Borrowed

by Lucia DiStefano

  “Cocoa,” he finally said, as if to remind himself.

  “Yes, cocoa.” Your skin reminds me of cocoa. I wish I could touch it. Not just accidentally when I hand you a napkin or the ketchup, but I wish I could put my hand on your face and you’d want it there.

  “Sorry, Max,” he said, jolting me out of my tactile fantasy, “but I’m gonna have to make a mess of your neat kitchen.”

  “Go for it,” I said. And then, I borrowed a favorite phrase of Harper’s: “The messier the life, the bigger the rewards.” Of course if she were here she’d have pinched my neck and called me a hypocrite. Many times I told her that saying of hers was nothing more than an excuse for living irresponsibly.

  He moved aside so I could vacate the space. I took a seat at the breakfast bar, our phones at my elbow. As I watched him pull stuff out of the fridge (milk, half-and-half, butter) and out of the pantry (cocoa powder, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, vanilla extract), a text came in from Harper. Is Ezra pissed? I ignored it, silenced my phone. And then another. You goin’ with him? I flipped the phone over so I wouldn’t have to see any others. When Ezra was looking the other way, I used a fingernail to discreetly silence his cell too. And then I saw a text from my sister to him. I’ll make it up to you tomorrow night xx

  Leave us alone, I thought. I turned his phone facedown, too.

  “Voilà!” he said, handing me a mug with cocoa dribble down the side. “Ezra’s famous hot cocoa.” There were two pans on the stove, not to mention whisks and wooden spoons and measuring cups.

  “Wow, all that for one mug.”

  “Two, actually.”

  “For a minute there,” I said, “I thought I was on the set of Breaking Bad.”

  “Yes! ‘Say my name.’”

  He was waiting for me to take a sip. “C’mon, Max, don’t let me down.” I felt my cheeks flush. But at least I could blame the ribbons of steam from the cocoa. “I know you have good taste.”

  The best.

  I took a sip. I swallowed, the warmth and the spice lingering on my tongue. “Delicious.” I don’t think I was referring to the hot drink. He beamed as if I’d gifted him with something. And then it seemed like a thought hit him. He looked away. “I should go.”

  “No, plea—” I scribbled out the rest in my head. “You don’t have to. Unless you want to, I mean.”

  He disappeared into his mug and came up with a little chocolate at the corner of his mouth. Oh, how I wanted to lick that off. Even now, knowing what I know, knowing how the night ended. What does that say about me?

  “Doesn’t it ever get boring?” I blurted. Harper sure thought it did.

  “No, that’s the point of the cayenne.” He winked. “Keeps your palate on its toes.” He gulped more cocoa, the Adam’s apple in his slim throat surfacing more prominently. The slurping would’ve pissed me off in anyone else.

  “No, seeing one person all the time.”

  He stopped then, his mug frozen halfway between his face and the counter. He spoke his answer as if he were dropping the words onto the surface of his drink. “Not when it’s the right person.” “Oh, please.” I rolled my eyes. “Harper’s a pain in the ass.” And worse, she takes you for granted. She qualifies the “harmless” stuff she does behind your back as “expending my restlessness and therefore making me a better girlfriend.”

  “Max …”

  I hid my face in another long draw of cocoa. When I came back up, he still hadn’t added words to my name. It dangled there, a lone trapeze artist after the audience had gone home. “I know I shouldn’t come down on her because she’s my sister and all, but Jesus, she—”

  “Max.” He set his mug down. Then he shook his head. “Never mind.”

  “No, really. Finish your thought.”

  But he’d already busied himself at the stove, moving the pans to the sink, filling them with water. “My dad always said honoring your commitments is the mark of a real man.” His father died when he was nine. A few years ago his mom married a guy secure enough to let Ezra keep his real dad alive in a real way.

  “I’ll clean up,” I said, slipping off the stool.

  “What? No way. Heisenberg cleans up after himself.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, but I drank what Heisenberg cooked up.”

  “Ah. So you’ve implicated yourself.” He stretched across the counter to reach his mug, his shirt rising up and revealing a band of bare skin above his jeans. My fingers flushed with heat at the thought of touching him there.

