“We know, Dad,” Brynn says. “We do this every year, so you don’t have to give us the same speech each time. And anyway, it’s Birdie’s job to keep her cat from eating the tree—not mine.”
I don’t dare comment. It only encourages the little monster.
She continues without taking a breath. “Did you even notice the guy had a sign next to the trees this year that said ‘Meat Goats for Sale’?” she giggles to herself. “Meat goats! Disgusting.”
Mom sighs loud enough for everyone to hear; Dad stops talking. A blaring siren interrupts the station, one of those emergency alerts I hear on the television sometimes. Dad turns the dial down, but we can still hear the announcer report the flash flood warning that’s been issued for our county. Even though we live only a few miles from the lot, we’re still not home because of this violent storm we’re caught in.
Dad presses his worn leather boot to the gas pedal, gliding and swerving around the highway’s dangerous bend through the torrential downpour that’s covering the windshield. The wipers swish and sway, shoving pockets of water off our SUV onto the side of the road. I push my face farther out the window into the air. My fingers cling to the Nikon D3300 camera I got for my seventeenth birthday in January. Mom says I owe her one valedictorian speech at the end of the school year, something I’ve been working toward since I could speak and still, I feel so unprepared. Brynn sees my fingers fidgeting with the flower-printed strap and sharply cocks her head up at me.
“Maybe after you puke, you can take pictures of it like you do with dead animals,” she says. “It’s seriously messed up.” Now that’s she’s thirteen, and more of an a-hole than ever, I have to refrain from karate chopping her in the throat on a minute-by-minute basis. It would take me only one shot, and she’d be on the floor, choking for air. I know this because I looked it up (and maybe even practiced on my pillow). Chomperz thinks I have a suppressed rage problem, but I tell him it’s just an a-hole-Brynn problem. He usually gets me, but we seem to disagree on all things Brynn.
“You’re seriously messed up—stop looking through my camera!” I shriek.
“Stop being creepy and morbid like Jeffrey Dahmer. He ate people after he killed them, probably took pictures of them first. Are you a brain-eating zombie like Jeffrey Dahmer—a Dahmbie?”
I shoot her the I’m-going-to-kill-you glance, but she just smirks. “Brynn, I mean it. Shut. Up.”
“Brynn, I mean it,” she repeats. “Shut. Up.”
“Real mature.”
“Real mature.” She wags her tongue, dares me to pull it straight out of her throat.
I grunt, forcing Mom to spin around from the front passenger seat to look closely at me. “Are you sick?”
The thoughts are piling up in my head, making me flustered. I see them stacking like files I’m separating into categories: Tell, Don’t Tell, Kill Brynn, Schoolwork, Random Song Lyrics, and Cat Videos. Brynn’s eyes are still on me with a steely focus, instead of the phone she’s usually texting on. I don’t know who would ever want to talk to her unless they were threatened with execution, but that’s on them.
When I don’t answer, Mom turns back to the road.
I meet Brynn’s deep-set cocoa eyes that are lightened only by the moon. A half-crooked smile lifts from the corner of her metal mouth in a way that tells me she’s totally messing with me. Of course she is, because she’s Brynn—queen of her own whacked-out universe where she and I can’t possibly coexist like normal sisters. That would be too easy.
“You’re going to be in so much trouble,” she whispers. “I’m telling them their perfect little princess snuck out of the house without permission. It’s going to be awesome.”
I lean in, grab a fistful of her plaid shirt—my shirt she stole—and lower my voice to something from the depths of hell. “I already paid you off, you little brat. If you say anything to Mom and Dad before I do, I’ll call Jason Sloan and tell him you’re on your period.”
She rips my hand off and scoffs. “You better not—I’ll die!”
“Try me. Let’s see … this is day … four of your cycle. I know things you don’t even realize, little sister.”
