CHAPTER FIVE

PREPPY

Sixteen years old

I was born minutes away from the beach and minutes away from the sticks, in Logan’s Beach, Florida. Saltwater in my veins. Dust on my soul.

Which was probably the reason it never bothered me when Bear, King, and I didn’t spend our Friday nights like most teenagers in LB were. Kicking up shit in the woods or sneaking beer into the drive-in dollar movie theater.

Then again, King, Bear and I weren’t most teenagers.

Our Friday nights were spent a little differently. Like rowing out to an island to bury our ‘investments.’

Although it didn’t have an official name, we’d dubbed the little five-acre slab of land separating the Bay from the Gulf as Motherfucker Island.

MFI for short.

Motherfucker Island was uninhabited and only about as big as a typical strip mall. Dense brush covered most of it, for the exception of a small clearing in the center made up of red dirt and shell. An almost perfect line of mangroves lined the perimeter.

We’d started our ‘supply bunker’ a year before. It was really just a hole in the ground, but you could only reach the island by boat and the mangroves and alligator infested shallow waters around it didn’t exactly make it a hot-spot destination for anyone but three delinquent teens trying to hide newly acquired cash, guns, and drugs.

The apartment King and I were renting wasn’t much by way of security unless you consider the flimsy chain lock on the door with rusted hinges secure. Hence the need for MFI.

The sun was setting as we rowed toward Motherfucker Island in the tiny metal boat barely large enough to hold the three of us. The time of day when it wasn’t still day but night had yet to take over the sky. I liked to call it the time of day when I couldn’t see shit. The rays from the falling ball of fire in the sky reflected off everything in sight causing me to go half blind as I rowed, hoping King and Bear could keep us on target.

A manatee blew out water a few feet from our boat. “Hey, buddy,” I said, leaning over the side and lightly patting the surface of the water.

“What the fuck are you doing?” King asked with a laugh.

“Making him come to me. I saw it on a TV show when I was a kid.” I continued to pat the water. “Come here, buddy. Come to Preppy,” I said, whistling like I was calling for a dog.

“I’m pretty sure that only works for dolphins,” Bear said, a cigarette dangling from his lip.

“Manatees are dolphins much fatter, slower cousins,” I argued. I either remembered that fact from somewhere, or made it up.

Chances are I made it up.

The manatee’s head disappeared. He flipped his tattered back fin in the air before disappearing back under the water, creating a circular ripple in the surface where he’d just been.

“Anyone else think the manatee just flipped us off?” King asked.

“He sure as fuck did,” Bear agreed. “Way to go dolphin-cousin whisperer.”

I sat back up and glared at my friends. “It’s your attitudes that scared him off. It deters even the wildlife.” I reached for my lighter in my back pocket. “In addition to girls.”

“I don’t have any problems with the girls,” King argued.

“Yeah, they’ll fuck you, but they’re scared of you,” I pointed out.

“Don’t bother me none,” King said, taking a deep breath. “Prefer it that way, actually.”

“This town can be such shit,” Bear said, exhaling smoke. He pointed to his cigarette at the disappearing ripple in the water where the manatee had just been. “And then you see shit like that and it makes you think that maybe it’s not so fucking bad.”

“I fucking love this town,” I said. “And we’re gonna own it someday. Well on our way.”

“Then we’re gonna own one of those,” King said, tipping his chin to several huge homes on pilings, towering above the water. Some of them were dark, hurricane panels covering the windows and doors. A sure sign that they were owned by someone who only lived in them ‘in season’ which was somewhere from November to March.

“What a fucking waste,” King said, echoing my thoughts. He pointed up to one such house. A three story stilt home sitting almost right under The Causeway. It was completely dark, storm shutters on every window and door. It had a huge backyard with a neglected fire pit, bricks crumbling from the pile.

“Fucking shame,” I agreed. “When we get one of those big ‘ol fuckers for ourselves I’m never leaving the place. Like a king in his castle.”

King shot me a look. “We already got a King.”

I knew he was goading me because he had this thing he did when he was trying to be serious but about to crack where the corner of his lip would ever so slightly twitch like he was physically fighting his reaction. “Like a Preppy in his castle then,” I amended.

King smiled.

“I’m glad you let that smile out, Boss-Man. I was afraid for a second that you were going to spontaneously combust. That or you had a serious case of constipation,” I said.

Bear snorted. “Well, make sure that when y’all get one of them places that you make room for me,” Bear said, sounding defeated.

“Uh, Bear. You’re in a biker gang,” I pointed out. I quit rowing just long enough to pass him the dented Pepsi can I’d made into a temporary bong after dropping my rolling papers into the fucking Caloosahatchee. “I hate to sound all mean-girls on you, but...you can’t live with us.”

