by Sheri Leigh
"What happens now?" he asked as she shoved open her door.
She hesitated and looked back over her shoulder at him. A cold wind invaded the warmth of the car.
"I don't know," she said, getting out and shutting the door.
She stood on the front porch, watching until the scarlet of his tail lights were a blur in the distance, until they disappeared. She unlocked the front door. Ghostly blue-green filled the kitchen from the digital clock. No one had waited up for her. Julia had gotten used to Dusty's trashy behavior—coming in at one, two or even three in the morning.
She paused to kick her shoes off and drape her coat over a chair before she headed up the steep, narrow steps to her room. Moonlight threw shadows on the hallway wall, coming from her bedroom. She had taken to leaving her door open.
She was alone up here. Always alone. Her parents’ room, downstairs, was quiet. Nick's room, a constant reminder, was also closed and silent. She hated that she was the only one who had to go past it every day. No one else did. There was a bathroom downstairs and their bedroom was down there. Julia left clean laundry at the foot of the stairs, and an empty laundry basket for dirty clothes. Dusty was the only one who had to go upstairs during the night—or during the day for that matter, but somehow, the nights were worse.
Nick was alive in her mind at night, and her mind-scissors didn’t function as well when the shadows grew dark. Thoughts seeped in, unwanted and sad, often bitter and guilt-ridden. Lying on her bed, she could see the moon, bright and full, peeking out from behind the clouds. Memories came during the night. Everything came back—things she didn’t have to think about during the day, things her mind-scissors took care of. She dreaded coming to her room, passing his.
Tonight, Shane filled her thoughts as well. It was Shane's face she saw when she closed her eyes, except he was younger, so much younger—they all were. It was a time when they were indestructible, when they were going to live forever, and Larkspur was just one huge playground.
Summer stretched ahead, a shimmering lineal highway that ended at infinity. Life came and went in gentle, lapping waves: ups and downs, and most of all, warmth. The sun was a molten white-hot coin in the sky, summer had begun and they were...
* * * *
FREE!
Jean cut-offs worn over a black and white two-piece bathing suit, the sun warm on already tanned shoulders, Dusty walked the path, her tennis shoes crackling twigs.
Summer, summer, summer, it was a little sing-song voice. Heading down to the pond while Nick was back at the house still changing, Dusty contemplated freedom. She would get bored and start wishing school would begin again, but that time was forever away because summer had finally come, and it was delicious.
The pond, across Jarvis and through the woods, had waited for summer, as well, when it could be filled with the shouts of warm bodies. It shimmered like glass in the heat, and Dusty paused at its edge to look at it.
They used the pond in the winter too, for hockey and ice skating. Nick, James Thomas and Danny Clark were their best hockey players. She liked the pond in winter, when their skates sliced and dug into its frigid surface, but it seemed almost dangerous then, as cold and dead and humorless as the season itself. After the long layover from spring, when it was warm enough to swim again, the pond was ready to accept them again with open arms.
The pond’s sandy shores were sun-filled, except a stretch of sand covered by the shade of a big elm. There was a platform about ten or twelve feet up, where they sat on hot days, days when even the water was too warm to swim in comfortably and it was cooler up high in the shade of the elm's leaves.
Dusty stepped up to the water's edge, taking off her tennis shoes. She waded a little ways out, up to her shins. The water was unbelievably cool under the hot sun. Dusty hopped back to shore, pulling her shorts down over her hips and scanning the woods for a sign of her brother. He would show up soon, with Annie and James and probably Suzanne. There would be others, after everyone had gone home from school, changed, and either walked or caught rides out. Living right across from the pond had its advantages.
Dusty stepped lightly out of her shorts and tossed them aside. That was when she heard the screams behind her. She whirled around but couldn’t see anything—just trees and underbrush, rustling gently in the breeze, too thick to really see through.
There it was again, and she heard the distinct crackling and breaking of twigs under feet.
And a growl.
She watched wide-eyed, helpless, unable to see anything but the gentle swaying of trees.
