Broken, Bruised, and Brave

by L. A. Zoe

  “All evening, SeeJai. You just don’t understand the King, my father. Or my stepmother, his Queen. Or Princess Keara. They kicked me out of the palace.”

  Although he was talking crazy, I figured there was some underlying structure to his delusions. I wanted to know, to understand, so I could hopefully talk him back down.

  “I thought you left your father’s house to live on the streets.”

  “I began living on the streets after he kicked me out. He wanted me to take an apartment close to the university, so I could go to college like he planned. He planned—never me.”

  I still tasted the sweet, rich taste of the Chocolate Mousse cheesecake. It lay in my stomach like a concrete block, jamming my intestines.

  At last, a dog. Not barking at us from behind a backyard fence. Just howling. A loud mewling like a puppy missing its mother.

  “Why’d your father kick you out?”

  Rhinegold remained silent as we passed two red brick houses. Finally, he said, “I guess I should tell you. I didn’t plan on this, but … it must be time.”

  “Time for what?”

  He stopped suddenly, and I jerked ahead, almost falling on my ass. He held me up, stared into my eyes.

  “I can trust you, can’t I, SeeJai?”

  I leaned on the arm that caught me. Of course, his right arm.

  “I love you, Rhinegold. I wish I didn’t. I need you so much I’m frightened. Don’t leave me. I’m scared something will happen to you.”

  He pulled me close and hugged me. I could barely feel his thick, chiseled chest below the many layers of thick cloth we both wore, but I took comfort anyway from his embrace, and put my arms around him.

  We stood quiet, unmoving, for minutes, until the fierce cold wind penetrated our hug.

  Rhinegold grabbed my left arm, and pulled me forward. “Which version do you want to hear first? The real one or the real one?”

  “Huh?”

  “The one I think is real—or the one you’ll think is real?”

  “Umm, let’s start with what I’ll think is real.”

  “All right. Father married Sybille over four years ago. She and Keara weren’t rich, they lived somewhere closer to the city, so I didn’t know Keara until one evening they both came over for dinner. I knew Father was dating one particular woman for a long time, so I thought it must be getting serious, but I never met her. And he didn’t tell me she had a daughter, until that night.”

  “How could he keep her a secret from you?”

  Rhinegold shrugged. “Easy. I was fifteen going on sixteen. I was used to not seeing Father for days on end. He practically lived at his office. I hung around my buddies, and the girls I knew. I was a typical selfish kid, thinking a lot more about the next karate lesson, swim team workout, or date than what my father was doing. I was used to him not showing up to watch my football games.”

  I squeezed his hand. I didn’t know what to say. Mom was always there in the house. Though, not for me, either. I never participated in sports or anything else, but if I had, she wouldn’t have gone to watch me either.

  “So when he told me to be there that evening, meeting her and hearing they were engaged wasn’t much of a surprise. But Keara was.”

  He cleared his throat, dry from the low humidity of winter.

  “When Father and Sybille made the big announcement, I could tell Keara wasn’t surprised either. Except about me. She knew her mother had been dating a wealthy divorced lawyer, but Sybille didn’t tell her he had a son. Maybe Father didn’t even tell her about me until he had to.”

  “Rhinegold, that’s terrible!” I didn’t know whether I could believe Mr. Cunningham really so wicked.

  “So, a few months later, they had a big wedding. I was a groomsman, Keara a bridesmaid. They went on a two-week honeymoon. That was the longest Father spent away from the office since he started the firm. And Sybille later complained how he called in every morning and late afternoon.”

  As the wind blew, the tree branches creaked, their coatings of ice making the sound peculiarly unpleasant, like people cracking their knuckles.

  “Sybille and Keara moved in, and Father and Sybille kept talking about us as brother and sister, and what a great family we made, and all that stuff. Do you think we felt like brother and sister?”

  I didn’t know what to think. “You were still strangers?”

  “Exactly. I’d just turned sixteen, her fourteen. We’d barely met or talked. We had to dance together at the wedding reception, but that was just a show. In my arms she felt stiff as a table. I stayed in my own bedroom, and Sybille slept with Father in the master bedroom, so Keara had her own room. Down the hall.”

