Brutal Precious Read online

  And that was it. All my leads, suddenly dead. Jack was slipping from my hands like midnight sand.

  And then someone named Lily called. She’d overheard the Rose Club operator’s conversation with me. She was a friend of ‘Jaden’, which I insanely doubted because the only friend Jack allows himself to have is his reflection and/or his own massive dumb brain. I let her chat my ear off and agreed to meet her at a café in Columbus.

  Lily was blonde and beautiful and almost six feet. From her expensive purse and perfume, I called her out instantly as an escort. She didn’t deny it, which made me like her more. She wasn’t wasting my precious time as I tried to save Jack.

  Save?

  I shake my head and watch the salt spray of the ocean douse a rock. Save is the wrong word. I can’t think like that. I can’t save myself, let alone another person. But for a while, I wanted to. I really wanted to. Jack of all people, deserved help. I thought I could help a little. I thought I could at least that much for him.

  I laugh and chuck a rock, not bothering to skip it.

  I was an idiot.

  The old Isis wouldn’t have given up when Lily told me Jack came to visit her before he left town. He wouldn’t say where he was going, but he gave her a manila folder and told her if a girl named Isis ever started snooping around at the Club, to give it to her. So she did.

  “He must really like you,” Lily said, inspecting her nails as I put the folder in my purse.

  “Yes, well. Cobras also like mongeese. From afar. On separate sides of electric fences.”

  “No, listen,” Lily leans in, one cool hand over mine. “I’ve seen a lot of men, okay? I’ve seen all types of people, too. Jack – Jack is something special. He’ll deny it, but he either cares with his whole heart about someone, or not at all. He doesn’t half-ass things. The people he bothered to leave goodbye-stuff for – those are the people he cares about in his life. You’re one of them.”

  My heart felt like it was flattened by a sumo wrestler. I tried to inhale to say something, but every breath stung. I didn’t want to believe her. How could I believe her after he just took off like that?

  Lily left soon after, leaving me to stare at the envelope.

  The old Isis wouldn’t have given up after seeing what was inside.

  He didn’t leave me a note, or a giant teddy bear. He’d given me a ticket to Paris, with the words ‘I’m sorry’ scribbled on it in his neat, large handwriting.

  My eyes burned. He was trying to get rid of me.

  No, c’mon Isis, don’t be dramatic. Nothing good happens when people get dramatic. Example; Amanda Bynes, those rabbits that die when their heart beats too fast, every episode of LOST ever. Jack may have been heartless, but he was also…? Also what. Also definitely not caring about me. He didn’t even say goodbye in person, and now he was sending me this ticket. He obviously wasn’t in Paris himself, asking me to join him. That was almost stupidly romantic. Jack’s a lot of things, but stupid and romantic is on the rock bottom of his attribute list, along with ‘nice’ and ‘generally tolerable’.

  I told Kayla I wanted to backpack Europe multiple times, mostly jokingly. He was nearby to hear it, though, when they were dating. He must’ve seen through the joke, and realized I really wanted to. Figures.

  I pull the ticket out of my pocket. It’s worn and crumpled and the plane left six days ago, but I couldn’t throw it away, or use it. He used Sophia’s surgery money to buy it for me, after all. No way in hell could I ever accept (or reject) something like that. So I just kept it. A braver Isis would’ve used it. A not-guilty Isis would’ve used it.

  If I close my eyes now, I can remember when I went into Jack’s room to look for clues as to where he went. The beach fades, and I’m lying on his bed, looking at the ceiling and wondering where he is on this hellacious butthole we call Earth. And if he’s safe. Happy is too much to ask for. But as long as he’s safe, and keeps being safe, one day he can be happy again. Or so I think. I don’t actually know for sure. I’m real arrogant, saying these things like I’m sure. I never had anyone I love die. Jack’s had three.

  He might never be happy again.

  He might be broken forever.

  His room fades, and the ocean comes back. The knot in my throat returns with a vengeance.

  “I hope you’re safe, you idiot,” I whisper to the waves.

