Four
A truck door slams out front. Even before the sound registers, I’m out of the chair, my body tense and ready to run. It’s only 4:09 p.m. He shouldn’t be here. Not yet.
My brother’s faint, familiar whistling keeps me from bolting to my room.
The door to the garage swings open and James breezes in, all dimples and smiles like always, holding one of our father’s beers in his hand. I must look terrified because his grin fades before it can reach his eyes.
“Hey, Sar-bear,” he says softly. “It’s just me.”
I edge over to the stove to check on our water, which has started to boil. My hands are still shaking when I dump the two boxes of macaroni into the pot. “Do you have to drink that crap?”
He doesn’t answer. After a moment, I peek over my shoulder and see him leaning against the counter, arms folded across his chest, eyes narrowed on me. The beer is nowhere in sight.
When James gets serious like this, he looks exactly like Knockout Jimmy in his prime, right down to the bump on the bridge of his nose. Even with sawdust in his blond hair and paper pulp caked onto his coveralls, my brother is gorgeous. Half a dozen girls throw themselves at him whenever we’re in public, but he never dates. I don’t get it. If half a dozen boys threw themselves at me, I’d be out every night. Anything to get out of this house.
“What?” I ask him.
“Nothing. Nice jeans, by the way.”
I roll my eyes, the panic gripping me successfully diffused. James bought me these jeans two weeks ago, one day after I’d drooled over them at the mall on my way home from school. He always does sweet things like that, even when I beg him not to. “To make up for you having to put up with me,” he says, but we both know that’s not what he’s making up for.
He pushes away from the counter, loops an arm around my shoulders, and plants one of the wet kisses I secretly love on my temple.
“Don’t…eww!” Laughing, I sink into his embrace. Wriggling out of his grasp never works. I’m way too light, and he’s way too strong for me to make him do anything he doesn’t want to do. Unfortunately, he knows it. At least he has the decency to grunt when I elbow him in the gut.
“I’m going to get cleaned up,” he says. “Save some of that for me, ‘kay?”
“I always do. Now go away.” I smack him with the hot wooden spoon I’ve been using to stir the macaroni. He yelps and jumps backward. Giving me one last smile, he saunters down the hall.
James is a pain in the ass. I love him more than I love anybody, even when I hear the crack of a beer opening in the bathroom.
As soon as he’s gone, I rush around the kitchen, rounding up the milk and butter and pepper. No one showers and dresses faster than James or I. Maybe it’s because we’ve always had to get in and out of the house as quick as possible. Whatever the case, I like having dinner done before he gets out.
Nineteen-year-old boys shouldn’t be working long hours doing crap jobs in the mill. Especially not ones smart enough to get into just about any college they want. He does it for me, so I do this for him.
Sure enough, before I’ve had the chance to strain the macaroni, he’s out of the bathroom. Our bedroom door slams—he’s always loud—and he cranks his music full blast. Godsmack floods the hallway. I dump half the pot of steaming mac ‘n cheese onto a plate for my father and leave it on the counter where he’ll see it. Maybe he’ll take it as a peace offering and leave me alone tonight.
Armed with bowls of food and Tupperware cups full of tap water, I kick our bedroom door with the toe of my black sneaker. “Are you dressed yet?”
Sharing a tiny bedroom with a teenage boy requires planning and patience. I give James his privacy as often as I can and take pride in the fact that I’ve never walked in on him naked or doing any horrifying boy things. Too bad he isn’t nearly as mindful of my privacy. I can’t begin to count how many times he’s walked in on me changing.
The music shuts off and plunges the house back into a quiet that feels even louder than his music. Canned laughter from whatever sitcom our mother is watching seeps through her closed door down the hall. As soon as he lets me in, I’ll turn on the fan that sits on my nightstand to block out the sound.
James throws open the door wearing only a pair of jeans and a wide grin. The fading yellow bruises on his ribs make me want to throw up, and I nearly spill the water trying to shield my eyes with the bowls. “Do you mind?”
“You are seriously messed up,” he says as I push past him, but I hear the amusement in his voice. “I’ve got pants on. Isn’t that enough?”
No, it’s not. Thankfully, by the time I settle onto my bed with our bowls, he’s pulled on a t-shirt. Covering up is also something James does for my benefit, though he teases me mercilessly about my “skin phobia.” I blame it on a lifetime of hiding bruises and welts under long sleeves and pants, but not all of it. It’s easier to pretend than tell him the real reason I don’t like seeing his body, so I play along. “Maybe if your skin wasn’t DayGlo white, looking at you wouldn’t physically hurt.”
