Page 11 of False Start
“Yikes,” he grumbles, putting the mirror back under the table and walking into his room. In just a few minutes, he’s out again, holdingThe Lion KingVHS in his hand.
“No way, dude.” I wave him off, knowing damn well I don’t want that shit. “Just give me some narcos to take the edge off, something with codeine.”
“That shit is bad for your liver.” He shakes his head. “Tiny bumps, never more than enough to get rid of the pain,” he instructs.
“Ryan, it’s all drugs,” I muse, never tired of the way his brain processes things.
“Yeah, and one favors big pharma. The other supports the local economy.” He grins, opening the VHS and pulling out the clear bag.
The powder is a light beige color, looking more like something I’d cook with than something I’d put up my nose.
“I don’t know,” I drag out my words. “I feel like, once upon a time, I had a hard limit, andthiswas it.”
“Hard limits are for people whose drug dealers don’t know them by their full names, Antônia Da Silva. If I remember correctly, your birth certificate’s original copy is still in myimportant documentssafe.” He gives me that damn parental look again.
Except I’ve never bothered to askhimfor his last name. Ryan Lee always felt like enough, and maybe by not telling me, he protected me, in his own way.
You never want to know too much. That’s one of his many rules. In typical Ryan style, the rules are for everyone but him.
“Are you kidding me? I’ve been looking for that thing for at least three years, Ryan! I blamed my mom for losing it.” I get up, running to the black and white framed photo of this very house that hangs above the fireplace.
“You brought it over after the homecoming dance fight,” he reminds me. “You were gonna start over, remember?”
I exhale all the air out of my lungs, an autonomous response to the memory.
That was the night I’d had enough. Some petty argument between my mother and I had escalated into me telling her college wasn’t my path. At the time, it hadn’t been, but she, an immigrant who had worked her entire life to give me the opportunity of college in the United States of America, couldn’t fathom the idea that I’d throw it all away.
ForRoller Derby, of all things.
After threatening to send me to Brazil forcorrecting, I exploded. Packing everything I deemed as necessary to become an independent adult into a small bag, I set to camp out at Ryan Lee’s house.Still a minor then.
I lasted two weeks before she goaded me into responding to a text, somehow using that message to help the police track my location. Ryan and I had been at the local Waffle Station getting breakfast when the police showed up, his assistant at the time feeling the full force of the raid in his stead.
I lift the frame from the wall, entering the numbers I know by heart.
Fourteen, forty-one, fourteen. The guy is some weird sort of genius, but he’s oddly obsessed with the number fourteen. I can’t fight his logic; when he breaks it down and tells the chronological tale of every fourteen that had brought him blessings, it gets hard to argue that it trulyisn’this lucky number.
Fourteen has kept Ryan Lee from prison many times.
The safe clicks, and inside is nothing but a thick manila folder. Opening it up, I find every single conviction this charlatan would dare try to convince me doesn’t exist. Thumbing through a few Wayne County misdemeanors from the last three years—no doubt discharged by whatever judge he paid off—I eventually flip right past it, theSilvacatching my eye before I flip back to find my full name.
I smile victoriously, folding it in half and sticking it back into the pile of papers. I don’t know why, but it’s been safe here for this long. Why move it? It’s not like I know where I’m going next anyway. I tuck the rest of his trophies back into the folder before I close the safe once more.
“Keep it here for me until I figure out where I’m going? I don’t want to lose it.”
He smirks like he knows I can’t be trusted with my own shit. “You good to go then?” He’s obnoxiously irritating for a man his age with somany felonies.
“Don’t be annoying.” I slump back onto the couch. “I’m just not sure I’m ready forthat,” I confess.
“I’m not the Devil on your shoulder, I’m just the facilitator.” He clicks his tongue, putting the bag back into the VHS.
“Wait.” I bite my lip, and he lifts his chin up, raising his eyes to look at me. “Maybe just to try it?”
“I don’t know, squirt. I don’t think you’re right for this shit.” He stands again, grabbingThe Lion Kingas if he’s going to put it away.
“Ryan…” I growl. “Don’t be a dick.”
I know his methods well, the dark psychology he uses to get addicts from one thing to the other. It’s kept him rich, regardless of whatever product he might be low on at any point in time. The man’s a mad genius. Borderline terrifying, but he’s undeniablygoodat pushing drugs.
