Spoils (4 page)

The phone rings throughout dinner. Exchanging a glance each time, my brother and I ignore it. Eventually Eddie walks over and disconnects the phone from the wall jack. Then he clicks on the television mounted above the cabinets and we ignore each other too.

My parents return around midnight, looking old and tired.

“You didn't need to wait for us, sweetheart,” my dad says when he sees me curled on the couch. Eddie has retreated to the den to catch up on European soccer scores.

“How did it go?” There's a massive bandage around my mom's hand. Her thumb is swaddled and gauze wraps the rest of her hand.

“Seven stitches,” my dad says.

“It's a scandal, what's going on in the ER,” my mom says, her voice about half an octave higher than usual. “We waited four hours for someone to see us! And then some twelve-year-old stabs me with an eight-gauge crochet needle. Jesus Christ!” She shudders, unconsciously cradling her injured hand to her chest. “We need to call Bob.” Bob Johnson is the Democratic legislator my parents supported four years ago when they still had money to burn. I'm not sure he's still in office.

My dad shushes her and pats her back. “Come on, honey, let's get you to bed.” Then he looks over at me. “You too, Leni. Off to bed.” He leans over and kisses the top of my head. “You've got school tomorrow, got to be sharp.” I look into his sweet, tired green eyes and kiss his cheek.

“Okay, Dad. Love you.”

“Love you too, baby.” He lays a warm hand on my head and I close my eyes at his touch. I kiss my mom on the cheek. She smells like sweat and disinfectant. She gives me a sad, wobbly smile, her blue eyes red-rimmed and watery. Then the two of them make their way, walking slowly, fatigue in their every step, to their suite at the back of the house. My steps echo in the empty foyer, the high ceilings, the bare walls as I climb the stairs again. The house is too big for four people. We're swallowed up.

I'll fix it.

My promise echoes in my head. I think of Natasha and shiver, wondering what awful thing she did.

Fix it.

I'd love to,
I think.
But how?

We moved into the new house my parents had built about a year after the money landed with a thud in their bank account. A mix of Italian, Spanish and classic Florida styles, the house is a mishmash of ideas that don't fit together: the orange tile roof that doesn't go with the pink stucco that doesn't work with the dark, heavy front doors or the Moorish tiled fountain that stopped working last year. The new house was my mom's chance to finally give her younger daughter the bedroom of her dreams. My mom's dreams, not mine. I was almost twelve at the time, but still, always, the baby of the family.

The walls in my room are pink and the windows are draped with silk swags in cream-and-pink stripes. There's a crystal chandelier hanging from a powder-blue ceiling painted with puffy white clouds. A four-poster bed all in cream and lace squats against a wall, and the attached bathroom is worthy of a professional actress: huge lightbulb-lined mirrors, a sunken tub and a mosaic of Cinderella stepping into her glass slipper. I hated everything about my room from the first second I saw it. Except for the ceiling, which I couldn't even see while lying in bed because of the stupid canopy. I planned to put up with it for a couple of years and by the time I was fourteen, tell my mom I was too old for pink and fairy tales. Then we'd paint the walls cream, and sell the bed and buy me a nice normal one, preferably constructed from salvaged wood, with a sustainably made organic mattress.

But by the time I was fourteen, there were already cracks in the foundation, literally and figuratively. People think that rich people don't have problems. That fancy appliances don't break, that expensive houses aren't shoddily built. People are wrong. Because the house was built so close to the water, the sand under it shifted. Within three years, the house needed to be shored up and pinned. It also turned out that in his hurry to meet his building deadlines, the contractor had skipped a few steps, like lining the floors with a moisture barrier before laying the hardwood planks, or connecting the plumbing in my bathroom to the main sewer line. The family-room floor warped and buckled within two years and all the water from my tub and the sink drained under the house, a big part of the reason the foundation shifted. By the time my parents realized it was a construction issue, the real estate market had started to turn and the contractor was long gone, having declared bankruptcy and fled the state. On the bright side, I used the bathroom down the hall and Cinderella wasn't an issue anymore.

