There's a version of my brother that never existed before East Highland. That version was soft. Careful. The kind of person who thought twice before he did anything. I don't know what happened to him. I think Zen ate him alive and left something sharper behind.
The Week 2 prompt came through on a Tuesday.
Storytelling.
Jordan read it twice, put his phone face-down on the desk, and went back to the beat he had half-built on his laptop. He didn't think it was hard. Every song he'd reconstructed so far was storytelling. The prompt was basically just: be good. He could do that in his sleep.
He was mid-loop on a sample when Zen called.
He picked up on the second ring. That was already a habit he hadn't meant to build.
"Got something tonight," Zen said. No greeting. "Woman. She's been held up somewhere she doesn't want to be. You pick her up, you drive her back here. That's the whole job."
Jordan was quiet for a second. "Held up how."
"The kind of held up where you don't ask more questions."
He set the headphones around his neck. Stared at the wall. "Give me time to think."
"Thirty thousand," Zen said. "One hour. Then I find somebody else."
The call ended. Jordan sat there with the phone in his hand.
* * *
Here's the thing about Jordan that people don't get. He's not reckless. He's never been reckless. Every stupid thing he's ever done, he thought about first. Which is maybe worse. Because he can't blame impulse. He can't blame not knowing. He always knows exactly what he's doing.
He got up.
Walked out of his room. Down the hall. Through the kitchen, which still smelled like the dinner Mom had thrown together before her double shift started — something with rice and a can of something else, whatever she could make work. He stood in the doorway of the living room.
Gia was on the floor with her legs crossed, watching something on the tablet with headphones in. Rue was on the couch in that specific position she got into sometimes, not asleep but not all the way present either, eyes half-closed, some show running that she wasn't really watching.
He stood there for a minute. Neither of them looked up.
I don't know what I looked like from the couch. I wasn't really watching him. I was in that thing where you're aware of everything but you're too tired to react to any of it. But I remember he was just standing there in the doorway for a long time. And I remember thinking, even through the fog: something's wrong with him tonight.
Mom had been on overtime for three weeks straight. The AC had been running every day because the heat wouldn't break, and electricity was expensive, and Jordan knew the math on that even if nobody talked about it out loud. Gia needed new shoes. He'd noticed without being asked. He noticed everything without being asked; that was the problem with being him.
He went back to his room.
* * *
He sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the floor for a long time.
The thing he didn't want to do was pretend he didn't know what the job was. He wasn't stupid. A woman being held somewhere she didn't want to be, and Zen needed a driver who wouldn't ask questions. He knew what that was adjacent to. He knew exactly what world that sentence lived in.
He also knew thirty thousand dollars.
He thought about his mom's face when she got home from doubles. The way she moved around the kitchen at midnight, slow and deliberate, conserving energy because she didn't have any left. She never complained. That was the part that got him. She just absorbed it and kept going and never once made him feel like the weight of the house was on him too.
But it was.
The thing about money when you don't have enough of it is that it turns every decision into a math problem. And once you're doing the math, you're already halfway to yes. Jordan knew that. He's smarter than people give him credit for. He was doing the math and he knew he was doing it and he did it anyway.
He picked up his phone.
Texted Zen: I'm in.
Then he put the phone in his pocket, picked his headphones back up, and went back to the beat.
He had a song to finish.
* * *
I used to think that the worst thing you could do was make a bad choice without knowing it. Like stumble into something. But Jordan never stumbles. He walks into things with his eyes open and his hands steady and that used to make me feel safe. Now I'm not sure what it makes me feel.
Maybe that's the part I don't want to think about.
"Fuck."
Time was dragging. I kept messing with the beat, trying to find a rhythm, but my head wasn't in the music. I was too wired. Then the screen lit up—Zen. The location was twenty minutes out.
"My people are handling the heavy lifting," the message read. "They'll clear a path for her. She's going straight to your car. You move the second she's inside. What are you driving? I need to tell her what to look for."
"Charger," I replied. "It's low-profile and it's fast." The clock hit 9:00 PM. No more talking. I moved through the room, grabbing my keys and getting dressed as the adrenaline finally started to kick in. I was headed for the door when the final confirmation flashed:
"30 minutes. Be there."