Without Merit

by Colleen Hoover

  Then when she started dating Kirk, his death put an even bigger wedge between us because up until that point, we had experienced almost everything together. But after Kirk died, she had experienced things I hadn't. Being in love, losing her virginity, experiencing grief. We no longer felt like we were on the same level after that. Or at least she felt she was on a different level than me. And the more time that passes, the more we drift apart.

  I walk back into the kitchen from the garage and my steps falter at the sight of Sagan.

  His back is to me as he sits at our kitchen table. In our house. At a highly inappropriate time of day. Who visits their girlfriend at seven in the morning? He's becoming a constant fixture in Dollar Voss, which makes me feel less and less envious of my sister every time he chooses to be here. Who in their right mind would willingly return to this house? Has he not met my family? Is he that blinded by his unrequited love for Honor?

  He's hunched over, focused intently on his sketch pad in front of him. When I realized he actually was an artist, I laughed at my luck. I had hoped he was an artist right before he kissed me, but it's only fitting that the more I'm around him, the more perfect he seems. It's karma for being attracted to my twin sister's boyfriend.

  Moby walks into the kitchen and shuffles over to the table. Moby is quite possibly the only part of this family that brings me joy, but four-year-olds are fairly liked across the board. There's still plenty of time for Moby to disappoint me.

  "Morning, buddy." Sagan ruffles Moby's hair, but Moby is not a morning person, despite his age. He shifts his head away and climbs into the seat next to him. Sagan tears off a sheet of blank paper from the sketchbook he's been hunched over. He slides the piece of paper in front of Moby and plucks a crayon out of a basket in front of him, winning Moby over instantly. There isn't a four-year-old on earth who doesn't love a crayon and a sheet of paper. Moby is always trying to copy the things Honor's boyfriend sketches. Which is humorous considering the morbid themes her boyfriend is always sketching. Just yesterday I found a picture he sketched of Honor. She was sitting in an empty grave, putting on lipstick. On the back, he had written "Till death do us part."

  I never know what any of his drawings mean, but they fascinate me. I just don't want him to know that. I also don't want him to know that every time he draws a sketch for Honor and she leaves it lying around like it doesn't even mean anything to her, I steal it. I have several of his drawings now, wrapped in a bathrobe and stuffed in the bottom of my dresser drawer. Sometimes I look at them and pretend they're pictures of me and not Honor.

  I'm sure the one he's sketching now will end up at the bottom of my drawer as well because Honor doesn't appreciate the artistic side of him.

  Moby glances at me and covers his mouth with his hand, mumbling something intended for only me to hear. He always puts his hand flat over his mouth when he's telling someone a secret, rather than cupping his hand around his mouth. It's so adorable, we don't have the heart to tell him we can never understand a word he's saying. But I don't have to understand him because I know exactly what he's asking for.

  I wink at him and grab the box of donuts from the top of the refrigerator. There are two left in the box, so I put one in my mouth and walk the other one to Moby. He takes the donut from my hand and immediately crawls under the table to eat it. I don't even have to tell him to go hide from his mother. He already knows that anything that tastes good to him is off-limits to Victoria.

  "You realize you're teaching him to hoard junk food, right?" Utah enters the kitchen in his usual holier-than-thou mood. "If he grows up to be morbidly obese, it's your fault."

  I disagree with his theory, but I don't say anything to defend my actions. It would ruin my three-day streak of not speaking. But despite my lack of a rebuttal, Utah is wrong. If Moby grows up to be morbidly obese, that's all on Victoria. She's eliminated entire food groups from his diet. She doesn't allow him to have sugar, carbs, gluten, or any ingredient that ends in ose. The poor kid eats steel-cut oatmeal for breakfast every day. Without butter or sugar. That can't be good for him.

  At least I sneak him sweets in moderation.

  Utah walks past me, heading for his smoothie. He takes it from Honor's hand and leans in to give her a quick thank you kiss on top of her head. He knows not to come near me with his cheerful sibling affection.