Eddie was back with us by then, moping because all his money was gone. Natasha had sunk her money into Steeped and Emmett's tattoo parlor in Tennessee and she was working fifteen-hour days to make sure her shop succeeded. It became clear to me that money, even copious amounts like my parents had won, didn't last without thoughtful planning. It seemed selfish and petty to whine about wall colors. Besides, I had my share too, a million dollars sitting pretty in a trust fund, growing slowly in an interest-bearing account. When I was eighteen, I'd have my chance to spend it as I saw fit. Which wouldn't be on travel and parties like my brother, or a tea shop like my sister. I was nearly eleven when my parents won the lottery, which meant I had years to think about the best way to spend a million dollars, and I had plans. Plans that I regretfully put aside when the obvious became clear. Seven years after they won a 70-million-dollar jackpot, taking home 22 after the lump payment and taxes, there was nothing left. Except for my trust fund.

Next week the money becomes accessible, and for all their talk about how I should live it up, it's obvious my parents expect me to hand over the money. My million will keep all of us sheltered, clothed and fed for years to come. There is nothing better that I could spend it on. I keep telling myself that. I feel like a bad person when I don't believe it. The money could pay for all my schooling through my PhD. The Marine Rescue Aquarium could use the money to build better rehabilitation tanks for the animals they rescue. A million could save thousands of wetland acres from developers, and the Everglades always need help. Eddie and Natasha got to spend their money pursuing their dreams and now, because I'm the youngest, I won't get to spend mine the way I choose.

Then I remind myself that I choose to spend it taking care of my parents. I would be the worst daughter in the world if when my parents needed help, I spent the money on something else.

I keep telling myself that. And in a week and a half, there won't be anything to say anymore. I'll hand over the money, apply for college loans and that will be the end of that. Except here was Natasha saying not to. And some terrifying angel getting involved.

It's very late, but I'm unsettled and spooked, so instead of sleeping, I shove my pillow out of the way and Google Michael again. This time, following the random rabbit hole of links and more links, I end up reading a passage from the book of Daniel, something I've never read before.

Three Jewish scholars are brought as captives to serve in the court of Nebuchadnezzar, a powerful king. One day, he builds an idol and commands that when a certain piece of music plays, all must fall down and worship before it. The Jewish scholars refuse; their religion prohibits worshiping idols. Incensed by their disobedience, Nebuchadnezzar threatens to burn them in his fiery furnace.

They don't budge.

“God will deliver us from the burning fiery furnace,” they say.

Nebuchadnezzar has his men build the fire to seven times its usual heat. He offers the Jewish scholars one last chance to save themselves but they remain confident that the Lord will protect them. The king watches as his soldiers tie the men and push them in, so that they fall down, bound, into the fire.

But they do not burn.

“Lo,” cries Nebuchadnezzar, “I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire and they have no hurt.”

From inside the roaring inferno the figures walk out. The three Jewish men are not hurt, their clothes are not singed, their hair carries no smell of the fire. At that moment, Nebuchadnezzar understands that these young men are under God's protection.

Most scholars believe the fourth figure was the archangel Michael. It's part of the reason many faiths see him as their special protector. The text doesn't explain where the fourth figure disappeared to after leading the men out of the fire.

“So this is a good thing you're doing?” I ask out loud. But Michael doesn't answer.

Sleep remains elusive.

Padding down the stairs, I creep out to the back of the house, feeling the need for fresh air.

It might be something like a sin to build so close to the water, but the view from the patio is amazing. Huddling on a musty-smelling lounge chair, I hug my knees and watch moonlight catch and sparkle on the water. The house looms behind me like a giant beast, the garish pink stucco walls a dull beige under the flat silver light of a three-quarter moon. Tiny airplanes land over at the Tampa airport; occasional pinprick headlights flash by from cars out late in the Bradenton suburbs across the bay, modern fireflies.

It seems impossible to tell my parents that the money we've been living off, the moment that changed us forever, came from a shady deal Natasha made. That I shouldn't give them the money in my trust fund. They'd have Natasha committed within twenty-four hours. And maybe me with her.

I'd take a trip into the fiery furnace over letting down my family like that.