"Help! Heeelp!" The words were distinguishable now, and Dusty's eyes moved across the thick covering, searching for signs of life. It grew louder, louder, the strangled cry and the growling sound. Dusty picked her shorts up, ready to retreat.
Something broke out of the underbrush and flew through the air. It took a moment for it to click in her mind, and by then he had slid through the sand next to her, face down, wearing Levis, a t-shirt and tennis shoes. The Doberman sprang next, and Dusty watched it fly, streaking through the air, snarling. It landed in the space the boy had just vacated.
Dusty managed to move then, the dog turning toward her. Acting instinctively, Dusty shoved her shorts over its head, inside out. The boy, lying panting on the ground, watched her with wide eyes.
Dusty started to run. "Come on!" she urged. But the kid was frozen, watching the Doberman shake its head from side to side, struggling with the cut-offs. Dusty had managed to get its snout through one of the leg holes, so it was temporarily stuck. Dusty was almost to safety. All she had to do was climb the boards nailed to the trunk of the elm and crawl onto the platform.
The Doberman, snarling and whining, was winning its battle with the cut-offs. The kid sat there, dumbfounded, not hearing Dusty's hoarse plea to run!
Dusty hesitated, her bare foot paused on the lowest board. Then she began to run back, making her way past the dog. Grabbing onto the kid's arm, she pulled, yelling in his ear, "Get up! Come on!"
The kid, startled and dazed-looking, stood up obediently. The dog, getting its front paws over the tops of the shorts, was wiggling out of them and it didn’t sound happy.
"Run!" Dusty screamed, pulling hard at his arm. He stumbled for a moment, but Dusty didn’t let go. He regained his balance and ran behind her. The distance to the tree had grown to the length of a football field while their backs were turned. Dusty's bare feet sank into the sand, slowing her down, and the dog was now free.
She heard it behind her as she ran, faster than they were on the sand. Sand's not slippery, she thought. Why am I slipping? The kid, panting in her ear, was almost past her now.
"Up the tree," she managed to say. He flew up the elm, his feet hardly touching the boards. Behind her, the dog's jaws snapped, and she felt its breath, hot and heavy, near her thigh. She kicked back blindly with one foot, reaching up for a handhold. Her foot made contact with the dog and it yelped. In that instant, her hands found one of the rough boards and she pulled up. She scrambled the rest of the way up the tree until she lay panting, safely on the platform.
She lay there for a moment, eyes closed, sweat rolling off her back and down her sides, face pressed against the cool wood. The dog, cheated out of its fun, barked from below. Dusty rolled over onto her back with a sigh. The kid, sitting cross-legged, was looking at her with a mixture of admiration and embarrassment.
"Are you okay?" she gasped, still out of breath. He nodded. Below them, the dog began to whine. She sat up, looking him over. Dirt streaked his face and white t-shirt.
"I'm Dusty," she told him. "Who're you?"
"Shane," he told her, starting to wipe the dirt off his shirt and pants. Dusty's eyes widened for a moment and her breath caught somewhere inside. She had never met Shane Curtis but he was a legend of sorts at school.
His older brother, Buddy, had nearly killed a teacher at the junior high school by tossing an M-80 into the wastepaper basket by her desk. Rumor had it this teacher, Mrs. L
owe, hated it when kids played "basketball" with paper and the wastebasket. When a kid used the basket as a hoop for a scrunched up piece of paper, she would take the piece of paper out and make him eat it. Dusty didn’t know if that was true. She had doubts a teacher would do anything like that. Buddy had tossed the M-80, hidden in a paper bag, into her trash just before lunch, and when Mrs. Lowe went to fish out, she received, in Buddy's own words, a "little surprise."
Shane, last year, had gotten suspended for having a copy of Playboy in his desk, and although he’d never done anything really bad, like Buddy, who was now doing time in the reformatory and would probably be in institutions similar for the rest of his life, Shane was expected to be as bad.
"Is it gone?" Shane asked.
Dusty peeked over the side. It was quiet. The dog, either bored or distracted by something, had disappeared. It was, she knew, Casey Reardon's dog. He kept it penned up because it was so mean. It had gotten out while Shane was in the process of running a stick along the fence, Dusty found out later.
