CREW (Crew #1)

Chapter Three

I walked past the motorcycles on the front lawn, knowing the house would be unlocked.

What I didn’t know was whether my brother would be home. It was Sunday night, his night off from the bar, but that didn’t always mean he’d be here. He kept a random schedule, coming in and leaving at odd hours. I was usually okay if he was gone, but not because he was a bad guy. He was just an absent guy, had been most my life.

I stepped inside and quietly shut the door. I held my breath, waiting, listening. No lights were on, but I smelled smoke as it wafted past me on a breeze. The back patio door stood open. I crossed to the kitchen and stood at the sink. They weren’t on the patio, but I saw the fire pit lit up, and a second later, Heather’s voice drifted to me on another breeze.

“…can’t blame her. She’s a senior this year.”

My brother’s girlfriend, or his on-again-off-again-whatever-the-f**k-they-were-doing-childhood-sweethearts-girlfriend, sat forward in her lawn chair.

My brother, Channing, sat next to her, tipping his beer back as he spoke. “Give me a break. She should be home and you know it.”

It was just the two of them.

They were talking about me. Even now, knowing that, I let some of the darkness sneak back in. When I felt it, it pushed all the other emotions away. I felt some peace, but I knew it’d come at a cost. There was always a cost. The darkness was there for a reason. I wasn’t an i***t. I knew I was messed up, but I couldn’t help it sometimes. Or like now, I welcomed it. The firefly had left me on the walk home. I loved feeling the buzz of its wing next to me again.

I turned and sat, my back against the cupboard beneath the kitchen sink.

Eyes closed.

Head down.

I listened to them.

A lawn chair creaked. A bottle clanked against another one. Then came the swish sound of another bottle being opened.

“She’s my sister, Heather. You act like I shouldn’t worry about her.”

A frustrated sigh. “That’s not my issue. I’m just saying, you’re forgetting how we were at that age. We ran wild. The s**t we did, f**k. You want your sister to act like some normal kid, and there’s no way she can. Not with all that’s happened to her. You need to be realistic.”

“Thanks,” he clipped out.

“Your mom died when she was so young, and your dad went to prison. Max died a few years ago. Give her time.”

“It’s been two years.”

“She lost her parents, her half-brother, and she had to move out of the house she grew up in.”

“f*****g bank. I offered to pay the rest of that mortgage. Asshole had a stick up his ass.”

“Channing.” Her voice was soft and soothing. “You can’t blame yourself.”

“Yeah.” Glass shattered. “I could’ve been around more. I know that much.”

It was the same conversation I always heard from them.

My brother blamed himself—for what I had no idea. I didn’t blame him for his absence. Hell, half the time I was jealous of him. I wish I could’ve disappeared like he had when he was growing up. He spent most his time from eighth grade until he got his own house on someone else’s couch. I would’ve done that too, if I could’ve. I’d been too young.

Heather half consoled him, but she was always frustrated too. I could hear it in her voice. It was in everything, actually, even the way she walked around the house. Some days I wished she would move in, but part of me was scared of the day it happened—because when that happened, something else would happen. I didn’t know what, but I always felt it. I carried it around in my stomach.

The relationship between Heather and me was half because of that. We were half friends. We were half not-friends. We were half present, half not-present. Half haunted, half alive. Or wait, maybe that was just me? But Heather averted her eyes when we talked to each other sometimes, and she avoided having conversations with me in the first place. But other times, she was in my face, eyes blazing with fierce determination. I was never sure which Heather I would get, but I knew it wasn’t me or her. It was the question of her relationship with Channing. I got it. I did. I could sympathize somewhat.

I generally avoided everything.

Heather was nice. She loved my brother, but I was in the way. They couldn’t have a normal relationship because of me.

A part of me ached at the thought. Who was I to stand in their way? But this brought me back to the conversations they always had:

I would be out.

Channing would grumble.

Heather would comfort.

And when I overheard, I’d always wonder: why didn’t they just let me go? Why did my brother keep trying to play the part of father/parent/big brother extraordinaire? It wasn’t a role that suited him.

He was a legend.

He was a fighter.

He ran his own crew.

The domestic look was not something he wore well. I agreed with Heather on this part.

He hadn’t been around when it was just my dad and me. Our half-brother was never around, or hardly. He was kept with his mother most our life. Channing started his own crew in high school—the whole reason the system was created. And when he graduated, he started working right away. He took over my dad’s bar two years ago, and he made it better. He brought in our cousin, and they made it a success. And he’d been fighting at events the whole time. He talked about retiring, but I never knew if that was a wish, like he was wishing to become an adult? Or he was wishing he didn’t have a teenage sister to take care of? Or he was wishing for his old life again?

Like that.

Maybe fighting was his way of coping? I didn’t understand that either.

It wasn’t like he and my dad had been close.

Channing was like our mom, and when she died, it was like he went with her. He left the family. I mean, I saw him around town and at parties sometimes—until he either kicked me out or had my guys and me kicked out. He said we were all too young.

Jordan was relieved when Channing stopped attending the same parties we did, and we had learned to avoid him at the bigger parties.

The Roussou scene was different than other towns.

People didn’t leave. Or if they did, they weren’t in the system, and those people—the Normals—didn’t really exist to us anyway. In the crew system, we’re all part of a big, f****d-up extended family, no matter the age.

“I’m going to get a refill.” Heather’s chair groaned. “You want more beer?”

That was my cue.

I stood and slipped down the hallway to my bedroom just as the patio screen door opened.

Then the refrigerator opened, lighting up the kitchen and dining room.

I grabbed my backpack and returned to the hallway. I paused, listening as Heather opened some bottles, pouring into a cup. I smelled rum. Bottles clinked together, and then the fridge door shut.

The inside of the house fell into darkness again.

The screen door opened and closed.

As I heard her footsteps going over the patio, down to the backyard, I slipped out the front door again.