by Julia Drake
“They hated me after that. The Threebies.” He volleyed the watch from hand to hand.
“You’re not hateable, Sam.”
“Yeah, Mom and Dad always say that, but you don’t understand, the way…” He tucked his chin and spoke into his knees. “They reminded me a little bit of you, actually.”
The seams of my pockets strained and burst, no warning at all. The pebbles flew everywhere. One went under the stove, gone for good. “What does that mean?” I said.
“Nothing. I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
“You mean I’m a bitch.”
“No, don’t say that word—one of them was nice, sometimes, if you got her alone….”
“Sam, I want you here. Didn’t you hear how scared Toby was? Mom and Dad are freaking out right now. I agreed not to call them, I’m doing everything you ask….”
Sam shrank, hugging his knees tighter, a hermit crab trying to scuttle back into his shell. “You’re mad. Please don’t be mad at me, Violet, I hate when you’re mad.”
“You’re the one who’s mad at me.”
“I shouldn’t have come.” His knuckles were turning white, still clenched around the watch.
“Sam, no. That’s not what I meant. Don’t freak out—”
He pulled his hood over his head.
“I’m sorry I said that, Violet, really. I’m so sorry—”
“Sam, take it easy.”
“I shouldn’t have come, I shouldn’t have come.” His voice was muffled and wrenched. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Sam…” I put my hand on his hunched shoulders and spread them as wide as I could, an Orion-size wingspan. Sam had been up all night. I had, too.
“Shhh,” I said, my voice a mixture of Mom, Dad’s, Toby’s. “Please,” I said, to whom or what, I wasn’t sure.
“Please, Vi, I didn’t mean it. Just leave me alone.”
“I’m scared to leave you alone right now,” I said, the words falling from me. I didn’t know where they’d come from.
“I won’t move,” Sam said. “I swear. Please. I promise. I’m different.”
“Ten minutes,” I said.
I pressed my fingers into his back before I took my hand away, like a tree frog powering from one branch to the next, leaving behind slime and fairy dust and coffee grounds, a magic mixture that’d make him feel okay, now and for always.
Fresh air felt good. Quiet was nice. Maybe I liked quiet even more than Sam did.
Six minutes into my ten-minute time-out, Liv’s car came into view, and I didn’t care if I had to live in Times Square for the rest of my life. I’d opened the passenger door and slid inside before she’d even turned the engine off.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you move that fast,” she said.
“Hi,” I said, peeling her hand from the steering wheel and lacing her fingers through mine. “This happened, right? I mean, it’s happening. You and me.”
“It’s happening,” she said, giving my hand a squeeze. “I know, because that was the longest five hours of my life.”
I leaned toward her and pulled her to me at the same time. The gearshift got me right in the stomach just as when her lips met mine, smoke and coffee-y and minty-toothpaste descant, my body went liquid, melting, the two of us butter-mouthed and soft and real. During the Year of Wild, kissing anyone twice was rare, and kissing anyone sober—that list was so small, I could count them on one hand. Twice and sober? Yeah, right. I’d known a lot of lips, but I hadn’t ever known one set intimately: the meat of a lower and the daintiness of an upper, the shape of the space formed when the two separated.
“You taste like sugar,” she said.
“I made cupcakes.”
“A regular Betty Crocker,” she said, and I nipped her lower lip.
“I want to memorize your face. Your mouth, specifically.”
“I’ll give you an inventory. A map of my mouth. The left corner droops. And I have a recurrent zit on the edge, right here, that’s been with me now for over a year, so I hope you get used to it.”
She kissed me again, pecking, fast. That was fun, too, these little giggly ones, especially when they got serious, when our mouths met and I’d give anything to keep kissing her—anything—go away, Sam, go away, let this be the only thing in the world, this Liv, this feeling of having found yourself in another person—
I stopped kissing her.
This wasn’t real. Real was my brother, quaking in the kitchen. Real wasn’t just kissing. Real was hard, and it took work.
“What is it?” Liv was breathless. A jolt in my stomach: I’d made her breathless.
