“What about you?”
“Don’t worry about me,” Riley says briskly, an edge to his voice that makes me sorry I asked.
I watch the speedometer as it creeps up to seventy-five, then back down to seventy with the release of his foot on the gas. Riley is a pretty good driver, and for that I’m grateful. I may be seeing dead bodies come to life on a regular basis, but I have no desire to go spinning off the earth any time soon. We drive for a while without speaking, the silence between us a quiet lull, and I watch the way the headlights from the adjacent lanes of traffic sweep over the planes of his face, lighting it up like a strobe. There is an exit coming up, gas, food, lodging, and without warning, he eases the car over and onto the off-ramp, the wheels following the gentle curve of the road.
“I’m pretty beat,” he says, and now that I’m looking for it, I can see it in his face, the exhaustion hanging over his features, sharpening them to a fine point. “The thing is, we’ve still got a ways to go, and I don’t like to drive when I’m tired.” He rubs one eye, digging his fingers in roughly, and I want to grab his hand, tell him to stop. “Okay if we find somewhere to crash for tonight?”
“You mean like . . . a motel?”
The thought of being alone in a motel with Riley makes my mouth suddenly dry, the car slowing as we exit the freeway.
“Unless you want to sleep on the side of the road somewhere.” Riley laughs, and I watch out the window as we pass fast-food restaurants, a gas station. At the end of the block there’s a Motel 6, the sign glowing like a neon savior.
We pull into the parking lot, driving up to the office. Through the window, I can see a tired-looking woman seated behind the desk, engrossed in a magazine, her long fingers turning the pages idly, a mass of blond curls tumbling down around her face. When Riley walks in, she looks up and pushes a sheaf of papers toward him, pecking blindly at her computer.
The room is like every nondescript motel room scattered across the country: drapes the same unremarkable shade of dirty-looking beige, plastic-wrapped water glasses in the bathroom, the caustic smell of bleach emanating from the sheets and towels, washed to a shade stark as bone. I sit on the bed and wait for Riley to return from the gas station with supplies, flip the TV on to a talk show, then flip it off again, too restless to pay attention to anything.
I hear a jangle of keys and sit up as Riley pushes the door open, a bulging paper sack in his hands, a bag of salt-and-vinegar potato chips sticking out of the top. He grins, dumping the bag onto the bed, kicking his shoes off one after the other, and tossing his crap around the room in that special way that only boys can do, marking his territory.
“Hardly anything was open,” he says, sitting down on the bed and facing me cross-legged. He reaches into the bag, pulling out the chips, some candy, a bag of popcorn—and, last, he yanks out a six-pack of beer with a ridiculous flourish that immediately cracks me up.
“How’d you get that?” I say through my laughter.
“Please.” He rolls his eyes, feigning irritation that I would even ask, twisting the top off of one of the bottles and handing it to me. I take a long drink, tilting my head back, and the coldness of it, the bubbles tickling my dry, scratchy throat, feels so good that it’s everything I can do not to drain the entire bottle in one long gulp. I watch as he tears open the bag of chips, popping a few into his mouth and moaning with exaggerated pleasure. “Mmmmmm . . .” he mumbles, “I didn’t realize how fucking hungry I was until I got in there.”
We sit there munching in unison, fingertips crusted with salt, knees touching. The room is warm, shielding us from the early spring chill, the curtains drawn. It’s almost cozy, being here with Riley, the door locked and bolted, the lamps casting a soft glow over the bed, the sheets, the white marble slabs of the pillows awaiting the insistent crush of our heads. I finish my beer and Riley opens two more, passing one to me.
“Are you trying to get me drunk?” I grin at him, the malty scent hanging between us.
“It’s prom night,” Riley says, taking a long drink, wiping his mouth with the back of one hand. “It’s a goddamn tradition, or haven’t you heard?”
I think of the gym, the dim blue lights sweeping the dance floor, Ben and Delilah wrapped in each other’s arms, her dark hair pinned up so the back of her neck is exposed, vulnerable and defenseless. I close my eyes for a minute, sickened.
