Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 83394 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 417(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83394 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 417(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
“Yeah.” I grabbed the pack of cigarettes off my nightstand and lit one up.
“I smell that! I hate that shit!” She shoved my door open. “I can’t believe you’re smoking in the apartment. It’s not allowed here, ya know.”
I couldn’t believe it either. I’d always hated cigarettes, thought they were disgusting. How much shit had I given Gage about them over the years?
I shook my head. Nope. I couldn’t think about him today.
“Come in why don’t you,” I said instead.
She frowned. “You used to hate it when Gage smoked.”
Yeah, I used to hate or love a lot of things I didn’t anymore. I wasn’t the same person I’d been then, and never would be.
“You’re going to be late for school,” I told her. She was killing it in art school. I was so happy for her, even if I didn’t say it as much as I should. Mouse had a scholarship, and unlike me, she wasn’t letting it go to waste.
“So are you. That’s why I checked to see if you’re awake.”
I shrugged. “Don’t know if I’m going to class today.”
“Joey.” She crossed her arms. “You can’t keep doing this.”
“Leave it alone, Mouse.” I took a drag of the cigarette, let the smoke fill my lungs, then stubbed it out, rolled over, and closed my eyes.
She sighed, didn’t leave, but then finally I heard the door click closed, and I could breathe again.
I was barely hanging on to my own scholarship. I’d lose it, probably, but I couldn’t find it in myself to care. The boy who’d dreamed of moving to Los Angeles and studying the universe and how it worked…was dead.
I slept for a little while longer, then got up, took a shower, and grabbed a quick breakfast.
Afterward, I headed straight for the gym. I’d been working out for a year now, building muscle I hadn’t known I had, taking boxing lessons and tae kwon do.
I wouldn’t ever be seen as weak again.
I wouldn’t ever need anyone else again either.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Gage
Two years down, nine to go. If I was lucky, maybe less.
I was the definition of night and day, of opposites living in one body.
I did exactly what Herbert taught me. I steeled myself, cut off my emotions, didn’t have any feelings at all, actually…well, mostly. I did for Herbert. He’d become a father figure, better than my own dad, who never came to see me. My dad loved me, according to him, but he wanted to stay as far away as he could from places like this. I understood, right? Cops and the law made him itchy, so he just…left me alone.
I let myself love Herbert, though, even told him I couldn’t read well. He tried to help me sometimes, but letting him depended on my mood. One day I would because I wanted to do better, wanted to be better, to be smart, but the next I’d slam that door closed because wanting only made me hurt.
I would never be super smart. I would never be really good at reading either, but I was a little better, and I’d gotten my GED, which had made me strangely proud before I sealed myself off to that too. Herbert had pushed me to do it. Most days I believed I did it for him. Some days I acknowledged it was a lie.
It was easier if I didn’t feel.
I was sitting at the lunch table. Herbert to my right and some other guy—Skull—on my left. When a group of guys rushed Skull, stabbed a shiv into his neck, blood squirting all over our mashed potatoes, all I did was move out of the way, stood back while he fell to the ground, spasming.
I was stone—Killer Kid. The one who didn’t cry or speak a word when a guard accidentally gave me an elbow or a baton for being a cop killer.
God, if Romeo and Mouse could see me now. They wouldn’t be able to call me Hero.
I wasn’t anyone’s hero.
Still, I had a nightmare that night—Skull getting killed, only it was me who did it, and instead of Skull falling to the ground, it was Joey’s father.
I wished I could figure out how to turn my brain off, especially at night. It would be a whole lot easier to forget if I could.
Romeo and Mouse still wrote me sometimes, but I never opened their letters, never read them. Some I sent straight back; others I kept because no matter how difficult it was, no matter how many walls I built, there was still a secret spot inside me, one that hard as I tried, I couldn’t burn. It was a fireproof safe, indestructible, invincible, the way he used to make me feel.
That’s where the old Gage hid, where Jojo’s Gage lived.
Every once in a while, I opened the box, let him out. Sometimes that happened when I stuck my dick in Benny, a guy who liked to get fucked and didn’t require any conversation. I couldn’t give him words, but I could give him cock. I could never give anyone more than a lay, but sometimes…sometimes I’d let myself pretend he was Jojo and talk to him in my head. Other than that, the only time I opened the box was when I lay in bed and let myself remember…