Nicholas

 

I didn’t know how long I was lying there. It was the opposite of my first memory. This time around, when I returned to the realm of the living, instead of being white, everything was dark.

 

It was nighttime. The lights overhead in the alleyway were dim and flickering. They only made the shadows deeper and more jagged. I felt something warm and wet dripping from my mouth. The tangy, metallic taste told me it was blood. My lips were dry and my whole body shivered from head to toe.

 

I tried to move. The second my muscles ignited, pain tore through me like I’d never felt before. The white hot epicenter of it burned in my chest, where a grinding crunch hinted that something must be broken.

 

The dealer had beat the shit out of me and left me for dead. I was close to it as far as I could tell. Nothing moved right. Everything hurt. I couldn’t even sit up. All I could do was blink. Even thoughts seemed like too much effort for my body to handle.

 

I kept fading in and out of consciousness. It went dark for a while, and when my eyes opened again, it was morning. I was so thirsty, my throat desperate for a sip of water. Something cold nuzzled against my face, a tiny pinprick of sensation. It was snow. Flakes began to fall from the sky lazily, drifting down between the power lines and the rooftops to settle in a thin patina along the wet concrete. I opened my mouth and caught a few snowflakes on my tongue.

 

Every time I tried to move, the same pain flared up, just as bad as the first attempt. I was going to die out here if I didn’t get some help. No food, no shelter. I’d be buried in a snow bank for weeks before they found my body. I almost wanted to laugh at the mental image of some garbage man unearthing me, finding a scrawny little corpse with his tongue stuck out.

 

The snow kept falling. I wasn’t going anywhere. I couldn’t, try as I might. This was as far as Nico was going to get. I should’ve died in the car crash. It would’ve been quicker and less painful.

 

“Oh, shit!” came a wearied, nasally voice. “What’s this little man doing back here?”

 

I struggled to move my head in the direction of the sound. “Help,” I wheezed through my dry throat. My lips cracked and bled with the motion. “Help me.”

 

The man rounded into view. He was small and frail. Dirty clothes hung loose from his skinny body and a thick beard clung to his sunken cheeks. His fingers twitched and danced restlessly in the air in front of him. He looked like shit, but his eyes were brown and friendly. “Oh, shit!” he exclaimed again. “You ain’t doin’ so well, my man.”

 

I raised a limp hand, but the effort exhausted me after a moment. It dropped back to the ground uselessly. “Please,” I muttered. The act of speaking tugged tenterhooks into my devastated rib cage. Each word was agony.

 

“What happened to you?” he asked. “Wait, no, no, don’t tell me. You don’t look like you can speak anyway.” He laughed, then cut himself off suddenly with a frown. He seemed crazy, pirouetting from emotion to emotion, his body never standing still. I groaned.

 

He pounced over and crouched in front of me. Reaching forward two dirt-covered fingers, he peeled back my eyelids. I looked up into his face. The beard was grungy and when he smiled, I could see the clotted gunk accumulated through years of street living. “What’s your name, amigo?” he chirped.

 

I drew in a slow breath, wincing, and said, “Nico,” as loudly as I could. It came out in a tinny whisper.

 

“You a young one to be out here alone, ain’t ya?” The man cackled. “Well, I’m Smalls. And I can’t very well leave ya out here like this, can I? No, certainly cannot. You’ll have to come with me.” He furrowed his brow and hunched closer to me. He smelled horrific. “But you can’t walk, can you?”

 

I shook my head gingerly.

 

“Didn’t think so,” he replied. “Hmm.” He stroked his beard and looked around. “Ah, I know, I know.” He rose to his feet and sprang out of my field of vision. I heard the sound of cardboard ripping. Smalls pranced back around, a gleeful smile splitting his face and a big sheet of cardboard held between his hands. He set it on the ground next to me and patted it. “Come on, now,” he said. “Roll on over on top of this guy right here. This’ll do the trick.”

 

I eyed the cardboard. Summoning all my strength, I threw my weight over to my side. It took a moment to rock back and forth to build the necessary momentum, but eventually I managed to roll myself onto the cardboard. By the time I was on it, sweat beaded across my forehead and short moans burst through my lips. My eyes were wired open, staring at the sky above as lava pain surged up and down me.

 

“That’s the ticket,” he said, snapping and standing back up. “Good on ya. Well, let’s go, yes?” Smalls didn’t wait for an answer. I tried to yelp for him to wait, but he didn’t hear me or didn’t care. Seizing one edge of the flattened box, he started to pull me down the alley.

