Brother/Sister (7 page)

So while I was telling that story about Mom trying to run Dad over, I didn’t mention that once he’d subdued her, he’d marched her up to their bedroom and locked her in, left her there for like a day and a half, even after she’d calmed down and no matter how much she begged and promised she’d get her anger under control. Yeah. He was quite a guy.

“I wish he was here now,” she said. “He’d be way better than Keith at knowing what to do.”

I almost lost it. Then I caught myself.

It’s inevitable, I guess, that she’d idealize Dad. She never really knew the man. When he left, she was three years old. That’s not a lot of time to get to know someone. And what you do know, you forget. I mean, I can’t remember anything from when I was three, can you? Maybe a flash of sound, or the feeling of riding your Big Wheel down a hill, but that’s about it. Nothing real. Nothing you can really get your head around.

Really, the only thing she remembers clearly is that he had a wiry brown beard that she liked to scratch her cheek against. Which is true. He did have a beard like that. Everything else, though? It’s total bullshit.

Still, there’s so little that’s gone right in Asheley’s life that I don’t think I would have been able to live with myself if I’d stomped all over this fantasy of hers.

The truth is that I’m the one who’s here to protect her. I’m the secret angel looking out for her. I always have been, I always will be.

She’s okay, right?

Have you talked to her?

Tell me she’s okay.

Or I can just stop talking.

Right. So, that night in the living room, after they took Mom away, things were bleak.

And the look on Asheley’s face. Total fear of the future. And, see, here’s a moment when I played the hero.

I cracked a smile. I winked at her. “Listen,” I said, “I’ll be right back.” And I hopped up and ran up to my room to get the bottle of champagne I’d stashed away there last New Years, partly to keep it away from Mom, but also thinking that it would come in handy if I ever had anything to celebrate.

Holding the bottle high above my head, I took my time marching back down the stairs.

“Grab some glasses! We’re gonna celebrate!” I said.

“Why?”

“First of all, I’m the best golfer in all of San Luis Obispo County. That counts for something. And second, you kicked ass today on the softball diamond. Right?”

“I guess so.”

“So, you and I know how big that is. Why let Mom take our triumph away from us?”

“Ha.” Asheley began to get into the spirit of things.

She set two wine glasses on the marble counter that separates the kitchen from the living room area and I positioned myself to pop the cork, aiming it toward the ceiling four floors above my head, toward the geometric, modernistic chandelier that Ash and I used to try to reach out and touch from the landing in front of our mother’s room.

I twisted the metal wrapper off. I eased the cork up. And bang, like a gunshot, I sent it sailing. The second floor landing. Not bad for a first try.

Then I poured us each a glass, and holding mine up ready to toast, I said, “And, third, Mom’s gone. She’s gone! We’re free! If that’s not something to celebrate, I don’t know what is!”

“You think so?”

“Absolutely! Hell, if we can survive life with her in the house, we can definitely survive life without her!

This got a timid grin out of her.

We chinked glasses and drank.

“Wonder Twins, unite!” I said, and we touched our fists together.

God that was satisfying. Just saying it aloud,
Mom, I don’t need you
. It was like suddenly I really was free, like I wasn’t just pretending for Asheley’s sake.

And with my emotions running high like they were, I drank fast. We both did. We finished the bottle off in maybe an hour, tops. We put some music on and cranked it up loud—not Mom’s crusty old Guns N’ Roses, but good music. Our music. And we danced around, spazzing out. It was fantastic. In some weird way, we were purging ourselves of Mom. The longer we danced, the lighter the room got, like her mean spirit was going up in smoke.

Finally, exhausted, we collapsed to the floor and laid there on the rug, watching the room spin around us.

“Hey, remember that game we used to play?” I said. “Out by the cliffs? When we’d sit at the edge and let our feet dangle off the side?”

“End of the World!”

“Yes! End of the World! And we’d imagine what was lurking down there, all that stuff we couldn’t see because the fog was so thick. You always said popsicles.”

