Bleep bleep bleep.

  I rolled over to my morning alarm sounding from my phone beside my pillow on my bed. My eyes still closed, I reached over and swiped on the screen, snoozing the alarm. I crossed my arms and continued to keep my eyes shut while I lay on my back.

  I couldn’t stress how much I simply dreaded school. Who wants to wake up at the buttcrack of dawn for no other reason than to learn mostly useless shit, taught by teachers who barely passed college? I’m pretty sure Ms. Blane, the biology teacher, didn’t even go to college. Rumor has it, she was just a substitute for a teacher that never came back. Now, she’s worked at the highschool for the past thirty years, and no one is even around to remember the missing teacher.

  Bleep bleep bleep.

  I finally opened my eyes, blinded as I grabbed the phone and shut off the alarm for the day. It took a few seconds of squinting before I could actually make out what my phone screen had displayed. My head was throbbing with a migraine from hell.

  6:45

  I was out way too late last night.

  While swinging my legs to the side of my bed and throwing the cover off, I ran my tongue across my gums to try to get some relief from my dry mouth, and my tongue landed in an unfamiliar gap between my teeth just behind my bottom right canine.

  How crazy did the party get at Jaimie’s last night?

  “I hope I didn’t smoke all of my product last night, I gotta try to make some dough.”

  I walked to my closet, rubbing my eyes along the way, and moved my hanging shirts to each side. On the back wall of my closet there was a cutout in the wall where a small safe sat. I punched in the code, then turned the handle with a thud and clang, then pulled towards myself, opening the safe. The contents inside were two unmarked vials, a large mouth mason jar half full of cannabis, twisted and striped with deep purples and bright oranges. It glistened with what looked like sugar. A bag of little blue pills sat in the front, just behind the safe’s bottom lip.

  I snatched the pills and tossed them on my bed, then grabbed a blank, light blue shirt that was hanging up, before shutting the safe and slinging the shirts back to their original state. Turning from my closet I walked over to my bedside dresser, opened the bottom of the two drawers, and grabbed an unbundled pair of black, calf-high socks. I put on the socks, then grabbed the dark blue hoodie slung at the end of my bed and threw it on, before checking the jeans I had slept in.

  Hm. Seems to be clean enough.

  I shrugged and slipped on the laceless hightops that sat beside my bedroom door. My car keys hung beside the door on a hook, the Audi logo shining at me. I couldn’t help but grin. I almost had enough money to afford a supercharger to tack on to my already turbocharged inline four cylinder Mk1 Audi TT. I just had to sell everything Jaime fronted me the night before.

  I grabbed my phone from my bed and checked the time again.

  7:05

  I smelled my armpits and gagged a bit.

  “I can just throw on some deo for that, pff.” I combed my hand through my slick, oily hair. “Nah, I gotta get a shower for that, though.”

  I tapped open my music app on my phone, started playing my music in my library on shuffle, then locked my phone and slipped it in my pocket, opening my door, and waltzing to the bathroom just across the hall from my bedroom door. I sang along to the entirety of AC DC's Highway To Hell before I had even gotten undressed and started the water.

  The song that followed, Have a Drink on Me, was hummed along to as I brushed my teeth.

  I didn’t care that I would likely miss my first period. It was a Monday, in my senior year, in my last semester. At this point having alcohol on my breath and smelling of weed would pose a bigger threat to my scholarships. I’d start to make big money when I moved to the big leagues at college.

  Ding! Bzz bzz.

  My eyes snapped to my phone sitting on the sink with a notification from Youtube Music. Tapping twice on the screen of my phone with my left hand, I swiped down on the notification to read it.

  “Mattstagraham just released a new song!”

  “Oh, Caffeine was a banger. I bet this one’ll go hard, too.” I tapped the notification and the song title, Petty, popped up and immediately started playing. Within a few seconds the song already had me bouncing on my feet. “Oh!, That’s the shit! It's goin’ on repeat!” My speech was all slurred since the toothbrush was still in my mouth as I bopped to the music.

  “You know what?”

  Without covering myself, I walked back to my room and grabbed two of the pills, then walked back to the bathroom and set them on the countertop next to the sink. I rinsed off my toothbrush, then grabbed a cup and filled it about halfway with water before rinsing my mouth out, and spat in the sink. I grabbed a hand towel that was hanging on the wall and wiped the bottom of the cup with the towel, then crushed the two pills into a fine powder. Using the side of the cup I lined the powder into one large line of blue dust. Then I used my left hand to pinch my left nostril closed and leaned down to the line of blue dust with my right nostril and inhaled quick and sharp while moving my head down the line.

