by Zara Rivas
"Deal me in, you morons," I grinned, and plopped down on the floor in their little circle. Finn tossed seven cards at me and I quickly put them in order, catching on that Daphne'd already won three games out of five. I rolled my eyes at Finn to let him know that I was onto them letting her win but that wouldn't be the case anymore.
I absently twisted one of the rings on my middle finger and Daphne noticed, holding up her own hand to show me hers and smirking.
"Are we playing teams?" I asked quickly, and got a negative nod from both Nic and Daphne. I looked at Finn and he raised his eyebrows quickly, basically asking me if I wanted to cheat.
I raised my eyes towards the ceiling quickly and back at him to let him know I would if he would. Nic and Daphne both missed this whole interaction, instead tossing down cards like crazy.
"Green!" Daphne called when she put down a wild card. Finn groaned, as he was sitting to her right and the little card told him he had to draw four more.
"Little twit," he grumbled affectionately as he picked up cards. He tossed down a green four and tilted his cards just enough so that I could see them to help him out some. I put down a yellow four and Nic flipped me off as he started drawing because he couldn't play.
My phone buzzed from behind me and I felt around for it, my fingertips skimming the carpet, and I flipped it open. I had a text message from Torrance.
Change of plans, it read. Meet up at 10 at school. Back entrance—journ room.
"Who was that?" Nic asked, only half paying attention as he shuffled the used part of the deck.
"Torrance," I replied, tossing down a card when it was my turn. "She wanted to meet up here tonight but she changed her mind. We're meeting up at school instead."
He shot me a warning look and I shrugged.
"If you want to go with to look out for me, I'm sure she wouldn't mind," I said, and I was being serious. Nic had a look on his face that said he was debating on whether or not to let me out of the house.
"Does anybody else know that you're going?" he asked skeptically, tossing his own card.
"Not that I know of. Avery and Adrian knew we were hanging out but as far as I know she hasn't told anyone about the new location or anything." I tilted my cards so Finn could see them; I only had three left. "Besides, I think this is just a me and her thing, she didn't invite anyone else."
"I guess it's fine, then," he acquiesced, and I smiled.
"Protective big brother," I teased, and he frowned as Finn tossed down a red reverse card. I breathed a small sigh of relief—I didn't have any reds. I looked up from the deck to see someone standing to the side of the doorway and was surprised.
Logan stood there, hanging back but watching our game nonetheless. Nobody else noticed him so I didn't point him out, just met his eyes questioningly. A small smile pulled at his lips and he pulled back, heading down the hallway.
Maybe he craved the family he left after all.
I frowned for a moment; if Logan changed his mind, about Daphne, about living with Nic and I…I didn't think I could handle it. Of course I loved my little sister, and my father was an enigma I couldn't figure out, but to have us all thrown together so suddenly…I liked my life. I liked the simplicity of it, with just Nic and me, and Finn not too far away. But if Logan started trying to be a parent….
oOoOo
Ten o'clock came and went, and I got into my car at around 10 15 to head to the school when the front door opened behind me, spilling light from the house over the front lawn. Daphne stood there uncertainly, clasping and unclasping her hands in front of her, her rings glinting in the light from the doorway.
"Mind if I come with you?" she asked, and I smiled and unlocked the passenger door and held it open for her. She smiled, relieved, and hopped into the car. I rounded the front and got into the driver's side, relishing the time alone with my sister.
"Do you know how to drive yet?" I said in the quiet interior of the car as I pulled off down the road.
"No," she said, sounding disappointed. "Dad said he'll teach me sometime this summer, though. I'm almost old enough to get my permit."
"I know, it's exciting, isn't it?" I smoothly turned the wheel and we turned off on a side street on the way to the school.
"And scary." She stared out the window at the glimmering lights from all the houses as we passed.
I wondered if she was thinking of the general freakiness associated with learning how to control a vehicle, or about the wreckage involved with the accident our mother died in. I didn't ask. I wasn't sure I wanted to know—I had no idea how she thought of that accident, because she wasn't there. Maybe it was one of those Twilight Zone-esque moments for her—one moment her mother exists, the next she doesn't. I was the only one with the horrifying transitional details in my brain, and I didn't want it that way. Well, I did. I didn't want my sister having those memories, but I wished I didn't have them either.
"Yeah," was all I said for the rest of the drive. I drove into the school parking lot and pulled into my usual hidden space for these frowned-upon outings. I motioned for Daphne to follow me up to the school and we slipped through the back door unnoticed—there was no traffic on the road and the school still had no security guards. Closing the door softly behind us, I gave her a quick tour of the school.
It was much more exciting to walk through by night, and I could see the sparkle of adrenaline in Daphne's eyes as I showed her around. I'd known for years and years that she'd inherited the Lexington penchant for mischief, but this was the first opportunity I'd had to see it in a long time.