“I wonder what it would’ve been like if everything hadn’t happened the way it did,” I mutter. Maybe it’s the alcohol flooding my system, maybe it’s being in a strange place, an anonymous room so far away from my real life that I can say anything. I open my eyes, one thumbnail absentmindedly picking the label off the bottle in my hand. Riley takes another swig of beer, tilting his head back. “I mean if I had gone to prom with Ben. If none of this had ever happened. Would you be there with Janelle right now? Would we be happier?”
There is a stabbing sensation in my head, a constant reminder of all that has been taken from me, the wound raw and bloody, refusing to heal. I can almost feel Ben and Delilah together, see the way he takes her by the hand and leads her to his car, the place we spent so many hours, our mouths moving against each other’s bodies, the windows fogged and steaming.
“I guess we’ll never know, will we?” Riley’s expression shifts slightly, and I can see the anger and sadness rising in him, making its way to the surface. He shoves the bag of chips to one side of the bed so that there’s nothing between us now but a few paltry inches of air. “Luke made sure of that.”
A wave of shame sweeps over me, and I want nothing more than to vanish. I wonder if it will always be like this, my brother and I so intricately connected that, like Siamese twins, we will never again be separate entities.
“Maybe it’s better this way,” Riley says flippantly, breaking into my thoughts.
“How can you say that?”
The idea is inconceivable to me. Monstrous.
“Think about it. Maybe we’d be at prom right now, having a totally miserable time. Maybe you’d be hiding in the bathroom wishing the night would just hurry up and be over because Ben turned out to be an A-hole anyway. Maybe I’d have gotten totally shitfaced just so I could deal with Janelle’s endless bullshit, just so when I woke up tomorrow morning, I wouldn’t remember anything at all.”
I smile, despite myself.
“This isn’t so bad, you know? Me and you here together. We’ve got beer.” He points at the bottle in front of me. “Snacks. What else do we need—bad music?”
“True,” I say grudgingly, laughing a little. “Still, I wish it had never happened. Any of it.”
“Even being here with me?”
He is staring at me intently. If I reached over and touched his leg, the bare skin of his forearm, we would tumble into each other, falling backward onto the bed and inhaling each other’s breath, drunk on it. Dangerous, I am thinking as I look at him, fighting the urge to turn away. This is very dangerous . . .
(—“Don’t,” Luke said, his annihilating heat permeating the room—)
“What do you think Luke would’ve thought of . . . this?” I say, the tension in the room like so many pounds of air crushing my chest.
“What,” Riley asks. “You and me?” He smiles a funny half smile, full of pain, pointing in my direction, then at himself. “He would’ve hated it.” He laughs, a short, rough sound that comes out more like a yelp, nothing expressing happiness or mirth. “He probably would’ve killed me.”
I can feel the warmth draining from my body as soon as the words leave Riley’s lips.
Killed. Because that’s what Luke is
(was)
A killer. A liar. Someone who fooled us all expertly, so seamlessly, that we didn’t know we were being fooled at all until it was way too late. Until there was blood streaking the floors of the library, the hallways, the asphalt in the parking lot.
I m
ust look terrible because Riley stops, taking my hand gently, carefully, in his own, and holds on tight. I feel queasy, and I lean over and put my beer bottle on the floor without breaking contact.
“I miss him,” I say, my voice barely audible. “Most of the time I wasn’t sure he even liked me.” I am ashamed to admit this somehow, and I drop my head, afraid of Riley’s reaction. “I mean, it’s not like we were close anymore. Most of the time he barely spoke to me, and I just pretended that everything was fine because that’s what we do in my family. And even though I’m so mad at him for what he did, I can’t help it—every time I walk into that house, I miss him so much. I miss hearing him come home at night, the sound of the door closing behind him, knowing he was in the next room, right where he was supposed to be. I miss the way he’d listen at the door of my room when I practiced sometimes, so quiet I didn’t even know he was there until he clapped, and we’d just crack up together. I miss watching him argue with my mom at breakfast, the way he wouldn’t eat a goddamn thing in the morning. I miss his stupid fucking sugar packets in his stupid fucking Cokes.”
