by Lucy Auburn
At some point in the middle of eating, I looked up to see where Silas was and couldn’t find him. Heart thundering absurdly—that was those instincts kicking up again—I looked around for him in a wide-eyed panic until I spotted him standing in the shade of an old pecan tree, talking to Wally.
“What’s wrong?” Jade followed my gaze. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Oh—it’s just Silas. You’ve got to stop worrying about him. He’s going to Connecticut, not Mordor.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Then tell me.”
I opened my mouth to try, but nothing came out except a frustrated breath of air. I didn’t know what was wrong, not really. As far as I could tell, my brother’s life since returning from Coleridge’s orientation week had been non-eventful. Dad had mostly kept to himself, entering that passive aggressive, silent treatment period of his moods, and Mom was the bright and cheery self she always got to be when she was entertaining like this. There was nothing for Silas to really be mad about—at least, not that I could see.
He was getting what he wanted: to leave Wayborne forever. So why was it, as he watched Wally walk away from him, something frightened flicked across his face? Why did Wally look like he had something in his stomach that wasn’t settling right, as if he’d eating all of Ms. Rathbone’s casserole and was suffering the consequences?
I got my answer soon enough, and it came from the opposite end of the table, where the First Baptist girls were sitting. Silas walked up towards the empty seat at the end near them. Church girls through and through, they were eating the lowest calorie menu items—and not sneaking the wine margaritas at all.
They looked at Silas like he was diseased. “Be careful.” One of them shot a look towards my brother, flipping straight blonde hair over her shoulder. “You never know what that Wilder boy will do. You should cover your cup with your hand, Abigail. He might put something in your drink.”
Her words were loud enough to carry, and she meant for them to be. A hush came over our end of the table; Silas, stiffening, picked up his plate and looked down the row of chairs for another place to sit. Our eyes briefly met, and his jaw clenched.
He looked like he wanted to be anywhere but there.
Something in me rose up, something wild and angry that could not be contained or controlled. I stared the girl who’d spoken down. “Shut up Bridget. You’re one to talk. We all know what you do behind the bleachers during gym class. No one needs to drug you.”
Jade’s hand clenched on my upper arm. “Brenna... people are watching.”
“I don’t care,” I muttered back at her. “She doesn’t get to talk to my brother that way.”
But the gaggle of church girls wasn’t done. “We all know what he did to that girl up in Connecticut.” Abigail looked at me with wide, doe eyes. “Or don’t you know, Brenna? Didn’t anyone tell you?”
I didn’t understand what they were talking about. I wish I never learned.
Silas threw his plate down and glared at the church girls. “Shut the fuck up and mind your own goddamned business.”
There were gasps up and down the picnic table. He’d gone too far now, cursed too openly and sacrilegiously. All eyes were on him with disapproval.
Even Mom’s eyes. “Silas Taylor Wilder. There are children here.”
One of the church girls grabbed the cross necklace brushing her clavicle and started murmuring a prayer beneath her breath, no doubt for attention as much as anything.
But all I could do was stare at Silas. “What are they talking about?”
Bridget made a faux sad face. “Someone should tell her. I guess I’ll bite the bullet.” Silas was looking at me with wide grey eyes, shaking his head back and forth, frozen like he was in some kind of nightmare that he just couldn’t stop. The church girl said, “Some poor girl up in Connecticut who’s too good for hick trash turned your brother down, but he didn’t take no for an answer. Now he’s got his very own hashtag. Every high schooler in the country is talking about it... except, I guess, you.” She batted her eyes in faux sympathy as my whole world ground to a halt. “I’ll pray for you. Silas should pray too—for forgiveness. That poor girl.”
Everything inside me was cold all over. I didn’t know if it was anger or shock; I couldn’t tell what I was feeling at all. All I knew was that there was a look on my brother’s face that I’d never seen before.
It was the same expression I saw on our father just before his hands turned into fists.