He plops down on the edge of his bed and scowls at me in a way that I think is supposed to be chastising. When I laugh, he gives up, grabs his bowl out of my hands, and shovels pasta into his mouth. We’re a good pair. Neither of us can stay mad at the other for long.
4:26. Nine minutes to go.
My stomach growls, but I only nibble at my food. One bowl of mac ‘n cheese is never enough for James. I want to make sure I have some left to give him when he’s done. To distract myself, I focus on the posters plastered all over the walls on his side of our tiny bedroom—all horror movie and rock music-related, of course. Sometimes I wish he were into sports or supermodels or something a little less morbid. Other than a lone, teal Mariners pennant hanging crooked on the back of our door, his choice in decorations does nothing for my nightmares.
“So, Dad’ll be home soon,” he says through a mouthful of food. My pulse picks up, but then I notice his bowl is empty. Sure enough, he’s eyeing mine. “You want to get out of here, or are you cool locking yourself in while I’m gone tonight?”
I take one more bite and hold the rest out to him. He’s off his bed to grab it before I can blink. “Can you take me to the mall? I need a haircut.”
He looks up from my bowl and frowns. “I think your hair looks fine.”
“Really?” I smooth down the limp strands that hang almost to my elbow. “I was thinking maybe I’d get it cut really short this summer. Like, pixie-cut short.”
“Huh.” He resumes inhaling his food. “You can do whatever you want, I guess. All I’m saying is you look pretty as is.”
Heat creeps up my neck and bleeds into my cheeks. Even though he’s been saying nice things for as long as I can remember, his compliments always do this to me. It’s a confusing balance between feeling good about myself and being uncomfortable with that feeling.
“I’m supposed to meet up with Sam and Alex in a few hours,” he continues, as if he has no clue he’s embarrassed me. “Think we’ll be done by six?”
At the mention of Sam, my cheeks go from warm to scalding. I’ve been nursing a crush on the tall and mysterious Sam Donavon almost as long as he’s been James’s best friend, which is pretty much forever. I don’t delude myself into thinking it’s mutual. It made sense that he ignored me at school when he and my brother were popular upperclassmen, but the few times Sam has been at our house, it’s been the same way. His gray eyes look through me like I’m a window in the wall.
All-brawn-and-no-brain Alex Andersen, on the other hand, has been flirting with me for years. When I was in fifth grade and he was in sixth—before I knew about his obsession with all things sexual—he lured me out to the rickety shed in our backyard under the pretense of helping him find something for James. Surrounded by rusty lawnmowers and spare car parts, Alex gave me my first kiss.
While it had been a monumental, albeit disappointing, event for me, I doubt it meant anything to him. Alex dates all the girls my brother blows off, plus the few he manages to snag first. James doesn’t talk about the girls themselves much, but he thinks shafting them with Alex is hilarious.
Thinking about Alex and that kiss makes me think about Sam again. After he and James graduated last year, I hardly saw Sam anymore. Now that Alex has graduated, I’ll probably see him even less. Imagining his dark eyes staring at me and his lips on mine, hot and insistent, sends happy shivers up and down my body that I’m terrified James might notice.
The alarm clock perched on the top shelf of James’s headboard ticks off another minute.
4:29. Time to go.
“If we leave soon, we should be back in plenty of time,” I say. Hopefully he’ll take me with him tonight. Just in case, I hop off my bed and quickly contemplate my meager selection of shirts in our closet. A stretchy pale pink t-shirt—long-sleeved, of course, and also a present from James—is the most summery thing I own. I grab it and head for the door.
“You don’t have to change in the bathroom,” James says. When I turn around, startled, I see he’s shifted around to face his headboard. “You know I won’t peek.”
That doesn’t stop me from positioning myself in front of the mirrored closet door with my back to him so I can make sure. I shouldn’t feel weird about changing in front of James—we’ve shared a room our whole lives, so it’s not like we haven’t seen each other before—but I can’t help it. I may hate seeing his bruises, but I worry seeing all of his failures etched into my skin would kill my brother.
It only takes me three seconds to peel off my drab school shirt and slip on the pink one. The second the soft material clears my belly button, James is off his bed and out the door, mumbling that he’ll be back in a second.
While I wait, I rinse out our cups and bowls in the sink. The low rumble of a car pulling into the driveway stops me cold. I frantically glance at the clock in the hallway.
4:36.
We’re too late.