From the barn and my safe place, all the way to a different small town I grew up in, is only three hours away. Three long hours down the highway carved into the mountains.
The next float strolls by and this time the man stops. He shouts something, cupping his hands around his mouth to call out across the street. His smile broadens and the cheers get louder as the music does. Everything is so damn loud, but it’s silent just the same.
It doesn’t matter; it doesn’t mean anything.
For Harold it’s just another reason to drink and then get in his car.
I wish I could steal his car from him when I’m done. That’s a regret I have. But my teacher, the monster he is, would never do such a thing. He doesn’t take trophies. That’s a rule.
Even if I could steal the car and take it from him, it’s not like I could drive it.
So for now, sneaking onto trains and in the back of trucks to get back home will have to do. But I’d be damned if I didn’t admit the trunk would be a good place to sleep at night. A closed-off, locked space … I can only imagine.
A cool breeze blows by and I instinctively look for the stairways down to the stores. They block the wind too and when the stores are closed, bundling up in the corner and hiding behind a trash bag works quite well. They can’t see me. So long as they can’t see me, then everything is all right.
“You okay?” a woman asks as she stumbles into me, her sharp red nails digging into my shoulder as she braces herself against me. I get the idea that her instinct was to keep me upright, but she staggers in her high heels.
Her lashes are dark and long and there are little diamonds at the corners of her eyes. “Little dude, you shouldn’t be out here all alone,” she tells me and looks past me.
She seems like one of the good ones. One of the ones who need protecting. She’s so much taller than me. Pretty bird. That’s what the man would call her. But only once he was done with her.
“You lost?” she asks when I don’t answer. I smile up at her, shaking my head and tell her I’m just going home. She smiles back. “Be careful, cutie.”
The short interaction almost makes me lose him. I can’t lose sight of him. Not today. Today is the day it has to happen. A numbness pricks along my skin as I follow Harold around the corner, quickening my steps and slipping through the crowd.
Harold disappears into a liquor store, one he’s been in a number of times. I bide my time, finding a rock and carving something into the concrete. It won’t last, just like the promise I make with the stone won’t either.
Kids play with rocks outside of stores. No one looks twice.
With the parade, the noise and the crowds to slip back into, the timing is perfect for my first.
And Harold has to be the first.
Harold has a habit. It’s a bad one that he’s yet to learn from. He drinks, then gets into his ’86 Ford and drives home. His brother, a senator, got him off this last time. The charges suddenly disappeared, as did his sobriety test results. The scandal was all over the news. And even though there isn’t a damn thing distinctive about Harold, I knew him. I recognized him.
Because he’s the man who took my parents away. He caused the accident; he set all of this into motion. He should be my first.
The moment I saw his picture in the crinkled newspaper that reeked of the coffee it was stained with, it all made sense.
It was meant to be this way.
He took my parents, and that led to everything. He started it all and who I was before will end with him. Only then can I truly be Marcus.
The bad guys always lose and he is a bad guy. Even if he smiles. Even if his brother is a senator. Even if tonight he decided to walk instead of getting into his car. His victims don’t get to decide anything anymore.
If he hadn’t done it again, if it hadn’t been in the papers I scavenged while rummaging in the dumpsters that lined the alley hours away from here, it never would have occurred to me. I wouldn’t have chosen him. But he did do it again and they let him go. They gave him another chance, but that’s not fair when the man he killed didn’t get another chance.
Harold is a bad man and his time is up.
A numbness pricks down my arm, my fingers twitching for the cheap blade I found last week. The very day my plan came together. It’s funny how things all align when you have a plan. How the pieces fall into place and it’s so much easier to sleep, to move forward.