Verse 1.3 (Beginning)

The arguments and fights between Madame Roux and Michaell causes him to want to join up with a group of things to gain money so he can afford doing things that make him happy, like buying a house.

He went into our room first and grabbed his deck of cards. He shuffled them really quick, then dealt me into a game I never played before. He said the point of the game was to get close to 21 without going past it and told me how many points each card was worth. “It’s a game of faith and smarts,” he said flipping the first card over. “How do you know so much about these games and how are you able to shuffle like that? Did you learn this in a foster home?”, I always wondered where he got his skills from. “Haha nah, my dad taught me this trick and a lot of other things I know too. SCFS was my first foster home and I wasn’t a foster child until a little after my fourth birthday. My dad taught me a lot before I went there,” he stared off into space again. “That’s why I say you should take it easier on Madame Roux Michaell. She not that hard to work with. Don’t engage her to much and she’s fine, she’s easy to read too. If you battle on, your only going to make it harder on yourself in the future,” and he continued to deal each other out cards. I shook my head, “I can’t just let her walk over us, I can’t let anyone walk over us. I’m gonna fight, to the end. I don’t know where you were before this but my life wasn’t the easiest either. If I didn’t fight, I probably would have died a while ago,” I flipped the first card of the game over and it was a 6. “Yay, we both had it hard huh? Let’s play though, enough about the past,” then he told me to pull again. I pulled a joker to make 16, then pulled another joker to make 26. “Aww, you lose. My turn,” he said while pulling a king. He smiled and pulled an Ace then yelled “21! I win,” and wrote down our scores. “Dude, your cheating at this. There’s no way in hell you get perfect cards on your first turn,” I stared at the deck in disbelief. “Hahaha, don’t be such a sore loser. Let’s keep playing.” He would always do that when we began talking about our parents and the closer I got to having him open up a little more about his life, he always blew it of or changed the subject. I would kill if I could know what happened to him. After about an hour of playing 21 with Kane and having him beat me (some how he got exactly “21” eight times in that game and had a better score then me the remaining times) I decided to go take a bath and forget all the crap that happened to me that day. Taking a bath was always my way to rewind, the water somehow always cleansed me of my pain, I could stay in there for hours if I could. Eventually Kane came to check on me, banging on the door asking if I drowned. I blew him off but finished my meditating a little sooner then I would have. I left the restroom completely wrinkled wearing just my boxers. “It’s like you want the water to suck you in become part of it or something. Any longer in there and you probably would be,” he said pointing to all the wrinkles on my body. I probably would have liked that, an easy escape from life. Kane went into the bathroom and came out 10 minutes later completely finished. “See, everything’s done and I wasn’t in danger of drowning or dehydrating,” and he jumped into our bed pulling the covers over himself. “It’s probably because you hate getting wet because you some sort of monster afraid of water, like a cat,” I said laughing and pulling the covers over me. He laughed to and then started meowing for 5 minutes straight until I said “Shut up Kane! I heard you the first time. Your not a f*****g cat,” then he began laughing hard which made me laugh. “What’s so funny up there!”, our tyrant mother shouted from downstairs. We started chuckling after that and began to go to sleep. “Night Kane,” I laughed. “Good night brother,” he said laughing too.
