by Scott, Eliot
The wheel is all that’s giving me balance as my heartbeats punch into my temples, doubling the crippling headache I’ve had for days. I swear I'm about to black out. Wouldn't the town gossips love that. Even dead, my father's lingering dark ghost would force The Tacoma News to print the headline he'd want to read over the real truth. Something like: Loving son, Alex Sinclair, found unconscious in car overwrought with grief before his father’s funeral.
I’d always daydreamed about how JoJo would look if she came back here. It—she—should look and feel like anger, vengeance, hatred. But, shit…the girl who's silently staring at my car and waiting patiently for me to find enough balls to exit has me feeling unprepared to build walls against her like I need to build.
It’s all got something to do with the way she's biting her lip. I know exactly how that lip tastes.
I’ve never forgotten. Never will.
"Fuck,” I say again and shake my head to clear it, looking desperately for some sort of weapon to use against how JoJo Wallace affects me.
I’ve brought the suit jacket Grady, my older brother, had asked me to bring for the funeral. As I’m stepping out, I hold it in front of me like it's some sort of shield, and reach into his pocket to find one of his cigarette packs and a lighter.
Even though I don’t smoke, I tap out a cigarette and pause to light it, almost giving myself away in a fit of coughing before stepping around to where JoJo and I will have to cross paths.
Long before I reach her she blurts, “So…you're smoking now?"
Like she's hit me with a slingshot, my feet slip on the gravel and I stop dead in my tracks. I was right to be afraid of her. The sound of her clear voice chastising me just how she used to has undone me as much as her words have humbled me. Of course she's concerned, upset...worried. About me. This is Jojo, after all. She’s the only person in the world who ever worried over me about anything. About everything.
Should she still smell like lavender and look up at me with stained-glass-window eyes that hint that she still loves me despite everything, I will pull out the gun I've stashed in my glove box and put it exactly where someone placed it on my father's head, right between my eyes, and pull the trigger right now.
That kind of fast death is preferable over letting myself die a second time, year after year, over JoJo Wallace when she can never be mine.
Keeping my eyes off of her, I pull the cigarette to my lips again, sucking on it hard, willing the smoke and the heat to burn the scratchiness and tightness at the back of my throat away.
I pretend to stare at the just-washed-for-the-funeral cars all around us and force my expression to angry-annoyance. When I'm about to choke on the excess amount of smoke I’ve pulled in, I puff it all out slowly so I can only smell the stale and sour scent of tobacco instead of the memories of her, then I step closer and risk looking at her face, hoping the smoke between us will also blur out some of her beauty.
It doesn't.
"You came back for more? Still so stupid, huh?” I spit out words that mean to maim, and I make sure I say her name like it’s poison on my lips, hoping to scare her off. “Make my life easy and drive away, here and now, would you, Jojo? I deserve that luxury, because as you probably know, I didn’t have that the first time we all got you to leave this place. I was forced to deal with you, and you kind of fucking owe me for saving your life, so…just go, would you, before one of us finally kills you.”
Instead of rising to my bait she’s rolled her eyes at me and after a long pause, she glares at my cigarette and answers simply: "You know my mom died of lung cancer."
I return the cigarette to my lips, dragging in more smoke to cover a smile of admiration as a telltale crease of worry forms above the bridge of her nose. Despite what we did to her, this mini-lecture and that scrunched face means we didn't break her.
I get that she is older, more beautiful…maybe more composed—a lot more composed—but still…this is her. This is still Jojo Wallace.
Even though I want to pull her into my arms, and laugh with relief over that realization, I play this carefully and layer on a lecture of my own.
A warning.
“Since we all get that your family has a history of being a little slow, I'm going to say it clearly in some of those shorter words you can understand. Get the fuck out of here, Jojo. No one wants you anywhere near here. I can guarantee my father didn't ever feel guilty. Not about you or your mom. Nor did he have you added to the will. If that's why you came."
She holds her ground, surprising me yet again.
“That's not why I came.” Her eyes latch onto mine. Clear. Bright. Unwavering.
The way she’s looking into me has me sucking in a breath. She has me threatening to quake—to pull a one-eighty and drive the hell out of here, just how I’d wanted her to do.
What the fuck?
The Jojo of the past would have fired at least twenty wounded expressions at me by now—maybe even pleaded or cried, all things that kill me to see. But the only reaction she lets slip through now is a slight tilting at the edges of her eyes—and, damn her, she licks her lips, which is sexy as hell. That, plus her voice, because it was completely devoid of the anger I'd expected, has coated me with the kind of goosebumps I'd long forgotten.
"After we bury your dad, after I do some...fishing. See…I’m here…"
She shrugs, and my eyes are drawn to how vulnerable her slight frame looks in her mother's old, faded black dress.
I take in the stubborn set of her shoulders, the solid lift of her chin, before I risk letting my eyes trail up the soft curves of her face again. The only change I can note in this adult version of JoJo is that her freckles have faded. The soft scent of lavender snakes around me as though to taunt me. “I’m here,” she repeats, her eyes rise up and glue onto mine. This time what she’s said has come out stronger and makes me reel back some. Because damn her, I know exactly what she's going to say next. Exactly.
