We had a layover in Houston. We got some snacks and found our gate with several hours to kill. I went to find a bathroom while Momz and Seth watched my bag. I was coming back down the concourse when I saw Momz and Seth huddled together looking at her phone. As I walked up behind them, I heard Momz say, "What's he doing?"

"Who?" I asked, looking over her shoulder.

She immediately shut the phone down. "Nobody." She looked and sounded guilty.

"Was that Uncle Clarence? It looked like he was in F2." Suspicions growing, I pointed to the phone. "Were you on Skype with him?"

Momz looked uncomfortable. "Ah, CW." Her voice dropped as she said my name. Her mouth turned down and her eyes begged for understanding.

"What she's trying to say is that it was Uncle Clarence in F2, but he wasn't on Skype."

"You put a camera in there, didn't you?" My voice was ominously low as I struggled to control the volume. "You said my space was clean, but you lied."

"No, hon," Momz said. "He didn't lie. Your space was clean. The company called the Friday before we left. They wanted us to test drive a new, very small camera they are trying out. If we help them, they're giving us an extra month free and the little camera to use as long as we're under contract. We just put it in F2 for while we're in Mexico. We weren't planning on leaving it there. I just didn't trust Jake and Marlow."

"Oh, I know how you feel about my homies." My eyes and my voice sneered. "But you didn't find them snooping, did you?"

"No, no we didn't."

"So, what was Uncle Clarence doing? I want to see."

"Uh, CW." Momz was stalling.

"Just show me."

She reluctantly pulled up the cameras on her phone. She was the only one with remote access while we were trying out the system. Once we signed a contract for the next year, we'd all get access on our devices.

"Back it up to where he comes in the shed." 

She did as requested. I heard Uncle Clarence say, "What have you gotten me into, Paul?"

Momz hit the mute button. "No! I want to hear."

She started over. Uncle Clarence started talking to himself again. "What have you gotten me into, Paul? First you give me the key to Blue Ox and swear me to secrecy. Now you tell me you have a secret stash that needs to be cleaned out before CW can find it."

While he was talking, he was taking stuff out of the cabinet. I held my breath when he took the blanket out, but the I-pad stayed hidden. I watched as he dropped the false back and peered in. The contents weren't clear, but it didn't matter.

"You weren't kidding." He began taking stuff out and putting it in a box mostly hidden behind the chair. "Booze, weed, bongs... You left him a treasure trove, you Son of a Bitch. You need to be down on your knees thanking that God of yours that he didn't get into this one of those times when he was about ready to throw Patty to the dogs."

He closed up the cabinet.

"I've seen enough." My voice cracked as emotion overwhelmed me.

"Did you know all of that was there?" Momz asked.

"Yeah, I found it, but I was a good boy." Sarcasm oozed from every word. "I left it there. I didn't even drink the Whiskey."

"Thank goodness Jake and Marlow didn't know," Momz said. "I'm sure they would have relieved you of your stash. They'd probably be selling it on the corner."

"But they did know." I drilled a hole through her with my eyes. "I gave them a bottle of Whiskey for Christmas. That's the only thing I've taken out of there."

I didn't tell Momz that Marlow had suggested selling the stuff. And I didn't tell her that they hadn't had a chance to relieve me of the stash because Seth had cameras installed a couple of days after I showed it to them.

"They may have been working on a way in," Seth said. "Maybe that's why the camera showing the back gate kept going black. The company had to go out at least three times in the last two weeks."

"And maybe not," I said. "Maybe the neighborhood toms didn't like their love life being spied on. My homies obviously weren't inside F2 or the house. You would have known."

"True," Momz said. "But that doesn't mean they weren't trying."

"I told you that they're good guys, deep down, but that's right, you don't trust my judgment." I paused to let the guilt sink in. "Just because they've had hard lives doesn't mean they're into breaking and entering."

"You know better," my mind warned. "That was just because they were cold and hungry," I told myself.

"I know," Momz said, "They're your homies."

"You told me your camera might prove you wrong," I reminded. "It just did. Jake and Marlow haven't showed. Uncle Clarence is the only one who is betraying anybody. He knew where the key to Blue Ox was all along. And now he's stealing my stuff."

"He didn't tell you that he didn't know where the key was," Momz reminded. "He just told you to ask your Dad."

"You knew, too?" I felt the weight of betrayal piling upon betrayal. My gut felt like it was on fire and I was starting to breath heavily.

"I did." She didn't even look apologetic. "I tried to get Clarence to take the bike home, once. He told me that it was your inheritance, and he wasn't touching it until your 18th birthday when you'd be an adult in the eyes of the law and could make your own decisions. I figured that was a long ways off, and I'd deal with it when the time came."

She turned my face towards her so she could see my eyes, like she used to do when I was little and was lying to her. Until recently, I couldn't look her in the face when I lied.

