by Vivian Lux
And then threw the tablet to the floor. “Take it,” I told Beau.
His nostrils flared slightly. “Gabe, I’m not gonna fucking confiscate it from you like you’re a bad little boy getting his toys taken away.” He snorted. “Fuck, I’m not Claire.” Then his eyes softened. “Just…be careful, okay?”
All at once my eyelids felt far too heavy to keep open anymore. “Take it,” I urged. It was easier to talk with my eyes closed, easier to tell the truth without seeing him react to what I was saying. “I… I can’t be careful, Beau. You know I don’t know how.”
His silence was more of a response than any words could have been.
“Take it,” I pleaded with my eyes still closed.
“I’ve got it,” he said.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
When I opened my eyes, Beau was no longer holding it. Whether he had shoved it up under his shirt, or quickly hidden it somewhere in the room, I had no idea. I didn’t want to know. He knew I needed it gone right then and there.
Of course he did. He was Beau. “Now what are you going to do with yourself?” he asked me.
I stared at the ceiling. What I wanted to do was have Everly come over and give me another sponge bath, only this time she’d get in with me. I licked my lips, knowing full well that wasn’t an answer Beau was going to want to hear and I was frustrated. “I dunno. Read a fucking book or something,” I hissed. My eyelids were heavy again. I just wanted to sleep until Everly came over.
“Mom’ll be happy to hear that,” Beau said.
For a second I thought he had read my mind, until I realized he was talking about me reading a book. “Oh god no, don’t tell her, she’s gonna come home from work with an armload of books,” I sighed. Beau was the type to sit there in a corner with a giant book in his lap, making frowny faces as he turned the page, but I’d never been able to sit still long enough for reading to work for me. “Oh god, and they’re all gonna be about World War Two, I bet.”
“Because you were interested in it.”
“For like three months. In fifth grade.”
Beau smiled. “Mom doesn’t let go of things easily.”
“Yeah, I know. She’s still working at the library even though she and dad could have retired five times over by now. Especially with what we all gave them.” A flicker of something crossed Beau’s face. “What?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Beau said, then kept talking. “You gave them a cut?”
“We all did,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “We talked about this way back when.”
“I know, and yeah, I gave them mine, and I’m pretty sure Jonah did his but…” he trailed off and I could see the internal fight. Loyalty to the family or loyalty to his twin.
Because I already knew what he was going to say. “Finn never gave his?” I asked, bristling.
Beau raised his hand to quiet me as he glanced at the door. “Mom and Dad don’t know.”
“How do they not…” I trailed off. “Oh.”
Beau looked sheepish.
“You covered it for him,” I sighed.
“It wasn’t a big deal.”
“What happened to his money?” I asked through clenched teeth. I still had most of my King Brothers money left in the bank and it wasn’t like I’d been living a life of Spartan austerity these past few years. “How the fuck did he blow through…”
“He’s gonna pay me back,” Beau interrupted, waving his hand. “And it’s not like I didn’t have it either. I can’t really think of a better use for my money than helping out my brother and my parents at the exact same time.”
I mimed retching noises. He rolled his eyes. “Look, it’s not like I didn’t have enough to go out and get some toys.”
“Toys. Now you’re talking my language,” I said. “What’d you get, an ATV? A jetski?”
“A fishing boat,” Beau said proudly.
“What the fuck?” I breathed.
But he ignored me. “I take it up to Ganagua Lake in the summer. It’s almost trout season too, so I have a few spots I want to hit. The creeks are all swollen with all this rain so it’s not even safe to go out there in waders. You’d need a boat.” His eyes got this faraway look. “Uncle Gid showed all his secret fishing places to me and Grandpa King showed them to him. Like a family secret. I’ll fish them someday with my kids.”
This was a side of my younger brother I’d never seen before. “You want kids?”
He grinned. “A whole pack of ‘em. Like us. Only smarter.” He narrowed his eyes critically at me. “And better looking.”
“They’re gonna have to depend on their mom’s genes for that, then.”
He eyed the heavens and then gave me the finger as he stood up. “I’ll take you out if you can promise not to be a gigantic prick about it.”
“Thanks,” I sighed. “I’m gonna need a new hobby soon enough.”
He looked at me like I had three heads. “Why a new one? Your guitars are over in Dad’s shed just gathering dust.”
I swallowed. “Yeah, maybe,” I said, trying to sound like I was thinking about it. But I wasn’t. Ever since Noelle, the music that used to ring through my head at top volume fell silent. It was like losing a limb and I had no idea how to explain its loss to my brother who would undoubtedly tell me to just pick it up again and ignore how wrong it felt. I looked up at him, hoping that my expression was one of complete sincerity. “I’ll do that, yeah.”
Beau nodded. “In the meantime I’ll have mom find you some books on the Battle of the Bulge.”
“Oh god,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose with my thumb and forefinger. I could hear Beau’s laughter ringing all the way down the stairs.
