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“I live next door.”
“I didn’t ask that,” she says, raising an eyebrow. Oh, now I see where the boys get it from.
“Knight. My name is Knight.”
“Like nighttime?” The smaller one asks this time.
“Like a Knight in shinin’ armor.” The kid has the balls to snort a laugh before turning back to his mom. “We were playing football. You know I need the practice.”
“Were they in your yard?” she asks me as I shake my head.
“No.”
“Then fuck off.” With that, she flips her hair over her shoulder and walks back toward her house. Yeah, that is most definitely where the kids get their attitudes from. I’m not letting this shit fly.
I stomp behind her and up the steps before she turns to look at me.
“I have a gun,” she warns me. Now, I snort a laugh. I’m not scared of no damn gun.
“So do I.”
“What do you want? They’re being kids. They play,” she says, sounding exasperated with the whole thing. I get that kids play but at seven in the fucking morning?
“It’s seven in the mornin’,” I tell her.
“And?”
“Don’t they have school or some shit?”
“In an hour.”
“Thank fuck,” I mumble before walking back down her steps and back toward my house. That’s when I feel something slimy slam into my back. I can feel it running down my skin. I turn and look over my shoulder to see a mud bomb sliding down my back. My eyes jerk to the older kid as he moves toward the house.
These little fuckers are going to be the death of me; I can feel it already.
2
Lyra
“Why the hell are you aggravating the neighbors already? We’ve been here a few days,” I remind Cameron, my oldest. He’s fourteen and thinks that he’s grown, but after what we’ve lived through, he has had to grow up faster than others. And I hate that. I regret what got us to this point.
“No one was aggravating him. Billy was playing ball with some of the neighbor kids while a few others and I hung out. He was just being a dick,” he tells me.
“Well, I don’t need to tell you we don’t need enemies right now,” I remind him. I see the way his eyes drop and his shoulders slump. I hate seeing him like this. I hate this is how things have to be. In a perfect world, none of this would be happening, but we don’t live in a perfect world. Never have.
“I was friendly enough,” he argues as I shake my head and roll my eyes. I know what his version of friendly is, and it’s not that nice.
“I have to work tonight. Dinner is in the oven. All you have to do is heat it,” I tell him. He nods his head, knowing the drill all too well. Another thing I hate about my life but what can I do?
“Am I gonna be on a team this year?” Billy asks.
“I don’t know. We’ll see.”
“You say that every year, and then I never get to be on the team,” he whines. Billy is ten and doesn’t fully understand why things can and can’t happen. I hate it, but it is what it is.
I finish making their lunches and bag them up while they eat their breakfast.
“We’re going to be late,” I tell them as I rush around the room, getting their backpacks and jackets together.
