CRUSADERS’
NIGHT
By
April
Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me, but, if Brendan Fehr was offering himself to
me for the night, I would gladly accept.
Summary: On a completely normal day in the quiet town of
Category: Michael and Maria
Rating: PG-13-R
Author’s Note: Just to let you know, Max isn’t very nice in this at first,
but he’ll get nicer. This is my first AU fic that I didn’t do in response to
a challenge, so there are no rules. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I
enjoyed writing it.
**********************************
When the sun goes down and the moon comes
into view, I awake. I become me, the person I really am. I blend into the night
until I am one with it, until you can no longer tell that I am a real, living,
breathing person.
I look dark, because I am. I look dangerous, because I am. This may frighten
you. I hope that it doesn’t. I want you to come with me. I want you to join me
with the night. It’s exhilarating. It gives you a certain rush, a high, that
you would never feel in the day. Come with me.
It’s dark. It’s dangerous. It’s criminal.
It’s everything you never thought your life would be.
Come with me . . .
This is our night.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Sleep was coming. He could feel it. It was still daytime, true, but daytime was,
after all, when he usually slept. His eyelids were becoming heavy—almost too
heavy to keep open—and his body was growing weak and limp. He knew he would
succumb to the beauty of sleep’s peace soon. There was no denying it.
It was this way every day. A ritual, of some sorts. Michael Guerin would climb
into the van with Max Evans and Kyle VaLenti, his two best friends, and they
would take off down the road. Usually, Max was in the driver’s seat on deer
alert. Michael had tried to tell him that deer didn’t usually come out during
the day, but he didn’t listen to any of that. Kyle managed to climb into the
backseat all of time where he could stretch out all he wanted and sleep
peacefully, and Michael always got stuck in the passenger’s seat where Max
could always keep and eye on him and scold him if he fell asleep while he was
supposed to be watching for deer.
But, eventually, Max would give in and Michael would fall asleep. It always
turned out this way, and Michael knew he was going to be asleep very quickly
now.
He had almost escaped the daytime and fallen into dreams when Max suddenly
reached over and switched the radio station to a hard rock channel. Some dude
began to scream out right away, causing Michael to snap his eyes open. Kyle
jolted awake from the backseat practically screaming himself.
“Guys, calm down,” Max said. “It’s just a little rock.”
“But I was asleep!” Kyle protested. “You don’t turn something like that
on while a guy is asleep!”
“Well, that’s just too bad,” Max said, glancing out the window cautiously
for any signs of deer.
Michael remained silent in his seat and closed his eyes again. He knew he
wasn’t going to be able to fall asleep with rock on. Rock energized him and
made him want to get up and move, so he just closed his eyes and sat there deep
in thought while Max and Kyle continued to bicker about resting hours.
Kyle and Michael were night-owls, and Max wasn’t. It was as simple as that,
and over the past year or so, Kyle and Michael had become almost nocturnal,
staying up during the night and resting during the day, but Max was just the
opposite. He was wide awake from morning until dusk, usually driving, but once
the moon rose, a wave of exhaustion seemed to take him over, just when Kyle and
Michael were getting up.
“This is going to have to change.” Max was saying, cutting into Michael’s
thoughts. “You two can’t be staying up all night! Then there’s no one to
help me watch for deer!” Suddenly, he was hitting Michael on the shoulder,
urging him to stay awake.
“Trust me, I’m awake.” Michael told him, turning down the volume on the
radio.
“Good,” Max commented. “Stay that way.”
“Max, why are you so terrified of deer?” Kyle asked. “I mean, sure, the
can run fast and they have big antlers, but they’re not that bad.”
“Yes, they are.” Max protested.
They continued to argue, and Michael let out a big sigh. He busied himself with
watching the outside world fly past him so fast that it was barely recognizable.
They were going a little too fast, it seemed, so he spoke up, interrupting his
friends’ argument.
“Um, Max, you might wanna let up on the gas a little.” he advised. “The
last thing we need is a cop pulling us over.”
Max visibly slowed down—so much, in fact, that if someone had been right
behind them, they wouldn’t have been able to slow down in time to prevent a
crash. But lucky for them, they seemed to be the only ones on the deserted
desert road.
They were on their way to
Robbery.
The life they lived was dark and dangerous, and most people didn’t want to
live such a life, but Max and Kyle did. They had chosen it by themselves, Max in
an effort to scrape up some money, and Kyle in an effort to run away from home.
But Michael hadn’t chosen it. He had been born into it. His father had been a
master criminal, and his mother had been taken along for the ride. His father
had handed him his first gun at the age of five. Michael had even helped take
part in his first bank robbery at the age of seven, and, since then, he had been
hooked. It was like a gang. Once you got in, you didn’t get out. The first
moment you held a gun in your hands and pointed it at an innocent civilian, you
were roped in for life.
And, now, to this very day, he was doing the same thing, only without his mother
and father. They were gone now, both having died in a car accident somewhere
around
He often wondered if it was too late to get out, to break free and just live a
normal, simple life like everyone else did, but he knew that he couldn’t. They
had caused too much damage now. Even if he did try to break free, he would be
caught and thrown in jail. Now, all he could do was run and keep on doing what
he was doing. He had no choice.
“Michael, open your eyes!” Max shouted, taking him out of his thoughts.
Michael realized that he had let his eyes drift closed again, and now Max was
freaking out because no one was going to help him watch for deer.
“Sorry.” he apologized. He turned the volume on the radio back up so that
the car was blaring. He knew Max didn’t want him to fall asleep, and sometimes
the only thing that would keep him awake was noise.
“Like I was saying,” Max continued over the blaring music. “You two
can’t keep living in the night. Live during the day like normal people.”
Michael didn’t like the thought. The day? Was Max being serious? After at
least a year of crime, being crammed into the same bus as both Michael and Kyle
for hours at a time, didn’t he know that they both hated the day, and that
they would never willingly change?
“You can’t ask us to do something like that, Max.” Michael told him.
“It’s our choice.”
Max grunted. “Michael, what do you guys do all night, anyway?”
“I look for strippers.” Kyle announced, suddenly awake again.
“You can still do that during the day.” Max pointed out.
Michael didn’t have an answer. He usually didn’t do anything during the
night. He would sit in his hotel room and watch TV, sometimes casting a
sidewards glance out at the moon, other times just thinking about what his life
could have been like if he hadn’t been forced down this path at such an early
age. His life wasn’t that exciting, except for an occasional robbery or two,
but it had gotten to the point where even that was routine and boring.
He wanted something more. He just didn’t know where to find it, whatever it
was.
Maybe Max was right. Though he did hate the daytime and everything about
it—the sun, the heat, the light—there was no reason that he shouldn’t be
able to change.
“You’re right, Max.” he agreed reluctantly. “We should be awake with
you, just in case something goes wrong.”
“Exactly.” Max seemed pleased.
Kyle sighed, seeming a little less willing. “Oh, fine.” he finally agreed.
“I’ll try it.”
“Good.” Max focused his attention back out on the road then, still looking
for deer or anything else that might decide to pop out in front of him. “Now,
don’t even think about falling asleep again. We’re almost to
Michael leaned his head against the window and forced his eyes to stay open. He
was going to have a tough time adjusting to his new living situation—he knew
that already—but he would do it for Max, because Max was his friend, and
because, sometimes, his friends were all he had.
The alarm clock set off a shrill ring as it
always did in the morning and jolted Maria DeLuca awake. She rubbed her eyes
sleepily as she tried to adjust to the morning light. The sun always seemed to
be shining directly into her eyes, and she hated it.
Slowly, ever so slowly, she slid out of bed and down onto the floor. She
wasn’t a morning person. She never had been. She had always looked forward to
summers as a young girl, because she usually got to sleep in. But now, however,
summers seemed to be just the same as any other day, because she did have to get
up early and go work. Ever since her mother had lost her job, Maria had to help
cover the bills by working two jobs. She worked as the cashier at the Lift-Off
gas station during the day and as a waitress for the Crashdown Café during the
evening. At night, she would come home and collapse on her bed and fall asleep
almost immediately only to be rudely awakened the next morning to start the
whole routine over again.
Maria ran her hands through her hair and yawned. She felt dirty, and she wanted
to shower, but their hot water wasn’t working, and she didn’t feel like
running all the way over to her best friend Liz Parker’s house early in the
morning just to shower. Knowing she would only get dirtier and greasier at the
gas station, she stood up and skipped the whole thing altogether and headed
downstairs for breakfast.
Her mother wasn’t up yet. Now days, that wasn’t anything new. Her mother
slept really late in the morning and never seemed to get up past nine o’
clock, so Maria had to make breakfast for herself. She sometimes envied those
families that she saw on TV or on commercials where the children would get up
and their mother would have a splendid breakfast of scrambled eggs and French
toast sitting out ready for them, just waiting to be eaten.
Maria searched through the somewhat empty cupboards and found a box of Poptarts.
She took one out and ate it cold without even sitting down. She didn’t pour
herself a glass of milk or juice, either. She just took a tiny sip of water
directly from the faucet, not even bothering to pour it into a glass.
And that was breakfast.
It didn’t take her long to get ready. It never did anymore. She had learned to
move quickly when she was expected somewhere, and her boss, Randy Newman, always
seemed to want her at the station before she was due.
The beautiful clothes in her closet never got worn anymore. Now she only wore
her Lift-Off gas station uniform or her Crashdown uniform. Whatever was
required.
The brilliant make-up that had once covered the sink in her bathroom never was
worn anymore, either. Now, it was stashed away in the cupboards as well. She
didn’t have time for any of it.
Her curling iron and blow-dryer were never used anymore. They probably didn’t
even work now. Nowadays, she just let her hair be. She pulled it back in a
shaggy pony-tail and let it stay the whole day.
It was hard to imagine that she had once been a normal teenage girl with normal
hopes and dreams. Now she was just a poor girl with only two good friends whom
she barely even saw anymore and one boyfriend who she wasn’t even that
attracted to.
Billy. Billy Jarden was her boyfriend. He wasn’t appealing to the eye, or not
to her eye, at least, and he wasn’t popular. He didn’t play sports. He
played music. He got made fun of a lot, but he was kind, and he had always been
kind to Maria, so she stayed with him. She didn’t see their relationship as
moving beyond where they were, but Billy clearly did. Just a few days ago, he
had told her he loved her.
She had run away then, leaving him all alone in his car after saying the three
most important words of his life. He had most likely been expecting, or at least
hoping, that she would return them back to him, but that was just something she
couldn’t do, because she didn’t love him, and she couldn’t lie to him.
They hadn’t spoken since.
She often wondered if she would see him sitting in the Crashdown, and if he
would motion towards her, wanting to talk to her. She had invented all sorts of
scenarios of how it would happen. He would wave to her, and she would go sit
down across from him. She would apologize, and he would smile and tell her that
he didn’t mean to push things, and that he wasn’t expecting anything from
her, that she could take her time falling in love.
But she had no way of knowing if it would really turn out that way. She hadn’t
seen Billy, and she took that to mean that he was sad, perhaps even in sorrow.
She pictured him crying on his bed, muffling the sounds in his pillow so that no
one would hear him.
She didn’t want to hurt him, but she didn’t love him. Not in the way that he
loved her, anyway. She loved him as a friend, and she would always love him as a
friend, but anything more than that was almost inconceivable.
Maria, noticing that her thoughts were causing her to run “late”, almost ran
out the door after stopping in her mother’s room to kiss her good-bye. Not
that it mattered, anyway. Her mother didn’t feel it, and she only continued to
sleep and dream.
Dreams were pleasant. Life was not. Life was like one big nightmare that never
ended, that you could never get away from, no matter how hard you tried.
Maria hopped in her car and took off down the empty little roads of
Nothing ever happened in
She finally reached the Lift-Off at the edge of town. Randy gave her a big
lecture on how important it was to be on time, and she pretended to listen, and
then she went back behind the counter as the station opened. At first, no one
came. Then, though, the door swung open and Alex Whitman walked inside.
Alex. Good old Alex. He was Maria’s best friend, not counting Liz. He was
always there when she needed him, and he always put others’ needs before his
own.
“Alex!” Maria chirped excitedly.
“Hey,” he greeted, holding onto his guitar precariously in one hand while
waving hello to her with the other. Alex, like Billy, loved music, and it was
how they had all gravitated towards each other. Liz . . . Liz was just so
likable that they couldn’t help but include her.
“Oh, Alex, I’m so glad you’re here.” Maria told him. “I really needed
to talk to you about something yesterday, but I didn’t get the chance, so I
really need to talk to you now.”
“Talk on.” he told her, eyeing the candy under the counter. Alex had a
weakness for candy of any kind.
“Okay, so, you see, Billy and I were outside the station during my break a few
days ago just talking about all this random crap when he blurted out ‘I love
you.’.”
Alex’s attention was no longer on the candy, then, but on her. “Billy, as in
Billy Jarden, your boyfriend?” He seemed shocked. “Wow. I didn’t know the
guy had it in him.”
“Had what in him?” Maria didn’t understand.
“The nerve.” he elaborated. “Maria, you’ve gotta give him some credit
for just coming out and saying it.”
She knew he was right. “Yeah,” she agreed.
“But let me guess,” Alex continued. “You couldn’t tell him you loved him
back, so you ran off.”
Maria was shocked. “How did you know?” she asked.
“I was in here at the time.” he explained. “I saw you.”
“Oh.” she felt embarrassed, knowing that she must have looked really stupid.
“I wasn’t spying or anything.” he told her. “Just watching intently.”
She laughed. “Why do you watch, Alex?” she inquired. “Billy and I have no
chemistry.”
“He seems to think differently.”
She knew he was right again. Alex seemed to know everything about everyone and
all of their feelings.
“You should just tell him.” Alex suggested. “Tell him you don’t feel the
same way he does. Or else you’ll end up hurting him even more, Maria, by lying
to him.”
She sighed. “Yeah,” she agreed. “I know. But I can’t, Alex. He’s so
sweet and kind to me, and I wanna stay friends with him.”
“You can still be his friend.” he told her. “Just because you break up
doesn’t mean that it’s all over.”
As always, he was right.
Alex moved aside as a mother and her young boy entered the establishment, and
Maria let herself fall away into her normal routine. It was normal, and it was a
routine, because it was repetitive. She did it everyday, nonstop. There was no
end to it, and somewhere, she had forgotten that there had even been a
beginning. She had forgotten everything that had been grand in her life, because
now, all there was in her life was misery and painful, hard decisions.
She didn’t think about what she was doing. That wasn’t necessary, because
nothing new or exciting or even semi-important happened in
Kyle looked entranced as he watched the
woman dancing above him. His eyes had grown huge, and only continued to grow
bigger as the woman removed her top, revealing a barely-there bra and huge
breasts. Kyle was definitely a boob man, and he seemed to be losing control. His
mouth was open to, and he was practically drooling.
Max had found a cute little red-head and had taken her into a dark corner for
some “extra money”. His hands were all over her ass, and the expression on
his face was priceless when the woman started to unzip his pants.
Michael sat alone. He didn’t want any of it. Kyle and Max always liked to stop
at strip-clubs when they got the chance, and Michael was always dragged along
inside, even though he thought that it was sick.
Well, sometimes it was nice. These girls were dangerous. They weren’t afraid
to take a walk on the wild side.
A blonde-haired woman wearing only a black thong met his eyes and came down from
the stage. She walked through the crowd, ignoring everyone else but Michael. He
didn’t flinch, even as she brought her fingers up to run through his untamable
hair.
“You look like you need some good lovin’, Sugar.” she commented in a real
southern accent.
“No thanks.” he told her. She was definitely dangerous, yes, but not the
type of dangerous he liked. She was only a slut, nothing more.
“Oh, come on.” she practically begged. “I’ll take you back in a corner
and show you the real meaning of living for a few extra dollars.”
It was really sad that these women had to do this for money. It was clearly
their last resort.
But he wasn’t much different from them, was he? Either was Max. Either was
Kyle. Of course they didn’t work in bars and take their clothes off just to go
back in the corner and have a quicky with some random person, but they robbed
banks and gas stations and those kind of places for money. They stole cars and
sold them a few days later for big bucks. Their life certainly wasn’t
honorable.
“Sugar, c’mon.” The woman continued to try to persuade him, even being so
daring to lean forward and try to rub her breasts in his face.
“Sorry,” he apologized, getting up from the chair. He moved away from her as
fast as he could and out of her sight, only to be stopped by another girl, a
brunette this time.
“What’s a sexy man like you doing all alone tonight?” she asked, playing
with the buttons on his shirt. She was more attractive than the blonde. She was
still clothed—well, she was still wearing a bra and underwear—and she
wasn’t as headstrong. For a moment, he contemplated taking her back into a
dark corner like Max had done with that red-head, just to see what it would feel
like to be with someone for such a short period of time. It would be dangerous,
that’s for sure.
“I can’t.” he said, though he was still wondering if he could.
She sighed. “Alright, if you’re sure.”
He wasn’t sure. His fingers were itching with the desire to yank her bra away
and tear her underwear off. His lips were tingling with the need to run his lips
across hers. And his . . . well, that was doing something, too.
But he didn’t. He bolted away from her as fast as he could and forced himself
not to look back. He wasn’t Max. He wasn’t Kyle. He didn’t want to turn
into them. He didn’t use girls for a few minutes like that. He would carry a
gun. He would rob banks. He absolutely would not take on an offer like that, no
matter how tempting it was.
He met up with Max and Kyle by the door, watching the women on stage and
watching some of them as the pranced on by. Max looked tired from what he had
just done. Kyle looked envious.
“Hey, guys.” Michael greeted.
“Hey,” Max returned, grabbing a bottle of beer from the bar counter. He
didn’t pay. He didn’t even care that it had probably belonged to someone who
had. He chugged it down, obviously eager to cool off.
“We should probably be going now.” Michael told them. He hated to always
have to break the fun, but if Max and Kyle had their way, they would stay out
all night with the strippers. But Michael was tired. He was used to staying
awake during the night, but not during the day as well, and he needed sleep, no
matter what time it was.
“But I haven’t even gotten any yet!” Kyle whined. “I’m not going until
I get my hands on one of these ladies . . .” He trailed off and let his eyes
linger on the same blonde that Michael had turned down.
“We’ve got a big day ahead of us tomorrow.” Michael reminded them. “If
we wanna be able to pull off the robbery, we’ve gotta be in top shape.”
“No, we don’t.” Max shot back. “I could pull off a robbery in my
sleep.”
“Sleep,” Michael echoed. “Sounds good, don’t you think?”
Max surveyed the bar and then turned back to Michael. “I guess.” he said.
“I’ve already gotten my fair share for tonight. Kyle?”
Kyle, however, was less willing. “No!” he shouted. “I’m gonna break my
pants if I don’t just . . .” He trailed off again and Michael noticed his
eyes on the brunette he had been so tempted to take. He let his eyes drift to
the ground as he watched Kyle walk over to her and run his hands up and down her
bare arms.
“Are you with anyone tonight?” he asked.
She shook her head.
And then they were walking off together.
“Make it quick!” Michael called after him. “Meet us in the car!”
No answer.
So Michael walked out the door and waited for Max to follow. It took Max a
little longer. He was clearly on the verge of getting drunk, and he still held
two bottles in his hands. He tripped over something on the way to the car and
fell down on the ground laughing. Michael had to help him up again and help him
into the passenger side of the van.
“I never realized that there were so many girls on the planet that would just
let you fuck them.” he muttered. “I mean, it’s just so easy. You say one
word to them and they’re all over you. It’s
just . . . cool. It’s so cool!”
Michael didn’t know what to say to that. It was hard enough to carry on a
conversation with Max when he was sober. It was almost impossibly when he was
drunk.
About ten minutes later, Kyle tumbled out of the strip-club, clearly a little
drunk as well. He, too, clutched a bottle of beer in his hands, and he barely
made it to the car. But he made it in, and he practically collapsed in the back.
“That was great!” he announced. “God, if you haven’t had her, you’re
missin’ out.”
Michael started the car up, knowing that he could have had her.
“She can hold out forever. Makes you really have to work at it.”
“So that’s why you were in there so long?” Max asked from the front. He
threw an empty bottle out the window into the parking lot and opened up the next
one and began to chug it right away.
“No,” Kyle replied with a laugh. “I just wanted a few more minutes.”
Both Max and Kyle began to laugh, sounding stupid and completely drunk.
“That’s funny.” Max commented. “You’re funny, Kyle.”
“No, Max,” Kyle told him. “You funny!”
They began to laugh again.
“You funny!”
“You funny!”
Finally, they stopped repeating themselves enough for Max to notice that they
were still sitting in the parking lot. “Well, let’s go, Michael.” he said,
hitting him on the arm. “We’ve got places to go.”
“Right.” he agreed. He pulled out of the parking lot and drove a little ways
to a local hotel He got only one room, trying to save as much money as possible
and figuring that his friends might need him to keep a watch over them in their
drunken state, and registered under fake names, just in case someone was looking
for them.
It took forever for Kyle and Max to fall asleep. They stayed awake for at least
an hour making stupid jokes and playing around like little kids. A man from the
room next door even came to knock on their door in frustration.
“I’m trying to sleep.” he said. “It’s kind of hard, though, when you
and your buddies are making all this racket.”
“Sorry.” Michael apologized, glaring at the man dead-on. He wasn’t the
type of person to back down, and he didn’t like to apologize a lot.
“They’ve had a lot to drink.”
“Yeah!” Kyle shouted from inside.
“Lots of beer!” Max added.
The man shook his head disapprovingly and then left.
It took awhile for his friends to fall asleep, so Michael stayed up with them.
When they finally did fall asleep, they had taken both the beds. He made himself
as comfortable as he could on the floor and closed his eyes, prepared for the
slumber that he had been waiting for since the very early hours of that morning,
only to find that it was time for them to start moving again.
Sleep did not come that night. It was
impossible. He had fallen asleep too late and had to get up too early. Now, they
were in the car again, all three of them, as they always seemed to be. Kyle and
Max both had killer hangovers, and Michael was left driving again. He drove
slow, even though he preferred going fast. If a cop stopped them, they would be
toast, as in through. Done. They had guns in their hands loaded with bullets if
they ever needed protection, and there were a two broken beer bottles scattered
on the floor, too.
“We’re almost there.” Michael announced as they neared their destination.
The streets were becoming more crowded as they neared the tiny but profitable
town of
Max groaned from the passenger seat. “I don’t think I can do this today.”
he complained. “I feel like shit.”
“I wonder why.” Michael didn’t bother to hide his feelings. “You two
screwed around with strippers the whole night and got drunk. You think you’d
feel better.”
“You don’t know how it feels, Michael.” Kyle told him from the back. He
was sprawled out on the backseat looking like he was going to throw up.
“Hey, I was up all last night with you two!” he shouted. “I wanted to make
sure you guys would be okay! I didn’t get any rest, either, you know!”
Max let out a huge burp and then groaned again. “Let’s just postpone it for
tomorrow.” he suggested.
“No.” Michael decided. He put on gas, even though he knew it was best not
to. “You said you could pull off a robbery in your sleep, Max. Now we’ll get
the chance to see if you really can.”
Max grunted. “I’m not asleep.”
“You might as well be.”
So they rode in silence for a few more minutes, the only sounds coming from
Kyle. He was mumbling something that was barely audible, and that Michael did
not want to take the time to understand.
“What’s that, Kyle?” Max finally asked.
“Oh, I was just thinking about last night.” Kyle answered. “That girl.
That stripper. She was sure a firecracker.”
Michael pressed down the gas harder. Why did Kyle always have to mention that
girl? It wasn’t like she was that special. It wasn’t like he wanted to see
her again. It was just a longing feeling deep inside of him for someone that he
could just spend a few minutes of pleasure with and then spit right back out
again and never remember her.
He wanted someone like that. He wanted to be like his friends and just be able
to discard a girl just like that, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
“I wanted to take her with us.” Kyle continued.
“That good, huh?” Max asked as his eyes began to close. It was obvious Max
was feeling like shit. He was closing his eyes, and it was still daytime.
“Stay awake, Max!” Michael shouted slapping him on the shoulder in the same
way that he had done to him the day before. “Live in the day like normal
people!”
“Shut up, Michael!” Max shouted back.
“Hey, you guys have gotta stay awake and help me watch for deer!” Michael
continued to mimic Max’s earlier words.
“I said shut up!” Max shouted again. “Keep your eyes on the road!”
So Michael gave in and continued the struggle to keep his own eyes open while
Kyle and Max continued to talk about the stripper.
“I would do anything for a bitch like that, that I could just get my hands on
during any time of the day.” Kyle continued.
“Yeah,” Max agreed. “I sure wanna mess around with that red-head again
tonight.”
“Too bad we don’t have a girl around here.” Kyle complained.
“Yeah.”
Michael was becoming fed up. He couldn’t listen to it anymore. “If you guys
really want a girl that bad, all you’ve gotta do is kidnap one.” he told
them. “My dad did it a lot when he got tired of my mom.”
At first, his friends were silent, but then, Max spoke. “You know, Michael,”
he said, “that’s not really a bad idea. There’s plenty of hot girls in
“Yeah, that could work.” Kyle sounded excited again, and Michael knew that
he was getting the same greedy expression on his face that he got whenever he
was thinking or talking about a girl.
“Gee, Michael, I didn’t think you were into the whole kidnaping thing.”
Michael sighed and reminded his friends that he had been doing this years longer
than they had.
