Low (Low #1) Read online

  “It’s not fair, Lowen,” she whispers.

  “This is my struggle,” I say respectfully. “I know this life, Poe. Conning, stealing, and hustling are they only things I do well. Crushing cans and sweeping floors for pennies from some fat motherfucker kills me.”

  “Then why do you do it?” my girl asks.

  “Because it’s absolutely fair. It’s what I deserve for hurting people and taking shit that isn’t mine.”

  She shakes her head. “You’re not a bad—”

  “I’m a thug,” I say, closing the distance between us. Grabbing the front of her coffee-stained uniform, I lift her up to the tips of her toes. “You should be afraid of me, Poesy Ashby.”

  Resilience smiles in the face of sin, and her pupils widen with her lips. She pulls on the neck of my shirt, snapping stitches and stretching white cotton.

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of when we’re together, inmate. Why don’t you get it?”

  “I can’t give you more than this,” I admit, dropping my forehead to hers. “Don’t sentence yourself to a life of poverty because you love me, Poe. You can do better than some petty fucking felon. Go hang out with your college friends, and date someone normal.”

  Poesy shoves her hands into my chest, pushing me back two feet. “Don’t say that to me, Low. I’m different than those people. I love our life. I love you.”

  “You’re a shitty liar, girl.” Scrubbing my hand down my face, it’s apparent there’s nothing I can say to make her see differently.

  Poesy grabs at me as I walk by, tugging on my arm and pulling the back of my shirt. I shake her off and walk out the front door, unable to stand by and watch her become something she’s not.

  CAR ALARMS, POLICE sirens, and heavy beats litter the air in a ghetto symphony. The setting sun paints the sky in purples and pinks under a thick blanket of gray smog, casting my shadow on graffiti-marked walls as I stroll by on dirty sidewalks.

  This aimless walk takes me by the liquor store I tried to steal the jar of peanut butter from. I stand outside its doors, catching glimpses of the florescent lit inside as people come in and out, contemplating whether or not I should go inside.

  With a few bucks in my pocket and meat on my bones, I’m not the desperate kid who tried to pocket a meal I couldn’t pay for with my hood up and a lie on my lips.

  “You coming in?” a faceless man asks, holding one side of the double doors open for me.

  The scent of freezer burn and stale beer takes me back to that fateful night, and my hand brushes against my pocket, searching for brass knuckles that aren’t there.

  “What’s up, man?” a twenty-something Asian with his face buried in his phone mumbles as I pass the front counter.

  “Do you own this place?” I ask out of curiosity, expecting to have come face-to-face with my victim.

  “My parents bought it last year. I just work here,” the guy answers, using both thumbs to type. “Need something?”

  My feet carry me through the food aisle, but unlike the last time I was here, my stomach doesn’t growl, and my intentions aren’t lawless. The bread sits on the same shelf as before. I grab a loaf and a jar of Jiffy and continue down the lane, walking past the refrigerated booze and past endcaps selling cups of noodles and plastic roses.

  Coming upon the spot where Mr. Gutierrez bled for my crime, I watch it all happen again as it plays out in my mind. The same determination I had to get away with my freedom here is identical to what I experienced when I aimed my pistol in the faces of innocent people during the bank robbery.

  I deserve to be caged like an animal.

  “$8.62,” the store clerk says, setting his phone down to put my groceries inside a black plastic bag.

  Paying double like I promised I would, I toss a twenty-dollar bill onto the counter and walk out.

  “What about your change?” the owner’s kid calls out before the door closes between us.

  I haven’t been by the old neighborhood since I was locked up. The house I lived in with my ma and Gillian is vacant with a broken window and boarded front door. White paint chips from the trim, and yellow stucco has fallen off in clumps, exposing the bones beneath.

  From the steps I used to sit on with my homeboys, I inhale the scent of marijuana laced throughout the block and watch little homies with bad intentions ride by on their bicycles. There’s a house party of gangsters flying blue colors out of a garage, and the few good families that still live on the street shut their windows and lock their doors. As the sun goes down and the few streetlights with working bulbs flicker on, a dense sense of delinquency comes alive and sours the air.

