Page 3 of Pistol Whipped

“Because you are the best of me

Even when you make me cry

When you make me scream

You are the best of me

And if I lost you now

It’d be my last heartbeat.”

I am about to scream. Or cry, which is worse. All drink orders forgotten, I whip the towel off my shoulder, and I’m halfway to the dance floor, ready to storm the DJ booth and give Scotty shit for playing that goddamn song, when the crowd before me parts.

There, by the side door, the one used exclusively by Scotty for loading and unloading his equipment, is Lou Braun.

Lou-goddamn-Braun.

He’s chatting with Scotty, who points right at me. Lou looks up. The moment he sees me, that familiar sly grin, the one that makes me feel like someone’s poured grease over my skin, creeps onto his face. And he winks. Just like all those years ago, he winks.

Sometimes life’s cruelty slaps you across the face; other times, it slips in through a side door when you aren’t looking and you least expect it. Leaving you no choice but to take a deep breath and face it. Or you can run.

I choose to run.

Chapter 3

Swing Life Away

Rain

In my haste, or because the universe really is fucking with me, I burst through the back door and nearly trip over Resa. She’s on her knees giving Trey a very sloppy, very public blowjob.

“What the fuck! Treyyyyyyyy??!!” she screeches as I shove her out of the way.

“Rain? What the hell?!” he shouts behind me, but I’m already gone. I run out of the alley and down Beacon Street. It’s nearing last call, and people are spilling out onto the streets. Or joining the folks who were already there. My feet hammer against the wet pavement, but I don’t stop.

Calder is the rainiest city on earth. I swear, it rains all the goddamn time. Someone told me once, or maybe I learned in school a million years ago, that it’s because of how the city sits smack bang between the mountains and the ocean.

All I know is that when you’re trying to run away from the record producer who was part of ruining your relationship, your career and your whole damn life, it would be nice to do it without also getting soaking wet.

My scrawny legs give out a few blocks later on the edge of McDonald Park. I’m huffing and puffing like I’m a pack-a-day smoker, when really, I’m just in terrible shape. Hard to prioritize a gym membership when you’re scrambling to feed yourself. My stomach wakes up on that thought, snarling to remind me I haven’t eaten anything all day. I ignore that bitch and drag my ass to the swing set so I can sit down and catch my breath.

The playground here is just as sad as when we were kids. There’s only one working swing. All the others are missing their seats. The City of Calder stopped replacing them long ago, after neighbourhood teenagers just kept taking them. Now who would do a thing like that, I think to myself with a small smile.

The metal slide is still intact, if a bit rusted, but all the other play structures are falling apart. The first time I ever set foot in this park, I was thirteen, and it wasn’t in quite such bad shape. Gram’s old house, if I was brave enough to go look at it, is less than five minutes’ walk from here. That was the week my deadbeat parents finally split for good. Mom dragged me there on a Saturday morning and made me sit on the front porch swing while she and Gram had a muffled argument. One that ended with her running off without so much as a goodbye. Haven’t seen her, nor Dad, since. When they didn’t even come to the funeral, I assumed they were dead. Small blessings and all that jazz.

A week after they abandoned me with my grandmother, I was kicking rocks on my way home after school and stumbled upon this place. The first thing I did was start swinging. It’s an impulse that’s still there. My feet didn’t touch the ground then, and they barely do now. Unlike certain others, I never got that teenage growth spurt. Always a little runt of a thing, probably because my parents were too busy getting high to feed me properly. Drugs will stunt your growth, kids, even if you aren’t the one taking them.

With my hands on the chain links, I start to rock back and forth, letting the momentum build slowly. It’s still raining, only now, I don’t care because each drop rushes through my hair, and each swing brings a refreshing bite as the night wind rushes through my damp strands. Even the chill that’s setting in is freeing, a reminder that a girl can still just swing her problems away, if only for a second.

By the time I slow down again, I really am shivering. The freedom I felt a second ago has given way to longing. Longing for that day when I only stopped because a fierce whistle cut through the air. The noise had come from two boys watching me from the far side of the playground. They couldn’t have been more different. The taller one was already waving, dark coiled hair, a wide smile that stood out against his skin, while the other boy was smaller, skinny, like me, with white-blond hair and blue eyes that were almost too big for his face. He was almost hiding behind his friend, or as I would soon learn, his brother.

Ahhhhh, the Kelly brothers. Brothers by choice and circumstance rather than blood. They ended up in the same foster home in The Neck when they were like four and five and had stuck together ever since. Dutch, the taller and older one, was quick to laugh, quick to joke, quick to smile. He was the funniest boy I’d ever met. Dallas, the slight, skinny one, was quieter, slower to warm to me. But after a few weeks of running into them at the park every day, he came around, especially after I made Dutch laugh by doing an excellent impression of my stupid seventh-grade teacher, Mr. Coulter.

Maybe it was the fact that we all sported second-hand ill-fitting clothes. Or maybe because we didn’t have one good parent between us, but the Kelly brothers became my best friends. My only friends.

It wasn’t until a year later that Cohen Brady came along. This well-dressed kid, in clean sneakers and a crisp collared T-shirt with a big fucking horse-looking logo on the front.

I’d spotted him first, lurking around the playground, watching us. But it was Dutch, of course, who said hello, calling out to him, “Hey! We’re just about to see who can climb the highest.” He’d pointed to this very same swing set. We were fourteen, and thought we were invincible, and I’d just sworn up and down that I could climb to the very top.