Blood On Her Hands

Chapter 12

Julio's room looked as if a tornado had passed through it. 

Mattress propped against the wall, closet doors thrown open with every item of clothing torn from the hangers, drawers removed from their corresponding dressers. The floor was completely littered, making it impossible to navigate through it without stepping on something. There were papers, posters, pens, and chargers skewed about like an obstacle course. 

I had been planning to go straight to my room upon arriving home to get some work done when I had seen the mess through my peripheral vision. My room was past Julio's and Nancy's so I couldn't help but see the disaster as I walked by the open door. 

Just as I was about to shout for someone to give me an explanation, Tìo and Tìa came bounding up the steps with a massive, black trash bag. 

I gestured at the room. "What happened there?" 

"Drugs. The school called to say Julio went to class high," Tìa said, a vein bulging from her forehead. She rattled the trash bag with a huff. She was a second away from bursting like a volcano. 

"We're trying to find anything he may have hidden in his room," my uncle said, more resigned than angry. 

The irony of it. His father was hiding a gun in his room and Julio was hiding weed. I wonder if this was the first incident of the two being secretive around each other. I knew Julio had always been honest but they may have been because he was a child. I, for one, couldn't help but assume that the gun was only the tip of the iceberg on what my uncle could be hiding. Was it normal for parents to do that? To keep things from their children in order to protect them? It was seen as their right. They knew what was best for their kids, after all. 

"Don't just stand there," my aunt complained. She was venturing into the room and stepping on all the thrown about items. I wondered which one of them did most of the destroying. I wondered if they realized how insane this was going to seem to Julio. "Help us look!" 

Keys jangled in the door's key hole. One glance at my phone and I knew it was Julio. School was out for him at this time. 

"That's him!" Tìo whispered. He shooed me away from the room. "Go downstairs and distract him while we keep looking." 

It was a task I was more inclined to do than help them raid his room and rummage through his belongings. I went down the steps and saw Julio dropping his bag on the couch. He appeared sober now. His brown eyes were surrounded by white and he was steady as he walked about the lower level. 

"Hey, how was school?" I asked. 

Julio sighed heavily and threw himself onto the couch. He raked a hand through his hair and then threw both of them up in the air in defeat. 

"I don't know why I bother going.”  

It was a different response from his usual “Fine”. Getting Julio to talk about his school day was nearly impossible. He would much rather discuss what was for dinner or if I had seen the neighbors up to anything weird while he was at school. If Julio was going to willingly tell me about his day, then I better have listened. 

I sunk into the spot beside him on the couch, resting my elbow on the side of it. "How come?" 

"I can't absorb anything they're teaching. I hear the teacher speaking, I take notes, it's just not getting through," he explained with rising frustration. His eyebrows were furrowed like he's just as confused as he was upset. I didn’t blame him. Julio was used to getting passing grades without much effort. He never had to study for hours for a test to prepare. It was an unfair advantage he had, being able to absorb information so skillfully. I had once hypothesized that it was because he had such laser focus. He listened carefully enough the first time that he didn’t have to hear the information again. 

"Are you distracted by something?" I asked. 

He paused, darting his eyes between the wall and I. He swallowed a lump in his throat, not saying anything. I trained my gaze at him like Mac had on me when he was asking me about the anonymous call. It made me want to spill my guts to him. I hoped it did the same for Julio. 

He ducked his head down a bit like he wanted to retract into a shell. I had been referring to smoking and drinking with my question. It was poking at the fact that it could be messing with his academics but now that I had seen this reaction, I began to suspect something more sinister came to his mind. 

I was still trying to figure it out when he finally asked, "What's going on upstairs?" 

Thumping and shuffling sounds almost drowned out the question. There was no use trying to hide it from him. Besides, I wanted Julio to know I'd always be straightforward with him. I wanted him to trust me. 

"Your parents are searching your room for a hidden weed stash. The school called and snitched on you." 

"You gotta be kidding me!" he exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air. I thought he was going to race up the stairs to try and stop his parents but just as quickly as the energy had seized his body, it faded away. He groaned, covering his face with the crook of his elbow while resting the back of his head on the couch. 

"Will they find anything?" 

He snickered. "Nothing too bad." 

It sounded bizarre to hear him admit it. This wasn't the Julio I knew. Just last year he was trying to convince his friend to stop vaping.  

"Why are you doing weed?" 

"Smoking," he corrected. He sounded embarrassed of me. "Smoking weed." 

"You've been different lately. Is it because of the gun? Or what happened at the wedding?" I was feeling around in a dark room. I was certain there was a light switch somewhere. If I kept looking I'd find it. I was desperate to find it. 

"Things change." He got up from the couch and started toward the front door. "I don't want to be here when they find anything or when Nancy gets home."

It stunned me to hear him spit out Nancy's name like that. The two bickered but at the end of the day, they went out of their way to spend time with each other. Julio didn't have to ask Nancy to go to the arcade with him. Nancy didn't have to take him ice skating. The two may have technically been cousins but they were siblings in the true sense of the word. He must have been anticipating an even more explosive reaction from her than his own parents or was dreading the three of them ganging up on him together. 

When I finally recovered, I called out, "Where are you going?!" 

I was too late. The door slammed behind him, shaking the wall from the force. I sat in the silence of the living room. It was blaring in the absence of Julio. 

When I was ten and Julio was four, we discovered a bunch of dandelions in the backyard. We spent the afternoon making wishes on all of them. When we were done, Julio foolishly told me one of his wishes. Sweetly, he said he wished we could be best friends forever. I told him that wishes didn't come true if you told people about it. Sticking his bottom lip out, he said it could still come true if we kept it a secret between us. 

I had thought the wish had come true. Maybe I had been wrong. Maybe our friendship was bound to change, to bend, to break.

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