Alan, the Champion — Chapter 8 — The Kid
On an ordinary day, Alan crosses paths with a kid who won't lower his head.
Before he was King, he was cannon fodder, a convict, a killer. At thirteen, he ran grown men.
It was an ordinary day.
Tuesday, early afternoon. Slow business. I was doing something I almost never did in person, but that day there was nobody I could hand it off to: carrying two kilos of coke from one spot to another, in my backpack, walking down my own street like any kid coming home from school.
Two kilos in your backpack is more than enough reason not to want even a fly looking your way.
And that's exactly when the street started making noise.
First I heard it. Kids yelling, a body slamming into a gate, that nervous laughter of people watching a fight who don't want to be close enough to end up in it.
When I turned the corner, it was already over. Two street kids on the ground, one holding his nose, the other just sitting, deciding whether getting up was worth it. And standing between them, a third.
Smaller than the two he'd dropped. Smaller than almost everybody there.
A little Indigenous kid. Brown skin, straight black hair falling over his forehead, a split lip that didn't seem to bother him. T-shirt torn at the shoulder. And a posture — shoulders back, chin up — of somebody who thinks the whole world owes him something and is late on the payment.
He saw me coming. The other two took the chance to disappear. Not him. He came walking toward me like he knew me.
He stopped one step away from me. Right in front.