A-rab took the drawing and taped it to the wall before they ate their breakfast. He was proud of her. He did regret not being there for her for the five years he'd been with the Jets but she seemed to forgive him. He had only ran away because he was terrified of their father and he was sick of being beaten all the time. He hadn't even thought of Angie at the time. Their father had never laid a hand on her. A-rab thought that meant she would be safe even if he wasn't there. He knew now that he had been wrong but there was no way to change it. The past was the past.
Angie took him out of his guilty thoughts by telling him of the things she had been doing in his absence. She'd taken two years of a Spanish class when her school had started offering it. She had changed her friend group around, as he discovered when he no longer recognized the names she kept mentioning, and her new best friend's name was Eliza. Their mother allowed her to stay at Eliza's house sometimes when she thought her husband wasn't coming back from the bar, she told him, and that was always exciting. A-rab listened intently as she talked about everything you'd expect a teenage girl to talk about. She spoke of make up and her interest in art class, her friends and all they did together, school and just about everything else. A-rab had been so focused on her that he didn't even notice when the guys came back some hours later. The whole time Angie and A-rab had been catching up, Baby John had been guarding the door. He made sure the Jets stayed quiet and soon they all had been listening to Angie talk about her own life.
Riff thought she was pretty popular, as she seemed to have many friends. Real friends, that is. Not gang friends that you're only friends with to make sure you've got someone to cover your ass. He loved his gang, he really did, but he wished they hadn't had to be together as warriors instead of regular buddies. They weren't exactly out having gang wars everyday but the threat was always there. They could be ambushed and any one of them could be killed at anytime. He wished these guys were just friends from school like Angie had but they weren't and he knew that. Part of being in a gang was not having a normal apple-pie lifestyle.
He tuned out Angie's rambling as he mused over their lives together. They'd all had pretty shitty lives to start with, which was partly why they were in a gang in the first place. None of them had had good home lives. Some of them had been abused like A-rab, others had been neglected or their parents had either left them or had been killed.
Riff's father had been a drunken bastard and had gotten his mother killed in a car crash. He kicked him out soon after and he'd gone to live with Tony, thus beginning the Jets. They'd picked up everyone else on the way. Baby John had been hiding in an alleyway when they took him in. He'd been running from some other gang and had been roughed up pretty badly but he was alright. They'd found Diesel and Action fighting off some guys together and kind of got them as a packaged deal. Over the years, they'd find the others while out on patrol or food runs. They'd all had stories to tell and in time, everyone in their little family had told of their origins and they'd all listened and sworn never to repeat it to anyone. Most of their home lives weren't exactly the best things and it was pretty easy to find their families of you were looking hard enough. They didn't want their information to get out and be dragged back to their previous shitty lives.
Riff was pulled from his musings when he noticed that Angie had stopped talking. She was looking around at them all with a slightly pink tinge to her cheeks and smiled sheepishly. She hadn't known they were all there. A-rab glared around at the group, daring someone to say something about Angie's rambling. He seemed satisfied when nobody said anything. He turned his attention back to his sister and ignored the Jets, who all took the hint to go off and do their own things.
"That's amazing, Ang. Everything sounds pretty good for you," he smiled. "You wanna keep goin to school? You can, you know."
Angie's eyes grew curious at this. "I can?" She asked stupidly. She'd thought that she had to just up and leave her whole life behind now that she'd ran away and found her brother.
A-rab nodded. "Of course, Ang! Just because you're a Jet now doesn't mean you have to quit school."
He waited until Angie had nodded thoughtfully before continuing, "You're only fourteen anyways. You can't drop out until you're at least sixteen, okay?" He asked with a wink.
Riff came over with a mischievous glint in his eye and clapped his hand on A-rab's shoulder. "Do I hear you corrupting the youth of America over here?" He asked.
"Only doing my civil duty!" He laughed. Riff shook his head with a look of mock disapproval before walking away muttering about 'no good juvenile delinquents'.
Angie smiled at their antics and leaned against her brother's side. She was starting to like it here. The atmosphere was lighter than it had been in her house for quite a long time. She had James here and he was happy. She was thrilled to be apart of this group.
