Broken Arrow

  A Bad Idea Prequel

  N I C O L E F R E N C H

  Raglan Press

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or rendered fictitiously. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright 2018 Raglan Press

  All rights reserved.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite eBook retailed and purchase your own copy.

  Kindle Edition

  Dedication

  To my readers. You guys make this story fly..

  Table of Contents

  Broken Arrow

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Contact Nicole French

  CHAPTER ONE

  Johnstown, NY

  1994

  The tall, metal gates bang shut with a clank that echoes across the surrounding fields. I look up at the security cameras that stare at me with black eyes, perched over the curling barbed wire.

  Tryon. The detention center where I just wasted the past two years of my life.

  I turn to the road, where K.C., my best friend, and Alba, his mother, are waiting. I feel bad that they had to make the trip all the way out here to get me. New York is two bus rides and an expensive cab drive away from Tryon, but I’m still a minor, so the state wouldn’t release me without a custodian. And because of my mother’s immigration status, that’s been her best friend, Alba, my whole life and will be for another three weeks until I turn eighteen.

  “Come on, baby,” Alba says as she clasps my head briefly.

  K.C. punches me playfully in the shoulder, but he’s a little shy. It’s going to take some time for me to get back to my old self. But we’ve literally grown up across the hall from each other. K.C. knows me better than anyone else in the world. He’ll be patient.

  It’s over. Two years of being watched by creepy security guards, trying not to get the shit beat out of me by them or other inmates, counting the seconds while I stare at the gray walls of this fuckin’ jail for kids––I don’t care what they call it; that’s what it is. It’s over.

  The bus ride to New York is quiet. Alba sits up front, working on her knitting and paging through a magazine. K.C. and I lounge in the back, and he lets me take the window seat after I shove my small backpack into the compartment overhead. I don’t have much. My sketchbook. The clothes I brought with me, which are now too small. Some pictures of my sisters and my brother. My mother, who I haven’t seen in two years.

  “How you feelin’, Nico?” K.C. asks after the bus gets under way from Albany, and the dull roar of the pavement can mask our conversation.

  I blink, almost not recognizing my own name. How many times have I actually been called Nico in the last two years? I barely spoke to any of the other kids––most of them were either too doped up to talk or else spoiling for a fight. When the guards or teachers talked to me, I was always Nicolas, Soltero, or sometimes Mr. Soltero if the teacher decided to try that day. Every now and then Nick, though I wouldn’t answer. But never Nico. Never my real name. I never gave them that.

  There aren’t many people on board. The hum of the tires fills the air, but it’s a good sound. Almost soothing. A different kind of quiet from the tension of Tryon.

  I sink into the cushioned seats, scratching at the red sweats covering my knees. I didn’t have pants I could wear out of the center, so they gave me a pair of the uniforms. I fuckin’ hate this color. I will never wear red again for the rest of my life.

  It’s been a long time since I sat in a chair with cushions. We had our rock-hard mattresses and lumpy pillows at Tryon, but otherwise, everything in the place was hard plastic and metal. Apparently, criminals don’t deserve soft seats, even if they’re only fifteen.

  “I’m good,” I say, edging away from him toward the window. I need a little space. I’ve barely been alone in two years. With someone, whether it was a guard, other inmates, or those assholes they called teachers watching my every move. While I ate. While I brushed my teeth. All day long, right next to someone. My mother’s apartment won’t be too different––there’s five of us that share the tiny one-bedroom––but at least I’ll get to take a piss by myself again.

  “You look different,” K.C. remarks. “Went in lookin’ like Chicken Little, come out lookin’ like Rocky. Shit. Nobody’s gonna fuck with you now.”

  I shrug. We’ve both changed. K.C. came to see me a few times over the last two years, but only when he could save up the money. He’s about six inches taller than when I left. Still pale with short black hair, but his light mustache has darkened, and now he has a goatee. He doesn’t look like a kid anymore. Now he’s a man.

  Which I guess I am too. They gave us disposable razors while the guards stood over us. I didn’t need them when I arrived, but I started using them almost every day over the summer. I’m not as tall as K.C., but I stand at almost five-eleven now, which is still taller than a lot of people in our neighborhood. At Tryon, a lot of the kids played basketball or walked around the track during rec hours, but I did the boxing program, the same one that produced Mike Tyson, and now my chest and shoulders are filled out. I don’t look like the scrawny, scared shitless kid who left Hell’s Kitchen in the back of a secured van. I look like the kind of guy who could beat the shit out of someone. And you know what? I probably could.

  But honestly, I just feel tired, like I haven’t slept in two years. I’ve been too scared that someone was going to jump me when I closed my eyes, too worried that I’d wake up with my few things stolen or that one of the guards would unlock the door of my tiny cell in the middle of the night. We all knew what happened to Freddy, the kid from two doors over. We all knew why one kid literally pulled the screws out of the floor and swallowed them. We knew why some kids wanted to kill themselves rather than spend another night in Tryon.

  “Get some sleep, mano,” K.C. says, settling back into his seat.

