Page 3 of Bad Boy Next Door
Two
Jade
What in the name of all things holy had Dad gotten me into this time?
I stared at the apartment complex that sprawled along the street, cresting the top of a hill that at this moment looked like Mount Everest.
A Bay Area native, I was no virgin to the hills of San Francisco, but after working twenty hours straight, quitting two of my four jobs—then packing up all my family’s worldly belongings and lugging them via BART train, then the bus, then walking, then another bus, then tons and tons of walking—I’d had enough.
I didn’t know whether to thank my father or kill him for involving me in his deal. It should be nice to think that Dad had done something to help me, for the first time ever. But nothing about this deal felt moderately nice.
I adjusted my monstrous backpack. Behind it hung three garbage bags full of stuff, and the combined weight tugged on my shoulders. Checking to make sure the five small boxes of heavier items, including my cherished cast-iron pan, were secure on the barely functioning luggage cart, I grabbed the handle of my roller suitcase. Attached to the suitcase with duct tape was a second suitcase with broken wheels.
Everything gathered, I started up the hill—the final climb to my new digs that had so better be worth it.
Not like I had many choices. Even with my four jobs, without Dad’s long-term disability checks, I could barely afford the roach-infested place our family had shared in the East Bay. In contrast, this deal sounded way too good to be true, especially given how I’d landed my lease at Shady Oaks. Not that I’d seen an actual lease.
Not having paperwork wasn’t the only thing that seemed sketchy. Everything about this situation was sketch. I mean, the apartment complex even had the word “shady” in its name, and I was pretty sure I’d be walking into a veritable lion’s den, with me the only non-criminal tenant.
I’d keep to myself, wouldn’t talk to anyone.
With this deal, Dad would be protected in jail, Crystal had her tuition paid, and I got a new place to live, plus a great job. Way too good to be true. It was time for the other shoe to drop, and as I reached the gate, I got the distinct feeling a giant-sized boot was about to land on my head.
With zero breeze and the fog burned off, the early summer sun baked my skin, frying me in my own sweat as I stared at the arched, gated entrance to the Shady Oaks complex.
The keys for apartment 311 had mysteriously appeared in my staff room locker at Flo’s, a greasy-spoon diner in Oakland, when I’d worked my final shift early that morning.
The larger of the two keys opened the iron gate, an ornate monstrosity with a confusion of details—Spanish colonial meets art deco?—and I tugged my stuff through a long arched walkway into a courtyard.
The courtyard had some sad-looking palm trees, badly in need of pruning, and a few beautifully bright bougainvillea climbing up wrought iron to the second and third floors. In the center of the courtyard lay the corpse of what may once have been a very nice pool. The chipped and broken tiles inside the empty pool were teal, aqua, and peacock blue, but when I got closer I saw the bottom contained an indeterminate amount of water, green and murky enough to support its own ecosystem.
Letting go of the luggage cart’s handle, I shaded my eyes from the sun and searched for my new place. And hopefully an elevator. I seriously doubted such a thing would exist, but why not fantasize and embellish my already too-good-to-be-true situation.
Each apartment entrance was arched, with colored tiles framing carved oak doors sporting huge pewter knockers and little cages over what looked like tiny windows. This place must have been gorgeous in its heyday. Like a hundred years ago. It had an old Hollywood vibe, and I’d had no idea places like this existed in Northern California, never mind South San Francisco.
It didn’t take long to figure out that the units on the ground floor all started with a one—and it didn’t take a genius to realize that my hopes for an elevator had been ridiculous. I headed toward the open staircase at one of the back corners of the rectangular courtyard.
Leaving behind my barely-holding-together luggage cart, I dragged the two suitcases up to the first landing and shrugged out of the weighted-down backpack. I walked down the steps for the boxes, feeling weightless, like I had wings attached to my shoulder blades.
Carrying up the boxes reminded me I didn’t.
When I got all five boxes onto the landing, I considered my next move. I hadn’t seen anyone, but I had the distinct feeling I was being watched.
Thugs and criminals—that’s who lived in Shady Oaks. And although my family’s collective possessions weren’t valuable, they were to me, and after carting them so far, I didn’t want to risk their being stolen.
I carried two boxes to the second floor, leaving them in sight as I returned for the other three, carrying them all together, even though it meant I couldn’t see over the top.
Sensing I was close, I peered around the side of the boxes, then pushed them forward onto the second floor hallway, next to—
My first two boxes were gone.
“What the hell?” After scanning the open second-floor hallway, I raced up the stairs to the third floor and spotted the back of the most massive man I’d ever seen.
He looked back over his shoulder. “You’re moving into 311, right?”
“Put down my shit!”
“Why are you moving boxes of shit?”
