Flawed

by Kate Avelynn

  “So, Dad’ll be home soon,” he says through a mouthful of food. My pulse picks up, but then I notice his bowl is empty. Sure enough, he’s eyeing mine. “You want to get out of here, or are you cool locking yourself in while I’m gone tonight?”

  I take one more bite and hold the rest out to him. He’s off his bed to grab it before I can blink. “Can you take me to the mall? I need a haircut.”

  He looks up from my bowl and frowns. “I think your hair looks fine.”

  “Really?” I smooth down the limp strands that hang almost to my elbow. “I was thinking maybe I’d get it cut really short this summer. Like, pixie-cut short.”

  “Huh.” He resumes inhaling his food. “You can do whatever you want, I guess. All I’m saying is you look pretty as is.”

  Heat creeps up my neck and bleeds into my cheeks. Even though he’s been saying nice things for as long as I can remember, his compliments always do this to me. It’s a confusing balance between feeling good about myself and being uncomfortable with that feeling.

  “I’m supposed to meet up with Sam and Alex in a few hours,” he continues, as if he has no clue he’s embarrassed me. “Think we’ll be done by six?”

  At the mention of Sam, my cheeks go from warm to scalding. I’ve been nursing a crush on the tall and mysterious Sam Donavon almost as long as he’s been James’s best friend, which is pretty much forever. I don’t delude myself into thinking it’s mutual. It made sense that he ignored me at school when he and my brother were popular upperclassmen, but the few times Sam has been at our house, it’s been the same way. His gray eyes look through me like I’m a window in the wall.

  All-brawn-and-no-brain Alex Andersen, on the other hand, has been flirting with me for years. When I was in fifth grade and he was in sixth—before I knew about his obsession with all things sexual—he lured me out to the rickety shed in our backyard under the pretense of helping him find something for James. Surrounded by rusty lawnmowers and spare car parts, Alex gave me my first kiss.

  While it had been a monumental, albeit disappointing, event for me, I doubt it meant anything to him. Alex dates all the girls my brother blows off, plus the few he manages to snag first. James doesn’t talk about the girls themselves much, but he thinks shafting them with Alex is hilarious.

  Thinking about Alex and that kiss makes me think about Sam again. After he and James graduated last year, I hardly saw Sam anymore. Now that Alex has graduated, I’ll probably see him even less. Imagining his dark eyes staring at me and his lips on mine, hot and insistent, sends happy shivers up and down my body that I’m terrified James might notice.

  The alarm clock perched on the top shelf of James’s headboard ticks off another minute.

  4:29. Time to go.

  “If we leave soon, we should be back in plenty of time,” I say. Hopefully he’ll take me with him tonight. Just in case, I hop off my bed and quickly contemplate my meager selection of shirts in our closet. A stretchy pale pink t-shirt—long-sleeved, of course, and also a present from James—is the most summery thing I own. I grab it and head for the door.

  “You don’t have to change in the bathroom,” James says. When I turn around, startled, I see he’s shifted around to face his headboard. “You know I won’t peek.”

  That doesn’t stop me from positioning myself in front of the mirrored closet door with my back to him so I can make sure. I shouldn’t feel weird about changing in front of James—we’ve shared a room our whole lives, so it’s not like we haven’t seen each other before—but I can’t help it. I may hate seeing his bruises, but I worry seeing all of his failures etched into my skin would kill my brother.

  It only takes me three seconds to peel off my drab school shirt and slip on the pink one. The second the soft material clears my belly button, James is off his bed and out the door, mumbling that he’ll be back in a second.

  While I wait, I rinse out our cups and bowls in the sink. The low rumble of a car pulling into the driveway stops me cold. I frantically glance at the clock in the hallway.

  4:36.

  We’re too late.

  Five

  “Take my keys and go out the front door.” James’s voice is quiet and even when he appears beside me, the opposite of how he looks. The air around his body might as well be vibrating with excitement.

  “I’m not going without you.”

