The Other Side of the Street Read online

  The Other Side of the Street

  By

  Sarah Hall & Nicole Thorn

  By Nicole Thorn & Sarah Hall

  (Seers & Demigods series)

  We Will Gain Our Fury

  We Will Change Our Stars

  We Will Heal These Wounds

  We Will Bleed

  We Will Not Be Silenced

  We Will Rend

  (Way Down Below series)

  Way Down Below

  Follow Me Down

  We All Fall Down

  Down We Go

  Double Down/Down & Out

  Down in Flames

  Bitter Dreams

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by

  any means without written permission of the author.

  This Book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, duplicated, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are

  either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  The Other Side of the Street

  Copyright © 2019 Nicole Thorn & Sarah Hall

  Chapter One

  Hamilton

  “I’m sorry about this, son,” my father said as I laid packages down in my cooler. He stood at the counter; face drawn. He looked better than he had in ages, having lost enough weight that I could have made a second father.

  “Nothing to apologize for,” I said. I couldn’t quite make myself sound cheerful, so I went with neutral instead. This wasn’t a comment on our current situation, so much as my natural inability to sound cheerful. My mother always called me a grump, and I couldn’t say that she had been wrong to do so.

  Dad sighed, slumping to the table with a frown on his face. He used to have the same chocolate brown hair that I did, but lately it had started to turn gray, a little more each day it seemed. I hated that slowly lightening color. It always seemed to mock me.

  “I feel like I should apologize,” he said. “I’ve wasted all the money that was supposed to be yours.”

  I put the last package of jerky into the cooler and closed it up. If I didn’t, the cat would get in there and have a field day. I didn’t personally think cats should eat jerky, but Purricane liked to prove people wrong.

  “You didn’t waste the money,” I said, pulling the chair out so that I could sit next to my father. “Shit happens, Dad, and this is one of those times. I’ll figure it out. And hey, if I had been more on top of things, I would have tried for those scholarships a little earlier, you know?”

  Dad didn’t look mollified. “Nothing you say will make me think better of myself,” he griped.

  Perhaps Mom should have called him a grump. I had to get it from somewhere, and it certainly hadn’t been her.

  “Well, if you’re going to mope, you might as well do it down at the shop,” I said. “Mope at your friends. We all know that’s the only reason to have a friend, right?”

  My father gave me a withering look. “You are exhausting. Well, go. Get on out of here.” He waved his hand at me in dismissal. I smirked as I got up and grabbed my cooler. “I’ll stop by later to check on the rest of the jerky.”

  “Good,” Dad said, getting up. Despite all the weight that he lost, he still moved like a big man. I’d seen him go around corners like he would bump into something, while not coming even close to touching anything. Mom would have been amused to see him doing stuff like that. “I’ll have lunch waiting for you.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” I said, grabbing the car keys off the peg.

  “I’ll have lunch waiting for you,” he repeated, in a slightly less friendly tone.

  “Bye, Dad!” I called over my shoulder.

  “Bye, Ham,” he called back to me.

  I never liked it when he called me Ham, probably because kids at school used to make fun of me. Of course, I preferred Ham to Hamilton now, since people started randomly running up to me and scream-singing lyrics in my face. Imagine my confusion the first time that happened to me in school. I had been minding my own business when one of my friends called to me from across the room, and this girl started screaming a song out that everyone else joined in on.

  So yeah, I went by Ham now.

  Purricane sat on the back porch—which we had enclosed—yowling at me to let him out. He was a brown tabby with fuzzy ears and reddish gold eyes. “You aren’t allowed out,” I told him. “There are coyotes out there.”

  He yowled again, pawing at the door. I had to maneuver myself, the cooler full of jerky, and the cat as I left the house. I had to keep one foot against his chest so that he didn’t bolt. Purricane liked our neighbor’s Siamese, who teased him constantly from her window. I’d caught the two of them batting at each other more times than I could count.

  I’d inherited my car from my mother after she died. It had felt weird to drive it, when I always thought of it as hers. The Honda SUV had some sun damage on the roof, so that the forest green color no longer looked so pristine. A lot of cars in Arizona had this problem, from sitting out in the sun for so long. The engine ran fine, and that was all that I really cared about.

  Especially since I couldn’t park in the garage. Our RV that my father had bought ten years prior was in there. He tried to sell it, to make up some of the money that we lost, but no one wanted the thing. Most people that had RVs in Arizona were older people who drove them down for the summer to get away from the snow or rich people that wouldn’t dream of buying a used one.

  “All right, Mom, let’s go,” I said, to the picture hanging on the rearview mirror. It showed a woman with bright green eyes, a sunny smile, and a knife in her hands. No matter how many times I’d asked Dad why she had that knife, he would never tell me…

  I’d been making jerky for the last year, mostly because my father had mentioned wanting to maybe sell it in the shop, and then all the bad shit started to happen, so I took over the job for him. He sold some in the shop, but not enough to justify keeping a large supply. However, some of the smaller local shops liked to sell it in store as well. I’d been doing business with them for months and making quite a pretty penny off it too.

