2
Ipush open the heavy door of the garage and loop the chain before stepping outside into the hazy orange light of the rising sun. The sky is clear—for now. The cloud set on the horizon brings the promise of much needed rainfall that the Arizona desert begs for, but it also brings trouble.
Nothing good ever comes with the rain.
Last night’s music hums at a dull thrum over the sound system behind me.
I turn to look at the garage and sigh. It’s a mess from the three vehicles we have loaded in the bays, and whatever my brothers were up to last night only made it worse.
Rafe is asleep in nothing but a pair of Looney Tune boxers and his boots on the old twill couch we pulled out of the dumpster years before.
Murphy is beneath him sprawled out on his stomach across cushions he’d pulled off the couch, drool pooling around his cheek and his glasses crookedly pushed into his dark hair.
“I don’t even want to know,” I grunt as I walk toward them. I give Murphy a kick in the foot and he startles awake like he’s been shot.
“I wasn’t sleeping, you were sleeping…” he mumbles and tips back down to the cushions.
“Get up or you’re both fired,” I shoot back and start to clear the bench behind the mini van we have to finish for pick up today.
“You can’t fire us,” Rafe yawns. “Our name is on the garage.” He points to the neon sign that barely flickers on any more with one eye open.
“It’s cheaper to buy a new sign,” I groan, the bright white Monroe Motors mocking with uneven surges of electricity. Everything’s broken here. “Get up,” I repeat, “this exhaust isn’t finished and I’m not being yelled at by another middle aged Mom again because you two can’t get your shit together.”
“Oh there are three voicemails from her…” Murphy sits up, gags and stares at me.
“What the hell were you two doing last night?” I slam a wrench down into its proper place and turn to look at them.
“Bird brought home a bottle—”
“Where is she?” I ask him, knowing that the rest of the sentence involves video games and them both being idiots.
Rafe looks over at Murphy, who shrugs and lies back down.
Idiots. Rafe is two years older than Murphy and looks the least like either of us, with unruly sandy brown hair he got from our mother and a heart that he wears on his sleeve.
Murphy is the youngest but the most intelligent of the three of us.
He’s also the tallest. It's a point of constant contention between him and Rafe. He sports the same dark waves I do, with bright blue eyes that can’t see shit without his glasses and a goofy, lopsided smile that gets him in more trouble than he can get out of.
But Birdie… she’ll be the death of me.
“Shower, now. And get this done,” I chuck an empty box at them and wander back through the enormous steel structure toward our house.
Two stories, built in the early nineties—our family has lived in this house since before I was born.
Its dusty blue paneling and old rectangle windows are original to the Dutch colonial architecture but the porch has been updated with new columns and wood.
It’s a simple mix of old and new, and it was ours.
The T.V. is blaring from the living room as I walk through the back door and pass through the old bright kitchen with its mix-matched furniture and barely running appliances. She’s watching some reality show crap; the one where they are all sent for a free vacation to fuck and fight for ratings.
“Did she actually fall for that?” I cross my arms over my chest behind the couch watching one of the familiar women scream at the asshole who’s fucked just about everyone on the island.
Birdie’s spoon clinks against the bottom of her cereal bowl as she leans back and looks up at me with an unsurprised look on her face. “You know for a guy that says reality T.V. is trash you sure are invested in this season.”
Her thick black hair is pulled off her face in a massive, ratty bun and it shows off every inch of her heavily tattooed pale skin as she shifts on the couch to look at me. The stack of piercings in her ears glimmer under the morning sun as she shoves another spoonful in her mouth.
“It’s pathetic,” I grumble.
Birdie giggles, the sound dark and knowing, like the evergreen of her eyes.
“You can just admit you’re starved for a little female interaction, Riggs. It won’t kill you,” she smiles with the spoon between her lips.
“It might.” I huff. “What did you do to them?” I point my thumb over my shoulder in the direction of the garage.
“Murph thinks he’s a Need for Speed god or something. It’s not true—it was just some drinking and driving.”
Trouble, you’re so much trouble. I grind my teeth and a rumble comes up in my chest. “Keep the games to Friday nights, when I don’t need them doing work the next day.”
“They’re up.” She doesn’t look but her spoon directs me to where they slink into the house and up the back stairs to their rooms.
“Knowing them, they’ll go back to bed for three hours and leave all the work for me,” I tap her spoon roughly, “which means you get to work over time. Get dressed.”
Birdie whines and throws her head back, “after this episode.”
“Now.”
She rolls her eyes at me and slides off the couch, still in her pajamas before also disappearing upstairs.
Birdie is the only one of the four of us who doesn’t share blood, but she’s our younger sister in every sense of the word. Brought into the garage in a carseat and without a name, no one questioned it. We just took her in. Now she’s the reason I have a constant headache.
I put coffee on, the smell enough to coax Murphy from his hungover nest. I remember the day he was born, I was seven and Mom went into labor on her back changing the oil beneath a 1986 Ford-250.
Dad was gone by then, skipped out before she even knew she was pregnant with him.
But we managed, Rafe was two at the time and oddly good with babies, I did everything I could to help Mom in the garage and Uncle Bobby was always around to pick up the slack.
