raised the gun and knocked him in the temple with the butt. Tim went flying across the tiny kitchen, landing head first into the door of the refrigerator.
“Fucking shoot him!” Preppy called out, righting his jeans. Blood dripped from his nose. His cheek was already yellow and purple. Apparently, he’d taken one hell of a beating before Tim decided that anal rape was a more appropriate way to teach the kid a lesson.
“So, you’re gonna beat me, kid? Is that it? Gonna teach me a lesson now, boy?” Tim looked up at me from the floor.
“No,” I said, an eerie calm washing over me. The rage took a kind of precision-like control over my actions. “I’m not going to teach you shit.”
Fear registered in Tim’s beady little eyes.
“Then what, boy? You gonna call the cops? Cause I know the cops round here. They ain’t gonna do shit!”
“No,” I said, taking a step toward him, the gun in my still hand pointed toward the floor.
“Then, what the fuck, boy? You gonna kill me?” Tim laughed nervously until he saw the affirmative look in my face.
I raised the gun, aimed it at Tim’s forehead, and fired.
“Yes.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Doe
The only time King spoke to me in the days following Preppy’s death was to ask me to go into Preppy’s room to find something I thought he would like to be buried in. At least, that is what I took from the grunting and nodding that he’d been using in place of actual words. King was hurting, and I couldn’t do anything to make it go away.
I’d never been in Preppy’s room before, and when I opened the door, I noticed that his room was huge, much bigger than King’s. Preppy had the master bedroom. The room was neat and tidy but full of random things. Shelves of books, video games, action figures, and knickknacks of all kinds.
On his dresser was a single picture. A selfie of the three of us. He’d taken it one morning when he rushed into King’s room and bounced on the bed to wake us up, which he did frequently. King and I were on either side of him, tangled hair and half–asleep. King was covering his eyes.
He’d never wake us up like that again.
Preppy’s closet was a large walk-in, overflowing with clothes of all kinds. One wall was lined with storage bins that were all neatly labeled. One bin was partially opened. The label read Shit random chicks leave in my room and was filled with women’s clothing. I guess that solves the mystery as to where Preppy was getting all my clothes from.
I chose a yellow shirt and the loudest bow tie Preppy owned, a multi-colored checkered pattern, from a bin labeled Awesome Fucking Bow Ties.
Suddenly, holding his clothes in my hands, the final clothes he would be wearing at his funeral, it all became too much. I crumpled to the floor and held his jacket to my chest. My heart felt a million times its size. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t do much of anything except silently cry, holding onto a little piece of the only true friend I’d ever known.
I don’t know how long I was down there, but I must have cried myself to sleep, because I woke with dried tears on my cheeks and Preppy’s suit wrapped around me in a crumpled mess. I stood up and rehung the jacket onto a hanger and just as I was about to hang it on the back of the closet door in an attempt to dewrinkle it, I saw something taped to the back of the closet door. A small white envelope. And in Preppy’s messy handwriting the words:
OPEN ME MOTHERFUCKERS
* * *
King insisted on taking his bike to the funeral in what I think was his way of continuing to avoid any sort of conversation. When we pulled up, there were already several bikes parked along the road that wound through the lush grounds of the cemetery as well as Gladys’s old Buick.
We were the last ones to arrive. Bear and a handful of bikers, Grace, and six of the ‘Growhouse Granny’s’ were already seated under the portable canopy covering the rectangular hole in the ground that Preppy’s shiny black casket hovered above. All were dressed in black. Some of the grannies wore matching black floppy hats. King wore a black collared shirt and jeans.
I threw caution to the wind and wore a yellow sun dress. I think Preppy would have liked it.
As we took our seats on the damp plastic chairs in the front row, King grabbed my hand and set it on his lap, intertwining our fingers, bringing me as close as he could bring me without sitting me in his lap.
