5. Relic

Chapter five

Relic

T ext on my phone: The first monthly payment for summer childcare is due on Monday. All past balances are due at this time. Enrollment will be affected by unpaid balances. If you need financial assistance, please contact our office.

Summer daycare was $580 a month. That was on top of the $300 for afterschool care for the month of May—another payment I was currently late on. Here was the thing about financial assistance—we were already on it. The cost of reliable and safe childcare sucked.

Now, if I were okay with Camila being drugged into naptime by a junkie employee, or tied to her cot when they got tired of watching the kids, or if I dumped her into a place where they encouraged fight clubs every Thursday so the employees could bet on the winners (all real things that have happened by the way), then yeah, we could possibly pay our monthly childcare bills. But I loved Camila enough to not want her to be a Mad Max character before the apocalypse finally happened.

Guess I knew what I would be doing tonight—Dumpster diving for electronics thrown away for me to resell online.

I walked into my apartment and straight into a three-ring circus. Music blared from a speaker in the kitchen. Wearing her favorite Dolores dress from Encanto (my gift to her for her birthday) and singing "We Don't Talk About Bruno" at the top of her lungs, Camila danced with Marsh.

Camila had a different Mom from me and Lyra, so we didn't look much alike. She had black spiral curls that bounced with her six-year-old enthusiasm and, thanks to her mother's Hispanic roots, flawless brown skin. My little sister could talk a mile a minute, horded stuffed animals, wanted to bring every stray animal home, and I absolutely adored her.

Exhausted from work, ten pounds lighter from sweating all damn day in the two-million-degree heat, and twenty pounds heavier from all the drywall dust, I sagged against the door as I closed it. Should I leave, shower, or join in?

"Relic!" Camila ran into me for a hug. I grunted when she slammed headfirst into my gut. She pulled back and her face pinched. "Ew, you stink."

"What?" I mocked a gasp. "I stink?" I picked her up and hugged her tight, making sure her face was stuck near my armpit. She squealed with a bunch of "Ews," and "I'm dying." When she kicked, I put her down.

My eyes narrowed at the homemade splint encircling two fingers on Marsh's right hand. Great. He just got out of a cast for a broken arm and still wore a brace he had to keep on for a few more months. Now this? "What happened?"

"Slipped." Marsh tried to smile to play it off, but I spotted the fear in his eyes.

"Slipped?" I challenged, because I knew what he was up to last night and it wasn't selling Girl Scout cookies door to door. While I'd said no to Eric's offer of a job, Marsh had accepted it a few months back when his family was on the verge of losing their house.

He glanced at Camila as a signal for me to let it go. "Last night didn't go so good, okay?"

Marsh worked as a courier for Eric. He never asked what he carted in whatever package Eric gave him, and Eric never told. But evidently, last night, Marsh either pissed off whoever he was dropping the package off to, pissed off Eric, or both. A few months back, Marsh had angered Eric so much he'd sent one of his crew to break Marsh's arm. Of course, Marsh didn't admit to that, but I knew it and he knew I knew.

"I've never broken bones Dumpster diving," I said.

"But you did get arrested—"

I tossed him a glare as he was about to say "arrested for stealing out of cars." He stopped short, knowing I had no intention of telling Camila that tidbit.

"Sorry, bro," he said. "Long day."

Yeah, he could say that again.

Marsh looked like a seventeen-year-old version of a tenured philosophy professor. He had brown hair that never kept a style and a constant five o'clock shadow. Tall and lanky, my friend resembled a nerd, especially when he wore his glasses, but he was deadly in a fight, and he loved how people underestimated him. Where Lyra, Camila, and I lived a nomadic lifestyle, bouncing from place to place while staying mostly in a two-mile radius of this area for the lower rent, Marsh had lived in his house in the connecting neighborhood of this apartment complex his entire life. We'd been friends since meeting at the bus stop in first grade.

"Where's Lyra?" I asked.

"She's getting ready for a date," Marsh said. "And she called me to babysit. She thought you'd be working later." That had been the plan, but evidently, my company wasn't a company anymore. Something about debt and not paying their bills.

"I'm not a baby to sit." Camila stuck her hands on her hips, and her lower lip protruded.

Marsh one-hand tossed her into the air like she weighed nothing, and she yelped then giggled when she hit the sofa. "Fine, she called me to demon-sit. Is that better?"

"Who's Lyra going out with?" I asked.

"Whoever it is, Lyra looks like a million bucks on a dollar store budget," he answered.

"He doesn't know," Lyra called from the bathroom.

I dropped my previously-black-but-now-white-from-drywall-dust backpack onto the floor. As I took a step for the hallway to talk to Lyra, Camila said, "There's a fifteen percent chance of thunderstorms tonight."

A quick pivot on my heel and I faced my younger sister. She had that seventy-year-old expression on that six-year-old body. I pointed to the map of Kentucky and Indiana we had taped to the wall for moments like this. "What does fifteen percent mean?"

Her foot rocked. "It means that there is a fifteen percent chance the area covered by our news station will see a storm, and our news station is more than our city."