“My brother’s here,” I said.
She pointed at the floor. “Here here?”
“He’s coming with us to Aguecheek. My parents wanted it to be a surprise.” I didn’t like lying to her, but the alternative seemed altogether too complicated.
“Good thing Orion has a minivan,” she said, and then she touched the thin skin beneath my eyes—surely puffed and purple. “You okay? Is it good to see him?”
“Yes. No. We’re already fighting. He seems good—but it’s worse, because he’s different, and I’m different, and we both know we shouldn’t say these horrible things to each other, but we still do.”
With her other hand, Liv scratched at her clavicle. I’d never seen her do that before. She’d left red streaks behind on her own body that I wanted to smooth away with my thumb. I wanted to learn everything about her.
“I want you to meet him,” I said.
“I want to meet him, too,” she said.
“He’s really shy.” In fact, he’s probably still hermit-crabbed on the ground.
“I know he’s been through a lot,” Liv said.
“He may not even say anything to you. Just don’t take it personally, okay?”
“I won’t,” she assured me. I wanted to believe her.
“I’m worried I’ll never say the right thing to him.”
“Maybe there is no right thing. Maybe there are just things, plural, and you have to try them all.”
Sam wasn’t in the kitchen. The world exploded. Then Liv took my hand.
Three buses. Deep breaths. Easy.
“Sam?” I called carefully.
“In here,” he called from the dining room, and everything Mary Poppins–ed back into place. “I fixed it!”
“Fixed what?” I called back.
“Should we go see?” Liv asked, and a horrible thought struck me: what if Sam and Liv didn’t like each other? Or worse: what if Liv took one look at me with Sam—real me, bad sister me, New York me, ungrateful me—and decided she didn’t want any part of this minefield she’d stumbled upon?
“Violet?” Sam called.
We walked into the dining room. Sam wasn’t a hermit crab anymore. He was at the dining room table, hunched over, and he snapped up when he saw us. He had Fidelia’s watch in one hand, and the earring in the other. Separate from each other. Untangled.
“You did it,” I breathed. Sam’s eyes were bloodshot, his bunny nose was tinged pink, but he was up. Talking. He’d de-lumped, and he’d unsnarled the knot.
Sam’s eyes darted behind me. “Are you Liv?” he asked.
“Yes. Hi. Sam.” She stuck out her hand to my brother. Sam’d never liked handshakes—awful to be expected to touch strangers, he said, and germy—but cautiously, he took hers, and shook.
“You, my friend, have got a great handshake,” Liv said.
“No dead fish,” Sam said, and Liv laughed.
“Sam,” I said, “how did you undo that knot? You don’t understand, I’ve been trying to untangle those all summer.”
“You’re exaggerating,” Sam mumbled. His voice was more muted around Liv, but he was still talking. “You don’t have the patience for that.”
“She’s so impatient!” Liv agreed.
“She can barely finish a book,” he said.
“You should have seen how quickly she wanted to quit on the
Lyric! She never would have done it without us.” Liv let the earring clatter to the table and held the watch up between them. “If I believed in omens, I’d consider this a good one. Felix claims the watch has got a weird energy and Violet claims it’s lucky, but I’m just pretty sure it’s yours now. You should wear it. It’s got an S on it, after all.”
She held the chain open and Sam ducked his head through the loop, as though he were being knighted. The watch thumped against his chest, and Sam—I couldn’t believe this—posed and batted his eyelashes.
How was this all going so—what was the word—well?
“Resplendent,” she said. “Ready to go? The Apogee awaits.”
He nodded and tucked the watch under the shirt. “Who’s S?”
“You’re asking all the right questions. C’mon. I’ll give you the lecture.” She linked arms with him and walked him out the door, babbling away, as though talking with him were the easiest thing in the world.
We found Orion balanced on the Apogee’s bumper, red-faced and trying to get the rowboat lashed more securely to the roof, directing Felix and Mariah, who seemed more interested in sword fighting with bungee cords. Sam and Liv had spent the drive over gabbing about wreck hunting and I’d sat in the backseat, stunned. It was the most I’d heard my brother talk to anyone in months. Between that and seeing his teeth, it’d already been a banner day.
