by Zoey Parker
“Dammit,” Brittany cursed under her breath. She was too late. She’d failed to beat her brother home. She considered hiding her shopping in a nearby bush. The bag was in her hand and she was about to stoop down and conceal it when the mesh door of the house clattered open revealing Zack behind it. Brittany instantly straightened and remained frozen before him, like a deer caught in headlights.
“Where the hell have you been?” he snarled angrily at her. Brittany could feel eyes upon her as neighbors pulled back their curtains in the hope of witnessing a heated exchange. She refused to give them such a show. Pushing back her shoulders, she confidently approached the house and pushed past Zack.
Inside, the house was dark and cool, thanks to the ceiling fan which was forever rotating above the small lounge. They’d once had a proper air conditioning system but that, like the lawn mower, had been pawned long ago.
“I said where have you been?” Zack reached for her shoulder and spun her around to face him.
Like his sister, he had dark hair and bright blue eyes which were vivid even in the darkness of the house. But he stood a good foot taller than Brittany, and he looked down upon her now with anger distorting his chiseled, handsome features. Brittany was about to respond when she noticed the dark bruise clouding around his left eye.
“Hey, what happened?” she pointed towards it and Zack flinched. “You get in an accident at work?”
“Yeah,” he replied gruffly, turning away so that she could no longer see the bruise. “A box fell on me.”
“Want me to take a look at it?”
“No!”
“Seriously, Zack,” Brittany strode away from him and slung her shopping bag down onto the sofa.
“You’re always getting hurt at work. Last week it was that cut on your hand, before that you broke a rib. I swear you should just take out a lawsuit against your employer. No job should be this hazardous.”
“Just drop it,” Zack ordered briskly. “Where were you?”
He was back on his mission of interrogation.
“I went shopping,” Brittany sighed. It was hardly as if she’d committed some terrible crime, which was how Zack was trying to make her feel.
“Shopping?” he echoed incredulously.
“Yes, shopping,” Brittany gestured angrily at the bag containing her art supplies. “I needed a few things so I cycled into town. I don’t see why you’re getting so worked up about it.”
“You’re supposed to stay at home,” Zack declared through clenched teeth. “How many times, Brittany? You stay here!”
“Like a prisoner?” Brittany shrieked, clutching her bag tightly against her chest. Suddenly she wanted to be as far away from Zack as possible, which meant either retreating to the yard or her small bedroom. She chose the yard.
She started stomping through the open plan living room and kitchen towards the sliding doors, which led out into the modest backyard. Here the lawn was more tamed than the front yard thanks to Brittany’s backbreaking efforts with some garden shears she found in the garage. She lacked the stamina to do both lawns.
“Brittany!” Zack boomed her name with such force that some of the glasses in a nearby cabinet shook.
“Zack,” she sighed as her shoulders slumped, and she turned back, one hand resting on the handle for the sliding doors.
“I love you. I love everything you’ve done for me. But I’m eighteen, it’s about time I started having some sort of life.”
“Don’t I care for you?” Zack demanded angrily. “Don’t I buy you food, keep a roof over your head?”
“Yes,” Brittany admitted. “But I’m not a pet dog. I need more than food and shelter. You should let me go out and find a job, that way we’re both taking care of the house, and you’re not shouldering the burden alone.”
“I’m managing just fine!”
“Are you?” Brittany cried heatedly. “Because you’re always beaten up and in the foulest of moods.”
“You’re being ungrateful!” Zack barked. “Do you have any idea the lengths I go to in order to keep us safe?”
“Safe?” Brittany repeated the word, frowning. “Safe from what?”
Zack sighed in frustration and kicked at the sofa.
“Safe from what?” Brittany repeated. In recent years, Zack seemed to be scared of his own shadow. Each time the doorbell chimed or the phone rang he jumped ten feet in the air and went as white as a ghost. The front door was covered in a dozen different bolts and locks, same for the back. Zack became obsessed with securing the home as though he feared that there was going to be an imminent zombie apocalypse that only he knew about.
“Just…” Zack ran his hands through his dark hair. He smelled of petrol and cigar smoke. Brittany was becoming increasingly determined to follow him to work one night and see what kind of a factory he was actually working at.
“Just trust me,” he eventually conceded. “I’ve always looked out for us, haven’t I?”
“Yeah.”
“Then just trust me.”
“Trust goes both ways you know,” Brittany told him as she yanked open the sliding doors. The dense heat of the day came tumbling in around her, challenging the overhead fan which continued to spin in its never-ending orbit.
She stepped outside and breathed in the hot, clean air. Behind her, she heard a door slam as Zack finally abandoned the argument to go and lick his wounds. Brittany failed to understand how he could worry about her so much. Sure, they lived in a slightly dangerous part of town, but nowhere was without the risk of petty crime. She was basically an adult now, and she couldn’t go on with Zack insisting on treating her like a child.
