Almost Wrong

by Aubrey Parker

  “Jesus, Angela. Do you do everything she tells you?”

  “She didn’t tell me to do it. I just figured I’d help.”

  I expected him to contradict then insult me. Instead, Hunter turned his head fully toward me. The highway screamed by. I wanted to tell him to face forward, but that would invite mockery, too.

  “See, that’s why I picked you up, right there. If I don’t save you, nobody’s gonna.”

  “Save me?”

  “You’re such a goddamned Girl Scout,” he said, returning his eyes to the road, swinging us across two lanes and into the diamond lane fast enough to thump my heart. “Look, we’ve lived together for a while now. All you do is go to school, do your homework, hang out with your group of losers —”

  “Those ‘losers’ are my friends.”

  “And then, on top of it all, every time your mom says to do something, you hop right up and do it. ‘Yes, Mommy, no problem! I’ll do all that shit you should do yourself!’” He mocked my voice, injecting the parody with all the simpering goody-goody I’d always secretly feared others saw in me. Then he laughed. “Honestly, Angela, if you don’t learn to tell her no, you’ll be doing her shit your whole life. She walks all over you.”

  “She’s my mother,” I said lamely.

  “Oh, but now, it’s not just her. You know where I saw you yesterday?”

  The idea that he’d seen me anywhere was disturbing. Sometimes, Hunter and I managed to avoid each other for days, and I hadn’t seen him for a while before he’d popped up in the Camaro like a jack-in-the-box. The thought of him peeping in on me tickled my neck.

  He didn’t wait for me to answer. “The auto parts store. You got a lot of need for auto parts, Angela?”

  “I was just—”

  “Just getting shit for my dad? Yeah, I figured that out. He’s got legs. He’s got a car that runs, hence the need for a part. But no, you were out, so might as well take care of it, right?”

  “I was going to drive right by it,” I said defensively.

  “Uh-huh. Nobody fucks with me, Angela. Know why?”

  I’d seen him beat people up. I knew.

  “Because I don’t let them. It’s that simple.”

  “This isn’t messing with me. This is me doing favors for my —”

  “You can’t even say the word,” he laughed. “At least do that. Say the word, Angela.”

  “What word?”

  “‘Fucking.’ I said ‘fucking with me,’ and you came back with ‘messing with me.’”

  “You know what I meant.”

  “Do I? If you can’t have a filthy mouth sometimes, how are you supposed to ever stand up for yourself?”

  “I don’t see what one has to do with the other.”

  “Just say it. Say ‘fucking.’”

  “I don’t have to prove anything to you.”

  “Say it.”

  “No.”

  “Jesus, just say it, and I’ll leave you alone!”

  “Fucking!”

  He looked over at me for a second. A strange look passed through his eyes.

  “It sounds good on you. You should swear more. Say, ‘cock.’”

  I looked out the window. The silence almost made me think he’d persist, really wanting to hear me say it, but then he continued his berating.

  “And it is them fucking with you. My dad doesn’t fuck with me anymore, but he’s found out he can fuck with you. He saw your mom doing it. And why not? You’ll do all their crap jobs without a complaint, thinking it’s your duty. It’s cute, Angela. Maybe even charitable and kind. But where are you in all of this?”

  “I’m right here.”

  He looked at me, then back to the road. “I can only stand by so long. This is kind of my fault in a way. I don’t do Dad’s crap, so it goes to you. And I figure I have a responsibility to teach you some stuff anyway. Clearly, you can’t demand what you want while you’re busy doing everyone else’s work.”

  I didn’t know what to make of that, and couldn’t protest or arrange the pieces with Hunter talking.

  “You wanna know why we’re going to the beach? Because you need to learn some disobedience. So we’re gonna ditch your mom’s fucking shopping errand. You’re not going to call her and tell her where you are or that you’re not coming home. You’re going to the beach. You’re gonna be a kid.”

  “How do you ‘be a kid’?” I was deriding him, not asking. I had friends. I hung out. I played, in my own way. Just because I listened to the rules, was considerate, and did nice things for my mother didn’t make me a bad person, or old before my time.