“Well, yeah, of course, because at the edge of the world there’s another one, and in that one everything
is
made of popsicles. Don’t you know anything, Will?”

“Everything? Popsicles? Don’t you think the roads would be made of ice cream sandwiches, at least?”

“Nope. . . . I guess maybe there’s some creamsicles, but they’re sort of the odd ducks. They don’t get along with all the popsicle everything else.” Then she kicked me with her heel. “You know what else I remember?” she said. “You got mad one day and threw my Barbie off the cliff.”

“Yeah, but that was to prove a point! You didn’t believe things could survive the leap from this world to the next and I had to show you they could. I climbed down immediately, through the fog and everything, and I’m telling you, it was treacherous, I couldn’t see a thing, and I got that Barbie back for you.”

“You got her back, but her face was smashed in!”

“Well, she survived, though.”

“Barely.”

“Enough to torture Ken for another five years.”

“Ha!” she said.

We laid there, sort of floating, almost content, filled with hope.

“Ash?” I said. I’d been thinking about the way she fantasized about Dad, thinking I should let her know, somehow, that I was the one she should really rely on.

“Ash, we don’t need anyone else. Really. Ever. I swear, I promise, I’ll protect you. For the rest of your life. No matter what happens.”

I’m at the mercy of my moods.
If I’m in a dark place, like I was then, it takes an immense amount of effort for me to force myself out of it. What I mean is, I missed Craig. Even after what had happened. I wanted to see him, to talk to him. He had his own problems with family, and I just knew talking to him would make me feel better. But I didn’t want to seem desperate about it.

Among the many things I had let slide since that night when everything went down with Mom was that I hadn’t spoken to him. He’d sent me a couple texts, one on Sunday saying,
What’s up?
then another a day later saying,
You still pissed?
but I sort of didn’t have the nerve to text him back.

Like I said, I was having serious trouble dealing.

So, when Naomi called me on Wednesday morning to see if I was still going to Becca’s party, I said “Absolutely! I’ve been looking forward to it all week,” not ’cause I wanted to go, exactly, but ’cause I didn’t want to not go. It seemed like an important thing to do. To prove to myself I was still capable of being a human being, somehow.

Yeah, that was a kind of early tip off.

I told Ash not to go.

I said, “The only reason you’re going is to show them you can. To prove to them that you’re not afraid of them. But you don’t like those people. They’re all a bunch of Joiners. You don’t need those people. What do you care if they think you’re afraid or not? Stay here and watch old episodes of
Lost
on Hulu with me. That’s what you really want to do.”

But did she listen to me?

Of course not.

Naomi gave me a ride, and the first thing, she was disappointed that Will wasn’t coming. I had to make up a lie. “Oh, he’s sick,” I said. “Food poisoning. He ate some bad chicken.”

She arched an eyebrow. “He’s not just avoiding me?”

“No, of course not. He wanted to come. He just. . . he’s been vomiting for the past four hours.”

“Ugh,” she said. “Well, he’s not off the hook. That boy needs to be socialized!”

Right, I know, you want to hear about Craig. I’ll get to what happened with him. There’s a few steps in between I have to explain, though.

We got to Becca’s house and the place was so jam-packed that we had to park like a block and a half away and walk up the hill. Then when we got inside, it took almost half an hour to push through the crowd crammed around the drinks table.

By the time I got out of the thick of the mob, Naomi had disappeared.

I wandered into the backyard to check things out. It was just like I’d heard. This massive landscaped place with lots of separate areas to it—the hot tub area, the pool area, the orchard area, the grotto area—each held up on a different level by a wall of blond rocks. It was like something out of Epcot Center or something, uber-rich America land.

I toured through each area, sort of keeping to myself, exploring. Craig didn’t seem to be there, and that was a huge disappointment. Finally I found a quiet spot on the back porch where I could sort of be alone. I figured, if I could hang out here for a while and get used to being in this big social space, I’d be able to catch the spirit of the fun and eventually relax enough to join in.