The preacher nodded to King, then started speaking about life and death. He even tried to say a few words about Preppy, although the two had never met. I had to stifle a laugh when he referred to him as a wholesome and well-respected member of the community. For a fraction of a second, King’s stoic face gave way to reveal a hint of a smile, while Bear downright let out a blast of laughter from where he stood against one of the canopy poles. The preacher paused to collect his thoughts, then continued.
“Who has words for our dearly departed today?” His voice was mechanical, like he was reciting a manual.
I felt for the envelope in my pocket to make sure it was still there. When Bear started walking to the front of the small crowd, I stood and cut him off. King shot me a look of confusion, and Bear stopped in his tracks.
“Hi,” I said, realizing my voice wasn’t loud enough for everyone to hear when some of the grannies put hands to their ears to amplify the sound. I tried again, speaking a little louder this time.
“My name is Doe, and although I didn’t know Preppy, er, Samuel, very long, he was my friend. A great friend. My best friend. As much as I want to say a few words about him and how much he meant to me, in typical Preppy form, he’s already beat us to it.”
I took the envelope from my pocket and unfolded the notebook pages with small scribbly handwriting. I’d already read it, and I didn’t want to cry, so I tried to zone out while I read the final words my friend wanted his friends to hear before we laid him to rest. “So, just a warning, I know we have some…mature folks in the crowd. Because this is coming right from Preppy, it contains some, um…colorful, language.”
I glanced apologetically at the preacher whose attention was already down at his cell phone, his thumb raced across the keys.
Friends and MoFo’s,
Like you thought I would let you have the last fucking word.
Fuck that. I’m way to OCD to have you try to come up with some nice things to say about me, so I came up with them myself. I’ve updated this weekly since I was ten years old, thinking that because of the situation I was living in that I wasn’t going to make it to see twelve and that my family, if you could bother to call them that, wouldn’t expend the effort to say anything at my funeral. And the thought of that, the thought of silence when they put me into the dirt was worse than the thought of dying to me. After that, it became kind of a habit, so I kept doing it.
So in the event of my untimely death, this is what I need all you fuckers to hear.
If you’re reading this to a crowd of people dressed in their funeral finest, then I’ve achieved a longevity I never thought I would reach. I’ve made it to the ripe old age of twenty six and it’s been one hell of a fucking ride.
By now, I’m dead and will soon be rotting in the fucking ground, being eaten by worms and other random bugs and shit. But don’t worry about me because I died a happy fucking man. Looking back, I never thought I would live a life where the word happy could be a fitting word so describe it, but I did And it was all because when I was eleven years old, this big fucking brute of a man-child rescued me from a bully who shall not be named, and then he became my friend. Oh fuck that, the bully’s name was Tyler Nightingale and the pussy still lives with his fucking mom and works the night shift at the Stop-N-Go. Fucking twat. Go egg his fucking car on the way home.
Anyways, I motherfucking digress.
The man-child became more than my friend. He became the best fucking friend anyone could ever ask for. He became my only family. Our childhoods were complete shit, but because of him, we were able to live our lives by our own set of rules. He didn’t have to befriend a skinny kid with bruises all over his body and a foul fucking mouth. He could have looked the other way. He could have ignored me when I pestered him to no end. There are a lot of things he could have done. But he chose me to be his family, and I chose him to be mine.
Although there were bumps in the road, a little juvie, a little jail, and whole lotta shit I can’t talk about here. I don’t look back at those things as poor choices. I see them as part of the highlight reel of the most epic fucking journey of my life. A journey I never thought I would see. Shit, I never thought I would live past the age of 14, and if it wasn’t for my best friend, and him saving my ass one night, I wouldn’t have.
I want to send a shout out to Bear. Big-ups to you, you big fucking animal. Go travel. Go do you. Go do all the shit you want to do before that club of yours swallows you whole and you can’t see where your ideas start and their ideas end.
No shit. At first, I thought you were just an annoying hanger-on, but it turns out that I was capable of having more than one friend after all, and I’m fucking glad it was you, man.