All my life I’d thought that face was rage. The twist of his lips, the narrowing of his eyes, the way his thick brows drew down; I saw it and knew what was coming next.
And maybe it was anger, in part. But it was also hurt; I knew that once I saw it on my brother’s face, the face I’d been studying every day of my life. Beneath the anger and hurt, though, was a shameful humiliation, the kind of guilt that refuses to come to the surface and be dealt with.
Horrified, I asked Silas, “Is it true?”
He looked at me. And just like I knew his face, he knew mine; he saw on my expression that there was a part of me that believed what they said about him.
Hurt, anger, guilt, all of it turned to betrayal as he glanced back and forth between me and the church girls. Then, with a contemptuous sneer that chilled me to my bones, he reached out and knocked Abigail and Bridget’s cups of lemonade over. They shrieked as their thighs were drenched, ice cubes slipping off the edge of the table to bounce off their skin.
“Fuck you,” Silas declared, his useless anger turning his hands into fists that clenched and released over and over again. He backed away from the table, wild-eyed as the adults grabbed their kids and looked to my mother to get her son in order. “Fuck all of you.”
Then he turned and ran, out towards the hills, the deep grass and untamed ground between pollen-coated oak trees. We watched him go; a murmur rose in the crowd, which had been temporarily lulled to complacency from sheer shock.
I heard a deep voice behind me, and realized that my father had woken from his nap. “You see, Gretchen?” He grabbed my mom’s arm, to comfort her or to hold her back; I couldn’t tell. “That boy came out wrong the day he was born. It’s for the best that he leaves us. Good riddance, I say.”
I looked back, over my shoulder, and saw tears in her eyes. But when my mom met my gaze, I saw in an instant that she wasn’t going to say a single thing to correct him.
She wasn’t going to go after Silas, either.
So I did.
“Brenna!” Jade snatched my sleeve as I got up, pulling me back towards the long table. I looked at her, frozen in a moment in time. “Be careful. There’s a storm coming.”
Glancing up, I saw the wall of clouds, an inexorable dark force on the horizon. Then I looked back at my best friend, whose face reflected my own fear and confusion. “I’ll be back before a single drop falls.”
“Promise?”
“Promise,” I lied.
I banged my knees on the bench as I threw my legs over it. Running towards the trees, I drowned out the sound of the church girls praying condescendingly, my father shouting my name, the good old families of Wayborne muttering about “those Wilders” in voices loud enough to be heard.
All I could think of was that look in his eyes, the curl in his fists, and how I’d betrayed him.
I should’ve said, “I know you’d never do anything like that. Ignore those stupid girls.”
Or, “Explain to me what happened. Tell me the truth—that can’t be it.”
Instead I doubted him. Me, his twin, the first person to know him and love him, to hold him close and watch him go far away. He told Daddy he would take me far from Wayborne when he left, and I know that he meant it. To Silas, I was the sun that rose in the sky each morning and burned his shadow away. We were two pieces that fit together, in the way of things that are made whole and carved into mirrored halves.
I am nothing without him now.
But I ran towards him, as the stars cha
se each other around in the sky, wheeling forever, spinning on their axis. Minutes passed before I felt the first rain drop make its way down through the thick oak branches to splatter on my sun-warmed skin. More followed it; the sky darkened suddenly, and the leaves above my head fell as the wind trembled through the woods.
The hair on my back stood up, skin prickling, as the first boom of thunder crashed through the hills and a bright blue streak of lightning coursed to the ground.
I lost his trail; for a moment, confused, I stood in the woods, calves splashed with mud, searching for him in the darkening shadows of the trees. Then I found him, not with my eyes but with my heart and my mind. I turned towards the only direction he could’ve gone.
A few steps forward through the darkness; shivers ran down my back as the sky grew dark and thick with trouble. Then I saw him, leaning up against the wide trunk of an oak tree, hands on his knees, thick dark hair plastered across his face. His sides heaved. He looked miserable.
As I got close, he glanced up, eyes rimmed red. I stared at him and felt like I was seeing a stranger for the first time.