  ■

  Pulling into the parking lot behind the highschool’s basketball gym, I hopped out after shutting off the engine with a cigarette in my lips, lighter in my hand. I leaned against the building, staring at my car with its sweet matte blue color, as I lit the cigarette. I pressed my head back against the brick wall I was leaning to as I inhaled and heard a familiar voice.

  “Em things are gonna kill you one day!”

  The voice came from the silver car I parked next to with tinted windows. The passenger side window was rolled down and the driver was leaning over so he was easier to see from where I was at.

  I gave a grin and waved. “Long time no see.” I winked and let out a chuckle, and I could see Jaime chuckle too.

  “Feels like a long time after that rager last night, that's for sure!” He waved at me to come closer and so I did. As I got to the passenger side window, he reached his hand out and handed me a hundred dollar bill, rolled up like a straw. “I think we got a lil’ carried away with the party last night, and you forgot you made a sale on some of that fent.”

  Unrolling the bill, some blue dust fell out and I grinned. “I’ll be honest, I don’t even remember the sale, but I sure am glad to see this dough.” I let out another chuckle. “But I do remember you telling me your lil’ bros could help me take some of the heat off my back from Principal Bode.”

  “Good timin’ too, I was just droppin’ ‘em off.”

  The back passenger door popped open, and out climbed two freshman aged boys, both wearing black hoodies. I had only really seen them running around at lunch time at school, or occasionally playing basketball in the old basketball gym.

  “It's amazing what twins can get away with, am I right?” Jamie chuckled. “Dion and Donald are the best at selling customers on our product, homie.”

  “Yeah, it helps when all the competition’s been raided.” I gave a sharp look at Jaimie. “As long as no one is lookin’ at me, I’m good with it.”

  “Is their cut coming outta’ my profits?” I rested my hand on the door’s rolled down window.

  “Nah, homie. This was my idea, I’m takin’ care of it.”

  “Cool.” I turned to the twins. “So we meet back here by three o’ clock, on the dot. I don’t wanna hear of any problems, either. Take care of ‘em, before I have to get involved.” I walked over to the passenger side door of my car, opening it and the glove box, snatching the blue pills out that had been split into 2 smaller baggies. I strode back over to the twins, handing them each a bag.

  Riing!

  The bell for fourth period, gym class. The last practice with the basketball team before the off-season.

  ■

  “Great effort, team!” Coach Mendez slapped each of our bottoms as we jogged through the tunnel, off the court, and into the locker room.

  Smack!

  “Specially you, Kenyan.” I’m pretty sure he slapped my butt harder than the rest.

  Each of us slowed to a walk as we entered the threshold of the locker room, waddling to our lockers with sore legs from running suicides for the last fourty minutes. With our schedule changing to the off-season, we had to empty our lockers.

  Lucky for me, I didn’t keep much in my locker. I had a pair of sneakers -which I got to keep because I bought them myself-, the clothes I was changing back into, my game uniform -which we were told to keep in our lockers-, and the pair of practice clothes I was currently wearing . I was stripping off my shirt when a sneaker thudded between my shoulderblades, followed by laughter from two of my teammates behind me.

  Ha, ha. Very funny, guys.

  “Only reason you got the scholarship and have the scouts looking at you is ‘cuz you’re black, Kenyan.”

  Of course it's Jacob starting shit again.

  I turned slowly and bent over, picking up the shoe that had hit me in the back. “Fuck’s that ‘sposed to mean, asshole?”

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  I underhanded the shoe back at Jacob, and he scowled as he caught it.

  “I’ve scored more total points than you. I’ve even scored more free throws than you, and I’ve got more assists.” He spat at my feet, taking a few steps towards me, making sure to remain just outside of my reach.

  “Oh, boo hoo.” I made a fake crying face and pretended to rub my eyes with my fists. “Is the jealous baby gonna cry about it? Not my fault coach and the scouts can see the talent you can’t.” I scoffed and started to turn back to my locker.

  “Anyone that watches the game tapes back can see that you’re nothing but a ball hog.” I looked back and he was nodding his head and looking around to our teammates, some of which nodded in agreement. “You never pass when any of us are open, instead you barrel through the whole enemy team.”

  “Look, man. I can’t help it that the scouts are looking for someone that can make the crowd go crazy. That’s just how the game works. They want someone to make ‘em money.”

  “Yeah, the game,” Jacob scoffed. “Like the pill game you’ve been playing? What do you think that will do to your precious little scholarship when I let the cops know?”

  I genuinely laughed. For a split second I didn’t know why I wasn’t panicking, but in the moment I used it as a stepping stone to maintain my composure.

