Brighter Than the Sun (6 page)

The one who yelled turns to me. Raises his chin in greeting. Smirks. “Hey, dog.” He steps close. “You’re messing with the wrong girls.” Closer. “At the wrong park.” He has a lot of facial hair. “These are taken.”

I look at Kim to make sure she is okay before refocusing on him. “They didn’t mention it.”

“Leave him alone, Gabriel.” One of the blondes tugs on his jacket sleeve.

He ignores her.

“Well, how could they? With your tongue down their throats.”

“Actually, theirs were down mine.”

Celeste’s eyes become huge circles on her pretty face. She’s scared for me. A part of me is grateful. A part of me is embarrassed. But another part, a deeper part, feels bad for what she is about to see. I came here to kill someone, and it looks like I have my first volunteer.

He reaches out, yanks off the chain I’m wearing around my neck, and throws it on the ground. That’d show me.

Celeste walks up. “Gabriel, he’s only thirteen years old.”

He laughs. They all laugh.

“Bullshit.”

“He is, and I’ll call the cops if you touch him.”

Gabriel turns on her. Grabs her arm. Wrenches her forward. “Then what the hell does that make you? Kissing a thirteen-year-old? Maybe I should be the one calling the cops.”

She pales and tries to step back. He doesn’t let her. He glares until she bows her head. She seeks me out from underneath her lashes. Her expression full of apologies.

I look past her to another boy, this one younger. I’m not sure if he’s a part of the gang or not. He’s looking on but makes no move to join in.

He turns his head and spits, completely at ease. But I can feel the ripples of tension that have his skin pulled taut over his muscles. He is anything but at ease. A bomber jacket is resting on the ground beside him. Like he just took it off. Like he is expecting trouble.

“Maybe we’ll just give him a pink belly, then,” Gabriel says. “Teach him not to play in our sandbox.”

Before I can react, three of them grab me and push me to the ground. If I hadn’t already had the shit kicked out of me, I could’ve fought them off better. Or at least given them a better show. Gabriel straddles my hips as they hold me down.

At first, I just go with it. I’ve had a hell of a lot worse than a pink belly. But when Gabriel crawls on top of me, something inside me snaps. I’m tired of being hit. Of being handled and forced into situations I never wanted to be in. And I am damned sure tired of being straddled by men who are older than me. Bigger.

Earl knows what I’m capable of. He’s learned to tie me up or drug me first. These guys have no clue.

But before I do anything, I realize they’ve stopped. Everything has stopped. My shirt lies open, the edges tattered, and every gaze is locked on to my exposed stomach. Even the girls’. Their mouths open. Their brows drawn in horror.

Humiliation bursts inside me. Kim tries to get to me, but one of the lettermen holds her back. He’s not like the others. I felt it the moment they walked up.

“What the fuck?” Gabriel asks before he jumps off.

I grab the tattered ends of my shirt and scramble to my feet. The one holding Kim has slipped from longing to blatant carnal desire. He wants to save me. To rescue me. To kiss the wounds on my stomach and hold me until I’m new again. If only that were possible.

I get a similar reaction from the girls. They’ve shifted from desire to empathy in zero point three seconds, and I try to control the anger threatening to take hold of me.

The kid with the bomber jacket is standing behind Kim. He’s not gaping like the others, and I notice a knife in his hand. Was he coming to help me? Or, perhaps, Kim?

The struggle has reopened some of the nastier slashes. Two long, thin bloodstains spread across my shirt. Every gaze is laser-locked.

The one holding Kim lets her go at last. She runs to me. Throws her arms around my neck as the guy grabs my hoodie and holds it out to me. He wants to hug me as well. So bad, it hurts.

I take the hoodie and turn away. He’s good-looking as hell, but his desire is unwelcome. If we were alone, I would tell him the right guy will come along. And if that were not a lie. The right guy never comes along, and he commits suicide in less than two years. I know this because Gabriel finds out about him. Beats the shit out of him. Is branded for hell because of it. Because his actions lead to the death of an innocent.