 

I didn’t want to scream, but every bump and jolt made the pain blaze like shots of lightning. We made our way down the alley and went trundling down the sidewalk, headed for God knew where. It didn’t matter. I was alive, and that was all that counted.

 

But the pain was too much. I held out for as long as I could. Then I passed out.

 

# # #

 

Night had fallen. The fire crackling in front of me was warm. I stretched out my hands as far as I could towards it. The heat sank into my fingertips and slid up my whole body to calm my chattering teeth. Despite the blankets heaped on top of me, I was still shivering.

 

The flame threw funky shadows on Smalls’ face where he sat next to me. I twisted my neck to look up at him. He looked back down and gave a toothy grin. “Beats layin’ in that alley, don’t it?” He guffawed.

 

I didn’t have the energy to laugh with him. I turned back to the fire. In the hours since he’d dragged me away from the brink of death, the pain had begun to subside slightly, but I could still hardly twitch without it drawing a screaming protest from my whole body. It was going to be a long time before I would be up and moving on my own.

 

We were huddled at the foot of an overpass. A clothesline strung up around us held thick sleeping bags to block out the wind. The little fire next to me burned on balled up trash and aluminum cans. It was a shitty place to be, but still an improvement over being exposed to the snow in the alleyway. It wasn’t like I had a choice. Wherever Smalls wanted me to go, I would go. I couldn’t possibly fight back.

 

“So who are you?” I asked after a while. The wind whistled on the other side of the clothesline and cars thundered past us overhead. Every now and then the screech of a horn and raised voices would puncture the drone of traffic.

 

“Me?” asked Smalls. “I’m a supplier for the chop shop.”

 

I blinked in confusion. “A what?”

 

Smalls laughed. “I boost cars, little man. And then I sell ’em to whoever will pay for ’em.”

 

I scowled. “You’re a thief.”

 

He huffed like he was offended. “I’m Robin Hood, man! Steal from the rich and give to the poor. I just happen to be the poor in this here situation.” He grinned at me.

 

I wanted to hate him, but I couldn’t. How was I supposed to judge the man who’d saved my life? He did what he needed to do to get by. At least he had shelter, if that was what you could call this makeshift tent.

 

“As soon as I can, I’m getting out of here,” I informed him.

 

Smalls slapped a knee and laughed at the top of his lungs. “Oh, is that so, little man?”

 

“Yeah,” I shot back. “And stop calling me ‘little man.’ I’m not little.”

 

“You sure is little! How old is you, anyway?”

 

“Fifteen,” I lied.

 

“My ass,” Smalls snorted. “You’re fifteen like I’m a millionaire. You ain’t a day over eight, is that right?”

 

I hesitated, then nodded angrily.

 

His face sobered. “That’s awfully young to be out here,” he said.

 

“I’m a man.”

 

He eyed me, head tilted to the side. “The funny thing is, little man, I believe you just might be. Age don’t make a man now, does it? No, I don’t suppose it does.” The air was warm and silent as he looked at me. “What makes a man is fighting through pain. Taking what he wants even when he’s hurtin’. Seems to me like you’re doin’ an awful lot of that already.” He stood up and walked over to me. Hunching down, he tucked the blankets tight around my damaged body. “I guess what I’m sayin’ is, if you tell me you’re a man, I’ll take your word for it.”

 

I nodded again. “I’m a man,” I repeated.

 

“Okay, shorty,” Smalls said. “Okay.”

 

# # #

 

Five Years Later

 

“Yo, hurry up, man!”

 

“I’m hurrying. Calm the fuck down,” I shot back. I jimmied the thin steel bar between the window and the car exterior, slipping it down towards where the lock mechanism was sheltered. My teeth gritted as I concentrated on finding the right point of leverage.

 

“C’mon, c’mon…” Smalls muttered. His hands pawed at the air like they always did. His eyes darted nervously around the empty street, looking for anyone who might cause trouble.

 

I thought he’d have calmed down years ago, but calm was just not in Smalls’ nature. He was a twitchy, nonstop blur of motion and anxiety, always sniffing out the tiniest scent of danger. There—the bar caught and the lock unlatched. The door to the BMW swung open on silent hinges.

