Break, page 2
Chapter 2
16 years ago
Vincent
Running through the hallway, I slide in my socks to stop myself before passing by the door to the kitchen. Reaching out a hand, I grip the doorway to stop. “Hey, Mom? I’m gonna go over to Danny’s. Is that cool?”
Looking over her shoulder, she grabs a towel to dry her hands before turning to face me. Planting her hands on her hips, she raises an eyebrow before asking, “Did you get your room picked up?”
Flinging my head back to groan at the ceiling, I complain, “Mooooom, there’s barely anything in there. I swear I’ll finish it when I get back.”
“Vincent, you always promise, but you never get it done. It’ll literally take you ten minutes if you just stop messing around and do it.” Crossing her arms at me, I know I just need to pull out the puppy eyes and she’ll give in.
“Swear to God, I really will do it when I get back. Please? All the guys are going over there and we’re gonna play football for a little bit.” I show her my ball to prove that I’m telling the truth and then press it between my hands like I’m praying to her. “Promise. The moment I get back, I’ll get it perfect.”
Sighing, she rolls her eyes and then flicks the damp towel at me. “Get out of here.”
“Yes!” I fist pump in the air and then take off to the door to get my shoes on.
Calling out to me, she yells, “If you don’t follow through this time, I’m going to give you extra chores tomorrow. You hear me, Vince?”
“Got it, ma!” I yell back as I shove my feet in my shoes, pulling up my socks that are sagging down around my ankles.
Just as I pull the door open, she calls out once more, “Your dad will be home by five, so make sure you’re back by then!”
“Yep!” I scream out through the slamming screen door.
Racing down the front steps, I open the side door to the garage and pull my bike out. Shoving my football down the front of my shirt so I don’t drop it, I get on my bike and peel out of my driveway to head six blocks over to Danny’s house.
It only takes about five minutes to get to his house. I pedal through to his backyard where I can hear my friends laughing, and I slam my right foot back to brake the bike. Sliding a few feet, I check out my skid marks in the grass and smirk at the wavy line I left.
“Did you bring your football? Danny’s sucks!” Max calls to me.
Pulling it out from under my shirt, I let my bike fall to the side in a heap and run over to them. “Got it… right here…” I gasp, catching my breath. “We doing teams or just gonna toss it around?”
“Let’s just toss it. I don’t feel like running around right now,” Ethan says.
Nodding my head, I jog over to an open area, so we’re set up in a square position, and toss the ball over to Max. Perfect spiral. Dad and I have been working on my throw and it’s coming along nicely.
My older brother played football in high school for a few years, but he was only second string. Dad says that I’ve got what it takes to go all the way as long as I keep at it and put in effort between my pee-wee seasons. Middle school is next year, and I’ll finally have a school team to join. My little sister keeps telling us she wants to play, but we all know that football isn’t for the likes of girls.
“Nice,” Max compliments me and tosses it back, the ball flipping end over end.
“Right?” I ask, giving him a knowing nod. “Dad showed me where to put my fingers, so the ball spins the right way. Look. You gotta put your pinky finger behind the laces, and then your middle finger against them. Then your ring finger goes here.” I show him how to lay it. “Then this finger goes on the other side along the stitches. When you throw it, if you keep your finger really tight, it’ll spiral real nice and tight!”
I toss the ball to Ethan to show them what I’m talking about. Ethan misses the catch, letting the ball drop in front of him before he picks it up and tries to place his fingers where I told him. “Show me right quick, would ya?” Ethan asks.
Running over, I place his fingers where they should be and then step back while he tosses it to Danny with a decent spiral, though it wobbles a bit in the air. “That’s pretty good!” I tell him.
“It was alright,” Danny adds before tossing it over to Max, end over end again.
I really want to show him how to do it, but Danny gets pissed when people tell him he does something wrong, so I keep my mouth shut and run back to my spot. As I show the other two how to do it, Ethan and Max do their best to mimic what I did with the fingers. As we throw back and forth, they get better the longer we keep going.
