She was wearing some of her new clothes from the shopping trip her mother had dragged her on. Her mother had said to get whatever she wanted and they had walked out with six bags of clothes between them (most of them her mom's). She was currently wearing a blue velveteen shirt with tie-dye swirls of aqua and navy, and some new flared jeans that actually fit.
Her mother had been her usual self, pulling at straps, fidgeting and fussing at her, tugging at the backs of Jay's jeans to make sure they weren't too tight. “You've gone up a size.”
Jay hadn't really cared about that until her mother said it like she'd gotten an F on a test. “I'm taller,” she said defensively.
“Don't take anything that doesn't fit you to Hollybrook. No shirts that show your belly and no pants that don't hit the top of your shoes. Just bag them up and leave them on the curb.”
“You show your belly,” said Jay. “You show it to everyone.”
“Justine.”
“Fine,” she'd muttered.
Despite her mother's words, she did feel good in her new outfit. It was nice to have things that didn't squeeze and pinch, although despite her mother's instructions, she couldn't get rid of all her old clothes. No matter what her mother said, her wardrobe simply wasn't big enough to have everything be a perfect fit. If she wore her shorter tops with high-waisted pants, no one would even notice.
Hunched over her book, Jay listened to the other dancers talk about the men outside, their personal lives, the gloomy weather. The mood in the dressing room was weird today, almost somber. Jay got the impression that the other women really weren't sorry to see her mom go.
Naturally, her mother had felt the need to flounce in and start telling everyone goodbye, loudly and with fake tears that wouldn't ruin her stage makeup. She had taken grainy pictures on a new Nokia cell phone of her wedding at the Strip. Jay had peered over; it was one of those 24-hour chapels, all lit up in neon. She managed to hold her phone in a way that displayed her ring.
“I'm going to miss you all so much,” her mother had chirped on her way out the door, and as soon as she was gone, Honey had muttered, “Puta chingada,” before glancing apologetically at Jay.
“She is, though,” said Jay, who had obtained a Spanish-to-English dictionary from the library and now knew that putos weren't ducks.
Honey stared at her for a moment, wide-eyed, and then she threw back her head and laughed loudly enough that she startled a woman doing her eyeliner. “God, I'm going to miss you, sweetie.”
“What do you think of your mother's new man?” a Black woman named Dulce asked.
“I hate him,” said Jay, which made all of the women laugh, and caused Honey to ruffle her hair again.
She wasn't sure why that was so funny. She did hate him, and she hated her mother for doing this to her. For disappearing without telling her, for upending her life, for dragging her away from everything. She liked her school and she liked her friends. This was so unfair.
“Why are you going now?” Kristine had asked. “You're leaving in the middle of the year!”
“My mom got married to some guy.” Jay stared at her new shoes. They were very white. She was afraid to get them dirty, so even though her mother had told her not to, she had packed up her older Converse in her luggage, just in case. “He lives in Hollybrook.”
“Where is that?” asked Amy. “I've never even heard of it.”
“You've never heard of anywhere beyond San Leandro,” Kristine teased.
“It's on the other side of the state.” Jay kicked a rock. “Eight hours away. Near Beverly Hills. My mom's excited. She can't wait to shop at Rodeo Drive. I'm going to hate it.”
“Let's all exchange numbers and emails,” said Leah. “Then we can stay in touch.”
It won't be the same, though, Jay thought. You'll forget me.
Things would continue to tick along in San Francisco and everything Jay would be erased.
She had wanted to cry, but she had to be brave—for herself, for her friends. She didn't want to be seen as a spineless worm and she knew her mother wouldn't want to see any tears.
Her mother, Jay had quickly figured out, had opinions about literally everything, and these opinions were gospel truths as far as she was concerned. It was easier to just nod and tell her that she was right and then go do whatever it was that she really wanted to do, but Jay wasn't sure how to do that in her current situation. It wasn't like she could just refuse to move and stay in San Francisco.
