Aaron didn’t feel readying for a whooping that day, especially from the business end of a gun. He faced Moni, who still had the weapon trained on her. “It’s okay, Aaron. You don’t have to stay for this.” She couldn’t even look at him as her words drowned in disappointment.
Aaron took a couple of steps toward the door. Then he doubled back and glanced at Mariella, who cowered behind the couch where Darren couldn’t see her. One week before, the girl had seen her parents beheaded and gorged by a freakish killer. Today, she would see the only person left in the world who cared for her shot dead, Aaron thought. Who would love and protect her then?
As Aaron stared at Mariella’s remarkably serene brown eyes, he remembered the brown eyes and black skin of his childhood friend, Crystal Marshall. Only one of six black kids in his elementary school on the beachside, she had lived a few houses down from him since they were toddlers. They always played together, often pitting toy soldier against purse-wielding dolls. Yet, as they got into middle school, most of the kids weren’t so friendly with Crystal. They made fun of her “mini afro” and said she smelled like a monkey. When the girls shoved her, Crystal hit back. The teachers always saw the second blow and suspended her.
Aaron got picked on too, but not nearly as bad. Hanging out with Crystal would give them a whole new arsenal of names they could call him. Some of the boys said they’d beat the crap out of any white kid who dated one of the black students. The only guy who broke this rule was a football player, and he could fend for himself better than puny Aaron could.
So he blew Crystal off. They didn’t talk for the whole spring of eighth grade-not even at the bus stop they stood at every morning. That summer, a moving van rolled onto Crystal’s driveway and loaded up her house. Aaron went over and asked her mother whether he could see Crystal. Even at fourteen, he recognized the look of betrayal on a grown woman’s face. Crystal didn’t want any part of him.
A few days later, her family left. Aaron heard they moved to Atlanta, where Crystal might fit in better and find some friends-something Aaron had failed at being for her when she most needed him.
Now, Moni had a gun on her. He barely knew this woman, but she needed him. So did Mariella.
“I’m staying right here,” Aaron said. Darren pointed the gun between his eyes. He resisted the urge to flinch. “I’m not leaving them alone with you.”
“What do you mean them?” Darren asked. Moni gawked at Aaron. That wasn’t the reaction he had been hoping for. “So you were looking at someone back there. Whoever it is better get out here, and I mean now!”
Mariella didn’t move.
“You wanna see some blood? If not, you get your ass out here.” Darren turned his gun on Moni again. Her face went pale. Aaron knew she’d take a bullet for the girl, but that would only buy her a minute. He had a split second to stop Darren.
Too late. Mariella stepped out from behind the couch. The man had a fresh target. Seeing the look on Moni’s face, Aaron saw that this terrified her more than staring down a bullet herself.
“No. Don’t!” Moni pleaded.
Darren faced the child with the gun at waist level. He aimed it in her general direction, but not straight at her. Mariella wobbled on those meek little feet. Her lips shuddered as she eyed his instrument of death. Without a single word or even a scream, the girl’s angelic face contorted into a portrait of absolute dread, as if a million bodies had roasted in ovens before her eyes.
“Oh… I’m sorry,” Darren said as he tucked the gun into the waistband of his jeans. Moni’s mouth opened so wide that she nearly kneed herself in the jaw. “I didn’t mean to frighten you, kid.”
Mariella backed against the screen door in the rear of the house. Darren shuffled backwards toward the front door.
“I didn’t realize the girl was home,” he said. “I’m not like your daddy. I don’t hurt children.” Moni furrowed her brow and took a step toward her downed gun. “Yeah, I’m not done with you neither. I’ll see you again, Moni-real soon. And I better not see this punk making a play for your cooch or I’ll smash his little prick in my car door and drive ‘round town with him. Ya feel me?”
Aaron would have returned fire with a witty comeback, but concentrated on crossing his legs just in case. His chicken-legged stance didn’t exactly make him look macho for Moni, but at least he didn’t bail out of there crying.
When Darren slammed the door shut and headed for his car, Moni hustled over, scooped up her gun and pointed it at him through the window until he drove away. Aaron couldn’t understand why she didn’t do that in the first place if she thought he came there for a fight-as the broken mirror on Aaron’s car surely attested.
“Holy shit,” Aaron remarked.
“If you want to leave now, I’ll understand,” Moni said as she kept watch out the window. Aaron read the shameful expression on her face in the reflection off the glass as a sign that she couldn’t bear facing him.
“Naw, it’s cool. Everybody’s got some skeletons in their closet. It’s just that those skeletons don’t usually come packing heat.”
“And he might do it again. He doesn’t let things go. The safest place for you to be is as far away from me as possible.”
“What about Mariella? If it’s so dangerous around you, between him and all the craziness in the lagoon, then why is she here? I can help you both out.”
“Mariella…” Moni turned and looked for the girl. “Oh my God! Get away from that!”
Aaron whirled around and saw the night black water moccasin coiled on the other side of the screen door. Mariella was only a foot away on the other side of the flimsy netting. Snakes shouldn’t attack people unprovoked. They eat rats and frogs and stuff. But Aaron knew at once that wasn’t a normal snake. It sprung through the screen with such force that it tore it out of the door frame. The netting fell on top of it, but it wouldn’t keep it down for long. The snake started slithering out with its pointy, venom-filled head aiming for Mariella’s back.
Chapter 16
The snake poked its head out from underneath the downed screen and opened its jaws. Moni saw its white mouth and hooked fangs. One bite from the water moccasin, also known as the Florida cottonmouth because of the color of its most deadly weapon, could kill a grown person. The same amount of poison in Mariella’s small body would stop her heart quicker than a light switch getting flicked off.
Moni dashed across her living room. She couldn’t make it in time. She heard her cat Tropic hissing and yowling from her bedroom. Moni screamed at the snake as if the shockwaves of anger in her voice could stop it. The water moccasin coiled up and readied to pounce on Mariella’s back. The girl didn’t see it. She didn’t move, or even seem disturbed in the least by the sight of Moni freaking out.
The snake sprang toward the girl. Aaron dove from the other side. Mariella ducked out of Aaron’s way. The snake’s white mouth snapped at him as he fell on his shoulder. Moni couldn’t tell whether it had struck him or not, but he spit enough curses to make a truck driver faint. Mariella scampered into her room and slammed the door.
When Aaron sat up, he faced one peeved reptile. It didn’t hiss, but it recoiled into attack mode.
“Roll!” Moni yelled at him as she trained her gun on it.
Aaron reacted with more of a flop than a roll. It worked well enough. The water moccasin hesitated in its attack and Moni shot its head off. Its body fell limp as a rubber band as its blood trickled, not poured, onto her carpet.
“Oh damn…” Aaron gasped as he scrambled to the couch. If the snake had bit him, he couldn’t have gotten back on his feet. He gawked at Moni’s smoking gun. “Thank you.”
“I should thank you,” she said as she holstered the weapon. “You got Mariella out of the way.”
“I didn’t lay a finger on her. I tried to shove her away from it, but she took off so fast. The girl’s got survival instincts.”