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JOÃO
After five hours of stalking a couple more people on that damn list that Imani had given me, I dropped off Landon and Kai at Landon’s house and tightened my hand around the steering wheel, glaring at Landon through the windshield.
“Get the fuck out of my car,” I said between gritted teeth.
Therapy.
He was one fucking asshole for suggesting that.
“You wonder why Imani doesn’t like you,” Landon said, one hand on the roof of my car, the other flicking on a lighter to light the cigarette hanging out of his mouth. “It’s because you’re a moody piece of shit.”
Before he could continue, I shifted the gear into reverse and hit the gas, giving him the finger through the windshield. Who the fuck did Landon think he was, telling me that I needed therapy?
The only kind of therapy I needed was one where I put a bullet through the head of everyone who pissed me the fuck off, everyone who fucked over the people living in the Redwood slums. I didn’t fucking need to talk or shit.
And who the fuck said I wanted Imani to like me? Not me.
Not me at all.
I drove back through the Redwood slums to see Mom and Ana for the night. For fucking once, she had the day off and away from those fucking assholes who raped her every night, and I wanted to at least spend a couple hours with her and my sister.
Just a few.
But when I pulled up at home, Mom’s car wasn’t parked in the driveway. I tensed and leaped out of the car, hurrying to the front door. Ana immediately pulled the door open with wide and watery eyes and jumped into my arms.
“João! Where were you? I’ve been home alone all day.”
“All day?” I picked her up and kicked the door closed with my heel. “Where’s Mom?”
“I don’t know,” she said, wiping away her tears with the backs of her hands. “She never came home. You said that she was going to be here when I got off the bus today and that she didn’t have to work tonight. You lied.”
Fuck.
Where is she?
“I didn’t lie, Ana.” I gently rubbed her back and walked throughout the house, checking in each of the rooms to make sure Mom wasn’t passed out somewhere. She should’ve been here. “She told me that she’d be home tonight.”
“Then, where is she?” Ana asked again, tears filling with eyes. “Why doesn’t Mama love us anymore? She never comes home and doesn’t spend any time with us when she does. She always gets so mad at me too.”
Ana didn’t understand, and there wasn’t much of a way I could explain what Mom did. She thought that Mom disappeared every night because Mom didn’t love us, but that wasn’t true. But how could I tell my sister that Mom sold her body to provide for us?
Tears poured down Ana’s cheeks, her body heaving back and forth. I placed her on the ground and crouched down to her level, taking her tiny face in my hands and wiping away her tears with my thumbs.
“Ana, you might not understand,” I started. “But Mom does this for us.”
“No, she doesn’t!” she said, shaking her head. “She doesn’t love us.”
“She loves us,” I whispered, my chest tightening. “She does.”
Ana’s cries and hiccups slowly turned to sniffles. She wiped her forearm across her runny nose and frowned at me. “Where is Mom then? What is she doing? I want her to be with us, João.” She pushed some hair out of my face. “Don’t you want her too?”
“I do,” I whispered, my voice even lower than before.
But I didn’t know where the fuck she could be. She worked all over Redwood, and even outside of it whenever she was desperate for work and money. Where would she have gone? She loved spending time with Ana, no matter what. Why would she ditch Ana for her job?
Unless she … never came home last night.
My stomach tightened, and I gulped. I hadn’t seen her this morning when I brought Ana to school. She might’ve had a bad night go really fucking terrible, could’ve been stuck somewhere with someone she didn’t want to be with.
