In Between The Stars

The Evening Of Sixteen And A Half Years ago

DYLAN'S POV

Chauncey is a prick. If I've learnt anything at all in my life, it is that Chauncey is the kind of person who would shoot a meek dog right in between the eyes if it meant making money at the end of the day. But Chauncey is all I have.

We, Chauncey and I, are the two beloved sons of the most successful industrialist in the town of Westwood. We spent most of our childhood playing with toys that were about as expensive as many houses in our town. Our father gifted us both Rolls-Royces on my eighteenth birthday last month. And Chauncey, who is a year older than me, is constantly surrounded by girls of phenomenal beauty.

Just kidding.

Chauncey and I are orphans who put up in the outskirts of Westwood in an infinitesimal one room apartment that always reeks of alcohol, tobacco and gasoline. The only Rolls-Royces that we've ever seen are the ones that pass by us on roads or the ones that are parked outside fancy restaurants when we go up to town to watch a movie... or get drunk like silly in the many pubs and throw up until our minds leak out. But Chauncey is my brother.

We never knew our parents and were brought up, at least for a while, in the Happy Home Orphanage in town at whose doorstep we were abandoned as one and two year old kids respectively. Until Chauncey, at ten, decided that we'd had enough of that shit and grabbed the couple of clothes that we owned and we ran away on a chilly December midnight nine years ago. Since then we've been on our own.

Chauncey works as a mechanic in old Harvey's Fix It For You garage and I wait tables in one of those fancy restaurants I was talking about earlier. We don't make much.

And that annoys Chauncey. Which is why we make extra money out of carjacking sometimes on a desolate dirt road that leads out of town. Yes, that makes us shitty people. But Chauncey says it's better to be shitty than poor and starving.

"Netty, you smell like bat-shit." Chauncey grimaces as we sit in his Nissan which is conveniently parked behind a line of trees so that we are out of sight of the people who pass by the stretch of the road that has come to be our second workplace.

Newton 'Netty' George is old Harvey's only son. He was named by his mother in the hope that he'd grow up to be like the legend himself. But even she knows that she's better of teaching a donkey how to sing than teaching Netty how to spell.

So Netty, a scraggly, pimply, sinewy, sixteen-year-old prefers hanging out with us instead.

"What's wrong with you, Chauncey?" He asks my brother, clearly confused at his disgust. "Chicks die over this scent, man."

Chauncey rolls his eyes at him and goes back to drumming his finger over the steering wheel and keeping a keen eye on the road.
Chauncey looks a lot like me, except that his dark hair is cropped short unlike the large, shaggy mess that I sport. And his eyes are a clear blue instead of turquoise like mine and he is an inch or two shorter than me.

We wait for a long time as the RJ on Chauncey's old stereo continues to blabber about how someone did something some time ago and how that something is of zero importance in our lives right now.

"This is getting boring, Chauncey." Netty complains. "There won't be any cars to-"

"Shhhh....!" My brother shushes him. "I hear something."

And sure enough, we hear the distant rumble of a car approaching.

"Get out!" Chauncey orders and we oblige.

I eye the solid bulge in the back pocket of the cargo shorts that Chauncey is wearing with grim apprehension. It is his revolver, his .45 caliber handgun, to be exact. Not that we've ever used it, or ever will. But it seems to scare the shit out of people when you point it at their chest and they strip themselves of their money and other valuables a lot faster.