For a moment I closed my eyes in the silence he left behind, hoping for sleep to overtake me and rescue me from the restlessness that crawled under my skin. But after several long breaths I opened my eyes again. A nervous energy was coursing through me. I stood up carefully and hobbled to the window, then gazed out, earnestly scanning the trees, the omnipresent gray clouds, the rain-swollen creek like they were hiding something. I heard my pulse thudding in my temple and realized I was holding my breath and let it back out again.
She wasn’t coming today.
She had her boards.
I knew this.
But the prospect of a whole day spent without her hard-won smile, without her unexpected laugh, made the day seem even bleaker than the gray clouds could. I missed her.
I fucking missed her.
Glancing at my phone, I counted the hours until she came over again. And then called myself pathetic. And then decided I couldn’t get much more pathetic than a half-crippled shut-in standing by the window like a dog waiting for its master to return so why even bother caring? And then I gave myself the mental middle finger. I really was pathetic. I was even standing here imagining I could hear the sound of her terrible car starting, the coughing wheeze of an evil asthmatic, but that was stupid since there was no way I should recognize the sound of her car.
But I did. I was hearing it, and it didn’t sound right. I felt the back of my neck prickle and before I knew it, I was strapping on my boots.
Chapter Fourteen
Everly
Every morning for the past month I awoke with the same breathless nightmare. That somehow I’d gotten the day wrong and slept through my alarm on the day of my boards.
But it never happened, and today? Today I awoke before my alarm, jerking out of a half-sleep and sitting straight up in my bed with a smile of anticipation.
It was today.
It was today!
And I was ready.
I flew down the stairs, the silent house a kind of blessing to my racing heart. I’d barely slept last night. When my breathing had finally slowed enough to let sleep creep in around the edges of my consciousness, my brain had taken over and started drilling me on questions. I dreamed half-formed dreams where I paged through my review books, the words dancing around on the pages, the sentences changing
before I reached the end, and then jerked awake to check my phone alarm one more time.
I knew I must have fallen completely asleep at some point, because there had been a whole thing where it was Gabe King who was administering the exam, but then I snapped awake again before he took his shirt off to reveal that roadmap of scars.
I felt a flush, then shoved it from my mind. The last thing I could afford to be thinking about today was Gabe King.
I poured a cup of cold coffee left by my parents in the carafe and stuck it into the microwave. The seconds ticked down. My stomach roiled. I’d been prepping for this for four years and it was finally here. The misting rain hung in dreamlike curtains over the morning, adding to the sense that this wasn’t exactly real. It hardly seemed possible that something I’d been looking forward to for so long was finally about to come true. My life was quiet and ordinary enough that there wasn’t much I could say that about. I’d spent all those years crushing on Jonah and for what? He never noticed me. But he had put me in Gabe’s line of sight.
The thought made me smile as I leaned against the stove and stared out the window. Gabe was up there in the King house, but I wasn’t going to be seeing him today and for some reason that made me feel a tinge of melancholy. I wondered if it would be weird to go right over there after the boards were over. He’d probably want to hear how it all went. He didn’t seem to mind talking to me, no matter how awkward I got. In fact, he seemed to actually enjoy himself, which meant that I enjoyed it too. I leaned in further, looking up the hill to the King house. His bedroom was on the north-facing side, which meant I couldn’t see it, but that didn’t stop me from craning my neck to maybe catch a glimpse of him hobbling past a window, hopefully wearing his boots like a good boy…
When the microwave beeped, I nearly jumped out of my skin. I grimaced as I pulled the hot mug out, feeling slightly ridiculous. Like the microwave had caught me and was disappointed by my daydreaming on today of all days.
I pushed all thoughts of Gabe from my brain and resolutely marched out the door. In all the mental rehearsals I had for this day, the sun had always been shining out full-strength and warm with encouragement. Instead it was another gray day of rain. It was the ninth straight day of rain and there was some talk about dangerous levels in the creek.
But that wasn’t my concern right now. I got into The Grim Reaper and took a deep breath. “You and me today, kid,” I said with a chuckle, and reached out to give the dashboard a fond pat.
Then I turned the key.
He coughed and then sputtered into silence.
I licked my lips. A faint tremor ghosted through my hands, and then I took a deep breath and laughed. “Oh, we’re gonna be like that, are we?” I leaned back and cracked my knuckles. “Okay kid, you asked for it.”
I turned the key.
He coughed.
Sputtered.
Then the engine caught and he roared to life. “Ha!” I crowed, smacking the steering wheel with the flat of my palm. “That’s what I’m talking about!” I threw him into reverse and hit the gas.
He died.
For a moment he rolled silently until he ran out of momentum and ground to a halt, dead in the water.
Irritated, I threw on the E-brake and blew out an explosive sigh. The ghost of a tremor was back again, but if I gripped the steering wheel hard enough I didn’t have to feel it. I took another deep breath and looked at the dash, gazing at it like I could somehow peer into my car’s evil soul. “What the hell, Grim?” I asked him. “What is it? What did I do?”
There was no reply, of course, and thank heavens because then I’d know I really was cracking up. I sat for a moment, considering my next move. The engine was flooded, I could tell. I waited. The minutes ticked by and I tried to remind myself that I had plenty of time. I only needed fifteen minutes to get there. Add in another fifteen to find parking, walk in to the building, and take my seat and I was still a good twenty minutes early. I looked at the clock on my cell phone and breathed out and in as slowly as I could, trying to let my breath be the only thing I was concerned about. Forced meditation is still meditation, right?
