Intertwined

by Jerilee Kaye

  Tom and Travis surfed while I was left with my parents. Travis was a pro at surfing. It was like he actually lived there along with the waves. It was only recently that Tom tried surfing, too. He was good. But still not as good as his best friend.

  I turned to my parents. They were eating barbecue. I noticed that they were barely speaking to each other. They were not even looking at each other.

  “This is a nice house,” I said.

  “Yes, it is!” my mother agreed immediately.

  “It was nice of Travis to invite us over,” my dad said almost too eagerly. It was like the two of them were struggling to find a topic to speak about. Geez! What happened to my parents?

  “How was your room, sweetheart?” my mother asked.

  “Nice. All green.”

  “Well, it’s only for the weekend. Green is a neutral color. I’m sure this house wouldn’t have pink stuff since Travis doesn’t have a sister.”

  I like green! I screamed in my head. It’s as if even my own mother didn’t know me.

  “I’m glad Tom and Travis became friends,” my dad said.

  I’m not!

  “That kid may have everything his heart desires, but he doesn’t have family.”

  “Where are his parents?” I asked, not that I really cared, simply out of curiosity.

  “His father is the head of Cross Magnates, one of the biggest companies in the country,” my father explained. “His mother is the head of one of the biggest magazine chains in the country. They are very rich. You can tell from all this property and the cars that Travis drives. I guess they’re out of the country most of the time. I think his mother lives in France more.”

  “Yay! That makes us lucky! We get to keep Travis!” I said sarcastically.

  My mother sighed. “Sweetheart, I know you two don’t get along well all the time. But over the years, we’ve learned to love Travis as our own. He needs a family. He needs us. Your brother adores him. I hope you try to get along and sort out your differences. I don’t think this setup is going to change anytime soon.”

  I sighed in frustration. At that point, I didn’t think my setup with Travis and my life was going to change, either. But I guess life can be a total bitch, huh?

  Chapter Two

  He was young and responsible…the epitome of sunshine. If one said angels do not walk on earth, I would disagree. Because Tom was one of them. He was always positive, always considerate of the people around him.

  One night, he didn’t come home. We were waiting for him at dinner. His phone was off. And then we received a call from the hospital, informing us that he was rushed to the emergency room.

  Tom had been racing when we didn’t even know he could race.

  It had been hazy, as if everything moved in fast forward. We rushed to the hospital and waited frantically as they operated on him.

  I found myself praying so hard. I loved Tom. He couldn’t die! He was only seventeen. He had so many things going for him. He was an angel. There were a lot more people in the world he could help, a lot more lives he could touch.

  Like Travis’s. Travis was a troubled kid when he met my brother. But then he was able to find a new family with us. Because Tom took him in.

  When the doctor came out of the room, he told us that they did everything they could. He was alive, but we were told not to keep our hopes up. There were complications and we could not be guaranteed he would walk out of the hospital healthy again.

  The first time that Tom opened his eyes, he asked for Travis.

  Tom was driving Travis’s Porsche. It had been totaled. The car’s safety features were the only things that gave my brother a little chance at survival.

  From the window, I saw Tom make an effort to raise his hand. Travis hooked his pinky with his and pulled it away to bump it with my brother’s fist. That was their sign of brotherhood.

  I’d never seen Travis cry before. But as I watched them from the window, I could tell that he was on the brink of breaking down. He was always so proud, always so cold and distant. He never really showed much emotion. But now I realized that Tom really was a brother to him. He really did care for us.

  The next time Tom opened his eyes again, I was with him.

  “I…love…you,” he said with each precious breath he took.

  Tears rolled down my cheeks. “I love you, too,” I said in a broken voice.

  “Promise me…you will always…be happy,” he said.

  I nodded. “And you will be there with me, Tom. You will see me live each day happily!” I said. “You’re the best brother anybody could ever ask for.”

  “You will never be alone…baby sister,” he struggled to say. “I promise you that. I love you…you won’t be alone.” He gave me one sad smile, and then closed his eyes.

  Just then, I heard a sharp sound that froze me on my feet.

  “Tom!” I shouted. The nurses and doctors rushed into the room. They pushed me away. I struggled to come closer to my brother. Just then, somebody wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me away as they tried to perform CPR on Tom.

  And then finally, I heard somebody say, “Time of death…”

  I didn’t hear the rest. “No!” I screamed. I didn’t know who was holding me. But I was thankful for him because I was breaking down. I almost fell to the floor. I felt arms wrap around me to support my weight.

  “It’s going to be okay, Brianne,” I heard Travis’s familiar voice as he cuddled me against his chest. But I could hear the tears in his voice as he struggled to be strong.

  “He can’t die, Travis!” I cried against his chest.

  “He will always be with us,” he whispered against my ear and I wrapped my arms around Travis’s waist. Right then, it didn’t matter that I hated him or we never got along. Right then, I knew that if there was one person who understood exactly what I felt at this moment, it was him…because every pain I felt in my heart, he felt exactly the same. Tom was a brother to both of us.

