Sweet Nothing by RICHARD LANGE Read Free Book Online Page A

so close I can feel heat coming off him. I slam the door and twist the dead bolt.
      
    IT WAS ONE month after my fifteenth birthday, and all everybody was talking about was a party some kid was throwing at his house while his parents were in Mexico for a funeral. Carmen and Cindy said, “You’ve got to go. We’ll sneak out together.” Stupid stuff, teenagers being teenagers. “You tell your mom you’re staying at my house, and I’ll tell mine I’m staying at yours.” We were actually shocked that it worked, to find ourselves out on the streets on a Saturday night.
    The crowd at the party was a little older than we were, a little rougher. Lots of gangbangers and their girlfriends, kids who didn’t go to our school. Carmen and Cindy were meeting boys there and soon disappeared, leaving me standing by myself in the kitchen.
    One of the vatos came up and started talking to me. He said his name was Smiley and that he was in White Fence, the gang in that neighborhood. Boys were always claiming to be down with this clique or that, and most of them were full of it. Smiley seemed like he was full of it. He was so tiny and so cute.
    Things move fast when you’re that age, when you’re drinking rum and you’ve never drunk rum before, when you’re smoking weed and you’ve never smoked weed before. Pretty soon we were kissing right there in front of everybody, me sitting on the counter, Smiley standing between my legs. I was so high I got his tongue mixed up with mine. Someone laughed, and the sound bounced around inside my head like a rubber ball.
    Following Smiley into the bedroom was my mistake. I should have said no. Lying down on the mattress, letting him peel off my T-shirt, letting him put his hand inside my pants—I take the blame for all that too. But everything else is on him and the others. Forever, like a brand. I was barely fifteen years old, for God’s sake. I was drunk. I was stupid.
    “Stop,” I hissed, but Smiley kept going.
    I tried to sit up, and he forced me back down. He put his hand on my throat and squeezed.
    “Just fucking relax,” he said.
    I let myself go limp. I gave in because I thought he’d kill me if I didn’t. He seemed that crazy, choking me, pulling my hair. Two of his homeys came in while he was going at it. I hoped for half a second they were there to save me. Instead, when Smiley was finished, they did their thing too, took turns grinding away on a scared little girl, murdering some part of her that she mourns to this day.
    Afterward they made me wash my face and get dressed. I wasn’t even crying anymore. I was numb, in shock.
    “White Fence,” Smiley said right before he walked back out into the party, into the music and laughter. “Don’t you forget.” A warning, pure and simple. An ugly threat.
    I never told my friends what happened, never told my family, never told my husband. What could they possibly have said or done that would’ve helped? Nothing. Not a goddamn thing. The sooner you learn it, the better: some loads you carry on your own.
      
    THEY MAKE A big show of it when they come for Puppet. Must be six cop cars, a helicopter, TV cameras. That detective wasn’t lying; all it took was an anonymous phone call. “I saw who killed the baby.” One minute Puppet is preening on the corner with his homeys, acting like he owns the street, the next he’s facedown on the hot asphalt, hands cuffed tight behind his back.
    I run outside as soon as I hear the commotion. I want to see. Lorena and Brianna come too, whispering, “Oh my God, what’s happening?”
    “It’s the bastard who shot little Antonio,” says an old man carrying a bottle in a bag.
    We stand at the fence and watch with the rest of the neighborhood as they lift Puppet off the ground and slam him against a police car. Then, suddenly, Brianna is crying. “No,” she moans and opens the gate like she’s going to run to him. “No.” Lorena grabs her arm and yanks her back into the