"What were they?" she asked.
"Attempted murder."
Her voice was quiet. "Wow."
"Yeah." I shrugged. "But hey, it was true, right?"
"You wanted to kill him?"
"Wouldn't you?"
She gave it some thought. "If you really wanted to kill him, you would've grabbed the gun. Right?"
"Maybe," I said. "Or maybe, shooting the guy seemed too easy."
"But with what happened to your sister, I mean, that had to count for something, right?"
I gave a bitter laugh. "Not when Mom wouldn't testify. And Kara, she didn't even know about it. And I was damned determined to keep it that way."
I looked over the street, littered with garbage, potholes and overgrown weeds. "And let's say the thing with Kara got out. She'd be the girl who almost got molested by some forty-year-old. School was hard enough already. She didn't need that."
"What do you mean?" Chloe asked.
"Our school? It was the worst in the district. But it was the only one we had. And Kara and me, we got enough shit already because of the way we talked."
Chloe shook her head. "I don't get it."
"Like I mentioned, Grandma was a teacher. English mostly. And she didn't put up with any sloppy talk."
"You mean swearing?"
"Or bad grammar."
"But that's a good thing," Chloe said.
"Yeah, well people didn't like it, especially other kids."
"Why not?" she asked.
I looked around, taking in the destruction around us. The streets were empty, but I'd be a dumb-ass to assume that no one was watching. I had to stay focused.
"Wherever you live," I said, "you gotta fit in, right?"
After a long moment, Chloe nodded.
"Well, we didn't fit in," I said. "It was a problem."
Funny, it was a different problem for me than it was for Kara. My problems, I could solve with my fists – or whatever else I might be carrying. With Kara, it was a different ballgame. There was only one way she might fit in – and it wasn't something I was willing to let happen.
I looked over to Chloe and added, "And the older we got, the bigger the problem."
"So what'd you do?" she asked.
I shrugged. "I learned to blend. Or when I couldn’t, I learned to fight."
"Well, you sure learned that good. But what happened with that councilman?"
"Officially, I was a minor. But at first, the guy worked like hell to see me tried as an adult."