I could pretend that my attack this afternoon was the work of some troublemaker, my vision merely a hallucination as a result of a concussion. There's a very large part of me that wants to do that. Ignore Natasha's advice, forget her crazy story and laugh off my angel encounter. I would too, except for the way Natasha's words stay and resonate within me.
That money is cursed.
There's definitely some truth in that. Eddie went from a successful, if middle-of-the-road, college student to a borderline-alcoholic, twenty-seven-year-old college dropout. Every once in a while he mentions signing up for classes, returning to school, but soon he's back in his room, watching television, bingeing on fast food and endless bags of chips. Natasha always suffered from a want/got gap, wanting too much and happy too little, but even she, in the aftermath of the win, seems worse off, a whirlwind of planning and travel and work that never ceases, and now she's on the verge of some mental collapse. My parents abandoned the family business they started twenty years ago. My dad was an electrician, my mom the office manager/secretary and accountant. They always said they loved their jobs, they loved being a team, that they would continue working even if they won the lottery. Until they actually won the lottery. Within two months of the win, they put a recording on voicemail saying the business was temporarily closed.

Idle hands are the devil's playthings.
It was one of my bubbie's favorite sayings long before we ever won. It isn't healthy not to work. It's not normal. Maybe that's a big part of the problem. My parents certainly aren't a team. Half the time my dad doesn't even come in from his workshop for dinner.

Then there's me. I shiver thinking about it from the angel's perspective. One foot out the door, eager to get away. Willing to give my parents my trust fund, but not my time. If nothing else, Michael's visit reminds me that there's more I can do for my family than hand over a truckful of cash, though that's probably what they would prefer, given the choice.

It takes me a while to define the stomach-churning brew of emotions swirling inside of me. Fear, obviously. Awe. A pinch of disbelief. A few tablespoons of unworthiness. A healthy splash of resentment and helpless confusion. And underneath it all, under the finishing, lingering flavor of this emotional stew, there is a hint of comfort. Confirmation of divine existence is not something I ever expected to receive. Everybody who believes in God relies on faith, but suddenly I have something more than that to work with.

I have to talk to Natasha about this. I need her to make sense of this mess. Even though it's almost two in the morning, I call her and leave a message. There's no way she's sleeping. I wait, hugging my knees, my cell phone lying passively by my hip. I keep checking my cell's (clear) signal, the (ample) battery life. I text her a couple of times. She must be awake.

Call me. We need to talk.

The mosquitoes find me. I stubbornly refuse to leave my seat. She'll call.

After an hour, I trudge up the grand staircase, exhausted but wired at the same time, the phone still in my hand. I text her again.

I lie in bed and place my cell phone on the pillow next to me, waiting for it to buzz. In the morning, still curled on my side, I wake up facing my phone.

Natasha never called.

With only eight days left before my birthday, I follow the scribbled directions to room B-14 in Laufer Hall through the labyrinth of Safety Harbor Community College, the massive, popular choice of twenty-seven thousand Floridians. The landscaping runs heavy on Spanish moss–draped live oaks, lending the ten-year-old campus a historic, timeless quality.

High school started a few weeks ago but my high school chemistry teacher last year recommended that I take marine chemistry at the local community college this year and it seemed like a good idea at the time: a nice bright mark on my transcript for college admissions. But I'm not prepared for the hustle and bustle of so many people. Half the buildings don't show numbers, the names on two of them have apparently changed since the online map was scanned, so directions that made perfect sense at home don't make a bit of sense here on campus. I hunch my shoulders and duck my head, like a little box turtle hoping to tuck into her shell and hide until this goes away.

If you're going to be a turtle,
I tell myself fiercely,
try to be a snapper.

The common areas are starting to clear as people head into their classrooms, and I have about three minutes to find my room. People are already seated by the time I find B-14.

It's a small room with a large whiteboard at the front where the professor is standing, and rows of battered, badly aligned, blue plastic bucket seats with tiny attached desks. The door is at the front of the room, to the left of the teacher, and everyone's heads turn my way as the door swings open.

“Hi,” I whisper and, with my head down, hurry to the first open seat, which happens to be in the front row.
Crap,
I think, feeling eyes boring into my back.
Nice entrance.

“Welcome, everyone. I think we're all here now,” she says, glancing my way. “We have a lot to cover this semester. Let's begin.”

