Page 22 of Fight or Flight
I wake up to the loud cheers coming down from the living room and glance at the watch on my wrist. Twelve thirty. Jeez, I’ve been out of it.
Rubbing at my eyes, I get up and leave my cluttered bedroom barefoot to see what’s all this ruckus. Unsurprisingly, I find the guys playing a video game where they have to shoot each other, the whole place fogged up with weed. Saint is nowhere to be seen, but I assume he’s the one who let them in. If they even left here since yesterday. Last night is a blur.
“Hey, I’m in here,” Saint grumps when I enter the bathroom. He’s busy shaving his already bald head until it’s literally glowing as always. The guy’s obsessed.
“I need to take a piss,” I mutter, still groggy from whatever the gang had given me yesterday, saying that it’s some kind of rite of passage. I didn’t like it.
Saint hums without looking away from the mirror, and after I flush, asks innocently, “Shouldn’t you be at school 'lil bro?”
“I don’t know, should I?” I ask, not in the mood for his shitty plays. I shove him with my shoulder to get to the sink and wash my hands before I glance briefly at my reflection. I look like shit.
Our eyes meet in the mirror, and Saint smirks before going serious. “Adelaide called.”
Mom? I didn’t even know Saint and her were in contact with each other.
I try not to show my surprise or any emotion, actually, and shrug. “What does she want?”
One eyebrow slowly lifts on my brother’s face at my act of nonchalance before he steps away from the mirror and looks at me directly as he dries his hands on a towel.
“Wanted to know how’s things going with her favorite boy, of course. Not me, obviously. Asked if you were doing okay at school and stuff.”
I snort, even though the words do bring a painful tightening in my chest. I haven’t talked to my mother in years, and now she’s calling Santiago. Who’s the son she didn’t want even more than me, pretending to be the caring mother that she never was?
It’s no wonder that the first question out of my mouth is, “What’s her deal? Does she need money or something?”
Saint's face brightens, and he laughs before slapping me on my back. “We’re so alike, Aidy, it’s impossible. That was precisely what I asked her. Took her about ten seconds to hang up.”
“Then why are you telling me this?” I eye him suspiciously.
Saint goes back to his solemn look, the tattoo on his neck shifting as his jaw ticks. “Just wanna be always straight with you, chico. And remind you that at the end of the day, all you have is me. And the Culebras. We got your back. As long as you're with us.”
“Okay... thanks,” I say lightly, even though his words sound more like a threat than brotherly words of support, and apprehension fogs over my mind for a second.
With a last look thrown his way, I move to get past him. “I’ll be in my room. I feel like I need twenty more hours of sleep after that shit you gave me yesterday.”
“No can do, bro,” his words stop me when I’m in the corridor. “The boss called. He needs us for something. Gotta be at the warehouse in an hour.”
“We have a boss now?” I call over my shoulder. “What about Culebras being the masters of their own fate and all that shit you told me about before I joined the gang?”
“We were getting nowhere. Wallace will open doors for us. The man has a plan.” Clearly, “the boss” is rubbing off on my brother if his delusional words are any indication, and I want to shake some sense into him.
“The man’s a fucking lunatic,” I say with a sigh, already knowing that Saint won’t listen to me.
He’s so excited about the prospect of running a drug and gun empire that he’s blind to see that the man plotting the whole thing is detached from reality. Yeah, he can use words that will make you believe the giant pile of shit is actually gold, but he won’t fool me. I can still smell it from afar.
My mom dated too many twisted men when I was younger for me not to see the signs of barely restrained craziness right away.
“Be ready in fifteen,” is all my brother has to say, his voice calm but also again with a little sprinkle of threat underneath.
“Fine.” I walk to my room with a shake of my head. Nothing good will come out of the thing we have with Sheriff Wallace. I just know it in my bones.
––––––––
“DUDE, WHAT THE FUCK is he doing?” I whisper to a guy named Riz as we stand in the half-dark open space of the abandoned warehouse.
There are two empty crates that used to hold some semi-automatics that were already distributed, but other than that, there’s nothing here that would indicate what we are here for.
I see the other guys glancing at each other and then toward Saint, who looks unbothered by the weird behavior of the Sheriff, who’s busy muttering to himself and constantly checking his phone.