Page 19 of Stone’s Cage
"You know what? You don't know what I'm going through. Let me just do this on my own."
"Do it on your own? You almost ended up gang-raped." He looks right at me and those blue eyes burning. This time, there's a little spot of color in his face. "The world of gangs is not for the faint-hearted. People, movies, TV romanticize it. They think it's cool. Or that it's, you know, a way to adulthood. Being in a gang is shitty. It's just plain shitty. You do stuff you never dreamed you'd ever do. You're hanging out with people who are assholes. With no regard for human life, or property, or the environment or anything. It's a cult mentality. And there's a pecking order. It's shit. I hated it. I hated every minute of it. And I didn't even know how much I hated it until I was out. Once you're in it’s as hard as shit to get out." He paused. "You don’t want in."
"How, exactly did Coach get you out then?"
Ignoring the question, he just keeps talking. "Shreve would shoot me and the other recruit high with amphetamines to keep us jacked. I was crashing once, when Coach found me. And took a decade to extricate me."
I push my plate away and he takes it to the sink. Setting the pan down in front of both of us, he hands my fork back.
"I'm sorry," I say. "I'm so sorry."
He stabbed a few carrots on his fork. "The last thing you should've done is join a gang."
And that's when I realize something. "I'm in aren’t I?"
Stone says nothing and then a chill runs down my spine and my mind clutters instantly with thoughts that all resonate with a dark, ominous beat behind them. I realize what he's done. What he's done for me.
"You rejoined the gang, didn't you? So Shreve wouldn't have first dibs on me."
He shrugs his shoulders.
I watch him swallow.
"Eat your carrots. Listen, I did what I had to do. Shreves came around yesterday looking for me. I said no. But this? You?" He pauses. "No, I couldn’t let them do that to you. The moment I rolled the die I was back in. It was bound to happen anyway. Once in a gang, always in a gang."
My heart is breaking. He's been clean for two years, two years away from Shreves and the Hooks and now because of me, he's now a member again. Because of me. What had I done? I put this poor guy up against these people he hated.
My body slides stiffly from the barstool. "I can't deal with this right now. I need to go to bed."
He's instantly up, moving quickly, gracefully, pulling out a fresh sheet from a shelf and snapping it open over the sofa, then a blue comforter and he takes out a fresh pillow.
"Go ahead. There's the sofa."
After brushing my teeth with my new toothbrush, I slide under the covers keeping the sweatpants on. Stone is cleaning up in the kitchen and I see he's made a nest for himself on the floor with two other blankets, one to use as a bed and a second, a quilt, to use as a cover. Another pillow rests on the floor. Tig comes over and lays right in the middle, making himself at home. His little pink mouth spreads open in a yawn.
Leaning over, I scoop him off the pillow and into my stomach. I can’t see Stone from where I'm resting on my back. But I can hear him.
"Stone. Please tell me, please tell me, you're not going to go through with this. You don’t have to get re-initiated do you? You aren't going to get beat up because of me are you?"
His silence is not reassuring.
"Just tell me you're not going to do that."
"Don't worry. I don’t have to."
But I can tell there's something else.
He comes back around to the sofa and sits at the end. He's choosing his words very, very carefully. "Shreves has asked me to do something. It’s not a big deal and then I'll figure a way out again." There's something in the way he glances at me and I piece together what he's going to do.
"You're going to throw a fight?"
"Shreves will let me go after this one. It’s just one."
He's lying. I can tell, because he's looking straight ahead at the closed blinds.
Sitting up, I wrap my arms around my knees. "And what about Coach?
His face darkens and his stare moves down to the floor. "He's not going to find out."
