The Bad Boy and the Tomboy

by Nicole Nwosu

  “He’s avoiding me.”

  “You may not be friends like you were before, but he’ll talk to you eventually. He would want an explanation.”

  “Is that Mom talking or you?” Justin asked.

  “That one was me. What did Sam do?”

  Before I could explain that the only person I was truly furious with was myself, my phone rang. Pulling it out of my pocket, I answered Caleb’s call.

  “Can you get over here?”

  He sounded off, almost panicked. “Where?”

  “The Cahill house.”

  What? “Why would I do that?”

  “Because we can’t find Sam and his aunt Liz is getting really worried.”

  “What if he’s at a friend’s house?” Justin asked in the car minutes later as Dad drove. “He’s eighteen.”

  “Your sister is eighteen and still tells me where she’s going at all times.” Dad’s valid point hung in the air and Justin shut up fast. “His aunt, who’s looking after him, is worried about where he is; it’s understandable.”

  “But this worried?” Justin mumbled.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Caleb sounded really stressed when he told me to rush over there.”

  Dad turned into the Cahills’ big driveway. Before I could ring the doorbell, the door whipped open, Cedric on the other side of the threshold. His eyes were slightly red. “Come in.”

  As I entered the living room, Caleb’s frustration was clear. “Seriously? He disappears today of all days? Are you sure he’s not hiding out in the pool house?” He directed that last question to Ivan, who said no.

  “What’s going on?” I asked Caleb.

  “No one has seen Sam since last night, and I called everyone to see if they were with him today, but no.” Caleb raked a hand through his hair.

  “Did anything weird happen last night?” Dad asked.

  “Nothing abnormal,” Cedric said. “He didn’t have any night terrors. I would have heard.”

  “Night terrors?” Justin whispered to me. I shrugged, as confused as he was.

  Ivan tapped Caleb with his phone. “What about the rec center?”

  “Austin texted me,” Caleb said. “They said he’s not there.” Phillip pulled his feet up on the couch next to his mom, the cat in his arms. He was worried. His bond with Sam reminded me of my own with Justin. I didn’t know what I would do if my brother suddenly disappeared.

  Heavy footsteps echoed in the house as Vince Cahill walked in. He was wearing his usual work attire. Silence fell over the room. Mr. Cahill nodded at my dad before turning back to everyone else. “No idea?” The evident stress clouding his expression surprised me a little bit—I wondered what Sam would have said if he was here.

  “No, we’re still looking,” said Cedric.

  “He’s not at your grandmother’s.” Vince turned to Liz. “I rang up the house back in England, James checked and no purchases have been made from his credit or debit cards.”

  “Are Uncle James, Greg, and Aunt Alice flying here?” Phillip asked, biting his nails. Sam’s family.

  “Not yet.” Vince turned to his wife. “If we don’t find him in two hours they’re coming. He’s not at any of the extended family’s houses.” Vince took a seat on the other side of Phillip. “He doesn’t want to be found.”

  Ivan’s eyes shot to me. “Where would he go?”

  “Wouldn’t you think Caleb would know?”

  “No, he’s right,” Caleb agreed. “You would know.”

  If he wasn’t in the rec center, where we’d spent most of our time playing soccer together, or school or home or at his grandmother’s, then he must be at the one place he considered his sanctuary; a place he’d taken me. “The quarry.”

  “The quarry?” Caleb looked as confused as everyone else in the room.

  “It’s outside of the city,” I explained. “If he’s not with his grandmother, then he’s at the quarry.” Caleb still looked puzzled. “You don’t know where it is?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Caleb said.

  “He said . . .’’ I trailed off. He hadn’t told me that Caleb knew of his thinking place; I had simply assumed it.

  “I think I know where you’re talking about,” Cedric said. “I’ll give you a ride.”

  “Are you certain he’s there?” Liz asked.

  “It’s the only place I can think of.” I turned to my dad. “Can I go?”

  His face looked serious. “You have your phone on you?”

  “Yup.”

  “If you can’t get a ride home when you find him, you call me. You got it?”

  “Got it.”

  Cedric walked out of the living room. I was about to follow him when Caleb held me back by my arm. “Text me when you find him, okay?”

  “I will.”

  Cedric’s hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles were turning white. My anxiousness was growing and overtaking my focus on the obvious awkwardness between the two of us as he drove.

  After a long and deafening silence, Cedric parked the car, but didn’t move right away.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. Too quickly. “For not explaining.”

  “I think we should talk about this when it all blows over,” Cedric said, and I agreed, spotting a familiar car in the parking lot. Cedric reached into the back seat and pulled out two water bottles, handing them both to me. “If I know my cousin, you’re going to have to make him drink this.”

  I grabbed them and got out of the car. “Thanks.”

  “Anytime.” He pulled out of the parking lot, waving to me as he drove away.

  Walking the familiar route, I zipped up my jacket. There was no one near the water, and I figured Sam would be near the top of the quarry. Trudging up the long path, one hand on my phone and the other on the zipper of my jacket, I reached the top and found him.

