The House at 758

by Kathryn Berla

  Go home! Leave us alone! You don’t belong here!

  And finally, I’m at the street where I make a right that leads me to the house. But it’s dark and I’m not going to stop. I know that. I knew it before I came here. I just want to see the car. His car. I want to be prepared for tomorrow. Or if not tomorrow, when the time is right. Time.

  The brown Toyota with the silver patches is in the driveway and its door is open. The interior light illuminates the dark silhouette of a man who has his left foot on the driveway and his right foot still in the car. He’s either just coming or just leaving, and at the exact moment I drive by, his head swivels and our eyes connect.

  I keep driving without slowing down and I make two rights to avoid having to make a U-turn and go by the house again. But by the time I’ve come to the end of the block that would take me back to El Dorado and eventually the freeway, I can see the brown Toyota in my rear-view mirror.

  At this late hour, the stoplights on El Dorado are timed to stay green most of the time, so fortunately I don’t have to come to a stop. But every time I look in the mirror, he’s still behind me. My hands are shaking, so I grip my steering wheel harder but that does nothing for my heart, which feels like a fish flopping around in an inch of water. I’m scared and I want to call someone, but who? 9-1-1? They’d probably arrest me! When I finally reach the freeway entrance, I press down hard on the accelerator to merge into traffic.

  But the brown Toyota is still behind me. I move over a lane and it moves over too. I pull all the way over to the fast lane on the left and it follows my lead as though we’re connected by an invisible tow line. At the last minute, just before my freeway exit, I change lanes quickly to the right and exit, not daring to look behind me.

  At the bottom of the off-ramp, there’s a stop sign. I breathe a deep sigh of relief and then look in my rear-view mirror. And he’s behind me . . . waiting for my next move. I have no choice but to go home. Where else can I go? At least Dad and Grandpa are there and can help me. But help me with what? What’s he going to do to me?

  There’s no point in driving fast now; I’m not going to lose him. This is what it’s all come down to, what I wanted—isn’t it? I try to stay calm in order to face the inevitable. I breathe slowly and deeply. I’ve set this into motion, and now I have to deal with it. How much worse can it be? How much worse can my life get? As I drive up the steep hill to cover the final distance before my house, I slow down slightly to give him a chance to keep up.

  And then we both park our cars in front of my house. We’re on opposite sides of the street and it takes me a minute to work up the nerve to open my door. His door opens right away and he steps out of his car but doesn’t move toward me. He just leans against his car. He’s tall and slender like my dad. By the light of the night sky, I can make out that his hair and eyes are dark. He turns his head slightly and the shadows that fall over it reveal a sculpted nose and jawline. I’m so detached at this moment, I’m almost robotic. My breaths continue to come slow and easy. I can handle this by myself. I’m strong. Dr. Bronstein never prepared me for this moment. Never could. But my heart pounds so heavily, so incongruously to my detached resolve that I’m confused for a few seconds before I return to the place where I am that coldly calculating girl again.

  Do it.

  He’s wearing a uniform of some sort—maybe he’s a waiter, or even a busboy in a nice restaurant. I stare directly at him and he drops his eyes. I wonder . . . if I saw this man in a restaurant and he was bussing my table, would I ever wonder about his life—who he was going home to, who he loved, who he hated? Would I even see him at all?

  I press myself against the door of the Hornet for the false security it provides. The time has come for me to say what I need to say. Time. But my vocal cords seem absolutely paralyzed. I have the feeling that if I attempt to speak, I might physically choke on my own words.

  “Is this what you want?” he says finally in a slightly accented voice. “Do you want to see me? See the monster? Here I am, then.”

  This is it. This is the moment. What do I say, Grandpa?

  “Say whatever you want to me. Do whatever you want. I don’t care. But please leave my mother and my brother and sister in peace. They’ve done nothing. They’re innocent and have already suffered enough because of me.”

  What do I say, Grandpa?

  “I have to take care of them—you understand? There’s nobody else but me. So say it. Hit me. Do what you will. I don’t care!”

  I can hear the sob coming up his throat well before it turns into a sound. He buries his face into his hands and says something I can’t hear or maybe don’t understand. Then he looks up at me and his eyes, even at this distance, are like black holes swallowing all the pain in the world.

  “I think about them every day,” he says. “Both of them, but especially your sister. I went to her and she looked up at me. I tried to help her. I tried . . . and I couldn’t do anything to save her. They pushed me away. I tried . . . but I couldn’t do anything . . . I couldn’t do anything for her.” Deep, wretched sobs escape from his chest, and a light comes on in the Sullivans’ second floor window.

  I simply fade away into the depths of his pain. Is this the peace I wanted? Is this the resolution I was seeking at 758?

  Or is this what it feels like to die?

  I get into my car and drive away from his words.

  And from my absolute lack of words.

