by Lucy Auburn
My brother knew what it felt like to fold in the middle under an onslaught of fists, but he had no idea what games the rich play when they’re bored of getting everything they want.
He was a gazelle walking into the lion’s den, and he’d left me, his only other pride member, behind.
The call came in the dead of night, breaking through my cell phone’s sleep rules and waking me in the middle of a dream. My fingers fumbled across my nightstand for the phone, and I pressed my thumb down on the web of cracks across the finicky touch screen.
“Hello?” My voice came out warped with sleep; bleary-eyed, I stared at the red numbers of my digital clock. 2:13 AM. The caller wasn’t a number saved in my phone, but somehow I knew. “Silas?”
“Yeah.” He sounded frightened, but not in an immediate way, as if he’d just run panting from a tiger and was calling me from the top of a tree, staring down at its claws and teeth. “I’m calling you from the school’s landline. My cell’s broke. It kinda fell in a toilet bowl.”
“I keep telling you not to put it in your back pocket when you’re going to the bathroom.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” he responded, sounding indignant. “That’s not why I called, though. There’s... something else.”
Silence on the other end of the line. I waited for him to finish the sentence, mind too full of sleep to figure out what to say to draw him out. Sitting there in my bed, hair mussed from sleep, I enjoyed just hearing him breathing for the first time in days.
“It’s bad here, Brenna.” He sounded choked, like he was talking around a pit lodged in his throat. “I didn’t... I knew it would be tough, but not like this.”
I didn’t say “I told you so,” to my credit, because it wouldn’t have helped. Instead I asked, “What happened?”
More silence from him. Silas had never been the most talkative brother, but when it was just the two of us I could always depend on him to at least respond to my questions. The worry lodged in my middle bloomed into fear.
If I’d had a car, a license, and a lick of good sense, I would’ve driven up north to get him right then and there. I can see it now in my mind, with the clarity of hindsight and broken-heartedness: the sun rising over the horizon’s edge, the sound of wind flowing past rolled-down car windows, and his kicked-puppy face as I pull up in front of the academy’s ostentatious gates. He would say something like, “I tried my best,” or “you didn’t have to come all this way.” I would tell him to get in already and throw his luggage in the back.
But I didn’t have a car, a license, or enough good sense to know what to do in that moment. All I knew was that something was wrong, it was too big for me to fix on my own, and neither one of our shitty, no-good parents would be able to help even if Silas wanted their help.
Finally, after a long handful of seconds, Silas spoke. “It’s nothing you need to worry about. I’ll... I’ll handle it myself. I’m sure by the time the school year starts it’ll all die down.”
Alarm set the steady rhythm of my heart off-kilter. “Settle down?”
“Go back to sleep,” he said. “Sorry for waking you.”
The line went dead before I could respond.
I slept, somehow. I slept despite the worry in my heart. I told myself I would see him again in a few days, and he would tell me all about it. In my mind it was so easy to imagine what those other students would do to him: make fun of his clothes, call him poor, imitate his accent, and single him out as an outsider.
Now I realize that I lacked imagination.
What they did to him wasn’t the run-of-the-mill bullying that a new kid gets when they transfer schools.
It was something else, something that lurked in the dark and struck before you sensed it. They bit down hard and left a poison inside him that spread through his veins fast as blood. By the time they were done with him, they didn’t even have to lift a finger to finish the job; the events they set in motion did all the hard work for them.
Let it never be said that rich people don’t know how to delegate.
After that phone call, I punched the number of the landline he’d called from more than once, trying to get someone to track him down. But though I got a friendly menu response, and more than one friendly receptionist, no one seemed to be able to find him for me when they went looking.
So I just had to sit at home and wait, whittling down the hours.
The day before Silas came back, I went to Jade’s house.
Chapter 4
Jade lives in the part of Wayborne that floods when the river is fat and full. Her house has been rebuilt from the foundation up three times; by the third incarnation, it had stilts and a ten-step staircase leading up to the front porch.
If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t look too close, you’d probably assume that Jade and her family lived in a lower elevation part of Wayborne. You’d fault the flooding of her house on the land itself, and tsk-tsk every time they refused to evacuate or rebuilt instead of moving.
But what you don’t know is that Wayborne, built straddling a river, has a not-so-well-kept secret. The north side of town is where the white folks lived back when segregation was legal, and the south side of town was where the black folks were allowed to live. Bisecting the two sides of town is a lazy river that swells every few years or so, its fat, full belly squeezing water out onto the land.
The north side has levees to prevent flooding.
The south side doesn’t.
So while my father’s father built his house north of the levees, Jade’s grandparents had no choice but to go south to find a plot of land to settle on. And if the color of their skin made their options narrow, well, they refused to let the inevitable storms rip their roots up from the soft ground.
Each year that the floods came, they sat in their house and watched the water rise.
When it left, taking things they loved and people they knew with it, they turned their backs to the rising sun and rebuilt that which was stolen from them. They set down roots in land that had been theirs for generations. Suggest to them that they’d be better off moving, and you’d get a look that would scald your very skin from head to toe.