I watch her deflate and know I’ve won. She backs away and crosses her arms but in this backseat, there’s nowhere she can go that’s far enough. Her hair brushes up against me when she turns her head, and now I really want to gag. Thanks to puberty, she completely sucks—a stinky, moody narc who wants to catch me doing anything out of character so she can rat me out and be the hero. Mom and Dad’s little Birdie Jay doesn’t make mistakes. Ever. That, of course, is according to them, not me. Brynn’s determined to prove that theory wrong so she can shove it in my face. They won’t even think sneaking out to a party is a big deal, but to me it’s everything. I don’t want them to see me as one of those girls—lying, sneaking around—the kind of girl Brynn will, inevitably, be (and kind of already is). And if I pull at one thread, the whole ball will unravel, and the scholarship thing is a really big ball.
“Vroom!” Benny yells, rolling his toy car’s wheels against his leg.
“You like your new car?” Mom asks.
“Yeah,” he says—pretty much the extent of his vocabulary.
I look over at him, his unmatched socks pulled high, sparkling cobalt eyes illuminating all of Clifton. He doesn’t look as sick as he’s been the last couple weeks, and I think I can’t do this. Things flop in my stomach the closer we get to home.
“I can’t believe he’s almost two,” Dad says laying his hand on Mom’s. Her fingers have swollen to twice the size they used to be—before the baby weight from Benny left her permanently heavy—so she wears her wedding ring around her neck instead of her finger.
“Can’t believe I’m a forty-three-year-old mother of three with the youngest still in diapers,” she says. “Not what I had planned all those years ago in undergrad. I should be a bestselling author, teaching English at a major university, not ghostwriting in my pajamas while balancing a sippy cup and a pack of wipes.”
“You’ve got to let it go, Bess,” Dad says. His salt-and-pepper hair—that’s more salt than pepper lately—reflects against the moonlight. “You chose to stay home, and you’re great at it.”
“I didn’t mean—never mind,” she says, mumbling. “Things are just different than I imagined. That’s all.”
“So goes life,” Dad says.
She turns her attention out the window while a long strand of her coarse brown hair unravels from her fingertip. Thunder clashes, scaring Dad just outside of the thick yellow lines, where the water builds and carries along this winding highway—the one we live on. When he tries to regain control, his white knuckles clutching the wheel, he overcorrects and crosses the double center lines around the bend just as an oncoming vehicle is directly in front of us.
The car swerves, howling a HONK to show us what idiots we are, but they never slow their speed—something we’ve realized is the dangerous norm on this stretch of road. Dad eases up on the gas so the rain puddles on the hood. I see his shoulders rise and fall in a sharp, panting motion, and my heart jumps. My breath shortens, my chest is tight, and I can feel my hands clenching shut tight like his. Brynn and I give this look to each other, as if to say, That was close! But no one says a word aloud for a solid ten seconds.
“I wish people would slow down on this damn curve,” he says, shaking.
As we approach our driveway, I know it’s ours by the raised wooden stake with the fresh SOLD sign on the corner that wasn’t there last weekend.
Mom places her hand on Dad’s shoulder. “I’ll drive next time.”
He nods with intermittent breaths. Brynn looks to me again. She’s a hot branding iron and I’m the animal hide. Together, we’re a violent stampede waiting to happen. All of this combined gives me mixed sensations. I’m cold, with a sweat that drenches my cheeks and I’m hot, with a chill that runs from my toes to my spine in one swift flash. Dad steers up the steep, newly paved driveway that overlooks a str
ing of memorial crosses on the other side of the highway. This part of the road is known as the Devil’s Backbone. It’s nearly impossible to reverse or check the mail without a car pulling skin off the bone. To be honest, I don’t know why anyone would build a house here, but Dad says he got a great deal—just like the cypress—and it’s better than the small confines of that apartment where everyone could smell Brynn’s hair.
I see in the rearview mirror Dad is struggling to find the path of the beastly hill. He punches the garage door opener, but per the new-house kinks we’ve noted, it stalls. His aggravation is mounting, probably over Mom’s underhanded jabs at everything he’s doing wrong muttered beneath her breath, but the thing won’t budge.
“Piece of shit,” he mumbles.
Brynn chuckles. “Dad said shit,” she whispers.
“Brooks!” Mom says in a huff. “Language.” It’s the same thing she always says when Dad curses, which happens often.
