by Zac Brewer
“This smells great.” Julian was making an obvious attempt to quell the tension in the room. His attempt was obviously failing. “Nice to have a few last home-cooked meals before you eat three times a day in the dining hall, eh?”
I thought I’d humor him with a response. “Wills does have kitchens we can use in the dorms. But other than late-night cookie baking, I doubt I’ll use it.”
“What about you, Grace?” The sweetness in his voice was way over the top.
“Hmm?”
Julian forced a smile. “Do you miss home-cooked meals during the school year?”
Grace seemed distracted. She poked a piece of chicken with a tine of her fork before jabbing it and placing it on her plate. “It’s wonderful, thank you.”
“Enough of this.” Viktor dropped his fork and knife on his plate with a loud clang.
“Viktor.” Julian stretched his arm out, catching Viktor’s hand in his. The eternal peacemaker, more so even than Viktor. “I don’t think now is the time.”
“There couldn’t be a better time. And I refuse to eat another bite until we get this settled.” Viktor wiped his mouth on his blue linen napkin and returned it to his lap. When he regarded us with his eyes, it was clear that he meant business. “Adrien. Grace. You clearly have problems between you. I’ve been gentle, understanding, and patient. But I have reached the end of my ability to sit back and wait for you to communicate with each other. I tire of the constant needling, the underhanded insults. We are not leaving this table until you two say whatever it is that you feel needs to be said. Who wants to go first?”
I glanced at Grace. What was this?
By the look on Grace’s face, she had no idea.
“Fine. We’ll do this alphabetically then.” Viktor leaned forward and nodded to me. “Adrien, tell your sister why you carry so much venom for her.”
Why? Why was easy. But I wasn’t entirely convinced that Viktor wanted to hear it. “What do you want me to say exactly?”
“You call her vile names and glare every time she enters the room. I think she deserves to know why. Out with it.”
“Because she—”
“To her.” Viktor pointed to Grace.
I took a breath and drummed my fingers absent-mindedly for a moment on the table before looking at Grace. Once I did, the words came out of me in an honest puff. “Since I can remember, you’ve acted like I’m not a member of the Dane family. You’ve always treated me like some kind of charity case. I call you a terrible person . . . because you’re a terrible person. Also because I try not to use the word bitch when I can help it.”
My words didn’t even make her flinch. Maybe she was used to being called a bitch. Maybe worse. She pursed her lips and looked me in the eye. “Maybe I’m a bitch to you because of the way you treat me. Did you ever think of that? You say horrible things about me every time I see you—”
“Because of the way you act toward me.”
“—and you act as if Mom and Dad treated me like some pampered princess, when we were always treated like equals.” In a huff, she picked up her fork and stabbed at her potatoes. “Despite the fact that we shouldn’t have been.”
“And we come to the center of the shrubbery maze!” I laughed, but it wasn’t natural. I was angry and feeling more than a little bit bitter. “How do you think I should have been treated? Like some kind of long-term houseguest?”
“Like their adopted son.” She picked up her napkin and held it to the corner of her eye. It was a ploy for sympathy that she had used in the past, but there were no tears there. Not even the threat of tears. “Not like their actual son.”
Julian opened his mouth to intervene, but Viktor held up a hand to stop him.
“For all intents and purposes, I am their actual son. They’re listed on my birth certificate as my parents.”
“That was changed as part of the adoption procedure. Genetically, you’re no more connected to them than a housecat.”
“You know what your problem is, Grace?”
She returned her napkin to her lap and regained her immaculate posture. “Please. Enlighten me.”
“They chose me.” The venom in my voice was thick. Thick and intentional. “They got stuck with you.”
Grace’s cheeks were flushed, her eyes sharp, her lips tight. Maybe she thought that I’d gone too far. Oh, but there was so much further I could go.
The room was silent for several moments. Viktor finally broke in. “Are you two finished? Is there anything more that you need to say to each other to lay all this negativity to rest?”