Well, at least Kane made going to school a little better. I never liked going to school, I still don’t, but having Kane there meant I had someone to talk to and suffer with me. Well, I was the only one who was suffering, surprisingly Kane was good at talking to other kids and making the teachers like him too. The first day he was enrolled, he was praised by all our teachers telling him, “Oh your parents must be so proud to have such a smart young man at the house. You’ll be a great role model for other students,” and “This must be to easy for you, I wouldn’t mind giving you something a little more advanced. You can lead the rest of the class in it later,” and especially from teachers that knew me and him were siblings, “You should really encourage your brother to be more like you.” Also, when he walked into our first class for the first time, instead of being yelled at by our history and literature teacher, Mrs. Vayhorn like I was, she told him, “Ahh! My dear boy Kane Powasa. I heard so much about you. Come on up and introduce yourself to the class, then you can take any empty seat you like.” He smiled, walked up and did the same introduction he did when he first met Madame Roux and me, bowing and everything. He added on, “I would love for us all to become friends,” and everyone in the class clapped saying, “I would love to be your friend Kane,” and “Oh. The chair next to me is open,” and more crap like that. I don’t know why it was so easy for everyone to love him. When it was time for P.E., everyone wanted him on their team plus it didn’t help that he was actually good at sports. When we had lunch, girls and boys would walk over to our table and ask for him to come and sit with them or to come and hang out with them. I was kind of jealous of him, but I was happy that he always turned them down and stayed with me, he was kind of alright. He usually had my back and that never changed. Through the school year, Kane stayed my partner on projects, helped me study, and did every club or event I wanted to do with me. He even ended up taking Krav Maga and Jujitsu with me after I saw a demonstration at the church. We had to take 2 extra buses to get home after the lessons each day too, but he didn’t complain. We did a lot of things like that together, mainly what I dragged him to. I always liked studying different fighting styles and watching shows about them, so we went to a lot of different martial arts gyms and joined their classes. As I got older, I wanted to do more and learn more but since I didn’t have any money to pay for all the classes and things I wanted to do, I also begged Kane to begin doing some less the legal things with me. At first he told me how stupid it was and explained all the risk that were involved in doing jobs like that, but eventually, after many days of begging and persistence, he agreed to help me. “The only reason why I’m doing this stupid crap is because I don’t want you to get killed and you leave me to explain to Avy and Inesa about how and why you died.”
(Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you guys. Nes became apart of our family when I turned 11. She was adopted because Avy became super lonely when Kane and I stopped coming back home right after school. Madame Roux’s and my fights were becoming worse and Kane couldn’t always break them up so easily, so I decided to make everyone happy and just not be at the house as much as I could before somebody ended up getting hurt. Kane agreed with my plan, but I told him I didn’t just want to wander around alone with nothing to do and no one to talk to, so he decided to come along with me for the greater good of the house. Besides, it wasn’t like he had anything better to do. The only downside was that we didn’t get to hang out with Avy as much. “You guys are never home anymore and you never tell me where your going?”, Avy came and confronted us in our room in the middle of the night. “Ave, go to bed. It’s 2 am,” I was half asleep and tired for boxing practice that day. “It’s like you guys don’t want to hang out with me. I can do the things you guys are doing too, I’m only 2 years younger than you. I won’t complain either, I promise, I can come a-,”. Kane stopped her, “Nah my love. It wouldn’t be safe for a little girl to go around doing the things we have been doing. It’s not even safe for us to go out.” He was right, we’ve been going through some dark neighborhoods and even got into a couple of fights although, I was a little happy we did get into those fights. I got to test out the skills I learned and after we beat the s**t out of our attackers, some of them were caring some pretty valuable stuff. We got almost $1,300 worth of money, jewelry, and some kind of expensive weed we stole from this business guy. It was inside some kind of fancy silver jar, but we haven’t been able to get anything from it yet. Neither one of us knows were to sell it or who to give it to. Either way, Avy was still mad and I