  I went to a bait shop first. I had been doing work with them for the longest time.

  When I entered the store, Jerry the Manager looked up from the counter. He looked bored. “None today, Ham.”

  I stopped. “Are you sure?”

  He gestured to the rack where he normally kept the jerky, and I saw that he still had the supply I’d given him a few days before. “It’s starting to slow down,” he said. “What with school just letting out. Try again in a couple of weeks. That’s when vacation time starts.”

  “All right,” I said, walking out. I got behind the wheel of my car and tapped the steering wheel with the tips of my fingers. “Well… crap.” I’d gotten the same brush off at all the other stores that I’d tried this week. Some claimed that with the snowbirds gone, they didn’t need as much anymore. I didn’t know if snowbirds really ate jerky, considering most of them wouldn’t be caught dead in a cheap ass store, but whatever. Some of them said that they would give me a call—which meant that I’d never hear from them again. They must’ve gotten tired of paying me for something that they could get online, from a more
reputable seller.

  Even the Beer and Ice store had turned me down this week, and they had never done that before.

  I leaned my head against the back of the seat and let out a slow breath. I had almost two weeks’ worth of supplies, and nowhere to put it. I had three more stops on my list, but all of them were people that had already told me to take a hike. I’d just been trying to wear them down.

  I stared at my cooler full of jerky and got a sinking sensation in my stomach. Oh, I could get a job somewhere else. I could even do it at my father’s butcher shop. And if I did that, I wouldn’t make nearly as much money as I did with the jerky. People loved their dried meats. What could I say?

  Maybe I just needed to branch further out, find different stores. I had this car and she ran beautifully. I could even go into Phoenix and try to sell some of my wares there. Although, the shops that would take it probably wouldn’t be in the best neighborhoods. I’d still risk it.

  If I just kept trying and saved every penny that I earned, then by this time next year, I might be able to enroll in community college and go from there. One year late didn’t sound too bad.

  I even liked making the jerky. It was surprisingly easy, and I didn’t exactly have competition.

  Chapter Two

  Jay

  “I would kill a man for an uncapping machine,” I sighed, scraping at honeycombs. I was in the garage, working on getting wax off of honeycombs. Dad had set it up for me when I started getting serious about honey. I loved it… in the wintertime.

  “I believe in you!” my baby sister, Dee Dee said, creeping by the door. I worked in the third garage, completely separate from the other half. My sister had come in when she heard me singing, and she curled up at the door with her stuffed bunny.

  “Thank you, child,” I said, wiping my brow when I stood up. “Are Mom and Dad home?”

  “Yeah, they don’t have to leave for another hour,” she said.

  I clapped my hands together. “Great! You know what happens now, right?”

  The little girl’s nose wrinkled as she laughed, curling in on herself. “No!”

  “Yes! They’re coming to get you, Barbara!” I shouted in as scary a voice as I thought a little kid should have been exposed to, and I started on my zombie walk. She screamed and dashed away. Naturally, I chased her.

  We ran into the house, almost crashing into our dog, Cullen. The old timer only glared at us, laying his head back down. I hated his name and he hated me for it. It wasn’t my fault Mom named him after a book character. I’d wanted to name him Pat Sajak and my parents denied me without further discussion. A hound dog couldn’t have had a better name, but no one took a five-year-old seriously.

  “Ahh!” Dee screamed when she got to the kitchen, turning around to see me right behind her. She screamed again when I grabbed her, tossing her over my shoulder and making zombie eating sounds as I tickled her sides. Her legs kicked, but she couldn’t stop laughing.

  “You are dead,” I informed her.

  “Bleh!” She flailed in my arms, going limp. She slipped a little, but I caught her. Her tongue stuck out, her arm hanging off me, with a bunny still clutched tightly in her grasp.

  When my mom walked into the kitchen already dressed in her cashier uniform, I held Dee Dee out at her. “I killed your child.”

  She gasped. “Well… shit. Eh, I have three more.” She shrugged it off, walking over and kissing Dee on the forehead before going to the kitchen for a snack.

  “I’m dead, Mommy!” Dee whispered, one eye open.

  “Oh, sorry,” Mom whispered back. “Carry on.”

  The five-year-old went limp again, lying in my arms with her eyes closed. At half past noon, she still had on her jammies, which had little pumpkins and had gotten almost too small for her. We hadn’t bought her new clothes in a long time, but I didn’t want to mention it. If we could afford it, it would have been done.

  I left the kitchen, wanting to talk to Dad before he left with Mom.

  AJ sat on the couch with a little tool kit and a skateboard on his lap. It looked like he’d already sanded it down and now just needed to fix the wheels. He looked up at me when I walked in.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Greetings,” he responded, shaking messy dark blond hair from his face. He looked like me. Though, we all looked the same except for Dad. We’d inherited Mom’s dark blond hair and clear brown eyes. AJ’s hair had gotten shaggy, where I made sure to cut mine shorter. I wouldn’t have wanted hair in the honey.

  “Where is Father?” I asked.

