The House Of Robles Ch. 15

Chapter 15

Party Gone Wrong

Amanda Robles took in the scene around her. She was in somebody's fairly large back yard, large for the ghetto, anyway, and while there were plenty of people dancing to the DJ's music, there were plenty of negative aspects present as well. The girls were all standing in little cliques when they weren't dancing. They were eying their rivals with contempt and gossip, and if their nemesis happened to walk by with a man by her side, their faces glared with outright jealousy and hatred.

The young men weren't much better. There had already been two small fights that had threatened to shut the party down. A growing contingent of gang members was hanging out in a corner of the yard, getting drunker and rowdier by the minute. Even at the tender age of eighteen, Amanda was already wise enough to know that these ruffians were going to end up instigating some sort of disaster later.

Amanda sighed. The pretty teen had gotten dressed up for the occasion. She wore a nice blouse colored in berry with tiny, multi-hued flowers on it, and a blue denim skirt. Amanda didn't know anybody at the party. She didn't like either the guys or the girls, or their horrible attitudes. It was still early, but she was already thinking about going home.

Well, she did know one person. Her brother Junior stepped up beside her with a beer in one hand and a wine cooler in the other. He wore his usual crisp white tee shirt and jeans.

"Here you go." Junior extended the arm with the beer, before quickly taking it back. "Sike! Take your fruity-fuck wine cooler out of here!"

"It's better than that warm piss you're drinking." Amanda retorted.

"Not warm yet." Junior shook his head and took a big gulp. "I got this one from the fridge. Somebody's going to be pissed off later when they find out I took it."

Amanda noticed that her brother was getting cold stares from the hoodlums, which now numbered at about eight. "I'm not liking those guys, at all."

Junior looked over. "I know. Two of them hit me up when I went inside to use the phone. I tried to call my buddy who dropped us off here, but he didn't answer."

Amanda shook her head. "We should just go. You know those assholes are going to come over and try to pick a fight with you, as soon as they get drunk enough."

"There's only eight of them." Junior joked. "And I can take on, what, maybe one or two at a time? I guess I would get my ass handed to me, huh?"

"You think?"

"Well, what do you want to do?" Junior asked. "I don't know anything about this shitty neighborhood, other than it's far away from our house."

"Let's just go for a walk." Amanda said. "We'll find a liquor store with a pay phone. You can try calling your friend again."

"All right, let's go." Junior shrugged.

Amanda turned down the path that led past the side of the house, toward the gate they'd used when they first walked in.

"Not that way." Junior stopped her. "Those eight fuckers will follow us if they think we're heading out into the street. Let's just go through the house and make them think we're not leaving yet."

Amanda followed her brother through the home's back door. They went past a kitchen whose counter was overflowing with empty beer cans and half-empty bags of chips, and a sink full of dirty dishes and plastic bowls. "Who owns this place?"

"No idea." Junior said.

They went into the living room, where a couple of hoodlums and their girlfriends were smoking weed on the couches.

"Hey, guys." Junior nodded, but it was clear that these paired hoodlums were associated with the single ones outside. "We're going to grab our smokes from the car. We'll be right back."

As they stepped out the barred front door, Amanda noticed that one of the hoodlums got up and started off toward the backyard. She and her brother were on the residence's lawn when she revealed this.

"I saw that, too." Junior nodded. "Let's just walk a couple of houses down, then we'll get the fuck out of here, okay?"

Two yards later, the pair crossed the street. While using both cars and foliage as cover, they ran. The siblings stopped a block later, made a turn at a corner, and ran another half block before Amanda had to pause for breath.

"If I would have known we were trying out for the track team, I would have worn my sweats!" Amanda complained.

Junior considered his sister's outfit. It wasn't much, he observed in the moonlight, just a tight blouse and an even tighter skirt. "Let's just keep moving."

They walked on a few more blocks, before they came to a dark hill. Once they'd descended the hill, they found themselves on the edge of a much wider, and thanks to its lack of streetlights, equally dark and forbidding road. The venue didn't even have sidewalks on either side, but mere brush and grass.

"Where the fuck are we?" Amanda asked.

"If we walk this way, we'll end up near the highway and some businesses." Junior pointed. "But it's going to be a long walk before we get to a phone."

