by Karen Rivers
No, he says.
She comes in anyway. Look, she says. I found out something.
I don’t care, he says. Whatever it is. If it’s about Sin, then don’t tell me. She’s wrong, whatever she said.
She didn’t say anything, says Zara. It’s about Dad.
And she tells him.
As she’s talking, Axel feels like his insides are being torn slowly apart. Slow motion. This is worse than cancer. He wishes it was cancer. Cancer would be easier. A brain tumour. Then he’d just die and everyone would be sad but he’d be gone so he wouldn’t care. This is something worse.
And everyone says that he’s his Dad’s son. Just like your dad! they say, clapping him on the back.
I’m not like him, he says.
I know you’re not, says Zara. Try to follow along. This isn’t about you.
Axel sits up in bed. I’m nothing like him, he says. What a bastard. What a total bastard. But we have those genes, remember. We have total bastard genes. Maybe that explains everything. Maybe all of it is just karma because of Dad. Did you tell Maman?
NO, says Zara. I can’t tell her. You tell her.
No way, says Axel. I can’t tell her.
He gets out of bed and shoves his legs into some shorts. Throws on a T-shirt. It has a picture of Mickey Mouse on it.
That’s my shirt, she says.
I’m wearing it, he says. I have to go somewhere.
Barefoot, he takes off out of the house, runs to the car. Drives to Gigi’s house. She lives in a suburb of identical houses. The first driveway he pulls into is the wrong one. They’re all the same, that’s the problem. Probably there’s a girl living in this one who is just a clone of Gigi.
Finally, he finds the right house. Rings the doorbell. She answers wearing glasses he’s never seen before. Red rims. She’s not wearing any makeup. She actually looks pretty bad.
I’m breaking up with you, he says. It’s for your own good, and you know we don’t really even like each other.
He leaves her standing in the door, mouth hanging open. She looks like a fish, he thinks. How could I ever have wanted to kiss her funny fish mouth?
Then he drives to Sin’s house. Suddenly there is nowhere else he wants to be. He forgets that Sue lives in the same house as Sin. He forgets how small the house is and he doesn’t know that as he’s pouring out the story — all of it — to Sin, that Sue is listening and that Sue is Maman’s best friend.
More importantly, he kisses Sin. It’s easy. It feels like remembering something he’s forgotten from a long time ago.
SIN
Chapter 18
YOU CAN’T BELIEVE that he’s here, asleep on your bed. He’s wearing a shirt that’s too small with a Disney cartoon on it. He looks eight years old. He didn’t kiss like an eight- year-old. Though, funnily enough, when he reached in to kiss you, you suddenly remembered him kissing you once before — when you were, in fact, eight. As part of one of those dumb games that kids play, like spin the bottle or something like that.
This was nothing like that. This felt like ...
It felt like nothing you’ve ever experienced before.
It’s not like the other stuff doesn’t matter, the stuff about his drinking problem (does he really have one?) and his dad, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the kiss.
Which is ... which has ... which you are sure has changed you forever and permanently. You lie down next to him, careful not to wake him. Careful to give him a lot of room. And when your mom yells, I’m going out and I won’t be back until later, you don’t even bother to answer. You watch him sleep, his eyes darting around behind his eyelids like insects. You want to stay in this exact moment forever. You want this to never stop.
You had never imagined that anything as amazing as this could happen to you. You never dreamed. Well, you dreamed, but it’s better than you dreamed.
It’s everything.
ZARA
Chapter 19
I SEE SUE’S CAR skidding up the driveway and I somehow know (even though I can’t see her face) that she knows and she’s going to tell. I run down the stairs so fast, I swear my feet don’t touch the ground. I’m too late, though. I’m way too late. She’s already telling Maman the story so fast, how does she know it? And I hear Dad’s footsteps thudding on the front porch. Is he coming or going?
I’m going to have a heart attack.
Instead of going into the room, I sneak out the back instead. I go into the pen where the puppies that are still unsold have been separated from their mother. I let them crawl all over me, nipping me and scratching me with their claws. I try not to imagine what this is like for Maman. I try not to think about what this will mean.