  The night will sing gunshots and heartache. Drug addicts won’t sleep tonight. Mothers will lose their children to the streets.

  My life is better with Poesy.

  I’ve always known it, but sitting on these cracked steps in this broken neighborhood makes it more apparent.

  She’s where I belong now, and I need to accept that she wants me exactly how I am.

  I go to her.

  “Wake up, girl,” I whisper, pressing my lips to her sleep-warm, sleep-lined skin.

  On my knees beside the bed, I move her tangled hair away from her face as her long lashes begin to flutter open. Poesy blinks interrupted dreams from her sleepy eyes and scowls when I come into focus.

  “Jerk.” She pushes me away by my face.

  “I’m sorry.” I grab her wrist and kiss the palm of her hand. “All I can do is try, Poe.”

  She rubs her thumbs over my lips and smiles in the shadows. Her shower-damp hair smells like coconut, and the faint fragrance of mint crystals softens her breath.

  “We can’t be apart. I’m here with you, Lowen,” she repeats the same words she uses anytime I need to be reminded.

  I’ll try to believe her.

  WE’RE ABLE TO pay a month’s rent with the rest of the robbery money, giving Poesy time to search for another job. Each morning she gets dressed with a bright face and optimistic smile and fills out applications after she drops me off at the recycling plant.

  “They said to expect a call for an interview this week,” she says in a cheerful tone when she picks me up from work every evening.

  Calls never come, and when one month turns into two, bills aren’t easy to pay on my wages alone. Poe’s optimism fades with the balance in our checking account, and diminishes entirely when hunger pangs come back, and we have to sell the kitchen table to buy groceries.

  I fight Jorge for hours and work a side job with my mom’s boyfriend for extra cash. They need the money as much as we do, so it’s an opportunity that only comes once.

  “My dad said he can lend me fifty bucks for the electricity bill, but I have to pay him back next week,” Poesy says with tears in her eyes. The men in her life constantly cut her short.

  “Tell him we don’t need it,” I lie.

  Three months after Poesy loses her job at the coffee shop, she drives me to work on an empty tank of gas. Her hazel eyes have gone dim, and I can’t remember the last time I saw her smile.

  “I was thinking about going to the temp agency today,” she mentions before I get out of the car.

  There are more people than jobs, and the thought of her waiting in line for hours with no promise of employment angers me. We live in a society where the rich get richer, and the poor can only hope they can temporarily file the wealthy man’s paperwork while their secretary is on maternity leave.

  “You look pretty today,” I say, brushing loose curls off her shoulder.

  “Yeah, well, my looks haven’t gotten me far,” she replies, shifting the car into first gear. It’s time to go.

  I walk into the recycling plant, past the other employees who talk shit about me in Spanish, and toward the storage room where my orange vest and broom wait. I’m accustomed to the stinging scent of wet aluminum, but the mixture of old beer and stale caffeine punches me in the gut.

  “Seely, in my office,” Jorge calls out from his workplace acro
ss the factory.

  He sits in a chair behind his desk, typing numbers onto a plastic-covered keyboard to an ancient computer when I walk inside.

  “Do you need to see me?” I ask.

  “Sit down, my friend,” he says with no real indication in his tone that he considers me to be his friend at all.

  “What’s going on?” I take a seat across from him, wondering if he’ll adjust my time since I haven’t clocked in yet.

  “You do good work, and I like you,” Jorge mentions in his thick accent. “But this is business. My other guys have families to support and need money. You’ll find work somewhere else.”

  The office is silent, with the exception of the humming computer monitor as I accept what he’s suggested. Blood rushes to my head, and my heart lodges in my throat, cutting off air and reason, and this can’t happen.

  “I need this job, Jorge,” I say between gritted teeth. My temper threatens to get the best of me, pumping red hot blood through my veins as my visions goes spotty.

  “Hey, we all need this job. Go home. I’ll pay you for the day.” He waves me off, punching numbers as if he didn’t just wreck my life.