Bear, you need to look out for King and Doe. Lord fucking knows those two will need all the help they can get. I mean, they fucking love each other, but both are too fucking stupid to see past their own crap long enough to keep their shit together.
I see major fuck ups in their future. Be there for them. Help them see past their ridiculous issues and preach to the about the joys of honesty and anal sex.
Continuing on.
I’ve done shit I’m not proud of. Thanks to all of you for not judging me. Thanks to all of you for being my friends in spite of it. Thanks for giving me a life that was worth dying for. I would do it all over again if I fucking could. So don’t fucking cry for me, be happy for me. Be happy that I had friends like all of you who I loved more than fucking family, who I loved more than myself, and we all know how crazy I am about me. Be happy that I was happy and that all you fuckers were a part of that.
Doe, if King doesn’t get his head out of his ass and marry you and impregnate you with millions of his little man-children, he is a dumb fuck and I promise I will rise from the grave to take his place. It may take me a while to figure out how, but if anyone can do it, it’s gonna be me.
King, my brother, thanks for taking a chance on a skinny geek all those years ago. Thanks for fucking saving my ass, but you did more than that. You saved my life. You gave me a life.
I love you, man.
Be happy kids.
I gotta go be dead now. No after funeral bullshit. I fucking hate that shit.
Go get laid. That will make me happy.
Fuck. Party. Make merry. And know that I fucking loved all of you.
-Prep
PS-I have also written my own obituary which I would like published in all the local papers. I’m serious about this. I will haunt you if this doesn’t happen.
“Ummm, I don’t know if I should read this next part out loud.”
“Do it!” Bear cheered me on. Even from the other side of the tent, I could see the tears in his eyes, but now there was a smile on his face. “Let’s fucking hear it!”
The crowd joined in, and I was left with no choice.
“Oh, fine,” I said, taking a deep breath and speed reading through Preppy’s autobiographical obituary.
Samuel Clearwater
26 years old
Badass MoFo
Went out like a boss
Leaves behind the family he chose: King, Doe, Bear, and the GG bitches.
May God rest his soul…and his ten-inch cock.
The entire group of mourners burst out laughing. Not just a few chuckles, but knee-slapping, belly laughter. As I put the note away and took my seat next to King, I realized what Preppy had done. He was the kind of guy who couldn’t bear the thought of us crying over him, so he did what Preppy always did.
He made us laugh.
I looked over to King, who wasn’t smiling at all. I tugged on his hand, but instead of getting his attention, he stood up.
Before the preacher said his final words, King was already long gone.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
King
My girl had been raped, and it had been a week since we put my best friend into the ground. In that time, I didn’t know where to place my anger at the person I hated most in the world.
No, not Isaac. I killed that motherfucker. Splattered his head wide open with a bullet at close range.
The person I hated most in the world was me.
After everything Doe had done for me, after everything we’d been through, she deserved better than to live a life in fear of being raped or shot. As much as I wanted out of the life, it wasn’t something I could just jump out of in an instant. I needed to do something for her, but no matter what came to mind, it wasn’t big enough to make this huge wrong, right again.
Then, it came to me.
There was one thing I could do for her.
One fucking reverse GOOGLE image search. That’s all it took to find out who Doe really was. I’d uploaded a photo of her I took from my phone the first night she’d slept in my bed and pressed search and there she was, staring into the camera like she was looking right into my eyes. I wished I’d never done the search. I wished I’d never known who she really was.
I’d used the fact that I knew who she was and what that could do for me as an excuse to bring her back to me. Even though it was her I wanted since the very first moment I saw her.
I’d planned to keep her forever, and her secret even longer if need be.
Until now.
Seventeen year old Ramie Elizabeth Price.
Either the police were really shitty at their jobs, or they never really tried to find out who she was to begin with, because for the second time after searching her image, less than a second after pressing search, I was staring at multiple images of the girl I’d fallen in love with on my laptop.