  “I’ll load the dishwasher,” he said, passing me a sponge as our hands collided, “you tackle the stove.” Maybe I was too slow to take the sponge, or maybe he was too slow to let it go. Whatever it was, my fingers flushed even hotter.

  Music wrenches me out of that night. It takes me a moment to pinpoint the sound as coming from inside the house. I squint at the kitchen ceiling as if I can see through it. Upstairs. I freeze. My stomach clenches. My head feels light. I lean against the mop handle. Should I add auditory hallucinations to dementia?

  It dawns on me in the next breath: the electric piano. From Harper’s room. It must be fritzy after Mom toppled it. It’s playing one of its preloaded songs. Ezra righted it, but he must’ve not unplugged it.

  I let the mop fall into the bucket and trudge up the stairs, heading for the room I wanted to avoid today, the door closed tight as an ancient wound.

  A different song now. The auto playlist comes complete with a hundred songs. Two Christmases ago, Harper asked Ezra to lug the piano downstairs so she could have autoplay on a continuous loop all day. Will said having the piano playing without a player was creepy. And we’d all gotten to the weary point of predicting which song came next. Harper obliged by banging out a bunch of carols (with her own improvised twists added), and then a couple of songs she composed. Ezra and Mom had been after her to record those originals onto the piano, but she refused. “My messing around doesn’t deserve to sit alongside Mozart and Bach and Burt Bacharach.”

  “Greensleeves” is playing now. I don’t really want to go in there, so I press my palm against the door like the house is on fire and I’m checking for heat. The doorknob is bone cold. Or maybe my hand is the cold thing. I heave a big breath and heave the door open.

  My ears know what they’re hearing, but my brain can’t make sense of what my eyes report. There’s someone playing the piano.

  A girl, her back to me. Long sandy-blond hair. Sitting on the bench.

  Playing. Harper’s. Piano.

  Too stunned to scream, to speak, to breathe, for a long moment I can only stare.

  She turns around, sees me, smiles, says, “Whoa, what happened to the knock-first rule?”

  “Wha … Who … How … ?” Words flee. I’m reduced to tremors.

  “Max, what’s wrong?” the girl says. “And why are you looking at me like that?”

  16

  HARPER

  Max is all bug-eyed in the doorway, her mouth flapping open and shut wordlessly. If I wasn’t so hungover and bruised, not to mention sheepish about forgetting where I left the car last night, her fish face would be funny. I swivel back to the keyboard. Music’s the only thing making sense. The rest is a blur. Where’s Tyler? How did I get freezer burn? Is that what a blackout feels like?

  I launch back into my makes-me-happy-to-play song, “The Entertainer,” which Max calls the longest piano score ever. Well, until I tracked down the sheet music for Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Freebird” and proved there are longer. A tight bud of wistfulness opens in my throat. Was everything less complicated then, or is that one of those car salesman lies the mind likes to spin?

  “Thank God for spring break, huh?” I say over my shoulder. “I can’t imagine school today.” I was so exhausted when I got home last night I tumbled into bed wearing my clothes (the clothes I found myself wearing, to be precise). Didn’t even bother pulling back the duvet. Judging by the fact that little feet aren’t pattering in through the open door, I guess Mom’s left for work and the boys have
been shuttled to science camp.

  Max is standing by my elbow. “Who are you?” she finally blurts. Her tone is chilling. The anti-music.

  I stop playing. “Point taken. You’re pissed. I stayed out late last night. And the night before that I borrowed your white sweater without asking and got mustard on it. I know you’re keeping score, but at least the sweater, I can fi—”

  “How did you get in here?”

  “Duh. How else? Laundry room window.”

  I never pegged Max for an actress, but man, she’s hamming up the shock like she’s auditioning for a horror movie.

  “But who are you?” she says.

  “Okay, you win. Apologies suck. But I guess I owe you one. Here goes.” I clear my throat dramatically as my chest flares with pain. “I’m sorry, Max. I shouldn’t have called you Miss Moral Majority. You were right. I’ve been acting out, taking Ez for granted, doing stupid shit. I need to stop.”

