He broke away from me, his strained smile not masking his confusion. “But that kiss. What did it mean?”
“I thought you were sad and needed someone to hold you,” I confessed, looking down.
“You kissed me because you felt sorry for me?” He swung away from me and slammed his fist into the side of the garage. “I don’t want your sympathy.”
When he turned back, his expression had hardened.
Instinctively, I backed away.
He grabbed me before I could run. “Just pretend you’re luring me for Trek and we’ll get along fine.” He crushed me against him, his kiss hard.
“Don’t!” I cried. When he didn’t stop, I bit his lip.
His breathing savage, he pulled back and wiped the blood from his chin.
For a long moment, I just stared at him.
When my breath came in even draws, he offered me his hand. “I’m sorry, Blaise,” he said. “Satch is right. It’s been a long day. I’ll walk you home.”
Exhausted, letting my tears flow, I fell against him and felt his arm slip around my waist, his sadness and mine weighing on me as he guided me up the walk to my house.
When I stepped onto my porch, Rico said quietly, “Your kiss made me believe you wanted me.” He tapped his chest. “I felt it here. I thought you’d finally fallen in love with me.”
I started to tell him that I loved him as a friend, though at the moment, I wasn’t even sure about that. He held up his hand to keep me from speaking.
“Don’t say anything, Blaise. Just let me talk. I know I was wrong, ugly wrong, in what I tried to do, but I get all this frustration inside me when I’m around you.”
After a moment, he spoke without looking at me. “I don’t care if I’m only second best. After tonight maybe I’m not even in the running, but the kind of love I’m offering you, most guys aren’t willing to give. I’d make you happy. I know I would, and I’d get you out of this neighborhood. We’d live a good life. Just think about what I’m saying.”
He finally glanced at me. “Don’t be afraid of me. It won’t happen again. I got other ways to get rid of my frustration.”
He walked away, leaving me alone with a terrible ache in my heart.
I unlocked the door and stepped into the living room.
Ariel sat on the stairs, waiting for me. She stood unsteadily and collapsed against me.
“Danny’s in the hospital,” she sobbed. “He was almost beaten to death.”
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22
In disbelief, I stood in the alley where Danny had been beaten, my temples throbbing, the beer sour in my stomach. How could Danny be in intensive care? I had been hit harder and more often during my jump-in. From the length of police tape that cordoned off the lower half of the alley, I reasoned that Danny had almost made his way to Tulley’s, but something had happened to him near the sunflowers that lay broken and crushed in the dirt.
Determined to get a closer look, I started forward when I became aware of footsteps crunching the gravel near the street. I ducked behind a rusted-out station wagon as Lobos marched down the alley, beams from their flashlights grazing over the weeds, searching for clues.
When I eased back into the pitch dark near the garages, a familiar hand clasped my elbow, the long fingers warm and squeezing tight. Satch guided me backward.
“Ariel was worried about you,” he whispered. “She said you ran off the moment she told you about Danny.”
“I should have stayed with her,” I said. “But I had to see. I couldn’t believe . . . I didn’t want to . . . Where is she now?”
“Rico took her home,” Satch muttered before rubbing his hands over his face, his anguish rousing my guilt. He hadn’t wanted to go after Danny this afternoon; neither had Rico. I had forced them. What would have happened if I hadn’t let Trek intimidate me with his pantomime of shooting them? The answer chilled me. I would have found myself standing over a memorial tonight, either Rico’s or Satch’s.
“Why’s Ariel so upset?” Satch asked, pulling me from my thoughts.
“I don’t know.” I could never tell anyone that she had been seeing Danny.
“She couldn’t have known Danny that well,” Satch said, prodding for an answer.
“Maybe she just couldn’t handle any more violence,” I said. “We all knew Danny in elementary school.”
“Ariel thinks a doper beat him and stole his drugs,” Satch said, holding a side door open. “But that’s not possible. Danny was still strong enough to beat off dopers when we left him. Something else happened.”
I stepped into the narrow yard that ran between the houses, my bare feet squishing into cold mud. I stopped abruptly on the front lawn near a rusted tricycle.
Across the street, beneath the wispy shadows of an elm tree, Trek waited for us, leaning against his car. Wind ruffled his black sweats and tangled his wet hair, which he had tied loosely at the nape of his neck, giving the impression that he had showered and dressed quickly in a rush to find us.
“Don’t say anything,” Satch warned, easing beside me.
“Why?” I asked, but Trek had already noticed us, and Satch didn’t answer.
“I told you to break Danny’s nose, not beat him until he was half-dead,” Trek said harshly as we stopped in front of him.
“Danny was sitting up and cursing us,” I argued, ignoring Satch, who pressed his hand against my back. “He had enough strength to throw a rock at me before we left him.”
Trek glanced at me, his eyes glowing with satisfaction. “Then why is he in intensive care?”
“Something else happened,” I said, annoyed with Satch. Why wasn’t he defending himself?
Trek grinned. “The lure always gets blamed, so you might as well take credit for it. No one could have caught Danny without you. You did a good job. Leave it at that.”
