Brother/Sister (9 page)

I tried, though, that night. I really did. I made lasagna, a salad from Keith’s garden. We broke out some frozen jalapeño poppers and mini egg rolls for appetizers. Ash got us ice cream from Milky Moo’s. Fine. I was all down for playing the good host and smiling and pretending this was fun for me.

Ha. Some dinner party. Exactly what I didn’t want to happen happened.

Eight o’clock, eight thirty came and we started getting all kinds of knocks on the door. The girls from the softball team. Then, the baseball team. And the track team. Hell, even the chess team showed up. Guess someone didn’t get the memo.

They took over the stereo. There was pounding music and a massive grayish noise bouncing around the room from everybody shouting. There were people spilling their beer all over the hardwood floors.

Just . . . not a dinner party. More like a
let’s all get shit-faced
Joiner party.

And I couldn’t find Asheley.

And I kept getting caught up by Naomi. She’d grin at me and say things like, “Hey, let’s do some shots! I know how to make this great thing called a Swedish Fish,” or “This house is crazy weird. It’s like an aquarium. Where are all the other rooms? Can I get a tour?” or “When’s your next tournament? You’re going to State, now, right?” Just grinning and grinning. I’d mumble something to her and she’d nod and grin some more. Why? Because she liked me? She didn’t like me! She didn’t even know me. She hadn’t known me since we were in fifth grade, when we’d sat next to each other in Mrs. Kelly’s class and she would pass me all these stupid notes all the time, like, what’s your favorite color, and do you like music, and if you were an animal, which animal would you be? That’s the last time we’d ever had a real conversation. So, it was annoying and sort of horrifying to have her acting all buddy-buddy with me now.

And meanwhile, more and more people are streaming in. The golf team, now. Lewis and Ricardo. It was like somebody had posted a Facebook event: Come ruin Will’s night—Saturday—his house!

I finally said to Naomi, “Look, can you lay off, just for a minute? I’ve got to find my sister. I need to ask her something.” I tried to be as nice as I could about it. It’s just, I had to find out if this was just a spontaneous event, people passing the word around until critical mass, or if I should be angry specifically at Ash.

Turns out she was in the kitchen, jamming frozen pizzas into the oven. She was surrounded by a whole mess of girls from her team, and I could tell from the way she was spazzing around that she was anxious about making sure she appreciated them.

She flashed me a smile. “Hey bro,” she said.

“Hey bro, yourself,” I hissed. Then I leaned in to whisper so I wouldn’t embarrass her. “Who are all these people?” I said.

Her answer came loud. “They’re party people, Will! It’s a par-tay!” She’d had a few drinks, clearly.

I kept my composure and whispered, “Tell me you didn’t invite every Joiner in school.”

“Of course not. It just happened. But . . . are you angry?” The thought alarmed her, but at least she got the hint that I was serious. Whispering herself, now, she said, “The only people I invited were the ones on our list. I don’t know where all the rest of these people came from.”

“Well, Lewis and Ricardo just walked in. We don’t have enough lasagna for all these people.”

“Dude,” she said, playing to the crowd again. “The lasagna ran out like an hour ago. People loved it.” She hip-checked me and winked. “Relax, Will. It’s a party. Our party. You and me. These are our friends. Work with me, you know?”

So, what was I supposed to do with that? I guess she wanted to have a blowout after all.

“Go with it,” I said back to her. “Yeah.”

You’re right. I was sort of pissed. And sort of panicky. But Asheley seemed happy so . . . I mean, I was trying to deal, you know? To just get through it.

I did what I always do in situations like this when I’m uncomfortable and under assault. I withdrew. I slipped out of the house. I got my driver and a basket of balls from the shed out back and walked into the darkness, took the path through the forest to my place on the rocks, and I stood out there hitting balls off the edge of the cliff, watching them sail out over the bay and then drop, watching the water swallow them up, trying to calm myself down, and thinking how great it would be to dive in, to just dive in and be done with everything.

It must have been
about eleven when Craig called. Eleven thirty, maybe.

