Wild Cards (3 page)

I don’t know what went down with Brandi and her old man. She didn’t explain much, except to say she left home right after her parents’ divorce and hadn’t been back . . . until now.

Brandi grasps Julian by the hand and tugs the tired kid up the porch stairs. “This is my son. Julian, say hello to Grandpa.”

Brandi’s son is a cool kid who can talk your ear off. But he’s
acting shy right now and doesn’t say hello to his grandfather. Instead, he keeps his eyes focused on his sneakers. Brandi’s old man does the same.

“And this is my stepson, Derek,” Brandi finally says as she waves her hand in my direction.

Her father looks up. “You didn’t say anything about a stepson when you called.”

I’m not surprised Brandi didn’t prep her father about me. Common sense is not her strong suit.

Brandi cocks her head to the side, her big red hoop earrings reminding me of those ring-toss things at the carnival. I think she’s got a set to match every color in her wardrobe. “Didn’t I? I’m such a flake I must’ve forgotten to tell you, with all the moving and packing and . . . other stuff. Derek can stay in the den.”

“The den is filled with boxes,” he tells her. “And I gave the old couch that was in the den to charity a while back.”

“If you’d rather, sir,” I drawl, “I can sleep on the porch. Just give me a blanket and toss me scraps of food every now an’ then and I’ll be just fine.” It’s times like these that I’m wound so tight I can’t turn off the natural twang in my voice even if I want to.

Brandi’s dad narrows his eyes at me. I have the feeling if I let three greased pigs loose in his yard he’d shoot ’em, eat ’em, and then attempt to skin me alive.

“Nonsense,” Brandi says. “Derek can stay in my old room with Julian, and I’ll sleep on the couch in the living room.”

“I’ll move the boxes and put a blow-up bed in the den,” her dad says, reluctantly giving in when he realizes that I’m not about to hightail it back to California.

“I’m cool with that,” I say.

It’s not like I plan on hanging around the house all that often.

“Derek, can you and my dad bring our stuff in the house while I put Julian down for a nap?” Brandi asks. “I’m exhausted from the trip and need a nap myself.” I note she doesn’t spill the beans to her dad that she’s pregnant, not that she can keep the secret for long.

Before I can answer, she slips through the front door with Julian, leaving me alone with her grouchy old man.

Her father scans me up and down. He doesn’t look impressed.

“How old are you?” His gravelly voice carries down the steps and across the yard to where I’m standing near the packed SUV.

“Seventeen.”

“I don’t expect you to call me Grandpa.”

“I wasn’t plannin’ on it.”

“Good. I suppose you can call me Gus.” He sighs in frustration. I’m about as thrilled to be here as he appears to have me here. “You gonna come in, or are you about to stand there all day and wait for an invitation?”

He disappears inside. I’m tempted not to follow, but I have no choice. The house is old, with dark wood floors and well-lived-in furniture. The floorboards creak as I walk, reminding me of a haunted house.

He leads me down a hall to a back room and swings open a door. “This’ll be your room. I expect you to keep it clean, do your own laundry, and make yourself useful.”

“Do I get an allowance?” I joke.

The guy looks at me with a deadpan expression. “You’re a real comedian, aren’t you?”

“To people with a sense of humor, yeah.”

He makes a
harrumph
sound in response.

I follow again when he makes an about-face and heads back to the car. I don’t expect him to help unload the boxes, but he does. It doesn’t take us long to lug everything into the house. We put Brandi’s and Julian’s stuff in her room upstairs and mine in the den. There’s no conversation. This is definitely going to be an interesting living situation—not in a good way.

I’m moving boxes to the corner of my room to clear space when Gus reappears. Without a word, he hands me an air mattress and leaves me to figure out how to inflate it. I have no clue why Brandi would want to come back and live with a father who obviously doesn’t want her here.

My dad is the opposite of Brandi’s. When I was younger and my dad came home on leave, he was all smiles the second he saw us. He’d hug me and my mom so tight we’d pretend we couldn’t breathe.

Brandi’s dad didn’t even hug her, when I know they haven’t seen each other for years. Hell, they didn’t even bother to shake hands or pat each other on the back. And he hardly acknowledged his own grandson.

