Prologue
“Good Lord! What happened?”
Julia’s eyes went wide when Al and I burst into the kitchen. She stopped putting birthday candles on the cake and tightened the belt on her bathrobe.
My face was bleeding.
Al threw a roll of paper towels at me and then turned to our mother.
“He cracked his chin open on the coffee table.”
I wadded a dozen sheets and pressed them to the gushing wound. My jaw ached—there wasn’t a spot on my body that didn't—but I just shrugged.
“I’m fine.”
“There’s so much blood.” Julia came closer, but I could tell she didn’t want to look. She hadn’t been feeling well, and the sight of the blood seemed only to make her more squeamish. She glanced back at Al. “You look at it. Tell me how deep it is.”
Annoyed, Al came over and yanked the towels away. He pushed my chin up to inspect the gash with his big hands, and a new stream of blood flowed down my neck.
Julia turned away. I knew she’d seen the cut anyway.
“He’ll need stitches,” she said. “Take him to the emergency room, Al.”
Al grunted. “What’s the matter with you? Why can’t you take him?”
“I’m not feeling well,” was all she said.
Al wouldn’t stop. “Maybe while you’re at the hospital, the doctors can finally figure out what’s wrong with you.”
I stepped forward. “Leave her alone. I don’t need stitches.”
“Yes, you do,” Julia insisted. “Let me get dressed. I’ll take you.”
“I’ll take him,” Al barked, snagging his car keys from the hook near the back door. “Get in the car, you pussy.”
“Fuck off,” I snarled.
Dwarfed between us, Julia held up her hands and pleaded, “Boys, please stop fighting.” She turned a distressed grimace on me. “And Toby, your profanity upsets me.”
I lowered my head. “Sorry, Ma. I’ll go with Al. Just relax.”
Like yesterday, Julia was having a ‘bad’ day. Today, trying her best to be upbeat, she’d roused herself out of bed. Still, she hadn’t managed to get dressed.
She rubbed my arm. “When you get back, we’ll have your cake.”
* * *
Fourteen stitches for my sixteenth birthday—and a scar I’d probably have the rest of my life. As Al drove me back from the hospital, I got a call from Dev.
“We’re hanging out in town. Come down, we’ll celebrate your birthday,” Dev said.
I told Al to drop me off in front of the donut shop on Main Street.
He pulled the car alongside the curb. “Mom wanted you home for cake.”
“I’ll be home later,” I said and got out. Leaning back in, I saw that his right cheek was swollen. At least I’d gotten in a few good shots before he’d taken me down.
“Hey, thanks for the birthday present.” I patted my bandaged chin.
Al didn’t reply. Before I had a chance to shut the door, he floored the gas pedal. I jumped backwards before the car’s heavy door slammed shut, narrowly avoiding being decapitated.
“Asshole!” I gave him the one-finger salute as he drove off.
From outside the donut shop window I could see Ed, one of the local beat cops, at the counter. He eyed me through the plate glass, his stare fixed on my ridiculous bandage. I glared back.
“Get your donut and get out of here,” I muttered under my breath.
Rounding the corner to the back, I saw Dev in the shop’s small parking lot behind Main Street. He was with Ray—the two of them mostly concealed by a large commercial dumpster.
Just then, three younger elementary school kids rode by on their bikes, skirting the edge of the walkway doing wheelies and slide tricks over the curb. Dev shot out from behind the dumpster, growling savagely as he gave chase. The unsuspecting boys shrieked and took off down the block, pedaling as fast as they could. Winded, Dev picked up a handful of pebbles from the ground and chucked them in the kids’ direction.
Near the donut shop entrance, four freshmen girls from my class sipped overpriced iced coffees and babbled incessantly. Only mildly interested in Dev’s idiotic performance, their attention latched onto me as I drifted towards my friends. I scanned them, hoping to see the familiar shape of this one girl I’d been dying to tag. She wasn’t among the crowd.
I'd been lighting up a Marlboro when the cute, dark-skinned girl from my Earth Science class, April, sidled up to me and smiled.
“What happened to your chin?”
I took a drag and said, “Skiing accident in Utah. Bad fall out of the helicopter.”
She laughed and I immediately liked that she had a sense of humor.
“Hey, how come I haven’t seen your friend around school?”
She sighed, loud and dramatic. “Claudia? Her parents sent her to St. John’s. Can you believe that?”
“Bummer.” Though I hadn’t been close to making anything happen with her, I was disappointed with the news. Tucked away in private school, there was little chance anything ever would.
“Want me to tell her you said ‘hi’?” April offered.
I squinted at her, wondering if she was yanking my chain, but she seemed sincere.
“Okay,” I shrugged.
Right away, walking back to her friends, she began tapping on her cell phone, relaying the message. I didn’t kid myself that anything would come of it, though.
Dev stepped up to me, looking over my shoulder at the girls.
“Think they’d hang out with us?”
I didn’t even bother considering it. “No.”
“Even if we tell ’em we got some ganja?”
“No.”
Alone, I might’ve been able to hang with those girls. Unlike most of my classmates, I wasn’t plagued by acne, and I’d grown two inches in the past year. An unexpected bonus to the constant battles with my brother was the way my once weedy body was morphing into a powerful fighting machine. I liked the change in my appearance—and girls seemed to like it, too.
Alongside scrawny Ray, who could barely string two words together, and Dev, built like a massive tugboat and prone to doing stupid shit like chasing down defenseless little kids on bikes, our collective odds were ridiculous. Getting with any of the girls here tonight would require a whole lot of clever chitchat and persistence. Normally, I wouldn’t pass up the opportunity, but I was still wound up after the throw-down with my brother.
I was itching for a good fight and if there was anyone who could find one, it was Devlin Van Sloot. He was as predictably reactive as a lit stick of dynamite. Even without a fight, we could always get lit. Ray’s house was stocked, and his mom was generous with her booze.
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