by Lucas, Helen
Sarah came tumbling down the stairs after me.
“Dakota, I told you not to be staying out so late…” she murmured, running over to her sister. Dakota pushed her off.
The two girls looked terribly similar, even though they were otherwise totally different creatures—Sarah was dressed fairly modestly, besides those jeans that clung to her fantastic ass. But that wasn’t something she could control. Dakota, on the other hand… She wore a little girl’s spaghetti tank top that stopped at her belly, revealing a pierced naked. Below that? A skirt so tight and so short that it had to be a joke. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it on her right then and there. She looked like a pedophile’s dream: a barely pubescent version of Sarah dressed up to the nines like Lolita ready to go out on the town.
“I hate all of you!” Dakota squealed, stumbling to her feet and dashing clumsily up the stairs. Presumably to her room. No one followed her.
“Fucking kid…” Harry muttered. I noticed another glass of bourbon in his hand. It was already half-empty. He downed it, poured another, and downed that.
And then, it was like Sarah and I were invisible. I glanced back at her, shook my head, and started back upstairs.
“Where are you going?” she hissed.
“I’m going to go tell Dakota to cut it out.”
“She’ll just curse you out.”
I shrugged.
“That’s fine. What kind of idea is she getting if no one tells her not to do this shit? That tells her that no one gives a fuck about her. And she’ll just keep doing it.”
Sarah followed me up the stairs and pointed to one of the doors. It had a kid’s name plate on it: Dakota, in big, loopy pink letters, with butterflies.
I knocked.
“Go away!” Dakota screamed from inside.
“Dakota, it’s Damien. I’m coming in.”
If it were the Marines, I just would have busted in. But there’s a difference between breaching a door with hostiles behind it and talking to an angry teenager, I figured.
I eased the door open and Sarah followed me silently. Dakota was sitting on her window sill, smoking out the window, her phone lying in her lap.
“This is my fucking room—“ she started off.
“Dakota, don’t talk to our brother like that…” Sarah murmured lamely from behind me.
“What the fuck is her doing here?”
“He just got out of the Marines and he’s going to be staying here for a while.”
“I’m going to be finishing up high school,” I told Dakota. “And if you keep acting like this, you’re going to be in my position when you’re my age too.”
“Fuck if I care,” Dakota scowled, taking a drag off her cigarette. I sighed, caught her hand, and plucked the cigarette out of her fingers.
“Hey, that’s mine!”
“From now on, no more smoking,” I told her.
“You’re not the boss of me. “
“Nope,” I agreed. “But if I catch anyone buying cigarettes for you or selling cigarettes to you, I’m going to kick their teeth in.”
“Fuck you.”
“From now on, you’re home for dinners.”
“Fuck you.”
“If I catch you out with anyone, I’m going to beat them to within an inch of their lives. I’m not going to touch you, but I’m going to make your friends’ lives a living hell. The guys who give you booze, who drive you around—Dakota, listen to me.”
I took her face in my hand, holding her by her cheeks.
“I will end them. No one is going to want to hang out with you. They will be scared shitless.”
“You’re a fucking asshole. You can’t beat up anyone.”
“That’s right. I’m a fucking asshole,” I whispered. “And I’ve seen people way meaner and scarier than anything this shit hole of a town can even fathom. And do you know what I did to them, Dakota?”
By now, Dakota didn’t have an answer.
“I killed them. And the Marines gave me medals for it. I’m not proud of it, but don’t you think for a second that your dealer or whatever scares me. I’m the one who scares him. He doesn’t even know it yet, but I’m his worst fucking nightmare.”
Dakota’s eyes were wide. She looked like the child she was. Good.
“Now, go downstairs and have some of the lasagna my mom made. I bet she’ll still warm it up for you. And then go to bed, because you have school tomorrow.”
“I hate you.”
“I don’t care,” I replied with a shrug as I turned and left, shooting a grin at Sarah as I did so.
SARAH
Shivers. Shivers, up and down my spine as I watched Damien lay down the law. I wished to god he had come home sooner.
“That was incredible,” I whispered to him as I followed him down the hall, back to our rooms.
“She’s a kid,” he said with a shrug. “She’ll always do dumb things like that, but you’ve got to start somewhere.”
“Those things you said about… You know… The war… Is that true?” I asked, biting my lip.
My brother nodded.
“Wow. I’ve never met anyone who…”
He turned on me. We were in the hall now, between our rooms. He was close to me and I could feel his heat, not too far from me. Feel it warming me. Feeling it driving me wild.