Eventually, I hear the unmistakable sounds of Dad’s truck starting up. I don’t hear Sue leave. Finally, I go up to bed. I can still hear them talking in the kitchen, the low murmur of their voices and the clinking of their glasses. Why isn’t Maman screaming? Why isn’t she hysterical?
I don’t understand. For someone who can see everything, there’s so much that I just don’t get.
AXEL
Chapter 20
DETRITUS IS SHAKING with nerves. No, that’s Axel. Axel is shaking with nerves. He feels awful. He said he wasn’t going to drink anymore and he did last night. Too much. Way too much. And now his body wants more, is shaking for more. And he didn’t have any reason to be drunk. No party. Nothing.
Just himself, alone. Well, he had a million reasons. But somehow he’d thought that, by finally getting together with Sin, that she’d ... fix it. She’d fix him. He’d be altogether better. The funny thing is that he’d said as much to Zara, this morning and she’d flinched. She’d said, Me too. At first, he didn’t get it, then he realized that Zara had hoped that Sin would fix her problem, as well. That they all saw Sin as a saviour of some kind when she was just a girl.
A great girl, but just a girl.
And she didn’t — couldn’t — fix anything. How could they have expected her to?
He said to Zara, Why should she be responsible?
Zara shrugged. I just thought she could, you know?
I know, he’d said. I totally know. For a second, he hugged her hard. Then he grabbed her knuckles and cracked them. She jerked away, but she laughed, too.
I really like her; he’d added.
Don’t hurt her, Zara said. Don’t forget me, too.
I won’t, he said, surprised. I won’t forget you, you’re my twin. I’m just into Sin and she’s into me so you should be ... could be ...
It’s okay, said Zara quickly. I’m happy for you. I am. It’s all good.
It is good, he said. It is.
Sin was beautiful, sure, unexpectedly so ... beautiful. Especially now that she’d lost all that weight and he could see her face properly. And she got him. She was great. But she wasn’t enough and she should have been. She didn’t fill up all his empty spaces, and he’d thought that she would. It doesn’t make sense, but he’d thought...
It’s all still a mess. Everything. Maman is being a rock. She’s being so stalwart, he can’t believe it. He’d thought she’d fall apart. Zara says that she hasn’t. She says, when she looks at Maman, it’s like Maman is in a glass bowl that’s filled with amber marbles that are keeping her from being too angry. She’s being accepting. How can she be accepting? It turned out that Dad is married to someone else. He’s had another wedding. He’s had other children. He, Axel, is a brother to another set of twins in a different city. His dad has another barn. Other horses.
A whole other life.
Amber fucking marbles or not, Maman should be homicidal.
But she isn’t. He doesn’t get it. He can’t accept it.
He wants a drink.
Sin says ... well, she says he needs help. She says that he’s an alcoholic and the way she says it is so matter-of- fact that he almost believes her. But how could he be an alcoholic? It’s not possible. He hasn’t had time to become an alcoholic.
But he must
be. Because, if he wasn’t, he wouldn’t want a drink so badly. If he wasn’t, he wouldn’t be shaking like this. If anyone knew, he’d die of embarrassment. Which is why he is stopping. He’s stopped. The thing is that he hates it. Hates stopping. He hates this feeling, that he’s totally present. Completely in the moment. He needs Sin but she’s somewhere with Maman, over in the stands. He needs Zara. He needs ...
He needs a fucking drink is what he needs.
It’s the worst feeling he can remember. Before this summer, he never drank as much. It was something about this summer this cursed summer; that’s all. It can stop as suddenly as it started, he’s sure of it. In the meantime, Detritus can carry him, has been carrying him. Is carrying him.