They talked it over a little more and decided that they would go for a blonde if
possible, even though Kyle wanted a girl resembling the brunette and Max wanted
a girl resembling the red-head. They decided that it was only fair that they go
with a blonde since they couldn’t agree. For the most part, Michael stayed out
of it. He had already come up with the idea. He didn’t want to take part in
anymore of it. Inside, a part of him felt terrible. He was going to be tearing
this girl, whoever it turned out to be, apart from her family and friends and
the only life she had ever known. But another part of him was anticipating it
all. Maybe this would be the girl he had been waiting for, the one that could
satisfy his hunger and clench his thirst, just for a little while.
He felt awful for thinking such thoughts. This wasn’t him. It never had been
him.
But it was now.
What was he becoming?
“Hey, right here.” Kyle said, pointing to a gas station that was, as
expected, alien-themed.
“The Lift-Off gas station,” Max read aloud. “Catchy.”
“Okay,” Michael said, pulling the ban to a stop just outside. “This is it.
We’ve gotta move fast and carefully.
“Relax, this isn’t gonna be any different than every other robbery we’ve
ever gone through with.” Max said, slipping on his ski-mask. “Except for the
girl.”
“Yeah,” Kyle agreed. “Who’s gonna get her?”
They all were silent for awhile, wondering who would get the best girl, or who
would be able to do it the fastest. Then, both Kyle and Max turned to Michael.
Neither said a word, but he both knew what they were thinking.
“Me?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Kyle replied. “Like you said, you’ve been doing this longer than
we have.”
That was true.
Michael slipped on his ski mask, knowing deep down inside that his life would
never be the same again.
Everything was normal, as everything always
was, until it happened. Alex had been sitting in one of the booths in the corner
gently strumming his guitar, and Randy had been yelling another employee out for
being late, or so it sounded, and a few customers had just come in to pay for
their gas, while a few others came in just to get some snacks for the drives
ahead that awaited them. Maria had just finished handing a woman back her change
when she looked out the window.
She saw three men rushing inside dressed all in black. They held guns in their
hands, and ski-masks covered their faces. Before she could do or say anything,
they were inside.
“Everyone down!” one of them shouted, pointing his gun out at everyone.
“On the floor now!”
Maria was almost too shocked to do anything. She felt frozen in place, but when
she felt Randy tugging on her arm, she got down as quickly as she could and laid
down on her stomach.
“Give us all you’ve got!” two of the men shouted. They ran around and
began to collect what the people in the station had on them. Sometimes, it was
only a few dollars. Other times, hundreds. Some were forced to hand over their
credit cards and jewelry.
“You!”
Maria looked up and found the tallest man towering over her, pointing the gun
directly down at her. “Give me all of the money out of the cash register,
now!”
Maria struggled to stand. Her legs were shaky and wobbly, and she felt like she
couldn’t do anything. She fumbled with the lock on the register, trying to
insert the key and get it open.
“Come on! Hurry!” he pressed.
She finally pulled it open and let him reach in. He took almost every penny so
quickly that she hardly even noticed it was gone. When he was done, he only
stared at her. All she could see was his eyes, but they bore down into hers like
daggers, and she felt her heart pounding rapidly inside her chest. Was he going
to hurt her?
“Michael, we’ve gotta go!” one of the two other men urged after they had
finished collecting from the customers.
The man, obviously Michael, suddenly jumped over the counter and grabbed her by
the arm. “You’re coming with
They zoomed down the streets fast, almost too fast for Maria. She felt herself
spinning out of control. Her hands were shaking, and her arms was hurting. The
man still held her tightly, not willing to let go in case she decided to try
something fancy. The sound of police cars could be heard close by, so the man at
the wheel sped up. Soon, they weren’t driving, but flying, and Maria began to
feel like she was going to be sick.
The last thing she remembered was watching the police car disappear behind her
before she blacked out.
When she came to again, Maria was surprised
to find that it was nighttime. They were far away from
The man who had been at the wheel when they had left the Lift-Off was still
there. She could tell by his structure. He had dark hair cut in a clean fashion,
and his ears were a little large. They stuck out from his head, and his eyes
seemed to be a little too small for his face.
The man in the passenger’s seat looked like a cowboy. His hair had that kind
of wave in it that made it look like he had just worn a cowboy hat. He was
nice-looking. Very clean cut. He didn’t look very old, though. Not as old as
the dark haired one did.
And then she looked beside her at the man who had grabbed her arm and pulled her
away. He was staring out the window and his eyes were almost closed. He looked
tired, like he hadn’t gotten a decent rest in days. His hair was just the
opposite of the other two men’s. His hair was untamed and unruly. It shot up
from his head almost to the ceiling of the van, but it worked for him. There was
a hint of stubble on his chin, too, like he hadn’t gotten a chance to shave
for awhile, or had chosen not to.
They all looked normal.
She debated whether to say anything, and decided against it. She was too
terrified to say anything, let alone to these guys. She could still see a gun in
the cowboy’s hand, and she shivered at the thought of the damage that it could
cause.
The man in the seat beside her—Michael, or whatever—seemed to notice that
she was awake, because he glanced in her direction and then clamped his hand
down on her arm again. “Don’t you think about going anywhere.” he warned
her.
“I wasn’t.” she reassured him.
“Good.” He made no effort to loosen his grip on her arm, and she made no
effort to say anything more.
“Is she awake?” the cowboy asked from the passenger’s seat.
“Yeah,” Michael told them.
The cowboy turned around and smiled at her. “Well, hell-o.” he greeted,
cutting the word up into two syllables. “I’m Kyle VaLenti.” He turned to
Michael, then, and smiled. “You sure got a good one.” he said a little more
quietly.
Michael remained silent and continued to stare out the window.
“I’m Max.” the dark-haired man told her. “The better looking of the
three.”
“You are not.” Kyle protested.
“Well, you sure aren’t.” Max shot back.
“Maybe we should just let the little lady choose for herself.” Kyle
suggested. “What do you think?” He asked the question directly to Maria, and
she didn’t know how to respond.
“I . . . I don’t think I could choose.” she stuttered.
Both Max and Kyle began to laugh from the front. “You can’t choose, huh?”
Max said. “Well, then, maybe you’d just like both of us.”
Maria didn’t understand. Like both of them for what?
“You guys don’t even know her name.” Michael suddenly piped up.
“Either do you.” Kyle told him.
“Yeah, I do.” he said. “It’s . . . it’s . . .” He looked down at
Maria for help. “What is it?”
“Maria.” she choked out.
“Maria what?” Max asked.
“Maria DeLuca.” She didn’t like the idea of letting these people in on
what her name was. She didn’t want to give out a lot of personal information,
but she didn’t see that she really had that much of a choice.
“Maria DeLuca,” Kyle echoed. “Well, Maria, sorry if we scared you back
there. We’re just kinda desperate for a woman.”
She didn’t like the sound of that.
“Not now, you guys.” Michael told them quietly.
Max pulled the van over to rest on the side of the road and got out, motioning
for Kyle to step out as well. “Stay with her.” he told Michael.
Maria watched Max and Kyle for a few seconds, trying to figure out what was so
important that they didn’t want to discuss it in front of her. When she
decided it was impossible to tell what they were talking about, she gave up
watching them and just sat there and thought. Michael had begun to loosen his
grip on her arm now, and the pain was subsiding.
She let herself think. She asked herself questions that she was scared to get
answers to. One question, in particular, floated around her head, threatening to
break loose at any moment. She turned to Michael and wondered if she should dare
ask him. What would he do to her if he found it offensive in some sort of way
for her to be speaking without permission?
He was staring out the window, a lost, tired expression plastered on his face.
He looked like he was in deep thought, as well, so she blurted it out, hoping
for the best.
“Have you ever killed anyone?”
He brought his eyes away from the outside world and looked down at her. She let
her own gaze travel down to the floor, afraid to look him in the eyes again. She
had already done that back at the Lift-Off, and now look where she was.
He was silent for a long time, and she wondered what he was thinking, what he
wanted to do to her at the moment, and then he replied, “I haven’t.”
She let out a deep sigh, feeling relieved. But then another thought occurred to
her, and she risked it again by asking it aloud. “But Max and Kyle . . .”
She trailed off, hoping he would understand what it was she was trying to get
out.
And he did. “They have.” he replied, like it was nothing. The relief she had
felt sweep over her just a few seconds over her was replaced by a dark cloud of
fear. If they had killed before, what was to stop them from killing her?
“Was it an accident or did they just . . .”
He didn’t let her finish. “You better just shut up, now.” he advised her.
She nodded in agreement and ran her free hand through her hair. So much had
happened so fast, and now she was riding in a car with three criminals, two of
which had killed. She didn’t know what they wanted with her, or why they had
taken her to begin with. All she knew was that she was scared, and that she
wanted to go home. She wanted to be in her mother’s arms, crying on her
shoulder. She wanted to be with Liz and Alex, just goofing around, and she
wanted to tell Billy that she was sorry for how she had treated him, because she
knew now that she might never get the chance.
She didn’t want to be here, out in the middle of the desert with these people
with no clue where they were going or what was to become of her.
She felt Michael let go of her arm completely, and she began to cry. She tried
to muffle the sounds she made, but she knew that he could hear her. He tried to
pretend that he didn’t, but she could see by the expression on his face that
he knew, and that he chose to do nothing about it.
Michael almost fell asleep on the drive to
the hotel. Almost. Not quite. Sleep was not possible with the girl in the
backseat beside him—Maria, or whatever the hell her name was. She was crying.
Really crying. She was trying to be quiet, and she was actually doing a pretty
good job, until she let loose one huge sob that seemed to wrack the whole car.
Max and Kyle didn’t notice. They had the music blaring up in front, but
Michael could tell. He ignored it for a little while.
But, soon, as they neared the hotel right along the
“Would you shut up?” he spat, clamping his hands down hard on her arms
again.
She looked up at him with watery, scared eyes, and Max turned down the volume of
the radio. Both he and Kyle turned around to the back to see what was going on.
“Keep your eyes on the road, Max.” Michael instructed.
Max sighed and returned his gaze to the road.
“Michael, calm down.” Kyle told him.
Michael almost yelled at him, too. He wanted to tell him that he didn’t feel
the guilt that he was feeling at the moment, the overwhelming guilt, but he soon
thought better of it and kept his mouth shut. Kyle knew what guilt was. He had
killed someone. They had been somewhere in
Michael let go of Maria’s arms again and continued to looking out the window.
Her crying ceased to exist after that, and she was only silent. She made no move
to try to get out of the car, so he made no move to hold onto her.
They reached the hotel a short while after. It was
“Snazzy,” Kyle commented, getting out of the car and looking over the hotel.
He was right. It was very big and very fancy, and probably very expensive, but
they could afford it. After all, they had just pulled off another big robbery
today. It was amazing how much money tourist carried around with them,
especially to tiny towns like
Michael stepped out of the car and motioned for Maria to follow him. He
immediately latched onto her arm again once the door was closed, because they
were outside now in the open with no car to keep her in. He surveyed the hotel
himself, noticing how it was built in a Mexican style with all the rooms
surrounding one enclosed fountain and garden area. He could faintly make out the
sound of salsa music from inside, obviously from some kind of party. The aroma
of spicy food drifted through the air, calling to him. He was so hungry. He
decided that he would have to get something to eat before turning in for the
night.
“Kyle, talk to Michael.” Max ordered, taking Maria from Michael’s grasp.
He wrapped his arm around her shoulders, and she stiffened visibly under his
hold, but she walked into the hotel with him as calmly and collectively as she
could.
“Okay, so, Max and I came up with a plan back there in the desert.” Kyle
began when they were out of earshot. “We decided that since it was your idea
to kidnap this girl in the first place that you should get to have her first.”
Michael sighed. He didn’t know if he really wanted her anymore. There was
still a need, a want, a hunger lurking deep down inside him, but it had begun to
fade now, replaced by that awful feeling of guilt. “I’m really tired. Maybe
you should have her first.” he suggested.
“No, no, you deserve her.” Kyle protested. “Believe me, dude, I want her,
but she’s yours first. Take her for tonight and screw her as long as you
please, just so you get her ready for Max and I. Escort her over to our place
whenever you’re done and we’ll take our turn.”
Michael stuffed his hands in his pockets, mentally searching for a way out.
“Just look at her, man.” Kyle said, pointing to the backside of the girl as
she and Max entered the hotel. “You know you want her.”
Did he? His feelings were so mixed up and turbulent at the moment that he
didn’t know what he wanted. He needed something to dull the pain inside of
him, some sort of drug.
She was just what he needed. A few minutes of hot sex with her would surely numb
him up so that he wouldn’t have to go through such turmoil again.
“Fine.” he agreed at last. “I’ll bring her over to your room when I’m
done.”
Kyle nodded. “Great. Now, you gotta work her up real good for us, but not too
much. We still gotta have a little bit of a challenge.”
He watched his friend walk at a brisk pace into the building to tell Max the
news. Max would never believe that Michael had agreed to this. He had never done
anything of the sort in his life.
He trailed behind. When he did get inside, two rooms were waiting for them.
“Here’s your key.” Max handed Michael a tiny little card to one of the
rooms as they walked down the hallway. “Maria, you’ll be staying with
Michael for awhile.” He winked at Michael and smiled at Kyle. Kyle smiled
back. Michael did nothing. He didn’t know what to do. But he would. Soon, he
would. Because, soon, he would be just like his friends. He wouldn’t worry
about what was right or wrong. He would just live a life of darkness and not
care about it.
At least Max and Kyle had fun and enjoyed living the way they did. With help,
maybe Michael could be like that, too. Just one quick little tryst . . .
Michael stopped at the door that was pointed out by the card and watched as Max
and Kyle headed one door down to their room. He fumbled with the key, wondering
why the damn lock was made so complex in the first place, and noticed that Maria
was standing beside him. She was there physically, but her mind seemed to be
somewhere else entirely, and she was staring down the empty hallway with a
thoughtful expression on her face.
“Don’t even think about trying to run off.” he warned her. “I’ve got a
gun in my pocket and I’m not afraid to use it.”
“You said you’ve never killed anyone.” she reminded him, turning her head
to look into his eyes.
“Not yet.”
She didn’t seem scared. “You wouldn’t shoot me in a hotel.” She said,
sure of herself.
“Smart, smart girl.” He finally forced the door open and walked in,
motioning for her to follow. She did, and left that silly hallway thought
behind. She was right. He wouldn’t have shot her. Either would Kyle. But Max
might have.
She tried the light-switch right away, only to find that it wasn’t working.
“Great.” she mumbled.
“That’s alright.” he said. “We’re just gonna go to sleep, anyway,
aren’t we?”
“Yeah,”
She sat down on the edge of one of the two beds, testing it for comfortableness.
She bounced up and down a bit and then laid back on her back.
“You taking that one?” he asked.
She nodded. She looked so tired, like she was capable of falling asleep right
then and there. He couldn’t let that happen.
After throwing his jacket down on the floor, Michael lifted his shirt over his
head, hoping to catch her attention with his tan chest and rock hard muscles.
She didn’t flinch. She didn’t even seem to realize that he was now standing
with no shirt less than three feet away from her.
“You’ll learn to like it.” he told her, sitting down on the edge of the
bed beside her. “Max loves it. Kyle does, too.”
“Do you?”
He was surprised by her question. She was outgoing for such a tiny little thing.
She had a mind of her own, and she wasn’t afraid to voice her thoughts.
“Sometimes.” he replied.
She sat up beside him, then, running her fingers through her hair. “I could
never like this.” she said. “It’s not who I am.”
He sighed. “It wasn’t who I wanted to be.”
She looked at him with a confused and puzzled expression. “What does that
mean?” she asked.
“Nothing.” he replied quickly. He didn’t need to get all sappy with a girl
that he barely knew.
She clearly knew that it had meant something, but she didn’t push the issue
any farther. They sat on the edge of the bed in what was a very uncomfortable
silence to Michael for a few more seconds until he felt the urge to speak again.
“It’s not all that bad.” he continued. “All those movies on TV that
depict what this life is really like . . . they don’t depict it accurately.
Max and Kyle and I, we have a lot of fun together. They’re like my family now.
I don’t know what I’d do without them.” He reached up and placed his hand
on her shoulder. “You’ll be fine with us.” he reassured her. “Trust
me.”
She grunted. “How can I trust you?” she shrieked, rising to her feet. “I
don’t even know you! I mean, you kidnaped me and took me away from my family
and my friends and the only home I’ve ever known in one horrible moment, and
now we’re God only knows how far away and I’m freakin’ terrified that
I’m gonna get hurt or killed or worse!”
“What could be worse?” he asked, surprised that she was being this outspoken
to him, the man who had, as she had established earlier, kidnaped her.
“That’s not the point!” she shot back.
“Well, what is the point?”
“I don’t know.” she seemed to be weakening in her argument. “I can
hardly even think right now.” She ran her hand across her forehead and sighed.
“Sit down,” he said, reaching up and grabbing her hand. She let him, and
willingly sat down beside him again.
“I just wanna go home.” she admitted.
He felt the guilt rising inside of him again, and he knew he had to do something
about it fast. He turned her towards him and gazed down into her eyes. She
avoided her gaze by looking at the carpet. He used his thumb to tilt her chin up
so that he could meet her eyes. They were sparkling with tears again,
threatening to spill over. He ran his fingers through her hair and leaned down
slowly, preparing to touch his lips to hers.
“What are you doing?” she asked when they were only inches apart.
“I’m trying to kiss you.” he replied. He leaned in again, only to have her
push him away with surprising strength.
“Don’t.” she told him sternly.
“Just come here.” he told her, grabbing her arm again, which he suspected
was now very bruised by the way people had been grabbing her.
“Stop it!” she shouted, hitting him on his shoulder with her tiny fists.
“Come on.” He encircled his arms around her waist and brought her down on
the bed, falling on top of her.
“Get off of me!” she shouted, hitting him some more.
He forced her arms above her head and held them together with one of his hands
so that she couldn’t hit him anymore. He straddled her hips with his legs so
that she could not resist. “I don’t think so.” he said, throwing her shoes
to the floor and bringing his free hand up to the uniform she was still wearing
from the gas station. He undid the buttons quickly and then tore it off of her,
ripping it into shreds. She screamed out in horror as the air hit the exposed
parts of her body.
“Please,” she whimpered. “Please, don’t!”
Something about her words caught his attention. He hadn’t known the girl very
long, but it just didn’t sound like her. In fact, it sounded so unlike Maria
that he forced himself to look at her face.
She didn’t look scared. She looked terrified, like she had said she was. She
was crying, almost as much as she had been in the car. Her body shook with each
sob beneath him, and he let go of her wrist bound above her head. She slowly
brought them down her sides to rest over her naked stomach. “Please,” she
whispered again.
He surveyed the scene. This innocent girl was laying underneath him with barely
any clothes on at all. She would have looked fit to be one of the girls at the
strip club had she not been crying and had she not looked so frightened.
What had he become?
Slowly, he got up off of her. He offered her his hand, willing to help her up,
as well, but she refused. She stood up on her own and wrapped her arms around
herself.
He had to get her out of there. She wasn’t safe there with him.
Remembering what he and Kyle had talked about, he grabbed her arm again, but not
as forcefully this time. She gasped when he touched her and didn’t even bother
to fight back. He pulled her with him out the door and into the brightly lit
hallway. He opened the door to Max’s and Kyle’s room, which they had left
unlocked just for certain purposed, and threw her inside.
“Stay in there.” he ordered. He reached in and pulled the door shut so that
he was on one side of the door and she was on the other. It didn’t matter what
happened to her now, because she wasn’t with him. He wasn’t a monster, and
he wasn’t going to put her through that, but it wasn’t his fault if someone
else did.
She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling
more vulnerable and naked than she ever had before. Max and Kyle were laying in
their beds talking and laughing, and they each held a glass of wine in their
hands, a sign that they had spent some more of the money that they had taken
from the innocent bystanders at the Lift-Off, and ordered room service to bring
some up.
Maria felt wrong here in this place with these people. Here she was, standing in
a tiny, dark hotel room with two men who she had just recently learned had
killed, and she was hardly wearing anything. Because Michael had tried to rape
her. He had sat down and talked to her, and, for only a minute, she thought that
he might be trying to communicate with her. She had been wrong.
“Well, well, well, look what we have here.” Kyle was the first to notice
Maria’s presence. “Did Michael throw you out.”
She didn’t feel like she could speak.
“Did you have a good time?” Max asked, taking another sip of his wine and
then setting it down on the table beside his bed. “Michael’s kinda new at
that kind of thing.”
She shuddered. They had been in on it. They had known. When Max and Kyle had
stepped out of the car to talk in the desert, they had been devising a plan. It
all made sense now. She should have known.
She wished, now, that she would have taken a chance and run down that hallway
while Michael had been fiddling with the door. At least, that way, she might
have had a chance at escape. But she had let him intimidate her with his fancy
talk and piercing eyes.
She took a quick glance at the door to the room. She wondered if she could make
it if she tried. Max and Kyle were in their beds. They wouldn’t have time to
jump up and come after her if she did get away, right? She could try for it now.
But what if something went wrong and she couldn’t get the door open or she
tripped in the hall or some stupid thing like that?
“But Max and Kyle . . .”
“They have.”
They had killed, and she knew somewhere deep down that they wouldn’t hesitate
to do it again. Or at least Max wouldn’t. She could see it in her eyes. He
wouldn’t even stop to think about it. He would do anything if it was for his
own good.
Kyle might not be so quick to act. He seemed different than Max, or at least a
little different.
She resisted the urge to take the chance.
“You look like you’ve gone through something pretty rough in there.” Max
said. He threw his covers aside and rose to his feet. Kyle did so, too, and they
began to walk slowly towards her. “Maybe we can make you feel better.”
Maria wrapped her arms tighter around herself. “No,” she whimpered.
“Oh, come on. We’re real good at it.” Kyle tried to persuade her. He
reached out and placed a rough and calloused hand on her shoulder, and
shuddered. Max’s hand soon came up to touch her other shoulder, and she tried
to back away.
“Please, don’t do this to
“We can make you forget about all your troubles.” Kyle promised.
“No!” she shouted. She jerked away from them completely only to run into the
wall behind her.
“Don’t think you’re leavin’ us.” Max hissed. His eyes seemed to glow
with an eerie yellow, and he sounded like a snake when he spoke. He moved
forward and gripped her arms with his hands, hurting her again, squeezing her
close together. She cried out in pain, but he ignored her. “You’re ours
tonight.”
Maria tried to collect herself as much as possible and took two deep breaths.
Then, with all that she could master inside of her, she screamed as loud as she
possibly could.
But Max only put an end to her screaming by bringing his lips down to cover hers
so that she could make no sounds. She squirmed under his hold and tried to pull
away, but his lips held onto hers like suction.
She felt Kyle’s hands tracing up and down her legs, eventually to her thighs.
He let his fingers linger along the thin strap and then trailed them up her
stomach and to the center in her chest where her breast were joined.
She tried to fight back as they hauled her to the bed and laid her down. She
felt her head hit something soft and realized that it was Kyle’s lap. He
placed his hands on both sides of her head to keep her from looking either
direction. “Shh,” he whispered as Max got on the bed and straddled her hips
in the same fashion Michael had done. “It’ll all be over soon.”
She saw Max lean down, and she soon felt his lips on her stomach, his tongue
circling in and out of her bellybutton. She had always thought that a guy
kissing her stomach would be romantic, and she had often fantasized about it.
But not about this. This was not what she wanted. Not from him. Not like this.
She began to weaken and give up as they touched her and kissed her. She knew she
didn’t stand a chance against two big, strong men who weighed twice as much as
her and could do anything they wanted to her wherever they wanted. There was no
point. She was only wasting her energy.
She let out one final cry for help until Kyle’s hand clamped down over her
mouth, and she had no choice but to let them do what they chose.
Michael leaned against the wall, listening
to the sounds coming from the next room. Maria made occasional sounds, though
none were of pleasure. All of them were of pain an agony, and she finally ceased
altogether. Once in a while, Kyle or Max would say something, too, not as loud,
of course, but there sounds were different. They were having a good time.
The guilt arose deep within him again. Not only had he kidnaped that girl, but
he had tried to rape her, and, when he had failed, he had tossed her over to Max
and Kyle so that they could have their ways with her, because she didn’t
matter to him anymore. She never had. She was just a stupid girl that would have
to deal with some pain in life like everyone else did. Nothing more. Nothing
less.
That wasn’t like him at all.
He didn’t like what he was turning into.
He had to do something.
Michael quickly bolted away from the wall and over the bed. He tore through the
door and came to Max’s and Kyle’s. It wasn’t locked, just the way he had
left it. He swung it open and a horrendous scene was revealed on the other side.
Maria was trapped on the bed. Kyle was in the process of unzipping his pants
from behind her, and Max was kissing his way down her thigh in the front.
Kyle’s hand was placed over her mouth so that she couldn’t scream. But he
wasn’t too late, because she was still wearing what he had left her with, and
though she already looked worn out, she was still there.
He moved forward, and his friends stopped what they were doing at once. They
looked up at him. Kyle smiled. “Wanna join the fun, Michael?” he asked.
Max only glared at him as if he sensed what was coming.
“Get away from her.” he ordered.
Kyle grunted. “Hell no.”
