Chapter 5

Animal

The fosters were home, so I took that as my cue to leave. I didn’t want to get roped into their addiction or the mania it brought.

I started to walk, thinking of finding T. She’d been keeping to the park in town. Though she hated it when I found what she used as shelter—she was embarrassed. I got it. I respected it. We could allow each other to be kings in our imaginations if we didn’t see reality sometimes.

Instead, Boon and Fleece met me on the corner. They’re assholes, way older than me. But I was bored tonight. Boon had been bounced around the system like me back in the day. It had broken him. Fleece had parents, but he lived on the side of town that people avoided at night. They were reckless. The lack of a goal was evident in how they spent their downtime. I shouldn’t have hung with them, but I didn’t want to be with the fosters, so I walked with them.

They started talking about jacking a car. And I hated it. But I knew how it was. I had to be as tough as they thought I was. Fleece was going on and on how he’d been watching videos on how to hotwire a car. That might have been knowledge I wanted to hoard—if he was telling the goddamn truth. He probably wasn’t.

We walked together to the part of town that had the fancy trash cans and every bench was dedicated to some old, dead rich person. I hopped on one and walked across it looking for old cars. The whole plan was shit. We were in the wrong part of town to ever find an old car. A lady pulled out from a parking garage real slow. She was at the light at the entrance. It was red. She started applying lipstick in the rearview mirror. I saw her start to talk, smiling as she put away the lipstick.

But Fleece was shit for impulse control. He hissed, “Go, fuckers.”

Fleece snuck up the side of the BMW. Stupid impulses happened quickly. Boon pulled a gun out of the pocket of his jacket. Fleece opened the driver’s side door and yanked the woman out by her hair. She scrambled up the second she hit the pavement.

I got chills up my spine when I saw the car seat in the back just as she screamed, “Not my baby!”

I read scenes. It’s what I did. The choices flew in front of me. These fuckers were taking that car. I watched as Fleece punched the mother in the face, knocking her out cold.

Boon’s eyes were wild as he yelled, “Come on!” to me.

I leaped off the bench and ran to the car. I had to step over the mother’s body, and I hated to leave her like that. I didn’t know how her head was—if she’d hit it way too hard. But I’d seen how mothers were. At the park. In the street. In school. They’d die for their kid. I got in the back seat as the wheels started spinning.

I turned to look at the lump of lady next to the car. Unbelievably, and thankfully, she tried to sit up. At least she wasn’t dead. Fleece and Boon were in the front seat. They were slamming the steering wheel and cursing up a storm. I looked to the car seat. I was right. A little baby—crap. As tiny as it was, maybe it was six months old? Who knew? It looked back at me and I watched it pout.

Oh no.

“Don’t,” I tried to warn the baby. The baby didn’t care. The crying shocked both the assholes in front.

Boon turned in his seat. Instead of a question, he slid me his gun. “Kill it.”

I took the gun, smooth as I could, and pointed it at the floor. I had to get the kid out of here.

The baby started crying harder.

I met Fleece’s eyes in the rearview mirror. I watched his left eyelid twitch. “That crying. Make it fucking stop.”

I slipped the safety off and checked the chamber. There were four bullets in the gun. Enough. If I had to. I sure as shit didn’t want to.

Boon and Fleece had connections to gangs. What I did next could put me on a few hit lists. I was fucking thirteen years old.

I glanced at the car seat. The baby was inconsolable. Babies could sense stress, like dogs. At least the ones I had encountered could. I knew how this kind of seat worked. Two fosters ago had a set of twins, and I helped with their shit. If I pressed the red button, it would separate the seat from the base. I leaned over the seat and unlocked the handle, shifting it up so it acted like the handle on an Easter basket.

Aiming the gun at the floor became aiming the gun at the back of Fleece’s head.

“Stop the fucking car.”

We were barely out of town. Woods and a few rundown buildings were all that was left as the scenery before it was just wilderness.

“Don’t start, Animal.”

