All Involved

All Involved Read Free

Book: All Involved Read Free
Author: Ryan Gattis
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hear then, and I feel hands on me. Not hands so much as pressure. The pain isn’t the biggest deal. The problem is I can’t breathe. I try and I can’t. My chest won’t rise. Feels like a car’s parked on it. I try to tell them this. If they could please tell the car to move, I’ll be fine. It won’t be so heavy and I can breathe and everything will be okay if I can just get air. I try to shout this, any of it. But my mouth won’t work and my skin feels big, loose, and the sky feels too close, like it fell on me, on my face, like a sheet, and I have the strangest feeling, like it’s coming down to fix me, that it’s getting inside me with some dark kind of concrete, trying to patch my holes up and make it so I can breathe and I think how good that’d be if that were true but I know I’m just dying, the kid is right, I know I think I’m just melting into it because my brain’s low on oxygen, and I know because that’s logic, because brains don’t work right without food, and I know I’m not really becoming part of the sky, and I know because, I know because

LUPE VERA,
A.K.A. LUPE RODRIGUEZ ,
A.K.A PAYASA
    APRIL 29, 1992
    8:47 P . M .
1
    Clever’s studying a textbook while Apache’s sketching Teen Angels magazine style at the kitchen table, and over on the stovetop Big Fe’s slapping chorizo around in a pan with a wooden spoon. He’s halfway through shouting his Vikings story at me in the living room, talking about how one night at Ham Park shots pop off and everybody hits the floor, and how bullets whiz, man, how they really do make that sound, when a knock hits the front door of my house all hard and fast, like bam-bam-bam, like whoever is on the other side doesn’t give a fuck about his hand.
    We were watching a bunch of mayates tear the city up after putting a brick through some white trucker’s face on Florence and Normandie, but the news got boring quick so we clicked over to the small dial to watch something else. There’s a western on TV now with the sound down, but whatever. It’s safe to say my eyes aren’t on the guns and hats anymore though. I’m looking at Fate (Big Fe pretty much only goes by Big Fate, so you know) and Clever and Apache and they’re all looking at me. We’re thinking the same thing: this ain’t sheriffs.
    Sheriffs don’t knock. They ram. They come in screaming behind shotgun barrels and flashlights. They don’t care if you’re a girl like me. They fuck everybody up regardless.
    No way this is sheriffs.
    Fate’s got the juice card around here. Under his wifebeater he’s that natural type of big that pro wrestlers wish they could be. His right arm ripples with Aztec tattoos as he pulls his khakis up at the belt and moves the pan off the heat even while the sausage keeps pop-popping.
    I nod at him and he keeps talking, to sound normal in case whoever’s outside can hear us, and he nods back as he bends down and comes up with a pistol. There’s always one in the pan drawer under the oven.
    It’s a .38. It’s real small, but it makes real holes.
    â€œSo I’m on my back,” Fate says as he moves to the door all slow, “looking up at stars, and, like, little shreds of leaves falling down on me cuz the bullets cut straight through them. They’re just raining down on me.”
    I slip to the floor. I eye the windows, but I can’t see shadows for shit behind the curtains. Apache’s right up on them though. I see the white comb he keeps in his back pocket peeking out. He’s not much taller than me but he’s solid muscle, and he wears baggy clothes too so nobody can tell how strong he is. He’s the kind of guy you need in a situation like this, in any situation, really. I mean, he scalped a fool once. That’s how he got his name. He took a knife and peeled the skin off, inch by inch, hair and all. He threw it in a

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