3. Kelly
3
KELLY
I f I could make it until Wednesday, this hellish week would be over. The hardest days—and nights—were when it all overlapped with little time to spare. From classes to labs then back to lectures, I was expected to be present. After all the reading and studying, then working at the admin building, and then wrapping it all up at the bar where I mostly bussed tables and acted as a dishwasher. They hired me to tend the bar, which was the only vacancy for work they had at the moment, but I liked running the dishwasher and just picking up dirty stuff instead. Other girls on the staff browbeat me away from being an actual bartender because they wanted all the tips.
I was fine with that. It gave me less of a chance of having to speak with strangers. Just me and the noisy, huge dishwasher in the back. And that was fine with me. Sure, I had to walk around the crowd and pick up glasses and whatnot, but that didn’t mean I had to actually talk to anyone.
Wednesdays were always the hardest. After a full day of classes, homework, and the student aide job, I was pooped by the time I got to the bar.
Tonight was no exception.
“Kelly!” The bartender slapped the counter and shot me a dirty look. “I thought you were bringing me more glasses!”
Nodding, I hurried toward the back to get that rack and also drop off more dirty stuff on my tray. I took the corner too fast, though, almost colliding with another bartender bringing a case of beer out.
“Hey! Watch it.”
I sighed, rushing around him and trying to keep up with the fast-paced demands. Being shouted at and ordered around didn’t faze me anymore. And I wasn’t inclined to speak up or tell them to cool it.
By the time my shift was over, though, I sat on the stool next to the rattling and steaming dishwasher and flexed my feet. These shoes were too tight, and I swore I’d work myself down to the bone if I kept up this rate of working and hurrying around.
“Oh, I can’t wait to get home and sleep,” I muttered, waiting for this last run of the dishwasher to clear.
“What?” A bartender walked by my station. She raised her brows, catching my complaint. “Did you actually say something?”
I’m not a mute. I’d only said something because I thought I was alone, though, so I didn’t reply to her. Turning around and giving her my back, I gave her the cues to back off.
Before I was drugged and knocked out, I wasn’t this antisocial. I didn’t have the best or most stable background. My childhood was one rough experience after another. And those weren’t excuses for why I strictly minded my own business now.
It was because of how I’d almost become a number. A statistic. One among many other girls who’d been drugged and/or raped on campus. Something about that day changed me, and I wasn’t sure how to snap out of this collective fear of, well, everyone.
At last, I was given permission to leave. The manager was a jerk, but even he couldn’t find something to keep me here for longer.
I trudged out of the bar, glad the rain had stopped. While I would be dry walking to my apartment, the recent precipitation had iced over and left a slippery surface on all the paths. That was why I moved slowly and cautiously, my arms loose and out in front of me as I went.
It didn’t matter how tired I was, I still wanted to hurry to the relative safety that I could enjoy in the teeny studio apartment I’d managed to snag. Warring against the need to pick up the pace and the warning to not slip, I grew more frustrated on the walk home. I was tired of these freezing cold nights. I was exhausted from the long days and nights of all my responsibilities overlapping. And I was so overwhelmed with the oppressive loneliness that filled my heart, mind, and soul.
Out here in the dark with minimal street lamps lighting the way, I felt so terribly isolated. No one else was stuck walking. Cars zoomed by with the smart people driving to wherever they needed to go. Even the damp chill in the air got to me, somehow freezing me further and making this nighttime trek darker, icier, and more forlorn.
Until I heard sounds that indicated I wasn’t alone. Not at all. Too focused on looking down at where I placed my feet, I missed the commotion up ahead. Toward the side, between two short buildings, two people struggled. The faint shapes of arms and legs moving clued me in to a fight. Grunts and thuds of flesh hitting flesh reached my ears.
Now that I’d noticed them, I hoped to steer clear of the scrimmage and avoid any possibility of involvement. It was too soon, too close to the trauma I’d faced for me to want to be anywhere near them.
“Fucker,” one man said as he pulled out a knife. The blade glinted under the red exit light anchored over a door there in the alley.
Oh, shit.
I froze, skidding to a stop as I paused on the path.
I knew that voice. I recalled that harsh tone.
It’d been years since I’d seen Jerome Parson, but I knew that nasally twang. Before I could catch myself, I gasped at the realization a person from my past had come back to me in my present. No one knew me on campus because I stuck to myself. Like that bartender had mocked, I never spoke up anymore, never bothered with small talk or reaching out to anyone. Eva was the only person I’d befriended here, and she was gone.
