by Cora Brent
What have I done to myself? What am I doing?
I didn’t hear a sound. Or see a movement. There was no reason to look up but when I did there was an outline of a person bathed in the light from my bedroom window. He was standing on his side of the property line, smoking a cigarette. He looked just like his brother and for a split second my heart seized.
It wasn’t Conway though. It was Stone.
My desk lamp was a sixty watt bulb, almost a spot light in the darkness. He had to have seen. He would shake his head with revulsion and walk away. He would tell his brother that I was a whacked out nutcase who mutilated herself. He would casually lay bare my secret shame.
In a panic, I dropped the scissors and took a clumsy leap to the window. I needed to shut it. Somehow I figured if I could only block Stone Gentry out within the next few seconds then it would undo what he had seen.
The frame often stuck and I wasn’t strong. I’ve heard that times of distress can uncover a magical strength but it was always the opposite for me. I heard my own gasping curses as my noodle-like arms fumbled with the window. Underneath that was the roaring in my head.
“Erin.”
He moved absurdly fast, a stealth shadow in the night. He was already at the window.
“Erin.”
He reached a hand out and grabbed my wrist as I yanked on the window frame.
“Stop,” he ordered.
I wilted. I stopped. I slid down to the floor and tucked my knees up to my chest like a little girl. Maybe Stone wasn’t heartless. Maybe if I begged the right away he would keep this to himself.
“Don’t tell him,” I choked out. “Please.”
I heard his thick exhale, either pity or exasperation. “Come outside,” he said, rather gently, and extended a hand to help me through the window.
I felt better once I was out of my room and covered by the darkness. Along the side of my house was the cracked remnant of an old paver path that had been there since before my parents bought the house. Stone sat down and waited silently for me to join him.
He was facing away, looking at the empty street. “Why were you trying to do?” he asked softly.
My face burned with humiliation. How could I explain the weird mechanics of my mind to the rough and tumble Stone Gentry? I couldn’t even really explain it to myself.
“I’m not like my mother,” I said defiantly.
“I didn’t say you were.”
“I mean, I wasn’t trying to kill myself or anything.”
He lit another cigarette. “Okay.”
I hugged my knees to my chest again. Stone continued to stare at the street and let his cigarette burn without putting it to his lips.
When he didn’t say anything for a moment I relaxed my knees, tucking them into a more comfortable position. ‘Crisscross applesauce’ was what the teachers called it in elementary school.
Then, in halting words that sounded inadequate even to me, I tried to explain how sometimes I felt like running in seventy directions at once. My head would become too cluttered to deal with all the noise and I just needed to release some of the pain before I choked on it. And despite the vague shame, for a few minutes after I felt the sting of the blade I always felt better.
Stone listened silently. When I was done talking he ground his cigarette underneath his shoe. “Con keeps telling me I need to quit,” he said wryly. “It’s a bad habit that won’t ever do me any good.”
“Con’s right.”
“He doesn’t know, does he? He doesn’t know about the ah…”
“Cutting,” I finished for him. “You might as well say it. No, I’ve managed to keep him from finding out and if he’s ever suspected he’s never said so.” I almost didn’t dare ask the next question. “Are you going to tell him?”
“You should get help, Erin.”
“I know. That’s what Roe says. But like I told her, I don’t really need to do it. And I wouldn’t really hurt myself. I can stop anytime I want.”
“Are you sure?”
“No.”
Stone opened his pack of cigarettes. At first I couldn’t tell what he was doing but then realized that he was extracting them one at a time and breaking them in half. He then stuffed the ruined pieces back into the package.
“I won’t tell him,” he finally said.
Maybe I should have felt guilty for asking Stone to keep an important secret from his only brother but all I felt was a wave of gratitude. I just couldn’t handle it, the look of hurt and bewilderment in Conway’s face when he realized I was more messed up than he ever guessed. So as cowardly as it might be, I would gladly take Stone’s help in keeping it quiet until I found a better way to deal with the problem. This time I knew I had to deal with it. Despite my bravado I couldn’t solve this on my own. I’d already tried.
“Thank you,” I breathed weakly.
I expected Stone would just make some embarrassed exit and go about his night but instead he hung around and talked for a while about things like his love of the desert and how he and Conway planned on hiking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon someday. The wind was picking up and made it tough to hear his words at times but I understood he was just going on and on to make me feel a little better. I didn’t say much and he didn’t seem to expect me to, which was nice. It was nice to just sit there and listen without being required to speak.
Eventually I started yawning but as I got to my feet and waved good night to Stone I felt more peaceful than I had in a while. There were a lot of people in my life who I counted as acquaintances, but other than Roe and Con, none of them I really thought of as friends. As I climbed carefully through my bedroom window I realized that Stone had shown me more friendship than I ever thought him capable of. I was glad to have another friend.
Tomorrow I would keep my promises to Roe and to Stone. And to myself. If I couldn’t stop this self-destructive addiction on my own then I’d get help. But tonight I just need to sleep. Everything would be better tomorrow.