I shove my suitcase behind the door and take in my new room. Faded wood paneling is on the walls. Boxes are scattered everywhere. There’s an old fireplace in the corner that looks like it hasn’t been used since the Civil War. At least there are two windows to keep the place filled with light. This place doesn’t feel like home—not by a long shot. It doesn’t remind me of Regents, either,
surrounded by friends. I remind myself I’m here because I have to be.

Suddenly this house feels like it’s suffocating me.

I head to the backyard. It’s hot and the sun is shining, so I strip off my shirt and tuck it into the waistband of my jeans. The grass is so tall I wonder if it’s ever been mowed. I walk through a small garden of weeds to a big wooden shed. The paint is chipping, obviously having been neglected for years. An old padlock on the latch is open, so I push back the door. Rusty garden tools hang on wall hooks, spray-paint cans and bags of weed killer are scattered on the workbench, and little metal buckets crowd the floor. I kick a bucket aside, then pick up a second one, thinking about everything that’s changed in the past two years.

I swear under my breath and whip the bucket across the shed, the sound of the metal hitting the wall echoing in the small space.

“Stop or I’m calling the police!” demands a girl’s voice from behind me.

I turn to find a hot chick about my age with blond hair in one long braid snaking down her chest. She’s blocking the doorway and holding a rusty pitchfork. She looks like she’s ready to stab me to death, which lessens her hotness factor, but not by much.

“Who’re you?” I ask, taking in her black T-shirt and matching hoodie. If she weren’t threatening to stab me, I could imagine her being one of those sexy warrior girls in a video game or action flick. And while it’d be damn cool to fight her in a video game, in real life that’s never gonna happen.

Next to her is a monstrosity of a dog with short gray hair and
gunmetal eyes that match hers. The beast barks at me as if I’m fresh meat and he hasn’t eaten in months. Streams of drool fly from his mouth with each bark.

“Quiet, Falkor!” the warrior girl orders. The beast goes silent, but his lip twitches in a menacing snarl as he stands next to her like a soldier, prepared to pounce at her command. “You thugs from Fairfield think you can come here and—”

I hold up a hand, halting her tirade for the moment. Me, a thug? That’s hilarious. This girl’s thug radar is way off. I don’t think I’ve ever been called a thug before. “I hate to break the news to you, sweetheart, but I’ve got no clue where Fairfield is.”

“Yeah, right. I’m not stupid. And I’m not your sweetheart. I don’t even fall for that really bad fake southern accent.” Rustling in the garden captures her dog’s attention. He abandons his post and leaps toward some unlucky critter. “Falkor, come back here!” she orders, but the beast ignores her.

“Put the pitchfork down, honey.” I take a step closer to her and the exit.

“Not on your life. I’m warning you . . . take one step closer and I’ll stab you.” One glance at her shaking hands tells me she doesn’t have the nerve to go through with her threat.

I put my hands up in mock surrender.

I wish this girl had an on/off switch so I could permanently shut her down. I’m standing directly in front of her now, the points of the pitchfork an inch away from my chest. “You
really
don’t want to stab me,” I tell her.

“Yes, I think I do.” The warrior girl blinks her fierce eyes. For
a second I’m sure she’s about to lower her weapon, until I hear something creak behind me. As I glance over my shoulder, a bracket holding a bunch of tools on the wall crashes to the ground. The sound startles the girl and she drops the pitchfork. On my foot.

What the—

She stares at the pointed tine sticking out of my left shoe and her mouth opens in shock. Before I know it, she backs up and slams the door shut. I’m swallowed by darkness as I hear the padlock snap into place. Two thoughts cross my mind: she thinks I’m a thug and I think she’s a wackjob.

One of us is right, and it’s not her.

Chapter 4
Ashtyn

I can’t believe I just stabbed someone! A thug from Fairfield I’ve never seen before. He’s too cute for his own good, and he’s tall, with shaggy brown hair peeking out from a knit cap. If that isn’t bad enough, he isn’t wearing a shirt and is totally ripped. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he was posing for a magazine spread. Did he actually think he’d get away with vandalizing our property with those old spray-paint cans he was hovering over? Those jerks from Fairfield are always causing trouble on our side of town. Jet’s warning is still fresh in my mind. I was voted captain and became a target as soon as word got out.

I run as fast as I can toward my house, refusing to panic but not doing a great job.

“Dad!” I yell as I rush inside, hoping he’s home and not at work. “There’s a guy in the . . .”

