Chapter Four

Chasing Dragons

Garrett

Seven Years Ago…

I lay in bed, like every night, chasing away demons and looking for angels.

I found one. I finally found one tonight.

Juliana Torres.

Last night, I had my first date, not that she knew it, not that I intended on it being that. My intention was to score. Not to find something that was soft to focus on when I closed my eyes at night. Something...oddly beautiful.

That night, I slept. The next day, I thought of her. Hell, I even googled her, but nothing came up for a Juliana Torres. I laugh at myself—yes, at myself—because nothing good can be real, not one fucking thing.

I walked into school the next day, on time, and saw Gage. Mom held him back a year when we moved to the States, making him a grade above me. Fucking joke, he wasn’t behind. I know she did that shit because of my temper. As usual, he’s surrounded by all this fucking fans. Yeah, fans. Everyone loves him and his best friend, Zandor Steel. I wonder if he told them about me. I wonder that all the time. I have every day for the past five years.

Once I asked him if they all knew about me. He was pissed, pissed that I called him on it, and he hissed, “No.”

I don’t believe him.

I make my way through an entire day of school, hiding under my hood and pissed off. No one fucks with me. Half of them cross the hallway when they see me coming; some of the meatheads walk up and expect me to step out of their way. After the first dozen or so ended up on their asses, only the new kids try that shit anymore.

I don’t care to make friends. I don’t care to be part of the in-crowd. Hell, I don’t care to be part of any crowd. Ninety percent of the time, I don’t even care to be.

After school, I drive to the park to sit and smoke. I haven’t had a cigarette all day. Every time I craved one, I thought of her, of Juliana.

“Where the fuck did you go last night?”

I look back when I hear Razor’s scratchy voice call out to me.

I wait until he’s in front of me to answer. “End of Fourth Ave.”

“What?” he gasps.

“Shithole you told me about,” I answer, butting the cigarette out on the picnic table.

“You did what!” he yells.

“Don’t fucking worry about it. Didn’t even get in the door. Fell through the fucking stairs and saw a girl.”

I hide the smile in my voice. It’s none of his business. And it’s not his business that I have every intention of going back to feed her again, just to be in her company, and not because I think she’s fucking beautiful. I do. But it’s because I slept last night. I fucking slept.

He laughs and shakes his head. “You get head?”

I glare up at him, and he shrugs.

“The girl, she looks kind of hot, kind of dirty, kind of sad?”

I don’t answer. That description could be half the population, and I don’t like the way he describes her.

“You get a blowjob?”

My fists clench at my sides.

“She’s usually a throw in for your type. Rich, too much money to spend, so they want you to keep coming back for more.”

My body tenses and my clenched fists start to shake.

“If I remember correctly, her teeth scrape.” He laughs, and everything goes black.

When light returns, I am being pulled off of Razor by none other than the fucking hero—my big brother, Gage.

“What the fuck are you doing! Garrett, what the fuck!”

I see Razor’s face as he spits out a mouthful of blood. His lip is cut, nose bleeding, and his eye is already starting to swell. He deserves it. Deserves everything I unleashed on him for what he said about her.

“He—”

Razor hold his hand up and shakes his head. “My bad, man. Thought he was someone else.”

“Bullshit! What the fuck happened, Garrett?” Gage asks, shaking me.

I look at Razor, who shakes his head then walks away.

“I’ll stay on my side of the track, rich boy. You just stay on yours.”

“Garrett?”

I pull away from Gage. “Guy asked me for money.”

Gage looks at me, shocked, then like he doesn’t believe me.

He shouldn’t.

“Jesus, just leave me alone,” I snap, walking toward my car.

From behind me, he calls out, “Stay the fuck away from here, Garrett. People like him are bad news. And this place—”

“Yeah, I know,” I yell over my shoulder.

***

- Snitches get stitches. Stay the fuck away from me, and stay the fuck away from my dealers, or your rich ass will be sorry. RZ

I stare at the text for hours. My dealer is now an enemy, and the girl...the girl, she’s either being abused or it’s by choice, and I want to fucking know. I sure as fuck won’t ask him. I don’t want him to know I give a damn. And I do. I do for so many fucking reasons.

I wait until dark, pacing back and forth in my bedroom, probably wearing a patch in the carpet, so I can sneak out and get answers. Hell, I will demand them.

When the clock says eleven, I walk into my bathroom and open the window. I climb out onto the oak tree that I am thankful hasn’t been cut down in one of Mom’s landscaping rampages. Once down on the ground, I rush to my car that is parked on the side of the road.

It takes twenty minutes to get from my house to hers. So fucking close, yet its difference is night and day. She and I are night and day.

I park in front of the thugs’ house tonight. The three guys are standing on the porch, same as yesterday.

I run my hands over my face, and then step out. Am I nervous? Fuck yes. But they will never know.

At six-two, I am never carded for smokes. Hell, sometimes I’m not even carded for beer, but that’s not my drug of choice. Alcohol doesn’t chase demons; it brings them up close and personal, so rarely do I bother.

I hear them snicker and say shit under their breath about me, making this too damn easy as I round the front of the vehicle.

“Touch these wheels, and you’ll answer to me first, then Deeds,” I say in a deep, threatening tone, using the name of the man that Juliana gave me last night, the one who buys hot cars and strips or sells them.

“Oh shit,” one whispers.

“Safe here, brother,” the biggest one calls out.

“We’ll make damn sure of it,” another says to my back.

I walk to the porch, making sure I am really fucking careful where I step so I don’t fall through another one of those dilapidated, old, rundown, shithole of the house’s steps.

