Ike greeted me casually, as if it were a normal sight. "Hey Zac."
The woman beside Ike turned toward me and I could tell that it wasn't Destiny. "Hi, I'm Sharon, Robert and Destiny's mother. You must be Zac."
"Yeah." I was too shocked to make polite conversation. "Uh..."
"Do you want a drink, Zac? Ike?" She left us alone, promising to bring back two Dr. Peppers.
Ike watched her go with love in his eyes. "Isn't she great?"
"Ike, you're having sex with Robert's mom? Isn't she like forty? Ew." I shook my head in disgust, wondering how Robert dealt with it.
His mood seemed to lighten when he noticed my apparent disapproval. "Sharon is only thirty five. Zac, I know you're surprised, but I love her very much. Mom and Dad already know. They're not thrilled, but they are willing to give it a shot. I'm going to ask her to marry me soon."
I kept shaking my head, but I asked anyway. "How did Destiny know how to get to our house?" Ike burst into laughter for soem reason. "What?" My voice cracked.
Ike managed to stop his giggling streak long enough to sputter, "She's been in love with you for years, Zac. Didn't you know? Ever since she saw a picture of us in Robert's room, she swore she was gonna marry you. Of course she knows where your house is!"
I punched his shoulder in a brotherly way and begin laughing along with him.
Sharon reentered the room. "Oh, Zac. I almost forgot to tell you. Destiny said she's sorry, but she got called in to work right after she hung up. She's going to pick you up at six instead."
"Thanks, Sharon. I guess I'll leave you two kids alone then." I went out back to the shed to retrieve Taylor. He climbed in the car and began tapping a rhythm on the steering wheel.
We didn't get home until almost six. Between cruising around, stopping by people's houses and a trip to the mall, we hardly made it then. I was so entranced in a daydream about Destiny that I hardly realized when the car stopped. I exited the car in a daze and slammed into a tall blond beauty.
"Sarah Beth?" I asked, surprised.
"Hey Zaccy, I'm back." She grabbed my shoulders and started to kiss my neck. I hesitated, wondering if I should push her away or let her keep on.
"Excuse me," came a female voice from behind us. We turned toward it and saw Destiny standing there, hands on hips, glaring at Sarah Beth.
"Wait, Destiny. I can explain," I told her pleadingly as I moved to her side.
"Yeah? I hope you damn well can." Her eyes focused on Sarah Beth, who towered over her by at least three inches. Anger twisted her beautiful face as she took another step toward Sarah Beth.
FIVE
Sarah Beth looked annoyed, but fearful as well. "I have to be going now, but I'll see you kids later. I promise." She pushed past Destiny, 'accidently' bumping her, and crossed the street.
Destiny kept her eyes on Sarah Beth until she was on the next block. Then she turned to me. "Well?" Her face was set and I knew that I had no reason to worry as long as I was honest.
"That's Sarah Beth. My ex." Destiny reached out to brush a strand of hair off of my face. "We broke up a few months ago, right before she left for Chicago. I guess she's back for awhile."
Destiny nodded and lowered her head guiltily. "Sorry. I had no right to do that. It's not like we're going out or anything. I was really jealous and let my emotions take over. Please don't be mad."
"It's okay," I comforted her. "I'm glad you showed up. I would have done the same thing if I saw some guy getting up on you. I like you a lot. I was hoping that you'd be my girlfriend someday." I felt heat rising in my face and stared down at the concrete.
Her hand brushed my shoulder and I glanced up. "I would be honored," she said, giving me a soft kiss on my cheek. We hugged for what seemed like forever until we pulled apart. Then I decided that it wasn't long enough.
I invited her in to introduce her to my parents, who fell in love with her as fast as I had. We sat in the family room, playing Twisted Metal 3 on my Nintendo64 until it was almost time for the party.
"Come on, we won't have time to eat if we don't go now." She reached over me to the remote and clicked off the television. "Turn off the game, Zac."
"Alright," I said, "let's go tell Mom bye." We followed the scent of grilled chicken into the kitchen where Mom was cooking dinner. "Mom, Destiny and I are leaving now."
"What time will you be home?" she asked, not looking up from the bell peppers she was slicing.
"I'm not sure. It'll probably be late." I prayed silently that she wouldn't tell me to be home by midnight.
"Okay. Go on then. Bye Destiny. It was nice to meet you, sweetheart. Come back soon." My mom came over to hug Destiny.
Destiny returned it warmly. "Bye, Mrs. Hanson. It was nice to meet you too. You're sure to be seeing me a lot."
We ate dinner at a little Mexican restaurant downtown before heading to the party. We didn't drink or toke like everyone else. I was happy just to be with her and she acted like she felt the same way. After a few hours of dancing, I took a seat and she went to get a soda.
I noticed Sarah Beth approaching me. She had to know I was with Destiny. She sat beside me and placed a hand on my thigh. "Zaccy, I can't believe you didn't miss me. I was hardly gone for three months and you already found another girlfriend. Wasn't I important to you at all?"