  If the proof weren't in our DNA, I would say that Utah and Honor seem more like identical twins than she and I do. They're the ones who finish each other's sentences, share inside jokes, and spend the most time together.

  Utah and I have nothing in common, other than being the only two people in the Voss family to know its deepest, darkest secret. But since it's something we've never once discussed since the day it happened, it's barely a common thread between us now.

  And we look nothing alike. Honor and I look more like our mother. Or at least like she did when she was younger. Her hair used to be a more vibrant blonde, much like ours is now. But she hasn't seen the sun in so long, I've noticed that the color has dulled. Utah looks like our father, with sandy brown hair and pale skin. Honor and I also have a paler shade of skin, but it's not to the degree of Utah's. He has to wear sunscreen if he's going to be outside for more than half an hour or he'll burn. I guess Honor and I lucked out, because we tan fairly easily in the summer.

  Moby is just a mix of all of us. Sometimes he looks like our father, sometimes he looks like Victoria. But most of the time he reminds me of this bird off a Dawn dish soap commercial I saw last year. It's not a bad resemblance. It was a cute bird.

  Utah takes a seat and bends down to look under the table. "Morning, buddy. You excited about today?"

  Moby wipes sticky glaze from his mouth with his shirtsleeve and nods. "Yes!"

  "How excited?" Utah says.

  "So excited!" Moby says, grinning from ear to ear.

  "How excited?"

  "The most excited!" Moby yells.

  There's nothing significant about today worth being excited about. This exchange is a daily occurrence between Utah and Moby. Utah says it's important to get kids pumped up for their day, even if there's nothing significant about it. He says it helps foster a positive neurological environment, whatever that's supposed to mean.

  Utah wants to be a teacher and already has his entire college schedule planned out. As soon as he graduates high school in six months, he has a two-day weekend and then begins classes at the local university the following Monday. Honor also signed up to start classes two days after graduation.

  Me? I'm still debating on going to class today, much less college six months from now.

  It's unusual to have three siblings who are all seniors in high school at the same time. My mother gave birth to Utah in August and then got pregnant with Honor and me one month later. Apparently it's just a rumor that breastfeeding prevents a woman from ovulating.

  When it was time for Utah to start school, she and my father decided to hold him back a year so they could have us all in the same grade at the same time. No sense dealing with different schedules when you can have one schedule for all three of your children.

  I don't think they thought far enough in advance to consider having to pay for three college tuitions at the same time. Not that it would matter. My parents don't have the kind of money to pay one college tuition, let alone three. Once we start college, it'll be student loans or nothing for me. Honor and Utah won't have to worry about tuition because as it stands, they're several points ahead of anyone else in the class when it comes to vying for valedictorian and salutatorian. There's no question a Voss sibling will be in the top two spots in the class and will land the coveted scholarships that accompany the awards. It's merely a question of which one of them will come out the most victorious. My vote is on Utah, simply because he runs less of a risk of becoming preoccupied with the terminally ill between now and graduation.

  I'm not a competitive person by nature, so grades have never meant as much to me as they do to the two of them. I u
sed to fall somewhere in the middle of the class when it comes to grade point average, but I'm sure my GPA has taken quite a hit in the past two weeks. I haven't been back to school since the day I left early and went to the town square. I might go back but I'm more leaning toward not.

  Utah is moving out in a month or two, but it probably won't affect his GPA. Utah isn't the type to party and let his grades slip. Besides, he'll probably still be here most of the time since he isn't going far. He's redoing the floors in our old house--the one located directly behind this one. As soon as he finishes them, he's moving over there. If anything, the peace and quiet will give him even more time to study. And clean. And iron his clothes. He has to be the most impeccably dressed high school senior I've ever encountered at a public school with no required uniform. Honestly, I'll be glad when he moves into our old house. There's been a lot of tension between us for a while now.

