The Artist's Shadow

Chapter 14

The next two weeks seemed to go at a tortoise's pace, and Jaftha was about done with it. Bladen had been running him into the ground with his constant side jobs he wanted Jaftha to do, one minute he was supposed to be shadowing JJ who luckily had not been one of those guys from the room that night and was actually really cool, to following someone around town and taking pictures of what they were doing. The first time he did a delivery they had given him a blue backpack and an address, nothing else. The whole way to the address Jaftha had hyped himself up and had only stumbled two times when he entered the building the address led him to. Not saying anything else other than the word delivery as he had been grilled by Bladen and his band of misfits, he had watched as the men in the room take out the wrapped packages and inspect them before giving him the payment. He had turned around, went back and delivered it to Bladen where they seemed to have had a sort of bet on him. That same night he had gone out with JJ who had taken him to his most favourite spots to sell and who had taught him how to watch out for cops and the ones who wanted to buy. JJ had been the only reason he wasn't losing his mind, because he made sure to keep Jaftha hidden if customers approached. When Jaftha had asked him about this, JJ had only shrugged and said. "There might be a chance you won't have to sell, so why expose yourself as a dealer to the town." Jaftha had been so thankful to him that he had bought him dinner everytime they went out.

Jaftha looked around The Pit, because it was Saturday morning, it was empty except for the two or three people cleaning and getting things ready for the Saturday night. He looked at his watch and sighed in annoyance when he saw it had already been an hour since Bladen had contacted him and told him to get to the club. Scrolling through his art book in favour of staring at the door like some dog waiting for its owner, his fingers itched to grab a pencil and draw. Just as he decided to screw it and grab the pencil, voices came through the club doors which had him look up. Bladen the douchebag and Gray the best friend walked through the doors, talking, Gray was by the waving around his hands describing something to Bladen. They greeted some of the other members around the room with nods while making their way upstairs. Jaftha narrowed his eyes at Bladen's blantant ignorance of him so not even attempting to stand up and run up after them like some dog, Jaftha turned his attention back to his drawing. He looked through his book and stopped at one of his unfinished drawings, the drawing was an incompleted picture of the train station.

Hardly even 10 minutes later, a shadow loomed over his book causing him to look up, eyebrow raised as he stared at Bladen's glare.
"Next time, I have to come fetch you, I'll give everyone in this room a show of dragging you by your hair up that stairs. You got that?" He sneered and Jaftha inwardly rolled his eyes, nodding his head he stood up and stuffed his book in the bag before squeezing past Bladen. He didn't even look around to see who was staring because he knew everyone probably was, news had spread between the members about the animosity between Bladen Cross and Jaftha Acosta. Bladen had never even attempted to treat him like a person, always shouting and grunting orders at Jaftha and while Jaftha took it in stride, he was also slowly losing his patience. There was no way he could take Bladen in a fight, should one break out but he could atleast give him a piece of his mind before Bladen put him in the emergency room.

Entering Bladen's office always felt like stepping into a room filled with timebombs. You never knew where to step so you didn't create some sort of explosion. There were always people in the office, not different people, a certain group that JJ had told him, consisted of his closest friends and allies in the gang. So the fact that they were all his friends made them automatically take his side in this mindless sort of civil war between Bladen and Jaftha. Jaftha never knew where to step so he didn't get thrown ice cold glares and scoffs and shoves. The door was already open and instead of the usual squad only have of them were present this time. He moved inside and Bladen stormed inside the room, throwing it close creating a loud bang that Jaftha knew everyone downstairs heard. Great, he thought, another one of those screaming session.
"Sit down, Picasso. You've wasted enough of our time."
"I am deeply sorry. I didn't realise I was meeting with the A-team." He said not wanting to have Bladen and his friends just walk over him. He was immediately met with a glare from Bladen so he reluctantly moved to take a seat across Bladen's and he saw two of the squad members move forward, probably to pretend they wanted to sit there so he could sit on the floor like some dog. He levelled them with his best innocent face and sat down before they could reach him.