Page 2 of Morsel

“You can’t be serious.”

“I’m as serious as a dinosaur,” he says.

“Craig, shut the fuck up.” My brother has always been a total prick, but he’s never hurt someone before.

“She’s right. That doesn’t make any sense.” Hank is up in the front seat of the white van. He stares at me, and then he looks at Craig. “But we should get going.”

I look in the van at Oscar’s limp body.

“What did you inject him with?”

“Nothing important,” Craig says.

“You said you just wanted to talk to him.”

“I do. I’m leaving now, though,” he says.

“I’m coming with you.”

Before Craig can tell me to fuck off, I slide in the back of the van. I hear him groan, but he slides the door closed. He gets in the front seat, and Hank takes off.

“How far away are we?” Hank asks.

“How the hell should I know?”

“GPS bro. Check the traffic.”

I sit with Oscar while Hank and Craig look up the best route to Hank’s place. I don’t bother telling them that they should have done this in advance. Hank and Craig have been best friends since middle school, but they aren’t exactly geniuses.

“You’re going to be okay,” I say, whispering to Oscar. I pull his head into my lap, but I don’t know if I’m speaking the truth anymore.

“Don’t baby him,” Craig says. He looks over his shoulder at me. “You always baby people.”

“I do not.”

“You do,” Hank says. “It’s fine, though.”

“Why the hell did you have to inject him with anything?” I asked. I don’t know what I’ll do if he dies. “His brothers will kill you if anything happens.”

“They’ll kill us?” Craig laughs. “That’s real rich.”

“They’d have to find us first,” Hank says.

“Yeah, and you aren’t a snitch, so how would they do that?” Craig’s tone evens out.

“I don’t know,” I say.

“Yeah, well, me neither.” He turns back around and stares straight ahead. I look back down at Oscar, at the handsome man I invited to coffee. I didn’t mean to betray him. Really, I didn’t. My brother asked me to help him get Oscar into the van, and I thought I could do that without suffering any consequences.

Apparently, we were both wrong.

“Twenty minutes,” Hank says.

“When we get there, back in,” Craig says.

“Why?”

“We can haul him out of the back. Not as many people will see.”

---