Jamie Riley

The shouting wasn’t what made Jamie leave. That part came every few nights, like clockwork, muffled words slurred through alcohol and resentment, rising in volume until they spilled out of the cracked walls and filled the whole apartment like smoke. It was the sound that came after. The sharp, wet slap of skin against skin. Then the thud. Then silence.

The silence was the worst part.

She didn’t scream anymore. She used to, back when Jamie was younger, when there was still some fire in her. When she still believed a neighbor might call the police, or knock on the door and ask for the noise to stop, at the very least. Back then, her fear still had a voice. Now, she just took it, the same way old punching bags just sag from the hook, waiting for the next hit. There was no pleading, no desperate scramble to protect herself. She had come to move like someone who had already learned the ending to every argument before it started. Jamie often thought that she wasn’t a person anymore.

Maybe she had been, once. Before Jamie, back when Chris was born. She might have laughed or argued back or slammed doors. There might have been a whole woman there, with opinions and anger and dreams Jamie would never know about. As far as Jamie could remember, she had always been quiet, always watching the room before she entered it. If she had ever been whole, she’d been losing pieces for so long that by the time Jamie was old enough to notice, there was nothing left for him to miss.

Jamie sat at the edge of his mattress, in the room he shared with no one now, since Chris was gone. His shoes were already on, but he untied one just to do it again, fingers working slow over the frayed laces. A habit, something to focus on. His room was small, box-shaped. Chris’s side still looked like he might come back; posters curling off the walls, a busted speaker in the corner, and a shoe box under the bed full of lighters and notes Jamie never touched. The floor was scuffed but clean, the single window patched neatly with tape where the glass had cracked. Compared to the rotting balconies and boarded-up doors along Halston Street, their apartment looked almost cared for, like someone was still trying, even if everything else had already given up. On the desk wedged between the two small single beds sat a photograph of two brown-haired boys, Chris with blue eyes and Jamie with green. Chris was twelve in it, with one arm hooked awkwardly around Jamie’s shoulders. Jamie was six and smiling because that was what you did for pictures.

Grabbing the pocket knife Chris had given him last year, when Jamie turned twelve, he slipped out of his bedroom. He didn’t want the floor to creak. In the kitchen, he caught a glimpse of his father, shirtless and red-faced, looming over her like a storm cloud about to break again. She was on the floor by the cabinets, her face hidden behind her crossed arms. Jamie moved quietly past the open doorway, opened the front door, and pulled it shut behind him as softly as he could. The apartment door opened onto the building stairwell, dim and stale-smelling. A teenage couple smoked at the bottom landing.

The street outside was breathing heat even though the sun had been down for hours. Somewhere in the distance, sirens howled, rising and falling like a dying animal. Laughter echoed from a cracked-open window above. Halston was one of the two main roads running through the heart of Redham Vale, along with Allwick Crescent, which was just as shitty despite the nicer name. The capital had plenty of rough districts but Redham Vale had a reputation all its own, and streets like Halston and Allwick were the reason why. Jamie had lived on Halston all his life, in one of the apartment blocks crowded along both sides of the street. Buildings stacked close together, windows facing windows, balconies hanging over the street, everybody living on top of each other, beside each other, against each other. Every building on Halston seemed built with walls so thin everything came through. Other people’s lives seeped in under the doors, through the vents. The smell of someone else’s dinner. Someone else’s sweat. Someone else’s garbage sitting too long in the heat.

Jamie walked with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched just enough to disappear into the shape of the night. He wasn’t scared. Fear didn’t do you any good around here. You learned the rhythms instead. You learned to read danger the way other kids learned to read street signs. He knew which buildings were fronts for things that didn’t get spoken about. He knew which doorbells nobody touched for fun, which alleys you didn’t cut through even in daylight, which porches had pitbulls trained to kill instead of bark.

As he moved down the street, he didn’t feel sad, or angry. His body moved on autopilot while his mind stayed quiet, shut off like lights before bed. It was just another night. Another few hours to kill before his apartment went still, and he could go back home.

He thought about Chris.

