Chapter 2: Sticky

In the morning after, he sat across from me at the kitchen table, eating a ripe peach. Juice ran down his arm with each bite, but he let it drip from his elbow without a flinch. While I watched him, he watched me with an oblivious grin. Had my cousin come back to kill, or was he simply mad like the rest of us? No matter the cause, I had been ordered to be kind.

"No Sunday school? Thought this was a God-fearing household," he joked while reclining back in his seat looking about the room.

He couldn't be bothered to wear a shirt. He couldn't be bothered to use a plate. But somehow, my cousin wanted to know if church was coming.

"Mom wants me to take you shopping," I answered and stood from my seat to put away my bowl.

My appetite had gone before I had a chance to eat.

"Does she?" Shawn asked, and I told him, "You need clothes."

"I got clothes."

"We'll get you some more."

"I could always wear what you got. I bet we're still the same size most ways."

"Do you have something against new clothes?" I asked.

"Course not. But I'd hate to be a burden, cousin."

Was that sarcasm I was picking up? Was Shawn smart enough for the rhetoric? I might have thought on it, but that juice. It dripped to the floor, and he did nothing to stop it until the pit of his fruit met his bite. I passed a roll of paper towels and he cleaned up without grimace.

Even when he was dressed, it couldn't hide the devil. Though I noticed he tried to mirror my image. I wore a collared shirt; he wore a button-down missing buttons and a black wife beater. I wore khaki pants; he wore khaki shorts. When we went out to take the truck, I was hesitant to let the neighbors see us together. To be fair, which was more than he deserved, his clothes weren't anything that couldn't pass. But it's as if he'd never used a wash or an iron.

"What happened to grandma," I asked as I drove dad's truck.

We were on our way to Sunset Mall.

"I told you, she died," he said, looking out the window like Texas was a world different from Louisiana. And maybe it was, but it wasn't his first time crossing the plains.

"But how?"

"How should I know? We all gotta go someday," he remarked.

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Texas was more than horses and cowboy hats. There were cities, businesses, good shit by the mile. But there were farms, no-name towns, and dirt roads scattered about. Starwood was a neighborhood between the cities and farmland. Whether we went north or south, a drive was never shorter than 30 minutes—thirty minutes to glass and steel or 30 minutes to mud.

"So what's my cousin been up to," Shawn asked after the radio got old.

"Nothing," I answered without investment.

"Your Pa said you've gotten smarter. Some on-a-role student."

"What do you care?"

"Just making conversation. I was a smart ass at my old school too."

"Still getting in trouble then?"

"If I am, at least I deserve it."

He remembered, but for the life of me, I couldn't tell if he was sour.

"I'm clean as a new tooth," he added with a chuckle and took out a pocket knife.

The glare that came from the metal caught my eye for a moment before I returned to the road. It didn't surprise me he was the type to carry something like that.

"Sure you are," I remarked.

Sunset Mall. It wasn't the biggest. It wasn't the greatest. It was the closest most folks in our county could reach without a full tank of gas. There might have been two name-brand stores amongst a cluster of unique facades.

Shawn and I walked in together, but once we made it past a few kiosks, I held out 100 dollars and told him, "Take this, buy whatever you want, and we can meet up in an hour."

He looked at the money like a bribe before taking it and asking, "Where are you going?"

"To see a friend," I answered, already going in another direction.

He said, "I can come with you," but I explained, "My friends don't need new friends."

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