Fire in the Streets (24 page)

The world implodes around me. I run through the streets, aimless, no clue what I'm thinking, where I will end up. But I can't escape the sight; it lingers like a photograph. Can't escape the knowledge of what Raheem has done. I run to the edge of the lake, dip my toes in the icy water. Anything to cool the fire beneath my feet.

This is where we come. Sam and me. Sam, who I love, who I believed the worst of. My betrayal of him stings my skin. The world splits wide open in front of me, my every mistake roiling in the waves. A thousand grains of sand. Water lapping languidly. Streaks of clouds like claw marks across the ruined sky.

I let it out, finally. The scream bends me double.

A seagull caws at me, frightened. His toes skim the lake surface as he glides away to a fresh perch somewhere beyond the edges of my gaze.

For the first time I can ever remember, I don't want tomorrow to come.

R
AHEEM'S WAITING FOR ME WHEN I GET
home. Sitting on the couch with his hands folded in front of him, elbows on his knees.

“Don't you have to
work
,” I say, pressing the door shut behind me. Now that I've caught him taking a bribe, his real jobs are going to matter more than ever.

Raheem simply stares at me. It hits like a hammer over my head. How stupid I've been all along. How did I believe he could work all these extra shifts and still be able to do the policing? To still come home every night more or less at the usual time?

Now all the shreds of pretense are dropped. He doesn't have to work tonight.

“How much?” I ask.

“What?”

“How much money did they pay you?” I fight to keep my voice even.

Raheem rubs his hands together. “You don't want to know more than you already do.” He comes off the couch, moving toward me. “I need you to forget what you saw, Maxie. I need it to be like this never happened.”

Forget?
“Did you think this was going to be okay with me?”

“We're blood,” he says.

“We're all blood,” I cry. “Skin. Hair. How could you?”

“You wanna sleep on the street? Someone has to pay for our life.”

“Such as it is,” I blurt.

Raheem's eyes narrow. “You think you can do better?”

I'm angry. Shaking. Frightened. “I don't know. Maybe.”

He shakes his head. “You think this was easy? Jesus, Maxie. Why do you think I did it?”

“Don't—”

“I did it for you.”

“Don't say that.”

“We had no money,” he says. “None. This Fed, he knew all about it, and they covered our bills. And then some.”

“Why didn't you tell me?” I whisper. “I would have told you no, it wasn't worth it.”

“We're okay now, don't you get it? Doesn't that matter to you at all?”

My stomach aches. “Raheem.”

“Don't look at me like that. I did this for you,” he says. “I gave up
everything
for you!”

“You
took
everything from me,” I cry. “How am I supposed to go in there and face everyone now?”

“Just like I do,” he says. “Do your work and keep your head down. Never tell anyone. I mean
anyone
. Not even Sam, not even Emmalee, you hear me?”

“So it's over now, right? You're going to stop?”

“Maxie—”

“What are you going to say to Leroy?”

Raheem grabs me by the arms. It's rough. A kind of pain I've never known. For someone I love to hurt me. I've been so careful not to love, not to be hurt anymore. The ache bubbles inside me, boils into rage.

“Let me go!” I struggle against his hands.

“You can't tell anyone,” he insists. “Ever. You know that, right?”

I want to spit at him. I gather a pool in my mouth and pucker.

“If you tell, they will kill me. Leroy himself would shoot me dead.”

I swallow hard, stop fighting him.

“You understand?” he says. “They'll kill me.”

“I'll kill you myself,” I hiss. Each trembling breath a coffin nail. Mine. His. I can't even tell. Maybe that's the
thing with the blood bond. You all rise high or else all fall down together.

I've been living off the pigs. The truth consumes me, hot as the licking flames of hell. I tear through the house, to my room. I tear down everything, not just what is new. The pretty blue dress. My white sandals. I don't know when it started. When he first sold out and sold us to the enemy. Everything is tainted.

My beautiful, beloved Panther leather jacket. I strip it from my skin like it's on fire.

T
HERE IS NOTHING, NOTHING THAT TOUCHES
me anymore. The invisible thing that I have been seems fitting now. I don't want to be seen, for once. Keep the phone in my hand at all times so people will know I'm busy and not bother to ask me anything.

I see the effects of Raheem's betrayal everywhere. The legal aid lawyers come by, gearing up for Slim and Rocco's defense. They've not been let out of jail. The court is not letting us bail them out, for reasons no one seems to understand.

I miss Rocco's presence in the office. We thought they would be home by now, able to go about their business, just with a court date hanging over their heads. Cherry's eyes are puffy behind her shades, and even though she won't admit it, I know it's because she misses Slim.

She says only one thing to me about any of it. I come up
to her in the office to show her I'm wearing the lipstick she got me. I feel so pretty and grown-up in spite of everything. She tips my chin up with her finger, looks at me, and says, “Yes. It suits you.”

I lean in and hug her. “Cherry.” It feels right because I know that she has lost something, and I know that I have too.

She wraps her arms around me and whispers, “Maxie, sugar, don't put off anything you want. Not a thing. Not even for a minute. Just go get it, because you don't know when it's going to be gone.”

