A Family Affair: My Bad Boy Foster Brother

by Blake, Abriella

  “Wow.” My mother's mouth is a rictus of surprise. I can practically hear the argument going on in her head.

  “So you can imagine, that's pretty important, and as honored as I am to be included, I think maybe I should sit Minnesota out.” Coolly, Trace resumes eating, with surprising relish. Like this miserable casserole is so great. From across the table, so subtle I'm sure I'm the only one who can see it, he winks in my direction.

  “Well,” my Dad is saying. “Guess that settles things. What a bummer, kids! I'd so looked forward to spending the conference with you. But of course, school comes first.” He tucks his chin. Even his beard looks disappointed.

  “We'll do the family road trip some other time,” Mom supplements. “Bunk up like we're in college again.”

  Relieved as I am to have skirted the truth, in that instant, I know a pang of regret. A daydream swims across my mind: my parents are snoring in one double bed, while across the grimy hotel room carpet, Trace and I brush bodies beneath cool sheets. His hand skitters over the distance between us on the double bed mattress, coming to a final resting spot on the fluttering flesh of my hip...

  “...sound good, Joanna?” Oh my God. I can't be this distracted. I am actually going to fail out of school and have to become a call girl on the gritty Baltimore streets.

  “Yes!” I say brightly, though I'm not sure exactly what I'm agreeing to. Though I can feel Trace’s eyes bounce off and around me throughout the rest of family dinner, I don't dare look up. I don't dare let him get a look at my eyes.

  * * *

  After I help mom put the dishes away, I put on my coat and make for the front door. I'm not sure what this agitation is, but I know I can't stay inside. From its fleece pocket, my iPhone pings with a text message:

  Hey, it's Eric. This is my new number. Thinking about you, baby. Feels like things have been weird ever since before the EC fair, wanted you to know that I'm still here for you.

  Aww.

  ...But also, was wondering if you could stop by my office sometime to come get some of your sweaters. Starting to look weird that there are four cardigans from one student on my coat rack! :-)

  Grrr.

  As soon as I pocket the phone, there's another chime.

  Hey girlfriend. Listen up: went to my psychic today, and she mentioned something about a tall-dark-handsome-stranger in my near future. I secretly think it could be your finnnne F0$t3R BR0. Cool if I ask him out sometime? Just wanted to check with you first, lol. Claudia out.

  I switch off my phone.

  The lights are blazing from inside the garage. Though I haven't encountered any other ladies-of-the-night in or around Trace's piece of the property since that evening a few weeks ago, I've still been deeply wary about his...area. For all I know, he has friends over right now. Howling lady friends who screw like they're being murdered. I bet they all wear pillowy genie pants, and know exactly how to comfort a kid with a rough past. I bet they're all named Jasmine.

  Something shoots across the gravel, narrowly missing my feet. Something big and orange and round. I yelp.

  “Sorry bout that!” My eyes adjusting to the gloom (and my heart to its close encounter with death...), I survey: on the back half of our driveway, Trace has apparently made a little basketball court. I spy the flipped lid of a trash can hovering over the garage door. Its insides have been carved out to form a hoop. Trace darts past me to collect the freaky object he threw at my head. It is, obviously, a basketball.

  “Seriously, sorry bout that. Didn't think anyone came outside.”

  “Of course we come outside.”

  Even though it's dark, I can see his face twisting into that familiar smirk—but for once, he looks more goofy than smug. It's an expression that reminds me of someone else, someone improbable, someone from an old time movie I've seen at the art-house with my parents. Right, got it: Paul Newman. Trace Harter looks just the littlest bit like Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke, twinkling eyes and all.

  “Sure you do,” Trace mutters. “Look sharp!” The big orange ball shoots towards me again. I duck.

  “What the hell, Trace? If you're trying to kill me, I am one trillion percent positive you could find a faster way.”

  “Shoot it back to me. C'mon.”

  “It's freezing out here. I'm going in.” I stamp my feet, for emphasis, but I don't turn.

