Critical Thinking

The Rules

A/N Can also be found on Cipher under the username Hatshepsut. God, I had such a hard time deciding on the genres. I've put it under Action, but the real action doesn't start for a while, then Angst/Drama. I just want to say that this story really belongs under Gang Culture.

Trilogy summary:

A story in three parts, of three gangs in an American ghetto.

Religious overtones, ripped-apart families, racist teenagers, not a trace of honesty and the complete and utter removal of morals (but not of ethics).

Disclaimer: Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" does not belong to me.

How many years must a mountain exist before it is washed to the sea?
How many years can some people exist before they're allowed to be free?
How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn't see?
The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.
The answer is blowing in the wind.

How many times must a man look up before he can see the sky?
How many ears must one man have before he can hear people cry?
How many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind
The answer is blowing in the wind.
The answer is blowing in the wind.

Prologue.

There are certain things in life that are simply accepted: that day will become night and spring will become summer, that in a world subject to change death will inevitably take us all, and that the Prescott family’s impeccably bad decision-making would only get worse with each generation.

Enter the last living Prescotts.

The story begins with a rolling of eyes – something that will be a recurring theme, no doubt. Indigo Prescott (seventeen and far too mature to be dealing with her thirteen-year-old would-be-brother-if-he-wasn’t-such-a-moron, thank-you-very-much) had heard a similarly phrased question every five minutes out of the past two hours of driving.

“I haven’t seen her since I was four,” Indigo pointed out once again, gritting her teeth. “Mama’s aunt. Maryellen. I think she turned sixty this year.” The scent of Tiger Balm filling the car as Angelo opened the small container. “Must you carry that thing everywhere?”

“Yes,” Angelo replied simply, rubbing some of the balm onto the undersides of his wrists. “Tell me about her, Indie.”

“What did your last slave die of?” Indigo asked, ignoring his disgruntled glare.

“Disobedience.”

Indigo bit the inside of her cheek, stopping harshly at a red light. “She raised mother from the age of twelve,” she informed him, albeit reluctantly. “Did anyone ever tell you why they stopped talking?”

Angelo shook his head. “I don’t recall her even being mentioned until you pointed out that she didn’t come to mama’s funeral.”

“It’s not that I really expected her to,” Indigo explained, “it just felt a little… lonely, with only the three of us there.”

Neither pointed out that the funeral earlier that week, with just the two of them, had been even lonelier.

“Do you know why they stopped talking?”

Hesitant, Indigo spared him a quick glance. Her mother wouldn't want her to explain it, but suicide was kind of a dealbreaker. “She didn’t agree with the way mother was bringing me up.”

The heavy scent of spice was making her head feel light, actually, but she knew better than to admit weakness. “Does she even know I exist?”

“Father saw to it that she was informed when mother died that they had a second child,” she said, “but at the time she had no idea.”

Angelo fell into silence once again, staring out of the window. He’s wondering how I’m going to be able to look after him, Indigo decided, the strange void in her stomach aching. He thinks that I’m just going to let Maryellen take over. He’s wrong.

In all honesty, they had never been close. Their father had raised Angelo; their mother had raised Indigo. Shared income and living arrangements had failed to bring their parents close and failed almost as badly with the siblings.

And really, this may have been what shaped the pair of them into the people necessary to fulfill the following accounts.