We were screaming at each other over this baby’s crying. Boon started hitting the handle of the car seat. I didn’t let my eye contact leave the mirror, but I was watching Boon out of my peripheral.

I reconsidered everything I was doing, and the plan became clear, like someone wearing a halo and a pair of wings whispered it into my ear. I pressed on the car seat and it snapped back into its base. I wasn’t trying to get us out of the vehicle anymore.

I worked to calm my voice, though it still cracked a little. “Get out of the goddamn car before I blow your head off.”

Fleece was enraged. Maybe he was on something. “You won’t fucking do it. You’re a goddamn kid.”

I shot the gun between them, the windshield shattering. I covered the baby with the built-in canopy without looking at it.

Fleece and Boon exited the car like a gun just went off. Fast.

My hand was shaking, but I had to act like I was confident. I wasn’t really looking to kill anyone tonight.

I kept the gun pointed toward the windshield as I tossed myself between the seats and took over the driver’s side.

Fleece and Boon were showing their irritation by picking up rocks and branches from the side of the road to toss them at the vehicle.

I shot the gun toward their feet and they hopped back. I saw the whites of their eyes bug out with shock.

I had two bullets left. The baby was screaming.

I looked at the dashboard. I’d never driven anything before. I managed to slide the gearshift into drive, and the SUV lurched forward. I hit the gas pedal hard and over steered, hearing the back wheels spin on the gravel.

The open doors closed themselves from the force of the car speeding forward. I tried to look in the rearview mirror, but it was angled in the wrong direction. The cracks from the broken windshield were expanding. If I ducked, I could see the baby in a little mirror the mother must have installed for this exact purpose. The baby was purple from all the crying.

I was staying on the right side of the road. I looked at the speedometer, but I couldn’t register what the hell I was doing before I had to look at the road again.

A car came up behind me and flew around, passing me on the double yellow. I held my breath. Was it possible Fleece and Boon got picked up that soon?

I exhaled when the car sped around the corner up ahead. I realized I was going slower despite the fact I was pressing the pedal hard. When the car piddled to a stop, I looked at the dashboard again. The gaslight was on.

This car was out of business. The baby was slowing down with the crying. Gasping and restarting a lot.

I put the car in park. I didn’t have a ton of options. We’d only gone about five miles, so walking wouldn’t be too hard. It would have been a hell of a lot easier if I didn’t know that two assholes were dumped out raging mad down the road.

I got out of the car. I didn’t want to give up the gun, but the pants I was wearing had no safe place to store it. Carrying the gun and the baby at the same time gave me the willies. I opened the chamber and dropped the bullets into my hand.

After tossing the gun in one direction and the bullets in another into the woods that edged the road, I turned back to the car. I needed to walk the baby back to its mom.

Lights flashed in the distance. Another car.

Fuck.

Part of me wanted to run, but the other part of me knew I couldn’t leave this baby alone. A car could hit the vehicle. Fleece and Boon could come up on it.

I was the child’s only defense.

Straightening my shoulders, I folded my arms in front of my chest. Projection was half of a battle. Maybe.

The car slowed down, but all I could see was headlights. I let my nostrils flair. I was tougher than anyone else. At least, that’s what I hoped it looked like.

The car door opened and I could hear it, but I couldn’t see it. Those could be my last moments. Which would suck—because then the baby would be on its own.

I heard my name. “Animal.”

I squinted, trying to see who was talking to me. The headlights cut out and a flashlight illuminated Officer Patrick Merck.

I dropped my folded arms and felt my spine relax. Thank God. Of all damn people to run up on me like this—he was the best one.

“What the hell are you doing with a stolen car? Is that the missing baby I hear?” Merck turned his flashlight on the car.

“Yeah. I don’t know how to make it stop.” I shrugged my shoulders.

Merck walked past me and looked in the back seat. I peered over his shoulder as he slid the pacifier into the kid’s mouth. It took a bit, but soon the baby latched onto the plastic. It was still sniffling and shaking a little on the comedown, but we finally had silence.

“Remind me never to have kids. That thing is a lunatic.” I pointed at the baby.