  All I can do is hope, and move on. I can’t wait around. I have my own life to live. I just wish things had turned out differently, is all. Not like, us dating. Because that would be horribly, stupidly selfish slash impossible in the face of Sophia’s death. I just care about him. As a nemesis. As a rival. As the only person in the world someone who can challenge me, I want him to be acceptably healthy and functioning so we can meet up and fight again one da6. Because the fighting was fun, and I learned a lot and grew a lot from it. Just the fighting. That’s all I miss. That’s all.

  My heart gives a little shuddering squeeze. I start crying. To remedy this, I take my shirt off and wipe the seagull poop on the hood of Kelly’s BMW. I start laughing.

  And it’s great, except for the part where I start crying harder.

  -2-

  It was the boy’s crooked grin that gave it away.

  He grinned in that special way young boys do when they’re about to conduct mischief. Possibly violent, and painful. Also possibly illegal, and definitely probably fun for them. Not so fun for the people it was conducted on.

  That’s why I follow him. Because I know that grin. I know it like I know parts of my own soul. I’d made that grin once or twice in my life, when I was a stupider, angrier boy who’d lost his father and had to take it out on the world. I made that grin before I raised the bat on Leo. I made that grin once while escorting a woman because she found rape scenarios terribly, horribly sexy.

  I vomited for an hour after that session, and tried to scrub her off, tried to scrub the evil out of me, out of humanity.

  It never worked.

  I follow the boy, and he leads me to two more boys. Freshmen in high school, probably. Skinny, with tight jeans and earbuds hanging out of their pockets. No muscle. No experience. No courage. That’s why they corner the homeless man between a dumpster and a wall scrawled with candy-colored graffiti gone brown on the edges. Rotten. They laugh and push him. He wears a flannel shirt and filthy pants, shaking hands clutching a half-eaten banana he fished out of the trash. His gray beard is down to his chest and knotted, his face sunburned. The man babbles under his breath, so low and fast it sounds like a chant, or a curse. He doesn’t want to die. He spends every day trying not to die.

  “What’s that, you crazy fucker?” A boy leans in, holding his hand to his ear in an exaggerated motion. “Speak up, we can’t hear shit if you don’t say shit.”

  The second boy brings out his phone and held it up.

  “I got this. I’m recording, so do it.”

  The third boy frowns. “No way, man, someone’s gonna see.”

  “No one’s gonna see,” The second boy snaps. “We got his back.” He turned to the first boy. “We got your back. C’mon!”

  The first boy hesitates, and that’s when I know. The first boy is not the real threat. Neither is the third boy, who looks uncomfortable, like he’s about to run away at any moment. It’s the second boy, the one with the camera, who is the true coward. Hiding behind a lens, just like Wren did that night. But unlike Wren, he’s smiling. Wren never smiled. Wren looked comatose, brain-dead. Wren looked like he was putting his soul somewhere far, far away to escape from the violence. Camera boy, on the other hand, is instigating it, egging it on, goading it with all the small, sickly power he has in his gangly teenage body.

  Before I punch the camera out of hands, I briefly thank whatever god is listening. I’ve lived long enough to learn the differences between just bad people, and truly terrible people. Some people never learn that, and get hurt.

  Like Isis.

  Like Sophia.

  My heart contracts painfully, and I punch again, this time for his face. The camera boy staggers, nose bleeding through his fingers. His friends jump, backing up quickly. The homeless man squawks and huddles in the corner, covering his head with his scrawny arms.

  “Who the fuck are you?” The second boy shouts.

  “Nobody hits Reggie!” The first boy ducks into a fighting position.

  “Get out of here,” I say. “Or you two are next.”

  “Fuck you!” The first one lunges, and I duck to the side and pull his arms behind his back in one fluid motion. He struggles, trying to kick and headbutt me away, but my grip is steel.

  “You there,” I say to the third one. “Help your friend up, and leave. When you’re around the corner, I’ll let your friend here go.”

  The third one is sweating profusely, eyes darting between his bloodied friend and his immobilized one. He finally makes the right decision, and pulls the camera boy up. Camera boy scrabbles for his phone, and limps around the corner with his friend, vibrantly swearing. I wait a hundred seconds, and shove the first boy forward. He backs up, pointing at me with a furious, twisted expression.