  “There’s no way. You’re just makin’ shit up, now?” I pointed with my thumb to him, and looked around to the rest of my teammates, most of which were silently watching, frozen with eyes wide. I took a single step closer to him, and he didn’t seem to notice. “You’ve got no hard proof.”

  “Yeah? Only proof I need is that your momma’s rotting in prison for sellin’, too.” He paused and grinned. “You ain’t got no daddy, so ‘course you’d follow her footsteps, like the monkey you are.”

  Jacob had always been the racist asshole, bringing the color of my skin into the argument when we lost a game, or he got shown up in practice. Jet, our team captain, usually interjected and told him to cut it out, but as I looked at him now, I could tell he was wanting this to play out. That made it all so much more satisfying when I could hear the crunch of Jacob’s jaw breaking from my index and middle finger knuckles perfectly placed in a right hook along his lower jaw. His head snapped sideways and the rest of his body followed limp to the floor.

  “Alright, alright, that’s enough.” Jet’s voice let out a bit of sarcasm. “I said that’s enough!”

  I looked up to see Jet holding his forearm to the other teammate that was laughing with Jacob behind my back earlier, Austin. He never did anything without Jacob backing him up. Even now he backed down to Jet, who had turned and given me a wink before saying, “It’s over now.”

  I nodded, and finished changing my clothes, while the rest of our team did the same. Meanwhile Jet helped Jacob up after grabbing an ice pack and pressed it against his already swollen, and surely broken jaw.

  “I’ll help you to the nurses office,” Jet said, wrapping his arm around Jacob, “but you went too far with shit you said, dude. This was deserved.” Jacob said something back as Jet led him through the back exit from the locker rooms, but I couldn’t make out what was said.

  Riing!

  I finished pulling my pants up, still panting with anger and panic. My phone was still in my pants pocket, so I pulled it out and sent a text to Jaime:

  “We need 2 meet NOW!!! Tell ur bros 2 get the bred 2 U.”

  I shoved my phone back into my pocket and made sure to grab my car keys hanging on the inside of my locker, making one last visual sweep across my locker. I made sure nothing else was inside but my old game uniform, with my sweaty practice clothes laying over my shoulder. I let out a sigh before swinging my locker door closed for the last time.

  ■

  Pecans crunched under my car tires as I pulled up to the curb. I left it in gear, but shut the engine off, pulling the handbrake so the car I had spent so much money into restoring didn’t roll backwards down the hill I was parking on.

  I preferred to park there when I visited Jaimie. He and I both understood that with the line of business we chose, we had to keep our heads on a swivel a hundred percent of the time. Parking at the curb meant I could dart from the house, into my car, and drive away if anything went sideways.

  Leaning over and reaching to my glove box’s shiny aluminum lever handle, I pulled it and let the drop-down drawer slowly drop down, where I had stashed a pistol. It had a pale, earthy green handgrip, with a brassy-copper colored barrel, and a black slide with multiple sections cut out, topped off with a pair of neon green-dot iron sights. The barrel stuck out from the slide by half an inch, which gave it a sharp look, especially with it poking out of the end of the leather holster I had it stashed in.

  I hope I don’t have to use this today.

  Grabbing the pistol, I stuffed it along my waistline and covered it with the front of my shirt. I climbed out of my car, leaving the keys in the ignition, and swung the door closed, putting slightly more force behind the push than necessary.

  Slam!

  I didn’t care if I damaged my car door. I didn’t care if it was a modern classic. My heart was beating a thousand miles per hour, and I couldn’t tell if I was scared, or pissed.

  What if Jacob really did have proof against me, and was just trying to get a rise out of me?

  I strode with a quick pace across the small lawn, up the two small stone steps, and briefly paused just as I arrived at the front door. I took two seconds to inhale and held my breath for another two seconds before exhaling for three more. Turning the handle on the door, I walked in.

  The rule at Jaimie’s house was that we never knocked. Instead, we walked in like we owned the place. Knocking drew attention, and attention was the bane of Jaimie’s and I’s business.

  Luckily I didn’t have to make sense of my frazzled thoughts. As soon as I opened the door Jaimie let out a holler, climbing out of his large recliner, and leapt across his living room to meet me.

  “Hey, cuz!” He wrapped his arm over my shoulders. “I got your text. What’s up?”

  “I dunno, but we probably need to lay low for a while.” I took his arm off my shoulders and plopped myself on the sofa in front of the double windows. “Someone confronted me today about our job. I played him off like he was crazy, but he was convinced.”

  Jaimie walked to the recliner, which was facing the TV on the wall adjacent to the front door, and sat in it like it was a bucket, his legs dangling off one of the arm rests.

