by Moon, Dalya
Dad reacted like the engineer he is and quickly assessed the situation. I was yelling, therefore I was still alive and not needing immediate medical attention.
He chose not to leap over me, flailing around at the foot of the stairs, but took off in the opposite direction, through the kitchen. I heard him thundering up the back stairs, the other way to the upper floor.
Upstairs, Garnet's door slammed and I heard the little click that meant the lock was engaged. They'd put the lock in a year earlier so Mom wouldn't have the shock of walking in on him during his solo time … again.
I moaned and groaned, but I wasn't broken.
Pickles licked my face for a few seconds, possibly contaminating my eyebrow piercing before I could shove her away.
Marc helped me to my feet. “We can do this another time,” he said.
“No, just wait,” I said, pausing to assess.
Upstairs, Dad was threatening to bust down Garnet's door if he didn't open it that instant. For the most part, my father ignores things, but every now and then he takes a different approach and completely overreacts. There is no middle ground with him.
“I'm going to count to three!” he roared. “One!”
“My dad's not really a psychopath,” I said to Marc.
“Oh, no, he's quite nice, as I recall.”
“Two!” my father yelled at the door.
I said to Marc, “Once they get this sorted out, we can watch our movie.”
“Three!” my father yelled, and at the same time he shouldered the door. Hard.
A crunch reverberated through the house. I ran up the stairs, worried about bodily damage. On my watch! How dare they!
Upstairs, I found the door open next to a split wood door frame, my brother in tears, and my father rubbing his shoulder while cursing.
“You can search my room,” Garnet blubbered.
I zipped in and yanked open the top drawer. The baggie was gone. I did a quick search of the surrounding area and all the logical hiding spots while Dad helped.
Garnet stood by, his arms crossed and an inscrutable expression on his face.
We turned up nothing.
“You'll have to strip-search him,” I said to my father.
That was when I noticed my brother was sweating. A lot.
Unlike me, Garnet doesn't have a bathroom attached to his bedroom, so he couldn't have flushed the two joints down the toilet.
What he could have done, though, was dispose of them in another manner.
I searched the area just behind him. “Garnet,” I said as I pulled the empty Ziploc bag out from under his mattress. “Did you eat those two joints?”
“What if I did?” he said.
Marc joined us in the room. “I'm still here,” he said.
My father was frozen, speechless.
“My brother may have ingested two joints.” I took another look at Garnet's face. “I'm quite certain he did.”
“If it was just two joints, he'll probably be fine,” Marc said. “Bugged-out, yes, but he doesn't need to get his stomach pumped.”
“Dad?” I said.
My father flopped back on Garnet's bed and put one of the pillows over his face. His voice muffled, he said, “Maybe we should get his stomach pumped to teach him a lesson.”
“We could take a vote,” I said to Marc.
My brother gagged and spat some shredded paper into his hand.
“You're in big trouble,” I said to Garnet.
Marc said, “I'm not here to make enemies, so I vote we babysit him for the evening, and no stomach pumping.”
“I vote pumping. I am pro-pumping. I hear they put a thick hose down your throat.”
Garnet took a seat on the chair next to his desktop computer, looking more miserable by the minute.
I said, “What about you, Dad? Tie-breaker vote. Stomach pumping, yes or no?”
My father slowly took the pillow off his face and sat up. “I'm going for a drive.” He talked as though he was speaking to himself. “I think I'll treat myself to some Arby's.”
He got up and left Garnet's room. Just like that, he'd swung from overreaction to avoidance.
“Pickles and I should leave,” Marc said, still holding the bag of Doritos. Pickles sat obediently near his feet, tongue out, enjoying herself.
“You sound like you might be a drug expert,” I said. “You should definitely stay and help me babysit my brother.”
“Story of my life,” he said.
“Really?”
“My older brother liked to dabble. He's fine, now, but I'm good at talking people down from a bad trip.”
