Radioactive - Book 1: Birth 🪼

Forty-Two

A/N: just as a forewarning, this chapter is quite lengthy. forgive me if there is a retcon on some details from previous chapters. i haven't read them in a while so those who binge read may see some differences. sorry about that if that is so...

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We pulled up to Jetson's Bar and Asstro and I turned off the car so we could wait for Sakina. Nalak leaned over to me.

"So here's what we're gonna do, see: the rest of the boys are in the front and when I give the signal, we're going to come through the back and Jonesy will come through the front. We're gonna do a swap-a-roo, ya hear? So what we do is, come from both directions, take all the money you can, and then we'll switch cars, ya hear? Switch cars... Then we'll meet back at the hideout and count the loot. This is the big one, champ." He says in a really sucky gangster accent.

I smile and decide to play along. "But Boss, what about the goil? Don't Jonesy got a broad who used to be with him in there? What if she sees us and recognizes Jonesy? You think she'd rat us out?"

"Listen here, kid," he says, putting his arm around my shoulders and pulling me to him. "No is broad worth betraying ya boys. If Jonesy don't know the meaning of that, then he'll see himself wearing a pair of concrete shoes if ya know what I mean. If he messes this up, I'll mess him up. Got it? We stick with the plan."

I can't keep the façade anymore and snicker and then we both start laughing our heads off.

"Were you always this funny?" I ask.

Nalak leans back in his seat and rubs his stomach.

"I guess you didn't know me before the whole school check up thing but I was pretty much the class clown. Or so my former friends used to say." He shrugs. "This journey has really strung me through the ringer, so I haven't been myself in a lot of ways but I like playing around and making people laugh. I'm fourteen, not forty. When we all entered high school, most of my friends became laser focused on studies and stuff because they wanted to be able to get into good colleges and have good careers and all that jazz. I... always had a feeling that would never happen for me but I was fine with it and so I just stayed myself."

"Must have been nice to have friends." I say with a small smile.

I really wasn't trying to sound like a pitiful little bitch, but it was true. I didn't have friends, save Girvan. I look back at Nalak as he gives me a hurt look.

"What's that look for?"

"I forgot that you've always been an Empty... I mean, was everyone mean to you? Were you friendless your whole school life?"

"Practically. There was Girvan."

"Girvan isn't a friend; he's like a highly anticipated acquaintance." He says with a frown.

I laugh a little but look out the window.

"Nah, you've got him all wrong... It may have looked like that from the outside but that's because that's how I wanted it."

"What do you mean?"

I lay on the door and pull my knee up into the seat to face Nalak. I haven't talked about my childhood and past for a while that it was a little hard to get things back into place.

"Even though I've been an Empty most of my life, when I was little I wasn't. When I say little, I mean like, five. I don't remember much about that time except that one day I was fine, the next I was feeling really bad on the inside. I didn't want to worry my parents because they had been really skeptical of letting me go to school anyway and I liked being around everyone. Well, the pain got worse and I finally told my dad and we went to the hospital. That's when they found out I needed surgery and when I woke up, that's when I found out that they had taken things out and that things weren't going to be the same. When I got back to school, everyone was looking at me weird and then they all stopped hanging around me. I was all alone for a while with no one to talk to. I got picked on a lot too...