  “You ever been to the pier?”

  “What pier?”

  “Santa Monica Pier.”

  “No.”

  “Well, today you’re going. We’re going to ride rides. We’re going to play video games and carnival shit. I got beer. I —”

  “I don’t drink.”

  “Well, I do. And you’re gonna hang out on the beach without a care in the world.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I looked over at Hunter, trying to decipher his impassive profile. “I don’t have my swimsuit,” was all I could think to say.

  He ticked his head toward the back. “I brought it.”

  I wasn’t sure I liked the idea of Hunter rummaging through my drawers.

  But I didn’t protest as the highway unspooled before us.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ANGELA

  Hunter and I were both dirt-ass poor back then, our already-pressing poverty exacerbated by us both being teenagers. I still don’t know whom he borrowed the car from, but I did know the gas to get us to Santa Monica in that fuel-guzzling monster must have hurt. He probably didn’t have a choice. His Ford was always falling apart; it ran its final year on spit and bailing wire. He’d probably been afraid we’d break down and find ourselves stranded, and getting to the pier seemed unduly important to him.

  I didn’t understand why. We’d been passingly friendly lately, but only passingly. As in: I passed him, and he passed me, and we were usually able to resist sniping. He was moody and barely spoke; I was a bit intimidated in spite of the broken tension, and kept my head down. We had an understanding, but we didn’t mesh and never would. I was coming to understand that he was the troublemaker; I was the stuffy drama girl that he seemed to feel some obligation to protect. That was it.

  In the past, when we’d been alone, things had been slightly uncomfortable. When Mom and Bill were out, I worked in the living room, and Hunter stayed in his room. He came and went. We nodded and traded brief greetings. But we never sat for long in the same room. It was too strange. There was the tension of unfamiliarity, plus a different strain that hung in the air like a cloud. I felt guilty for my part. I’d started to notice that despite being an asshole, Hunter was hot. That was wrong on a thousand levels, and I hated the feeling. Worse: I didn’t like what those feelings said about me as a person. I was supposed to date nice boys who did their chores and earned good grades. I was supposed to be into people who weren’t my stepbrother.

  But I’d found myself looking at Hunter in the wrong way more and more often. Whenever I caught myself thinking something inappropriate, the feeling intensified rather than going away. I hated it, and hating it made me want to avoid him. But that was impossible, because we lived in the same house. He walked from his room to the bathroom in his boxers, and my room was between them. I listened to the shower through one wall, unable to stop thinking of him standing in its spray, water coursing along his washboard stomach, running down his body to —

  But that was so much worse.

  And sometimes, at night, I’d hear him clicking around on his computer. Hunter wasn’t much of a computer guy, and the idea that he’d be looking up information on Wikipedia after dark seemed odd. Sometimes, I’d catch the faint sounds of moaning, and I knew he was watching porn. Of course. Boys would be boys. I wanted to be disgusted, having to hear that, knowing what he must be doing on the other
side of our thin wall. But sometimes, thinking of it, I’d slip my hands into my pajamas and do the same.

  I didn’t like any of it. It was so, so wrong. So out of character for me. So not who I was.

  Our Santa Monica run made me a strange mix of uneasy and giddy. I didn’t like running from my responsibilities or not knowing what he had up his sleeve, but I couldn’t help but feel flattered by his attention. The slurry of emotion hit every corner of my being. I could barely hang on.

  Hunter wanted to teach me his lessons. And while I wouldn’t just do what he said, I was willing to listen so long as his ideas stayed sensible.

  Shockingly, they did. It was as if our house had a poison aura, and Hunter, once freed, was able to breathe. He was sullen and defensive around his dad and rough around his friends, but he opened up in the sun and breeze. He almost seemed to become a different person.

  I had no idea what to talk about, and spent the entire first hour with the vivid premonition that at any moment I’d do something to annoy him: I’d say the wrong thing or act the wrong way. He’d blow up. Then he’d drive us home in angry silence, blaming me for this futile errand while I felt guilty for being myself.

