Grace whistled under her breath. “Uh-oh.”
“Is he okay?” Quinn asked.
“He’s fine,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
I walked up the stairs slowly, the balloon dancing behind me. Brooks was in the bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed.
“This isn’t even my house,” he said. “I said it’d only be us. No parties. I promised.”
“They’re only saying hi.”
“Right.”
“We’re here for my birthday,” I said. “Grace is my best friend—you’re being rude to her, to everyone. They’re important to me.”
Brooks looked at his hands. “Tonight was for you and me,” he said. “Us.”
How could I tell him that I was nervous? That even after two months I still wasn’t ready? That we spent so much time alone, and I missed spending time with other people?
I kissed his head. “I’m going to say goodbye to them, okay?”
“Okay.”
Downstairs, Hayden stood—his arms stiff—and the rest sat on the couch.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Brooks had stuff planned. And, you know, he doesn’t like crowds—”
“Because four is a crowd,” Rich said.
“Four is kind of a crowd,” Quinn said. “Especially when you’re involved.”
Grace stood. “Don’t you dare apologize for him,” she said.
“I’m not,” I insisted, because I was apologizing for myself, that I was choosing him over them.
“Anyhow,” Grace said. “It’s okay, we were a surprise. And we’re late anyway. Hayden is chauffeuring us to a party so he can get back into the spirit of Safe Ride.” She smiled. “Sure you don’t want to ditch Brooks and come too?”
I looked up at the balloon. “I like quiet birthdays,” I said.
Grace hugged me. She whispered in my ear, “Tonight? Are you going to do it tonight?”
I didn’t want to let her go. “No.” I let her go. I backed away. “No way.”
She nodded and pulled back, “All right, okay. Well, call me, whatever the time, if you need to escape.”
I smiled too. “I won’t need to.”
Grace and Quinn ran out of the house for a pre-party sprint across the sand to the waves. Rich followed them behind, pleading to be let in on their track-speed fun. And then it was only Hayden and me, following them outside to the boardwalk. We stood in silence for a couple minutes. My feet were bare, and I distracted myself by rubbing my heel against the sandy asphalt.
Hayden took in an audible breath and said, “I offered to DD because I wanted to see you.”
“Oh.”
Quinn and Grace attempted cartwheels on the sand. Rich fell on his face.
“It should be noted that, in my opinion,” he said, “I think we’re close.”
I warmed. “Me too.”
He shuffled his feet. “I don’t like this. Leaving you here.”
I tugged on the balloon string, made it dance. “I’m stronger than you think.”
Hayden laughed. “I think you’re plenty strong.”
And I laughed too, clumsily, because I didn’t know what I meant—what being strong had to do with my sleeping in the same bed as Brooks. A wind blew, and Hayden raised his hand to my face, as if to brush the hair from my eyes, only to stuff it back in his pocket.
“I hope your birthday is sweet,” he said.
“Like the carrot cake you’re going to bake me?” I teased.
“Yes.” He grinned. “That sweet.” He looked back to the house. “Brooks rubs me the wrong way. I don’t like him. Can I say that? I don’t like this.”
I faltered. “My relationship?”
“Him. I don’t know. He’s intense.”
“His intensity—I love it,” I said. “I’ve never known anyone more passionate.”
“Passion doesn’t always equate to something good, Audrey.”
My throat throbbed. He didn’t know Brooks, didn’t know how he treated me, how he made me feel. And Hayden, he’d never cared about me, not like this.
“Brooks is gentler than he lets on, different when he’s not with a group of people.” I twisted the purple bracelet around my wrist. “I’m safest with him,” I said, the same thing I’d said to Grace, because it still felt true, even if Hayden’s gaze fell. “I want to be here.”
He bit his thumb, a shared habit with Grace. “Good, that’s good.” His dark curls fell over his glasses, and I thought he was going to hug me, and I thought maybe I should hug him, but neither of us made the move. “I’ll see you,” he said. “Okay?”