I turn toward Gabriel. He scowls at me, and I realize I could save the kid. I could kill Gabriel right then and there. Before he beats up a friend for something that is completely beyond the boy’s control. The boy who doesn’t know it’s okay to be attracted to members of the same sex. It’s not a sin. If it were, every gay person I came across would be branded for hell. They rarely are. When it does happen, it has nothing to do with their lifestyle.

But who knows if the boy will really commit suicide anyway? The situation is too much of an unknown. Too risky. I have another job today, so I decide against intervening. I can’t risk being arrested before completing my first objective.

The others stare in silence as Kim and I turn to leave. The kid with the bomber jacket does the same. After a few feet, he slips his jacket over his shoulders. The back of it reads
AMADOR
. I commit it to memory.

Celeste calls out to me. “What’s your name?”

“Alexander,” I say over my shoulder.

Kim turns back to her. “Reyes,” she says, and I question her with a raised brow. She squeezes me harder. “Your name is Reyes. Reyes Alexander Farrow.”

I suppose it is.

12

We walk to the edge of the park and wait. I am there for a reason, after all, and that reason is walking through the park as we speak. Gillian, the nurse who ruffled my hair in the hospital, is walking toward us. If she hadn’t been so nice to me, I would never have tried to find her again. But she was, and now I can’t let it go. I just can’t.

She is on a cell phone, laughing, completely unaware that she is about to be stabbed to death in her own house.

We follow her, keeping back a ways so she doesn’t notice. She’s pretty, just as I remember, with dark blond hair and a wide smile. When we get to her house, I tuck Kim behind a group of bushes, stand at her back door, and wait. This is the moment I saw in the hospital. The orderly is in love with her, but she just wants to be friends. He is not taking it well.

Then again, things could’ve changed. I’m hoping that they did, in fact. I’m not sure if fate is set in stone, but I figure any number of things could have happened that would set the orderly, Donald, on a different path. That was years ago. Maybe he found someone. Or has learned to take rejection a little better. Or died in a freak defibrillator accident. Surely someone has to clean those.

Sadly, that is not the case. I can feel him. He’s already inside.

I try the door. It’s locked, naturally. I shove it with my shoulder. Normally, knocking in a door wouldn’t be a problem, but since I’d recently gotten the shit kicked out of me, the door was proving more of a problem than I’d expected. By the time I push hard enough to crack the doorframe, Donald has stabbed her.

They are in her kitchen. She is screaming as he raises the knife again. Pleading with him to stop. I walk up behind him. She falls back against the refrigerator, and he is just about to plunge the knife into her heart when I say, “You’re going to hell eventually anyway. Why put off the inevitable?”

He stops and whips his head around, which helps the momentum when I snap his neck.

Gillian is horrified. She gasps and throws blood-covered hands over her mouth. Then, as Donald is crumpling to the floor, I slam his head into the countertop.

“He was hiding in your house when you got home,” I say to her, letting his body slump the rest of the way to the ground. “He attacked you.” I pull his legs out a little so it looks like he fell. “You fought back.” There is a glass of water on the counter. “Pushed him.” I throw the contents on the floor. “He slipped. Fell against the counter. Broke his neck.”

She doesn’t acknowledge anything I say. She slides to the floor herself and stares in horror, completely blindsided on two counts: his and mine.

I go to her. Take her shoulders. Shake her until she focuses on me. “What happened?”

Her lids flutter. “What?”

I shake her again. “What happened here?”

“I— He was in the house.”

“Waiting for you.”

“Waiting for me. He attacked me. He stabbed me.” She gasps when she realizes she’s really been stabbed. Starts to hyperventilate. I lift her off the floor and sit her on a chair.

“What next?”

“I— I pushed and he stumbled back. He fell. Hit his head on the counter.”

“You have to slow your breathing.” I put a hand on her back. “You’re going to pass out and you need to call an ambulance.”

She nods, scared out of her mind, and gradually begins to recognize me. I see it in her expression.

I change mine. Harden it. Shake my head. She nods again, understanding.

I lean over her and kiss her cheek. She wants to hug me but she doesn’t. I think she doesn’t want to get blood on my clothes. I’m wearing the hoodie, so she doesn’t know my clothes are already bloody.

“Call the police,” I say.

She puts a hand on my cheek. “He would have killed me.”

“Call the police,” I say again. Then I leave.