I sighed and openly glared at her. "Sarah Beth, let's do a reality check. You dumped me before the move. Before! Not because of it. Do you understand me? I want nothing to do with you."
"Zaccy, please." She moved closer to me. "I'll let you have what you never got from me if you ditch her and come upstairs with me."
Destiny's voice cut through the whining, hard as nails. "Listen, bitch, are you braindead? Do you not get the message?"
Sarah Beth stood up and smiled smugly. "Aw, Destiny. Isn't it cute how he thinks you're so special? I think maybe you should back off a little bit. He was mine first, and I know about you, scank. I've seen the skeletons in your closet, you fucking cocksucker."
I grabbed Destiny's arm and tried to calm her. "Honey, don't start a fight. We'll leave and go back to my house. Leave it be."
Destiny shook her head at me. "It doesn't work like that, Zac. In situations like this, us Manhattan girls have a rule. Death to the bitch that touches my man." She practically growled the last sentence at Sarah Beth.
A tall, dark-haired guy steps in. "Is there a problem here, girls?"
"Gavin," Destiny exclaims. "I'm so glad you saw us. This ho seems to think that she can have my boyfriend, even after he has made it clear that he would like her to go away."
Gavin looked at me. "You're Zac Hanson, right? Tay and Ike's brother." He turned to Sarah Beth and gave her a gentle shove in the direction of the door. "There's no fighting at this party. Destiny and Zac, you guys can stay. You can leave," he ordered. Sarah Beth didn't move, so Gavin grabbed her arm and roughly pulled her away.
Destiny wrapped her arms around me. "She'll be back, you know. Girls like that always come back."
Her beeper interuppted our moment. She swore apathetically. "Baby, my mom's calling curfew on me. Can we hang at my house instead?"
I grabbed her hand and began making my way through the crowd. "It's fine," I assured her. "We can watch a movie or something."
She agreed as we climbed back into her Dodge Shadow. Sharon called my parents and made sure it was okay for me, Ike and Tay to stay over. Then she disapperaed into her room with Ike. Tay and Robert went chick hunting. And for the second night in a row, Destiny and I fell asleep together on her bed.
SIX
A few blissful days later, I walked into Destiny's house. "Hey Sharon," I greeted her. "Did Ike stay here last night?" I teased.
"No, Ike did not stay here last night, you twerp." She mussed my hair. "He went to Oklahoma City for something or other. He said he had a very special present for me." Sharon and I had gotten a lot closer in the past few days. After all, I thought, I wasn't the one who was planning to marry her.
"Go on up," she told me. "Destiny's in one of her moods again. She got a letter from her dad and she's been moping around ever since."
I made my way up the now-familiar stairs and into Destiny's room. I stood in the doorway silently, waiting to be noticed. An old Paula Cole song, "Road To Dead", played quietly in the background as Destiny sang along and added another newspaper clipping to the fifty or so already on her wall. Each one was an obituary, representing the death of a friend. Most of them were drug or gang related and it had to break her heart, seeing her friends go out like that.
She looked up and her eyes met mine. "Hey Zac," she said softly. "We lost two more." As upset as she sounds, her eyes are dry.
"I'm sorry, baby." I moved closer and put my arms around her. "Why don't you every cry? It's not healthy to hold your feelings inside."
She pushed me away. "Crying makes you weak. In my world, being weak gets you killed. Just like those two idiots." She gestured to the clippings she had just hung up. "You don't understand me, do you? We are from different worlds. If you'd grown up in my neighborhood and lived my life, maybe you could understand, but you can't even imagine some of the things I've seen."
I opened my mouth to speak, but she interuppted. "Wait, let me show you my life. I can't make you understand, but at least you can see it." She grabbed a photo album from her bookcase and sat on her bed. I sat beside her.
"I lived in New York until this year. I spent three weeks in Tulsa every summer. That's when I saw you, on one of those summer trips. Here, look at this picture. That's me when I was eight," she said, pointing to a picture of a little girl and an older boy. The little girl was holding some kind of automatic weapon. "That's my cousin Bobby. He let me hold his Uzi for the picture. He died four days after the picture was taken. He was ten."
"This one." She pointed to another shot. A group of eight or nine preteens sat on someone's steps. Destiny held a bottle in one hand and a plastic bag in the other. "My eleventh birthday. All my friends pitched in to buy me a bottle of whiskey and a quarter bag."
The next page had a picture of a group of teens and preteens dressed in purple and silver. Each was displaying a tattoo. The guys had one on their right bicep and the girls on their right hips. "That's my initiation night with the Eight Balls. The guys are the Eights and the girls are Lady Eights, but we're usually called POES, Property of the Eights."
She continued flipping through the album, pointing at each one and telling me about the people in them. Sadly, most of them were dead. Each picture was filled with guns, drugs, alcohol and kids that were too young for the life they lived. Younger than me. Kids Jess's age, twelve or even younger. It was horrifying.
We went downstairs and helped Sharon to cook dinner, but I hardly paid attention to what I was doing. All I could think about were those pictures. All the kids, Destiny and her friends. Children with too much experience in the wrong things. Children with cold, hard, uncaring eyes. It could've been me.