Michael took a quick glance at Maria. She was shaking as she sobbed, and the
sobs shook her whole body. Her eyes were closed, as if she couldn’t bare to
see anymore. “Just leave her alone.” he tried again. She opened her eyes
when she heard his voice and stared at him with a questioning expression on her
face. There was fear in her eyes, and something told him that she didn’t
particularly trust him, either.
“You already got your turn.” Max said. “Now it’s ours.” He bent down
again and placed a hard kiss on the inside of Maria’s thigh. She moaned, but
not from ecstasy, from discomfort.
“I said get off of her!” Michael shouted. He grabbed Max by his bared neck,
for his shirt had ended up on the floor by now, and lifted him up with superior
strength to meet his eyes.
“Not a chance in hell.” Max bent down again to start torturing her some
more, but Michael reached down, too, and stopped him again. He brought his face
up to look at him and then swung his fist out in the air, slamming it onto his
face with a loud thud. He flew to the ground.
“Whoa, dude!” Kyle exclaimed.
“You, too.” Michael ordered.
Kyle took one look down at Max, who now had a bloody lip and an already puffy
eye, and saw him holding his jaw. He seemed to have no problem getting away from
Maria, then. He re-zipped his pants and moved as far away from her as he could
get. “She’s yours.” he said, throwing his hands up in the air offensively.
Michael returned his attention to Maria, then, who was still laying flat on her
back on the bed. Her eyes were open now, though. “Come on.” he told her,
extending his hand.
She remained motionless, and the only thing her eyes showed was fear. Complete
and utter fear. Michael didn’t blame her. She was having to choose between two
evils. Stay with the bad boys who were trying to have a threesome with her
against her will, or go with the man who had tried to take advantage of her only
minutes before?
Slowly and reluctantly, she reached up and took her hand. He pulled her up
gently, noticing that her arms were bruised from all of the rough contact. He
guided her out of the room and away from Max and Kyle as fast as he could.
He opened the door to their room again, then, and told her to step on inside.
She seemed reluctant again, but she soon stepped in agreeably. The fire and
passion that he had once seen was gone from her, only to be replaced with sorrow
and quiet. She didn’t even fight back on anything anymore. She made no effort
to look down the hall to contemplate running away. She walked in and sat down on
the bed, but not the one that she had sat down on before. She looked so cold. He
searched the floor for her uniform, but it was dark, and he could barely see. He
felt around, though, and found it eventually, but it was torn to shreds. He had
torn it to shreds.
He found his jacket on the floor in a big heap where he had left it, and brought
it over to her. He laid it out in front of her, and she reached up and took it
hesitantly. She put it on almost at once, covering her exposed body up and
enjoying its warmth. She didn’t say a word, so he did.
“I’m not gonna hurt you.” he told her. “I promise.”
“How can you expect me to believe that?” she choked out. Her voice was
scratchy, due to all of the crying.
“I can’t.” he said. “But I want you to.”
“Well, I don’t. So why don’t you just make it easy on me and undress me
and get it over with already.” She opened the jacket up so that he would have
had free access to her if he had wanted it. A lot of guys would have wanted it,
too. Some men would kill just to have a girlfriend with such a gorgeous body.
“I’m not like Max and Kyle.” he tried to tell her.
The fire returned in her, then, blazing at full force. “Oh, you’re not,
huh?” she shrieked, rising to her feet. “You tried to rape me, too, you
know, and you were the one who threw me in with them in the first place!”
“But I was also the one who got you out.”
“That doesn’t matter!” She closed the jacket around herself again and
grunted. The fear was edged out of her eyes, replaced by anger and rage.
“You’re not a hero, so don’t try to be one.”
“I know I’m not a hero.” he acknowledged. “But I don’t wanna be like
them! They’re my friends, practically my brothers, and I love them, but I
don’t wanna be like them!”
Something softened in her eyes, but the rage was not completely wiped away.
“This wasn’t me!” he continued, trying desperately to get her to
understand. “The person that you saw tonight isn’t the person that I am!”
“Then who was it?” she asked.
“I . . .” He didn’t have an answer. “I don’t know.”
She closed her eyes and turned around so that her back was to him. “I just
don’t understand this.” she cried. “Why did you have to take me? Why
me?”
He didn’t have an answer to that one, either. “I’m so sorry.” he
apologized.
She choked back a sob and turned around to face him again. Her eyes were
shimmering with tears. “I wanna believe that.” she said. “But I
can’t.”
He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “What can I do,” he asked,
“to show you that, that isn’t who I am, to show you that I’m not really
like that.”
“You can let me go.” she said immediately, without hesitation.
He glanced at the door and then back at her. “I can’t.” he told her sadly.
“I’m sorry, I just can’t.”
She raised her eyebrows in confusion.
“Max and Kyle would kill
“Oh, I understand.” she said. “You couldn’t have possibly forgotten what
was going on in there.”
He hadn’t. He had a feeling he never would.
“I know what he’s like sometimes.” she said. “I’ve experienced it.”
He sighed. “I want to.” he said. “I wanna let you go. I really do. But I
can’t.”
“Then you’re selfish.” she concluded. “You put your own life ahead of
others’.”
“Who wouldn’t?” he spat. “Everyone looks out for themselves, Maria.
That’s just the way things are.”
She seemed surprised that he had actually said her name. To his recollection, he
hadn’t said it once, and she was probably thinking the same thing.
“I guess you’re right.” she finally gave in. The fire diminished once
again from her eyes and she sat down on the bed. “I guess I’m just stuck
here forever with all of you, then.”
“Not forever.” he told her.
“Well, how long?” she asked, curious. “I’m just wondering, you know. I
had a life back in
He didn’t bother to ask what she had been sorry for. “You don’t need to
talk about them in the past tense.” he told her. “You’ll see them
again.”
“No I won’t.” She sounded sure. “I know I won’t. You don’t have to
lie to
“I’m not lying.” he told her.
She didn’t seem to believe him, yet, and why should she? He had given her no
reason to after what he had tried to pull.
“I’m not going to sleep tonight.” she announced in an abrupt change of
conversation. “I never know what you might try to do to me in my sleep.”
“Maria . . .” He said her name again.
“Michael . . .” she mimicked. She crossed her arms in front of her chest and
sat up straight. “I guess I’ll just have to stay up all night to make sure
that you don’t try anything.”
He sighed and crossed his own arms in front of his chest in the same way she
had. “Fine.” he agreed. “Then I guess I’ll just have to stay up all
night to make sure that you don’t try to sneak out. Can’t have that. I’d
be dead.”
“Good.” she mumbled.
So they sat there like that until the early hours of dawn. They didn’t make
eye-contact. That always seemed to end up with something bad happening. So they
avoided each other’s eyes as they fought to stay awake, until they each fell
asleep just before the sun began to rise.
The sun was bright, and it came in through
the window, slanting in a certain direction that it hit her eyes exactly. That
was how Maria woke up the next morning, and she really wished that she hadn’t.
Her dreams had been beautiful, the only way she had been able to escape this
living nightmare. She had dreamt of
But when she woke up again, she wasn’t in
The shabby little room didn’t seem so bad in the daylight. It was almost
decent.
Decent was something that she was not, however. She still had Michael’s jacket
wrapped around her, and she only had her undergarments on underneath. She pulled
the jacket tighter around her body, enjoying the warmth and security that it
provided, even if it was his jacket.
Maria rubbed her eyes and ran her fingers through her hair as sleep began to
drift away from her and reality returned. She took the ponytail holder out of
her hair. Somewhere along the trip, her ponytail had fallen out.
There was a knock on the door, a loud, heavy knock that could only belong to Max
or Kyle. Most likely Max. Maria shuddered.
Slowly, Michael awoke. He rubbed his eyes sleepily, too, and took one look at
her. He opened his mouth as if he were about to say something when the person on
the other side of the door knocked again. He closed it abruptly and then stood
up on unsteady legs and made his way towards the door.
Maria sat back and quietly listened to little bits of their conversation, trying
to figure out what they were going to do to her now.
She hoped they wouldn’t kill her.
After looking through the peephole first,
just to make sure that the person on the other side of the door wasn’t a cop
or something—you could never be too cautious in situations like they were
in—Michael unlocked the door and swung it open to reveal a tired-looking Kyle
and an angry-looking Max on the other side. He had been dreading facing these
two since the incident the night before, and he didn’t know what to say.
“We’re leaving in ten minutes.” Max said, breaking the silence. He had a
black eye from Michael’s punch, and his bottom lip looked a little overly
large. “You and your bitch better be out in the car soon, or we’re leaving
without you.”
Michael sighed. “Her name’s Maria.” He hoped that she wasn’t listening
to them from inside. The last thing she would want is to be called his bitch.
“Yeah, I know.” Max said. “I heard you screamin’ it last night.”
Michael felt like reaching out and hitting his best friend again, but he chose
not to. The last thing they needed was to draw more attention to themselves.
“We didn’t do anything like that.” he tried to explain.
“Whatever.” Max seemed to have lost interest, and in seconds, he and Kyle
were both striding down the hall in silence. Michael shut the door once they had
left and leaned up against it. His eyes finally settled on Maria. She was
sitting on the second bed with the jacket wrapped so tightly around herself that
it looked like she might cut off her circulation. Her hair was down, now,
instead of in the shabby ponytail it had been in the night before.
“We’ve gotta get ready.” he told her. “Ten minutes.”
“Where are we going?” she dared to ask.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Max is usually the one who decides where to go
and why. I come up with the plans for the robberies.”
“And kidnapings.” she added quietly.
A pang of guilt hit him in the chest at her words, and he tried to ignore it.
“Better hurry.” he advised, reaching down and finding his shirt on the floor
after noticing that he was still shirtless from the night before. “They’ll
leave without us.”
“Do you really think they would do that?” she asked. “I thought you said
that they were like your family.”
“They are.” he said. “But after what happened last night, I wouldn’t
doubt it.”
She visibly stiffened at his mention of the night before and what had happened,
so he changed the subject quickly.
“Wanna shower?” he asked.
She looked at him with a mortified expression.
“No, no!” He realized that that had come out completely wrong. “Not with
me, I mean. Alone. Just you.”
She grunted. “Not with you this close to me.”
He ran his hands through his hair and shook his head at her words. “You always
have to see the dark side of things, don’t you.”
“Gee, I was just kidnaped. You think I’d be all spunky and happy right
now.”
The girl was quick with the comebacks, that was for sure, and she kept him on
his toes, waiting to see what it was that she would come up with to say next.
“It’s just that you make me sound like a horrible person.”
“That’s ‘cause you are a horrible person.”
“I may not be a knight in shining armor, but I’m not completely bad,
either!” he shouted. “Look at Max and Kyle.”
“Turning on your family?” she asked, curious.
“They’re not my family.”
“I thought you said they were like your brothers.”
He had said that. “I don’t know what they are to
“How can you have friends like that?” she wondered aloud.
“They’re all I have!” he shouted.
She seemed to back down, then, and she spoke softer and slower. “Your parents
. . .”
“Dead.” he cut her off.
“Oh.” Something in her seemed to click into place, and she dropped back even
more. “I’m sorry.” she apologized. It was the only time he could remember
her being civil around him.
“It’s not like it really matters.” he continued. “My dad’s the reason
why I’m here now, anyway.”
She was interested again. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“Never mind.” He didn’t want to get into that story with a girl he barely
knew and had tried to rape the night before. “We’ve gotta get going.
They’re waiting.”
“I don’t wanna go out there with them.” she said.
“So you’d rather stay in here with me?” he asked.
She seemed to think about it for a minute, and then replied, “I wanna go
home.”
“I know you do.” he said. “So do I. I just don’t know where home is.”
He sighed and stood up, continuing to get ready even more. It never took him
long to get ready. Whatever he looked like in the morning was usually what he
looked like when it came time for bed anyway.
“Why do you do that?” she suddenly asked.
“Do what?” he asked. He saw her coming up behind him in the mirror with his
jacket still tightly wrapped around her as he was combing his hair.
“Talk like that.”
“Like what?” He hadn’t the slightest clue what she was talking about.
“Well, you say something that just leaves me hanging, and I keep wondering
what it is that you mean. I can’t figure out what you’re trying to say
because you use such fancy word-work and big words.”
He almost laughed, but didn’t. “Why do you care what I have to say?” he
asked.
“Because you’re trying to get something across to me when you talk.” she
continued. “There’s some kind of point. Some message. I just can’t
decipher it.”
“Who’s using big words now?” he asked.
“Decipher is not a big word.” she said. “Now, palindrome, that’s a big
word.”
“Do you have any clue what a palindrome is?” he asked.
“Not really.” she admitted.
He allowed himself to smile. He felt the muscles near his mouth stretching, for
he hadn’t smiled in days, and he had begun to forget what it felt like.
“Better get ready.” he told her again.
“Well, I’m at a slight disadvantage.” she reminded him. “I don’t have
anything to wear. Someone demolished my uniform last night.”
The memory of pinning Maria down underneath himself on the bed flashed through
Michael’s mind. She was such a tiny little thing that it was hard for her to
fight back. He could have gotten anything that he had wanted.
But now, he was beginning to realize that he didn’t want what he had wanted
the night before anymore. Maria was a hard person to get to know. She didn’t
let people in to discover who she was, and even now, he hadn’t discovered who
she was, and he suspected that it would be a long time, if ever, before he
really did get to know her. But she was so feisty and opinionated and
head-strong that one couldn’t help but like that about her.
“Then we’ll have to go shopping today.” he told her. “Get you a new
outfit, get me some new clothes.”
“Really?” she seemed interested again, like the idea of shopping appealed to
her. “And do you use money to pay for the things you buy.”
“Of course not.” he replied. “We’re masters at the art of stealing.”
“So, if you guys get caught, then I’ll get caught with you.”
“Yep.” He knew where this was going. “But don’t think about trying to
get caught on purpose. Max and Kyle can escape the cops better than anyone I
know, and I’ll be outta there before you can count to two. And I’ll be
taking you with
“And why will you be taking me with you?” she asked.
He didn’t know why. There was something about her that he didn’t want to be
without. “Because you know too much about us.” he lied. “I couldn’t risk
letting that kind of information get out.”
“I wouldn’t say anything.” she promised.
“Yes, you would.” Michael reached out and opened the door to the room,
allowing Maria to go out first. “You’ve got the biggest mouth ever, DeLuca.”
“Who said you could call me DeLuca?” she asked.
“
“But I didn’t.”
“Exactly.”
She sighed. “See, there you go again. What are you trying to say?”
“I don’t know. What is there to say anyway?”
“What?”
“Words only go so far to express what you really mean.” He spoke in riddles
on purpose now, just so she could try to figure it out.
And even though he was walking behind her, Michael Guerin could see the trace of
a small smile playing on Maria DeLuca’s lips.
Her heart began to pound rapidly in her
chest as she neared the car and saw Max and Kyle again. They looked mad,
especially Max. Kyle seemed too tired to really be functioning properly. Max was
glaring at both her and Michael, though, and soon he grinned a wicked grin that
sent a chill through Maria’s bones.
“Well, well, well, look who it is.” Max greeted unpleasantly. “Aren’t
you gonna hold onto her, Guerin? She might try to run off.”
“She won’t.” He sounded so sure, and even Maria knew that she wouldn’t.
She felt safer with them than trying to run away. She knew they would chase her
or shoot at her or something like that. It seemed, now, that her best option was
just to stay put and see what happened.
Max circled around her, and she stood completely still. His hands ran up and
down her arms, and she shuddered with a sharp intake of breath. He seemed to
notice, because he began to snicker.
“It’s such a pleasure to look at her,” he commented, “but she can’t
stay. If we’re not gonna use her for sex, then she’s not good for
anything.”
“What do you mean? What are you gonna do?” Maria asked frantically.
“You’re no good to use anymore.” Max replied. “I’ve got a gun in my
pocket and I’m not afraid to use it.”
They’re going to kill me! Maria realized. She felt herself losing control on
the inside, and her feet were itching with the desire to run, but she stayed
put.
“You don’t wanna do that.” Michael soon spoke up. “We don’t kill
people. That’s not who we are.”
“Let’s review.” Max suggested. “I’ve killed people. Kyle’s killed
people. It seems as if that’s not who you are.” He reached down into his
pocket and began to feel his gun suggestively. Maria could see that outline of
it through his pants, and she closed her eyes. Soon, she would be dead. Her
mother would find out and come rushing to wherever it was that they were. Alex
and Liz would find out and come to see her as well, crying hysterically all the
while. Billy would find out and his heart would break.
“That’ll only cause more trouble.” Michael told him. “Someone will find
out that we did it, and soon the cops will be tracking us down in no time. Do
you really wanna take that risk?”
Max glared at him and avoided answering his question. “Defending her, huh? She
musta really been good to you last night.”
Maria saw Michael’s fists clenching, and she silently prayed that he would
help her. She couldn’t avoid it by herself. She wasn’t strong enough, big
enough.
“She’s only more money to spend and another mouth to feed.” Max reminded
him. “She’s only a liability.”
“Then what’s that make you?” Michael asked him.
They were silent for a long time. They each stared at each other, refusing to
back down. Kyle seemed to finally be waking up, but he chose to stay out of the
conversation. Maria wished he would jump in at her defense, but he had no reason
to.
“You know, Michael,” Max said at last, breaking the silence. “I’ve got
you all figured out. You like to pretend that you’re a good person, that
you’re a hero, but you’re not. You like to think that just because you’ve
never killed anyone, you’re a good guy. You like to believe that someday,
you’ll get married and have kids and live in a cozy little house with a
white-picket fence out front, but you won’t. You’re not a hero, Michael, and
you’ll never live a hero’s life. In fact, you’re anything but a hero.
It’s your fault that this girl’s gonna be dead in a few minutes. After all,
it was your idea to kidnap her in the first place.”
Don’t back down, Michael, please! Maria begged silently. She found it odd that
she was cheering for the man that had put the moves on her the night before, but
he seemed to be her only hope now.
“That has nothing to do with this.” he said.
“Oh, but it does.” Max said. “In fact, everything somehow manages to come
back to you. The reason we’ve got this girl now is you. The reason we’re
gonna kill her is you.”
“Shut the hell up, Max!” Michael shouted.
“Why should I?”
Michael reached out and pushed him to the ground with strength that he had
exhibited the night before in the hotel. Max hit the ground with a thud, and his
gun went flying out of his pockets. Maria turned away from the gleaming, silver
metal immediately, not being able to bring herself to look at it.
“Maybe something good could happen because of her.” Michael tried again.
“Well you won’t let us lay a hand on her, so what could she possibly do for
us?” Kyle asked joining the conversation for the first time. “Maybe Max is
right.”
Michael seemed in shock. He looked Kyle deep in the eyes and spoke to him in a
calmer voice than he had used on Max. “How can you say that?” he asked.
“Don’t you remember how torn up you were after you shot that girl?”
Kyle winced. “That was a long time ago.” he whispered.
Michael grunted in outrage. “How can you guys even think about this?” he
asked as Max was standing up. “I know I’m not a hero, but I’m not a
killer, either.”
“You will be,” Max said. “In a few minutes when I get done with her.”
“Please, don’t.” Maria begged. The words echoed in her head from when they
had all tried to rape her. “I’ll do anything you want me to. Just don’t
hurt
“You hear that?” Michael tried again. “Maybe she could help us out with
robberies and stealing and all that. She could come in real handy.”
Robberies? Stealing?
“She probably doesn’t even know how to hold a gun.” Kyle said.
“I’ll teach her.” Michael volunteered. “I’ll make her into someone
like us.”
She didn’t want to be someone like them, but if it meant her life . . .
“I’ll do it.” she piped up. “I’ll hold a gun and I’ll steal whatever
you want me to and I’ll take money from innocent people if you want me to.
Just don’t hurt me, please.”
Slowly, Max picked his gun up from the ground and pointed it directly at her.
This is the end, she thought wildly. This is where I die.
But then, he did something unexpected. He stuffed it back in his pocket and
turned to Michael. “Fine.” he agreed. “You’ve got two days to turn her
into a criminal. If she isn’t one by the time we reach
Maria didn’t doubt that.
“Fine.” Michael agreed. “Let’s get going.”
Max climbed into the driver’s seat of the van and Kyle climbed into the
passenger’s seat. Maria got in the back with Michael. She wanted to say thank
you, but the part of her that was still Maria DeLuca from
It was easy to tell that they were in
She missed her home. She missed her family and friends. She missed everything
that
But as they neared the
What a brother, Maria thought bitterly, remembering that Michael had thought of
Max and Kyle as brothers until the night before. Now, he didn’t know what to
think of them, and that was quite understandable.
She wouldn’t shed a tear if Michael was killed. He deserved it. He wasn’t a
good person. Sure, he had saved her once, okay, maybe twice, now, and he talked
with a bit of a Canadian accent, not to mention in a very complex and deep way
that she was still getting used to, but he still wasn’t a good person. He
wasn’t a hero.
But if it wasn’t for him, she would have been dead. He was risking his own
life now for her, and he didn’t even know her.
She refused to let herself think about it any more. Instead, she busied herself
by looking out her window as Michael did a lot. Kyle was again sleeping in the
front seat as Max drove. Once in awhile, Max’s eyes would drift back to meet
hers, and he would smile in that wicked way that he did that sent a chill up and
down her spine.
The mall was crowded. People could barely drive because the parking lot was
littered with people. It was harder to back up and get out because of the
worrisome thoughts that a person might be behind you. Max seemed used to it,
though, as he practically flew to the closet empty space. He had obviously been
in much bigger places than
Heather was a beautiful name, but the city was not. It was crowded and dirty and
it smelled funny.
Max stopped the car, and Kyle slowly awakened. “Wow, this place is huge!” he
exclaimed. “We’re baggin’ a lot of stuff today!”
“Take only what you need.” Max reminded him sternly.
“Oh, so, you’re a good civilian, now, are you, Max?”
“I just don’t want us to get caught.”
Michael sighed audibly. “Let’s just do this.” he said.
Max narrowed his eyes and glared at him. “If you’re so eager,” he said,
opening his door and getting out of the van, “then go ahead and teach your
whore the tricks of the trade. We’ll be inside.” He slammed the door shut
and motioned for Kyle to follow him inside. Without asking questions, Kyle did,
and Maria was left alone in the car with Michael once again.
When he only remained silent, she decided to start off for him. “So, are you
gonna teach me or not?”
Michael swallowed hard. “I don’t want to lead you into a life like mine.”
He almost sounded sincere, but Maria knew that was impossible. “Well, we
don’t really have a choice. Max sounded pretty serious about that whole
killing thing, so I’d say we better get started.”
“You don’t understand.” he protested. “Everything will change for you
after this.”
“Well, I don’t wanna die.” Her tone was impatient. “So teach me.”
He sighed. “It’s not that hard, really.” he began. “There’s lots of
different ways of doing it, but lots of them involve debugging the security
systems, and that takes time. So Kyle and Max and I came up with this way to get
what we need and get outta there fast without paying a dime.” He paused, as if
waiting for her to say something.
“Go on.” she finally urged.
“You get what you need,” he instructed, “and put it in one of these.” He
reached down onto the floor and picked up a sack. “When you walk around the
store, it looks like you’ve already paid for your stuff.”
“So, I put my stuff in there, and then what?” She was curious and intrigued,
now. It wasn’t that she wanted to do this, but if it was going to keep her
alive . . . she wanted to do it right.
“Then, when you’re all done, you start walking out of the store casually
like you’ve already paid, but you’ve gotta be with someone else.”
She was lost, now. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, stick with me or Max or Kyle at all times. There has to be two people
leaving at once for this to work.”
“Okay,” She understood. “Go on.”
“Say you and I go together.” he said for example. “I have to walk out of
the doors first, and once I’m safely on the other side, you throw your bag to
me from inside. Throw it fast, so that the alarms won’t be able to react.
Then, walk on out like nothing’s happened.”
She was full of questions. “Well, what if someone sees me?”
“If anyone sees you, it won’t be anyone important, and they won’t suspect
anything. Human beings only care about themselves, not about what’s going on
around them.”
And there was that deep speaking thing again. “Well, what if I had something
breakable in there?” she asked.
“Then you better hope that I catch it.”
She recited the entire plan to Michael again, just to make sure that she was
seeing everything accurately, and, when she felt confident about it, she and
Michael both got out of the car. IT felt weird walking around in only a jacket
with only her undergarments underneath, but the jacket was big, so it looked
like it was hiding some short shorts or something. She stuffed the bag in the
pocket of the jacket so that no one would see it as she walked in, and took a
deep breath as she opened the doors. This was it. It was now or never.
Inside, the mall was just as crowded, even more so, in fact. The lines at the
check-outs were all a mile long, and every person inside looked impatient and
wanting to get out of there as quick as possible. There were extra little
displays set up for Christmas, too, as the holiday season neared.
Christmas. With all of the activity in her life with Billy and her mother losing
her job, Maria had almost forgotten about Christmas. Christmas had always been
her favorite holiday. She loved setting the tree up and baking cookies and just
the whole spirit of the holiday.
Would she spend Christmas with her family this year? It was a question that, at
the moment, was impossible to answer. It was still weeks away. There was still a
chance . . .
“Get your head out of the clouds.” Michael ordered, breaking her thoughts.
“You can never be too careful.”
She nodded quickly and came back to the real world. They made their way through
huge throngs of people and tiny clusters, as well, down rows and rows of things
Maria had never seen in her life—and some she never wished to see again.
