I stood, frozen, not sure what I should be doing after I got caught in the biggest lie of my life. I’d never been in so much trouble, and I couldn’t wrap my head around how angry they were. The night before had been a huge mistake, but I didn’t know how to tell them that I’d learned my lesson without getting into the details I knew would only piss them off more.
My mom stood behind my dad with her arms wrapped tight around herself as she shook, and both of them were staring at me like they didn’t even know who I was. I shifted my eyes between them, trying to figure out what to say, until my mom snapped, and with the veins in her neck bulging and her face turning red, she screamed at me to get in my room.
I bolted.
I spent the rest of the day cleaning my room and finishing up the homework that was due on Monday, quietly listening to music in my ear buds. My mind raced back and forth from the night before to the scene I’d walked in on earlier in the day; I had a hard time concentrating on anything else. One little decision and I’d completely screwed myself.
At around seven o’clock, I was lying in my bed reading when my mom came into my room carrying a plate full of food and a soda. I sat up quickly as she placed the soda on my nightstand and sat on the side of my bed. When she handed me the food, she started speaking, and my stomach tied in knots when I heard the tremble in her voice.
“You scared me, mija. I called and called when we got home last night and no answer. So I call your friends, none know where you are. Your father had the phonebook out to call the hospitals when your grandmother calls and says you’re with her,” she told me in a calm voice, sniffing as she spoke. “We knew something was not right, but I knew if she said you were with her, then you were safe and we could deal with it when you got home today.”
“I’m sorry, Mama,” I apologized quietly, and it had never been so true.
“Well, you are home safe now,” she commented with a shrug, as if that was all that mattered. “I brought you dinner, so you can eat in your room. Your father, he’s not so ready to see you yet. Maybe tomorrow, okay?”
When she finished speaking, I lurched into her arms, anxious for forgiveness. She wrapped her arms around me tightly, and as she kissed my head over and over, I knew how much I’d scared her. When she finally relaxed her arms, I held on to her, loathe to let her go—but she didn’t make me. She smelled so good, like a mix of fried food and Paris Hilton perfume that she’d received as a Secret Santa gift the year before and had worn every day since. For the first time in almost a year, I wasn’t secretly embarrassed that she was wearing a perfume made for teenage girls. She smelled like home, and she didn’t let go of me until I was ready.
After she was gone, I ate dinner and got ready for bed. I was a little afraid of what my dad would be like the next day, but he was usually gone before I got up for school, so I knew he’d have an entire day to cool down before I saw him again. He never stayed mad for very long, so I was confident that by the time he was home from work, we’d be back to normal.
If I’d known what would happen, I would’ve acted differently. I wouldn’t have relaxed in the shower. I wouldn’t have taken the time to shave my legs or paint my toenails. I wouldn’t have let him stay mad or let things go unsaid between us.
I would have marched downstairs and made things right with him, and then I would’ve curled up next to him on the couch like I had as a little girl—content to watch boring television just so I could spend time with him.
But I didn’t—and I had to live with that.
Chapter 7
Grease
I met up with the boys and headed out of town before we had to deal with any more problems. The open road calmed me like it always had, and by the time we hit Sacramento I’d finally stopped thinking of her. She was just another girl in a long line of girls I’d wanted to fuck—nothing more and nothing less. I convinced myself that there wasn’t anything special about her.
We were a few hours from the Oregon border when I signaled the boys to follow me off the freeway. My phone had been blowing up in my chest pocket for the better part of an hour, and while I felt justified ignoring one or two calls when I was riding, something felt off. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing straighter with each call, and by the time I shut off my bike, I was ready to strangle whoever had messed up my Zen.
I scrolled through my missed calls, seeing about fifty of them from both Slider, my club president, and Deke. My mind was racing with possibilities, but before I could call my prez back, Deke called again.
“Grease, man, Poet’s been calling my phone. Didn’t even realize it—want me to call him back?” Dragon called out to me from a few feet away. He was still sitting on his bike, but the relaxed posture of the last few hours had faded and his body was tight. He was feeling it, too—whatever it was.
