Rush

by Minard, Tori

  Trent came into my room with me. As soon as he’d closed and locked the door, he started taking my clothes off. I let him do it. I wasn’t in the mood, but then when was I ever?

  Afterward, I stumbled into the shower and got cleaned up before dragging on my nightshirt and falling into bed. Trent had gone into his own room and I was alone. I fell asleep so fast I wasn’t even aware of pulling the covers over myself.

  ***

  Mom and Dad were arguing again. They’d been doing a lot of that lately. Our rented house was small and cheap, with thin walls, and even in my bedroom with the door shut I could hear them. It scared me when they yelled at each other. Usually my parents were so quiet and soft-spoken that yelling seemed foreign and startling.

  My dad yelled something that ended in “Jo.” They were talking about my aunt again. Lately, it seemed like she was all they talked about. Could Jo hear them? They’d hurt her feelings, yelling like that.

  I sat up in my pink princess bed. I had my own room because I was so much older than the twins, who slept with my mom and dad. Moving slowly so as not to make my bedsprings squeak, I crept out of my ruffled floral nest and went to my door to listen.

  “She’d never hurt the kids,” my mom said, her tone defensive.

  “Maybe not intentionally, but you have to admit she’s a bad influence,” my dad retorted.

  “She’s not that bad.”

  “I overheard her talking to her invisible friends today.”

  My mom sighed so loud I could hear it even in my room. “Oh, no.”

  “And yesterday, Caroline was talking to someone I couldn’t see. She insisted there was a little girl in our kitchen with her.” My dad sounded so angry.

  I hadn’t meant to make him angry, and I’d tried to introduce him to my friend Patsy, but he claimed she wasn’t there. She was. I saw her and even touched her hand. She wore a pink dress with a ruffled, white pinafore over it and old-fashioned black patent shoes with straps across the top. Her socks were plain white. I saw her. But now my dad was angry about it. Had I done something wrong?

  “I’m sure Caroline was only playing,” Mom said. “She’s very imaginative.”

  “I don’t think so. She seemed to really believe this little girl was there. She even had a name for her. Patty or something like that.”

  Not Patty. Patsy. Hadn’t he been listening?

  “I’ll talk to Jo about it.”

  “I don’t want her living here anymore, Heather. She won’t get treatment and she won’t stop acting like a lunatic. She has to go.”

  No! He couldn’t make Jo leave. I loved her. Who would play with me and tell me fairy tales at night if Jo left? Mom and Dad never wanted to tell me fairy tales, and when I managed to pester them into it, their stories weren’t as good as Jo’s.

  “Where will she go?” my mom said. “She doesn’t even have a job.”

  “That’s not our problem anymore. We’ve been more than patient. We’ve tried to help her get it together, but nothing seems to work. We have to think of the kids.”

  “Caroline loves her.”

  “I know. That’s half the problem.”

  It was my fault. They were going to get rid of my aunt and it was all my fault because I loved her too much.

  ***

  In the morning, there was a cardboard box sitting at the foot of my bed. It was the kind that copy or computer paper comes in, sturdy and white, with handles built in. Written on the side, in somewhat messy black felt-tip marker, were the words “Max’s stuff.”

  I sat up, frowning. Max’s stuff? Who’d put that on my bed? And why? Had Trent come in this morning and done it as a joke?

  I didn’t really see the humor in it.

  Sitting up, I tugged the box closer. It made a sloshing sound as whatever was inside it slid around and hit the sides of the box. Whoever had put it on my bed must have meant for me to look inside it, or they wouldn’t have left it for me. The top had been folded shut but not taped, so I opened it, my heart beginning to pound. I was about to see pieces of a murderer’s childhood.

  There was a loose pile of old photos at the top of the contents. I pulled them out. They all featured Max at various ages beginning from infancy, including school pictures, casual snapshots, and a couple of family portraits. There were quite a few of them, especially the baby pics.

  Had they thrown every picture they had of him in this box?

