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“Let’s talk about something else,” he suggests as I turn down Peck Avenue. “Like where we’re going?”
My lips kick up in a half smile at his response. He texted me earlier, asking me to pick him up, but didn’t question where I was taking him. He asks so often now, almost every day. I guess he doesn’t care where we go so long as he has somewhere to get away. He always goes home though. For his mother. For his brothers too.
“I want to check on someone,” I tell him as I round the corner, passing over a speed bump and slowing down at the weathered stop sign that marks that we’re close to our destination.
Carter’s brow furrows. I don’t know if I’ve ever told him I want to check on someone before, but when I turn down Dixon Street and slow in front of Chloe’s house, he gives me a shit-eating grin. As if I just told him his favorite joke.
“Like old times,” he says with a rough laugh. Carter’s my only friend and that’s because I know who he is to his core. He’s six years younger than me, but he’s like family, the only family I have.
All he has are his brothers; he’s told me that so many times. But it’s always followed up with a pat on my back as he tells me I’m one of them. I have to admit, it’s nice to feel wanted, and even nicer to feel like you’re part of a family. Even if you know deep down that’s not really true.
I was eighteen and he was twelve when we met. He got caught shoplifting bread of all things. Dumb fuck couldn’t even pick something that fit under his jacket.
Grabbing him by his collar, I yanked him away from the clerk hellbent on beating the shit out of him. If you let one person get away with stealing your shit, everyone will come running with duffle bags.
So you have to send a message, loud and clear. I was in charge of keeping that shop out of harm’s way; it was one of my first jobs from Romano.
I looked the clerk in the eye and told him the kid was going to pay for what he’d done. I had a reputation and the clerk was happy enough to let me handle it, knowing he could tell his story about how I’d kicked the kid’s ass for trying to steal from his store.
Carter was a scrawny thing and still is, although he’s starting to fill out. I picked him up like he was nothing and he didn’t try to fight it.
The look of fear in his eyes wasn’t there, only a look of disappointment, even as I dragged him around back. I remember how I felt something I hadn’t in so long. Something like regret, maybe?
He wasn’t like the others, the ones looking for a fight.
Carter already had enough to fight for and to fight against, so to him I was just one more thing he had to endure. I could see the weary resignation in his eyes.
I didn’t kick his ass. Instead, I told him to go home. I made the decision to let him go because he wasn’t like the others. And also, because the idea of beating up on a lanky twelve-year-old made me sick to my stomach.
That was when I saw his anger and his fight. His passion.
“I’m not going home without it,” he told me with determination, even though his voice shook. His hands balled into fists, but he didn’t raise them.
“Get home, kid,” I told him, walking over to where I’d thrown him and towering over him.
He stared me in the eyes as he shook his head. “I’m not leaving without it.”
“For a fucking loaf of bread, you’re willing to get your ass beat?” The kid was stupid. I still tell him he’s stupid and it’s true half the time.
“I have to make sandwiches, my mom told me--” He started to say something else, but I cut him off.
“Well your mom can make it herself,” I spat back at him, with a pent-up rage he didn’t deserve. He was only a kid, and some of the kids didn’t know. My mother was a whore. A bitch. I don’t have a single nice thing to say about her. Even with her dead in the ground after spending the last minutes of her life with her favorite needle, I can’t bring myself to say one good thing about her. I never had a family aside from my grandmother, bless her soul. And I never would. It’s as simple as that. It was as deeply ingrained in me as whatever possessed Carter that night.
“She can’t!” he yelled at me. I took one step closer to him, and he stiffened. My spine was stiff, my shoulders straight and the aggression and threats evident just from my stare at him.
His bottom lip quivered as he took in a quick breath, but he didn’t give up. “I have to feed them tonight and we don’t have anything… but I can make sandwiches.” He gritted out the last words with tears in his eyes. “I just need bread.”
“And what are you going to put on the bread? You going to steal something else too?” I berated him, even though I believed him.
“There’s peanut butter already.”
“You can eat it with a spoon,” I said dismissively, turning my back to him and ready to get the hell away from him. Something about the way he looked and acted bothered me to my core. He wasn’t frightened, and he wasn’t angry.He was desperate.
“She said to make sandwiches for my brothers-”
I lost it again with the kid, thinking about my own mother and how she’d forced me to fend for myself. She never told me to make dinner, I just had to. No one else would. “And why didn’t she do it then? Huh? She can dish out orders, but-”
“She’s in the hospital. She told me on the phone to make sandwiches and I just need bread.” He stumbled over his words, but he never took his eyes from me. “I told him, the clerk,” he gestured to the shop, “we’d pay him, but I don’t have the money right now.” He visibly swallowed and continued, “My mom will pay him when she’s back. And it’s going to be real soon. She’ll be okay real soon.” He started rambling on and on and I could feel his sob story getting to me. I could feel myself getting played like I’d played everyone else as I grew up on the streets.
