Chapter 20: "I Also Have Friends"
Outside the Home in the Woods Orphanage.
Rango closed the door of the pickup truck behind him and stared at it for a long moment, shaking his head.
"Once Emma moves in, we're getting a new car," he muttered.
"Why?"
Ted hopped out through the window on the passenger side — because the door handle was, predictably, too high for him to reach — dangled from the frame for a second, swung twice, and dropped to the ground with a soft thud. He looked up at Rango with genuine confusion. "This is my masterpiece. I literally spent all week picking it out. It's barely been driven."
"That is exactly the problem."
Rango kicked the tire of the Ford F-650 beside him — a truck so massive it looked less like a family vehicle and more like something you'd see hauling bulldozers on a highway. The thing sat high off the ground, all chrome and black paint and an engine that sounded like it belonged in a monster truck rally.
"Ted, the door of this thing is over a meter off the ground." He gestured at the cab. "Emma is four years old. How exactly is she supposed to get in? Climb a ladder? Do you expect her to do what you do — hang off the rearview mirror and swing down like a monkey every time we park?"
Ted opened his mouth. Closed it. Looked at the truck. Looked back at Rango.
"...Huh."
"I told you," Rango said, pinching the bridge of his nose, "to go to the used car lot and find something appropriate for a child. Instead you bought a road grader."
Ted had the decency to look slightly sheepish about this. But only slightly.
He studied Rango for a moment — the way he was pacing, the way his jaw kept tightening and releasing, the way his hands kept going to his pockets and back out again, like he didn't know what to do with them.
Ted had known Rango long enough to read the signs.
"Hey," he said, tugging gently at Rango's leg. "You good? You've been muttering since we left the museum. Like, a lot."
Rango stopped pacing. He stood there for a second, staring at the orphanage gate without really seeing it.
Then he let out a breath — long, slow — and shook his head.
"I don't know," he said. "I just... everything's moving really fast. Not that long ago I was still doing shady stuff overseas, running around in places I probably shouldn't have been. And now I'm back in New York, and I've got a haunted house, and a museum job, and now I'm about to adopt a kid." He rubbed the back of his neck. "It's just a lot. All at once."
Ted tilted his head. "You don't like your sister?"
"What? No — of course I—" Rango stopped. Blinked. Then let out a short laugh, shaking his head. "No. The opposite. She was..." He trailed off, and something shifted in his expression — something quieter, softer, the kind of thing that only showed up when Rango thought no one was paying close attention.
"She was the best person I knew," he said, simply. "When Mom and Dad were gone — which was most of the time — she was the one who kept everything together. And she wasn't even that much older than me. But she just... did it. Handled everything. Food, school, making sure I didn't fall apart. All of it."
He lit a cigarette, took a long drag, and let the smoke out slow.
"I remember this one time — middle school. Football practice. The coach was going off on me about something. I can't even remember what anymore, honestly. But he was loud. In my face. The whole nine yards."
A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
"And my sister — she was watching from the bleachers. She saw the whole thing. So she just... came down. Walked right onto the field. Right up to the coach." He held his cigarette between two fingers, gesturing vaguely at the height difference. "This guy was a foot taller than her. Didn't matter. She got right in his face and said — and I quote — 'Listen here. Nobody. I mean nobody. Gets to talk to my family like that.'"
Ted stared at him. "Damn."
"Yeah." Rango exhaled another cloud of smoke. "Yeah, exactly."
He was quiet for a moment. The cigarette burned between his fingers, the ember glowing orange in the gray afternoon light.
"You asked if I'm worried about not being able to take care of Emma," he said, after a while. His voice was quieter now. More careful, like he was picking his way through something fragile. "I think... I am. A little."
He looked at the orphanage gate — the modest wooden structure, the sign above it slightly faded by weather.
"My sister had a hard birth. A really hard birth. But she survived it. She had Emma. And everything she wanted — everything she hoped for — she put into that kid." He took one more drag and stubbed the cigarette out against the side of the truck. "If Emma grows up under my watch and she doesn't go to a good school, doesn't find work that matters to her, doesn't end up with someone who actually deserves her..." He shook his head. "How do I look my sister in the eye? After everything she did for me?"