He kicks the horse up into a slow trot and then into a canter around and around the practice ring. It’s raining lightly and the air somehow smells like fall is coming, which it is. School goes back in three days, after all. He can taste it in the air: that particular flavour of something cool shifting and leaves turning. He shivers, even though it isn’t cold by any stretch of the imagination, it’s still summer. The ground still wafts with steam as the drizzle evaporates from the warmth of the dirt. There’s still an hour or more before his turn in the big ring, his last chance to show what he can do. Detritus feels good underneath him. Solid. Even if Axel himself feels like throwing up into his boot. He’s scared. Terrified. But he’s done this a thousand times before. It doesn’t make sense to be so scared now. Doesn’t add up. He feels like flinging himself off the horse and scrounging around the barn for some kind of drink, anything to take the edge off. Someone usually has a mickey of something, or someone’s groom does or someone’s trainer does or someone ... anyone.
Des trots into the ring on Egregious. Egg is a new horse for Des and he somehow looks too big or Des looks too small. The proportion is wrong. Des trots over.
How are ya? he asks.
Great, lies Axel. You?
Enh, says Des. I don’t know. This beast doesn’t feel so right to me, you know? He shakes the reins and the big grey whinnies and whips his head around, practically unseating Des. See?
Axel forces himself to laugh, Yeah. Well, good luck.
Hey, says Des.
Yeah?
Good luck yourself, says Des.
He’s staring at Axel intently. Too intently.
Thanks, says Axel. He looks at Des and tries to remember that, anyway, Des is the same guy he’s always been. He can see that. He is. Thanks, he repeats, like he doesn’t know what else to say but saying it once doesn’t sound like enough. What he really wants to say is much longer, much more ... well, touchy feely. He wants to tell Des that it’s okay, that the gay thing is okay with him, that he’s not freaking out.
It isn’t completely true.
Axel pulls Detritus up and walks him out of the ring. He’ll let him rest for a bit before trotting him one more time before it’s his turn, he figures. He rides him slowly up the wide wood-chipped path toward the paddock, where there are a lot of other horses in various states of readiness. It’s a big event. Everyone is dressed in their best clothes, that’s for sure.
He scratches his nose where it’s itchy from being sunburned. He went to the lake yesterday with Sin and Zara. There was a lot of laughing. Inner tubes and flipping each other and diving off the rocks. No one mentioned Zara’s thing. Afterward they had a fire on the island, just the three of them and Zara sang her song. Her song. It was so ...
It really did take his breath away, like nothing he’d ever heard before. It was so honest and he could tell, as she was singing it, it was turning her inside out. That was the part that made him want to cry. That was when he started to drink. It was the words and, not just that, but the way she sang it. While she sang, her voice seemed to turn into something like ash and drift around her.
He didn’t say anything. He was sure it was only him who saw it. It didn’t upset him. It was nothing like what happened to her. There was no clarity; it just moved him. Made him sad.
He drank.
So it was like old times in that they were so close, he felt so close to both of them, was literally close to Sin, his hand in hers.
Until she let go, somewhere around the point when he began to slur and teeter. He can’t blame her. He would have, too.
He got badly sunburned on his shoulders and back, a sunburn he didn’t even feel until this morning. Under his clothes, it feels like his skin is trying to crack right open.
He tries to empty out his mind. Tries not to think about Gigi and how she keeps texting him with notes that say, I’M SORRY and LET’S TALK. He doesn’t want to talk to her. He’s finished with her. Wants a clean break. It doesn’t make sense, but somehow all the bad stuff that happened this summer is attached in his mind to her.
He tries not to think about school on Tuesday. School being the last thing he’s able to wrap his head around. Packing up a lunch and sitting in classrooms all day seems like something he can’t even remember doing. Tries not to think about Dad and Maman, about Maman’s face when she told Axel that she knew and that Dad would be going now forever. That somewhere he has a brother and a sister. That he’s been replaced. That it’s all...
It’s too much. He can’t stand it. He feels so angry, it’s like the anger itself is a living creature inside his chest, tearing and tearing. It hurts. It fucking hurts so much he can’t stand it.
Don’t think about it, he tells himself. Not now. Later.
Z should be riding today, too, but she bailed out. Said she didn’t feel like it. She was talking about selling Cake for money to go to some high school for the arts where she can sing all the time. Well, whatever. It upsets him but he’ll pretend it doesn’t if it makes her happy. But if she thinks she’s going to sell Cake, she’ll get way more if the horse has won something recently. She should be riding. He would never say it because she’d be upset, she’d feel pressured and she has enough going on. He’ll ride Cake himself in something, just to give him a win.
