted her up slightly. Charlie tipped her head back and shuddered as Brad pushed two fingers between her thighs. With her head back, he could only kiss her neck and she liked it when his nose tickled her ear.

  ‘You’re amazing,’ Brad purred.

  Charlie realised Brad would take this as far as she let him. She groaned with satisfaction – this amazing-looking guy wants me – but at the same time she wanted a pause button. Charlie was about to tell Brad to stop when one of the skateboarders over the far side yelled.

  ‘Cop cars!’

>   ‘Pigs are coming.’

  ‘They’ll send me back,’ Charlie gasped as Brad let her go and glanced behind.

  Kids were streaming through the torn-out section of fence, but cops with flashlights picked some of them off.

  ‘Try this way,’ Brad yelled, bumping panicked kids as he grabbed Charlie’s wrist.

  Behind the changing rooms, the skateboarders had pushed a stack of loungers up against the fence, making an easy climb. Brad lifted Charlie on to the stack. The loungers wobbled as she hesitated over the eight-foot jump.

  ‘Jump or get out of the way,’ a panicked kid shouted, the pile of loungers shifting precariously as he pushed past.

  As Charlie dangled and dropped on the outside, Brad was fearless, placing his foot on the fence and landing with a parachute roll. The cops and their flashlight beams were closing, but as Charlie found her feet the next person to jump caught her ankle and sent her sprawling.

  ‘Look where you’re going,’ Brad shouted.

  ‘Up your mother,’ the skinny kid shouted back.

  ‘What you say?’ Brad shouted, grabbing him by his hood.

  He was properly weedy and no more than fourteen, but Brad punched him viciously in the face.

  ‘Hey!’ Charlie yelled, her ankle in excruciating pain as she tried to walk.

  ‘I’ll stomp you into the ground,’ Brad shouted, kicking his much smaller opponent, who already had hands cupped over a bloody nose.

  Brad’s eyes were manic as he turned to Charlie. ‘Come on.’

  ‘My ankle’s twisted,’ Charlie gasped, almost falling as she tried putting weight on it.

  The first cop had arrived, but went for the dazed kid Brad had thumped.

  ‘Piggyback,’ Brad said, crouching down. ‘Put your arms round my neck.’

  ‘I’m gonna puke,’ Charlie said, close to tears.

  Brad backed off as Charlie lurched forwards and sprayed the dirt. He looked around, clearly thinking about abandoning her.

  ‘I don’t know the way,’ Charlie said pleadingly, her mouth strung with vomit.

  Brad sounded angry. ‘Get on my back. Stop dicking around!’

  ‘I can’t help feeling ill,’ Charlie whined.

  ‘You drank half a pint of whisky before we even arrived,’ Brad said, as he lifted Charlie up and started a wobbly run. ‘And you’d better not spew on me.’

  18 BLOODSHOT

  Pungent anti-viral gel evaporated from Harry’s hands as he rapped on the door of 16A.

  ‘Charlie, it’s me. Are you awake?’

  ‘Door’s open,’ she groaned.

  Harry smiled when he set eyes on Charlie. Her smell, her hair all scruffy. Her big toe slightly shorter than the one before it. But the big blue eyes were framed in red, and the dressy purple top on the floor had an obvious puke stain.

  ‘Have you been ill?’ Harry asked anxiously as he put down the gift bags. He caught his reflection in the window as they hugged, hating the zit cluster on his chin and unpleasantly surprised by her booze-infused sweat.

  ‘Got wasted,’ Charlie confessed, backing up to the bed. ‘There’s a family of hippos disco dancing inside my skull.’

  Harry felt deflated. He’d spent ages planning their day together and Charlie didn’t seem up to it. ‘This place looks OK,’ he said weakly.

  ‘Grab the seat,’ Charlie said, pointing at the chair under a little desk.

  ‘I got the underwear you asked for,’ Harry said. ‘And there’s a couple of other bits.’

  Charlie reached for the bags as Harry settled into the school-style plastic bucket chair.

  ‘Does it smell in here?’ Charlie asked, sniffing her wrist.

  In prison, she’d always worn a T-shirt, sweat pants and sneakers, so Harry was fascinated by her cleavage as she peered into a bag.

  ‘Can’t smell much of anything,’ Harry lied. ‘Who’d you go out with?’

  Charlie didn’t answer, because after briefly inspecting two packs of H&M underwear she saw the bag with the Dell laptop inside.

  ‘No way!’ Charlie gasped, as she lifted the box out. She looked excited, but then straightened up and pushed a hand through her hair. ‘I can’t accept that, Harry. It’s way too much.’

  ‘You need a laptop,’ Harry said firmly. ‘It’s not amazing, but it’ll do for internet and typing essays. And the screen flips behind, so you can stand it up to watch movies, or use it as a tablet.’

  ‘But …’ Charlie said, certain the gift was over-the-top, yet still wanting it badly.

