mine.
“I’m Roxy,” she says. One side of her hair is cut real short, and the other side is long and dyed purple. When she rocks, it falls over her face, hiding her eye.
“Link,” I say.
“What happened to your face?”
I lean against a post holding up the porch roof. “Got burned when I was a kid,” I tell her, my voice low and quiet.
She shows me her arm. A long stretch of twisting, raised skin stretches from her wrist to her elbow. “Tripped into a firepit when I was eight.”
“Shit,” I whisper. She holds up her arm like it’s something to be proud of. At least you can cover it up, I think. But I also think maybe she’s the kind of person who doesn’t want to cover it up.
Henry pokes his head outside. A cigarette is dangling from his mouth. “You good?” he asks. His eyes move between me and Roxy. One corner of his mouth lifts in a smirk.
I nod.
“You want a beer?”
Beer sounds good. Everyone else has one in their hands. “You want one?” I ask Roxy. She doesn’t say anything, but gets up and follows me inside.
The screen door slams behind us. Henry and the guy with the ponytail sit at the kitchen table. Wheels, Rat, and Jonny stand around them. They all look at me when we walk in.
I slouch against the counter, trying to disappear. Roxy pulls two beers out of a cooler and passes one to me. The can is cold. My fingers leave prints on the frosty metal.
She nods with her head for me to follow her. Henry grabs my arm and pulls me down so my ear is next to his lips. “You gonna tap that?” he asks. The other guys hear and laugh, and I know Roxy heard, too. My cheeks burn, even the already burnt one, and I shake my arm out of his grip.
“Screw off, ” I grunt, but that makes them laugh louder.
I have to follow Roxy, even with all of them watching us. We go down a hallway and into the living room. Red Bloodz tags cover the walls.
It hits me that I’m at the Red Bloodz clubhouse. I get jittery thinking about how I’m drinking their beer, how I’m kind of one of them right now. How Koob would lose it if he knew what I was doing. Roxy pats the spot beside her on the couch.
It’s dark green leather, the couch. It makes a sound, like letting out a puff of breath, when I sit on it. Across the room, three small holes in the wall stare back at me. Roxy moves close so our thighs touch. She’s got a fairy tattoo on her foot. It starts by her toes and goes up to her ankle, like the fairy is flying away.
She leans her head back and sighs. Her beer is between her knees and it makes goose bumps all over her skin. I stare at them, thinking it’s kind of ugly how smooth skin can hide all those little pimples.
Her bangs fall away from her face. I can see close up, she isn’t much older than me. Piercings run up her ear and one is in her nose and eyebrow.
“You from the city?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Reserve at God’s Narrows.”
“How long you been here?”
“A few weeks.”
The beer is starting to loosen me up. I sink further into the couch and stop thinking about her ugly goose flesh, or how much of our bodies are touching each other. I dent the can with my fingers, listening to the metal pop in and out. More people spill into the house from outside.
“There’s a room upstairs, you wanna see it?”
I look at her, like why? but she gives me a look. Like I should know why. My gut starts to churn and I wonder if she’s shitting me. But she’s already standing up. The dip in the leather where her body was disappears in seconds, like she was never there. I take another swig of my beer, draining it.
She crooks her finger around mine and leads me up the stairs.
Jakub
Lincoln gives a low whistle. “You did that last night?” He tilts his head, pushing up the flat brim of his baseball hat. His narrow slits of eyes with their heavy line of lashes scan the piece, drinking it in. The piece looks even better in the daylight.
“Yeah. Where the hell were you? I went by your place at midnight and the lights were out.”
Lincoln pulls the brim of his hat back over his eyes. “Henry’s back.”
I give a noncommittal grunt. “Is he gonna hang around for a while?” I pull my hood up. It’s the last few weeks of summer, still hot out, too hot for a hoodie, but I like being able to disappear under it.
All I can see is Link’s mouth. “Got a new tattoo. It says ‘Brothers to the End.’ Right across his chest,” Link brags.
What lies did Henry spin to make Lincoln think the tattoo was for him? Biting down hard, I want to tell Lincoln that after a year and a half in jail, Henry has a whole gang of brothers. But criticizing Henry never gets me far. Some weird hero-worship thing keeps Lincoln from admitting who his brother really is: a criminal.
We walk toward the park, kicking a can back and forth. A few kids on BMX bikes are doing tricks around the fountain.
I pull my black book out of my backpack. A gift from Father Dom last Christmas, the book’s textured paper holds the lead of my pencil and makes my drawings come alive. Not an inch of space is squandered. “What do you think about this?” I show him designs for a big piece, something that will take up a whole wall.
Lincoln pushes his hat back to see it better. He raises an eyebrow, but other than that, his expression doesn’t change. “Think you’re a king now?” There are only a couple of graff writers in the city who are kings. I’m not there yet, but maybe someday.
“Thought we could work it together.”
“Another neighbourhood beauti-fuck-ation project brought to you by Morf-Skar Productions!” He holds his knuckles up and I hit them with my own. “Bam!” we both whisper.
A crew of Red Bloodz rolls into the park with swagger and red bandanas, five of them fanning out. Henry’s in the middle, head shaved, his arms bare in a white tank top. Bigger than I remember. He doesn’t look like anyone I want to tangle with. I wince at the tattoo on his neck. That had to hurt. He catches Lincoln watching him and gives him a chin nod.
Henry’s muscles and blistering white undershirt make him look like a Roman god, perched on the fountain. “He wants me to join them,” Lincoln tells me, so quiet it’s like he doesn’t want me to hear.
I narrow my eyes. “Are you going to?” I ask.
Sticking his fingers through a rip in the bottom of his T-shirt, he doesn’t look at me. “I dunno. He’s my brother,” he says with a shrug.
“Who’s been gone for the last year and a half,” I mutter. I stuff my sketchbook into my backpack. A page tears. Valuable, thick paper. I zip up my bag, a couple cans bang together.
“Where