Brittany lay her head against the thick trunk of the willow tree in the yard and reached into her bag for her new sketch pad and paints. She took a deep breath and let her mind clear. And then she started to draw. She drew ornate skulls adorned with flowers and jewels, she drew magical fairies who danced across the garden on luminous wings. She filled pages and pages with her drawings, and she only stopped when a shadow spread across the page. Squinting up against the sun she saw Zack standing above her, holding a fresh glass of iced tea. Condensation clung to the glass as the ice cubes swirled noisily within the amber liquid.
“I thought you might want this,” he handed it to her. “Especially if you’re going to insist on spending the day outside.”
“Thanks,” Brittany smiled up at him in gratitude.
“I’m heading to bed for a bit,” Zack told her. Dark circles had blended with his blooming bruise to make his eyes appear hooded and sinister.
“Promise me you’ll behave while I rest?”
“I promise,” Brittany told him sweetly. “And I’ll even stick a pizza in the oven for when you wake up.”
“Thanks, sis,” Zack sauntered back towards the house, his shoulders slumped. Brittany watched him with a heavy heart. She knew that she couldn’t let him keep supporting them both. Whether he liked it or not, it was high time she got a job of her own and started paying her way.
Chapter Two
While her brother slept, Brittany poured over the local newspaper, determined to find herself a reasonable job. Sadly, there wasn’t much work available for her skillset. Most of the jobs posted required some sort of relevant experience, which Brittany didn’t have. Pretty much the only thing she really excelled at was her art. Beyond that, she could cook and clean, but no one was hiring a surrogate sister or mother.
Leaning back in her chair Brittany sighed, feeling deflated. She glanced sadly towards the bedroom door beyond which Zack was sleeping soundly. A part of Brittany knew that there was more to his damaged eye than he was letting on. There had to be. He was always getting strange and mysterious wounds, and she kept turning a blind eye to them.
“What do you do at night?” she wondered aloud, still staring at the door. She feared that perhaps Zack was getting involved in the seedy underbelly which had slowly rotted their once wholesome town. Back when their parents were alive, it was the k
ind of place where you could leave your front door unlocked at night, and let your kids play out on the front porch. But all that had changed during the last decade. Now if you walked home alone at night you kept your steps fast and your head low. Their town was no longer safe and was Zack possibly contributing to that?
No. Brittany shook her head. She wouldn’t believe that Zack was doing anything dishonorable. That wasn’t like him. He was the protective older brother who had been there for her, who had helped raise her. He could never hurt someone.
With a sigh, Brittany looked back down at the paper. It was slim pickings for jobs. There wasn’t even any waitressing work ads. Groaning, Brittany scrunched up the page and pushed it aside. It was useless. As bummed out as she was, she went back outside to work on some more sketches beneath the willow tree and clear her mind.
When Brittany drew the world around her, she disappeared, and she became lost in her art. The process consumed her. She’d learned early on that drawing was a great way to get away from all the pain and sadness that haunted her day to day life. With a pencil in her hand she could get away, she could draw beautiful castles or strong, powerful animals capable of carrying her off on their backs. And her pictures were good, she was sure of that. Whenever she plucked up the courage to show them to Zack, he was always full of praise.
“Wow, Brittany, those are amazing,” he’d gush proudly. “Clearly, you got all the talent in the family.”
Brittany would blush modestly, secretly warmed by his words. If Zack liked her pictures, then they must be good. Yet no one else had ever seen them. Had her parents still been around, she’d have showed them, but beyond them, the town of Harlow was cut off from most people. There was nothing like a tragedy to show you who your real friends were. Those who did stick around had recently left town for college, leaving Brittany well and truly isolated with only Zack for company.
She realized that she wanted a job for more than just financial reasons. She longed for companionship. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d met someone new. In her town people only ever left, no one new ever showed up.
Placing down her artist’s pad, Brittany saw that the sun had started to dip in the sky. She wasn’t sure of the exact time, but she sensed that it was late afternoon. Zack would be waking up soon and her plan had been to ambush him with her idea of getting a job. He was always most receptive to change when he was fully rested. But if she went to him with only an abstract idea, he’d never go for it. She needed something concrete if she was going to win his approval.
Standing up Brittany dusted herself off and headed back inside. A quick glance at the clock told her it was four o’ clock. She had little over an hour until Zack awoke. Brittany stood in the kitchen and debated what to do. She knew that she had to cast her net a little wider to find a decent job. The newspaper had been a dead end, which meant that really, she needed to look online. Only her house didn’t have internet. Zack was bizarrely dead set against having it. Brittany paced around the small table, debating what she should do.