  “Don't be such a chickenshit, sis.” Trace widens his stance. I can see him better now, in the gloom—his face is half lit up by the lights coming from his bedroom window. Slowly, having decided...something...I bend, and pick up the basketball, realizing in the process that I can't remember how long it's been since I've held one of these suckers. The ball's nubby surface, like Trace's expression, conjures some vague, distantly lovely memory. Being a carefree little kid somewhere, shooting hoops.

  I dribble the ball twice against the crunchy gravel. Then I take it between my fingers and shoot hard. Trace's thick arms bulge and ripple as he moves to grab my pass, and ever-so-deftly, he latches onto the ball. Dribbles twice, three times, bouncing the orb between his knees. He appears to dance across the shitty expanse of our driveway, and after a second, I hear the rugged swishing sound of the ball falling through its makeshift basket.

  “BOOM,” my foster brother yells into the night—and I can't help laughing at how loud his voice sounds against our silent suburban streets.

  “Alright, alright. So where'd you learn to do that, tough guy?”

  “You get sent outside a lot when you're one of a bunch. Picked it up in the group home, I guess.” He's not watching me as he speaks. He still dances with the ball, making a few lazy lay-ups across the driveway.

  “That must've been fun.”

  Trace pauses, seemingly mid-flight. He hoists the basketball up and over his shoulder, and begins to spin it—impressively—along the tip of his index finger.

  “I wouldn't call a group home fun, exactly.”

  “Oh, God. Trace, I'm sorry. That was so insensitive.”

  “Fuckin' hellish, maybe. A living nightmare –”

  “I'm so, so sorry.” I am such an idiot. Unbidden, I feel my face growing hot. I'm so ashamed that I start blinking rapidly, like I'm going to cry.

  But before I can stutter out another apology, Trace ventures back into a patch of light from the upstairs window. I see that silly glimmer in his green eyes.

  “Wait. Wait. Are you...fucking with me?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Trace Harter, are you fucking with me?”

  “A little bit.” He grins, and his teeth glow. I trace the source of this new light, tilting my chin up to the sky. It's the moon now that falls on his face.

  “You know, I can never tell with you,” I say quietly. “You haven't—I mean, I don’t know, I feel like we got off on the wrong foot and now you hate me, or something. And listen, I'm really sorry about that terrible orphan thing I said. Again.” And cue the violins—my stupid face is filling up behind the eyes. I exhale, deeply. Jesus—what do I even care? Just a few miles away from here, Eric is probably sipping a glass of wine, gazing soulfully into some book as his wretched, beautiful wife snores across the hall. Some great guy's out there, thinking about me, and I'm here—so overly and unnecessarily concerned with what this random-ass, midnight hoop-jumping dude thinks.

  Without my quite realizing it, Trace has sidled up to me. He's so close that I can feel his breath land on my face—he's a brief warm respite in the chilly air. He smells so good. I usually hate cologne, but whatever he's wearing is subtle, leathery. Classier than I'd expect. I start.

  “So what are you really doing that weekend in November?” he breathes to me. “You also 'planning some sessions with your counselor?'” I see little beads of sweat cresting on his forehead. It takes me a second to remember that he's just been running around—and when I do remember, I'm weirdly disappointed.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Don't do that coy shit with me, J. I've got a real good BS detector.”
And just like that, he turns his back on me once more. “I know your deal, you know. I think the whole f-ing school knows.”

  I yank my coat tighter around my middle. The weird little ball of dread that's been knotted in my stomach for months now, ever since I took up with Eric—suddenly expands inside me. Like a fist, stretching into a palm.

  “What are you talking about, Trace?”

  “The old guy. Mr. Mahoney. It's not like you're subtle, either of you. I thought I'd figured it out at the EC Fair shit, then I heard you and your girlfriend dishing the other night. And a brotha can tell when somebody's in the sex haze.”

  “Right. I'm sure you can.”

  Trace whips back around. “And what's that tone, Miss Thing? Your secret's safe with me. I don't give a flying fuck who you get freaky with.” He dribbles the ball further away from me, launching into another lay-up. I wish he'd quit it. The rhythmic sound of the ball smacking against gravel is no longer crisp and pleasing; it's just flat out annoying.