I break off. Unable to find the words to go on, staring at the bedspread, the pattern of leaves and vines crawling across the rough fabric.
“Hey, Alys.” Riley lets go of my hand, tilting my chin up to meet his eyes, wet with tears I know he’s too proud to spill. “I know,” he says, almost resigned now. “Believe me, I know. He shut me out,” he says bitterly, “just like he did everyone else.” We sit there for a long moment, just looking at each other, and I’m trying to hold it together, trying not to break into a million pieces when Riley speaks again.
“And he definitely liked you—I know he did. Hell, he loved you. You were his sister.”
I want so much to believe him. It’s hard to keep looking at Riley, like staring straight into the sun, the force behind his words, the insistence and surety of them making me dizzy.
“I see him sometimes.”
My voice shrinks down even further, a murmur, and Riley leans in closer.
“You see him? Like in a dream?” Riley looks first confused, then worried when I don’t answer right away. “I have those too. I told you, Alys. They’re not real.”
It takes everything I have to keep talking, to get out what I need to say, what I need somebody, anybody, to hear.
“No. I mean, I see him. In the house. In my room. Even at school, sometimes. He just shows up. He won’t leave me alone.”
I am racked by sudden sobs, the air stopped in my chest, syrupy and thick. I keep my head down as tears run over my face, scalding it, and Riley pulls me to his chest. The sounds I am making are incomprehensible, my body shaking violently. Riley holds on tight, drawing me into his lap. He moves from side to side, rocking me, my face buried in the salty folds of his neck.
“Shhhh . . . Alys,” he says quietly. “It’s okay. It’s not real. It’s going to be okay.”
I lift my head, aware that I’m a mess, makeup streaked across my face, hair coming down from the bun my mother fixed so many hours ago.
“What if it won’t?”
Outside, a car pulls up and a door slams shut, and the lamp on the table buzzes and hums, a moth flitting around inside the shade, wings beating heavily. Riley looks at me, his face crumpling slightly as he begins to cry, and the very sight of his tears, his face so open and vulnerable, strikes a sharp chord inside me, moves me in a way I can no longer deny.
I kiss him, pulling him down on top of me, my hands in his hair, his mouth sucking avidly at mine as we press our bodies together, trying to destroy the space between us. From somewhere far away I’m aware that I’m still making noise, desperate moans, and Riley pushes up on his elbows for a minute, his fingers scrabbling against the buttons of his shirt before he pulls it off. His hands are underneath my dress, thumbs hooked into the sides of my panties, and I pull him harder against me, wanting to get as close to him as I possibly can when my eyelids flutter open, and over Riley’s shoulder I see Luke, looking at us from the side of the bed.
There is a burning smell in the air, a reek of hot, dripping wax and charred blossoms. Riley is kissing my neck, oblivious, and I stare at my brother’s face, too helpless to move, to say anything at all. But for the first time, there’s no anger, hostility, or sarcasm in his expression. He shines in the lamplight, flickering like a candle on its way out.
It’s okay, he mouths. His lips barely move, but I can hear his voice in my brain, as if he is already a part of me, inside me forever. It’s going to be okay, Alys. But this isn’t what you need right now. He smiles at me once, so sweetly, and so unlike the half-cocked, sarcastic grin I know so well that I want to beg him to stay here with me. But as quickly as he arrived, he begins to fade, and it takes all of my strength not to cry out as he slowly blends into the walls behind him, the light, the very air in the room until nothing remains but Riley and me, locked together in an embrace that could beat back death itself, banishing it from the premises.
“Wait,” I say, my voice guttural, scorched. “Wait.”
Riley stops, his face full of concern. I’m crying again, turning my head to the side, unable to really look at him.
“What’s wrong? Do you want to stop?” he asks, stroking my cheek, his voice tight. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No,” I say, pushing him off of me and sitting up. “I just . . .” I’m not sure how to explain, how to make Riley understand.