Merck used the blanket to wipe the baby’s nose. “How the hell are you involved in this?”

He unhitched the baby bucket from the base and carefully pulled the baby out of the car.

“Dumbass Fleece and Boon. I thought we were boosting an old car. Instead, they did a carjacking. When I saw there was a baby in the car, I jumped in.” Merck handed the bucket to me and waved for me to follow him to the patrol car.

I looked down at the baby. It looked up at me. It was small and delicate and made me nervous.

“Then Fleece told me to shoot the baby. So I took the gun and shot the windshield. They got out, I drove off, and now I’m here with you. The car ran out of gas.”

Merck used his walkie to tell someone somewhere that the baby was safe, and that the car was found, too.

He leveled a gaze at me. “I told you those two are nothing but trouble. You not into listening? I swear, havoc follows you around like a puppy sometimes.”

Merck looked a little like Superman. Tall, with dark hair and blue eyes. We met each other when I was still in elementary school. Anytime I got in trouble at school or in the community and he’d shown up, I’d tell him the truth. Whether it incriminated me or not.

There was a connection between us. Something in me told me I could trust him. On more than one occasion, Merck could’ve put me in juvie for things I’d done. But that damn closeness. He knew I’d tell him the facts no matter what I saw. And there was value in that—or so he said.

We both heard a car in the distance. We looked at each other and didn’t need to speak. I passed him the baby in the bucket and Merck put it in the back seat and shut the door. Protection.

Merck lifted his eyebrows and chin. That was my cue that we were going to roll into a scenario. I put my hands on the hood of the police car and he made the motions of kicking out my feet without actually touching me.

The car pulled through real slow. Merck told me to keep my head down.

As soon as the car pulled away, Merck stepped back. “That was at least Fleece. Couldn’t see the rest of them in the car.”

I turned. We’d play-acted an arrest before, but I still hated it. And I knew he did, too.

It was disrespectful to what we both knew to be true. We helped one another.

“So what’s the move?” I let us skip over the uneasiness.

Merck opened the back door to look at the baby.

“You come stay at my house for a few days. They think I got you locked up. Then we spread that your age kept you out of trouble. And you say nothing.” Merck pulled out his laptop and started typing. “We’re waiting for the ambulance. The mother is coming, too.”

“What about Fleece and Boon? You’re going to get them, right? I’ll testify.”  I nodded and flexed. It would feel good to help put those assholes in jail. I kept picturing Fleece punching the mother. I hated it.

“We let them go. For now.” He didn’t take his eyes off the computer.

“No.” I slapped my hand near Merck’s electronic.

He stopped typing and turned his head. “You need to stay safe. And they need to not think you’re a snitch.”

I kicked at the dirt. “I’m no snitch. They wanted to kill a baby. Come on. There has to be something done about that.”

“There was. The baby’s safe because you saved it. I’m proud of you. But now you have to trust me.” He went back to typing.

“I’m not staying at your house.” I looked down the road and focused on where the yellow line met the dark.

There was silence. We’d been through this before. When I was just a kid and Merck was Superman in my head still, I’d asked him to adopt me.

And he’d said no.

I wasn’t going to play house with him for a few days just to go back to the fosters. It’d be like getting everything I’d wanted just to give it back.

I heard Merck sigh. Mrs. Merck had been the reason back then. She’d said no, and Merck respected her decision. She didn’t want to adopt a kid when she was trying so hard to have a baby.

I’d lost a lot of potential families before then and since then. Now I set the terms. I didn’t want a goddamn family. I’d make my own. Someday.

“You can stay at a friend of mine’s house. They have an apartment.”

I shook my head and wiped my nose. I could hear the ambulance in the distance.

“I’m good, Merck. You need someone to testify—I’m there. Otherwise, I’ll catch you around. Oh, I tossed the gun that way, and the bullets that way.” I turned my back and walked away. Merck called my name twice, then let me go.

I didn’t turn around. I didn’t want him to see the tear that was rolling down my cheek.