by Zac Brewer
“Indeed, I am,” I said as I took a spritzer in my hand. But the moment Viktor turned his back, I switched it out for a cosmo. Maybe I didn’t drink. But I didn’t fight, either.
As Viktor, Grace, and I stepped into the den, Julian gave my shirt a disapproving once-over and whispered to me, “Play nice.”
What was that supposed to mean? Grace was the one who started shit. All I ever wanted was to finish it.
Once the doors were closed, Viktor smiled warmly at us both. “It’s good to see you both, children.”
“Likewise, Uncle.” Grace sat on the chaise and folded her hands neatly in her lap. Her hair was curled into ringlets that lay over her right shoulder.
“And it’s nice to see you two getting along. Even if it is merely a lie perpetuated by Julian.” I shot a glance to Grace, who was already looking at me in wonder. Apparently we weren’t the great actors we thought we were. “Come, now. Do you really think I’m that stupid?”
Grace began to say, “We never—”
“It’s quite all right. If I can’t get you two to come together as a family, at least I can pretend for a short while that you won’t strangle each other in my parlor.” Viktor moved to his desk and opened the top drawer. From it, he removed a manila envelope that looked stuffed to the gills. “Now, as to why I wanted to speak with you . . .”
I didn’t speak, couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even move. The whole room felt like it was filling with a thick, hot gas. I knew this sensation. We were about to talk about death. Viktor’s death.
He said, “I didn’t want you to find this out after I’ve passed on. Julian knows, and he supports my decision. But I’ve decided that I want to tell you in person why I’m not leaving any of my estate to either of you.” Grace sat up some in her seat. I didn’t move. “Instead I’m leaving the entirety to the Wills Institute. All but a modest stipend for Julian.” It was unexpected, but it was also just money.
I counted two heartbeats before I let the words leave my mouth—words I already knew the answer to. “Does he . . . know that you’re dying, then?”
Grace’s eyes snapped to me in a warning—Julian had probably talked to her about it, too—but I simply shrugged in response. We were all dancing around the issue, and I was quickly tiring of it. The last semblance of family that we had would soon be leaving us forever. I didn’t get why we were pretending that he was going to be alive in another year or two or ten. The sky was blue. Water was wet. And Viktor was dying. It was just the way of things.
“Yes. I suspect he’s known for some time, but this past week, I told him myself.” For a moment, a profound sadness filled his eyes. Then, as if gathering himself once again, he took on a businesslike tone. “Do you understand the importance of my decision to will my estate to Wills?”
Grace and I spoke at the same time—probably the only time we had ever agreed on anything, even if it was only a choice of words. “Of course.”
“I just didn’t want either of you to feel left out. I care deeply for both of you. But I think the money would do better to serve many children, rather than just two, and of course you have the trust from your parents.”
“Don’t worry about it, Viktor. I’m not.” I downed the last of my cosmo and set the glass on the desk.
As I stood, Viktor’s eyes shimmered. He said, “I cannot possibly express to you how much I will miss you both.”
Grace stood and rushed across the room, hugging him tightly. “Oh, Uncle . . .”
“The time for good-byes is fast approaching, children. I want nothing unsaid when it comes.” As he embraced my sister, he looked at me, his eyes now filled with visible tears. “I love you. Both of you. I never had children of my own, but I always viewed you both as such. After I am gone, only the two of you and my beloved Julian will remain. Take care of one another. Please. All of you.”
It was too much—the idea of losing Viktor. I’d known for over eight days now, but it hadn’t seemed real until this very moment. Viktor was dying. And soon all I’d have left to call family would be Grace. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair.
I walked out of the room and snagged another cosmo, then found a quiet corner of the house to hide in until it was announced that dinner was being served. I counted roughly twenty people gathering around the table—by the looks of it, power players, maybe a few academics, and me. An older gentleman to my left swallowed a bite of something creamy and green before meeting my eyes. “I knew your father well, Mr. Dane. Tell me. Do you plan to follow in his career footsteps? He was a brilliant chemist, and a marvelous teacher.”