That night, Jay dozed on her futon, staring at the cartons and bags of her things in the darkness and wondering what the future would bring. She fell asleep to the red blinking light of the liquor store outside.
When she woke up, her mother was yelling at the movers as they offloaded the cartons of their belongings out of the apartment. On the curb out front was a pile of things that hadn't fit into their shiny new life: the futons, all the old dishes and silverware, Jay's old clothes.
Damon had bought them first class tickets to Los Angeles and a car was waiting to pick them up. Probably trying to impress Mom, Jay thought dully, glancing at her mother's shining face. Could he be more obvious? She just wanted to have her own room and have there not be any rats, so when she saw where they were going to live, her jaw actually dropped.
It had a gate, and an elaborate facade with a covered porch buffered by colonnades, as imposing as stone soldiers. There was a walkway to the front of the house and a sweeping expanse of emerald green lawn. Was all of this really just for one person? It looked like a hotel.
“We're living here?” It had to be a trick. When her mother nodded, she said, “Really?”
“Our new home.” Her mother was glowing, pleased with herself, pleased with the house. When the car stopped, she practically skipped out of the door, leaving the driver to tend to her things, even though Jay was pretty sure that wasn't his job. “Why don't you see if you can find your stepbrother while I make sure the rooms are all sorted out?”
Wait. “Stepbrother?” Jay repeated, but her mother was too far away to hear.
The driver was stacking the suitcases, muttering under his breath in what sounded like Russian. “Do you want help?” Jay asked, glancing at the doors uncertainly.
“No,” he said politely. “Do as your mother told you. I will be fine.”
Okay. Jay brushed dust off her bare legs and knotted her sweatshirt around her waist. Trust her mother to overlook a detail like that. A stepbrother. She definitely hadn't told Jay that she'd be sharing the rest of her life with another kid.
She wondered if he was older or younger. She wondered if he was nice. With a father like that cold-eyed creep from the strip club, she wasn't sure how he could be, but she wasn't much like her own mother, either, so maybe he was different. She wondered what had happened to his real mother and whether she was still in the picture. Her mother would hate that.
Jay had always been so envious of her friends with siblings. She'd dreamed about what it would be like to have an older brother to look out for her, protecting her the way a knight looked after his fair lady, an older sister to borrow makeup from or ask about boys, or a younger sibling to look up to her and accompany her on her adventures through downtown San Francisco.
Jay had always felt like she would be a good big sister. She knew a lot of interesting facts about the world and she wasn't afraid of bugs or dirt. I hope he's nice, she thought wistfully.
She wandered around the side of the yard, stopping to investigate some rose bushes, and then froze. Disappointment had been a major factor in her young life and she was used to it at this point, but her heart still broke when she saw her new brother and his little freak friends throwing rocks at a kitten in a tree. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Jay hadn't even stopped to think—one moment, she had been on the ground. The next, she was in the tree, limbs bursting with feverish adrenaline as she scooped up the small, warm ball of fluff with one careful hand. The way those kids stared at her when she yelled at them!
Like she was speaking alien instead of an Earth language. Especially that stupid, dark-haired moron who just stared at her the way his dad had. They even had the same cold gray eyes.
Screw him, thought Jay, reveling in the sharp edges of her anger. Screw all of them. I hate this place.
Holding the cat, she stormed into the house and immediately found herself lot. The high ceilings were strangely vertiginous and the checkered floors made her feel like a piece in a game that she wasn't even sure she wanted to play. There was a sculpture hanging from the ceiling, ice blue, with dangling parts that looked like tentacles. It looked ready to fall. Jay stared at it nervously and the cat mewed softly, squirming against her.
Right, thought Jay, petting it. I've got to find my mom and . . . stepdad.
After wandering around in several loops, Jay found the two of them sitting in a massive lounge area that exited out to the pool. For a moment, Jay was so distracted—a pool, my own pool—that she had forgotten what she had come in for, or that she had just decided she hated this place. Both of the adults stopped talking to stare at her in bemusement.
