13. Deck - Age 18 #2
“Deck—” She paused. “I’m glad I ran into you. So I can thank you…for yesterday.” She folded her arms over her chest. “Johnny was pretty out of it. He talked a lot while I cleaned him up.” I wanted to interrupt, tell her I needed to hurry, but there was obvious alarm in her tone.
“What did he say?”
“Nothing that made much sense, honestly. But from what I could tell, it sounds like you guys are in real trouble.”
Cori fixed her gaze on me. I’d worked so hard to keep our shit from touching her. She knew her brother used, but with the rest of it, we’d drawn a line. Cori had too much going for her. Even with her mom and everything else. She needed to be protected from all the stuff we’d gotten mixed up in.
After the night I’d fallen asleep in her lap, I’d tried to get rid of her hold on me.
That conversation had cut too close. I avoided being alone with her and stopped asking her for help with my classes.
I even gave in and lost my virginity to one of Chi-chi’s hangarounds.
It had felt good for ten seconds, but it hadn’t done the trick of getting my mind off Johnny’s sister.
I slept with two more girls before finally admitting that I wouldn’t be able to fuck Cori out of my system.
My desire for her was soul-deep. Being around her sometimes, even if it meant not having her, was better than nothing.
Avoiding her had been nearly impossible anyway.
Our worlds were too intertwined. During the past few months, we’d established a rhythm where I didn’t actively seek her out, but I allowed myself to soak up every minute I was near her.
Every chance encounter at school, with Johnny, or when she came to my house to watch Marisol.
I knew it was wrong to hold on to those feelings. She wasn’t mine to dream about. I should have worked harder to stay away. Because now, inevitably, I’d brought the shit directly to her doorstep.
“Cori—”
“Johnny said you owe Chi-chi. What does that mean? What the hell are you and my brother mixed up in, Deck?”
I stared into her stormy eyes.
I’d caused that. The regret bubbled up again. But I didn’t have time for it.
“Listen.” I clapped my hands in front of my chest in a praying gesture. “Johnny was out of his mind yesterday… But he’s not wrong. We had a misunderstanding with Chi-chi. Cruz is trying to fix it now, but in the meantime, is your brother at home?”
“Probably, but why? What do you mean ‘a misunderstanding’?”
“I promise I’ll explain it all soon, but right now, I really need to go find Eliazar.”
“Eliazar? Is he okay?”
“I hope so. That’s what I’m trying to make sure of. Because Chi-chi’s not fucking around.”
Cori’s face changed. Even with a bright future ahead of her, she’d still grown up here. She knew how quickly the situation could spin out when you dealt with guys like Chi-chi. “What can I do?”
I put my hands on her shoulders, which she’d squared into steel. “You said Johnny’s at your house?”
“He should be, yeah.”
“You need to find him and tell him he needs to leave. It’s the first place Chi-chi will look. He needs to hide. The dumpster was Chi-chi putting him on notice. Understand?”
Her eyes widened. I could tell she wanted to ask questions, but she didn’t. “Let me run in and say goodbye to Marisol and your parents—they’ll get suspicious if I don’t—then I’ll go home and make my dumbass brother go to Rosa’s. He’ll fight me on it, but I’ll get it done.”
Dios , she was spectacular.
“Thank you. If you can do that for Johnny, I can concentrate on helping Eliazar.”
“I’ll handle it.”
She bit her lower lip and shifted her weight, knitting her brows as her expression fought with itself.
Without warning, she threw her arms around me, pressing her face hotly into my neck.
I shivered as her lips skimmed over my pulse.
Looping my arms around her waist, I pulled her tight against me, leaning into her embrace.
Cori was in my arms. At last. Where I’d wanted her to be for years. And even with all the shit around us, it felt right. Her breath on my neck. Like truth and home and safety. For precious seconds, she squeezed, and I held on, burning the memory into my brain.
Finally, she stepped away. “Be careful, Deck.”
As Cori ran into my house , I thought about my next move. Meaning I thought about Sebastian Roccio.
And the three things I knew about him.
First, Bash had been rolling with Chi-chi for as long as anyone could remember.
I’d never quite been able to make out if he was Chi-chi’s muscle or just one of his boys, but he was always around.
Second, Bash hardly ever talked. I’d heard him order food, pass a joint, and tell someone to look at his phone, but he mostly communicated with grunts and hard stares.
And the third thing I knew about Bash was that he wanted to fuck Eliazar.