  I don’t know how I survived the following days, trying to keep a brave face in front of our relatives and our friends. I tried to be strong. But whenever I was alone in my room, I hugged one of Tom’s shirts and I cried my heart out.

  My parents stopped talking to each other. It seemed that they were both blaming each other for what happened. Even Travis had been confined in his own world. I felt that he kept blaming himself for what happened to Tom because it was his car that Tom drove that night, and he had not been there to stop it.

  I stared at Tom’s grave, after his funeral when everybody had gone, including my parents. I didn’t want to go yet. I was left all alone. I read the words written on his tombstone.

  Thomas Antoine Montgomery

  Forever Young

  It began to rain, as if the heavens were crying with me. My parents seemed to have forgotten that they’d left their little girl behind. I stood there in the rain for at least an hour, and neither of my parents came to find me.

  You will never be alone, baby sister, Tom promised me. But he was gone. And even my parents caved in to their own worlds to mourn on their own. Whom did I have now?

  Suddenly, I felt an arm around my shoulder. I looked up and found Travis staring down at me. His eyes were teary, too.

  He hugged me to him, and this surprised me again. Travis and I hated each other’s guts. But the embrace he gave me was warm and sincere. More than that, it was needing, too. It was as if we suddenly felt so alone and now all we had was each other to hold on to.

  “Ssshhh…” he hushed me. “Everything’s going to be okay. I promise I will take care of you for as long as I live,” he said. Then he turned toward Tom’s grave. “I will protect her with my life, bro. You don’t have to worry. She will never be alone for as long as I am alive.”

  And suddenly, I realized this was what Tom had asked Travis for in the hospital. He asked Travis to take care of me…because he would no longer be able to.

  And even though I hated Travis in the past, I knew he me
ant what he promised Tom. And I knew Tom would not leave me in Travis’s care if he didn’t trust him with his life.

  I buried my face in Travis’s shoulder. I felt him kiss the top of my head and then he leaned his cheek against it. He was taking deep breaths once in a while and I knew he was crying, too. But as he held me in his arms, I knew he was trying to be strong for both of us.

  ***

  “I was… I was…” I watched Peter Zonokkis stammer in front of me.

  Because he was taking so much time saying what he wanted to say, it gave me more time to study him, up close. He was wearing khaki pants, his shirt buttoned all the way up to his neck, and he was wearing glasses.

  Peter was one of the smartest kids in school. He was regarded as a geek most of the time. And it killed me to hear him stammer in front of me, knowing full well what he was going to ask me, and knowing full well, too, what my answer would be.

  “So? Will you?” he asked.

  I blinked back at him. Did he already ask me something?

  “Sorry, Pete.” I’m not really going to ask him to repeat himself, am I? “I’m not allowed to date…yet,” I said. I hope I was right in thinking he was asking me out.

  His mouth formed an O. “But…aren’t you sixteen already?”

  I shook my head. “Not yet. I’m three days shy.”

  “Some… some girls start dating earlier than fifteen.”

  I shrugged. “Not my parents,” I lied. Actually I didn’t think my parents cared anymore if I got pregnant!

  “All right. Maybe I’ll ask you next week?”

  I shook my head. “Well…I’m not sure. I’m not in a hurry. Maybe much later.”

  He smiled at me. “All right. Well, see you around.”

  I nodded and turned around toward the exit.

  “I hope you’re not just letting him down easy,” a male’s voice said behind me.

  I turned around to find Allan Gilmore walking behind me.

  I raised a brow at him. Allan was two years my senior. He was captain of the debate team. Very smart, and very cute.

  “No. That’s the truth, actually.”

  “How can a gorgeous girl like you not be allowed to date at this age?”

  I shrugged. “I’ll ask my parents when I see them,” I answered sarcastically.

  He smiled. “So, if I asked you out, I’d probably get the same answer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? Because I’m not your type?” he asked wistfully.

  I shook my head. “Not that. Because I wasn’t lying to Peter.”

  “Okay. Maybe I’ll check up on you in a couple of months.”

  I nodded. “Maybe.”

  He walked past me and gave me a wink. “See you in a few months!” he yelled as he walked away.

  I walked home and thought about Allan and Peter. Not that it wasn’t true, but it wasn’t a lie, either. I hadn’t discussed dating with my parents. With all of us still mourning Tom’s death, boys were the last thing I needed to worry about.

  I remembered talking to Tom a couple of years back. I asked him about his first date, the rules and proper dating decorum if there was one.

  He laughed and told me I was too young to be asking those questions.

  “I promise, when you are allowed to date, I will be your first date!” he said to me. “I will take you out on a real date. I will tell you the do’s and don’ts. Let you know what to expect. And hopefully, set the bar really high for your future dates…it’s good to have high expectations, so your first boyfriend will be a cut above the rest,” he said with the boyish grin on his face.

  “Promise?”

  He raised his right hand. “I promise.”

  And then Tom was gone even before my parents could give me a go ahead on dating. How could I go on my first date now without remembering that my brother should have been with me? He should have been alive.

  I didn’t know it, but tears were welling up in my eyes already. I missed Tom so much. It had only been a few months since I’d lost him. And it still felt exactly the same as that first day.

