I heard more cursing as I entered our bathroom.
Had this not been a common occurrence in our household I may have felt more empathetic to Troy’s situation. He had a knack for getting hurt even in the most laid-back scenarios.
I grabbed the plastic med-kit and returned to the main room. My sister was now in the kitchen with Troy, who was still hunched over. The ranch-style house was an open concept so you could see everything in its entirety, apart from the bedrooms off the small hall.
“Does he need an actual hospital, maybe?” I asked, passing my sister the kit.
“Hospitals mean questions,” Troy rasped.
I rolled my eyes. They were standing right in front of me, so it was safe to assume they’d gotten away. I didn’t notice any stolen cash or goods so whatever they’d been after hadn’t been obtained either.
I considered asking but they were both preoccupied with Troy’s injury. He winced as my sister began to lift his shirt. If he was hurt that bad, why did he come back here?
“You know, no one can ask you much of anything if you drop dead.”
This earned me a glare from both of them. An apology was on the tip of my tongue, vanishing the second my sister revealed what was beneath the shirt.
“You did all of this for a flesh wound?”
“Adel,” Isabel groaned.
“I’ve had papercuts worse than that.”
It was such an overdramatic display. His injury wasn’t anywhere near as bad as they were making it out to be. I watched my sister play nurse for a few minutes before I decided my presence was no longer needed, not that it ever was, to begin with.
I turned on my heel and trudged back to my bedroom.
Nothing out of the ordinary here, not at all. This was just another regular morning in the Asmo household.
The world is full of thieves doing everything they can to make a dishonest living, fucking people over in the process. I didn’t understand where the aspiration came from. Unless you were doing things Money Heist or 0007 style, what the hell was the point? And then to be an absolute idiot too?
Of the two of us, my sister got the book smarts, and I took the streets, which is why I didn’t have any idea what she saw in Troy or why she chose to participate in his pursuit of petty crime.
Their relationship was a terrible rendition of a romance novel. Prom queen and head cheerleader falling for the bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks—it was so painfully cliché. Only, nothing about Troy was remotely attractive or mysterious. He was built like a Slim-Jim and reminded me of Bill Nye, but with jailhouse tattoos and red hair.
My sister could do ten times better.
Since she had sacrificed so much to practically raise me, I did my best not to complain about the situation. This was getting old, though. Something had to be done.
Our bills were piling up with utilities at risk of being shut off and we couldn’t afford a single reconnect fee right now.
Isabel was let go from her cashier job nearly a month ago and my measly pay was nowhere near enough to keep a roof over our heads and our stomachs full long term. Being thieves was not the solution—they weren’t even good at it.
This time one came back with a flesh wound, before this my sister had nearly broken her leg. Call it intuition or a sixth sense, but I knew if this continued the outcome would eventually be something dire—death or prison.
Armed with this knowledge and determined to find a solution, I found myself wandering the aisles of a local grocery. Our town was nothing more than a giant square, so we only had two to choose from and I worked at the other.
The generous ten percent discount I got from being a valued employee of Wholesome Goods wasn’t worth seeing my co-workers on my day off. I mentally added and subtracted items as I pushed my buggy down another aisle.
Tough times called for penny-pinching, but if I was going to stage an intervention, snacks were a must. I’d lure them in with things we now considered a luxury to eat and force this conversation to happen if it was the last thing I did.
After grabbing a bag of tortilla chips, I began perusing the various kinds of salsa and queso. There were way too many of the same damn thing.
I selected the cheapest options and turned to sit the jars in my cart, catching in my peripheral one of the finest men I’d ever seen coming down the aisle.
It didn’t register who I was looking at until eyes the color of seafoam met mine and his perfect lips lifted into a friendly smile.
“Adelita, it’s been a while,” he greeted warmly.