Specter: Circuit Series Book One

by Dailey, Lacey

  Barry and Shannon have been married for more than thirty years. And they had a couple of ginger kids to consummate that marriage. It was some kind of miracle. Two gingers having not one, but two ginger children was pretty much unheard of.

  My father’s orange locks had since faded into a color that resembled an orange peel after it’d gotten stomped on, while my mother wasn’t keen on going gray. She kept it died a color that was more red than orange. My sister followed suit, keeping her long locks maintained a deeper red. Me? I was allll nat-u-ral. My locks were the color of cheddar cheese.

  And I liked it that way.

  “Would anyone like any seconds? Barry?”

  “Nope.” My dad grunted, slapping his gut. “I’m full.”

  “Same.” Lilah pushed her plate away.

  I, on the other hand, smiled at my mom while she loaded my plate with more pancakes.

  “I can always count on you to eat seconds.” She winked at me. “How was your week? Anything interesting happen?”

  I snorted. Finding Sage outside my door was interesting. Sure. But I’d describe it more as an unexpected shock but not at all unwelcome.

  Sage Maddison was what one would call an enigma.

  It was clear she was devastatingly affected by what had happened to her, though she was still able to make jokes. Highly cynical ones, but jokes. What’s more is that she likes the color yellow and gives out bright crayons to show somebody they’re a badass. Even when she was living in the dark, she found it inside herself to be bright.

  I kept hoping she’d make another appearance, but I didn’t receive a gift or see her at all after she told me a story that had my jaw scraping the ground and stepped onto the elevator in my apartment building.

  My phantom girl had seemingly turned back into a phantom, though I’d worried less about her. Having two cyan crayons propped on my desk at Circuit was a reminder that I wasn’t the only badass in our acquaintanceship. Though panic seized all the muscles in her body, and she seemed to wish she’d fall right through the wall she was pressed against, the strength she possessed was undeniable. She had a fire in her eyes, brewing in the ocean that surrounded them. Her hands were clenched into fists as if she were ready to throw down at any moment. Her eyes never stopped roaming, scanning her surroundings as though she were committing them to memory.

  Though I doubt she believed it, Sage was vastly intelligent, and she was a fighter. I hardly knew her, but I knew that for certain. I spoke a few simple sentences and based my actions on what seemed to calm her. I kept my distance and made sure Ace did too. It was clear as glass Sage wanted nobody near her, and I did what I could to respect that.

  I would not be another person who intimidated her.

  I was not darkness.

  I was her sunshine.

  “Why are you smiling?”

  “What?” I flipped my gaze and found my dad studying me. “I’m not smiling.”

  “Sure you are. What’s got your face all red?”

  “My face isn’t red.”

  “Son, you’re redder than a lobster’s ass.”

  “Barry Wilder! Good grief.” My mom threw her hands in the air and gathered her dirty dishes, heading towards the kitchen.

  “Dad, I’m not smiling at anything.”

  My dad followed my mom’s lead and gathered his dishes, standing up. “I don’t believe you.” He announced, disappearing into the kitchen.

  “You don’t fool me.” Lilah said, crossing her arms across her chest. Sunday was the only day she dressed so casually. If you counted a flower blouse thing and really nice jeans casual. “You were thinking about Sage.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “Liar. Liar. Pants on fire.”

  “My pants are fine. Ice cold.”

  “Whatever, Wren.” She chuckled, standing up. “Your little nerd brain is filled with thoughts of her. Wait until you get another gift. You’ll lose your shit like a 16-year-old girl who just got kissed.”

  I argued with her, rolled my eyes and told her how wrong she was. I wasn’t obsessed. I was proud, honored, and humbled that my team and I made such a profound difference in her life and she was filled to the brim with gratitude. I was excited thinking about her only because I was pleased to know she was safe, doing well, and living a life. There was nothing better than knowing you’d been the catalyst for such a positive change in somebody’s life.

  It felt good knowing I helped Sage, and I hoped she'd come to recognize me as someone who was good.

