The Rules of Burken

by Traci Finlay

  Dana stood. “Charlotte? I can’t imagine what you two go through every year. I get sick to my stomach when I think about it. I know there’s nothing I can do to make the pain go away, but I’m doing what I can, and I just wanted you to know how much I love you, that’s all.”

  I peeked at her from behind Ian’s bicep as his hands ran up and down my back. “Chuck, listen. Don’t take your anger out on Dana, okay? It’s not her fault.”

  I nodded. “Sorry, Dana.”

  “Just accept her present, okay?” Ian turned me toward the lumpy duffel bag on the couch.

  “You know she got you a present, too,” I tattled.

  Dana bit her lip and looked at Ian.

  Ian sighed. “I told you from the beginning that I won’t accept Christmas gifts or any form of holiday charity, Dana. You knew this. But my concern right now is for Charlotte. She’s my priority. And since I have to set a stupid example for her—” he winked at me—“we’ll take them this time, but no more. I’m serious.”

  My jaw dropped, and Dana nodded graciously as she bound to her bag and ripped out the presents. “Here!” she bubbled, handing us our gifts.

  Ian and I hesitated, then Ian reached for his first before I snatched mine and tucked it in the crook of my elbow.

  “Now I’m going to have to get you something,” I heard Ian telling Dana as I headed for my room.

  I slammed my door and tossed the box on my bed, looking around my room as tears filled my eyes. Why did Ian make me accept it? I was shocked he didn’t lose his temper with Dana; he was more dogmatic against Christmas gifts than I was. I slid to the floor as their laughter carried from the living room, and I pouted as I heard them clunking down the hall toward Ian’s bedroom.

  I raised my head. Ian’s bedroom? Dana wouldn’t. She’d never go past second base with boys, which is why I never understood why my hormone-raging brother would ever date her.

  I tiptoed to the wall that divided my and Ian’s rooms and heard him talking, his voice low and muffled. His monotone murmurs and Dana’s silence spiked my curiosity, and I found myself fluttering from my room and perching in front of Ian’s closed door, holding my breath and listening.

  “…like walking on eggshells around her,” he was saying. “I don’t know what to do anymore.”

  I crinkled my nose. Who was he talking about?

  “I’ve tried talking with her, suggested counseling, even mentioned going on a trip or something. But she’s a lost cause, once mid-October hits. I pray for her every day. It breaks my heart, seeing her like this.”

  He couldn’t have been talking about me. Not only was I sure he never prayed for me, he also had never made any of those suggestions. Besides, if anyone walked on eggshells in that house, it was me. Literally. He once threw a whole dozen eggs at the wall and hid the mop, so I had to clean it by hand. And if it wasn’t eggshells, it was glass. Or ceramic. Or porcelain. Or furniture. Or liquids of any form and quantity…

  Dana chirped an inaudible question, and Ian released an exasperated sigh. I imagined him slouched on his bed, Dana flocking him and feeding him grapes like he were an Olympian god.

  I heard the crinkle of wrapping paper and Dana giggling before Ian snickered and said, “Yes! You remembered! This is awesome!” Dana laughed a high-pitched trill, and I heard feet clomping as I pictured Ian picking Dana up off the bed and spinning her around, like he did with all his girlfriends who showered him with buttery gifts and extraneous trinkets.

  I scoffed and twisted back into my room. I didn’t want to listen to them gush over each other while discussing my mental instability. I made a swan dive into my bed as I thought of how much I hated Dana. There was something about that girl I didn’t trust. The way she invited herself into our nightmarish circumstances, the way she’d swoop in and try to make everything better. The way Ian kept accidentally calling her Chrissy…

  I glared at the sparkling package on my bed, and suddenly my hand was ripping off the paper. I tore the lid off the box and jerked on the tissue paper to reveal a frame holding a picture of Dana and me at the county fair the summer before. Blue tongues protruded from our smiling lips, stained from the blueberry pie we’d just devoured. And on the frame was engraved the words, Best Friends.

  I whipped it into the corner, and it shattered onto the floor.

  A reverberating bang and Ian’s booming voice shot me straight up in bed. I adjusted my eyes to the dingy glow hovering around my window and casting a bluish mist in my room. My heart pounded as his voice blared through the house like a tornado, and a loud blast sent a picture frame off my wall. I hugged my pillow as I stared at our adjoining wall.

  I shuddered when I heard Dana’s morsel of a voice pleading, then it was drowned out by the ear-rattling height of Ian’s volume. “You don’t know what we need!” he screamed. “I don’t need this, Dana, I work too hard! I’ve lost and sacrificed too much in my life to play these stupid games. You have no idea how to sympathize with what I go through every day!”