  “Cozy,” I said.

  “Oh, yes. They put two teenagers brimming over with hormones together and told us we were brother and sister. But I had no childhood memories of her. We never played board games. Or tag or kickball or hide and go seek. We never argued over candy. We never watched TV side by side. We never skied or swam at the beach on family vacations. We had no shared history.”

  As we neared Riverside, I couldn’t help but stare at the stretch of curving entrance to the park known as the Red Line. Empty. Anybody walking it tonight had already found a sugar daddy, or given up.

  “Is this going where I think?” I asked.

  “Shouldn’t be hard to figure out, was it? Horny young athlete. Gorgeous hot babe. If we met at a party, or in the cafeteria, or Algebra class, or at a country club dance, or a tennis tournament, nobody would care at all. Or blame us. Just one more teenage couple thinking they’re in love, right?”

  “But —”

  “But my father married her mother, and somehow everybody just assumed that meant something to us. Yeah, sure—living under the same roof enabled us to spend lots of time alone together, without having to sneak away, or drive my car into an isolated area.”

  I remembered Keara showing me the upper patio just below Rhinegold’s bedroom window. It would have been so easy for them to slide down the icy slope.

  Meet late at night, enjoy the gorgeous view. In warm weather they would have had no incentive to go back inside. Talk about their problems. Share life stories. Complain about their respective parents. Eat pizzas, and leftovers out of the kitchen. Drink cans of beer, smoke a few joints. Maybe sit on Rhinegold’s bed watching movies. Get tired, and lay down …

  “Keara told me you were like her big brother with the other kids. You helped her by making them accept her.”

  “With the other kids, sure,” Rhinegold said. “She didn’t know anybody, so I introduced her. It wasn’t exactly hard work. She was a nice kid, though kind of shy and withdrawn. People liked her. At first some kids kind of laughed at her wardrobe. She thought Old Navy was a luxury brand label. But I told Father, he gave her a Visa card, and several girls took her shopping. She got kidded, but it wasn’t mean, only ignorant, and she laughed back, so everybody liked her. Only one problem.”

  “Oh?”

  “She was shy with boys. Country club kids—it’s hard to explain—some are as reserved and upright as their parents want them, but others break out, big-time.”

  “You were one of the rebels, I’m sure,” I said.

  “Sure, but not in any dramatic way, not yet. My buddies and I, we got drunk early, and thought girls ought to screw us just because we were so rich. Arrogant assholes, I admit it. I smoked weed, but stayed away from the ones went hippie and did all kinds of drugs like acid and E. Even back then I was that smart, anyway.”

  We reached the park, and, as though on cue, the mountainous piles of black cotton clouds drifted apart, revealing stars so bright they seemed so close I could touch them if tall enough.

  “So you slept with her,” I said.

  “Not overnight. Gradually, we got used to each other. Then we talked on that upstairs patio, as you know. And, since I was her big brother, she admitted she never did anything with boys. Not even real kissing, just a short goodnight peck once. She was a wallflower at
her old school. The kind of kid walked the halls and attended classes without hardly anybody paying attention, never remembering her.”

  “Like me.”

  “Makes sense,” Rhinegold said. “You’re a lot alike. Anyway, we started out me teaching her. She thought she didn’t know. Of course, if you put two sets of lips together, it’s going to be all right. But she didn’t even know about French kissing.”

  My stomach wanted the Chocolate Mousse cheesecake to leave. I rubbed my tummy, but it didn’t help. I thought of the two of them wrestling naked in Rhinegold’s bed, and wanted to heave.

  Yet, oddly enough, Rhinegold offended me more than Keara. A big, handsome teenage hunk who no doubt caused many girls to drool from their mouths and their pussies.

  I saw Keara just a little smaller, overimpressed by the world of wealth her mother dragged her into. Hanging out with the rich kids. And one of the richest, hunkiest, most popular guys slept right down the hall. And he almost had to at least talk to her, because she was his little sister. Yet unaware of the power of her beauty. How it could drive the most confident and powerful men and boys into a state resembling insanity. Until they ejaculated.