  He gets it. No one knows me like K.C., even if I’ve been gone. We’ve known each other our whole lives, since our mothers got pregnant at the same time and raised us together in Alba’s living room. He knew me when I started running with a group of kids who used to knock over the local bodegas on dares while he started spinning records in his cousin’s basement. He knew me when I got caught the last time and ended up here.

  I lean against the window and close my eyes. When I wake up, I’ll be back in New York, and it will feel like the last two years were just a bad dream.

  ~

  CHAPTER TWO

  It’s funny the things you notice when you’ve been gone a while. The old brick building where I grew up is the same and somehow different. There are new graffiti tags on the foundation, but the sandy red color of the brick is just like it ever was. The creaky stairs going up to the third floor are just as dingy as they always were, but one of the knobs at the bottom of the railing has been broken clean off. One of the apartments has a wire hanging directly through the top of the doorway––someone bootlegging electricity so they don’t have to pay a utility bill.

  I pull the keys from my backpack, which feel strange in my hand after two years. On the other side of the door, I can already hear the noise. My sisters, Selena and Maggie, are arguing about something. There’s the blare of the TV, some kind of cartoon––I’m guessing that Gabe, my baby brother, is watching Looney Tunes. Every now and then, there’s a bark, my mother’s low voice coming from the kitchen.

  I put the keys in the lock and turn the knob.

  Everyone’s a couple years older, but just like our building, still pretty much the same, I realize with relief. Selena and Maggie are on the faded orange couch going over some kind of magazine, their shifting weights making the plastic cover crackle every now and then. Gabe is on the floor working on some kind of homework in front of the TV. Yeah, I’m going to have to break that habit now. My brother is smart––always was. If any of us can go to college, it’s him.

  The door shuts behind me with a loud creak, and almost immediately, the bustle of the room stops. Selena and Maggie are actually quiet for once in their lives, and Gabe pops up, his eyes big in his thin, horsey little face. His gaze alights on me, and a second later he’s up and off the floor, launching his skinny body across the room.

  “Nico!” he shouts as he throws himself at me.

  And I laugh. For the first time in two years, I laugh out loud as my sisters also clamber off the couch to squeeze the life out of me. I am covered by my siblings, with the first touch in a long time that’s not angry. I am overcome by the smells of home: the rice floating out of the tiny kitchen, the flowery scent of Selena’s cheap perfume, the dusty musk of bodies that sleep too close together. But I squeeze them all, because fuck if it doesn’t feel good to see them. People who don’t hate me. People who aren’t indifferent to me. My family.

  “When did you get back?”

  “Did you see how big I grew? I’m almost as tall as Selena now!”

  “You got huge!”

  “Did you know Maggie’s got a boyfriend?”

  Suddenly they’re all throwing questions and comments at me as we push and laugh, my sisters looking me up and down like a piece of meat, Gabe flexing his tiny m
uscles while he prods at mine. I’m happy for the first time in years. I’ve seen them all a few times, when Alba took them up to visit. Selena and Maggie came for my birthday last year; Gabe always wanted to visit at Christmas. But the trip to Tryon is costly and long. It’s been months, almost a year. It feels so good to see them, no matter how annoying they used to be. God damn it feels fuckin’ good to laugh.

  “Nico?”

  Her voice, that voice I’ve only heard over a scratchy phone connection every Sunday, cuts through the room like a knife. Everyone goes silent, and my brother and sisters fall off me like the skin of an onion, breaking a natural path from me to the kitchen. My mother stands in the doorway, winding a dishtowel tightly around her hand.

  She looks the same as I last saw her when we said goodbye in the courtroom. Young, too young to have three teenagers and a ten-year-old, her oldest––me––almost grown. Small and sturdy, with dark skin the color of coffee with just a touch of milk. Big, almost black eyes that she gave to all of her kids, fringed with thick lashes. Bristly dark hair threaded with gray, pulled into a small, tight knot at the base of her neck. The same grubby apron I’ve seen all my life covers the hand-me-down clothes she gets from Alba.

  “Hola, mami,” I whisper, lapsing into the Spanish I’ve barely spoken in two years. The feel of it on my tongue is strange and familiar at the same time. “I’m home.”

  She blinks, and I see the wet of tears cloud her big eyes. The sight of it almost makes me tear up too. My mother doesn’t cry. This is a woman who has seen some rough shit in her life, way worse than this building, this neighborhood. This is a woman who was smuggled across the Caribbean in a raft when she was two and orphaned in the process. Who has worked her ass off her entire life to make sure her kids don’t have to go through the things she did, and who didn’t even cry when her oldest son fucked up and was taken away in handcuffs.

  But now I’m back. And it’s my mother’s face, crumpling the way it does, that finally breaks through this shell I’ve built over the past two years.

  “Ven pa’ca.”

  She gestures hurriedly, and in a second, I’ve dropped my bag, wrapped her in my arms, and pulled her close. She smells the same: like air freshener and rice and wool sweaters. Her tears come––I can feel them on my shoulder. She shakes. I’m surprised. I don’t remember her being this small.