  Harry held up both hands. ‘I’m doing well out of Vegas Local. Ellie’s got local news sites in ten cities now. But he’s always half broke, so I bought twenty-five per cent of Vegas Local with some of the money I made from the bombing footage. I also curate the home page and I get one third of the ad revenue. It’s six times what Matt earns doing Saturdays at Five Guys.’

  ‘So you write articles and stuff?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Harry said, ‘but most of the content is created by local people. Bake sales, school sports, retail coupons, restaurant and show reviews. Anyone can post a notice or an article. I’m more of a curator, making sure there’s always something fresh on the home page. I bump the best stories people have submitted.

  ‘Videos are super popular. We had a burst water main washing cars down Koval Lane a few months back that got over two million hits. The construction worker bit my hand off when I offered him three hundred bucks for his video and it’s earned twelve times that in ad clicks.’

  Charlie did the math in a flash. ‘You made twelve hundred bucks from someone else’s video?’

  ‘Eleven after paying for the video,’ Harry explained. ‘It’s the biggest site for local information. I get invites to grand openings, shop vouchers and tons of other freebies from people who want me to plug stuff on the home page.’

  ‘Smart,’ Charlie said admiringly.

  Her favourite thing about Harry was that while most teenagers were all bravado and half-baked ambition, he was an unassuming guy who’d achieved more at sixteen than most thirty-year-olds.

  ‘A laptop is important,’ Charlie said thoughtfully. ‘The only way I can realistically afford a top college is with a scholarship, which means top marks in every subject. Plus a ton of extra-curricular achievements to make me stand out from the herd.’

  ‘Maybe stop erasing that big brain with booze,’ Harry teased as Charlie used a thumbnail to pop the seal on the laptop box. Then he turned serious. ‘I’ve also been keeping my ear to the ground on the Janssens. They’re running dive casinos and half-empty strip malls, but their business finance records show profits of fifteen to twenty million a year. They’re laundering drug money or something, but the cops don’t seem to care.’

  ‘They’ve certainly got powerful friends,’ Charlie said, more interested in her new laptop.

  ‘Did you hear that Fawn and JJ got married?’ Harry asked.

  Charlie reared up on the bed. ‘I don’t give a shit about Fawn,’ she snapped. ‘And you need to steer clear of the Janssens.’

  ‘They destroyed your life,’ Harry said furiously.

  ‘I’ve had a lot of time to fantasise about revenge,’ Charlie said, narrowing her bloodshot eyes. ‘But they’re powerful, Harry. You’ll get steamrollered.’

  ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,’ Harry said grandly.

  ‘Who said that?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘Edmund Burke.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘I have no clue,’ Harry admitted.

  But Charlie looked worried. ‘Fancy quotes are great, but I want to forget my old life and start from scratch.’

  ‘I get it,’ Harry said. ‘You’ve been through hell.’

  Then he changed the subject. ‘You know what you were saying about extra-curriculars? I knew you didn’t have regular internet access at White Boulder, so I asked on the Vegas Local forum about charity work and stuff that might interest you in North Vegas. There�
��s a maker space fifteen minutes’ drive from here.’

  ‘A what?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘A maker space is like a big workshop that’s open to anyone. This one is called Maker’s Yard. They have tools and workbenches. Everything from hammers and chisels, to fancy stuff like laser cutters, oscilloscopes and 3D printers. Some people rock up and work on their own projects, like making robots, automatic garden sprinklers, or whatever. They also have classes. There’s an eco-thing, where a guy teaches people how to fix broken electrical goods rather than tossing everything in landfill.

  ‘There are also more advanced classes. A practical robotics class taught by some retired UNLV professor, and this woman who teaches coding to seniors. If you got involved in something like that, it could be the difference between being a regular underprivileged brat going for a college scholarship and someone who stands out for doing some interesting projects.’

  Charlie smiled. ‘Besides making explosives …’

  Harry laughed. ‘If your hangover isn’t too terrible, I thought we could drive up there.’

  ‘I’ll live,’ Charlie said, her face brightening. ‘Do you have to pay to join?’

  ‘Only twenty bucks if you’re in full time education. The classes are free, but you must provide materials, like computer boards, or whatever.’

  Charlie nodded. ‘It’s cool knowing I’ve got you looking out for me.’

  ‘It’s in this ritzy gated community called Swallow Park. It’s also got a café-restaurant type place, run by a chef who used to work with my mum. I had an email when they first opened, offering me a free lunch.’

  Charlie laughed, leaning across her bed to plug the laptop charger. ‘Look at Mr Vegas with all his connections.’

  As the laptop booted, she hopped up and gave Harry a peck on the cheek. ‘I can’t believe we’re hanging out, like two normal humans …’

  She laid chest down on the bed as the laptop booted for the first time, flicking black-soled feet in the air and giving him a smile that made Harry feel like he was floating.

  19 MANSPLAINING