  And even as I lied to my sister, I refused to recognize I was lying to myself.

  And then I got home and was forced to admit it. Lilah and I stepped off the elevator onto our floor, stuffed full of pancakes and arms full of leftovers, when I spotted something on our welcome mat. I took off down the hall like somebody strapped rocket launchers to my tennis shoes.

  Right there, on the welcome mat outside my door, was a bouquet of sunflowers. Somehow, she’d managed to find a bundle with thirteen.

  I peeled open the card with a grin on my face.

  Specter, Mischief, and all their friends- thank you for being a sunflower in a world of weeds.

  And then I lost my shit like a 16-year-old girl who'd just gotten kissed.

  12

  Sage

  “Are you sure you don’t want anything?”

  I gritted my teeth, pursing my lips and attempting not to become an angry little demon. “I’m fine.”

  My brother licked at his spoon, strawberry ice cream coating his tongue while he moaned in delight. “You sure? This shit is good.”

  “I said I’m sure, Brett. Like a hundred times.”

  The room seemed to compact. He dropped his plastic spoon in the paper cup that held his frozen treat and dropped his gaze. “Okay. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine, Brett.” I twisted my water bottle with two fists, crinkling plastic the only sound between us for several moments. “Finish your ice cream before it melts.”

  He shook his head, his face slamming shut like someone just closed the shutters. One minute he was smiling and then next he looked like he’d never experienced any form of happiness. “I’m done.”

  “No, you’re not.” I argued, using two fingers to push his bowl closer to him. “Finish it? Please? It’d make me happy.”

  That did it. He lifted his spoon and shoved a mouth full of frozen yogurt in his mouth, swallowing it without savoring the taste like he did the first two dozen bites. It was my fault his smooth, creamy dessert probably felt like nails going down his throat. Leave it to me to become a raging bitch when all he wanted to do was buy me a cup of some overpriced frozen yogurt.

  But the thing was, I didn’t want the damn yogurt. I couldn’t bring myself to point at what I wanted from behind a glass case and let some stranger scoop it into a bowl for me. Never mind the moment she turns around to add toppings or put it on the scale to weigh it.

  The whole experience made me jittery. I knew it wasn’t entirely rational, but the three seconds the yogurt lady was spun in the opposite direction was a prime time for something to get plopped into my dessert.

  Even as I sat here and watched my brother scrape his bowl clean, his eyes focused and clear the whole time, I just couldn’t do it.

  And Brett knew that. But still he’d picked me up at Dr. Julie’s office, smiling bright and insisting we go out for frozen yogurt. I didn’t argue. What was the point? I simply slid into the passenger seat of his Chevy Cruise and placed my hands on my lap, knowing I would only be purchasing a bottled water. I knew I’d disappoint him on this random sibling outing eventually. But at least now he had some dessert to make the blow less painful.

  But I knew he’d still ache from it.

  He’d wanted to do something fun. Unsurprisingly, I screwed it up.

  “You want another water?”

  “Uhh.” I peered down at the water bottle in my hands, twisted in half and mangled. “No, thanks.” I nudged my head at his empty bowl. “You going back fo
r seconds?”

  He snorted. “Nah. Let’s just go.”

  “Brett.” I twisted the bottle harder, the cap popping off with an air-filled sound. It went flying across the small building and hit the glass case with a clank. I sunk down into my seat, throwing a hand over my face when everyone turned to look at me.

  “Sorry about that!” Brett called. “My mistake.”

  I dropped my hands. “My mistake, Brett. Not yours.”

  He managed a smile. “Your face is turning the color of my ice cream.”

  “Shut up!” I slapped both my palms over my cheeks in horror.

  His faint chuckle eased the tension that was thick enough to choke on only a moment ago. “Nobody is looking anymore, Sage.”

  “You swear?” I mumbled through my hands, splaying my fingers so I could see him from between my fingers.

  I found his smirk. “I swear.”

