I climb over the girls and slide on my sweats. The ringing is non-stop now. There’s only one person who rings my bell like that. I fling open the front door ready to sock Arnie in the chest.
I don’t see Arnie.
I don’t see anyone but Dani.
A few minutes later, she sees Alisa and Amy in my bed, and I go to the bathroom and puke. I send the girls home, and Nick starts our meeting. Aurora isn’t the only new addition. Alex, the guy Will hooked us up with, is here too. He’s a thirty-two-year-old stoner from Lake County who looks like he hasn’t showered in a month.
“Alex, you’ll be working Lake County. Aurora will be heading up the Humboldt State operation and a few surrounding areas. Arnie, you keep doing what you’re doing, and Matt, you’ll be with me.” Nick hands out new cell phones and reminds everyone they need to watch their minutes. “I know I’ve said this before, but it needs to be said again. Thizz is our business, it’s a product we sell to make money. We don’t get high on our own supply. When we party, we do it in a controlled environment. We don’t act a fool, we have to stay in control.” Nick looks at Arnie when he says the last bit. He’s been on a few binges lately. His father has been on him to join the army. We’ve been hearing about this since freshman year, but now he’s serious. Arnie will be eighteen this summer, and with no plans to go to college, it doesn’t look like his old man is going to let up. Arnie nods in agreement. It’s cool that Nick didn’t bust him out in front of Aurora and Alex. Then again, Nick is cool like that.
Nick ends the meeting and takes Alex into my room to count out the pills he is taking back to Clearlake, and the rest of us fall into pockets of conversation. Dani won’t look at me. I don’t even want to look at myself. I pull my beanie down until it’s just above my eyebrows. My head is pounding. I want to crawl back in bed and sleep until spring break is over.
I hear Aurora brag to Dani about her new car and her plans to travel to Europe after she graduates from college and I look up. Why is she even here? I pull Arnie aside to complain. “She drives an eighty-thousand-dollar Mercedes, what does she need to sell thizz for?” Aurora looks up like she heard me. I don’t care. “She’s just a bored rich girl that wants to play badass.”
“Dude, listen to what you just said. You could be talking about Nick.” Arnie’s right. Nick doesn’t need this lifestyle either. He doesn’t sell drugs out of necessity, and that’s what worries me. I always believed he would stop once we graduated. We had plans to go to Stanford together, and he didn’t even apply. Even if Nick leaves Eureka, it won’t be for school. It will be for the two most important things in his life. Thizz and Dani.
Nick finishes up in my room and walks Alex out. When he comes back, he motions for me to join him in the kitchen. As soon as the door swings closed he says, “We might have a problem.”
I pull an oatmeal cookie from the bag on the table and pop it in my mouth. Ashely must have left them down here for me. “What kind of problem?”
“The Devil’s Gold is putting up some resistance. They don’t like me very much.” Nick smiles like it’s something to be proud of. I choke on the dry crumbs. Nick pulls a bottle of water from the fridge and tosses it to me. “Don’t worry, Will’s working on it, but I wanted to give you a heads-up.”
I nod as I gulp down the entire bottle of water. I crumple the bottle and toss it in the sink. “Are they coming after you, us?”
“No, hell no. They don’t have the balls. You know who I am?” He puffs his chest out and flexes.
He’s pretending it’s no big deal, but he wouldn’t be telling me this if there wasn’t something to worry about. “Can you be serious?”
“Will told the Devil’s Gold president that he’d put Eureka on pause while they’re negotiating, out of good faith. That’s why I have Alex and Aurora running shit from out of town. Arnie is using some guy he knows in Arcata to sell his shit. This way we can lie low.”
I take a deep breath and tell him I have no problem lying low. The lower the better.
“There’s one more thing.” Nick leans on the sink and runs his hand through his hair. This must be the real bad news. “Will’s worried that Devon, his old partner, will find out about our beef with the bikers and make them a counter offer. If the bikers back Devon, they’ll give him Eureka and all of Humboldt County. If that happens, Devon will try to move in on Will’s action in the city, and Will won’t stand a chance. With all the heat he’s getting about that dead lawyer, the last thing he needs is a war.”
“I thought they were fishing?” I feel a burning sensation in my throat.
“Yeah well, they caught something. Will found out the witness is real. He’s got his guys looking for her now.” Nick opens the fridge again and rummages around for something to eat while I’m fighting the urge to puke.
“You think Will shot those people?”
“I don’t know, probably.” Nick shrugs as he pulls another bottle of water from the shelf and tosses it to me. “My uncle is old-school. He has his ways of dealing with shit. Good and bad.”
I crack it open and take a huge drink. I let out a loud burp and fan the air in front of me. “Fuckin rum.” It isn’t just the regurgitated alcohol making me sick. “What’s he going to do with the witness if he finds her?”
Nick looks at me like I’m an idiot. “What do you think he’s going to do?”
A cold chill runs up my back at the thought of some innocent girl being hunted by Will Walker. What makes it worse is the fact that I’m not doing anything to stop him. What can I do? For all I know, Will is just paranoid. The cops have no evidence it was him; if they did, he’d be in jail.
“None of this bothers you?” I look at my best friend, the guy that cried when we were six because he nailed a squirrel with a baseball, who is acting like murdering innocent people is no big deal.
“Yeah, I know.” He runs his hand through his hair. “It’s fucked up, but what can we do? It isn’t like I can tell Will how to run his life. I respect my uncle. If that means turning a cheek when some bad shit goes down, then I will. But I don’t plan on following in his footsteps.”
“Well, that’s a fucking relief.” It is, it really is. Nick isn’t a killer or even a gangster. He’s just a fucked up kid with a really fucked up role model. Unfortunately, Will can do no wrong in Nick’s eyes.
“Sorry to interrupt.” Dani pokes her head into the room. “Aurora needs to go. She has an appointment.”
Nick rolls his eyes and I give him an I-told-you-so look. “Give us a minute, babe.” Nick winks at Dani, and she disappears without looking at me. “I gotta get this girl back before she drives me crazy. I just wanted to let you know what’s up. I got your back.” Nick gives me a bro hug and says it’s best not to tell anyone about Devon or the cops. By anyone, he means Dani. I agree. She’s in enough danger as it is with the bikers on our ass.
“Why don’t you call those chicks back to keep you company,” Nick jokes as we walk to the door. “It’s a shame you have the house to yourself and you’ll be all alone.”
Dani brushes past me without saying goodbye.
“Nah, I’m just going to crash.”
“Alright then, later dude.” He waves as he gets in the car.
I watch Nick drive away, hoping he isn’t stupid enough to get into another confrontation with the bikers, not with Dani in the car. Who knows what will happen next time. Nick’s first priority should be Dani’s safety. I hope for her sake he does everything he can to make sure nobody ever hurts her. I also hope the daughter of the people Will shot is somewhere safe, someplace he will never find her.
I pull my memory box off the shelf and open it. The box was a gift from my parents on my twelfth birthday. I don’t have jewelry, so I crammed it with birthday cards and old photos. It’s the only memento I let Lucy bring me from home. I didn’t want anything else. I would have driven out of the city with the clothes on my back if it weren’t for Lucy. She spent all night driving to San Francisco to pick me up from the police station the night of the shooting, and I wouldn’t even let her rest a few hours before heading back to Eureka. I couldn’t wait to leave the city, leave everything that happened behind.