  I held up each one in turn. He’d looked happy as a baby, all smiles. Innocent. I wondered briefly what he’d think if he knew I was looking at his baby pictures and grinned. If he was like most guys, he wouldn’t be too pleased. He’d been a cutie, though, all black hair and huge blue eyes, adorable dimples in his cheeks.

  Did I have a crush on him? The thought stopped me for a minute, made me put down the pictures. I shouldn’t be having these thoughts about him. He’d killed his own brother, for pity’s sake. Plus I was still attached to Trent. Sitting in Trent’s house.

  But I couldn’t help how I felt, and Max had been a beautiful baby. Also, a beautiful toddler, preschooler, and grade school kid. It hurt to think of this innocent child becoming slowly warped until he turned into a killer.

  You could see the change in him, though, in the pictures. His face went from happy to sad sometime in preschool, and the pictures became fewer. Then, in grade school, he started to look like a different person. Sullen. Angry. And there were hardly any photos of him from this period.

  After that, it was like no-one wanted to notice him or look at him. I only found a handful of him in his teens. Not surprising, considering what he’d done.

  Or maybe they were stored somewhere else. Maybe these were just extras and they had the others in regular photo albums with the rest of the family pictures. I set the photos aside and dug deeper into the box. There was a copy of one of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time books and a concert t-shirt from a metal band I remembered being popular when I was in middle school. Beneath that were several sketchbooks.

  I pulled those out and opened the first one. It was filled with drawings of typical boy stuff...dragons, motorcycles, swords, cars, skulls. Lots of skulls. They were remarkably detailed, though. I could see the talent and skill in them.

  Leafing through the book, I found the drawings increasing in sophistication as his skills grew. The second book was darker, and the drawings more complex, more like complete compositions. Their subject matter was often violent, although mostly fantasy stuff with armored knights and castles. I could feel the anger coming off them, see it in the dark, slashing lines of his drawings.

  Flipping through pictures of knights slaying dragons, demons abducting beautiful women, and dancing skeletons, I was in reluctant awe of his artistic abilities. He was really, really good. I didn’t want to admire him for anything, but it would have been impossible not to acknowledge his gift.

  Then I turned the page to a picture of a fist breaking glass, finely rendered shards spraying across the paper. An openly violent image, with no fantastic elements at all. It looked completely realistic. Under it, Max had written “he broke my ribs today.”

  I stopped and stared at the words, my stomach turning. Someone had hurt Max. Hurt him badly. Who? Was it Trent or someone else?

  Until now, I’d imagined Max as the villain, the aggressor. Maybe he hadn’t meant to kill Carter, but he had been playing with a gun. But this...he’d been a victim too. A weight seemed to settle deep inside me as I thought of him getting beaten so badly his ribs had broken.

  Should I sympathize with him? He’d killed someone, after all, and Trent believed he’d done it on purpose. But Max was human, too, and he’d been a vulnerable child once. Someone whose ribs had been broken by another person. I wondered if anyone else, anyone other than Max and me, had seen this picture.

  The door opened. I started and knocked some of the photos onto the floor. Trent barged into the room, a smile on his face, stopping short when he noticed the box.

  His smile disappeared as his eyes
went round and his mouth fell open. “What are you doing?”

  “Looking at this stuff someone left for me.”

  “Where did you get that? His crap is all in the basement.” He advanced on me, his eyes narrow now and angry-looking. “Were you snooping around looking for Max’s shit?”

  “No! I told you; someone left it for me.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest and scowled down at me. “That’s bullshit and you know it. Who would give you that box?”

  “How would I know? I thought you did it.”

  Maybe there really was a ghost and he was trying to communicate with me. No. Nope, not going to Jo-ville.

  “Don’t lie to me, Caroline.”

  I scowled back at him. “I’m not lying. I woke up and this box was sitting on my bed. I thought someone wanted me to see what was in it, so I opened it. That’s all.”

  He gave me a disbelieving look. “What are you saying? A ghost put it here?”

  “No. I’m saying I don’t know who did.”

