CW: Violence, blood, cops
Once Run started working at the store it felt more real to be home. The routine was helpful, not to mention it was only a very short matter of time before he ran out of money; it went so much faster than he remembered.
Smith’s General was an oddly situated convenience shop sandwiched between two much bigger buildings and had been in Kate’s family for a few decades, though none had carried the last name of Smith in three generations–Kate herself being a Hauer before marrying Mia and becoming a Rivera. The store, like home, had familiar bones, but the rest of the body had changed. The movie rental box was gone, the old coffee station that meowed in a tinny voice while dispensing had been replaced with a Grande!Kafé! Kiosk. There were twice as many chip brands and candy flavors.
The large built-in cooler at the back was neatly arranged, perhaps the biggest shock of all, given Kate’s tendency to let chaos reign, but the soft drinks and energy drinks had been swapped and there was a whole section of teas and juices that he didn’t recognize at all.
Kate loved the store in a grudging way, a thing Run had been clear on for a long time. It was the place she’d spent the most time in as a kid, driving her dad crazy instead of working on her homework, soaking up every minute with him until he passed away while she was in college trying to finish a marketing degree that she’d never planned to bring back to Sauner.
“I’m only asking you to work at the store if you want to, okay? This damn place trapped me, don’t let it get you, too,” Kate had grumbled while lighting a cigarette. “Don’t worry about me, find something better as soon as you’re ready.”
They stood just outside of the dinged up metal door, which had recently been spray painted with a large, white GHSTBOI. The ‘O’ was long and narrow and had two ‘X’ eyes and a smaller ‘o’ mouth. Kate thought it was cute and didn’t layer grey paint over it like she had many other more offensive tags over the years.
“I thought you quit, Mom. Mia would be pissed.”
“Don’t you dare snitch me out,” she snorted, but she dropped the half smoked butt into the ashtray. “Not that she can’t always tell. There, I quit again.”
“Mhm. How many times a day do you quit?”
“Bratty kid, you haven’t changed at all.”
“Neither have you, still smoking at your age.” Run shook his head at Kate and dodged when she made to shove his shoulder.
“Seriously though, have you thought about it?” Kate frowned and lit another cigarette, asking through her teeth.
“About what?” Run waved the smoke back towards her before it had a chance to touch his face and leaned against the brick wall.
“What to do with yourself aside from being chained to this store.”
“What if I don’t think of it as being chained?”
“You will, trust me. Come on, think about it a bit. You could go back to school. This isn’t a challenging job and you’re a real smart kid, you know.”
“I already have my GED and I spent ten years taking classes and still don’t have any skills to show for it. I’m fine with just working here. I’ll take your shifts, then you can go back to school. And I can be smart and not have a degree, which you know.”
“So bratty. Just like your mom.”
“Which one?”
“Smart ass. Hey!” Run knocked the cigarette out of her hand and ground it into the pavement somewhat viciously before hurrying into the store before Kate could retaliate.
Back inside, the work wasn’t any different than it had been when he was sixteen. All he had to do was learn the new cash register and not space out too much. He swept the floors, straightened the shelves, stocked the coolers, emptied the trash. Every so often, he flipped through one of the tabloids on display or texted back and forth with Neko.
No one seemed to recognize him, though he saw quite a few familiar faces. When he was seventeen he hadn’t reached his height and despite having a knife-sharp mouth, was soft-faced, perpetually sleepy looking in a way that didn’t match how much energy had, how in motion he had to be. Now, he was taller, broader, and capable of such surprising stillness. He felt that not only had he become a different person, he also looked like someone else comparatively, too. If he had voiced this to Kate or Mia they would have laughed. His jawline was a little more defined, but his face still looked languid, as if he was always one yawn away from a nap.
And if sometimes he felt one yawn away from a nap there was no reason to tell Kate; she would just take it as another reason to push him into signing up for classes or looking for a new job. Was there really anything wrong with not having any particular ambition?