  “I’ll get you for this, you piece of shit!”

  “No,” I say coolly. “You won’t.”

  This makes something in him snap – his pride, maybe. He rushes me again, and this time I’m forced to show no mercy. I put him in a sleeper hold, and when he stops flailing, I ease him gently to the ground. I extend my hand to the homeless man.

  “We should go. His friends will be back.”

  The homeless man uncurls, watery blue eyes connecting with mine. He nods, slowly, and uses my hand to help himself up. I make him walk in front of me, guarding the rear, all the way out of the alley and back to the front of the strip mall, where there are cars and too many witnesses for the boys to try anything else. The homeless man’s gait is strong and true, but a limp hampers him. A veteran, probably, who’s fallen on hard times.

  “Thank you,” The man croaks. I shake my head, and open my wallet, fishing out two twenties.

  “Go get yourself some real food.”

  “Bless you. God bless you,” he says, taking the money and easing down the boulevard.

  He did. God blessed me, I think as I watch him go. And then he took it all away.

  I shrug that thought off. I’m far better off than most people. But it’s that same privilege that sickens me. I’m eighteen. I’m, by all nationality counts, Caucasian. There’s some Italian in me, on Mom’s side, and Russian on Dad’s. But I’m decidedly white. And male. I am not hideous to look at, nor is my brain crippled by general idiocy. Mom and I never wanted for money. I am lucky. I am privileged.

  The homeless man hobbling down the boulevard is the one who needs God’s help more than I do.

  Sophia needed help more than anyone.

  And I let her down.

  I failed her.

  The traffic becomes white noise in my ears, washing against me and around me. People pass, their faces blurring indistinctly. Nothing feels real – it’s a world trapped in a snowglobe. The colors of the strip mall are washed-out, instead of bright. The smells are Styrofoam and wood, instead of sun and dirt and greasy fast food. Nothing is right. I’m not right.

  But I’d known that for a long time, now. I’m not right. I stand out too much. I’m too cold. I am not like the rest of the faces in the crowd. I don’t feel as deeply as them. I don’t vibrate with as much emotion as they do.

  If I was more like them, warmer, would I have been able to tell what Sophia was about to do? Would I have been able to understand her better? Would I have been able to see her despair, and stop it?

  If I was more like Isis, would I have been able to save her?

  That’s what you do, her voice echoes. You protect people.

  My fingers twitch, the knuckles bloodied. I turn and head to the car.

  I came to meet my new employer, Gregory Callan of Vortex Enterprises. This little side trip to the strip mall was for an ATM I could get cash from. I got sidetracked by the homeless man.

  The September air swelters around me, crickets crying out lonely songs in the tall golden grasses on the side of the highway. The heatwave is the last, dying gasp of the brutal, once-in-a-century summer that hits Ohio. The city of Columbus has never looked drier, or bigger. The sky is a pale white-blue, and goes on forever. My white dress shirt sticks to every sweat-stained crevice of my body, and the dark suit over it is uncomfortably hot.

  I shouldn’t be here.

  I should be in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

  I should be at Harvard, settling in to my lackluster dorm room and learning to tolerate the idiot who will be my roommate for a year. I should be taking classes now, taking notes on the laptop Mom bought me. But I returned the laptop, and I returned my dorm room. I returned it all. I redacted my tuition and closed my bank accounts and packed a single black backpack and left a note on the kitchen counter that told Mom not to worry.

  And then I left.

  That world, the innocent little fishbowl of young adult angst people like to call college, isn’t meant for me. I am older than they are. I always have been. I am smarter than they are. I always have been.

  ‘I’m amazed you manage to get your head off your pillow in the mornings.’

  The voice rings, clear and bright in my ears. But I’m better at ignoring it, now. It’s gotten fainter. I haven’t seen her for half a year, and yet her voice clings in my brain. It’s incredible. Incredibly annoying. It’s either a testament to her infuriatingly persistent personality, or a testament to my unwillingness to let go of the last few moments in my life I recall being truly happy. Happy? I’m unsure if I was ever happy, even with her. It’s a mishmash of fuzzy memories and stolen moments of tenderness, all laced with the searing edge of guilt that is Sophia’s face.

