Page 11 of Sugar and Skulls

“We are. I trust your art, I just want to see how bad you mutilate the fruit with the needle first,” he laughs.

I get to work on the fruit. He hovers over me and nudges my hand when he thinks I’m going a little too deep. “Pretty good for your first time. Practice a few weeks and then we will go from there. I can’t let you do any work on the customers, but I might…might…let you do a small piece on me.”

Jumping up from my chair I give him a big hug and then head out to meet William. We are supposed to take the rod out to get ice cream.

When I get to the corner near William’s house I see him standing on the porch with someone. I slow my steps to watch as he smiles then leans down and kisses the person. A girl. He just kissed a girl. A girl who is not me. I stop dead in my tracks. My heart sinks like the titanic. The iceberg skates along my body. The sound of impending doom clear as day in my ears.

The girl shifts and I see it’s Penny Larson. Penny just kissed William.My William.

He looks up smiling until he sees me. He tells her something and then jumps the steps heading towards me.

What do I do? Well, I run. He yells my name, but I don’t stop.

He doesn’t follow me. Was I expecting him to? I don’t really know. I don’t have time to think about it though because when I get home I see something more horrific than William kissing Penny. My bedroom door is gone. Gone as in MIA. What the hell?

Jimmy clears his throat from behind me. I turn to see him sitting on the couch with a smug look on his face.

“Two years, I’ve let you lock yourself away in that room. No more. I don’t know what you’re hiding but, it stops now.”

My eyes scan the trailer for any sign of Renee but evidently she’s at work. Well fuck.

“I’m not hiding anything, Jimmy. I just like my privacy.”

“Hmm.” He shrugs his shoulder and flips on the TV “Your aunt is gone for the weekend so why don’t you get started on supper?”

Bad thing number four, which is Jimmy, continues to plague me. I go to the kitchen as my mind runs rampant trying to figure out what I should do. The man from my childhood enters my thoughts.Sometimes you have to be mean, Jesse.

I start supper, putting the sauce on to simmer. My eyes dart to my bedroom, my insides shake. This is bad. Real bad. I head to the bathroom and dig through the medicine cabinet finding the narcotics that are prescribed to Renee for her migraines. I grab a few and crush them up with a bottle of perfume and brush the powder into my hand. When I get back out to the kitchen I crack open a beer and dump all of it inside. I finish cooking and set the beer down beside Jimmy’s plate.

“This is good. I think you’re a better cook than your aunt,” he compliments.

He eats everything on his plate. Drinks the entire beer before asking me to be a sweetheart and grab him another. Soon he is staggering out and plopping himself on the couch. I swallow another bite praying to Father Gabriel’s god that the pills knock Jimmy out. They do.

I sigh. I saved myself today.What the hell am I going to do tomorrow?

As I’m packing a bag someone knocks on the door. I quietly shut my light off and hide in the closet. If it’s William I don’t want to see him and if it’s one of Jimmy’s friends I don’t want to see them either. The knocking continues and then the door opens.

“Jimmy, Jimmy, wake up, you fuck. I got the shit.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jimmy mumbles, still half asleep.

“Fuck, dude. I’ll leave it right here. Clean yourself up man.” Then the door opens and closes and it’s quiet again.

I quickly finish packing a bag then tip toe out to the living room. Then I do something stupid. I open the case that is sitting by Jimmy. It’s filled with little baggies full of white powder. Fuck. I bet there are hundreds of them in here. Hundreds. So, what does this bitch do? I take them with me of course.

When I get outside its dark so as fast as I can I make my way to old man Tom’s house. He’s gone for the month visiting his daughter in Phoenix. He gave me the key to take care of his dog while he’s gone. I unlock the door, feed, and water the dog then crash on the couch, exhausted.

The next day I head to Big Dan’s hoping Raffe is there for his weekly appointment. He is. They are working on a leg piece now. I patiently watch while Dan works and when Raffe leaves I follow him out. “Hey, remember when you were looking into Jimmy a few years ago?”

He eyes me warily. “Yeah.”

“I have something of his I think your group might be interested in.”

He laughs and shakes his head. “Jimmy is the least of our worries right now, Jesse. We got a shit storm going on that little girls like you wouldn’t understand.”

It’s like a knife to my heart. Everyone pushes me off. Well, maybe not Dan but everyone else. Renee, William, my Dad and now Raffe. He isn’t going to help me. I don’t know what to do. I need to get rid of Jimmy or he’s going to hurt me. This I know for a fact. I see the looks he gives me. It’s the same look Rick gave me. The same one I saw on Gabriel’s face.

Sometimes you have to be mean, Jesse.

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