The south side of Wayborne had its hazards, sure, but it had its beauties too. It was where their children were born; it was the land they played and grew on. It was here, south of the river’s screaming destruction, that they made the best of it and leaned on each other for help.
Each flood they built better. Each flood they lost neighbors to the waters, the destruction, or the cold aftermath. Some moved up north; others moved down south. But the Smiths never left. They’d been put in Wayborne, Virginia generations long past, and they refused to give ground. It would take God Almighty himself to remove that family from the blue-painted, clapboard-sided house with its dark brown shutters.
Jade’s mom Grace used to say, “I was born in Wayborne and I’ll die in Wayborne, no matter what may knock on my door. I’ve got more blood in this soil than circulates through my body, and I won’t walk away from a single drop. This land is as much mine as anyone’s.”
Staring up at the house’s third rebirth the day before Silas returned, I tried to summon some kind of courage. Unlike every other time I stood at the foot of those steps, this time I was coming with my metaphorical hat in my hand to beg for forgiveness. And I didn’t know if I’d even be let through the front door.
But I was lonely, desperate, and all out of pride. I’d do anything to get back in Jade’s good graces. Even grovel, probably.
Standing at the bottom of those steps, though, I couldn’t quite make myself go up them. Maybe because I knew the instant I did I would have to face what I’d done.
So it was a relief when the front door opened, Jade standing at the threshold of the house, her hair a gentle halo pushed back from her forehead by a thick headband. She looked at me the way you look at a stray cat when it drags its dirty, wounded body to your front porch after weeks away, begging for a morsel of food and a pat
on the head.
“Long time no see,” she said, sounding neither angry nor happy to see me. “You picked a hell of a time to darken this door again.”
“‘Darken this door?’” I raised an eyebrow at her choice of words. “You’ve been reading too much lit fic again. You only speak in metaphors when you spend all day buried in a book.”
“What else do you expect me to do?” The way she put her hand on her hip and looked down on me, Jade made it clear she was judging me and found me wanting. “If I even so much as step out of this house I have to worry my dumbass juvenile probation officer will drop by for a surprise visit to make sure I’m not breaking the law. So yeah, Brenna, I’ve been sitting in my room reading my mom’s old paperback books all day. There’s not a whole lot else I can do.”
Lamely, I offered, “Sorry.”
“Oh.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “The great Brenna Wilder is sorry she ran away when the security guard came. Well, I guess if you’ve said the word we’re all good now. Come on into my house and let’s pretend like it never happened.”
There was scorn dripping from every word, so acerbic it made me wince. But I couldn’t back off, couldn’t turn around and walk away. I had to buckle down and face the storm. Whatever she had to give to me, I deserved it, and so much worse.
“I know you’re mad.” This seemed self-evident, but it bore observing out loud. “I didn’t know what to do about it. I thought... I thought even talking about it would just...”
“Explode in your face?” The snort that left her nose was disdainful. “I guess you’re not exactly used to disagreements repairing things. Your family isn’t really experienced in conflict resolution.”
Unlike most of my friends, Jade knew everything. She’d been there during the late nights when I curled around myself and cried; hers was the house I ran too, back when I was still in the habit of running. There was no sugar-coating Silas’s bruises or the dark circles under my eyes. Jade knew all of it, every dirty secret the Wilder family held close to their chest, and my father hated her for it.
“Maybe you can teach me.”
“Maybe I can,” she acquiesced. “And maybe I could stand to hear you apologize a few more times.”
“I’m sorry, so sorry, really very sorry.” Biting my lip, I stared up at her and asked, “Can I come in?”
In response, she stepped into the cool shadows of the air-conditioned house and left the door yawning wide behind her.
It was an invitation, not just into her house but back into her heart. I approached it with the reverence it deserved, taking the stairs one at a time and staring hopefully into the depths of the reborn house, certain that I’d find salvation within those four walls.
“Do you want lemonade?” Jade called from the kitchen, trusting me to waltz in and close the door behind me. “The trees out back are dripping with lemons, and Mom won’t stop juicing them. We have enough to whet the thirst of a whole football team.”
“I’ll have a glass.” I followed her into the kitchen, which was wallpapered with a feminine floral pattern that I knew was bought in the past decade but still looked like it came out of a 1970s Home & Garden magazine. “Is your mom around?”
“She has a shift down at the diner.” Jade eyed me as she poured two tall glasses of lemonade from a pitcher fresh from the fridge. “You picked a perfect moment to come over. I’m sure if she were home she’d box your ears.”
I winced at the thought. “She’s that mad?”
Jade made an indelicate noise that was half-snort, half-laugh. “I’ve spent the last three weeks picking up trash on the side of the road in full view of all the PTA parents and half the rest of the city. Of course she’s mad. She thinks you should be standing right there beside me.” She slid one of the glasses in my direction. “And you would be, if you weren’t the world’s greatest coward.”
I swallowed a too-big mouthful of the sour-sweet lemonade. “I resemble that remark. And a whole lot of others beside it. But I am sorry, Jade. I didn’t think that it would become a whole big thing.”