"Mind if I take a look around while you do your thing with Torrance?" she asked in a hushed voice, and I laughed quietly.
"Sure thing, do you have your cell on you?"
She pulled it out of her pocket and waved it in front of her face, the little screen announcing the time to be 10 34.
"Call me if you get lost and I'll come find you," I whispered. I didn't know why I did it—no one was there to hear us, but it seemed like more fun anyway. I gave her directions to the journalism room and she nodded and took off. I started climbing the stairs and eventually I saw the slight glow in the hallway that meant one of the classrooms was occupied.
I pushed open the Journalism lab room door and walked in. I saw no one but that didn't mean anything—I was a little bit late, after all, so I sat down in one of the rolling chairs and patiently turned it slowly back and forth, with my foot on the table.
"You know," a voice said from behind me, startling me, "I'm glad you aren't the chatty type when it comes to text message conversations. That could have made this a lot more complicated."
I spun around in the chair and tilted my head, not comprehending what the girl was saying. Adrian stepped through the doorway to the adjacent classroom.
"I didn't know you were coming with Torrance," I said, my heart pounding from the surprise. "Complicated how?"
"Oh, Torrance isn't coming," Adrian said, smiling slightly. She crossed over to the door and locked it, while I remained in the chair. I didn't have any idea of what was going on but it didn't seem like it was pleasant.
"Why's that?" I asked slowly.
"She doesn't even know you're here."
"She sent me a text telling me to meet her here," I said, confused. I slowly got up from the chair and placed my hands on the table my feet previously rested on.
"No," Adrian said, circling around and standing on the opposite side of the table. She held a newspaper in her hands. "I sent you a message telling you to meet her here."
"Why would you do a thing like that?"
"Because," she said, a small smile pulling at her face, "it was an easy way to get you alone."
"Alone," I repeated flatly. My phone buzzed in my back pocket and I wondered if it was Daphne coming to look for me, but I didn't want to reach for it just yet. I didn't want to distract Adrian from telling me whatever it was she had to say, because it had to be important for her to sneak around everyone like this.
&nbs
p; I straightened up fully and started walking around the desk, and Adrian simply turned towards me as I moved, that strange smile still on her face.
"Why would you do a thing like that?" I asked, and her hands tightened on the newspaper.
"You seem to listen to people better when they're one-on-one with you."
"I would assume that's a universal truth. When you're in a big group everyone's competing for attention anyway," I said, brushing off her remark. "What did you want to talk about?"
"Did you know," she said idly, ignoring my question, "that even if a person is brain dead they still allow the family to make the decision to keep them on life support? Of course, eventually the body wears itself out and death occurs anyway, but for a while they're held in something like suspended animation."
"That's…interesting," I said, privately thinking the word 'morbid'.
"It's curiously good at creating a false sense of hope. You see, the person in the coma is still breathing, right? You can still see their chest moving up and down, still hear their heart beating…they just seem to be sleeping. So they could wake up at any time, right?"
Her hand moved almost convulsively over the paper and my attention was drawn to it once more, but she held a tight grip on it so I still couldn't see the headlines.
"Adrian, you're creeping me the fuck out. What's going on?"
"Do you want to see?" she asked, gesturing towards the newspapers.
"Sure," I said slowly, but refused to move any closer. The glint in her eyes didn't bode well for anything she had to say.
She slowly peeled the front page off the paper, dropping it to the floor. Holding up the second, she folded it until it isolated a single story at the bottom of the page. A smiling man's picture was outlined in black, surrounded by a few short paragraphs of text.
My heart jolted a little as I read the text—about a young man who, several years previously, had been in a fatal car accident involving an intoxicated driver but he'd only gone into a coma. I realized with a shock that it was the car accident that killed my mother. He'd recently died and his death made the local newspapers because he hung on so long. My confusion deepened.
"Did you know this man?" I asked, looking inquisitively at Adrian's face.
"Did I know him? Yeah, I knew him," she said with a light laugh. "He was only my big brother."
"But—his name isn't—"
"Oh, the benefit of having divorced parents," Adrian said. I didn't think I'd ever seen her this articulate before. "He took my dad's name, and my mother gave me her maiden name."
"Is this what Torrance wanted to show me?"
"It is," Adrian confirmed. "I hung out with her after school yesterday and saw it on her desk. I already knew, of course—they notified our family last week, but I suppose she didn't tell me because she wanted you to know first."
"Did Torrance know he was your brother?"
Adrian shook her head and started peeling the rest of the newspaper pages away from her brother's article, shedding them onto the floor and dropping them in a wide circle.
"No one knew. He lived out of town, he was only here for a visit."