  I pour myself a cup of juice and sit at the table across from Sagan. He doesn't acknowledge me but he does shield whatever he's drawing with his sporadically tattooed arm. I take note of a few new tattoos I haven't noticed yet. There's some sort of shield, a tiny lizard with one eye. Or maybe it's winking. I would ask him what they mean, but I'd have to speak to him. I just keep my mouth shut and try to sneak a peek at whatever it is he's drawing. I lean forward and try to get a better look. His eyes dart up and meet mine. I ignore the flutter of energy his eye contact gives me and force an unwavering expression. He arches an eyebrow and picks up his sketchbook as he leans back against his chair. He's still looking at me as he gives his head a slow shake to let me know I'm not getting the privilege of watching him sketch.

  I don't want to see it anyway.

  His phone vibrates and he practically lunges for it. He flips it over and looks at the screen but his face falls flat. He silences the call and flips his phone over. Now I'm curious who makes him so anxious to answer his phone if Honor is sitting right here. Sagan glances up at Honor and she's staring at him. There's a silent exchange between them and knowing they probably have inside secrets burns a hole in my stomach.

  I move my attention to Moby, who is still hiding under the table. He's managed to get more of the donut on his face than inside his mouth. "One more?" he mutters with a mouthful. I shake my head. Moderation. Also, we don't have any more.

  Victoria enters the kitchen in a rush. "Moby, come get your oatmeal!" She yells this loud enough to spread across all quarters of the house, but if she'd pay closer attention to her child instead of her makeup, she'd notice he's already awake, dressed, and fed.

  Victoria grabs a knife from the drawer and a banana. She wipes the blade of the knife across her pink scrubs, judging its cleanliness. Or lack thereof. "Whose day was it to wash dishes yesterday?"

  None of us respond to her. We rarely do. Unless our father is in the room, Victoria is of little importance to us.

  "Well, whoever unloaded the dishwasher, make sure the dishes are clean before you put them away. These are disgusting." She puts the knife in the sink and pulls another knife out of the drawer. She glances across the kitchen at all her stepchildren sitting around the table. I'm the only one looking at her. She sighs and begins peeling the banana.

  I have no idea what my father sees in her. Sure, she's cute for her age, having just turned thirty-five. A good ten years younger than my mother. But that's the extent of Victoria's qualities. She's an overbearing mother to Moby. She takes her job as a nurse way too seriously. Not that being a nurse isn't a reputable career. But the issue with Victoria is she doesn't seem to know how to separate her work life from her home life. She's always in caregiver mode to Moby like he's ill, but he's a very viable four-year-old. And she always wears pink scrubs, even though she's allowed to wear any color or pattern she wants.

  I think her pink scrubs annoy me more than anything else about her. I might even be more willing to forgive her for the atrocity she committed against my mother if she'd wear a different color just once.

  I remember the day she started wearing pink scrubs. I was twelve, sitting at this very table. She had emerged from Quarter Three, back when Quarter Three was shared by my father and ailing mother. She had been my mother's nurse for about six months and I actually kind of liked her. Until that particular morning, anyway.

  My father had been sitting across from me reading the paper when he looked up at her and smiled. "Pink looks really good on you, Victoria."

  I know I was young, but even kids can recognize flirting, especially when that flirting only involves one of their two married parents.

  Victoria has only worn shades of pink scrubs since that day. I often wonder if their affair began before or after that flirtatious moment in the kitchen. Sometimes the curiosity consumes me so much, I want to ask them the exact hour they began ruining my mother's life. But that would mean we were discussing a secret out in the open, and we don't do that in this family. We keep our secrets buried deeper than the grave Victoria wishes my mother would go ahead and fall in.

  They kept the affair quiet for at least a year. Long enough to realize my mother's cancer wasn't going to kill her after all, but not long enough to prevent Victoria from getting pregnant. My father was stuck between a rock and a hard place at that point. It didn't matter which decision he made, he'd still come out the asshole. On the one hand, he could choose not to abandon his wife who had just beaten cancer. But if he chose his wife, that would mean he was abandoning his new pregnant mistress.