 

Tucking the bar into the loop of my belt, I quickly dropped to my knees and popped open the panel on the underside of the steering column. The wire guts of the car peered back at me, a mess of colorful, twisted cables and circuitry that would have looked intimidatingly complex if I hadn’t done this a million times already.

 

“Pliers,” I hissed over my shoulder. Smalls leaped forward and quickly plunked the tool down in my hand. I reached in, grabbed the cable I wanted, and gave it a neat snip. After doing the same with another, I picked up a severed end in each hand and touched the frayed tips together.

 

The engine sputtered to life.

 

A big grin split my face as I turned to look at Smalls. “Let’s go,” I told him. He scurried around the other side and yanked open the door before throwing himself inside. I slipped into the driver’s seat.

 

Wrapping my hands around the sun-warmed leather wheel, I paused for a moment and took in a deep breath. The interior of the car smelled rich and spicy, an intoxicating blend of clean and expensive that never seemed to get old. No matter how many cars we boosted, this was always the best part.

 

“Drive, motherfucker, drive!” Smalls yelped, slapping on the dashboard.

 

I laughed, jerked the gear stick into drive, and pressed my foot on the gas pedal. We shot forward down the street, the thrum of the engine settling deep into my bones. I piloted us onto the bridge. We crossed over into the other side of town.

 

Smalls had finally started to settle back into his seat. He let loose a big sigh as soon as it became clear that no one was following us. “You takin’ too damn long these days,” Smalls accused, half joking.

 

“You and I both know I’m the fastest guy in the whole damn city,” I retorted.

 

“Yeah, well, why you gotta be showin’ off, then? Who cares if you unlock every damn feature in the car? All we need is the engine, baby.” He patted the dashboard again to make his point.

 

“What’s the fun in driving a nice car if you don’t get to enjoy all the luxuries?” I asked. Leaning forward, I turned on the radio. Beautiful, crisp sound flowed out of the speakers around us. I hummed along to the song. “Satellite radio and everything. Now that’s how it’s supposed to be.”

 

Smalls shook his head as I laughed and kept singing.

 

We drove fifteen minutes further, winding down darkened city streets. It was dusk, the last of the summer sun sneaking its way between the skyscrapers to reach the streets below. Pulling up in front of an abandoned-looking warehouse, I cut the engine. The inside of the car was silent. I looked at Smalls.

 

“Let me come in this time,” I said.

 

“No way.” He shook his head. “Not a chance in hell, shorty.”

 

“C’mon, Smalls,” I begged. “Just this once.”

 

He sighed and ran a hand through what little remained of his hair. I knew his resolve was weakening.

 

“Please?” I asked one more time.

 

“All right, fine,” he growled as he clambered out of the car. “But keep your damn mouth shut.” I barely heard him as I was too giddy with excitement. “And don’t look anyone in the eye.”

 

I ran around to the other side of the car and swooped him up in a big bear hug. I lifted him off the ground as he yelped, “Put me down, you son of a bitch!” It was hard to believe five years had passed since he’d found me broken and dying in that alley. I was big and strong now. My muscles bulged across my chest and at the sleeves of my shirt. Already, I towered over him.

 

I set him back on his feet and planted a big kiss on the top of his balding head. He muttered curses to himself as he turned and headed to the dirty, graffiti-tagged door set in the wall to the left of the building. I smiled.

 

Smalls was a good guy. He’d taken me under his wing, teaching me everything he knew about boosting cars. He was the best in the business, or so he proclaimed, and everything he did seemed to back up that boast. Those twitchy fingers of his could spring a car door open before I could blink. No lock was smart enough to keep him out. It hadn’t taken me long to pick up the tricks of the trade either. Before long, I was hot-wiring engines to life even faster than he could.

 

The best part, though, was driving. The moment before you pressed the pedal, when the whole road was wide and open, just waiting for you to push the vehicle to its limits. I had a knack for it. The wheel just made sense under my hands, like the second I touched it, I became part of the car. I read it and it read me, and together, there was no corner that I couldn’t drift around, no gap I couldn’t hit with just the right amount of horsepower and torque to leave cops and enemies alike in the dust.

 

Not that we ever got to hold onto the cars for too long. This was a business, after all, and there were buyers to satisfy. But that was one part of the gig Smalls did his damndest to keep me away from. “You’re too young for this shit,” he’d always tell me. “These aren’t guys you want to meet.” No matter how much I’d prodded and cajoled, he insisted I let him handle all the transactions.

