Page 15 of Savage Lover

“You’re dealing for him?” I hiss, keeping my voice down because my dad is still sleeping, and I don’t want him to overhear.

“Sometimes,” Vic mumbles.

“For what?” I demand furiously. “To buy a bunch of bullshit expensive sneakers? To keep up with that idiot Andrew? That’s what you’re going to throw your future away for?”

Vic can’t even look at me. He’s staring down at our dingy linoleum, miserable and ashamed.

It’s not even his future he threw away. It’s mine. That cop is coming for me today. There’s no way he’s just gonna write me a ticket.

Despite my fury at my brother, I don’t regret what I did last night. Vic is smart, even if he’s not acting like it right now. He gets top marks in biology, chemistry, math, and physics. If he buckles down and studies this year, and quits missing assignments, he could get into a great school. Get some scholarships, even.

I love my little brother more than anything in the world. I’ll go to prison before I watch him incinerate his life before it’s even begun.

“Get to work,” I tell him. “And no fucking around with Andrew and Tito afterwards. I want you to come back here and sign up for those summer AP courses like you said you were going to.”

Vic grimaces, but he doesn’t argue. He knows he’s getting off light with me. He grabs the other half of his toast and heads for the door.

I finish my coffee, then eat the poached egg Vic didn’t want. It’s overcooked. I was too distracted to pay attention to the timer.

My dad’s still sleeping. I wonder if I should put a couple more eggs on for him. He never used to sleep in, but lately he’s been crashing ten or eleven hours at night. He says he’s getting old.

I decide to let him sleep a little longer. I grab a fresh pair of coveralls and head down to the shop. I’ve got to finish up with that transmission, then get to work changing the brake pads on Mr. Bridger’s Accord.

It’s nearly ten o’clock by the time my dad finally joins me. He looks pale and tired, his hair standing up in wispy strands over his half-bald head.

“Morning, mija,” he says.

“Hey, Dad,” I say, fitting fresh seals into the transmission. “You get your coffee?”

“Yes,” he says. “Thank you.”

My dad is only forty-six, but he looks a lot older. He’s medium height, with a round, friendly face, and big, thick-fingered hands that look like they could barely hold a wrench, and yet can manipulate the tiniest little bits and bolts with ease.

When he was young, he had thick black hair and he roared around on a Norton Commando, giving girls rides to school on the back of his bike. That’s how he met my mom. He was a senior, she was a sophomore. She got pregnant two months later.

They never married, but they lived together for a couple of years in my grandmother’s basement. My dad was crazy about my mom. She really was gorgeous, and smart. He told her to keep going to school while he worked days as a mechanic and took care of me at night.

Money was tight. My mom and grandmother didn’t get along. My dad started getting chubby because he didn’t have time to play soccer anymore, and he was living off the same peanut-butter sandwiches and chicken nuggets I was eating.

My mom missed her friends and the fun she used to have. She started staying out later and later, not for school but to go to parties. Eventually she dropped out. She didn’t come home any more often. In fact, we wouldn’t see her for days at a time.

I remember that part, just a little. My mom would drop in once every week or two, and I’d run to see her, this glamorous lady who always smelled like fancy perfume and wore tight dresses in bright colors, just like my Barbie dolls. She didn’t like to pick me up or have me sit on her lap. As soon as my dad asked her too many questions, or my grandma sniped at her about something, she’d leave again. And I’d stand by the window and cry, until my dad picked me up and made me a dish of ice cream or took me out to the garage to show me something on his bike.

Eventually, my dad saved up enough to set up Axel Auto. We moved out of grandma’s house into the little apartment above the shop. My mom never visited us there. I didn’t think she even knew where it was.

Then one night, when I was ten years old, somebody rang our doorbell. We didn’t hear it at first, because of the rain. I was watching ER with my dad, eating popcorn out of a giant bowl set on the couch between us.

When the bell buzzed again, I jumped up, knocking over the bowl of popcorn. My dad stopped to pick it up, and I ran to the door. I opened it up. There was a lady standing there, not wearing any coat. Her dark hair was soaked, and so was her blouse. It clung to her skin, so I could see how skinny she was.

Neither of us recognized each other for a minute. Then she said, “Camille?”

I stared at her, mouth open. Maybe she thought I was angry. Maybe she heard my dad walking toward the door, calling out, “Who is it?” Either way, she turned around and hurried back down the stairs. She left Vic behind.

He’d been hiding behind her leg. He was two years old, small for his age, with huge dark eyes and hair that was almost blond then. For a second, I wasn’t sure if he was a boy or a girl, because of those lashes and because his hair hadn’t been cut in a while. He had his thumb in his mouth, and he was clutching that Spider-Man toy.

We brought him in the house. My dad tried to call any friends of my mother that he knew, plus her parents and cousins. Nobody knew where she was. He offered to bring the kid over to her parents’ house, but they said they’d call the cops if he did. They still hadn’t forgiven my mother for getting pregnant with me in the first place.

So Vic stayed with us for a while. That turned into him staying with us forever. Actually, we don’t even know what his name was to start with. He didn’t talk back then. I picked “Vic” because I was way into Law and Order, and I thought the Crown Vic cop cars were cool as shit.

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