Michael picked up random items on the way. A new watch. A jacket. A Metallica
CD. He did it so fast that it was barely noticeable, and he stuffed them in the
bag so quickly that Maria hardly even noticed it. He had clearly been doing this
for a long time.
Her heart was pounding the whole time. It vibrated in her ears and slammed
against her chest so much that it was almost painful. Her mind was a whirl of
thoughts, and she tried to push them away, but they always threatened to return.
“Concentrate.” Michael muttered.
She took a deep breath and entered a store entitled Sunny Days. It was full of
clothes that looked like they could have been worn in the sixties. She liked the
style, and she had always wanted to wear those kind of clothes, but they had
always been so expensive. Now, though, it was all hers for the taking if she
wanted it.
The store was crowded, so she had no problem sneaking a few jeans and belts and
shirts into the bag. It was getting pretty fully now. She looked at Michael
questionably.
“Let’s get out of here.” he suggested. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her
away from one of the racks to the entrance to the store. He exited ahead of her,
raising his eyebrows. What did he want? When he eyed the bag in her hands, she
knew. It was the first test. She through it hard and fast at him, and he caught
it. The alarm never went off, so she walked right through, unnoticed.
She had done it. It was the first actual store that they had been in, and she
had done it.
“Never stay in a store too long,” he told her.
“Gee, I don’t even get a congratulations?” she shot back. “I did it, and
all you can say is, ‘Never stay in there too long,’.” She imitated his
voice as best she could.
He ignored her and slowed his pace as she struggled to keep up with him.
“There you go.” he said, pointing to a nearby store that was called Sexy
Slut. In
“That’s not funny.” she told him, eyeing the clothes—if they could be
called clothes—inside.
“It wasn’t supposed to be.”
“Then what was it supposed to be?” She kept her voice calm and level. She
didn’t want to cause a scene.
“It’s just, lots of girls like to go in there for stuff sometimes.”
“And why would I do that? It’s not like I have anyone to impress.”
He seemed to be at a loss for words, for once.
“How much do we have?” he finally asked.
“The sack’s full.” she replied.
“Tie it at the top so it doesn’t come undone.” he told her. “We’re
outta here.”
So they pushed back through the crowds at certain displays and though the lines
of people waiting at the front check-out stands. They went through doors with
security alarms easily. Michael went through. Maria through the bag to him. It
really wasn’t that hard, like he had said. In fact, it was incredibly easy. No
one stopped them, and, in no time at all, they were back out in the car. Max and
Kyle were waiting for them.
“How’d it go?” Max asked.
“It went just fine.” Michael told him. “No problems at all.”
Max raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Really? What a surprise. Didn’t think
you’d be able to do it.” He said the statement to Maria and Maria only.
“I did.” she told him.
He chuckled. “Fantastic. Now, Guerin, you just gotta teach her how to hold a
gun.”
They were silent as they drove. Max blared the radio on some hard rock station,
forcing everyone to stay awake. Maria felt so tired. She wanted to go to sleep.
She had only gotten a few hours the night before. It was obvious that Kyle and
Michael wanted to go to sleep, too, but that was impossible with the music. Max
kept mumbling something about deer up in the front, and Kyle sat there and
rummaged through their bags, looking over all that they had stolen. Michael
looked out the window, in deep thought, looking as if he wished it were a
different time of day. Maria suspected he didn’t like the daytime. He always
squinted when he looked at the sun, and sometimes he shook his head as he looked
out the window. But, at night, he seemed different, like he was at peace. He was
never at peace during the day. He was always on edge and nervous, anticipating
his next move, but, during the night, he seemed almost happy.
Night.
Last night.
She forced the thoughts to remain. Though they were painful, they reminded her
that Michael Guerin wasn’t worth wasting her time thinking about.
To Michael’s surprise, Max drove to the
nearest strip-club. It wasn’t surprising that Max would want to go to a place
like that. He was almost as bad as Kyle when it came to strippers, but Michael
had thought that they were going to keep driving to get a little farther away
from
“We’ll be in here.” Max announced, getting out of the car and shutting the
door.
“Take your time.” Kyle added as he opened the door and got out as well.
“Where are they going?” Maria asked.
“They’re gonna go screw some strippers while I teach you how to use a
gun.” he told her.
“Where are you gonna teach me?” she asked.
He shrugged. He didn’t know. How was he supposed to answer her when he
didn’t know?
Michael got out of the backseat and went around to the front of the car and got
into the driver’s seat. He adjusted the seat. It was too far forward, and he
adjusted the seatbelt, too, so that it was looser. Maria made no effort to get
up from the backseat.
They drove for a few minutes until Michael spotted what appeared to be an
abandoned warehouse towards the edge of town. They were practically out in the
middle of nowhere, so this would surely be a good place to teach Maria.
“You’re gonna teach me here?” Maria asked.
“Why not?”
She was silent, so he took advantage of her lack of words and got out of the
car. Soon, she reluctantly got out as well.
Michael went around to the back of the van and took a key out of his pocket. He
inserted it into the lock on the back of the van, and it soon clicked. He pulled
it open to reveal the storage compartment.
Maria gasped. “I had no idea you guys had so much.” she said, looking over
the items in the back. She ran her fingers over all of the jewelry that they had
stolen, and tapped the lids of cases where their stolen money was. There were
several duffle bags, too, full of personal items, like clothes and stuff.
Michael rarely used his duffle bag. He carried whatever he needed in his pockets
most of the time.
“It starts piling up after awhile.” he told her. “We have to trash some of
it.”
“Have you stolen all of this?” she asked.
“Yep.” he replied. He doubted there was one item back there that wasn’t
stolen from a store or forced from someone.
“You keep guns in here?” Maria seemed surprised. “I thought you’d be
smarter than that.”
“Where are we supposed to keep ‘em?” Michael asked in return. “We drive
slow and responsibly most of the time. Cops have never given us any trouble.”
“You have drugs in here.” Maria pointed out, eyeing a bag of marijuana
curiously. “Are they yours?”
“No.” he told her honestly. “Sometimes Kyle uses ‘em. Not very often,
though.”
Maria sighed. “I hope they kill him.”
Michael could have laughed if she hadn’t sounded so serious. The girl wasn’t
afraid to speak her mind, not even in front of someone like him. Even matters
like killing and drugs didn’t stop her.
“We should get started.” Michael suggested. He reached inside the van and
found two guns. One was his, the other was a spare. He handed one to Maria. She
flipped it around in her hands at first, and then let her hand play on the
trigger, pointing it at him slightly.
“It’s not loaded.” he told her, rummaging through the van for some
bullets. “Don’t bother trying to shoot
“I wasn’t going to.” she said. “I was just thinking about it.”
He grunted. “You couldn’t kill
“Oh, I could.”
“You could kill Max and Kyle. You couldn’t kill
“What makes you think that?”
“I saved you. Twice, now, in fact. You couldn’t kill me, now, no matter how
badly you want to.”
Reluctantly, she let her fingers fall away from the trigger to examine the rest
of the gun. “That’s not fair.” she complained.
“What?” he asked, finding the bullets stored way in the back.
Her eyes drifted down to the ground. “Sometimes it seems like you know me
better than I know myself.”
His mind spun with the possibilities of what she was trying to say. “Who’s
talking in riddles, now?” he spat. “What’s that supposed to mean.”
“Never mind.” she snapped. “Let’s just get this over with.”
He slammed the trunk shut again and glared at her. “Using a gun isn’t as
simple as stealing.” he informed her. “It’ll take more time. More
practice.”
She sighed. “Great.”
“You should probably change into something else before we start.” he advised
her, surveying her clothing, his jacket.
Maria looked herself over. “Where am I gonna change?” she inquired.
“In the car.”
“There’s no way I’m gonna change in there while you’re standing out
here!” she shrieked.
“What? You want me to come in there with you?” Michael couldn’t help but
mess with her mind.
“No! No!” she shouted. She threw her hands up in the air exasperatedly and
then finally gave in. “Fine. I’ll change in there. Just . . . don’t
look.”
Michael turned his back to the car as she got in. He could hear her rummaging
around inside, cursing when she hit her head on one of the seats. He stifled a
laugh.
At last, though, she had finished. She stepped out of the car in a new outfit,
one that they had stolen at the mall. The jeans were new and tight, clinging to
her body, held up around her hips by a shining silver belt. She had a white
V-Neck on for a shirt that rose above her belly button.
She was cute. Much cuter than that blonde stripper Michael only vaguely
remembered now.
Michael began to walk towards the warehouse. He could hear Maria trudging along
behind him. She mumbled something under her breath that he didn’t catch, for
memories had begun to invade all of his senses as, with each step, he became
closer and closer to changing the girl’s life forever.
He remembered holding his first gun. The feel of it in his hands . . . the cool
metal . . . running his hands over it . . . pressing the trigger . . .
“Here you go, Mikey,” his father had said. “I promised you a gun, didn’t
I?”
Michael had been so excited. Most boys only dreamed of having a gun, and, here
he was, barely even five, and he was holding a gun.
“Just hold it up. Point it at them. Threaten them. They’ll give you anything
if they’re afraid.” His father had given him a big list of instructions that
he already knew before they had entered the bank, but he had just wanted to make
sure that Michael’s first robbery went as planned.
He remembered pointing the gun at the people inside. He remembered the look of
terror on their faces. He remembered the guilt rising inside of him, but he also
remembered looking at his dad, and trying so hard to make him proud.
“Michael?” Maria asked. She was standing in front of him, now, and he
noticed that he had stopped walking. Her eyes were full of askance, but he
pushed past her and kept going. After a bit of hesitance, she followed.
When he entered the warehouse, a foul odor filled Michael’s nose. The place
was definitely abandoned. No one would inhabit such a place.
Maria groaned as the smell hit her, too.
“You’re fine.” he told her. “It’s not that bad.” But even he had to
admit that it was bad. God, how many things had died in there? And what the hell
were they to begin with?
They went up the stairs to find that it didn’t smell quite as bad up higher.
Michael pushed open a tiny door, and it opened up into a tiny room that would be
perfect for practice.
“In here.” he instructed, opening the door wider for her. He didn’t bother
to hold it for her. He walked on inside and surveyed his surroundings.
It reminded him of where his father had taught him how to handle a gun.
It appeared that the room had once been lived in. There was a rickety old bed in
one corner and a tiny table in the other. There were a few items strewn about. A
lamp. A clock. A few books. A picture of a horse standing by the ocean, the
waves curling at its feet, hung by a nail on the wall near the bed.
He tried the lamp, surprised to see that it did work, and told Maria to close
the door and lock it, just in case someone did, by some chance, live there.
There were no windows, so it was impossible for anyone to see in. Not that
anyone would want to.
“Well, this is cozy.” Maria said, sitting down on the bed and bouncing on it
a little, causing the springs to squeak. “The rats I see running around in the
corner don’t bother me at all.” There was a definite hint of sarcasm in her
voice that caused Michael to glance in the direction she was peering. She was
right. There were at least five rats scampering about. Michael raised his gun
and shot them down one at a time without hardly any effort.
When he was done, he turned to Maria to find that she was stiff and tense on the
bed, now, at the sound of the gun. She was trying hard to hide the fear on her
face, but she wasn’t succeeding.
“They’re just rats.” he reminded her. “They were bothering you.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t want you to kill them!” she shrieked, getting up from
the bed. “Is that what you people do? You just point your little gun at anyone
or anything that makes you upset and pull the trigger?”
“They’re rats!” he repeated.
“That doesn’t matter!” she shouted back. She got so close to him that he
could feel her breathing mingling with his own. He could feel the heat radiating
from her body traveling through him. “You just killed them and you don’t
even feel bad about it!” Her eyes began to shimmer and sparkle, making their
bright green color appear almost turquoise with tears.
“I’m sorry.” he apologized. It was the only time in his life he could ever
remember apologizing to anyone. “I had no idea you felt that way.”
“I just don’t like guns,” she said before quietly adding, “and killing
and everything that you guys do!” She choked back a tear and then turned so
that her back was to him. “I’m not gonna cry in front of you.” she
whimpered. “I won’t give you that satisfaction.”
“I don’t wanna see you cry.” he told her.
“Then why the hell did you kidnap me in the first place?” she screeched. She
never turned to meet his eyes, and Michael suspected it was because she was
crying now.
He didn’t have an answer to that question, though, so he remained silent.
“Why don’t you just kill me right now?” she continued, getting more and
more choked up by the second. “Point your gun at me and kill me, too.”
“I can’t do that.” he told her. He couldn’t bring himself to kill
someone. Some real, living person, just like he couldn’t bring himself to use
that slut for a few minutes or to rape Maria. He couldn’t let himself be that
hideous person.
“Anything’s better than living like this.”
“It’s not completely bad.” he reassured her. “You get used to it.”
“Well, I don’t wanna get used to it.” she shot back. Suddenly, she spun
around to face him, tears streaming down her cheeks now. “If you won’t kill
me,” she said, “then I will.” She reached out and snatched his gun from
his hands before he could do anything about it.
Her hands shaking violently, Maria pointed the gun at her head and placed her
finger over the trigger.
“No, no, no, don’t!” Michael reached out and grabbed her arms. “You
don’t wanna do that.” he told her. Slowly, he lowered her arms, and removed
the gun from her hand. Her tears began to fall more rapidly, and Michael
didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t good at this, this sympathy, consoling
thing. He had never had any experience with people like that.
So he reached out to her. He placed his hands on her arms, preparing to bring
her to him to embrace her, holding her so close that she might know that he was
there, and that she might learn to trust him somehow, but she backed away as
soon as his skin made contact with hers.
“Don’t touch
So he didn’t. He left her alone and watched helplessly as she sat down on the
bed and cried until her eyes were so dry that she could cry no more.
“We should probably get started.” he suggested for what seemed like the
thousandth time.
She sniffed back some tears and wiped her eyes and cheeks. “Yeah,” she
agreed in a tearful voice that didn’t sound like her at all. “After all, you
don’t wanna die.”
“Either do you.” He surprised himself with the words. He had just seen her
point a gun at her head. She had been ready to pull the trigger, and, now, he
was doubting that. “You don’t really wanna die.” he continued. “You’ve
got a life and a family and friends that you wanna see again someday. You
don’t wanna die.”
She sighed. “See, there you go again. You start saying all these things about
me that even I shouldn’t really know.”
“We’re on the road a lot.” he told her. “I get a lot of time to
think.”
“Obviously.”
He twirled both of the guns around in his hand, waiting for her to get hers.
Finally, she got up off of the bed and strode over towards him. She seized the
gun in her hands and stared at him, waiting for what to do next.
“You’ve gotta load it.” he told her.
She glanced down at the box of bullets on the ground and then back at her gun,
and finally at Michael, a questioning look on her face.
So he told her how to load it, and then watched carefully as she tried it. She
had no problem with it at all, and, at last, they were able to really get
started.
He told her how to hold it, how to point it, and how to aim it. She took a
little longer to get a hold of all of this.
“I can’t do this.” she told him. “I’ve never held a gun in my life.”
“But you don’t wanna die.” he reminded her.
She looked down at the floor. “I guess I don’t.” she gave in.
“Then you have to do this.” he told her. “You don’t have a choice.”
“I don’t seem to have a choice in anything anymore.” she snapped.
“Get used to it.” he told her. “That’s the kind of life you live now.”
The conversation quickly switched to the gun again before things became too
deep. Michael shot at the picture on the wall and hit the horse directly in the
eye. It was an easy shot for him at such a close range, but for Maria, it would
be a real challenge.
“Now just try to hit that exact same spot.” he told her.
She raised her gun and pointed it at the picture, but her aim was all wrong.
“Wait a minute.” he said. “Aim a little below. Sometimes a person jerks
their gun upwards when they shoot.”
She did as he instructed, and, when she shot, she did better. She got the
horse’s neck instead, but it was an improvement.
So they spent forever on that eye, until, finally, Maria was fed up with it. She
let out a huge, resounding scream and shot carelessly at the picture.
And she hit the horse in the eye.
“Did I do it?” she asked, more calmly now. She squinted at the picture, as
if she couldn’t tell if she was seeing things straight.
“You did.” he told her. “Everyone has their own style of shooting, DeLuca.
I guess you just like to go for it.”
“I guess.” she agreed. “Aiming and lining it up and stuff takes too
long.”
So they practiced some more on different things, until Michael felt like his
ears were going to explode with all of the shots. Maria got better at lining it
up, but it was clear that she would do better just shooting at something, not
one detail in particular.
Once they were out of bullets, they left. Michael hoped that no one actually
stayed in that room, for their were holes covering the walls now, and the lamp
and picture were shattered.
They walked down through the smelly part of the warehouse and outside, back into
the van. After putting the guns in the trunk, Michael got into the driver’s
seat. To his surprise, Maria climbed in beside him in the passenger’s seat.
“You’re not gonna sit in the back?” he asked her.
“Why? Do I have to?”
He shook his head. “No,” he replied. “No.”
He drove slowly and cautiously back to the strip club, turning the radio to a
hard rock station as they drove.
“What’s that crap?” Maria shrieked, switching the station to some pop
station before he could do anything about it.
“It’s called rock, the greatest music ever.” he told her, turning it back.
“It’s called screaming.” She switched it over again.
Michael sighed and gave in, only because he knew Maria wasn’t going to stop
until she got her way. “I forfeit.” he said.
“Good.”
He held back a smile as they continued to drive, because he knew, even if she
didn’t want to admit it, Maria DeLuca was already getting used to the kind of
life that he lived.
The bartender passed another beer to Max
over the counter and then moved on down the line to serve another customer. Max
seized the beer greedily. He chugged it like there was no tomorrow. He was so
thirsty. He had just had a little fun with another red-head. This one had kept
him going for almost an hour.
Kyle was somewhere around the place. Max looked around, and he spotted him on
one of the couches with three girls—two brunettes and a blonde—hovering
above him.
“What’s a good man like you doing here all alone?” a sweet voice asked. A
woman with platinum blonde hair suddenly appeared in front of him. She sat down
on the barstool beside him and smiled. Max smiled, too, for she was only wearing
a teddy and high-heels, and that barely covered anything.
“What’s a pretty lady like you doing with extra time on her hands?” he
asked in return, using the same line he used on every good-looking stripper.
“Maybe I’m just waiting for you.” she said, running her tongue across her
bottom lip suggestively. “Ten dollars?”
“Ten dollars it is.” Max agreed. He downed the rest of his beer and then set
the empty glass down back on the counter for the bartender to pick up. He and
the girl made their way to one of the darkened corners and had a quick one. It
wasn’t as good as Max had wished it would be. These girls down south didn’t
know as many tricks of the trade as the girls up in
This . . . this was something else entirely. This was a tired girl getting it on
with a half-drunk guy just to scrape up a few extra bucks.
Max ended it as quickly as he could and paid up like he had agreed, though he
felt that she wasn’t worth but half that.
What a disappointment that had been.
Kyle was still on the couch with the girls, obviously having a better time than
Max had had with the platinum blonde, so he decided to look around for some more
girls. Maybe he could find a worthy screw this time.
He found exactly what he was looking for. He found a tiny little blonde with
nice, long hands and full lips. He knew she would fit perfectly underneath him,
and that he would fit perfectly inside of her, but there was only one problem.
That girl was his hostage, and she was standing right next to Michael, looking
around the strip-club in horror.
Another disappointment.
Michael’s eyes traveled all over the room until he found Max. He moved forward
with Maria trailing close behind, afraid to be lost in the crowd of half-naked
and half-drunk people.
“We should probably go now.” Michael suggested. “We gotta get to a hotel
tonight.”
“Right.” Max agreed. Normally, he wouldn’t have wanted to leave, but this
was different. There were no spectacular girls here that he had seen, except for
that red-head that had taken him away for an hour. She had been pretty good, but
nothing compared to the red-head back in Santa Fe, or wherever it was that they
had been a few nights ago when he and Kyle had gotten wasted.
“Go get Kyle.” Max told his friend. To his surprise, Michael listened to him
and disappeared from Maria’s side and into the crowd, back into the dark
corners where Kyle and the three girls were.
And that left Max alone with Maria for the first time in history. She seemed
uneasy around him, and she avoided all contact with his eyes.
She was such a desirable creature, much more tempting than any of the other
girls in the club. The lights flashed around her, making her eyes shimmer with
fear.
He liked it when girls were afraid of him.
“No one would have to know if we did anything in here.” he told her, his
speech slightly slurred. “Michael won’t have to know.”
“I don’t care about Michael!” she shouted, but something in her voice told
him otherwise. He wasn’t sure what it was, exactly, but there was a tiny hint
of something that made him suspect that she didn’t completely hate Michael the
way she pretended she did.
“Good,” He disregarded the tiny trace in her voice and moved in front of her
so that she was trapped between the counter and his body. “Then you’re all
mine.”
She shifted uncomfortably. “Stop.” she told him.
“Why should I?” He let his fingers play around on the rim of her shirt,
threatening to pull it over her head.
“Because I’m learning about all of that criminal stuff.” she replied, her
voice quivering as his hands reached underneath the shirt to circle around her
bellybutton. “You might need
“Baby,” he whispered, “the only thing I need you for is some quick sex.”
He let his hand travel into more dangerous territory, sliding upwards, pushing
her shirt up with it.
“Help!” she shouted, but her voice was drowned out with the banging music.
No one paid her any attention.
“This is what I’ve been waiting for.” he murmured against her neck before
clamping his lips down on it hard to suck vigorously.
“Stop!” she shouted again, trying to push him away with one hand, hitting
him on the back with the other. “Stop!”
Suddenly, Max felt himself being ripped away from her by his shirt. “Get off
her!” a familiar voice commanded sternly.
Max spun around to see Michael. “Oh, sorry, dude.” he apologized
sarcastically. “I thought you were done with her.” He could see Michael’s
fists clenching at his sides, and wondered if it was because he was jealous or
just trying to be the hero again.
“Let’s just go.” Michael suggested. He grabbed Maria by the wrist and
hauled her out the door and back to the car. Kyle, after taking one last look at
the three lovely ladies who had been pleasuring him for quite some time,
followed after, and Max went out last, wondering why the man who he used to
consider his best friend was all of a sudden turning on him.
Maybe his feelings for that bitch of his just went farther than either one of
them knew.
The hotel that they got that night was nice.
Even nicer than the one the night before had been. Maria obediently followed the
three criminals up the stairs to the third floor where their rooms were located.
She was afraid to do otherwise. Running away was not an option anymore. In fact,
it was a scary thought, but she felt safer with Michael than she did apart from
him.
Michael. He was quite a complex individual, and she didn’t like him, but he
had rescued her from Max and Kyle while they had tried to rape her, and now he
had done the same again when Max was getting a little frisky. And she was only
alive now because he had persuaded Max that, by tomorrow night, she would be a
criminal, too.
He wasn’t a good man, that was for sure, but as long as he would protect her
and not try to put his hands on her again, she would stay with him.
Once they reached the third floor, Kyle and Max kept going up, to Maria’s
surprise. She didn’t follow them. She went along with Michael, hoping that
they wouldn’t notice.
“Hey, Maria, I thought you’d wanna spend the night with us!” Kyle joked.
Both he and Max laughed. They sounded drunk, and looked kinda out of it.
“In you dreams.” Maria shot back.
Kyle laughed, but Max didn’t. “Okay, in our dreams.” he agreed. “Michael
can have the real thing.” He bursted out laughing, though his joke, if it
could be called that, wasn’t funny at all. Kyle laughed along with him, and
they stumbled up the stairs to the fourth floor.
“Maria?” Michael called. “You comin’?”
She turned in the direction in which the voice was coming from and met
Michael’s eyes. She didn’t want to, but she couldn’t help thinking that he
might not be completely awful like Max and Kyle. True, he was a bad person, but,
maybe, just maybe . . . maybe there was some good in him, somewhere, hidden deep
down inside.
“Yeah,” she replied. She made it inside the room as fast as she could, glad
to be inside and away from Max and Kyle. Especially Max.
“Can you lock the door?” she asked Michael, once he shut it in place. He
reached over and complied.
“Thanks.” It was the only time she could remember saying that word to him.
She sat down on the bed.
He was silent. He flipped on the light and threw his things on the floor before
collapsing on the bed beside her and letting out a long sigh. She didn’t move
away.
“How good was I at using that gun?” she asked aloud. “Honestly.”
He shrugged. “You were alright.”
“Will Max go for it?”
“Probably. We can just get him drunk tomorrow again and he won’t even think
about killing either of us.”
“What about Kyle?”
Michael shook his head. “He should be okay. Kyle’s a good
“I don’t think so.” Maria mumbled quietly.
“He’s a lot like me.” Michael continued, oblivious to her statement.
“That might be why I don’t like him.” Maria couldn’t resist saying it.
Michael turned his head to the side to face her, and, slowly, a small smile
appeared on his face. “Where do you come up with all of these things to say,
DeLuca?” he asked.
She shrugged. “When you grow up like boys with I have, you learn to defend
yourself.”
“So, you’re a tomboy, huh?”
She shook her head. “No. Well, at least, I wasn’t at one time.” Memories
of the beautiful time when she had actually been someone with a real future
ahead of her began to invade all of her senses. She could still see her
reflection in the mirror. It had, at one time, been pretty. Maybe even
beautiful. She could still hear the people talking about her, not in bad ways,
though. ‘There goes Maria DeLuca,’ they would say, ‘I wish I was her.