My face was feeling warm. It was a pleasant warmth, and one that made it easier to make small talk. I blamed the booze. With a shrug, I said, “I might follow him into chemistry, but not teaching. To be honest, I haven’t given it that much thought just yet.”
The man dabbed at the corners of his mouth with his cloth napkin, then returned the napkin to his lap. He looked somewhat perplexed by my response. “It is your senior year, isn’t it?”
The rest of the table had turned their attention to our conversation. I took a sip of water and set it down, gathering my thoughts. “Yes. It is my senior year. But anyone who thinks that an eighteen-year-old is capable of choosing their forever path in life is kidding themselves. I’ll figure it out. I just need time. And patience.”
“Adrien has a brilliant mind. He just needs the right people behind him to encourage him and show him how to apply himself. I expect wonderful things from him, given time.” From the opposite end of the table, Viktor raised his glass to me in a toasting gesture and smiled. “And patience.”
A woman in peach chiffon addressed my sister then. “What about you, Grace? Do you find yourself requiring more time to find your chosen path in life?”
Grace, as usual, had all the right answers. “I plan to work in pharmaceuticals. In fact, I’m confidently planning to apply to all the Ivy Leagues when the time comes.”
“Of course you are,” I muttered under my breath, earning a look of warning from Julian.
Looking down the table to my godfather, I silently thought to him, Why am I here?
But Viktor and I had been having conversations with our eyes for years, and the way he was looking at me now, I imagined his response was something like, Because sometimes a brief, pleasant dinner conversation can open a door years later that you weren’t even aware existed. Now, if I could trouble you to be your charming self for the remainder of the evening?
His smile came slowly but surely—the way it always did when he was certain he knew what he was talking about. When it appeared, I found myself letting go of my urge to leave the table. Viktor had always had that effect on me. He was soothing, calming. When he smiled at me, it felt like being wrapped up in a blanket after coming in from the cold.
I was going to miss him.
I spent the rest of the dinner nibbling on small bites and engaging in small talk to make him happy. I even promised a man who owned a few biomedical companies around the country that I would look him up after I finished school (whenever I finished school).
It helped to pretend that Grace wasn’t sitting across from me, judging me with her effortless ability to talk to strangers. It helped more that I’d managed to sneak another cosmo when nobody was paying attention. After dessert and coffee, Viktor and Julian gave their good-byes and escorted guests to the door. Grace and I were the only two left at the table, but neither of us spoke. My phone buzzed in my pocket, and when I retrieved it, I saw that my mysterious informant had just texted me. They said, Grace has evidence of what really happened to your parents. Find it!
I glanced toward the door long enough to see something that made my heart skip a beat. Julian was texting someone. Another message popped up on my phone. Might I suggest you check her room?
I sat there dumbfounded. Could Julian be the person who’d been tormenting me with these text messages? Why?
Grace raised a well-manicured brow in my general direction. “Are you
staying here tonight or going back to the dorms?”
The room tilted slightly, so I said, “Staying.”
“Good. I’d hate for you to die in some horrible car accident after sneaking so much to drink.” She smiled in that sweet, sadistic way of hers before walking around the table to leave the room.
As she passed behind my chair, I emptied my glass and said, “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
She paused, but only briefly.
“Oh, brother . . .” She bent down, whispering in my ear. I could feel her breath brush the tiny hairs on my neck, my skin turning to gooseflesh, as if reacting to the poison of her words. “I’d revel in it.”
I had no idea why some people were vile and others were not. Maybe they really were that way when they were born. After all, we’d had the same parents—it was hard to say Grace was a product of bad nurturing. Still, maybe experience made them that way. We might have lived inside the same house, but Grace and I had led very different lives. It was hard to think of a control group to even test a hypothesis. I’d met people like Grace of all genders, races, and orientations. Nothing seemed to tie them together but the bitterness that fueled their words . . . and my exhaustion over having met them.