My voice trails off as I catch a glimpse of a strange woman in
our kitchen standing in front of the open refrigerator. She’s wearing a red sundress and big red earrings to match. I think she’s about to steal our food, but when she smiles brightly and says, “Hi! Wow, my baby sister’s all grown up!” my mind focuses and I’m stunned.

The woman standing ten feet away from me isn’t a food burglar. She’s my sister, Brandi. In the flesh. I recognize her now . . . an older and bigger version of the eighteen-year-old who left when I was in fifth grade.

“Umm . . . hi,” I say, dumbfounded.

My dad said Brandi was coming to stay with us for a little while. I didn’t believe it, because my sister hasn’t called or written or e-mailed or texted me since she left when I was ten. Not even to tell me she’d had a son with her ex-boyfriend Nick, or that she’d recently married some random Navy guy. I found that out when I ran into an old friend of hers.

I haven’t seen my sister in seven years. With her bright and cheery “hi,” she’s acting like it was yesterday.

“Where’s Dad?” I ask, postponing our reunion because there’s an intruder in the shed with a pitchfork sticking out of his foot.

“I think he went to work or something.”

“Oh no. That’s not good.” I bite my bottom lip as I worry about the boy in the shed. Will I be arrested? Coach Dieter won’t be happy to find out that within an hour of being voted captain I stabbed someone. Forget maintaining a 3.0 or higher GPA. Stabbing people in the foot isn’t exactly role-model material, but I
have a good excuse. I was defending my house . . . or, more precisely, my shed. What am I supposed to do? Should I call the police or ambulance . . . or both?

“What’s going on?” Brandi asks.

“Umm . . . there’s a little
situation
out back.” I cringe at the thought of what I just did.

“Like what?”

“I locked a football player from Fairfield High in our shed. They’re animals,” I explain quickly as I gesture toward the backyard. “I told him to leave, but he wouldn’t. I didn’t mean to stab him.”

My sister’s eyes go wide. “
Stab
him? Oh, my gosh. Umm. Umm. Umm. What should we do? Umm . . . I got it!” she says frantically. “Derek will help!” My sister slams the refrigerator door and hurries toward the den, yelling, “Derek!”

“Who’s Derek?”

Finding nobody in the den, she runs to the living room, her long bleached blond hair flying behind her. “Derek, you in here?”

“Who’s Derek?” I ask again. I thought her husband’s name was Steve. Supposedly he’s deployed and wasn’t due back for a while. Did Brandi dump him and already move on to a new guy? I wouldn’t put it past her. My sister was never known as the stable type.

“Derek’s my stepson, Ashtyn.” I follow as she heads upstairs calling, “Derek, we need your help! Where are you?”

Stepson?
What is she talking about? She’s got a son named Julian, but I hadn’t heard about another kid. “You have a stepson?”

“Yes. He’s Steve’s son.”

“How is Steve’s little kid gonna help us, Brandi?”

Brandi whips around to face me with furrowed brows. “Derek’s
not
a little kid, Ashtyn. He’s seventeen.”

Seventeen? My age?

I get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. No, he couldn’t be. But what if he is?

“Is he tall . . . with blue eyes, a southern accent, and a knit cap?” I ask, my heart beating so fast I wonder if it’s going to burst out of my chest.

My sister’s eyes go wider. We both realize my horrific mistake and race to the shed. I get there first. Falkor barks like crazy, his long tail wagging back and forth excitedly.

Brandi pounds on the door. “Derek, it’s me, Brandi. Please tell me you’re, like, not bleeding to death.”

“Not yet,” comes the guy’s muffled voice from inside the shed.

Brandi yanks on the padlock. “Ashtyn, we need the key.”

Umm . . . “Key?”

More wide-eyed stares. “Yeah,
key
. You know, those oddly shaped metal things you use to unlock stuff. Where is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’ve
got
to be kiddin’ me,” Derek moans.

“Don’t worry, Derek. We’ll get you out in a jiffy,” Brandi cries out. “Ashtyn, where does Dad keep those big sharp cutters?”

“In the shed,” I answer weakly.

Brandi picks up a rock and starts slamming it against the padlock, as if that will somehow magically unlock the thing.

“I can break the door down if you want me to,” Derek yells through the door, “but I can’t guarantee the roof won’t collapse.”