Not that he’s exactly been raking in the ribbons lately himself.
Trying not to think about a thing is exactly the same, he realizes, as overthinking it. There’s just so much going on. One little drink won’t hurt. It will let him concentrate on the riding, nothing but the riding. It’s like it hones his focus, somehow. Makes him sharper, no matter what they say about alcohol dulling your senses. For him, it has the opposite effect. It makes his reactions clearer. All the crap about the rest of his life just falls away. He looks around for a likely suspect, sees Des and Wick heading into the barn. Well, there you go, he thinks. Des and Wick will have something.
He dismounts and leaves Detritus tied loosely to the paddock fence. He’ll have to come right back and get the horse to some water and so on but first... it can’t hurt. Just this one more time. He’ll stop tomorrow.
Hey, Wick! he shouts. Des!
At first, they don’t turn around. They’re deep in conversation. Wick turns and whispers something in his horse’s ear. Wick always did look much more natural with horses than with people, Axel thinks as he approaches. Of course he’d end up with Des, because Des is really that way, too.
Hey, Wick, he says more quietly.
Wick jumps. Oh, he says. Axel. Hey. I didn’t see you.
Yeah, I’m here, says Axel. I need to talk to Des for a sec.
He grabs Des’s hand and pulls him into an empty stall.
What? asks Des. Why are you holding my hand?
I’m not, Axel says.
Just giving you a hard time, says Des. Relax.
I am relaxed, says Axel. I mean, I’m not. I just, I need a drink, you know? I know that’s lame, but look. He holds out his shaking hand.
Huh? says Des. That’s seriously fucked up, my friend.
Yeah, says Axel. Don’t make me beg, though, okay? I swear; I’ll do something about it soon. I just need ... Come on, man.
Okay, okay, says Des. Fine.
He disappears and comes back with a tiny fla
sk. So small that Axel’s heart drops. It’s not enough, whatever it is, but he gulps it greedily anyway, feels the hot sweet liquid burning his throat.
Okay, he says. Thanks. I have to get back to Detritus. Good luck today. And, you know, thanks. I’m going to ...
Yeah, says Des, already heading back toward Wick and the horses. Good luck.
Axel walks back to Detritus, feeling both more and less steady. His heart rate has slowed anyway. That’s good. His breathing feels steadier, warmer. Somehow. He unhitches Detritus and walks him over to the trailer for some feed and water. He can literally feel the alcohol opening up his pores, his cells, soothing him.
Shit, he thinks. I am an alcoholic. Sin’s right. Of course she is. Well, that’s just great. Add that to the list of utter shit that my life has become. Damn it.
He sits down on an upturned bucket and tries to get himself together. Time is slipping away; it’s almost his turn in the ring. Finally, he saddles up again and heads toward the crowds. It’s always overwhelming to be riding here, in this city, in this ring, which is quite famous/He’s seen it on TV, yet he’s never ridden here himself. He isn’t drunk, not this time, just enough to relax.
Just the perfect amount. No one could possibly blame him. Not after all that’s happened.
In his head, he rounds all the corners, clears all the rails, he wins. He takes a breath, and enters. The crowd is huge. For a second, he can’t catch his breath; there are way more people here than he’d thought. From the ring, especially, it looks like so many more. He’s nervous again in an instant, his mouth is as dry as parchment. As is his habit, he starts scanning for Maman. Finds her down in the front section. He raises his hand slightly and she waves back. Sin’s with her. And Zara.
Seeing them all there, relief floods through him. Like he’d imagined somehow that maybe they’d leave or ... he doesn’t know. He’s just glad he spotted them, glad to have the eye contact. He immediately feels so weak. He can’t feel his limbs, like when he jumped from the plane, his whole self turning into some kind of petrified jelly. Only it’s not because he’s scared, it’s because he doesn’t have to be scared. He’ll be fine. The event will be fine.