CHAPTER TWELVE
CONWAY
Stone always snored like a motherfucker. Sometimes smacking him in the face with a pillow would jolt him into changing positions, snuffing out the noise.
I’d slept like shit last night, although when I heard him come in I pretended to be sound asleep already. I sensed that he was standing over me and having some deep thoughts (or guilt) but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of opening an eye. Of course when I finally dozed off he started making as much racket as a saw mill as if even his subconscious was hell bent on taunting me.
Instead of hitting him with a bag of feathers I walked calmly over to his bed, grabbed the far side of the rumpled quilt he was sleeping on top of, and yanked blankets, brother and all to the floor. Stone landed with a thud and began flailing around while sputtering seventy creative variations of the word ‘fuck’.
I stepped over him on my way to the shower. I took my time in there and let the hot water continue to run even after I was done. By the time I was dressed and spitting toothpaste into the sink the room looked like a sauna.
Stone was waiting for me when I got back. I expected it so I kept my elbows out, ready to throw some weight around, but he only sat on the edge of the bed, glaring balefully and complaining, “What the fuck?”
My Carson’s Garage shirt was damp and dirty but I threw it on anyway. I was scheduled to work all day but a pristine appearance wasn’t exactly part of the corporate culture over there.
“Conway!” Stone bellowed.
“What?”
“What do you mean what? What crawled up your ass and died overnight?”
I tucked my shirt in even though Stone always laughed that I looked like an old snowbird when I did. Whenever I had briefly lapsed into sleep last night I’d been haunted by muddled nightmares. In one of them my mother and Erin were skipping arm in arm on the far side of a deep canal while laughing “You can’t play!” in teasing unison. In another I was in a deep, dark place and shouting up at the light.
My brother appeared and stood there for a somber moment, looking down. Then Benton Gentry showed up with a wide length of plywood and covered the hole, trapping me in the darkness. There was one more. It was vague, just a passing image, not even a whole dream unto itself. But it was the most vivid of all. Erin, wearing Kasey Kean’s American flag bikini, was straddling Stone on his bed as they kissed, ignoring my screams of anguish from across the room.
“What’s wrong?” my brother asked and now his voice sounded strange. Less furious, more worried.
I looked at him. Stonewall Gentry, named for some reckless, wild great uncle who died before we were born. There’d never been a day that I was alive where he wasn’t my brother. And even though he’d had ten Conway-free months before I came along, I knew it was impossible for him to remember them. We’d always shared a home, a family, even a bedroom. We’d always been together.
“What’d you do last night?” I blurted out.
And there it was. Just for a split second. A flicker of something in his blue eyes before he looked away. Stone didn’t feel guilty about much so it wasn’t too often that a day came along where he couldn’t look me in the eye.
“Hung out at the bridge, got sucked off and came home.”
“That’s it?”
Slowly his eyes returned to my face. This time he was utterly impassive. “That’s it.”
“And you wouldn’t lie to your brother.”
Stone leaned back a few inches, like he needed a little bit of distance in order to see me better. His eyes narrowed. “What are you getting at, Con?”
“Not a thing. Just wondering when I missed the news that you and my girlfriend are now best buddies. Yeah, that’s right. I saw you guys all cozy and conversational out there. Not the first time in the last few weeks I’ve caught the two of you looking awful fucking close all of a sudden. So tell me brother, just who belonged to the pair of lips that sucked your dick last night?”
He was angry. His face was red and his hands were clenched. But that wasn’t what was sinking my heart. If there hadn’t been a kernel of truth to those words then he would have jumped up in a fury and tackled me before I finished talking.
“Goddammit Conway, it wasn’t like that. We were just-“
“Just what?”
“Just talking for fuck’s sake.”
“Bullshit. You spend as much time listening to what any girl has to say as you spend cleaning the toilet.”
He stood up then. I thought there was half a chance he was going to take a swing at me but he merely crossed his arms and glared. “You don’t think I would touch your girlfriend. There’s no fucking way you can think that. Conway, I could have an ice pick to my balls and I still wouldn’t take a step in that direction. Never!”
I almost wavered. But then I flashed back to last night’s feelings of despair.
There’s nothing worse than what you come from.
In my lowest moment, when I’d just been fed a heaping plate of sordid surprises from my own mother, I stumbled through the darkness looking for comfort. The only thing I found was my brother and my girlfriend huddled together, talking earnestly about something that obviously didn’t include me. It wasn’t the kind of visual trauma that included naked skin and entwined limbs, but at that moment it was just about the loneliest thing I could have faced.
“Conway?” Stone asked and there was a note of pleading in his voice.
I wanted to hit him so badly. “So you were talking. I bet you guys had a lot to discuss one on one late at night. So were you discussing politics? Shakespeare? Enlighten me.”
He shook his head and looked miserable. “No. It wasn’t anything important. We talked about you, about school.”
“You hate school.”