For a moment, silence.
Then I dared to ask for answers I didn’t want to get. “What were they talking about back there?” Reaching out, I grabbed his sleeve, tugging at him like a child—only we weren’t children anymore. “I know something happened at Coleridge, but you keep lying about it. Tell me, Silas. Tell me what’s going on.”
He yanked out of my grip, standing up straight, mouth a thin line. Lightning struck. I looked up at him—I’d been looking up at him for years at that point—and saw, again, our father.
I gasped. Took a step back. Shivered, from the rain or the cold or—something else, some other kind of fear, the kind I don’t want to admit to myself.
Silas snarled, “You wouldn’t understand. You don’t understand anything.”
“Why?” I cried back in response. “Why wouldn’t I understand?”
He was contemptuous. “We’re both sixteen, but you’re naive. Sheltered. You’ve never dealt with the real stuff. You avoid it, Brenna. You couldn’t even deal with a security guard catching you stealing fucking ponytail holders.” Another bolt of lightning, nearer this time; the cool white light of it turned Silas’s skin a stark, pale color, his dark hair dripping rivulets of water down his neck. “Face it, Sis, you and I are nothing alike. Just like Mom and Dad.”
“No, that’s not true.” I shook my head, reaching for him, and this time he didn’t back away as my hands closed over his arms, as I pulled him closer and tried to look into his eyes even as he avoided my gaze. “We’re the same, Silas. We’re going to get out of here together. I just need you to tell me what happened so I can understand.”
His mouth thinned; his arms flexed beneath my fingers. I felt like I was holding a wild animal, or a bolt of lightning itself. Already he was slipping away.
“Please,” I begged, “just tell me. It was... it was a mistake, wasn’t it? You didn’t mean to.”
He flinched. His nostrils flared. And he pulled away from me again—but this time his hands came up, palms spread wide, and he shoved me so hard I went flying back.
Mud slipped beneath my sneakers.
Thunder boomed in my ears.
I went down, hard. The thick oak roots that rose from the soft ground hit my back. Air whooshed out of my lungs in a humph. Ears ringing, I curled up onto one side, briefly aware only of the pain and the sound of the storm.
I think Silas said something to me then.
I wish I remember what. I wish I’d been listening. Maybe if I’d heard him—maybe if I’d ever heard him—I would have known him as he tried to know me.
He reached for me with a pale hand.
And I snarled in anger, rising to my feet and rushing towards him. I was barely aware that my hands were fists until my right connected with his side, knuckles hitting him hard enough that I felt it reverberate back to me.
The shock of the punch connecting woke me from a rage. I pulled back, staring at him in horror, an apology already dropping from my lips. But it was drowned out by the sound of the storm descending on us in full force, thick with fury. I don’t think he heard it, but even if he had, he wasn’t listening.
All that was left in his grey eyes was nothing. No fury, no rage, no confusion or fear. The lightning dissipated, leaving behind darkness. He turned from me, a silhouette in the dim light overhead, trudging through the mud towards a destination only he could find in the chaos waging war around us.
I stood there for a while, alone and confused, lost in more ways than one. Then I heard the sound of an engine idling, and turned to see Wally sitting in his pickup truck on the side of the road.
That whole time we’d been fifty yards away from salvation, but we hadn’t seen it through the darkness.
“Brenna!” He leaned over to prop open the passenger side door, heedless of the rain slanting in. “Get in. It’s about to get worse.”
“Wait a sec.”
I looked around for Silas but didn’t see him.
In that moment I heard my father’s words echoing in my head: good riddance. I thought—he’s a grown man, just like he says. He knows where he’s going. He has his Eagle Scout badge.
I thought a lot of things. I could make a lot of excuses. But the truth is, I was wet, angry, and afraid; and I didn’t think my brother wanted me to find him.
So I turned away from the rain and hopped up into Wally’s pickup truck, closing the door behind me and dripping onto the rubber mats at my feet. Hesitantly, I told him, “Silas was out there. I don’t know where he went.”