With a big grin on his face, Garnet finally spoke up, saying, “I'm fine! I'm not going to be sick, I don't think.”
My anger at my brother faded. I had to admire him for his fast thinking in disposing the evidence. Sure, a smarter kid would have thrown the evidence out the window, into the bushes, but this way he got to have his cake and eat it, in a manner of speaking.
“I get to hang out with you guys?” he asked, his eyes wide and his face as innocent as a little lamb's.
“I guess,” I said. “You have to watch whatever movie we want to watch, and no talking during the film.”
Garnet laughed. “Bro, you're the movie talker! You always talk, talk, talk.” He laughed some more, then suddenly gave me a serious look. “Hey, this isn't the same guy who was here with you yesterday.”
I grabbed the Doritos from Marc and threw them at my brother. “You're high. See if you can get those open.” To Marc, I said, “Come on, that movie's not gonna watch itself.”
The three of us got settled on the L-shaped sectional in our TV-watching den at the back of the house, overlooking the garden. We have a more formal living room at the front of the house, but nobody uses that room, which makes my parents happy, because it always looks presentable.
From his spot on the sectional a few feet from me, Marc kept looking out the big windows, talking about how nice the back yard was, lit by my mother's new solar-powered landscape lighting.
“Those are fig trees,” I said. “We get a buttload of fresh figs in the summer. I'll save you some.”
“Are those the things inside fig newtons?” he asked, looking adorable in his ignorance about figs.
My brother, who was staring at his hands, laughed extra-loud. He seemed to be doing okay, just acting stupid and baby-like, like those kids you see on YouTube after they have their wisdom teeth taken out. I don't have the gene for being wise, because I didn't have any wisdom teeth to remove. Garnet wasn't as lucky as me, because his x-rays showed buds for three teeth. My parents and I teased him about being one tooth short of a full load of wisdom.
“Figs are yummy,” Garnet said in his baby voice. “Hey, brother-sister-person, hey, you, can I wear your eyebrow?”
“My piercing? No.”
“Can I wear your nice black hair? Your witchy, witchy, witch-hair?”
“No. Be quiet and eat your chips,” I said.
What was Marc thinking? He probably thought I was stupid for piercing my eyebrow, or dying my hair, or both.
I switched over to the other remote control, the mini keyboard one, and brought up Netflix to scroll through.
Garnet sat on my left, stretched out on the shorter side of the sectional, and I sat cross-legged in the corner spot, where I always sit. To my right, Marc sat up straight with his feet on the floor, his dog Pickles sitting contentedly between us.
Marc turned and said to me, in a hushed voice, “Your brother seems happy enough. Trust me, this is the better scenario than a bad trip.”
I remembered what Haylee's hairdresser had said on the phone about being more likable, and counted quickly to five before I replied to Marc.
To my surprise, before I could say anything, he started talking again, unprompted, saying, “One time my brother put his fist through a mirror.”
Instead of responding, I raised my eyebrows in response and counted in my head: one, two, three …
I nodded to show I was listening, and counted: one, two, three, four …
“Your eyebrow piercing suits you,” he said. “And it's perfect on that side. They really knew what they were doing at the piercing place.”
I smiled and counted: one, two, three, four …
“Your dreadlocks were cool, too,” he said. “But I really like this dark color. Are you wearing perfume?” He leaned over and smelled my head. “It's your hair. They put a lot of perfume in the hair dye stuff. My mom dyes her hair, so I know that smell.”
I nodded and didn't even bother counting. To my amusement, Marc continued to talk, prompting himself to keep going. He warmed up, even making a few jokes and teasing my brother a few times.
Eventually, he said, “Enough about me, lets get this movie on or it'll be four in the morning by the time it's finished.”
“The pizza! I haven't ordered it for dinner.”
My brother whimpered. “Pizza? Me hungry!”
I said to Marc, “Your choice, pick anything, I'll go order some from our regular place. Do you have a preference?”
