Andrew

I wake up with my hand on warm, soft tissue; Emily’s tit. She groans and pushes my hand away while turning over. The world is still spinning as distant dogs barking keep me from falling back asleep.

*thunk*

“Fuck,” My sister whispers.

I get up and see she’s fallen out of the bed. I guess three of us made it to cramp.

I would’ve sealed the deal if Sara didn’t cockblock me. It’s whatever, it’s going to happen eventually and I’m ecstatic for it. These past couple of days have been stellar. Nothing can fucking stop Andrew Mera. I’m fucking great.

Not even these ghosts that haunt me can slow me down.

“Where are you going?” Sara asks me right before I leave Em’s house.

“Out.”

“I need to talk to you,” She follows me out.

I sigh, “Can it wait, I have business,” and leave right after that. I hear her shout my name but I can’t be late. Acid doesn’t like to wait. Besides, she’s a big girl whatever it is Sara can figure it out.

Acid is in his black Honda smoking a cigarette. He’s already been waiting for two minutes which is far too long. Our first stop in Seattle, Capitol Hill to be correct. As much as it praises to be this progressive and inclusive area, it’s filled with nothing but hypocrites and addicts.

Acid rambles how the bill to make Weed legal is going pass without question. I tell him how the city’s been growing lately but with its passing, the taxes from it is only going to help it. The city is already expensive to live in but all the tech companies moving in and the potheads thinking it’ll be a good idea to migrate, well it’s not going to be pretty. Acid chuckle’s as he stops by Dick’s and grabs himself a burger.

I’ve done these sorts of things before, today’s not any different. Acid asks if I have my gun on me but I don’t need one. There’s no need for metal to intimate some entitled gay bitch enslaved to their addictions.

I walk up to the house and ring the doorbell. A dog inside does into a frenzy and it’s promptly told to shut up. Some young guy opens the door, too young to own or rent this place. “What do you want?” he says.

“It’s time, mate.”

“You’re new,” he scoffs. “Where’s the girl?”

“Not here to answer questions.

“Sure, sure,” the guy complies and pulls out the money he owes Lyle and gives it to me. “Be nicer when you’re back in two weeks.”

I love doing pick-ups, they’re nice and easy; clean. It’s the dealings where things sometimes get tense. There’s always a chance of someone trying something. Luckily no one ever has as all of they should know I work for Lyle.

See, this whole thing is a business. You buy drugs, pay then and there, or you can have them delivered and you pay later. Think of it as a subscription where failed payment costs an arm and a leg. Not sure why Lyle does it this way for the richer folk, but it’s funny. I’m not the one who usually picks up the money but I heard the last few runners couldn’t handle it. Whether it's delivering or picking up, it’s a two-man job. To my understanding, it’s usually Lyle and Acid who pick up. Not sure why Lyle would get his hands dirty but I’m sure it’s an ego thing. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve seen him anyways.

What bothers me is why he asked for Elizabeth. He didn’t know she was dead and besides and more importantly, they only met once. The only reason why Lyle would ask about someone if it’s they owed him money or were working for him. I wonder which was Ellie. Shit, the rabbit hole only goes deeper. That girl kept more secrets than she let on.

“What did Lyle want with Elizabeth?” I ask Acid at the next stop.

“Hmm?” he turns down the music. I repeat myself. “Oh, he was curious. Don’t worry about it,” he quickly brushes it off. Something’s up.

I know I don’t have to guilt myself over her. Bitch was crazy, that wasn’t my fault. If Lyle was involved that just leaves more questions to our gaps of knowledge. She asks for Lyle to get direct contact for drugs after Cody threw a fit and made us stop giving her stuff. She could’ve owed him money and couldn’t pay it off. Nah, she was made from money.

And it doesn’t explain the gun.

She started to work for him.

So what the fuck happened then?

It’s no use thinking about it. I have a job to do. This one’s on Queen Anne and on a fucking hill. It’s some mom, her kids are playing video games in the living room. She doesn’t hesitate to give me the money so I thank her. Shit, I don’t know why people have to make it more complicated than this. A grand just for some coke and a few vials of Winter. People are just too broken.

Fremont is up next. Before I even knock I can already guess how this will go down. Sure enough a crackhead answers. “Time to pay up, yo.”