At the beginning of the school year, Eliazar got into a relationship with some guy who lived in Seattle. I was pretty sure they’d met on an app, but Eliazar never talked about the men he was with, especially not after the douche kit incident.
When he started dating Seattle Guy, he kept it separate from us, just as he’d always done.
I never met the dude, but I once saw Eliazar get into his car—a shiny black Acura that attracted a lot of attention when he parked it across the street from the high school.
Pretty soon, it was all over that Eliazar had a boyfriend, and the talk was too much for his parents to bear.
They had gone to church nearly every day and prayed for their boy’s soul, but somehow, he was still gay.
After that Acura had cruised through the neighborhood a few times, they kicked Eliazar out of the house.
He stayed with his boyfriend at first, but then they broke up. Apparently, Seattle Guy liked showing off his hood Latino boyfriend to his yuppie-ass friends, but not enough to share space on the daily.
The cabrón also accelerated Eliazar’s meth habit. Eliazar had been dabbling since we first started going to Chi-chi’s parties, but the boyfriend was a fiend, and he helped turn my friend into a full-blown addict.
We tried to help. Eliazar mostly stayed with Cruz, since his pops was never around, or Johnny, since his mom barely noticed anything. He couldn’t stay with my family because they’d ask too many questions. Wherever he slept, we made sure he ate and got to school most days.
But we couldn’t stop him with the meth. He’d disappear and come back strung out and quiet. Tell me he missed Seattle Guy. That he didn’t see the point of graduating. Didn’t see the point of anything. Then he’d get high again and be happy for a minute.
Cori mostly stayed out of our shit, but she wasn’t totally ignorant.
Once Eliazar started crashing at her house, she asked Rosa for help.
Rosa had a soft spot for Eliazar since he’d gone to the Center until middle school.
Rosa spoke with Eliazar’s parents, but they refused to budge since Eliazar was eighteen.
They even threw Rosa’s “roommate” Lupe in her face. Assholes .
Cori also had to bear the burden of her brother. Johnny wasn’t as bad as Eliazar yet, but he was on that path.
Both our friends had been spiraling for months. Cruz and I didn’t know what to do, other than keep rescuing them.
Keep dragging Johnny out of dumpsters.
And keep Bash off Eliazar.
The four of us had been pulling small jobs for Chi-chi over the past year.
Small because Chi-chi wasn’t a big-time gangster, just a neighborhood king with grand ambitions.
I dealt MDMA at clubs with Johnny and Eliazar.
Cruz used his car to run hot merchandise to Seattle and Portland.
The jobs didn’t happen often, and I didn’t mind the extra cash in my pocket.
But we still had some sense. We refused whenever Chi-chi asked us to move real product, knowing it wasn’t worth the risk.
Except deep down, I’d known Chi-chi wouldn’t take no for an answer forever.
A few weeks ago, Chi-chi summoned the four of us to his house to talk business.
Leaving Johnny and Eliazar on the couch, Chi-chi took Cruz and me into the kitchen.
He had a job in mind. A big one. He’d been “babying” us for years, he said, and it was time to man up.
He told us how much Johnny and Eliazar owed him, saying if Cruz and I didn’t do what he wanted, he’d be forced to make our friends pay.
Despite the sinister gleam in his eyes, Chi-chi immediately acted like he hadn’t threatened us, insisting we stay and hang out. “We’ll get to an understanding, bruh.” He slung his beefy arm around my shoulders, squeezing too tight. “ Te relajas, vato. No hablamos de chamba .”
Cruz and I knew we needed to get the hell out of that house, but we had to play it smart. We sat down on the couches where five of Chi-chi’s boys were already chilling with Johnny and Eliazar, passing a bong.
Half an hour went by. Chi-chi’s friends turned on Mario Kart .
The game noise competed with the wet slosh of the bong water as the dark green cylinder got handed around.
I took a hit but was still as tense as I’d ever been.
I’d never wanted to leave a room more. But we needed to stay cool.
Making an enemy of Chi-chi was a bad idea.
Then one of Chi-chi’s friends made a shitty comment to Eliazar, asking like a perv whether an asshole felt as good as a pussy.
Eliazar’s face went red, and Chi-chi’s boys laughed like it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard.
I restrained Cruz with a firm hand on his thigh.
“We can’t win,” I muttered under my breath.
His eyes darkened, but he remained seated.
Suddenly, Bash piped up from the corner, “I want to try.”
Slivers of light creeping in through the tightly drawn curtains highlighted the smoke swirling above us.
“What’d you say, cuz?” Chi-chi drawled. “You want a hit?”