He said, “Anything but ham. It makes my tongue thirsty.”
I climbed over the back of the sofa to get to the phone. “It makes your tongue thirsty?”
Garnet squealed with girlish giggles.
Marc shrugged. “I can be weird too.”
I pointed to myself. “Are you implying I'm weird?”
He picked up the remote control and examined the many buttons. “We're all weird in our own ways.”
From the appreciative way he looked at me just then, I got the feeling I might be getting out of the friend zone soon.
It had to be the hair. Or the not-talking so he could talk.
My scalp was itchy and dry. Alone in the kitchen, I itched it for relief.
I just had to get my brother out of the TV room, get Pickles the dog out from between us, and get myself in there next to him.
Chapter 16
I had just ordered pizza when Dad walked in, back from his drive to cool down. I followed him into his office, an alcove off the kitchen, near the back stairs.
“It's just pot,” I said, taking a seat on top of his filing cabinet, the metal surface giving me a chill, even though my jeans.
“I smoked a little when I was his age,” Dad said, seeming a lot calmer than when he'd left.
“We've got some pizza coming.”
“Thank God. I tried to find Arby's, but I couldn't. I swear they had one on Southwest Marine Drive, but I couldn't find it. They must have closed that one down.” He looked down at his hand and twisted his wedding band. “Years ago, your mother and I used to go there for curly fries and Jamocha shakes.”
When he stopped talking, his office seemed very dark and cold.
He looked at my eyebrow, his eyes sad.
I peered up at the shiny metal ball protruding from my eyebrow and said, “I'm sorry I didn't ask permission before I got this piercing.”
He frowned and blew his cheeks out into bubbles, the way he does when he knows he's in the wrong with Mom over something. “You're eighteen. I don't know why I freaked out.” He shook his head.
“Did you take your pills today?”
He flicked at some papers on his desk without answering. That meant no, he hadn't taken his ADD medication, or his anti-anxiety pill.
Fidgeting in his fancy ergonomic computer chair, he said, “I'm your father.”
I wasn't sure what he meant, but the way he said it, almost as a question, made me scared.
“She'll be home in just a few more weeks,” I said.
He flicked at the papers again, then turned on his enormous computer monitor and pulled up his gmail account. “Ah, here's another update from the Missus.”
The text read: They upgraded my room! Wish you were here to share this tub.
Below was a photo of an enormous soaker tub, in front of a window overlooking a panoramic view of LA.
“It's a tough life,” I said.
“There goes your university fund,” he said.
“What? We're paying for this? I thought the record label was.”
He wiggled his hand in the air, making a sorta gesture.
And then, even though I didn't want to know the answer, I asked how they were doing, relationship-wise.
He threw both hands in the air. “How should I know?”
The back of my thoughts whistled with that warning, that internal waitress clock, reminding me Marc was still there, in the TV den.
I slipped off the filing cabinet and backed away from the office. “I should check on the boys.”
“What should I do about your brother? Ground him for life?”
I'd been thinking about that very same thing ever since I'd discovered the drugs. I glanced around my father's office until I spotted a photo of the extended family pinned on the wall.
Uncle Jeff.
No, that would be too extreme. I couldn't.
But my father looked so lost. Maybe if I took charge, he would see it wasn't so difficult to react without overreacting.
I said, “Make Garnet spend a day with Uncle Jeff. It might do that scared-straight thing. I know the fear of turning out like him sure kept me away from drugs.”
Dad's face came to life. “That's a great idea!”
“Really?” I twisted my hands. “Don't tell him Uncle Jeff was my idea.”
He drew an imaginary zipper across his mouth.
Back in the TV den, I found Marc talking to Garnet about the university experience. They seemed to be getting along like pals. I curled up in my corner spot and Marc started the movie.
