Purple Hearts(13)

Luke


I opened my eyes to the Bronco’s ceiling, head throbbing. The interior smelled like sweat and cough medicine.

I’d met Johnno at a party at his house four years ago. When all the gin and whiskey bottles ran dry, he had started handing out pills. He was one of those kids who were always on the Austin Community College campus, but never in class. No one knew how old he was. The day after the party, I’d come back for more. And the day after that.

He’d never asked for money, only that I ride with him to someone’s house, or play him in Fallout, or answer the door when cops came. Our friendship had turned sour when I tried to go back to school. He’d pull his gun on me when I told him I was going to class, then joke about it later, after we’d snorted more pills.

That’s the kind of asshole he was. Pure chaos. And I was back in the epicenter. I sat up.

Before I could register Johnno next to me in the backseat, he landed another blow to the back of the head. My nose ground into the seat in front of me, spotted with grease and sprinklings of white powder. He was holding the back of my head in place.

“You thought you’d just lay low for a couple of months and get out without paying for all the shit you dumped? You don’t answer my calls,” Johnno muttered, digging his long nails into my neck. “You getting smart, motherfucker?”

I said nothing, even as his nails broke my skin and involuntary tears leaked from my eyes.

Kaz’s pink cotton torso loomed in the periphery, one hand on the wheel, the other scrolling through his phone. He sighed, bored.

Johnno pressed my face harder into the seat. “If you don’t talk, I’m gonna take you out and curb stomp you.”

Kaz made a sound like a snort, still not looking up from his phone.

“I’ve been in training,” I said, trying not to shake.

“One night we’re having a good time, watching The Wire, then you disappear and get on a boat to Afghanistan.”

Kaz let out another snort. “Afghanistan on a boat. Motherfucker, do you know where Afghanistan is?”

“Man, fuck you, Kaz,” Johnno muttered, and suddenly his mouth was close to my cheek, stinking of menthol. “Ten.”

“What? No.”

“Five for all the shit you threw out, five for interest.”

I blinked against the fabric, trying to ignore the throbbing behind my eyes. “How much does Tim want?”

“No, you don’t talk to Tim. You talk to me.” Out of the corner of my vision, I could see Johnno put his other hand to his lap, where the gun was tucked.

“Let me up,” I said as calmly as I could. “I’m not going to pull anything, Johnno.”

“Do not fuck with me,” Johnno said, his voice tense and high.

I rose with my palms open, near my shoulders. Nothing. I got nothing. I’m not a threat. A thought flashed. I wonder if he would give me a bump. Just to get through this.

No. Stay here. Stay straight. “I don’t have the money,” I said.

“No shit,” he said. “So you have a week to get it.”

My palms became fists. “What the fuck, dude?”

“You got some vision while you were balls-deep high and wiped out my supply, dumbass. Just because you were feeling righteous one night.”

I had flushed it down his toilet while he was in Orlando. He had returned home to no pills, all my stuff gone, and a vague note I had written, something like, I’m okay, I’m just never coming back.

Johnno pounded the seat. “Return to Earth.”

I stuttered, glancing at the piece. “Yeah, b-but a week? You couldn’t have pushed that much in six months. Is Tim after you?”

“That’s none of your fucking business.”

That meant yes. This was the same answer Johnno had given me back when we shot the shit on the futon, and I had asked him if Tasha, the girl he was seeing, had broken up with him. None of your fucking business, bro, he’d said, his upper lip twitching.

Still, it didn’t add up. I opened my hands again, trying to sound casual. “Five K is nothing to what Tim makes. What’s the rush?”

Kaz cleared his throat, eyes still on his phone.

And then I realized. “You got yourself into some other shit, didn’t you?” Someone was after him, too. So he thought he’d shift the load.

Instead of answering, Johnno reached for the cup holder, grabbed a bottle of Sprite, and took a swig. Johnno had always drunk Sprite like it was water.

With a jerk he palmed my head and whacked it with the butt of the gun, Sprite spreading in the air like a fountain. Pain streaked through my nerves, my teeth, my spine.

“I need more time,” I slurred, lemon-lime pop in my eyes. “I’m serious. You can kill me but I don’t have it.”

“If you don’t have it, I’ll come for your family, too.”

I broke out in a cold sweat. “What am I supposed to do?”

Johnno chugged the rest of the bottle. “Not my problem.”

“Half in three months,” I said, blinking against the knives in my skull. “Half when I get back.”

“Fine.”

I tried not to shake. Johnno spit out the crack of the window. Kaz pressed a button to unlock the doors, and I staggered out, dripping blood.

The squeak of a door opening sounded from across the street, and my breath caught. Jake stepped out on his stoop. JJ’s little blond head poked out from behind him.