The Trial (The Tree House) (5 page)

“I beg to differ,” Ben said.

“Then you beg to be wrong.” Aly shifted on her feet nervously as the two of us tried to stare the other down. “You don't know me as well as you think you do, Ben,” I finally continued.

“I know you well enough to know you need to take that with you,” he replied once again nudging the gun toward me.

I stared at him for another minute feeling my nostrils flaring as I tried to keep myself calm. Finally with a frustrated grunt, I grabbed the gun and shoved it into my coat pocket then stomped out before either of them could say another word. 

As soon as I hit the sidewalk, I regretted turning down Ben's company. At least
he’d been conscious when we arrived here. I didn't really know where I was or where I was going, or where my car was now that I thought of it. It had everything I had managed to grab from my apartment when I'd hurried out of there. All my clothes, my laptop, my phone. Though I guess if I was “on the run” or “laying low for a while” it was probably a good idea that I didn't have any electronics. Those crazy men in suits would probably be able to track me down.

My stomach grumbled bringing me out of my head. I needed some food, preferably somethin
g that didn't resemble concrete like everything – it seemed – in Aly's house. As I reached for my wallet in my back pocket, I realized I'd left it up in the apartment. No way was I going back up there any time soon. It's weird, but I could feel the dishonesty in there, like it was tangible. Like there was something palpable in the air that I might breathe in, making me a liar like Ben. Like my parents. Maybe like everyone I'd ever met.

I guess it didn't really matter if I had my wallet or not. The only thing in there that would buy me some food was my emergency credit card. I'm surprised Ben hadn't destroyed it yet for fear
of me using it, causing some guy in a suit to come shoot up wherever we were. No, the only way I was going to get anything was with cash. I felt the gun weighing my pocket down. Maybe I could pull my hood up so my face was dark and find some unsuspecting...

What was wrong with me? Why would the thought of mugging someone even enter my mind? I wasn't Ben. I couldn't just pull the trigger and end a life the way he had at our house. Though feeling the gun in my hand did give me a sense of power.
Even if I had never used it before. I didn't want to learn though. If I learned how to shoot, it would open me up to temptations I didn't want to deal with. I didn't want to drown in power. I didn't want to think I was better than anyone else. Cuz I knew I wasn't. I wasn't any different than this homeless man sitting on the corner with a sign. In fact, I was much more like him than anyone in this group of guys walking silently past him only to start cracking jokes about his situation as soon as he was out of ear shot. I was like him.  Homeless. Starving. He probably had somewhat of a normal life before this. Maybe he had a wife. Maybe he had a whole family that he loved and that loved him. And maybe something happened to make him run away from it all. Maybe a terrible secret or something from his past had come back to haunt him.

Or maybe I was looking way too deep into this smelly
hobo’s life and he was nothing like me at all.

“Any spare change, brother?” he asked me with
a pleading, possibly rehearsed look in his eyes.

I shrugged. “I'm sorry, man,” I said. “I don't have anything to give you.”

The man turned away muttering to himself about how I was lying to him and that I thought I was better than him. I wasn't a liar. I definitely better than him.

I continued on down the street and was about to turn the corner when I heard commotion behind me. Turning back around, I found the group of guys had stopped in front of the homeless man again and one of them was saying something to him. I watched as he shook his head and tried backing away only for the guy talking to close the gap. He grabbed the man by his grimy coat and pushed him back against the brick wall he'd been leaning against.

“Hey!” I yelled and jogged toward them. They all turned to look at me though the guy with the homeless man pushed against the wall didn't let him go. “What's going on here?” I asked feeling my voice shake.

“It's alright,” the guy said with an easy smile. “We're just messing around.” Then he let the homeless man go and turned toward me. “You probably shouldn't be poking your head into other people's business, anyway. Am I right?”

I stared the man in the eyes. There was no anger in them, but they were glassy like he'd been drinking. A sickly sweet smell hit my nostrils. Tequila.

“Just leave the guy alone, alright? He didn't do anything to you,” I said meeting the eyes of the homeless man. He turned his head away from me ashamed. I took his arm and began pulling him with me. “Come on,” I said to him. I didn't know where I was going to take him. Just away from these idiots, I guess.

“Hey!” The guy yelled from behind me. He grabbed my shoulder wrenching me around to face him. Then I watched as he reared back and threw his fist forward, connecting it with the side of my head. The sound of something cracking resonated in my ears. Whether it was his knuckles or my cheekbone, I'm not sure.

I stumbled back
, but regained my balance pretty quickly and instinctively reached into my coat pocket feeling my fingers wrap around the gun.
Click
. Everyone, including the homeless man, backed away from me, their eyes wide with horror. My arm was stretched out straight, the barrel pointed directly at the guy's forehead.

“You gonna shoot me?” he asked me stepping forward again. Surely the tequila gave him a little bit of moronic confidence.

I couldn’t shoot him. There's no way. I didn’t even know really how to cock the gun. Luckily, one of his more sober friends pulled him back by the shirt collar. “Come on, Josh. It's not worth it,” he said. “Let's get out of here.”

I kept the gun trained on them as they hurried down the sidewalk and disappeared around the corner. Lowering my arm, I saw that the homeless man was still frozen in place behind me. “Sorry,” I muttered. “Hopefully those guys won't bother you anymore.”

The man didn't respond, just hurriedly grabbed the few things he had and scurried in the opposite direction. I cursed under my breath as I watched him slink like a sewer rat into the nearest alley. I tucked the gun back into my pocket wishing I hadn't brought it with me. Though for that millisecond when I'd pulled the gun out and everyone had backed away from me, I'd felt in control for the first time in the last few days. I felt power and it wasn't a good feeling.

