“Damn.” I breathed heavily with my hands on my head as I turned in slow circles trying to catch my breath and look out for him.
Ten minutes passed and he never came. Walking back down the street I saw Mr. Ryan drive by. He looked at me with this eerie look that had me frowning back at him. Shaking my head at his old creepy ass I saw Odom walking across the street from his house limping. The closer I got I saw the black eye, busted lip, and torn clothes. Seeing him try to hide his tears made me stop. I never seen Odom cry. The only time I saw him show any sign of emotion came when we refused to go home.
Once Odom spotted me he used pieces of his torn shirt to wipe his face. I flinched hearing him hiss. Standing in front of him I said nothing. I didn’t know what to say. I kept looking between him and his house hoping to see Nesha. If he was this beat up then what did his sister look like?
“Come on, you can stay with us.” I meant that. Odom could stay with us for as long as he needed to.
No one went to school for the next two days. I was too scared that someone would pick Cassian and Atlas up while we were in class. Odom ended up staying with us also. He was too bruised to go to school. Mrs. Ryan came over yesterday morning to ask why he didn’t go and once she saw his face she said that she’d call him out until he healed.
That pissed me off. She knew her husband abused them and instead of doing something about it she looked the other way. Well, only abusing Odom. Nesha came over every day after school and she looked to be without bruises and when I asked her if Mr. Ryan ever touched her, she said no. That made me feel better. One thing I didn’t like to see was a man hurting a woman.
Nesha was a beautiful girl. Her skin was the color of cinnamon sticks. In my head, I called her my Cinnabon. Always sweet.
“Aye, Amell.”
I looked over my shoulder and noticed Mitch driving up beside me. We ran out of milk and bread, so I went to the Blue store to get us some food. Odom stayed back with my brothers while I jogged up the street.
“What’s up, Mitch.” I stopped walking.
“Why haven’t you been working?” Though his eyes were hidden by his dark shades, I still felt the hardness of his glare. “Son, when I ask you a question you better answer me.”
The last thing I wanted Mitch to think is that I was about to lie so I told the truth and explained how I knew Keith called DCF on us. Call it snitching or whatever, but I told it all. How he and his friends rode through hours later and threw diapers at our house and then came back at midnight blasting the songs from Barney.
Mitch looked off down the street not saying a word. I’m sure he probably felt some type of way that I broke the code, but this was serious for us. “Get in the car,” he gritted low.
My mouth gaped open; feet already pointed in the direction of my house. I had three more blocks but still. “I need to get back to my brothers.”
“I’m taking you home, Amell. Stop questioning me and do as I say.” These gangsters and their demanding ways got on my last nerve. They expected you to understand what they meant off of one command that had no explanation.
A normal five-minute car ride felt like forever. Sitting in the passenger seat of Mitch’s Cadillac Deville, staring out the window, not even an appetite to finish the bag of chips I picked up. He said nothing and I was too afraid to speak. Keeping quiet in the silent car with not even the radio playing and the low hum of the air conditioner seemed like the smart thing to do.
Parking in front of my house, we both turned to look at Odom sitting on the porch watching Atlas and Cassian play in the sprinklers. “Do you have any other family members that can take you in?”
“Never really met the folks on my mom’s side of the family and my dad didn’t have any living relatives.” I thought about calling our mom’s but then I remembered all the nights when she begged my father to leave her alone and how she wanted to forget about the mistakes she left behind. Mistakes.
“We were her mistakes.”
“Her own children.”
“I’d rather take my chances with us in foster care than reaching out to her and beg her to be a mother.”
“Have you ever thought about working for me, Amell?” He turned to look at me but I kept my eyes on the porch. Out of everything I said and the trouble I was in, it angered me that all he thought about was working me on some corner.
“With all due respect, Mitch, working for you and Duffy isn’t important to me right now. Tonight, may be the last night I spend with my brothers. I need to focus on that.” I reached to open the door but stopped at his next questions.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” His question made me frown. Was he some type of magician that was going to grant my childhood dream? Whatever I wanted to be became a distant memory the night I used my hands to kill.
“I used to want to be one of two things; a lawyer and Ichthyologist.”
“What is an Ichthyologist?”
I smiled at his question. Most people didn’t know what it was. “A person who studies fish. A branch of zoology that focuses on the study of fish. I love piranhas. Unique creatures with two rows of teeth.”
A wild thought came to my mind watching him stare at my brothers. “Mitch, if I asked, would you pretend to be my dad? If I worked for you would you take my brothers in?”
The right corner of his mouth lifted into a half-smile. He looked straight ahead, and I waited to see what he would say. I already knew the answer was no, but it couldn’t hurt to ask.
“Take care, kid.” His dismissal only made my fear of tomorrow more frightening. If Mitch couldn’t help me then who could?
“Where is Duffy?” I stood outside the car and asked him from the window.
“He got picked up last night. The crackas trying to bury him under the jail for a misdemeanor. Don’t worry about coming back to work.” He glanced at me one last time before driving off.
“How did you end up with Mitch?” Odom asked as I took a seat next to him.
“He pulled up on me on my way home.”
“Is he going to help you?”
I had nothing to say. Telling him no felt like defeat and that I had given up on keeping us out of the system. Not just with asking Mitch for help but in general. That lady was coming back, and we were back at square one. If I knew what they did with my dad’s body, I’d dig him up just so he could be here for this moment.
When day three hit, the day of our doom, I was already awake before the sun. Cassian and Atlas slept on the couch with me because I refused to sleep in my room. I was too afraid that if I fell asleep the police would break in and take us. At least if I stayed awake with eyes on the window I was prepared to try and run.
“Run where, anywhere that we could go together.”
“I’m sorry, young man, but if there is not a parent or guardian here like right now, we have to report you and your brothers as being abandoned.” Evelyn West came bright and early right when we would’ve been leaving out the house for school. When normal parents should have been leaving for work.
She wanted to catch us. Catch and see if a parent really lived in the house. Dad’s car had been moved from the garage to the driveway. Odom said that if she saw the car then maybe that would throw her off. This lady ignored the car and stormed her way into our house searching and looking for people that she wasn’t going to find.