Under the Bridge (14 page)

It took a moment for what I said to register with him. Four years of watching the dealers from the other side of the park sell to addicts flashed through my head, and now he was here. We were here. He was one of them. We’d all made a pact that we’d never deal and that we’d never do the hard stuff. Indy, me, Sid, and Piper. Now I was standing under the wrong side of the bridge talking to my drug-dealer brother. He’d betrayed me, but most of all, he’d betrayed himself. His face went blank, and then he nodded. “You don’t understand, Tate. Just go home. Please.”

A moment passed between us, and it seemed that in a few seconds’ time, the only thing I had left of my brother was remembering how it used to be. He was right. Things had changed, and I hated it. I hated the world and my dad, and most of all, I hated my brother because he was the only
one who could hurt me like this. “Fuck you, Indy.” Then I was gone.

On the way home, my mind rushed through things. We didn’t live in an insulated world. Guys I’d known living further up the hill, with a buffer of space and money, didn’t think like we did. They didn’t know what we knew. They didn’t see what we saw. There was no buffer with us because we were the buffer that kept it from other people. Our neighborhood was the zone that separated the city from the suburbs, and you dealt with what it threw you because there was nothing else to do.

I knew the drug world because I saw it every day. I skated through it. I knew the dealers and the pimps, the badasses, gangbangers, and thieves. I knew where to go and where not to go, who to talk to and who not to talk to, and how the game was played. The street was a tapestry, and we knew it. But we weren’t the street. We never had been, and we knew the difference. We also knew that if it got to you, it sucked you in. It ruined you.

Over the last couple of years, we’d seen guys sucked in by it. Dealing, doing, thieving, joining gangs, getting involved with the wrong people. Now my own brother was in it, and I didn’t know what to do. Part of me said he wasn’t in too deep and I could get him out, but another part was so pissed off I didn’t want anything to do with him. My brain boiled over with it all the way home.

Dad was sitting on the front porch when I came up the walk. It was after two in the morning. He reminded me of a great, hunch-shouldered statue of a bear—a warning to anybody crossing the doorway to his cave. I stopped five feet in front of him, far enough away that if he rushed me, I could run.

A few seconds passed; then his voice, low and soft, vibrated through the air. “Go to bed.”

I did.

Dad was gone on an early shift before I got up, and that was just fine with me. Usually a good night’s sleep rearranged my attitude when it was swirling down the toilet, but I woke up in a worse mood than I went to bed with. I was sure the shit was going to hit the fan when he got home that night, and part of me envied my brother not having to deal with it
.

I was still so mad at Indy that even thinking about him made my blood boil, and as I brushed my teeth, I thought about what Mom had said about Dad the other night. I stopped brushing, looking at myself in the mirror. Am I him? I thought. Am I my dad? I looked at myself hard for a moment more, then spit in the sink. I was so pissed at Indy I could beat his face in, and it was because I cared about him, no matter how much I didn’t want to. I didn’t know what to do, either, and that made me more angry. Ms. Potter might have been right, but I realized that sometimes, being right isn’t enough.

School dragged on with my mind in the nowhere zone, and when lunch came around, Sid came along with it. I sat on the concrete wall eating a bag of chips, and he sat next to me, not saying hello or even looking at me. “Word on the down-low is all about your bro.”

“Oh yeah?”

He nodded. “He’s dealing Under the Bridge.”

I looked across the street, wondering if there was a hole I could crawl into. “Yeah.”

Sid shrugged. “Not just the light stuff, either.”

I turned to him. “What do you know about Will?”

He shrugged again. “He’s the real thing.”

I told him about the guy at the apartment, and that he was holding a stack of credit cards.

He nodded. “Doesn’t surprise me. That stuff goes hand in hand.”

“He’s in deep, Sid.”

He sighed, kicking his heels against the wall. “Dangerous deep. I was talking to Michael about Will. I guess Will’s uncle has ties from Texas. Was he sort of older?”

“Yes.”

“He came up about a week ago. He supplies Will. Some sort of convict.”

After sixth period let out, I had no plans to hit the park. Indy dealing was something I didn’t want to answer to, and I knew I’d have to put up with questions. It was embarrassing, and if there was one thing I couldn’t stand, it was being ashamed.