  “I can work less hours. Don’t fire me,” I say, careful not to come off as begging.

  “Go home, Seely,” Jorge answers dismissively.

  It’s an indifferent attitude I’ve faced from teachers, bosses, and hacks when I was behind bars. He thinks he’s better than me, and thinks he’s done me a favor by employing me in the first place.

  I stand up and kick Jorge’s desk, thrusting it into his fat stomach, and kick it again until he’s jammed between it and the wall. Pushing everything off the desk’s surface with one sweep of my arm, I take out the computer last and listen to it splinter apart as I watch my former boss’s face turn bright red beneath his dark skin.

  “I’m calling the cops,” he says, but the phone is on the floor with the rest of his crap.

  “If you call the cops, I’ll report you and every other illegal in this motherfucker.” I spit on his desk and kick the chair I was just sitting in out the way before I exit his office.

  I open the door so hard it slams against the wall and breaks the drywall. The smell of mold takes my breath away, but nothing keeps me from walking through the recycling plant with my shoulders back and my head held high.

  “Estúpido, wedo,” one of the guys weighing some crackhead’s milk jugs says as I walk by.

  With nothing left to lose, I grab him by his throat and shove him into stacks of barrels, sending thousands of crushed cans and glass bottles across the plant. Everyone scatters, not daring to say another word, and I walk out with my pride mostly intact.

  The journey home gives me time to cool off and an opportunity to think. When I walk through the front door, Poesy’s on the couch with the remote control in her hand.

  “Couldn’t do the temp agency thing, Low. There were so many people there, and I’m better than that.” My girl has kicked off her heels and has her bare feet resting on the coffee table. She sits up and says, “Wait, what the heck are you doing here?”

  I look at her and say, “We’re going to rob another bank.”

  MY .44 IS layered in dust, but as lethal as it was when I left it in the shed months ago. I wipe it clean with a dishrag, exposing its brushed metal finish. With a pocket of ammo, I slide the loaded weapon into the waist of my jeans where my bare skin warms the cool steel.

  “If we’re going to do this, we need to leave,” Poesy says, placing her hand on my shoulder.

  “I can’t make any mistakes¸” I say, turning around. “A lot went wrong last time.”

  Dressed in black with her hair pulled into a bun so tight it slightly stretches her eyelids, my girl smiles. “We cased the bank and have a foolproof plan, Low. Relax.”

  My partner in crime and I leave before the sun peeks over the horizon and walk across town where we steal a maroon Accord from a shopping center parking lot. The sky turns hazy purple as we cruise side streets and alleyways toward Poe’s hometown of Culver City.

  Within the city limits, we spend our last five dollars on coffee I can’t stomach from a drive-thru while we wait for Bank of Los Angeles to open for business. We made this same trip a week ago, and Poesy went inside, asking questions as a potential customer like she did when we took California Credit Union.

  “Five tellers, four loan desks on each side of the lobby, and two security guards: one by the doors when you first walk in, and the other by the vault,” my girl repeats for the twentieth time since we left our apartment.

  “Leave if I’m not back in five minutes. Don’t wait for me like you did last time, Poesy. It’s not worth the risk,” I say in return, squeezing my hand into a fist to keep from shaking.

  “How can you expect me to do that?” she asks in a low tone, looking out the window at the brightening sky.

  “Don’t be stupid. I can’t do the job and worry about you getting arrested. It’s too dangerous. Promise you’ll leave, or I won’t do it.”

  “What if I go in with you? I can help while you bag the money. Two has to be better than one.” Persistence turns in her seat to face me, wide-eyed and wondering.

  White-hot anger burns away the nervousness I felt about the heist and leaves me rattling for a new reason. The idea of Poesy inside the bank with me makes me sick. I swallow thick saliva and squeeze my hands around the steering wheel to keep from grabbing her.

  “No,” I say through tight teeth.

  “It was just an idea,” Poe replies sorely, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth.

