who was willing to be an ear when I needed one and get rid of illicit drugs I had no business having in the first place.
"Are you and Enzo... close?"
To that, Paine let out a humorless snort and shook his head.
"No."
Eight
Paine
If you looked into me, if you pulled up my records, I was as clean as the fresh fallen fucking snow. No arrests, no holds for questioning, not even a damn parking ticket.
That being said, looks could be deceiving.
I grew up in the ghetto with a mom who had enough of the lying, cheating, drug-addicted shithead who sired me and my sisters. I distinctly remember a few days after my fifth birthday walking out into the hall with my mother, one sister on her hip, the other in a cheap umbrella stroller, and almost walking right into a kid who could have been my twin. Tall for his age, solid, same color skin, same color eyes. The baby bag my mother had been trying to get onto her shoulder fell to the ground and the contents flew across the dirty hall as she looked down at the little boy with understanding, then at the kid's mother with horror.
"That mother fucker," the other mother said, shaking her head. I remembered Annie as being too upper class to live in the crummy apartment building. I don't know where my young mind got the idea. Maybe it was her clothes that seemed nicer than my mom's and my aunts'. Maybe it was the way her short cap of blond hair was always perfectly styled and shiny. Something about her screamed 'money' to me. "He's five?" she asked my mother who gave me a tight smile.
"Yep."
"Wow," Annie said.
"Yeah," my mother agreed, shaking her head.
From that day on, those two were as tight as two women could be. I guess it came from sharing a lying, cheating, drug-addicted shithead unwittingly then both dumping him and trying to move on with their lives. Annie, I would learn later, had just divorced from her husband, the couple being an upper-middle-class childless family who just couldn't make it work. She had a nice apartment in a nicer town where she met my father who had been working at a repair shop she brought her car into for a tune up. The rest, as they say, was history. He saw dollar signs; he latched on; he pulled at her heartstrings and sucked her dry. She wisened up and kicked his sorry ass to the curb and about three weeks later found out she was pregnant. So fast forward to her working two jobs to support a kid in a roach-infested apartment.
Because our mothers got tight, Enzo and I became brothers in all the ways that counted. We walked to and from school with each other, we had each other's and my sisters' backs. We raised hell together. We chased girls together when we were old enough.
And, being so close, we grew into similar young men: driven, ambitious, wanting nothing more than to rise up out of our shit beginnings. Living in the slums, that meant one of two things: you got good at a sport and got a college scholarship the hell out of there, or you sought a way to run the streets. Enzo could shoot hoops, but busted a kneecap his senior year, killing his chances of any kind of sports career.
I had never had any skill in any sport, so by sophomore year, I was already learning the ways of street corner politics. I made myself available. I carried product because I was underage with no priors, making myself the fall guy for whatever hustler that knew that if he went back inside, the only way he'd be leaving was through the back door.
Back then, it was weed or rocks.
Before long, I was doing the actual dealing with some other banger watching over me to make sure I didn't fuck up deals or take a cut that I wasn't entitled to. It wasn't more than a couple months before I was having a meeting with the shot-caller, a tall, skinny dude in his late twenties with eye teeth so pointy they looked like fangs named Terrell. It didn't take much for me to realize he wasn't long for the leadership position. First, he
"Are you and Enzo... close?"
To that, Paine let out a humorless snort and shook his head.
"No."
Eight
Paine
If you looked into me, if you pulled up my records, I was as clean as the fresh fallen fucking snow. No arrests, no holds for questioning, not even a damn parking ticket.
That being said, looks could be deceiving.
I grew up in the ghetto with a mom who had enough of the lying, cheating, drug-addicted shithead who sired me and my sisters. I distinctly remember a few days after my fifth birthday walking out into the hall with my mother, one sister on her hip, the other in a cheap umbrella stroller, and almost walking right into a kid who could have been my twin. Tall for his age, solid, same color skin, same color eyes. The baby bag my mother had been trying to get onto her shoulder fell to the ground and the contents flew across the dirty hall as she looked down at the little boy with understanding, then at the kid's mother with horror.
"That mother fucker," the other mother said, shaking her head. I remembered Annie as being too upper class to live in the crummy apartment building. I don't know where my young mind got the idea. Maybe it was her clothes that seemed nicer than my mom's and my aunts'. Maybe it was the way her short cap of blond hair was always perfectly styled and shiny. Something about her screamed 'money' to me. "He's five?" she asked my mother who gave me a tight smile.
"Yep."
"Wow," Annie said.
"Yeah," my mother agreed, shaking her head.
From that day on, those two were as tight as two women could be. I guess it came from sharing a lying, cheating, drug-addicted shithead unwittingly then both dumping him and trying to move on with their lives. Annie, I would learn later, had just divorced from her husband, the couple being an upper-middle-class childless family who just couldn't make it work. She had a nice apartment in a nicer town where she met my father who had been working at a repair shop she brought her car into for a tune up. The rest, as they say, was history. He saw dollar signs; he latched on; he pulled at her heartstrings and sucked her dry. She wisened up and kicked his sorry ass to the curb and about three weeks later found out she was pregnant. So fast forward to her working two jobs to support a kid in a roach-infested apartment.
Because our mothers got tight, Enzo and I became brothers in all the ways that counted. We walked to and from school with each other, we had each other's and my sisters' backs. We raised hell together. We chased girls together when we were old enough.
And, being so close, we grew into similar young men: driven, ambitious, wanting nothing more than to rise up out of our shit beginnings. Living in the slums, that meant one of two things: you got good at a sport and got a college scholarship the hell out of there, or you sought a way to run the streets. Enzo could shoot hoops, but busted a kneecap his senior year, killing his chances of any kind of sports career.
I had never had any skill in any sport, so by sophomore year, I was already learning the ways of street corner politics. I made myself available. I carried product because I was underage with no priors, making myself the fall guy for whatever hustler that knew that if he went back inside, the only way he'd be leaving was through the back door.
Back then, it was weed or rocks.
Before long, I was doing the actual dealing with some other banger watching over me to make sure I didn't fuck up deals or take a cut that I wasn't entitled to. It wasn't more than a couple months before I was having a meeting with the shot-caller, a tall, skinny dude in his late twenties with eye teeth so pointy they looked like fangs named Terrell. It didn't take much for me to realize he wasn't long for the leadership position. First, he
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