I look around for her, for Juliana, but I don’t see her. I get annoyed, angry. No, I get pissed thinking she’s inside. I fucking wish she was out here. I wish she was out here and telling me to get her the hell out of here again. I would take her somewhere nice, not fucking McDonalds or Taco Bell. I would take her...

I stop when the door opens and a scrawny-ass man opens it.

“Who the hell are you and what do you want?”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

I didn’t even consider how this would go down, just her. I only considered her.

Thinking quickly, I pull out a wad of cash, all Benjamins, and tell him, “Deeds said I could get some Blueys.”

He scowls at me, looking me up and down, not saying shit.

“No? Fine, I can go elsewhere.” I start to turn and walk away when his voice stops me.

“Shit. No, man. Come in. Any friend of Deeds’ is a friend of mine.”

I turn back, and he steps inside, opening the door wider.

I hesitate for a moment. Am I really going to do this shit, walk into a fucking dealer’s house with no one at my back? Not like you can ask your brothers, dipshit. And it’s not like you have any fucking friends, I answer myself.

I walk in, keeping my head up.

The place reeks of smoke, cigarettes, and pot, plus something else unfamiliar.

“Maria, we got company!” he yells then turns to me, motioning me toward a couch that looks like the last time it saw a good day was back before my mom was born. It’s stained, and I legit have to force myself to sit on the disgusting fucking thing.

A woman comes out. She looks Latino, like Juliana. But this bitch is almost lifeless. Her cheeks are sunken in, making me assume she has no teeth.

I run my tongue over mine, hoping life doesn’t get so fucking bad I lose my shit, too.

Her eyes are shallow, hollow, and clearly fucked up. Her pupils are dilated so big I can’t tell if she has the same color as Juliana’s. They are black.

“Should I get the girl?” Her words are so slurred I can barely make them out.

He looks at me with question in his eyes.

I nod.

He chuckles and nods. “She’s busy right now, but you give it ten minutes, and she’s all yours.”

I want to reach across the room and take his throat in my hands, choke the life out of him, but that would get me nowhere, and clearly, it’s not just me, her, and two fucking soulless pieces of shit in this roach infested shithole. Who knows who else is in the room with her?

He pushes his ass up out of the black recliner that sits crooked. “You said Blueys. You sure you don’t want something stronger? Got some good stuff in tonight from our people in the mountains.”

“Blueys.” I nod.

“Blueys it is, then. Give me a few minutes.”

He leaves the old bitch in the room with me and walks into another.

She leans against the wall. “You know you ain’t got to wait for her. I can scratch that itch you have, boy.”

My stomach turns.

“Been doing it a helluva lot longer than she has.”

The man walks out with a bottle in his hand. “He don’t want your old ass. He wants a young one.”

“I’m not too old. Thirty-two ain’t old.” She smiles, and now I am going to puke. Half a mouth full of black teeth, and at thirty-two years old. Fucking sick.

He chuckles. “Only reason I took you in was ‘cause you was knocked up. Apparently not anymore.” He sits in the recliner and looks at me. “Gotta do some good to try and even out those scales. Been livin’ in hell all my days, hoping for some heaven when I meet my Maker.”

“Shit.” She smiles again. “You born in hell, you stay in hell. Only heaven you get is ‘tween my legs.”

“Only reason I keep your ass here is ‘cause you give head without teeth scraping.” He laughs at his own sick joke then looks at me. “Girl still got teeth; be mindful of that, young man.”

I look at his hand. “How much and how many?”

“Twenty at...” He pauses and looks me over. “Twenty a pill.”

“Four hundred dollars?”

He looks at me. “Five for the pills and the young one.”

I nod, knowing the price is going to go up if I say another word. Still, I can’t help it. “She comes with me”—I grab my cash and peel off six hundred dollars—”for two days.”

“A grand, and you can have her for three,” he says, leaning forward.

“She got school,” the old bitch tells him. “She miss it, they gonna come knocking.”

“A thousand, and I promise she gets to school, but you give me a whole week.”

“Fifteen hundred, and you’ve got yourself a deal,” he says, eyeing the cash.

I have a grand in my hand, another in my car, but I’m going to need the fucking cash to put her up somewhere. “A thousand’s all I got.”

He looks me in the eyes and shakes his head.

Calling his bluff, I stand. “That’s what I got.”

“You be back for more?” he asks.

I nod.

“Fine, but they come knocking once, and you ain’t gettin’ her again.”

“She’ll get to school.”

Less than thirty seconds later, two men walk out from the back, both high and fucking smirking.

They look at me. “Have fun with that.”

I want to slit their throats.

“J, you got company,” the woman calls down the hall.

“Bitch wasn’t worth the fifty, old man,” one says as he walks by.

The old man looks at me and smiles. “They just fucking around. Trust me; she’s worth it.”

“I got places to go,” I sneer at him. “Get her out here.”

I hand him the cash and grab the pills.

When she walks out, her hair is a tangled mess, her eye makeup is halfway down her face, and her body is trembling. When she looks at me, she begins to cry.

“J, keep your shit together. This one paid real good for you. Maybe you could actually give it up to him,” the woman whispers.

“I don’t do that,” she half-whispers, half-hisses as she hugs her trembling body.

“Pack a bag, J,” I tell her. “I have you for a week.”

She looks at me in confusion, scared, and I have to force a small, hopefully reassuring smile on my face, to which she stiffens.

“Come on; I haven’t got all day. Grab a bag.”

She looks at both of them as she walks back in the direction she came from. When she comes back out, she is carrying a filthy book bag and has on a tattered black coat that, to my best guess, was once a men’s pea coat.

I turn and head toward the door, knowing that, if I don’t get the fuck out of there, I’m going to kill someone.

When I get to my car, the thugs are leaning against it, which pisses me off.