Sweet Ruin(3)
If MizB knew a fraction of what went on in these streets . . .
But Jo saw all.
The local gang lord was the worst. The street people called him the Wall because of his steroidal build, but also because he liked to screw his prostitutes from behind; in other words, your back was always up against him. Jo nicknamed him Wally.
He hung with a pair of brothers named TJ and JT. Because cleverness. The hookers named the older brother Knuckle behind his back since his dick was the length of a finger from knuckle to knuckle. The younger brother didn’t even merit a body-part nickname. The fourth crony was called Nobody. In other words: “Who did it?” “Nobody.”
Girls went into Wally’s crib one way, and after screams sounded, they stumbled out different. Whatever those four were doing in that house took the fight out of girls. Which was unforgivable.
Jo worshipped fighting. She dreamed about being a comic-book superheroine—just so she’d have an excuse to mess people up. With no superpowers on the horizon, she’d launched a one-girl guerrilla war, kicking the ant mound and running.
She’d started out small. Stick of butter underneath the door handle of Wally’s car. A little breaking and entering to slather his toilet seat with superglue. Then sand in the Monte Carlo’s gas tank.
She could stomach the risks, but she had a kid to think about. So why couldn’t she stop herself? It was as if some instinct was forcing her to target prey, stalk it, then hurt it.
She’d struck a much bigger blow last night, putting a stop to Wally’s revolving door of bad. She grinned.
When a car rumbled down a nearby side street, her grin faded. Waaaay too hot. She could feel the dragon’s breath.
“Come stay with us, Josephine. Just try it out,” MizB said. “There are only so many times I can watch you leave here before I do something.”
Jo went motionless. She gave the woman the same scary stare she’d given that dickwad foster dad, the look that got him to yank his hand away and back off. “You report us, and I’ll bust Thaddie out just like I always do, and I’ll take him so far away you’ll never see him again. We clear?” You’re already gonna do that, Jo.
How would MizB react? It’d probably break her. Which Jo didn’t care about. At all. Jo’s job was looking out for number one.
“I have no doubt. That’s why I stop my fingers from dialing Child Protective Services every day.”
“I am his mom,” Jo said, even as Thaddie shoveled the woman’s grub into his mouth.
MizB softly said, “A mother would want better for her son.”
She sounded reasonable, but here was the thing: Jo was feral. There’d be no living under someone else’s roof and following someone else’s rules. Rules didn’t apply to Jo and never had.
There’d be no sharing Thaddie with a woman who desperately wanted to be his mother.
He’s mine, not hers. He was Jo’s number one.
But a tiny part of her said, Thaddie’s not feral. Not yet. Sometimes Jo had dreams about him with the Braydens. The three of them as a family.
Those dreams weirded her out, because she wasn’t in them.
Done with this, Jo snagged a chicken leg and stood. “I gotta blaze. Be back in an hour or so.” She swooped in to kiss Thaddie. “Mwah!” Then she whispered to him, “Bitch tries anything, you tit-punch her.”
He nodded happily. Smacking cornbread, he said, “Bye-bye, JoJo.”
MizB walked her to the door. “Out to pick pockets again?”
“Yeah, you want me to grab you anything while I’m out?”
But the woman grew really serious. “How can you touch a child so innocent and good when your hands aren’t clean?”
Jo shoved the chicken leg in her mouth, raising both hands. Around the drumstick, she said, “Clean as they’ll ever be.”
“That’s not true, Josephine. I think you’ve forgotten you’re just a little girl.”
“Little girl? I’ve been a lot of things, but that ain’t one of them. . . .”
Out on the street, Jo mimicked, “How can you touch him? Meh meh MEH meh meh.” She snatched a bite of chicken, hating how good it was.
She turned the corner. Stopped in her tracks and swallowed hard. The chicken fell from her limp fingers.
A gun barrel was pointed at her face.
Wally.
Behind him stood his trio of asshole friends. They all looked spaced-out, eyes crazy bloodshot.
Wally’s long, stringy hair had been singed, and sweat poured down his blistered face. “People been saying the creepy pale girl’s always fucking with me.” His words were slurred, and the gun shook in his bandaged hand. “People been saying she was sneaking around my place last night. So I’m gonna ask the creepy pale girl once: why’d my goddamned house catch on fire last night—with us in it?”