What the hell was wrong with me? Why the hell was I… Getting turned on by my stepbrother?
He was just so goddamned… What’s the word they use in romance novels… Alpha.
“Killed someone?” he asked, jerking me out of my reverie. I nodded nervously, my hands and fingers shaking in spite of myself. He took my hands in his and held them.
“Yeah…” I breathed, almost unable to control my shaking. “Yeah. Killed someone.”
“You don’t know that. There’s lots of killers out there. Most of them just probably aren’t as honest as I am.”
“Maybe you’re right…”
An awkward silence settled over us. I took a deep breath. Today had been way too wild.
“Well, the first day of school is tomorrow so I guess I’ll get ready for bed…” I started to say.
Damien shot me an easy grin.
“That’s good. Set a good example for your sister.”
Even if that’s what I was doing, I was just as eager to get attention from my brother… As much as I was embarrassed to admit it.
The next morning, my alarm rang like an absolutely and totally unwelcome reminder of the real world. As I forced myself from my sleep, I heard the tell-tale sound of the shower going down the hall.
Dakota was never up as early as I was. Maybe she had decided to shape up and fly straight finally this year? Or maybe…
The memories of the day before came flooding back into my mind. My estranged step-brother, back in our lives. Dinner. God, he was handsome. The way he talked to Dakota.
And now he was down the hall showering?
I bit my lip. I felt, desperately, like sneaking into the bathroom to join him but I knew that was horrible. God, how had I turned into such a horn dog all of a sudden? I had never been like this before—never been salivating over a boy, let alone my brother, just because he’s close…
And gorgeous. And kind and funny and oh, god.
I had to shut these feelings down. And I did, in the best way I knew how: by organizing. I went over my course schedule for the day, figured out where I would need to go for class, what all I would need to do, and before I knew it, I had disappeared into a daze of pleasant planning. My preferred existence. When I was planning, I could make sure everything was logical. Everything was reasonable. The world, my life, it all made sense. That’s what I wanted, and no one, not my father, not Dakota, not even Damien—no one could interfere in the pure worlds of my organization and planning.
“Hey,” came a voice, followed by a knock and my door easing open.
My mouth just about fell open when I saw him: Damien was standing there, a towel wrapped around
his waist, his perfect body slicked with shower water from the waist up. His well-formed abs glistened, and I felt another shiver go up my spine as I took in the glorious sight.
“I’m done in the shower, if you want it. Just letting you know.”
“Th-thanks…” I murmured, barely able to form words. And then, like that, he was gone.
At that exact moment, my phone buzzed. It was Mitch:
“ready for another year of bullshit?” his text read. He meant another year of school. I grabbed my phone and texted back frantically:
“omg huge news. Do u remember my brother Damien? He’s back for the year.”
Mitch’s reply came back in seconds. I could always count on Mitch to text back promptly:
“Ur brother? Wasnt he kicked out like 4 years ago”
I replied:
“Yes. Its crazy. Will explain at school.”
He sent me back a goofy emoji. Mitch is my best friend. We’ve been best friends ever since we were little kids. He’s also super gay: he does musical theatre, paints his nails, has long, almost androgynous hair. As you might imagine… This being high school and all… He gets bullied pretty severely.
I showered, dressed, and before I knew it, Damien and I were walking to school together. It was so bizarre—days ago, we hadn’t known each other and now, here we were, walking side by side to school, like we had really, truly grown up together.
“So, when is your GED class?”
“Three hours in the morning,” he said. “I’ve got my afternoons free, so I guess I’ll go and try and find some sort of part time job.”
“Good luck with that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, just that Laramie’s a shit hole and no one can find a job. Not even adults, let alone kids.”
Damien raised an eyebrow.
“You really don’t like this town.”
I sighed and shook my head.
“Damien, I don’t know. This is the only place I’ve ever lived but…”
“But you need to get the hell out?”
“Right. I can’t remember the last time I even left Laramie. It’s suffocating.”
“Yeah. The first time around, I only lived here for a few months and I was feeling the same thing.”
“But,” I said with a small smile. “I don’t think I could just go and sign up for the Marines and get out like that…”
Damien shrugged. “They’d take you.”
Finally, we were at the beginning of Laramie United’s sprawling, derelict campus. Students from all corners of town, bleary-eyed, sad for summer’s passing, streamed onto the school’s fields.
“Hey, beautiful.”
I turned to see Mitch loping across the field towards us, waving. He was clad in his usual bright neon pink shirt commemorating whatever school musical the theatre group had done last spring semester.
