Episode 2: Freddie's Dead

Rico

I never thought I had to worry about missing life events while in the field. Nothing like this has happened before. Nothing like this.

And yet, I don’t think I missed it. I remember a sharp pain in my head, followed by one in my heart. Passed out, and woke up in the infirmary. They didn’t know what was wrong with me, but I did. I knew instantly.

Fredo was gone.

I felt the emptiness immediately, and no matter how many enemigos I slaughtered, the emptiness persisted.

I feel it now, waiting for my plane to disembark.

The difference between identical and fraternal twins isn’t just how they look, but how they’re made. Identical twins come from one egg that splits. We’re not just wombmates, we are one in the same.

And now he’s gone.

It’s finally my turn, so I stand, grab my duffel, and shuffle out of the plane. Always travel light. Nan taught us that. So I don’t have to go to baggage claim. I just keep walking through the airport until the humidity of a Kenton summer day greets me.

Summer Dae.

I need to see my Hazey.

Guilt assaults me like it always does but I fight it off. And when I see my best friend, my platonic soulmate, I smile for the first time in weeks.

I drop my duffel just in time to catch my Haze. She sobs into my shoulder, wrapping her legs around me.

We take on the emotions the other can’t handle. She’s crying for me, because she knows I can’t. Just like I hate for her, because I know she’s incapable.

Eventually she gets herself together, and I put her down to grab my duffel. We don’t speak. She just holds my hand and leads me to her Beamer, where the third corner of our square, Turk, is sitting in the driver’s seat.

I throw my duffel in the trunk and get in the front with him after helping Hazey into the back, and then we’re off toward my brother’s wake.

“You spoke to Nan?” Turks asks after awhile.

“Not really. How has she been?”

“Give Rico that envelope in the glove compartment… she gave this to me last week when I told her you were coming. I haven’t seen her since.”

I take the envelope from Haze and open the letter that was inside. My eyes pinch as I fight not to crumble it.

Ricky,

Come home after you say goodbye to Freddy. We still have a chance to get it right.

-Nan

“You haven’t seen her at all?” I ask as we turn into the funeral home parking lot.

“No,” Autumn says. “When I went to drop off some food, I used my key, and the apartment was cleaned out.”

I fold up the letter and slide it in my pocket. Nan and her riddles.

Once Turk parks, we exit the car and Haze wraps her arms around one of mine. Turk slides on some sunglasses and walks ahead of us. Sometimes I don’t know who’s hurting more out of the three of us. Maybe it alternates.

“I miss him so much,” Autumn whispers to me. I wrap my arm around her as we enter the funeral home. Straight ahead is a blown up picture of him. My psyche temporarily stalls, seeing my face with In Loving Memory above it. Where I cut my hair when I went off to the Marines, Fredo kept his long, in a thick low ponytail always. Always smiling. Always soft spoken. Loyal to the soil.

Haze squeezes me harder as we slowly walk up the aisle. I should have made him come with me. We did everything together. But he was worried about being in the Armed Forces. The Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell bullshit was weighing him down, and I didn’t push, because he was just starting to accept that part of himself.

He couldn’t reconcile it for a long time. Being bisexual and a gangsta. 

I mean, we’re tall, and be fighting, and serving, and robbing, and doing whatever young project babies do. But where I was having grown women slide their numbers to me, Fredo was off daydreaming about the latest R&B singers and shit. I never gave a fuck. Love who you love. But my brother did. He cared too much, and besides his one ex nigga I ended up having to smoke a few years back, no one we ran with outside of me, Haze, and Turk knew.

Haze and Turk accepted him. And he wanted to stay behind with them. Told me one of us had to look out for Romeo and Juliet. So I dapped him up, and he saw me off to basic training.

And now he’s dead.

Staring at your identical twin while he’s in a pine box is trippy to say the least. I see the glue where they put his skin back together. Where he was shot. Autumn’s vibrating, before finally sobbing and leaving my arms for the casket.

“Oh, Fredo. It’s not fair!” she screams. Turk comes and pries her off the casket.

I can’t move.

I can’t look anywhere except at my own face. Sleeping peacefully. Hair slicked into two low braided ponytails.

It’s finally hitting me; I’m alone in this world.

I turn and walk out of the home as calmly as I walked in. Fredo’s dead. There’s nothing left for me to see here. 

A blonde-haired girl is tapping on her phone, not paying attention as usual. I hold my hands out to stop her from running into me. She lifts her head and scowls before realizing it’s me.

Wynter Snow. For some reason, Fredo took pity on this ice cold bitch. He always said she reminded him of Ma. She had the same dead look in her eyes.

He only held pity because he’s a hard sleeper. He wasn’t awake to hear what I heard. Otherwise he’d hate Ma, and any bitch who reminded him of her.

I squeeze her arms and bring her close to me, relishing her wincing at her discomfort.

“You’re not welcome here,” I whisper to her.

She’s scowling and trying to get out of my grip, but it’s no use. I lean in more, until I’m at her ear.

“If I see you again, I’m putting one in your forehead, like I should have done when I was seventeen.”

Fear flashes in her eyes, followed by remorse. But I don’t give a fuck about any of that. The way she did Haze, I’d never do my brother that way, and he never would do me that way, either.

Being a twin is a privilege. Sacred. And my blood yearns to snuff out her life even more so, now that my womb mate is gone, while she pays hers dust.

When she tries to twist out of my grip this time, I let her go, and watch her rush out of the funeral home, and hopefully out of my life forever.

But taking my anger out on a lost soul like Wynter Snow does little to nothing to qualm the daunting emptiness inside of me.

I take out my phone and book a flight for Belize.

Maybe I’ll find more answers there.