"Do we have a choice?"

"Not really." Junior said, and they started off.

To one side, the hill loomed up high and verdant, until a large brick wall near its crest divided its range from the fairly recently built residences sitting up top. There was nowhere for them to hide, if those gang members decided to pile into a car and came out looking for them. Since Junior didn't want to end up on some list of crime statistics, he quickly guided his sister across the street.

They found a dirt path running alongside the road, made by countless human footsteps. A few thin trees were scattered about, and a natural ditch stretched by along the path. The siblings could conceal themselves in the ditch if they had to.

Junior had been keeping tabs on the road behind them. "A car is coming up on us, from the same place we were just at."

He led his sister down into the ditch. Tensely, they waited for the car to pass them by, but it was creeping along at a very slow pace.

"It's gotta be them." Junior whispered. "Who else would drive so slow down such an empty road at night?"

"An old man."

"It's not an old man's car, though." Junior crept up, enough to be able to see where the car's tail lights were heading. "Not unless old men are into buying chrome wheels nowadays."

"Dad's been thinking about putting chrome wheels on his truck." Amanda said. "He's an old man."

"He's not that old." Junior straightened up. "Okay, it looks like those guys went up another street. Let's get going."

They did.

The brother and sister walked on for almost twenty minutes. Vehicles passed them by only half a dozen times. The travelers weren't overly concerned about them, since the cars were approaching from a contrary direction.

"This sucks." Amanda griped.

"Sorry." Junior said. "I didn't know my buddy was going to rank out on me like that. I would have never gotten off the car if I'd known he was going to take off just a few minutes later. I'm sorry I brought you out here."

"I didn't mean just tonight." Amanda elaborated. "I mean things just suck all over. Do you know how many parties I've been to where some stupid gang members start fighting and fuck it all up? They ruin everything!"

Junior kept on walking.

"And the girls at that party, they sucked, too." Amanda added. "Did you see the way they were looking at me? Like I was after every single one of their thug boyfriends. I don't think so!"

"Well, you're hotter than any of them were, that's for sure. I think you were the only girl that smiled during the entire time we were there."

Amanda considered this briefly. "Well, what about you? You should have had at least a couple of girls hanging on your arms. Why didn't you?"

"Neighborhood politics." Junior admitted. "I was an outsider at that party, just like you. They've already got their pecking order set up and their internal rivalries going on. People like us that don't belong to their little social groups. We get ignored because they're all competing among themselves. I learned a lot of this shit by listening to the older guys while I was in jail, because some of the cellblocks run the same way. It's kind of stupid, because people don't ever really look past their own noses. They miss out on everything else in the world because they're so busy with their own little corner of bullshit to worry about."

Amanda thought about her boyfriend, who was still in jail, and who kept getting time added to his sentence because he kept getting into fights with everybody. She'd chosen him because he was big and tough. Once she found out what an asshole he was, Amanda discovered that he was impossible to get rid of. He threatened everybody that made a move on her when he wasn't in jail. Now that he was incarcerated, his homeboys from the neighborhood would frequently stroll by Amanda at school. In no uncertain terms, they'd remind any possible suitors of hers of what they'd have coming to them once Amanda's boyfriend was released.

"Life sucks." She said. "Everything sucks."

"If you'd seen some of the guys I was in jail with and heard their stories, you wouldn't be saying that. You'd be saying your life was great."

They came to a small shopping center, but all of the lights were off except for some signs and a few lampposts spaced around the parking lot. A couple of abandoned cars sat around and moped in the darkness.

"It's got to be close to midnight." Junior said.

"You need to buy a watch."

"I will, as soon as somebody gives me a job." He complained. "You don't know how many times somebody takes a look at my criminal record, and shoves me out the door a second later. I wish I would have never started smoking weed."

"I just told you that life sucks."

"We've got it good, sis, compared to other people. You have to always remember that."

They came to a large and sprawling, two level white building. It had stucco walls and evenly spaced-out rows of doors and windows on both the upper and lower floors.

"I know this place." Junior said. "Dad drove me here a couple of times, to talk to a lawyer in one of those offices. There's a pay phone on the first floor."

