God, from the pool below, shouts back, “Two!”
The crowd continues the count, calling out, “Three!”
I down the contents of the bottle and take a running leap off the roof.
“Ohhh shit,” rings out from below, but it’s too late. The buzz of liquor hums through my veins, air whooshes past me in a flash, and then I’m hitting water, the cold liquid consuming me on entry.
A jolt sparks up my ankle, zapping a sharp stab of pain through my foot, and then everyone is cheering as I break the surface. Opening my eyes I float in the shallow end of the water.
“Oh fuck! There’s blood,” someone cries out, and next thing I know, I’m being dragged out of the pool by God.
My blood? I think to myself, but the reality of what’s happening doesn’t penetrate my drunken haze.
“Fuck! Call an ambulance!”
Laughter cackles from me, rattling my entire body.
I don’t feel human right now.
Am I losing my mind?
A burly white dude with a skinhead and tattoos up his neck kneels in front of me and rubs his chin. “That’s pretty grim, man. The bone pierced through the skin.”
“You in any pain?” God asks, and I snort, pushing at him playfully.
“My brother’s killer was given a fucking fine. I’m numb,” I tell him honestly, and then the laughter turns to sorrow, and I can’t stop the tears and desperate hands tugging at my sanity.
Someone’s knocking on the door to the recesses of my mind, and it’s the old me, begging me to let him take back the wheel.
Fuck him.
Slouching back, I close my eyes to shut out all the faces looking down on me.
A throb begins to pound behind my eyelids, and everything swirls around inside me like a tornado, dragging me under into the calm of the storm.
It’s too quiet.
Eerie.
I’m in the middle of the road. The asphalt is wet, but it’s not raining.
“Rhett.”
My name is whispered on the gentle breeze rustling through the trees, and my breath hitches.
“Where are you, Rhett?”
My heart rate is elevated, pounding through my chest, beating through the skin.
Placing a hand there, I search the treeline for someone…for him.
“Don’t forget about me, Rhett.”
“Robbie!” I shout.
“I’m here.”
My entire frame jolts, and I brush at my ear, certain the whisper echoed there.
My eyes spring open, and I’m propelled into consciousness.
A dull yellow glow lights the room bringing it into view.
The shadows shift and move until a figure steps out from them, and I exhale an unsteady breath.
Emotion, heavy and weighted, pushes down on my chest, and tears burn my eyes.
My mother comes to stand at the base of the hospital bed I appear to be in.
“Mom?” I croak.
My mouth feels like it’s been left open for a week and moths have taken up residence.
“Do you know how terrifying it is to get a call informing me my son is in the hospital?” she says, shaking her head, exhausted.
Her brown curly hair matches my own, messy and chaotic, and full lips tug down her pretty features. Red-rimmed eyes pin me to the spot, and guilt cloaks my body like a blanket.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“So am I, Rhett. I can’t stick around and watch you self-destruct. It hurts too much. I’ve lost too much. Suffered more than…” she chokes, but there’s a resolve in her tone that leaves a pit in my stomach.
My mouth opens, but words fail me.
Her hand comes to rest on my leg, and it’s then I notice my other leg is suspended in the air, hanging in a sling with a cast from my shin to my toes.
“You snapped the bone. Ruined your football career before it even took off.”
She swipes at a stray tear and sniffs, shaking her head again.
“Your grades are slipping, and the school is worried about you graduating.”
“I don’t care about any of that shit anymore,” I tell her honestly.
Her features transform from sorrow to anger, and she rounds the bed, coming to stop right next to my head.
“You better start caring. You lived, Rhett. You didn’t die that night, Robbie did, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to watch you piss your life away in his memory. You owe him more than that—more than this!” She punctuates each word with a pointed finger to my chest.
Guilt, rooted all the way to my bone marrow, infects me. It’s like an illness inside me I can’t recover from.
“That son of a bitch who killed him got a fine—a fucking fine! He was over the limit!” I weep, tears brimming and falling from my eyes. I know it’s selfish of me to put all my anger and pain on her. She must feel a million times worse than I do.
I hate it. I hate this. I hate him. I hate myself.
Closing her eyes, she hugs her arms around her waist like she needs to hold herself together or she’ll crumble to dust.