  Again, her mouth does that weird thing. Like her brain is giving her suggestions for things to say that her mouth keeps rejecting.

  “Holy shit,” I say, “you’re shivering. What’s wrong? Are you sick?” I’m off the bench. She backs away. Her hands fly out in front of her, blocking me. She’s trembling so violently I can hear the click of her molars. “Max, what happened?”

  “Who the fuck are you?” she screeches.

  “Is this some sicko intervention you heard about, pretend you don’t even know the person? I’ve punished myself enough, okay? You wouldn’t believe the night I—”

  “Answer my questions, or I’m calling the cops.” She snatches the lamp from off my desk and yanks the cord out of the wall. Then she raises the lamp above her head. Like a weapon.

  “What are you doing?” I’m on her. She screams. I wrest the lamp away from her and set it down.

  “Don’t you touch me!” she yells. “Don’t you dare!” Something’s rising in my throat. Something I can’t swallow down. This weird flip-flop déjà vu. I know I hadn’t ever been in the restaurant before last night, yet someone swore I had. Today, I’m swearing I’m where I’ve always belonged, and I’m told the opposite. What is going on?

  “What is happening?” Max mutters as if she’s talking herself off a ledge.

  “Max,” I say slowly, gulping air in big lungfuls, the scene at the restaurant making me tread carefully, “I’m Harper. You know that, right?”

  Max collapses in my doorway. Her hair covers her face. She’s sobbing.

  “Eenie?” I creep over to her, start to squat so that I can put my arm around her. But her sobs intensify so much that they scare me. She scares me.

  She lifts her head. “What did you call me?” Her voice is a fistful of dried leaves.

  “Eenie,” I repeat.

  “How could … ?” She straightens.

  “Jesus, I am never smoking again. This is weird on top of weirder. I know you hate that old nickname, but that doesn’t mean it’s forever off-limits.”

  Something changes in her eyes. A flicker of understanding.

  “You are unspeakably cruel,” she spits. She’s steely now.

  “Cruel? How?”

  “So you knew Harper, and obviously you hated her or were jealous of her or maybe she hated you, and on today of all days you thought you’d get even by hurting her family. By walking in here and fucking with us.” She’s practically spitting. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her this mad. She swipes the tears off her face with quick, angry strokes.

  “Knew Harper? I am Harper!

  “Get out of here. For real. Or I’m calling the cops.”

  Is this that mythical rock bottom recovering addicts are always blabbing about? The people who know you best stop knowing you?

  The doorbell rings. Max whirls out of my room and flies down the stairs. I’m on her heels. She gets there first, flings open the door.

  It’s Ezra. “What’s going on?” he says.

  Thank God. Ezra. Normalcy.

  My eyes feel greedy, feasting on him, and at the same time I’m ashamed about last night. Why did I ever think he wasn’t enough for me? I hope the shame doesn’t show.

  “You’re here,” I say, with relief. He glances at me like he sees right through me and reaches for Max’s elbow. She steps outside. It’s late, past noon, and the day is warm and the sun is out and the fact that the sun rose today means that absolutely everything can’t be fucked up.

  “You okay?” he asks Max. “Your mom texted while I was in class. She doesn’t sound right. And she’s never texted before.”

  What class? It’s spring break. And why would Mom be texting him?

  “She doesn’t have the phone,” Max tells Ezra. She sounds as exhausted as I feel.

  “Then who?”

  “Did Max tell you about last night?” I say to Ezra. “Is that why you’re icing me out?”

  He looks straight at me. “Excuse me. Who are you?”

  I yank my hair. Frustration sends me into a 360-degree spin. I let out a short scream. “This is stopping. Now. You guys have punished me enough. Ezra, I texted you. Why would you think it was my mother?” I’d thought I’d lost my phone last night, but it was right there on my dresser when I got home. “I’m done with booze. With weed. With anything stronger than strawberry milk. Happy now?”

  The way he’s looking at me reminds me of how I looked at a lacrosse player from Cedar Park who came up to me at a party once and started talking to me like she knew me, as if we’d traded trig homework earlier that day. The whole time I was frantically trying to find the slot in my memory where she fit. Finally one of her friends found her and elbow-dragged her away, saying, “That’s not Paula, duh.”