  Sam was sitting where we had been the first day we had been here. Still behind him, I texted Caleb that I’d found him and put my ringer on silent.

  Sam didn’t turn around but his shoulders tensed—he knew someone was behind him. Moving closer, I immediately noticed the tall bottle of alcohol.

  I sat down next to him and both of us looked at the sun sinking in the distance. “I don’t need you here,” he muttered.

  “I’m not leaving. Also, drinking in public isn’t legal.”

  “You can’t tell me what to do.” He sounded childish.

  “Sam, stop being obnoxious.”

  “You need to mind your own business and leave me alone.” His voice was as cold and hard as steel.

  “Is that what you really want?” His eyes were redder than Cedric’s—I wasn’t sure if that was due to the drinking or the crying. “Fine, I’ll leave you alone.” I started to get up but a hand on my arm stopped me.

  “No, don’t go.” Sam’s expression softened. “Stay.”

  “What is with you?” I sat back down. “Everyone is worried about you.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Because I care about you.” Much more than I want to admit.

  “You shouldn’t care about me,” Sam said. “I hurt you. It was all over your face the other day.”

  “I don’t care about that right now.”

  He took another sip of his drink. “Shit, this is going to affect me in the morning.”

  “Then stop drinking or you’ll make it worse.”

  Sam didn’t bother listening, and took a cigarette package from his pocket. He flipped the package over in his hand, and while I was surprised to see it, he didn’t take notice of my expression when he handed it to me. “Before I met you, I only had one real friend here.”

  He paused to shut off the lighter and took a swig of his drink as I still held the water bottles in my hands. “How did you find me?”

>   “This is your thinking place,” I recalled. “You really worried everyone.”

  “I can imagine,” he said dryly.

  “That’s all you can say?” I stood up. “Sam, you had them worried sick that something happened to you. Even your uncle.”

  Sam stood up in disbelief, wobbling back and forth. “My uncle was worried about me? What did you do? Tie him to a chair?”

  “Believe it or not, he cares for you more than you think.”

  Sam didn’t care, ready to take another swallow of his drink. I grabbed the bottle from his hands. “Give it back, Hazel.”

  “I’m not going to have you in the hospital with alcohol poisoning or liver failure.” I held out one of the water bottles. “You can have this instead.”

  “Give it to me.” He managed to take his bottle out of my hand. “I could be doing something much worse, you know.”

  “Your uncle has your parents on alert and they are probably worried sick about you, and you want to do this? Fine.” I threw both of the water bottles onto the ground in case he changed his mind later. “Excuse me for trying to be there for you.”

  “Wait.” He inhaled sharply, his voice cracking. He dropped his head and stood there, defeated. Reaching forward, I took the bottle from his hand and placed it on the ground behind me. Taking a harsh breath, he sniffed, wiping a hand under his eyes.

  I hugged him. He reciprocated instantly and I didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to hear anything or an “It’s okay.” It wouldn’t help him.

  After a couple of seconds, he pulled back, taking one of the water bottles from where I had dropped them. He took a seat again, taking a drink of water as I sat down next to him. Dusk had fallen, and his eyes went up to the sky. “Today’s the anniversary of Bethany’s death.”

  He wiped his tears away with the backs of his hands furiously. “She didn’t even get to fight for her life. It was instantly taken away from her.” His voice cracked at the end and I winced at the unexpected sound. “My parents told me at the hospital. I didn’t believe them—I half expected Bethany to open the door and laugh loudly that my mum was kidding . . . but she didn’t. No one talked about it at all, not until after her funeral.

  “That was the worst day. There were so many people at her funeral. We flew Caleb over and I think his face was the worst out of everyone’s. He was crazy about her. And now she was . . . she was just lying there, in her favorite white dress and the bracelet Caleb had given her one summer on her wrist. She had a necklace on, same as mine. Hers had an S in the middle.”

  Sam let go of my hands and reached for the necklace, pulling the pendant out from where it was tucked under his shirt. “We got them on our tenth birthday with our given letter, then switched them and never took them off. After the funeral everything went into a downward spiral. She was my twin. My other half.”

  He was staring at the ground. “About a week later, I got into the biggest argument with my dad. I was upset that he had gone back to work, back to normal, as if her death had never even happened, and I called him out on it. Then I took off and went to Redmond, my grandmother’s house, in the middle of the semester. I guess that’s when it started.”

  “What started?”

  “Alexis was my first,” he mumbled. It took me a moment to register his words, and my expression must have said it all because he was quick to speak up. “It didn’t mean anything. I told her that and she said to forget it even happened. We remained friends.” So that was why she was so attached to the idea that Sam loved her like she loved him. A pang of sympathy surged in me for her; Sam had used her at a difficult time in his life, and she believed a bond had formed between them.

  He took a drink from the water bottle. “After that, Dad dragged me back home. I wanted to forget everything, so I did things I wouldn’t even have thought of weeks earlier. That’s why everyone says that I changed—I guess I did. I hung out with different people and did things that made my entire family upset at my behavior. I stole things. I would walk into the house absolutely pissed; my mum kind of snapped.”

