Page 7 of Revenge At Raleigh High
There are, indeed, two locks on the red, reinforced steel door. I use the key he pointed out, quickly unbolting the door and then pulling it open.
Inside, a bright, cold strip-light casts a stark blue glow over the small room beyond—a liquor store, lined with shelves that span from floor to ceiling, laden with a supply of booze that would last me a goddamn lifetime.
“In there, at the back,” Westbrook clips out. “On the floor, by the bottles of Jim Beam.”
I give him a tired, weary look. “Pete, I’m going to be so disappointed if I find out this door automatically locks when it’s slammed closed.”
His weak, irritated smile confirms that he was going to try and lock me inside the liquor store. “Can’t blame a guy for trying, right?”
“Just fucking move, before I decide to lockyouin there and set this place on fucking fire. I hear death by smoke inhalation’s a pretty miserable way to go.”
Westbrook stumbles a little as I shove him inside the liquor store. He reluctantly makes for a bank of whiskey bottles at the far end of the room and halts, sighing.
“All right. Here you go,” he says, kicking out with one of his leather shoes. “The magical, mysterious bag Monty sent you over here for. It’s been nothing but fucking trouble since the moment I laid eyes on it. Untie me and get the fuck out of my sight, before I call in some friends and have them play soccer with your dismembered fucking head.”
“Sounds like a good time. Real talk, though. Friends? You’re fucking detestable. I can’t picture you having manyfriends, Pete.” I join him, snatching up the bag at his feet by one of its handles, determined not to bother trying to guess what’s inside it by its weight. A hard thing to do, though. I never know what’s inside any of the packages Monty sends me to drop off or collect, but this run has felt different from the get-go. There was something off about the desperate edge to Monty’s voice when he told me Ihadto get this bag for him. The look on his face was nothing short of weird.
“The key?” Westbrook snaps, spinning around to give me access to the cuffs behind his back.
I’m already walking away, though.
“Hey! Hey, don’t you dare, you fucking punk!” Westbrook yells after me. “There’s no cell phone reception down here. No one’s coming in until nine tomorrow morning.”
I pause in the doorway, hand resting on the cool steel, pitted steel. It takes me all of three seconds to weigh the pros and cons of leaving Peter locked in his own liquor cellar overnight. Pro number one: it’s a fuckingliquor cellar. The guy can have a great time if he sets his mind to it. Two: if he can’t use his cell phone down here, then he can’t call any of his goons to chase me down and ruin my night. Three: imagining the look on Westbrook’s face when he realizes the hand cuffs he’s wearing are fucking novelty cuffs and a stick insect could pop them open makes me fucking laugh.
Cons: Hmm. Well, damn. Doesn’t look like there are any of those...
That settles it, then. Westbrook’s spending the night locked up in his little box. I give him a halfhearted shrug as I swing the door closed. The guy charges, trying to reach the exit before it has a chance to slam shut, but he’s too fucking slow.
“Hope you’re not claustrophobic,” I call to him through the door. From how muffled the angry shouts are on the other side, I doubt that he’ll have heard me. “Have a nice night, Mr. Westbrook.”
The freezing night air tries to rip right through me as I step out of the emergency exit at the back of Gimlet’s. The wind’s been howling for days now, tearing through the Whitson Valley, knocking down Raleigh’s street signs, felling dead trees, causing chaos and blocking the roads in and out of town. It felt like the Camaro was going to fucking roll on the drive over to Bellingham. The weather’s even worse here. Not only is the wind so much stronger as it comes raging in off the bay, but the threat of snow is hanging heavy and pregnant in the air, promising to make the drive back to Raleigh seriously sketchy.
If I were smart, I’d wait the weather out. Hang tight in a motel for the night. Watch some bad T.V. and gorge myself on vending machine food. I don’t want to waste the money on the room, though, and this storm isn’t a twenty-four-hour squall. Once this cold front takes hold, it’s going to snow, and it’s going to snow hard. Not just for hours, but for days, and there is no way in hell I’m getting stuck in goddamn Bellingham for that long. Not with Silver Parisi expecting me to meet her in Raleigh. The very hounds of hell couldn’t keep me from makingthatappointment.
It takes a couple of minutes to jog down Culver and cross over a couple of blocks to the parking lot of the Night Stop Convenience Store where I left the car; by the time I hurl myself into the driver’s seat and I slam the door closed behind me, my hair is stiff with ice and my eyes are streaming like crazy.
Somewhere in the world, the sun’s shining right now. There are beaches, and coconuts, and cocktails, and people are walking around in their goddamn swimsuits, but I can’t for the life of me think where such a place might be because my fucking brain is too fucking frozen and I can’t form a coherent thought.
The fingers on my right hand ache and throb as I fumble with the car keys—an unpleasant reminder a day five years ago when I’d been playing my guitar a little too loud for Gary Quincy’s liking. I curse angrily under my breath, annoyed that I’ve even allowed myself to remember the man, which is dumb really. I’m covered in scars, and plenty of my bones crunch and crack courtesy of all the injuries I’ve suffered at other people’s hands. I should be used to this kind of thing by now. But there’s something aboutthisinjury that makes my insides burn. Gary knew how much music meant to me. I’d wanted to play professionally. I’d wanted to pay my bills by playing the guitar, and he’d taken hold of my hand and slammed it in his door to his truck over and over again…
I can still play, thank fuck. If I stretch out my hand and use the bands I was given to strengthen the muscle and the tendons, there’s no real reason why I couldn’t make a living through my music, one way or another, but…
Every time I feel that fucking ache, I also see the hatred and the spite in Gary’s rheumy, spiteful eyes, and deep down inside, I know that it’s fucking true. That motherfucker didn’t end up totally destroying my hand like he’d wanted to, but hedidsucceed in destroying my dreams for good.
TEXT MESSAGE RECEIVED:
+1(564) 987 3491: Your fucking disgusting. I don’t no how u can even bear to look in the fucking mirror without puking. Im gonna cut your face up.
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SILVER
There many different ways to love.
There’s the kind of love that exists between friends. The lifetime bond of camaraderie that sometimes forms in the space of a summer afternoon, playing outside on the streets, riding bikes up and down the sidewalk and collecting bugs in jars. There’s the love a person bears for their siblings or their parents. An intrinsic, deep-seated love that is always there, and always remains, through slight and disagreement, spanning decades and distance and so much silence.
And then there’s romantic love. The kind of love poets have written sonnets about for hundreds of years. Romantic love, the lynchpin of all good stories. The all-consuming, burning fire in a heart that can create or destroy in the blink of an eye. The kind of love that inspires heroic acts of sacrifice, while also being the root cause of murder, jealousy and hideous acts of revenge.