“Wow,” said Liv, looking at her friends and the boat, “we’re really going, I guess.”
It had hit me, too, with the weight of a prophecy. Sam was here. Liv was here. The stars had aligned, and the Lyric was ours.
Liv bounded from the car and Mariah and Felix shrieked.
“I thought you weren’t coming!” said Mariah, squeezing her into a hug.
“They all look so old,” said Sam.
“Orion’s going to be a senior, and everyone else is my age.”
“So I’m the youngest,” he said.
“You don’t look the youngest,” I said, feeling impatient. Now that we were here, I wanted to go. We were going to find the wreck—didn’t Sam see that? If he came, we’d find it, and Liv would get into Oxford, and maybe Orion could save the aquarium…and we’d be fixed. Sam and I would be fixed.
“They won’t hurt you,” I said.
“Maybe I shouldn’t go,” he said. I needed Liv back; she was like the Sam whisperer. Maybe I needed a mantra. Mantras were a thing that calm, centered people used, right? I will be as kind as Liv, I will be as kind as Liv, I will be as kind as Liv….
“Look. If it’s overwhelming, you should just ask Liv to tell you more about Lyric history. And everyone will groan and she’ll give you a private tutorial, okay? Say it now.”
“Like, practice?”
“So you learn the lines.”
“I’m depressed, not five.”
Whoever came up with mantras was clearly an only child.
“Please come,” I said. “I want you to come.”
Somehow, that pushed him over the edge. He got out of the car: phase one complete. I never thought standing in a driveway would feel like such a victory.
“Everyone, this is Sam, Violet’s brother!” Liv said. “Sam’s the whole reason we’re wreck hunting! Sam, that’s Orion, and this is Mariah and Felix.”
Sam had time to murmur a barely audible hi before the conversation came like a crush:
“More Fidelia spawn!” cried Felix gleefully.
“Field day for Liv,” said Mariah.
“You have no idea,” Liv said.
“Oooh, can I read your tarot?” cried Felix, and Mariah wrestled him into a bungee-cord restraint. I thought of my first night with them: how close they’d seemed, how afraid I’d been that they’d never let me in.
“They’re nice, I promise,” I whispered to him.
“Could someone help me with this boat, please?” Orion called, straining to fix the rowboat in place. I rushed to the other side of the van and tied a knot as best I could, centering and securing the boat atop the Apogee. We hopped down and Orion said, “What’s this I hear about you having a brother?”
Had I really not told Orion about Sam?
“Hi, Sam,” Orion said, and Sam blanched. No one was safe from the Eyebrow God’s beauty.
“You guys look so much alike,” Mariah said to me.
“Fraternal, yet same-egged,” Felix agreed.
God bless them: when we were little, Sam loved telling people we were twins.
“People actually used to confuse us. Right, Sam?” He hadn’t said anything yet, and I just wanted him to start talking, to supply the details: our identical bowl cuts, matching backpacks, coordinated outfits.
But Sam wasn’t interested in telling the story. He wasn’t even looking at me. “Liv,” he said, his voice small, “can you tell me more about Lyric history?”
As predicted, Felix and Mariah groaned. Liv grinned, and slid open the Apogee’s back door. “Step into Professor Stone’s office.”
I opened the Apogee’s front door, ready to shove aside the familiar pile of trash, but there wasn’t any. The trash was gone. The seat and the floor were vacuum-streaked. The car smelled fresh and lemony.
“Speaking of surprises,” Orion said.
“I cleaned all last night, too,” I said.
“Great minds,” Orion said.
You have no idea what’s going on with me and Liv, I thought.
“Let’s go!” screamed Mariah from the back. “Before someone we know sees me getting into a strange boy’s van and tells my parents!”
“Ready?” Orion asked.
Sam was talking to Liv. He was fine. The only thing holding us back was me.
“Ready,” I said.