"Look at me, CW. I'm telling you the truth. If I had known all that stuff was in the shed, I'd never have told you that you could have any of your Dad's things that you wanted. You can still have the rest of it, the legal stuff. The things Clarence took are illegal. They were never yours to keep."

"Tell me about it." I almost choked on the words. "Why do you think I didn't tell you? I needed time to decide what I wanted to do with it."

"It looks like time just ran out."

"Yeah, it did."

I took my phone and walked over by the windows, as far away as I could get from Momz and Seth while staying in the gate area.

I hooked into the airport wi-fi and called Sasha on Skpe. She answered on the first ring. She was sitting by the pool. "Hi," she said. "You home?"

I panned the airport waiting room and the runway through the window. "Houston. Layover."

"Too bad. I thought you were going to give me a virtual tour of , what did you call it? Your crib place?"

"My crib. It's another word for home or a place that's yours - where you hang out. My homies hang out with me in F2, so I call it my crib." My explanation was delivered in a monotone, but she didn't seem to notice that my voice was like a cold wind blowing across the barren arctic. Maybe I didn't sound as desolate as I felt.

"I'm going to, oh gonna, have so many new words to teach my homies." She grinned into the phone.

I cut to the chase. "Anyway, I called to see if you could help me find a place to live if I came to Quadalajara."

"Live? For how long?" Her eyes were wide and her mouth half open. She finally seemed to cotton to my mood.

"Forever. My Momz put a camera in my crib after she said it was a camera free zone. My Uncle turned against me. Momz caught him on camera. She didn't want me to see, but I walked up behind her while she was watching so she showed me. Nobody here is in my corner. Not even Popz. I've got money in a savings account. I'm gonna take the cash and hop a plane back there."

"That would make you a runaway." She paused. "My parents would never let me bring home an American teen who was running away from home. That'd open us up to law suits and kidnapping charges."

"Well, don't tell them. I didn't think I could stay with you, but you know the city. You could help me find a place, cheap."

"And what are you going to do for money when your savings are spent? Wash car windows on the street or become a man whore?"

"I don't know. But anything is better than staying with these backstabbers."

Sasha frowned. "I know you're mad at your Mom, and you have reason to be, but she's still your Mom. Do you think she's not going to follow you here and take you back home? I know my Pappi would come looking for me, and he's not even my real Dad. Don't do anything dumb."  

I glared into the phone. "I won't run away to Mexico then, but I'm going to do something that will show them." 

She touched the bag hanging around her neck. "Kept your heart strong."

I smiled. "Okay. Talk to you later."

After I hung up, I was still mad but my mad wasn't coloring my world red anymore. Sasha had helped me see things differently. I sent Jake a text. "in Houston mmMcDs tomorrow noon need to talk."

The rest of the flight home was silent. I froze out Mom and Seth. Before I had thought Seth might be sort of in my corner. Now I knew better. 

When we got home, the first thing Momz did was ask for the key to F2.

"Why?" 

"I'm just going to remove the camera." She waved towards F2. "You can come watch."

So, I watched. The camera was hanging on the pegboard. I wouldn't even have noticed it. It blended in well with the tools.

"If we'd been trying to get one over on you, we would have hidden it. We could have easily put up there in the 2X4s." She pointed upwards. "You would have never seen it."

"Instead you hid it in plain sight." I indicated the peg board. "You know I don't use most of the stuff on there. I would've never thought to check and see if there was something new added."

"I didn't really think about it." She shrugged her left shoulder. "I wasn't trying to spy on you. I knew it'd be gone from here once we got back."

"Whatever." I turned towards the door. "I'm gonna sack out."

Momz was up and out the door by 9am the next morning. She had a spa day planned: massage, hair, nails, the works. It had been Seth's Christmas present to her. That kept me from having to explain to her where I was going at noon. I knew she didn't want me hanging with Jake and Marlow.

Momz and Seth had plans for New Year's Eve. I knew they would be out until the wee hours of the morning. That would give me time to get with my homies and put my plan in action. I'd show all of them. I wasn't some little kid they could boss around. If they didn't trust me, it was time they had a reason.

Jake and Marlow were in our booth, but they didn't have any eats. I went over, grinning. "Burgers and fries all around?"

"Sure," Jake said.

I got the eats with some chocolate milkshakes to wash it down. I figured they'd not had much in the way of food while I was gone.

"Whassup?" Marlow asked, after eating about half the burger in one gulp.

I filled them in on what I'd discovered by video.

"He took everything?" Jake asked. "You watched?"

"Well, the camera angle wasn't great and the box was behind a chair, but, yeah, he wiped me out. The cupboard is bare, just like in the nursery rhyme."

Marlow groaned. "All that Oxy flushed. Man what a waste."

"Momz puts old pills in kitty litter and dissolves it. Then she bags the litter and puts it in the trash. No flushing at our place."

