“Are you ready, man?” Ronnie looks over at me.
This is it; the moment in time where you are standing at a crossroads, and the decisions that lay before you will forever change the course of your life. I am in that moment.
As we sit in the driveway of a known drug house, I know the choice I’m about to make will alter everything from this moment forward. My only hope is it will alter it for the positive. My intentions are good, selfless even, but I don’t have a crystal ball, so I can’t see what kind of future this choice will bring. If I were playing the odds, they’d be stacked against me, yet I don’t see any other option. I need to help get my family out, and to get out fast, this is the only way.
I stare out the windshield, thinking about what got me to this point in my life. What was the driving force for me to make such a drastic life choice?
And then I see her—Darcie. I’ve been replaying her attempted rape over and over in my mind. Battling with my demons, I know this is the only choice I have. Whenever I close my eyes, I see her broken and bloodied body, the scarlet red liquid seeping from her and painting the white snow. I will always have to live with the fact I wasn’t fast enough to save her. I couldn’t get to her, and now Darcie has survived one more spineless douche bag hurting her.
Over the course of the last eight months, this is all I’ve been thinking about. Since graduation from high school, my mind has been made up, so here I am.
I beat the shit out of Grady, thinking that would ease the anger I have toward myself, but I soon realized I had to be as low as him to get out. However, the difference between Grady and me is that we need the money for two very different reasons—Grady’s money is for material use while mine is for my family’s freedom.
The only option is right here in my face, in the shape of an old, rundown house. A house with chipping white paint, broken screens, falling shutters, and dying grass; it screams crack house with a single, solitary glance. And I’m here, parked in Ronnie’s beat up Chevy, facing my impending future. I wouldn’t be here otherwise. Ronnie knows this, and he knows my hesitation, yet the feeling in my gut is telling me to do it; to go against everything Reggie’s preached to us since we were kids. I need to rescue my family. It’s up to me to get them out of Sulfur Heights. It’s up to me to protect them from the horrors of this place. Racing was putting some money in my pocket, but it’s not the kind of cash I need to uproot all of us.
I’m not sure how I will convince Reggie to move, considering the bar, but I have a couple of years to think about it. According to Ronnie, I can easily make a grand in a week if we hit up the right people and sell the right kind of stuff.
When I look back over at Ronnie, my mind is made up. It’s not what I want to do; it’s what I have to do. I turn to glance out of my window one more time as the flash of Darcie climbing out of the car door, falling into the snow, comes to the forefront of my mind as it always does. If I had been doing my job as a big brother, she never would have been with Grady in the first place.
Even the sight of Presley’s encounter with Robert Stein plays in my mind. Although I didn’t really know Presley all that well when she was taken by Robert, over the last several months, she has become part of our family. She is an innocent, frail soul who was tortured by her own flesh and blood. I can feel the anger boil greater. This makes my decision even more justified.
This will be my burden to bear, but not my family’s because we’re getting out of this place. Anger at seeing those girls in my mind sends my emotions raging and my gut twisting into knots. This is the only way I can save them.
I connect my eyes with Ronnie’s and nod my head.
“When we go in there, the men we will be dealing with are upstairs.” Ronnie reaches in the backseat of his car and grabs his black baseball hat. “It isn’t the type of situation you see on TV. These guys aren’t dressed in suits or gang banger clothing; they are just everyday fuckers, but they won’t hesitate to kill you if you steal their shit. Or if you don’t deliver.” Ronnie runs his hands through is blonde hair before putting on his cap, pulling it down, practically covering his eyes. He only dons his hat when he’s dealing. I’m not sure if it’s a disguise or a uniform, nonetheless it’s always on his head.
We open our car doors and slam them shut simultaneously. The gravel crunches under my boots as we travel up the long driveway. There are several cars parked in the street and in the drive. The old, rusted chain-link fence clinks as a large gust of early summer wind connects with it. I feel like I’m walking into a house of hell, similar to what you’d see in an old horror flick.