CHAPTER 3: NO GOODBYE

  SOUTH END—DECEMBER 1st, 1986 | MORNING

  ?

  Ms. Stelshare was vibrant and full of life, humming to herself behind the counter. Her hands were clayed with dried poultice and saps from strange plants that Cameron would never know the name of.

  His mother was nestled somewhere in her shoebox of a shop, where the old shelves reached the ceilings and the numerous display cases collected dust. Vinyl flooring added a punch to each of her steps as she returned to the front counter, where Cameron had been leaning. She had long hair, a harsh black, that reached down to her tailbone. Her gauntish features made her pretty in a sickly way, not unlike that of a woman put to rest in a freshly opened casket.

  She wore a gray dress shirt that day, wrinkled, and missing the top two buttons. Below that, slacks, sneakers, and a new name tag—her fourth one in the last three months. Her name tag read JESS.

  “Jessica Kessler!” croaked Ms. Stelshare, standing up from the stool on the opposite end of the counter. “You found what you needed, then?”

  His mother held it up proudly. A green liquid sloshed around in tincture labeled P?-BLD.

  It wasn’t the first time they’d been here for it and it wouldn’t be their last. Every day and without failure, they were at South End Salves at the time of opening. Always the first customers, always the first through the doors. It had been that way for years, longer than Cameron could commit to memory. Getting her vials was when his mother was most punctual. It was the only time she ever arrived anywhere early.

  “Sure did. Mind taking a few bucks off the top this time? You know I’m good for it,” his mother said with a smile. She had a gap between her two top teeth.

  “No, no, no, I won't be falling for that, Jessica, not twice,” said Ms. Stelshare.

  “Worth a try,” his mother said, nudging Cameron with a wink.

  “Is it? She always tells you no, more or less,” Cameron said wryly.

  His mother placed the vial onto the counter and dug through her wallet. Ms. Stelshare took to the register, raising her brows in the direction of Cameron. “About your mother’s height, now, aren't you? Well, I'll say, if not a smidge taller. Growing into quite the young man now, Cameron Kessler. Though, I wish you'd let your hair grow out, you'd be far more handsome. But then, ah—you've got your mother's face. A lucky thing!"

  At fifteen-years-old, five-foot-nine was either standard or unimpressive to most. Cameron made his peace with the fact that he may not grow to be any taller than his mother, who was, by a woman’s standard, not short. In a year or two, he may put on another inch, but nothing more than that. He shared her dark hair, but he’d always worn it short, almost to the scalp. He didn’t have her eyes, though. Hers were brown and kind. His were blue, a steel blue, and they were entirely uninviting. Ghostly and wolfish.

  His mother placed a wad of cash onto the table. "Thanks, Sasha."

  Ms. Stelshare cleared her throat. Ms. Stelshare mentioned something to her on the way out, nagging her, almost, about how his mother ought to just buy the vials in bulk, or at the very least, buy a week’s supply. She didn’t understand that most mornings, his mother spent whatever disposable income they had on those vials. “Can I expect you tomorrow, then? Same time?”

  “Same time, Ms. Stelshare,” responded his mother, who smiled at Ms. Stelshare before making her way toward the door.

  Cameron followed suit.

  “Going to have enough for tomorrow?” said Cameron, shuffling his hands into the front pockets of his coat.

  "Well, sure."

  "Sure?"

  "Yes, Cam. I'll have enough."

  It was brighter than usual that morning. If there was any sun to shine above the South End, or the Commonwealth at all, it never reached its glimmering hands very far. The fog, stubbornly and without failure, coiled through the concrete undergrowth of the South End more than it did most other places. His mother opened up the door to their car: a raggedy, rust-speckled station wagon twenty years out of date.

  Cameron slipped into the passenger seat. His mother turned on the car's headlights, shoved the keys in and started the car, driving along the length of the tight street Ms. Stelshare's shop was situated along. She veered onto a larger one, and then, onto the main thoroughfare that ran throughout South End.

  “I’m dropping you off at the apartment, Cam. Should be cereal left, milk in the fridge. Read those books the neighbor donated to us and—”

  “And what, sit at home, do my multiplication tables?”

