Kyle – The First Legacy

Okay, so getting woken at 5:00 a.m. by a guy in a suit who wanted a cheap-and-quick blowjob with added hair pulling wasn’t the best way to meet the new day, but the twenty Jason pocketed was worth it. He just needed to clean up now and used the locked public bathrooms by climbing in through the narrow window. His skinny frame easily fit through the small space, and he dropped to his feet inside.

The place stunk; even if it was raining, no way on earth would he sleep in here. The stench of urine and shit and fuck-knows-what-else were enough to have his eyes burning. Still, there was water in here, and he had bits of soap in his backpack—real soap that he’d taken from his last motel booking—and a can of deodorant.

He needed it because today was going-to-the-bank day. He took the money out of every place he’d hidden it, and laid it out on the sink. Five hundred and eight dollars. Jason pocketed the eight, enough to buy breakfast, and the rest he rolled up with a rubber band and poked right down into the bottom of his bag. He considered leaving out another fifty, maybe even getting a room for the night, but he’d easily get a place in a hostel if he turned up early enough.

No point in staying out to earn anything; pickings were slim on Christmas Eve. Most of the men who wanted his services were at home with their families, with no chance of a fuck-and-run to get whatever was in their heads out of their system.

“Yo, J. You in there, dude?”

Jason sighed at his reflection in the cracked, misted mirror. “Yeah,” he called back.

Noises announced someone else slithering in through the window, and then Evo stood next to him. No one knew why he was called Evo, but the five-five skinny teenager was probably the closest thing Jason had to a friend. If you could have that kind of thing in his walk of life. They’d partied together, but not in the beer-and-laughter sense, more the being-used-together kind of way. Still, situations like that bonded guys.

“Heard there’s a party over at Jeb’s tonight,” Evo said with a grin. He looked well, bright and awake, and he was wearing new clothes. Likely he’d lifted them from a john, but he actually looked kind of cute.

Then it hit Jason: Jeb was having a party, so that had to be why Jason had gotten thrown out. Jeb’s parties were young boys, old men, and a hell of a lot of pain. Not Jason’s scene and he wouldn’t go again, not after last time. But Evo looked at him steadily, and he was smiling.

Jason frowned. “Fuck, you’re not going, right?”

“Jeb asked me. Said I could make one-fifty if I took it all, if I did okay. More if I made him proud.”

Temper had Jason rounding on Evo. He hated that Evo looked for approval from Jeb, who was nothing more than a lowlife peddler of second-rate drugs and used-up kids.

“Jesus, Evo, it’ll kill you. Stay away from Jeb.”

Evo looked up at him, his wide brown eyes focused right in on Jason. “Where else am I gonna make that much money?” he asked a little petulantly.

“From anything but working one of Jeb’s parties, for God’s sake.”

Part of Jason wanted to suggest they share a bed at the shelter. Sometimes the shelter people would look the other way but part of the deal with getting a room was to be at least outwardly clean. Evo looked a little on edge, his pupils wide, probably high on something. Jason had learned his lesson in the past; Evo was an addict and at least two years shy of eighteen. Way too much heat. Guilt flooded him, but he’d learned he needed to look out for himself if he ever hoped to get off the streets alive.

“Pays well.” Evo began hopping from foot to foot.

He did that a lot recently, shimmying and shaking his ass, unable to sit still. Jason didn’t know what Evo’s backstory was—well, apart from leaving home at an ungodly age and finding his way to this particular part of the city—but something really bad had driven him out here. Jason had seen the scars on Evo’s back, knew the pain that must have put them there.

As he danced, Evo checked his hair in the mirror, pouting as though posing for a selfie, like the ones tourists took all the time, and then catching Jason’s eye and winking at him with an added broad grin.

Evo rummaged in Jason’s bag, not deep enough to get to his money, but Jason grabbed at it to yank it back. Evo wasn’t allowed near his bag; it was unspoken between them that they had boundaries.

“Sorry, just wanted this.” Evo grabbed the deodorant and then danced out of reach, shoving the can under his jacket and T-shirt.

He sprayed enough to knock a guy unconscious at ten paces. Jason, still waking up, couldn’t even be bothered to chase him. He was still stiff from a night outside on a bench, not to mention the early-morning blowjob and his scalp stinging from the hair pulling.

Evo held out the deodorant, his eyes going from Jason’s face to the bag, a flicker of uncertainty in his expression. Jason looked down at the bag; a couple of the zippers were open, and he pulled them tight closed.

“I’ll put it back,” Evo said.

He sounded wrong—though Jason didn’t know how exactly. It wasn’t a defined thing; Evo just wasn’t his dancing, smiling self for an instant.

Jason held out his hand, and Evo passed over the can. He was worrying his lower lip and kept glancing down at the bag.

“Fuck,” Evo muttered, then looked up at Jason and grinned broadly. The smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Bye!”

“Whatever, asshole.” Jason concentrated on washing his face with the remnants of soap and the copper-colored water the old restroom faucets provided, gripping his bag very firmly between his legs.

Evo did one last check in the mirror and then danced back to the window.

“Merry Christmas, J,” he said, and in a smooth, sinuous movement he was out of the window and scrabbling down the wall outside.

Jason leaned on the sink as the water drained away. One of his tricks had been just a little too handsy last night and decided mid-blowjob that he wanted to add in breath play. Fucker. A ring of bruises marked Jason’s neck. He stared at them, even poked at them, pressing hard until it hurt. When he released the pressure, they disappeared in a bloom of scarlet, then reappeared as his skin settled. At least if he took a couple of days off then the bruises would fade a bit; he definitely wasn’t offering dying while sucking cock as an option.