I was alone. I was painfully alone here, in the dark and trying to not move and attract Jerome’s attention as he drove his knife into the other man’s chest. With one hard stab, he speared his weapon into the guy’s body. Then he pulled it out and stabbed him again.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God!
Run. Just go. Get the hell out of here!
My instinct to fight or flee flared higher, and I chose the latter. I wouldn’t be entering this danger and clear violence this man from my past presented. I wouldn’t ever want to get closer to one of the guys who’d been a slightly older teen at one of the foster homes we’d both gone to.
Fleeing wasn’t so easy, though, not on this slick, slippery ice surface. My shoes slipped, and teetering too far to the side as I spun out, I had to circle my arms to maintain my balance.
Go. Just go!
I couldn’t look back to see if Jerome noticed me passing by. I couldn’t slow down to steady my steps on this slick surface. All I could do was run as hard as I could and pray I didn’t fall.
Whatever he was up to, I wanted no part of it. I would not get involved with any violence, any murder.
Not again.
As I slipped away, my heart racing and banging wildly against my ribcage, I dared one single glance over my shoulder to determine which way to run. Fortunately, no one was after me. Jerome wasn’t chasing me down. No other people were within sight.
Go. Go. Go!
Gripped by panic, I didn’t stop until I was all the way back at my apartment. With fumbling fingers, I turned the locks after I burst inside my place.
Did he see me?
Why would Jerome be here?
Safe and alone—alone in a good way, for once—I sagged against the front door and closed my eyes tight. Experiencing this fear was one thing, but seeing it was another. I’d seen someone die before. I’d watched someone be killed before. And the consuming dread of that violence stayed with me. With the comforting blackness behind my squeezed-tight lids, I tried to catch my breath. Sucking in heaving inhales and wheezing deep gulps of air, I waited for my heart to slow. I was shaking, trembling from head to toe from how terrified I was.
Not only from seeing Jerome, a negative influence from my past who I never wanted to run into again, but also from the fact that he was killing someone.
Not just anyone.
A Petrov. I didn’t know many of them, and I wasn’t aware of their names. But from my time near Eva and seeing who she seemed to people watch, I got a good feeling for the most familiar ones. Which thugs were on Lev’s side. Which men were always sneering at them—men from the Petrov and Ilyin families. After Eva didn’t return last semester, I got worried about her and feared what could happen to her. That led me to snoop around online and on social media to give myself a crash course on the Mafia families of the area.
And tonight, I’d witnessed a guy from my past kill one of them.
I’d never believed in the term innocent bystander , but I felt like I was trying to be one now.
“What could I do?” If I didn’t want to be a bystander and act on this, I was limited in what I could do. I couldn’t have intervened and tried to save that man from Jerome’s blade. That would’ve put me in the line of danger from an enemy from my past. It would’ve put me in danger, too, because I wasn’t skilled with self-defense or any other form of fighting.
“It’s not like I can call the cops.” I whispered it as I opened my eyes, feeling slightly calmer as I tried to rationalize my thoughts about it all. It had happened so suddenly in a blur that I needed this time to really think back and be clear-headed.
The security guards on campus wouldn’t be equipped to handle violence like that. There was no morgue on campus. But calling 911 for the so-called cops wouldn’t have solved anything, either. The police and the Mafia didn’t mix as far as I could tell.
But more than that, I didn’t mix with the cops. I hadn’t in years, and if I could have it my way, I wouldn’t ever willingly be near them again.
Or I could call Eva…
She was involved in all things to do with the local Mafia scene. She was a princess, with her full troop of bodyguards and?—
“Rurik?” I wondered it aloud, with a wince. Unsure whether I could contact him, I debated again what my options were and how things could turn out. He’d given me his number way back when I’d first met Eva and established myself as her friend. But he hadn’t given me his contact info so I could get a hold of him myself. For my own needs.
I shook my head, talking myself out of the idea of contacting him.
No. I refused to get involved. I didn’t want to be a third wheel to Eva and bother her when she was happy with Lev. And I refused to use this degree of danger as an excuse to get in touch with the man I couldn’t forget.
Whatever happened with Jerome didn’t have to make a difference in my life. I didn’t need to do a single damn thing because if the last twelve years of my life had taught me anything, it was that keeping my head down and minding my own business were the only ways to survive in this cruel, hard world we lived in.