  It was so long ago, I'm not sure how he came about making the decision he made. I don't have much recollection of any fighting taking place between the adults. I do, however, remember when my mother and father discussed where his new wife and child would live. She suggested he move to our old home behind Dollar Voss and leave her here to manage us children. He refused on the grounds that she wasn't mentally or physically competent enough to manage us children without his help. And sadly, he was right.

  My mother had been in a car accident when she was pregnant with my sister and me, and she never fully recovered. To us kids, she's the same person she's always been, considering we didn't know her before the accident. But we know she changed because of how our father references things. He would say, "Before the accident when your mother could . . ." or "Before the accident when we would take vacations . . ." or "Before the accident when she wasn't so ill . . ."

  He never said any of those things out of spite, I don't think. They were just matter-of-fact. There is the Victoria Voss "before the accident" and the Victoria Voss we now have as a mother. If you don't count her bad back, her two-year fight against brain cancer, a slight limp in her step, a severe social anxiety that's kept her in the basement for over two years, a few scars on her right arm, and her inability to make it through an entire day without at least two naps, she's relatively normal.

  We used to try to get her to leave the basement and interact with us all the time. The last time she left the basement was to attend Kirk's funeral, and that was only because Honor sobbed and begged her to come. But after that, when the first year of her seclusion came and went and our mother seemed to be functioning just fine with her life in the basement, we had no choice but to accept it. With Utah, Honor, and me, she's checked on daily. My father still buys all her groceries and Honor and I make sure her mini-kitchen is fully stocked. She doesn't have any bills because my father covers utilities on the whole house.

  The only issue that has come up in the two years since she's been secluded is her health. Fortunately, my father found a doctor who does house calls if he's ever needed. And since she refuses to see a psychiatrist for her social phobia, we have no other choice but to accept it. For now. I have a feeling after all three of us kids are out of the house next year, Victoria is going to demand my mother move out. But that's not a battle anyone wants to confront prematurely, especially when my siblings and I will be the first to come to our mother's defense.

  Victoria has just resigned to pretending my mother doesn't exist. The same way my sibli
ngs and I pretend Victoria doesn't exist. We don't see the point in befriending a woman we despise, simply because she's the mother of our little half brother.

  Since the day Victoria entered our lives, our family hasn't been the same. And while we do hold our father accountable for half of our family issues, he is still required to love us. Which makes him harder to blame than Victoria, who doesn't even like us.

  Victoria scoops up the bananas and layers them over the top of Moby's bowl of oatmeal. "Moby, come eat your breakfast!"

  Moby crawls out from under the table and stands up. "I'm not hungry." He wipes glaze off his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt. There's no hiding that he just inhaled a donut, and there's no sense in trying to hide that I'm the one who gave it to him.

  "Moby," Victoria says, taking him in. "What in the world is all over your . . ." Here we go. "Merit! I told you not to give him donuts."

  I look at Victoria innocently just as my father walks into the room. She turns her attention to him, waving the knife in the air that she was just using to slice bananas. "Merit gave Moby a donut for breakfast!"

  My father gently slides his fingers around her wrist and grabs the knife. He leans in and kisses her on the cheek and then sets the knife on the counter, finding me in his crowd of children. "Merit, we talked about this. Do it again and you're grounded."

  I nod, assuming that's the end of it. But Victoria doesn't stop there, because a donut for breakfast is the equivalent to Armageddon and it deserves all the panic.

  "You never ground them," she accuses. She grabs the bowl of oatmeal and walks it over to the trash. She angrily scoops the contents of the bowl into the trash. "I've never seen you actually follow through with a single punishment, Barnaby. It's why they act like this."

  They being my father's three oldest children. And it's the truth. He's full of empty threats and very little follow-through. It's my favorite thing about him.