“No.” Bash licked his lips and took a step forward to where I sat pinned together with my friends on the couch. “I want to try Eliazar.”
Cruz’s hands balled up at Bash’s flat tone. His nostrils flared.
A few of the guys laughed again, but there was a hint of confusion in it.
“What do you mean?” Chi-chi asked Bash, chuckling menacingly. “You maricón now?”
Bash shrugged. He kept his gaze on Eliazar but spoke to Chi-chi. “I’m whatever. And he’s…pretty.”
I wondered briefly if Chi-chi had invited us over with the intention to let Bash have a go at Eliazar to force our hand. But Chi-chi seemed as surprised by Bash’s words as we were.
Pure fury radiated from Cruz. Again, I put my hand on his knee. Chi-chi had Bash plus five other guys here. Johnny was so high he’d practically passed out.
Eliazar shrank into Cruz’s other side.
I’d heard rumors that Eliazar traded blow jobs for meth sometimes even though he’d denied it when I asked him directly. But even if my friend was tricking, he would never extend that offer to Bash. Or any of Chi-chi’s guys.
Bash must have heard the rumors, too, because the next second, he directed his eyes to Eliazar and said loudly, “I’ll pay.”
An eerie quiet fell over the room. All of us were some degree of fucked up, and I didn’t know how much the others were processing.
But Chi-chi had told me and Cruz an hour ago that he’d been floating product to Eliazar and Johnny for months.
He’d demanded Cruz make a special delivery for him.
If Cruz didn’t agree, then Chi-chi would get payment from Johnny and Eliazar. One way or another.
Chi-chi gave Cruz and me a dead-eyed grin. He pointed at the hallway. “First bedroom’s free.”
Eliazar pressed his compact frame against Cruz. “Um…no…no thank you.” His voice was small. Scared. His jaw quivered, and I could hear his teeth clanking together.
Cruz stood, holding Eliazar against himself. “He’s not interested.” Cruz glanced side to side as though daring someone to disagree. “We’re leaving.” I jumped up too, shaking a strung-out Johnny to awareness.
Bash made a move like he might try to stop us, but a subtle headshake from Chi-chi held him back.
In the entryway, Cruz said, “You’ll get your money. We’ll figure it out. Then we’re even.”
Cruz spoke with bravado, but everyone in that room knew the four of us were only getting out of there because Chi-chi allowed it.
Chi-chi rushed ahead of us and opened the door in an exaggerated motion.
He leered at Eliazar. “If you ever want to take Bash up on his offer, you let me know, eh, guapo .” He brushed the hair off Eliazar’s forehead, chuckling when Eliazar flinched.
“Shit. Maybe I should try you myself. A mouth’s a mouth, right? ” He grabbed his crotch.
Vomit threatened in my throat. Next to me, Cruz vibrated.
“Like we said, you’ll get your money,” I reiterated.
Chi-chi laughed and stepped back. “Maybe so, muchacho . Maybe so.” We walked out the door into the light, which felt punishingly bright. “But just so you know—” His tone turned to ice. “I don’t care what you do. I’m the one who decides when we’re even.”
That was less than three weeks ago.
Since then, Cruz and I had talked in circles about how to get the money. Four grand, Chi-chi said. There was no way Johnny and Eliazar had smoked, snorted, or shot that much product, but it wasn’t like we could argue.
We didn’t have the money. Even if Cruz sold his car, we couldn’t get that much.
But letting Chi-chi fuck Johnny up or having Bash take the payment out of Eliazar’s ass was out of the question.
We were brothers. No matter that our brothers were messed-up little meth heads right now, we couldn’t let them down.
A few days ago, I’d considered coming clean with my parents, seeing if there was a way for them to help. But then we’d gotten the call that I wasn’t going to graduate, and I knew I couldn’t do that to them.
Dios . How did things ever get this fucked up?
Cruz and I had assumed Chi-chi wanted the money more than he wanted to make a power play.
But based on Cruz’s texts to me just now, as well as Johnny’s adventure in dumpster diving, we’d miscalculated.
Forcing Cruz to make that run was apparently worth more to Chi-chi than four grand.
There had never been a choice. Chi-chi would still fuck up Johnny and give Eliazar to Bash, just to remind us who was in charge.
I trusted Cori to get Johnny somewhere safe. And it sounded like Cruz had already made up his mind to do the job. My focus now was on saving Eliazar.
Thank fuck I could track his phone.
I checked the app.
Eliazar was at Chi-chi’s house.