The words hung in the air between them for a moment.
Then Ted reached up and put one small paw on Rango's leg. He looked up at him — serious, steady, no jokes.
"Believe me, Rango," Ted said. "She's never going to be disappointed in you."
Rango looked down at him. Then he smiled — real, if small — and shrugged. "Hope you're right. At least I won't be as useless as Emma's dad. Guy couldn't handle it and put a bullet in his own head. Left a four-year-old behind." He said it flat, matter-of-fact, the way people talked about things that had already hurt too much to hurt again.
He shook it off. Glanced at his watch.
"Speaking of which — where the hell is Kevin?" he muttered, his tone shifting back to irritation. "I've been standing here for thirty minutes. Thirty. Minutes."
Ted, who had been sitting on the ground beside him, wrinkled his nose. "Honestly? I don't think calling him was a great idea."
"Your fault," Rango shot back, pointing at him.
Ted held up his paws in surrender, but he didn't argue. Because Rango was right, and they both knew it.
The last time Rango had come to this orphanage — to start the paperwork, to lay the groundwork for the adoption — Ted had been with him. And Ted, in his characteristically blunt way, had made a few comments in front of the Director. Comments about certain people. Comments that had landed badly, that had put a look on the Director's face that said I'm watching you, and had made the whole visit about ten times more complicated than it needed to be.
So Rango had come up with a solution. A simple one, at least in theory: bring Kevin. Kevin, who was Black, who was loud, who was unmistakably, obviously, visibly a friend. Proof that Rango wasn't what the Director suspected he might be.
In theory.
Another ten minutes crawled by. Rango checked his watch again. Drummed his fingers against his thigh. Shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
And then — from somewhere down the road, still a good distance away — a sound hit them like a wall.
Engine noise. Massive engine noise. The kind that vibrated in your chest before you could even see the source. And underneath it, pounding out of speakers that were clearly turned up way past any reasonable volume, a rap track — heavy bass, aggressive flow, lyrics that were about sixty percent profanity and forty percent threats.
Rango turned his head.
Seven cars. Maybe eight. Coming down the road in a loose convoy, every single one of them modified to within an inch of its life. Three-hundred-millimeter tires. Custom exhaust pipes belching black smoke like they were running on something that wasn't entirely gasoline. Rims that caught the light. Body kits that made each car look less like a vehicle and more like something from a Fast & Furious movie that had been left in the sun too long.
Ted looked up at Rango. Rango looked down at Ted.
"Oh," Ted said, with the quiet satisfaction of someone watching a disaster unfold in slow motion. "So that's how this is going to go."
Bang.
The lead car — a blacked-out Dodge Charger with flames painted along the side panels — slammed to a stop at the curb. The door flew open like it had been kicked.
Out stepped Kevin.
Kevin was exactly what you'd expect from someone who had once described his personal style as "menacing but fly." Tight athletic vest, gold chain thick enough to anchor a boat, baseball cap turned sideways, sneakers that probably cost more than Rango's weekly groceries. He hit the ground with the kind of energy that suggested he'd been vibrating inside that car the entire drive over.
Behind him, spilling out of the other cars like a clown car at the world's most intimidating circus, came a dozen or so guys — all built, all dressed in similar gear, and every single one of them holding an automatic rifle like it was a natural extension of their arm.
Kevin scanned the area, spotted Rango, and immediately pointed at the orphanage gate with the kind of theatrical fury that suggested he was enjoying himself enormously.
"Mother fuck! Where's that bastard?!" he bellowed, loud enough to be heard three blocks away. Then he turned to Rango, grinning wide. "Yo, homie! Tell that punk to step out! Kevin's got something real to show him!"
He reached back, grabbed the bolt on his rifle, and started to rack it.
"Stop."
Rango moved fast. He crossed the distance in two strides, snatched the rifle out of Kevin's hands before the guy could get a full grip on it, and hurled it — underhand, clean, without looking — directly into the back seat of Kevin's car.
Then he turned on Kevin, one finger jabbing into his chest.