“Is this…” he started upon seeing Damien and I. I nodded rapidly.
“Mitch, this is Damien. My… My stepbrother. Damien, this is Mitch, my best friend.”
There were stars in Mitch’s eyes as he shook my brother’s hand.
“That’s… That’s a hell of a handshake you’ve got there, Damien,” Mitch murmured, practically star-struck. Damien just smiled politely.
As we broke off, going to our respective classes, Mitch caught up with me and grabbed me hard by the arm.
“Ow!” I yelped. “You dick!”
“Sarah, he is fucking gorgeous,” he gasped.
“Oh my god, I know!”
“You think your brother is gorgeous? Ew, you skank!”
I giggled and playfully swatted him as we headed to our first period class.
“No, it’s not like that. It’s just… He’s so, so, so…”
“Hot,” Mitch finished for me. “Tall. Dark. Handsome. The strong, silent type. He’s not…”
“Sorry. I don’t think he’s gay.”
“But you don’t know he’s not for certain, right?”
I had to admit that I didn’t and Mitch punched the air.
Damien
What a surprise. School was just as lame as I remembered it being.
My class was three hours long and totally focused on passing the GED. They offered a night version of the class too, so the people in my class were the ones who couldn’t go to the night class—in other words, people who worked at night. Single moms working as bartenders and strippers, Chinese guys who all seemed to have a restaurant together (I hoped) judging from the stains on their shirts, and some bleary eyed security guards.
And… Me.
There was no effort to get to know anyone. We started off with grammar, something I was surprised to find I excelled in, just by virtue of being a native English speaker. Then, math and science, which I had always struggled with.
And then, before I knew it, it was lunch time. Lunch had always been my favorite part of school.
Not knowing what else to do, I made my way towards the cafeteria. I remembered the school layout only vaguely from my few months there. But now, passing through streams of students, I felt like a time-traveller returned from the future. God, they all looked so young.
But I had served alongside men their age. I had killed men and boys younger than them too, in the war. These were really just children. Naïve children. God, but this was strange.
I found my way to the packed cafeteria. It smelled vaguely of old cheese and frying grease, like any good cafeteria should. Screams and squeals, shouts and groans, the sound of someone’s prohibited boom box—the symphony of American high school greeted me.
I picked out a tray, got in line, selected a sad looking slice of pizza and a side salad for my meal, plus a big cup of Sprite that was mostly ice.
Some things really don’t ever change, I supposed.
And then, the perennial difficulty of deciding where to sit.
There were the obvious cool kids: a surprisingly heterogeneous group of jocks of both sexes, plus some tragically hip kids who seemed to be the school’s hipster royalty. Not far from them were the more extreme hipster kids—too cool to even hang out with the cool kids.
From there, we had—kids in the band, based on the instruments and music books sprawled around their tables; stoner kids, judging from their dazed, vacant gazes; preppy nerds; sloppy nerds; ghetto kids; skateboarder kids; gamer kids all glued to their Gameboys; and more, as far as my way-too-old-to-be-here eyes could see.
“Damien!” I heard a voice call out. I turned and there was Sarah and Mitch, plus a handful of kids looking somewhere between hipsters, band geeks, and outright nerds. Of course, the theatre kids.
I sat down next to Sarah and Mitch: they had already started eating, surrounded by a small mountain of textbooks and schedules.
“We’re trying to see if we can both switch into AP Calculus,” Sarah told me.
“The Honors Calculus class is terrrrrible,” Mitch drawled, rolling his eyes.
“That’s ambitious of you two,” was all I really had to offer as they began to chatter away about their classes, their teachers, the local gossip.
I was a fool for thinking I might fit in here. I was too old. I had seen too much. High school wasn’t the place for me.
I was looking forward to getting out. Looking forward to getting on with my life.
But god, what would I do?
Did I really want to go back to the Corps? From this vantage point, it sounded attractive, but something about what Sarah had said resonated with me—something about wanting to see more of the world. Wanting to get out.
Maybe I’d prefer seeing the world some way besides down the barrel of a gun.
“Damien!” Sarah squeaked, jerking me out of my reverie.
“What’s up?”
“I’m going to the movies for my birthday next Saturday. You should come with us!”
“It’s the same night as Homecoming,” Mitch cut in. “We’re not going.”
“Why not?” I had to ask.
&nb
sp; They both stared at me, as if it were obvious.
“We’re just not the kinds of kids who go to homecoming,” Sarah finally said. “It’s… It’s for the cooler kids. For the cool kids.”