I’m pretty sure staring at me and seeing Dad is what killed her eventually.
That or Koa and I scared her to death so often that the reaper caught up with her early.
“Morning dickhead,” I grunt, looking at the fox statue on the window sill.
Carved from koa wood and given to me by his mother at the funeral.
All it did was remind me of my mistakes.
What led us here. If he was here right now he’d tell me to stop sulking but it’s not that simple and he’s not here.
“It creeps me out when you talk to that thing,” Murphy groans and steals a mug of coffee from the counter. “It’s going to come to life one day.”
“You read too many Goosebumps books,” I reply dryly and hand him the honey. I watch as he dumps way too much into the bottom of the mug and takes it back without flinching at the temperature.
He clears his chest of the heat with a solid cough and sets the mug down. “I have class after lunch but I’ll get that stereo installed before I leave.”
“Don’t put anything in that he didn’t ask for, or didn’t pay for Murph.” I warn him and he wanders out of the house into the garage. When Birdie finally reappears, she’s in a T-shirt cut tight around her stomach and a pair of baggy cargo pants.
“He already installed an extra switch in that system,” she says as the door clicks closed.
“I know,” I groan, there’s no stopping him once he starts.
It’s not even about customer service, it’s about him one upping himself.
His intelligence will eventually eat him alive.
The problem is we aren’t bringing in enough money for him to give away that crap.
He refuses to look like an idiot—especially when he’s his own worst critic.
“Where’s Rafe?”
“In the shower.” She shrugs and grabs the mug that Murphy left on the counter to fill it for her own share of the black tar caffeine. “Bowie invited us to the Spider tonight, says she has news.”
“Yeah alright,” I agree, “all three engines gotta leave the shop though. We need that money,” I warn her and she nods, carrying the mug out the back door.
We don’t see Rafe for another two hours and he struts into the garage like he’s trying to impress someone. His hair is combed, button up shirt is loose around his torso and the beige pants he’s wearing are asking to be stained.
“How are you supposed to work in that?” I ask him, cleaning my hands on my towel to spare my jeans.
“Oh I have to go grab the shipment from Bobby and then I have a date.” He clicks his tongue at me and I want to rip it out of his mouth.
“Meet us at the bar later?” Birdie appears from the paint bay covered in hot pink and I try to remember the work orders we have to close. What the fuck called for that?
“The convertible we’re fixing for that Barbie doll, Murphy brought her in,” Birdie says like she can read my mind. “She’s paying us extra to get it done fast, you said we need the money.”
“Yeah just…” I wave my hand at her, looking back to argue with Rafe and he’s disappearing through the garage doors. By some miracle, the jobs get done before the storm hits, and I’m able to close up the shop while Birdie talks Murphy into drinking two nights in a row.
“Come on we can torture Jet and get them to make us frozen daiquiris?” She tugs on his jacket as he pulls it on.
“I need water, Bird. Water,” he stresses.
“There’s water in daiquiris.” The scoff that leaves her is annoyed and Murphy glances over his shoulder for assistance but I just shake my head.
I walk back to the office and flick on the light as the rain starts to beat down on the tin roof, blanketing the entire shop in white noise as I flip open the books. Everything’s red lately. No matter how fast we work, we’re drawing in bills.
“Time to get messy, Riggs.” I can hear him say it like he’s standing over my shoulder.
I can smell the oil of the cars running in the distance, can feel the vicious midnight air on my skin and taste the danger that once loomed.
One run to Mexico would fix everything. Just one.
You know the routes, the routines. I swallow and stare at the debt beneath my fingernails.
There was a time when doing the wrong thing kept us in the green, but without Koa, I wouldn’t risk my siblings.
He always knew what to do, and how to avoid getting caught.
My family deserved to live life without the worry of sirens.
“Instead they worry about the electricity getting shut off,” his voice is cold in the back of my mind.
“Ghosts don’t fucking talk.” I slam the book closed and lean back in the office chair to stare at the ceiling until the memory of him fades into the rain. I fall asleep, I don’t know for how long but it doesn’t last, the thunder crashes across the roof and I’m startled awake.
The clock blinks like the power’s been cut, and I dig out my phone.
Two a.m. I spin to look at the ratty couch against the back wall and consider sleeping in here instead of crawling back to the house for only a couple hours.
I reach out to turn on the radio, hoping that some mindless music will lull me back to sleep.
But there’s something in the silence, at first it sounds like thunder but I know that sound.
I’m out of my chair and down the rickety metal steps faster than I can take a breath.
I burst out into the sheet of rain squinting my eyes in an attempt to see through the darkness when blinding lights come straight at me through the void.
I know that vibration in my sleep, I’ve felt it in my bones.
I step back as the car screeches to a halt and the engine rumbles in protest from the sudden stop.
“Koa?” I whisper, seeing the red Cuda for the first time in nearly two years.
“Riggs…” The voice that answers is pained, low and sweet. Always sweet. Cress steps from the driver’s side, her curly hair soaked and stuck to her bruised and battered face. “I didn’t know where else to go,” she breathes, and I watch her crumble to the gravel.