And I picked up. Why? I was a little buzzed. Not drunk, not sloppy or anything, but riding a wave of good feeling, dancing barefoot in my own living room, surrounded by all the coolest kids in school. All these people who, it turned out, liked me a whole lot more than I’d ever imagined. It was like the world was tilting toward a happier place. And I saw Craig’s name come up on my screen and I didn’t even think about my anger toward him, I just thought, hey, Craig’s calling, let’s see what he wants.

It wasn’t until I actually heard his voice that I realized, oh, it’s Craig. The last person on earth I want to deal with.

“Can we talk?” he said.

I sobered up just like that. I ducked out of the cluster of people I’d been dancing with and slipped out the sliding door onto the back porch. It was quieter there. The party was all taking place inside the house. “We’re talking now. I answered, didn’t I?”

“But can we talk for real?” he said. “Or are you going to hate me no matter what I say?”

“That depends on what you say, doesn’t it?”

“I feel like total shit.”

“Well, you should.”

“I know.”

“Oh, do you?”

“Yeah. I’m an asshole. I know it. You have no idea how completely I know it.”

“I think I do, actually.”

“All I’ve done, for like a week now, the single thing I’ve been able to do is wake and bake and sit there and . . .” He sounded like he was about to cry. The last thing I needed, right about then. “Just sit there. You know? Thinking about what a dick I am and how I totally messed up the one thing I’ve ever wanted to do right.”

Wow. I could feel myself getting sucked into the mud. I got hot flashes of details of all the good and bad times I’d had with him—our first kiss, out behind the bluff at the edge of the bay where I’d been watching him surf that morning, the tingling anticipation that came after, all that not knowing and hoping he really liked me, then the conversations we’d had, these deep, deep conversations, all my secrets and all my insecurities and all my sadnesses dished out for him to stomp on if he wanted.

Inside, the dancing continued. The muffled bass line of a hip-hop song was pulsing through the door. Will was wedged into the nook under the stairs, propped on a stepladder, watching everybody bop around. He had a kind of terrified expression on his face, like, shell-shocked, like he wished he could melt into the wall, get as far away from these people as possible. I wondered, briefly, if maybe this party wasn’t such a good idea. Naomi was bouncing around on the other side of the glass and she caught my eye and threw me a quizzical look. I shook her off. This stuff with Craig was private. I’d kept it that way so far and no way was I going to change that now.

“Craig, you know I’m having a party, right? You must know. The whole school knows. The eighth graders at RFK probably know. You really want to do this now? I should be in there hosting. Or is that the point?”

“That’s not the point, Ash. I’m not trying to ruin your good vibe. Give me at least a little credit, huh?”

“Then, what? Isn’t there a better time to do this?”

“Can I just see you? For five minutes? That’s all. Then I’ll leave.”

“Wait, what? Leave?” It was like my stomach had just dropped out of my body. “Are you here? Are you totally insane, Craig?”

“Yeah. I mean, sort of. Not exactly. I just, I couldn’t take it anymore. I biked over. I had to get out of the house. I had to try to see you.”

“You’re here? At my party? Right now? After all the ways you’ve—”

“Asheley, wait! Wait! That’s not what I mean. I’m not that stupid.”

“Then—”

“I’m out on the curb. Like around the corner near the woods. That’s partly why I’m calling. To ask your permission to let me in?”

From my spot on the back porch, I could see the woods and I knew just where he would have been balanced on his bike—at the place where the road curved in toward the cliffs—but it was too dark. The pines were too thick to see anything that might be going on out there.

“What happens if I say no?” I said.

“I don’t know. I’ll go home, I guess. And sit there. And think about all the ways I’ve fucked everything up. I’ll tell you what I won’t do. I won’t bother you ever again.”

And what did I do? I said. “Fine, five minutes. Not one more.”

I remember wondering at the time why I was doing this. I’ve thought about it a lot since then, too, maybe even every day, and I still don’t know. Maybe I didn’t trust that he was telling the truth and I wanted to head him off before he burst into the house and made a scene in front of everybody. The thought crossed my mind. But I don’t know, maybe it was something else—the threat of him never speaking to me again. Maybe no matter how over him I wanted to be, I still loved him. Maybe I wanted to forgive him.