I nodded, confused by the tightness in my chest, the static of flutters. Hayden crossed the boardwalk to the border of the sand. He shouted that they had to go, that he didn’t have all night—he needed to get to his reading. And I went inside, locking the door behind me, pausing at the sight of Brooks in the kitchen. Waiting and watching, a nervous smile to greet me.
40
2:18 P.M.
I’m driving to the hospital and Brooks’s dad is calling me and can this day just please cut me a break?
“Audrey, it’s Luis,” he says.
I press on the brakes. “Oh,” I say. “Hi.”
I want to ask if something happened to Brooks, but it’s like my mouth is stuffed with dirty cotton. I focus on driving, and I try not to think, because I’m not going to think about what I heard Luis say last week.
“I need you to be honest with me,” Luis says, two notches too frantic—like father, like son. “I’m sure he’s told you—Brooks—I’m sure he’s told you all about Cameron.”
My stomach flips and the road spins. I pull off onto the shoulder. The GPS Robot Lady demands I take the on ramp for the I-5 N in a quarter of a mile, but I’m thinking of the burning grass and a beach I’ve never seen. I can smell the gasoline, and I can hear a boy’s scream. I’ve parked the truck. I’m resting my head on the wheel.
“Audrey?” Luis asks.
I can’t think about what I heard Luis say last week.
“Yeah,” I say. I choose my words carefully. “Brooks told me all about Cameron.”
“With all that’s happened,” he says, “I had to call.”
The tangle of speech, the chopped sentences. Luis talks like Brooks talks when Brooks isn’t okay. He sounds like how Brooks sounded all September. Cars whip past, each one a muffled roar, a brief gust that resounds through my truck. I clock the cars with my eyes. Seventy-seven mph. Eighty-four mph. Sixty-seven mph. Eighty-eight mph. Ninety-one mph. Seventy-three mph. Ninety-nine mph. The speed limit is sixty-five. I’ve been on the side of the road for approximately 174 seconds.
“Have you heard anything from him?” I ask. “Is he okay?”
“Audrey,” Luis says, so smooth now, so slow, a recording voice. “Do you have any reason to think Brooks started the fire?”
I hurdle over the bench and push at the passenger door. I’m not thinking right now. I’m clammy and hot and shivering. I get out of the car and fall into the yellow weeds with my head between my knees, pressing the Zippo into my thigh.
“Audrey?”
“I don’t understand,” I say.
“Did Brooks start this fire?”
“Why would you even ask me that?” I say.
Brooks asked me the same question Thursday night. Why would you even ask me that?
Luis is laughing. No, Luis is crying, though it almost sounds like laughing. “Maybe I made a mistake. Supporting him with this whole firefighting deal. Guilt—hanging around for so long, blamed for your brother’s death. I don’t know if he’ll ever get past it.”
It’s like he’s dropped me into the Pacific in December and I’m trying to swim, the ocean filling my lungs.
“He was only a boy,” Luis is saying. “Just a kid. Just an idiot kid.”
“A boy,” I echo, because it’s confirmation. Just boys. Just idiot kids. It doesn’t fit. Maybe it could. Because I still see a boy on a beach, drenching himself in gasoline. I mean, Dad calls me a kid all the time and I’m sixteen. How’s my girl, he says, good morning, kid, he says.
“Audrey,” Luis says.
I almost scream shut up. I almost scream, because I wish he’d stop saying my name that way, as if we’re on the same team. He knows the facts. I know the lies. Brooks lied and he lied and he fucking lied.
“I just want to know that my son is okay,” Luis says. “I need him to be okay. My boy.”
I hold my hand against the speaker of my phone. Inhale. Exhale. I wish I were swimming. I wish Luis had tossed me into the ocean. I’m wishing I were anywhere but here—illegally parked on the side of the Toll Road, my ass in the dirt for the billionth time today, on the phone with my boyfriend’s dad who is crying and implying that my boyfriend was blamed for his brother’s death.
