Chapter 16 Loyalty
Loyalty
After Mr. Hilton goes into his house and closes the door behind him, Blanca and I walk back towards Victor’s car. Victor and Oscar are talking to each other, laughing.
I’m still kind of shaken up by the whole incident with the police officer, so I don’t know how these guys can be acting normal again so quickly.
Oscar says, “And she was all like, ‘Gimme your badge number!’”
“Like she would know what to do with it!” Victor says.
Blanca starts laughing too. “See that bitch run inside her house?”
Oscar imitates Mrs. Prentiss looking offended and running. “Her face looked like she just took a shit!”
They all keep laughing.
Then, Oscar looks at me. “Damn, Hunter, what’s the matter?”
“That was intense,” I say. “How can you all laugh it off like this?”
Oscar turns to Victor and Blanca and says, “Hunter is so white.”
Victor nods. “Asimismo, asere.”
Blanca says, “Neta, wey.”
Oscar then says to me, “You live in this rich, white neighborhood, so you don’t have to deal with police rolling up on you.
But if you live where me and Victor and Blanca live, we deal with bullshit like this all the time.
It’s a thing. Like going to the grocery store or getting your hair cut.
You gotta laugh it off. Otherwise, it’d be depressing as shit. ”
“I go over to your house all the time,” I say. “I’m in your neighborhood a lot. We never get harassed by the police.”
Oscar shakes his head, “Damn, Hunter, for someone so smart, you being stupid right now. I never get harassed when I’m with you because . . . I’m with you! See? You’re my protection. You’re like my Captain America shield. Of course we’re not gonna get stopped.”
“Okay, I get it.”
Victor opens his car door. “Where were you, Hunter? Are we going to the Verizon store?”
“Hang on a second,” I say.
I pull Oscar aside, out of Victor’s and Blanca’s earshot.
“Hey,” I say, “I need to talk to you about something.”
If I’m going to go confront Nash, I need an ally. And since Oscar is my best friend, it has to be him.
I know Oscar isn’t always the brightest guy, and he can be crass and embarrassing to be around sometimes, but he’s always been a solid friend, he can be funny as hell, and he’s loyal AF.
I met Oscar back in kindergarten.
When I was five, I was smaller than most of the other boys at school, which made me an easy target for kids who needed somebody to make fun of.
My hair back then was shaggy and a bit long, so other boys would call me “Blondie” (my hair was lighter back then too) and tease me for looking like a girl.
One day, Joey Robertson and his gang surrounded me on the playground.
They threw sand at me and taunted me with words that I’ve tried to erase from my mind.
(“Little girl,” “lezzie,” “fag.”) I didn’t know what those words meant—and I’m not sure that Joey knew what they meant either—but they hurt anyway.
All of a sudden, without warning, five-year-old Oscar appeared. He yelled at Joey, “Leave him alone!” And he proceeded to swing a tree branch at the side of Joey’s face, whose ear started to bleed.
Oscar was immediately suspended from school for like a week, but when he came back we became best friends.
And as we’ve grown up, no matter how different we both have become as human beings (like, no one understands why we’re friends), our bond has remained strong.
He kept bullies away from me for the rest of elementary school.
But even after I became able to stand up for myself, he was still there for me in other ways.
When my cat, Pepper, died in sixth grade, Oscar comforted me by sitting in my room while I cried and tried to cheer me up as best he could.
When I broke my leg falling out of a tree in seventh grade, he actually carried me to the nurse’s office.
When I was overwhelmed with my upcoming written driver’s test in tenth grade, he helped me study as many nights as I asked (even though he himself failed the test three times).
And through the years, he would welcome me into his home (a small apartment below the tracks), and his mom would cook for me and him to make sure we were never hungry.
“What’s up?” Oscar asks.
“I’m in a pretty bad situation right now,” I say, “and I need your help.”
“Anything, bro.”
“I need you to come with me to see my brother. I don’t think he’s staying here this weekend, so he’s probably at school.”
“Okay, yeah, I’ll tell Victor we’re going to Pomona today.”
“No,” I say. “Just you and me. Can you get rid of Victor and Blanca?”
“Yeah, okay, man. Blanca’s gonna be mad as shit, but whatever.”
Oscar moves back to the car. Victor is in the driver’s seat. Blanca is sitting in the back.
“The hell you whispering about?” asks Blanca. “You two are like sorority girls gossiping.”
“Hey, Hunter and me have some things to take care of today. It’s urgent. Victor, can you drive Blanca home?”
“I’m not going home,” says Blanca. “Where you going?”
“It’s none of your business. Now go home.”
“This is shady as fuck right now.”
I step forward. “I’ve got a family emergency. And I really need Oscar to help me out.”
Blanca looks me up and down. Then: “Fine.” And: “As long as you don’t blow my boyfriend.”
Frankly, I’m shocked that Blanca said that.
