Page 3 of Violent Skies

“You can’t fire us,” Rafe yawns. “Our name is on the garage.” He points to the neon sign that barely flickers on any more with one eye open.

“It’s cheaper to buy a new sign,” I groan, the bright white Monroe Motors mocking with uneven surges of electricity. Everything’s broken here. “Get up,” I repeat, “this exhaust isn’t finished and I’m not being yelled at by another middle aged Mom again because you two can’t get your shit together.”

“Oh there are three voicemails from her…” Murphy sits up, gags and stares at me.

“What the hell were you two doing last night?” I slam a wrench down into its proper place and turn to look at them.

“Bird brought home a bottle—”

“Where is she?” I ask him, knowing that the rest of the sentence involves video games and them both being idiots.

Rafe looks over at Murphy, who shrugs and lies back down. Idiots. Rafe is two years older than Murphy and looks the least like either of us, with unruly sandy brown hair he got from our mother and a heart that he wears on his sleeve. Murphy is the youngest but the most intelligent of the three of us. He’s also the tallest. It's a point of constant contention between him and Rafe. He sports the same dark waves I do, with bright blue eyes that can’t see shit without his glasses and a goofy, lopsided smile that gets him in more trouble than he can get out of.

But Birdie… she’ll be the death of me.

“Shower, now. And get this done,” I chuck an empty box at them and wander back through the enormous steel structure toward our house. Two stories, built in the early nineties—our family has lived in this house since before I was born. Its dusty blue paneling and old rectangle windows are original to the Dutch colonial architecture but the porch has been updated with new columns and wood. It’s a simple mix of old and new, and it was ours.

The T.V. is blaring from the living room as I walk through the back door and pass through the old bright kitchen with its mix-matched furniture and barely running appliances. She’s watching some reality show crap; the one where they are all sent for a free vacation to fuck and fight for ratings.

“Did she actually fall for that?” I cross my arms over my chest behind the couch watching one of the familiar women scream at the asshole who’s fucked just about everyone on the island.

Birdie’s spoon clinks against the bottom of her cereal bowl as she leans back and looks up at me with an unsurprised look on her face. “You know for a guy that says reality T.V. is trash you sure are invested in this season.”

Her thick black hair is pulled off her face in a massive, ratty bun and it shows off every inch of her heavily tattooed pale skin as she shifts on the couch to look at me. The stack of piercings in her ears glimmer under the morning sun as she shoves another spoonful in her mouth.

“It’s pathetic,” I grumble.

Birdie giggles, the sound dark and knowing, like the evergreen of her eyes.

“You can just admit you’re starved for a little female interaction, Riggs. It won’t kill you,” she smiles with the spoon between her lips.

“It might.” I huff. “What did you do to them?” I point my thumb over my shoulder in the direction of the garage.

“Murph thinks he’s a Need for Speed god or something. It’s not true—it was just some drinking and driving.”

Trouble, you’re so much trouble. I grind my teeth and a rumble comes up in my chest. “Keep the games to Friday nights, when I don’t need them doing work the next day.”

“They’re up.” She doesn’t look but her spoon directs me to where they slink into the house and up the back stairs to their rooms.

“Knowing them, they’ll go back to bed for three hours and leave all the work for me,” I tap her spoon roughly, “which means you get to work over time. Get dressed.”

Birdie whines and throws her head back, “after this episode.”

“Now.”

She rolls her eyes at me and slides off the couch, still in her pajamas before also disappearing upstairs.

Birdie is the only one of the four of us who doesn’t share blood, but she’s our younger sister in every sense of the word. Brought into the garage in a carseat and without a name, no one questioned it. We just took her in. Now she’s the reason I have a constant headache.

I put coffee on, the smell enough to coax Murphy from his hungover nest. I remember the day he was born, I was seven and Mom went into labor on her back changing the oil beneath a 1986 Ford-250. Dad was gone by then, skipped out before she even knew she was pregnant with him. But we managed, Rafe was two at the time and oddly good with babies, I did everything I could to help Mom in the garage and Uncle Bobby was always around to pick up the slack.

I’m pretty sure staring at me and seeing Dad is what killed her eventually.

That or Koa and I scared her to death so often that the reaper caught up with her early. “Morning dickhead,” I grunt, looking at the fox statue on the window sill. Carved from koa wood and given to me by his mother at the funeral. All it did was remind me of my mistakes. What led us here. If he was here right now he’d tell me to stop sulking but it’s not that simple and he’s not here.

“It creeps me out when you talk to that thing,” Murphy groans and steals a mug of coffee from the counter. “It’s going to come to life one day.”

“You read too many Goosebumps books,” I reply dryly and hand him the honey. I watch as he dumps way too much into the bottom of the mug and takes it back without flinching at the temperature.