I looked at Grace pointedly. “When did you steal the pages from Dad’s notebook? Exactly when?”
She met my gaze with daggers. “The day we had that horrible professional picture taken.”
There was only one more thing that I needed to know. “Can I see what’s on them?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Grace spoke clearly, putting emphasis on each word, as if they were separate sentences. “Because they belong in the family. And you are definitely not family.”
I stood up, pushing my chair back. As I left the room, Viktor called after me, “Adrien, where are you going?”
I stopped in my tracks just outside the pocket doors. “Excuse me, Viktor. Julian. It would seem I’ve lost my appetite.”
CHAPTER 3
ACIDIC SOLUTION:
Any solution that has a higher concentration of hydrogen ions than water does
I found my appetite the next morning when the smell of bacon and eggs wafted its way up the stairs to my room. I lay there, staring up at the painting of a young girl wearing a gas mask that hung on the wall beside my bed. This room had always been mine, just as Grace’s room here had always been hers. Sleeping over at Viktor’s house had been a normal part of our lives for as long as I could remember. Still . . . it felt weird being back here, for some reason.
Throwing on a T-shirt and jeans over the boxers I’d slept in, I made my way down the stairs to the breakfast nook. Julian was standing at the stove in a burgundy terry cloth robe, humming as he poured pancake batter into a pan. I took a seat at the table and he greeted me with a smile, his blue eyes twinkling. “Hungry? I made plenty.”
My stomach rumbled an answer. I hadn’t eaten since lunch the day before—the price of my righteous indignation last night. When Julian pushed a plate across the counter to me, I stood to retrieve it and sat back down, immediately shoveling a forkful of scrambled eggs into my mouth.
“Where’s Viktor this morning? Won’t he be joining us?” I didn’t ask about my sister. Mostly because I didn’t care. In fact, I had a few good ideas on where she could go.
“He and Grace drove over to Wills to get a few things in order before classes start on Monday. I can drive you over and help get you settled after we do a little shopping. It’ll take a few days to get your belongings all shipped over from California, so we should buy you enough to get your school year started.” He flipped a pancake over and turned to look at me. “Do you want to talk about last night?”
Through a mouthful of eggs, I said, “I don’t need my stuff shipped in. I don’t know what Viktor told you, but I’m only staying a month. And as for last night, I’d rather not talk about it. But something tells me I don’t have much choice in the matter.”
Julian quietly moved a finished pancake onto his plate, turned off the stove, and filled the rest of his plate with bacon and eggs. As he sat down beside me, I swallowed a mouthful of crisp bacon and said, “Let me see if I can sum it up and save you the energy. I should be nicer to my sister, because she’s really a very sweet, gentle person who needs me now more than ever, blah, blah, blah. . . . Am I close?”
He picked up his fork and met my eyes. “Actually, I was going to say that she said some horrible things to you last night, and if that’s the way things normally are between you, I can’t blame you for never wanting to see her.”
I took another bite of bacon and chewed it slowly,
wondering if this was some kind of sarcastic joke or something. I said, “Wow, Julian. You’re not like Viktor. He would have said the exact opposite.”
“Well, you know what they say, opposites attract.” We continued to eat our breakfast in comfortable silence. It was nice to know that Julian understood my feelings, at least partially. “So listen, Adrien—I’m confused. Viktor said that you’d be graduating from Wills.”
I set my fork down, the metal clanking against the porcelain. It sounded much louder than I’d intended. “Well, he’s wrong. I only came back here to . . . deal with some personal stuff, and then I’m going right back to my school. I don’t know what to do about Viktor. It’s like he’s asking me for the one thing I can’t ever give him. He wants me to do something about my relationship with Grace. To fix it or something. I keep telling him I don’t have a relationship with her and don’t want one. I’ve never had a relationship with Grace. So why start now?”
