Faith

I felt so bad for poor Garrett last night.

I didn't know that he thought what he did about his adoptive parents; I was under the impression that he saw them as good people, but now I'm realizing that he didn't talk much about them in the first place.

Today is the day where I've decided that I want to rent a bike and ride into town, and I don't really care if anyone comes with me or not.

At about ten in the morning, I go get Mike from the other smaller bungalow to recruit him for the bike ride. He happily agrees and runs with Trevor and Garrett following in hot pursuit behind him.

"Five bikes, please, two hours," I say to the guy at the bike rental counter. "Twenty pesos," he replies, and I hand him the money over the counter as he points toward the garage full of rental bikes. Maria chooses hers first, a really pretty pastel yellow color, and I grab the one beside it that's my favorite shade of lilac. "Of course, Scofield, that's the one you want," Garrett says jokingly, giving him a playful smack on the arm. "Hey!"

We start riding into the small town, which is only about a mile from the bungalows and the beach. These bikes are way better than Mike's; they ride really smoothly and don't take much effort to pedal either.

We finally get into town and try to decide on which small shop to look in first. "There's this one place that we go to every year that has the best nachos if we want to go there for lunch," Maria suggests. It's only ten thirty right now, so we still have some time to decide where we want to eat before we get hungry.

We decided on a small touristy shop that sells souvenirs and clothes and cute things like that.

Maria and I are walking around together when she gives me "The Look" which means that she wants to ask me about a certain guy that's in our group right now. We walk behind a rack of Baja t-shirts and I decide to tell her everything.

Well, almost everything. Leaving out the most sensitive parts and the subjects that only him and I know, because that's his choice to tell her or not.

"He told me that he's actually happy now and not so down all the time anymore, because he finally found someone who knew what it was like to not have a family. I guess it's kind of a misery loves company type thing."

We finally realize that we can't hide behind this t-shirt rack forever, so we finally emerge from the corner of the store and pretend to look at bracelets. I then turn around to see the boys walking across the street, looking in the skateboard shop. "I guess we're going to look at skateboards next."

It's already noon by the time that we're done in the skateboard shop, because Trevor and the teenaged boy that worked in the shop got into a heated debate about the best pro skateboarder. Needless to say, the guy who worked at the skateboard shop won by saying that Tony Hawk was the best.

"Can we go eat? Nachos sound fantastic right now," Mike says, and no one objects, so I guess we're going to get nachos, whatever those are.

"What are nachos?" I ask Mike what everything is, because when you've lived in a basement for your entire life, there's really not much that you learn about the real world. "They're chips with cheese and meat on them, and you can get other stuff with it like lettuce, sour cream, and salsa if you want it." They sound good; I'll give them a try.

I've come to a new conclusion in my life: nachos are my favorite food.

"Man, I'm full. Let's go back," Garrett suggests, and I completely agree. "Absolutely."

We grab our bikes from the rack that we parked them on when we started walking around, and that's when I notice that Trevor's gone. I don't really think anything of it, but I still find it a little weird. "Hey, does anyone know where Trevor is?" The four of us look around a little bit before we see Trevor emerge from behind a palm tree. "Where did you go?" Trevor puts his phone into the pocket of his gym shorts and grins. "My dad called."

We hop on our bikes and start riding back to the bungalows when a gray car turns onto the road behind us. "Hey, guys, there's a car," I say, because Mike doesn't pay attention as much as he really should. What I find really odd is that the car doesn't pass us; it just stays behind us and drives extremely slowly. "What the heck?" I'm glad that I'm not the only one that finds this weird and that Maria does too.

I'm in the front of all five of us, so I turn onto a backroad that will take us back to the bungalows, it just takes a little bit longer than the way we came. The car turns onto the road behind us. "Okay, now this is weird," Trevor says, but I don't like his tone of voice. It rubs me the wrong way, although I can't put my finger on why.