“Did Brooks start this?” Luis asks again.
Guilt like that.
It takes you places.
And in Balboa, the night I turned sixteen, what did Brooks tell me?
That I don’t know guilt. That I don’t know what guilt can do. I didn’t really know what he was talking about then. I didn’t have a clue.
“No.” My words taste like the ash suspended even here, some fifteen miles away from the flames. My words taste like lies, like the way Brooks’s voice sounded in mid-July. “Brooks would never. Fighting fire,” I say. “That’s his passion.”
Luis is breathing into the speaker and I’m staring up at the slouched eucalyptus trees that border the Toll Road, the 133. The whole row is yellowing. Trees usually a rich olive green, native to Australia, considered resilient to California’s severity because they suck up all the water, hog it for themselves, Brooks told me—no—Brooks notified me of the eucalyptus’s selfishness. I don’t care. The eucalyptus is mine.
Selfish like me.
“I’m so grateful, Audrey,” Luis now says. “I’m so grateful that he has you.”
“I have to go.” And I don’t wait for his response, his goodbye. I end the call and drop my phone and hang my head between my knees and breathe through my nose.
I read once that it helps if you stick out your tongue, so I stick out my tongue. It doesn’t help. I thought I was okay. I thought I was done, but I’m not done. I heave up water and breakfast and I want to cry but I can’t cry, because I can no longer pretend and I just lied to a crying dad, a dad who only asked for honesty.
Guilt like that.
It takes you places.
I just lied for the last time today.
41
Why
The morning before I turned sixteen, Brooks bought two cupcakes, and that night in the Balboa beach house, my friends gone—Brooks acting as if my friends had never even been there at all—he lit a candle and sang. He was surprisingly on key. I blew out the flame.
Sitting on the white kitchen stool at the high counter, I tried to eat the chocolate cupcake. It was too rich, too heavy. My legs shook. The house was so empty without Grace and the others. The balloon now tied to a chair, blowing limply in the breeze. I thought he’d make a comment about Hayden, ask about him and me, but he didn’t. The stool was cold through my jeans, and Brooks was too quiet and I was too quiet. I wished I were home, and I nudged the plate aside, said, I’m not hungry. I was already so full from the night.
Brooks threw the chocolate cupcake into the sink.
“You’re angry,” I said.
He ran his hands through his hair, as if trying to shake out the sand from the beach. “I’m sorry it’s not carrot cake.”
“That’s not fair,” I said.
Brooks leaned against the counter. “I know,” he said, soft but slow. He lifted his head and met my eyes, “I love you,” he said. “God, do I love that I can say that out loud now.” He held my hand like I was made of glass. “I love you.”
I kissed him in reply.
* * *
* * *
Upstairs in Brooks’s coworker’s parents’ master bed, I was a child in gym shorts and Dad’s old In-N-Out shirt. Brooks’s cell phone rested on the bedside table. He clutched me against his bare chest. I was lying on pins, so acutely aware of every inch of my skin.
My shirt drooped off my shoulder, and he kissed my spare freckles. His finger ran around my neck, trailing down my collarbones, my shoulder blades.
“Happy birthday,” he said.
I rolled over to face him. “I can only kiss you.”
He laughed as if we weren’t alone, as if he were worried my parents might hear. “Still? You’re serious?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I am.”
“I thought tonight—your birthday—” There was a strain in his voice, an annoyance he couldn’t tamp down.
I didn’t know what to say. “I’m still me,” I said, though I wasn’t entirely sure what that meant. “I’m not ready.”
“You’re safe with me,” he said. “You know that, right?”
Waves rolled outside. The new school year was less than two weeks away, and we were in the fold of unflinchingly hot days, no breeze, still time left before the dry Santa Ana winds. Yet even with his skin warm against mine, I felt as cold as ice. He tugged on my shirt, where the flesh on my hips is swollen, bones replaced with wet sand.
