Malo - Page 45

“I’ll never doubt your skills again,” he promises me.

“Yeah, hope you’ve learned your lesson,” I reply, raising my eyebrows at him, and I head back inside the house. Nobody follows me. I’m glad. I need a minute to myself, to find out where the hell Malo is, and figure out just why he seems so intent on keeping his distance right now.

Maybe I’m overthinking it, but a dread begins to creep up my spine, a warning shot, like something is wrong. It’s the same feeling I got when I was headed back to my father’s house after I arrived back from the UK, that sense that something is off, something is wrong. I don’t like it.

Where is he? I head through the living space, to the kitchen, around the back of the house where the bikes are usually parked up, but there’s nothing—no sign of him anywhere. He has to be around here somewhere, right? He can’t have just taken off and vanished, not in the middle of such an important period of preparation for the group.

I glance toward the stairs which lead up to his room. There’s something telling me to head up there and find him. I don’t even know what I’m looking for, not really, but I just need to make certain that he’s all right. After what Blue told me about his struggles with drug addiction, I feel as though I have been on high alert, all too aware the stress of this situation might be enough to drive him in to the temptation once more.

I take the stairs slowly, pacing my way up to his room, doing my best to still the panic that’s throbbing in my chest. There’s nothing for me to worry about, I need to remind myself of that. Nothing to worry about. This is just me overthinking, stress, and fear driving me. I’ve been through too much to let it go entirely, and I’m spooked, letting my brain get the better of me.

I arrive outside his door, and hesitate before I knock. Will he even want to talk to me right now? He’s probably busy with the planning, preparing for what’s to come. He doesn’t need me pushing myself into his life, making myself a nuisance.

But I’m not going to be able to focus until I know he’s okay. I rap my knuckles on the door, and pause, waiting for an answer.

Nothing. Nothing but steely silence hanging in the air. My heart is thumping hard in my chest as I lift my hand and knock again, waiting for something, anything, in the way of an answer, but it doesn’t come.

“Malo?” I call out, my voice hitching in the back of my throat as I force the words out. Swallowing hard, I try again, but there’s no answer.

I know something is wrong. My instincts are screaming at me, warning me that there is something to be afraid of right now. I push open the door a crack, and peer around it. The room is empty, or at least, that’s what it seems at first glance. Stepping inside, I search for any sign of life, and I notice that the door to the bathroom is ajar a few inches, spilling out a shaft of unnatural bluish light into the room.

I make my way toward it, pushing it open as slowly as I can. Somehow I know I don’t want to see what’s on the other side. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, every part of me screaming out to just turn around and walk away before I get drawn into something I can’t handle.

And then, I see it. Him. On the other side of the door, slumped over the toilet, a scattering of powder around him. Lips blue, foam dripping from his mouth, eyes blank and half-open.

And, without stopping to think, I part my lips, and let out a scream.

CHAPTER 33

MALO

“It’s your fault, you little bastard!” she screams at me in Spanish, her finger jabbing in the air next to my head, her face streaked with tears, and her eyes blazing with fury. “Malo, that’s what you are! Malo!”

I blink. I can’t remember how I ended up back here, but it’s as vivid as the moment I experienced it in the first place. Chuy’s mother, yelling at me in the street, telling me off for losing track of her son, as though I had anything to do with it.

I’m fifteen, and one of my best friends, Chuy, has just vanished off the face of the earth. We ran the streets together, a group of us kids who thought we knew the world inside and out just because we had lived a life tougher than most. But we were nothing but children, with no idea of what actually lay beyond the walls of our little town.

Chuy’s mother thinks I’m evil. She’s never been good at hiding it, closing the door on me on those few occasions where Chuy brought me back to his place after a night of playing soccer and running around the streets. Most of the other mothers, they fuss over me, dragging me in to eat and wash and maybe even get some sleep, but she’s always looked at me like I’m nothing more than a nuisance. Even worse than that, now, with her beloved son having vanished into what seems like thin air.

“I’m telling you, I don’t know what happened to him,” I protest, and she lets out a derisive snort.

“Of course you do, Malo,” she snarls back at me. Even now, I can see that this is her grief and terror speaking, but it puts my hackles up anyway.

“I don’t!” I protest, but it’s futile. She’s already decided what kind of person I am, and nothing is going to change her mind on that. No matter how much I try to stand up for myself, she’s going to look at me and see the reason for her son’s vanishing.

She throws me out of her house, but her words ring in my ears—malo, malo, malo. It suits me, knowing there’s nothing I can do to deny it. I am that, I am bad, I have this badness that seems to follow me everywhere I go. Better I embrace it and lay it out up-front for everyone to see than try and deny it and pretend it’s not always been a part of me.

I search for Chuy for weeks, all of us do—Los Malditos, we called ourselves, before he went missing. Now that one of us has vanished, though, it feels dangerous to define ourselves like that. As though there could have been a target on our backs. In the months that follow, we stop reaching out to each other, until we eventually drift apart entirely. Chuy’s vanishing serves as the end of my childhood, once and for all, and I know I need to get my shit together and start figuring out how to handle myself. I can’t just run the streets with my friends and hope for the best; there are too many people out there who want to cause us harm, and I’m not willing to risk it any longer.

I turn my attention to building something for myself, starting to run errands for vendors at the local market. It’s not much, but it brings in some money, enough for me to live on. I can pay my way, for the most part, even if I still have to sleep on street corners sometimes.

And I don’t ever stop looking out for Chuy, not once. I search for his face in the crowds, squinting at any boy who reminds me of him. I know the chances of ever seeing him again are slim, because when people go missing in this place, they rarely live to come back. I’ve heard stories of what happens to them—sent out to traffic drugs, caught up in a bust, and forced to take the blame for it or worse. Used as soldiers in these wars between gangs, and given little in the way of protection, treated as dispensable because of their age.

But Chuy was one of my best friends, and it grinds in my chest to think of him out there, being used like that, hurt like that. He’s just the same age as me, our birthdays are only a couple of weeks apart, and I don’t know if I would have been able to survive what he’s been thrown into.

If he’s even still alive at all.

The next year passes without much incident, and I try to focus on what lies ahead of me, not what’s come before. Every time I catch a glimpse of Chuy’s mother at the market, I see her gaze darkening, her eyes black with hatred. She blames me for it entirely, probably because she doesn’t want to face up to the fact that she might have taken her eye off him for long enough to let something like this happen. I can’t blame her, for not wanting to face the truth. I can hardly take it myself, and I’m just his friend, not his mother.