  Catching another glimpse of his smug, twinkly expression in the moonlight—so very smug, so very twinkly—I want to coil up some insult about the screaming girl I heard in his room the day he moved in, but the quips aren't handy. I actually cannot believe he knows my secret. How have we not been subtle? Eric's bought new phones every month, the whole time we've been dating. We never meet up in public. He goes out of his way to make sure we don't leave 'clues,' and still, Trace Harter can figure us out?

  He tosses me the ball again, but I demur. I clear my throat. “Listen, I don't know what you think you heard, but its bad information. I really don't appreciate being the subject of a malicious lie.” And now, is my cue for the cool-headed exit. Is it possible he's still just fucking with me, and I fell into another one of his traps? I know this sounds snobby as hell to say, but I resent the fact that I'm being outsmarted by a guy who's barely on track to graduate.

  As I'm backing away, towards the house, my resolve stiffens. Trace and I come from totally different worlds, and as far as I'm concerned, there's not really a reason or a need for us to intersect. I let the ball roll past me on the rocks. This, whatever it was, is—this is a mistake. I see that now.

  “Jo! Oh, don't be like that, Jo! I said I don't give a fuck. Doesn't matter if you're banging the counselor on your off-days. Lord knows I—”

  “And not that it's any of your business whatsoever, but I happen to have a huge audition for music school that weekend in November. So no, I'm not just sticking around the city to have some secret fuck. Some of us actually care about our futures.”

  I can't believe he gets me to think and say such bitchy things. I don't know what it is about that man.

  I run back into the house before I can read his expression in the moonlight. I'm too afraid to see if I've hurt him, and at the same time, I'm just as afraid that he won't be stunned. That my words will have left no mark.

  Chapter Six

  October 21st

  “Schrodinger?”

  “Pass.”

  “Zeno?”

  “Pass.”

  “Okay, then. Einstein?”

  “I'm so bored I could stein. Do you have any weed?”

  Claudia is draped across the couch in my living room, looking for all the world like some adult Lolita in booty shorts and a striped tee, that stretches tight across her huge tits. I love her to death, but the girl's about as subtle as a hurricane. Earlier today, she came up to my locker with her classic Claudia pout on, and started whining about how I just had to help her study for the Philosophy of Physics mid-term. I might have guessed, of course. Claudia's not even enrolled in that class.

  “Dude, if you're not going to take this seriously, amscray. I actually have a shit-ton of work to do.”

  “Hey, I'm listening. I might need to know about Humdinger someday. You never know.”

  Outside, sounds from a loud car spill out onto my driveway. I hear music that's harsh and grating. I hear the hollers of three or four dudes. I think I recognize a few of the voices, but when I try to conjure faces I just see a faceless mish-mash of members of the Douglass basketball team. Seems like the demon has gotten in deep with his new jock pals. Claudia's whole face seems to perk up. Like a dog's, when it hears its owner coming home.

  “That wouldn't be Mr. Harter, now would it?” she trills in a Southern debutante's voice, jumping to her feet and running to the window. Outside, the car door slams, and heavy feet crunch along the gravel. Various obscene goodbyes are shouted into space.

  With that, my best friend has already bounced out onto the porch. I hunch back into the textbook. It's not that I'm afraid to talk to Trace, because it's more complicated than that. We just haven't spoken in three days. No steely looks, no bickering, no nothing—just nods and silence. Even Earl and Janice have noticed our weirdness, from behind their impenetrable, always-happy-for-ourselves fortress of smugness.

  “No one's getting the silent treatment, right, Jo?” My mother had demanded, over yesterday's breakfast. “Because we want to make sure we're making Trace feel welcome. We must remember, our whole family has committed to providing him support.”

  (Oh, how I love when my mother says 'we.' Like she can Jedi Mind Trick me into not only obeying her whims, but agreeing with the reason behind each one.)

  Note to self: I feel like I've been badmouthing the parents a little bit lately. Scratch that: I've just not been myself, in general.

