Bleed Like Me (8 page)

Brooks barked out a maniacal laugh. His feet slowed and I belted him. He laughed even harder.

“I'm not getting busted for this,” I said through my teeth.

He started to pedal fast again. “Neither am I.”

He steered our boat to the edge of the pond and I leaped out. He followed, still laughing but moving quickly. The boat started to drift back into the pond, and Brooks grabbed my hand and pushed me toward the running path. The sound of sirens
echoed in the distance and I ran faster. Brooks maneuvered us into the center of a group of runners.

“Let's cut through the zoo,” he said.

I gritted my teeth and moved with him past the zoo entrance. We stopped running and Brooks pointed to a bench. I plopped down and crossed my arms. He laughed again and dropped his arm behind me.

“That was fun,” he said, breathing hard.

“Yeah. Not so much.”

“Oh, come on, sweetheart. That was fun. You loved it. Admit it.”

“No.” I shifted away from him. “So far today you've taken me to a crack house and nearly gotten me arrested. This is hardly gaining you boyfriend points.”

“Boyfriend, eh?” He slid closer to me. “I didn't think you were ready for that, but I'm in.” His fingers traced the hickey on my neck.

“I—”

He put his fingers over my mouth. “Don't ruin it by saying something stupid.”

“Go to hell.”

He laughed. “Is that a girlfriend term of endearment?”

I clamped my mouth shut.

He launched himself off the bench and held his hand out to me. “I should probably take you home now.”

The day hadn't been anything like I'd expected and I still wasn't sure if dealing with my parents' anger was worth it, but as Brooks pulled me up and brushed another kiss on my lips, part of me decided it might be.

•  •  •

Brooks parked in my driveway despite my insistence that he should leave me on the corner. He stepped out of the car and came to my side, his fingers linking with mine. Most of the time I was embarrassed about the state of my house when people came over. It needed a face-lift in the worst way, but as Dad liked to point out, kids are expensive, and because of my brothers Mom refused to work anytime but half-day mornings as an assistant at a preschool. No money, crap house. Fortunately, Brooks had experienced every kind of living situation, and after seeing Kenji's place I wasn't so worried.

Mom opened the door before we'd even reached the first step. Her mouth dropped open when she saw Brooks. I doubted it was his blue hair; she'd gotten used to crazy hair with my zebra stripes. She'd just never seen me with a boy who wasn't Ricardo before. And Ricardo never held my hand.

“It was my fault,” Brooks said before she recovered from the shock. I looked at him and he winked at me. “I wanted to see her and I wouldn't let her go until she went to the zoo with me. I'm a horrible influence. I'm Michael, by the way. I'd like
to date your daughter.” He flashed a boyish grin at Mom, and I thought I heard her sigh. Holy crap, Brooks was good with moms.

She blinked a few times and then narrowed her eyes at me. “How did you get out of the restaurant?”

“I work there,” Brooks interrupted. “My shift was over and I saw her and insisted she come with me.”

Mom crossed her arms. “You could have told us.”

I opened my mouth to speak, although I didn't have anything to say. Before I could stammer out a bogus explanation, Luis screamed from the background. Miguel squealed and something broke. Mom whipped around and took a step into the house. She turned back to me.

“I need your help.”

Resentment pricked along the back of my neck, but I nodded and released Brooks's hand. She shook her head at Brooks, but in this weird sort of girlish way.

“Michael. It's nice to meet you. Come here first next time.”

Then she bolted into the house. I smiled at Brooks and shrugged. He dropped a kiss onto my nose and pinched my ass as I walked away. I whacked him in the arm, but he only gave me another innocent grin.

“See you in school.”

The door clicked behind me and I leaned against it for a second. I shut my eyes and pictured Brooks's face, hidden on one side by his blue hair. My fingers touched the mark on my neck again and I adjusted my hoodie to hide it. I peeked out the window on the side of the door and watched Brooks slide into his car. The word popped into my head before I could shut it down, and my insides melted at the truth behind it:
Mine.

