That night, I lay in my bed in the dark and wondered what was going to happen to us. When Christina, and later Alex, had shown up, we had talked and come to the consensus that we needed to be careful. Gemma had said we should travel as a group. She was right, but that wouldn't always be possible. Alex had brought up carrying blades, which Elle had immediately said no to, and she had pointed out that there was no way she could ever cut anyone. By the time they all went home, we still had no plan of action. We only had the realization that no matter what didn't or didn't happen with that girl in the lot, we were suspected for killing that girl and the Columbus gang are not someone you want suspecting you of murder.
And part of me wonders what did happen to that girl. Who really did it, I mean. It had to be one of the East Siders, but who? Maybe it was one of the older groups of guys. I knew for a fact that some of the guys Liam hung with had guns. Not that they carried them or even used them, but they had them. Alex's boyfriend, Tom, was friends with James. And Tom was the kind of guy who might have a gun. He might not use it, but he might carry it. He was violent and reckless. Then there was Christina's boyfriend, James. James was nineteen. He was tough, but he wasn't violent like Tom. He was older and smart and mature. Either way, it was scary to think that the boys you know might have been killers.
I wondered what was going on with Elle and Caleb. They weren't dating, but they were flirting and they had kissed at one of the last summer parties. Gemma had the same sort of thing going on with a guy named Louis.
It was funny how in a few short days, the discussions at our sleepovers had turned from boyfriends and crushes to guns and gangs.
****
On Tuesday, in between third and fourth period at school, some guys slammed Alex up against the lockers as she was walking to Biology. I was walking towards her, and she was waving, and then all of a sudden her head was slammed against the lockers and she was going held there by some large, tough boy. She had had her earbuds in, and they pulled out of her iPod as it dropped from her hand and skidded across the tile floor, now loudly blaring Green Day from somewhere on the tiles as the guy grabbed her body and slammed her again.
Kids stopped and watched. The noise rose in the hallway to a mixture of surprised voices, American Idiot, and the sound of Alex's head being crashed into the metal lockers. I pushed through the people, tripping over feet and pushing past bodies in time to see Alex give the guy a swift punch and drop to the floor. She jumped up and backed away, a wild look in her eyes. I grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the guy. There were no teachers around, and I doubt they would have cared if they were there. I pulled her back from the angry guy.
She was holding her head and swearing under her breath. I held her by the arms to stop her from running at him with her fists, and eventually I led her to the bathroom down the hall where we spent fourth period. After the halls cleared, I went back out to get her iPod. It wasn't gone, which was a small miracle considering half the kids at this school have a hobby of stealing.
She slid it into her pocket. We sat on the floor in the back of the bathroom, under the windows.
"We have to do something." She said suddenly. "Let's face it. You or me could beat the crap out of someone. But can Elle? Or Gemma? More to the point, what if a guy who's too big or strong comes along and none of us could fight him? We've got to do something."
"Yeah, but what?" I asked.
"Tom has a gun."
I turned to face her. "No! That's dangerous as hell, and stupid, and its a perfect excuse for them to think we actually did kill her!"
"I wouldn't load it. I'd carry it for protection. Like...remember The Outsiders? Dally carried an unloaded heater for bluffing. It would be like that."
I rolled my eyes. Alex had an incurable infatuation with Dallas Winston. God knows she liked her bad boys, fictional or otherwise. "He died, Alex! He ended up dead thanks to that unloaded heater." I exclaimed. "Or did you handily forget that bit?"
"Hey, it was just an idea." She shook her head. "All I'm saying is that we need to do something. We can't just walk around unprotected like we're waiting for them to come attack us.
****
School and the streets quickly became two places where we learned to watch our backs and keep our eyes open. On Thursday, Christina narrowly avoided a group of Columbus kids coming out of the CVS after dark for her job. She walked away fast and got home perfectly safe, but it wasn't a nice feeling to know that there were people lurking around in the dark ready to jump you.
I mean, our neighborhood has never been particularly nice. There have always been dangerous people around at night. There has always been rivalry between gangs. But we were never part of it, we were just kids when the gang stuff really stopped. Now we're like a gang ourselves. And now we are a specific group, and they are a specific group, and they want us for a specific thing that we didn't even do.
And the Columbus gang isn't just any group. It's a big group. They probably have 40 kids. If you band together my friends, and the guys gang with James and Tom and them, we have twelve. There are other East Side gangs that we could call if we really needed help, but it boiled down to the twelve of us. There were the girls, which were Gemma, Christina, Alex, Elle, and me. The guys were James, Tom, Liam, Caleb, Derek, and two other guys named Carter and Ian.
On Friday night, the twelve of us got together at Christina's apartment, and over whispers so we wouldn't wake up her younger sisters, we talked late into the night and came the conclusion that Derek, Ian, and I were the only ones who hadn't been jumped or come near to it.
I feel eerily like my name is about to get crossed off that checklist.