It was bad.
I nodded my head at Dragon as I connected with Deke.
“Deke, what’s up, man?” I asked him cautiously. He was my brother and I loved him, but I would have preferred to talk to Slider first. If they were both calling non-stop, it was nothing good and I’d need my boys at my back. Deke might be family, but he was also a Jimenez.
“Grease. Boys down here weren’t real hot on how things went down with Jose,” he told me haltingly, pausing at the end and pissing me off that he wasn’t getting to the point.
“Yeah, brother. I figured. I’m fuckin’ hours away from there. Can’t do shit to me now, and once I’m home they can talk to Slider—”
“No,” he interrupted me, and the next words out of his mouth were like a punch to the chest. “They’re going for the girl.”
“The fuck are you talking about?” I roared into my phone, causing Tommy Gun’s head to snap toward me. I glanced to Dragon, wondering what the hell Poet had said, and the look on his face confirmed what I already knew.
I’d unknowingly left her to the wolves.
Deke starting scrambling, “It’s probably already over. I started calling you hours ago, man. Nothing you can do about it now. She was nothing—but they don’t know it. I didn’t tell them she wasn’t yours. So now it’s equal brother—” He was actually trying to explain how a fucking drug dealing gang could justify going after an innocent sixteen-year-old girl. I couldn’t deal with him. I flipped my phone closed and stood staring at Dragon as he got off the phone.
“It’s a warning. No need to call Slider back—Poet says they just wanted you to know what was going on.” He paused and ran his hand over his beard and then nodded once. “Said to tell you, next play’s up to you. We can head back to San Diego or get to Oregon and deal with it from there.”
I just stood there, my mind racing. I was goddamn hours away from her. There wasn’t anything I could do. I could feel every muscle in my body tensed in preparation of heading back to San Diego and killing those fuckers myself—but it wouldn’t do anything but get the three of us killed. We’d be in their territory, and without back up it would be a suicide mission. But, God, I wanted to go back and get her. I wanted to go back to twenty-four hours before and shoot to fucking wing Jose instead of hitting him with two in the chest. I wanted to tell Callie’s Gram to lay low for a while. I wanted to have never left her there without protection.
Goddamn it—I’d been so fucking concerned with getting away from her jailbait ass that I hadn’t considered the possibilities of leaving her. That was on me.
I reached my hand up and pulled the rubber band out of my hair, pulling it out of my face to give me a few more seconds before I had to make the hardest decision of my life. I had to fucking leave her down there, possibly alive and hurt, or lead my boys into a situation that none of us would come out of. It was a fuck of a decision—but I wasn’t going back.
I started to slide my phone back into my pocket, opening my mouth to let Tommy and Dragon know what was up, when my phone rang again. I didn’t know the number, but with all the shit going down, I answered it anyway. Thank fuck I did.
“Grease?” she wh
impered in my ear, her voice so quiet I had to plug my other ear with my finger.
“Yeah?” I thought it was her, but she was so fucking quiet, I wasn’t sure. Fuck, could they be playing me? Trying to get me back to San Diego?
“Asa? I’m scared.” she sobbed quietly—and I knew it was her. No one called me Asa.
“Baby, you okay?” I asked her gently, climbing back on my bike and nodding to the boys whose faces had hardened.
“I’m hiding,” she whispered.
The last twenty-four hours had turned into a long list of complications and bad decisions—and it looked like I was going to make one more.
Fuck the consequences.
“Stay where you are and keep quiet, sweetheart,” I ordered her as I strapped my helmet on. “I’m coming to get you.”
Chapter 8
Callie
I was startled awake in the middle of the night, and it took me a second to figure out that someone was banging on the front door. My heart started racing as I hopped out of bed, my feet tangling in my sheets when I reached for my phone that was charging on my nightstand. Any knocking in the middle of the night signaled bad news, and my mind sifted through scenarios of policemen telling us someone was hurt.