“You’re a kind person, Grace.” I raised my empty glass in her direction. The room was feeling warmer than I remembered, and a lot less stable. Were the walls really spinning or was it just my perception? “Mom and Dad would be proud.”
I wasn’t sure where he’d come from or when, but Julian was standing over me, his jaw set, his eyes full of disapproval. I set my glass on the table and said, “It’s just a cranberry spritzer.”
“Please. Lying is so unbecoming of you.” He took my glass, despite the fact that it was empty. Then he bent closer to my ear and hissed, “Seems like you’ve had enough. More than enough, considering you’re only eighteen. What were you thinking? That no one would notice?”
That wasn’t it at all. I wasn’t even sure what it was, why I’d drunk, especially so much. I’d thought I could come back here, to the place where I’d grown up, and not completely lose myself. I was wrong.
I stood. I wanted my actions to be strong and smooth, but I staggered a little as I pushed my chair back from the table. “Julian, you’re not my father.”
I looked him in the eye, hardly caring in that moment whether it had been Julian texting me about Grace and the evidence she supposedly had about the fire that killed our parents. As I moved past him and up the stairs, I said, “He’s dead.”
CHAPTER 11
NUCLEAR REACTION:
Any process in which the nucleus of an atom is changed in some fashion
That night I didn’t sleep so much as move in and out of consciousness on a wave of nausea. Once I’d sobered up, I drove Maggie back to the dorms in the wee hours of morning and took a hot shower. My head felt like it was floating somewhere above my body, and my everything hurt. It had been stupid to drink. Alcohol was a poison, and consuming it would serve to get a person nowhere fast. It wasn’t logical to poison yourself, and it had been proven in my case to lead to negative outcomes. But then . . . I hadn’t been feeling very logical lately.
Caroline was waiting for me beside the soccer field at 9:00 a.m., as promised. We went over our notes in silence, recording our method and double-checking that we had the right amounts of potassium and water. Finally, she handed me a pair of goggles and said, “You look like hell. Did your weekend get worse after the last time I saw you?”
I took off my sunglasses, squinting at the light of the sun, and hung them from my left jeans pocket. “Dinner party on Saturday, hangover on Sunday.”
She frowned, her pink lips sinking in concern. “I’m worried about you.”
“Don’t worry about me. Worry about this garbage can. Are we all set?” I glanced over at Coach Taryn, who had put the lacrosse team to work running laps and now eyed us warily. I wasn’t worried about the garbage can blowing up so dramatically that it might hurt the players all the way over there, but I didn’t want a screaming coach on my back this early in the morning.
“Thirty grams of potassium. Sealed trash can. Goggles on. Let’s do this.” She signaled our supervisor with a nod and shouted, “Coach Taryn?”
He gave us a thumbs-up.
Caroline clutched the string that was dangling the potassium over the water inside the trash can. I opened the scissors and placed them around the string. “One . . . two . . . three!”
I cut the string, and we both held our breath as the potassium dropped into the water. For a moment nothing happened. Then an explosion of steam blew the lid off the trash can. The chemical reaction reached up into the sky, forming a mini mushroom cloud of sorts. Impressive on a visual level. The trash can, however, stood unharmed. I sighed. Caroline groaned. “That sucked! It didn’t even dent the can. It just blew the lid off. How are we going to blow up a bathtub?”
Our calculations were off. Way off. It should have been far more fantastic than it actually was. I was off my game, clearly. “We need more potassium. A lot more potassium.”
Caroline rolled her eyes at my obvious assessment of the situation. “Ya think?”
“Well, recalculations are part of the process. Every failure is a success that we learn from.” I didn’t even feel like I was there, in that field, going through the motions of a scientific experiment. My mind felt like it was somewhere else entirely, though I couldn’t pinpoint where exactly. Maybe California.