Marlow laughed, "Some coon rooting around in your trash is in for a surprise."

"Did he dump the whiskey, too?" Jake asked.

"I dunno what he did with any of it. He boxed it and booked. But he drinks. He probably kept the bottles."

"So what's the plan?" Jake asked.

"Yeah, how you gonna stick it to Unk and Wicked?" Marlow added.

I told them what I was thinking about. They were all in. We agreed to meet a block from my house at dark thirty.

"Leave your car in the 7-11 parking lot and walk in," I told them. "You don't want someone calling the cops because an old beater was abandoned in front of their crib."

It was 7:30ish before it was completely dark. The sun actually set shortly after five, but twilight held on for what seemed like forever. I actually left the house about 5:30 so that I'd be seen leaving and returning. I went to CCs and played around on my tablet until time to meet the guys.

I made sure to come up on the meet without passing my house.

"Stay close to the fence and follow me," I told Jake and Marlow. "We need to go single file to avoid the camera that shows the mailbox."

Luckily the side where we were approaching was on the opposite side of the house from Sue Sue Maya. The neighbors in the house on that side were gone on some cruise or something. It was the perfect setup for what I had planned.

When I got to the fence between our yards, I turned north. I counted. Ten boards in, I stopped and pushed. The nails on our side were out on the bottom. I could still squeeze sideways through the loose slat, barely. Jake and Marlow were both skinny guys. They had no problem following.

Once we were on my side of the fence, I turned to Jake and Marlow. I pointed at the window in front of us, the only one not on camera. "Do your magic. It's unlocked."

"You're sure there's no camera?" Jake asked. "It'd be just like Wicked to stick it back in."

"I have the mini." I opened my bag and showed him the tiny camera. "She didn't put it back."

"Damn, man," Jake said. "You trying to give her a closeup?"

"It's off." I picked it up and showed him that no light indicated it was running. "You have to push on it to activate it."

"Why'd you bring it?"

"Maybe I'll give them something to watch later." I laughed. "It'd make a great helmet cam." 

Marlow gave Jake a boost up, and before I could blink, Jake was inside. I gave Marlow a boost. "See you in a minute." I disappeared back through the fence.

I walked up to the mailbox and checked the mail. Then I went in the house and got a coke and a bag of chips. I'd already stocked F2, but I wanted everything to look normal. I turned the front porch light on so Sue Sue Maya could see me. I walked over to F2, took off the padlock and went in, firmly closing the double doors behind me. There were no windows on Sue Sue's side of the house, only the door. She could see light coming out of the windows facing the house, but she couldn't see in without coming into our yard.

When I got inside, Jake asked, "Now?"

"Let's eat first," I said. "I took sandwiches and drinks out of the fridge and broke open the chips."

Jake carefully poured some drink from his flask into his coke.

"Hey." I grabbed the bottle. "You have to stay sober. You're driving."

"Too late," he said. "Don't worry, I have a high tolerance."

I shrugged, gave him the flask back, and let him pour some in my coke, as did Marlow.

"We chugged everything."

"Now," I said, taking the tarp off of Blue Ox. Jake reverently ran his hands over the bike. He raised the seat and picked up some wires. "All I have to do is connect these babies, and she'll come to life," he said.

"Well, after we put gas and oil in." 

"You didn't do that already?"

I pointed to the cans sitting under the saw table. I think there's enough there to get it running. We can stop and gas up if we need to.

Jake put in the gas and oil. "Five gallons is all we'll need tonight," he said. "We can get more later."

He made sure the spark plugs were tight and tinkered with a few things. He connected the wires and the bike roared. He wrapped some electrical tape around the wires. That'll do for now," he said, putting the seat down and mounting the bike.

Marlow climbed on behind him. I would bring up the rear, once we were outside. I was wearing Popz helmet. I stuck the little camera over my ear. All I would have to do was push on it if I wanted to give Momz a heart attack. The other guys were bareheaded. Neither one wanted Momz pink contraption.

"I like to feel the wind in my hair," Marlow said. "Helmets are for whimps...and newbies," he added, giving me permission to ride without wind benefits.

I turned the lights off. I opened both doors, and Jake and Marlow rode into the yard. I closed and locked the doors before taking my place. As we roared out of the driveway, we raised our hands towards the camera, giving it a one-finger salute.

Jake made the block and headed up the main street. Someone on a bike was a little ways in front of us.

"It's that loser BJ," Jake said over his shoulder. "Let's scare the shit out of him."

He started to pull to the left so he could come up beside BJ.

"No!" I screamed. "He's getting ready to turn left." BJ always took the ally to the back of his house.

The wind grabbed my words and blew them over my shoulder. BJ turned left just as Jake roared into the other lane. I heard the sound of metal impacting metal. As I flew backwards off the bike, I saw BJ flying through the air, stark fear on his face. Everything went black.