Jay held up the kitten, which emitted another mew. “I found this outside. I want to keep it.”
Behind her, the front door slammed and she found herself with an audience. It was the three kids from the yard. The cat-torturer gang. The dark-haired kid was standing in front, as self-appointed leader, with the other ones—one with a smarmy look on his toady face, the other bespectacled and trembling—behind him.
He probably thought I came in here to tell on them, she thought scornfully.
“Justine, no,” said her mother. “You don't know where that thing has been.”
“I do know. It was in the tree.”
One of the boys giggled at that. She didn't turn to see which one.
“There's a feral cat colony that lives around here,” her stepfather said without interest. “Animal Control is always coming out here to round them up and have them destroyed.”
Destroyed? Jay's arms tightened around the cat so tightly that it emitted a distressed squeak. “No,” she cried, looking at her mom. “You can't let them kill it. Please let me keep it.”
“Justine.” She was using the voice that came out with men who didn't tip and store clerks who refused to check in the back. “Put the cat back outside right now and go wash your hands.”
To Jay's embarrassment, she could feel her eyes filling with tears. “It's just a baby.”
“Let her keep it, Danielle,” said her stepfather, and Jay looked over at him in suspicion. She hadn't expected him to be her ally. He gave her a smile that she suspected was meant to be warm; it wasn't. “Her room is at the farthest end of the house. If the cat stays in there, we'll never know it exists.” He pulled out his phone. “I'll have the housekeeper make arrangements.”
She could feel the cat's little heart pounding against her arm. “I can . . . keep it?”
“I suppose so.” Her mother sighed. “What do you say, Justine?”
“Um.” Jay swallowed thickly. “thank you . . . Mr. Beaucroft?”
He looked up from his phone. “Damon. Call me Damon, my dear. And this is my son, Nicholas.”
Jay looked down. The boy had abandoned his friends to sidle up beside her. He was staring at the cat in a way that made her cover it protectively. “Justine?”
“It's Jay.” You sadistic little freak. “Just Jay.”
“Nicholas,” said Damon. “Why don't you show Justine her new room?”
“Fine.” The boy glanced at his friends with a look of scorn. “Go set the game up in the den. I'll be right back.” He started walking towards the double staircase, looking over his shoulder. “Are you coming or not? I want to play Nintendo.”
Annoyed, Jay raced after him. The kitten mewed again and he looked back.
“Is it okay?”
No thanks to you. She swallowed the words back. “I think it's hungry.”
The boy shrugged. “Sounds like my dad will take care of that.” They came to the top of the stairs where there was a strange half-wall. He pointed at the statue sitting on top of it. “That's a Louise Bourgeois,” he said, stumbling over the words. “My dad paid tens of thousands of dollars for it.”
“It's ugly,” said Jay.
The boy blinked at her, shaking his head. Then he leaned up on the tiptoes of his sneakers in a way that made her worry he might tumble over the side of the wall. She peered down and saw his two friends sitting on a blue couch, staring at the title screen of a game. “That's the den. My room's on the left.” He pointed. “I have the only bedroom on the first floor.”
“Neat,” said Jay.
The boy glanced at her again with another one of those unreadable looks. Then he started walking like a little boy-shaped robot. “Kitchen and dining room are downstairs and there's a bathroom too. There's also a bar and a lounge for the adults. We're not allowed in there, but sometimes I go in anyway.”
“Why?” she asked, only a little curious.
“Because I can.”
He—Nick—continued walking. There was something strange about him. Most of the kids she knew spent all of their time playing outside in front of their apartments, cycling around the cul-de-sacs, playing in the gutters with cars or action figures. “Do you have a bike?”
“No. Only geeks ride bikes. That's my dad's room,” he said, pointing into the first door they came to. It was open and she could see a massive brass bed and what looked like a rococo fainting couch. “We're not supposed to go in there, either,” he added, ticking off more rooms on their way down the upstairs hall. Her own strange little tour guide.