“We didn’t beat him unconscious, so why should I leave it at that?”
“It’s up to you.” Trek opened the car door. A gun lay on the passenger seat next to three unopened cans of beer. “Right now Lobos are sending a posse into the Borderlands to get the doper they think beat Danny. If they ever learn that he was lured into a beating, they’ll come after you.”
“How would they find out?” I challenged, every nerve in my body screaming.
“Things like that have a way of getting around,” Trek said, his voice low and ominous. “There are four of us, and you know the old saying ‘Four can keep a secret if three are dead.’”
“Then I guess I better practice smiling for my mug shot,” I countered as Satch dug his fingers into my back. Too late, I understood his warning not to speak. Trek couldn’t have known that we’d actually beaten Danny, but in my haste to defend us, I had confessed.
Trek grinned. “No one’s going to call the cops, Blaise. We’re going to handle this our own way.”
I stared at the taillights as he drove away. The one I had smashed was still not repaired, reminding me of Trek’s promise that our game didn’t end until I was in love with him.
“Danny’s almost dead and Trek’s happy about it,” I whispered.
“That’s because he owns us now,” Satch said.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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23
Later that night, with insects chirping around me and gunshots echoing from the Borderlands, I sat across the street from Trek’s house, deep in the shadows, not wanting Satch to wander by and discover that I had lied to him. I had told him that I was going home to bed when really I planned to talk to Trek and convince him that our beating could not have sent Danny to intensive care.
My plan had seemed reasonable when I’d started out, but the closer I’d gotten to Trek’s house, the more my fear had grown. Though
I tried to convince myself that my sense of danger was no more than my own imagination, I could not overcome the feeling that if I knocked on his door this late at night, alone, without anyone knowing where I had gone, I would become one of those girls who just disappeared.
From my hiding place, I watched Dante peer out the front window. A moment later, he stepped onto the porch with a cocky stride and looked up and down the street.
I nestled deeper into the weeds, the feathery blades skimming over my face as three more shots fired in the Borderlands. Grisly pictures churned through my mind of what the Lobos would do to me if they ever found out that I had set Danny up.
The murmur of voices drew my attention back across the street. Trek and Omar stepped outside, Melissa with them, dressed in a short black skirt and a sequined top. Her shrieky laughter sent a shock through me. She was high or drunk, and staggered slightly in her platform heels as she danced against Trek, her hands wrapping around his neck. He disentangled himself from her and handed her to Omar.
I felt sickened. I had to decide what to do. I couldn’t just let them take her. At the same time, I wondered about my need to rescue her. What exactly was I saving her from? I had no idea where they were going, but it felt wrong.
When I started to stand, a hand clapped over my mouth, startling me. “Don’t make a sound. It’s me, Kaylee.”
I turned so rapidly that for a second her fingers caught in my mouth. “Kaylee? What are you doing here?”
“I told you to be quiet,” she whispered. “What do you think I’m doing? I came here hoping to figure out a way to get even with Trek. I know where he hides his extra key and I keep hoping he’ll leave the house unguarded so I can go inside and trash it.”
A bolt of excitement rushed through me. “Where’s the key?” I asked.
Her eyes widened and she pointed across the street. “Will you shut up?” she asked in a barely audible voice as she crouched lower.
Omar was staring at the weed-infested shadows where we sat, his hand at his waistband ready to draw his Beretta. I froze. He’d fire first and investigate later, but Trek said something and Omar’s hand fell to his side. He opened the front car door and waited for Melissa to sit on the passenger’s seat.
Kaylee pinched my arm. “You won’t be able to talk Melissa into leaving Trek, anyway. I’ve tried.”
“You have?” I glanced back at Kaylee, stunned.
“I told her that I’d been with Trek, but she called me a liar,” Kaylee explained. “So I talked to Ariel. I thought maybe she could convince Melissa that I was telling the truth.”
“Why didn’t you ask me? Maybe I could have—”
“Melissa would never listen to you,” Kaylee interrupted.
“Why not?”
“She’s too jealous of you since Trek asked you to be the lure.”
I wanted to feel surprised about this, but I wasn’t. I glanced back across the street as Trek slid behind the steering wheel. Melissa sat in the front, laughing loudly and dancing with her hands, while Omar climbed into the rear. Dante gave one more look around, then went back inside.
“This isn’t like Melissa,” I whispered.
“You can’t blame her,” Kaylee said. “Trek has a way of filling your head until you don’t have room for your own thoughts. When I was seeing him, he told me that I couldn’t let anyone find out that we were a couple because if his enemies knew, they’d try to kill me. He even convinced me the bullets that took out Gabriella were meant for me.”
“And you believed him?”
“Sure. He has this power, Blaise. He can make you believe anything, and now he’s got Melissa under that spell.”
I thought of the conversation I had overheard between Trek and Melissa when they’d been sitting on her stoop. He had said that she was the one who had wanted to do the rollins. Had he been planting the thought in her mind to make her believe that the rollins had been her choice, when really it had been his way of breaking her, so he could put her back together into a completely different person?