  But that didn’t happen. Hunter laughed and smiled. We played carnival games and rode a few rides. We walked the beach and, in the sun’s sweetest heat, parked ourselves under the pier to cool off.

  It had been an hour and a half since we’d arrived, and I was gaining confidence in this strange new Hunter Altman. I was also slightly intoxicated, I supposed, by being the focus of his attention. In another world, Hunter might have been the bad boy I secretly crushed on, confessing about him to my friends. His attention filled me like a Mylar balloon.

  Knowing I’d never normally have the guts, I asked him a question. “What’s with you, Hunter?”

  He was sitting on the sand beside me, knees to his chest. The slight breeze licked his hair. He shrugged. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean … you’re nicer than you seem, maybe.”

  He looked at me for a long time, and I wondered if I’d spoken out of line. Then he charmed me with his smile and said, “Don’t tell anyone.”

  “So why only here? Why can’t you … you know … at home?”

  “Why can’t I what, Angela?”

  “Why can’t you … not be an asshole?”

  That was a risk. But he smiled again. “Dad, I guess.”

  “What about him?”

  “If I give him an inch, he takes a mile.”

  “That’s what you’re trying to teach me here? To be a badass?”

  He shifted and turned more toward me. The sun had been hot and, even now in the shade, I could feel a bead of sweat trickling down between my shoulder blades. A pack sat between us. I’d bought two bottles of water and stuffed them into his small cache of gear. I fished one out and opened it, waiting for his response.

  He looked at me, then out at the pylons under the pier. “I just wonder about you, Angela. You don’t have to be a badass, but shit, I hate to see you stepped on so much.”

  “I don’t feel stepped on.”

  He took my bottle and casually swigged it. I didn’t usually share cups and bottles, but apparently Hunter had no such reservations.

  “Of course you don’t,” he said. “That’s why it’s so easy to step on you.”

  He fumbled the bottle, and for a few seconds it danced in the air. Finally, it fell and rolled away from us, the cap (luckily) still on.

  He gestured at it. “Grab that, will you?”

  I flexed to rise, but he put his hand on my lap and pushed me back down. Then he crawled after the bottle and held it up.

  “Exactly what I’m talking about,” he said. “Here’s what you say: ‘Get your own bottle, asswipe.’”

  “I was just being nice,” I said, realizing I’d just been tested.

  “You’re nice anyway. Err on the other side.”

  I looked across the water. “I’m not always nice.”

  He nodded. “Yes, you are. Look at you. Your whole personality says ‘nice.’ It’s how you’re defined.”

  “That’s so not true!” I said, faux indignant.

  “Hell yeah, it is. You’re straight-As, drama club, choir, volunteer work, you name it. You’re so squeaky clean, it hurts.”

  “Oh, yeah.” I meant to be dismissive but didn’t know what to say. Everything so far was true.

  “I’ve known a lot of girls like you. If you played right, you could get whatever you wanted.”

  “What girls like me?”

  “Pretty, popular girls, with —”

  “You think I’m pretty?”

  He pushed on as if he hadn’t heard. “— all sorts of guys around, but they get stuff done. But you? You don’t get stuff done that you actually care about. Really, you just take shit.”

  “Hmm. I see.”

  “You’re too sweet.”

  “Sweet how?”

  “I don’t know. It’s like there’s no dirt on you at all. You’re all … virginal.”

  “What makes you think I’m a virgin?”

  Hunter laughed. “Aren’t you?”

  I felt myself blush. “None of your business!”

  “Yeah, you are. You can tell by the way you act. I’ll bet you don’t even know what a dick looks like.”

  “Hunter!” I almost added I’m your stepsister, but I found myself not wanting to remind him.

  Now he was laughing. “You couldn’t even say ‘fuck’ earlier. So go ahead, Ang. Tell me you’ve fucked a guy.”

  “I’m not discussing this.”