She didn't look up from the newspapers and her single-minded concentration unnerved me. I felt my phone buzz again in my back pocket and ignored it once more, hoping Daphne wasn't in the hallway wondering where the hell I'd gone. As much as I hoped it wasn't her, I also hoped she wouldn't remember my directions to the Journalism room. Maybe I'd gotten something wrong in them, anyway.
"Do you know what I think?" Adrian asked softly, returning her concentration to me.
"What's that?" I asked warily, reaching for my phone but at the last moment changing my mind and making it look like I'd meant to grip the desk instead.
"I think you're alive. And I think he isn't. How is that fair?"
Her words stung and I blankly said, "The driver in your brother's car was drunk. He was an idiot for driving in the first place."
The moment the word "idiot" left my mouth I was mentally smacking myself. Adrian had gone out of her way to get me alone and show me this, and here I was, insulting her big brother who'd just died, but exerted much more trauma on the family with a coma. Not a wise choice in words, Sloane, I thought grimly.
"Maybe so," she conceded, white-blonde hair brushing her face as she inclined her head, "but he was still my brother."
"I know," I said, remorse evident in my tone. "I shouldn't have said that."
"I've been watching you," Adrian said, and exhaustion seemed to saturate her frame as she started sinking down into one of the rolling chairs at a computer. "I've been trying to think of what made you survive when everyone else is dead now. Sometimes when there's an accident with loads of alcohol involved, the drunk person survives…something about the alcohol making them relax their bodies when the tension could have killed them."
I warily sat down opposite of her, watching. She seemed to be spacing out, staring off into another time that I could see just as clearly, but so differently. Her eyes were glazed over, and I waited patiently. This seemed to be something she'd been desperately wanting to get out for a long time, and there was no way I was going to interrupt her.
"I slashed your tires," she said suddenly, "and painted your locker."
My grip on the desk tightened, and I could see my knuckles white against my skin. I still said nothing, partially out of shock, and partially out of a hesitation of what would come of it if I did open my mouth.
"I was so angry, and he died, and he'd been in a coma for so long and you're this golden girl of the school…everyone thinks the sun shines out of your ass and it's childish and I know it but you survived, didn't you. Nobody else would understand that, and I realize I'm an awful person for doing it and I've hated myself so much—we're supposed to be friends, we're supposed to be close, but all I can see every time I look at you is his face."
She rambled on and on, silent tears starting to well up in her eyes, and I swallowed.
"And now he's dead, and we're stuck in the same stupid school, and we're still friends but part of me doesn't want to be…and then part of me does. What a fucked up thing to do to your friend but it's like something took over."
"Adrian…"
Something in me said I should be worried about being here alone with her, in an empty school in the middle of the night when she was upset like this and admitting to terrorizing me for the past few months, but I pushed it down.
"I warned Xavier," she said in another sudden burst of speech. "I tried to take it back."
She gave a small laugh.
"It didn't work, he's still suspicious…but I told him to stay away from you. I don't know if he ever told you that."
I nodded, a rueful expression crossing my face. I opened my mouth to say something but the words died, and for once I was completely, and utterly, speechless.
"It's so stupid, logically I know…know that nothing could be different, that it wasn't your fault, but sometimes I hate you so much," she shook her head, as though trying to shake it off.
My phone vibrated insistently in my pocket against my leg, and this time I found it harder to ignore. Adrian heard it in the silence.
"You should answer that," she said finally, slumping back against her chair. "I didn't tell them we were meeting up, so Torrance is probably at your house right now. Dominic must be going crazy."
"Shit," I muttered. I'd said nothing to her entire speech, and I didn't know how to process it. Where did this leave us?
"Yeah," Adrian half-laughed, half-sighed. "How fucked up…"
I wracked my mind for the best thing to say, even though it seemed to take hours. Adrian wasn't waiting for a response, though. She was still sitting at the computer, staring blankly at the desk.
"I won't say anything," I finally said, "to get you into trouble. I'm going to tell my brothers, so they'll stop worrying about me…but this has to stop. If it happens again, I…" I shook my head and continued. "I don't want to have to be frightened all th
e time, wondering where the next blow is coming from, so this has to stop, Adrian. And...I'm sorry about your brother."
I scooted my chair back and slowly stood up.
"If you don't want to be friends, I understand. We aren't all that close anyway and I know it, and if keeping your distance helps you, I'd rather lose a friend than torture you all the time by being around. I just don't want to get stabbed in the back."
I thought for a second about what I'd just said and a smile twisted the corner of my back.
"Literally or metaphorically."
Adrian nodded, standing up as well.
"I guess…that's all I had to say. And today I just...felt like I had to get it out, because it's getting bad and I can see how stressed this is making everyone."