by Julie Israel
“You don’t care if you get in trouble?”
I shrug. “What are they going to take from me?”
Brand unlocks an ancient Pontiac and stares at me before opening his door. “I think you’ve been hanging out with me too much.”
∞
We drive to a neighborhood where the yards are narrow and strewn with children’s toys or beer bottles, occasionally in fragments that catch the headlights, and mean-looking chain-link fences keep out visitors.
Brand pulls into the driveway of an unlit property—one of the larger homes at two stories—and even in the darkness I can see the peeling strips of paint, the moss that grows in clusters on the roof, the weeds in the cracks of the pavement.
A dog barks down the street as we get out.
“Your house?”
Brand nods. “Just gotta grab a couple things.”
We carefully climb the steps of a sunken, frost-covered porch, and as Brand turns the key, I wonder what it is he’s been avoiding at home.
If we’ll encounter it.
“After you,” he says, holding a door that creaks on its hinges. I enter and he shuts it behind us.
“Are you . . . baking?” I ask as an aroma registers.
“Special occasion.”
I follow him into the kitchen. The clutter hits me like a smell: dirtied plates, bowls, beer bottles. Mugs heaped over with used silverware. Every surface is stacked, and by the opaque, sudsless water in the sink, I would guess that the pans and glasses sticking out of it have been there for several days. Something shrill begins to buzz—the oven timer—and Brand quickly shoves aside an armful of bottles to make room for two hot trays of cookies on the counter.
“Pumpkin chocolate chip?” I’d smelled the chocolate, but am surprised to see they’re orange.
Brand throws down the oven mitt. “You’re not gonna say anything about the mess?”
His eyes press at mine. I meet them, neatly not gawking at hardened mustard stains on the counter, the dried noodles, crumbs, wedges of crunchy bread on the floor. I’m glad to be wearing boots, and wonder vaguely if cookies are a cover for the stench of mildew and booze. “Should I?” I ask, uncertain.
“Won’t apologize for it”—Brand reaches past me, pulls a spatula from a drawer—“because it isn’t mine. Well—most of it. My dad drinks enough for ten. Don’t worry,” he adds, “Father Boozy is out right now. Every New Year’s he throws ’em back at the Firehouse till closing.”
I nod, even less certain how to answer this. “What do you usually do?”
“For New Year’s?”
“Yeah.”
“Me, I make something hot and go up where my mom used to take me.”
“Where’s that?”
Brand’s smile reveals his canine. “You’ll see. Get the coffee while I box these? There’s a thermos in that cupboard.” I follow his gesture and, half bracing myself for rats, claw the cupboard open and find the canister. Brand directs me to the opposite counter, where a pot of fresh, hot coffee sits beneath a glowing light. I transfer it to the thermos.
“All right then.” He shovels the last of the cookies into a Tupperware container and snaps on the lid. “Let’s just grab a few sugar packs and—”
Headlights flash through the window. Brand stops cold.
“Who’s—?”
“Shhh.”
Tires crunch to a stop outside. Then the engine shuts off and a door slams.
“Fuck.”
Before I can ask, we are moving, Brand steering me swiftly toward the stairs.
“Brand, wha—?”
“Go go go,” he urges.
We make it to the top and into a room, the door of which he slams behind us and secures with two latches, a bolt, and a chain as someone—I assume his dad—unlocks the entrance below. I’d ask again but a sort of numb foreboding’s taken me, and instead Brand and I just look at each other, breathless, waiting for whatever’s to come.
The front door bangs shut again with a force that rattles the house.
“BRANDON.” A few heavy steps, then a jumbling like collision with furniture. “BRANDON, I KNOW YOU’RE UP THERE.”
Brand doesn’t answer. He looks soundlessly at me as the footsteps resume and approach the stairs.
“Get down here, you little shit, know what’s good for you.” The threat is mumbled, slurs together.
It’s also closer.
“BRANDON.” The wall quivers with each step. “Brandon, if you don’t get your sorry ass down here NOW—”
Even given all I know or have heard about Brand Sayers, his next move surprises me:
He cups his hands around his mouth and hollers, “MAKE ME.”
“Piece of—!”
The slow thing on the stairs suddenly animates, clambering wildly as if on newly sprouted limbs. Brand runs for the dresser and yanks it toward the door and I hurry to help, and together we slide it into place just as the knob judders and a palm strikes the wood from the other side.
The voice that comes is unsettlingly even. “Open the door, Brandon.”
“No.”
“I’m not gonna ask you again.”
“Good.”
A snarl. The knob rattles in its socket and the wood bucks with punches. Then it stops, and you can tell the speaker is lowering his fists and sidling up to the door to whisper threats through his teeth.
“You’ve got some reeeeal nerve, you little shithead,” the voice hisses. “Think you can run away from home and then drop in whenever you feel like it, help yourself to my kitchen? My wallet? You been STEALING MONEY from me, wiseass?”
A slam. I swear the door jumps in its frame.
“I support myself. I ain’t stolen shit.”
“Bullshit.” Something drops with a thud. Maybe a picture frame. “Missing a fifty just today, Brandon. You gonna tell me it just got up and walked out on its own?”