She outlines what we'll study, the major issues of marine chemistry, and I forget about the people behind me, forget about the fact that they're all older, and feel excited about learning something that I want to do for the rest of my life. She's like a missionary preaching salvation to us savages, except she isn't asking us to open our hearts, she's asking us to open our minds.

When she calls for a ten-minute break halfway through the ninety-minute class, I blink and reluctantly leave my seat. Most of the students congregate in the open-air hallway outside the room. A few smokers light up, while other students hustle over to the vending machines around the corner for a sugar/caffeine hit. We chat, trading names that I instantly forget and basic information about each other. Turns out there are two other students my age, homeschoolers who are taking community-college classes and amassing college credits. One of them is three credits shy of an associate's degree and she's sixteen. There's a girl in a vintage Hello Kitty shirt who recently switched majors for the second time. A couple of guys who thought this would be an easy science class grumble about the professor's lecture but the rest of us ignore them.

There's one student who stays conspicuously quiet, leaning against a metal pillar, apart from the group but close enough to listen. I barely noticed him when I first stepped out, too engaged with the rest of the group, but after a while I feel his eyes drilling into my back. Our break is almost over when it finally sinks in. I do a mental double take as I recognize the slouch.

I know him.

As if he's been biding his time, waiting for me to notice him, as soon as our eyes meet he slowly makes his way over to me. Wearing low-slung jeans and flip-flops, hands shoved in his pockets, he's taller than I remember, his dark hair cut short now, and so ridiculously good-looking it hurts me. For a second, I forget that I've never liked him, that I don't like anything about him. For a second, I forget to lie to myself.

He doesn't say anything to me. Just holds my gaze, wearing an inscrutable expression.

Gavin was that guy my freshman year, the magnetic rock to everyone else's iron ore. I can't count how many girls had crushes on him. How many people laughed at his jokes or found their way to his lunch spot on the quad. We ended up taking a computer-science class together, but I tried to stay out of his way as much as possible. On principle. He was too cocky and arrogant and everyone else thought way too much of him and his pranks and his sharp wit. When he ended up getting arrested for hacking, we were all shocked, of course. But Gavin has a way of turning lemons into advantages, and despite the stint in juvie, the last I heard he managed to score a full ride to Tech. I can't imagine what he's doing here at SHCC.

As I look at him now, a hot blush rises for no good reason.

“Hi,” I say into the awkward silence. “I think we went to high school together a couple of years ago? I'm Leni.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I know.”

Then why are you staring at me like a psycho?

“Gavin, right?”

He nods curtly.

“Welcome back,” I say, vaguely referencing the ginormous elephant in the room.

He nods again and stalks past me into class.

Okaaaay. I guess he prefers that we all ignore the giant elephant. I'll try to remember that for next time we don't have a conversation.

Once class resumes, I have a hard time keeping up with the teacher. Gavin sits at the end of the row about halfway back with an open laptop obscuring his lower face.

It would be a lie to say I haven't thought about him since he left school. People still talk about some of his more legendary pranks—no one has been able to match the statue of our school rival's mascot, the Sand Crab, on a cafeteria tray in our school's trophy case—but seeing him now, after two years, I realize that it wasn't a mistake that half the school idolized him. There
is
something charismatic about him.

I promptly renew my vow to stay away from him, shared class notwithstanding.

Throughout my musings and the professor's lecture, Gavin has been steadily typing. The professor glances at the seating chart and calls out, “Gavin Armand.” The typing stops. “What are some of the benefits of a chemical approach to ocean science?”

I'm the only one who isn't surprised when he answers clearly and intelligently.

“The advantages are that measurements are reproducible and a small sample is representative of the whole.” He has a deep, even voice. Calm and thoughtful. At complete odds with his jerky-slacker attitude. “Chemical compounds are also markers of the past, meaning they can uncover biological or geological events while giving scientists a good look at current marine dynamics.”

The professor blinks and then smiles like a woman who has found a Godiva chocolate in her bag of M&M's. A couple of students share glances and roll their eyes, but I'm with the professor. Gavin's brilliant. That's a big part of the problem. Always was.