A few of the softball girls found me eventually—Crystal, Ruth—and we chatted for a while and then Ruth said, “Hey, did you and Craig break up or something? What’s up with him?”

A shot of panic went rumbling through me.

“What do you mean? Is he here? Where?” I said.

“Of course he’s here,” she said. “It’s not a party if Craig hasn’t shown up.” Then she gave me a crooked look. “Sort of defensive, aren’t we, Asheley?”

“Yeah, it’s just—”

“Trouble in paradise?”

“No, no, it’s just . . . I didn’t know he’d gotten here yet. Where is he?”

She pointed across the yard, and there he was with Pauly, sitting high up on one of the stone walls. They’d brought bright red-and-yellow pump action water guns with them and were shooting people in the back of the head.

Seeing him, I totally lost my nerve. I circled around to a spot near the trees where, hopefully, I could see him but he couldn’t see me.

He and Pauly were targeting girls. Aiming for their butts. And then when the girl would spin and look for who shot her, they’d wiggle their fingers at her in a way that was goofy and threatening all at the same time. Lewd in some hard to explain way.

I couldn’t help wondering if he knew I was there. He always seemed to be situated in just such a way as to almost, but not quite, be looking at me.

Yeah, it rattled me. It made me a little paranoid. He seemed fine without me. Oblivious. Not missing me at all. And the better off he seemed, the more I wondered what was wrong with me.

And then, almost like I’d willed her into being, Claudia Jackson came dancing up to me! Claudia Jackson! Completely drunk—like bombed off her ass, which I guess is no surprise. She’s got that rep. She’s the girl people invite out to parties just to see what kind of fool she’ll turn into this time. She was wearing a horrible lime-green bikini underneath a button-down shirt that she’d tied to show off her boobs. This was supposed to be a seductive look, I think, but the effect was it highlighted her belly rolls.

“Hey, Asheley,” she said, “I’d start protecting my assets, if I were you. Craig’s totally flirting with every girl here.”

Of course it made me angry! But that doesn’t . . . It made me sad, too. Mostly sad. What I did was flee. I followed the cobblestone path up the hill and perched myself against a broken Grecian column in the ruins area way up in the highest plane. From there, I could see basically everything, and in order to distract myself from Craig, I tried to find other things to pay attention to. People were jumping in and out of the pool, lounging around in the hot tub, smoking up in the shadows where they thought they couldn’t be seen. Becca and her brothers were wandering around with cookie sheets filled with Dixie Cups of Day-Glo blue and yellow Jell-O shots. Groups of girls were falling all over each other in the folding chairs Becca had set up everywhere, posing in groups for photo after photo to post to their Facebook pages, as though getting drunk was some huge accomplishment. Guys were standing in packs along the edges of the action, checking out the girls, tilting their whole bodies to comment to each other, then laughing in huffy self-satisfied ways.

A shot of water hit me in the gut, and turning to see where it had come from, I saw Craig far below me, bobbing in the pool, waving his gun in the air like an action hero.

And who was there with him? Claudia, the skank. She had her legs wrapped around his waist, one arm thrown over his shoulder, half floating in the water, half grinding up against him.

He grinned at me. “Sucka!” he shouted, a gaping, drooling drunken grin taking over his entire face.

They kissed. Well, she kissed him and he let her do it. And the only thing I could think to do was call Will and ask him to come rescue me.

If you only knew
what kind of a rage I was in. I leapt out of the car almost before I’d turned it off, before I even knew what he’d done to her, and I raced off to find him. I swear, I could have killed him right there. That’s all I kept thinking. That no way was I going to let him hurt Asheley like this.

But, and this is important, you have to understand, even after all this, Ash wanted to protect him. She grabbed me by the edge of my shirt and yanked me back. Actually tore the shirt. She begged me to leave him alone. That’s when the tears came. They were like a tidal wave. She kept mumbling, “Let’s just go. Take me home. Right now. Take me home. Please. Right now. Right now. Right now.”

So, okay, fine. I took her home.