Wood shop was my last class of the day and the only one I consistently got an A in. I was a C student in everything else. I probably could have gotten better grades, but it was more trouble than it was worth. Especially since the sad reality was I probably
would
end up working for Dennis the rest of my life. Although, hopefully, I'd live in the yet-to-be-renovated apartment above the store instead of with my psycho brothers.

Most of the time we worked independently in the shop studio, but today my teacher decided to give us a lesson in scale drawing. I hated the drawing part of shop and thought it might be the thing that kept me from doing anything real with my carpentry skills. Everything I sketched looked like a misshapen foot, and the guys in class had no problem relentlessly
teasing me about it. Probably because no one could get near my excellence with the jigsaw.

I fumbled with my pencils, cursing three-dimensional design under my breath.

“Psst. Gannon.”

I looked up and raised a brow. Rodney, one of the work-study kids, leaned closer to me.

“I heard you're dating that guy with the blue hair?”

I shrugged. “So?”

“How long you been dating him?”

“I don't know. Why?” People were talking about me? Weird.

“I heard he's got a record.”

Oh. That explained it. Speculation on time spent in juvie was like cotton candy to a diabetic in the high school gossip circles. Ali constantly updated me on which guys at the Punkin' were rumored to have been locked up. It was all bullshit.

“So?” I said with a sigh.

“So you're dating a guy with a record.”

I tapped the pencil on my desk. “Rodney, I'm not exactly one to follow rumors, you know?”

He sucked his lower lip through his teeth, drawing attention to our conversation with his disgusting slurping sound. Jeremy, the guy who sat behind me and never talked about anything but playing StarCraft, poked my shoulder.

“I heard that too. From a pretty reliable source.”

“Yeah?” I tapped my chin. “Who would that be? One of your online pals?”

He sneered at me. “As a matter of fact, I play with one of the guys who lives with him. He said Brooks has been to juvie. He killed a guy or something.”

I snorted. “Give me a break. How would he be in school if he killed a guy?”

Our teacher stood up and gave us the Jedi death stare. I bit my lip and went back to my drawing.

“Just watch your back,” Rodney whispered from my side. I shook my head and ignored the doubt prickling along the base of my neck.

•  •  •

“Where've you been lately?” Ali asked as I pulled books from my locker and shoved them into my messenger bag.

“Do you care?” I scratched at the plaid skirt rubbing against my fishnets and wondered again if jeans would have been an easier choice.

Ali flashed her tongue barbell and grinned. “Only if it's somewhere good.”

I laughed. “No. Nowhere good. Just around. Avoiding home.”

Ali nodded. “Wanna talk about it?”

“Nope.”

She tilted her head and looked at me hard. I turned away
so she wouldn't see the hickey and added another book to my bag.

“So you haven't asked me about Jace yet,” she finally said.

“The guy from the woods? What about him?”

“Hot, right?”

I shrugged. No blue hair. No eyebrow stud. He wasn't Brooks. “Where'd you meet him again?”

“I told you before. Dark Alley.”

I groaned. Buying clothes at poseur, overpriced hipster shops like Dark Alley was almost as bad as getting music from the “What's Hot” section of Walmart.

“What were you doing at Dark Alley?”

“I saw him through the window. He works there.” She clicked her tongue piercing. “I know, it's lame or whatever, but he gets an employee discount and they have really cool vintage stuff.”

Really cool vintage stuff like the same
I'M A PEPPER
seventies retro T-shirt on the racks at Urban Outfitters? I bit my tongue and adjusted the strap on my bag. It wasn't my business who Ali spent time with.

“So what'd you do yesterday?”

I smiled for a half second, then slammed the door to my locker. “Family breakfast.”

Ali hooked her arm in mine and started walking me down the hall. “Did they kick your family out of the House of Pancakes again?”

“Not exactly.”

“Oh my God, they didn't call the police, did they? Remember when Luis told the barista at Starbucks his mom had abandoned him? And when she asked who the woman with him was, he told her she was a stranger who kept wanting him to get in her car?”

“Yeah,” I said, laughing. “My mom had to pull out family photos to prove he actually was hers. I told her she should have left him.”

Ali snorted. “She probably would have been better off.”

Comfortable silence slid between us. A bunch of people said hi to Ali as we passed, but they mostly ignored me.