"Gone," she reported. "You've still got dirt on your face."
He smiled, his eyes dipping downward from hers. "You're dirty, too.”
She looked down and saw sand and dirt streaked across her suit and her bare stomach. She blushed, aware of his eyes on her. She became conscious of how she looked—tall, long-legged, the bathing suit too tight on her growing body. She crossed her arms self-consciously across her breasts, small buds just beginning to show.
"We can get down now,” she said, keeping her eyes averted. "You go first."
"Are you Nick Chandler's sister?" He moved so he was sitting beside her, their feet dangling from the platform.
"Yeah," she answered, looking at him. His blonde hair, a little too long, shone in the light seeping through the leaves above them. His blue eyes were making her tingle with...something...when he looked at her. The feel of his jeans, chafing against her bare thigh as he swung his feet, sent strange but exciting tremors through her body.
"He's cool, your brother," Shane said her, eyeing her. "You look a lot like him... but you're cuter." He smiled at her and Dusty bit her lip. She had been around boys before, and had even played spin-the-bottle with guys in the neighborhood at parties when parents left the "kids" alone in the basement. She had kissed boys before, and she knew about sex, but the way Shane looked at her made her feel inexperienced, shy, and excited all at the same time.
"We're twins," Dusty informed him. "My brother should be here any minute. We're going swimming."
"I figured," Shane said, his eyes on her suit. Dusty swung her legs, turning herself over, finding the first board with her feet. She began to descend. Shane started after her.
When Shane hopped to the ground, brushing his hands on his jeans, the voices were just coming to the end of the path. Dusty headed toward them, and Nick, his towel slung casually over his shoulder, led the group toward the edge of the water.
"Hey, you guys!" Dusty called, padding toward them. Sarah, Annie, Suzanne, Tommy, James, Josh and Danny were crowded behind him.
"Hey, Dusty," Tommy called with a smile. His eyes went from hers to look behind her and his smile faded. Everyone was looking at her now. Nick waved, and his smile wavered only slightly.
"Hi, Shane," Nick said as they advanced. Dusty was only a step ahead of Shane. She stopped, and Shane stood a little behind her, his arm brushing hers.
"Have a good time?" Tommy asked coolly, picking up Dusty's sandy cut-offs. Dusty felt cold and exposed.
"Nice place you have up there," Shane said. "Dusty was nice enough to give me a guided tour."
She turned to look at him and he winked at her. "Real private."
She opened her mouth to deny it, to deny anything and everything he could be implying, but nothing came out. All she could remember was the strange tightening feeling in her stomach, and the tingling farther down, when Shane was sitting next to her.
"I bet." Tommy tossed Dusty's shorts to her. "I think these are yours."
She couldn’t say anything as she bent to pick them up. Nick was watching her with, it seemed, a cold expression. She knew his face as well as she knew her own, maybe better. He was angry and something else—disappointed maybe.
"Quite a sister you have, Nick," Shane said with a small laugh, tossing his arm around Dusty's shoulders. She shrank away, pleading with her eyes.
Rescue me, Nick! Tell them you believe me! Shane's a liar, tell them!
"Anyone for a swim? I'm roasting." Nick stepped back and looked away from her. "Shane?"
That was too much. Nick had chosen Shane over her, believed him over her. She let her shorts drop and began to run, hating them all, but hating herself more. She hadn’t said a word, and she could have, easily. Nick would have believed her in an instant. Instead, she had kept quiet, unable to get that tingling sensation Shane's touch left out of her mind.
Later that night, Nick had come into her room and had left her shorts and shoes at the end of her bed. She had never worn them again.
* * * *
The moon shifted, darkened, and then was gone. Dusty looked at the space it had vacated in the sky. Clouds were there, moving in the darkness.
Shane's voice, low and pleading, saying, "I'm sorry." Too late. So he was sorry. Nick was gone, and it didn’t matter much if Shane was sorry. She’d often thought it had been then, in that single moment in time, things had been decided. There, in the bright June sunshine, their fates had been sealed. Shane was destined to become his brother all over, and Dusty was destined to live her life looking for her brother’s approval.