  “Have you ever fired a gun? Could you aim it in the face of an innocent person, Poesy? A child’s face if you had to?” I ask, turning my attention toward her. “Because that’s what I do. That’s what a criminal does.”

  “Teach me.”

  “Don’t be fucking ridiculous.” I start the car and get out so she can get behind the wheel, passing by my girl between cloudy headlights and a plastic chrome-chipped grill.

  “It doesn’t have to be right now, Lowen, but you should teach me how to shoot a gun. I’d aim it at anyone if they tried to hurt you, even a kid,” she says with her hands in her pockets and a smile on her lips. “Who knows, maybe one day I’ll save your life.” She winks.

  “You save my life every day,” I say over the hood of the car.

  Poesy and I pull our ski masks over our faces and push our fingers through our black gloves like we practiced, tucking in stray strands of hair and covering any exposed skin. With only minutes to spare before nine a.m., I set the .44 on my lap.

  “Five minutes,” my girl says, looking over at me.

  “I’ll be out before that,” I reply amongst heavy breaths. My heartbeat races to the point of pain, and my face sweats beneath the woven cotton. Adrenaline consumes me like wildfire, rapid and unforgiving of anything in its path.

  At eight fifty-nine, Poe pulls the car into traffic and accelerates until the engine roars and jerks into gear. She swerves in and out of lanes, runs a red light, and stops the car to a screeching halt in front of the bank.

  Before I have a chance to get out, the love of my life pulls me close by the front of my shirt and presses her mouth against mine. Dirty and wild and raw, Poesy slips her tongue between my lips and kisses me so hard our teeth clash, and the corner of my mouth splits.

  “Don’t die,” she says breathlessly before licking the bead of blood.

  Poe shoves me away, and I dash from the car with a kiss-clouded mind and the taste of coffee and her cherry Chapstick on my lips. As I set the timer on my watch, a rush of strength hardens the muscles in my body, and electric-like momentum leads me through the glass doors without fear. With my finger on the trigger, I point the barrel of my weapon at the security officer guarding the entrance and smile.

  “Down on your knees, motherfucker,” I command.

  As he slowly lowers himself to the blue carpet, I notice movement to my left and swing my gun around to aim at the second guard. His
bony hand hovers over the fire alarm on the wall. My grip tightens around my pistol.

  “Set that off, and I’ll blow a hole in your head. I’m in the mood to kill someone today.”

  With both rent-a-cops under control, I quickly soak in my surroundings. All five teller booths are open with customers at their windows. Nine more clients wait in a single file line, and three employees sit behind their desks on either side of the room.

  Every set of eyes is on me.

  “Hands in the air!” I shout. My voice echoes, and the hair on my arms rises with excitement beneath my long sleeves. “I want everyone against the wall—now.”

  A little boy with a tin toy train in his hand cries softly, hidden behind his mother’s legs. She hurries him along, shuffling on the heel of a man with a hard hat atop his head and a couple with matching Honolulu T-shirts on.

  I direct the employees at desks to their feet, and point my gun at the branch security officers until they jump up. Herding hostages beneath advertisements for student loan interest rates and IRAs, I lick my lips and remember Poesy’s kiss. It gives me the push I need to ignore the overwhelming guilt as I look into the eyes of frightened individuals, all different ages and at various stages in life.

  An old man with wiry white hair and deep wrinkles can only hold his trembling hands chest high. A teenage girl with bleach-blonde dreads has her eyes closed, but her lips move.

  “Forgive us for our trespasses. As we forgive those who trespass against us,” she whispers; tears drip from her lips.

  Fifty-two seconds into the heist, and with everyone but the tellers grouped together, I throw my backpack to the first cashier. It hits the twenty-something-year-old man in the face, knocking his glasses from his nose.

  “Fill it up,” I order. “And if any of you drop dye packs in with the money or set off your silent alarm, all of you die.”

  Without delay, the first teller drops stacks of cash into the plain, black, generic backpack. He passes it to his coworker, a young girl with glassy tears in her dull gray eyes. She has a hard time steadying her hand long enough to open her drawer.