“Shit man, I don’t have it all, just give me a day or two,” he says but I don’t listen. I don’t even wait for him to try and say anything else and instead I just beat him to the ground. It doesn’t take much. For crackhead, he keeps his apartment clean. I find his bag of coke on the living room counter and take it. I don’t need to do anything else.

What these people don’t understand is that it isn’t the money Lyle wants. He gives no shits about that. Maybe this guy will learn next time I’m here, but I doubt it. They usually don’t.

“Not compliant?” Acid asks when he notices the blood on my fists.

I toss him his bag and puts it inside his blazer. “What’s with the new guys? Never done this route before.”

“Don’t matter. I’ll let Sessions know, we won’t be coming back here.”

“Sessions? What are they going to do?”

Acid chuckles, “There’s more than meets the eye. Besides, Lyle’s out of town so Session’s is running the show for now.”

Sessions. I finally met this mysterious person of myth a while back. All the rumors turn out to be half-truths. The crystal white hair and eyes, the translucent white skin, so pale like a vampire. The white ghost. This is all true, but someone to be terrified of wasn’t one of them.

Not much of a talker either.

I get home a little past two. Dad’s passed out again with an empty bottle of whiskey in his hand. All the messages I’ve gotten don’t matter except for one: Emily. Just seeing her name puts a smile on my face and my heart jumps a beat. It’s a shitty ass new feeling but fuck it. Every other text is some asshole wanting a deal.

“You have a second?” Sara comes into my room.

“The fuck you want?”

“I want to go to Mom’s grave.”

Mom?

“Why?”

“I miss her.”

I stare at her in disbelief. It’s been years since we actually have been there. Mom, a ghost that haunts me. “Okay.” I don’t know why I agree.

Our neighbor is this old fuck that is never home and keeps his old Toyota in his driveway. He tends to keep the keys under the car with a magnet. I’ve been driving this car ever since I discovered this fact. This is how we get to the cemetery on the other side of town.

“Thanks,” Sara says as I park.

“What are we doing here?”

Especially today of all days, I’ve almost forgotten. Last I heard she broke up with Lucas but I doubt she’s hungover that dumbass. Shit, I haven’t been paying too much attention to her. She’s strong though, whatever it is, I’m sure she’ll get through it.

Sara doesn’t say anything and walks towards our mom’s grace. It’s been eight years now. None of us have been the same since. I stand about ten feet away from her as Sara stares at the grave. I haven’t been here in five years. Never really felt like coming back.

“She was so kind, wasn’t she Andrew?”

“Huh?”

“Mom. She took care of us. She loved us and then one night, poof. Gone.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Do you have a cigarette?” My twin sister asks.

I walk up to her and hand her one. While I’m here, I look at the grace. It’s worn out by now.

Angelica Mera

“Do you need a light?”

Sara shakes her head. “I miss her. I want to talk to her again. I want to know what to do, she always knew what to do.”

Is she high? When did Sara start thinking that our Mom was a good person? She fucking killed herself in front of her for Christ’s sake. Is Sara repressing all of that now? “Sara, you know-” I stop myself. Nah, Sara’s going through something so she needs this comfort now. “I miss her too.”

“Elizabeth’s death. That was our fault too, wasn’t it?”

“Of course not,” I scoff. I look to the right to where Ellie’s grave should be. I see it faintly in the distance. Every gravestone is old and withered, except for hers. She was the most recent death and soon, her’s will wither too. “No one’s at fault.”

“The rumors. Are they true? That you got her pregnant?”

I laugh, “I don’t know.”

“But you fucked her right?”

“Yeah.”

“And Cody’s not mad?”

“Yeah, we don’t really hang out as much because of that,” I chuckle. “But you can’t really blame me for that, I fuck anything with a pair of tits and can move, ya? Where are you going with this? What makes you blame yourself?”

“I encouraged her to do Coke and E for the first time. She talked to me about dying and I ignored it.”

Sara’s talking through all this guilt like we haven’t before. She’s trying to say something else but can’t figure out how. This isn’t what she wants to talk about. Sara has a different motive.

“Let’s go home,” she says.

On the way home I stop by the only 7-Eleven in down. Sara pays for her drink while I just take some shit when the cashier isn’t looking. He never looks, or at least doesn’t get paid enough to give a shit, so why should I?