“The system is full of injustices. Instead of becoming part of the problem, become part of the solution,” she snaps. “Make your life count for something.”
Without another word, she leaves the room.
Our house.
Our town.
She leaves me.
2 months later…
Order pizza. Working late. Dad.
I snort at the note left on the fridge. It’s the same one that gets reposted at least four nights a week.
He’s hardly ever home, and that suits me just fine. I swipe the twenty he left and stuff it in my pocket.
He’s tightened my allowance these days and took my credit card as punishment for renting out an entire hotel for my friends and me after our prom.
It was worth it. If I can live in the illusion of who I used to be before Robbie’s death, it helps me forget—if only for a moment. I long for those moments where I get a sliver of reprieve from the anger, the guilt, the goddamn sorrow.
Locking the front door behind me, I jog down the street, keeping my steps light.
God meets me at the bottom of my road with a gas can and tube in his hand, a cocky smirk on his face.
“I ain’t doing the sucking,” he informs me, handing me the instruments for tonight’s activity.
“You always suck,” I gest, taking the jab to the arm he gives me.
His brown, almond-shaped eyes clash with mine, a mischievous gleam shining through.
Most people who don’t know us assume we’re related with our similar looks and brotherly bond.
We’re both tall and athletic, dark hair and eyes, full lips and chiseled jawlines.
We’re a dynamic duo.
“Why can’t we just go to the gas station and fill it up?” he moans, looking up and down the street to make sure no one is around to see us syphoning gas from my neighbors’ cars.
“Because we don’t want to be on any video surveillance that can be used as evidence,” I tell him again. We’ve already been over this a few times.
Losing my scholarship was crushing once it really sank in.
My mom’s parting words at the hospital after my stupid accident really struck a cord with me, and since she’s been gone, my old man’s been a thorn in my fucking side.
Using money for school as a tool to keep me in line.
Fuck him.
He’s been flaunting his ass all over town, making a mockery of his marriage and my mom.
I fucking hate him and can’t wait to be out from under him.
“You sure you want to do this? I can speak to my dad for you.” God pulls out his cell phone. “This could be a hoax,” he grumbles.
“Or a test,” I remind him.
Rumor has it someone has proof that a secret society, The Elite, is in fact a real thing.
To most, it’s an urban legend, whispered about amongst high schoolers, but to those of us who know it exists know becoming a member brings opportunity, belonging, wealth, knowledge, and status.
God’s father, Baxter Samuel Goddard IV, or Four, as his friends call him, bears the mark of The Elite in form of a tattoo, yet he’s yet to confirm he’s in fact a member to his own son.
That’s how secret and elite this society is. However, I fucking know it’s true.
When I was twelve and staying over at God’s, one of God’s favourite pastimes was daring me to do shit. This one night, he had dared me to sneak into his father’s office and replace the “good” bourbon his father kept in there with cheap stuff he paid some hobo to buy for him in town. God’s always had issues with his father, like I said; we’re cut from the same cloth.
I was just about to exit Four’s office after completing the dare, when I heard his heavy footfalls approach. I had to find a place to hide. Lucky for me, Four needed a big office to fit his huge ego.
6 years ago
I dart across the room my head swivelling in all directions until I notice a slither of space down by the couch along the back wall.
The door opens and my eyes scan his movements. I can see him clearly, his cell glued to his ear.
My eyes track him as he goes to the huge self-portrait of himself positioned in the centre of the main wall.
The artist who created it had missed out a few of Four’s chins but captured the greed always alight in his eyes.
When he opens the frame like a door it causes my mouth to pop open, a safe is displayed behind it built into the wall.
That’s freaking cool.
Punching in numbers it beeps and releases the safe door.
Reaching inside he pulls out a book of some kind; it has an emblem of a skull covering the front with words that I can’t make out from this distance. With his cell to his ear he frowns and then speaks down the line.
“With her inheriting all his businesses it’s even more imperative that we recruit her into The Elite.”
Taking a few heavy breaths he shakes his head slightly before continuing.
“That was college. She’s made a life for herself since then, maybe we give her a little incentive. I want her name in this book.” He grunts, plonking the book down on his desk and straining his ass into the seat before grabbing a handful of candy from a bowl on his desk, shovelling them into his mouth like he’s never going to get a meal again.