“You probably spent it on booze already, you drunk.”
“OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR!”
The wood shudders and heaves in beats, straining against the locks. The knob saws back and forth so violently I worry it’ll fly off. But Brand looks more annoyed than concerned; he takes a remote from the navy bedspread, aims it at a stereo, and hits PLAY. A wave of angry electric blasts from huge speakers at the end of the room.
“I’M GONN—” The sound becomes unintelligible as Brand cranks up the volume.
“Sorry,” he yells to me. “Easier to ignore this way.” He casually braces the thumping dresser with his back. There’s still shouting, but it is indeed muffled now, drowned by the wails of guitars.
“He’ll tire himself right out,” Brand mouths.
Sure enough, in less than a minute the charging and shaking desist. Brands scales the music back almost imperceptibly—just enough to be less than an assault on the ears—and crosses the room to the window. Headlights soon snap on below, flurries of falling snow lighting up in their glare, and the dark truck to which they belong peels back and off into the street.
Brand clicks the loud music off. The quiet that follows is worse.
He says, without turning to face me, “And the night was ruined in record time.”
“Hey.” I circle around him till he looks at me. “Who says it’s ruined?”
Brand holds my gaze.
He leans closer . . .
Then he shakes his head and moves for the dresser. “Every time,” he says to himself, grabbing an end. I go to push the other. “Every time, I tell myself, ‘This is the last time I let Emory Sayers fuck something up for me.’” We wedge the dresser back into place and he moves to the door, undoing its latches. “And yet—aw, shit, not again.”
“What’s wrong?”
Brand is turning the doorknob. And turning and turning it. It spins like a plaything, around
and around. He grimaces. “Second one this year. Something’s busted inside so the knob isn’t gripping the bolt. Man, I gotta start keeping a screwdriver in here.”
“How do we get out?”
“Well . . .” Brand crosses the room, peers out through the glass. “Normally I’d say the window . . .” He slides up the bottom panel. A blast of cold air and snowflakes whips in under it. “But given the ice, I’m a little iffy on dropping down from the ledge just now.”
“How far is the drop?”
“C’mere.”
I join him at the window and look down. The snowy ledge looks low enough to drop from, but not so low that you couldn’t break something if you landed badly.
“Here.” Brand shoves the window up the rest of the way, ducks through it so he straddles the sill.
“What are you doing?” I demand.
“Testing. Give me your hand.”
I offer it and he takes my forearm more than hand, sets down a tentative, feeling foot along the roof. Seems okay. He swings the other leg out and slowly rises, checking his balance on both feet. Takes a few tiny steps.
“Mm,” he says. “Maybe it’s o—”
His foot slips.
He slides like a deer on a roller rink.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!”
“Gotcha.”
I ground my feet against the wall and pull. Brand eagerly grips both my arms now, legs tripping helplessly beneath him. I reel in, straining, and drag him back to the sill, level with it, and with a final oomph, over.
We both land, winded, on the floor.
“Oh god.” Brand pushes himself up. For a moment he hangs over me, checking his limbs. Then he seems to remember me and meets my eyes.
The smell of his Axe, I happen to notice then, is a lot less unpleasant than I remember.
We stare at each other.
“Sorry,” he says after a beat, and backs upright into sitting position. Helps me achieve the same. “You okay?”
“Fine. Just got the . . .” I gesture because even my thoughts feel suddenly dizzy. “Breath knocked out of me.” I push my hair back and straighten my off-the-shoulder sweater. “Guess the roof is out.”
Lacking a screwdriver, we try a variety of pens, keys, paperclips, and even his box cutter on the screws in the doorknob—all without luck.
At last Brand swears and pulls out his phone.
“What are you doing?”
“Texting Keegan. He’s filling in for a guitarist in Portland tonight and won’t be done until after midnight, but . . .” Brand sucks his teeth and hits SEND. “Better late than being stuck here till the snow melts.”
“He’s . . . gonna come here?”
“Yeah. I’ll toss him my keys out the window so he can come in and let us out.”
I loll my head at him. How many times has Brand done this before?
“In the meantime,” he says brightly, eager to change the subject, “the goods are in here with us. So c’mon. Stop staring at me like that and enjoy a cookie. Pumpkin choco chip is your favorite, right?”
He retrieves the Tupperware and sits back against the bed, proffering the box to me.
“How’d you know that?”
An offside glance. “I may or may not have consulted Sponge.”
“And why would you do that?”
He regards me without speaking. A sly expression twists his lips. “Because it’s cold outside,” he answers, “and hot cookies would defuse, if not entirely remove, the temptation to put the moves on me to get warm.”
“‘Put the moves on you’?” I scoff. “Someone sure thinks highly of his haircut.”
“Have a fucking cookie, Lemon. It will make me feel like less of a jerk.”
Rolling my eyes, I join him on the floor and comply. I am not disappointed: The cookies are still warm and melt like a pumpkiny, chocolate butter in my mouth. I wash it down with coffee Brand pours for me in the thermos lid.
