“Get down!” I shouted.
The Cadillac trounced over the curb. An explosion of noise followed, roaring against my ears, as the tires ground through the debris and split open trash bags. Papers spiraled behind the rear bumper, rising into the air.
The headlights burst over Rico, who aimed his one-bullet gun at the car speeding toward him.
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Abruptly, the car swerved again, swaying from side to side, over metal pipes and broken chunks of concrete. The front bumper hit a rusted shopping cart, catapulting it into a thicket of black trash bags. Satch reached Rico first and stood transfixed beside him as a kaleidoscope of glass from beer and whiskey bottles sprayed from the car’s back tires.
I jumped over a discarded washing machine and joined them, my lungs heaving.
“It’s Trek and Dante,” Rico said, letting the gun fall to his side.
Less than twenty feet away, the car stopped. The driver’s side door opened and Dante slid out, a cigarette clenched between his teeth. Smoke swirled from his mouth and nose, clouding his face. He ambled around to the front of the car, his hand smoothing over the hood.
“You like this beauty I jacked?” he asked, oblivious to our tension as he opened the car door for Trek, who turned, his gaze falling on Satch.
“You’ve disappointed me, Baby Rex,” Trek said, his voice menacing. “I thought you would have been smarter than to hole up in enemy territory like your dad. This was the first place I came looking for you.”
Satch returned Trek’s gaze straight on but said nothing.
Dante finally understood that we were making a stand. He flicked his cigarette into the trash and shrank back to the car bumper, a coward who would be loyal to the winning side.
Trek bailed from the car and strode toward us, his shoes crashing over splintered boards. “I want to know why there was no shooting at the mall. I should have seen pandemonium on TV, a mall evacuated after a gun was fired, but all I saw was the price of gasoline.”
His smile told me that one of us was going to die even before I heard the rack-rack of a pump-action shotgun. He swung the twenty-gauge, pistol-grip shotgun up and aimed it at us. The barrel had been sawed off and altered, the flash guard removed.
My stomach turned to ice.
“You used to be my favorites,” Trek continued, “and now I have to kill one of you, otherwise everyone’s going to think it’s okay to back out on me.”
Rico tensed his grip on the gun.
“You think you can take me?” Trek challenged, excited, easing his shotgun down to his side until he and Rico were faced off, waiting for the other to draw.
Trek had dropped his shotgun too readily. Did Rico’s gun even work? “Tony’s not a threat to you, Trek.” I interrupted their standoff. “Only a fool would want to shoot a schoolgirl who—”
“Are you calling me a fool?” Trek jammed the gun into my chest, knocking me back. The pain stunned me.
“The eleven-year-old boy wasn’t a threat to you, either,” I said bitterly. “He shouldn’t be dead.”
“His death was his own damn fault.” Trek continued jabbing me with the gun, each stab causing new pain. “The little puke should have known to run for cover the moment he heard gunshots.”
“Only punks kill kids,” Satch said, drawing Trek’s anger away from me.
Trek smacked the shotgun against Satch’s jaw. In the same instant, Rico swung his arm up, pushed his gun into the side of Trek’s head, and pulled the trigger.
Anticipating the attack, Trek was already ducking. He pivoted beneath Rico’s arm as the gun went off, the bullet discharging high. The silencer muffled the sound, but the shot was still loud, not like the soft phut heard in the movies. The bullet pierced the factory wall. Bricks and mortar burst out, leaving dust that billowed into the night before dissolving.
Trek stood upright and braced the butt of the shotgun against his hipbone, getting ready to fire. “Was that your way of volunteering for the bullet, Rico, or did you volunteer the day you stole the drugs I’d hidden behind the floorboard?”
My shoulders slumped.
“We all have to go some time,” Rico said, then, looking up at the stars, he added with a grin, “It’s a good night for dying.”
I grabbed the end of the shotgun, surprising them both, and tilted it toward me, the metal warm compared to my icy fingers. “I’m the one who talked them out of shooting Tony,” I lied, hoping to turn Trek’s anger away from Rico. “So if one of us has to die, it should be me.” Then, willing to do anything to save Satch and Rico, I gave Trek a seductive smile. “Or, maybe, you and I can settle this another way.”
“This is the way we’re going to settle it,” Trek said. “I’m going to send the bullet where it will give you the most pain.”
Satch and Rico threw themselves at Trek as he ripped the shotgun from my hand and fired. A white flash exploded from the bore, scorching hot and blinding. My ears rang, aching from the blast.
Blood flooded my mouth, and more dripped down my chin. I slid my hand over the side of my blood-glazed face, searching for the entry wound, and found none. My breath came out in a wail. The blood seeping over my scalp and through my hair belonged to Rico, who lay on his back, blood pooling around his head.
Satch dropped to his knees and gripped Rico’s hand, squeezing the corpse fingers, as if trying to keep Rico from slipping into death.
Trek walked away, not even glancing back.
A deep, primitive rage came over me. I took the hammer from my purse and ran after him, swung, and hit him, high between the shoulder blades.