I turn onto another backroad, and yet again the car follows us. "Okay, I'm done," I say, stopping my bike and putting the kickstand to the ground. "Hello? Do you need anything?" The guy in the car gets out, pointing the barrel of a gun straight in the air.

•••

"You know, you guys are different than your average seventh graders," the guy begins, staring at all of us who have dismounted our bikes to stand in front of this random guy that's pointing a gun at us. "Okay, didn't see that coming. Who are you?" Garrett asks. He smiles the smile of a true cold-blooded person, a deranged and sinister smile that I recognize almost instantly. "Luca Abruzzi, in the flesh." He pivots the gun toward me and looks me in the eye, a tough look with a hint of fear deep in the corners. "How do you know that?" At this point he's making demands that he and I both know won't be answered. "No reason. But you still haven't answered my question. Why are you following us?" He smiles that sinister cold-blooded smile again that makes my blood boil. "Trev!" Trevor runs up to him and does some sort of secret handshake move with Luca and then a fist bump, and we're all just standing there confused. "This," Luca explains, "is my son." I'm standing there, confused as ever.

I'm forming a plan in my head, which is full of risks and things that need to go right for me. I'm not going to think about it anymore; if I do, I'll psych myself out of it.

In one motion, I go for the gun that was pointed at my head and grab it with my right hand. I'm trying to wrestle it from his seemingly iron grip when I hear the sound of the gun going off and then the sharp pain in my left shoulder. "Faith, no!" I haven't really registered what just happened yet when I hear Mike's voice cutting through the air. He and Garrett run to me on the ground, but then Luca pulls a knife to keep them at bay. I don't bother trying to look at Luca's dismayed face when he realizes that I took the gun down with me, and it's then that he pulls his pocketknife on me and slices my arm with it, and it exposes more of the interior of my left bicep than I'd ever want to see. I point the gun with my right hand, taking aim and getting ready to fire. But then, Luca actually starts laughing at me. "You won't do it. You're just like your dad; too soft." Those words make my blood boil and surge through my veins, so I take the next step; my right thumb finds the safety and clicks it off. "You're going to wish that you hadn't said that," I fume, still staring him in his beady eyes. The other three kids are standing behind me, Trevor the Snitch to my left and Mike, Maria, and Garrett behind me. Luca lunges at me with his pocketknife, going for my chest, and that's when I make my move. The next thing I know, Luca hits the ground with an ominous thud.

I can't believe what I've just done.

Trevor looks like he's about to cry, but then anger overcomes him and he stares at me with a gaze that could kill. My left arm is still bleeding from the gunshot, and I look down and I've lost way more than I thought I had. Trevor whips out a switchblade from his pocket and he lunges at me, the blade finding my chest and making a cut that begins to bleed. "Faith!" I'm going to lose too much blood before I get to end this fight. "Call someone!" Maria is so calm under pressure, and I'm not really sure how she does it. "Mike! Your dad!" Mike dials dad's number as Garrett and I wrestle Trevor down, and Garrett presses his foot into Trevor's hand, causing him to release the blade and Garrett to kick it a few feet away. "Dad, get here now, please! We're at the second left turn in the woods in town. Hurry, please! I can't tell you why over the phone, but bring Sucre, Linc, and mom too." Garrett and I are standing on his wrists with one foot to make sure that he doesn't get away somehow, but he's struggling and I'm still bleeding. "Garrett, I can't. Mike!" Mike comes running over, and he kneels on Trevor's wrist and looks him in the eyes. "If she dies, you die."

I know for a fact that I'm not going to die. I won't let it happen, not now that I just found everything that I've ever lived for. Mike gives me his shirt and Maria comes over to help me with my arm. "Garrett! Your shirt!" Mike's isn't big enough to spread across the shot in my shoulder and the nasty cut in my bicep because there's too much blood. He throws us his orange baseball shirt and Maria presses it against my bicep.