I scrambled to the door of my room, meeting my mom in the hallway as I saw the back of my dad as he walked down the stairs. His bare shoulders were straight and tense, like he was preparing himself for whatever was on the other side of the front door, but his hands were loose at his sides. It took a lot for my dad to lose his composure.
My mom reached out and grabbed my hand as we watched him, but neither of us moved to follow. She was in a robe that was tied at the waist, and the hand not holding mine clutched the lapel in what was both a nervous gesture and a way of keeping the fabric covering her breasts. I was a little grossed out that both of my parents had dressed in a hurry, but I didn’t focus on that because most of my attention was at the front door. I wasn’t ready to face whatever was happening, and naively believed, for just a moment, that if we stayed in the hallway time would stop and I’d never have to find out what was going on.
Time slowed as we waited for my dad to reach the door, and we stood quietly listening to the turn of the deadbolt and the snick of the latch.
When he opened the door, I heard him say, “What the hell?” before gunshots tore through the quiet house. I stopped breathing, my confusion and horror paralyzing me. What was happening? I couldn’t seem to wrap my mind around what was going on until my mom squeezed my hand tight and jerked me to get my attention. She was wearing an expression that I’d never seen before, and in my haze it took me a minute to interpret it. Fear—all consuming, unrelenting, hope stealing fear.
Fear, but not panic.
Then time sped back up.
“Escóndete en el closet detrás de las decoraciones de Navidad. Te quiero. No salgas,” she whispered, her voice so low that I had to watch her lips.
Get in the storage space. Behind the Christmas decorations. I love you. Don’t come out.
I tightened my grip on her, shaking my head frantically as she wrapped her arms around me in a quick hug. I didn’t want to let go, and I tried so hard to drag her with me as we heard the men moving around on the bottom floor of the house, but the minute they sounded on the stairs she pushed me hard, causing me to stagger across the hallway.
“Go!” she mouthed to me before turning her back and facing the stairs.
I raced into my parents’ bedroom, scrambling to the wall. There were storage areas beneath the eaves that we kept Christmas decorations in, and I quickly slid one of the little doors open, put my phone between my teeth, and scrambled inside. My hands were sweating so much that I had a hard time getting the door closed behind me, and I bit down hard on my phone, sobbing silently as my fingers tried to find purchase on the smooth wood.
It only took me seconds before there was no light shining from my parents’
bedroom, and I crawled silently behind the boxes of Christmas ornaments as quickly as I could. Cody and I had used the storage areas as hideouts when we were little, playing hide and seek and pretending that we were hiding from bad guys. Little did I know how an innocent game would end up being the thing that saved me.
I was shaking hard, my teeth clenched to keep them from chattering, when I heard a man yelling at my mother in the hallway. Whatever he was saying was muffled, there were too many boxes between us for me to hear clearly, but the gunshot wasn’t. It was as clear as if he were standing right next to me.
I bit my arm as hard as I could to muffle the screams in my throat when I heard a loud thump in the hallway. I was hyperventilating, rocking in small movements back and forth, my mind spinning. My chest felt like it was cracking open, like any minute it would just spontaneously split apart, but still, I stayed silent.
I heard the men come through my parents’ bedroom, tearing apart the bed and lifting the mattress up off the frame before dropping it loudly. They were calling me by name, telling me to come out from wherever I was hiding, and somewhere, behind the mind numbing fear, I was mortified because I felt myself peeing my pants.
I don’t know how long I sat there after they left, shaking. It could have been minutes or hours, but I was afraid they were just waiting for me to make a move, so I did nothing. I just sat there in my own mess, with my head on my knees and my fingers twirling slowly in my hair—a habit I thought I’d grown out of when I stopped sucking my thumb in kindergarten.
When I finally felt safe enough to do something, I slowly reached my hands to the floor around me, searching for the phone I’d lost in the darkness. When I found it, I took a short breath of relief until it fell out of my shaking hand with a loud clatter, startling me and causing me to curl into a tighter ball of fear. I didn’t hear anyone, but I waited a few moments before reaching out with both hands and grabbing the phone again.
