Free Indigo: The Saving Bailey Trilogy #2 by Nikki Roman

again!” I say, digging my brass knuckles into his body and squeezing his blood out like a cherry tomato. Missing the soft part of his belly, I slash where his wing meets his chest; he hops off my car and totters down the street, unable to fly.
    I’m angry, bitter. I want to kill everything and everyone. I bet I could kill the whole world, and still I would sit in my car, the last person on Earth, completely miserable.
    There’s a special place in hell reserved for people like me, people like Papa. We’ll burn together. I clap a hand to my mouth, trying to hold back the sick feeling.
    Blowing chunks, I smear it with my shoe, grinding it into the floor mat.
    “Damn you!” I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. “I can’t ever escape you!”
    I’m starting to understand how Bailey feels, always running from a tormentor impossible to evade. I keep the chase going. It ends with me.
    •••
    My little bird Bailey is away today, so I take a break from bird watching and pay a visit to Trenton. We sit side by side on his couch, every part of me sweating to make love to him.
    “Are we going to do it?”
    “I don’t feel like it,” he says, looking away from me.
    “You always feel like it.”
    “When was the last time you showered? You smell like a blunt that’s been festering in the folds of a fat, sweaty guy’s pit.”
    “I’ve been sleeping in my car,” I take a swig of Smirnoff Vodka to numb the feeling of rejection.
    “So, this is fun…not.”
    “Will you at least kiss me?”
    “No.”
    “Will you hold me?” I anticipate yet another no.
    “You reek.” He gets up and goes into his kitchen, looking for something to eat.
    “I’m going to take a shower,” I say. Going into his bedroom and locking the door behind me, I flip his mattress over and push my hand under the box spring, until I feel the chain of Bailey’s locket. I bury it deep in my bra—the one place I’m sure Trenton won’t be going in today.
    I walk out of his room, the mattress still turned over, I don’t give a shit if he finds out I took it. What could he do about it? It didn’t belong to him in the first place .
    “Buh-bye,” I say, passing him as he stuffs his face with a hot pocket on his Ikea couch.
    “Where you goin’?” he asks with his mouth full, pizza sauce dribbling down his chin.
    “Away from here and away from you. Have fun being alone with your hand, tonight.”
    •••
    My car is running dangerously close to empty; I have just enough gas to make it back to Fort Myers. It’s time to put my weaponry to use and get some cash. Downtown Fort Myers is the ghetto compared to Cape Coral; here the cops are slack, as long as you don’t kill anybody, you’re golden.
    I sniff out a boy of about sixteen, with a black afro and jeans that sag past his crotch. The kind of kid most would try to stay away from. I choose him because he knows the street, knows you don’t mess with someone who wants your money and has a gun. He’s probably jumped a few in his day; think of it as the food chain: he eats plankton, I eat him .
    “Give me your money!” I say, the gun by my thigh, where only he can see it.
    “I ain’t got nothin’ worth a shot to the head,” he says, pulling out a wad of dollar bills.
    “You been workin’ the corner?” I laugh, fanning the bills.
    “Just take it!”
    As I turn to leave, his money securely stashed in my bra, the boy catches sight of a black eagle emblem on the inside of my right wrist.
    “You an Apocy?”
    “Yeah bro, what you care?” I ask, slipping into my ghetto accent. You talk like a kid in Cape Coral public high school; they’ll chew you up and spit you out.
    “Just wonderin’.”
    I stare at him a little longer. He’s cute in an odd way, his silver teeth and thick, slurred speech. Brown eyes… just brown—no gleam or sparkle to them like Trenton’s. And skin as black as the hilt of my gun.
    “Thanks for the cash,” I say, taking off.
    •••
    Ten bucks , I held