An hour, that was all she needed. If she left now, she could cycle into town and use one of the computers at the library to access the internet. But if Zack found out he’d be pissed, and that’s putting it mildly. Not if he never knew, not if she was back in time. Before Brittany could talk herself out of it, she was heading out of the front door and reaching for her bike. Despite the lateness of the day, the air still felt hot and humid. Pressing down on the pedals Brittany started to cycle and was soon leaving her street and heading into town.
The feeling of freedom was intoxicating. As the wind blew through her hair, she leaned back and relished the sensation. She pedaled harder to help whip her hair into a wild frenzy. She was laughing, delirious with the excitement of it all. The fact that her visit to the library was forbidden made it feel all-the-more wondrous.
She was giggling to herself like a crazed sole conspirator as she chained up her bike and hurried up the stone steps towards the library. It was now four fifteen leaving her only thirty minutes to find the perfect job, which Zack couldn’t possibly say no to.
“You can do this,” she told herself confidently as she entered the air-conditioned cool of the library. Pushing back her shoulders and lifting her chin ,she approached the section with the computers and tried to blend in, acting as though she belonged there, that what she was doing wasn’t actually some strange act of defiance. As she logged into a vacant computer, she prayed that her perfect job was just a few internet searches away.
Chapter Three
A shiver of excitement danced down Brittany’s spine. It flooded her whole body with a warm tingling sensation. She had found the perfect job, she was sure of it. Leaning closer to the computer screen she read the post through again and again, each time feeling more certain that this was the job for her.
A tattoo artist in the next town over was seeking an apprentice. Experience in a tattoo parlor wasn’t necessary, all they wanted from applicants was ‘a sincere love and appreciation of art in all its forms.’ Brittany clasped her hands together in delight and stifled an excited squeal. She most certainly did have a love of art. She had a sketch book full of drawings to prove it.
After printing out the details of the posting, Brittany used the rest of her allocated time on the computer to research tattoos. It was a subject area she knew little about. She remembered a few of the girls at school talking about getting tattoos, but no one ever did. As Brittany started scanning through internet images of tattoos, she saw why the love of art was required. Each tattoo she saw was a work of art in its own right. She saw designs so intricately beautiful that they threatened to bring tears to her eyes. And the people who had these designs tattooed on them had the privilege of being living, breathing works of arts. It was amazing.
With wide eyes, Brittany tried to take it all in. As her excitement mounted, she became increasingly certain that this was where she belonged. Tattoos were living art, lifelong testaments to beauty. This job would be the perfect fit for her.
“Just one town over,” she mused aloud. It really wasn’t that far. It would take her half an hour, maybe a little bit more to cycle there. It was nothing really. The biggest hurdle she’d have to overcome was facing her brother. He’d be angry if he found out she’d been at the library, how could she expect him to allow her to go and work in a different town? But he had to.
Brittany folded up her printed pages and placed them in her purse. She knew in her heart that her brother had to approve, had to let her take this job. She couldn’t spend her life locked up in their parent’s house like a prisoner. It was time she found herself and experienced the world, and he couldn’t deny her that.
As Brittany cycled home, her initial excitement dwindled and turned to nerves. In her mind, she rehearsed what she was going to say to her brother, how she was going to make him see that her getting a job was a great idea. She wished, as she so often did, that her parents were still alive. The memories she had of them though dulled with time, were still a source of comfort. She remembered them being kind and enthusiastic people. She had no doubt that if she’d gone to them with her desire to become a tattoo artist’s apprentice that they would have been supportive. Perhaps she needed to remind Zack of that fact? For so long he’d embodied both mother and father for her – putting food on the table and a roof over her head. But he’d forgotten the most important part of being a parent – supporting your child and nurturing them into an adult.
If her parents were still around, what would they make of his dangerous night job which saw him coming home with black eyes and shaken nerves?
Brittany shook her head, dismissing her dark thoughts and letting her hair tumble into her eyes.
“Urgh,” she scoffed as she released one hand from gripping her bike to toss the hair out of her line of sight. She was almost home. Just a few more blocks and she’d be there, with her brother hopefully still sleeping soundly in his bedroom and none the wiser of her little trip out.
Brittany nervously prepared a frozen pizza. She kept glancing at the clock and chewing her lip, wishing it was already time for Zack to get up so that she could get the awkward conversation out of the way, but then also wishing time could go slow and prevent their encounter altogether.
Eventually the pizza was cooked, she carefully removed it from the oven, the cheese atop it all golden and bubbling as distantly a door creaked open. Zack was awake. He strode into the kitchen wearing sweatpants and a loose fitting white T-shirt. The musky scent of sleep still clung to him.