His brother had left the same way once, after another night like this one. Only Chris hadn’t come back. Now he was in the first year of a life sentence, locked away for killing two people in what everyone called a fit of rage. Jamie didn’t know all the details. He hadn’t watched the news when it happened, and most of what he’d heard after came from kids at school. Some said it had been a gang fight. It was an easy answer in a city where gangs were everywhere, but Chris hadn’t been in a gang. What little Jamie knew for certain was that Chris hadn’t been fighting for a crew or a corner. Whatever had happened that night had come from somewhere inside him, from the part of him that whispered into the dark long after Jamie had pretended to fall asleep.

They had never been close. Chris had always been more of a presence than a person. Heavy footsteps, bottles under the bed, the stale smell of beer on his clothes when he came in late. He drank like their father, but without the cruelty. Still, Jamie missed him sometimes, in a strange, distant kind of way. Sometimes he wondered if their father would end up in the same place too, if he ever got locked up. If they would pass each other without speaking, two men from the same house, carrying the same anger in different directions.

He turned the corner by the liquor store with the busted neon sign that hadn’t lit up in years. The storefront stank of piss, and a man was slumped on the steps with flies buzzing around his head, mouth hanging open and a half-empty bottle still balanced in his grip. Up ahead, sitting on the edge of the curb near a vacant lot where the street of Halston ended and Allwick Crescent began, was Anthony.

Anthony was easy to spot, even in the half-dark. Skinny as a stick, clothes too big for his frame and streaked with dirt like he’d crawled through the day. His hoodie hung off one shoulder, the front pocket torn, and his jeans were filthy from the knees down. He held a cigarette in one hand and smoked like someone who’d been doing it forever. His fingers trembled a little, but he looked calm, a bit too calm for a ten-year-old out this late. His dark hair stuck out from beneath a crooked beanie, messy in a way that wasn’t on purpose. His eyes were wide, round, and strange. Hazel, almost golden under the orange wash of the streetlamp. They gave him a weird mix of wild and tired, like he hadn’t slept in days but still might bolt if you got too close.

Jamie slowed down. It had been a while since he’d seen Anthony around school. Weeks, maybe. He remembered hearing something about Anthony skipping again, maybe even getting kicked out. It wasn't surprising. The kid was trouble from the start, always getting into fights with kids twice his size.

They weren’t in the same class, Anthony was younger by three years, but they ran in the same circles. Sort of. They had mutual friends, the kind who set shit ablaze just for fun. The kind who stole knives from the corner shop and dared each other to use them. Jamie hung around those boys, sure, but he wasn't like them. He didn’t skip school like they did. He never said it out loud, but he actually liked it. Not the rules or the teachers, but the work. He liked the schedule, the predictability of it. Morning lessons, lunch, afternoon lessons, final bell. The day had an order to it, one thing after another, and Jamie liked knowing what came next. He liked worksheets, reading assignments, numbers lined up in neat little rows.

Jamie kept that part hidden. Admitting it would’ve been social suicide. If his friends found out he liked school, they’d beat him up just to save the effort of beating up someone else. Anthony, on the other hand, didn’t seem to care what anyone thought. His family had come from somewhere else. Puerto Rico, if Jamie remembered right. Three years ago, the kid hadn’t even known enough English to ask for a pencil. Now he spoke fast, full of slang and bad words. Some kids still had trouble understanding him, but Jamie never did.

He watched Anthony from across the street for a moment before he crossed over. He didn’t call out, but walked until he was close enough for Anthony to notice. When their eyes met, Jamie saw the damage right away. Anthony’s lip was split and puffy, the skin darkening at the edges, and one of his eyes was swollen half-shut, purple blooming beneath the socket. He didn’t try to hide it, didn’t flinch or look away, but just took another drag from his cigarette.

Jamie didn’t ask what happened. He didn’t need to. He’d figured out a long time ago that Anthony’s home was a lot like his own. Just louder, maybe even meaner. There wasn’t much space in that apartment either; Anthony, his mom and two brothers. The older one, Marco, had a reputation. Mean, fast with his fists, the kind of kid even grown men gave space to on the street. The youngest, Jamie had never seen at all. Not once, not even when he’d been over at Anthony’s place. He didn’t even know the kid’s name. The only reason Jamie knew he existed was because of the other bed in Anthony’s room.