“I know I’m safe,” I said, because that’s why I was still there, why I hadn’t left with Hayden and Grace, because I believed I was safe. But to peel off the fabric, to be so close, I didn’t know how. “I’m just not ready,” I said, because it was the truth, the simplest way to articulate my muddle of a mind. “Is that not enough?”
His left eye lost a tear, and he nodded but asked, “What are you waiting for?”
And I said, “To feel as comfortable with myself as I do with you.”
He kissed my forehead, cocooned me into his arms, and we slept.
* * *
* * *
But that August night in Balboa, I woke to the smell of sulfur and burnt wood. The clock read 2:49 A.M. Brooks sat on the hardwood floor with a box of matches, striking one after another.
I lifted myself up on my elbows. “What are you doing?”
His hair veiled his face, but I could see his arms, his knees, his hands—see how he let the matches taste his skin. “How do you think it feels to know I’m not enough to make you happy?”
Rage bit my chest, so foreign and sudden. Half-asleep, I said, “You can’t guilt me into sleeping with you.” A line I’d heard in a movie, I must have, because my voice didn’t sound like me, the accusation was a surprise.
Brooks just laughed. “Shit. You don’t know guilt.”
“That’s not fair,” I said. “I do.”
When he spoke again, his voice was quiet. “I know you haven’t lost Maya to fire,” he said. “And I know you can’t understand the guilt that would come from that.”
It hit me. “This is about Cameron.”
He laughed again. “You won’t ever get it,” he said. “What guilt can do, real guilt.”
The room was hot. My skin seared. I haven’t lost a sibling, but I almost did. I haven’t lost a sibling to fire, but guilt—I know guilt. I know what guilt can do.
But the night I turned sixteen, I didn’t tell Brooks this. He didn’t need to hear it. He didn’t need to hear what a terrible sister I am when he no longer had the chance to be a terrible brother. He needed me to fill the holes his brother’s death had left.
He moved from the floor to the edge of the bed. “Audie,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I just miss him. I miss him so bad.” He pressed his cheek to mine, and the night stood still. “I love you,” he said, the words still new.
He wasn’t a boy with plans to save the world, prepared to fi
ght fires and protect me from earthquakes. He wasn’t the boy who taught me the beauty of a quiet night outside, the necessity for passion. He was a boy with grief tacked on to his shoulders and scars on his wrists and hands. A boy playing with matches on the floor, crying for what he couldn’t have, worn down.
I reached for him, circling my arms around his back, resting my head on his shoulder. We fell back on the bed, curled into each other. I tried to remember how we’d been in June and July, because it hadn’t been this. This was a new Brooks. It hurt to breathe, and I wondered if this was what it was like to have a panic attack: a balloon in my chest, filling too fast, cards shuffling in my head.
“I’m sorry too,” I said, because I wanted to hear him say it was okay, but he didn’t.
And I am sorry. I’m sorry I don’t know how to make myself better, and I’m sorry I couldn’t save Brooks. Instead of soothing the embers, I offered more kindling. I’m sorry, because if I’d listened closer, if I’d acted better, if I hadn’t interrogated, if I’d used my phone—
I know guilt. I now know what guilt can do.
42
2:24 P.M.
The ground is warm. I’ve wasted six minutes. I need to drive away, before a cop or a Good Samaritan shows up to help and sees me pasty and shaking and asks me what happened. Because I’ll tell them, I swear, right now, I’d tell anyone who asked. Say it all. I’d tell them the truth. The words would slip out from my mouth, and that would be it. That would be the end.
I flick the Zippo and burn a dry blade of grass. It smolders and curls in on itself so fast.
Call me back, Luis. Let me tell you a story in exchange for a story, the tale of Brooks and Audrey for the tale of Brooks and Cameron. Give me another chance. Let’s have a chat.
I’m tapping on my phone, but I’m not calling Luis. Let him have some peace for a few more hours. Let him breathe, take a nap, drink a beer. Whatever. My phone is in my hands, and I’m tapping the screen, but I’m not calling Luis because I’m calling his son.
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