“It’s a motorcycle club,” Bear corrected, looking off into the distance. “And I ain’t moving in. Just make sure you have space for me if I need to crash.”

King and I glanced at each other and understanding passed between us that Bear meant he needed a place to crash for when his ‘ol man, Chop, pushed him to the edge, which he was doing more and more of ever since Bear turned official Prospect for the MC.

“Sure thing, man,” King said, casually.

The three of us continued to survey the darkened waste of real estate until we came upon one that was different than the others.

It was lit up and being that it was closer to the water than the others, we could see directly inside to where a family was eating dinner together at the dining room table. A mom, dad, and little boy. They were smiling and laughing together. “Didn’t know families actually did that,” I said, not realizing how sad it sounded at the time.

“You don’t want that,” Bear argued. “Shit looks boring as fuck.”

King agreed with a slight nod of his head.

“I didn’t say I wanted that,” I quipped, shrugging my shoulders. “I just didn’t know people actually did that. Thought it was made up or something you only see on TV.”

“It is,” Bear said. “What you just saw there was a lie. The dad is probably fucking his assistant, who’s a dude, mom’s knocked up by the principle of junior’s school and has a thousand dollar a day drug habit, plus junior is so high on ADD meds he doesn’t know his dick from a wet noodle.”

“I feel like you’ve given this way more thought than it deserved,” I observed as the family eating dinner grew further and further away. “Wait?” I faked a gasp. “Are YOU the one fucking the dad?”

Bear punched me in the shoulder and smiled. “Boring as fuck,” he said again, like it was a fact he wanted me to remember. He slid his cigarette to the side of his mouth so he could use both arms to row against the growing current.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Boring as fuck.”

As we approached the island everything was cast in shadows, making the long roots of the mangroves look like hundreds of skinny legs dipping into the water. The trees themselves appeared to be large spider-like creatures standing guard around the island.

I held the flashlight, trying to find the clearing we’d hacked out months before. The light caught the yellow glowing eyes of a dozen or so gators lingering at the surface of the water. Some darted under the second they found themselves in the way of the beam, other braver ones slinked toward our boat without creating any sort of wake to better inspect the intruders.

Us.

“It’s like a gator orgy out here,” I said.

“Yeah, so let's get over there quickly without tipping the goddamned boat before it becomes a gator buffet,” King said.

Once we found the clearing we paddled toward it with all of our strength to keep the tide from pushing us back. The second the boat made contact with land King jumped out first pulling the boat further onto the shore, scraping the metal bottom of the boat over the rock and shell.

Bear and I followed, each of us carrying backpacks with our stash. It only took us an hour or so to locate our hole, dig it up again, bury our stash and cover it back up.

As we made it back to the boat my flashlight again caught the yellow eyes of the gators surrounding the boat. One thrashed as it caught a fish in its mouth before diving back under the water with its meal between its teeth. “Great night for a swim,” I sang, looking back at King and Bear.

“You afraid?” Bear said, slinging his empty backpack into the boat.

“You’re the pussy out of the three of us,” I said. “Bet you wouldn’t dip your big toe in the water.”

Bear raised a brow. “Oh yeah? I’ll do you one better, I’ll run in, knee deep if you run in with me.”

“One lap around the boat?” I asked, already kicking off my shoes and rolling up my pants. Bear did the same. We both looked to King.

“Fuck,” he said, tugging off his boots. “The only reason I’m doing it this is so I don’t have to fucking hear about it for the rest of my goddamned life.” He stood at the edge. “Don’t tell Grace a word of this,” he muttered.

The three of us stood at the edge and Bear pushed the boat halfway into the water.

“Ready?” I asked, cracking my neck and rolling my shoulders. “First motherfucker to get eaten...well, dies.”

“I’m not scared,” Bear said.

“Me neither,” King chimed in.

“Okay then,” I said. “Ready. Set. Goooooo!” I shouted as the three of us splashed through the water like a herd of zebra running from a lion. It only took a few seconds for us to round the boat before we collapsed onto the shore, breathing hard from the adrenaline rush.

“All thirty fingers and toes accounted for?” King huffed.

“Yeah,” Bear and I both said at the same time. I held a finger in the air, “But Bear’s pinky toe on his right foot is weirdly smaller than the rest of his toes, so the ‘all finger and toe’ thing is subjective at best.”

“Shut the fuck up, Preppy,” Bear said, reaching for me to hit me but his fist fell short, smacking the ground instead.

“That wasn’t so bad,” I said, still gasping for air. 

My life would never be like the perfect-looking family eating dinner in that window, but it didn’t have to be, because at that moment, with my friends by my side, I decided I’d much rather live the kind of life that had me splashing through gator infested waters, feeling very much ALIVE.

I glanced over to King and Bear who recognized the look on my face and cringed.

“Wanna go again?”