They're Gone by E. A. Barres

Author:E. A. Barres
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CROOKED LANE BOOKS

CHAPTER

29

JAMES SMITH PULLED into a parking space at the far end of his apartment building’s lot, turned off the engine, closed his eyes. Rubbed his forehead. He’d been working long days and hadn’t slept much at night, driving back and forth through the hellacious traffic between his apartment in Rockville and the hospital in Baltimore.

Waiting for Cessy Castillo to get out of the ER.

Just so he could put her in the morgue.

Everything felt heavy: the pull of sleep, the seatbelt crossed over his body, his worry like a giant’s boot flattening him to the earth. He hadn’t even set the fire at the safe house, but still felt nervous whenever he saw a story about it on TV.

And Cessy’s pictures didn’t help.

After all, James hadn’t been raised as a criminal. Had grown up in Catonsville, outside Baltimore. Middle class. Went to a decent high school.

And then his dad was arrested for beating their mom, and he never saw him again.

The case was public—not national news or anything, but his father’s position on the city council made him a statewide figure. Everyone knew what had happened. Other kids in James’s high school started avoiding him, the way kids do when something happens that they can’t handle or understand. Like James had done something wrong.

That’s when he felt hate.

He hadn’t felt it when his father hit his mother. Hadn’t felt it when his father was taken away. But when those kids at high school made him feel that way, like he’d messed up and they needed to distance themselves, that’s when his anger first emerged.

When kids he knew started using in his third year of high school, James went a step past them. Contacted dealers, started selling his own stuff. Got kicked out of high school. Pity for him because of his father—something James realized could be weaponized—helped him get back in. He went back, got into a fight, and put a kid in the hospital. He loved fighting, felt like it was that hate given action, like a painting turned into a movie. He fought more. More kids ended up in the hospital. James ended up expelled.

His mother barely hung onto him, seemed like she barely wanted to. A rush of cancer had ended her abusive husband’s life while he was in prison, and she seemed determined to distance herself from everything related to him. James left her house the day he turned eighteen. She didn’t try to stop him.

That bothered James more than he let on.

A traffic stop a year later revealed a glove compartment full of hard drugs and an unlicensed gun. He used that middle-class earnestness to plead his case, got a lenient sentence from the judge. Met someone in community service who was connected, who asked him if he wanted to make some money and didn’t care how.

James did, and didn’t.

For years afterward he skated by on that line, slipping over to whatever side he needed, able to play each side against the other.

And now that nice

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