Chapter 44 Prayer
Prayer
I’m being pulled away from Oscar, pulled away from his lips. Nash has grabbed me by the shirt collar, and he tosses me violently onto my side. My glasses fly off of my face, but I manage to grab them before they roll too far away.
I put my glasses back on and look up. Nash, survival knife in hand, stands over Oscar, who has his hands pressing down against the cut in his stomach. Approaching all of us quickly are Nikolai and Tate.
Nikolai points at Oscar. “This is the boy? This is the boy who stabbed me in the neck? Who almost killed me?”
Nash nods. “Yes.”
“You didn’t finish him,” says Nikolai.
Nash kneels down. “He got away.”
“Finish him,” Nikolai insists.
Nash is shaking. He might be a drug dealer, and he might be an integral part of Nikolai’s operation, but it’s clear that hurting people, killing people, is not in his job description.
But despite all that, Nash says, “Okay.”
Dear God:
We both know that I’m not that religious. Hell, I’m not religious at all. I’m not even sure if you exist. But just in case you do, I’m going to use this moment to say a few things to you.
I know I’ve done some bad things. Really bad things.
Secretly recording my brother. Posting his videos on a porn site to make money.
Also invading his girlfriend’s privacy. Intending to post videos of her too.
Luring guys online with dirty talk and perverse promises so that they would give me even more money.
The whole time I was doing it, I knew it was wrong. I tried to justify it by saying that I had a shitty family. My parents were dicks, and Nash didn’t act brotherly. I felt so alone in a house full of people. I know now there is no justification for my actions.
I also tried to make up for it by being a nice person, buying people things, acting like an all-around good guy. But I guess all that wasn’t enough to absolve me.
So I understand I’m now being punished for it. The awful part is not so much me getting hurt. But people all around me, people I care about, getting hurt. That’s the worse thing about this punishment. I do wrong, and it’s other people who are most affected.
Please forgive me for what I have done. I will go to confession and admit my sins. I will say sorry to Nash and Alessandra a million times. I will give them all the money I made. I will never do anything like this ever again. I promise.
But perhaps my greatest wrongdoing is not valuing my own life. I know suicide is a mortal sin in the eyes of the Catholic Church, the church most of my family belongs to. And here I’ve been, playing around with suicidal thoughts like they were nothing.
I’ve hated myself so much for being gay. But now I see that it’s been one of my greatest blessings. Because of my homosexuality, I am able to experience a very special, a very profound, love towards Oscar.
For the longest time, I was obsessed with my brother.
Originally, I had thought it was because he was so handsome and charismatic.
But what I was actually drawn to was this false image of his goodness, his perfection.
Of course, all of that was a lie. When that image dropped away, I finally began to recognize real goodness.
I’m finally seeing Oscar for who he really is.
Yes, Oscar can be a clown and rough around the edges and “unenlightened” in certain areas.
But he’s learning. We’re all learning. His authentic self, what’s in his heart, eclipses all of that.
I will right my wrongs. I will value my own life.
Please let Oscar live, dear God. Please.
Amen.
“Don’t you fucking dare!”
I turn my head, and I see Manny standing on the sidewalk, a gun in his hand, aimed directly at Nash. Behind him are Carlos and Blanca, holding things they probably found in the trash bins of other houses: a discarded ceramic dish and an empty bottle of wine.
Nash, hunched over Oscar, doesn’t move.
“You might think I’m too far to hit you,” says Manny, “but you’ve never seen me shoot before.”
“His aim is like a sniper, yo,” says Carlos.
Nikolai, who isn’t armed (Tate isn’t either), raises his palms in the air. “Everybody calm down. You go through all this trouble to save this little boy? Why go through all this trouble? Leave him to us.”
“That’s not going to happen, bro,” Manny says, taking a few steps forward.
“Fine,” says Nikolai. “We let him go tonight. But you know this is not over. We will just come to get him again tomorrow or the next day or the next. You get in our way, we hurt you. We hurt everyone you love. We keep coming back again and again. We will not stop until this boy is dead. And you can shoot us all down now. Kill us all. But we die, there are so many more who will come in our place. We are not the only ones. You think it’s just us.