She’s so pretty and popular. Every guy likes her.’ She could still smell the
perfume that she used to put on in the morning to make herself smell perfect,
too, and the shampoo she used to wash her hair with every night so that it
smelled of flowers the next morning. She could still feel the fabric of her
clothes, her beautiful clothes under her fingers.
“I used to be really popular.” she continued, realizing that she had been
spacing a little. “Every guy wanted to date me, and every girl wanted to be
me.” She blushed, knowing that she sounded a little conceited. “Recently,
though, my mom lost her job, so I’ve had to work one job during the day and
one at night. I haven’t had time to make myself up in the morning or care what
people really think. That’s why I started hanging out with Liz and Alex and
Billy again. I mean, they were my friends through middle school, but, then, when
I was a Freshman, I totally ditched them. Now, though, they’re the only
friends I have.”
“So, were you planning on going to college?” Michael asked, interested.
She shook her head. “Nope. Well, I mean, I was, before my mom lost her job. My
grades started to slip during my senior year, and I lost my scholarship. But,
that’s okay, I guess. Mom needs me.” She saw the look of pain and guilt
mixed on Michael’s face and reflecting in his eyes, and she knew that she had
brought up something inside of him.
“I’d bring you back to her if I could.” he admitted. “But I can’t. Max
would kill
“I’m not asking you to.” she said.
“You can’t possibly wanna stay here with us.”
“I don’t.” She didn’t know what she wanted. Looking back,
He nodded mutely. “I’ve felt like that ever since my father placed that gun
in my hand.”
Maria was surprised. Never had Michael actually revealed to her something so
deep. He was a quiet individual, and he kept to himself. “Michael . . .” She
paused, unaware of how to approach asking the question. “What was your father
like?”
Michael sighed. “Kinda like a combination of Max and Kyle and I all combined,
I guess.” he said. “He could be funny and nice sometimes, like Kyle, but
then he could be dominating and unfeeling, too, like Max. Most of the time,
he’d just lie low and not say or do much, kinda like me. I think that’s what
made him such a great criminal.”
“What about you and your mother?” Maria asked.
Michael swallowed hard at the mention of his mother. “My mom, she kinda just
got dragged along for the ride. I don’t think he ever really loved her or
cared about her. She was just there to help out.”
“Kinda like me.”
Michael sat up slowly on the bed and faced her. “No, not like you.”
She didn’t want to ask what that meant. “What about you?” she asked
instead. “Why did he drag you into it?”
Michael shrugged. “I don’t know. Wanted me to follow in his footsteps, I
guess. Looks like I have.” He laughed, but it was fake and forced.
She couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. Without even thinking, she reached up
and placed her hand on his shoulder. He seemed as surprised by the gesture as
she felt.
“I don’t hate you, Michael.” she blurted out. “Not like I hate Max,
anyway.”
He laughed again, a real laugh this time. She couldn’t suppress her own smile.
“You’re not like your dad.” she continued, getting serious again. “At
least I don’t think you are.”
He dropped his head and looked down at the bed. “I am, though.” he
protested. “I hurt people.”
She couldn’t deny that. He had hurt her. “You also help people.” she told
him. “You helped
“And look where we are now. Now I’m teaching you to be a criminal, and I’m
ruining your life.”
“I’m still alive.” she reminded him.
He sighed. “I guess.”
“Come on.” Maria had to get him out of that depressing room. She needed to
lift his spirits . . . and hers. She rose from the bed.
“What?” he asked.
“Let’s go have some fun for a change.” she said. “We both deserve
that.”
He smiled. “What do you have in mind?”
“Well, by the sound of it, there’s this party going on downstairs.”
He grunted. “Why are you being nice to me all of a sudden?” he asked.
She really didn’t know. Maybe she just needed to reach out to someone and have
someone to share things with, no matter who it was. Maybe she just needed to
feel something again, for anyone, even if it might be sympathy. “Let’s just
say,” she replied, “that I kinda feel sorry for you.”
His face softened in a way that she had never seen before. The rugged, tough
look was gone, and she saw a completely different man. A wounded, hurt, pained
man. “Come on.” she said. “Let’s go.”
Michael seemed reluctant. “I don’t know . . . Max always freaks out if
we’re tired in the morning. He wants people to help him watch for deer.”
“Max is gonna have such an awful hangover that he won’t be able to even
think about deer.”
Michael made no effort to move.
“You know I have a point.”
He sighed and nodded, and, finally, she got him to leave the room.
Michael could barely hold in his laughter
when they reached the party. People were going completely crazy, acting insane,
but no one cared. No one really knew each other, so acting stupid was fine.
“Woo!” Maria shouted. “Disco!” She sway her hips and arms a little bit
in time with the music, and Michael found that he couldn’t take his eyes off
of her.
“Let’s go dance.” she suggested excitedly. She grabbed onto his hand,
sending brief bolts of electricity up his body, and pulled him out into the
middle of the crazy dancers.
“I don’t dance.” he told her. He saw the disappointment on her face, and
he felt bad. At the moment, there was nothing more he wanted to do than to
please her.
“You don’t dance?” she shrieked over the loud music. “Michael . . .”
She trailed off and looked down at the ground.
He sighed. “Fine.” he said, glancing around at the other dancers. He
couldn’t be much worse than them, could he? Besides, the least he could do was
dance with Maria. The girl deserved to have some fun and be happy for just a
little while, didn’t she? “I’ll give it a try.”
She jumped up and down excitedly and began to squeal out of happiness, but then
began to dance again, blending in with all of the other dancers. It took Michael
awhile to get started. He couldn’t remember the last time he had danced, and
he didn’t even know if he would still remember how to do it. He lost Maria in
the crowd and went to find her, only to have her find him. She grabbed his hand,
causing him to turn around.
“If you said you’re gonna dance, then you’ve actually gotta dance.” she
reminded him. She kept moving along with the people around her, grabbing
Michael’s hands at the same time and trying to get him into it. He found that
he liked having her touch him, even if it was just his hands. So he started
getting into it a little more, and he found that it was fun. He followed Maria
around wherever she went. He didn’t want to be away from her, for some reason.
Everyone started to do the disco, then, in time with the music, and Michael
found himself starting to do it, too. Maria laughed at him. It was the first
time that he remembered her laughing since they had . . . abducted her.
Maria got into it, too, shaking her hips and everything while doing the hand
movements. They weren’t as good as everyone else, there, though. Everyone else
was older and had actually lived during the age of disco and knew what they were
doing. Michael and Maria had to guess on what to do and follow what everyone
else around them did.
“Twirl me, Michael!” she finally shouted, giving him her hand. He took a
hold of it and began to twirl her around in circles, running her into people
while he did so. She laughed again, and so did he. It was good to see her happy.
She was so much more fun to be around when she was enjoying herself.
They just started acting stupid from there on out. They didn’t care what they
looked like or what they were doing. All that mattered was that they were having
fun, because, fun wasn’t something they had much anymore.
Max pushed his jealousy down deep inside of
him as he watched Maria and Michael dance around like freaks together. He
didn’t know what had happened between them, but Maria was actually laughing
and smiling, and she wasn’t acting afraid of Michael. In fact, she voluntarily
touched him a few times, and allowed him to touch her. It wasn’t sexy
touching, or anything. Just friendly touching.
Max sighed. Maybe he had been wrong. Maybe the DeLuca girl wasn’t Michael’s
bitch.
Max tore his eyes away from them and headed back up to his room where Kyle was
waiting. He opened the door to find Kyle flipping channels on the TV. “You
find ‘em?” he asked Max without taking his eyes off of the screen.
“Yeah, I found ‘em.” Max told him. “They’re downstairs at a party.
Dancing.”
“Michael’s dancing?” Kyle chuckled. “Hard to picture.”
“Even harder to watch.” Max sat down on the edge of the bed and ran his
hands through his hair.
“What’s wrong?” Kyle asked.
Max sighed. “I hate Michael’s guts right now, you know that, right?” he
said.
Kyle nodded.
“But,” Max continued, “he’s like a brother to me. And that girl . . .
Maria . . . she makes him happy. You can tell. I mean, he was laughing and
smiling and . . .” He trailed off. “Maybe we should just keep her around.”
Kyle grinned. “I knew you’d cave, dude.”
“I didn’t cave!” Max shouted. “But, you’ve gotta admit, she’s not
that bad to look at, and maybe she could lighten the mood around here a little.
Besides, we need all the people we can to help us watch for deer.”
Kyle grunted. “Max . . .”
“I’m going to bed, Kyle.” he announced before the conversation could go
any further. He got into the covers and took off his pants and his shirt,
throwing them on the floor so that he was only in his boxers. He pulled the
blankets up around him and closed his eyes. “Don’t tell Michael about this,
okay?”
“What?” Kyle asked, shutting the TV off. “That Max Evans kinda has a bit
of a soft spot deep down inside?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Maria awoke the next morning when she heard the water running. She sat up in her
bed and stretched, forcing her eyes to open. She didn’t see Michael anywhere.
Michael. He was a criminal, true, and he had kidnaped her, but he was a good
person at heart. She had enjoyed spending time with him. It was weird, but, in
his own way, he was kinda . . . friendly.
Before she could even get out of the bed, the water stopped running and Michael
came out of the bathroom with only a towel wrapped around his waist. His hair
was wet and stuck out all over the place. “Oh, hey.” he said. He didn’t
seem to be uncomfortable standing in front of a girl that he barely knew wearing
only a towel.
“Hey.” she greeted.
“I got up a little early so I could get ready.” he explained. “Sorry if I
woke you.”
“That’s fine. I could use a good shower, too.”
He froze in place. “You mean, you’re actually gonna take a shower while
I’m this close to you.”
She was reminded of her earlier words. They sounded foreign to her now.
“Michael, I’m not saying that I trust you or anything,” she said, “but I
like hanging out with you, as long as you’re not trying to tear my clothes
off.”
He cringed at the memory.
“But,” Maria warned him, standing up and walking past him towards the
bathroom. “If you try to get in there while I’m in there, I’ll fuckin’
kill you.” She said the words with a smile, but she wasn’t joking. But she
didn’t believe that Michael was going to try anything like that, either, so
she felt comfortable.
He didn’t say anything as she walked into the bathroom and closed the door.
He could hear the water going again, now, as
he got dressed outside the door. A large part of him wished that he was inside
the door, with her. Her. Maria. Maria DeLuca. The most amazing girl he had ever
met. She was only a few feet away behind that door, and she was in the shower,
naked, with water dripping all over her body . . .
He couldn’t let this happen. He couldn’t develop feelings for her. Not
intense feelings like these. It was okay to be her friend, but anything more
than that wouldn’t be right. She was good, he was bad. She was light and he
was dark. They were complete opposites. Nothing could ever be between them but
friendship.
To his disappointment, she dressed in the bathroom. He wouldn’t have minded to
see her walk out with a towel wrapped around her
But when she did walk out, she looked amazing. She had on a blue spaghetti strap
that made her breasts look huge and rose high on her to expose a lot of her
stomach.
“So, where are we going today?” she asked.
Michael shrugged. “I don’t know. Outta
“Are we gonna steal some more today?” she asked, and she even sounded a
little excited. “I mean, I don’t like it, and all, but I could really use
some make-up.”
“Do you even wear make-up?” he asked.
“I did,” she replied. “Once.”
He understood. “I get it.” he said. “You wanna start off with a clean
slate.”
“Stealing from stores and learning how to shoot a gun is hardly a clean
slate.”
“But, it’s a new one.”
She nodded in agreement.
“So, you wanna go back to the way things were before your mom lost her job or
whatever?”
“Basically.”
He laughed. “You can’t go back now.” he informed her. He recalled the
words his father had said to him during one of their heated conversations. It
had been the last time Michael had spoken to him before he had died.
“Why do I have to do this, father?” Michael had asked. “Why can’t I be
like normal kids?”
“Michael Guerin, you must follow in my footsteps!”
“Why?”
“Shut up and don’t ask so many questions!”
Michael had cowered in the backseat, then, making himself as tiny as possible.
“I don’t wanna do this.” he had mumbled, hoping his father wouldn’t hear
him.
But his father had heard him. “You can’t go back now.”
And, then, suddenly, there was no more father. There was no more mother. The car
had skidded and Michael had blacked out. When he woke up, he had found out that
he was alone. His mother and father were . . .
“Michael?” Maria asked, waving her hand in front of his face. He snapped
back to reality. “Oh, sorry.”
“You went totally spacey.”
“Totally spacey, huh?” he echoed.
“Yeah.”
“Sorry.” he repeated. He shoved the memory out of his mind and continued to
get ready, shaving the start of a beard off of his chin. Maria sat around and
waited for him, talking most of the time. “That was sure fun last night,
don’t you think?”
“Yeah.” he agreed. Fun was an understatement. That was the most fun he had
had in years.
“I bet we looked like dorks.”
“We?” Michael ran a towel over his chin and the sides of his face to dry
off. “I don’t know about both of us. You might have, but I looked
awesome.”
She laughed. “Just keep tellin’ yourself that, Guerin.”
When he was done getting ready, Michael tossed his stuff and Maria’s few items
in his bag. He opened the door and allowed Maria out. She brushed his arm on the
way, and he felt his body ignite in fire.
“So, what are we doin’ today?” she asked as they made their way down the
hall and out into the lobby.
“I don’t know.” Michael replied. “We can hit another store, for your
sake.”
She turned back to him and smiled. “Oh, you’re so sweet.”
He smiled back. He couldn’t remember ever feeling this comfortable around a
stranger, let alone a girl, a girl who just happened to be beautiful and smart
and, in her own, unique way, funny.
“Then you’ll have to do some physical training.”
She stopped dead in her tracks. “What?”
He kept walking. “Physical training. It’s not that bad, really. If you ever
trip the alarm in a store, you’re gonna be glad you went through it.”
She sighed. “Then what?”
He shrugged. “Why does everything have to be planned out? Be spontaneous,
DeLuca.”
“I like to know what I’m doing before I actually do it.” she told him.
“I like to have a plan in mind.”
“So, you like to walk a path that’s already planned for you, is that it? You
don’t like to make your own decisions.”
“I do make my own decisions.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
He didn’t believe that. From what he had heard from her about her life, she
did what people told her to do, not saying much about it, not complaining, but
not jumping for joy, either. It seemed like she didn’t believe that her
opinion counted for anything and didn’t voice it much, figuring that it would
be forgotten in time, anyway. But, my, the girl did have an opinion, and she
certainly knew how to voice it. She just had to be given the chance.
When they saw the van come into view, they also saw Kyle and Max. Something
seemed different about Max. His features had softened quite a deal, and he
appeared calmer than he had been for the past few days.
“Let’s get going.” Max suggested without any harsh remarks towards either
Michael or Maria. He got into the driver’s seat and Kyle got into the
passenger’s seat. Michael and Maria both stood there, wondering what was with
him. It was obvious that he had changed over the night. Maybe he was just
feeling the effects of the alcohol and wasn’t awake enough or feeling well
enough to make any quick remarks. Max immediately blared the radio before they
were all even in the car.
Maria got in the backseat with Michael, and he noticed that she got as close to
him as she could. “What are you doing?” he asked her as she was pressing her
body up against his.
“Staying as far away from Max as possible.” she replied. The music disguised
the sound of her voice so that Max and Kyle weren’t able to hear her. Michael
didn’t say anything more, because he didn’t really mind Maria being that
close to him. It had been a long time since he and his friends had even
associated with a girl for more than a few pleasurable moments at a strip-club.
Kyle sang along with Cold as their song No One played on the radio, and Michael
had to hold in his laughter. Kyle’s singing was . . . well, in Michael’s
opinion, he’d never be the next Barry Manilow.
“Shut the fuck up and help me watch for deer.” Max snapped.
Kyle obediently closed his mouth and looked out the passenger window for Max’s
sake, but he kept bobbing his head in time with one of his favorite songs ever.
They were out of
Michael had to agree that it did sound like Max’s kind of place. In fact, it
sounded like Kyle’s kind of place, too. Michael wasn’t too excited about the
strip-clubs, himself, but the stores would sure be fun to hit.
They drove for about an hour along a busy high way, and then Max took an exit.
“Where you goin’, Max?” Michael asked, leaning forward to peer out the
front window.
Max sighed and pulled the car to a halt. He unbuckled his seatbelt and got out,
motioning for Michael to follow him. Michael looked to Maria to make sure that
she was okay about staying in a car with Kyle alone, and she didn’t seem to
think anything of it. He suspected she didn’t really hate him, she just
didn’t trust him . . . yet.
Michael opened his door and climbed out and joined Max, who was standing a few
feet ahead of the car with his hands in his pockets, his head tilted towards the
ground as the wind messed up his hair.
“Michael,” he started. “I really didn’t wanna tell you all this shit,
but I figured I better. Ya know, maybe it’ll help things between us.”
Michael didn’t understand. “What exactly are you trying to tell me?” he
asked.
Max sighed again and brought his eyes up to meet Michael’s. “I’m . . .
I’m sorry.” he stuttered.
Michael didn’t know what to say, because he wasn’t sure what Max was
apologizing for. They had had so many disagreements and arguments lately that it
was hard to tell.
“I’m sorry for fighting with you,” Max explained after Michael’s long
silence. “I’m sorry for thinking Maria was your bitch, and I’m sorry for
trying to hurt her.” He took a deep breath after he was finished and looked
back down at the ground as if he were ashamed of what he had just said. It must
have been hard, because Max wasn’t one to apologize to anyone when he didn’t
think it was necessary.
“I’m sorry, too.” Michael told him. “I haven’t been a good friend.”
“Yeah,” Max replied, surprising Michael. “Guess you’ve just been
spending too much time being a great brother.”
Whoa. That was something he hadn’t expected.
“Where’s all this coming from?” he had to ask.
Max shrugged. “Don’t know, really.” he answered. “I guess, when I saw
you dancing with Maria last night . . .”
“Wait, you saw us dancing?” Michael asked, embarrassed. They had been acting
like fools out there at that party the night before.
Max nodded. “Yep. You looked pretty funny, too.” he chuckled. “But, yeah,
I saw you, and I just realized that I should back off of Maria, you know? If you
want her, you should have her.”
Michael shook his head. “I don’t want her.” he lied.
Max smirked. “Just keep tellin’ yourself that, bro.”
Michael knew Max was right. He did want Maria, but what he didn’t know was,
how, exactly, he wanted her. He didn’t know if he wanted her the way Max and
Kyle wanted every girl that they saw in a strip-club, just for a quick fuck or
something, or if he wanted her as something more.
Michael smiled, and Max smiled back. They gave each other a manly hug, and then
headed back towards the car. Michael couldn’t wait to tell Maria that Max
wasn’t such a bad guy after all.
At about lunch time, Max stopped at
Minnie’s Café to eat. He got out of the car and Kyle followed immediately.
Michael lagged behind a little, and Maria decided to stay with him, though she
and Kyle actually had talked a little bit in the car while Max and Michael had
been outside talking. Kyle had even apologized for his actions and said that he
would really like to get to know Maria . . . as a friend, nothing more. Maria
had thought that she would need time to think about it, about trusting Kyle,
maybe even thinking of him as a friend, but she didn’t, and that was scary,
because she was supposed to hate Kyle and Max. Hell, she was even supposed to
hate Michael. He was the one who had kidnaped her, after all. Yet, she
couldn’t let herself hate him. He had saved her life once and saved her from
being raped twice. She couldn’t just ignore him. She owed him this much.
“Michael, what did you and Max talk about back there?” Maria couldn’t help
but ask.
Michael shrugged. “Nothing much. He just wanted to apologize.”
Maria smiled. “Yes, he’s sort of lacking, though, in the apology apartment,
don’t you think.”
Michael sighed. “Maria . . .”
“All I’m saying,” She tried to defend herself. “Is that I don’t
exactly see the guy making hallmark cards any day soon.”
Michael smiled. “Hallmark cards?”
She nodded and laughed. “Seriously, what would he say. Sorry I tried to rape
you. Will you let me put my hand down your shirt now?”
Michael laughed. “Nah, I don’t think so.”
Maria was surprised. “Michael, this is Max.”
“Well, he did apologize.” Michael reminded her, holding the door to
Minnie’s open for her.
“What, for trying to rape me?” Maria found it hard to believe.
“Well, he just promised not to do it again.”
Maria couldn’t forgive Max that easily. Kyle was different than Max. Michael
was different than Max. She could tell that much about those two, but Max . . .
she wasn’t so sure about him.
“I don’t trust him, though, Michael.” she admitted, shaking her head. “I
don’t know if I’ll ever be able to trust him.”
They stopped right behind an elderly couple and waited as they ordered. For a
few seconds, they were both silent. Then, Maria notice Michael staring at her.
She tried not to look at him back.
“Do you trust me?” he finally asked.
She was so surprised by the question that she didn’t respond right away. Did
she trust him? It was a simple question, or at least it should have been, but
this was different. Did she trust him, her kidnapper? The man who had taken her
away from her life and her family and the few friends she did have? Did she
trust him?
“That’s fine. You don’t have to answer.” Michael said, taking his eyes
off of her and shifting them to look at the menu in front of him. “I know you
trust
“How would you know?” she shot back.
“Cuz you danced with me last night.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Well, you let me hold a gun while within ten feet of you. You have to trust
me a little.”
“It’s not like I really had a choice, Michael.” she reminded him.
“Let’s see, who’s a big strong burly man who could kill me with one tiny
click?”
Michael grinned. “Yeah, I am big and strong, aren’t I?”
She slapped his shoulder. “You’re missing the point. I wasn’t gonna get in
your way while you had a gun. You could have killed me if you wanted to.”
“I wouldn’t have killed you, Maria.” he told her. “I told you myself
that I’ve never killed anyone. You had to trust me a little bit to be in that
room with me while I was shooting rats.”
She gave him a confused look. “Okay, I’m losing track of this
conversation.”
He laughed and stepped up to the counter as the elderly couple backed away and
ordered.
After having a quick lunch, the group left Minnie’s and got back into the van.
Kyle decided it was his turn to drive now and got into the driver’s seat while
Max got into the passenger seat. Michael and Maria got into the back again.
They drove a little farther on a deserted highway on their way to
Maria glanced back behind the van and saw a cop car. This should be interesting
. . .
“Shit, Kyle!” Max shouted. “I told you not to fuckin’ speed!”
Maria could see Michael fidgeting nervously beside her as Kyle reluctantly
pulled over. “What’s the big deal?” she asked. “If I don’t tell them
you guys kidnaped me, you should be okay, right?”
Michael shook his head. “Not really, DeLuca.” he told her. “If they see
we’ve got guns and drugs in this car . . .”
“Drugs?” Maria shrieked cutting him off.
“We sell ‘em if we ever need some extra money.” Kyle explained.
Maria didn’t like this one bit.
“If they find out what we’ve got in here, we’re goin’ to jail.”
Michael told her. “And you’ll be goin’, too.”
Maria let it sink in for a few seconds. Jail? Her? She was a good girl, for the
most part. Jail was a word she was never supposed to know. She couldn’t go to
jail. She couldn’t. It’d be on her record forever. She’d never get a job.
She and her mom would be exiled to the streets . . . if she ever even made it
home again.
“Everyone just stay calm.” Max said as the cop got out and casually made his
way to the car.
Maria knew that wasn’t going to work. She’d seen the show COPS. They always
searched cars. They’d find those drugs and those guns. But, then again, maybe
that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. She’d be sent home, even if she did have
to stay in jail for awhile. She’d be free of kidnapers. She’d see her mom
again, and Liz, and Alex, and even Billy.
She glanced at Michael quickly, who seemed to be preparing for the end. She
thought of what he had done for her. Sure, he had kidnaped her, but he had saved
her from being raped, and he had saved her life . . .
Acting quickly and irrationally, she told Michael to give her his T-Shirt.
“Why?” he asked, though he was slipping it over his head as he spoke.
“Just do it!” she barked. She threw the baggy T-Shirt on as soon as he threw
it off and prayed to God that all of the junk that they had in the back of the
van would conceal what she was doing.
She grabbed the pillow next to her and stuffed it underneath the baggy T-Shirt.
She told Max to hand her his water bottle and he did. She wet the sides of her
hair down a little bit so that it looked like she was sweating. She finished
just before the cop reached the car and began to scream.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Michael asked.
“Having your baby.”
Michael understood what Maria was just about
the moment the cop placed his hands on the hood of the car and peered inside.
Michael followed Maria’s lead and slipped his arm around her as she screamed
and sweat—er, water—ran down her head. He had to control the urge not to
laugh, and he could see that Kyle and Max were doing the same.
Maria lets out another piercing scream and he brought his hand up to run over
the pillow concealed by the big T-Shirt, pretending like it was their . . .
baby. He forced himself to remain serious.
“Oh, I had no idea . . .” the cop trailed off as he looked at Maria.
“That’s right, you had no idea!” Michael shouted. He pulled Maria closer
to him, noticing that she smelled like strawberries for a tiny instant, and
whispered in her ear. “Everything’s gonna be okay, baby.” he said softly,
his voice shaking as he said the words because he was so close to laughing out
loud.
“We’ve gotta get moving!” Kyle shouted, playing into the lie as well.
“Right, right,” the cop agreed. “I’m sorry. Do you want me to lead you
to the hospital?”
“No, we know the way.” Max lied smoothly.
The cop hurriedly nodded, wished them the best of luck and got back into his
car.