  “Was it that racist redneck, Jacob?” He laid his head across the other arm rest of his recliner, facing me.

  My heart raced faster and shivers ran down my spine. “Did you catch him snooping? Why didn’t you say something!”

  Jaimie finally sat in his recliner normally. “Relax, dude! Chill.” He moved both his hands up, then down in a slow pressing motion, slowing gradually to a halt just before his knees. “He’s that racist hillbilly; been giving you problems all year. It’s about time you sock the son of a bitch, Ken!”

  I laughed, holding up my hand, which was already red and swollen. “Did that already, actually!” I winced, then brought my hand back down and started to rub the index and middle knuckles. “You should see his jaw. Pretty sure I heard it crack.”

  “Sure it wasn’t your own knuckles?” Jaimie let out a hearty laugh, then hopped out of his chair and pointed at me. “Fo’ real, though, I’m gonna get something for you that’ll help that. Hang tight.”

  He grabbed the TV remote off of the coffee table and turned on the flatscreen TV, mounted to the wall. The news was the first thing that was on and he left it at that, throwing the remote back onto his recliner. I didn’t mind the news. It’s never hurt to keep track of current events. The news outlets weren’t clawing for views from political propaganda since the election was over, so they were mostly back to honest work.

  I leaned back into the sofa, and put my good arm behind my head as a makeshift pillow. I closed my eyes and repeated the breathing exercise I did before walking through Jamie's door. When I finished and opened my eyes, I looked around the room at my surroundings. My gaze moved from Jaimie’s recliner, to the remote sat atop, then the coffee table between the sofa and chair, taking my time to soak in the mundane details. I could feel my heart rate drop, and my breathing returned to normal.

  Jaimie may have been my plug for dealing drugs, but he was more like a big brother to me, even though he was whiter than printer paper. I would tease him about his bleach-blonde dreads, and he would respond with a witty response about saving my family line from the cotton fields.

  Smiling, I moved my gaze back to the TV and noticed a small black box under his TV. The box had a blinking red light and two pale, almost gray circles. It stuck out no more than half an inch under his massive seventy five inch TV.

  Has that always been there? Maybe he just got a cam for that streaming crap. He’s been talkin’ about how the money that can be made is insane. It’s not for me. I don’t do well with crowds, virtual or otherwise.

  The news on the TV flashed back from a commercial. The word “BREAKING” was plastered across the top of the screen in a banner, flashing and moving across the screen.

  “We’ve just gotten wind of what meteorologists are calling the craziest freak weather phenomenon of the century!” The camera cut to a video shot from a helicopter that was circling a small neighborhood with half a dozen houses reduced to rubble. “Disaster struck this small community just outside of Davis, Oklahoma this morning at a quarter past eleven with what our lead investigators are calling a macroburst. Authorities are still investigating the matter as to why this never tripped any of our redundant radars, but we will continue-”

  “Crazy shit, huh?” Jaimie had returned from the hallway just next to the TV, bong in hand. He walked over to his chair, setting down a spare bowl already pre-packed with weed covered in so many trichomes it looked like cut up sour apple candy straws. “Must be from all the climate change, am I right?” he chuckled and slapped the air in my general direction.

  “Yeah, bro,” I chuckled. “It's totally your fault. The amount you smoke has to have raised the global temperature by at least one degree.”

  “What-ever do you mean? I would never,” Jaimie scoffed sarcastically. He pointed at the layers of percolators in the stem of the bong and winked, “My smoke is clean, thank you!”

  He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a lighter, then brought the bong to his mouth and roasted the entire bowl of weed, inhaling for what seemed like an eternity until the weed in the bowl had burned to ash. Then he removed the bowl and finished clearing the smoke from the foot and a half tall bong, the water inside audibly bubbling as he did so. He held his breath as he handed it off to me, and as soon as I sat back down after replacing the bowls he let out his breath, almost immediately filling the room with smoke like a fog machine. He turned bright pink and started sweating bullets as soon as he started inhaling, and instantly started coughing/gagging from the absolute lungbuster of a hit he just inhaled.

  No matter how many times I’d seen it or how long he’d been coughing for afterwards, it never ceased to amaze me how he’d still be able to function after a massive dose of THC like that. He handed me the lighter and I chuckled and looked at him. “Yeah, bro, I’m just like that after a fraction of a bowl. Ha!” I tilted the bong to me and positioned the lighter to the bowl.

  SMASH!

  Two men in police uniform came rounding the corner from the kitchen at the back of Jaimie’s house, shouting, “Police! Show us your hands!”

  Jaimie tried to stand and hold his hands up but kept dropping them to his knees and coughing.