  I dropped my hands back in my lap and cleared my throat. Despite the water I’d just consumed, it felt like sandpaper. “Listen, Brett...”

  He held up a hand. “Stop. You don’t have to say anything. I shouldn’t have brought you here.”

  “No, Brett, it’s not...” I paused, stumbling over the right words. When did it become so difficult to have a conversation with the brother who has spent my entire life doting on me? Out of all the things I’d lost in the last two years, my relationship with my brother is one I’d longed to have back the most. “I’m just not ready, okay?”

  “Okay. Yeah. That’s cool. I just... I didn’t know, Sage. You don’t talk about it.”

  “Its best I don’t.” I shrugged.

  I never talked about it with anyone but Julie. And I certainly wouldn’t start expanding that short list in the center of a frozen yogurt shop. There was absolutely no point. No silver lining to stuffing my brother’s brain with all the terrors his baby sister suffered through. Why tell him I’m terrified to accept food from strangers because the last time I did, I woke up on a dingy mattress in the back of a moving vehicle in an outfit that did not belong to me.

  Why bring up the spot on the side of my neck that seemed to have a permanent hole the size of a needle, perfect for injecting the contents of a syringe into?

  I couldn’t, for the life of me, comprehend why it would be some therapeutic revelation to tell my big brother his little sister spent the better part of two years with her face smashed against a glass table, a tight fist wound around her hair that was connected to a voice that ordered her to sniff. The grip tightened until she did it with tears burning deep in her eyes and sobs clogged in her throat.

  “If you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t have to.”

  Did I want to? No. Hell no. I could barely rasp the horrible truth to Julie. That somewhere along the line, when my face was stuck to the glass with tears and sweat, I stopped fighting so hard and came to actually enjoy it.

  And then when I’d finally looked forward to the moment I’d start to fly, I crashed to the ground. Kade had decided during one of his benders he didn’t want his girlfriend to be like the junkies and hookers that begged him for a fix. So, I found myself cuffed to a bedpost. The extent to how long I was in that room, barfing and sweating and screaming through the door was beyond me.

  Withdrawal hit me like a cold bucket of water. I drowned in it and spent an entirety gasping for breath and screaming that I was gonna die.

  But I didn’t die. I lived. And more times than not, I found myself asking why.

  I shuddered, gripping the small spot on my neck. “I really don’t, Brett.”

  He nodded and shifted his gaze, peering out the large windows that took up the storefront. His eyes looked nowhere in particular, flicking past the couple holding hands during what seemed to be a leisurely afternoon stroll. The mom pushing a stroller with her phone tucked between her ear and her shoulder. The man in a full suit, slamming his fist into a parking meter.

  The blue eyes that used to match mine, filled with laughter and mischief, were dull. Void. There was nothing in them.

  My big brother appeared so much different than he had two years ago. The blond hair he styled with gel and got cut every four weeks was grown past his ears. The honey color had become the color of coffee when too much cream was added. His fresh face now had rough stubble spanning his cheeks and chin. And his smile? The lopsided one that got him a lot of girlfriends and into a whole lot of trouble with adults was simply nonexistent.

  He looked miserable, but the awful kind of miserable where you just wanna scream and cry and punch things and slam a shit ton of doors without really knowing why.

  My big brother was in pain.

  I did that.

  “Are you ready to go?”

  I blinked, finding him standing from his seat. “Sure.”

  “The next time you don’t want to do something, tell me to piss off. It won’t hurt my feelings.”

  I wondered if he had any left or if those got taken when I did.

  “I like to hang out with you, Brett.” I shuffled to the trashcan and tossed my shredded bottle inside, sliding out the door while he held it open for me, angling his body so he didn’t touch me. “I didn’t mind coming here at all.”

  His car was parked on the street. We took the four steps it took to get across the sidewalk, and he opened the door for me. I slid inside, clicking my seatbelt while he rounded the car. “I feel like I forced you.” He admitted, turning the ignition and looking over his shoulder to check for traffic before pulling on to the road.