At the end of class, she sets up a sign-up sheet.

“You'll each need a lab partner,” she says. “There will be three labs during this course and I reserved the lab for our class to use on Friday mornings. You'll be graded on the lab reports that you turn in. This is an advanced-level class and I expect excellence from you all.”

She looks at us, making eye contact.

“Lab can provide you with hands-on learning that nothing in the classroom can provide. Lab is where it's at, people. So make a commitment to it and see it through.” She gazes at us sternly; then apparently feeling she's made her point, she nods. “Okay, you can go.”

All the students gather their things and shuffle out, pausing by the sheet to sign up for a lab time and partner. I hustle over to the professor to discuss getting a note to give to my high school. I didn't factor in for lab time and I'll need a valid excuse for missing three Friday mornings of world-history class. By the time she scrawls a note and signs it, everyone has signed up and left. There's only one name without a partner. It figures. With a heavy heart and sinking feeling of gloom, I sign up to be Gavin's lab partner. Our first lab is tomorrow. It's only three times, I tell myself. Keep your head down, don't try to be friends and you'll get through it.

My heart speeds up as I approach the familiar storefront, the royal-blue-and-cream awning shading the front door with a cup of tea etched on the glass and Steeped written in dainty letters under it. I've been trying all day to think of what to say to my sister.

“Natasha?” The fruity smell of tea greets me as I step into the cool, dark shop. An iced raspberry-mint tea would be awesome right now.

“Tasha?” I call out again, heading straight to the back. “Do you need a break? I can stay until dinner.”
Maybe she's feeling better today
. Maybe we'll figure something out together. Maybe it isn't as bad as I fear and she's being hard on herself.

There aren't any customers at the shop and even the stereo is silent. It's almost eerie.

“Hello?” My heart beats faster. Again, absurd, out-of-proportion worry for Natasha suddenly takes over. I rush toward the back of the shop.

“Hey, if it isn't Little Sister.” Stepping out of the back room, John Parker walks up to the counter, smiling a broad greeting. I stop abruptly, my satchel bumping into me, before continuing slowly. It's beyond weird for John to be at the shop so soon after Natasha's trip. I've never really liked John and that was before he asked me out on a date a couple of months ago. This with him being at least ten years my senior. Then all those smiles and pats on the back that lingered too long made sense.

I didn't tell Natasha that he asked me out, since she'd probably fire him. As clichéd as it sounds, good help really is hard to find, and John has stuck with her for a year and a half, longer than anyone else. He's a good enough assistant manager, and none of the customers have ever complained. But I hate being alone with him. There's something creepy about his too-large hands; his big, even teeth; and the hair that seems snapped on, like a plastic piece on a LEGO figurine.

“Where's Natasha?”

“Your sister needed a spa day,” he says, smirking, like,
oh, you silly girls.
“And I was glad to help out.”

“That's big of you,” I say. “Why is the music off?”

He looks up at the speakers, as if to ask them why. “You have such wonderful attention to detail.” He beams, as if he's paid me a tremendous compliment.

I wait. He leans forward, elbows resting on the counter, smiling in anticipation, as if we're exchanging witty retorts and the ball's in my court.

“How long did Natasha say she'd be gone?”

His smile dims a bit. But gamely he continues lobbing his creepy version of charm my way. “Oh, I don't know. Until the evening, at least.” This said in hearty tones of
Good news!

“Tell her to call me, okay?” I head for the door.

“You're welcome to stay here.”

“Oh, thanks,” I say, with exaggerated gratitude
. It's my sister's shop, asshole.
“But I have a ton of homework. I'd hate to get detention.” I love reminding him how young I am. “Then I'd get grounded.” His smile dims further. “Lose TV privileges.”

I should stop before he realizes I'm mocking him.

“Don't forget, tell Natasha to call me. It's important.” Then before he can say anything else, I quickly leave the shop.

Sweating in the humid heat, I'm uneasy as I mess with my bike lock. John's presence at the store doesn't make sense. Natasha would never miss a day of work after a long trip. She's ignoring me, maybe avoiding me, and that doesn't make sense either. There's something about John that's grosser than usual, which is saying a lot. In his own way, he's as screwed up as Natasha.