But my gut clenches at the memory of Julius’s first glimpse of Alejandra, the unconcealed awe in his gaze as he took in her loveliness, and the flash of jealousy on my partner’s face when Alejandra made to kiss her husband.
I saw it.
I fucking saw it. And I didn’t like it.
He never looks at me like that.
With an annoyed sigh, I walk away from him. Just before I head back upstairs to my room, I taunt a man who doesn’t deserve it. Holding onto the banister with my pump resting against the first step, I confess, “I went up there to do what you weren’t man enough to. I went up there to put a bullet in her brain.” As his jaw steels at my admission, I go on, “Doesn’t matter though.” I move up the stairs with an impassive smile. “Li’l bit is planning on killing herself.”
Choke on that, boss man.
I was sixteen and still in juvie when I got the call. An officer who I considered a friend—only in private—came bearing the news. His face averted, hat in hand, he told me my sister, Tonya, had taken a bunch of pills, and although her stomach had been pumped, it didn’t look good.
She wasn’t going to make it.
Tonya was only fourteen and a new mom. With our parents dead, she had only the help of my mother’s sister, our Aunt Georgia, who took guardianship of Tonya. With six children Aunt Georgia had of her own, it wasn’t easy for Tonya’s small voice to be heard over the majority. Whenever I got the chance, I called to check in on my baby sister and my niece, but it was seldom, and our conversations were time limited.
Tonya told me that being a mother was hard. She rarely slept, and the baby was demanding. Aunt Georgia helped out, letting Tonya sleep when she could, but our aunt had to work to support her now extended family. Aunt Georgia’s shifts became longer, because the bills weren’t going to pay themselves, and there were hungry mouths to feed, and Tonya, at the age of fourteen, who should’ve been playing with Barbie dolls, was nursing a child. A restless child.
The last call before my sister attempted to take her own life, she spoke about putting the baby up for adoption, refusing to speak Keera’s name. She told me that she was a terrible mother and her baby deserved a good life. Tonya stated it wasn’t the baby’s fault she was born into our family. And I sat emotionless, remaining silent, listening to a little girl grown up too fast, making decisions no fourteen-year-old should have to make and making those decisions on a rational level.
Before our time was up, I told my sister I loved her and that she needed to do whatever she felt was right, that I would support her decision. But the truth was I didn’t want my niece to be adopted out.
It was hard to explain, especially with people not knowing the truth about Keera. But Tonya and I did. And Keera was as important to me as my baby sister. They were family, and I was all they had.
I was escorted back to my cell, left on my own after the news of my sister’s suicide attempt. Emotions swept through me.
Sadness. Hurt. Anger. Betrayal. And finally, guilt.
My baby sister was going to die in a sterile hospital bed somewhere unfamiliar. I wasn’t there to hold her hand, to protect her. I couldn’t pray to a deity I didn’t believe in. I had nothing behind me, nothing divine, no god to help me see the light.
I felt nothing. And I felt it completely.
That afternoon, when I went out to the quad for some fresh air, I had my first run-in with a boy who would unbeknownst to me become my biggest ally.
There he was, a lanky scrap of a boy with wavy black hair that had grown too long, anger set in his hooded brown eyes. He obviously hadn’t found the pecking order in the yard to his liking, because he came at an older boy, a boy built like a tank, at full speed after the basketball he’d been shooting hoops with was taken from him.
I sat on the ground and watched him, waiting for him to back down. But he wasn’t. He didn’t. And he was going to get his ass beat when the older boy stopped being amused by the unusual show of fight.
My brow dipped in confusion. The boy was different, savage and animal-like. From the way his eyes darted side to side, assessing, to the way he held himself, his body language was barely human.
Thinking of my sister and my not being there for her, something inside me coiled then released. A protectiveness came over me, and I found myself getting involved in a yard fight I had no place being involved in.
The older boy had a hold of the young’un in a loose headlock. The kid struggled aimlessly, his face turning a deep red as he growled and fought, and I called out, jerking my chin to the tank, “Yo, Johnny. The kid’s new. Give him a break. He doesn’t know the way of things.”
Johnny, the older kid, turned angry eyes on me at being spoken to in such a familiar way, but realizing whom he was talking to, his gaze held a glint of respect. “I won’t hurt him too bad.” He looked around to his friends, a cruel grin stretching at his lips. “Teeth grow back, don’t they?”
His group of cronies laughed and heckled obediently.