His first formal check in at the Reintegration office took up more time than he had expected, most of it waiting. The office was located on the fifth floor of city hall, a building that grew shabbier and less well cared for as it climbed, and had a line of other parolees that snaked down the hallway and wrapped around the corner. Before he could meet with Lena he had to sign in for a drug test and piss in front of a sweaty, bored looking man who understandably didn’t enjoy watching people piss in cups as part of his job and who rushed him to finish so that he ended up splashing a little on his shoes. It embarrassed him, even if it was quickly wiped off.
After that he sat in Lena’s small, too hot office, sweating while she questioned him about his job, living situation, and family reunion and typed his answers quickly on a laptop with a whining fan that shut down of its own volition twice before she could save everything.
Almost two hours after he first lined up, Run was back outside where a cool breeze had kicked up and stole most of the heat and any lingering irritation that brushed up against the clear calm surface separating him from anything that might really disturb him.
I’m out and all this is fine, he thought. He was used to long lines and meaningless acts of authority. Quickly, he returned to a neutral state, placid and undisturbed.
As he walked down 1st North from city hall to the bus station Mia called to see if he wanted to have take out with them before he went home.
“Sure, where from?”
“Shen’s sound good to you?”
At least Shen’s was still around! Run wasn’t sure he’d ever actually eaten at any other Chinese take out place as a kid. “Yeah. If you want to order, I can pick it up on my way. I’m walking right past it on my way to you.”
“Sounds good, want anything in particular?”
“Spring rolls–”
Mia cut in with, “Peanut chicken, side of noodles–same as always, yeah? I’ll order online. See you when you get here. Love you, kid.”
“Yeah, same as always, thanks. Love you, too,” Run said.
From behind him, a deep, hoarse voice snapped, “Who the fuck loves you?”
Run halted and turned around. He stared, unable to speak for a long pause. “N-Noah?” Run asked.
In ten years, Noah had grown from a slight, angular boy with sharp elbows and knees that were in awkward perpetual motion to a stocky, finished version of his brother, Nathan: hazel-eyed, long-nosed, shaggy-haired. Noah was even wearing an old white Blondie t-shirt that looked identical to the one his brother had worn to rags throughout highschool. Run’s chest ached and the seemingly impenetrable, monk-like barrier between him and everything the old Run had felt simply collapsed.
Noah didn’t answer, not that Run needed him to. Tension collected between them on the sideway where they stood blocking foot traffic until Noah stepped forward and caught Run in the face with a heavy, if poorly aimed punch. He followed Run to the ground, climbed on his chest and hit him again.
Run laid there. Even if his arms weren’t clamped down by Noah’s knees he wouldn’t have covered his face or fought back. He deserved this and so much more. Noah could beat him to death on the street and he’d let him.
“You motherfucker, you fucker,” Noah spat at him over and over, punctuating each punch and slap. He didn’t know how to fight, Run could tell; it wasn’t his first time taking a beating and it wasn’t hard to tell that the larger man had started crying.
In short order the heaviness of Noah’s body peeled away from him, but the weight bearing down on him didn’t seem to lessen. He gulped air feeling for all the world like he couldn’t take a whole breath.
“Sir? Sir, can you hear me?”
Run opened his right eye, the left seemed glued shut, and croaked, “I’m fine. I can get up. I’m fine.” The cop in front of him was blurry but the law enforcement silhouette was permanently recognizable. He waved the offered hand away and slowly pushed himself up to his knees, dizzy and nauseous. His ears were ringing. Blood ran from his nose to his mouth, down his chin and neck. It pooled in his mouth, but he couldn’t purse his lips to spit it out.
“Who cares if that piece of shit can hear you. He killed my fucking brother, you assholes, let me fucking go!” Noah was cuffed, face down on the sidewalk, and straining against another uniformed officer’s knee between his shoulder blades.
“Jesus christ,” the officer standing over Run sighed. “What’s your name?”
