Blood to Dust (10 page)

I stand up, and she scans me up and down, her throat bobbing with a swallow. “Sorry,” I say and pick up my keys and wallet. “Gotta go.”

I spend the ride back home trying to come up with legitimate reasons to wake up tomorrow morning. So that. . .what? I could work a shitty job I hate under the supervision of a woman who pinches my ass and giggles, make minimum wage to try and escape a life I don’t even have so the Aryan Brotherhood wouldn’t kill me? So I could continue on existing, for no reason other than my basic, human instinct to survive?

I’m not even sure why I’m preventing Pea’s escape. She probably has more of a life to live, and she certainly tries harder than I do. I’m just being a greedy bastard, saving my life instead of sparing hers.

Making a booze stop at a bar on the outskirts of Stockton, I come back to the house sauced as fuck. It’s three a.m. Too late to check on her. Even if she’s not asleep, we’re not friends. I can’t cry on her shoulder. Can’t crawl into her lap. Even though she’d want that. Welcome me with open arms.

But she’d do it to save herself, not me.

I stomp my way to my room, kicking my boots against the wall and shouldering past a sleepy Irv, who wobbles his way back from another night shift.

It doesn’t take a genius to see that I’m upset, but he doesn’t care. We’re practically strangers. Two people who share a roof because we can’t afford not to.

Once I fall onto the mattress, I scrub my eyes, fighting the sting.

I wait for her to talk, because she always does whenever she hears me getting into bed. I can feel that she’s awake. She waits for those fifteen minutes with me, longs for them as much as I do.

Oh, fuck. What the hell am I saying? I shouldn’t want shit from her.

But right now, I’m too down to care. Don’t care that I’m breaking for her, playing into her dangerous game, and that Irv is likely to hear us.

“Talk,” I order, staring at my mold-stained popcorn ceiling, wishing it was the wood of a coffin. I need comfort, a distraction, and she’s it. I’m Mrs. Hathaway’s dancing monkey, and Pea? She’s fucking mine. Pea doesn’t answer.

“Goddammit, Prescott. My day was fucking brutal,” I grunt. “Talk.”

Nothing.

“Fucking talk!” I shout, rolling my body to the edge of the bed and slamming my fist to the floor. Irv raps the wall of his room three times. “Shut the fuck up, man. What’re you doing drinking on weekdays?”

“Talk,” I whisper one last time, ignoring Irv, knowing she can hear me. But she doesn’t utter a word. This girl who seemed hell-bent on blabbing when I left her last night is now mute. What’s changed? Has Irv done something to her? No. He knows I’d kill him.

Maybe she’s given up on life too. Great fucking timing, Pea.

Bitch.

I hope I’m betting the right horse.

Nate just begged me to talk to him, and I threw the opportunity out the window, even though the original plan was to butter him up and win his heart, or at the very least, his dick.

Nate.

Ink gave me his name tonight. The idiot.

The mastermind showed up in the basement earlier than Nate usually does, probably before his night shift. I know that because Nate arrives when the owls start singing me my lullabies for the night. I was just marking Day Four with my new chalk on the wall when he came down, bringing canned food, his ski mask reeking of weed. I’m not used to five-star hotel service, but at least Nate—or Beat—brings edible food and snacks to see me through the next day.

“God’s girl, you’ve got fifteen minutes, yeah? Let’s go. I got a shift in half an hour.”

I hated that he came for me. Then again, Nate is airtight and doesn’t let me budge. Maybe Ink would give me more space, and I could run away.

“Okay.” Excitement pushed me up to my feet, and I strode over to him.

“Keep your distance.” He manhandled me, poking me up the stairs from behind. “Beat said you’re a biter. Don’t make me crush your teeth.”

Huh
.

Nate was trying to keep Ink away from me. I had a giddy feeling that I knew exactly why.

When Ink strode into the bathroom with me, I raised one palm up.

“Beat said I’m allowed my privacy in these fifteen minutes,” I lied.

“Beat is not the fucking boss of me,” he retorted chirpily, bulldozing his way in. The way his gaze licked my body confirmed that just like his roommate, Ink was ready for some action. But in his case, I moved uncomfortably, my eyes searching the room.

An hourglass moment pinched at my gut, telling me that Ink is just like them.
A taker
. But not again. Never again.

It was the first time I was grateful for Godfrey and his threat not to touch me. Ink was the kind of guy who’d let Godfrey cut his dick off with a butter knife—slowly and painfully—before disobeying orders.

“I need to. . .poop.” I cleared my throat. He winced, I noticed it even through his ski mask. This was not a part of the peep show he had in mind. His round belly wobbled as he chortled. “Clean up after yourself.” With that, he stepped out of the bathroom and locked the door from the outside. My stare lingered on the lock. Beat replaced it with a new one after I broke it the night before, and probably didn’t tell Ink, seeing as he hasn’t mentioned it.

I got down to business, weirdly happy with the fact that Beat wasn’t here to witness me doing a number two, and even happier that he kept my attempt to run away to himself. I had a quick shower, after which I left the water running while I searched for a potential weapon.
Again
. But Nate wasn’t stupid. After my attempt to break free yesterday, he removed the towel rack.