The two walked over. While Junior busied himself with the phone, Amanda trotted up the steps to the second level. She found a spot where she could see the dark road and the quiet businesses across the street. Further down by a couple of blocks, she could see a gas station. Just past that lay the entrance to the highway. She felt relieved that they were close to a spot she more or less recognized.

Amanda heard Junior's footsteps shuffling up the steps.

"The phone's dead." He grumbled.

Amanda pointed out the nearby gas station.

"So, what are you waiting for?" Junior asked. "Don't tell me you're tired of walking already."

"I don't have the leg muscles you do." Amanda quipped. "I didn't get chased around a prison yard like you did for the last four months."

"I didn't go to state prison." Junior reminded her. "I went to county jail. Big difference. There's a lot less room to chase somebody in there."

"Let me just stay here for a minute to think about things." Amanda said.

Quietly, Junior took a spot beside her.

They both stood this way, silent and contemplative, for the next few minutes.

"You got a girlfriend yet?" Amanda finally broke the stillness.

"Kind of."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"I do have a girlfriend." Junior revealed. "Her name is Sheila. She's white, and she goes to the same high school as our cousin Diamond."

"I hate Diamond." Amanda grimaced. "She's such a bitch! She's just like Aunt Cessy."

"I know." Junior concurred. "Diamond does a lot of crazy stuff. I kind of met Sheila because of one of Diamond's schemes. Anyway, Diamond is a horny little tramp, and she convinced Sheila to make our relationship open-ended. So Sheila can go out with other guys. I can go out with other girls too, if I wanted to."

Amanda glanced at her brother. "You happy about that?"

He shrugged. "I like Sheila a lot, but I'm not going to try and control her life either. We've only been seeing each other for a couple of weeks. We have to keep it under wraps, because Aunt Cessy thinks that Diamond and Sheila are lesbian lovers. This is how Diamond tricks her mother into letting her go out all the time. Diamond really goes out looking for guys to bang, and she drags Sheila around with her."

Amanda laughed. "That sounds like Diamond all right!"

"If Sheila still likes me after she gets out of high school, I might get serious with her." Junior admitted. "But she's having fun right now while she's romping around with Diamond. I don't want to stop her from having fun. High school was a pretty shitty time for me, remember? It was all bad grades and smoking weed for the last couple of years."

Amanda recalled her own situation with her overbearing boyfriend. "I know what you mean."

They stayed quiet for the next few minutes, until Amanda brought up another subject. "I have a crush on somebody. Somebody in our family."

"Who? Frankie?"

Junior would quickly pinpoint the individual, if Amanda weren't careful about masking that person's identity. "I'm not going to say any names, but it could be a male or a female."

"Okay. That's still only a handful of people."

"I'm not going to tell you anything else, if all you're worried about is who this person is." Amanda sounded perturbed. "I just wanted to ask you one question."

"Okay, go ahead."

"What do you think about two people from the same family sleeping together?"

"I would have said that was pretty disgusting, not too long ago." Junior revealed. "But some things have happened to me recently. They're making me rethink that whole deal."

"Like what?" Amanda's interest grew, in light of her own incestuous encounter with her brother Frankie, and her unfulfilled fantasy to sleep with her father.

Junior stared directly into her face. "The first night I got out of jail, I went to Melinda's house. She came on to me kind of strong. I couldn't help myself, since I hadn't been with a girl since way before I got thrown in jail." He paused to gauge her reaction. "You're not shocked?"

"Not really. Not about Melinda. I know she likes to pretend she's with every guy in the world, while she's busy fucking her boyfriend. Melinda tells me that sometimes, like it's her guilty little pleasure. I'm sure she wasn't thinking only of you the whole time you were doing it."

"I think that's what happened, too." Junior considered. "She thought she was at her strip club and giving some guy a lap dance. We both got carried away. We took it way past where we should have. That's not the only person, though."

"You slept with somebody else from our family?" Amanda couldn't believe her ears.

Junior nodded. "I went to Frankie's house the day after I slept with Melinda. I was just going to take a shower and pick up some extra clothes. That's all, I swear. When I got out of the shower, I saw Carmela lying on the bed. She was wearing only some red lingerie. She looked really hot..."