Finally, they came to a dead end and one final door. “This one's yours.”
Jay opened the door immediately and in her shock, she relaxed her grip on the kitten, who immediately raced under the bed to hide. A bed—an actual bed. Adult-sized too. A queen.
Someone—probably not Damon—had decorated the room for her. There were sunflowers stenciled on the walls, and there was an empty bookshelf waiting to be filled for her books, and a padded window seat next to a bay window that overlooked the mulberry tree outside. Someone had opened the window to air out the paint smells and it was making the voile curtains flutter.
She immediately sat on the window seat, curling her legs to her chest. I've always wanted one of these, she thought, feeling her heart flutter. I'm going to stay here forever.
Almost as soon as she sat down, she immediately sprang up and began opening the other doors. One was a full bathroom—she had her own shower—and the other was a walk-in closet. Jay could feel herself beginning to hyperventilate. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “This is mine?”
“Chill out,” said Nick. “It's just a room. Haven't you seen a room before?”
She spun around to look at him. He was crouched in front of her bed, lifting up the yellow bed skirt to watch the kitten. “Stop that,” she said. “It's scared. Leave it alone. It'll come out when it wants to.”
The boy pulled back, looking at her for a long moment. “You're weird, blue jay.”
“Blue jay?”
“You're blue and you squawk a lot and your name is Jay.” He rolled his eyes. “Duh.”
“I do not squawk,” Jay squawked, as the boy drifted out of her room. She tugged down her blue shirt, which she now regretted wearing, and closed the door behind him with a loud slam.
Then she drew in a long, steadying breath and began to unpack her suitcase.
▪▫▪▫▪▫▪
Jake and Aaron were waiting with the game cued up when he got back. Nick was gratified that the two wastes hadn't started playing without him, but it soon became clear that this was less out of any respect for him and more because they wanted to talk about what had happened outside.
What had happened outside? The blue jay had come swooping out of nowhere like an infuriated bird. He hadn't been about to throw a rock at the stupid cat. Jake was the one who was always doing stuff like that; he'd only been going
to throw it at the tree.
He glared at Jake, who was wearing a little shit-eating grin. “Hi, Nick. How'd it go?”
“How'd what go?” he asked without interest, swinging up on the couch beside him.
“Your stepsister,” said Jake. “Jay. You were gone awhile. What'd you do?”
“Took her to her room. She's weird. She acted like she'd never seen a room before.”
“Well,” said Jake. “I'll give you this—she's not a dog.”
“You were the one who said that,” Aaron pointed out. “Not Nick.”
“I know,” said Jake. “It's my gift to you, dude. You're welcome.”
“Shut up and play. I don't want to talk about my stupid stepsister anymore.” Nick grabbed his controller and began selecting the settings so they could all choose their guys. Nick let Aaron choose the level because he didn't really care, and because Jake was being annoying.
“We've done this one so many times,” he whined predictably. “I'm tired of the bunker level.”
“Well, we're doing it,” said Nick. “You can pick the next one.”
“God,” Jake muttered rebelliously. “This sucks.”
“Stop whining,” said Nick. “You sound like a baby.”
“I'm taking this ammo,” said Aaron to no one.
“Don't hog all the ammo, you waste. I need ammo.”
“It's battle royale. I don't want you to have ammo. You'll shoot me with it.”
“Screw you, dude,” said Jake. “Just wait until I find a Kalashnikov. I'll shoot you with that.”
“I can't believe Dad just let her keep the cat,” said Nick, shifting his knee up to block Jake from hitting Aaron and grabbing his control stick like the cheater he was. “I never got a pet.”
“Did you ask for one?” asked Aaron.
“I don't think so.” Nick thought for a moment. “My dad hates dogs.”
“She's a girl,” said Jake, like the answer was obvious.
Quid Pro Quo: A dark stepbrother romance Page 9