Bluford Series 11: The Fallen by Paul Langan

Author:Paul Langan [Langan, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781591940661
Amazon: 1591940664
Publisher: Townsend Press
Published: 2006-06-15T04:00:00+00:00

My head was spinning as I made my way home. Frankie was going to make a lesson of me. In a way, he had no choice. Everyone would think he was soft if he allowed me to stand up to him. People would start talking. His reputation would suffer, and then younger wannabe’s would push and test him to get respect. I’d seen it before. He had to prove to the rest of our crew that there was no questioning him.

But how far would he go? At the least, he’d give me a beating I wouldn’t be able to walk away from after a day. Maybe worse. I remembered the doctor’s words just before I was discharged from the hospital.

“Another shot to the head could cause brain damage.”

I knew what another fight with Frankie would be. More shots to the head. Harder ones.

“I ain’t never seen him so mad.” Chago’s words echoed in my head.

This time Frankie would be more brutal than ever. I kept picturing the way he kicked the kid at that party. The horrible wet crushing sound it made. Frankie would give me the same treat-ment. No, he’d give me worse.

By the time I made it home, fear was digging at me the way rats clawed through the walls of our old apartment. My mother was still at work, and it was dead quiet as I walked in and locked the door behind me. From the shadows at the end of the hall, Huero smiled at me from his picture.

“I might be seeing you again soon, little brother,” I said crossing myself the way we do in church.

Getting beaten isn’t what scared me most. I’d been through that enough times as a kid with my father. Once, when my mother was pregnant with Huero, my dad got drunk and started swinging. She fell trying to get away from him, and I jumped in between them.

“Stop it, Papa! You’re hurting her,” I screamed.

He hit me so hard my teeth pierced my lip like glass ripping through an old trash bag. I was on the floor in a puddle of blood when he left in a storm of English and Spanish curses. That was one of the last times I saw him. Eight years ago, and I still have a scar on the inside of my lip from the stitches, his only lasting gift to me.

At the time, my mom called me her hero, saying I protected her and my brother. But she never understood that it was fear that pushed me, not bravery. Fear that if I didn’t act, I’d lose them. Fear that I’d fail to keep my mom and brother safe.

Huero’s death made those fears real, turned them into wounds that hurt worse than any bruises Frankie could give and scared me more than any threats.

Pacing in my apartment, I felt these fears again, driving me like hunger. If Frankie was coming for me, if he was going to bring everything he had against me, I wouldn’t survive.

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