I knew I should call 911, and that was my intention, but when I accidently pushed send with my trembling fingers, I didn’t hang up when I saw the name ‘Grease’ come across the screen. He didn’t say anything right away, and it took me a couple of seconds to realize that the phone had stopped ringing.
“Grease?” I was whispering, terrified that my phone call had somehow alerted the men in the house and any second they’d slide open the door of my hiding place.
“Yeah?” he answered in his gruff voice, and I was instantly filled with a choking feeling of both relief and terror.
“Asa?” I asked again, desperate to know it was really him. “I’m scared.”
When he spoke again, worry lacing his voice, I felt like I could finally breathe. I quietly informed him that I was hiding, and when he told me he was coming to get me, I believed him. He’d saved me before, hadn’t he? So when he told me to stay where I was and keep quiet, that’s exactly what I did. I never called the police, and I didn’t leave my hiding spot. I did exactly what he told me, because I was afraid of what would happen if I didn’t.
I didn’t answer when I heard people walking around, yelling that they were police, and asking if anyone was still in the house. I didn’t call out when they searched through my parents’ room and called back and forth to each other. And I didn’t make a sound when they talked about my dead parents as if they were science projects. I couldn’t be sure they were safe. Without seeing their faces, I didn’t know if it was all a game they were playing to try and find me. So I stayed hidden, waiting for Asa, until finally, the house was silent once again.
I sat there, curled in a ball, and I thought of my mother and why she hadn’t hidden with me. We would’ve had time, and there was space enough for the two of us. I rocked and rocked, my sleep shorts growing clammy and chafing my skin as they dried.
Asa texted me throughout the day, asking me if I was okay and still hidden. I replied with one word, “Ok,” to every single one of his texts, no matter what he sent. I was busy replaying the night over and over in my head, trying to figure out what I’d missed, trying to see
how I could’ve done things differently. I couldn’t seem to think of any other words to type—my mind consumed with what ifs—until I received a text asking me where I was. For some reason, the thought of telling anyone where I was hiding made me feel like I was crawling out of my skin, and he had to send the question seven times before I could make myself reply, “crawlspace.”
The last time I’d seen my mom, she was standing with her shoulders back, her robe tied tightly around her waist, showing off her hourglass figure. Her back was to me, so I hadn’t seen her face, but I knew which expression she’d worn with that body language. She was bluffing. The raised chin and rigid posture I’d seen whenever she felt uncomfortable was in full view as I’d left her.
She’d stood her ground for one reason. If they’d known who we were, or even if they hadn’t, they would’ve expected to find my mom somewhere in the house—but a teenage daughter could be absent without raising any red flags.
If my mom would have followed me into the crawlspace, they would’ve known there was somewhere to hide and would have searched until they found us.
So instead, she’d faced them like a lioness, fiercely, and with absolutely no reservation.
I wasn’t sure about the passing of time, and it didn’t matter—not really. Because the moment I figured out why my mother hadn’t hidden with me, I shut down and retreated into my own mind—effectively blocking the outside world and anything with the potential to hurt me further.
Chapter 9
Callie
I was yanked out of my quiet place by a loud hammering coming from my bedroom. I’d been so out of it that I hadn’t heard anyone come into the house, and my heart started racing like a scared rabbit’s when my phone lit up beside me with an incoming call from ‘Grease’. I didn’t answer it, like I hadn’t all day, too afraid to make any noise. The pounding grew louder, and I heard someone cursing, when all of a sudden I got a new text message. “We’re here,” was all it said, and I was hit with a surge of relief mixed with panic. I wasn’t sure what to do, and my thoughts were so jumbled that I just sat there, staring at the screen as the cursing and pounding became louder. Was he here as in my house, or here as in San Diego County? I couldn’t be sure if the noise in my room was him, or someone ransacking the house. I couldn’t be sure of anything.