  We trudged along, most of the snow frozen so solid it held our weight, but our feet kicked up clouds of dry snowflakes fine and solid as grains of sand, but lighter. In the gusting wind they whirled and skirled, twirling around us, vortexes of whirring air and white.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Rhinegold said. “I took advantage of her, and you’re right. But not quite like that. I didn’t pounce on her. I didn’t ambush her. I didn’t plan it. It happened over months. We went from strangers shy to eat our bowls of cereals together, to friends, to a sort of brother-sister closeness, but didn’t stop there. I tried to remain just a big brother, but … we weren’t a brother and sister. It takes more than our parents marrying. We tried to fake it, but we didn’t make it.”

  And no doubt Keara wasn’t quite so innocent. No girl, no matter how ignorant or inexperienced, was as truly naive as some boys believed. In the back of her mind, the response she got from being close to Rhinegold must have flattered her.

  Neither of them asked for the situation, and they couldn’t escape it.

  Knowing Rhinegold, I decided he was as decent as any sixteen-year-old boy thrown into that situation could be.

  “Gradually, it went from practicing kissing, to petting, to heavy petting, and eventually we went all the way.”

  I didn’t need to hear that. My chest felt stopped up. My nose itched deep inside, and water formed behind my eyes. But it was too cold to cry. And didn’t seem worth it. It was done, part of the past.

  “And then you got caught,” I said.

  The snow devils swirled around us, ten, twenty, or more, like spirits escorting us to Rhinegold’s weirwoods. When I leaned my head back, I could see the cold black sky full of more stars than I ever saw before. I saw stars normally buried behind the big city’s lights and pollution. As though we’d walked to the top of Pike’s Peak.

  At ground level, all around us, a creepy fog floated. A damp mist that hid even the nearby trees, blurring everything with the lack of nearby light at night, and their swirling, unformed fumes.

  Rhinegold kept walking at a steady pace. He knew the way. Did he even see the fog? I wasn’t sure, and I was too frightened to ask, in case he said no. So I just hung on to his arm and listened.

  “Father and Sybille went to some high society social affair, and came back early. We didn’t even notice them returning. Sybille wanted to tell Keara something, and walked in on us kissing.”

  “So your family exploded,” I said.

  “Yes, big-time argument. Shouting. Screaming. Crying. Wailing. Moaning. Sobbing. Threats. Ultimatums. The bottom line, Sybille threatened to move out with Keara if Father didn’t kick me out. So I drove off. I still had my Honda Acura Father gave me for my sixteenth birthday. I slept it in for a few months, until I realized I could be killed by car thieves, so I sold it.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say. I still wanted to upchuck my Chocolate Mousse cheesecake, especially remembering how Keara glared at me from across the table.

  Did she still love him? No, she just wanted him with Helena. Her friend, who just happened to look so much like her. Helena was almost Keara’s clone, except with a personality disorder and who played the violin with impressive talent.

  Yes—what if they met at school? Church? Or any place else besides their own home? Liked each other. Hung out. Started making out, and eventually had sex.

  The story of millions of teenage couples for the past hundred gazillion years. Rhinegold’s father and Keara’s mother would no doubt worry about pregnancy and STDs, but nearly every parent of teenagers did that.

  “Sybille seems to tolerate you now,” I said.

  “That’s the right word, tolerate. Deep down, believe me, she still hates my guts for despoiling her little baby. But Father does care about me in his own way. He hasn’t really abandoned me, but we sure don’t agree on anything. And Keara has moved on. Had a few boyfriends. Gotten closer to Jesus. Hangs out with Helena. I hope she’s well. Like tonight, we pretend we’re friends. Or brother and sister.”

  “That’s good. She had to.”

  Rhinegold stopped. He squeezed my hand, then hugged me, though with just his right arm. “I’ve lived on the streets. And now I have you. So everything worked out.”

  Nothing seemed worked out to me, but I just joined the game. Until then, I hadn’t even known the score.