"So, that means eighty-five percent of the rest of us will have clear skies. Percentages are in our favor. Plus, did they mention a severe storm watch?"

She shook her head and her curls bounced in front of her face.

"See?" I said. "Clear skies."

I waited three beats to make sure her little mind wasn't spiraling into a tornado-driven nightmare, and when she got back up to sing and dance, I went down the hallway. I leaned a hip against the frame of the bathroom door as Lyra applied mascara.

The bathroom smelled like she had tried on twelve different perfumes, and the sink contained a rainbow of colors of makeup she'd somehow dropped. She wore a slim-fitting sequined silver dress that ended below her ass.

"I thought you worked tonight," I said.

My petite and sassy older sister ran her fingers though her platinum blond hair and then fluttered her blue eyes in the mirror as if trying out the flirty expression. "I work later. I'm going out for an early dinner date."

A tug-of-war existed inside me. If she dated someone from the neighborhood, I hated it because I wanted better for her. If she dated someone outside the neighborhood, I hated it because I automatically assumed they didn't have the best of intentions with her. I shoved my hands in my pockets having to work for casual. "Do I know who you're going out with?"

Whoever it was, I had a feeling she'd been seeing them exclusively over the last few months, and I hated that she was hiding the relationship from me.

She glanced over at me. "You have so much drywall dust on you I could write my name on your arm."

"I'd take a shower but someone's hogging the bathroom."

"Wow, that person must be so rude." She winked at me.

"So rude," I echoed. "The date. Spill."

"You know I'm your guardian, you're my baby brother, and I'm twenty-one, right? Which means I'm the one who asks questions and demands answers. Not the other way around."

"How about I frame it like this, when I call the police because you don't come home, I'd like to be able to give them a description of who you left with."

"You worry too much." Lyra touched up her lip gloss.

"I don't worry enough," I countered. "I lost my job today."

Lyra's constant flippant attitude switched to concern as her head whipped toward me. "What happened?"

"Company went under."

"I'm sorry," she said, and I could tell she meant it. "It'll be okay. You'll find something else."

"I have a record now," I said low enough to keep Camila from hearing. "My employment opportunities aren't bright and shiny. Only reason the drywall company kept me on was because I worked for them before the arrest, and they knew what a good job I did."

Lyra returned to applying lip gloss. "We'll figure it out. We always do."

I was actually the one who figured it out, and I was damn tired of doing it. When I didn't say anything, she placed a hand on my wrist and squeezed. "I see you, Relic. When no one else does, I do. So, trust me when I say you worry plenty and work too damn hard. Maybe this is a blessing in disguise. You need a break, not to mention a job that's not going to run your body into the ground before you're twenty."

"Because those bills are going to pay themselves."

"Don't worry, I'll handle it."

Words that definitely made me worry.

Lyra brushed powder over her nose. "I made plans for Camila to spend the weekend with Alma." Camila's great-aunt and the person Camila's mom lived with before she met our dad.

"You sure Alma's up for that?" Alma was in her seventies and tired easily.

"She said she can. Alma wants to see her and said she would love to have her all weekend. I say let's have Camila stay with her tonight and then you can reach out after you sleep in tomorrow to see how things are going. In the meantime, go out, be seventeen. Go do something irresponsible."

"I'm the one who was arrested, remember?"

"You're not nearly irresponsible in the right ways. I got into way more trouble at your age. The seventeen-type of trouble. Drinking. Getting high. Getting laid. Not worrying all the time." Lyra puffed out her cheeks, which told me she had something I didn't want to hear. "Dad said he'd be happy to watch Camila for us. If we did that, it would give you more time to hang out with your friends. You know…be seventeen."

"Would that be before or after he sells drugs for Eric?"

"He said he's not selling for Eric anymore." Lyra put her makeup back in a bag.

"Dad said he wasn't selling for Eric before, and then he went to prison for it."

"Dad's doing the best he can."

"Dad hangs out at the bar, kneels at Eric's feet, and does nothing other than sleep. I'm not leaving her with him."

She sighed heavily. "What can he do to prove he's changing?"

"He can start with changing. Daily drug testing would possibly help."

"You're being unreasonable."

" You're being unreasonable," I echoed. "Let him take care of a plant first. If he doesn't screw that up, we'll move onto a fish. We don't start with our sister. It's not like he's around much other than to sleep anyway."

"Could be because I'm the only one who lets him in."

Because I refused him a key and I didn't answer when he knocked.

"Or maybe he stays away because you're a bear when he's around," she challenged.

"Maybe he stays away because he's drinking and drugging again."

Lyra's phone vibrated with a call, and I memorized the number in case I did have to contact the police. "Gotta go," Lyra said. "I'd hug you, but you're disgusting, so I'm going to pass."

I edged back enough to let her by and watched from the hallway as she hugged Camila.

"Make sure my little brother takes Camila to Alma's and then acts seventeen for once," she said to Marsh. "Which means he doesn't leave a party to figure out how to make more money. Force him to relax and have some fun."

"Easier said than done," Mash muttered.

Here was the thing about seventeen—I didn't know what that meant. Not by a long shot.