My stomach grumbled again and I decided to cut my walk extra short. Any food sounded good right about then, even concrete chili.

Chapter four

“What happened to you?” Aly asked me when I walked back through the door.

Ben walked in just then pulling the clip out of his gun and pushing it back in absentmindedly. His blond hair was wet like he'd just taken a shower. He stopped when he saw me. “Geez, Jack,” he said shaking his head. “You were gone for fifteen minutes and you still managed to get yourself into trouble.” He put his gun down on the table and grabbed my chin, turning it so my bruised eye was in the light. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” I muttered pulling my head away from him.

“Yeah, obviously,” Aly said crossing her arms over her chest.

I took the gun out of my jacket pocket and tossed it on the table. “Do you have any more of that chili left?” I asked trying to change the subject. Without another word, Aly took a bowl out of the cupboard and filled it with chili from a pot on the stove. “Thanks,” I muttered and took the bowl with me into the extra room down the hall. I climbed out the window onto the fire escape and sat down on the steps.

The chili wasn't really that bad. It tasted like it had come from a can
, but I didn't really know how else chili was supposed to taste. Maybe that oatmeal hadn't tasted so bad that morning either. Maybe I needed to be a bit nicer to Aly. She had opened her home to us, even if it was tiny. And she had taken us in knowing the risks and knowing who was coming after us, even if it was something she could potentially have a part in.

My face hurt. The skin around my eye was tender and I winced when I pushed on it even in the slightest bit. My dad used to ask me whenever I'd hurt myself if it hurt when I pushed on it. Then I'd push on the bruise or the scrape or whatever and flinch from the pain and say in my most whiny voice, “yeah." He'd always say “then don't push on it” and that usually made me smile. As I got older it just made me roll my eyes. He thought he was so clever. I suppose most dads are like that though.

I couldn't sleep that night. Maybe it was because I'd slept all day. Maybe it was because I was in a weird place and the only reason I'd been able to sleep before that was because I had been completely wasted and exhausted.

My brother was a few feet away from me snoring and I felt like if I rolled over, I'd see that shiny gun in his hand and his finger wrapped around the trigger. It had definitely been weird holding that other gun and pointing it at a total stranger. Sure he'd hit me in the face, but why had I felt it would be okay to retaliate by shooting him? A person doesn't get a bruise from getting shot. They can't just cover their boo-boo with a Band-Aid and call it good. I could have killed the guy. I could have had more blood on my hands. No, I don't think I would have shot him. I wasn't that kind of person. I wasn't like my brother.

But then again, I also hadn't been forced to kill anyone. I'm sure Ben had been a lot more like me before he'd gone
to London. We'd had similar interests. The same friends. It was like we were blood rather than adopted brothers. But in that moment I had seen him approaching me in the airport, he seemed like a different person. He'd had that haunted look in his eyes that someone can only get from hiding a terrible secret for too long. Maybe the only difference between the two of us was that he'd gone to London and I'd stayed at home where it was safe.

As quietly as possible, I got up and made my way down the hall and into the kitchen. The black gun was on the table glaring menacingly at me. I grabbed a glass from the cupboard and filled it with tap water gulping it down.
Ack
. It tasted metallic like old pennies. Maybe it was a rule that everything in this place had to taste bad. I went and sat at the table and leaned my head against my palm only to feel a shooting pain in the side of my face. I'd already forgotten about my shiner.

He'd had a pretty good arm for a
drunk guy. I wonder why he was getting drunk on a Monday night in the first place. Maybe he wanted to drown his sorrows in alcohol like I did the previous night. Maybe I could do that again tonight. Aly was Scottish, right? There had to be alcohol somewhere in this house.

It didn't take me long to find it. She had a whole cupboard devoted to the wares of her ancestors. I grabbed the half full bottle in the front and
unscrewed the cap, taking a whiff. She liked the strong stuff.

“Mind if I join you?”

I whirled around almost dropping the open bottle of scotch to find Aly leaning against the door frame in her bathrobe. “Uh, sure,” I finally said after my heart had slowed back down. “Sorry if I woke you up.”

“Oh, you didn't,” she replied with a wave of her hand. Then she got two tumblers out of the cupboard and sat down in the chair across from the one in front of me. “I couldn't sleep anyway.”

“What's your reason?” I asked sitting down and pouring scotch into her glass.

She downed it before answering me. “Work,” she finally sighed. “Always work.”

“So what do you do anyway?” I asked taking a sip from my own glass. It burned its way down my throat making my eyes water.

Aly looked down at her empty tumbler and rolled it around in her hands. “Oh, you know, just office wor
k. Lots of answering phones and–”

“Ben told me what he had to do in London,” I interrupted catching her eyes. “And he said you had to tell him who to kill.”

She held my stare with a guilty look. “Oh,” she said. “Right.”

“Are you still doing that?” I asked her as I pushed the bottle of scotch closer to her.

Without a word, Aly poured more of the amber liquid into her glass then gulped it down. “It’s complicated,” she finally said. “I think I’m going to try and get some sleep.” Then she got up and left, taking the bottle with her.

I wasn
’t done with that. Luckily for me, she had plenty more.

* * *

The next morning I woke up with my brother eying me from across the table. “I hope this isn't turning into a regular occurrence with you,” he said gesturing with his spoonful of Fruit Loops at the half empty scotch bottle next to my hand.