He reeled around and thrust the gun hard into my solar plexus. Air escaped my lungs in an eerie whistle and I plunged to the ground. I could not move, could not catch my breath.
As I lay sprawled in the trash, Trek stepped closer and rested his foot on the side of my face, the sole of his shoe covered with mud that smelled of oil and decayed fish. “It’s your fault, Blaise.” Trek’s voice penetrated the buzzing in my ears. “I was giving Rico a second chance. All he had to do was pull the trigger and shoot Tony’s leg. He wouldn’t be dead if you hadn’t talked him and Satch out of doing what I’d sent the three of you out to do. Tony would have a busted kneecap, she might have even lost her leg, but Rico would be alive. So did you make the right choice?”
I shook my head, unable to speak.
Trek stared down at me, no emotion in his eyes. Satisfied, he lifted his foot and continued to the car, where Dante waited for him behind the steering wheel, the engine rumbling.
Quietly, the car drove off the lot and away, the whir of tires fading.
A heavy weight descended over me, squeezing my heart, cramping my lungs, suffocating me. I pulled myself up, and when I glanced down at Rico, the night shifted crazily, the ground moving out from under me.
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The next thing I knew, I was lying behind a mound of trash, Satch beside me, his forehead covered with sweat. Through my daze, I became aware of voices shouting and cursing and screaming. A gunshot exploded, jarring me into full consciousness. I realized I had fainted.
Random shots, four in a row, hit trash bags less than six feet away. Whatever lay inside began to smolder. The acrid scent of burning plastic weaved into the air, carried on ringlets of smoke. I pressed my finger against my nose to stifle a sneeze.
Aware that I was conscious, Satch whispered, “Babo and his crew got here before I could carry you away. I only had time to hide us.”
I turned onto my stomach and peered out at the Lobos. Two were spraying black paint over Rico’s name, while three more fired guns, enraged by what Rico had done to their graffiti. A short distance away fro
m them, Babo stood over the place where Rico had died.
“Why doesn’t he see Rico?” I asked.
“I hid him while you were out. I didn’t want Lobos to find his body.”
I nodded my understanding as Babo looked up.
Something drew his attention back to the street. Immediately, he shouted, “La chota, vatos, run! Andale!”
The others lifted their heads, blue lights glinting over their faces, before they bolted from the lot and sprinted away, feet smacking the asphalt, their torn pant cuffs whipping behind their tennis shoes. At the crossroads, they split apart and ran in separate directions, as the whoosh of tires grew louder. Within seconds, two squad cars raced down the street, bar lights flashing though no sirens sounded.
“The gunshots finally pissed someone off enough to call the cops.” Satch pulled himself up, then gave me his hand and helped me stand.
Concealing ourselves in shadows, wary of both police and Lobos, we set off for home.
Near Tulley’s, we stole into a backyard and found a garden hose. Satch turned on the water and held the nozzle for me. I dunked my head under the flow and flinched from the cold, then scratched at the blood encrusted on my face, scraping it away until my skin felt raw and stung. My fingers were numb, my clothes sopping by the time I stepped back from the water.
Satch sprayed his face, then bent over, letting the stream gush over his head. His back hitched and, from his trembling, I knew he was crying and using the water to hide his tears. I pried the hose from his fingers and held it for him while he scrubbed. Minutes later, he wiped his hands over his eyes a final time and then turned off the water.
“Do you still have your father’s gun?” he asked.
“You have lots of guns,” I countered, tossing the hose aside. “Why do you need that one?”
“The cops confiscated the ones that belonged to my dad,” Satch said as we started walking. “The only ones I have are the ones I bought myself, and street dealers don’t sell reliable weapons to kids. I don’t want to use something that’s going to jam up when I face Trek.”
“Do you want to end up in a hellhole prison like your dad?”
“Trek isn’t done with us,” Satch said. “The only way we’re going to escape him is to kill him.”
“Don’t do anything until we’ve had a chance to think this through,” I argued.
“There’s no thinking to be done,” Satch said. “Trek dies or we die. Nothing’s going to change that.”
“Promise me you’ll wait,” I said as we stopped next to my grandmother’s garage. “Trek will expect us to retaliate tonight.”
“We’ll talk about it tomorrow, at school.” He lifted the garage door, and as I started inside, he said, “Blaise.”
I turned back and waited.
“After the cops arrested my dad, I ran away,” he said softly. “I ran because they were going to put me in a foster home. I didn’t want to live with strangers who would judge me by what my father had done. Rico kept me hidden in the Borderlands for five months until things got straightened out so my aunt could be my guardian.”
Satch took a deep breath. “Rico and I were always there for each other. Some brothers aren’t even that tight.”
I understood what Satch was trying to tell me. He would probably never say the words to blame me for Rico’s death. He didn’t need to. I knew it was my fault. If I hadn’t gotten in the way, trying to play the heroine, he and Rico could have taken Trek down, but because I had turned the gun until it was aimed at me, they had hesitated, and that pause had cost Rico his life.
Finally, he broke our silence. “No matter how you feel, you have to show up at school tomorrow and pretend like nothing’s happened.”
