Oops

Chapter 5

                                                                                    Maya           

                Nani wasn’t going to bring it up first. I guess I knew that, but still. My sister was patient, more so than I was. I knew she wanted to know just what had happened. And I was pretty much bursting to tell her. Like it or not, Nani was going to outwait me, and I knew it.

                Rocky was asleep, or feigning that he was. I could see in his eyes the shock that registered when he saw me. Not fear, exactly. It was almost like, when he looked at me, he was extremely disappointed, maybe a little defeated. I knew he thought I killed that boy. I hadn’t. More likely than not it was the kid’s first flesh wound. He’d probably be bragging about it as soon as he got out of the hospital. Meanwhile, my arm was killing me, and I couldn’t afford going to the hospital as it was.

                I was driving the van around in circles, looking for a new place to hide out. I could probably go to another one of Dad’s old warehouses, but I hadn’t done much digging into the other places. Who knew which ones he could’ve returned to? A run-in with my father, while we still had Rocky, could be disastrous. I didn’t even want to think about it.

                Even though I was pretty sure Rocky couldn’t speak Spanish, I waited until I was sure he was asleep before speaking. Both Nani and I grew up with both English and Spanish as our primary languages. We were fluent in both.

                “The boy’s not dead.”

                Nani glanced over at me. “I saw the wound,” she said, amused, although much of her expression practically shouted her relief at me. “It wasn’t anywhere near fatal.”

                Good old Nani. Despite her only being in the gang business for eleven years as opposed to my fifteen, she was every bit as trained as I was. Sometimes, it had its perks. I smiled a little bit in response and then told her the whole story.

                Lover Boy wouldn’t stop pestering me, so I punched him. Little guy was slicker than I thought, grabbing the gun from my jacket pocket and whirling it on me a second after I decked him. His shot went wide, though, still reeling from the blow I'd given him. I turned and ran, heading back towards the warehouse. There were six shots in that gun, and he’d used one already. Still, guns were a bad thing in the hands of a kid gang member. They felt like they had to prove themselves, and after I attacked him, he was probably looking for some payback.

            Luckily, I had some experience in dodging bullets, so I ducked and weaved as the bullets echoed after me. Silently I counted in my head the rounds he was firing. Two, three, four… Where was the fifth one? Taking a glance back I could see the boy standing still, arms up. He was actually aiming this time. I swore quietly and swerved. Even though he was almost an entire two blocks behind me it was unlikely he’d miss once he was concentrating. Sure enough, the familiar sting of a bullet kissed my arm, drawing a sharp gasp from me. I gritted my teeth and pushed on, ignoring the pain. I was pretty sure it was just a graze, anyways, and once the boy realized he was out of bullets, he was going to come after me with that knife.

            I hadn’t gone far from the warehouse. Racing down the edge of the building I swung into the doorway, locking eyes with Nani immediately. “Pass me the gun!” I shouted, reaching out. To Nani’s credit, she didn’t even blink and tossed the gun to me. I knew there was only one shot, and I wasn’t about to kill the poor kid, so I aimed for the empty part of his right shoulder, paused a second to breathe, and fired.