  Maxine is crying again, her head against Ezra’s chest. “She said she’s Harper,” she mumbles.

  “What?” he says, sizing me up like I’ve got explosives strapped to my chest. “Why?”

  “I don’t know if you guys are tripping or if I am, but just listen.” I bound up the stairs. I fold myself onto the piano bench, shake my hands out at the wrists, and ratchet the volume knob up to full. Commanding my quaking fingers to obey my brain, I play my heart out. The songs I’ve composed. The ones no one else knows. I’m playing and playing. Barely breathing.

  I hear a gasp. I swivel around on the bench. Max and Ezra are in the doorway, side by side. Agape.

  I move toward Ezra, backing him against the door. He can’t deny me now. I place my palms against his chest, soaking up his warmth through his T-shirt, inhaling his musk.

  “See?” I say. “I told you. Now can we go back to being okay again?”

  I want Max to leave us alone so I can kiss him, so I can skip the words and apologize with my body for going on a wicked bender and probably missing a ton of his calls, but she’s not leaving, she’s staring. Why is everyone staring? So what the hell—I deserve something that makes sense today—I lean in, my mouth an inch from his ear. I whisper, “Whatever I did to piss you off, I promise I’ll make it up to you.” Careful to block my hand from my sister’s view, I grab his crotch. “How’s that?”

  And that’s when he punches me.

  17

  HARPER

  I can barely see through my tears. I don’t pull over, though. I’ll scream if I don’t keep moving.

  I take one hand off the wheel and scoop up the bag of peas I grabbed from the freezer before I left. Gingerly, I press it against my cheekbone. The tiny lumps of cold—more cold, I hate the cold—make it hurt more at first and then numb it, mercifully, but not long enough.

  The bag crinkles in protest when I throw it onto the passenger seat. I blink fast to clear my vision. I keep driving. Max isn’t my only family.

  She freaked out when Ezra hit me, yelling and babbling something I couldn’t decipher and Ezra told me to get out of the house and I can’t remember all that I said to him, but I know it was bad. Impossible-to-rescind bad. As it should be. No one lays a fucking finger on me and gets away with it. And never in a million years would I have pr
edicted I’d be knocked around by Ezra. Ezra. Ezra who teaches the boys how to scoop up bugs in the house and carefully release them outside Ezra. That Ezra. Spoiler alert: he turns out to be a prick like all the rest of ’em.

  Wailing, hysterical, as if she’d been the one to get punched in the fucking face by someone she loves and trusts—loved and trusted—Max ran to her room. Ezra followed her, only after he told me yet again to leave and never come back.

  “Why are you doing this to me?”

  That’s the only thing I kept coming up with. Like I was the piano, stuck on one measure.

  Why are you doing this to me?

  Stunner: I found my car in the garage. So maybe I got home before I took a freezer ride in an alternate universe? Maybe Tyler picked me up? No, I would never mix the two worlds. He doesn’t even know my real name. I’d never tell him where I live. Maybe I called Max before I waltzed into the icebox and she and Ezra picked up my car and this is why they’re playing this mind-fuck game? To punish my carelessness?

  I was about to go back into the house to get my spare keys when I noticed two tires were flat. Like sitting-on-the-rim flat. The whole car was shrouded in dust, which wasn’t weird because I’ve never been meticulous about my wheels (get over yourself, it’s a method of transportation, not an altar), but usually the windshield is (relatively) clean where the wipers and washer fluid swipe the gunk away. How did Max drive it back like this? It’s like, zero visibility.

  On the other hand, Max’s car was sitting in the driveway, road-ready. The contrite side of my brain said, If you thought she was pissed when you borrowed her sweater, try borrowing her car. The freezer-burned side said, Tough shit.

  I went to get the spare keys on the hook in the mudroom, the hook that Mom insisted on being way up high because one of the cases she litigated last year involved parents suing Honda for making it too easy for their ten-year-old to joyride one Saturday morning while they were asleep. She had Ezra move the hook rack way up, so there’s no way the boys could reach it, not even standing on a chair. We all, however, just needed to stretch.