"What the hell, Kevin?" His voice was low but sharp enough to cut glass. He gestured at the armed parade behind them. "What part of this looks like a reasonable response? This is an orphanage, not a war zone!"
Kevin blinked. Looked at the guns. Looked at the orphanage. Looked back at Rango.
"Hey, I'm just doing what you asked," he said, spreading his hands with an expression of total innocence. "You called me. Said you had a situation. Said you needed backup. So..." He shrugged, like this was the most logical sequence of events in the world. "Here we are."
Rango opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"I said I needed support. Like — moral support. A witness. Not—" He swept his arm at the small army flanking them. "This."
"Oh." Kevin tilted his head. "My bad."
He turned and waved lazily at his crew. "Yo. Put the heat away. We're not doing that today."
The rifles disappeared — into car trunks, under jackets, behind seats — with a speed and practiced ease that suggested this was a routine they'd done many times before.
Rango exhaled through his nose. Then Kevin tugged two people forward from the group — a man and a woman, both Black. The man was tall and lean, with an easy, confident posture and a smile that said he found most situations amusing. The woman was built solid and wide, with bright eyes and an laugh that could probably be heard from the next county.
Rango looked at them. Something clicked.
"No way."
A grin broke across his face — wide, genuine, the kind that showed up rarely. He stepped forward, threw his arms out, and pulled them both into a hug — half-embrace, half-backslap, the kind of greeting that only happened between people who'd been through something together.
"Andre! Megan! Where the hell have you been?!"
"What's up, Rango!" Andre — the tall one — slapped him on the back hard enough to rattle his teeth, laughing. "Man, it's been way too long."
Megan — the woman, not the android — leaned back from the hug with a wide, toothy grin, her accent thick and warm and completely at home. "Soon as we heard you were back in New York and had some situation going on, we grabbed our stuff and drove straight here. Didn't even pack right."
"Don't listen to Kevin running his mouth," Rango said, shaking his head and laughing. "There's no situation. No fight. No one's in danger." He held up both hands. "I'm trying to adopt my niece. Her name's Emma. She's four. The Director here—" he jerked his thumb at the orphanage gate, "—thinks I might be a bigot. So I called Kevin to come hang out with me. Show the guy I've got friends. That's it."
Andre snorted. "So you need us to just... be here?"
"Basically, yeah."
"Easy." Andre cracked his knuckles. "We can do that."
Megan, meanwhile, had already crossed her arms and turned to face the orphanage with a look of mock-offense. "Hold up — so this Director thinks you're racist? The guy who literally—"
"Yeah, I know. It's stupid. But Ted here—" Rango jerked his thumb at Ted, who waved innocently from the ground, "—made some comments last time that didn't land well, and now we're playing cleanup."
Andre and Megan exchanged a look. Then Andre shrugged. "If he still gives you trouble after seeing us, we'll handle it."
"No," Rango said immediately, holding up a finger. "No handling. No snatching. No—" He looked at the guns that had just been put away. "—any of that. We are going in there like normal, civilized adults. Understood?"
"Understood," Andre and Megan said, in unison, in a tone that suggested they understood perfectly and were also finding this deeply entertaining.
But before anyone could move toward the gate, it opened on its own.
The Director stepped out.
He was a stocky man in his fifties, wire-rimmed glasses, cardigan over a button-down shirt — the picture of a mild-mannered authority figure. Right now, though, his face was the color of someone who had just watched a small armed convoy pull up outside his orphanage.
His eyes swept the scene. The cars. The guys. The gold chains. The barely-concealed weapons. Rango. Ted. All of it.
Then his gaze landed on Rango, and it stayed there.
"Mr. Winchester," he said. His voice was very calm. Very controlled. The kind of calm that meant someone was choosing their words with extreme care. "Would you care to explain this?"
A beat of silence.
Rango looked at Andre. At Megan. At Kevin, who was leaning against his Charger with his arms crossed and a grin that absolutely did not help the situation. At the dozen or so guys now lounging casually around the convoy, looking for all the world like they were just hanging out on a Sunday afternoon.
Then he looked back at the Director.
And smiled. Forced, a little stiff, but trying.
"See," Rango said, gesturing broadly at the group behind him, "I also have Black friends."
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