Things had never been the same after that day A bond had been broken, and one had been formed. It happened in an instant, a blink, a heartbeat.
We grew up, she thought sleepily. We grew up and we grew apart. It was going to happen anyway. You weren’t going to stay a tomboy forever. There are just some things you don’t tell your brother or your sister, no matter how close you are. It was going to happen anyway, Shane or no Shane. All Shane did was act as a catalyst. It was—SNIP!
She almost physically tore the thought from her mind.
It was an impossible thought, an unthinkable thought. It was Shane's fault Nick had begun to exclude her, in little ways, and then in bigger ones.
"I'm sorry." Shane's voice echoed in her head. "Cross my heart and hope to die."
She shivered, pulling the blankets up. She’d wished him dead so often. She’d wished he would disappear, be swallowed up, something, anything, she just wished that he would go away! She’d wished she’d let that stupid Doberman tear his heart out, tear him apart like he had torn her and Nick apart.
She had spent the rest of her adolescence trying to live that moment down, trying to be the good girl, to do the right thing, always. Her choice of profession had been no accident—she’d wanted to find a sense of justice in the world, to be a part of creating that somehow. She knew it was also no accident that she’d found herself working in vice, playing the whore. Had she been punishing Shane, she wondered, every time she brought down another John? Probably, she admitted, flushing in the darkness at the self-realization.
And yet here she was, her ties severed, the world she believed in turned upside down. Everything was corrupt. Nothing was as it seemed. And there was, it turned out, no justice in the world after all.
I'm sorry—she shut her eyes tightly against it. Sorry... what did that mean? Words, just words, after years and years. Where was the justice in that?
A small sob escaped her throat and she turned her face into her pillow. Oh Nick, Nick… God, she missed him! Sorry, sorry…oh, who cared? It was all too late. Sorry didn’t make anything better. Sorry didn’t bring any justice or sense of order. Nothing did. Nothing would.
Except, maybe, for her plan.
Could she accept Shane’s apology? What would that mean? Hating him was the fuel for her fire. How could she let that go?
So…maybe she would let him think she’d accepted it, but she couldn’
t let herself believe it. She had to hate him—she had to.
"Nothing's changed," she whispered into her pillow.
It was good, better, to hear it aloud. Nothing had changed, she insisted, nothing at all. Sorry, apologies, it was all too late. Nick was dead, Tommy was dead…but nothing changed the way she felt. Nothing.
Chapter Nine
"Luh-Lee said yuh-you can guh-go on yuh-your break." Sam handed the tray of beer over the counter to her. Dusty smiled, waving at Lee.
"Thanks," she mouthed, and he nodded, taking an order.
"You've moved up in the world," she remarked to Sam with a smile.
Sam shrugged, looking away. "Juh-just part tuh-tuh-time."
"You'll be taking Lee's place soon, if you keep it up." Dusty winked at him and Sam looked back at her shyly, but still beamed under her compliment as Dusty threaded her way through the crowd towards the pool tables. It was packed, even for a Saturday. Everyone had found a reason to celebrate—mostly because the hunt was going to be called off soon.
"Hey, it's the lady with the beers!" Billy called to her. "Gimme one!"
"Need your money first, pal." She held her tray just out of his reach.
"Don't I get a discount? I'm a buddy of your boyfriend over there." He jerked his thumb towards Shane, sitting astride one of the chairs. Anger flashed through Dusty, white-hot, but she covered it.
"He doesn't even get discount rates," she told him. "You had the Miller, right?"
Billy gave up and started to dig through the pockets of his tattered jeans. "Here." He tossed the money on her tray and took the bottle. "Hope you're happy."
"Only if you left a big tip," she said, smiling. She made her rounds with the rest of the beer—she knew by memory now what they all ordered—and then went to sit by Shane.
"Hey." He slipped his arm around her shoulders and she watched as their pool game resumed. It was amazing how easily she’d been accepted.
"They caught it." She leaned over so he could hear her over the dull roar.