believe she thought we were lying to her. “If it’s some place you guys shouldn’t be going to either, then it’s probably dangerous and really bad and I don’t want you guys going anymore either. You could end up in jail or get hurt really bad. Stay here and we can do something together. I wouldn’t want any-,” I stopped her this time. “It’s ok Avy,” I said looking up at her, “We’ll be fine, but I’m not gonna just stay here and ruin my life. I’m gonna keep going out, but I can’t talk for Kane. Wether he wants to stop or not, that’s on him.” She looked at Kane with tears in her eyes. I think she knew what he was going to say too. “Same here sweetheart, I have to go with him to make sure he doesn’t do anything too stupid. If he goes by himself, he will die,” after that Avy left crying while calling us both idiots and telling us how dumb we could be. She became more upset with us the next day that we didn’t come home until later that night and as days went on, we could see she was becoming more distant to us. It came to the point were Madame Roux noticed she was lonely and yelled at us for it, mainly me. We told her she was mad that we’re not here as much and she just wants someone to play with. She didn’t believe us and ended up trying to ban us from going outside, but I went out anyways and Kane followed after me, it was one of the only times he disobeyed her. Eventually she talked to Avy and I guess Avy told her how lonely she was or something because a week later, I came back home and found another little girl in Avy’s room playing with her. “Ah! Michaell, Kane, come over here! I want you guys to meet Inesa. She just got adopted by mama Mae today. She’s really sweet and funny and she’s smart like you Kane and she doesn’t know where she’s from and she just moved to the U.S. three years ago and she-,” Kane jumped in and slowed her down.“Okay, okay Avlynn. I know your excited but have to slow down for we can understand. Let’s let her speak herself, okay. I’ll start, My name’s Kane Powasa, this is my brother Michaell Pat, and you already met our sister Avlynn Peterson. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” then he bowed like he does every time he meets a new person and he asked her to, “please, go ahead and introduce yourself.” She hesitated and stared at Kane blankly, then snapped back to reality, “Oh, sorry. I am Inesa, Inesa Demi Mona. Sorry. I’m from Scotland, I moved here couple of years ago with Mister Creag. We were always together until couple months ago.” She seemed sad after saying that. I looked at Kane and Avy, then asked Avy if I could speak to her a minute outside. “What’s wrong with her? Why is she so shy,” I asked. “I don’t know why, but it took me a while to open her up and she’s still kind of shaky. I don’t know what happened to her mom or dad but all I know is she was raised with Mr. Creag and some other people in Scotland. After a while she moved with Mr. Creag our here when he got a job offer. Some how they got separated and she became a foster kid.” It didn’t sit easy with me that she had so many secrets too and everybody somehow had the need to hold secrets from someone. It’s one of the main things I hate about Kane, that he still feels like he can’t trust me fully. “That’s fine, just watch her and make her feel comfortable. Let her know that we’re all gonna help each other out, we’re siblings.” She nodded and we went back into the room. Inesa stared at us then asked, “Did I do something wrong? I’m sorry if I hurt you,” she was sad for some reason again. “No, no, no, I was just asking Avy about something from yesterday and it was a little embarrassing. Haha, sorry it couldn’t wait,” I laughed trying to make myself sound as sincere as possible. “Sorry, I know my English isn’t good sometimes and I say the wrong words sometimes. I can’t always say what I want to because I haven’t learned the words,” she frowned. The poor girl must have had something bad happen to her to be so afraid of talking, that’s probably the reason she’s constantly apologizing. “Your ok, that’s why we’re here. We have your back. I know Kane would be more then happy helping you study English, studying anything actually, it’s what he likes to do and Avy and I will always be on your side too. Your our sibling,” I said smiling at her. She looked at us, then started to cry to Avy. “Really. You guys would do all of that for me,” she said crying. “Of course we would. We love you,” Avy said crying back to her as she hugged her. They were both hugging each other as they cried on each other’s backs. “I never had anyone, it was always me alone. I never had a real family.” As I listened to what she said, I remembered the first time I met Avy. I was alone too, then all of a sudden I had a sister. That feeling was nice, to not be alone anymore. Kane motioned me to give them some privacy as he walked out the door. I followed behind him and Inesa told me “Thank you” as I left and continued hugging Avy.)
