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Relief washes over me like a tidal wave and I can’t believe my luck. I might get in trouble later, but I couldn’t care less. There’s no way that Kir—or anybody, really—can understand the depth of responsibility I feel toward Evie.
When our older sister left for New York, she made me swear I’d look out for the kid. I wasn’t crazy about the idea because Evie’s never been much more than a troublemaking brat, hanging with the wrong crowd, failing classes, and getting caught for boneheaded things like shoplifting candy. She needed some sort of guidance, though, and it wasn’t going to come from our father. So, it fell to me.
As if she knows at this very moment I’m thinking of her, my phone vibrates with another call from her. I don’t answer because she’ll have too many questions I can’t answer, and if she learns too much, she’ll be here the next day, snooping around, getting involved, and generally making things worse for us both. So, I text her I’m on my way.
I turn to Kir after I’ve pulled my seatbelt on. “Are you taking me because you believe me? Or because you don’t believe me?”
He thinks for a moment, before he puts the car into gear. “Maybe a little of both.”
That’s better than I expected.
He starts to drive, with me navigating, and it all just feels so normal. The sunroof of his Audi is open, the wind is blowing our hair, and he has the radio cranked up high. As the bass gets louder, he bops his head and slaps his thigh, and I think my life has never been this normal, even when it was normal.
* * *
CHAPTERTHIRTY-THREE
Kir
Five minutes after arriving at Evie’s high school, I have all those fuckers figured out.
Hell, I haven’t been in a high school in years. I’m thirty-four years old, so it’s been more than fifteen years. And yet everything looks the same, smells the same, hell, evenfeelsthe same.
While waiting for the principal to see Charleigh and me, I watch the kids crowd the hallways in between classes. Fashions might have changed, but it’s impossible not to recognize the alpha pricks, who walk the halls with their heads so high in the air you can practically see inside their noses. Then, there are the kids they pick on, who walk looking down at their feet. And last, there’s everyone in between, just trying to figure out life and get through the day.
And that’s just high school. A bunch of kids. They’ve already figured out the hierarchy of life. If I had more time, I’d tell anyone who’d listen which ones would be successful, and which would be, ten years on, remembering high school as the best years of their life.
And then there’s Evie, waiting outside the principal’s office. What a sight. Hair dyed jet black, rings of messy black shit around her eyes, a pierced lip, and a scowl of epic proportion.
When I snagged Charleigh leaving the club earlier, I didn’t doubt for a minute the story she told me, that she had to get her kid sister out of some sort of trouble at school. If she were really trying to escape, she’d have a much better story, first of all, and fought me a lot harder when I stopped her. No, her story was too real to be fake. Too mundane to have been invented.
Which interests me all the more.
Here’s this woman, about to be offered up, basically, as a sacrificial lamb—unbeknownst to her—and she’s worried about her little sister. In what world does that happen?
Not one I’m normally part of.
And yet her father is such a fucking loser. A scumbag gambling addict who threw his beautiful, innocent daughter to the wolves to save his own ass, who can’t even look after his younger one.
What a waste of flesh.
Do we really need him to repay us what he owes? Hell no. We have all the money we could spend in this lifetime and the next. But collecting debts is a matter of respect. If the people we do business with see us going soft, it would all be over.
So, in spite of the shitshow Charleigh’s father created of her life, she still finds the time to be concerned about someone other than herself.
The woman continues to surprise me.
Like the day before when Vadik was having a go at her. I thought for sure she’d fight him off, but instead she kind of just fell into him, and let him make her feel good. Like she needed it.
The principal, a tired middle-aged woman with bleached hair, finally has time to see us. While I consider for a moment whether I should just wait outside, I figure what the hell, might as well watch how schools handle bad kids these days. They can’t smack you across the face anymore, like they did at my Catholic school. These days they have to force kids into submission without the threat of pain hanging over their heads.
I’m not convinced that is a good thing.
“Thank you for calling me,” Charleigh says to the principal. “Let’s get this straightened out.”
Shit. She’s done this before.
I glance over at the brat in the corner who’s causing Charleigh trouble just when she really doesn’t need it, and the kid is glaring at me. Like if she had a sharp weapon in her hand, she’d just as soon stab me as walk down the hall to lunch. I stare back at her until she gets uncomfortable and looks away.