After seven minutes I couldn’t stand it any longer. “Okay, fucker,” I told Grim. “Time to stop jerking me around like this.”
I breathed a silent prayer and started the engine.
He coughed.
I swore and turned the key again.
The engine caught. Quickly, without taking time to showboat, I threw him into reverse again, and we rolled down the driveway together. “Yeah,” I murmured quietly so he wouldn’t hear me. I needed to get out onto the road immediately and hit the gas before he could sputter out again. I slowed at the end of the driveway to hastily check over my shoulder before pulling out onto my normally quiet country road.
There, up on the hill, a delivery truck was starting to trundle its way down.
I rolled to a stop and threw Grim into neutral, revving the accelerator to keep him from stalling again. “Come on,” I begged the truck. It was too close for me to pull out now and the bridge was narrow enough that I wouldn’t be able to squeeze past.
“Come on!” I shouted at the top of my lungs.
The truck blew by, rocking Grim like a baby in the cradle.
“Great,” I said, baring my teeth in a determined smile. I backed out quickly and then threw Grim into drive before he got any bright ideas. I pressed the accelerator and started up the slight hill the truck had just come down. Five miles an hour. Ten miles an hour. The Kings’ house slid slowly past me on my left.
Grim coughed again.
I scowled at the dash, shooting him a death glare that I hoped would scare him straight. He’d never done that while I was actually driving before. Only when I was starting up. “Settle down, Grim,” I murmured. Fifteen miles an hour.
The whole car bucked like a horse in a rodeo. “What the—” I cried, throwing up my hands. Grim was jerking like a rocking horse. “Oh! No. No no no no no.” One by one, every indicator on the dashboard was lighting up, like the streetlights in town winking on one after another at dusk. “No no no no no.”
The engine fell silent and I slowly rolled backwards down the hill. Grim gave one last shudder.
And died for the last time.
Chapter Fifteen
Gabe
When I heard the engine cut out fully, I grabbed my crutches and hauled myself down the hallway as fast as I could. “Beau!” I shouted. “Beau, you still here?”
My brother was MIA. I felt a flutter of helpless outrage, an impotent anger at how fucking helpless I was right now. Before my accident, I was fast enough, strong enough, to be out the door and checking on her already. But now I had to deal with these crutches and these stupid fucking boots when I just wanted to see that my girl was okay.
My girl.
I paused to let those words float in front of my brain for a moment before I batted them aside. Regardless of how I felt about her, I still had no idea how she felt about me. In between those flashes of warmth that made my face hurt from smiling, she was cool, detached, and skeptical. Her single-minded focus on her schooling seemed to leave no room for any distractions, and I was fairly certain that was how she viewed me—as a distraction. If I showed up right now, who knew if she’d accept my help. There was always the risk that she’d slap me in the face for invading her space.
What can I say? I like taking risks.
I placed the crutches carefully as I hopped down the stairs. She’d kick my ass if she knew I was doing this without help and for some reason that made me all the more determined to go find her and show her. “See? I can come find your ass, stop being a pain in mine.”
There was no sound outside except the persistent patter of raindrops on the newly budded leaves. The rush of water in the creek was the loudest I had ever heard, loud enough even to drown out my ragged breath as I picked my way over the uneven terrain and down to the narrow bridge where I’d spotted her car. It sat there hulking like a shadow, the m
atte black exterior absorbing the light like a vehicular black hole. And next to it, standing stock still like she’d been frozen into place, was Everly.
She was slumped, fallen back against the side of the car, her face turned to the heavens in some kind of silent supplication. The rain was pattering relentlessly against her face, but she didn’t seem to notice. She might even have been asleep, here in the middle of the road. But her eyes snapped open when she saw me drawing near.
I opened my mouth to greet her, but any snarky comment I wanted to say fled when I looked into her eyes. Those pretty eyes of hers, the ones that showed everything she thought she was hiding, looked completely lost. She was staring at me, glaring even, but there was no focus to them. She looked like she’d lost something she knew she’d never find again. “Everly?” I asked and it was a question I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer to.
I expected her to burst into tears. I certainly thought she was about to by the way her eyes looked, opened wide and shining impossibly bright like that.
But she took a deep breath. She stumbled slightly—was she drunk?
And then I jumped because she started laughing. Full-on belly-laughing tinged with acute hysteria. I shuffled my crutches around to get closer to her and she stumbled again. I reflexively shot out my arm to catch her even though I was still shaky on my feet. She caught herself against it, bracing her feet and then slumping against the side of the car again in another fit of helpless, frightening laughter. “It died,” she managed to gasp.
“What? Who died?” I demanded.
”It died today.” She hiccuped and clapped her hand to her mouth, looking like she was about to vomit, then shook her head in wonder. “So many times it could have died,” she breathed in a soft, helpless voice utterly unlike the one I was used to hearing come from her mouth. “But it chose today. Today…”