“What’s your problem, girl?” Oscar says.
“I don’t got a problem. I’m just saying, know who your friends are. That’s all. Drive, Victor.”
Victor looks at Oscar. “Seriously though?”
Oscar nods.
Victor sighs and starts the engine. “All of you are crazy.”
“I know,” says Blanca.
“I meant you too, Blanca,” says Victor.
“Shut up, Victor!”
The car backs out of the driveway and speeds off.
Oscar and I watch them disappear.
He says, “Ignore Blanca. She’s always thinking people are fags.”
Oscar is the type of person that other people easily dismiss because he can come across as “unenlightened” by the way he talks and the way he acts.
But I don’t understand how people can just immediately reject other people like that.
Everybody is at a different place in their development as a human being.
And if you knee-jerk dismiss people, you’ll never have the opportunity to suggest a different path, like I’m going to try to do now.
I say, sincerely, to Oscar, “Hey, can you not use that word?”
“‘Fag’? Oh, right. Sorry, bro.”
“It’s just that, uh, my cousin Patricia is gay, and that’s, like, kind of offensive.”
“Yeah, yeah, sorry, I just get used to saying a thing. Like, I used to say the N-word all the time, but Darren Goodman punched me in the jaw to get me to stop. Now, even if I’m singing along with a song and that word comes up, I just move my lips to it but don’t say it out loud.
Some songs use it so much it looks like I’m a deaf-mute.
” Oscar laughs. “Anyway, maybe you can introduce your cousin to my sister. She always complaining how she doesn’t get enough pussy. ”
“Patricia is married.”
“No shit? That’s weird, to be honest, but all right. Lesbians are cool. I’m trying to convince Blanca that we should have a threesome with another girl.”
“She down with that?”
“Nah. She said I have to agree to have a threesome with another guy first, and then she’ll do it. But I don’t play that shit. She makes it sound all normal, but that’s gay as fuck.”
As interesting as this conversation is to me, I really need to shift focus back to the matter at hand.
I say, “Hey, we gotta go find Nash. Now.”
“Okay. So what’s up?”
I open my mouth to try to explain the whole situation, but I don’t even know where to begin. The murder? Their argument? My hidden camera?
“Um . . . I swear I’ll explain the whole thing later, but just let me start by saying that there’s a hidden camera in my brother’s room.”
“What?”
“I put it there.”
“Why?”
“I’ll explain later.”
“That’s weird as shit, Hunter. I mean, Alessandra is hot and everything, but if you’re doing that to see her naked that means you gotta watch your brother fuck her.”
“Never mind that, Oscar,” I say. “So there’s this camera in there, and I caught Nash doing something.”
“Oh, he’s into some freaky shit, huh? He let Alessandra shit on his chest or something?”
I shake my head.
Oscar looks at my face and realizes how serious all this is.
How do I describe this? Will he even believe me? Will he think it’s some kind of joke?
“Look,” I sigh. “I think I just have to show you.”
Besides, I need to get the video files off the cloud and onto my computer. I should also probably back everything up on a flash drive and carry it with me.
Moments later, we’re in my bedroom. I sit down at my desk and open my laptop. Oscar stands behind me.
I log into the site that stores all of the hidden camera footage in the cloud. I lean towards my screen because, at first, I’m confused. I log out and log back in again. I start to panic.
WHERE THE FUCK ARE ALL MY FILES?!
All of my video files are gone. Not only the ones from yesterday that show Nash killing Alessandra, but all the porn files as well: the videos of Nash masturbating, the videos of Nash and Alessandra having sex, everything.
“No, no, no, no, no” is all I can say.
“What’s the matter, Hunter?”
I click away from my web browser. I go to the files on my hard drive.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.”
“What?”
All of the hidden cam footage that I keep on my computer is gone. All of the edited videos that I uploaded to the porn site are gone.
My forehead is sweating.
I go back to my web browser. I navigate to the porn site.
Oscar scrunches up his face. He is very, very confused.
I try to log into my account. But the site tells me that my account under that username does not exist. I do a search for Nash’s videos. They’re not here.
“Hunter! What’s going on?!”
I can’t move. I can’t think. I can’t anything.
Then, a jolt of adrenaline seems to pump through my body. I get up.
“We need to go,” I say. “We need to go see my brother right now.”
I lead Oscar out of my bedroom. We’re rushing down the hallway when I abruptly stop.
“Wait here,” I say.
I walk back in my room and open the bottom drawer of my desk. I stare at the survival knife.
“Hunter?” I hear Oscar say from the hallway.
I think about my name. Hunter. I think about its meaning.
By instinct, I move to my laptop, navigate to a dictionary, and type in my name. The first definition reads: “a person or animal that hunts.”
I shut the laptop, grab the survival knife, fold it closed, put it in my pocket. And with a determined stride, walk out the door.