  When I reached home, I saw a sleek new Porsche parked in front of my driveway. I thought one of my parents had a visitor.

  As I approached the driveway, the door of the car opened. I watched a familiar figure step out of it.

  My breath caught in my throat. Straight black hair, streaked with some dark blond strands and sleek, sporty sunglasses hiding his devilishly cold eyes.

  I stopped in front of him.

  “Cherie,” he greeted me.

  “Wow! Someone is still in Paris mode,” I teased him.

  I don’t know how Travis had been making his classes. He’d been in and out of the country for the past couple of months after Tom died. One month he was home, and then after a few weeks, he went back to his home in Paris, with his mother.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “Okay. Alone most of the time.”

  He pushed his sunglasses up his head to reveal his startling crystal blue eyes.

  “Alone?” he echoed and something in his expression told me that he didn’t like the sound of that. “What about your parents?”

  I shrugged. “You would think that since they lost one child, they would care more for the other, right?” I shook my head sadly. “I think I lost them the day I lost Tom.”

  Tears suddenly slipped from my eyes. I tried to fan my hands in front of my face and disguise my sadness with a giggle. But when I looked up at Travis, I could tell that I hadn’t fooled him.

  He reached for my shoulder and pulled me to him. I rested my head against his shoulder, took a deep breath, and then for the first time in many months, I let all the tears fall.

  ***

  I sat on my seat and attacked my banana split as if I hadn’t eaten ice cream in months. Well, I hadn’t, actually.

  “How’s school?” Travis asked me. He was sitting opposite me, having a soda.

  “Same old,” I replied. “Except that today, I had two boys coming up to me, asking me out.”

  “And?” he asked with a raised brow.

  I shook my head. “I told them I wasn’t allowed to date yet.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “I don’t think my parents care anymore, to be honest,” I replied sadly. “But that’s not really the reason why I don’t date yet.”

  “Then what is?” he asked.

  I shrugged. Because Tom promised me…

  Travis took another sip of his soda. He didn’t ask me again. Instead, he waited for me to be ready to tell him.

  I sighed. “Tom promised me…” I started. “He promised he would be my first date.”

  “Okay, that sounds weird…even for me,” Travis said.

  “Don’t be absurd!” I said. “He promised to take me out on a real date, to tell me what to expect, to teach me what I should know about…the do’s and the don’ts. And he was hoping to set the bar really high so I could set high standards for myself.” I sighed. “I guess that’s not going to happen now. And somehow, it held me back. Every time a guy asks me out, I think about how that first date should have been my educational date, you know. Now, I guess I’m up for…trial by fire. And I’m not very thrilled to do that just yet.”

  “Aren’t you turning sixteen in three days?”

  “Hey, you remembered!” I said. “I hope that was not the reason you cut your Paris trip short.”

  He took a deep breath. “It was, actually,” he said in a low voice.

  My head shot up at him. “Really? Because the Travis I know didn’t really care about me.”

  He raised a brow at me and sighed. “I’m bound to care about you now, remember?”

  I rolled my eyes. “A little sincerity would be nice.”

  “How do you know I wasn’t sincere?”

  “Because…you barely show…any sincerity.”

  “I barely show any emotion, period,” he corrected me.

  I sighed. There was no winning that argumen
t. Travis Cross was cold and ruthless now. There was a time in the past that he was so playful and mischievous. But now that Tom wasn’t around anymore, he had gotten worse. As if my brother’s death taught him not to care too much, get attached too much. Because when these people went, he would get hurt over and over.

  Now, he didn’t care about the people around him. He was trained not to show how he really felt. Trained to cave in and shield himself from getting hurt. The only person he didn’t shield himself from…was buried six feet under. It must have been quite ironic for him that the first person he opened up to was taken away from him. So I guess I shouldn’t really have complained about his lack of feelings toward me.

  I heard him release a breath. “But it doesn’t always mean I don’t…feel anything at all,” he said.

  I stared into his eyes. They were cold, but somehow I could see his soul there…hiding in the shadows.

  “You should know this about me, Brianne,” he said. “Because our lives are going to be intertwined for the years to come.”

  I sighed and nodded. “But you must know…” I said. “I tease and laugh a lot! Or at least, I used to.”

  “I know. If some girls are candies and bubble gums, you’re a Tootsie Roll,” he said, and somehow, I couldn’t tell if he found that endearing or irritating.

  I smiled and then I reached across the table for his hand. “We’re going to be okay, Travis,” I said. It wasn’t just an assurance for him. It was more of a question for him to reassure me. Funny, because a few months before, I really loathed this guy. Now, I felt like he was the only thing I had left…the only thing I had to remind me of the happy family that I used to have.

  He turned his hand over and gave mine a gentle squeeze. “Yes, cherie. I’ll make sure we’re going to be.”

  ***

  I couldn’t have mistaken it. The locker with a rose tucked in the handle was mine. There was a note with it.

  I nervously opened it. I didn’t know what to expect. I was hoping it didn’t come from Peter or Allan since I really wouldn’t know what excuse to use this time around.