Page 10 of A Favor Owed

“I’ll get your bike.”

I sigh and get out of the car, too tired to argue with him.

“Thanks,” I say when we’re at my door. I unlock it and take hold of my bike’s handlebars.

“Any time,” he says, looking down at me in the darkness. “I’ll see you around, Angie Pines.”

He smiles that sweet neighborhood-boy smile, and I have to remind myself that this is nothing. He’s just a boy in my class, and I’m a girl with too many secrets.

Chapter Four

Brady

I’ll be damned. Our little princess lives in a complete shithole. I thought for sure she’d be living in some form of understated luxury. But no. The neighborhood is rundown, and not in an up-and-coming, artsy kind of way like the rest of this town. A flickering streetlamp shows that the house is worse, with gutters hanging off the roof, sagging front porch steps, crap (literally and figuratively) on the patchy front lawn, and what looks like a black tarp hanging off the roof to shield the front windows from the sun.

But the piece de resistance is the garage where Angela lives. I’m not sure how it’s even legal to rent out a place like that. The windows look like they can’t keep out squirrels, let alone burglars and rapists. The blinds are bent and broken, the paint is peeling, and the roof appears to be covered with tar paper instead of roof tiles. The front door lock almost fell off when Angela turned her key.

The girl has definitely gone off the grid. No one could find her in this place, except for potential stalkers who might be wandering around the neighborhood observing the hot-as-hell chick with the purple-streaked silver hair as she comes and goes. I wonder if she even has a cell phone.

I don’t really care that the runaway princess is slumming it for once in her privileged life, but I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t cross my mind to tell her to get back in my car and come stay at my place. In deference to sanity, however, I just say goodnight and wait for what passes as a lock to click into place before leaving.

It was never my intention to interact with her tonight. I was just supposed to keep an eye on things. But when I saw that asshole grinding up behind her, it triggered something approaching rage in me, and the next thing I knew, I wasn’t thinking anymore. When I told her that I hadn’t done it for her, I wasn’t kidding—I’d done it entirely for me. It made me want to hurl to see that douchebag’s hands on her. So it was either throw up perfectly good beer or put a stop to that shit.

It was also an effective means of getting closer to her. If I can get her to trust me, I can get her to tell me more. It’s nothing personal to do with Angela. A debt is a debt, and I have a debt to pay. And now—bonus—I have her address.

I pull into my apartment complex, park, and take the stairs up to my apartment. It’s almost four o’clock in the morning. My family will still be asleep back home. In an hour or so, my mom will be waking everyone up and badgering them to go to mass. My seventeen-year-old sister Siobhan will pitch a fit and slam her door and rant about not supporting the patriarchal something or other. My dad will yell at her to settle down and listen to my mom. My nineteen-year-old brother Mike will be making himself scarce and nursing a hangover, if he even came home.

It should feel like a relief to be here in this little California town, alone in my apartment, with nothing to do but sleep and study. But honestly, I feel totally out of place, like I don’t fit in my skin. I’ve met a lot of people and gotten invited to a lot of parties since moving here a few weeks ago, but it’s not the same as being around my friends back home. Anyway, it’s just temporary. I’ll be back in New York soon enough. With that thought in my head, I pull up the number with no name and send a text with Angela’s address. Obligations met, I fall asleep for ten hours.

When I wake up well after noon, my phone is blinking with texts.

Mom:Did you go to church?

Mike:Giants playing Packers today.

Siobhan:Did you take my iPad charger idiot? WTF? I need it for school.

Dad:Everything cool there?

I groan. I need to wake up a little before dealing with my family. After a run and a workout, I come home and eat whatever I can find in my fridge. Finally, I sit down in the living room and fire off a few texts.

To my mom:I’ll go next week.

To Mike:I know. I’m having some guys over to watch.

To Siobhan:No, dumbshit. Look in Ma’s car.

And, finally, to my dad:All good.

I put on my Giants jersey and order some pizzas. Those show up around the same time my friends from school start arriving. The game is just starting on the flat-screen TV that hangs over the fireplace. I toss out beers and sit on the sofa, wishing I was back in the Bronx with Mikey and my buddies from the firehouse.

It’s a pre-season game, so everyone is pretty laid-back. Sometime in the second half, the talk turns to the girls in our class. Who’s hot, who’s not, and who’s taken.

“What about that Angela girl?” someone asks.

I stand up and stretch and go get another beer as they proceed to talk about Angela.

“Who’s she?”

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