I'm just realizing that the bullet went all the way through my shoulder and out my shoulder blade when I hear a car engine coming towards us. "Dad!" Maria runs to Sucre and almost pulls him out of the car. Garrett's shirt is soaked in blood by now. I can't keep bleeding like this for very long. "What happened to you?" Dad kneels down next to me and looks so worried, I wish I could tell him that it would all be okay but I can't. I don't know that yet. "Luca... Abruzzi... is Trevor's dad," I manage between breaths. "Trevor must have told him... where we were, because Luca started following us... down this road. He had a gun and was going to shoot us all... so I went for the gun in his hand, but it went off... on my shoulder. Then he got a pocketknife... and sliced my arm open when I had just fallen from the gunshot, and then Trevor takes a switchblade and... cuts my chest." And to think that I haven't even told them the worst part yet.

I take Mike's red shirt off my forearm and dad pales a few shades. Mom starts running over, and she looks at it but stays calm. "Okay, we've gotta go to a hospital," she says, still calm although I'm not sure how. "What do we do with Trevor?" Linc looks at the kid laying on the ground with Garrett and Mike stepping on his wrists, and he walks toward him and picks him up from the ground and throws him over his shoulder with ease. "The police department is just about a quarter mile up the road. I'll take him there," Linc decided, and starts walking back towards town.

I'm still sitting on the gravel path leaning against a tree, looking at the blood pooling beside me. Dad, Sucre, and mom lift me ever so gently off the ground to get me to the car. "Boys, get in," dad says, starting the car and looking back at me. Garrett and Mike squeeze into one seat, so I'm in between Mike and mom. I can't make it much longer, so I lay my head back on the back of the seat to make myself more comfortable. "Faith, you can't die!" Mike's almost hysterical beside me, but my head's dulling out all of the emotions. I try to sit up again as dad guns it out of the woods, but I can't. I black out.

•••

When I wake up, I hear beeping and see ridiculous amounts of white. It smells clean, like bleach and chemicals. I'm in the hospital.

For some reason I can't move my head, so I just try to look around and see dad sitting in the chair, hands folded together, staring at the floor. "Dad?" This comes out as barely a whisper, so I try it again. "Dad?" That time it's loud enough, and he whips his head up from the floor and looks at me. When he sees that I'm awake, he smiles. "Hey, how do you feel?" My head is pounding and I can't even move it, but other than that I feel okay. "My head still hurts, but I can't really feel anything anywhere else." He looks at me and, if it's even possible, smiles wider. "That's good." "Dad, there's something I didn't tell you. I..." He looks at me, a gentle, kindhearted expression on his face. "If it's something about Luca, then you don't need to tell me if you don't want to." I take a deep breath and look down at the white hospital blanket. "No, but you need to know. Dad, I... I killed him." He looks at me, a different expression on his face that I can't really figure out. "I promise you, it was self defense. He would've killed me before you got there." He puts his head in his hands and looks like he's going to cry, even though I know that he's not. "Why... why would he do that?" Now I know that he's not mad at me, he's mad at Luca.

I think.

"He said something that ticked me off, and then he went after me with his pocketknife again and I knew that he was going for the kill that time." Dad looks to me, the beginning of tears in his eyes. "Is it okay if I ask what he said?" I take a deep breath and look at the door, the only thing in this room that's something other than white. "He said, 'You won't do it. You're just like your dad; too soft.' And then he went after me again, and the only thing I had in my mind at that point was that he was going to kill me. So I did it, dad. I killed someone." My voice breaks at this, and dad looks down at the floor again, and sighs. "We won't worry about that yet, just worry about getting better." I give him a weak smile and look at him. "I think I'm going to go get everyone else so they know that you're okay, if that's fine with you." I give him a small grin and nod. "That's fine."

First mom walks in, then Garrett, and then Mike, Sucre, Maria, and LJ after him. "You look good, considering what just happened to you," LJ says, and I take that as a compliment. I smile and try to hide the fact that I'd just been crying, and I'm just hoping that I'm doing a decent job of it.

