“Listen.” I clapped my hands in front of my chest in a praying gesture. “Johnny was out of his mind yesterday… But he’s not wrong. We had a misunderstanding with Chi-chi. Cruz is trying to fix it now, but in the meantime, is your brother at home?”
“Probably, but why? What do you mean ‘a misunderstanding’?”
“I promise I’ll explain it all soon, but right now, I really need to go find Eliazar.”
“Eliazar? Is he okay?”
“I hope so. That’s what I’m trying to make sure of. Because Chi-chi’s not fucking around.”
Cori’s face changed. Even with a bright future ahead of her, she’d still grown up here. She knew how quickly the situation could spin out when you dealt with guys like Chi-chi. “What can I do?”
I put my hands on her shoulders, which she’d squared into steel. “You said Johnny’s at your house?”
“He should be, yeah.”
“You need to find him and tell him he needs to leave. It’s the first place Chi-chi will look. He needs to hide. The dumpster was Chi-chi putting him on notice. Understand?”
Her eyes widened. I could tell she wanted to ask questions, but she didn’t. “Let me run in and say goodbye to Marisol and your parents—they’ll get suspicious if I don’t—then I’ll go home and make my dumbass brother go to Rosa’s. He’ll fight me on it, but I’ll get it done.”
Dios, she was spectacular.
“Thank you. If you can do that for Johnny, I can concentrate on helping Eliazar.”
“I’ll handle it.”
She bit her lower lip and shifted her weight, knitting her brows as her expression fought with itself. Without warning, she threw her arms around me, pressing her face hotly into my neck. I shivered as her lips skimmed over my pulse. Looping my arms around her waist, I pulled her tight against me, leaning into her embrace.
Cori was in my arms. At last. Where I’d wanted her to be for years. And even with all the shit around us, it felt right. Her breath on my neck. Like truth and home and safety. For precious seconds, she squeezed, and I held on, burning the memory into my brain.
Finally, she stepped away. “Be careful, Deck.”
As Cori ran into my house, I thought about my next move. Meaning I thought about Sebastian Roccio.
And the three things I knew about him.
First, Bash had been rolling with Chi-chi for as long as anyone could remember. I’d never quite been able to make out if he was Chi-chi’s muscle or just one of his boys, but he was always around. Second, Bash hardly ever talked. I’d heard him order food, pass a joint, and tell someone to look at his phone, but he mostly communicated with grunts and hard stares.
And the third thing I knew about Bash was that he wanted to fuck Eliazar.
At the beginning of the school year, Eliazar got into a relationship with some guy who lived in Seattle. I was pretty sure they’d met on an app, but Eliazar never talked about the men he was with, especially not after the douche kit incident.
When he started dating Seattle Guy, he kept it separate from us, just as he’d always done. I never met the dude, but I once saw Eliazar get into his car—a shiny black Acura that attracted a lot of attention when he parked it across the street from the high school. Pretty soon, it was all over that Eliazar had a boyfriend, and the talk was too much for his parents to bear. They had gone to church nearly every day and prayed for their boy’s soul, but somehow, he was still gay. After that Acura had cruised through the neighborhood a few times, they kicked Eliazar out of the house.
He stayed with his boyfriend at first, but then they broke up. Apparently, Seattle Guy liked showing off his hood Latino boyfriend to his yuppie-ass friends, but not enough to share space on the daily.
Thecabrónalso accelerated Eliazar’s meth habit. Eliazar had been dabbling since we first started going to Chi-chi’s parties, but the boyfriend was a fiend, and he helped turn my friend into a full-blown addict.
We tried to help. Eliazar mostly stayed with Cruz, since his pops was never around, or Johnny, since his mom barely noticed anything. He couldn’t stay with my family because they’d ask too many questions. Wherever he slept, we made sure he ate and got to school most days.
But we couldn’t stop him with the meth. He’d disappear and come back strung out and quiet. Tell me he missed Seattle Guy. That he didn’t see the point of graduating. Didn’t see the point of anything. Then he’d get high again and be happy for a minute.
Cori mostly stayed out of our shit, but she wasn’t totally ignorant. Once Eliazar started crashing at her house, she asked Rosa for help. Rosa had a soft spot for Eliazar since he’d gone to the Center until middle school. Rosa spoke with Eliazar’s parents, but they refused to budge since Eliazar was eighteen. They even threw Rosa’s “roommate” Lupe in her face.Assholes.
Cori also had to bear the burden of her brother. Johnny wasn’t as bad as Eliazar yet, but he was on that path.
Both our friends had been spiraling for months. Cruz and I didn’t know what to do, other than keep rescuing them.
Keep dragging Johnny out of dumpsters.