Kane and I got a job delivering “candies” to people from a guy we met at one of my training gyms. He never talked to us or entered the gym actually, just always sat down on the same bench outside the gym listening to his music on a pair of big headphones. It wasn’t until he saw us exit the gym one day and be attacked by one of the guys we beat up on a previous day. The guy tried to get revenge on us, he even brought some of his friends to help him, but we ran and lured some of them to one of the alleys near the subway station, beat the man up again and his friends, then got on our subway to go home. The next day, the guy confronted us. “Hey little bros, I saw you guys get chased by that f*g and his friends yesterday. You guys don’t really seem hurt and your not afraid to come back here. How did you manage to get rid of all of them and come back here like nothing happened?” We ignored him and continued walking into the gym without making any response to him, we didn’t even look his way. I finally said something back as I was about to close the door, “We fought back,” then went inside to go exercise. We stayed in the gym about an hour until closing, gathered our stuff and we were one of the last people to walk out the doors. As we exited, we saw that the man was still on the bench waiting; his headphones, jacket, and glasses were off. “You guys are some pretty tough kids, pretty tough. A brother of mine said that some p***y got beat up near the train station yesterday, said he was left there until some women saw him as she was walking her dog and called the police. Y’all heard of that?,” we stared at him. “Yay, in fact there have been a couple of stories popping up recently about some kids who were beating some weak n****s up, then robbing their asses,” he said starting to laugh. He calmed down, then sighed, “Listen. I want to offer you little homies a job, nothing bad, just something that’ll fit your talents. I’m in a candy business. I supply people with some of the best chocolates, suckers, and other sweet stuff all around L.A. It’s just I need someone to help me deliver my products. By myself, I get messed with a lot. You guys can see I’m a pretty small man, if someone where to robe me, they would take all my lively hood. So little bros, I want you guys to deliver my candies for me. You guys are strong, able to handle y’all selves, and your back to back fighting style seems to be unbeatable.” I looked at Kane and saw that he didn’t approve of what the man was saying. “Oh. You’ll be payed a hefty stack too,” and he lifted up his shirt and taking out a wade of cash containing many hundred dollar bills. We also saw the butt of a pistol in his pocket when he pulled out the money. “Haha, sorry just ignore this,” he pulled his shirt down and tapped his hip. “I just keep it for protection. There is this group of children going around attacking grown men remember. Hahahaha,” he continued to laugh while I looked again at Kane. I couldn’t stop think about that money and I didn’t care about the weapon I just saw. I tried to ease both of our nerves by smiling and nodding “we should do it” to Kane, but he immediately pulled me in close to him, “No Michaell, this is clearly a bad idea. We should have been walked away from this trash and completely erase this memory out of our minds.” I didn’t care, “Did you see all that money!? Do you know all the things we could get with that? F**k going back to Madame Roux’s f****n’ place, we could buy are own house and take Avy and Nes with us. We could be free.” He shock his head and sighed. “No. That’s a bad idea. One, Madame Roux is still legally our guardian, two this man’s “candy” business seems really sketchy, and three, even if this somehow doesn’t end up being crap, no apartment complex in the world is going to rent to two thirteen year olds and their two little sisters.” I tried to come up with some other reason, excuse, anything to change him to help me get that money, but he wouldn’t listen. When he’s set on a answer, he never changes it. I groaned then called him and idiot out loud and began to walk away toward the street. “F**k Kane, your always acting like someone’s damn parent,” I said as I headed to the subway home. Kane shrugged and followed after me. “Aye, so is the deal off? Y’all know y’all missing out on a lot of money. Kids y’all age would of jumped at the chance to have that much dough, no matter what the job was. Your makin’ a mistake,” he yelled out to us. I yelled back, “We’ll think about it,” then Kane yelled back “but don’t bet money on it,” and we headed toward the subway.
