“Okay,” May finally said, “I’ll give her another half hour. Then I guess we can drive around and look. She’s probably over at Dave or Jamie’s or something….”
A car approached the house. It pulled in behind Pete’s Cutlass, under the heavy shadow of the Starks’ oak tree. May could see that there was writing on the door and sirens on the roof. A large man in a dark uniform got out of the front seat.
“No,” May said, almost to herself. “There’s no way….”
Palmer shot off in the direction of the car. May and Pete followed, almost cautiously. With every step the scene came into clearer focus, and May’s fears were confirmed. The car was a police cruiser, and Brooks was being unloaded from the backseat. She had no handcuffs on. Her makeup was smeared.
A husky officer was standing by the door, watching May and Pete approach and basically ignoring Palmer.
“Are you her brother?” he asked Pete.
“No.” Pete shook his head. “I’m—”
“I’m her sister,” May offered, pulling herself up straight. “What’s going on?”
“Your mother is on her way,” he said. “Is your father home?”
“No. He’s…no. Not home.”
“She’s been processed,” the officer went on. “Will you both be here until your mom gets home?”
By both he seemed to be indicating May and Pete.
“Yes.” May nodded. “I will….”
The officer looked to Pete.
“Sure,” Pete said. “I’ll be here.”
“All right. Here are your forms.” The officer passed Brooks a number of pink and white papers. “Call that number on Monday morning.”
Brooks took the papers silently.
“Where’s the car?” May managed to ask. “Our car?”
“It’s at the police lot,” the officer explained. “One of your parents can get it out tomorrow. I circled the address on that yellow sheet there.”
“Right,” May said.
“Wait here,” he said to Brooks. He walked back around and got in his car, leaving the door hanging open. He spent a few minutes talking into his radio. All four of them stood silently, listening to the muffled codes and chatter from inside the car. Brooks stared at the ground. Then the officer climbed out and leaned over the roof.
“We’re good,” he said. “You’ll stay here, Brooks, with your sister and—”
The “and” was Pete. Palmer was still invisible.
“Okay,” Brooks said.
“Remember what I told you.”
“I remember.”
“Okay.”
Without another word, he got back in his car and pulled away.
“What was that?” May asked, even though she felt like she probably already understood.
“I’m going in,” Brooks said.
“It’s a DUI.” May sighed. “Isn’t it?”
“I’m going in,” Brooks repeated, heading toward the house. Palmer trailed along behind her.
When they were gone, May looked around and saw curtains being drawn back discreetly in the house across the street. The Stark boys were standing in their screen door, unabashedly staring. Once again, she realized, the Golds were the neighborhood show. She walked over to Pete’s car and slid down the side to the ground, leaning against the tire, where she couldn’t be seen. Pete came over and stood with her, pushing his hands deep into the pockets of his long army green shorts.
“It had to be a DUI,” May said. “She gets that look when she’s drunk. Kind of glassy.”
“Is she drunk a lot?”
“A couple of nights a week.”
“What do you mean by a couple of nights a week?”
“Two, three. Maybe more.”
“Does she have some kind of problem?”
May stared at Pete as if she didn’t understand the question. Asking her if Brooks had a problem was kind of like asking her if rain was wet.
“Does your mom know?”
“I don’t think so,” May said. “Brooks leaves after she goes to work.”
“Did you ever tell her?”
“My mom’s got enough problems,” May said, picking up a twig and snapping it into several small pieces. “What am I supposed to do? She hates working nights as it is. Do I tell her that Brooks gets wasted all the time and that Palmer stays up all night watching TV? Great. She can feel even worse.”
“She’s going to know now.”
“This is just what Brooks is like,” May said, her exasperation growing. “Everybody knows it. You know it. My mom knows it, but she doesn’t want to deal with it. Besides, no one yells at Brooks. Probably not even this time.”
May listened to the cicadas chirp for a moment and stared at the yawning space in the garage, the spot where the car had been.
“I must sound pathetic,” she said.
“What?”
“It’s just that this is it. This is my life. I go to school, and I go to work. Someone has to be the good one, you know? I’m the good one. Which pretty much means I’m the boring one. No boyfriend. No life. Nothing.”
She exhaled deeply and turned to look at him. She noticed that his nose was just slightly crooked. It had been broken twice when he was younger—once when he’d played Superman and tried to fly down the steps and again when he’d ridden a shopping cart through the grocery store parking lot like a skateboard. He had a personal understanding of stupid behavior and its consequences.
“I’m fine with it,” she continued. “It sounds really sad now, I know, but I have a plan. College. I can do fun stuff in college, when I don’t live here. I just have to get in and get a scholarship.”
“So you can’t have fun now?” he asked.
“I have fun,” May clarified. “I just don’t have as much fun as some other people, like Brooks. And Palm’s happy as long as she’s playing softball. She doesn’t even notice anything else.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Palm always noticed things. She’s really aware of stuff—what people are doing.”
