Free Romeo of the Streets by Taylor Hill Page A

girls looking at them from across the crowd. One of them had glasses and her hair tied back in a bun, while the other was kind of large and punkish with a streak in her dyed-blonde hair. They both looked faintly familiar.
    “Hey,” Ferret said, nudging Lou, “ain’t that your sister over there?”
    “Ah shit,” Lou hissed, “yeah, it’s her—her and Lisa…” He looked back across the crowd and shouted “I got to go baby, I’ll explain later!”
    At that moment Eyeball pushed forward in an effort to get his accomplices out the door but when he looked to Romeo it seemed like the guy had all of a sudden completely forgotten the stakes of the situation here. He was staring back at Lou’s sister, totally oblivious to Eyeball’s attempts, and when Eyeball followed his eyes back to the girl he saw that she was just staring right back at Romeo too. Behind her, Eyeball spotted the campus cops pushing back into the hallway and when their eyes met his they immediately widened, no doubt with the dawning realization that of all people in the frat house liable to be making serious trouble that night, he and his associates were clearly the most obvious suspects. He shouldered into Romeo as he passed him, hissing to get a move on, and then the four of them pushed back into the darkness outside, each of them disappearing in a different direction under the all-encompassing cover of the night.
     

 
     

     
     
    It wasn’t until later the next day that we properly heard the full story about what had happened at Delta Gamma House that night—and it sure wasn’t in the form of any explanation from Lou to Lisa or me. I let on to Lisa that I wasn’t surprised, in between fretting and pawing over her like a best friend should, but truthfully, I was almost as shocked as she was. Yeah, of course I knew what Lou was mixed-up in (and as for Romeo—well truth be told I didn’t actually know anything about that guy at all, now did I? So I couldn’t admit to being upset about his part to play, no matter how much I felt like it) but the whole business had always seemed somehow distant and removed from the civilized life that me and Lisa lived on campus. I understood that they were into that tough guy gangster crap, but as a concept it was somehow abstract and theoretical, not something that would ever affect me or invade upon my real life. I guess part of me was just waiting until Lou grew out of the phase he was in and started behaving like a normal law-abiding citizen again. But now… well now I was starting to think maybe the only one who wasn’t facing up to reality in all of this was me.
     
     
    We hadn’t even intended to go out that night—Delta Gamma and the football crowd wasn’t exactly our idea of a good night’s fun—but when we got our test scores back from our latest exam a day early, complete with surprisingly high marks for both of us, Lisa was insistent that we do something to celebrate. It was a coin toss between the frat party at Delta Gamma house and Flip N’ Chip’s and since Lisa had been spending so much time at the bar with Lou lately, we decided we’d stop by the frat party and check it out for a while. Sure, our hopes weren’t exactly high but what did we have to lose? We could always leave again if the party was too wild and unsavory for our civilized tastes. Little did we know how wild it would actually be…
    We spent the evening drinking cocktails and trying on various dresses and outfits (I still hadn’t had a chance to get my laundry backlog fully cleared, so Lisa took me into the city to go shopping and I picked out a couple of delicious little pieces on sale. I felt kind of guilty thinking of Gino and his accident until Lisa reminded me that Lou and Romeo would be taking care of him now and it was his own responsibility to pay them back. When I still seemed uncertain, she just about insisted that I needed some kind of indulgence after all I’d been through and I was once again reminded