Maria let out one more scream just for effect as the cop drove on past them, and
Michael let out the laughter that he had been holding in. Max and Kyle laughed,
too, and, soon, Maria’s scream turned into a laugh.
“Oh, my God, did you see his face?” she asked mainly to Michael and Kyle.
Michael felt so good. Laughing felt good. It was something that he had forgotten
about a lot over the past couple of years. “What made you do that?” he
asked. He meant is a joke, in a way, asking her why she would pretend that she
was pregnant with his baby and on the way to the hospital when she could have
told the cop everything, but he soon realized the depth of it all. She could
have told the cop something. She could have told them that they had kidnaped her
and tried to rape her and were now forcing her to become a criminal on the run
like they were. She could have, but she didn’t.
“I . . .” She hesitated. “I don’t know.” Her eyes met Michael’s and
he saw in them such confusion and emotional turmoil.
“We should get moving.” Max said. “I wanna get to
Maria took the pillow out from under her shirt as Kyle started driving again and
threw it to the floor. Michael watched as she slipped his T-shirt over her head,
causing her spaghetti-strap underneath to rise up a little on her stomach
revealing a patch of creamy white skin.
“Here’s your shirt.” she told him, tossing it to him. He caught it without
a word and slipped it over his head. He didn’t know what to say to her. Thanks
for saving my ass after I ruined your life?
What did he do to deserve this? He had kidnaped her and tried to rape her. He
wasn’t a good guy, but she was a good girl. Why would she help him? It
didn’t make any sense.
Kyle turned on the radio so that rock blasted throughout the van and so that
there was no room for words to be spoken. Michael sat in silence and looked out
the window at the world flying by him. He was so tired. Though his plan had been
to get a good night’s sleep last night, he and Maria had stayed up late
dancing at that crazy party to some disco shit, and a good night’s sleep
turned into a few restless hours thinking about . . . her.
He glanced at Maria now and then just to see how she was doing. She was avoiding
any sort of eye contact with any of them in the van and cringing as the rock
group on the radio began to scream.
Michael smiled, but his smile faded when he noticed how confused she still
looked.
Finally, a few hours later, Kyle announced that he was feeling tired and that
someone else should take over.
“I will.” Max volunteered, jumping out of the car. Of course. Max always had
to drive. He always had to watch for deer and make sure that they weren’t
going too fast. Typical Max. Always worrying, always wanting to be in control.
But was there even such a thing as control in the life that they lived?
The moon was out again by the time they made
it to
She had spent a long time thinking about who she was, or rather who she had
become. She wasn’t a bad person. Just because she had helped three criminals,
all of which who had tried to rape her at one time, get away from the cops and
continue on their journey with her in the backseat didn’t mean that she was a
bad person.
She was a screwed up person, that’s what she was. Her mind worked in weird
ways. She would revolve her entire life along one issue until she got it out of
her system if she had to, and that was what was pathetic about her.
“Maria, you comin’?” Michael asked her as he held the door to the hotel
building.
Maria gave him a confused look as she snapped out of her thoughts and was
brought back to the real world. “What?” she asked. She wasn’t sure,
exactly, what it was that he had said.
“You comin’ inside?” he asked again. “We’re getting some hotel rooms
for the night.”
“Oh, yeah.” Maria walked inside as Michael held the door open for her and
watched as Max booked two rooms and paid with a stolen credit card. There was
something about him that still frightened her. How was she supposed to trust
him? Michael had told her that Max apologized, but that wasn’t enough.
All at once, a horrible memory rocked Maria’s mind. She saw herself underneath
Max. She saw him struggling to unclothe her . . .
Maria staggered backwards as the memory threatened to engulf her completely, and
she thought she would hit the floor, but a pair of warm hands held her up.
Michael.
“You okay?” he asked. He sounded genuinely concerned.
Maria closed her eyes and forced the memory away. “Yeah,” she whispered,
struggling to stand up again. She wrapped her arms around herself and took a
step closer to Michael. She didn’t know why, but she felt comfortable around
him, maybe even safe. It was crazy to think like that. She was slowly going
crazy. She was sure of it, because, the girl that she used to be never would
have thought such thoughts.
She remembered the girl that she had been only days before clearly. She
remembered her appearance. Shabby ponytail, sleepy eyes, Lift-Off gas station
uniform of Crashdown uniform, whichever was called for. Now, she felt different.
She felt pretty again. It was a weird thing to feel while you were out on the
open, dusty road with three guys you barely knew having not taken a shower for
days. Her hair was out of that ponytail and hung loose on her shoulders. Her
eyes were still sleepy, but, whenever she caught sight of herself in the
rearview mirror, she saw something else in her eyes, something that looked like
strength. And her clothes . . . Stealing was wrong, and it wasn’t something
she’d recommend to any kids trying to get their mom to buy them a candy bar at
the grocery store, but she had gotten some awesome clothes at the
She had to be pretty in some way, didn’t she? Max and Kyle seemed to think
that she was pretty. Even Michael must have thought that she was pretty, because
he had tried to . . .
She pushed the thought away. She didn’t want to think of him in that light.
She was really starting to see him, the real him, and, the real him, she enjoyed
being around.
Max got two rooms again and spoke directly to Maria as he said, “I guess since
you helped us out today, you should get to choose who you wanna room with.”
It wasn’t an apology, but Maria had to admit that it was something Max had
never said to her before, and said in a way that she never imagined he was
capable of saying it.
“I’ll room with Michael.” she offered. If she was going to share with any
of them, it was going to be the guy she had danced with and had a fun time with.
“Great.” Max handed her the room key and started to walk up the stairs.
Michael followed, and Maria followed behind him with the key in her hand,
completely ignoring the fact that there was a door only feet away behind her
that she could have run out of any second she wanted to.
Max and Kyle’s room was on the first floor, but Michael and Maria had to walk
upstairs to the second floor. On their way up, Max stopped Maria as Michael
continued to walk forward. He grabbed her arm hard and she gasped, thinking that
he was going to yank her into his room so that he and Kyle could have their way
with her, thinking that the whole “apology” thing with Michael had just been
an act, thinking that they would lock the door so that Michael wouldn’t be
able to help her this time.
But he didn’t. When he heard her gasp, he loosened his grip and let his hand
fall away completely. “I just wanted to tell you thanks.” he told her
quietly as Kyle disappeared into the room.
“For what?” she asked.
“For helping us out back there on the highway. It was pretty funny, too.”
She forced a smile. “Yeah.”
“And, um . . .” He lowered his head to look at the ground as he spoke. “I
just wanted for us to maybe start out on a clean slate, you know? Forget all
that’s happened?”
Maria shook her head. “I don’t know if I can.”
He sighed. “Well, try.” With that, he disappeared into the room as well,
leaving a very confused Maria to walk up the stairs to her room alone.
She hated Max Evans. It was impossible for her to forgive him. Wasn’t it?
She spotted Michael leaning up against one of the doors looking off into space,
thinking. She stopped dead in her tracks and studied his profile for a minute.
He sure looked like a criminal. That shaggy and spiky hair and that rough and
tough exterior . . . She was surprised the cops hadn’t arrested him already
just because of his appearance.
Michael was not the kind of guy Maria associated with. She had guy friends, of
course, like Alex and Billy, but not like Michael. Her guy friends were
interested in music and playing the guitar and all that stuff, not robbing banks
stealing from malls and taking innocent girls hostage and trying to rape them.
Maria shook the thoughts from her head and joined Michael by the door. She
fumbled with the lock and found her face turning red.
“Need some help?” he asked jokingly.
“I’ve got it.” she snapped back.
“I don’t think you do.” Michael said. “See, to get the door unlocked,
you can’t put the key in upside down.”
She stopped trying with the door and glared at him. “If you’re so smart,
then you try.” she said, backing away.
Michael raised his eyebrows at her, then turned his attention to the door. He
took the key out, turned it around, stuck it in again, turned the knob, and
opened the door almost effortlessly. He threw the key back to her and stepped
inside, his pride practically gleaming on him.
“I just loosened it up for you.” Maria told herself more than him as she
stepped inside. “You only got it open because of . . .” She stopped in
mid-sentence when she noticed that the room only had one bed.
Michael saw the look on Maria’s face when
she entered the room. He couldn’t keep the guilt from rising up inside of him
again, because he knew that he alone was the reason she was here. She didn’t
trust him yet. Not completely anyway. She had no reason to. She sure as hell
wasn’t going to want to sleep in the same bed as him.
He’d ruined her life.
There was a big part of him that wanted to restore her life to the way that it
had been before, but he couldn’t do that, for several reasons. First of all,
he could never set foot in
“I guess I’ll be sleeping on the floor tonight.” he said, breaking the
silences and ending his thoughts. She didn’t have to say it herself. He knew
what she was thinking.
She nodded quickly. “Yeah. Yeah, you will.”
“Because, there wouldn’t be a chance in hell that I could share this bed
with you if I promised not to lay a hand on you, right?” He didn’t speak it
as a statement, but as a question, because he was still wondering, clinging to
the thought that, maybe, just maybe, he might get a decent night’s sleep for
the first time in a long time.
It still was weird sleeping during the night. Usually he awaked when the moon
rose, but, now, because he was Max’s friend, because he would do a lot for his
friends, he was sleeping just like any other normal person.
“Just give it up, Guerin.” she told him. “You’re on the floor
tonight.”
He didn’t tell her how that statement could have been interpreted.
Maria closed the door and made herself comfortable on the bed, kicking off her
shoes and socks and then falling backwards to lie on her back with her eyes
closed and her arms sprawled above her head. “This is good.” she murmured.
He didn’t bother telling her how that one could be interpreted, either.
Michael sat down on the floor and took his shoes and socks off, too. He threw
his jacket down beside him and asked Maria for a pillow, hoping that she could
at least spare him that much.
Within seconds, she had thrown the pillow down right on top of his face.
“Hey!” he shouted jokingly. “What’re you tryin’ to do? Smother me?”
She laughed, a real laugh. “Oh, yeah, that’s exactly what I’m trying to
do.”
“You never know with girls.”
She laughed again. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He sighed and positioned the pillow under his head. “It means that girls tend
to say one thing and mean something completely different, or do one thing and
start hinting at doing another.” He laid his head down and closed his eyes.
Maria was silent for a minute, and Michael thought that he might be able to fall
asleep on the spot, but then she spoke.
“So, you think you know how girls think?” she asked curiously.
“Yep.” A one word answer. Classic.
She grunted. “Okay, Dr. Guerin, if you’re such an expert, then why don’t
you tell me what I’m thinking right now?”
He opened his eyes and propped himself up on his elbow to try to get a better
look at her. She was still lying on the bed the way she had been before. Her
body language gave no hints as to what she was thinking.
“I didn’t say I knew what girls were thinking, I said I knew how they
think.” he tried to argue his way out of it, but she wouldn’t let him.
“You’re avoiding answering.” she said simply. “You don’t know, do
you?”
He sighed reluctantly. “Nah, I guess I don’t.”
She shifted around a bit above him—ooh, that could have been interpreted in
the wrong way, too!—and she, too, propped herself up on her elbow to look at
him directly. “Fine.” she said. “I’ll tell you what I was thinking. I
was thinking that you definitely need to shave tomorrow morning because you’ve
got this funky mustache starting to form.”
He ran his finger above his top lip self-consciously and felt the tiny, rough
hairs scratch at his hands. “Is it really that bad?” he asked her.
She giggled. “Well, it’s not hideous, but you don’t want it to get
worse.”
He smiled. “Okay, thanks for telling me.”
She smiled down at him revealing a set of perfectly white, perfectly sparkling
teeth. For someone who wasn’t a fairy princess at all, she sure had the
Cinderella look down.
“Why are you staring at me?” she asked, suddenly causing him to realize that
he had been gazing at her for a few seconds without saying anything. He tried to
cover it up quickly. The last thing she needed to know was that her abductor
thought she was hot.
“I’m just thinkin’.” he replied, letting his head fall back down on his
pillow again.
“About what?” she asked.
He resisted the urge to look up at her again. He knew she would look radiant.
The moonlight would be shining through the thin veil of curtains covering the
window directly on her, making her appear almost luminescent, like she was
shimmering, shining, glowing. Her eyes would sparkle like he had never seen them
sparkle before.
“Just about how this is gonna be a very, very long night, you know?” he
lied. “I mean, doubt I’ll get any sleep down here on this hard, wooden floor
with one tiny pillow and not even a single blanket.”
Oh, yeah. Way to make her feel sorry for you, Guerin, he thought to himself.
She was silent for a long time again as if she were debating what to say or what
to do, and Michael realized, in that single moment of silence, that he was not
Dr. Guerin. He didn’t have a clue as to what Maria was thinking or what she
was planning on doing. Whether she was going to offer him a half of the bed or
reach down with that pillow and actually try smothering him this time, he did
not know. Dr. Guerin. Not in this lifetime.
“Michael?” Maria finally said quietly, her voice echoing off of the room’s
plain, white walls.
“Yeah?”
She hesitated, and he wondered if she would continue.
“I guess . . . I guess I could make room for you. Just promise me you won’t
try anything.”
“I promise.” he told her honestly, grabbing his pillow and moving from the
floor to the bed in one swift and quick movement. Maria moved over to the other
side of the bed, but not as far away as he had expected her to. Maybe she really
didn’t hate him that much.
Michael grabbed the blankets and pulled them up around his body, and Maria did
the same. There was a bit of awkwardness as Maria tried to decide which way to
lay. Every position they tried—God, that sounded wrong, too, didn’t
it?—didn’t work out for some reason or another.
“I can’t lay like this.” Maria complained. “My arm’s all twisted.”
“Yeah,” Michael agreed. “They need to make these fucked up beds bigger.”
Maria laughed and agreed.
They must have spent at least five minutes trying to get situated. Sometimes
they started laughing too at stupid things, like when Maria said. “Eww! I
don’t like anyone else’s leg touching my leg when I’m sleeping.”
So DeLuca must still be a virgin. Imagine that. The girl sure had . . . hmm . .
. what was the word Max liked to use? Potential?
Finally, Maria decided to lay on her side with her back to Michael, and he
decided to do the same to her. Then there was this whole quarrel about the
covers and who was taking more than their fair share, but, soon, the covers were
forgotten, and they both fell asleep.
The next morning was different than the
previous ones had been. Maria awoke feeling more energized than she had in a
long time. For a few seconds, she thought that she was back home in her bed,
thinking that she would have to get around and get ready for work at the
Lift-Off, but when she reached over and felt something . . . someone . . .
beside her, she remembered that she wasn’t in her bed, that she wasn’t going
to be heading to the Lift-Off any day soon, and that she was nowhere near
Roswell, New Mexico.
When she first noticed that Michael Guerin was lying in the bed next to her, her
first thought was to scream at the top of her lungs and flip out like a maniac.
Maybe even run down the hall and tell someone that there was a man sleeping in
her bed with her when he shouldn’t have been, but she didn’t, because she
remembered something else, too.
She remembered that, over the past three days, she and Michael had formed a
unique kind of relationship. Friends didn’t seem quite like the right word to
describe it, because they were nothing alike. They had nothing in common, and he
was a criminal. A freakin’ criminal! She wasn’t friends with people like
that.
So, if they weren’t friends, then what were they? Not lovers, that was for
sure. No way. Never. But, if they weren’t friends and they weren’t lovers,
then what was there left to be. The only thing Maria could think of was enemies.
But Michael wasn’t her enemy, and she truly hoped that she wasn’t his.
He began to stir beside her, so she got up quickly and headed into the bathroom.
Liz had told her this story awhile back about this time when she and Kyle had
stayed a hotel room and she had woken up beside him. Everything had seemed great
until she smelled his morning-breath. Maria had laughed out loud as Liz had told
her about it, but Liz had thought it was serious.
Those were the good old days . . .
. . . or were they?
The thought shoved it’s way into Maria’s head uninvitedly, and she was so
surprised by it that she scared herself. She really scared herself, because she
didn’t want to think like that. She didn’t want to think that she was
actually starting to like these guys. Even Max. And that she was starting to
like the whole aspect of stealing from stores and pointing guns at people. She
didn’t like to believe that maybe getting abducted from that gas station on
that one fateful day had been a good thing.
Maria ran her fingers through her hair and walked into the bathroom as Michael
began to wake up. Was she going crazy? Was this all some big play that she was
being forced to play a dominate role in without wanting to?
Was she still the person she had been in
Maria closed the door to the bathroom and took a deep breath as she studied her
reflection in the mirror. She saw a sparkle in her eyes that she had never seen
before. Something new was building inside of her, taking her over, changing her.
Something cruel and sinister. Something that her mother would scold her about if
she only knew.
She could still remember the feel of the gun in her hands as Michael had taught
her to use it.
“ . . . just pull the trigger whenever you’re ready . . .”
True, it was a heavy thing in some ways, but it fit and felt right in ways that
nothing had ever felt right in her life before. A gun. A very wrong weapon felt
completely natural and right in her hands.
“ . . . just don’t aim it at me . . .”
She had the chance to kill him if she really had wanted to. Michael Guerin had
been standing in front of her while she had been holding a loaded gun. If she
had wanted to, she could have shot him in the name of self-defense. She could
have gone home.
Maybe she just hadn’t wanted to.
“ . . . you’re a natural, DeLuca . . .”
A natural. She was a natural, or at least that’s what Michael said. She had
never shot a gun before, and she had never really planned on it, but she had.
She had practiced shooting a gun up in some abandoned piece of shit out in the
middle of nowhere, and she had liked it.
She had liked it.
“What’s happening to me?” she asked herself quietly, touching her cheek.
“Maria!”
She jumped when she heard Michael shouting and pounding on the door.
“Um . . . yeah?”
“I gotta use the can. Get outta there.”
Maria opened the door to reveal a sleepy looking Michael on the other side.
“The can?” she echoed. “God, no wonder you’re all bachelors.” She
brushed past him on her way out and gave him his privacy.
While Michael used “the can” and took a shower, Maria got dressed in one of
her new outfits. One of her stolen outfits.
She paraded herself around the room pretending to be a super model on the runway
exhibiting herself and her body for everyone to see. The outfit did look good.
The black skirt kept threatening to rise higher and higher on her legs, and the
red V-neck sleeveless shirt threatened to fall lower and lower down her chest.
Michael opened the door as she was strutting around, and she jumped in surprise,
holding one of her hands to her chest and pulling her skirt down with the other
to conceal herself.
He smiled. “Just thought I’d tell you that you might wanna wear something
you can work out in today.” he told her.
Maria sighed and fell down on the bed as Michael began to laugh.
“Why are you laughing?” she asked. “It’s not funny. I got all ready in
this striking outfit and now I have to change.”
He turned on the water and ran it over his toothbrush. For a criminal, he was
sure particular about hygiene. “That’s exactly why it’s funny.” he
informed her smugly.
She shook her head and walked to the bathroom and closed the door for him so
that she could change and he could brush his teeth. “So, why, exactly, do I
have to wear work-out clothes today?” she asked him as she slipped her shirt
over her head and let it fall to the floor. “Please tell me we’re not doing
that physical training stuff you were talking about.”
“We are.” he replied simply. “Max and Kyle are probably gonna wanna hit
another store today, so we can train while they do that.”
“No!” she whined, exchanging the V-neck sleeveless for a plain white T-shirt
that read B.U.M. on it. “I wanna go to the store, too!’
“With Max?”
She sighed and slipped on a pair of sweat-pants in place of the oh-so-tiny
skirt. He had her now. “Okay, not with Max, but I’ll go with Kyle.”
“Kyle might wanna hit a strip-club afterwards, though. Then what’re you
gonna do?”
“Take my clothes off, get up on a table and dance for ten guys who’re
drooling over
Suddenly, the door she was leaning against swung open and she almost fell
backwards. She managed to keep her balance, though, and a freshly showered,
sparkling teeth, newly shaven Michael Guerin shoved past her to put all of his
stuff back in his pockets and located his jacket on the floor. He slipped it
over his shoulders and sat down on the bed, staring at Maria as if expecting her
to say something more. When she didn’t, he did.
“Why don’t you wanna train?”
“Okay, two reasons.” she answered. “First, that sounds like something
someone would say on Buffy. Second, my athletic ability is extremely
challenged.”
A hint of a smile began to form on his lips. “You dance, though, right?”
She was surprised that he knew her secret passion of dancing. She’d never told
anyone except Liz how much she loved dancing, that that was what she would do
with her life if they made more money. How did Michael know? She certainly
didn’t tell him.
“I could kinda tell.” he answered immediately, as if reading her thoughts.
“You were having so much fun when we were dancing back at that party.”
She blushed.
“Well, anyway,” he continued, “dancing’s physical activity, just like
physical training.”
She sighed. “But why do I have the feeling that physical training involves
something like running laps and lifting weights and sweating my ass off?”
He laughed. “You’ll be surprised, DeLuca.” He stood up and handed her her
duffle bag, which Kyle had managed to steal for her at the mall in
Max Evans glanced back only enough to see
how everything was going, and then returned his eyes to the road and his
deer-watch. You could never be too careful. They were on there way to a big
shopping complex not to far away, but they were taking a side-road as to avoid
any unwanted attention by cops. They’d passed a couple of troopers on the main
road to the mall and decided they better take a different route, just to be
safe.
Yeah, you really never could be too careful.
Maria still seemed uncomfortable around him, and that thought was troublesome,
because Max really did want her to trust him, to be comfortable around him,
maybe even to be friends with him. She and Michael seemed to be hitting it off,
and she and Kyle seemed to have a lot more in common than either of them really
wanted to admit. Why couldn’t she have some kind of connection with him?
Max had lived a life of solitude, with only Michael and Kyle to confide in. He
didn’t have friends. He didn’t have family. Now, though, there was someone
new to confide in, someone new to grow close to, someone to befriend, and Max
would be damned if he let that opportunity slip past him.
Suddenly, Kyle began to shout. “Deer! Deer!”
Max barely even heard him, but he put on the brakes fast enough so that they
avoided hitting the deer. Luckily, no one was behind them.
The deer walked on across the road like nothing had happened.
“Dude!” Kyle shouted as he caught his breath. “Where’s your head! You
were headin’ straight for that thing!”
Max shrugged and told Kyle that maybe he should drive, so they got out in the
middle of the deserted road and traded places. Kyle started up again slowly and
cautiously, and, finally, they were heading down the road at a normal pace.
“Better get your head outta the clouds.” Michael suggested from the
backseat. Max nodded in agreement. That wasn’t like him to go off into his own
little world like that, but, once in awhile, his thoughts would have a tendency
to consume him entirely.
He had an uncontrollable feeling to turn around in the seat, then, and ask Maria
a question. It was one he couldn’t ignore.
“Do you hate me?” he asked her.
She seemed so surprised by it that she didn’t even answer at first. She looked
around at everyone in the car, meeting Michael’s eyes for a brief second
before she returned her attention to Max.
“I . . .” She paused, and Max felt a little bad for putting her in the
spotlight like that.
Finally, she shook her head slowly, and Max smiled. Thank God! (Well, not God.
If there was a God, he wouldn’t have planned out such a horrible kind of life
for him and his friends.) Thank those higher beings worth more than anything in
the world! She didn’t hate him! Maybe he did have a chance to make a friend.
A friend. Someone who, besides Michael and Kyle, Max had never really had in his
life.
He wasn’t going to ask how she got over the whole raping thing already.
Instead, he just turned around in his seat and stared at the sun as it climbed
higher and higher in the sky as each minute passed.
Little did Max know, while he was staring at the sunset and while Kyle was
staring at the road and while Michael was trying not to stare at Maria, the girl
in the backseat was wondering why the sinister urge inside of her just kept on
growing larger and larger by every second.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Kyle didn’t seem to have any problems driving. No run-ins with deer, and no
speeding and having to fake out a cop. That was definitely a good thing. He
found another abandoned warehouse just outside the busy parts of
“We’ll be 2 hours tops!” Kyle yelled as he pulled away. Michael knew,
though, that it was very possible that it would be 4 to 5 hours if his friends
found a strip-club they were interested in.
“Why are there so many abandoned warehouses all over this state?” Maria
wondered aloud as they walked inside. “There was that one in
Michael shrugged. “Dunno. Probably was someone’s crib at some point in
time.”
“Like, a gang?” she asked.
He nodded. “Yeah, they probably abandoned it not too long ago.”
Maria opened the door and stepped inside, and Michael followed carrying a CD
player Max had stolen from a guy in a parking lot once and a few CDs. He was
relieved to find that this place didn’t smell as bad as the one in
“Actually,” Maria commented, “this place isn’t that bad.” She motioned
towards a fairly nice couch in the corner sitting beside a lamp. “All it needs
is a few homey-touches and it might be kinda nice.”
“You Martha Stewart now or something?”
She brushed a cobweb from the corner. “Maybe.”
Michael reached over and switched on the lamp, surprised to find that it still
worked. “You think someone might still live here?” he asked her, noticing
that the words NINTH STREET were spray-painted all over the walls. If this
Maria shook her head. “No, I don’t. There’s not even a trash can. You
gotta have a trash can if you’re gonna live somewhere.”
He smiled. “Why is that?”
“Because guys tend to bring home lots of trash.”
He chuckled. “Is that so?”
“Yep.”
Michael turned on the battery-operated CD player and opened up the lid, debating
on which CD to put in first.
“Why do we need music?” Maria asked curiously, bending down to survey what
he was doing.
“Because it helps you get into the training.” he answered.
Maria grunted. “Okay, who came up with this shit anyway?”