  One officer said, “Keep ‘em up!” While the other officer screamed at me at the same time, “On your feet!”

  Jaimie coughed again, then one of them screamed, “He’s reaching!”

  BANG!

  I didn’t even think about what I was doing, but time seemed to slow down around me. I pulled the front of my shirt up with my left hand and swooped my right hand down, pulling out the pistol I had hoped would be left unused. I let out a shot from the hip, squeezing the trigger as I pointed the gun in the general direction of the cops who opened fire on us. BANG! I wrapped my left hand around the opposite side of the grip and pressed out with my arms, releasing a volley of bullets.

  The cops ducked back behind the corner and I took the chance to prop up the coffee table, ditching my pistol and crawling over to Jaimie, who had slumped over in his recliner, face down. “Come on, we gotta dip. Fast.” I tried to turn him over and immediately felt something wet on his chest. My hand was stained red with his blood. Jaimie had been shot.

  “God damnit!” I cursed.

  “Come out with your hands up,” One of the cops in the kitchen commanded, “Don’t make me do this!” It was only the one calling out now, and his voice was shaky.

  Maybe one’s dead and the other is hit.

  I leaned back against the side of Jaimie’s recliner, facing the sofa. I had to get out of here before reinforcements for the downed cop and his partner in a shootout arrived, preferably without getting shot. I could have darted across the living room and through the front door, but that would have risked me getting a new hole.

  Or-

  My eyes sharpened on the two windows behind the sofa. I positioned myself with my feet under me in a crouch, bracing myself with the recliner behind me. I heard sirens faintly in the distance. I closed my eyes and started my breathing routine again. When I opened my eyes I pounced, headfirst, pointing both my elbows out in front of my head, and shattered the window, falling into the hedge on the other side while two more gunshots rang out.

  BANG! BANG!

  I felt a hot pain like a branding iron across my butt cheek, but had no other choice but to brush it off, sprinting with a limp across Jaimie’s lawn, to my car. I could see flashing blue and red lights on the opposite side of the block of trailer houses across the street of his house. I didn’t have long to get out alive.

  I jumped and slid across the hood of my car, quickly opening the driver-side door and scrambling inside. I turned the key in the ignition and the engine roared to life. I slammed the throttle to the floor, my tires screeching as I sped away.

  ■

  I slammed the front door to my house shut as I hobbled inside, shivering and gasping. I limped to my bathroom and rummaged under the sink for a few seconds before pulling out a first aid kit. It was a cheap one that I bought off of Amazon. I didn’t even look inside when I bought it, just threw it under the sink without a second thought, never thinking I’d actually need it.

  I opened it and was relieved to find a small suture set, and plenty of gauze inside. I tucked the first aid kid under my arm and limped my way into my bedroom, where I tossed the kit on my bed and made my way over to my closet, throwing the clothes to either side and punching in the code to the safe with no hesitation.

  Thud. Clang.

  I opened the safe and swiped one of the two vials and a syringe before pulling a tie from a hanger. Waddling over to my bed, I set the drugs on the bed and began wrapping the tie around my arm above the elbow, using a knot that could be tied while holding one end with my teeth.

  “Not much better than fentanyl to kill the pain of a gunshot wound. Ha- Ow!” I tried to laugh but the gunshot wound on my bottom hurt from the muscles clenching when I laughed.

  I waited a few moments for my veins in my arm to start to pop, then I started to measure out the drugs from the vial, into the syringe. When the vial was empty I removed the syringe and turned it upside down, tapping the side as I squeezed the air out, squirting some liquid out in the process. After removing the air from the syringe and needle, I pressed into the vein just at the bend of the elbow, emptying the drugs into my bloodstream before removing the needle.

  I grabbed the suture and needle set for stitches from the first aid kit, then pulled out some alcohol wipes from the side pouch of the kit. Pulling my pants down -and ruining my bedsheets with blood-, I used the wipes to clean and disinfect the wound. I reached into the first aid kit one last time and pulled out a pair of medical-looking needle-nose tongs.

  Before I went fishing in my own wound for a bullet, I untied my arm and felt the drugs rush through my bloodstream, immediately intoxicating me. Warmness rushed over me, numbing all the pain in my butt, and my hand along with the rest of my body.

  Oh this is that medical grade stuff.

  My vision blurred and I started to fall off the side of my bed.

  What the-

  I tried to catch myself, but my own body didn’t seem to want to respond to my own thoughts. I crashed to the floor with a thump. Trying to roll over and leverage myself up, I failed, leaving myself in a pile with my bleeding rear sticking in the air as my vision faded to black.

  ________________________________________