“He just wants peace. It makes sense, considering his condition.” He met my eyes, and I could see the knowledge of Viktor’s disease written all over his face.
Still, I had promised my godfather that I wouldn’t say anything. No matter how ridiculous I thought the notion was. “Condition?”
Julian reached over and cupped my hand, giving it a squeeze. “It’s all right, Adrien. I know all about Viktor’s health problems. He may think he’s capable of hiding a terminal illness from me, but he’s mistaken. I may be younger than him, but I’m not an idiot. I know he’s . . . I know he’s dying.”
“He asked me not to say anything. I’m so sorry, Julian.”
“Thank you.” He gave my hand another squeeze and picked his fork up again, moving the eggs around on his plate before speaking. “And thank you for honoring his wishes.”
It looked as if it was his turn to lose his appetite. Who could blame him? He and Viktor had been together for going on thirteen years. They shared a life.
But in true Julian fashion, he forced a smile. “I look at it like this. There are two ways that I can approach losing him. One, I can throw myself into the emotional abyss and wrap myself in a cocoon of mourning. Or two, I can say ‘screw it all’ and get on with things, squeezing every drop of joy that I can out of our remaining days together. I choose the latter.”
I thought about how it had felt to sit in the headmaster’s office and learn that I’d never see my parents again. Even now, there was no grave to visit, no private place where I could commune with my memories of them. There were just cold metal urns filled with even colder ashes, sitting atop a fireplace mantel in a room I’d spent the last twenty-four hours avoiding at all costs.
I felt like I should offer him some solace, some shred of hope. But all I had to go on was my experience. “I’m still mourning my parents. It takes time, y’know. There’s no set calendar for things like this. And who knows, maybe the doctors will turn out to be quacks who gave him the wrong time frame. It happens sometimes. We don’t have to mourn him just yet.”
“You were only a boy when you lost them. Hardly ready to be thrust into the world on your own. I can’t even imagine how difficult it’s been for you.” The air around us had changed. I shifted in my seat a little. “But as harsh as it may sound . . . sooner or later, Adrien, you’re going to have to look forward instead of back. We all do.”
“Now you do sound like Viktor.” I stood from my chair, grabbed a glass from the counter, and poured myself some juice.
“What can I say? He brings out the best in me.” A smile crossed Julian’s lips as he winked at me. The love and respect that he had for Viktor was undeniable. It was free, easy, obvious.
“Grace brings out the worst in me.”
I had a specific incident in mind when I said this, though it was one I hadn’t thought about in years. Grace and I were standing in the backyard of our house—just kids, maybe nine or ten years old. We were standing in our mom’s garden. Not the greenhouse, never there. We weren’t allowed. Mom had told us countless times that her greenhouse was for cross-pollination experiments and interspecies plant breeding. It was her place—a place for her work. Not even Dad was allowed in there.
We were outside, in her personal garden, where Mom spent her mornings relaxing with her plants rather than cataloging and studying them. It was a peaceful place for her, and she referred to the time she spent every morning tending to each bloom as her “Zen time.”
Grace and I were arguing, which already by then wasn’t out of the ordinary for us. Only this time we were arguing over a species of a particular plant in the garden. The flower in question was lovely and white with purple accents on the petals. Grace insisted it was an Orchidaceae dendrobium, a genus of orchid commonly referred to as a “King’s Jewel Pink Crystal.” But she was wrong. While it was an orchid, it was the more uncommon Minho Princess “Water Color Artist.” I knew, because Mom had told me the day before.
When I pointed out her error, making note that the purple veined its way through, rather than just appearing as spots on the petals, Grace set her jaw and ignored me. I raised my voice so she’d have no choice but to listen, but she plugged her ears and started humming this annoying song by John Mayer that she knew I hated. The heat of anger burned through my veins. She couldn’t just listen to reason, to me. She’d rather shut me out than admit that she was wrong. Before I realized what I was doing, I had picked her up by the throat and screamed into her frightened face.