“Kyle. He’s Buddhist. He read this book and it talked about getting in touch
with your soul and improving the conditions of your body all at the same
time.”
Maria almost laughed. “What a load of crap!” she exclaimed.
Michael placed his Sneaker Pimps CD into the player, removed his jacket and
through it on the couch. “If you’d shut up,” he told her, “this might
work.” He took off his shoes and told her to do the same.
“What do I have to do?” she asked exasperatedly.
“Close your eyes.” he instructed.
After a moment of hesitance, she did so.
“Extend your arms to the sides.” he continued.
“Like this?” she asked, extending her left arm to the left and her right arm
to the right.”
“Yeah.” He kept on telling her what to do after that, and he told her to
take things slow and easy and calmly. He told her to breath deeply and stretch
the muscles of her body. She listened carefully, and, when she had learned all
of what he had taught her, she did the movements effortlessly, and she looked
exquisite. Michael couldn’t take his eyes off of her as she moved so
gracefully. If she had had her eyes open at the time, she would have wondered
why he was staring at her so intently.
She repeated the movements over and over, and then finally asked, “Okay, what
am I doing, exactly?”
“Some kind of cross between yoga and dancing.” he replied. “I really
don’t know. Ask Kyle.”
She opened her eyes and stopped moving. “Well how is this physical
training?” she asked.
Slowly, he walked up behind her. He wanted to touch her so badly. He couldn’t
hold back, but he still didn’t know what her reaction would be when he did
touch her . . . again. He had touched her once when she hadn’t wanted him to.
That night . . .
He reached forward and grabbed her arms, expecting her to feel some kind of
trepidation, but she didn’t seem to. He lifted them up and extended them to
her sides again. Ever so slowly, he ran his hands down her arms to meet up with
her hands. He entwined his fingers with hers and told her to keep moving.
She tried, but it was harder for her now, because he was behind her, moving with
her, and she not only had to move one body, but two. “I see why you added the
word physical to training, now.” she admitted. “This is hard work.”
“That’s ‘cause you’re not strong enough.”
“No, it’s ‘cause you weight too much.”
He smiled, bringing his head down close to her hair. “You’re funny.” he
whispered with sarcasm.
“I know I am.”
“I didn’t mean that.”
“I know. But I still am.”
He smiled again, hoping that she could not detect how happy he was feeling at
the moment just being close to her.
After three hours, Maria finally got too
tired to continue. Running her fingers through her sweaty, greasy hair, she sat
down on the couch and sighed. “That can really wear you out.”
“That’s why we decided to call it training.”
She rolled her eyes at the word. It still reminded her of something she would
hear on Buffy rather than in real life. “So, I’m still confused. Why did I
have to learn this again?” She reached down and turned down the volume on the
CD player so that she could hear his answer properly.
“‘Cause someday you might have to run on your feet to get away from a
problem.”
For a second, she thought he was starting to talk in riddles again, but, once
she thought about it, she understood exactly what he meant. “You mean, if
something ever happens and the cops catch up to you guys and I can’t fake my
way through it pretending I’m having your baby, then I might have to flee on
foot?”
He smiled, remembering the dumb cop on the highway. “Yeah, somethin’ like
that.”
Maria took a minute to think about it. It was dangerous. The thought of running
from a cop
was . . . well, in it’s own way, it was exhilarating. It gave her a rush, a
high just thinking about it. (Okay, no, she’d never been high before, but she
imagined that if she ever had been, it would feel something like she was feeling
now, thinking about running for her life.)
“Have you ever had to put your training to use?” she asked him.
He shook his head. “Nope. But Max has. You can ask him about it if you
want.”
She didn’t know what she wanted to do. She was confused when it came to Max.
She didn’t know what to think of him. Was he the guy who had tried to rape
her, or was he the guy that was trying to apologize? Was she the guy she hated
or the guy she was slowly starting to forgive?
She was confused when it came to Kyle, too. She hadn’t spent that much time
with him, but he was funny as hell, and he had made her laugh when she didn’t
think it would be possible. He reminded her a lot of Alex, and that always
helped. But was he a religious Buddha boy or a stoned, drunken criminal?
She was confused when it came to Michael. She was confused because he was slowly
turning her life upside down, and he didn’t even know it. She had never met
anyone like him. He was so deep. He had this bad-boy exterior, but, inside, he
was hurting more than anyone knew. And though she knew it was insane, she
actually considered him a friend. Liz wouldn’t be able to believe it or accept
it if she knew Maria was thinking that way. She was friends with a guy who
robbed banks and stole from stores and shot guns and kidnaped innocent girls.
Most of all, though, she was confused about herself. She kept telling herself
over and over again that this would only be a temporary thing, that she would
start thinking straight and acting normal again within the next few days.
She’d go back to normal. She’d be her boring self, only with twist. She’d
just be on the run with three guys she barely even knew. But she, herself, would
not change. She’d stay a good girl.
The question was, did she want to?
“You’re spacin’ off.” Michael informed her.
“Sorry.” she apologized. “Just thinkin’.”
He nodded in understanding. “I was thinkin’, too.”
“About what?”
“About what you said to Max.” he answered. “So, you don’t really hate
him after all?”
How could she answer that question? She didn’t know the answers!
“Um . . .” she paused, and then told him. “I don’t think I do. I mean, I
don’t hate you, and you tried to do . . . that to me, too.”
He winced, obviously not wanting to remember that, so he continued talking.
“Maria,” His tongue darted out to wet his lips. “If you got the chance to
go back to
She was so surprised by the suddeness of the question and force put behind it
that she didn’t know how to respond. It was something she had been thinking
about a lot. “Why are you asking?” she inquired in return, trying to put off
answering his question as long as possible. “Are you trying to tell me
you’re taking me back?”
“No.” he said immediately. “I can’t ever do that. It was a hypothetical
question.”
It was a hypothetical question she didn’t want to answer.
“I didn’t have a great life in
“That doesn’t answer my hypothetical question, though. If you had the
chance, would you go back?”
She fidgeted nervously on the couch, remembering what had once been her home. A
crummy hippie-house where there was more stuff that didn’t work than did,
where she ate cold poptarts for breakfast in the morning, where she practically
fell out of bed after a couple of hours of sleep. She remembered her mom,
sleeping in bed during the day instead of going out and looking for a job of her
own. She remembered school, how she had basically become a nobody, how people
frowned on her appearance and never listened to what she had to say. She
remembered Billy, how he had told her he loved her and how she hadn’t felt the
same way, how she hadn’t been able to respond in the same way.
She didn’t live a horrible life, but it wasn’t a great one, either.
“No,” she answered decidedly. “There’s nothing in that shitty town for
me.”
She saw an expression flash across Michael’s face, one of regret. But as
quickly as it had appeared, it was gone.
“Why are you asking?” she wanted to know.
He wiped a streak of sweat from his forehead. “I just wanted to know if it was
too late.”
He really was doing that riddles thing again, wasn’t he?
“Give me a real answer.” she told him.
He sighed. “Maria, I didn’t want your life to turn out like mine. I didn’t
have a choice. I had to do this.”
“I don’t think I really have a choice, either, now do I?” she shot back,
remembering that Max had said he would kill her. She didn’t bother mentioning
that Max probably wouldn’t kill her anymore.
“Look, I just didn’t wanna throw you into this without your consent, because
then I’d be just
like . . .” He trailed off. “Never mind.”
“No, just like who?” she asked. She wasn’t going to let him off this
easily. He never stopped questioning her until he got answers. Now it was her
turn.
After a slight pause, he answered. “My dad.”
Maria’s mouth dropped open in surprise, though she hadn’t intended for it
to. She understood now. “Your dad forced you into this.”
“Gotta follow in his footsteps.”
She felt sorry for him, but she understood at the same time. It wasn’t like
her father had forced her into a life a crime. She had just never even known her
father.
“Those kinda things can hurt.” she agreed.
He nodded. “Yep.”
“So, what happened to your father? And your mother?” Maria asked.
He reached over, shut off the music completely, and mumbled, “Dead.” He
avoided her eyes as if trying to seem strong.
“Oh.” She immediately regretted having asked the question and bringing such
memories into Michael’s head. “I’m . . . I’m sorry.” Even as she
apologized, there was still one question that she had to ask. “How did they
die?”
He didn’t seem to want to answer, but he did. “Robbed a bank in
So, Michael’s parents had died because of the life of crime that they lived.
This really was dangerous.
“That’s why I asked you that hypothetical question.” Michael said, as if
reading her thoughts. “This kind of life is dangerous. I don’t wanna put you
in that kind of danger if you’re not ready for it.”
The thoughts of running from the cops and pointing a gun at a person and robbing
banks and all of that stuff scared her, because, yes, they could end up costing
her her life. But they also excited her, and that excitement overpowered her
fears.
“I’ve made my choice, Michael.” she told him. “I’m gonna do this.”
Boredom. That’s what Kyle was feeling as
he sat at a table in one of the
There was one hot girl he’d seen so far, but she wasn’t even a stripper, and
she was willing to give him any. Besides, it seemed as if she were a lesbian,
and that would make sense, seeing as how she was the only woman in the club who
wasn’t there on “work”.
“You look disappointed.” Max was saying as he walked up to Kyle.
“Haven’t found anyone here, have you?”
Kyle grunted. “
“No, that’s
Kyle smiled. “Then we gotta go there.”
“Trust me, we will.”
Kyle sighed and looked around. If there was only one girl worth “spending his
time with” at this place, it wouldn’t be so bad. But what he saw was not
what he wanted to spend time with. He saw twigs, girls so skinny you could see
their ribs, girls that looked like they were purposefully not eating, girls that
were just straight up and down.
Where were all the boobs? The asses? All he saw was bones.
His eyes were traveling around the room when he saw her. She was strutting
around in a red tube top and a black mini skirt. Her long legs peeked out at
him, and he practically found himself drooling. Those legs . . .
Her hair was long and blonde and it fell over her shoulders in luxurious waves.
He could just imagine running his fingers through that hair of hers while she
screamed out his name.
She was superior to the other girls in one particular way. She had a body that
wouldn’t quit. It curved all around, up and down, making you wonder where it
would ever stop. God, that ass was just trailing behind for the pickin’, and
those gigantic breasts were just threatening to fall out of her oh-so-small top.
“That’s her.” Kyle blurted, pointing to the girl walking around the room.
Max smiled when he saw her. “Nice, man. Go for it.”
Kyle rubbed his hands together and worked the crick out of his neck. Then, with
a deep breath, he walked forward and stopped her dead in her tracks.
“Hi. I’m Kyle, and I’m thinking about pinning you down on the floor and
tearing all your clothes off.”
The girl smiled and blushed. “Well,” she said. “That might not be a bad
thing.”
Kyle smiled in return and wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her to him.
“So, baby,” he began, pressing his lower body into hers. “What’s your
name.”
“Isabel.”
Though it pained him to know that he was
ultimately the reason that Maria DeLuca had taken on a new life so suddenly,
Michael Guerin could not help but feel a little happy at the thought of her
running around the country with him, doing all of the things that criminals did,
surprising him with all of the new things she’d probably come up with to say
and astounding him at how beautiful she seemed to be becoming each and every day
he was with her.
“I think I’m startin’ to like this stuff.” Maria commented on the rock
music as they waited back in the abandoned building for Max and Kyle to come
pick them up.
“This shit.” Michael corrected her.
She nodded in agreement. “Right. This shit. I guess if I’m really gonna be
one of you guys, I gotta start talkin’ like you, right?”
He smiled. “Yeah, probably.” He didn’t know what to say. He wanted to come
up with something creative and quick to say, but his mind wasn’t thinking
about words at the moment. His mind, his very dirty mind, was thinking about all
of things he could do to Maria if she gave him the chance. And all of the things
she could do for him.
Maria was dancing around the room and Michael had to force his eyes away from
her. He didn’t wanna look like he was staring, even though he really was. It
was when he glanced out one of the dusty windows that he saw two figures coming
forward. He thought for a moment that they might be Max and Kyle and began to
relax a little. But, then, as he began to see them more clearly, he realized
that it was not Max or Kyle, and that the two African American guys that were
coming closer and closer with each step seemed to be pretty comfortable around
this area, like they lived in this abandoned building.
Michael reached over and turned off the music as quickly as he could, hoping
that the two gangstas hadn’t heard it from the outside.
“What’re you doing?” Maria asked a little too loudly.
He put his index finger to his lips to silence her and gathered up his CDs and
his CD player. He motioned for Maria to follow him as he headed up the stairs,
and she did.
They reached the second floor just as the gangstas reached the first floor.
“What’s going on?” Maria asked him quietly as they ducked into a secluded
bathroom.
Michael closed the door quietly and fumbled around, hoping to find a lock. He
didn’t, but he felt as if it were too late to go out now. If they were to
start walking around upstairs, the two guys downstairs might hear them.
“Is there someone here?” Maria asked when he didn’t answer her.
“Yeah.” He didn’t want to scare her, but he didn’t want to keep anything
from her, either.
He heard her sharp intake of breath and knew that he had scared her by telling
her that.
“Just relax and stay quiet.” he told her as calmly as he could, though the
thoughts of two gangstas just a floor below him who were probably packin’
scared him, too. He grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her closer to him in
the dark room. He couldn’t see her face, and he didn’t want to, because he
didn’t want to have to see the fear sprawled across her perfect features.
“Just stay close to
And he meant that.
It remained quiet for only a few seconds, and then yelling could be heard from
downstairs.
“Yo, brotha I told ya somebody was in heer!” one of the guys began to shout.
“Da light’s on!”
Shit.
Footsteps could be heard climbing up the stairs, and Michael began to worry as
they drew closer. He could feel Maria trembling beside him.
“Dude, if it was Kai again, I’m gonna fuckin’ beat him to da ground dis
time.” the other guy was saying as he tore through the . . . crib? Wasn’t
that the word those gangstas liked to use?
Before Michael could think of what to do, the door swung open and one of the
“brothas” glared down at them from the other side. “What da hell?” he
spat, grabbing Michael by his shirt collar and pulling him up. “What makes you
think you can just waltz in here wheneva you want?”
Michael was too scared to say anything. He’d never had an encounter like this
before.
“Ya find him, Jamal?” the other guy asked from downstairs.
“Yeah, Terrell, I found ‘im.” the guy, apparently Jamal, answered. With
that, he threw Michael down hard on the floor. Michael groaned when he hit, and
his CDs went scattering in all different directions.
“Hey, stop!”
Michael wanted to tell her not to do anything, just to wait until she had the
chance to escape and run, but it was too late. Maria’s voice rang out in the
air with a sharp warning attached to it as she stood up and looked Jamal dead in
the eye.
Jamal smiled as Terrell joined him at the top of the stairs. “Well, ain’t
you a nice thang.” he said. Terrell nodded in agreement and licked his lips.
“Stay away from her.” Michael warned, struggling to get back up on his feet.
Terrell grunted and took a threatening step forward. “What’re you gonna do
‘bout it, dog?” he asked. “Talk me ta death?”
Michael suddenly regretted not bringing his gun inside with him.
“Look, this was all a big misunderstanding.” Michael tried to explain. “If
you let us go, we’ll be outta your hair.”
Terrell shook his head. “Nah, I dun think so.” He swung his fist out in the
air, then, and it collided with Michael’s jaw, sending him spiraling to the
ground again.
Terrell began to laugh and then looked back at Maria. “Say we go have some
fun, baby?”
Michael was barely able to see the fear in Maria’s eyes, but it was there,
just like it had been when he had tried to . . .
He saw Jamal grab Maria by her waist and pull her to him.
“Stop it!” Maria shouted, struggling to get free. When Terrell joined in,
though, and grabbed her around the back, she had no chance of getting free.
“Michael!” she shouted. “Michael, help!”
“Ya bitch uva boyfriend can’t help ya anymore dan you can help yaself.”
Jamal whispered, leaning down to speak into her ear.
Maria began to squirm as they hauled her out of the room, and Michael struggled
to stand up again. He rushed out of the room after her as fast as he could go,
but he had already lost track of where Maria and those guys had gone.
He had to find them.
It was a familiar position, one of which she
had found herself in way too many times over the past few days, one of which no
girl or child or any human being of any kind should have to be in. Ever.
“Please, please, don’t!”
She didn’t think they could even hear her. If they could, they didn’t let
onto it as they tore her brand new stolen shirt off of her, revealing her
breasts covered only in a bra. Jamal began to take off his own shirt while
Terrell attacked her neck with his mouth. Maria tried to push him away, but he
was just too large and she was just too small.
They were hurting her. Jamal was grabbing onto her hips so hard that she thought
she might begin to bleed. She was in such pain and agony that she couldn’t
even fight back anymore.
“Maria!”
Her eyes snapped open and her strength returned when she saw Michael enter the
room like he had done when Max and Kyle had tried to . . . do this same thing.
Terrell backed off Maria and took a swing at Michael.
He missed.
Michael took his own swing back, and he didn’t miss. He hit Terrell square in
the jaw in the same exact way that he, himself had been hit, and Terrell flew
back against the wall.
With Jamal distracted and her strength returning to her, Maria had enough in her
to push Jamal off of her. She scrambled towards the back of the bed, wrapping
her arms around herself as Michael fought for her.
He should have been outnumbered. Well, technically, he was, but it didn’t seem
to be that way. He had a newfound determination inside of him, too, it seemed,
and he hit Terrell so hard that he was knocked unconscious.
Jamal, however, was another story. Jamal fought back. And hard, too. He slammed
Michael against a glass mirror, causing a the glass to shatter around Michael
and several to enter into his back. He yelled out in pain at the sharp impact of
the tiny shards, but he threw Jamal off of him and continued to fight.
Jamal punched him so many times that Maria began to worry if Michael might black
out in the same way that Terrell had and she’d be left to deal with him alone,
but he kept with it. When Jamal hit him, he hit back.
Maria watched helplessly as Michael grabbed Jamal and pinned him down on the bed
right beside her. She gasped and moved closer to the wall, huddled together with
herself, and kept her eyes focused on the scene in front of her.
And then, Michael grabbed a knife from the table beside him and aimed it right
at Jamal’s stomach. Jamal didn’t seem to think anything of it at first, but
when Michael didn’t move, he seemed to get a little shaky in his boots. He
didn’t let onto that, though.
“You can’t kill meh.” he said. “You’s a bitch-ass brotha wit nuttin’
betta ta do then pratect ya girl heer. You ain’t gonna kill me, cuz I’ma
kill you. And then I’ma fuck ya bitch ‘till she kills haself.”
And that must have done it, because, within seconds, Michael had stabbed the
knife into Jamal’s stomach, killing him almost on the spot.
Maria brought her hand to her mouth at the site.
Slowly, Michael moved away from the dead man underneath him and stared down at
his hands. There were traces of blood on them.
He’d never killed anyone.
Until now.
For her.
“Maria, let’s go.” he said slowly, staring at the man he had killed. The
blood was pouring from his wound now, and blood was seeping from Michael’s own
wounds, too.
Maria, with her arms still wrapped around herself, ran past Jamal’s dead body
and down the stairs with Michael following her just as Terrell began to wake up.
A sweatshirt was laying on the couch as they
ran down the stairs and out the building, and Maria ran over to it and grabbed
it before anyone could do anything about it. She slipped it over her chest,
which was, once again, only covered by a bra, and continued running. Terrell had
been stirring a little, and she didn’t want to have to run into him again.
“Come on, Michael!” she shouted as she noticed that Michael was way behind
her. He was clutching his stomach, and his back still had tiny shards of glass
in it from the mirror Jamal had crashed him into. His face was contorted in
pain.
Feeling that she owed him something, Maria ran up to him and grabbed hold of him
to help him get along.
“Thanks.” he told her, forcing a smile.
Luckily for them, Max and Kyle were just pulling up as they were coming out.
Neither one of them seemed to notice that Maria was wearing a sweatshirt way too
big for her and that Michael’s nose was bleeding and that he was suffering.
“Where’s the CDs?” Kyle asked.
Maria sighed in exasperation. “We have to get to a hospital!” Maria
announced, ignoring his question. “He’s hurt.” She opened the door and
began to shove Michael into the backseat as gently as she could.
He began to shake his head. “No, no hospitals.” As he spoke the words, he
gripped his stomach in pain, like speaking was a difficult thing to do.
“Why not?” Maria asked, getting in beside him and slamming the door. She
didn’t understand. He was hurt.
“It’s too public.” Max told her. “You never know what could happen
there.”
Maria didn’t completely understand their reasoning, but she didn’t push the
issue any farther. Max and Kyle and Michael had been doing this for a much
longer time than she had. They probably knew what to do.
“It’s not that bad.” Michael tried to tell them, but the pain and
suffering in his eyes said otherwise.
“What happened?” Max asked, finally, as he drove the van far away from the
gangsta’s crib.
“These two guys came in.” Maria answered, since it didn’t seem like
Michael wanted to speak. “Apparently they lived there, which I still don’t
understand, because I saw no sign of a trash can anywhere.”
Michael smiled for real this time, but even that smile could not wash the pain
from his face.
“So, they just decided to beat him up and throw a sweatshirt on you or
what?” Kyle asked.
Her eyes dropped to the floor as she replied. “They didn’t exactly throw a
sweatshirt on me.”
Kyle nodded in understanding, whispering something between an “oh”, and an
“I see”.
“So good ol’ Michael came to your rescue, right?” Max asked as he
continued driving.”
Maria took a glance at Michael and felt guilt rise up within her. “Yeah, he
did.”
This must have been what he had felt like when he had kidnaped her. That
tremendous feeling of guilt and that question nagging in the back of your mind:
Why didn’t I do this? Why didn’t I do that? Then this whole thing wouldn’t
have happened.
If she had only been a little stronger, she could have been able to fight back
for herself. If she hadn’t have lived such a sheltered life, she might be
smart enough—okay, smart really wasn’t the right word to use—to carry a
gun around with her in case she ever had to defend herself.
“I guess that physical training stuff might actually come in handy after
all.” she whispered to Michael. She grabbed onto his arm to let him know that
she was there, that she wasn’t leaving. He winced in pain, and she let go
immediately, suddenly aware that he was probably already bruising.
“Where are we going?” she asked when he said nothing more. She wanted to
make sure Michael got to some kind of place where someone—whether it be her or
a certified nurse—could help him.
“Gonna get a hotel for the rest of the afternoon.” Max replied. “We can
fix him up there.”
“We?” Maria asked. “Have you guys ever taken first aid?”
Both of the men in the front seat were silent.
Maria arched her eyebrows. “That’s what I thought. You guys are stayin’
away from him. I’ll handle it.”
“But, Maria . . .” Kyle began to protest.
“It’s my fault, anyways.” she mumbled, cutting him off. She wasn’t
really sure if he had heard her or not, but she didn’t bring the topic up
again. They rode to the hotel in silence, except for a few groans of pain from
Michael here and there. His nose had stopped running now, but blood was smeared
down one side of his face. Maria wanted to give him something to wipe it away
with, but she could find nothing.
At last, they reached the hotel just as evening was begging to descend upon
“You sure you don’t want our help?” Max asked her as he and Kyle stopped
at the vending machine and Michael and Maria continued down the hall to their
room.
“I’m sure.” Maria told them. Sometimes, less was more. In this case, less
people in the room would be better for Michael.
She opened the door to the room quickly, ignoring the fact that it smelled of
cat poop and looked like the beds hadn’t been properly made in days. She
helped Michael inside and closed the door, then helped him to sit down as best
he could on the bed. Every position seemed to hurt him in some way.
Inside, she was panicking, because she really had no idea what to do, but she
pretended that she did and kept it together for him, because, after all, she
owed him that much.
“I’m gonna go get a washrag, okay?” she told him as she removed his
blood-stained jacket and threw it on the ground. When he didn’t give her a
reply, she stood up quickly and headed into the bathroom. She found only two
washrags, so she wet them both down and hurried back into the main room.
When she arrived back, it appeared that Michael had blacked out.
Kyle knew that he should be thinking about
Michael, one of his best and only friends. He knew he should be concerned about
how he was doing, but he just couldn’t bring himself to take his mind away
from the girl at the strip-club in
Isabel. That’s what she had said her name was. He hoped that’s what her name
was, because he faintly remembered screaming it during their twenty minutes
together.
She didn’t even know his name. He hadn’t told her, because he never told
anyone. It wasn’t worth it. Why waste breath on simple words when you could
let it all out in moans, right?
“I hope he’s doing okay.” Max commented, dumping his M+Ms out on the tiny
table in their tiny room and starting to sort them out by colors. Max always
liked to do that, for some odd reason. For as long as Kyle had known the guy,
he’d liked to sort his M+Ms or Skittles or whatever out by colors and then eat
them in a particular order. With M+Ms, it was brown, then orange, then yellow,
red, green and then, lastly blue.
Kyle saw the frustrated look on Max’s face when he realized that the new color
purple had already been added.
“He’ll be fine.” Kyle reassured him. “Happens all the time. It’s
nothin’ major. He’s just feelin’ it strong right now, that’s all.”
Max nodded. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
Kyle busied himself with looking around the room, anything to keep his mind off
of Isabel. He cringed at the Picasso-like painting on the wall in front of him.
Picasso, in his mind, was a guy who’s screwed up look at the world somehow had
made him millions. Of course, it wasn’t actually a piece by Picasso, and that
made it even worse. A replica.
“Where’s your head, dude?” Max asked. “You haven’t been sayin’ much
since the strip-club.”