  I couldn’t understand Dana’s words through her guttural sobs, but it made my stomach sick, and I was glad I wasn’t on the receiving end of this monstrosity. But whatever Little-Miss-Perfect had said sent Ian’s voice into larynx-shredding wails, and the whole house shook as he sent objects flying against walls. He swore at her, and I could have sworn I heard the sound of flesh striking flesh.

  That was enough. I swung out of bed and out the door, nearly colliding with a hysterical Dana as she trucked down the hall, her hand cupping her tormented face. I watched her disappear and turned back to Ian’s door. “Did you just hit her?” I demanded, entering his room to see him shirtless and pacing with the heels of his hands at his temples, like he was trying to pop his skull.

  “She’s a manipulative psycho! Don’t talk to her anymore, Charlotte!”

  “Did you hit her?”

  Ian pointed toward the front door. “You know what she’s doing, don’t you? You know her ulterior motive, right? She wants to take Chrissy’s place! She wants to move in where Chrissy left off so she can be some sort of hero. She thinks she’s Chrissy!”

  My head drifted back and forth. “Why do you say that?”

  “You know what she told me?” He sent his iPad across the room and into his bookshelf. I bit my lip as the bookshelf jostled and sent a stack of books to the floor—this was the third iPad he’d broken now. “She told me she feels sorry for you, that you’re like this ‘little lost puppy who has no direction in life.’ She said it’s her Christian service to take you in and befriend you, like you’re some sort of orphan. You’re a charity case, Charlotte! And so am I!” He grabbed his DVD player and flung it into his closet door, then ripped his shirt and belt off the bed to follow in its wake.

  I wondered why his shirt and belt were on the bed and not on his body. “She really said that?”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “I’m going to talk to her,” I announced as I turned from his room. I ignored his protests and thrust my arms into my coat determinedly as he threatened to kill me if I did.

  It wasn’t until I was pounding on Dana’s door that I realized how severely I’d suffer for ignoring his threats. But I needed to hear this from her.

  The door opened, and I stared into her crying, angry face. “Is it true?” I asked.

  Dana nodded.

  “You really said those things about me?”

  Dana closed her eyes, like she didn’t have the energy to gear her emotions toward confusion. “Said what things? About you?”

  “You told my brother I was your charity case?” I yelled as I accosted her, and Dana shut the door behind us as she eyeballed me. “Charity case? Charlotte, what are you talking about? None of that was about you.”

  “What just happened with you and my brother? What did you do to him?” I shouted.

  Dana’s face dropped into a blank stare, and she unconsciously lowered into a chair. “You … you don’t even know. What did Ian tell you?”

  For the
first time ever, I empathized with Ian’s tendency to lose his temper, and I had to clench my fists to keep from turning Dana’s house upside down. “I don’t know who you think you are, or what you’re trying to do, but we don’t need you. We’ve been doing just fine on our own, so if you have this idea that Ian and I can’t function without you in our lives, you’re sorely mistaken.”

  “I don’t think that! What’s wrong with you, Charlotte? I’ve been nothing but good to you since we’ve become friends. I’ve listened to you, I’ve cried with you, I’ve conformed my lifestyle to suit your crazy one because I genuinely love you with all my heart. Nothing I’ve done for you or Ian has been out of sympathy or charity! And sometimes I feel like you hate me.”

  I sunk into the couch.

  “Charlotte, I know you hold me at arm’s length. I know you’re scared to get close to someone. I know you feel like I’m threatening what you had with Chrissy. You’ve made that very clear.”

  I dropped my gaze to Dana’s slippers.

  “And I don’t know what to do about that. Because I would never, ever try to take her place. And I know Ian told you differently, but please know that what happened between your brother and me today had nothing to do with you or my feelings toward you.”

  I jerked my eyes to her face. “What do you mean?”

  “I know how much you love Ian. I don’t want to mess things up for you guys.”

  “What did he do?”

  Dana swallowed. “He tried to rape me.”

  I burst out laughing. “He what? My brother?”

  Dana’s eyes filled with tears. “Charlotte, please don’t breathe a word of this to anyone. It was after he opened his gift. I … well, he had pointed out this watch he liked in the mall a few weeks ago.”

  “You gave him a watch for Christmas?”

  “Yeah.” She reached into her purse and pulled out an opulent TAG Heuer watch and handed it to me.

  I gasped and fingered the band, running my thumb over the shattered crystal. “These are really expensive. He broke it?” I asked, handing it back to Dana.

