Peter—Age Twelve
Peter’s faking laughter with Darryl as he opens the door, but the smell of blood and feces is enough of a blow to knock the smile off his face. It takes him a minute, maybe two, to comprehend what he sees.
The Dolphins game is loud in the background, cheering crowds celebrating through clouds of blood and brains. Cai sitting on the sofa, calmly, legs crossed, with a gun three times bigger than his hand resting in his lap.
“Police will be here soon I think, Rabbit,” Cai says, staring at Nikolai Dyachenko’s slack form.
“Motherfuck! What did he do?” Darryl’s sandals clack across the living room as sirens grow closer. “Oh, shit. He’s dead. Shit! Shit. What’d you do, Cai?”
Peter’s still trying to assimilate the scene before him when Darryl grabs the gun and Cai, jerking both off the couch. It’s not Peter’s first dead body, but that’s his father. His papa who just a few hours ago made him eat spinach. He’s maybe not thinking as quickly as he usually does. “Papa?” Peter says, staring at the corpse like it’ll stand up and grin, despite the cavern in its head.
“We gotta go,” Darryl screams, grabbing Peter by the hair and jerking him toward the kitchen. The sirens are practically on their doorstep by the time they all stumble out the back door, Darryl shoving Cai and yanking Peter the entire length of the lawn.
“I turned myself in,” Cai says, still calm. It’s such a rational voice that it reaches in and flips Peter’s switch to on.
“We’ll talk later,” Peter responds shakily, taking the gun as both he and Darryl physically shove Cai through the gate at the far end of the yard.
“They’ll see,” Cai insists. “They’ll see he needed to die. Let me go back. They’ll see.”
Fucking Cai and his logic. Peter can’t focus, can’t think about anything but getting away. He ignores the splatter of blood on his brother’s face, the chunks of something grey dangling in Cai’s black hair as they tear down the alley. “Cai, so help me,” he pants, “if you take one step to return, I’ll knock you out and carry you. Then we’ll all be fucked.”
They run in silence after that, slowing down only so Darryl can find a car old enough to hotwire. It ends up being a relic from the 70’s or 80’s, a Camaro. Cai has to clamber over the center console to get in. Darryl’s already pulling a screwdriver out and working on starting it when Peter sits down.
There’s a collective holding of breath while they drive past two police cars. The smell of onions and garlic fog the air as Peter and Darryl breathe out the pizza from just half an hour ago. Had it only been 30 minutes since his life was normal?
“I drugged his drink, Rabbit. So it didn’t hurt.”
“Not now, Cai.”
“He killed my dad, Rabbit.”
“I know,” Peter says. Darryl casts a sideways glance at Peter, gaze flickering on the gun.
“Are you mad, Petya?” Cai asks, in that bizarrely innocent voice.
“No, Cai. Never mad at you. Okay? Just don’t talk for a while—don’t say anything.” Darryl takes the gun and slides it under his own seat as he drives. Then he reaches over and grabs hold of Peter’s hand, squeezing it, before lacing their fingers together.
Peter stares out the window as Little Moscow turns into swamps, then rivers, then forests. “I’ve got forty bucks,” Darryl says after a few hours. “We’ll need gas soon. How’re we going to get money after that?”
They discuss robbing some place with the gun, but decide against that kind of attention. By day three on the road, they have a system of stealing wallets from guys whose pants are around their ankles in rest stop and gas station restrooms. Driving nights is all they can manage, since Darryl isn’t legal to drive and they can’t afford to be pulled over. The journey is long.
It’s not until the fourth week that Peter gives his first blow job to a trucker outside a roadside diner. No risk, no fuss, no screaming asshole scrambling after them with his pants down. Though that did happen once when Peter used his teeth because the guy shoved his head down and made him choke.
Easy sailing after that. Between Darryl and him they can pull a hundred bucks a night if they stop at busier spots.
Jealousy, Thy Name is Austin
“The original plan was to go to California,” Peter told me, either ignoring my dismay or too busy visualizing his past to pay attention to me. “We were passing through Denver when Darryl said he was done driving for a while. So we settled here. Was only supposed to be for a month or two. We just never left.”