  He turns on me so fast, I recoil. “I said go.”

  For months, there have been whispers at the mill about our father receiving disciplinary action. No one will say anything about it around James, but from what he’s managed to overhear, our father has gotten into fights and come to work smelling like a beer keg more times than the mill manager can overlook. The stronger the whispers, the worse our father’s temper at home. I clutch James’s hand even tighter and shake my head.

  “Yes. If he blows off steam fighting me, there’s less of it left for you.”

  “I don’t want you to do this. Not for me.”

  “You sure about that?”

  Both options end with someone bruised and bleeding, so what does it matter? The third option—the one where we get the hell out of this house—is the only thing I’m sure about. “Please, let’s just go.”

  The garage refrigerator door slams. At the last second, James presses his keys into my hand, soothing my fears with fingers so gentle I want to cry.

  With one last silent plea on my part, I tug him toward the front door, but then his hand is gone and so is he. I watch him stride toward the kitchen, the hand I was just holding clenched into a fist.

  The door to the garage opens. Our father’s keys slide across the tile counter in the kitchen. Even with James’s body between us, he sees me standing in the dimly lit hall. I feel his gaze raking down my body, lingering in places that make me shudder. He turns to his food, makes a show of poking at the plate of mac ‘n cheese, and glares at me. “My dinner’s cold.”

  I open my mouth to apologize, but James answers before I can.

  “So heat it up.”

  Is he trying to get himself killed? When our father narrows his eyes, I bolt for the door. I can’t watch this. Knowing what’s about to happen is horrible enough.

  James says something to him in a low voice. A threat, that much I can tell. I’m already through the door when our father grumbles his response. Any second now, I’ll hear the fists slamming into flesh. My brother’s flesh.

  I cover my ears and run faster.

  Except James jogs down the driveway a few moments later, which is too soon if he’d gotten into it with our father. I can’t help but wonder who backed off first, but neither of us says anything when he slides into the driver’s seat beside me and cranks the engine. It’s not until we’ve cleared our neighborhood and are driving past the park that he speaks up.

  “Something happened at work today,” James says. “Something with Dad.”

  “What did he do this time?”

  He grips the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turn white. “He insulted me in front of all the guys we work with.”

  “That’s it?” I fiddle with a loose thread hanging from the sleeve of my shirt, thinking of all the insults our father has hurled at me over the years. There are too many to count. And insults are much better than the alternative. James knows better than to let the taunting get to him. Our father lives to provoke people. It’s the boxer in him.

  “They laughed at me,” he says in a low voice, “and I had to take it because I’m a low man on the totem pole. If I retaliated, they would’ve fired me.”

  “They don’t matter.” I rest my hand on his knee. “He doesn’t matter.”

  “I’m not going to listen to his shit anymore. I can take him now—I know I can.”

  I remember what it was like before my brother was old enough and strong enough to keep me safe without getting hurt. The horrid guilt that gnawed at my insides every time he crawled back to me. When he turned sixteen and got his license, everything changed. When he got the job at t
he mill and started hanging around the Armory, it changed again.

  Still, the determination in his eyes won’t be enough to stop them—and the rest of him—from winding up black and blue. Again. “Please don’t. He’ll just hurt you.”

  “Your lack of faith in me sucks,” he grumbles, shoving my hand away. “I’ve been able to take every guy at the Armory for weeks, and they’re huge. Ask Alex.”

  The thought of all those massive guys pounding on my brother is enough to turn my stomach. I unroll the window and suck in a shaky breath. “I don’t like you boxing.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m sick of Dad acting like he’s still the shit. And he thinks we’re the disappointment. God.”

  We ride in silence. Our father may hate me, but once upon a time, James was his pride and joy. He’d bring him along when he socialized at the Armory, making sure James paid attention to their rotten technique. When they’d get home late at night, our father unsteady from the all the beers people bought him, James would crawl into my bed and tell me about the fights.