After a while, Danny’s neighbor’s voice interrupts us and I halt my throw just as I’m about to toss the ball back to Danny.
“Danny?” she asks. I see her standing behind him, holding a jar in her hands, pressed up against her chest. “Momma told me to bring this over.”
Danny’s head falls back, and he looks up at the sky, sighing. “Lord, save me. What do you want, Mina?”
I lean to the side to look at the little girl who has been a thorn in Danny’s side since she moved in and see her shoving the toe of her shoe into the ground. “Momma said that your momma asked for a stain remover for your sheets. She told me to bring it over.”
Danny spins around, clenching his fists as he glares at her. “What the hell are you on about? My momma didn’t ask for nothin’ like that, Whalemina! God, I swear you get fatter every time I see you. Get out of here, would ya?” He’s so mad at her that his face is almost purple.
Max snickers from behind me. “Stain remover? What, you pee your bed or something, Danny? Gotta get the sheets clean before you sleep in them, you baby?”
“Shut the fuck up, Max,” Danny growls, glaring back at him.
“Whoa man, you can’t say that kinda stuff!” Ethan is quick to say, his cheeks turning red. We’ve heard the ‘f’ word around, but none of us have been ballsy enough to use it yet.
Danny huffs, annoyed with our friend. “Whatever. Go away! I don’t even know what you’re talkin’ about!” he yells at the little girl, and I notice that she flinches when he speaks to her.
“B-but… momma said that I was supposed to bring it over!” I don’t think her arguing with him was probably the best idea because he stomps over to her and grabs the jar that she’s holding out.
Clenching the jar in his hand, he glowers at her before chucking it at the fence that separates their yards, and it smashes to pieces. The little girl is staring at the spot on the fence where the liquid is running down, biting her lip like she’s trying not to cry.
Max laughs, pointing at her. “Oh man, Danny. You’re gonna get in trouble! You made her cry! You gonna cry with her, bedwetter?”
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Danny this mad, but his fists are closed and he’s shaking. “You shut your damn mouth, Max. I’m not a fat fucking baby like Whalemina.” He turns to her and gets in her face, pinching her cheek. She’s a little chubby, but I wouldn’t say that she’s fat. “Go on baby, go run back home and tell your momma that you busted that jar all up. We’ve got witnesses to say that it wasn’t me. Hopefully daddy won’t be too rough with the belt this time, huh?”
Wait. What?
Looking over at my other friends, Ethan looks confused, and Max is still laughing at the two of them.
“DANNY! What in the world…” The four of us jerk our heads to look over at Danny’s mom standing in the doorway that leads inside to their kitchen. “What the heck are you boys doing?”
“Sorry ma. Mina got angry when we were just playing around and threw that jar over there. It busted everywhere.” He points to the broken pieces of glass lying at the bottom of the fence.
“N-No ma’am. I didn’t bust-” she starts to argue. I don’t blame the kid really, but Max interrupts her before she can tell on Danny.
“She did, Mrs. Reed. We were just playing around and she chucked it right over there. Darnedest thing, really. Throwin’ a fit when we were just messin’ around.” He gives Danny’s mom one of those smiles to charm the pants off her.
I kinda feel bad for blaming it on her, but if Danny gets in trouble, then we’ll have to go home, and I just got here. We all watch as Mrs. Reed narrows her eyes at Mina. “Mina, that kind of behavior isn’t acceptable over here. I need you to go pick up all the pieces from the jar and bring them inside to toss away. You can wait with me until I call your mother.”
I study her and watch her shoulders drop as she walks over to the fence and picks up the biggest pieces of glass. Ethan comes up next to me and whispers, “You think she’s gonna tell Mrs. Reed it was Danny?”
Shrugging, I whisper back, “Not sure. Kinda hope she doesn’t ‘cuz then we’ll have to go home.”
“ALL of the pieces, Miss Bardot. It wouldn’t do for the boys to be running around outside and cut their feet.”