  “Something like that, yeah. Anything, really, other than what you’ve been doing would be a good start.” She didn’t mean that, but she felt it. There were days he would come home with bruises. She never asked questions about how he had come across the cash he held tightly in his hand, but she would try to pry it out of his white knuckles, insisting that they needed it, when really, she needed it.

  “You could be a busboy, Cam. Or, I don’t know, deliver papers, maybe even help out Ms. Stelshare. Stock her damn shelves, you know, 'cause she's old—and you don't get this, but you will, one day—and can't move like she used to."

  “Where does honest work get you, Mom, in a place like this?” Exactly nowhere. For most people who tried to make a good-to-do living, they never went far. They were always victims to something or someone who had the gall to do the wrong thing to get a step ahead.

  “Look, Cam. Anyone can get bruises and give bruises. Especially here. It’s been a year since you dropped out, and I didn't give you any shit for it, now, did I?"

  "No," he responded.

  "You’ve had your fun, you know, scaring me half to death a few times while you were at it. But you need to try. Try harder than me, okay? Try and learn something. Something meaningful, or, you know what, yeah–you’ll end up like me. Serving tables one week, catering another. The best thing I've had in years was at that stupid bar I met your father at, and somehow, I blew that too."

  "Yeah," Cameron agreed. "You did."

  She leered at him. "All I'm asking, Cam, is that you do better than me. The bar is low. Do me a fucking favor and just try."

  Cameron had been staring out the window, and with each word that left his mother, he felt his brows tighten and a pressure beginning to build behind his eyes. They were at a stop sign now, and he wanted to avoid looking at his mother if he could help it. But that word—try—fueled some greater sense of spite that lingered in the pit of his stomach, like a knot of worms that refused to untangle themselves. Even still, that spite needed somewhere to go, and out it went.

  “Don’t see you complaining when I come home with something extra. You always complain about money. Always say you need help. So I did that. I helped, and now, Mom? You have money. More than you need. More than you deserve."

  "Cam, I—"

  "And you know what else? You're lucky, cause' bludheads like you need that shit Ms. Stelshare sells."

  "Cameron," she said, her voice low and weak.

  "If I wasn't bringing in something extra, you couldn't buy it. She's the only one in the South End who has a supply of that, I know it, cause' if there was somebody else, you'd find another dick to suck to get those vials for free, just like you do with that bum Germaine to get your fucking—.. your fucking poison. You know, you were better off when you were just a drunk. Somehow, it was better than this."

  He could feel her stare lingering on him as she pulled in front of the apartment complex, and shifted the station wagon into park.

  “At least I’m trying, Cameron!"

  "How? How are you trying? How is what you're doing trying? When you come home, you don't even eat! You just sit with that fucking asshole in an apartment that used to be ours, not his and yours, ours, and you shoot blud into your veins while he's off selling more of that damned poison to people just like you. Trying would be going a day without using that shit, trying would be taking your own advice!"

  She was silent. It was a harrowing, vulnerable silence. The kind that one would expect from a person who’d been stabbed so suddenly that they didn’t realize it. Her eyes were red and puffy.

  “Don’t cry,” Cameron said, leaning over the seat, pointing a finger in her face. “Don’t you dare cry. Don’t you sit here, Mom, tell me what I’m doing is somehow worse than what you’re doing.” Lurking alleys, looking for people smaller than him or older than him to threaten out of their hard earned cash. He only picked victims he knew were otherwise helpless, people who’d guarantee the path of the least resistance. These were people he could hurt easily.

  “Get.. get out,” she muttered. “I’m going to be late.”

  Cameron exited and held the car open for a brief moment. “You can get your next vial or whatever-the-fuck from Ms. Stelshare alone tomorrow morning. Fingers crossed you make enough in tips tonight, cause' I'm not giving you shit. Not ever again.”

  He slammed the door shut and made his way towards the apartment complex, a five-story building called Notting Terrace, and considered his options. They’d argue like this again in two or three days, and it would keep getting worse from there. Something would give, and as he approached Notting Terrace, he considered his options. Considered leaving—which seemed like the only option. It was something he should’ve done far sooner.