“The strip-club sucked, that’s why.” Kyle answered. “There’s nothin’
much to say.” What he said was only half of the truth. True, the strip-club,
overall, had sucked. Half of the girls there could have been walking around in
pajamas, but the other half of his statement was not true. There was a lot he
wanted to say, but he didn’t feel comfortable discussing that issue with Max.
In fact, he didn’t feel comfortable discussing that issue in front of anyone.
What the issue was was still unclear, but he didn’t want to face the fact that
Isabel had made him feel . . . special. She had made him forget that he as a
thief, a criminal, a no-good guy, and she had given him something that no other
girl had ever managed to.
“What about that blonde?” Max asked. “The one you spent the last twenty
minutes with?”
A brief memory flashed in Kyle’s mind, a memory of running his hands up and
down Isabel’s bare back in a hidden room upstairs where no one was able to see
them, of her hands burying themselves in his hair in return.
“She was . . .” he paused, looking for the right word. Great didn’t seem
like enough in this case, and wonderful reminded him too much of a Disney word.
Explosive? Yeah, she was definitely that . . . in more ways than one.
“She was what?” Max asked.
Kyle sighed. “Everything I’ve always been looking for.”
Max began to laugh. “You can’t really be serious, dude!” he exclaimed.
Kyle glared at him. “I am!” he snapped.
Max slowly began to stop laughing. “But, you only spent twenty minutes with
her.” he protested.
Kyle nodded. “Yeah, I know, but . . .” He trailed off and rubbed his temple
with his thumb. The alcohol from the club was beginning just not to take it’s
toll on him. Where the hell was the crack when you needed it?
“Go get her.”
Kyle was so surprised at the words he heard that he didn’t think Max had
actually spoken them for a split-second. “What?” he asked, making sure he
had heard her right.
“Go. Get. Her.” He said each word slowly and separately.
That’s all it took to get Kyle out the door and running back to the strip-club
where he would surely find Isabel again.
As his eyes started to flutter open, Michael
became aware of where he was, who he was with, and what had just happened. He
felt that feeling of exhaustion leave him for a brief second, only to be
followed by an ache in his stomach.
Everything was blurry at first, but when his eyes adjusted to the dim light in
the room, he could see Maria sitting on the bed beside him. She was looking down
at the bedspread playing with a loose strand of her hair. Beside her on the
night stand was a bowl of water and two washrags, one of which was
blood-stained. The other was not.
He felt strangely cold, at first, and then realized that it was only natural,
since he was without a shirt at the moment.
He stirred, and Maria seemed to notice. Her eyes shot up and she stopped playing
around with that loose strand of her hair. She smiled when she saw that he was
awake again. “Hey,” she said.
He smiled back, relieved that there was no sense of pain anywhere close to his
jaw. “Hey,” he echoed.
“Are you okay?” she asked him immediately. “You, like, blacked out or
something.”
“I’m okay.” he reassured her, though he felt like he had broken a rib or
something. He tried to show her by sitting up farther in the bed, but, when he
did try, he was felt like he had been stabbed by a knife of pain in the gut. He
groaned and fell back down against the headboard for support.
“You’re not okay.” She pointed out the obvious. “You should see your
back.”
He smiled again. “How’d you manage to take care of me all by yourself,
DeLuca?” He found it hard to imagine the petite blonde removing his shirt and
tending to the shards of glass lodged in his back and then turning him back
around to rest. He wasn’t what one would call a small guy.
“I have my ways.” she told him, shrugging. “At least there were no serious
injuries.”
He chuckled. “Gonna be a doctor, now, huh?”
She shook her head. “Never. I can’t stand blood. I could hardly take
removing the glass from your back. What if someone came in with their leg cut
off?”
He saw her point. “So, where’re Max and Kyle?” he asked, just out of
curiosity.
“I told them I wanted to be in here alone with you.” she told him, and he
wondered what she meant by it at first. When she continued, he realized that she
didn’t want to be alone for the reasons he was hoping for. “I wanted to talk
about what happened.”
He didn’t. “It’s not a big deal.”
“It is. Michael, you . . .” she paused, as if she wasn’t sure whether it
would be best to continue or not. “You killed someone.”
He sighed. “I just wanted to protect you.” He meant what he said. Too many
people, including himself, had tried to take advantage of Maria like that, just
because she was half their size. If he couldn’t do anything else good with his
life, he’d do this.
“I should’ve been able to protect myself.” she protested.
“Maria . . .”
“I see why you’re having me do that physical training shit, now!” she
exclaimed, tears welling up in her eyes. “God, Michael, you shouldn’t have
to suffer for me not being able to protect myself!”
“I’m not suffering.” he half-lied. It was only a half lie because,
physically, he was suffering. He hurt. He was tired. Mentally, on the other
hand, he wasn’t suffering. Maybe what he had done hadn’t fully registered in
his brain yet, but he didn’t care, because Jamal had tried to hurt Maria, and
he would’ve hurt her if someone hadn’t done something, and that was worse
than killing someone.
Maybe he was just too interested in watching Maria’s full lips move in
tantalizingly slow motions that he wasn’t able to think about anything else at
the moment.
She shoved her hair behind her ear. “I just didn’t think that was gonna
happen.” she continued, her eyes shifting to look down at the bedspread again.
“Maybe you should just kill me like Max wanted to. I’m just a liability.”
He wanted to sit up and grab her by the shoulders and turn her to look at him
and get it through to her that she was more than that, that he’d barely known
her and that she would always be more than that to him, always more than the
hostage, always more than the hot blonde.
He didn’t know exactly what she was to him, but, if he had, he would’ve told
her.
He couldn’t sit up and grab her, though, so he brought his hand up to run
across her bare shoulder. She had changed since the “incident”, and she was
wearing a new spaghetti strap again instead of the sweatshirt she had snagged on
her way out of the “Gangstas’
“You’re not a liability, Maria.” He wanted to say more, but words would
not come.
“Michael, you stopped Max from raping me twice! You persuaded him to keep me
alive! Now you’ve killed a guy for me! And what have I done for you? I’ve
pretended I’m pregnant to get that cop to leave us alone! Yeah, that’s real
great of me!”
“Stop it, Maria.” he told her.
“Stop what?” Tears were beginning to well up in her eyes.
“Stop blaming yourself for everything. You’ve brought something into my life
that’s never been there before.”
He thought she was going to keep screaming at him, but she didn’t. Instead,
her voice softened as she asked, “What?”
He hesitated, unsure of how to express what it was that he saw in her that he
saw in no one else.
“Hope.”
She was silent as she took the single yet powerful word in. “Wha . . . what do
you mean?” she asked finally.
He sighed. He didn’t know how to explain what it was about her that was so
addictive. “Max and Kyle and I . . . we’ve never had anyone like you with us
before. You’re so different from everything else in our lives. You’re true
and real and pure and . . .” He trailed off as he felt her fingers running
over a cut on his chest. It stung, but he didn’t tell her that, because he
just wanted her to touch him.
“You know, you’ve brought something into my life, too.” she told him,
grinning.
“What’s that?” he asked, matching her grin with one of his own.
“Adventure.”
“Adventure?” he echoed.
“Well, yeah. I mean, a few days ago, my life consisted of poptarts, work, and
very little sleep.”
He wasn’t gonna ask how poptarts had gotten thrown in there.
“My point is,” she concluded, “I have fun with you.”
“Today was fun.” he reminded her.
She let out a deep breath. “Must you make things so complicated, Mr.
Guerin?” she said in her best British accent. “Just accept what I say, why
don’t you?”
He smiled. “Fine, whatever.”
She seemed content with that answer, even though it didn’t seem to be exactly
what she was looking for. He was just content with having her next to him.
And, then, suddenly, she did something so unexpected that it caught him a little
off guard.
She leaned forward, and, with the greatest effort not to make contact with any
part of his body that might cause him to yell out in pain, she crawled into his
arms. She placed on arm over his bare chest, careful not to apply too much
pressure to his stomach, and wrapped her other arm underneath him, rubbing the
cuts where the glass had been with her delicate fingers.
He wrapped his arms around her in return and pulled her close. The feel of her
body next to his was enough to make him forget about all of the pain he had ever
experienced, and he closed his eyes and let her invade his soul.
He wanted to believe that maybe she was in his arms right now because she felt
the same way about him that he did about her, but he knew that that wasn’t the
case.
Oh, well. She was there, laying next to him.
That’s all that mattered.
Max could tell that Kyle was happy the
minute he came back into the room. Isabel or whatever the hell her name was must
be very entertaining.
“What’re you doin’?” Max asked as his friend grabbed his coat and his
duffle bag he basically lived out of from day to day and headed towards the
door.
Kyle smiled. “I got me a room. A room for Isabel and I.”
Max shook his head and sighed. “You don’t know what you’re gettin’
yourself into, dude.” he said. “Bitches are always a problem.”
Kyle shrugged. “If this is what a problem’s like, then I need a few more of
‘em.”
Max grinned. “You really got it bad for her, don’t ya?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I do. We better stay in
“We can’t stay too long.” Max reminded his friend. He didn’t like being
forced to play the serious-guy role, but someone had to do it. “Only for a few
days.”
Kyle nodded in agreement. “Yeah, I know.” He sighed and began to make his
way out the door. “I know.”
Max sat alone in his room for awhile, flipping on the TV and surfing through the
channels, finding that the country music awards were on on one channel, and that
country music videos were on on another, and that there was a classic country
movie marathon on on another channel. Everything was country here in
Bored out of his mind, he debated on whether to go check on Michael. He decided
against it, though, figuring that he probably needed his space. Something had
seemed to be bothering him a little as he had rushed out of that building as
fast as he could, something other than the pain.
Something he needed to talk to Maria about.
The warmth of the sun passed through the
curtains and onto Michael as he awoke. He felt better than he had when he went
to bed. Not that he had felt extremely bad when he had went to bed. His back had
hurt a little bit from the glass, and his stomach had hurt most of all, but he
better now. It was amazing what a night of sleep could do for a person.
He was surprised to find Maria asleep next to him, but not at all disappointed.
She looked so beautiful and peaceful. Her hair was sprawled across his arm, and
her lips were gently parted. Her body heaved up and down with each breath she
took. She wasn’t laying in his arms the way she had been when they had first
fallen asleep, but she was very close to him, her head tilted to the side so
that he could feel her breathing on his bare arm.
He wanted to reach out and touch her, but she began to stir, too, and,
eventually her eyes began to open. Michael yawned and rubbed his eyes to cover
up the obvious fact that he had been staring at her in awe.
“Hey, you’re up.” she said cheerfully. Her hand came out to touch his bare
chest, and he gasped at her touch. He tried to cover it up by answering her
question quickly so that she wouldn’t notice. “Yeah, I slept pretty good.
How ‘bout you?”
She yawned and nodded. “I slept good, too.” she said. “But I am really
hungry.”
How one person could be so hungry so early in the morning was beyond him.
Breakfast was supposed to be the most important meal of the day, but not to
Michael Guerin. Breakfast, to him, was a meal he never looked forward to eating,
especially not when he first woke up.
“We could go see if they have some kind of food court.” he suggested. Though
the thought of food wasn’t at all appealing to him at the particular moment,
he wanted to be with her.
“You’re not going anywhere.” she told him decidedly, sitting up in the bed
and running her fingers through her hair. “You stay right here in this bed.
I’ll be back with some food in a bit.” she stood up and stretched, revealing
a tiny patch of naked skin on her stomach. Michael wasn’t intending to look
for long, but something there caught his eye. It was a mark on her side, a small
cut, that appeared to be bleeding a little bit, but not much. “What’s
that?” he asked her, pointing to the mark.
Maria looked down at her side, obviously unaware that the mark was there
herself. “Oh,” she said. “I think that’s from one of those guys.”
Michael hadn’t known that they had hurt Maria. If he had, he would’ve killed
them both instead of just one of them. “What’d they do?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. They were holding onto me kinda tight, though,
and it did kinda hurt.”
Yeah, if he’d known, he would’ve killed ‘em both in a heartbeat. Sure,
they hadn’t hurt her very badly, but it was bad enough. And if he hadn’t
found them in time, they would have really hurt her.
“I’m gonna go get some food.” she repeated, slipping on her tennis shoes
again. He watched her every move as she opened up the door to reveal Max on the
other side, poised as if he were about to knock. Great.
“Oh, hey, Maria.” he said, lowering his hand and smiling at her. It was one
of the few times Michael had ever seen Max smile. He really did want Maria to
trust him.
“Hey, Max.” Maria said. She didn’t seem uncomfortable around him like she
used to. In fact, she even managed a smile of her own before she stepped out the
door.
Max stepped in and closed the door behind him. “Dude!” he shouted to
Michael, moving to stand beside the bed. “How you feelin’?”
Michael shrugged. “Okay. I mean, how would you feel if you woke up with a
beautiful blonde laying next to you?”
A brief look of shock came over Max’s features. “Wait a minute, hold up. You
guys . . .” He made a gesture with his hands to indicate what he was talking
about. “In your condition?”
Michael laughed. “We didn’t actually have sex, dude.” he told his friend.
“But we did sleep together.”
It took Max a moment to get it. When he did, he shook his head. “Sleep is not
exciting to me, bro. Sex is.”
Michael laughed again. “So, what’s up?”
Max shrugged. “Not much. Just wanted to see how you were doin’.”
“I’m fine.” Michael told him honestly. “It wasn’t that bad.”
“Are you sure?” Max asked. “‘Cause you looked kinda upset when you came
outta that building.”
“I was in pain.”
“Besides that.”
Michael didn’t know whether to tell him what he had done or not. Max might
understand, though. He’d done the same thing many times.
“Okay,” he admitted. “There is something else that was bothering me.”
Max didn’t say anything as he waited for Michael to go on.
“I killed a
“What?”
“I killed a guy.” Michael repeated. “These two gangster guys were tryin’
to rape Maria like we tried to do.”
Max cringed. He wouldn’t have cringed if they had been talking about anyone
else, but they were talking about Maria, and Max truly liked Maria for herself .
. . as a friend, of course.
“I got in a fight with ‘em and ended up killing one of ‘em.”
Max raised his eyebrows and nodded in consideration. “You really do care about
her, huh?”
Michael nodded in response. “I got her into this in the first place. It’s my
responsibility to protect her.”
“Well, you definitely protected her, man.” Max tried to make a joke out of
the ordeal, but failed. Maybe he didn’t understand. Maybe what they went
through back there was something impalpable unless you had experienced it
yourself.
“So, anyway,” It was clear that Max wanted desperately to change the
subject. “You should know that the strip-club Kyle and I hit was a bust. Those
girls act like they’re afraid to take their pants off.” he grunted.
“Except for this one that Kyle found. He’s with her right now in a room down
the hall.”
Michael couldn’t believe it. Kyle rarely spent more than ten minutes with
those kinds of girls. He had always talked about taking some of the really good
ones along with ‘em for a few days, but he’d never actually done it.
“We’re gonna stay in Dallas for a few more days so Kyle can, uh, spend some
more time with her and so you can get better.”
“It’s not that bad.” Michael insisted. “I feel fine.”
Just then, the door swung open and Maria came back in carrying an armful of
junk-food.
“Got TWIX?” Max asked.
Maria threw him a TWIX wordlessly and dropped the rest of the candy she was
carrying down on the bed beside Michael. “Do you know how hard it is to get up
the stairs past all those annoying little kids with all of this candy?” she
asked Michael and Max both.
Max laughed, biting into his TWIX and announced that he was going to leave. He
waved as he walked out the door, and Maria even said goodbye to him.
“He’s kinda nice once you get to know him.” she commented once he had
left. She rummaged through the candy and found a stick of Sweet Tarts. Muttering
something about sugar rushes, she opened it up and popped one inside her mouth.
“So, I take it there was no food court.” Michael said, looking over the
candy. The thought of sugar in the morning was making his stomach churn.
“No, there was.” she said. “But it was really expensive. And, besides,
there was this oriental guy cooking.”
“So?” Michael didn’t get it. They had plenty of money from stealing, and
they could always steal more if they had to. And what about the oriental guy?
“Well, I don’t trust those oriental chefs.” Maria answered. “He’d
probably put rice in my pancakes or something. They put rice in everything.”
Michael smiled and reached for a Hershey’s bar. She had went through all that
trouble of going “up the stairs past all of those annoying little kids with
all of this candy”, and she had put it. He better at least eat something.
“So, are we gonna stay here for a few days?” she asked, crunching into her
Sweet Tart.
“Yeah,” Michael answered. “Apparently Kyle found a pretty nice bitch at
the clubs.”
“Ohhhh, I see.” Maria drew out the oh just for effect. “Well, that’s
good. It’ll give you time to recover and me time to just hang out and have
fun.”
Michael arched one eyebrow. “What’s your definition of fun?” he asked.
She looked him over. “Can you walk?” she asked in return.
“Yeah.” He wasn’t sure if he could or not, but, what the hell, right?
She smiled. “Then get dressed and I’ll show you.”
They’d done a lot of walking around that day while Kyle had been screwing
Isabel and Max had been planning the next place they would hit. Michael found
that the walking was actually helping him. His stomach didn’t hurt too much
anymore from where Jamal had hit him, and he was actually almost able to stand
up straight. Once and awhile he received a few odd looks from strangers
wondering what had happened to him, and one kid even pointed out to its mother
that he looked like the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
They’d been to so many places in such little time. Maria knew her way around
They’d already been to an art museum, which Michael enjoyed immensely because
of his secret liking of art, and they had snuck in to see a musical, too at a
theater, for they didn’t have any sort of tickets. After that they’d stopped
to eat lunch, which turned out to be a hotdog that tasted like crap and about
two fries and a Pepsi that resembled water more than pop.
“We could go to the fair!” Maria suggested suddenly as they walked past a
row of stores.
“The fair?” Michael echoed. “That’s kinda a country thing to do, don’t
you think?”
She rolled her eyes. “Michael,
It wasn’t that she was being persuasive or anything. It was just that the
pleading look in her eyes made it clear that she really wanted to go to the
fair, ride some rides, eat some more nasty hotdogs and maybe even throw up if a
certain wild ride got to goin’ too fast.
Yeah, that sure sounded like fun.
But, this was Maria . . .
“Okay, fine, I’ll go.” Michael agreed. “How far away is it, though?”
“Why?” Maria asked, sounding worried at once. “Does your back hurt? Does
your stomach hurt?”
He laughed at the sound in her voice.
“No,” he told her. “My feet hurt.”
“Your feet?”
“Yeah, you’ve been walkin’ me around here for the past 4 hours and I
haven’t even gotten to sit down.”
She sighed. “Fine, fine, we can get a taxi.”
They found a taxi stop and sat down on one of the uncomfortable wooden benches.
Maria obviously liked to people-watch, because she pointed to practically
everyone who walked by. She criticized some and appraised others.
But Michael wasn’t watching the people. He was watching her. He was watching
the way her lips moved when she spoke, the way her hands formed the gestures to
emphasize what she was saying, the way her eyes danced as she took in the world
around her, the way her hair flew back behind her shoulders whenever a gust of
wind chose to make itself known.
Finally, a taxi showed up, and they climbed in. The comfortable seats felt good
to Michael, compared to the wooden bench and the endless walking.
“Where to?” the unfriendly driver asked.
“The state fair.” Maria told him.
The driver turned around slowly in his seat and glared at her. “I don’t know
where that is this year.” he told her in a gruff voice that matched his gruff
appearance. “You’ll have to get another cab.”
“You’re a taxi driver.” Maria shot back. “Figure it out.”
Michael smiled as the driver turned back around and pulled away from the stop
and out onto the road.
“Guys are like slaves.” Maria said quietly. “Tell ‘em to do something,
they do it.”
“Am I like your slave?” he asked her. Only once it had escaped his mouth did
he begin to think about it what might be like to be Maria DeLuca’s slave for a
night.
Maria began to giggle. “Michael, do you know how wrong that sounded?”
He nodded in reply, but he didn’t think it sounded wrong. In fact, the only
word he could think of to describe what they were both thinking about now was
right.
“So, how’d you know about this state fair thing anyway?” he inquired,
quickly changing the subject.
“Michael, don’t you ever read brochures?” she asked him. “Every time
I’m at a hotel, I read a brochure about what the city I’m in has to offer. I
found out about the “state fair thing” by reading while you were sleeping
yesterday after that run-in with those two guys.”
“Oh.” Michael had never really taken the time to read a brochure, or even
the paper, or even a book. He could read, of course, he just didn’t enjoy it.
He suddenly remembered the marks he had seen on her sides earlier that morning
and asked her how they were doing.
“They’re fine.” she told him, lifting her shirt up on the side a little
bit so that he could see for himself. True, Terrell and Jamal hadn’t really
hurt her that bad, but they had hurt her enough, enough for Michael, anyway.
“You sure?” Michael asked her, reaching out and running his fingers across
the reddened area of skin on her side. He couldn’t resist. He needed to touch
her again. She didn’t seem to mind. Either that or she didn’t know that he
was touching her just because he wanted to.
“I’m sure.” she told him. “Your injuries were much worse than mine.”
True, physically, his injuries were worse. But, mentally . . .
. . . were they?
That night, after riding on the roller
coaster at the fair until he almost threw up and eating so many hotdogs that he
never wanted to taste one again, Michael dreamt. He dreamt of a reality that
never had been, that probably never would be, a reality that he would only see
in his dreams.
The mists curled around her feet, causing her white, satin dress to flow around
her as she brushed her hair out of her face. He watched her standing there for a
minute, the darkness curling around her, the only light illuminating her
features being the moon.
“I know you’re here, Michael.” she said aloud, looking around for him in
the dream world. “You don’t have to hide.”
Slowly, he stepped out of the shadows that concealed his presence and let her
see him. Their eyes met, and he was hooked. He felt like he was drowning in her
as she surveyed his scraggly appearance, the very opposite of hers. She looked
like a princess. He looked like a homeless person.
She didn’t seem to care, though. She stepped up to him and ran her hand across
his cheek, feeling a day’s worth of unshaven stubble. She smiled as it tickled
her fingers, and he smiled back. Just seeing her happy was enough to make him
happy.
“It’s cold up here.” she commented, wrapping her arms around his neck and
bringing herself closer to him.
“Where is here?” Michael asked.
“Does it matter?” she asked in reply.
It didn’t matter. Here, as far as Michael was concerned, was Maria. She was
all there was to him right now. Remembering that she had been cold, he linked
his arms around her waist and pulled her as far against him as she could go,
letting the warmth exit his body and travel into her.
“Do you trust me, Maria?” he asked her, rubbing his hands up and down her
back to generate his heat throughout her.
“I have no reason to trust you.” she told him. “But I do.”
He let out a sigh of relief on top of her head.
“Why?” she asked. “Do you trust me?”
“More than anyone.” His words came out in a raspy way as he continued to let
his hands explore her body, wanting to be closer, wanting so much more. He let
out a sigh as he took in her sweet fragrance and pleasing appearance.
She let her head fall against his shoulder. “Then why aren’t you with me?”
“I am with you. I’m always with you, Maria.”
“No, with me.”
He ran his hands through her angelic hair and down her bare, uncovered shoulders
before settling them in the dip in her hips. “I didn’t think you’d want
that.”
“I do.” Slowly, she brought her head up to look into his eyes again. He saw
himself reflecting in her beautiful green eyes. To her, he wasn’t a hideous
monster like he had been when he had first kidnaped her. He wasn’t a scraggly
hunchback like the people out in the busy city of
“Do you want that?” she asked him. “Do you want me?”
He nodded, dumbfounded as her fingers began to work with the buttons on his
shirt, undoing each one carefully and slowly, as if to make him suffer.
“Well, we’re out in the middle of nowhere with no one else around.” she
reminded him, undoing the last button and slipping the shirt down over his
shoulders to reveal his naked chest. “Do you really want me?”
He did.
With that, he crushed his lips to hers, capturing her, tasting her, thrusting
his tongue into her mouth with such force that she could barely react. He
gripped onto her body so tightly that he knew he must be hurting her. He
didn’t want to hurt her, but she didn’t seem to mind, for she was doing the
very same thing to him, burrowing her fingers in his unruly hair with one hand,
clawing at his back with the other, urging him closer to her as he urged her
closer to him.
Together, they fell down upon the swirling mists and clouds, never breaking the
kiss, never ending the touches. He held onto her body even as he undressed her,
afraid that he might lose her somewhere in this world. She never even blinked,
afraid that she might miss a moment.
The smell of sweat drifted into the air as their bodies mingled together, and
Michael heard her call out his name as ecstasy overtook her. The mists continued
to swirl around them as they moved with one another, each’s desire, want, and
need placed permanently in their eyes and written across their faces. Michael
felt himself losing control, and he never wanted to stop. Never . . .
But he woke up. And the dream ended. And he found himself back in a reality
where dreams were not true, a reality where there was no swirling mists and
where there was no love happening between the two of them.
Wiping the sweat from his forehead, Michael looked around, his eyes adjusting to
the darkness in the room. Beside him, Maria was sleeping peacefully, a small
smile on her face telling him that she was having a good dream, but not the kind
of dream he had been having. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and pull her
close, but he couldn’t do that. Maybe she didn’t want him to. Maybe she’d
wake up and find herself pressed so close against him that it hurt and never
know what to think about him again. He couldn’t let that happen.
He couldn’t fall in love with her, because she would never fall in love with
him.