Mina winces when she picks up one of the shards and I see a little bit of blood on her fingertip, but she doesn’t say a word about it. Walking toward the back door of Danny’s house, where Mrs. Reed is still standing with her hands on her hips, Mina cups all the glass pieces in her hands.
“Inside,” she orders, holding the door open so Mina can slip into the house next to her. Once she’s through, the screen door slams shut behind them and they disappear inside.
The four of us don’t say anything, just stand there and stare at the door. Honestly, I’m pretty shocked that it worked out like that for us. After a minute, Danny’s shoulders start shaking before he turns to face us and busts out laughing.
“Well, that couldn’t have gone any better. Okay, you guys wanna do something different or keep throwing the ball?”
“Throwing. I almost got the spin down and I wanna keep practicing,” Max says, voicing his opinion first. I guess he’s done making fun of Danny now, which is good because I really don’t feel like breaking up any fights today.
I shove my elbow into Ethan’s side to get his attention away from the door. “Come on, man, you have to go back over to your spot. This is where I was standing.” He’s not smiling when he looks at me, but he moves over anyway.
We don’t even go five minutes before Mina’s scary church mom comes storming around the fence from her house. She doesn’t look at any of us as she marches to the door and raps her knuckles hard on the back door.
Max drops his arm from his next pass to watch as she yanks on Mina’s arm to pull her through the door onto the back stoop. Leaning down, she gives her a shake before scolding her. “You, ma’am, are in big trouble. You owe Mrs. Reed an apology for not only throwing a fit over here but embarrassing all of us in the process. This is not how young ladies act.”
Mina’s lips are trembling as she looks up at Mrs. Reed and mouths, I’m sorry to her. I’m not sure if she actually said it, but if she did, it was so soft that her voice didn’t make it over to us.
Nodding her head, Danny’s mom crosses her arms. “Let’s just not see that again, shall we?”
This time, I hear her when she softly answers, “Yes, ma’am.”
“I’m sorry, Diane. I’m so mortified. I swear she won’t act out like this again. Her father is home; we’ll both have words with her,” Mrs. Bardot says with a forced smile.
“Don’t worry about it. Dinner next weekend?”
“We had planned on it. I’ll call you later.” With that, Mrs. Bardot drags Mina through the yard by her upper arm and back around the corner of the fence as Danny’s mom goes back inside.
I flinch when I hear the door slam shut from the other house, but not before we all heard a high-pitched cry. My heartbeat pounds a little harder in my chest, and when I look over at Ethan, his face is pale. Danny is grinning in the direction of her house like a crazy maniac.
“Let’s go ride bikes,” Max snaps out. He storms over to his where it’s laid sideways on the grass next to where I dropped mine. He hops on and takes off down the sidewalk.
We all follow him, grabbing ours and pedaling to catch up.
I ignore Ethan and Danny behind me when I hear Ethan. “You’re a jerk, Danny.”
He snorts back at him. “Whatever. She’ll be fine.”
Chapter 3
14 years ago
Max
Slamming my bag down on the wood planks of Danny’s front porch, I sit on the steps while waiting for the guys to get here. Digging my nails into the palm of my hands to try to control how freaking pissed I am, Aiden’s words eat at me.
“Your dad is such a piece of shit and your mom is a pushover,” he sneers at me while his buddies are laughing behind their hands.
Narrowing my eyes, I try to stare him down. “The hell are you getting on about? You don’t know me or my family, you dick.”
Smirking, he stands a little taller. “Oh, no? So, it wasn’t your dad that me and my folks saw stumbling out of a bar Saturday night with one of the trailer women under his arm? Grabbin’ her butt and kissin’ on her? It was disgusting. My mom and dad said that he’s always out doing that kind of shit and your mom doesn’t even care! She just lets him screw all the dirty trash in town, and then lets him come right on home.”
I fist my hands at my side and get right in his face. “You have no damn clue what the hell you’re on about! Shut your mouth before I shut it for you!”
Ethan grabs my shoulder to pull me away and mutters in my ear, “Come on, man. Don’t let him get to you. Let’s get out of here.”
