Page 8 of Fall onto me

“Why aren’t you here?” I ask, trying to keep a burning growl from escaping my chest.

I try to listen past the distortion in his voice, but it’s too deep, too eerie to find an identifying rift to the tone. “I don’t trust you,” he replies, folding his hands over each other. I focus on any discerning features, no ring on his finger, no tattoos I can see but all I can make out is a partial of his hand anyway.

Not like I could really do anything with the information if I had it, considering he probably holds everyone here in his pocket.

“Fair enough.” Because I would break my no murder rule for you.

He sits up a little straighter and pulls out papers from a drawer, I can’t see any of it, but I can hear the actions. “Your first job.”

I inhale a quick blip of air, not wanting him to see just how fucking scared I am. He can obviously see me since he responded to my looking around. I’m stuck in this life my parents never wanted for me, but damn my intentions were so good. That’s probably how most of the kids from my neighborhood end up in prison, good intentions tangled with bad, powerful people. “What is it?”

“Patience, Ghost.” He talks so calmly, like he doesn’t have a care in the world. And he doesn’t; this is probably what he does all day, gets everyone to do his dirty work for him while he sits behind a cloak of shade.

I don’t have patience; I want to know if I’ll be committing a felony tonight or a misdemeanor. “Is there a way to repay the debt?” I ask before he gets the chance to tell me anything else.

“That’s what you’re doing here,” he replies blankly.

I shake my head. “I mean with money.”

“No.” the distorted voice says. “You had that chance.”

“It was stolen.”

He lets out a low laugh, and it rumbles the speakers on the old television. “I’ve heard that a million times.”

“How long will I be doing these things for you?” This is the question I’m most nervous to ask.

“Until I feel like you’ve repaid what you owe, whether that be three jobs or a hundred. Just remember, Ghost, you’re mine until I say otherwise. You can race, keep your money, fuck your whores.” I nearly punch the screen. “I don’t give a fuck what you do in your free time. But when you receive orders to come here, you obey.”

Obey is a strung-out word when it comes from him, deep and filled with orders that I can’t quite comprehend.

I nod, since there’s simply nothing else I can do. I’m alone in a room, talking to an unidentified person on a shitty screen from the nineties.

Finally, after an uncomfortable beat of silence has passed, he leans back in his chair. “There’s a race tomorrow night.”

“I know. I’m in it.”

“There are about thirty outsiders coming in. They’ll be at cliff canyon around eleven.”

Cliff Canyon is a spot only locals go, where we jump and plunge into the ocean in summer. “How do you know where they’ll be?”

“Do you think you’re my only source of intel?”

And there it is, a title for what I am. The intel.

I wonder how many of us there are, how many kids from my neighborhood are embedded in this shit? How could they ever escape it?

That’s who he goes after, surely, not people like Warren, Kate, Brett, or Skyler who were raised in privilege. I don’t fault them for it, of course, but it’s just the stark reality of what a few miles difference can do in a town. The reflection of lush grass and sparkling landscapes to parking lots and rusted cars.

Separate the vulnerable who are scraping themselves from a long-dug hole while people from the other side walk by without ever looking down. Why would they when their future is so bright and right in front of them?

Then there’s leeches like this man, who throw dirt in the holes and bury us alive.

The system is designed to keep us here, in the shadowed parts of a town while the other half is living in dreamland. The Keeper is using that to his full advantage.

“I need you to tamper with their bikes.”

It makes me wonder when my bike has had problems, has he gotten one of his intel’s to do something to mine?

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