Like I said, Kane eventually gave in to me pestering him. He’s strong when he comes to regular people bugging him, but I’m a whole different species of “bugging” to him. “It’s like you literally, freakin’ ignore everything I say until you here something you like. Then, if I still say no your going to do it anyway, so there’s no point and I give up. I just hope you follow some of the advice I gave you while on our “job” and you don’t end up killing yourself,” this was the angriest I ever made Kane. He sat on his bed pouting as I smiled to him, then nudged him in the shoulder. “You worry to much. Instead of thinking about all of the bad, focus on the positives. You know, for a being boy genius you act like a grumpy old man,” I told him while shuffling his hair. “At least I try to act older. For the oldest child in the house, you always act like your still in diapers,” then he pushed my hand away. I looked at him in shock and gasped, “Kane, how could you say that!? Your so mean,” trying to be as overly dramatic as possible then smiled and headed for the emergency exit window of Madame Roux’s apartment. I decided to start using this way to exit out since Madame Roux started guarding the front door trying to force us to stay inside. It was in the storage room next to my room plus Madame Roux never went in here and Avy was to afraid that something might pop out at her to know about it. I guess she figured out where some of the places we have been going are and thought something might happen to us if we continued going to them so began monitoring every time the front door opened up. I climbed down the window’s ladder, then shimmied over the narrow, metal bridge to the next one. Kane looked out the window as I continued to climb down staring at me. “You coming?” He groaned and looked up at the sky for a moment, then shrugged and sighed as he began to head down with me. The path down was easy enough but I wouldn’t mind using it if we didn’t live so high up. Once we reached to the fifth floor, I realized that we were going to have to climb all the way back up to get back inside. On the bright side, at least we were close to the ground now. We got to the last row and I tried to open the ladder that lead to the ground, but it was locked in a case with a key hatch around it. “Who the f**k puts a lock on a f****n’ emergency exit!?,” I looked around but could find anything to open it with. From were I was, it was to high to jump down to the ground and I saw no other way of climbing down either. I groaned, “This damn old building, it’s going to be the death of us,” telling Kane as he walked up behind me. “It’s f****n’ locked. Can you believe this s**t. We’ll have to go back-,” he then moved the lock around and looked at it. Then he started touching around the ladder and the cage holding it up. He kicked at one of the bolts holding the ladder until it broke off then did the same to the bolt underneath the first one. Once he broke the second one, the ladder ran down to the ground and creaked loud as it stopped. Smiling to him I told him, “That’s why your my right hand man sir, wouldn’t know what to do without you,” and I jumped the railing and headed down the ladder. He shrugged, “I was just saving time. If I didn’t do that, we would’ve had to go all the way back and find something to open the lock with or find another way down. It also irritated me that someone put this lock in. Not only would it have killed someone if there was a really emergency, but whoever ever put it in hasn’t opened it in years. All the bolts and sides were rusted and the lock had dust and spider webs on it. If we would have opened the cage with a key, the lock, door, or something else would have ended up braking anyway and we could of got hurt. I just speed up the inevitable,” and he continued behind me. “We’ll, thanks for opening it. When in doubt, make your own way; or find a person who can.” We hopped the metal gate of the back alley, went through the delivery drive way, and we were in the front of the building. “See. Easy enough,” I smiled looking back at the route we just took. “Well, let’s hope everything else continues to be “easy enough,” and we walked toward the subway entrance.
The man was sitting on the same bench he always did when we saw him, listening to music on his big headphones with his hood over his head. Kane stopped me one more time before I walked over to him. “Are you sure you want to do this. This can only be the beginning to a life of suffering.” I stared at the man, then sighed. I began to walk toward him. As I got closer, the man looked up and turned his head toward me. He took off his headphones and smiled at us, “aye, if it isn’t my two favorite boys. How have my little homies been? What, y’all came here to workout some more? It’s like you guys plan on being body builders when you grow up,” he said laughing to himself. “No, we actually came here to see you,” I said as I stopped about a foot away from him. “Oh yeah? What could that be for? Last time I heard it sounded like y’all wanted nothin’ to do with me or my business, so it can’t be that. Or did you come here to try and get rid of me afraid I might do something to ya,” as he put his hand on his side, the same side were I saw his gun the last time. I frowned, irritated that the idiot would even think about using a gun on me after I wanted to join him, so I began to walk away. “Wait, wait, wait. I was just playin’. See look,” he took out the gun and pointed it to