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  But what options did he have, really, out on the street? The South End was filled with people like him, alley snakes and street urchins too young and too stupid and, especially, too stubborn to allow themselves to get involved with the gangs. They never lasted. Eventually, they all caved. You either fell in line with the 8th Street Gang on the west side of the thoroughfare, the Lancaster Boys on the east side, or the Bridge Jockeys who made themselves unofficial toll collectors for the cars coming in and out of their disaster of a borough. If he ran with one of them, at the very least, he’d be protected and he’d have somewhere to stay.

  There were, of course, the smaller ones too. The ones who resigned themselves to specific alleys or apartment buildings. Small-fries who made a pittance, but still only answered to themselves. The Notting Terrace Crew, as they’d called themselves, were the ones who had taken over Cameron's apartment complex years ago. They avoided getting absorbed by the larger gangs by limiting their activities to the apartment building he lived in. All they enforced was an in and out fee for the day, twenty dollars, which Cameron coughed up to them earlier on behalf of him and his mother. He’d never pay that again.

  He tried to avoid eye contact with the two young men posted up at the inside by the access stairwell. Four floors later and he arrived at their apartment, 4-F, unlocked it and entered.

  When he got inside Germaine was sitting on the couch, same as he was when they’d left. His mother’s boyfriend was a large man, somewhere between muscular and fat, with full hair and five-o'clock shadow.

  “Your mom’s off for the day?” he asked, feet kicked up onto the coffee table in front of him, weasley eyes surveying an old porno mag.

  “Off to work, yeah,” Cameron said, closing the door behind him.

  “Ah-huh. A real class act, that woman.”

  “And you’re, what, taking it easy?” Cameron asked, pacing over to Germaine, voice seething, body stiff.

  “Yup. Don’t have a drop off till’ later, bud.”

  Bud. The word tugged Cameron towards the violence he’d grown familiar with. But Germaine wasn’t like the people he preyed on. He was older, but not old, and certainly wasn’t small. Even if he managed to surprise him and kick him out by way of force, his mother would find another Germaine, who’d move in within a week, and they'd be having the same argument in the car all over again.

  Anything to get her a fix of blud: unpasteurized demon blood, lacking in all of the healing properties that its purified counterpart, pasteurized demon blood—labeled and distributed aptly as P?-BLD—boasted in abundance. If you wanted to do the first, you needed to do the second. People like his mother and people like Germaine's buyers both knew this.

  The thought of everything she'd done so far to get her hands on the vile, black, and tar-like substance made Cameron feel sick, and so too did the memories of the Germaine’s that came before Germaine. Thomas, Bobby, Xavier. They used her, and she let herself get used, never tiring of the cycle if it meant getting her hands on what she'd lost years of her life to already. Cameron wondered if she was like this when his father had met her.

  “What?” Germaine glanced up at Cameron, noticing his silence and a stare that spoke volumes.

  Cameron decided today was the day and made for his room. It was a closet sized space riddled with old posters and dirty clothes with a single, thin window. He removed a duffle bag out from under his bed, shoving anything he could fit into there.

  Cameron made for the door, but on his way out, stopped in the living room. He saw a picture framed in the corner of the room on a lamp stand, and lingered, if only for a moment. In it was a man his mother claimed to be his father, far from ugly, with the same wolfish and ghostly eyes as him. He sat in a group with other men, lined up at a bar, raising their glasses. His mother was the bartender, younger, and more herself than she was now. Germaine didn’t notice him leave. On his way down the stairwell, the two young men of the Notting Terrace Crew glanced at him and he exited, wading through the foggy streets, looking for alleys to crawl in.

  ?

  They found him beating the money out of an older man just off the main thoroughfare.

  It was as reckless as it was risky, and not the kind of thing you did unless you wanted a fight, or, to get noticed. Cameron wanted both. If he proved his worth, the 8th Street Gang would see potential in him. They would harbor him, raise him up into something more than a junkie’s son. Something better than a busboy, a delivery cyclist, or a shelf stocker at Ms. Stelshare’s.

  But they never did that. All they saw was someone moving in their turf under the glow of the evening, taking money that could’ve been in their hands, and a duffle bag worth stealing.

  The 8th Street Gang left Cameron a bloody mess, beyond battered, with one eye swollen shut.

