SEVENTEEN
VICK AND I STUCK TOGETHER from that night on, making our dilapidated building into a semi-decent home with the things we took from houses that wouldn’t be missed.
I insisted we only take what we needed. Warm blankets when the weather turned colder. Clothes and shoes in our size. Unopened toiletries and food. And on occasion, when we were having an exceptionally hard week, we would take something we could pawn.
Hard weeks weren’t happening very often anymore, though, since I had made friends with a local drug dealer named Anthony and had become his errand boy.
Selling drugs was something I had experience with, but back when I had done it, I was messing with small amounts. The packages Anthony sent me with were huge, and I knew it would land me quite a few years in prison if I were to get caught.
Luckily for me, I knew my way around the streets, and what I didn’t know, I learned fast. Getting caught wasn’t something bound to happen to me anytime soon, but I knew if it ever did, I would be quick to turn in Anthony to get the charges dismissed.
It wasn’t anything personal, but it was business. The one thing I did know was the police around town would give anything to catch the big dog, and Anthony was the biggest of the dogs.
When I wasn’t running the streets with Vick or selling drugs for Anthony, who owned half of New York City, I was back at our place, making it feel like a home as much as I could.
With blankets hanging from ropes, we made ourselves two separate spaces and even managed to pull an old couch we found outside a nice brownstone back to our place. With the exception of electricity or running water, the place was home. And I found myself staying indoors with Vick more and more and visiting Jane’s place less and less. Actually, the more I sat on the situation, the angrier I became about it.
They were using me—trying to get pregnant—trying to steal my little soldiers like I was a fucking sperm bank or something.
Bullshit.
So after a few weeks, I was done.
I changed a lot in that time, becoming darker and colder to everything and everyone around me, with the exception of Vick. It felt amazing not to feel much of anything anymore.
By the time we ended the summer and fall was moving in, we were celebrating my eighteenth birthday. After Jane and the past year of my life, I was completely shut off emotionally.
The streets knew me, and I knew the streets, and I was earning a bit of a name for myself given that I wasn’t taking shit from anyone. Even Anthony, the drug lord who had murder under his belt, understood I wasn’t one to fuck with.
I was just a shell surviving with revenge simmering in my gut for over a year. I couldn’t let go of the fact someone had used me. Jane had taken any emotion I had once felt and shoved it back in my face without a care for me—wrecking me and my trust for the rest of my life.
Revenge.
It was why I convinced Vick that the Jepson’s home should be our next hit. They had nothing I needed or wanted, other than the things I’d left behind, but just the idea of taking from them the way they had taken from me was enough to bring a grin to my face.
“You’re sure you want to do this?” Vick asked as she took the back stairs one at a time.
“Yep,” I said with no doubts. “There should be a key under the mat.”
If the key was still there, then they were total dumbasses. They knew I knew the key was there. They also knew I was a delinquent—a delinquent they had wronged. One who would be coming back for revenge once the hurt ebbed and anger took its place again.
Vick bent over, pulled up the black mat, and snatched the silver key that opened the back door.
“I’ll be damned.” She giggled. “It’s like they want to have their shit stolen.”
She pushed the key into the door and unlocked it. A smirk tugged on the side of my mouth when she turned the knob, and the door popped open. I went in first, unarming the alarm with the same code the dumbasses didn’t think to change. Once it was off, Vick followed me inside and closed the door.
“Is there anything in particular you want from these assholes?”
She knew the rage I housed inside me. I’d told her the complete story one night while we lay in bed in the pitch black and listened to a winter storm blow outside our tin covered home.
“Take anything and everything you can. Jewelry. Money. Anything that might hurt them.”
“And what about you? What are you taking?”
I chuckled, enjoying the sting of the cold air on my cheeks. “I’m getting my shit if it’s still here, and then I’m filling my bag with anything and everything I can.”
And I meant it.
I didn’t matter what it was. I just didn’t want them to have it. They could fuck with me so easily—use me and toss me away like I was nothing.