  Chapter | 26

  In a front window of Jake’s house, I see the tell-tale flickering blue light of a late-night television. Two faces appear in the scallop-shaped glass window at the top of the door in response to my knock.

  “I’ll get it, Tyler,” a woman’s voice says. I can see her face, blurred slightly by the beveled glass.

  A porch light comes on and the door opens, just barely.

  “Is Jake home?” I see my pitiful reflection in the expression on his mother’s face.

  “Are you . . . Krista?” She opens the door fully and stands aside for me to enter.

  “Yes.” My voice is so small I can hardly hear it myself.

  “Mom! What if it wasn’t Krista?”

  “Shush, Tyler.” She swats the side of his head and looks up at me. “He’s asleep.” Then she looks at me for another second and reads the calamity behind my eyes. “I’ll go wake him.”

  Jake’s mom and brother have disappeared somewhere else in the house by the time Jake walks out, his hair mussed and his eyes bleary. He wears only a pair of boxers.

  “What’s up?” he asks in a drowsy voice. “Everything okay?”

  “Can I talk to you?” My voice is still tiny and he strains to hear me.

  “Sure.” He looks around. “Let’s go out back.”

  He leads me out the backdoor to the side of a swimming pool and pulls me down on its deck next to him. His feet dangle in the water. He puts an arm around me and draws me close.

  “What’s up?” he asks again.

  “When I first got my learner’s permit, I wanted to drive everywhere. Everywhere. My mom and dad always let me and it was a big deal in the family, really. At least it was to me. It made me feel grown up and important.”

  Jake looks at me with eyes that say go on. He nods.

  “I always wanted to fill up the gas tank too. That was part of it. Stupid really, but every time the tank got down to even three-quarters full I’d pull into a gas station and make everyone wait while I filled it up. Then Lucy wanted to do it. She was too young to drive, and I guess that was her way of being part of the exciting event—my transition to adulthood. She wanted to experience that feeling too. And all that she could do was fill up the gas tank.”

  “Your sister . . . Lucy.”

  “But I was too jealous of the whole stupid thing. I wanted it to be about me, not her. And I got mad and told my mom I was the one who was driving, and I was t
he one who should pump the gas. It’s so idiotic I can’t even believe that I said it. So that day . . . that day . . . I was doing something after school and my mom and Lucy were driving somewhere and they stopped to buy gas. I know they didn’t need it because I just filled the tank the day before. But Mom was probably trying to let Lucy have a turn, and since I wasn’t there they stopped at the gas station so Lucy could pump the gas.”

  Jake knows what’s coming next. He leans over and puts his other arm around me and holds me tight. I bury my head into his bare chest and the numbness is gone. I start to cry, but not sobbing—just crying like a springtime rain feels before the summer comes.

  “If they hadn’t been standing in that spot on that day, they’d still be alive. And all because I was so selfish I couldn’t let my little sister pump the stupid gas into the stupid car.”

  Jake lets me cry and doesn’t say anything. He just holds me. After a few minutes, he speaks.

  “Hey, that’s how it is with brothers and sisters. We act like idiots and learn to get along. It’s how we figure stuff out. It’s how we grow up.”

  “I know you’re right, but . . .”

  “I pushed my brother down the stairs once, fighting over a matchbox car. He broke his collarbone.”

  “You didn’t kill him.”

  “And you didn’t kill Lucy either.”

  __________

  When I leave Jake’s house, he has only a few hours to sleep before boarding the bus to his football camp.

  “It’s okay,” he says. “I can sleep on the bus just as well as I can sleep in my bed.” I don’t really believe him but I love him for saying it.

  We didn’t really talk much. His mother came out after a while to say good night and ask if there was anything we needed. I saw the way she looked at Jake . . . the same way Mom used to look at me when she could sense something was wrong but also knew that sometimes it was better to just stay in the background. It broke my heart to see that look . . . I so miss being the object of it. But it reassures me somehow that life goes on. And love goes on. I have to believe that it does.

  Omar and I were loud enough to wake Rachel who sleeps with her window open. I know this because my father called me on my cell phone right after she ran to our house in her bare feet, ringing the doorbell over and over until she finally roused him from his sleep. He wanted to come get me, but I wasn’t ready to leave Jake who I knew wouldn’t talk if I didn’t want to talk. Who wouldn’t ask questions that I wasn’t ready to answer. I just needed to be with Jake right then.

  While I try explaining this to my father, I hear Grandpa in the background.

  “Leave the girl,” he says. “She will be fine. She will be back.” And my father must believe him . . . and I believe him too.

  When I get home, my father’s bedroom light is on. I know he wants to see me, but I think he probably feels he should wait for me to come to him. Kind of like the way Jake’s mom and my mom sometimes stayed in the background, right where we knew they’d be if we ever needed them. And I do need my dad . . . badly. He’s been there with me all along, but I never realized it until tonight.