  The guy who won cheated! He rubbed Vaseline all over his cheeks so, when he got punched, the other guy’s glove would slip across his face. Can you believe it?

  Our father hadn’t cheated in a single one of his matches, a fact he bragged about every time he mentioned the lowlifes who’d taken his place of honor at the Armory. Maybe that’s why his devoted fans refuse to see what’s going on in our house. Someone as noble as Knockout Jimmy would never use his fists against his family.

  “I’m taking you with me tonight, by the way,” James finally says. “No sense in leaving you with him when he’s in a shittier-than-normal mood.”

  He reaches across the seat and squeezes my hand. His grip is tighter than ever—a reminder of how much stronger he’s gotten. Maybe he can take our father.

  Is it horrible that a tiny part of me wants him to try?

  James’s truck shudders to a stop in front of the mall’s Super Clips a few minutes later. Posters of perfect people with perfect hair beam at us from the windows, one of whom has the exact haircut I’m hoping for—super-short layers, flippy ends. I shove away thoughts of our father and point it out to James. “That’s what I want,” I say, positive now that he’s seen it, he’ll agree. “Isn’t it cute?”

  He shakes his head. “That won’t look good on you.”

  “Oh.” I frown, trying to imagine my face on the poster instead of the perky woman. The best I can manage is a mangled combination of her eyes and my brother’s nose. Not helpful. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m a guy, not blind,” he says and elbows me in the ribs. “C’mon. Daylight’s a’wasting.”

  As luck would have it, the receptionist is one of the cheerleaders at my school, a bubbly girl with thick chunks of blond highlights in her black-as-night hair. Hopefully I won’t get her stylist. No way, no how am I paying someone to turn my head into a skunk.

  Forcing a small smile, I say, “Hey, Claire.”

  She looks up from the magazine she’s flipping through and gives me the most artificial pep-rally grin I’ve ever seen. “Hey…”

  When her eyes drift toward where I’ve just written my name on the waiting list, I know she has no clue who I am. Which is pretty sad, considering we’ve been in the same homeroom since freshman year. Her hair was red back then.

  The door chimes behind me, and Claire goes wide-eyed, which can only mean one thing.

  “Hi, James,” she says, giving him a much brighter smile than she gave me.

  He smiles at Claire, then leads me over to a square arrangement of chairs. We sit, and her bright green eyes devour him, magazine forgotten. It’s…irritating. More than I would’ve expected. I grab one of the hairstyle books and flip through the pages. How many guys does she get with the whole silent gawking thing?

  Not many, I guess, because she scurries over to the low table beside James’s chair and makes a show of tidying the stack of already-tidy magazines. “So… are you coming to the party tonight?”

  “Thinking about it,” he says without looking up from the book on my lap. He points to a picture in the center of the page before I can ask what she’s talking about. “See, now this would look good on you.”

  The girl he’s pointing to has hair that’s maybe three inches shorter than mine and layered. I wouldn’t look a whole lot different. I flip ahead to the medium length styles and casually ask, “We’re going to a party?” I’ve managed to avoid Logan High’s party scene entirely and don’t know how I feel about breaking my streak now. Avoiding people is more my thing, and any party my brother’s attending promises to be crowded.

  “Thinking about it,” he repeats. “How about this one?”

  I frown at the picture, then at Claire who has moved on to tidying up the mirrored product wall so she can look at James without being too obvious. “That’s the same haircut she has.”

  “Hmm, you’re right,” he says. His gaze trails up and down Claire’s body twice before he throws an arm around my shoulders. “There’s got to be something in this book that doesn’t suck.”

  Through a stack of shampoo bottles, I see Claire narrow her eyes at her reflection in the mirror. I have to press my lips together to keep from laughing.

  “Plenty don’t suck,” I manage to say, pointing to the last style on the page. “You just have awful taste.”

  “I think you’re cute, don’t I?”

  “Sarah?”

  We both look up at the tall hairstylist who has really cool hair—longer in front, tapered in back, wisps of shimmering red highlights.

