CHAPTER5
August
How couldshe want to stay there? It’s hell on fucking earth.
Why does she want to be somewhere where he does those things to her and where he lets his friends treat her like a blow-up doll?
I hit the gas hard and speed down the highway. My knuckles whiten like my bones are gonna tear through the skin from gripping the wheel. I roar at the top of my lungs until my throat hurts like I’ve eaten gravel.
Ineedto protect her.
I swerve around a few cars ahead, making the tires screech. You should never overtake on a bend, but I do it anyway. Fuck it.
I replay our conversation. I gave Clemmie a motherfucking out, but she didn’t take it. I think back to when I gave Mom a similar chance.
We always struggled for cash when I was a kid. Mom injected any money we had into her veins, apart from the time she managed to stay clean for a few months. She met a guy one summer, and he supported her through her crazy withdrawal while I slept outside our trailer. Things settled after that... until I walked in on him kicking the shit out of her and decided I had to act. Enough was enough.
I grabbed a baseball bat and balaclava, then headed straight to our nearest store. I’m not proud of robbing it or how I cracked the cashier’s skull. The cashier was the same age as me, from a good family, and would have plenty of opportunities to make something of himself. A skull fracture would heal, but I needed the money. Mom’s life was at stake.
After clearing the register, I had five hundred dollars. It’s enough that we could have left town and gotten away from the guy who had turned from her savior into her nemesis, but I didn’t think through the next steps properly. Plans didn’t matter to a fourteen-year-old. I figured we’d work shit out along the way. We’d be a normal family again. Now she was clean, and the whole world stretched before us... until it didn’t.
By the time I cycled back to the trailer park with a backpack stuffed full of cash and a bloody bat, Mom was lying unconscious, andheloomed over her body.
“What’re you staring at, August?” he snarled. His warm breath smelled of stale beer. “Me and your mom are done.”
“It’s your fault!” I screamed in his face. “If you hadn’t—”
“If I hadn’t what, huh?” He yanked my shirt to pull me closer, spraying spit with each word. “You didn’t think you could change her, did you? Your mom will always be a junkie whore.”
“You’re a bastard,” I hissed, then he swung at me.
I dodged his punch, but my backpack split in the scuffle and showed him what was inside. Something he didn’t want to share.
The fucker beat the shit outta me, took the money, and left us. Things got worse from there. That was the beginning of the end.
If I ever saw him again, I’d kill the fucker. Elias Jacobson deserved to die, but I’d never get close enough. The Jacobson family is untouchable and are well-known in the criminal underworld. He only started fucking my mom because he was her supplier, and I suspected he only got her clean to crush her again. If Elias was anything like his brother Raphael, who is rumored to have a sick appetite for underage girls, I wouldn’t put it past him.
“Fuck!” I curse as blue flashing lights appear in my mirrors. Cops are the last thing I need. Can’t a guy catch a fucking break? They flash at me to pull over.
I take a sharp right turn down a quiet dirt path and stop, relieved to see a lone deputy in the car. Running won’t help, but I have a gun stashed under the seat. It’s always good to have a backup plan. I try to avoid violence, but it’s not my fault if it finds me.
I lower the window as the officer approaches. He’s in his mid-fifties and looks like an old-school type who might want to keep wayward kids outta jail.
“Going a little fast there, kid,” he comments, tapping on the hood.
“Sorry, Officer,” I reply. “Got carried away.”
He squints, looking at me intently, and I stare right back.
“You’re Jack’s boy, aren’t you?”
My jaw clenches. “What if I am?”
“You look just like him.” He chuckles. “Your father wouldn’t be happy if he found you out here.”
My mind races through the possibilities. We’re on a quiet stretch of road. No one would know if I ran the fucker over a few times.
“Can you step out of the car, son?” he asks.