  AJ shrugged. “Last I saw him, he was muttering something like ‘I’ve gotta find a way to kill Jay without him suspecting me.’ I think he was looking for a hammer.”

  “Dope. Thanks for helping.”

  I started walking just as Dad came out of the hallway with a hammer in his hand. I really didn’t like the timing of that one…

  “Dad,” I breathed. “I killed your child.”

  “What!” His hand went to his chest as he gasped, staring at the limp child in my hands. “No! Why!”

  “I ate her,” I explained.

  He stood straighter, dropping his hand. “Oh. Then I guess you had your reasons.”

  “Daddy!” Dee shouted, leaping out of my arms when she came back to life. She put her hands on her sides, still holding the bunny. “I’m still alive!”

  He held his hands out. “Good, then you can hug me.”

  “I’m headed out as soon as Beatrice gets home,” I told AJ. “You gonna be good here with Dee Dee?”

  He scoffed at me. “I’m thirteen. I can handle babysitting a kid who’s just gonna demand I play video games for her.”

  “Just checking.

  “Go tell your mom bye. I have to go fix the fence before work.” Dad told my sister, setting her back on her feet. She agreed, running off to the kitchen again.

  “Did you get those crates?” I asked Dad.

  “Yes!” he said with enthusiasm. “They’re in the back of Mom’s van. I got like twenty of them. It should work for what you need.”

  “Thanks. I’ll move them before you guys go.”

  I had the world’s shittiest truck, but it did the trick. I could load everything up and bring it to my spot no problem. It was really only an issue when I wanted to drive people around. Thankfully with my graduation having been three days ago, I didn’t really have friends anymore.

  AJ offered to help me with the crates. We went outside and started transferring them from the van to the back of my truck. Five minutes outside and it already felt too hot for me. He didn’t seem to mind it so much though.

  I’d had a hard time looking at him for the past year or so. Our house wasn’t all that tiny, but things changed when Mom had Dee. Everyone had a room, but when she came along, we had to squish her and AJ together. It had been fine when they were younger, but AJ was thirteen now. A thirteen-year-old needed a room. I saw only one reasonable option; I needed to make enough money to get a place and move out. I hadn’t told anyone yet, and I knew it would be a thing… so I kept my plans quiet. But with bills to help pay, selling honey didn’t exactly make me hopeful for the future. It didn’t help that summer was here now, and the kids would all be home. AJ would have no space.

  “I’m freeeee, motherfuckers!” I heard from down the street. I saw a sixteen-year-old blonde bopping toward us, her maroon dress blowing in the wind and her boots scraping across the street. Her now empty backpack bounced as she danced, her face filled with peace and joy.

  “We were free an hour ago,” AJ pointed out.

  Bea stopped, frowning. “Well… yeah. I got ice cream with my friends. So, I’m free now. Yay me.”

  “You gonna be good to go in a little while?” I asked her.

  “Yeah. I just need to brush out my hair. Are our birth givers inside? I wanted to show them my final grades. I got all A’s if you don’t include math.”

  “Why wouldn’t they include math?”

  “Because it’
s bullshit.”

  I nodded. “True.”

  She went inside, saying something about a backpack burning ceremony. The poor girl had another two years left in school, so she’d have to deal with that reality for a bit longer. The day I graduated was maybe the best in my life. I knew that I wouldn’t get to go to college, but I’d made peace with that by the time Dee Dee was born. I would never have the money.

  “Done,” AJ said when he put the last of the crates into the back of my truck. “Now, I think I’ll reward myself with ice cream and possibly a soda. Do you want a pregame snack too?”

  “Nah, I should get back to work. I have like fifty jars to get done before Bea is ready to go.”

  I took a deep breath, knowing it would probably be a long night. I never really got anyone past sundown, but I would get to start heading out earlier and hopefully getting a lot more customers. On a good day, I could sell enough to pay the phone bill.

  Now, all I just needed to triple my profit, and then I would have a chance of actually getting out of here.

  Chapter Three

  Hamilton

  Dad and I sat at the kitchen table, eating dinner. Mom used to cook dinner for us, but I had taken over the job after she died. Then Dad had taken it over for me during my senior year in high school. He kept saying that I shouldn’t have to cook when I had so much studying to do. Considering I didn’t have any tests except for finals, I didn’t understand what he meant.

  Either way, it worked out, since he had started cooking after his surgery, which meant that he had more control over his diet.

  “None of them?” Dad asked.

  I shrugged, still staring down at my food. The first six weeks after they went in to try and fix Dad’s heart had been the worst. I’d been in the house by myself most of the time, Dad had felt horrible because all the money he and Mom had saved for my college had gone to his hospital bills, and to top it off, I had broken up with my boyfriend. Not that Dad knew about him. I didn’t think my father would have a problem with me being gay, exactly. I just didn’t know how to tell him after everything else that had happened, and then as time went past, it felt awkward to bring it up. I’d told my mother when I was fifteen and she had died a week later. Definitely a coincidence, but it still made it harder to tell my father.