He straightened, then used the spray on his pits and in a general sweep over his body before pushing the can into his backpack.

He scrambled out of the restroom, dropped to a crouch, rose, and walked across the park to the bank. Way too early for it to open, but he had other things he needed to do.

At all times, Jason was aware of the noises and people around him. A few early commuters were around, but most everyone else were creatures of the night like him. One coffee and a bagel later, he took up residence on the bench outside the bank and waited. The minute it opened, he went into the front of the queue. He carefully completed a blank deposit slip in his neatest handwriting and passed it over.

The cashier smiled at him, an honest-to-goodness smile. She counted out the money. A pause followed as she was likely checking it wasn’t fake. Then she ticked it off on the slip, slid the whole lot in a drawer, and printed out the receipt.

“Could I have an account statement, please?” Jason asked politely. He owed himself the Christmas gift of seeing how much he’d saved. He’d never asked for one before but it seemed almost like a gift to himself to count the money he’d saved.

“Do you have ID?” she asked.

He didn’t. Of course, he didn’t. Not real ID, not one for Jason Smith. The bank account was a leftover from his time at the group home, the only thing he had that was anything official, anyway.

“Not with me, but it’s okay,” he said. “I’ll check outside at the ATM.”

She glanced left at the security guard who hovered tactfully just out of reach. It seemed the bank didn’t mind taking the money from someone who looked like him, someone with five hundred in cash, but they damn well-needed security close while they did it.

Jason didn’t take it personally.

She smiled, tightly this time. “Have a nice Christmas, sir.”

“Thank you,” Jason murmured and left the counter.

He stopped just inside the exit door at the cash machine, aware of the security guy following him at a discreet distance, and pushed in his card and entered his PIN. The card was only a month away from needing to be renewed. It was the last thing he had from his home, from that time when he had an address. At some point in the next week, probably by New Year’s, he needed to take out all his money with his card and get the hell out of Dodge.

Balance showed as a couple of hundred dollars, with the available balance just the extra five hundred dollars.

“What?” He ejected the card and pushed it back in again. Maybe something was wrong? The same balance showed again, so he clicked on the statement option.

There, in black and white, the money had gone on a daily basis: fifty here, thirty there, some days a hundred. In the last two months, nearly every cent had been taken.

And there was only one person who knew he had money saved, and who had stood next to him at the ATM on more than a few occasions. Evo. He recalled Evo standing by his bag this morning looking for deodorant—or was he putting the card back? How long had he been doing this?

Jason’s money was all gone.

And there was no point in talking to the bank; it wasn’t an administrative error.

The world fell around him. No wonder Evo had spent the last few months dancing around and living like he had it all. He’d taken Jason’s money and injected it into his arms, or inhaled it, or given it to clothes stores.

It had to be him. And Jason had never noticed, even though he checked his card was there every day… more than once a day.

He opened the small pocket inside his backpack where he kept the card—and pulled out a loyalty card from Starbucks, the same weight and shape as his bank card. Was that what he’d been feeling? Why hadn’t he unzipped the whole thing? Why hadn’t he checked visually? With a clenched fist, he punched the wall next to the cash machine and cursed loudly.

When he turned around, he walked into an unmoving wall of blue.

“Is there a problem, sir?” The guard looked down at him with no expression on his face. The man had a wide body, a thick neck, and a gun on his hip.

Jason somehow managed to look the huge, intimidating mountain of a man in the face. “No. I’m just leaving.”

The guard nodded, and Jason slipped past, exiting into the coolness of a Dallas December.

In a daze, he walked out with as much control as he could manage, and he held his head high. He went back to the park and into the now-open bathroom where, only a few hours earlier, he had stood with a feeling that he was close to his dream of getting a bus ride away from there and starting new somewhere, somehow.

Now he was back to square one.

He locked himself in the last cubicle and rested his head back against the wood-and-plastic partition. God knows what was on those walls, the unseen deposits alongside the graffiti.

Even though Evo had taken every single cent he had, Jason didn’t cry. Evo wasn’t to blame; he was a kid who didn’t know better, and Jason had been lax. He only had himself to blame.

So.

He moved on. Found the hostel, decorated with donated tinsel and garish with bright lighting, and he got himself one of the last rooms.

His cell vibrated as he sat on the edge of the narrow bed, clutching his bag, but he ignored it. He didn’t want to talk to the only person who had the number; Evo was dead to him.

Maybe an hour after, he decided to listen to the voice mail—it could be Evo apologizing. He should at least listen.

Damn kid was going to be the end of him one day.

The message was garbled; only two words made sense: “Help me.”

Fear had Jason running from the hostel to Jeb’s place, forcing his way into Jeb’s apartment, desperately looking for Evo, pushing at the body that leaned against the bathroom door, knowing it would be his friend.

And hell, he didn’t cry when he cradled Evo in his arms; when the boy who had stolen his money and danced in the bathroom bled out around him. Whoever hired out Jeb and his boys that night had done their best to destroy all the evidence. They’d left Jeb for dead, used Evo, and cut him. The fatal wound was a slice across his throat that hadn’t been deep enough to kill him outright.

Jason didn’t remember calling 911, but he must have done so, because suddenly the cops arrived. He still couldn’t make himself cry even when he was arrested, covered in Evo’s blood.

There was no point in crying. Who would he be crying for? Evo? He was in a much better place.

And for himself? What did it matter? No one cared if he cried.

No one.