You are actually fighting a whole army. You will lose. So leave us the boy.”
“Get up, Oscar,” Manny commands. “Get over here.”
Oscar manages to get onto his hands and knees.
Nash says to me, “Hunter, Nikolai is not shitting you. You may buy another night. You’re safe now. But this is far from over. We’re coming after you.”
“No, you’re not,” I say. “You, Nikolai, Nikolai’s people. You’re not going to touch Oscar or me or anyone we know. This ends tonight.”
Nikolai laughs. “I like little brother. He is very funny.”
I pull out Carlos’s cell phone from my pocket. I look at Patricia’s response to my earlier text to her. She writes: “It’s all done. I followed your instructions exactly.”
I exhale, relieved.
“You’re not going to beat Nikolai,” says Nash. “Nikolai doesn’t get beat.”
I stand up. “Nikolai has already been beat. All of you have.”
I remove the glasses from my face.
Nash cocks his head. He knows something’s not right. “When did you start wearing glasses?”
“Before I started playing around with spy cams in our bathroom and in your bedroom,” I say, “I played around with different types of spy cams. Like the one hidden in this pair of glasses. I’ve been recording tonight.
When I was at your kitchen window, my camera caught everything on video.
I recorded Tate talking about how he kidnapped Oscar and handcuffed him.
I recorded you talking about dealing and smuggling drugs.
But best of all, I recorded Nikolai talking about how he shot that cop in Riverside.
That’s been a big news story. Everybody wants justice.
And I’m recording all of you right now, every threat you’ve made out here. ”
Nash lunges for the glasses—but he doesn’t get far because Carlos throws the dish like a Frisbee and Blanca chucks the wine bottle. The dish slams into Nash’s stomach, where his stab wound is, and the bottle hits his forehead. He falls hard on the ground. He writhes around.
“You want these glasses?” I toss the glasses at Nash.
“I don’t need them any more. You can have them.
The camera in those glasses is connected to the internet using a Wi-Fi hotspot on Carlos’s phone.
So the camera was able to upload all that footage to an old cloud storage account of mine.
I had someone make sure it was still working, and it was, and they took tonight’s video footage and duplicated it on several cloud storage accounts and also put it on multiple flash drives that a couple of other people have hidden in physical locations all over. ”
(Patricia, Darin, and Henry have helped me do all of this.)
I send a partial video clip to Nash’s phone. “Take a look if you don’t believe me.”
Nash crawls toward Nikolai. Nikolai kneels down. The two of them watch the video.
Nikolai looks at me and nods. “Impressive, little brother.”
I say, “You touch Oscar, those flash drives go to the police. You touch me, those flash drives go to the police. You touch anyone here or any of our friends or families or acquaintances, those flash drives go to the police. You can come after me and you can try to torture me to tell you where all those drives are, but the moment anyone detects that something’s happened to me those flash drives go to the police.
If you leave us alone, we leave you alone. ”
I savor the look on both Nikolai and Nash’s faces. They know I’ve gotten the best of them.
I grab hold of Oscar and pull him onto his feet. We back away from the house, until we’re surrounded by Blanca, Carlos, and Manny.
Nash, Nikolai, and Tate look small against all those Christmas lights and decorations.
Within seconds, Oscar, the siblings, and I are all piled in my car. Oscar is lying across Blanca’s and Carlos’s laps in the backseat, moaning in pain. Blanca and Carlos use their hands to press down on Oscar’s stomach. There’s so much blood.
I’m heading to the hospital as fast as I can.
“Thank you,” I say to the three siblings. “You saved our lives.”
“That’s why we came,” says Manny.
“How did you know I was in trouble?”
Manny chuckles. “We weren’t going to just sit and wait in your car like a bunch of bitches. We hid out, a few houses down, and we kept watch.”
Oscar releases a bloodcurdling scream.
“We’re almost there, Oscar!” I yell.
“I don’t want to die,” says Oscar.
I ask, “You wanna live, right?”
“I wanna live,” says Oscar.
“You are,” I say. “You are.”