“…for a little adventure.”
She blinks, and then smiles, those fucking smiling, kissable lips of hers causing all of the blood to rage into my pants.
The first words she'd ever said to me. That fucking smile.
Check. And mate. Fuck. I think I just winced. I know I just winced.
Those are the words that started our friendship.
The smile she’s pinning on me is the one that instantly stole my heart.
She’s bringing up the beginning and the end.
The Wallaces and the Sinclairs.
Everything, here and now.
Everything that will never be.
Like an addict heading back to the pipe, I do what I swore I wouldn't. I look deep into her wide, open eyes. I probe the blue-green depths, and I try to hide my apologies, my devastation and, more importantly, myself from her unyielding gaze, because the monster I was when my family made me break her heart six years ago can’t compare to the monster I am now. Not. Even. Close.
Like she's a mind reader, and is still unafraid of that monster—as she always was—she simply blinks calmly and smiles up wider. She’s got this hopeful look on her face that's made me want her twice as much as I ever did, all while it makes a cold sweat break out along my spine. If she stays I will succeed in destroying her, or worse, she’ll end up dead like my father is now, like her parents are—and that is the last thing I ever wanted. It’s why I did everything that was asked of me—to save her. To keep her alive.
Panic thrums through me. Suddenly I'm eighteen again, pressing against the walls of a boathouse listening to this girl cry, while covering up my own tears.
“Why? Why? Why….” She’d asked me, unbelieving, hurt and broken.
“Happy fucking birthday, JoJo Wallace,” I’d said to her that day after treating her like an animal. “Emphasis on the fucking…”
She cannot stay here. She cannot stay here. I will not let all that I’ve been through to protect her be for nothing. I will keep her safe.
I shove my swirling thoughts
back into the present and pull in yet another huge drag of the hateful cigarette. Then I manage to puff more smoke than a forest fire over her, all without coughing or letting the mask she's just fucking tried to crowbar off of me drop from my face.
Acting like she's not worth one more moment of my time and pretending that my now rock-hard cock hasn’t nearly debilitated me, I grind the butt under my shoe and turn away without another glance. It's all I can do to hide the second wave of goosebumps that are coursing down my spine, because this time, I’m afraid.
Jojo hasn't come back here for blood or the paybacks she deserves to give us all.
I should have known when I saw the faded black dress. Jojo’s here for something else. Something more.
This girl has come back for me, for my soul.
Only it’s not there anymore. I’m not there anymore. My family killed both long ago. I’m like them—I am them, and I can’t change that.
But even so…I can’t push away the memories of who I was back before it all went wrong. Before I even knew about the feud.
Nor can I stop the flood of memories about the day I first met JoJo Wallace from happening as they pour into my mind.
5.
Alex, Summer Before Freshman Year.
I think I hear splashing when I reach the lower path that leads up to my lake, but it could just be my imagination.
My lake.
I love saying that. My lake.
As I get closer, there's even more splashing. My chest tightens, because it can only mean that someone is in my lake, scaring the fish I'd come here to coax out of the water with my rod, some dry flies and sheer patience.
My fish.
I smile at that thought, trudging along, trying to imagine what my father would say if he were as disappointed as I feel right now, because frightened fish never go for flies. I try on his voice and say,"Fucking hell."
Father always cusses with such perfect authority.
I sound like a toad.
Pausing to catch my breath, I try again, this time with less force so my changing voice won't crack, "Is it too much to ask for a little privacy after walking six miles? A little hell-fucking-damn-privacy?" I crack up at that last one. Cussing and trying to act like my dad is a first for me, as is this epic solo hike to the lake.
"My lake," I whisper again, admiring the curling ferns filling in every inch of space between the cedar trees. I'd never been allowed to just hike in the woods alone before today. My parents are such helicopter types that I actually thought personal freedom like this would never happen for me.
All the way up until my fourteenth birthday a few days ago, my father had insisted on hiking with me wherever and whenever I'd wanted to go. Sometimes twice a week, and always around our property lines. I thought he and I had been everywhere on the Sinclair property, but because our estate is so huge, and because I'm always stuck studying or doing whatever sports my dad thinks I need to be doing besides fishing (which is the only sport I want to do), this route and even the existence of a lake on our property had been unknown to me.
The first time father brought us here, he'd acted all strange, studying our reactions to the secret he'd revealed to us like we were rats in a scientific test.
I, of course, was ecstatic. There is no better lake than this lake.
Grady, my sixteen-year-old, know-it-all brother, simply complained and whined that his feet hurt and that he couldn’t care less.
Father, like he was on some sort of mission, had us hike to the lake three times in a row—day after day—and he had been acting so strange Grady and I started getting really nervous about his intentions. Our father had never really shown this kind of concentrated interest in us—in our reactions to things, for sure. Father also knows Grady hates hiking and that Grady hates me.