  He was forced to lay on the cold ground after it had ended, sharing the pavement with the old man who he tried to steal from. Somewhere in the awkward silence, the old man had forfeited his anger and accepted pity in its place. He saw Cameron as another victim, and that look made Cameron want to hurt the old man. Hit him harder, leave something more than a bruise. Leave scars. Leave something for him to wear as a statement—a message like a brand. Something that would tell the 8th Street Gang and their bruisers that he wasn’t going to be someone who was pitied. Not by them, not by anyone.

  He needed to make a statement, but an old man wouldn’t do.

  It need not be a shark, but a bigger fish. Someone whose name he could use as a small trophy. Cameron knew Germaine would do just fine, and set back towards the apartment building.

  ?

  When he made it back to the apartment he expected to find Germaine on the couch, feet kicked up, magazine in hand.

  Germaine was on the floor, slapping the face of Cameron’s mother, whisper-yelling like a man possessed. Germaine shook her, held her, tried to get her to wake. Cameron lurched towards them, and in a fit of adrenaline, found the strength to shove Germaine aside. He hit the couch with a thump, landing in its cushions, face red and distressed, tears and snot blending into his patchy beard.

  “Mom?” Cameron asked quietly.

  He shook her so hard that her name tag loosened. Red leaked from her nose and her ears and the stench of bile hugged her mouth. Veins, thickened and dark, ran up and along her face and her neck and well across her body, stretching to the tips of her fingers on either one of her hands. Her brown eyes were still.

  Cameron shook her again. And again. And again. Her head hung back and her heart did not beat. “Mom, Mom, wake up, Mom, please, please Mom, wake up! Wake up!”

  “She–“

  “The vial! Where is her vial?!”

  Germaine froze and stammered. He didn’t know. Cameron searched her slacks, cursing under his breath, and moved onto her bag to her side. He emptied in, hands frantically scouring through the makeup and stray coins and bobbles. The vial was unused. It read P?-BLD.

  Cameron bit the cork off.

  His shaking hands hovered over her vomit-soaked lips and he poured the liquid into her mouth. She remained motionless and still and beautiful in spite of the filth and the fluids, brown eyes enclosed and tearless, like that of a taxidermist’s favorite dear.

  Cameron collapsed onto her torso, clutching the name tag that read JESS. Slowly, his eyes settled onto the coffee table not far behind her.

  Next to the ashtray were small jars, two of them, already opened, with a spoon and a syringe. Ichorous black shelled over the spoon and the metal of the syringes needle. Blud. Germaine’s supply, kept handy just for Cameron’s mother.

  “I-I-.. I only saw her do the first one, Cameron, I swear, and I only leave her one for when she’s done at work. She.. look, man, she must’ve gotten’ into my stash while I was out making the drop off. I swear to God, man, I came home and I found her, just like this, just like how you’re seeing, I didn’t—“

  Cameron didn’t hear him.

  He made for the coffee table but stopped, slowed by a deep and resounding inner heat. It erupted from the center of his being and spread through his veins like the burning wax of a candle. He fell to his knees and lurched forward, groaning, screaming, crying. He bellowed and spat and swore, flaying his vocal chords in an effort to alleviate the pain.

  Power was ejected from his body, expelled from every orifice on his face—eyes, ears, mouth, nose—as a deep and waxen scarlet energy. It showered Cameron, and in an instant, solidified, hardening into an ivory-like material along his skin, covering everything but his face and his scalp. It was sleek and the color of a skeleton. Shiny like steel, and harder than any metal he’d touched before.

  Cameron gaped at his hands in abject horror. They didn’t look like his. They looked stolen. His heartbeat slowed steadily in his chest. Fear. Whatever was left of it caught fire and turned to rage. Cameron stood slowly and set his eyes onto Germaine.

  Germaine, in awe, was anchored to the seat. He tried to move. Cameron was too close. He grabbed hold of the man’s neck, feeling a strength that he’d never felt before, and lifted him. The higher he raised Germaine, the more he squeezed.

  “You-.. you’re a—”

  Tighter.

  “Pl-plee—”

  Tighter.

  Germaine’s face was blue and Cameron’s ivory hands were red with blood. A sickening crunch filled the air and the man’s body hit the floor. Cameron turned, and when he lowered himself to grab hold of his mother, he felt his father’s eyes on him. They stared at him from within the confines of the photograph in the corner of the room.

  Cameron stared back.

  CAMERON KESSLER (TEEN)

  JESSICA KESSLER

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