“I saw you getting chummy with Ems last night,” she tells me when she enters the car. “She’s my best friend, anyone but her.”

“No can do, love.”

She sighs, “Then do it properly, ask her out to homecoming. She’s actually expecting you. Kind of wish you took me, but whatever.”

Instead of our house, I take us to the town’s par. This is where we spent most of our childhood. Thinking about it now, I guess we were always here to be away from home. I wonder how Sara feels.

She sits on the grass at top of the hill, her favorite spot. Sara holds the cigarette I gave her between her fingers and stares off into the distance. I’m not an idiot. I took her here so she can finally tell me what is bothering her. I could ask, but that would be giving a shit.

But I do give a shit.

Fuck. I don’t know. I don’t want to.

I stand just a few steps away smoking my cigarette while I wait for Emily to reply to my text. Maybe it’s good for the soul to do this once in a while; to just sit somewhere and do nothing. Everything happens so fast in my life I don’t ever have time to just sit and think. But that would be giving a shit.

It’s those fucking ghosts, man. The past, the future, it’s all a ghost here to haunt me. It’s just like Chris says, we worry too much about everything that is going on that we don’t realize that most of it actually doesn’t matter. We convince ourselves otherwise. That fucker’s mind is something else. I know I’m clever and do good in school and all, but shit it’s like he’s in a different dimension half the time. Like how the fuck does he know about these ghosts; about my mom, my father, my demons, and this shitty fucking life I have.

It’s these moments where I want to die.

But fuck that shit bro. This is why I don’t give a shit.

These thoughts go away once Emily texts back.

How long has it been since Sara and I have spent the day together? Not since Mom died I think. I do a bump, then another. My sister uses her nail to snort it directly from there. It’s a fatty.

We stare at this forest town together and say nothing.

How long has it been since we actually enjoyed each other’s company? How long has it been since I told Sara she’s the only person I care about?

“Why do you do it?” She asks. “Sell drugs.”

I shrug. I thought about it before. I would like to say I came out with a noble and justifiable reason why, but I can’t. The answer is simple when it all comes down to it. Misery loves company, and, “It’s something to do,” I tell Sara.

“Do you ever think about stopping?”

After Elizabeth’s suicide I had trouble sleeping. I had nightmares and even felt hopeless. I even missed her. The world felt lonelier like it lost something it needed. That was the only time I ever consider stopping. But all those emotions I had, made me weak. I don’t need to be weak. Weak people die just like Ellie and my mom.

Sara puts the cigarette in her mouth but doesn’t do anything with it. She does this a lot. “You ever think that we do this to ourselves? Like we blame our problems on everything but ourselves?”

“Humans are too self-centered to ever admit their faults.”

“What about you? You’re never scared of anything, Andrew. Do you admit your faults? Little old Andrew, does whatever he wants.”

Any faults I have, I rise above them. “There isn’t anything to admit,” I laugh, “I’m a piece of shit, Sara.”

“You’re lost like the rest of us,” she says under her breath. Maybe she meant for me to hear.

“You’re being a pussy,” I tell her. “Just because it’s the anniversary of when Moms died doesn’t have to make you all sad. You’re Sara fuckin’ Mera, the fuck are you doing sad?”

“I’m gay, Andrew.”

Does she expect me to be mad? Is this what she’s been scared of telling me all day? It’s honestly a bit cute.

“Sara, what the fuck?”

Her body immediately closes itself off as if she expects me to scream. She expects me to call her a faggot and suddenly start hating on her. Sara has been keeping this hidden away from me for a long time because she thinks like this.

“I knew you were gay since we were born,” I joke.

“Wha-”

“I kid,” I laugh. “But I’ve known for a while. I’m just glad you finally have the balls to fucking admit it.”

Sara smiles for the first time today. “You’re not mad?”

I shrug, “I’m an asshole, not a homophobe. And you’re Sara fuckin’ Mera, you going to stop being a sad bitch now? So what you’re gay? Just means we get to slay pussy together now.”

“Then,” She pauses. “Everything is okay. Everything is going to be okay.”

“That’s the spirit!” I laugh and stand up to raise my middle finger to this town. “Nothing stops the Mera siblings from ruling this town! We ain’t shit, we’re champaign. Fuck this world!”

Sara gets up and grins with me. Together we flip off this town and scream, “Fuck this world!”