 

Until today.

 

We walked up to the door and Smalls knocked twice. A slit at eye level was swung open, revealing a sliver of someone’s face. “Yeah?” the voice drawled.

 

“It’s Smalls,” he said. He sounded nervous, though, to be fair, he always sounded that way.

 

The miniature door closed again without the man saying another word. I heard the clank of multiple locks and chains rattling before the whole door swung inwards.

 

A man stood at the doorway. I looked him up and down, awed by what I was seeing. He was huge, or maybe he just seemed that way due to the piercings and tattoos that covered every inch of his skin. His muscles stretched tight against the leather jacket he wore. When he looked at me, I felt power rolling off him in waves. This was not a man to be fucked with.

 

He extended an arm towards the back of the building, inviting us inwards. Smalls nodded and gestured for me to follow him. We walked inside. The door shut behind us.

 

Indoors, I heard the clack of pool balls skimming across the green felt of the billiards table and deep voices rumbling. We emerged from the dark hallway into a low-lit bar. Men like the one at the door were scattered around the room. Some drank, others smoked and played pool. All were equally as huge, equally as intimidating. Every single one of them looked up at us as we entered. We froze in our tracks.

 

A man unfolded himself from the booth to my right and sauntered in our direction. He stubbed out his cigarette as he strolled over. When he stood in front of us, he folded his arms across his chest and cleared his throat.

 

“Hey, Fists,” Smalls stammered. His hands were wringing in front of him like he was trying to squeeze out the last few drops of water from a dishrag.

 

“Smalls,” replied the man, inclining his head.

 

“Got a, uh, we got a good one for you today, yep, uh-huh,” he babbled.

 

The man shifted his gaze from Smalls to me. His eyes were dark and stormy. They raked up and down, peeling me apart like an onion. “Who’s the runt?” he asked, jerking his chin at me.

 

“Oh, this? This is my, um…”

 

“I’m Nico,” I interjected. I folded my arms across my chest to match the man’s posture and drew myself up to my full height. I had more room to grow, but I could already tell I was going to be a big son of a bitch. This bastard didn’t scare me. Nothing scared me. I was Nico. A man of the streets. I stole cars and drove fast and did whatever the hell I wanted.

 

The man’s eyes glistened. “And what are you doing here, Nico?”

 

“I work with Smalls now.”

 

“Is that so?” the man said, turning back to Smalls.

 

Smalls nodded and kept wringing his hands. His gaze darted around the room, never resting for more than a beat on any one thing. The other men had gone back to their mugs of beer or their game of pool, but there was still a palpable air of violence in the room. Bad things had happened here, I could just tell. But I liked it. It had the same pent-up vibe as the silence of a stolen car right before the engine roared and the wheels caught and I went flying down the street away from anything and everything trying to stop me. It felt dangerous. It felt right.

 

“Yeah,” I said before Smalls could say anything else. “That is so. Who are you?”

 

“Now, Nico, let’s just…” Smalls started to caution, laying his hand gently on my arm. I shrugged him off and glared back at the man.

 

He stared back at me stonily. “I’m Fists,” he said. “I’m the president of The Punishers Motorcycle Club. This is my clubhouse you’re standing in.”

 

The Punishers. So this was them. Smalls was always careful not to reveal too much about who bought the cars we boosted. But he’d let that name slip a couple times before. His tone when he said it was identical every time without fail. He said it the way you’d say the name of the devil if you were worried that, if you said it without the proper respect, you might accidentally summon him. Respect and fear all rolled into a few syllables that clattered off the tongue with a nice, rugged edge. It reminded me of the first time I’d cursed, way back in my foster care days. Just like the word “fuck,” the name of The Punishers MC had a ring to it that nothing else could quite match.

 

And this man. He knew what that name sounded like spoken out loud. In fact, he was the physical embodiment of it. Tattoos ranging over his tanned skin, muscles that had no doubt been earned the hard way, scars earned even harder. He had a steel barb piercing each ear and a set of rings on his fingers that had points suggesting they were there for more than just show.

 

He should have scared me, intimidated me. And in part, he did. But there was another part of me that didn’t see him as a predator or a bully like Smalls did.

 

It saw him as a brother.

 

Smalls started babbling about the car, and Fists’ attention flipped back to my partner in crime. But I could feel a piece of his awareness stayed rooted on me. He was testing me. There was not a chance in hell I was going to let him sense any weakness. I kept my arms folded and my face scowled, like nothing here impressed me.