  Trent picked up the first sketchbook and leafed through it, then tossed it in the box with a snort of disgust. “He was always doodling this crap.”

  “He’s really good.”

  “Oh? You like him? Is that why you’re going through his things?”

  I held up the picture of the fist. “Who broke his ribs, Trent?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Really? You don’t know? Are you sure you didn’t do it?”

  Trent’s mouth fell open again. “What kind of question is that? No, I didn’t do it.”

  “And you have no idea who did?”

  He looked down, avoiding my gaze. “No idea. Anyway, he was always getting beat up. Nobody liked him.”

  I shook my head. “That’s sad.”

  “So you do like him.” He glared at me accusingly.

  “I just think it’s sad. That’s all. Don’t you have any compassion?”

  “Not for him, no.”

  I stared at him for a moment and he dropped his gaze again, almost as if he felt ashamed. I didn’t believe that. Maybe he was covering up some other emotion. I was becoming highly suspicious of everything Trent did and it seemed like an ominous trend.

  Trent shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He sighed. “I came in here to ask if you were ready for breakfast and find out if you wanted to go on a little hike today,” he said in a grudging tone.

  What I really wanted was to get away from him and his messed up family. “A hike sounds good, but I need to get dressed first.”

  “Yeah, I can see that.”

  I put the things back in Max’s box. “Trent, I don’t want to fight over this. Honestly, I have no idea how the box got here. I don’t like Max.”

  He glanced at me. “Are you sure?”

  No. “Absolutely.”

  The rest of Friday was spent carefully avoiding the subject of Trent’s stepbrother. I never mentioned him to their parents. We hiked, had lunch in a local cafe, ate Thanksgiving leftovers for dinner. On Saturday morning, Trent and I started the drive back to Avery’s Crossing.

  I was never so happy to come home as when we re-entered town on Sunday afternoon.

  ***

  On Saturday morning, I woke up hungry and decided to go downstairs and forage in the kitchen for something to eat. I hoped the Kincaids didn’t mind. They seemed to like me, so it should be okay, but no-one had said I was free to raid the fridge.

  Downstairs, the only sound I could hear was the ticking of an old-fashioned clock in the living room. I padded into the kitchen in my stocking feet. The air was fragrant with the smell of coffee brewing; someone must have the coffee maker on a timer. Now that I was here, I felt a little nervous looking for food on my own. I hated imposing on people.

  My stomach growled so loudly it hurt. On a sigh, I opened the refrigerator door. There was still half an apple pie left over from Thanksgiving, so I pulled it out and began the hunt for a plate. Unfortunately, this involved opening cupboard doors, which for some reason made me even more uncomfortable than getting in the fridge.

  I persevered.

  I’d just cut myself a slice of the pie when Mr. Kincaid walked in, looking sleepy and rumpled as if he’d just gotten out of bed. He wore sweats and a t-shirt under a loose cotton bathrobe and his salt and pepper hair stuck up in seven different directions.

  I gave a guilty start. “Good morning. I hope you don’t mind that I got myself something to eat.”

  “Of course not. Help yourself.” He walked stiffly to the coffee maker, opened the cupboard above it, and pulled out a mug. “Want some coffee?”

  “Yes, please.”

  I glanced at him covertly as he took down a second mug and was struck all over again with his resemblance to Max. He was a good-looking man, his looks tempered rather than diminished by age. I was alone with him, with no Trent to interfere or be embarrassed if I brought up the other son.

  “I—um—I thought you might want to know—” I said hesitantly.

  He glanced at me with little curiosity. “Yes?”

  “I—um—met your son. Max. He’s—uh—he’s going to Central Willamette State this year.”

  Mr. Kincaid’s face took on a fixed aspect that said I was treading on dangerous ground. “I have no son named Max.”

  “Okay. Well, I met Trent’s former stepbrother, then. He looks just like you.”

  Mr. Kincaid sent me a chilly look. “Did he tell you what he did?”

  “Trent told me.”

