Crow’s Row by Julie Hockley

Spider resigned himself to his usual nasty glare. The whole room had gone tensely quiet.
    My ears were burning, like I was wearing hot coals for earmuffs.
    In an instant, Carly and Spider were out of their seats. With an added faint whistle and nod of the head from Spider, all of the men rose with them, rushing to grab last morsels from their breakfast plates.
    Everyone except Rocco and me trudged out of the common room with Carly and Spider. I was officially back to my first day in high school when I had mistakenly sat at the seniors’ table in the cafeteria.
    Rocco whistled. “That was fast. You sure know how to clear out a room. Do you have rabies or some other kind of contagious disease that I don’t know about?”
    I shrugged and chewed on the corner of my lip while he started stacking dirty plates.
    “I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” he said, his head bent over his task. “They’re a tough crowd to break. It took them a while to get used to me too.”
    I clasped a few of the dirty cups and glasses between my fingers and followed him into the kitchen. “How long have you been here?”
    “I got here over a year ago, I think. I’m not really sure. Time seems to stand still around here.”
    “Where are your parents?” I wondered.
    His eyes shot up. “My parents? I don’t know. They’re somewhere out in the world, I guess. Who cares?”
    “Isn’t this your parents’ house?”
    “That’s funny,” he said, shaking his head. He grabbed a frying pan from the stove filled with what looked like canned beans fried in ketchup. “Are you gonna want any of this?”
    I shook my head.
    “Suit yourself.” He scraped the remnants into the garbage and flung the pan into the dishwasher without rinsing it first.
    “Help yourself to some food if you’re hungry. That’s the way it works around here. You grab what you want,” he said. “But just don’t expect to be served. I may have to clean up after these guys, but I don’t serve anyone.”
    For whatever reason, he was trying to make a point.
    I grabbed a bowl from the opened cupboard and poured cereal from the box that was lingering on the counter. I got the milk jug from the table and poured it over my Captain Crunch.
    “Where’s Cameron?” I tried to keep my voice indifferent.
    “I don’t know.” Rocco’s hand quieted over the dishwasher. “Why?”
    “He’s your brother, isn’t he?”
    “Doesn’t mean I keep a leash on him,” he said, taking his frustrations out on the plates that refused to fit into the fully loaded dishwasher.
    In the meantime, I was pulling at invisible straws. “You left your parents and came here—on … purpose?”
    “I left my mom; never knew my dad. There wasn’t much to leave behind. My mom got a new boyfriend,” he said, like this explained it all.
    “So … you came to live with your brother?”
    “No,” he corrected indignantly, “I came to work for my brother.”
    We were getting somewhere. “What kind of work do you do for your brother?”
    “Right now, I look after the administration of the house,” he said as he looked over at me, like he guessed what I was going to ask next. “Meaning I do whatever Spider tells me to do, like cleaning the stupid kitchen.”
    “And putting all the groceries away,” I added.
    “And driving Miss Daisy.”
    I remembered the argument between him and Carly the night before. “This isn’t the work that you want to do?”
    “Do you know anyone who wants to spend his time cleaning up after a bunch of jerks? It’s not work a man should be doing … No offense.”
    “None taken.” I closed the dishwasher door and searched for the start button, letting him vent.
    “I mean, this was supposed to be temporary so that I could prove myself,” he continued without my encouragement. “I’ve proven myself and should be working for Cam now.”
    He pushed me aside and started the dishwasher.
    “What kind of work does Cameron do?” I asked him, but the one called