“There’s no time to go looking.” Wally sounded frustrated. “There’s an abandoned Ranger station out there. Silas and I used to sneak out and drink beer there. I’m sure that’s where he was headed.”
“If you say so.” Truthfully, I was relieved to have an excuse not to go trudging out into the wilderness after my lost, angry brother. My ears were still ringing from the fall; when I reached up to press my palm against my ear, my hand came back tinted pink with blood. “He’ll be okay. He’s always been a survivor. Me, not so much.”
Wally snorted. “You can say that again. I remember that time our families tried to camp together and you nearly died and got us all killed in just one night. Now c’mon,” he flicked on his flood lights, “let’s get you on home.”
Chapter 8
I stared out the windows at the rain as Wally flicked on his phone and pulled up a playlist to feed into the speakers. Questions gnawed at me. “What happened?”
“What do you mean?”
“When you picked up Silas.” He was going slow, the wipers turned to max, the road barely visible in front of us. I shivered and rubbed my arms, leaning towards the heater like it could drive out the source of the cold. “I know something happened between you two. He’s not talking, so you’re my best bet to learn to truth.”
Wally’s hands flexed on the steering wheel once, twice. He looked like he was considering whether or not he’d have better luck out in the trees with the lightning.
“Tell me,” I urged him. “I’m his sister. If I can’t help him, who can?”
Based on the way Wally sighed, I knew I’d gotten to him. So I pushed a little harder, dug in a little more. “I just want to make sure everything is okay.”
“Nothing is okay.” He slowed down as the rain picked up in front of us, water sloshing across the road and spraying on either side of his tires. “I can’t tell ya half of what’s going on, Brenna, ‘cause I hardly understand it myself. Everything about this is...” Wally cleared his throat. “It’s different. Silas is different. The way he talks about that school you’d think going there was gonna save him.”
There was a lull in the truck cabin as both Wally and I thought about, but didn’t say, the scars Silas bore deep beneath his skin. I flexed my right hand, knuckles scraped raw, thoughts skittering about. I was afraid to think too long on what I’d done; I couldn’t bear to think of wh
at it felt like to stare at Daddy’s expression on Silas’s face, his rage as he pushed me to the ground.
Minutes passed. The road darkened before us. Bolt of lightning came so close that they seared my vision, and the thunder shook the world around us.
Then, in the distance, I saw it.
A funnel cloud.
“Wally.”
“I see it too.” He sounded calm, centered; he was his father’s son, a salt of the earth type who plants his feet somewhere and stays, come Hell or high water. “We’re not gonna make it to your house, Brenna, so you’ll need to come stay with me and my family. We’ll make it into a tornado party.”
I nodded, throat tight.
And prayed to an undeserving god that my brother was somewhere out there, safe and whole.
As if hearing my thoughts, Wally said, “I’ve got an old radio back at the house. We can try to pick up the channel for the Ranger’s station, see if we can catch your brother. He’s probably halfway through a pack of MREs by now and drinking the last of the beer we stashed there.”
“Probably.” I gave him a wan smile. “God knows he’s survived worse.”
After a few moments, Wally said, “He wasn’t in the dorm he was supposed to be in.”
“What?” I blinked at him.
“When I picked Silas up.” Wally looked straight ahead at the road, I think not because he needed to, but because he didn’t want to look into my face as he told me. “He was supposed to be in some dorm called Hadley Hall, but he wasn’t there. Someone gave me directions and I went looking for him. He was in the girls’ dorms on the east side of campus.” Hesitantly, he added, “He was yelling at some girl. Telling her to delete a video. She kept shaking her head. I think... I think she was crying.”
“Oh.” I felt sick.
Wally continued. “He cut it out as soon as he saw me, before he did I heard him say ‘You’ll ruin everything.’ I didn’t get what it was about, but...” He trailed off. “I uh, I don’t go online much. I heard that’s where most of it is.”