At least I think Father knows that Grady hates me, because he’s never done much to stop my brother’s endless tormenting. He always says, “brothers will be brothers; you two need to sort it out,” no matter what Grady does to me. And that kid has pushed me off my bike, thrown rocks at my head, and once, when we were little, he shoved me down the stairs so hard I broke my arm.
This summer, I grew to be just as big as Grady is now. Six feet tall; skinny, though, but I’m still growing. Although I don’t outweigh him yet, my retaliation punches as well as the fighting skills I’ve learned from watching YouTube videos have started to find their marks. It’s to the point where Grady’s backed off some. “Brothers will be brothers. I was sorting some stuff out,” was my comment to Grady and to my father the day the big, whining baby went crying to our father about how I blackened one of his eyes.
Father, I think—though he didn’t say anything in front of Grady—was secretly proud of me. He was also pissed off at Grady for showing his weakness; we’re not allowed to do that. Grady looks bigger and stronger than I am, but my brother has always cried louder and longer about everything. I never do that. I just take it and clam up, simmering with anger while I start hatching plans for revenge.
Father also hates when Grady and I are together now that we are older, because he says I bring out the worst in my brother. Father hasn't realized yet that it's not at all about me.
Grady is just...the worst. Period. He’s a horrible person.
He and I had decided the hikes to the lake were our father’s final attempt to force us to bond. But no matter how much he orders us—how much he commands us, pesters us, bullies us—our disdain for each other seems to be something permanent, genetic and growing bigger every year.
Grady says it's because he's sure I was switched at birth, of course. Our mother assures me that isn't true, and the part where Mom and I have the same golden brown eyes proves it.
My father sees mine and Grady’s bad relationship as his one and only failure. But I see it as a survival tactic. Grady and I were terrified that Father was going to make us do this same hike on a fourth day, so we pretended to get along for once. We talked to each other and laughed at every one of Father’s crass jokes. We also said stuff we never say, like, “Father, this has been an amazing week—all of us together.” Grady even said that he wished we’d do stuff like this all the time, “together.”
It worked.
That last day, I'd snuck along my fold-up fishing rod, and I begged and begged to stay at the lake and fish, or hike back alone. But my suggested ideas were not in Father's plans.
Father had also brought some things along in his pack that day, too. Guns.
He’d planned to stop on the way back to the house so we could all shoot the crap out of distant tree branches or take aim and waste any poor bird the noise of the guns had flushed out.
As much as Father hates fishing, he loves watching Grady and I shoot guns. Father wants Grady and I to shoot better than military snipers. We’ve been shooting at the range since way back when we were little kids, so we’re both amazing shots, whether we like it or not.
Father always says he wants us to be able to take care of things when we grow up. We were raised on lecture after lecture about how “we Sinclairs handle things on our own, outside the law if need be, because we own the law in Tacoma.” Whatever that means, because how can someone own the law?
At this age, I only nod and go along with whatever Father says, because when I was younger, I’d ask questions about all of the stuff he would say. The wrong questions got me hit, so I stopped asking. I learned—wised up.
I have no clue what Father means by these “things that might need to be managed with guns,” so I’ve made up my own answers. And I was really into zombie books and movies for a number of years, so I’ve decided that knowing how to handle a gun could have its benefits, and I suppose Father, in his own weird way, just wants us to be able to stay safe.
* * *
Turns out all of the hiking, the lake, the information about the lake and the surrounding lands Father was drilling into me and Grady was all about me.
About me being a Sinclair. A real one. And my fourteenth bir
thday.
That thought warms my heart because I've been thinking about it—and my birthday—all the way up here.
See, instead of the usual cash for my birthday gift, which is what I’ve gotten every year since I can remember, Dad had handed me a thick, weighted manila envelope, already addressed to the County and Clerk Recorder of Tacoma, Washington.
It contained a map, along with a legal-looking paper with the words TRANSFER OF DEED across the top. The middle of the document had all of these extra-tiny-font legal sentences I couldn't begin to understand, but the bottom had two columns. One had my father's name and our address with his signature already on it. The other had four blank lines that read: Type or Print Full Names of New Property or Shared Property Holders.
My father asked me to sign the line next to my typed name, which I did very carefully. He told me the lake we’d been hiking to was now mine, really and truly mine. He’d explained that these papers meant he had also given me all of the lands we'd hiked through for the past three weekends—lands so vast that I couldn’t believe it when he’d shown me.
He’d talked about how one day I could build a house up there if I wanted, and he said that we would refurbish some of the old buildings he would soon give us in the downtown—and that together, as our profits from Father’s new oil investments grew out on the mud flats, we three Sinclair men would own all of Tacoma. Everyone and everything in it.
Grady had laughed as I smiled and hugged Father, I was so humbled by this amazing gift. Overwhelmed. Happy that I didn’t have anything to say besides, “Thank you.”
Always competitive, Grady bragged that Father had gifted him better land on his fourteenth birthday. His gift was made up of the city waterfront—lands that held the family business, not crap-land and a soggy lake in the middle of nowhere that held a few sea lions that no one cared about and wetlands that would be impossible to develop into anything good.