And that's the end of it. I wish it was that easy for me, knowing what I want. To top it off, I'm all alone in this. Raheem told me not to tell Sam, not to tell Emmalee. When he said it, I was so sure I would break that directive the second I walked away. But now I realize how true it is. I can't confide in anyone.

Sam strides across the office like he knows. Knows everything. I have to turn away.

“Maxie,” he says, and I put up my hand like “don't even start.”

He can't know. No one can. I hold secrets well. It's something I'm good at. I run my mouth, sure, but not about what's real.

“Not here.” The envelopes blur beneath my gaze. “Later.”

I'm going to have to tell him. Apologize. Admit defeat and helplessness and everything horrible. He'll hate me.

They'll all hate me. For holding the secret. For not telling sooner. For being his sister.

“Let's go outside,” Sam says. His eyes are reading me. Worried. Caring. I ache inside. Heart. Stomach. Way down low in the belly.

The window beckons. White light pouring in through the space around the curtains. I want to walk out with him. We've always been that way, needing space around us. Inside, breathing close, everything presses on us and we can't get out from under.

I want to take the hand he holds out to me, but . . . what happens a moment later? I'll speak the things I can't take back and everything will be over. No one wants anything to do with a traitor.

Around the room, everyone's working different tasks. Jolene and her adding machine. Leroy by the bookcase, surely thinking up words to use later. Hamlin reads aloud from a magazine, something that causes the people closest to him to be all smiles. Cherry tosses her hair and laughs, throaty and rich. Others join in, a happy chorus.

Sam turns toward them too. Toward the brief flash of joy lighting up the air. It's not a thing you can look away from so easy.

Shining, intense laughter, the kind that tastes like it's everything. Moment to moment, it all matters. After Steve. After the office assault. After Slim and Rocco, and all the cats behind bars. It could be over in an instant. The bullet hits and we all meet whatever god or devil's waiting, and knowing me, I say something stupid and end up damned for eternity in a sloppy hellhole. Worse than the gutter. So low.

I blink back everything. Panthers don't cry.

Boots on the floor. Eyes forward.

“I have work to do.”

S
AM DOESN'T LET IT GO. WHEN I LEAVE
the office later, he follows me outside. “You haven't told anyone,” he says. “So I guess you believe me now?”

“Of course I believe you. I overreacted.”

“I'll say.” Sam clears his throat. “Well, I thought about it later, and I can see how what I did might look suspicious.”

“You're not mad?”

“I wish you could have just trusted me,” he admits.

Yeah, me too. “Sorry.”

Sam touches my arm. “But maybe it's not fair to ask for trust when we know for sure that there's a traitor among us. Someone we probably trust actually is turning over info to the police.”

My gut aches, but I nod. “I know.” The desire to tell Sam exactly how much I know begins to engulf me. Have I
done the right thing, keeping silent? If Raheem stops turning over secrets, does it do any harm to keep what I know to myself?

“There was money in the envelope I took, but the man isn't a cop,” Sam says. “He's a doctor.”

“A doctor?” I claw my way out of my anguish, try to pay closer attention. “What kind of doctor?”

“Doesn't matter,” Sam says. “He has a nice office downtown and his patients are a bunch of rich old white people. He has a lot of money and he donates to our clinic once a month. I was there to get this month's money.”

“Why doesn't he mail it in like everyone else?”

“You don't mail wads of cash,” Sam says. “And he doesn't want anyone to know he gives us money. He's afraid he'll lose his clients. So I go to pick it up.”

“I saw him outside the clinic before,” I say. “I guess that makes sense now.”

Sam nods. “He came down twice to see what the clinic looks like, to be sure it meets high medical standards. His money is helping us get better medicine and equipment.”

“That's good.” Except it makes me feel doubly guilty for doubting him. “I want to go home now.” The words sound foreign coming from me.

His hand touches my arm. “Maxie, are you all right?”

“Fine. I'm sorry I jumped to conclusions.”

Sam shrugs. “How could you ever have guessed the real thing? It's pretty weird.”

“Yeah,” I reply, slinking away.

I
NEED TO KNOW HOW YOU'RE SITTING WITH
this,” Raheem says first thing. What—is camping on the couch waiting for me his new job or something?

“Not good,” I snap. “What do you think? How am I supposed to sit?”

“You're acting like it's the end of the world.”

Can't he see how the world is ending? My world, the world I've wanted so badly to be a part of.

“Rocco's my friend. Slim is—” I sigh. “Cherry's heart is broken now. You know that?”

“They would have found out some other way. They always do. That's how the pigs stay on top.”

“We're supposed to be opposite of them!” I cry.

“We are.”

I glare at him through narrowed eyes.

“Maxie, what are you thinking?” he says. “What are you going to do?”

I cross my arms. “I haven't told anybody, if that's what you mean.”

“Maxie—”

“Is it over?” I interrupt.

Silence. Then, “We can get by for quite a while on the cash they already gave me. I don't want you worrying about any of this.”