Anthony didn’t have a drunk for a father, but that didn’t mean things were better. Jamie had seen men come and go from their place at all hours. Sleazy types with twitchy eyes and belt buckles that never seemed to stay done. None of them stuck around. Some looked at Anthony like they were sizing him up. Their apartment was worse than Jamie’s, and that was saying something. The place reeked of sour laundry and old takeout, like the walls had soaked up years of neglect. Stained carpets, sticky counters, a stack of unwashed dishes crusted over in the kitchen sink. The trash bag by the door was always full, tied off but never taken out.

Anthony’s mom was... strange. Sometimes she was nice, smiled and even made them grilled cheese once. Then there were days she was a different person altogether. Screaming over nothing, throwing plates at the walls. Once, she pulled a knife on them when they wouldn’t leave fast enough, waving it around with her mouth foaming like a rabid animal. And sometimes, she just disappeared. Vanished for days, maybe even weeks. Jamie could always tell. Anthony wore the same clothes most days anyway, but when she was gone, he showed up to school with his hair greasier than usual and his stomach growling. He would stop making mean jokes, stop shoving people in the hall just to get a laugh. He didn’t get nicer, exactly, just quieter.

Standing there now, looking at Anthony’s bruised face, Jamie felt something bitter crawl up his throat. Not pity, but a heavy understanding that only kids like them ever shared. Kids who didn’t go home to rest, just to wait for the next bad thing to happen. He sat down beside Anthony on the curb. Anthony didn’t say anything as he reached into the pocket of his hoodie and pulled out a crumpled pack of cigarettes, offering it wordlessly. His fingers were stained at the tips.

Jamie took one. The lighter he was handed was scratched and half-melted on one side, and he had to flick it a few times before the flame caught. He lit the cigarette, took a slow drag, and let the smoke sit in his chest for a second before exhaling through his nose. They sat in silence, watching a stray cat nose through a pile of garbage across the street. Somewhere far off, a baby cried. A window slammed. The city never really slept, it just shifted shapes.

Anthony tapped ash off the end of his cigarette with the casual air of someone much older, legs pulled up like he was trying to disappear into his hoodie. Then, like he hadn’t been thinking about it the whole time, he turned and said, “You know what we do?” His voice was too light for the dark under his eyes.

Jamie shook his head.

Anthony grinned. He leaned in a little closer, lowering his voice even though there was no one around to hear. “The church... Cypress Grove, you know it? They leave the money box. Big wood one, no lock. Just a little hole. I saw them empty it once. Lots of bills inside. Maybe two hundred. Easy.”

Jamie took another drag, watching the ember burn down to the paper.

Cypress Grove Church. A small, weathered building that looked like it had been forgotten by time. The stained-glass windows were faded and chipped, their colors dulled by decades of rain and dust. The wooden cross out front leaned slightly to the left, splintered and warped by sun and age. The priest, an old man with a limp, often handed out sandwiches to the addicts camped on the front steps.

Anthony nudged him with his elbow. “We break in, we take it. Half for you, half for me. It’s like… commission, yeah?”

“Since when do you know what commission means?”

Anthony’s grin widened. “I watch Scarface last week. Twice.”

Jamie didn’t say yes. He didn’t say no either. He just stared ahead as the night pressed in around them, thick and suffocating like a heavy coat. Stealing from a church. That was low, even for this neighborhood where desperation took strange shapes. Then again, it wasn’t like God had done either of them any favors. If anything, they would just be taking what the world had failed to give them.

After a long silence, Jamie answered. “We’ll get caught.”

“Only if we’re dumb.”

Jamie looked at him, at the fading bruise, the busted lip, the cigarette too big for his mouth. He looked too young for all of it and too used to it at the same time, like he knew the world was already falling apart and he was just waiting to see how fast it crumbled. A boy with the posture of someone already tired of life.

“Fine,” Jamie muttered, standing up and grinding the cigarette under his heel. The glow sizzled out, leaving the air thick with the smell of burnt tobacco. “But I want sixty.”

Anthony scrambled up after him. “You get fifty or you get punch in the face. Your choice.”

Jamie rolled his eyes but didn’t argue. Honestly, he was glad for the distraction. Even if it meant stealing from a church. Even if the choice of target made him feel a little dirty.