I couldn’t escape it, though, and when I got home, Piper was sitting on our front porch. He stood, slapping me five. “Hey, Tate.”

“What’s up?”

He shrugged. “So what do we do about Indy dealing?”

I sighed, sitting down. “I don’t know. I don’t even know if I should tell my parents. My dad would go off the charts.”

“This isn’t about your dad, dude. It’s about Indy.”

“So I should tell him?”

“I don’t know, but it’s not about your dad.”

I thought about it. “I could waste Will. Scare him off.”

“I don’t think he’s the kind of guy who would scare off because you beat him up. I think it would escalate.” He paused. “Besides, Indy’s doing it because he wants to, not because Will is making him.”

“Yeah. I just can’t believe it. After Cutter and everything,” I said, my thoughts trailing off.

Piper took a breath, pausing. “The law came to my house last night.”

I glanced at him. “Why?”

“Lucius.”

I frowned. “What do you have to do with Lucius?”

He shrugged again. “They said they’re questioning all the
skaters who hang there. Looking for clues or whatever.” He looked at me, and a long moment passed.

“What?” I said.

He eyed me, nervous tension on his face. “Come on, Tate, I know you’ve thought about it.”

“About what?”

“Lucius. Dead. Will running dope Under the Bridge. Your bro.”

I had thought about it, but I didn’t want to even consider the consequences. “They said it was a bad drug deal.”

He shook his head. “I know, and I’m not saying anything, but it’s there. And I was questioned about it.”

“Shit.”

He nodded. “There’s a videotape.”

“Of the killing?”

“Sort of. They showed it to me. The pawnshop has had break-ins, so they have a surveillance camera on the back of their building. You can see two guys, just shapes in the dark, really, talking. Then one of them swings something and the other one goes back, falling out of the camera view. The other guy goes after him.”

“So what? Do the cops think you did it?”

“Cops think everybody is a suspect, but they were just asking questions about anything I might have seen around. Pretty standard crap, I think.”

“And?”

He frowned. “And I didn’t say anything. About Will or Indy. But there was more.”

“More?”

He nodded again. “As the tape is rolling, this detective dude pushes the zoom on his laptop and zeroes in on the back corner of the frame. There’s a shape there, Tate. Another dude.” He looked at me. “A witness.”

“Who?”

“They don’t know. Too fuzzy and dark.”

I remembered the guy at Will’s apartment. “Maybe Will and his uncle did it.”

“Who knows. Lucius had problems with bangers up north, too. At least that’s what the word was.”

I took a breath. “I suppose they’ll end up coming here to question me, too.”

He nodded. “Yeah, which makes two big problems.”

“Explain.”

“Well, first off is that Indy is dealing down there, and with the investigation, the cops will eventually find out. The second is that Will and his uncle are serious people.”

I knew he was right. “You didn’t say anything about Indy?”

“Nothing. He’s got enough problems without me snitching him out as a dealer.”

“Thanks.”

He picked up his board. “No sweat. Take it easy.”

I had two goals for the night. One was to avoid my dad and the other was to find Indy. I had to talk to him. Dad was the obstacle, though, because when he did talk to me, he
was totally cool. No threats, no hard-core, no grounding. Every bone in my body screamed to tell him what was going on, but I couldn’t. Not yet.

After a mostly silent dinner, I went to my room, and a few minutes later he knocked. “Come in.”

He walked in, dwarfing Indy’s computer chair as he sat. “I want to talk about what’s going on.”

“Okay.”

He took a moment, then began. “I know you’re upset about Indy, and I know you love him. I do, too. And I know that in some ways, your loyalties lie closer to him than they do to me. I appreciate that, and I understand it. But this is my house, Tate, and there’s got to be rules. And respect. Your brother didn’t follow the rules, and he pushed it to the point where I had to do something about it.” He paused, leaning his elbows on his knees and steepling his fingers. “If you don’t like what I did, you have every right to tell me and we can argue about it. But you don’t have a right to disrespect me or your mother because you’re upset.” He looked at me. “You didn’t respect me last night or even the other night, and everything I said holds true. I will not tolerate it in my home, and if you choose to behave this way, you’ll pay my consequences. Do you understand where I’m coming from?”