The film, called Chaotic Ana, was Spanish, with subtitles. When Ana appeared on-screen, we all laughed, because she had dreadlocks, not unlike the ones I'd had until recently.
The movie was unusual, but interesting. There was a fair amount of nakedness and sex, which made me uncomfortable, but at least my father wasn't in the room. My brother's eyes were huge, because no matter how many naked girls he'd seen on his computer screen, each new one was still a revelation.
In the movie, Ana discovers she's not the free spirit she thought she was, but she's lived many previous lives and they're all coming back to her. There's a lot of talk about politics between men and women, but I'm not sure I quite understood what the director was getting at.
My father got the pizza when it came to the door and brought it in to us. To my relief, Ana wasn't wiggling her naked breasts around at that exact moment, and my father took a few slices and didn't stick around.
To his credit, my father didn't say anything about us eating pizza in the TV den. According to my mother's rules, we were allowed snacks in there, but absolutely no meals, especially not greasy ones like pizza.
Eating dinner stretched out on the sofa was absolutely decadent. The only thing that would have made it better would be if I could have switched spots with Pickles.
When we got to the end of the movie, where the main character inexplicably poops on someone's face, we all screamed in horror.
Garnet asked, “Did that happen? Am I stoned? Did I imagine that, or did that happen?”
Marc paused the movie and we both played it straight and pretended it hadn't, asking him to explain what he'd just seen.
“Nothing. Never mind,” Garnet said, shaking his head and rubbing his eyes.
I snickered into my hand and wondered if we even needed to send him off to Uncle Jeff's after all. Marc kept looking over at me, grinning, and I enjoyed messing with my brother's head so much that the backs of my ears started to ache from my own evil smirk.
We started the movie again and during the fight scene, Garnet said, “You losers! That face-plop did happen! In the eye! What kind of sickos are you, making me watch this movie? I'm only fifteen. I'm impressionable.”
Marc said to him, “We're expanding your mind.”
I said,
“You didn't mind when it was all boobies.”
Garnet smiled. “Oh, yeah.”
Too soon, the movie was over, and Marc got up to leave.
To say the evening had not gone as I'd planned would be an understatement. First there was the pot-eating-door-breaking fiasco. And then, not only had Marc and I not crossed the friend barrier, but I hadn't mentioned my mistaken kiss with his friend. Then again, he hadn't mentioned it either, so I hoped he didn't know.
I walked Marc out to his car, and I'll admit it, I had high hopes for a kiss.
Instead, he gave me a very chaste hug, complete with a back pat. “See you Monday,” he said as he pulled away.
He looked like he might be about to say something else, but I'd forgotten about counting to five, so I said, “No kidding. Bring your crossword puzzle.”
“Right.” He pointed a finger at me and made a click-click finger-gun noise.
I turned and walked back to the house, but he called after me, “Perry, wait, I have something for you.”
He loped after me, his hand extended.
I put my hand out, palm up, and he gave me a handful of stuff: bottle caps, a coin, a single star-shaped earring, and a heart-shaped rock.
“For your art,” he said.
I heard a water noise and looked down to see Pickles having a pee on the lawn.
“Thanks,” I said. “I can totally use these. It was good to see you tonight.”
Marc scooped up Pickles and put her in the back of his hatchback. “See you Monday.”
Not wanting to look like a loser, shivering on the front steps in my jeans and thin gray shirt, I went inside the house and watched through the front window as he drove away.
I went back to the TV den and found Garnet fast asleep, snoring away on the sofa. Now he falls asleep, I thought. Not earlier, when I could have used some privacy.
My father was still quietly working or playing on his computer in his office.
I wasn't quite ready for bed, so I glued two of Marc's bottle caps, as eyes, onto my pink-striped Forgotten Creature. The eyes were perfect.
I couldn't believe he'd remembered about promising me the bottle caps. Because I'd talked to Cooper and shown him my Forgotten Creatures, I'd almost forgotten I'd showed them to Marc as well.