  “Ay, nene,” she says into my rough t-shirt, over and over again in Spanish. “Papito Nico.” My baby boy.

  “I’m home, mami,” I tell her in a low voice, more than once so she’ll remember. Or maybe it’s so I’ll remember. “I’m home.”

  My heart is full, like a cup that’s been bone-dry for years, set out in a rain. And then, just as quickly, it’s emptied again, kicked over as a shadow falls across me and my mother.

  “Nico,” he says.

  Some things do change. My shoulders tense. His voice isn’t as deep as I remember.

  “Good to have you back, man.”

  I release Ma and look up. Like hers, the eyes of David Esteban Martin Sanchez––names I’ll never forget because of the way he used to make me repeat them in time with his belt buckle––haven’t changed. They are deep brown with flecks of gray––a dull steel that doesn’t cut through the room, but saws, over and over again.

  He seems smaller than before, even though he still has about three inches on me. A native New Yorker from the South Bronx, David has always talked about this city like it belongs to him more than anyone else. He’s not my dad, who cut out before I was even born. Not even my stepdad, since my mother can’t get married. David is Gabe’s father, and the dude who keeps coming back to this family for the last ten years like a bad cough we can’t get rid of.

  Memories start popping off in my head, like a camera flash that’s stuck. Gabe crying in the corner. David with his fist lightly curled. Eyes like murder as he chased my mother into the bedroom with a folded belt. The screams the door could never block out.

  Two years ago, he had at least eight inches on me and fifty pounds. Two years ago, I might have flinched under his sharp gaze, knowing that when I spoke up, he’d turn those fists, that belt, on me. But now I’ve dealt with enough shit that David’s fists and belt don’t scare me anymore. I look at him straight on, and this time, he’s the one who looks away first.

  “That’s right,” I say. For the first time, I’m aware of just how low my voice has become. “I’m back.”

  ~

  CHAPTER THREE

  “So, what are you gonna do?” K.C. asks as we’re walking to school on Monday.

  It’s been a good weekend, and now I’m slowly starting to feel more like myself again. Whoever that is. David was smart enough to stay out of my way, and Ma made all my favorite foods, which went a long way to making me feel at home again. You wouldn’t think that sleeping in a room with three other people, Selena and Maggie griping on the murphy bed, Gabe twisting around on the sofa, and me on the floor would equal a good night’s sleep. When I got to Tryon, they tried to make it sound like they were doing us a favor locking us up at night. For the two-thirds of us or so that were bussed in from the city, it was the first time we’d slept in a room alone. Privacy, they told us. Enjoy it while you can. But a fifty-square-foot room isn’t a room, it’s a cell. Especially when you can’t get out.

  So now I’m feeling rested, a registration slip in my pocket as I follow K.C. to the high school. It’s a weird feeling to get to wear what I want again. Alba brought over a box of K.C.’s hand-me-downs on Saturday. Most of his shirts are too small––I’m bigger across the shoulders––so I’m wearing his uncle’s stuff today. But the pants fit fine. The jeans are a coarser material than the red sweats. Sturdy. Good.

  “About David? I don’t know como bregar con él,” I reply. “He hasn’t done anything. Yet.”

  K.C. nods, understanding my Spanglish perfectly.

  “Alba seems to be doing all right,” I remark, noting K.C.’s new Adidas jacket. “Unless that’s you. Man, you’re not...”

  K.C. looks down at his clothes and shrugs. He knows what I mean––I don’t even have to say the words to ask if he’s getting mixed up with one of the gangs that hang around the neighborhood, trolling for new members around the high school. It’s not like it was when we were kids––ten years ago, our mothers wouldn’t even leave our building by themselves in broad daylight. But even though the neighborhood is more cleaned up than it was when I left, there are still certain parts of the underworld that are on the rise. If I had a dollar for every time someone tried to recruit me at Tryon, I’d be rich right now.

  But I don’t have to worry.

  “Nah. They got Lucas and Juan, though,” K.C. says, referring to some kids who used to live in our building. “But I’m legit, mano, all the way. I got a part-time job over at the Hit Factory.”

  I come to a full stop on the sidewalk. “Acho, no fuckin’ way.”

  This time K.C. can’t hide his smile. “It’s just helping out with my mom’s crew. They got the night custodial job there last year, and she needed another worker. Someone––” he gulps–– “someone legal, you know?”

  We both know what that means. Alba cleans houses and office spaces for a living. While working in one of the big hotels for a while, she started her own business on the side, and eventually it got big enough that she was able to quit and start hiring other ladies to work for her. It’s how my mom has earned most of her income the past several years. But when Alba gets a bigger client like this, she can’t have someone like my mom on her payroll. Someone whose name can’t be on the paperwork.

  “Nah,” I say. “Of course. That’s great, though, that you’re able to make a little.”

  “Yeah, well, get this,” K.C. says as we start walking again. “One of the producers there listened to one of my tracks a few weeks ago. They want to sample it for one of their artists.”

  “What?” I turn to him with a grin and punch his shoulder. “Coño, that’s fuckin’ amazing, man!”