“How did you escape him?” I asked as the car engine started and the headlights came on.
“He got me pregnant.”
I clutched her hand. I hadn’t known. “Oh, Kaylee, you should have told me.”
“I thought Trek would be happy,” Kaylee said, her eyes glinting with tears. “He wasn’t. He told me I had to fix the problem, but I’d already named the baby Isabella. No way was I going to harm her. I lost her, anyway,” she said bitterly. “After I’d miscarried, Trek started telling me how much he’d wanted the baby. He blamed me for losing her and kept asking me what I’d done wrong. But I’d loved Isabella too much for him to be able to convince me that it was my fault. That’s when I started realizing what he was doing to me.”
The car sped away, music blaring, the thudding beat setting off the alarms in the cars parked along the street.
“Do you know where they’re going?” I asked.
“To a party,” Kaylee said, her gaze far away, as if memories were coming back to her.
“This late?”
“They wait until the other girls have gone home,” Kaylee said. “He’s been passing Melissa around to his friends.”
“How do you know?” I asked, feeling more queasy than angry.
“Because he did it to me.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
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24
The expectation that Trek was going to use Danny’s beating to blackmail me into doing something I didn’t want to do was taking its toll. I couldn’t sleep and, when I did, the dreams tormented me. I spent my nights with Satch and Rico, watching scary movies and drinking beer until I drifted off, Rico always soothing me when I jolted awake.
On this night, almost two weeks after the beating, I broke out of a nightmare, my fingers outstretched, grasping for the boy. The arms enfolding me tightened around me, the tenderness in the touch reassuring me that I was safe. Even so, a curious tension kept me bound to the dream. I scanned Satch’s bedroom, expecting to see blood splattered across the walls, which fluttered with light from the muted TV.
In the dream, the boy had come back to life, his pallid skin shimmering. He’d looked surprised to find himself alive and had walked toward me, through the pools of blood, his steps making wet, sopping sounds.
The killer’s coming, he’d warned me. The killer’s coming after you.
“The dream felt so real,” I whispered.
“I tried to wake you.” The drowsy voice at my ear made me flinch. Satch had his arms around me, not Rico. “When I couldn’t get you to wake up, I just held you the way Rico does.”
I nodded, trying to understand the sensations rippling through me. The closeness of Satch’s body stole my ability to breathe. Something slipped across my abdomen. I glanced down. Satch’s hand rested on my stomach. Was he even aware of how tightly he had pressed himself against me?
“Where’s Rico?” I asked, sounding frantic and startling Satch, who had fallen half-asleep.
“Bombing the Lobos’ neighborhood with paint,” Satch said.
I nodded, feeling responsible. Defacing their placas, getting the adrenaline rush when they came after him, was his way to get rid of his frustration over me.
“Get some sleep,” Satch murmured.
I twisted in his arms until I could see his eyes. “Why don’t you and Rico have bad dreams?”
“Who says we don’t?” His gaze held mine, the streetlight soft on his face. “Do you think I don’t relive breaking Danny’s nose? No one escapes the memories. You just learn to endure them.” His eyes closed. “Go back to sleep.”
I buried my head against his chest.
“Relax, Blaise,” Satch whispered. “Nothing is going to happen while I’ve got you.”
As his hands stroked me, warmth flooded through me. My muscles loosened and I snuggled against him, enjoying
the feel of his body so close to mine.
I hadn’t been aware of drifting off until gray light awakened me. Satch was still sleeping, his arms encircling me. Gently, I lifted myself on top of him and placed my lips on his. His eyes opened.
“Good morning,” I whispered.
“What are you doing?” he asked, instantly pushing away from me and looking around the room as if searching for Rico.
“Sorry. I thought . . . you know, after last night . . .” I crawled off him, embarrassment raging inside me. I was furious with myself for revealing my emotions.
I jumped off the bed, knocking over a stack of library books, aware that Satch was still watching me with an apologetic expression in his eyes. Struggling to conceal my hurt, I slipped into my shoes and dodged from his room, tears making a prism of my vision.
“I’ll catch you at school,” I yelled too cheerily.
Satch called after me, but I refused to turn back and let him see me cry. When I heard his steps slapping the floorboards behind me, I rushed down the stairs and out into the cool morning.
At home, I showered, scrubbing my skin, trying to wash away my humiliation. How was I ever going to face Satch again? I dressed, my hair still wet, and took a roundabout way to school, only to pause a few blocks later.
Someone had cut through the coils of razor wire at the top of the fence that encircled an abandoned building. A long loop dangled free, the blades scratching across the sidewalk, the glittering metal teeth tempting children to investigate.
The graffiti on the building told me who had done this. Lobos was sprayed above Que hora es, Rico? The question asked the time, but to any gangster the meaning was clear: You’re going to die, Rico. His time was up. To emphasize this, a target sight encircled his name.
At the moment, the carelessness angered me more than the threat. Didn’t anyone care about the little kids who played around here? I picked up the razor wire and threw it back into the rolls overhead. Then, taking deep breaths, I pulled myself together and walked away, my expression hardening as I neared school.