They had a surprise coming.
I took the stairs straight to my old room and pushed the door open, ready to see if they had thrown my things away.
They hadn’t.
They’d stripped the room completely of me, but in the corner, a box full of my things sat, ready to be taken to Goodwill. I knew that since someone had scrawled the word donate along the side.
Snatching up the box, I sat on the bed and pulled back a piece of the cardboard. There on top was a picture I’d secretly kept of Deloris and a few of the kids from the group home.
My eyes itched with tears I refused to shed.
Life had tilted on its axis, leaving me to grab onto anything to keep from floating away, but looking down at the picture of the only person in the world who had ever loved me, I knew one thing.
I had the one thing I’d spent my entire life looking for, and I didn’t even realize it until it was gone.
A family.
Love.
Deloris.
I missed Deloris, and as I smoothed my finger over the aging picture, I even found myself missing a few of the kids from the home. But I couldn’t let it rock me. I had to stay the course. I had to stay focused with my mind on the matters at hand.
Matters like food, shelter, and warmth since winter was on its way back to town and about to take its toll on New York. Matters like staying alive and keeping Vick’s shit together.
She was a wild one, no doubt about that, and obviously had a problem taking things that didn’t belong to her. I did the same, but it was different. Vick stole wallets and cash; Vick stole jewelry when we didn’t need to pawn. Hell, she would have stolen candy from a baby if I had let her, but after some time together, I helped her control her klepto ways.
Until today.
I’d given her free reign over the Jepson’s house, hoping she would take anything that might leave a lasting mark on their lives.
“What the fuck are you doing, Sebastian?” Vick asked from the door, her arms full of expensive goods—things I’d used when I lived in their house. Things I knew would piss Darrell off when he realized they were gone.
Good.
“Getting my things. You ready? Or you want to take more?”
She laughed, obviously enjoying herself.
“Fuck it. Let’s take more.”
We left the Jepson’s house with two backpacks full, a box full, and our pockets full. And when we left Sal’s pawn shop later that afternoon, we had enough money to actually go to a restaurant and sit down for a nice meal.
I only wished I could be a fly on the wall when Darrell and Jane came home and realized I’d taken all their valuables. To see the utter shock and devastation of knowing their things were gone. Things they could never get back—mementos of their lives.
I laughed to myself as I stuffed a piece of steak in my mouth.
“What’s so funny?” Vick asked as she chewed at her own medium-rare beef.
“Nothing. I just hope my baby batter was worth all their expensive shit.”
She laughed. “Doubt it.”
Later, as we lay in our beds separated by the blankets we had stolen, we laughed with our bellies full of good food.
“Jessica Rabbit? Should I know who that is?” Vick asked as I explained my cartoon obsession.
I sat up on my elbow and faced the blanket as if she could see me from the other side.
“You’re not fucking serious?”
She laughed. “Yes! It’s not like I sit around watching TV all the time, Sebastian. I mean, I couldn’t tell you the last time I watched a movie.”
I plopped back on my pillows in shock.
I thought I’d had a hard upbringing, but at least I had the colorful fun of cartoons to get me through. Apparently, Vick had even less than I did.
“Soon,” I promised. “We need electricity, and we need to buy a TV and a DVD player.”
Again, she laughed.
“Sure. We’ll just hook it up in the den and relax in our leather recliners,” she joked.
“I’m being serious, Vick. We won’t always live like this. It will get better.”
She didn’t respond, and I knew it was because she didn’t believe me. Nothing had ever been great in our lives. We couldn’t expect it to get better when it was only bound to get worse.
But I had determination. And if I had to lie, cheat, and steal to get somewhere in this life, then so be it. Honesty was always best, but honestly, I was hanging on the edge of everything. I wanted a real life. One that didn’t consist of a tin building without electricity and no idea where my next meal would come from.
Soon, I promised myself before turning on my side and drifting off to sleep.