Mike jumps on the end of the bed and looks at me. He slaps me on the knee and dad looks shocked. "Mike! Why would you do that?!" He grins at me and laughs. "I was just going to tell you that you're kind of an idiot, but my respect for you has gone way up." I notice that apparently they went back to the bungalows, because Garrett and Mike have shirts on. "And my respect has gone up for all of you, because you could have just stood there and done nothing." Maria smiles.

"What time is it?" They all look around at each other, as if they're contemplating whether or not to tell me. "Five thirty," Linc says as he walks in.

"Holy crap. You have the story of a lifetime to tell your uncle, kid," Linc says, referring to me. "Do you want all of it?" He looks at me like I'm mentally insane. "No, I want half of the story. Of course I want it all!" I take a deep breath and then look at the other kids in the room. "Feel free to interject."

"So this car started following us, and I was like, 'Whoa, this is weird'. We took some weird turns and they still followed us, so I stopped and asked him what he wanted. And you'll never believe who it was." Linc looks like he wants to absorb every detail. "Umm... Hector?" I look at him like he belongs in a mental asylum. "Umm, no." Linc ponders this for a second.

I just decide to tell him. "Luca."

He stares at me coldly. "Don't joke about that." I look at him, dead serious. "Michael, she looks like you when she does that. You guys are so alike it's creepy," Linc says.

"But seriously though, I'm not joking. It was him." He rubs his temples for a second, and then I look down at my arm that has the IV in it. "But then I go for his gun and it goes off on the front of my shoulder. But I ended up getting it in the end, and he didn't like that so he dug his pocket for his pocketknife and that's where my bicep got destroyed, and then Trevor cuts my chest open with a switchblade. We got him down on the ground and kicked his knife away, didn't touch it, and held him there until you got there." Linc looks at me like I'm the one that belongs in the mental asylum. "So you fought Luca Abruzzi and you're still alive? Kid, I've got some respect for you." But then his face falls as a thought comes to his mind. "What happened to him?" Now all four of the kids' faces fall to the floor, not wanting to say what really happened. "Linc? Do you really want to know?" He stares at me and nods, so I mentally steel myself and think about how to refer to his end.

"Have you heard the phrase, 'He brought a knife to a gunfight?'" Linc nods like this is common knowledge, and he looks puzzled like he's trying to figure out where I'm going with this. "Faith... that's pretty amazing," LJ says from behind Linc. I guess he got where I was going. "It is? Because depending on what the laws are here, I've just committed a felony." Linc's eyes widen. "Man, now my respect for you is through the roof. Luca's a-" Dad gives him a glare that says, "Don't Finish That Thought".

Linc, LJ, Maria, and Garrett leave, leaving dad and Mike to the night shift. "You guys don't have to stay here," I tell them around ten, and Mike gapes at me like I'm from another planet. "After what just happened? Fat chance."

I must have drifted off to sleep, because after what could have been five minutes or three hours, I wake up from an excruciating pain in my shoulder. I must've rolled over on it in my sleep. My shoulder and the cut on my bicep is throbbing, and I know that I won't go to sleep for a decent while now. So I lay awake and I forget that I can't fold my arms above my head when I try to do it and can't move my left arm.

•••

Luca can lay there and rot for all I care.

•••

I must have fallen asleep again, because I wake up from a nightmare in a cold sweat and breathing heavily. I look around the room for any sign of what time it is when I see the sun slowly peeking through the blinds, and then I see dad's empty chair.

The worst part about it is the boredom. I'm not tired anymore so I'm just laying awake in the slightly uncomfortable hospital bed.

Dad walks in, trying to be quiet while holding a cup of coffee. The doors in this place are not quiet at all. He looks around the room to see if Mike or I am awake yet, and when he looks to me and sees that I'm awake. "Why are you up? Try to get some sleep," he whispers, trying his best not to wake Mike up. "I rolled over onto my shoulder and woke up. I don't really know if sleep is going to be possible at this point." He grins at me through the dimly lit room. "You're the toughest person I've ever met." I smile at that.

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I don't know where this idea came from, but I thought it was a good twist so I decided to run with it. Review your thoughts!