“Well, yeah. She listens in on conversations when you don’t want her to. But she’s still a lot like Brooks. She’s clueless. Like she’ll spill her soda everywhere and just stare at it. It doesn’t occur to her to wipe it up. Things don’t occur to my sisters because it was always different with them. My dad would yell at me for taking too long in the bathroom, but if Brooks burned the house down, that would be okay. He’d probably get some marshmallows or something. Everything she did was great as far as he was concerned. Brooks was like the son he never had.”
As she was speaking, May felt herself getting angrier and angrier. The Firebird’s absence was starting to give her an actual ache. She pulled her knees tight into her chest. It was a minute or two before she noticed that Pete was holding her hand. It wasn’t a dramatic gesture. He was sitting cross-legged, leaning forward on his elbows, looking at her. It took her another minute still to realize that she didn’t mind and that it actually made her feel a bit better. She didn’t, however, want to call attention to the fact, so she just went on as if she was unaware of it.
“Anyway,” she said, “I just wanted you to know that I’m consciously pathetic. It’s all part of my plan. My escape-to-college plan.”
“You’re not pathetic,” Pete said, somewhat unexpectedly. May didn’t know what to say to that. A silence settled over them for a few minutes.
“I’m sorry you had to be here for this,” she said. “Sorry for the drama.”
She felt his grip on her hand tighten slightly.
“What is this processing?” she said. “‘She’s been processed.’ I guess that’s police-speak, but what the hell does it mean? She’s not cheese.”
May heard a car spinning around the corner. They both looked up and saw the minivan racing toward them. She casually took her hand from Pete’s, as if sitting in the driveway holding hands was something she did every day, then rubbed her face and got up.
“Here we go,” she said.
&nb
sp; “I guess I should leave.”
Before Pete could make his getaway, however, the minivan screeched to a stop in front of the house. May’s mom, clad in pink scrubs, raced across the lawn. She went right to the opening of the empty garage, looking as confused as May had been. Pete froze in his tracks, looking unsure about his next move.
“We can get the car in the morning, Mom,” May said quietly. “And she’s been processed or whatever.”
Her mother didn’t answer—not in English, anyway. Whenever May’s mom got really mad, she started speaking in rapid-fire Dutch to herself. She never told anyone what she was saying, but May was pretty sure that it was some seriously unrepeatable, melt-the-paint-off-the-walls swearing. The Dutch was flying freely now, all j’s and hocking sounds.
Pete backed up a few feet and gave May an I’m-going-to-go nod.
“Pete.” May’s mom finally noticed that Pete had been there the whole time. “This is…”
She shook her head and paced in the driveway.
“What happened?” May asked cautiously. “What was she arrested for?”
Before she could answer, Palmer came down and joined the group.
“Brooks is in her room,” she reported. “I think she’s still pretty drunk.”
With the Dutch still trailing from her lips, their mother headed inside with a determined stride.
“You’re still here,” Palmer said, staring at Pete.
“I was leaving.” He walked around to the driver’s side of his car. He gave May another nod, and she acknowledged this with a nod of her own. Palmer observed this silent exchange, then watched as Pete drove away.
“What were you guys doing?” Palmer asked, cocking her head like a little kid.
“Talking.”
“About what?”
“What do you think?”
“You guys were holding hands.”
May felt her face flush.
“God, Palm,” she said, heading for the door. “What’s with you?”
“Well, you were,” Palmer replied to her sister’s retreating figure.
When May had gone inside, Palmer stood for a minute on the lawn and looked up at the house, wondering why all activity always seemed to stop whenever she came near.
9
Brooks’s sentencing took place late on Tuesday afternoon, in the middle of a torrential downpour. She sat in the court, carefully dressed in a turtleneck (May’s) and a pair of khakis. The room, to her surprise, was just a small, plain space in the middle of a huge office building. It had no windows, and everything—the walls, the judge’s bench, the seats—was made of the same dark wood. No imposing columns or marble, no paintings. Her mother sat next to her, stony faced.
The memory from the bedroom still stung her, even now, as she faced the bench. She could still see their reflection in the dark television—the three of them. Dave rolling over so easily, Jamie so willingly. The last two days at school Dave had been amazingly evasive. He didn’t even show up to study hall. Every time Brooks saw Jamie, she had somewhere to be, immediately. She’d never had much to say to Fred, and the rest of Dave’s friends were strangers to her. So she was alone.
A bailiff came in and ordered them all to rise.
The judge walked into the room, and then they all sat down. She took a few moments to shuffle through some papers in front of her.
“Brooke…,” the judge read. “No. Brooks? Is it Brooks, with an s on the end? Is this right?”
The stenographer paused. Brooks and her mother nodded.
“Brooks Gold,” she repeated.
Brooks steeled herself, then walked to the small podium that the bailiff pointed her to.