I hear a whispered thank-you as I hurry out the door.

I can’t see what happens to her anymore. Her future is hers now. Donald was slated for hell the minute he made the decision to take her life, so even though he didn’t get to kill her, he is still going down. I don’t stick around long enough for the floor to open up and swallow him, though. I’ve seen only one person go to hell. I have no desire to see it again.

Kim and I walk back to the apartment, and I wonder why I did that. Why I stuck my neck out for Gillian. She was supposed to die. I wonder if I’ve thrown a wrench into some cosmic order in the universe. I wonder if that one simple act will cause the destruction of our world in a hundred years. Then again, I could just as easily have saved it. It’s impossible to know what one tiny change will do. What kind of effect the butterfly will have. Maybe the tsunami will happen whether the butterfly flaps its wings or not.

We get back before Earl does, and Kim washes the blood off me again. Gets me a clean shirt. Makes me spaghetti. She wants to ask what happened, but she doesn’t. Which is good. I’m still coming to terms with the fact that I’ve just killed a man. If I can do it once, why can’t I do it again?

No. I can’t. I can’t risk going to prison and leaving Kim alone. She would be put in foster home after foster home. At least in our situation, I know I can take care of her. I can be here for her.

13

The years go by and we exist. I convince Earl that Kim needs to go to school. I make promises if he will let her go. More if he will let me go as well.

So a few weeks later, I am in high school. I’ve never been to school of any kind. It’s like being in a foreign country where I know the language but not the customs. Kim is scared when I walk her to middle school and drop her off. I tell her she’s in the same grade as Dutch. I tell her she is going to love it. I tell her I’ll be there to pick her up the minute she gets out.

She nods, completely unconvinced. Kim has never been to school either, but a group of girls rushes up to us when we arrive. One of them takes her hand and they lead her to the playground before she can change her mind. I’m grateful and head to my own institution of higher learning: Yucca High.

The kids stare when I walk on campus, so I put up my hoodie. Only in school, I’m not allowed to wear the hood up, so I get in trouble every few feet. I drop it back, walk a ways, then put it up again. It doesn’t stop the staring, but it helps me cope with it. Like I’m in my closet. In a dark place. Safe. Forgotten.

I get registered and they hand me a class schedule, so a little while later, I’m standing in a room full of kids staring at me. Again. It’s physical science. The teacher looks at my schedule, then introduces me. To the whole class. I’m floored they actually do that. I can feel my face warming as I shift my weight.

Thankfully, nobody says anything. The teacher points to a seat. It’s surrounded by the hopeful gazes of sophomore girls.

“Hood down,” he says, his voice harsher than most of the others’.

I sit down and push my hood back. There is a coordinated release of breath around me. The emotion swirling in the room presses into my chest. I’m not sure I can do it. This. Any of this. My lungs aren’t working right, and everyone is looking at me. Gazes rake up my back and across my skin. Some are so full of longing, I almost feel sorry for them. Some are full of hatred. I do that. Inspire hatred for no reason. I figure it’s part of who I am. Another gift from hell. The hatred, I understand. The longing, not so much.

The teacher, a Mr. Stone, hands me a book. Points to the page number on the board. But I’ve already read the entire thing cover to cover. He asks a lot of questions about the chapter the class was supposed to read the night before. I know all the answers, but because I’m new, I’m spared the dreaded hot seat. That probably won’t last long.

All my classes go pretty much the same way, and by lunch, I still don’t have my bearings. I wonder if I ever will. My world has always been so small. So concentrated. This is like a diluted version of it.

I make my way outside while others are rushing for the lunchroom or the parking lot. There aren’t a lot of benches outside and most are taken, so I head for a quiet corner with a slice of grass that’s still green despite the chill. A voice resonates nearby as I sit on the grass.

“What’s up,
cabrón
?”

I look up. Block the sun with an arm to see a kid standing there. He walks over, and it takes me a minute, but I recognize him from the park. The one with the bomber jacket from that day five years ago. Amador. I wonder if he recognizes me, too, or if he’s just really friendly. I give him a head-nod greeting, so he sits next to me. Unfolds a tube of tinfoil. Reveals a burrito. The scent makes my mouth water.