I stepped closer to the struggling boy but kept my eyes on Johnny. “You took the ball. He got pissed. You made fun of him. It’s done. Now”—my tone was calm but firm—“let him go.”
Johnny’s face turned purple with rage, and just as he opened his mouth to speak, the little shit in his grasp opened his mouth and spoke through gritted teeth. “Fuck you. I don’t need your help, nigger. Go back to the plantation and pick your cotton, boy.”
The fuck he say to me?
The goddamn nerve.
“What did you say to me?” The vein in my temple pulsed, and my heart began to race as this boy picked up the thread and pulled, unleashing anger I’d long since hidden from the world.
Johnny and his friends laughed loudly, shocked at the kid’s outburst. The kid had gained a small amount of respect in their eyes, enough for Johnny to let him out from the headlock.
I stepped closer to the boy, almost nose to nose, glared at him and warned, “You better watch your fucking mouth—” I grinned viciously. “—boy.”
But the kid stood tall, his smile more a snarl. “Make me.”
He was quick. Too quick for me to react, and before I could register what had happened, I was falling backward onto the basketball court, my eye throbbing like a bitch.
The lanky fuck punched me.
The moment I landed on my ass, I lunged at him, and although he had time to move out of the way, he didn’t. It was as though he welcomed the fight, wanting, needing the violence that ensued. We rolled, and I sat on his stomach, rearing back and letting loose. I threw my fists into him at an alarming pace, his face being knocked to the side with every blow. A weaker boy could’ve died, would’ve died. But not this one.
No. This one laughed manically, his teeth stained red.
We were broken up after only seconds, but the damage was done. We wore our battle scars. My black eye, his broken nose and split lip. At feeding time, he sat on his own in a corner, but he watched me as I watched him.
For a moment, I hated him. He evoked the monster in me, the demon we all had inside of us. But he didn’t bother hiding his demon. He danced with it. He wanted to feed it, nourish it, bring it to the forefront.
I wanted to kill him. There was something wrong with the kid, unnatural. He had a poison in him. Like a rabid dog, he needed to be put down.
And I planned on doing just that.
Lights out came and went, and I waited in the dark. He was three cells away from mine. My mind calculated how I’d do this. I had to be quick.
I didn’t care about what they did to me. I was already in for murder, and my sister was likely dead. I had nothing, no one. I was empty inside.
Six a.m. came, and lockdown was lifted. The cells unlocked then slid open with a jarring squeal, and gripping the makeshift shiv in my hand, I moved fast, determined.
He lay on the cot with an arm thrown over his swollen eyes. I swooped in, kneeled by his side, gripped his shirt and pushed the shiv close to the skin at his throat. Chest heaving,
I pressed my mouth to his ear, and hissed, “You ready to die, baby boy? Don’t worry. I’ll make it quick.”
His body stiffened at my hands on him, but he forced himself to relax, and when he uncovered his face and turned to look at me, I saw something flash in his cold brown eyes.
Acceptance. Resignation.
He blinked at me before turning his gaze up to the dirty ceiling. “Do it already.”
The fight had left him. And what was worse, it seemed as though he welcomed death.
What the hell am I doing?
I had killed once in an uncontrolled fury. I did it because I was angry, my sister was hurt, and she needed protection regardless of the cost. I looked at myself, deep inside, and asked myself if I could do that again. It would be worse this time around, aimless and for naught.
The answer hit me hard.
Yes. Yes, I could.
I looked down at that boy and quickly reassessed the situation. This kid may just be the most honest person in this godforsaken place. More honest than me. He didn’t lie about what he was. I could use someone like that on my team.
My heart pounded in my chest, and I swallowed hard, removing the shiv from his neck but gripping his shirt tighter. “You’re never going to survive in this place. What the fuck do you think you’re doing, picking a fight with the tank?”
His eyes closed, and he bit out, “I don’t give a shit if I die. No one else would either.”
My mind worked. A decision was made right then. This boy and I, we could help each other. “I’m going to help you make something of yourself, kid.” I stood, and he seemed surprised at my change of attitude. “Don’t you want to get back at those people who said you’re no one?”
He sat up staring into the hall by my hip, gripping the bottom of the cot so hard his knuckles turned white, and I knew my words had affected him.
I pressed harder. “You stick with me, and we’ll watch the world burn.” A harsh smirk tilted my lips. “Set it on fire yourself. Hell, I’ll even hand you the lighter.”
His grip loosened, and he muttered, “I’m not like you. I’m not smart.”