“Yeah, well, you live on the other side of the levees,” she pointed out. Unsaid beneath her sentence was: You’re a white girl, and I’m a black girl. “The rules are different for you. If they’d caught us together, I bet we both would’ve had ten hours max. Instead I got a hundred all by myself. It’ll be a miracle if I finish them before school starts up.”
I winced, swallowing the instinct to apologize again. I knew it wouldn’t help. “You’re right, I’m sure.” The glass sweated against my hand. “Is there anything I can do? Other than perform hara-kiri.”
“I have a sword,” Jade said menacingly. “I’m sure you could disembowel yourself if you found sufficient motivation. Yukio Mishima committed seppuku, after all, and he almost won a Nobel Prize. You haven’t achieved nearly so much.”
“There’s that lit fic talk again.” I stared at her with wide, mournful eyes. “Next thing you know, you’ll be saying ‘ain’t’ ain’t a word, and correcting all our grammar. What’s next—Yale? Harvard? NYU?”
Jade laughed, the sound a balm to my injured soul. “If I go to an ivy league school I’ll never see you again.” Tapping her chin, she added mischievously, “Though maybe Silas and I will get into one together. And of the Wilder twins, he’s the one most likely to give me a happily ever after.”
I glowered at her. “That’s like, a step away from incest.”
“Is it?” She widened her eyes, all faux innocence. “Because my melanin check tells me you and I don’t have a drop of blood in common.” Jade stretched her arm across the kitchen counter and pushed it against mine, her brown skin a contrast to my deathly pale. “Pretty sure Silas and I can get down and dirty without our kids getting hemophilia.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Gross and grosser.”
We laughed together, and drank lemonade together. After a long, happy moment, I sobered up and asked her, “Do you forgive me? Can you forgive me? I never thought you’d get arrested.”
“I know.” She studied my face. “But, Brenna, you have to understand that the rules are different for you and me. What gets you a reprimand gets me hours of community service. We live on opposite sides of the river for a reason, and those reasons didn’t die with our grandparents.” Motioning towards her arm, she added, “Melanin.”
I nodded my head in acceptance, the bitter truth settling inside me the way adulthood tends to. It felt like growing up, and I didn’t like it at all, even though I knew I had to—just like Jade. “Next time I’ll stand right beside you when the hopped-up power-tripping security guard gets his cuffs out, and they’ll have to deal with the both of us together.”
Jade snorted. “Thanks, but I’d rather there never be a next time. No more stealing lip liner and ponytail holders for me. We’re not that far from being eighteen and graduating from high school. One way or another we’ve got to face adulthood together.”
I didn’t like the way that sounded, as true as it was. So I busied myself with drinking Jade’s mom’s lemonade, and then I dragged her to the living room and made her binge watch the latest streaming show with me, our mouths opening wide with incredulous laughter.
For a moment the Smith household was something next to heaven, a place where I rested my head and my heart alike. I knew a kind of peace: the repair of a friendship broken, forgiveness born of grace, and a place that felt like home. I let my guard down and dared to believe that everything would be alright.
There’s always calm before the storm breaks. It’s the only way you know the destruction is coming.
Chapter 5
He didn’t come home when he was supposed to.
Standing on the side of the road, cell phone in my hand, I frowned in the direction of the setting sun. Wally left to pick him up that morning with plenty of time to spare; they were supposed to switch turns driving on the way back with a rest in the middle. It was a long drive, but not that long. They were supposed to make it by sunset.
My anxious mind immediately jumped to the conclusion that it was the latter, insistently telling me terrible stories of my brother’s head going through a car windshield, or Wally getting them lost on the side of the road and murdered by escaped convicts.
To fight the catastrophe-related anxiety in my mind, I grabbed the old fixed gear bike from the garage and rode it around our cluster of houses beneath the darkening sky and time-activated street lamps. Its gear ran smoothly, pedals well-oiled by my brother’s careful hand. Even the little pink ribbon tied to the handlebars was bright, shiny, and brand-new looking.
At one point my mom came out, stood on the front porch, and called to me. “Brenna! Want any chicken pot pie? I’m about to put it in the fridge for later.”
I stopped and stared at her, the tips of my worn tennis shoes touching the ground. “Silas isn’t home yet.”
“He can reheat it for dinner. That’s the sort of thing he’ll have to get used to doing once he’s transferred to that new school.” The light in the middle of the lazy ceiling fan cast a warm orange glow across her face. “Don’t stay out here too late. Your father will want you to come to bed in time for nightly prayers.”
I nodded, not daring to speak out loud. Daddy insisted we were in bed at ten sharp every night so we could get on our knees and pray—a tradition he taught us when we were barely young enough to know the words to a single psalm. He almost never checked to make sure we were doing it anymore, but on those rare nights he came up the stairs at ten, we were either by our beds murmuring saintly words or would find ourselves yanked to our knees until reverence came pouring out.
I’d missed Silas that whole week as I knelt by my bed and spit out a penance half-remembered and never genuine in feeling. Normally we’d do our prayers—or his profanity-laden version of them—with our bedroom doors open, facing each other. For a while in middle school he spent every night inserting jokes into his prayers, insistently trying to get me to giggle, until Dad came home one night, went up the stairs, and put a stop to that.