"You fucked Carmela?" Amanda sounded more shocked this time. "Did you tell Frankie about that?"

"No!" Junior shook his head. "I don't want to break up their marriage."

"Their marriage is already broken!" Amanda's ire rose. "It's just that Frankie is too blind to see what Carmela is doing to him. You have to tell him!"

"I don't know if I can." Junior admitted. "I mean, the thing with Melinda was bad enough, but at least that was between two grown people. The thing with Carmela, that was a straight betrayal on my own brother. I feel like an asshole for having done it."

"I slept with Frankie." Amanda revealed. As soon as the words left her mouth, she turned her head away.

"You did?"

Without facing her brother, she nodded. "It happened one time when Melinda threw a pool party. Frankie and Carmela were there, and so were all these guys from Melinda's apartment complex. I don't know why, but I got more turned on when Frankie was looking at me, than when all of the other perverts were. When Carmela and Melinda left, and Frankie and me were alone, I kind of dared him to touch me. And he did."

Junior thought this over. "And now you have a crush on him?"

"No, I have a crush on somebody else." Amanda replied. The words were very difficult to get out of her mouth. She took a deep breath. "I have a crush on dad."

"Wow." Junior's voice said. He walked around to take in the dark street, and to make sure no thugs were still cruising around. "Does dad know?"

"Yes." Amanda nodded. "I almost fucked him, twice."

Junior laughed. "What did he do?"

"He pushed me away the first time. The second time, I threatened to make a big scene in the house, so he kind of let me rub up on him for a little while." She paused for a long moment, before she gathered up the courage to tell her brother the rest of it. "I know about two of the women dad has been sleeping with, very, very recently. I kind of found out by accident both times. I'm thinking about trying to blackmail him with that information, so I can make him sleep with me."

"You're nuts." Junior chuckled. "Dad is going to hit the roof if you try to blackmail him. He'll probably kick you out of the house, like he did to me when he found out I was selling his tools to buy weed."

"You really think he'll do that?" Amanda asked, now nervous about her plan.

"I'm sure of it. One hundred percent."

Amanda sighed. "Do you think it's wrong for me to feel like this?"

"If you'd asked me that before I went to jail, I would have said hell yes." Junior answered. "But now, after I slept with Carmela and Melinda, and cousin Diamond, I'm not so sure."

"You slept with Diamond, too? Eeww! She's so nasty!"

"I don't know if I'd take that back, though. Thanks to Diamond's scheming, I ended up meeting Sheila. But you should really be careful about pushing the wrong button with dad. He'll go nuclear on you."

Amanda thought of how vulnerable she'd left herself. "You'd better not tell anyone about this."

"Well, you'd better not tell anyone about what I said, either." Junior replied. "You've got me thinking about dad now. I didn't think he was getting any action, ever since that whole thing where mom found out he'd been cheating on her."

"Melinda did that." Amanda revealed. "It was bullshit right from the start. It was meant to get mom fighting with dad, but I guess it went too far. Melinda made it all up. She even told me she did."

"Melinda's got a twisted head on her." Junior knew from experience. "I bet it was over money, right?"

"Yup."

"She's like mega-bipolar. I would never in a million years sleep with her again. The only reason I did that one time was because I was so horny after I'd gotten out of jail. Can you believe that she took off her shirt and put her tits right into to my face?"

"She's a stripper." Amanda reminded him. "She does that for a living."

"Still, I'm her brother. She should have never done that!"

"If I gave you the chance, would you sleep with me?"

Junior glanced over. His sister was leaning against the stucco balcony, facing him. She was wiggling a little, just enough to make her look sexy. Her tongue was pressed hard against the inside of her cheek.

"Would you fuck me right now, if I let you?" She repeated.

"You're not my type." Junior said, although he was having trouble keeping his eyes away from her. She was clearly aroused.

"Well, you're not my type, either." She said, but nevertheless she took a step closer to him. "The only reason I came out here tonight was to look for somebody to fool around with. I figured that since this party was so far away from our neighborhood, no guy out here would know who my asshole boyfriend is. You see how that plan turned out."

"I just came out for some free brew." Junior shrugged.