He pulls the opener from the visor and bangs it on the steering wheel. Tap tap tap. One final press, and a light beams onto the lot, making it look like we’re at the top of a majestic mountain instead of a puny hill. “Just needed to shake the batteries loose.”
He parks the car and looks back at the three of us. “Me and Brynn are on grocery duty, Mom’s on Benny patrol, I’ll have Sarge help with the tree, and, Birds—you okay?”
I nod, I think. It feels like my head is moving. Everyone is staring at me like it’s not, so I decide now would be a good time to actually speak. “I wish everyone would stop asking me that. I’m fine.”
He looks to Mom, and they make these faces at each other like I’ve said something crazy. “Hope you’re not catching whatever Benny’s been fighting.”
We maintain eye contact. “Grab Benny’s stroller from the trunk,” he orders. He presses the garage door opener again, but the door doesn’t close. With a screech, he pounds the plastic opener on the wheel again.
“Birdie—did you hear Dad?” Mom asks.
I nod again. This time it seems like my head is moving, because the doors swing open and everyone goes on with their tasks. Mom is rustling around in her giant purse while Dad and Brynn grab armfuls of grocery bags. Brynn sticks out her tongue before running inside the connecting door that leads to the kitchen and I secretly hope she’ll trip and fall. Now is the time, I think. There is no other time.
Mom slides out of her side, fast. “Mom,” I say once out of my seat. I sling the camera over my shoulder and compose myself. She’s busy unfastening Benny, the strap strangling her arm as she lifts him, which causes his toy to fall to the ground.
“My car!” he cries.
I inch my way closer to her. “Mom,” I repeat with more urgency.
“I’ll get it, Benny,” she says, setting him down. “Grab the stroller, Birdie.” I hear a slight irritation in her tone.
I reluctantly pull the flimsy thing out of the trunk and, without thinking, something I’m not known for, unfold the hinges and prop the wheels against the opening of the garage. The rain is blowing inside in gusts as Mom kneels down onto the oil-tattooed garage floor to look under the vehicle.
“Mom,” I say, walking up behind her. Through the entranceway, I see Dad and Brynn putting the groceries away while Benny stands here with us. He’s rolling the wheels of the stroller between his fingers, ignoring the wetness of rain on his head.
“Go inside, Benny,” Mom says. “I’ll bring it in when I find it.” She’s reaching, patting the floor, mumbling something about how lazy Dad is and how she has to do everything around here and though Dad works a lot, she’s not completely wrong.
“I need to talk to you,” I say. My knees threaten to buckle and leave me with no solid foundation.
“Gotcha!” she says.
“What?” I think my bones have split apart now. One by one, they’ve unhinged and flung to the outside of me. She already knows what I’m going to say, and she’s been waiting, holding it in, until we were alone. A flush of heat tingles across my face.
“His car. Found it.”
“Mom, please stop moving,” I say, my voice quivering.
“What?” she asks. Her arms are spread wide, daring me to spill every word.
I open my mouth, but the space is void of any truths. The only sounds are of the bellowing winds and rain colliding, blowing streams into us. Through my grunting and stuttering, my grandpa, Sarge, interrupts, his glasses reflecting against the florescent lights.
“Hurry up, Birds,” he says, tossing back a popcorn kernel. “Law and Order: SVU is on in five. It’s the one where Benson is kidnapped.” He lingers in the doorway with a grin, then tips his camouflaged veteran hat before he disappears.
“You heard him,” she says with her hands pinching at her waist. “Spit it out.”
My hands are twisted behind my back while my feet shuffle a nervous number. It doesn’t feel like enough time; I can’t do this. I have, what—ten seconds to tell her I lost my scholarship and snuck out of the house to blow off steam? She won’t understand. “I have something to tell you.”
“Birdie Jay?” She crosses her arms, and sudden worry drenches her expression. She leans in close enough for me to smell her perfume, the floral one with a hint of peaches, and it makes me remember all the times I confessed things as a kid.
“So,” she says. Her silence is deafening, and now I know why Dad feels the need to talk incessantly when he has nothing to say.