“You know it isn’t your fault,” I say when I lower it. “Getting stuck here.”
“I know.” He stares ahead, not meeting my eye.
“Brand . . .” I don’t know if there’s a delicate way to say what needs to be said now. Brand knows the same. “How long has this been going on?”
No answer.
“That day you were limping—when I showed you my independent study stuff. Was that because . . . did he hurt you?”
Brand says nothing.
“Brand—”
“He doesn’t scare me.”
I open my mouth to respond, but then my jaw sets and I feel myself harden.
“So you think you’re being brave?”
Brand blinks at me, surprised. “I didn’t say—”
“It isn’t brave, Brand. It’s stupid.”
His face contorts. Suppressing a reply, he sighs and gets up to stalk away from me. It’s a short sigh—frustrated—so when he spins back, I assume it’s to lash out at me.
It isn’t.
“You asked how long,” he says instead. He turns to the window and looks out through the flakes floating down. “He used to hit my mom. She left. He started hitting me.”
“Brand, I’m—”
“Sorry?” He glances back at me over his shoulder. “Sorry is just a word. It doesn’t undo the things that that bastard has done. It doesn’t bring her back. It doesn’t change anything, or make things right again.”
To that I can say nothing.
I know these things better than anyone.
“Besides.” He shoves his hands in his coat and walks back, “I’m almost eighteen. I’ve been saving money from gigs, odd jobs. As soon as I graduate, I’m outta here for good.”
“Where will you go?”
“Don’t know.” He drops back to the floor and leans his head against the bed. “Anywhere’s better than here.”
We sit in silence awhile. It occurs to me I should tell someone about Brand, about his situation at home, his living out of Band Geeks’ Paradise—but before I can even consider who, I remember what Brand once said about Kody: that if we went to somebody, she would have to deal with the consequences. And what was it he said when I found Angela’s Oscar letter?—“You can’t go around assuming you know what people need”? He even warned against helping Sponge when I showed him the thrown-out crush poem.
Was Brand talking about Kody, Angela, and Sponge—or himself?
He asks, as if reading my thoughts, “You’re not gonna tell anybody, are you?”
I study him. “You don’t want me to.”
“Believe it or not, a couple people know already. Certain school keys didn’t just fall into my lap, you know.”
My eyes widen. “Who knows? You mean they gave you the keys?” Hearsay depicts Brand Sayers as both a pyro and a klepto.
He grins. “A mobster’s nephew never reveals his secrets.” He refills the thermos cup and takes a steaming swig, watching me. “So? You won’t tell anyone?”
I hesitate.
“Brand . . .” I begin, with difficulty, “if you’re threatened at home . . .”
“I’m rarely at home,” he counters. “I stay at friends’ places. If not there, the band loft. You heard what he said about ‘running away.’”
I frown. I’m glad the secret about staying at school is out in the open, but I’m far from reassured.
He waits, anxious. I bite my lip.
“I guess . . . if you’re not in danger . . .”
“I’m not.”
“And you have people and places you can go to . . .”
“I do.”
“And you really don’t want anyone to know . . .”
“I think I’ve made that clear enough.”
I draw my knees up in front of me and watch him, wishing I could see into his thoughts. “It makes me uneas
y, Brand. But if that’s what you want . . .” I lift my shoulders. “Okay.”
“Good.”
“And, like, I’d say you’re welcome at my house anytime, but I’m technically grounded, and even if I weren’t I’m not sure the oppressive silence would be much better.”
“I guess things aren’t quite Brady Bunch round the Lemon house, either?”
“Do you know why I’m grounded?”
I tell him about Camilla’s room.
“That sucks.”
We lose ourselves in coffee and cookies awhile, neither of us knowing what to say to make things better for the other, and watch the snow stick in feathers to the window.
Brand says, “Wanna see what I was gonna show you tonight?”
He reaches past me and pulls something from between CDs on a shelf: a glossy photograph. In it are a small boy and woman who must be his mother picnicking in the shade of a giant oak tree.
“Is that . . . Oak Hills Cemetery?”
“That’s right.” Brand sits back beside me. “It was one of Mom’s favorite places. We’d go up there for picnics, sometimes just for the view: the fall colors, holiday lights, fireworks—”
“At New Year’s?”
Brand smiles. “Ever been?”
I shake my head. “Not up the hill.”
“Well, let me tell you—you can see all of Fairfield, from Lauer’s and our ugly-ass high school to the fancy-pants high streets and shops up on Main. Big blue-green hills on the horizon, a few city lights winking through after dark . . .
“When we got up there, my mom—she was kind of spiritual in her way—she used to look out at everything and say it was a special place: on one side, the town and life; on the other, the cemetery and death. The hill had a foot in both and neither.”
“Sounds poetic,” I say. “This place and your mom.”
Brand shakes his head. “When my old man was with us, he’d cut her off and say to stop filling my head with her New Age mumbo-jumbo. But it rubbed off on me, anyway.”
“Is that why you go every year? ’Cause she used to take you?”
“Yeah. Plus, the fireworks are good. You can see them in every direction. Unlike—” Brand smirks to himself a moment, wry.