  Instead of going to his room though, I walk down the hall. There, right across from the guest bedroom is the door that always stays closed. I open it and walk into the room where I feel Lucy’s presence all around me.

  The doll that Emma found is propped up on the pillow of Lucy’s bed right where I left it. It stares straight ahead with its wide-eyed look of wonder, its loose auburn braid looking just like hers. Mom had been so surprised to come across this doll that day in the store—it so much resembled her younger daughter. And then, because I know that Lucy was a generous soul who shared everything with everybody, I pick up the doll that she had named Sarah. Lucy would want Emma to play with this doll. I know she would. It was only me who had to come around to accepting that fact. I shut off the lights and quietly close the door behind me as I leave her room.

  Epilogue

  My father and I finally came to our agreement—it only took us two years. I agreed to counseling if he would come with me, one last time, to the house at 758. And so, one morning we did just that. This time it was planned. We called ahead.

  For people who like a happily ever after story, I wish I could say that we all felt happy and hugged and made up on that day but it didn’t happen like that. We sat in the same room with nothing but silence between us. But when it was over we felt bound together, and in a strange way, we each had an interest in the happiness of the others.

  As for the future, I’m pretty sure I can speak for the others when I say that, after that day, we were all more thankful for our greatest gift—the time we have remaining on earth.

  Jake got back last week and Lyla gets home tomorrow. I’ve started seeing Dr. Bronstein again and it’s difficult at times, but I know it’s helpful. Summer already feels like it’s winding down, but I’m excited at the thought of going back to school and watching my first football game from the stands. Jake’s been teaching me the rules of the game.

  I’ve started writing again and thinking seriously about college. Everything seems . . . at least possible. And, oh yeah, I’ve moved back into my bedroom although I keep my tent up on the roof for my private getaway. Once the rains start, it will have to come down.

  Shortly after getting back from Disneyland, Marie moved out of the house. She got her own place and now shares custody of Chad and Emma with her ex-husband. Dad and Marie still see each other and I think they still love each other, but they both decided they rushed into something without thinking about the consequences to their kids. That’s what Dad told me. Exactly that.

  __________

  Tonight, I’m just enjoying an owl’s eye view on this warm, cloudless night. I’ll miss sitting up here once the weather turns cold, but Grandpa is coming to visit us for Thanksgiving, so I’m happy about that.

  The day before he left we were sitting in the living room while he flipped through the pages of our coffee table book about the greatest works of art. He paused at the page on the Venus de Milo which is permanently displayed at the Louvre Museum in Paris. Carved out of marble before the birth of Christ, the statue depicts Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty.

  “Look at this, Krista.” My grandpa held up the glossy photo of the statue. “If someone will see this and notice only that the arms are broken, they would miss something beautiful and rare.”

  I looked at the picture, as if for the first time, even though I had seen it many times before—the wavy hair pulled back to expose a serene face of perfectly proportioned features; the careless slouch of a body, both feminine and powerful; the exquisite folds of fabric that could be silk instead of stone. But that day, for the first time, it was the imperfection of her missing arms that made this statue so compelling to me.

  “May I see your list please?” He closed the book and set it down on the round, glass coffee table.

  “I don’t have a list anymore, Grandpa. Now that you’re leaving.”

  He fumbled through his pockets and pulled out what looked like an old receipt written in Spanish. In another pocket, he found a pen. He wrote something on the receipt and then handed it to me.

  “What’s this?”

  Scrawled across the top he had written:

  See the Venus de Milo in Paris.

  “It’s my gift to you,” he said. “The beginning of a new list. Now you must finish it yourself.”

  The chorus of crickets chirps in a steady, rhythmic beat. The celestial bodies above me sparkle and pulse. Once, a young Gyuri guided himself to happiness and safety using the position of these stars. Once, a young girl who was called Kicsi by the father who adored her, dreamed dreams under these stars. Once, two young sisters sneaked up to the roof of their garage and imagined each star to be a falling star that would make all their wishes come true.

  . . . a million kisses
. . . and a million more . . .

  Acknowledgements

  My deepest gratitude to Amberjack Publishing for believing in me and this story. Dayna Anderson, Kayla Church, Jenny Miller, and Cami Wasden—a dream team if there ever was one.

  About the Author

  Kathryn Berla is the author of YA romances, 12 Hours in Paradise and Dream Me. The House at 758 is an English translation of La Casa 758, which was originally published by Penguin Random House, Spain.

  Kathryn graduated from the University of California Berkeley with a degree in English, but she takes the most pride in having studied creative writing under Walter van Tilburg Clark at the University of Nevada.

  Kathryn lives with her husband in the beautiful San Francisco Bay Area, which she would never leave because she can’t think of another place with as much to offer, including the proximity of her entire family.