  “Go on. Say it. Even if it’s not true. Just say it. Say, ‘Fuck me.’”

  I watched the water, wanting to leave.

  Finally, he said, “That’s what I thought. But it shows, you know. And the guys who could be doing your bidding, they know you’re a dead end. So why should they —”

  “I’ve done stuff.”

  He looked at me. “What stuff?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Not the big one. You’ve never had sex.”

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but —”

  “Right. That’s what I thought.”

  “But other stuff, yeah.”

  I was feeling warm in my jeans. I wished I’d worn shorts, but it hadn’t been this hot earlier, and I hadn’t known I’d be sitting on hot sand. The denim felt tight. And tingly.

  “You ever sucked a guy off?”

  I couldn’t look at him. “No, but …”

  “Yeah. You’re a wild girl.”

  “But I’ve done stuff with my hands.”

  I thought he’d laugh at me again. A handie here and there was minor leagues. Guys really did think I was a prude. Seventeen and only giving hand jobs? But Hunter didn’t laugh; he seemed to think it was shocking. For a moment, I felt like the dirtiest girl in the world.

  “You’re jacking guys off?”

  “Not guys. Some guys.” In truth, two. But whatever; he didn’t need to know that.

  Hunter stared at me. I wanted to turn away, but I also very much didn’t. I thought something might have stirred in his lap, but that was probably only because I was keyed up and looking for things that weren’t there.

  “What?” I said.

  “I’m just kind of surprised to realize you have any of that in you at all.”

  “I’m human, you know,” I told him, as if I had all sorts of experience.

  “And I’m having a hard time picturing you with come on your fist.”

  “Okay.” I rolled to the side and started to stand. “Time to move on.”

  “Do you like it when they gush really high, like a geyser?” he asked, his voice taunting. “Or does that just make you afraid it’ll end up on your face?”

  “Gross.” I brushed sand off my pants, unwittingly finding myself picturing what he was trying to paint. I didn’t like that I wasn’t grossed out.

  Hunter stood behind me. I stepped into the sun and
felt instantly baked, remembering why we’d gone under the pier in the first place. Hunter came into the heat behind me then looked up, shielding his eyes with his arm.

  “Hell. It’s hot.”

  I fanned myself, not trusting myself to speak.

  “Give me the bag.” He pointed at the duffel.

  “Why?”

  “I want to put on my suit.”

  I resumed walking. “That’s not a bad idea.”

  “Hey, wait. Gimme.”

  I pointed. “The changing rooms are down there.”

  He looked back at the scattering of posts and pylons then shrugged.

  “What? Right here?”

  “Why not? There’s nobody around.” He unzipped the bag, pulled out a pair of surfer shorts, and walked back in. Within a few seconds, he’d vanished behind a cluster.

  I saw a flap of fabric, pinpointed his location, and realized that right there, Hunter was stripping down to nothing.

  Then I realized that he’d come back and see me still fully dressed, in my long jeans with my long-sleeved shirt rolled up to the elbows, sweating my ass off. Then I’d lead us all the way to the changing rooms across the beach, where he’d wait patiently while his prude-ass sister — one whom everyone apparently thought of as an ice queen — changed out of her six petticoats and bloomers into what would surely be a full-body 1920s swimsuit.

  I looked around.

  Fuck it. I could be crazy too, if “crazy” meant changing in privacy behind pylons on a deserted section of beach where no one could see me.

  I moved away from the water until I felt sufficiently hidden. Feeling dangerous (and — admittedly — kind of excited), I slipped off my jeans. Without wasting time, heart thumping, I slipped off my panties then pawed frantically in the duffel for my swimsuit bottoms, sure that at any moment someone would come up behind my bare ass. I felt better once my bottoms were on: not just cooler, but less like an ice queen.

  I paused to stuff my jeans and panties into the duffel, then doffed my shirt. I wriggled behind my back, unhitched the clasp of my bra, then slipped that off, too. The breeze, despite its warmth, felt cool on my bare breasts as it swept away my brush of perspiration and made my nipples stand tall and hard.