  “Then I’m not sure why we’re having this conversation.” He poured coffee into the two mugs.

  “I’m not sure either,” I said with a nervous laugh. “It just seems so weird to visit here and not even mention him.”

  “It’s not weird at all. He committed a terrible crime and this family no longer has a place for him.” His voice sounded so reasonable, so calm and assured, that I almost believed him.

  But there was that drawing. He broke my ribs today.

  “He told me—um—that someone broke his ribs once,” I said, watching Mr. Kincaid’s face.

  His jaw tensed. “He did, did he? You must know Max pretty well.”

  “Not really. We were just talking about growing up, you know?” Again with the lies.

  Mr. Kincaid handed one of the mugs of coffee to me and leaned back against the edge of the granite counter. “Max wasn’t a popular kid. I’m sure you can imagine why. He got beaten up so many times we lost track of all the fights he was in.”

  I frowned, unable to stop myself from saying “did anyone try to help him?”

  He looked me right in the eye. “No.”

  “But...why not?”

  “Because Max lost his right to protection when he murdered his little brother.”

  His eyes looked as cold and hard as the granite against which he leaned. There was hatred in them. Hatred for Max. I couldn’t keep looking into his face, so I glanced down at his hands where they clasped the coffee mug. He held the cup so tightly his fingernails were bleached almost white. A huge gold signet ring on his right hand flashed the letter K at me from a black background.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

  “Caroline, I’m sure you mean well,” he continued in that very reasonable voice that was so totally at odds with his white nails. “Max is highly manipulative and a compulsive liar. He’s probably told you all kinds of nonsense to make you sympathetic to him. Don’t believe any of it. I’m sorry to say that my son is an irredeemably violent person. You should stay far, far away from him.”

  I nodded stiffly. “Okay. I’ll remember that.”

  “Good. You do that. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some work to catch up on. I’ll be in my office if anyone needs me.” He left the kitchen for the same back area he’d emerged from on Thursday afternoon.

  I doctored my coffee with generous amounts of milk and sugar and brought my prizes to the kitchen table to devour them. His
words pressed down on my heart, giving me that drowning sensation again. Max hadn’t tried to make me sympathetic to him. If anything, he’d encouraged me to think the worst of him, saying that every word Trent had spoken about him was true.

  So what was going on with his dad? Why would he say that about Max? Trent had said the same thing; he was a master manipulator. At the time, I’d believed him. Yeah, maybe I’d thought he was exaggerating a little bit, but essentially I’d assumed what he told me was true. Now, I wondered.

  Max had been only ten years old at the time of the accident. How many ten year olds are so calculating they’d deliberately murder anyone, let alone their own siblings? It was possible, sure. But it didn’t seem very likely and it didn’t fit with the way Max came across in person.

  I’d told both Trent and Paige that Max gave me the creeps, but that had been a lie. I’d said it to cover up the humiliating fact that he could arouse me just by being in the same room with me. He’d never given me the creeps at all.

  I didn’t know what to think. I looked down at my plate and realized I’d eaten the whole slice of pie without really tasting it. My coffee mug had been drained, too, but I didn’t remember drinking the coffee.

  If I asked Max about his past, would he tell me the truth or would he put me off with a bunch of lies the way Trent and Mr. Kincaid had?

  Chapter 8

  Max

  Monday evening became catch-up time for my design business. I was falling behind because of all my school work, and it was beginning to worry me. Education was important, but I didn’t want my business to falter just when it was getting off the ground. I’d lose important momentum that way and it might take a while to recover.

  I was working on a logo for a local brew-house, and I had two proposed designs to show them, with a third still in the beginning phase. When I had the third one down, I’d e-mail them the designs and with luck they’d approve one of them. Then I had several book covers, both nonfiction and fiction, and two newsletters, among other things.

  The problem I had was my mind kept wandering to Caroline. My cock was half hard virtually all the time, and the minute I allowed my attention to waver, it returned to fantasies of all the things I’d like to do to her. School wasn’t the only reason my work was getting backed up.