There were no articles about her going missing, just pictures of her from various events. Balls, galas, fundraisers. It was her in the pictures, but it wasn’t. The gowns, the makeup, the fake smile, if there was any smile at all.
The last picture of her I found was taken almost a year ago. She had a blank look on her face. Her eyes were vacant.
I knew that look. I’d regrettably put it on her face myself. It was a look that broke my fucking heart.
Indifference.
She was holding the hand of a boy who looked a little older than her, who was smiling from ear to ear.
I wanted to reach through the computer and break his fucking hand and then break every single one of his pearly white teeth.
Senator Westmore Bigelow Price, with daughter Ramie Elizabeth and long-time beau Tanner Preston Redmond at the Heart Ball Gala to raise money for pediatric cancer.
Even though it was my second time scanning the pictures, my blood boiled. I don’t know what made me madder. The boy who was touching my girl. Or the man they listed as her father.
A senator running for president. A man who would want to avoid scandal at all cost. That’s probably why they didn’t even try to find their missing daughter.
Fucking asshole.
I stood from the kitchen table and threw the laptop across the room. It smashed against a cabinet and fell to the floor in a million pieces.
Bear came storming into the kitchen. “What the fuck?” he asked, looked over at the broken laptop. “You on the rag man?”
“We have to take a trip,” I said, staring down at the now broken laptop as though the image of Doe or Ramie, or whatever the fuck her name was and her boyfriend were still up on the broken screen that was flashing from blue to black over and over again.
“Where we going?”
“Tell me something, Bear, and be honest. What are the chances of us getting the kind of money we need for the payoff to the senator for Max?”
My eyes met his for the first time since he came into the kitchen.
“Slim to fucking none, man” he answered honestly.
“Then, get the fucking truck. I’ll drive.”
“But you still haven’t said why I’m getting the truck.”
“Because, my friend, there is a deal with the devil that needs to be made.” I looked down the hall at the closed door of my bedroom, where the girl I’d fallen in love with slept peacefully in my bed. She was mine, and I would always think of her that way. But she deserved a better life than the one I could give her, which seemed to only hurt her at every turn.
After Preppy’s funeral I was thinking about giving her the truth.
Now, I was just going to give her away.
“And who is the devil in this scenario?” Bear asked, shrugging on his cut.
I was going to see the senator and offer Doe in exchange for him making sure that I had signed custody papers for Max.
The only family I had left.
I stared out the kitchen window, but couldn’t see a thing. It was like I was staring into a white abyss, a place I was about to go, that I wasn’t ever going to be able to come back from.
“Me.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
King
When you fall in love, you know it’s the real deal because you come to the realization you would take a bullet for that person. And when you become a parent, you realize that you would not only use your own body but the body of the person you love as a human shield to protect your child.
That is the place where I existed.
The Senator had a daughter who had a life, a boyfriend. I wasn’t doing Doe any favors by keeping her with me, involved in shit she shouldn’t be involved in. It got Preppy dead. I wasn’t doing my daughter any favors by leaving her hanging out there in the world without protection. She needed her father. She needed her family.
She needed me.
I was going to give it all up for her. I couldn’t manage the payoff, but if the senator accepted my offer of a trade, then I could keep what money I did have and that was enough to sell the house, and disappear of the radar to somewhere where nobody knew who we were.
Me and Max.
I was going be a good father to her. A good influence. A good role model. I would get us a house in a good neighborhood and send her to a good school. I would read to her at bedtime. I would make this fucking work because it had to fucking work. I was going to disappear because my life was going to reappear.
I lost my best friend, and that made me realize that sooner or later I was going to lose my girl, too. Because as soon as she learned that I’d known who she was from the very beginning, she would hate me forever.
I needed Max because she was all I had left, and I was bound and determine not to fuck that up. I prayed to any god who listened that if I could just be with her, I would make things right. I would give her my all.
My love.
My heart.
My daughter.