Summer Son by Anna Martin

entrance of the alleys he disappeared into to exchange something from his pocket for a wedge of cash.
    “This isn’t ours,” Sab warned him as they pulled away, back into the night, and he handed the cash to Zane. “Stick it in the glove compartment until we can go hand it in.”
    Sab’s death—a drive-by shooting—went unreported in the local press. Why would anyone care about another gang member dying? Not when the gang member in question had more than two grand worth of cocaine in the car and in his pockets, and nearly five grand in cash.
    No one would care that his youngest brother watched the whole thing happen and screamed his voice raw as the life seeped out of Sab’s body. Police reports said they were on the scene within minutes, having been close enough to hear the shots.
    Zane was taken into protective custody until his mother could be informed that she’d lost a son. As the only witness to the shooting, he was questioned by the police until they could determine that he wasn’t the one who had killed his own brother.
    Within days of the funeral, their mother declared they were going to visit family in Vermont. Zane had heard they had family there, only in the loosest definition of family. His mom’s cousin’s wife’s family. What he didn’t know was that his mom had packed up everything they owned and was moving them all out of the city, out of the only life Zane had ever known, to live in a sleepy little town of less than five thousand people.
    A town where there was absolutely no one who looked like him. Or Cass, or Hyder, or Faris. Without Sab’s leadership, it was supposed to be Faris’s turn to head the family, but he immediately rejected any type of responsibility, and Hyder and Cass were too young.
    “The first few months were hell,” Zane said. “My mom managed to get me grief and trauma counseling, which really fucking helped. Missing New York sucked, though. I hated Woodstock. I hated the quiet and the fact that nothing ever seemed to happen. I didn’t want to go to a new school. I missed my dad and Sab and my friends. I used to scream at my mom that I hated her and I was going to run away.”
    He seemed ready for comfort, so I reached out and gently ran my fingertips through his silky dark hair. Zane kissed my thumb.
    “It took about a year for me to settle there, and that was only when my art teacher saw something in me and started to encourage me to paint and draw. We were dirt-poor without the money Sab was earning from drugs, and my teacher gave me a sketch pad from the school’s stock, and a handful of pencils.”
    “Look at you now.”
    “Yeah,” he said. “I owe him a lot.”
    “Where are your family now?” I asked.
    “Hyder got a scholarship into med school, and Faris works in a bank. They’re still in Vermont with my mom.”
    “And Cass is here, right?”
    “Yeah, he moved back to the city with me. We were the youngest when we moved, but I think the most desperate to get back.”
    “I can’t imagine wanting to be back in the city,” I said, shaking my head. “Not after everything that happened.”
    “It’s different now. So different. I would never have come to this area when we were kids. It was too dangerous. Then the artists moved in and turned it around…. So, yeah. Now you know.” He seemed to shrug off everything he’d just told me.
    “This doesn’t change anything between us,” I said, frowning as I forced him to look at me. “You know that, right? I mean, obviously I’ll tell you about my family at some point….”
    “It doesn’t matter to you?”
    “Of course it matters, Zane, it’s your past. But no, it doesn’t have any bearing on you spending time with Harrison.”
    He stood, returned the two glasses to the kitchen, then came back to hover in front of me. “I could still be a target,” he said. “I stood as the sole witness in a murder trial. They never showed my face, but it was pretty fucking obvious who was giving