I can't Hurt You - Marcus Lopez Arguello

40

It'd been a month since our Vegas trip, and boy did shit go down when we came back.

People were wondering where the hell Chico was, more specifically his gang. They told Lin that he followed us to Vegas and was never seen after that. Lin then came to the conclusion that any person in their right mind would've: one of us had done something to Chico.

We all had a talk about it and said that we would keep our mouths shut though. Whatever happened in Vegas stayed in Vegas. As far as we knew, Chico never even made it to our hotel, or so the lie we made up said.

If we came clean we'd be expelled from King's, and some of us like Marcus and I had nowhere to go. Others like Willie, Billy, and Saya couldn't possibly go back to their fucked up families. And Maria, well, if the secret got out that she slit Chico's throat and left him to die, his family would make sure she had a gruesome death, and possibly make sure the rest of us had the same fate after.

Lucky for us we were all great liars, even Willie. Lin would question us or send other people to question us multiple times a week, but we'd been raised as criminals weather we liked it or not. We'd been raised to not snitch and keep our secrets a secret. Most of us were really good at faking tears and playing the victim as well. We were grade A manipulators if you ask me. That shit came in handy, especially now. The point was, no matter if the cost was your favorite gun or your life, you don't snitch... ever. So the plan was to deny deny deny until we were faced with cold hard evidence we couldn't work our way around, which we hoped would never come up.

We'd all been doing our best to go back to normal though, like before our Vegas trip. Willie kept up his ghetto act and his gang followed him around like the clueless bimbos they were. Saya focused on her studies and kept her gang in line like she usually would. Maria took over for Chico and the Vatos answered to her now, though they didn't know the reason their original leader died was her fault. Her bipolar disorder had gotten worse, too. She tried her best to hide it, but I heard from Saya she was off her pills and Chico dying didn't do her mental health any good. I don't quite understand why, though. Chico was so abusive to her I thought she'd be relieved to get away from him permanently, but what would I know? Maybe it had something to do with the fact that Chico's dad put her in charge of finding out who killed his son, and she couldn't exactly come clean. Maybe the guilt was killing her. Billy, Marcus, and I ran with the Rats like we normally do. Petra had also finally come back from the ER. She had some badass scars from the detention incident, but besides that she was okay. Everything was as close to normal as it could get.

Except for the part where killing someone really takes a toll on a group of people. At school we would play the role of hating each other, but after hours or any time we could be in private we would hang out and somewhat get along. We were like a fucked up version of a friend group, all from different worlds in a way but understanding each other solely because of Chico's death.

With all the bullshit happening everything was more hectic than normal for us, that's to say the least. Because of it, Marcus and I made the decision to not tell anyone about our relationship yet. It would stir up drama and rumors which we didn't need right now. Besides, we had bigger things to worry about. So in front of people we would act like we usually did when we were best friends, but behind closed doors we could be ourselves.

This morning I woke up to an empty bed, which was strangely unusual since Marcus usually woke me up every morning. However, instead of moping around about it, I made it my personal mission to go find him and annoy the shit out of him. You can't blame me, he's my personal alarm clock every morning, Revenge was coming his way eventually.

I walked through the crowded halls and ran into Saya.

"Hey, Saya! Have you seen Marcus?" I asked.