“Are you just not . . . into this? I mean, me?” He looks away, sitting back on his knees and running one hand through his tangled hair.
“No.” I put my hand on his thigh, and he looks at me, waiting for what I will say next. “I am. I mean, obviously!” His smile is uncertain as he covers my hand with his. “But I’m not sure we’re . . . doing it . . .” My face flushes with embarrassment. “For the right reasons. I think we miss him. Luke, I mean.” Riley nods, his face tight. “But we can’t bring him back . . . by being together. I don’t think it works that way.”
“You don’t feel . . . anything for me, then?” Riley looks right at me, and he is more beautiful than I have ever seen him, shirt off, his bare chest gleaming in the lamplight, the crystalline blue of his eyes fixed on mine.
“I do,” I say slowly, “but I don’t know why I’m feeling it, or if it’s really real. I mean, you are the closest I can get to him now. You were his best friend.”
“I thought I was.” Riley’s voice breaks jaggedly and his eyes fill with tears again. I can tell that he hates it, this loss of control, that he’s trying desperately not to cry again but is forfeiting the battle with his own emotions, giving up.
“You were.” I rub his palm softly, curling my hand around his until our fingers are entwined. “Riley, nothing that . . . happened was your fault any more than it was mine. It was Luke’s. But I can’t run away . . . from everything—no matter how much I want to.”
Riley nods slowly. “I get that,” he says. “I do. I just wish things could be, you know . . . different. With us.”
We stare at each other, and even though we’re so close that I might fall into his arms once again, run my hands over his warm, bare skin and feel his breath in my mouth, it is as if a wall has come down, cleaving us in two. I want so badly to change my mind, to keep going until we reach Chicago, the Dodge gliding through the warm spring streets, carrying us along in its metallic blue haze, but I know in my heart that it won’t solve anything, that it will only delay the pain waiting for us back at home, the healing that we both need to go through.
“I know,” I say, breaking through the wall one last time and pulling him toward me, wrapping my arms around him. The heat from his body melts into mine, and we stay like this for a long while, listening to the silence in the room, the numbers clicking on the cheap digital clock on the bedside table, the light fixture buzzing in the bathroom. I close my eyes, grateful for this one moment where I feel small, where I fee
l almost loved. “I do too.”
After a while, Riley lies down on the bed, spent, and I switch off the lamp and lie down next to him, his tears hot on the back of my neck. We are both shaking slightly, and I hold on to his arm, rubbing the smooth skin in order to soothe him, to soothe myself. We drift off into sleep, comforted by the closeness of our bodies, the only beacon in the room the sound of our breathing. One by one, the stars dissolve in the sky and light, pure light, with all its clarity and wisdom, peeks through the crack in the curtains, falling across the wide, white confines of the bed.
In his sleep, Riley whispers my brother’s name in my ear, turning over once, his feet kicking the covers like a drowning man.
SIXTEEN
In the morning, everything looks different. Harder. Uglier. My eyes are ringed with dark makeup, and in the bathroom mirror under the buzzing fluorescent light, I resemble a pale, slightly rabid raccoon, my lips chapped and peeling. I’m still wearing my dress, the color too bright and bold in the harshness of the bathroom light, too vivid for daylight itself. I grab the little bar of soap and unwrap it, scrubbing at my face while steam clouds the mirror, the sound of the running water soothing my frayed nerves.
When I walk back into the room, Riley is stretching like a cat, arms overhead, his face splitting into a wide grin.
“How’d you sleep?” he asks, sitting up and running his hands through his hair, naked to the waist. The sight of him still makes me weak, the breath catching in my throat, so I distract myself by putting on my shoes.
“Like crap, pretty much. You hog the covers, by the way.”
I’m smiling as I fasten a thin strap around one ankle. He throws his legs over the side of the bed, searching around on the floor until he finds his white dress shirt, pulling it on, his fingers languidly working the buttons as if we’re never leaving this room, this town, the rumpled bed, the covers kicked to the floor in a heap of white cotton.
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