  “What did she do?”

  “She knew I was acting out, that I was taking Bethany’s death very hard. She put me in social groups. I hung out with people who weren’t exactly a good influence back home. I got involved in some shit—obviously the arson incident. When my parents heard I was involved, they realized the social groups weren’t helping.

  “The last thing I ever wanted to do was disappoint my mum and dad. And Greg. I knew I did when they sent me to live here. They also sent me to live here so I could clean up my act. At that time, all I wanted was to forget her. It was hard—really hard—and I did bad things.”

  I handed him the other bottle of water, watching him take a sip out of that one. “Last summer when I was here, I don’t know—I kind of gave up. I was very overwhelmed by everything and I didn’t think I would ever get used to never seeing her again. Her not being there, not laughing, or singing—her being annoying or sharing birthdays, asking me for advice. I was done with life. I was in the bathroom and . . .” He paused, his eyes on the ground. “And then Caleb appeared, knocking it out of my hands. It shattered on the floor; it looked like a thousand white beads had fallen. We dropped to the ground and I was crying. The most I ever had in my entire life. People have come and gone in my life, but Caleb has never left, even when I’ve ignored him. He was always there for me, like a brother.”

  He sighed heavily. “This is the first time I’ve ever really talked about what happened that night.” He whispered the last part of the sentence in pure disbelief and that was when I realized I should start talking.

  “You know what I’ve learned since my mom died?”

  “What?” His index finger was tapping at the ground and his tongue prodded the inside of his cheek.

  “The worst thing about death—other than dying—is being forgotten. You remember everything about Bethany, and that keeps a part of her alive. Moving on doesn’t mean we forget certain things. Instead, we have to understand that what happened happened and continue living.”

  He drank from the water bottle until it was almost empty. “Isn’t that why you take pictures?”

  “Each memory is something I want to remember. I like remembering my mom. If I forgot who she was, I don’t think I would forgive myself. Seeing her in old videos and photos reminds me that she’s always with me. That necklace of yours symbolizes that Bethany is with you. Even though you think you don’t want to remember her, this shows me that you will. It’s okay to mourn, to cry, and to let your feelings out. You don’t have to bottle up your emotions, and there are people and resources that can help you, no matter the situation. That’s the healthy part of dealing. This whole other outlet of alcohol, drugs, and sex is not going to help you.”

  Sam’s hands were on his necklace. He reached up to wipe the tears away from his eyes but it didn’t look like he was going to stop crying. The pads of my thumbs brushed the tears from under his eyes. “It’s okay to let it out.”

  I held him, waiting with a heavy heart as he did as I said. When he pulled away, I wiped the tears off his face once again, pushing his curly hair off his forehead.

  “Thanks.”

  “How about you tell me about her?” I suggested. “It sometimes helps me to talk about my mom.”

  “She was born before me and never let me forget it. We did everything together and she was always there for me. She forced my cousins to make a sign for me for my first football game. She wasn’t just my sister; she was my best friend. Sure, there were times when she was annoying as hell, but that’s every sibling. And . . . I’m all over the place here. Um, she had dark-brown hair and green eyes, like you saw in the picture I showed you.”

  “Like you,” I pointed out.

  Sam cracked a smile, the first one I’d seen tonight. “Yeah, Hazel. Did I mention we were twins?”

  �
�Don’t be a jerk. Not now.” Even with the tears staining his face, he chuckled. The picture on Caleb’s nightstand came to mind. “Caleb was crazy about her?”

  “Caleb met her the same day he met me for the first time. We all became best friends and I know Caleb fell for her not long after that, even when we were kids. When Drake came along? I knew he was hurt by it.” Sam sighed. “I shouldn’t have fought Drake that day.”

  “You shouldn’t have,” I agreed.

  “He didn’t even date Beth for that long, but he made her happy when we were here that year. And when he broke up with her, seeing him again, it reminded me of how much he hurt her when he ended things, and I got mad.”

  Sam held his arms around his knees. “You know, since that night I’ve had night terrors. Same thing every time. I hear everything, I see the lights close in on us—it’s fucking scary. They used to happen often but they started going away a while ago.”

  “How do you feel now?”

  He wiped the remaining tears from his face and put his leather jacket back on, zipping it up to his collarbone. “A lot better than I did before you got here.”

  “If you need anything, I’m here, Sam.”

  A grateful look crossed his face. “I know. I miss her a lot.”

  “It’s okay to,” I reminded him.

  “Thank you for being here even after what I did.”

  “Sam—”

  “I was being a horrible person and I know what I did. I’m sorry. I really am.”

  “I forgive you.”

  “I don’t deserve it,” he mumbled.

  “I’m giving this one to you,” I said. “I know you were being awful and you know it too.”

  Sam scoffed. “I was so stupid. We were so stupid.”

  “What?”

  “I really thought that us being together just for that time was going to make everything I felt for you go away.” I reached for the water bottle he was holding, taking a sip for myself because my heart pounded in my ears. “It didn’t do shit.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “That all the time we spent together at school, rec center, here, anywhere . . . it all meant something.”