Page 11 of Crew
I smiled.
Taz was my only female friend. I liked how feisty she could be, and she wasn't all fucked up like me. I knew there was pain inside her, but she was spunky. If I wasn't already best buds with Cross, I might've considered Taz my best friend.
Okay. If I was normal, she would've been my best friend.
I knew she had a special place in her heart for me too, and a second later her fight was already gone.
She groaned. "And you're smiling at me. Fuck, Bren. I'm like my brother. I can't stay mad at you for two seconds."
Cross laughed. Seeming to change his mind, he grabbed his keys, shut his locker, and snatched a pen from me. Moving around me, he kissed his sister on the forehead. "I'll see you guys later." He nodded to me, heading down to the other senior hallway.
She looked at me, her face reddening a bit. "He's going to check in with the other two, isn't he?"
I nodded. She knew it. I didn't know why she'd asked.
"We are in a crew together," I pointed out.
"Yeah." Her lips pressed together and resolve flashed in her eyes. "That's up after this year. Thank God."
I frowned at her, but didn't say anything. She went back to unloading the cart.
Taz was excited for graduation. She felt she'd get her brother back, and in a way, I understood. She'd confessed this to me a few times after too much wine. See? She wasn't like us even with her alcohol choice. She was classy, preferring martinis and wine. She'd long graduated from wine coolers. I didn't even know when she'd had those, but she claimed she had. I preferred the hard stuff, like whiskey or bourbon, or beer. Straight beer. Anything beer. Jordan had been known to get his own pony-keg at times.
But back to Taz. When she last got a little too tipsy, we'd been at a bonfire. We were all sitting on logs, and the guys had taken off, leaving Taz and me behind.
Staring into the fire, she'd started complaining about the group:
We took all of Cross' time.
We took him away.
He didn't even stay at the house much anymore.
Thank God we would graduate and disperse.
But not all crews broke up after graduation.
Taz was banking on it, but she was forgetting that sometimes that didn't happen. It all depended on the group. My brother had one of the longest running crews in Roussou. The only other one to challenge him had broken up a while ago. Their leader got sent to prison for assaulting some of Channing's friends from Fallen Crest. He was mum on the details, and I didn't push. If I wanted to know, I could've asked around to find out. I just hadn't cared.
I had a hard time imagining that our crew wouldn't last.
"Is it just the crew thing? Or is it personal?" I asked Taz tentatively.
Wide-eyed, she turned to me. "What?" I think she'd forgotten I was still here.
"Do you hate the group, or is it me?" I rested my shoulder against my locker, facing her.
"No!" Her mouth fell open, then closed. She shook her head. "No, no. I wouldn't want you to think that."
"So, it's Jordan and Zellman? Or the group as a whole?"
"Wh-what?" She blinked.
I figured it was the crew as a whole, but I wanted to push some buttons here. They were part of my identity, and while I had a soft spot for Taz, it dug inside me that she had such venom for us.
"It can't be Zellman," I mused. "He's a happy fly." Except in a fight. "Didn't you and Jordan work at the same place this summer?"
"Wha--huh?" She gaped at me.