Again, I open my mouth, ready to tell her everything, but we’re interrupted by a loud banging that originates from the big bay window at the front of the house. And through the entranceway that connects to the kitchen, there are screams. Loud, guttural screams. Mom and I both turn around at the same time to see why the banging, the screams, are echoing louder than the storm itself at a pitch most animals couldn’t recognize.
I’ll never forget the look on her face.
Her eyes expand to the size of planets, mouth slack in silent horror. She pushes past me and runs like hell after the stroller Benny climbed into, while I distracted her with my stupid, irrelevant news that now seems so unimportant.
The wind and spitting rain pulls at the metal and plastic, forces him down our steep blackened driveway that tips toward Highway 22 like a teetering roller coaster at its peak—the stroller I pulled from the trunk and left propped open. And this series of motions I will never forget, because this is the last time I will ever know myself, my life, in every sense of the word, again.
Brynn continues pounding on the window’s glass with her screams, chasing away every last bit of hope that maybe Mom will catch him, it’ll be fine, the storm will slow the cars along the bend this time. Dad runs through the entranceway after Mom, and now they’re both chasing Benny, in this runaway stroller, down this summit. I look through the door that leads inside our house that still smells like fresh paint, and Sarge is rushing around like he’s fighting a battle he can’t win. And I’m just here, frozen. My feet are concrete, cemented into the earth that is about to split into uneven halves.
There are moments in life, vivid ones splashed onto blank canvas, that hang in front of you, swing like a pendulum you can’t grasp. But you reach, eyes wide open, because if you close them, everything changes. So fast. My fingers are outstretched at Mom and Dad’s shadows like if I push them far enough, they’ll pluck Benny right off the stroller just in time.
Two headlights appear around the bend at an accelerated speed. The engine’s roar is louder than any I’ve heard around these parts. The way the tires squeal, pushing through heaps of stagnant flood water, I’m reminded of a jet landing on a runway at approximately 870 kilometers per hour—a reverberating sound I can’t wrap my senses around, even though I’m right here witnessing it.
The lights don’t slow through the storm, they speed up, challenge the thunder and crackling lightning that spills from the clouds. The collision is inevitable, and just as the earth is cut into halves, my heart splinters, too, into an endless chasm, creating
the moment those two headlights catch the stroller and fling my baby brother into the air like a ragdoll. The impact crushes the plastic and metal between the wheels, leaving the fabric in shreds and Benny’s motionless body next to the SOLD sign at the base of the hill.
The tires don’t screech to a stop, and there is no driver checking to see if my brother’s heart is still beating. The last thing I hear is Mom’s transcendent wail that seeps into the sky and carries through the whole state of Indiana.
And still, my limbs betray me.
“Move!” Brynn cries, pushing past.
Here I am, this solid mass of cancer, infecting the family—like we’re not already struggling—and my voice refuses to cry out while my feet don’t carry me to the point of impact. Sarge and Brynn run down the slope to where this is happening—it’s really happening—and I can’t make any part of me stir. My brain tells my feet to take a step, just one step, and all these files I’ve categorized in my mind have been hurled in all directions. There is no order inside of me right now—only chaos. I can’t see past the top of the drive. Is he dead, alive? I hate myself for not knowing, for not checking.
A sour stream of food shoots up my throat like a cannon, spewing all over my camera and strap. I don’t hunch over or look for a trash can. I puke, right here, on the cold garage floor where the lighting acts as a sunlamp, heating my scalp. Just as it happens, Chomperz casually strolls through the entranceway with a sort of cat smile, if there is one, and rubs up against my leg because cats are inconsiderate jerks who want to be petted at the absolute worst times. And all this is happening because I wanted to tell Mom something so insignificant, so trivial, before Brynn did.
And just as I think it, the boy at the party flashes through my mind.
And at the absolute worst time, I sort of smile, too.
LESSON OF THE DAY: For a reaction to happen, particles must collide with energies equal to or greater than the activation energy for the reaction. But the thing is, the one thing I can’t stop thinking about: Out of all the cars in the world traveling at normal speeds, why, at the exact moment Benny crossed the highway, was this car there? One second faster or slower, one variable changed, and this might not have happened.
The Inevitable Collision of Birdie & Bash Page 3