I’m not a violent person. I never have been. I’d much rather talk my way out of a disagreement than fight my way out. But on that day, with Grace’s smug little face in front of me humming that irritating song, all I wanted to do was shut her up and make her listen, by whatever means I could.
I was wrong to do it. I had known it then. I still knew it now.
I never touched her again, either, though there’d been plenty of times when I’d felt the same urge to shut her up for a moment and make her listen.
“And you bring out the worst in her.” Julian raised his eyebrows as he looked up from his plate. “I remember your dad always used to describe you two with a chemistry analogy. He said you can have two different substances that, by themselves, operate in wonderful ways. But when combined, they’re volatile. Maybe even explosive, if you’re not careful. And I think it’s true—that’s you and Grace. You’re both wonderful people who prove absolutely volatile whenever you’re around each other. You have to learn how to handle your interactions with the greatest of delicacy.”
The phone on the wall rang, interrupting our breakfast life lesson. Julian set his fork down on the table and picked up the receiver. I only partially paid attention to the half of the conversation that I could hear. From the tone of Julian’s voice and the things that he was saying, it was obvious that my godfather was on the other end of the line. I was more interested in another serving of bacon. Julian had been right last night. A good home-cooked meal was a lot better than eating in the cafeteria at school. I folded the bacon into a piece of toast and sank my teeth in just as Julian hung up the phone.
“That was Viktor. He spoke to the headmaster, and they’re arranging your room placement and preliminary class schedule as we speak. They’re trying to match as many of the classes you had in California as possible.” He returned to the table, but rather than sitting down to finish eating, he started clearing the dishes. It was as if hearing from Viktor was our cue to get on with the day. But then, it had always been that way. Viktor had always been in charge. “I know it must be hard, changing schools your senior year. But I can’t tell you how much it means to Viktor. In many ways, he views you and your sister as his children. We both do. I think he’s just trying to take care of you both, make certain that things are mended between you before his time comes.”
And there he went again. I was beginning to think that this was going to be the mantra for my entire stay here. I’d barely been back in town for a full twenty-four hours, and I was already sick of hearing that Grace and I needed to work thing
s out between us. “Look, Julian, it’s not like I haven’t tried to get along with Grace. And as much as I’d love to give Viktor that beautiful deathbed moment that he’s looking for, I just . . .”
Julian dropped a juice glass into the sink, and broken shards exploded against the side. He lifted his hand to his eyes, willing the tears to stay inside. Apparently he wasn’t handling the news of Viktor’s illness as well as he’d let on. I instantly felt like the biggest ass in the world. “Julian, I’m sorry. I should have chosen my words more carefully.”
He was quiet for a long time. His hands were shaking.
“You want my advice? No bullshit? Man to man?” He dropped his trembling hand to the counter and stared out the window above the sink. That moment had been just enough for him to regain his composure. “Fake it.”
I swallowed hard, not understanding. “Fake it?”
“Yes, fake it. Play nice until you two go your separate ways. Make your godfather happy. Even if it isn’t real.” He started picking up the broken pieces of glass, still not willing to look at me. “Do you seriously think that knowing how sick he is and the fact that he doesn’t feel the need to share that with me doesn’t hurt like hell, Adrien? It does. But I fake it because I love him.”
Julian moved across the room and dropped the remnants of the glass into the garbage can. He walked over to me and put his hands on my shoulders. Finally, he met my eyes. “I mean, really, how often are you going to have to pretend for him? When you pass him in the halls at school? When you join us for dinner on the occasional weekend? Christmas break, if you stay that long? When you think about it, is it such a sacrifice to make in order to please a man who cares so dearly for you both? To grant his dying wish?”
He was right, of course. But there were two sides to this coin, and I could only be in control of one of them. “What about Grace?”
A wrinkle settled across Julian’s forehead. It was clear that he was just as concerned as I was about the other side of that coin. “I’ll talk to her.”