“Smile now, cry later,” I said, repeating the gang girl’s motto. “I’m good at pretending.”
He let the garage door fall shut.
I pulled the house key from my purse and realized that I had left my hammer back at the vacant lot. I let myself inside and paused, leaning against the door, missing Rico, as my thumb automatically slid the dead bolt into place. With shock and disbelief settling over me, I crossed the kitchen. The moment I switched off the living room lamp, the music started, becoming louder until it resounded through the house. The front window shimmied with the thumping beat that came from the stolen Cadillac as it rolled to a stop in front of my grandmother’s house.
Trek had been waiting for me to come home. He lifted the shotgun and aimed it at the front window. But I knew he wouldn’t fire. He didn’t believe in drive-bys. You kill a guy and what then? he had told me. The guy’s free of his sorry life. You got to terrorize your vic first. Let him feel death marching toward him.
Trek had gotten the idea from watching a bullfight on TV. The fighting bull was butchered and eaten after the match. Its meat had a unique, bitter taste from the adrenaline released into its bloodstream during its fight with the matador. This had inspired Trek; he wanted his enemies to die with adrenaline flooding their veins the way it was pumping through mine now.
I stomped over to the door, flung it open and lunged outside, where I stood on the porch, daring him to shoot me, the wind cold against my still-wet body.
The shotgun came down and Trek smiled, then turned his gaze away from the house. The Cadillac rolled forward down the street, and soon the night songs of crickets and cicadas replaced the throbbing music from the SUV.
Trek had driven by to let me know that death was coming for me, but I refused to live my last days cowering.
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The next morning, I awakened to the smells of bacon and coffee, my chest aching for Rico. My body felt too heavy to move, my grief an unbearable burden that pressed me down against the bed. I buried my face in my pillow so my grandmother wouldn’t hear my cries.
“Blaise!” my grandmother yelled from downstairs. “You’re going to be late if you don’t hurry.”
Slowly, I remembered Satch’s warning that I had to go to school and pretend like nothing had happened. I forced myself out of bed, showered in steaming hot water, and put on my school uniform, then stole down the stairs and left before my grandmother could see my swollen eyes.
At the corner, Satch waited for me, the day already hot and sultry. He stared at the empty space between us, where Rico should have stood, and a terrible sigh escaped his chest, as if he had been holding in his sorrow, not wanting anyone but me to know how heartsick he felt.
His sadness seeped around me, heavier than the heat, and the urge to comfort him came over me. I pressed my hand against his side. Whether he was aware of my touch or not, I didn’t know, but he didn’t shrug me away either.
After a moment, he said, “I think I found an answer to our problem.”
The flutter in my stomach told me I wasn’t going to like his idea.
“Do you remember the Thanksgiving when I went to Colorado to see my dad?” he asked as we started walking.
“Of course.”
The District didn’t have a prison. Its convicted felons were sent to other states to serve out their terms. To visit his dad, Satch had flown to Colorado with his aunt. Afterward, when I had asked him about his visit, he’d acted like he hadn’t heard my question.
“I gave my dad the story I’d written, the one that had won the school competition.”
I nodded, remembering how proud Satch had felt.
“I put it in a binder along with the award. I couldn’t give it to him face to face. We weren’t allowed to touch or hug or anything like that. The guards gave it to him.” Satch squinted up at the sky. A single drop of sweat rolled down his neck. He paused and used his shirttail to wipe his face. I tried not to stare at his tight stomach above the top of his low-slung jeans.
“My dad sat on the other side of this glass partition and kept thumbing through the pages,” Satch said as
we started forward again. “Every time he looked at me, he gave me this huge grin like he was really, finally proud of me.”
“Wasn’t he always?”
Satch set his hands on his hips. “Blaise, I’m trying to tell you something that I only told Rico before and if you keep interrupting me—”
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly.
“I’d thought that maybe prison had changed him, because he didn’t make fun of me for writing a story,” Satch said.
“Why would he?” I asked.
“Because after my mom died, I wrote a poem, just something to get out my emotions. After my dad read it, he threw me to his homeboys and let them beat me into Core 9.”
I didn’t look at him. He and Rico had told me a different story about their jump-in.
“I was hoping that prison had changed him and he’d feel proud of what I’d done, but when I saw him the next day, he was furious. He said the guards must have stolen whatever I’d tried to give him inside the notebook, because he’d torn it apart and couldn’t find a damn thing.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“So now, when I answer the phone and hear the recording that tells me the call is coming from a prison inmate, I hang up. I don’t want my dad in my life.” Satch paused. “But my dad can get us out of this situation with Trek. All I have to do is call him. I know the right words. The guards listening to the conversation won’t understand what I’m saying, but my dad will. He’d jump at the chance to show me how powerful he still is.”
I didn’t like what I saw in Satch’s eyes.
“What will your dad expect from you in return?” I asked as we reached school.
Ignoring my question, Satch said, “You’ll never even know who the shooter is.”
“Tell me what your dad will want,” I demanded, my apprehension swelling.