“So are you working this afternoon?” she asked, hitching her bag on her shoulder.

I nodded, turning down the hall toward the exit.

“Well, call me later, okay? I really want you to meet Jace.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever.”

She pursed her lips to say something, but then shook her head.

Did she expect me to get enthusiastic about a guy named Jace? What a stupid name. It was like a combination of “jackass” and “ace.” Not that I was any kind of expert on guys, but Ali could do so much better than someone who worked at Dark Alley. I pushed my mouth into a smile, waved to her, and headed out the door. My feet scraped along the sidewalk as the
bitter breeze cut across my face. Tears stung the corner of my eyes, and I wondered if maybe I should bust into my hardware money to get a car. I smiled at the thought of Brooks in his crappy Honda. Maybe I wouldn't need my own car.

•  •  •

Ricardo was in front messing with the window display again. He stood holding six plastic pumpkins and a sack of fake leaves. I was at the main counter while Dennis barked orders at Ricardo to adjust the scarecrow.

“We're a hardware store. What do we need a Halloween display for?”

Ricardo added, “Yeah, Dennis, don't you think—”

Dennis cut him off. “I
do
think, so you all don't have to. I'm not paying you for your opinions.”

Ricardo exchanged a glance with me and shrugged. We knew Dennis well enough not to be affected by his bluster. We'd both seen enough little bonuses in our paychecks to know he was grateful for how much we did for the store.

“Now put more leaves to the left there,” Dennis said.

Ricardo sighed and opened the leaf bag with his teeth.

A crash came from the back door and Brooks toppled in. “There's my girl,” he said too loud, with a slur.

My eyes widened and I looked at Dennis. He squinted and curled his mouth downward. Crap. Drunk Brooks, just what I needed.

“Friend of yours?” Dennis asked.

I nodded and bolted to the back of the store, trying to get to Brooks before he got any closer to Dennis. Brooks wrapped his arms around me in an awkward hug when I reached him, leaning in to me for support.

“You've been drinking,” I said in a low voice.

He grabbed my cheeks and dropped a sloppy kiss on my lips. I sputtered and stepped back. He'd apparently been bathing in peppermint schnapps.

“Detention without a flask is like a fish without a bicycle . . . or something,” he slurred.

I snorted. “If you're gonna quote Gloria Steinem, get it right.” I yanked his arm from around me and dragged him toward the back door. “Be right back, Dennis,” I called over my shoulder.

Dennis shook his head and went back to barking orders at Ricardo.

I pushed Brooks out the door into the back alley. He stumbled a few times before steadying himself on my shoulder.

“You were in detention like this?”

“They didn't even notice.” He tripped and landed hard on his ass. I stood with my hands on my hips.

“What are you doing here?”

He stayed on the ground. “I had detention.”

“No, what are you doing here? At my work?”

He gave me a crooked smile, but I didn't react. “I told you I'd see you in school. But I didn't, couldn't find you, so I came for you.”

“Where's your car? You didn't drive here, did you?”

“No. It's at school.”

Well, there was that at least. “You're pathetic. Who gets wasted at Monday detention?”

A strange look crossed his face, but then he grinned again. “Me. Apparently. You want some?” He pulled a flask out of his back pocket. It had a flamenco dancer on it and seemed almost feminine. I stifled a groan.

“I'm working until six. And even if I weren't, I'm not drinking on a Monday afternoon. I have to go home to my family.”

As soon as I said the words, I regretted them. Brooks flinched and pushed himself off the ground. “My mistake. I'll see you.”

He turned his back on me and tottered forward. Part of me wanted to stop him, sober him up, and take him home. But the other part of me, the bigger part, was too overwhelmed to deal with any of his shit. He walked away, zigzagging across the sidewalk, and I returned to Ricardo and Dennis.

•  •  •

I didn't get home until almost eight. Dennis got this idea to hang pumpkin lights all over the store and had us try all these different arrangements before he made up his mind to scrap it
and stick to just decorating the front window. Ricardo asked if I wanted to go for pizza, but I turned him down. I was still smarting from the disappointment of Brooks's drunken appearance.