The Street Disciples (The Zores Legacy, Episode 1)
Prologue
Nova Rae Jenkins
Recommended Song: All My Life By K-Ci the Ninja coughed, then blossomed into a silky hum, pipes whispering ‘shhh’ like secrets were about to get their turn.
Toothpick Tony spilled out the liquor store just now, door chimes chirping after him like a snitch trying to stay on the payroll.
He had a neon green Arizona in one hand, a pack of Now a woman stepped off balancing a toddler on one hip and a grocery bag on the other and gave us both that mom look that’s half prayer, half pleading don’t die in front of my kid.
I lifted two fingers from the clutch in a salute so small it didn’t cost me any balance and felt the mercy of it circle back.
We took Crenshaw South, the boulevard ribboning itself under our tires, murals sliding by in a slideshow of saints and sinners and all the brown in between, hands with paint under their nails putting crowns on men the city forgot on purpose.
A corner preacher worked an amped-up storefront mic with three faithful members in folding chairs nodding like metronomes, his voice tripping on deliverance and restoration and the kind of now that makes the police cruise slower.
A group of boys stacked in front of the burger spot tossed us chin-ups of respect as we drifted through the intersection, one of them hollering, “Okay, Ninja bae, I see you!” and I laughed into my helmet because he meant it.
Ro glanced in the mirror, eyes catching mine for half a second, and tapped two fingers to his gas tank—our small yes, our road-ritual, “I got you”.
I returned it with a boot tap to my peg, then leaned as he leaned, the Yamaha R1 Street Bike falling into the next bend, my ZX-6R street bike sliding in his slipstream smooth as a rumor that knows how to keep itself.
We left the heat pockets of the blocks and chased the air toward the coast, where the night turns cleaner and the light thins out into long, pale lines across the asphalt.
The freeway on-ramp rose like a dare and Ro took it without blinking, engine note climbing from purr to growl to the kind of song that gets you in trouble if you hum it around the wrong men.
The wind hit my chest and shoulders like a blessing that wanted to check my posture, and I laid down into it, jaw loosening against the pressure, tongue tasting salt ghosting up from the ocean like a rumor of God.
“You good back there?” Ro’s voice crackled through the cheap helmet coms we’d stolen from a swap meet box for eight dollars and luck.
“Boy, I’m better than good,” I breathed, letting the speed carry a grin across my face he could feel even though he couldn’t see it. “I’m brand new.”
“Keep it G,” he chuckled, opening his throttle like a promise, lane-splitting clean through a line of half-asleep sedans and a CHP Crown Vic that glowed but didn’t pounce because sometimes angels earn their check.
We rolled the 10 West until it blued into the 1, the freeway mouth spitting us onto PCH like a wave that had learned discipline.
To our left, the ocean sniffed at the rocks and then slapped them for good measure, black water wearing a million white teeth.
To our right, the cliff walls held old heat and old secrets, scrub brush scratching the wind the way a dog scratches a flea—distracted, irritated, unbothered.
We throttled down and let the road breathe with us, the bikes settling into a pace that let our chests find each other through the coms.
“This it, Ro?” I whispered low because the grandeur on our left made shouts feel disrespectful. “This where you takin’ me to ask what you already know I’m gon’ answer?”
“You always ruin the reveal,” he accused with a warmth that felt like a hoodie fresh from the dryer, his laugh a slow roll under the engine noise. “I got a stop. You gon’ like it. On everything I love.”
“You love me?” I nudged, needling him the way girls do when they want the truth to stand up and take its oath in public.
“I love you,” he returned, no hesitation, no play, the words full as a plate and simple as a prayer. “Fo’sho.”
The com spat a tiny pop like it was witnessing.
I breathed in hard enough to taste the oil in the air and breathed out the fear men always taught me to keep in my teeth so it wouldn’t run away.
His blinker-tapped right and we slid into a turnout that looked like any other—chain-link swung wide, dust blooming under our tires—then wound us up a narrow service road that climbed the cliff like somebody had scribbled a line there with a pencil and the city never got around to erasing it.
We switchbacked twice, then three times, night air turning from warm to cool to the kind that tastes like it used to be ice somewhere further inland.
The chain-link gave way to a break in the wall, and suddenly we were on a flat slab of cracked concrete that had once been part of something official and now belonged to the kids, the ghosts and the mannish little boys.