Danny is quick to pipe up in my defense, putting himself between me and Aiden. “I’d think real hard about messing with him. You mess with him, you mess with us. Wouldn’t want your ass kicked, would you? Maybe I should tell Megan that you’ve been passing notes to her best friend during Computers class?”
He doesn’t wait for Aiden to answer him as he turns around to face me. “Come on, meet up at my house. We’ll deal with him later.”
So, here I sit after taking off on my bike from school, trying my best not to punch the daylights out of the pillars holding the roof up over Danny’s front porch. I’m not my dad, I’m not my dad, I’m not my dad. Squeezing my eyes shut, I can’t talk myself down from the rage I’m feeling. I want to fucking hurt him. All of them.
“You alright, Max?” Vincent asks. I don’t see my friends show up until Vincent speaks, dropping next to me on the steps. Laughing, he slaps me on my back before continuing. “Aiden is just a pussy, talking the big talk to look good in front of his friends. He’s been a little shit since elementary school.”
Gritting my teeth, I shove Vincent away from me. “I want to hurt that piece of shit. He’s so cocky, thinking he’s better than me ‘cuz his house is bigger and nicer than mine. I’m so sick of it!”
Danny leans against the handrail, dropping his backpack by his feet. “So hurt him then. No one’s gonna say anything about it if you do it outside. I wouldn’t let anyone talk to me like that, that’s for sure. Don’t let him push you around, dude.”
I glare at him. “I was about to lay him out, but you all pulled me back!”
“No, not like that. We were in school. You’d have been suspended for starting a fight. You gotta scare the shit out of him where there’s no one to stop it so he knows you’re being for real.”
Ethan hasn’t said anything until now. “What do you mean, scare him? How do we scare him if he wasn’t scared that Max was going to punch him?”
Crossing his arms over his chest, I fight my urge to punch Danny’s smirk off his face. He acts like he knows everything. “Weeeellllll… Take one of my pocket knives with you to school and flash it at him. Threaten him to stop running his mouth about you and your family. OH! Make him apologize in front of all of his friends, or you’ll use it on him.”
A smile works its way onto my face as I imagine Aiden crying like a little girl. “That’s freaking perfect. He’ll piss himself!”
“Of course it’s a good idea! I’ll run and grab one for you. I’ve got like ten of them in my room. Hold on a sec.” He pushes his way between Vincent and me, forcing us to catch ourselves before we fall to our sides.
“Asshole!” Vincent yells out, laughing at him.
“I don’t know if this is a good id-” Ethan starts to say before Danny’s nosey neighbor cuts him off.
“Hey… umm, Max? Can I talk to you a minute?” Mina asks.
“Jesus! Where the hell did you come from?” Vincent barks at her. Seriously though, I didn’t even see her walking up to us.
Trying not to be a total ass to her, I huff out a breath. “Not now. We’re kind of in the middle of something. Besides, don’t you have homework or something you should be working on?”
“B-but it’s important. Please… can I talk to you f-for just a second?” she asks again, this time looking right at me. Her hands are folded in front of her long sack dress that she’s always wearing.
The poor kid isn’t doing herself any favors with the way she dresses at school. She’s gonna get her ass kicked at some point. Besides, who still wears their hair braided in pigtails at her age?
Groaning, I stand up. “Fine but be quick about it.” I walk over to the side of the house and put my hands on my hips, glaring down at her. “What do you need?”
“I-I-I…” she trails off, and her stuttering just pisses me off.
“Out with it, Mina, or I’m just gonna go sit back down!” I snap at her and I feel a little bad when she flinches at my anger.
“I… umm, I wasn’t t-tryin’ to listen to what y-you guys were talking about… but umm, I just…” She trails off again, but then takes a big breath and stands up a little taller. “The B-bible says that if you see someone sin, you’re supposed to tell them with n-no one around first so-so you can try to get them to listen. I-I don’t think that you sh-should bring a knife to school…” She looks down and digs her toe into the dirt.
Who the hell does this girl think she is? Talking to me like I’m a kid and telling me what to do.