The towels were thrown on the floor.

Groaning, I yanked out the little metal wire that held the toilet paper and tucked it under my dress. It wasn’t sharp enough to cause serious harm, but walking out of there empty-handed was admitting defeat. I knocked on the door from inside.

“I’m ready.”

Jittery, uncertain and conceited. Wants to be a tattooist but is too untalented to land a real job, so he is flipping burgers.
Likes
: belittling women, playing the tough guy and, well, ink.
Dislikes
: being talked back to, independent women and his life.

He opened the door, his eyes moving up and down my legs. “You scrub up good, bitch.”

Eat shit.

“Thanks. You still look like rotten balls, even with a ski mask on,” I told him with a straight face, and he almost slapped me, but this time withdrew his hand inches from my cheek.

Ink shook me by the elbow, pouring us into the hallway, and poked my back, more aggressively than necessary, on our way to the basement. That was Ink. He wasn’t layered the way Nate was: sorrow, remorse, ruthlessness, heart, street-brain and compassion tossed into a personality of intriguing chaos.

“Who’s coming for me tomorrow?” I enquired before he swung the door shut.

“Nate—er, Beat.”

Nate.

While I don’t want him to know that I’m reading his diary, the day I tell him his roommate ratted out his name is closing in After all, there’s no guarantee I won’t run away from Godfrey, and if I do, his life will be over.

Ink swung the door open and rushed in, pinning me against the wall. He dug his fingers into my throat, his ski mask sending hot air from his mouth. The rotten scent of bacteria and plaque assaulted my nostrils.

“Listen up, bitch. That was a mistake. Tell Beat I said his name, and you’re dead. Get it?”

I nodded. He wouldn’t kill me. He was far too scared of Godfrey. And Beat. And everything else. A prime example of a beta-male. While Nate is everywhere, oozing quiet power, Ink can stand inches from me and I wouldn’t even notice. “Of course.”

From the moment he left the basement, until the moment I heard Nate sinking into his bed, all I did was try to rip open the boarded windows with that small wire I stole from the bathroom. It got me nowhere other than bloody fingers and a cut wrist after my hand slipped against one of the rusty nails.

I need to change tactics. I need to lure Nate faster.

Considering the fact that talking my way out of this situation hasn’t helped me so far, I’ve decided to try the opposite approach—silence.

NOVEMBER 18
TH
, 2010

“DEPRESSION IS THE INABILITY TO CONSTRUCT A FUTURE.” (ROLLO MAY)

I get sick for the first time in my life.

The Vela men don’t usually do weakness, unless it’s booze.

I stay in my cell, nursing a fever and a bad case of the shits. Pedro and his pleas for methadone are pissing me off. The world is pissing me off. I’m not even twenty-two and my life is already over. The realization’s a hard pill to swallow.

To make matters worse, Pedro’s constantly eyeing the toilet bowl, trying to fish my shit out, because he wants to throw it at the corrections officers to make a scene. A scene will land him in the hole. But he’ll get something to calm his raging withdrawal symptoms first.

That’s what Pedro’s counting on. He’d kill us both to get that shot in the butt. Beth, a corrections officer who I befriended, allows Frank to drop by with canned soup.

“Punk-ass kid.” He spits his words, as he does when he forgets to put in his artificial teeth. I grunt into the lukewarm liquid, taking slow sips.

“You were less of a weirdo as a teenager, y’know?” He grabs on to my arm, yanking me upright. “That poetry messed with your head, Nathaniel.”

“Name’s Nate,” I correct him. We’ve been hanging out every day since I arrived, but I never bothered to say something. Because I never bothered to talk. But today I’m angry at everything, Frank included.

“Whatever,” he says, standing up and slapping the back of my neck. “What-fucking-ever.”

DECEMBER 24
TH
, 2010

“THE FEAR OF DEATH FOLLOWS THE FEAR OF LIFE. A MAN WHO LIVES FULLY IS PREPARED TO DIE AT ANY TIME” (MARK TWAIN)

Christmas Eve I get word that Mamá’s dead. One of the counselors calls me into his office and sits me down. He delivers the news in a hurry, eager to go home to his own functioning family, but uses the furrowed forehead expression, the one that’s supposed to show compassion.

Is he sad for me? I don’t know.

Who the fuck cares?

I’m twenty-two and completely orphaned.

I killed my dad and now my
Mamá
’s gone, too. Hit by a plowed bus on her way back from sending me stamps. Lotta’ rain. Lotta’ fog. Bus driver was working overtime to make sure his kids would have presents under their Christmas tree. Got tired. Lost control.

Anyway, you know the rest.

The counselor asks me if I’d like to see a priest. Cry a little. Pray a lot. Pray. Hah! Pray to who? No one ever listens to me upstairs. My prayers fall on deaf ears no matter where they land. Heaven, hell, or the very earth I live upon.

Fisting my hair from its base, I answer with a headshake.

I spend the night in my bed, staring at the ceiling.

Unblinking.

Uncrying.

Unable to join everyone downstairs for the Christmas Eve charade.

And I’m all alone.