  Maybe I was happy. But it’s pointless. There’s no real value in being happy.

  There’s no real value in something that doesn’t last.

  I take a right onto the shipping roads of Columbus, where eighteen-wheelers gather five deep and Matson containers choke the dusty, fenced-in lots. Two massive cranes noisily rearrange blocks of containers, loading and unloading with creaking, dutiful slowness. Men in orange vests and hardhats weave between containers, checking the contents, marking things on clipboards, and shouting obscenities at each other over the ordered chaos. Gregory - a tall, broad-shouldered man with an impressive white mustache and a tweed suit - stands in a near-empty lot. A shorter, yet somehow even beefier young man stands next to him, wearing a dark suit like me. His posture is tense, yet relaxed, his hair spiked and his eyes dark. A dragon tattoo twines up his neck. It’s Charlie Moriyama – Gregory’s right hand man and most trusted bodyguard, aside from me.

  Across from both of them is a woman with black hair tied up in a neat bun. She shuns a business skirt for a woman’s suit, instead, looking every part a professional. But a professional of what, I can’t quite tell. There’s no obvious weapon lump on her, and any jewelry that would mark her as a drug dealer or tattoos that would mark her as a gang member are well-hidden, if they exist at all. She doesn’t even wear makeup. Odd, considering most of the women who contract Gregory’s services are usually wealthy housewives with a vengeance.

  Gregory sees me coming, and waves me over. He plays the jolly old man bit almost too well, but it serves to hide the vicious businessman, wizened soldier, and master black-belt beneath.

  “Jack! Vanessa and I were just talking about you.”

  I sidle up beside Charlie, who crosses his arms and grunts.

  “You took too long.”

  “Had to make a detour,” I say. “Road construction.”

  Charlie snorts. “Yeah? Is this the same ‘road construction’ that got you on the news last week?”

  “Charlie, c’mon.” Gregory smiles. “Let’s at least try to pretend to be friends when in front of –” He turns and cocks an eyebrow at the woman, as if asking her what she is.

  “Let’s call me a potential client for now,” Vanessa says. Her blue eyes are sharp, and riveted to my knuckles. I try to wipe the blood off on my pant leg.

  “ – in front of a potential client,” Gregory finishes. “Besides, Jack’s entitled to his five minutes. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were jealous.”

  Charlie scoffs. “Jealous? Yeah, boss, I’m real jealous of wannabe Batman over here.”

  I’d risen in the ranks faster than anyone at Vortex. Gregory himself had trained me. Of course Charlie’s jealous. He’s been in the business for years, even though he can’t be more than twenty-two. He had to claw his way up by his hangnails. He thinks I’m pampered and spoiled.

  “I wasn’t aware what I did in my free time was up for criticism by you,” I say. Charlie throws a glare at me.

  “It’s up for criticism when you fuckin’ decide to use your training to beat the shit out of guys who steal popsicles from 7-11.”

  “They mugged a woman,” I counter smoothly.

  “They were small time idiots pulling off small crime!” Charlie snarls. “But your little savior complex had you wasting time on their stupid asses.”

  “My time. Not yours. It’s hardly any of your concern.”

  “You got us on the news, idiot! We’re Vortex, not goddamn Walmart!”

  “They never got his name, or a picture of him,” Gregory steps in. “Really, Charlie, you can relax. We aren’t here for a witch hunt, we’re here for the client. Settle this later.”

  Charlie goes red down to his spiked roots. I glance at Gregory, and despite his smile he narrows his eyes slightly. He should’ve told Charlie to be quiet ages ago. Letting him blab in front of a client was Gregory’s way of letting Charlie embarrass himself. It’s the subtle kind of mind-trap game Gregory loves to play. Most of the young men he hires are too stupid to sidestep it. Save for me.

  “Vanessa,” Gregory begins. “Would you do the honors?”

  She nods, and pulls an ID out from her jacket. I feel my breathing slow. CIA.