The Pain That Grows Us

Chapter Thirty-One

The fog is thick tonight blocking out the light from the full moon. I should be inside planning with my brothers, but I can't keep staring at that fucking map. My fathers whole plan doesn't make sense, not anymore. Not since I stopped drinking.

"You shouldn't be out here on the sand. It's going to be trapped in your boot forever." Alice comments sitting down in the sand next to me.

"I just couldn't be inside anymore." I sigh listening to the waves crash against the sand. The ocean has always helped center me, but tonight I am extra thankful that we live on the beach.

"Your brothers are going crazy in there, and so was I." She sighs, staring ahead as if she can see through the fog straight to the water.

"I don't know what to tell them." I tell her, feeling the knot of fear grow in my stomach.

"What did your father tell you at the party the other day?"

"That I need to get my shit together, and stop making a mess of things. He heard about Max's night in jail, and my stay at Dr. Jeffery's Recovery House. But I am starting to think he was the one who called the police, and silently hoped that I would be the one in jail." My fingers dig into the sand next to me, I wish I could make fucking sense of everything.

"You know that we are behind you, right?" she asks, flipping her hair to the side, tilting her head to look at me. "If you don't think we should go through with what your Father wants, then we will stand by your side."

"I just don't understand what is going through his head. The half-cocked plan I pitched him the other night is better than the one he called me about." I shake my head in disbelief. He called me this afternoon telling me that he had a better plan for the expansion as he keeps calling it.

When he told me he had a better plan I was relieved, anything else had to be better than the plan I had. But it wasn't. Instead of taking the territory that is closest to the school and surrounding neighborhoods- neighborhoods we have several chefs in- he wants to risk all of our lives taking a port that is across town. A port that would be of no use to us, not when they control the territory surrounding it. Then to top it all off, he wants us to go into the heart of their territory and try to take control of that. Taking the port would be a bloodbath, but taking the heart of their territory would be the end of us, even if my father sent help. We just don't have the numbers or the man power. They know it, we know it, and my father knows it.

"If I say no, someone else will be put in charge, and then we will still have to do this." I grab a fist full of sand.

"So, what do we do?" she whispers, her voice shaking.

"I don't know." The sand slips through my fingers, and I can't help but feel like it represents my time left on earth. I can't figure out a way where this ends with any of- if all of us alive. That knot of fear growing.

She doesn't say anything, just lays her head on my shoulder. I wish I had some fucking clue as to what the right move here is, but I don't. I shouldn't have to be thinking about this. I should be worried about graduating highschool and what college I want to attend, instead I am worrying about whether my father wants my brothers and I dead or not.

We sit there listening to the waves crash in silence, taking comfort in the other's presence as everyone else worries about a problem I have been trying to find a solution to all day. In the past I would have gotten so drunk I could see straight and then I would have found some crazy ass solution, but I can't do that anymore.

"Max is staying at the recovery house again tonight." She tells me, pulling away, "Unless you want to go back?"

"I should be there right now. I canceled my appointment with Dr. Jeffery today after I got the phone call from my father."