Caroline met my gaze. “What did you learn from your hangover?”
“That vodka is something to be avoided in the future.” My stomach flip-flopped in response. It didn’t want to talk about vodka. It just wanted to go back to my room and lie down for a while. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Do you want to go out sometime? Like for a ride or something? Maybe pizza?”
She picked up the now-dented lid of our trash can. “Absolutely. But no one ever asks me.”
I paused, taking a moment to figure out whether or not she was joking. The look in her eyes said that she really had no idea that I’d done just that. “I’m asking you.”
“Oh.” At first she looked surprised. Then she shook her head. “No. Sorry.”
As she walked toward our failed experiment, I followed, shaking my head. Was I really that bad? I thought of the look in her eye on Friday night, when she’d invited me to meet her this morning. It hadn’t seemed like it was just for the science experiment. “What is it with you? You don’t like me or something?”
She shrugged. “I told you. I’m just not interested in you in that way.”
“It’s not a date. It’s just a ride with a friend. And maybe pizza.” I put on my most charming smile. At least, as charming as I could be when I felt like my head was full of sharp shards of rock. “If you’re lucky.”
But I wasn’t just asking her out as a friend, and I knew it. A little voice at the back of my mind questioned whether me asking Caroline out had anything at all to do with Josh kissing me the day before. I swore to myself that the two had nothing to do with each other, but honestly? What I did know was how it had felt to kiss Josh. What I didn’t know was what it might feel like to kiss Caroline.
She looked me over for a moment, as if debating just how terrible an evening with me might be. It didn’t exactly inspire confidence in my fragile ego. Finally, she hoisted up the trash can and said, “Okay. But we’re just friends.”
“Fine.” There was something way too formal about the whole thing. I’d hung out with friends plenty of times before. Why was she making this awkward? Or was that just her deal? Maybe she was just an awkward person. The evidence was certainly pointing in that direction. “Tonight? Say eight o’clock?”
“Fine.”
We cleaned up our experiment and yelled our thanks to Coach Taryn for his supervision. Afterward, I headed back to my room, where my pillow was calling my name. I was certain from what little experience I had that sleep was
the only thing that was going to ease my throbbing head.
As I moved into the dorm, silence enveloped me. This evening would be different. Commuter students would return from their weekends at home, and with them would come the hustle and bustle and noise of dormitory living. But for now, it was still early, and the halls were blissfully silent. I was looking forward to a nice nap.
I trudged up the main stairs of the dormitory, anxious to reach my room. My footfalls echoed as I climbed toward the top floor. I did my best to tread lightly. Not because I was afraid of disturbing anyone, but because I wanted to see if I could step softly enough that the sound wouldn’t reverberate off the stone walls around me. I was in a battle with the laws of physics. It was stupid, but people do a lot of stupid things when no one is looking.
I finally reached the top floor and hung a left toward the tower stairs. The tile floor of the hall coupled with the addition of wooden doors caused me to change my strategy slightly. Then a loud slam from the end of the hall thundered through my aching head, causing me to lose this particular battle.
The echo of voices had replaced the echo of my steps. The sound grew louder as the speakers came closer. There were two voices. Both rang at a higher timbre, definitely female. What’s more, I recognized one of them as Penelope’s, and the other voice belonged to Grace.
“I got it. I should have had it four years ago, but I’ve got it now.” Grace’s words piqued my interest. What was it that she had? But I was in no mood to ask her. The way I was feeling at the moment, I thought it best if she didn’t even see me. The last thing I wanted right now was to get into another argument with her. I ducked back into the doorway of the janitor’s closet, staying out of sight as they made their way to the stairs.
“I’m so excited for you. I’m already sick of seeing Adrien’s face and he’s only been here a week.” I could hear them as they started to descend the stairs.
Their voices were fading as they rounded the landing one floor beneath me. “Listen, I have to go pick something up. I’ll meet you in the dining hall in fifteen minutes, okay?”