KING(88)

“Fuck this shit man,” Preppy said, standing up. “I gotta go get the last of my shit from my stepdad’s. I’ll be back. Feel free to laugh at my f*cking expense while I’m gone, shitheads.”

“You want me to go with you?” I asked.

“Nah, I got this shit. It’s past nine. Fucker’s either at the bar or passed out on the couch. I’ll be back in an hour.”

Preppy never talked about it, but I was sure that his stepdad was still beating him up until the day he moved out. He was always slightly limping or clutching his ribs. When I asked him if he was okay, he usually told me he was working out. “Nah man, did chest today, hurts like a bitch when you do it right.” He was a shit liar, but his pride was all he had besides me and Bear. Although we joked around with him, the last thing we wanted was for Preppy to be hurting at the hands of some drunken *.

When I hadn’t heard from Preppy for two hours, I got on my bike and peddled over to the trailer park his stepdad wasted his life away in. As soon as I parked my bike, I heard a commotion inside.

“Prep?” I called out. No response.

“FUCK YOU!” I heard Prep roar from inside. His high-pitched voice cracking with his strained scream. With one kick, I knocked in the flimsy door.

What I saw beyond it would haunt my dreams for years to come.

His stepdad, Tim, had Prep bent over the end of the old corduroy couch, thrusting furiously into him while holding a pistol to his temple. When I sent the door flying into the room, he turned his attention my way, along with his pistol. Preppy turned and knocked him on his side, the gun slid across the floor. Preppy lunged for it but his jeans, which were still wrapped around his ankles, caused him to trip and fall forward against the wall.

“Get the f*ck out of here, boy. You two think you’re better than this place? Well, you’re f*cking wrong. I was teaching Samuel here a lesson. He belongs here. He ain’t no better than me and needs to know it.”

I kicked over empty beer cans and made my way to the gun. It was the first time in my life I remember seeing red. Seeing red isn’t just a saying, I found out. My vision was tinted the color of the rage boiling inside my veins. I flexed my fingers. My joints itched with the need to release the pressure building within my bones. I wanted to hurt him, but the want was secondary to the need to hurt him.

“What, are you gonna do? Fucking shoot me?” Tim asked, sitting up against the kitchen cabinets. Pushing off the floor, he went to stand, but before he could, I raised the gun and knocked him in the temple with the butt. Tim went flying across the tiny kitchen, landing head first into the door of the refrigerator.

“Fucking shoot him!” Preppy called out, righting his jeans. Blood dripped from his nose. His cheek was already yellow and purple. Apparently, he’d taken one hell of a beating before Tim decided that anal rape was a more appropriate way to teach the kid a lesson.

“So, you’re gonna beat me, kid? Is that it? Gonna teach me a lesson now, boy?” Tim looked up at me from the floor.

“No,” I said, an eerie calm washing over me. The rage took a kind of precision-like control over my actions. “I’m not going to teach you shit.”

Fear registered in Tim’s beady little eyes.

“Then what, boy? You gonna call the cops? Cause I know the cops round here. They ain’t gonna do shit!”

“No,” I said, taking a step toward him, the gun in my still hand pointed toward the floor.

“Then, what the f*ck, boy? You gonna kill me?” Tim laughed nervously until he saw the affirmative look in my face.

I raised the gun, aimed it at Tim’s forehead, and fired.

“Yes.”





Chapter Twenty-Seven




Doe


The only time King spoke to me in the days following Preppy’s death was to ask me to go into Preppy’s room to find something I thought he would like to be buried in. At least, that is what I took from the grunting and nodding that he’d been using in place of actual words. King was hurting, and I couldn’t do anything to make it go away.

I’d never been in Preppy’s room before, and when I opened the door, I noticed that his room was huge, much bigger than King’s. Preppy had the master bedroom. The room was neat and tidy but full of random things. Shelves of books, video games, action figures, and knickknacks of all kinds.

On his dresser was a single picture. A selfie of the three of us. He’d taken it one morning when he rushed into King’s room and bounced on the bed to wake us up, which he did frequently. King and I were on either side of him, tangled hair and half–asleep. King was covering his eyes.