He frowned. He reached for the pack of cigarettes sitting on the nightstand, but when he removed one it was broken. Stone shook his head ruefully and tossed the pack in the garbage before sighing. “I swear, there wasn’t anything weird going on. You’re just going to have to take my word for it.”
I pushed my wallet in my back pocket. “I’ve got to get to work.”
“Con.”
“No. Fuck you, Stone. Let me know when the truth feels like coming out of your mouth.”
He threw something at the door after I slammed it. Good. Let him be pissed. I was tired of being the only one who was pissed off.
I only stopped in the kitchen to grab whatever could stand in as breakfast. My mother was pacing around in there with the phone stuck to her ear and lots of “Oh my gods” coming out of her mouth. But she said it in a way that I knew she was more amused than bothered about whatever the subject was. She scowled at me as I grabbed a few slices of stale white bread. There wasn’t much more than exhaustion and the usual contempt in her expression though so I wasn’t sure she even remembered the terrible things she’d said last night.
Then she turned her back, heaved a giant sigh and dripped with self-righteous fakery as she cooed, “Lord rest her soul, poor Maggie. Got to say though I figured she’d fall to Benton’s fury a long time before this.”
No, she definitely didn’t remember last night. She wouldn’t have uttered Benton’s name so casually this morning if she did. I knew who Maggie was too. Benton’s wife, and the triplets’ junkie mother. She hadn’t been seen around town much in years and most of the time I’d half forgotten she wasn’t already dead. As I stepped out the door I felt a twinge of sympathy for Cord, Creed and Chase. The news had to hurt them. I figured you didn’t have to be close to your mother to feel pain over her death.
The screen door was open and I could hear my own mother was still carrying on in the kitchen about ‘poor Maggie’ even though all her words sounded more like gossip than grief.
“Con!” Erin waved from her bedroom window. Her long dark hair was loose on her shoulders and she wore an oversized yellow t-shirt with an unzipped white hoodie. She looked like sunshine and candy. I almost went running to her until I remembered. Then my stomach dropped and I felt sick with the burden of what I might know. She continued to call my name as I ran away.
The garage was busy and that was good because it kept my mind off things. There was some talk going back and forth about Maggie Gentry’s death until Benji Carson rolled out of his office and told everyone to knock it off. He patted my shoulder apologetically as he passed, and I felt rather guilty for not being more busted up about a relative passing out on her bathroom floor and choking to death on her own vomit. But hell, I had my own problems to deal with.
It was after lunch and I was underneath a rusty Pontiac when a shadow fell and a soft voice made me bang my head on the undercarriage before I pushed out from beneath the car.
“There you are,” Erin said with happy shyness as she waited for me to sit upright.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, wiping my oily hands on my jeans.
Confusion crossed her face. She didn’t usually stop by the garage since it wasn’t a short walk and Carson didn’t really approve of high school girlfriends showing up. But I also wasn’t usually this cold to her. In fact I never was.
“I just wanted to see you.” She held out a paper bag. “Chocolate chip cookies. Made them this morning.”
“Thanks.” I took the bag and tossed it on the nearest counter. She followed me as I headed outside. The guys looked Erin over curiously and a few of them outright leered, which ordinarily would have driven me up a wall. But today I just didn’t have it in me to care.
She was biting her thumbnail and looking a little nervous by the time we got to the parking lot.
“Con, what’s wrong?”
I shrugged. “You and Stone must have talked it all through already.”
She was startled. Her thumb dropped out of her mouth. “What? I didn’t talk to Stone at all today.”
“Yeah?” I said coldly. “What about yesterday?”
“I don’t get it.”
I crossed my arms. “What,” I demanded, enunciating each word with obnoxious p
recision, “did you and my brother talk about late last night?”
“Jeez, nothing important. We just happened to be outside at the same time.”
“You both thought I was a fucking idiot, huh?”
She was at a loss. She swallowed and held her arms behind her back.
“My god, Conway. That sounds like an accusation.”
“It’s a question. One that deserves an answer.”
“Really? What do you want to know?”
“I want to know why you and my brother look like you get just a little more cozy every time my back is turned these days.”
Her eyes grew really wide. Her mouth fell open. “You think,” she managed to gasp, “that I’ve been messing around with, with Stone?”
I didn’t answer. I just stared. Now that someone had uttered the words out loud they actually did sound ridiculous. Stone and Erin had never even liked each other. And up until now I wouldn’t have hesitated to trust either one of them with my life. But today everything felt confused and fucked up. Or maybe it was just me that was fucked up.
“Conway,” she whispered as her lower lip trembled. “I can’t believe you.”
“Then deny it.”
She shook her head miserably. I could have reached for her. I wanted to. The tears in her eyes were acid to my heart and something deep inside my soul screamed that I was making a fatal error and I shouldn’t say another word until I managed to screw my head back on straight. But Erin didn’t wait around for me to find my sensible side. She turned and ran away. And instead of running after her I just watched her go.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ERIN
I ran for probably a mile before my legs started to cramp and my lungs shrieked from the abuse.