  James must see the way I’m staring at her. He shakes his head. “Way too short.”

  “But I really like it.”

  He shrugs and sticks out his hand when I stand up, like he’s going to help me climb over his long, outstretched legs he’s apparently not planning to move out of my way—then jerks it back. Brat. I purposely kick him in the shins. He just laughs.

  The stylist watches us act like ten-year-olds with an amused grin on her face. When I’m finally clear of my brother, she gestures toward her station. “Right this way.”

  As soon as I’ve settled into the chair, I tell the stylist to cut my hair like hers. “Just make it a few inches longer,” I add, catching my brother’s eye. I’d never admit it to him, but his opinion matters to me. A lot. He’s almost always right, so there’s a pretty good chance he’s right about this, too. And he is a guy.

  Now that we’ve decided on a style, she leads me to the shampoo station and helps me get settled. The hot water she’s using sluices across my forehead and down my neck, soaking into the towel she wrapped around my shoulders. At least I’ll have good hair if James drags me to the party Claire was talking about—

  Two pieces of our conversation click into place.

  Oh my God. I’m going to see Sam Donavon tonight.

  Before I can fully freak out, the hairstylist shakes her head and squirts a glop of cold shampoo that smells like honeydew melon into my hair. “Mmm, honey. He hasn’t taken his eyes off of you since we got over here.”

  I don’t need to look to know she’s telling the truth. When James watches me, I can feel it.

  “I know plenty of girls who’d kill for a boyfriend like that.”

  Okay, maybe she’s not talking about James. The woman’s too caught up in the whole suds and rinse routine to notice me shifting in the seat to get a better look. Across the room, Claire is rearranging the magazines next to James’s chair again, this time in a fan pattern. Sure enough, he’s watching me.

  I slump back into the shampoo chair and close my eyes. How can I explain our relationship so the stylist gets it? It might not be normal, exactly, but it works for us. The kind of closeness we have can only happen when you grow up in a house like ours. When you know the one person in the world you can count on sleeps in a bed six feet away.

  “I think Claire’s plotting how she’s going to steal him away,” the stylist says with a chuckle, right as Claire knocks a coup
le of the magazines to the floor. James stops watching me long enough to help her pick them up. “Not that he looks interested in being stolen.”

  I sigh. “He’s just my brother.”

  Her hands pause mid-scalp massage. “What was that, honey?”

  “He’s just my brother,” I say again, loud enough for her to hear over the water.

  Except she shuts off the water at the same time and everyone in the salon hears me.

  My gaze darts to James who has a strange look on his face. Embarrassed, I look at Claire who, after shooting me a quick look of surprised recognition, ogles James like a cat ogling an abandoned can of tuna. She must have forgotten what he said about her hair, because if she gets any closer, she’ll be on his lap.

  The stylist looks from me to James. I know what she’s thinking. I know what they’re all thinking—the little blue-haired lady in curlers peering at me from beneath the hair dryer helmet, the military-looking guy getting a buzz cut across the room, the little girl bouncing up and down next to him…

  For whatever reason, right about the time I started looking more like my mother and less like a spindly little kid, people have assumed James and I are an item.

  No one gets it. And I’m starting to think they never will.

  “Well,” the stylist says. “Okay, then.”

  She doesn’t say anything else during the fifteen minutes it takes her to hack off seven inches of my hair and do that feathery thing with her scissors that makes the ends evenly uneven. Claire finally catches my brother’s attention, and I wonder how I can apply what she’s doing to my next conversation with Sam. If there is a conversation. I should probably figure out how to start one first.

  By the time the stylist finishes, my hair looks fantastic, even without the shimmering red highlights I couldn’t afford. And yet, I can’t bring myself to be excited because across the room, Claire has dragged James over to the reception desk and is showing him the little green butterfly tattoo she got last fall. I know it’s a green butterfly because we had the same gym class this year and she likes to prance around in her underwear.