Saying a secret goodbye to my party, I sort of hopped into the woods and took the shortcut out toward the road. Remember, I’d been dancing. I was barefoot. I kept stepping on pebbles and pine cones and twigs.

When I came out of the trail, I was maybe fifteen, twenty feet behind him. I have to admit, he was sort of adorable, hunched over his BMX, his hair standing up every which way, like he just couldn’t get it to go right by himself. He was staring up the road toward the globes at the end of my driveway, waiting for me to appear in the light. He’d actually put on a shirt for the occasion, a short-sleeved, baby-blue-and-gray pattern button-down with a Chinese dragon curling around the waist.

“Hey,” I said, padding toward him.

He startled. “Oh, hey. I thought—” His arms twisting and darting around each other, he pointed toward the light.

“I know. I took the shortcut.”

To get away from the gravel along the side of the road, I stood on the pavement and made sure to keep three or four feet distance between us. Neither of us knew what to say. He kept trying on different versions of his smile to see which one would get a positive reaction, but no matter how much I wanted to, I wasn’t budging.

“Thanks for coming out,” he said, finally.

“Yeah, well. Like I said, five minutes.” I pointed at the place where my watch would be if I wore one. “More like four and a half now.”

“I missed you.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Don’t be like that.” He reached for my waist and tried to coax me toward him but I pushed his hand away.

“Why shouldn’t I be like that? It seems to me you’ve been a little busy to miss me.”

“What? No!” He reached for my waist again.

“With Claudia? At Becca’s party?”

“Are you kidding? Ash . . . no, Ash—”

“Don’t give me that, Craig. You know I saw you. You sprayed me with your squirt gun to make sure of it.”

“I didn’t do anything with Claudia Jackson! Asheley, come on! She’s Claudia Jackson! She was just convenient! She was just there! And I saw you and you were doing everything you could to stay aloof and I sort of went crazy, Ash, really. Why do you think I squirted you? You think I’d work that hard to get your attention if I was really hooking up with Claudia Jackson?”

“Looked like it to me.”

“You were supposed to get jealous. That’s all that was going on. I thought if you got jealous you might at least tell me off, and that would mean, at least, that you still cared about me a little. But then, no, you ran off. I spent the rest of the party trying to find you. Really. Claudia disgusts me. I got away from her as fast as I could.”

With that sad look tugging at his face, how could I not believe him? The things he was saying made too much sense, they clicked too well with everything I knew about him to be lies. He was macho and insecure and even when he wasn’t trying to get to me, ninety percent of what he did in public was just showing off, just performing for the crowd. Which doesn’t mean I liked it.

“Do you think that was respectful?” I asked him.

“No.” He was glum. Contrite. He looked like a little boy, like he was eight years old again, waiting urgently for his mom to reprimand him.

“I mean, Craig, don’t you think the better thing to do would have been to come up and talk to me?”

His body spasmed with emotion. “I’m doing that now!”

“Yeah, now after torturing me for two weeks.”

“I’m sorry!” he said, pleading, holding his hands out to me palm up like I was a goddess and he was begging me for my blessing.

I softened. I couldn’t help it. All that power in my hands made me uncomfortable. I like peace. I want everyone to feel . . . safe. And I don’t trust myself to be as kind as I should. The thought . . . the thought that I might hurt someone I cared about. . . no matter how deeply they’ve hurt me . . .

I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be crying. I don’t know why I’m crying. Can’t we just skip this part? It . . .

I can try, but . . .

I said to Craig, very quietly, “I know. I know you’re sorry, really, I do. But—” This was hard for me. Asserting myself. He had to understand though. “You can’t do that, what you did at Shakey’s, I mean. You know? It’s not fair. I’m a person, not a sex doll. And that was such an important day for me. I’d accomplished something. All those girls, they’d accepted me. I needed to
have
that.”

This time when he reached for me, I let him take my hands. We were looking straight into each other’s eyes. I could feel him taking in the things I was saying. Completely. His macho and pride were totally gone. He was filling himself up with me. With my needs.