Run reached for his phone, the new screen cracked, and was grateful to see that his call with Mia had disconnected. Hopefully she hadn’t heard any of what had just happened.
“Run Rivera.” The inside of his cheek was swollen and ragged. Words felt thick and sticky. “No charges,” he forced out and pointed at Noah.
“You don’t get to say shit about my charges. Fuck you, you just–” Noah deflated into the sidewalk. Run remembered Noah going from rage to tears in mere moments as a kid, like his body just couldn’t hold anger very well. Noah crying into concrete hurt more than his face.
“Listen,” the cop standing nearest to Run said, annoyed and rubbing the side of his face as if he were too weary to be dealing with this shit. “We’re all going to go to the station and figure out who’s being charged with what. Not that any of it is really up to you.”
Mercifully, they were transported in different cars, Noah was taken first.
Run hadn’t been this anxious in as long as he could remember.
“Can I make a call?” He worked these few words out of the right side of his mouth, thinking only about how worried his moms would be, fixating on what they would do about dinner. He hadn’t been this anxious in longer than he could remember.
“Eventually,” an officer with the same build and bearing as Kate told him. She handed him a wad of damp paper towel and said, “I’ll get someone to take you to the bathroom to clean up better after we get your statement.”
“No statement. No charges,” he said again.
“The guy who beat you up says you killed someone, so we’ll see about that.” She, like everyone else in the station, looked sallow under the bad lighting. According to her name tag she was J. Shapiro. Her uniform was tidy but her boots were filthy and one lace was untied.
“On parole. It was ten years ago. Lena Nowak is my Reintegration officer. She saw me today.” Every time he spoke it broke open the side of his cheek so that the throbbing intensified. Swallowing blood was making him nauseous; he bent so his head was nearly resting on his knees and breathed slowly through one nostril.
“Sure. We’ll run you when we get time. Why don’t we start with you telling me what happened.” The cop didn’t bother smiling or trying to reassure him that they just wanted to get to the bottom of things, or that if he was honest everything would be fine. It had been weird when he was questioned about the accident and everyone was nice to him. But with an edge. There was none of that now. Run could talk or not, no one would spend much time on him either way. If it looked like he fucked up, he’d not be leaving.
“No statement, nothing happened,” Run repeated. He really might throw up if he had to keep talking. Officer Shapiro just looked him over without responding for a bit.
“Fine,” she said. “No reason to keep you out here then. But you know fighting violates your parole Mr. Rivera, so I wouldn’t get too comfortable.” She walked him through the station, which hadn’t changed much since he had been transported from the hospital after his release to be fingerprinted and bailed out. There were still beige cubicles separating most of the desks. It still smelled sour like anger and fear. He hadn’t been in a holding tank before though, he’d been processed quickly, including being set up with a heavy ankle monitor, and handed over to Mia and Kate to wait until his first court hearing.
He thought it was funny what felt like mercy as he was put in an empty holding tank next to the one that held Noah. As soon as his cuffs were removed he dropped in front of the steel toilet and vomited painfully.
He didn’t expect to be turned loose quickly, so he laid down on the rubber-paint coated cement block meant to serve as a place to sit and closed his eyes.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, he thought and tried to focus on anything but Noah, and especially anything but Nathan. He’d been stupid, getting caught up in the breeziness of his returned freedom. The apartment, his job, his family–everything had fallen into place too easily. Even a seventeen year old Run would have anticipated things going sideways. The old him would have anticipated a certain amount of chaos and wouldn’t have been so naive. Be a little more fucking self aware, he lectured himself. Despite that, he now felt more like his old self than he thought he ever would again. It fucking sucked.
UPDATED 3/4/22 +500 words
Note: There is some license taken with the Parole system here – it’s an amalgamation of what I’m familiar with, which is 20 years out of date, talking to people who are more familiar with current processes, and a belief that you can’t humanize our current “justice” system, no matter how the language is softened or changed. So if you pick up on decarceration as a theme, good.