The process took little time. Charges were read. When asked, she pled guilty to underage drinking and driving under the influence, as the family attorney had advised her to do. She hadn’t thought you were just supposed to plead guilty. On television everyone always fought or entered some crazy reason that all the evidence has to be thrown out. But Brooks had nothing to say in her own defense. She’d been speeding. They’d done a Breathalyzer. She was underage. End of story.
The judge was not going to care that she’d just seen her boyfriend cheat on her from two feet away—with her best friend. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t hurt anyone or that she’d just wanted to take the Firebird to get something to drink. That it had been hard to take the Firebird, but she’d done it. She’d liberated it. Now anyone could drive it. May had even taken it for a test run to the store with her mom.
Nope. The state of Pennsylvania did not care about any of that.
Her license was immediately revoked for the year. She was remanded to a counselor who would evaluate her substance abuse. She would be referred for treatment. She was fined three hundred dollars. She was directed to check in with the court clerk on her way out.
Brooks had known this was coming; the lawyer had advised her that this was the likely sentence. It meant no driving until November, so the summer was shot. All the money she’d earn at the pool would pay for the fine and the treatment. She could deal with that, but Dave and Jamie…
The judge banged her gavel. At least that seemed authentic and final.
May watched the rain that flooded the parking lot outside of Presto.
“So I was on top of him, right, and then we heard the door open….” Nell paused. “Do you know how Pete’s house is laid out?”
May nodded, defeated.
“Okay, so we hear his parents, and they’re coming up the stairs. Then we remembered that I’d hung my shirt on the doorknob before we shut the door, so my shirt is like hanging in the hallway, like a flag….”
For the last half hour Nell had been pouring out every clinical detail of the events of the previous night. Apparently quite a bit had happened since the conversation she’d had with Pete on Saturday, during which he hadn’t even seemed sure that he’d see Nell again. Whatever pet theories Linda had had about Pete holding out for his one true love…they were out the window. Pete was waiting for nothing.
May didn’t particularly need this news right now. For three days she’d been listening to the wailing and crying and slamming doors that had echoed through the house since Brooks’s arrest. In the last two days she’d been dragged through her German, history, and trig finals and had finished her English paper on three female British novelists. She still had to finish getting ready for the most terrifying exam of all: the biology exam, which she would be taking in the morning. She’d barely gotten any sleep. And now she knew the unabridged biblical truth about Nell and Pete’s relationship.
In short, she was in hell.
“So Pete completely freaks out. He jumps out of bed and puts his boxers on….”
Sheets of rain battered the windows. May wanted to run out into the storm, swinging something large and metallic over her head until the lightning got her and frizzled up her brain, wiping all of this information away forever.
“…and jumps for the door and just manages to grab the shirt. It was hilarious. Can you imagine his mom catching us like that?”
“No,” May answered honestly.
“It’s good that you’re so cool about this,” Nell said. “I mean, it bothers some people to hear about their friends dating. Some people get so weirded out.”
“It’s fine,” May said as she watched the pansies in the flower box outside getting crushed by the torrent. “Why would it bother me?”
Later that night May bunched herself into a corner of her bed and tried to imprint the following sentence into her head: The Krebs cycle, also known as the citric acid or the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle, is the second of three steps involved in carbohydrate catabolism.
“He said he’d call when he could, but it’s been three days…,” Brooks was saying.
For the past year Brooks had more or less shut May out of her personal business. She had chosen this moment to break her silence, as her exams weren’t for another week—not that May was expecting her to do much studying t
hen, either. She had stationed herself at the foot of May’s bed and had been talking nonstop for the last fifteen minutes.
The Krebs cycle, also known as the Dave-has-not-called cycle, is the second of three steps involved in my going insane if she doesn’t shut up. Oh my God…
“Three days,” Brooks went on, rocking back and forth slightly. “What does that mean? Three days? What do you think I should do?”
“I don’t know,” May said, keeping her eyes trained on the page. “Call him, I guess.”
“You think I should?”
“Um, yeah. Sure.”
“It’s that thing with Jamie,” Brooks mumbled, chomping at her nails.
“What?” May asked.
“I didn’t tell you about that.”
May gripped the edge of her book. One more tangent and she would definitely go down a full grade.
“Brooks,” she said with a sigh, “I do care. I really do. But do you see this?” She held up the book. “I am going to be up all night. I have an exam at nine in the morning. Could we maybe talk tomorrow?”
Brooks looked shocked, as if she’d just been slapped.
“God, you’re so selfish.”
“I’m selfish?” May shook her head. “You didn’t just say that.”
Brooks slid off the bed without comment and stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind her.
When May emerged from her room two hours later, she saw Brooks sitting on her bed, listening to her CD player and staring at the wall. (Brooks had blue-and-white-striped wallpaper, which, though much cooler than May’s pink ponyland paper, gave her walls the unfortunate appearance of bars on a jail cell.) Brooks looked up as she passed, and May felt obligated to stick her head in.
“Did you call him?” May asked after Brooks slipped off her headphones.
The Key to the Golden Firebird Page 13