  “You didn’t force me, Brett. I won’t do anything I don’t want to. I enjoy hanging out with you. I just keep wondering when you’re going to hang out with your other friends.”

  “Why hang with them when I can hang with you?”

  That sentence right there confirmed most of my suspicions. He iced them out. The dozens of friends my brother had dwindled down to just me. My lack of strength and ability to fight back had resulted in him losing all of his friends. He seemingly confided in no one after I was taken. A low ache formed in the pit of my stomach thinking of my brother feeling helpless and all alone. I repressed the urge to throw my fist in his dashboard and turned my head to mask the mist in my eyes.

  Who had been there for him?

  Who had held him when he cried?

  Who told him it was okay to get angry?

  Who clutched his hand at my funeral?

  Nobody did. He did it all on his own, and I envied the way he could still stand so tall.

  “You wanna Netflix binge when we get home?” I managed the question without my voice shaking.

  “Sure. Sounds cool. I gotta work tonight though.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “I could call in.” He offered, and I suspected he’d quit if I asked him to.

  I wondered constantly if my brother enjoyed his job. It was a minimum wage job at a sporting goods store in the mall. He sold Yeezys to rich kids and yoga pants to soccer moms when he should’ve been inside a lab curing cancer and making six figures a year.

  He should’ve graduated last fall with a degree in biochemistry. My brother’s brain reminded me of Mary Poppin’s handbag. Each time you reached inside, you came out with something new. The knowledge inside his brain was endless. He graduated at the top of his class, wearing his valedictorian medal proudly. He’d taken forever to choose a major. When he stood in front of all our family and announced he was going into biochemistry to be a healthcare scientist, I had to stop his rant and ask him what the hell that meant.

  He explained with the most excitement I’d ever witnessed he’d be helping diagnose diseases and find cures for children and adults everywhere. It was evident to everyone in the room he’d chosen to make a difference in the way he knew how.

  I oozed with pride for him that day. Cried when we moved him into his dorm room.

  My brother should’ve been wearing a lab coat with his name embroidered on the chest. Instead, he was selling sweatbands and shoelaces across a counter inside a depart
ment store.

  I knew on some level that it wasn’t, but it felt like it was all my fault.

  My brother had everything ripped from him that day. And I’d give anything to give it all back to him.

  13

  Sage

  When I was a kid, and people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I shrugged my shoulders and gave them the most mundane answer possible.

  I don’t know.

  They’d cock their head and give me a silly smile, rattling off a list of things I might want to be. Doctor, teacher, dentist, fashion designer, scientist, ballerina, lawyer. All sorts of different careers, some excited me and some didn’t. Still, I’d sit there and shrug at every suggestion, telling the questioning adult I had no idea what I wanted to be what felt like a gazillion years from then.

  The concept of choosing such a monumental thing when one was merely a child was absolute blasphemy to me. I wasn’t a total grinch, I recognized it was supposed to be all in fun, getting kids to dream about a time when they’re an adult and making exciting, important choices. But I hated getting asked that question. I was a kid for shit’s sake. I didn’t want to think about giving up a full day of running around outside with my brother or playing Barbies with Trish for a life that meant dressing up fancy and leaving at breakfast not to return until dinner.

  That sort of structured life did not excite me as a child. Even the concept of being a prima ballerina had me going “meh.” I maintained that attitude until I got to high school and things started to get real. Adulthood hit me like a brick in the face. I was not ready, and I believed deeply very few people were ready for the moment they had to put down their toys and put on their suit. I wanted absolutely nothing to do with any of it.

  I had one semester of a careers class when I was seventeen. The class was supposed to help us discover what we wanted to spend our life doing. It should’ve set us up with internships, college visits, mentors, and assisted us in applying for college. I got none of that. What I got was a bunch of online tests that told me I should be a florist or a professional athlete based on my love of being outside. It also ensured I received several disappointed looks from my parents when I came home every night and defaulted to “I don’t know” when they asked what I wanted to study in college.