The last familiar sight I saw was Frieda, four miles outside town, with her head held high, jogging back toward Lyric. Then she was a spot in the distance, and then she was gone, and then we were going.
“We’re going!” I drummed the dash, swiveled in my seat, and screamed to the back, “We’re going!”
“Don’t distract the driver!” Orion yelled through the applause and cheers.
“What if we actually find the ship?” I said, still fighting the seat belt to face backward.
“Wait, we’re actually looking for the ship? I thought this was just an excuse to drink,” said Mariah.
“Of course we’re looking for the ship!” said Liv. “We have Orion’s boat! Wet suits! Fins!”
“Someone one hundred percent peed in that wet suit,” said Felix.
All good? I mouthed to Sam, and Sam rolled his eyes like I was Mom.
“The way I see it, if we don’t find the ship, no loss,” said Liv, “and if we do find it…”
“Oxford, here you come,” Orion said.
“Oxford!” Felix yelled. “Try Hollywood! Dream big, Liv!”
“I’m game for Hollywood, but are witches supposed to be so fame-hungry?” said Mariah.
“We do live in a capitalist society,” said Sam.
Felix burst into applause. “YES! Even witches need to get paid!”
“What’d you tell your parents you were doing?” Liv asked Mariah.
“Staying with you,” Mariah said. “You?”
“Camping with Orion.”
“Classic. Ann hand you condoms on the way out?”
In the rearview, Liv blushed furiously. I stared out the windshield, hot with the memory of her body on mine. Keep your eyes on the pines, eyes on the pines, don’t think of her mouth, her hands, where they touched you—
“C’mon, Mariah,” Orion said. “That’s not cool.”
“Yeah, sorry, I know you’re more like her dad,” said Mariah.
“He’s super dad-like!” Felix poked Sam on the shoulder. “Just wait’ll you hear his jokes.”
“They can’t be worse than Violet’s,” said Sam.
“Sick brother burn!” crowed Felix.
“I’ll allow it,” I said. In the rearview, Liv’s blush was fading. Good.
“I’m n
ot a dad,” Orion muttered. “Violet, you like this song?”
He’d turned on the radio—his secret mix, I realized. The song was bubblegum punk, lady voices singing about cheap whiskey and sour candy. Picking flowers on LSD. This song’s good and it sets me free. In the rearview, Liv and I caught eyes, and I let myself remember last night, let my memories linger with hers.
“It’s good,” I said. “It’s really good.”
An hour south of Aguecheek Bay, we stopped for provisions at a ramshackle gas station that advertised seventy-five-cent coffee and fresh bait and tackle. Thick, wet fog had rolled in, and when we hopped from the car, I shivered in Toby’s windbreaker. We’d been jabbering in the car, hopped up on sugar and music and each other, and the feeling of fresh air and mist made me realize how tired I was. I’d gotten no sleep.
“You know they call this the Ghost Coast,” Felix said.
“Yes, Felix, we all grew up here,” said Liv.
“We didn’t,” said Sam.
“I have to pee so badly,” Mariah said, pushing Felix out of the way.
“We should get some real food besides cupcakes,” I said.
“More coffee,” said Sam.
“Coffee, yes,” said Felix.
I followed them toward the shop, and my phone buzzed a million times, all texts coming in, thanks to a rare patch of cell reception. I thought what I always thought when I got a lot of texts at once, that there’d been a shooting or a terrorist attack or someone I loved had died in a plane crash. It was a string of increasingly panicked texts from my parents and Toby. Call us now. Violet, where are you? Violet, answer us. Violet. We’re getting on a plane.
I texted: We’re safe. Then I switched my phone off for the first time since June.
“Secret admirer, in addition to secret brother?” Orion asked.
“Just my parents,” I said, feeling a little woozy, taking a seat on the Apogee’s bumper. I needed a turkey sandwich. Protein.
“Hmm,” Orion said. “Everything okay?”
“Fine.” My parents would never forgive me, likely. But I was giving Sam an adventure.
“I hope your brother’s having an okay time,” Orion said, sitting beside me. “Hey, Violet? Why did I not know you had a brother?”