  Mini-snow storms danced around us like extras in a Hollywood musical. The wind threw snowflakes hard as grit against my cheeks. The fog wrapped us in soft arms, veiling my eyes to everything but its gray, steamy mist and the illusions of shapes—vague, ill-defined—ghosts or demons within the fog.

  Rhinegold seemed to notice nothing beyond the ordinary. But what was ordinary in the middle of a public park at three o’clock in the morning of a vicious winter night?

  Surrounded by nothing but the many layers of snow and ice which began covering the ground before Christmas? And the bare trees so iced over they looked enclosed within Lucite paperweights?

  “So that’s the version I think is reality,” I said. “Now what’s the story you think is reality?”

  By that time we’d reached the grove Rhinegold called weirwoods. He dropped my arm, ran to them, spread his arms, and then bowed his head in reverence. Maybe he recited some kind of prayer. If so, I didn’t want to hear.

  For a moment, I considered leaving. Just turning around, walking away. Back to my room. Back to bed. Back to warmth and comfort and shelter from the weather.

  I wanted to leave Rhinegold and his craziness behind. But what if something happened to him? With that wounded arm, he could die of blood loss and cold exposure, all alone. I owed it to him to stay.

  And I wasn’t so sure the fog and the sprites hidden inside would let me leave, crazy as I know that sounds.

  After paying his respects to the weirwoods, Rhinegold ran to the small hill he called his castle. I struggled as well as I could to join him.

  Maybe he no longer wanted to tell me how he saw his relationship with Keara. Maybe it was something he knew I didn’t want to hear.

  Nothing crazy, that’s for sure.

  For what seemed a long time, I watched him run around. He practiced his sword fighting, though he didn’t hold a sword or even a stick. He ran through those karate kata. He seemed to be fighting evil villains, black knights, and dragons invisible to me.

  His shouts rang out loud and oddly clear, given the surrounding fog. He grunted as he struck, groaned when pretending to take a blow.

  He charged up the hill, sword hand raised, arm straight.

  I didn’t think he’d make it, with the snow so hard and slick with ice, but he dug in with his toes and heels, and finally reached the top. He turned, smiled, saluted me, then charged back down.

  He fell on his backside and slid, coming to a stop just in
front of me. Lots of blood soaked his lower left arm.

  “Rhinegold!” I screamed. “Your arm!”

  “It’s okay,” he said, scrambling to stand up again.

  He swayed, and I caught him, steadied him on his feet.

  “Keara was my first real princess,” Rhinegold said in a voice drunk on an invisible magic potion. “I always liked fantasy stories, you know that. I didn’t go overboard until she moved in.”

  “She likes fantasy too?” I asked.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Rhinegold said. “I didn’t understand myself right away, only after we got to know each other. She was my fairy princess. My Sansa Stark. My Lirazel. My Ozma. My Guinevere. My lady fair. My Arwen Evenstar. Galadriel. Even, given the nature of the ties binding us, my Cersei, though much sweeter.”

  I was sorry I asked. I didn’t understand the names, but I got the idea.

  “Take it easy,” I told him.

  “She didn’t walk, she glided on clouds. Her breath smelled like jasmine. Her voice sounded like golden wind chimes.”

  “We’ve got to go home,” I said.

  “But don’t be jealous, SeeJai. You’re my princess now. I’m just telling you how it was. You’re the magic now. You’re the silver soul sent to me by Heaven.”

  I shook him, trying to shake sense into him without knocking him down. “Let’s go. Now.”

  His eyes faded. “I love you, SeeJai. You’re my stars and moon and sun. Queen SeeJai.”

  He collapsed. I stared at his still body, far too large and heavy for me to move, let alone carry. He must have broken some of his stitches, for blood oozed onto the snow.

  No more fog. No more mist. No more illusions swirling around me. Just Riverside Park. Empty.

  Just after three A.M.

  I pulled out my cellphone, found the number his father gave me earlier that evening, and thumbed green.

  JaeSea 4

  March 13

  Dear JaeSea,

  I want to ask you so many questions.

  I need the answers so bad, but sometimes it’s like shining a flashlight at a giant mirror. I believe all I get back is the reflection of the flashlight, not a response from you.