  Out on the porch, I can hear that Claudia's put on her seductive, come-hither voice. The one that's about an octave lower than the way she normally speaks.

  “You guys do okay at your meet today?”

  “Hey, Miss Claudia. Sure did, sure did. Those fools—they alright.”

  “I'm sure you guys looked great out there.”

  Tinny, terrible laughter. I slam the philosophy book shut in my lap, noting its especially glossy cover. Did Claudia actually go out and purchase a textbook in order to flirt with my foster brother? I can't even.

  “Listen, Trace. I was wondering. Would you ever wanna –” and she goes into her spiel. I stand up, wander over to the sink, and wash my hands—more for something to do with my body than anything else. I'd told Claudia that it was completely fine if she asked out my foster brother, so long as she didn't expect me to listen to her bitch and moan about what an oversensitive asshole he could be. She'd maybe seemed a little surprised at my harsh words, but it was clear now that in Claudia-speak, a “sure, whatever” was girl-code for “Go for it!”

  For the past three nights, I'd stayed up late, watching from my bedroom window to see if Trace was tooling around outside. I figured, if he wanted to talk to me, he could extend the olive branch again by shooting hoops in the yard. God knows that at school, he is too well-ensconced into the tribe of the athletes and cool guys for me to approach. Maybe Claudia could thwack her way into any social circle she chose with sheer gumption, but for most of us, cross-pollination is a harder task. If I couldn't talk to Trace at home or at school, well—I couldn't talk to Trace.

  There was something else nagging at me, too, ever since the night I'd said that other shitty thing on the basketball court. In addition to Trace's knowing my secret, something else in his manner had made me uncomfortable that night. I guess I still wondered why he'd lied for me, or if he, perhaps, really did have some engagement on that mysterious November weekend that he needed to protect. I knew that the “counseling session” excuse had to be a crock of shit, but then, what reason could he really have for taking the fall for his dickwad foster sister? I'd racked my brain, and could think of none.

  “....anyways. Just if you wanted to. I think we'd have fun.” I bet Claudia is leaning over our porch railing, smooshing her breasts together, dangling herself like a carrot in front of the boy. I imagine his eyes twinkling in that Paul Newman way. I imagine him rubbing at the back of his neck for a long pensive moment, as he pretends to mull over his response.

  But I make for the stairs before I can hear this. Whipping out my iPho
ne, suddenly furious, I punch in the number of the latest burner. It's been a while, but still he responds right away:

  Art room in fifteen. Can't wait to taste you again.

  You play the cards you're dealt, right? I slap on some make-up, I twist my mousy hair up into a high bun, and I even shove an English textbook into my backpack for good measure. I push thoughts of beautiful Mrs. Mahoney from my mind. Out of habit, I reach for my violin case—then think better of it.

  As I pass them on the porch, Claudia's leaning (as I figured she would be) and Trace is shifting from foot to foot, dancing some long, thin object between his hands. I remember the thing—it was one of the drumsticks I saw peeking out of his pockets, that first day we met. Huh.

  “Jo!” Claudia turns. “Where are you going, all dolled up? And hey, how come you never told me that Mr. Harter here is another musician?”

  I snort so hard that my backpack falls off my shoulder.

  “What's so funny?” Trace asks. His eyes clamp onto mine. It's almost a relief, to make eye contact after we haven't spoken in days. Then again, he does not look thrilled to see me.

  “I just...I had no idea. Are you seriously a musician, Trace?”

  He doesn't respond, but Claudia giggles, and reaches over the porch-railing to place a protective hand on his forearm. They already look like boyfriend and girlfriend.

  Yuck.

  “Seriously, Trace? What do you play?”

  Now it's Claudia's turn to snort. Trace still says nothing, but in response Trace removes the other stick from his pocket, and begins to beat out a simple rhythm against the bricks of the house. Claudia throws her hair back. She starts to wiggle her hips to the beat, meringue-ing back and forth.

  “You know our girl here plays violin!” Claudia shouts, too-loud. “You guys have seriously never had a jam session? That'd be the first thing I'd do, if I picked up a brother who could play.”