Save Yourself Read Online Free PDF Page A

fucked sideways by a transvestite with a thorny branch before I went anywhere near him again.
    I couldn’t believe Brent had borrowed money off him. Okay, scrap that. I could totally believe it. The man had vices—a lot of them. Cheap booze, expensive women, weed, and ecstasy. He mostly stayed away from the harder stuff—like heroin and meth. He saved that shit for his “clients.”
    Brent was a dealer too, though he sometimes “consulted” for Red, which was how he was able to borrow money off him. Still, doing a few favours for the guy didn’t mean Red would go easy on him if he didn’t pay the money back, and fast.
    “How much?” I asked, weary and already dreading the answer. My headache was a full-blown rock concert in my temples, minus the actual music, just the thumping bass. Like listening to Rammstein with the volume turned way up.
    “Hmm? What’d you say?” Brent looked up at me. He’d been surreptitiously examining my shiny new IPod on the sofa.
    I stalked over and snatched it away from him. I shoved it in my pocket and crossed my arms again, glowering down at him. “I asked how much do you owe Red.”
    “Ah. Not that much, really. Just, you know…few hundred.”
    Bullshit. He wouldn’t have come to me for a few hundred. He’d have mined his clients by upping his prices for a few days. He worked a part of town that could afford it. His turf was just around the prep school where all the angry, rich kids hung out and looked for ways to get back at daddy for ignoring them, or just for ways to forget themselves and their piss-poor little problems.
    I curled my lip into something like a sneer. “Yeah, right. Try that again, Brent. How much do you really owe?”
    He sighed, picking at the edge of his split lip, rubbed his neck, and sighed again.
    I waited.
    Finally, he grunted and mumbled, “Maybe a couple grand.”
    “How much exactly? ”
    He sighed. “About fifteen grand,” he admitted.
    I groaned.
    He held up his hands and hastily added, “But I’ve got about half of it tucked away someplace safe. I just need a little more time to get the rest. If you could just let me stay here for a few days…or you know, if you could spare a little cash, I’d be out of your hair tomorrow. Come on, Rogue. You’re my favourite nephew.”
    “I’m your only nephew,” I countered, growling. “And I’ve only got a couple hundred to spare at the minute. I just got a new bike, after what happened to the last one,” I said pointedly.
    Brent knew what I was talking about, and made a rueful face. “Hey, I said I was sorry about that, but you know that wasn’t really my fault. I told you before we went into that place that leaving that thing on the street was a bad idea.”
    I gritted my teeth. “You didn’t say it would get fucking torched while we were inside, talking you out of another debt.”
    He looked set to shoot back, but I held up my hand, silencing him. I didn’t want excuses, and I didn’t want to re-hash the past. I just wanted him gone, preferably before Jet got home, or before Red found him there, and I got caught in the crossfire…again.
    “Look, I can give you two grand right now, but that’s all I got, and you need to leave. You can’t be staying here, Brent. Not after last time. I’ve got a flatmate now, and he wouldn’t take well with you bringing this shit in here. There’s a cheap hotel a couple of streets over. Stay there tonight, and I’ll see if I can dig up some more money for you, okay?”
    Brent nodded eagerly. Getting to his feet, he clasped my hands in his rough ones. “You’re a real life-saver, Rogue, you really are. I dunno what I’d do without you. You’re a saint, lad.”
    I pulled my hands away and waved him off. “Yeah, yeah. Just promise me you won’t come back here. Ever. If I get some more money together, I’ll come to you. Got it?”
    He nodded again, and I went through to the back of the flat, where mine and Jet’s rooms were, on either side of