 

“It sure is a nice whip, lemme tell you that much,” Smalls was saying. “Brand new leather interior and a custom engine. Here, here, come, let me show ya.” He waved, gesturing for Fists to follow him out to the curb where the stolen car was parked. He turned and started walking.

 

Instead of following right away, I hesitated for just a moment. My eyes locked with Fists’. I wanted to tell him one more time, Pain doesn’t scare me. You don’t scare me. I’m Nico.

 

Then we went outside.

 

# # #

 

We sat on the sidewalk and counted the stack of cash for a few minutes after Fists had driven the car into the garage and disappeared. The bills were crisp and fresh. They had that beautiful smell that nothing else in the world could match. Nothing beat the scent of new money.

 

Smalls was giddy. He riffled through the stack half a dozen times. I kept the scowl planted on my face long after the door to The Punishers’ clubhouse had shut and locked behind us.

 

“Oh, we are lookin’ real nice now, ain’t we, partner?” Smalls cackled, shifting back and forth where he sat. “Dough for days, ain’t that right? Yes, it is! Yes, it is!”

 

I didn’t answer. I was still in the middle of processing the weird sense of belonging that had swept over me when we walked into the interior of the clubhouse. I had an unnerving intuition that those were my people.

 

Smalls was my people too, of course. He’d saved me. I owed him more than just gratitude; I owed him my life. And his lessons were what had allowed me to make a living on the streets. We made a hell of a team and, in our few years running around together, we’d grown close.

 

But still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that inside that clubhouse was where I belonged.

 

“Smalls,” I began in a solemn voice.

 

He jerked his head up and looked at me with that funny sideways glance of his. “What’s up, youngin’?” he asked. “Something’s on your mind, ain’t it?”

 

I looked at my hands. They were stained with oil and grime from that day’s work, but beneath the muck, they were strong and capable. I flexed once, twice, savoring the feeling of power in my fingers. “What’s the deal with these guys, anyway?” I deflected, not sure yet how to ask the question I wanted to ask.

 

Smalls craned his head to look back at the clubhouse. It was completely nondescript, no sign that anything illegal or dangerous was on the other side of the walls. To a passerby, it would look just like any of the million chop houses and car garages that littered this part of town. But Smalls and I knew different. “These is dangerous men, kiddo,” Smalls said softly. “Hard men, you understand?”

 

I kept looking at my hands, flexing and unflexing, over and over.

 

Smalls continued, “The Punishers is guys that’s not to be messed with. They run half the damn city—well, they run everything that the Espositos don’t. Between them two groups, there ain’t a damn alleyway you could piss in without urinatin’ on someone’s turf.” He eyed me, searching for any reaction. For a guy who seemed as neurotic as he did all the time, he had a way of understanding right away what was going on in my head.

 

I wasn’t ready yet for him to confirm his suspicions. I didn’t look up.

 

“They seemed awful cool to ya, didn’t they, shorty?” Smalls asked.

 

I hesitated for a moment. When I looked up at Smalls and nodded, he could see right away in my eyes what I’d felt.

 

“I was afraid of that.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “You know, I done found you more than five years ago? You was a mangled-lookin’ piece of shit, just a li’l kid all beat up in that back alley. I dragged your ass down to my tent and I wasn’t sure you would, but you pulled through. We done all right together, haven’t we?”

 

I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him. He seemed so sad. I noticed his hands had stopped their incessant shaking.

 

He went on without waiting for me to answer. “Yes, we sure have. But, shorty, you are too young to do the kinds of things those men do. They fight some awful battles. You and me, we’re just little guys out on the edge. Those guys in there,” he pointed his thumb over his shoulder behind us, “they wade through blood. They been fightin’ the Espositos for years, and it ain’t a pretty, nice little squabble. It’s war, son. You is way too little for any of that. I know you think you big, but you ain’t so big yet. Not yet.”

 

He stood up and offered me a hand. I looked up at him from where I sat on the curb. He was frail, quickly graying, the years spent scrambling for survival starting to catch up to him faster than he could run away. When I clasped his hand, mine felt so strong and hardy in comparison to his.

 

He was a father to me, in his own peculiar way. He looked after me. He did right by me.

 

Smalls’ words echoed in my head for a long time. But I couldn’t shake the thought that kept playing in the back of my mind over and over again. I belonged in there.