himself and pulled the trigger. The gun just clicked, “You see, not even loaded. I just have it to scare people away. Like I said, I’m by myself a lot. I need protection.” I ignored him and continued to walk back to Kane. “Wait little homie. If you were here to join my group, how about I give you a welcoming advance for messing with you,” then he pulled out a couple of bills from his pocket. I stopped and turned my head, “I promise. You don’t even have to come and get it,” he then folded the money and slid it toward me. I looked at the cash, then the man. He smiled and sat back down on the bench. I then looked at Kane who frowned and shook his head no. Kane was right that I shouldn’t do business with someone who just played with killing me, but I did just get money from it and I technically was never in any danger. I picked up the money and counted seven one hundred dollar bills. I smiled, easiest money I ever made and it was almost a thousand dollars. “There’s a lot more were that came from,” the man said looking at me. I put the money in my pocket and looked at him, “And what exactly is it that we have to do?” He stood up and headed toward the parking lot of the gym, “I promise you guys, it’ll be the easiest money you ever made. Like I said, all I need you little homies to do is deliver some candy for me, easy right? I can show you exactly what your delivering if you don’t mind coming with me to my supply warehouse,” and he continued down the stairs toward the parking garage. Kane walked up behind me and looked at my pocket. “Michaell. We almost got shot. Are you sure you want to go through with this just for a chance to get some money. There are many more smarter, safer jobs out there.” I shook my head, “None like this. We just got $700 for standing our ground,” I said pulling the money out to show him. “Because we were going to get shot at!” I shook my head again and headed toward the parking garage. Kane groaned in the background calling me stupid. “Stop being a baby and hurry up,” and we caught up to our new boss.
We followed him to an old 1980’s BMW. It was dark green with tinted windows and many other sporty modifications. The wheels on the car were slanted with giant white rims imbedded in them, the car’s muffler faced out toward the passenger door instead of the trunk, and a black racing fin was on top of the trunk as well. The logos of different company’s and websites were place all around the car as well as different numbers and years. On the hood of the car, Candy Man was written across in a weird font. “Yup. This is my baby. She’s got me through a lot of s**t over the years, almost lost her twice but we managed to get through it all,” then man said as he patted his car. I pointed to the hood of the car, “Is this what you deliver your stuff in? For a guy who said he has a lot of people looking for him that want to hurt him, it would be pretty easy to find you.” He laughed at my response then patted his car again, “Nah little homie. Sweet Cheeks here is just for advertisement and to let people know who beat they asses. She’s good publicity, but not for supplying,” he sighed and walked around to the driver door and opened it, “Alright, y’all can get in and we can talk more about Sweet Cheeks on the way there. It should be open,” and pointed to passenger door. On the way to the warehouse he talked about what he mainly used his cars for and where a big bulk of his money came from, underground racing. Sweet Cheeks was his main car but he used other ones for different races and races he need a different kind of car for. I didn’t really care about his races or his cars, but Kane was surprisingly interested in it. He was not only paying attention, he asked him question about his cars and what kind of different modifications he did to each one and what sparked his interest in engineering and racing. He even asked the crazy driving maniac, “Where did you learn to drive with such skill?” after literally running 14 traffic lights, running over sidewalks and everything on them, and maintaining a speed of 120 mph the entire ride. I was surprised we made it to his shop without being pulled over by the police or having his car impounded. “I’m surprised you like her so much little quite homie, I’m also surprised you could talk this much. This was the most words I ever heard you say in the months I’ve been seeing you guys go to the gym. Usually it’s this little n***a saying everything for you,” and he laughed pointing at me. I ignored him and asked Kane, “what’s up, why the sudden interest in cars” with my eyes without actually saying it to him. He smiled at me then told the man “It’s a fairly nice machine you have. I love studying and enhancing things, something I picked up from somebody a long time ago. I would love to see you work on it one day.” The man continued to laugh as he blushed, “Haha hell little homie, of course I’ll show you one day. Stay with me long enough and I’ll even show you how to drive the b***h, the right way that is,” and he patted Kane on the head. Kane just stood and smiled as he told him, “ I would be honored,” and we all walked into the old, run down mechanics garage.

Author's Note

I apologize in advance. Each one of my chapters are actually one or a few paragraphs from my books. The sentences are long and the way their put together may be difficult for some readers. I am working to fix this issue now, but in the mean time please read and enjoy the story.
Many Thanks,
-Blackdeer