  Dana dropped it back in her purse and rubbed her forehead. “After he opened it, he made this huge fuss.” She sputtered a laugh, causing her tears to bubble over. “Told me it was the first gift he’s received in years, how thoughtful I was, how committed to our relationship I was. How hard his life was, having to deal with losing his parents and the love of his life, raising you, how no one understands him, blah, blah, blah. He said he didn’t have a gift for me, but he wanted to deepen our relationship because he hadn’t had feelings like this for anyone since Chrissy. He started kissing me … I liked it. He made me feel … like an angel. Like he was serious about us and that, you know, he’d consider marriage.”

  I shook my head. “Ian? Marriage?”

  Dana shrugged. “I don’t know, I was vulnerable, I guess. So I let him. Well, one thing led to another, and before I knew it, I was almost completely naked. I didn’t even realize it, Charlotte, until he sat up to take off his own shirt. Then when he unbuckled his belt, I finally started protesting. I should’ve done that a long time ago.”

  “So then he got mad?”

  She sighed. “You heard him.”

  I gave her a disapproving look. “That hardly counts as rape, Dana. Be careful how you throw that word around. You’re going to get Ian in trouble.”

  Dana bit her lip. “You didn’t let me finish.”

  I crashed Ian’s bedroom door into the wall and strode over to him at his computer. If I thought he’d look at me sheepishly, I was wrong. I’d forgotten how angry he’d be for defying his instructions not to confront Dana, but I didn’t care. This was war.

  “You forced her onto your bed?” I screamed. “You slapped her?”

  Ian shot up from his chair and stood over me, inches from my face. “Back off before I knock your teeth in.”

  “Shut up!” I tried pushing him, but he latched onto my arms and shoved me onto his bed.

  “Don’t talk to me like that!” he hollered.

  I bounced off the bed and lurched back in his face, my teeth clenched and hands shaking. “You did that to her?”

  “That’s a bold-faced lie. I did nothing to her! You see? You see what she’s trying to do to us? She’s a liar and a tease! I never did anything forceful to her, she came onto me then backed off once she got me going.”

  I released a scornful laugh until Ian raised his hand, then dropped it back down. “So help me, I’m going to smack you right in the mouth. You. Don’t. Know. Chuck. This is why I didn’t want you chasing after her because I know how she is. She’s a fake, and I knew she’d turn this into some victimizing story, and look! Now I’m a rapist! Think about it, Chuck. Me? A rapist?”

  I clamped my mouth shut and took a step backward.

  Ian nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” He slammed his hands on his hips and exhaled, softening, plopping on his bed. “You do what you want. But just so you know, I want nothing to do with her. What happened between Dana and me is what it is, and I know the truth. You’re an adult who can make your own decisions. But just remember—you and me? We’re blood. She’s not.”

  I drifted into my room and closed the door. I didn’t know what to believe. Those were two completely opposite stories, each one capable of causing serious damage to its respective antagonist’s reputation.

  But as each story presented its own defense in my mind, I refused to admit that Dana’s rendition made a lot more sense. I ignored the realization that Ian had been so sweet to her earlier and accepted her gift to butter her up and possibly talk her into doing things he knew she wouldn’t. That even though Ian wouldn’t own up to hitting her, I heard it. I heard it. Then again, I didn’t see it. Ian was just defending me against the crap she said about me, right? Never mind his history of violence versus Dana’s faultless testimony. She’d never come on to Ian, the whole world knew that. But to accept Dana’s story was too dangerous. It meant admitting Ian was evil, and I had enough of that in my family. Leave Ian out of this.

  Besides, Ian and I both saw that Dana was trying to take Chrissy’s place. That was just creepy.

  I couldn’t think about it anymore. Whatever happened between my brother and his girlfriends was none of my business, even if his girlfriend happened to be the closest friend I had, so I let those two stories negate each other.

  I looked to the corner where the picture frame lay shattered, the glossy photo catching the lamplight and shining in my eyes. Part of me respected Dana for sticking around Ian’s and my dysfunction for this long.

  I slunk to the corner and plucked the picture from its glass grave. I looked from my and Dana’s smiling faces to the framed photo of Ian and me at my high school graduation. “Sorry, Dana,” I muttered and shoved the picture in my drawer, because tomorrow was Christmas and I needed Ian more than ever.

  “Turn here.” I point, scooting to the edge of my seat when we get off I-75 toward Cadillac.

  “Wait, Lake City’s that way?” Jack asks, pointing in the opposite direction, and I nod. “How far is it from where you live?”

  “About fifteen miles,” I answer between biting my nails, both pinky and ring. He looks at me like I just sprouted a handlebar mustache. “And you ran that?”

  “Yeah. Why, is that hard?” I ask with a wink. “Trust me, Ian and I aren’t normal when it comes to running. We have some sort of supernatural endurance. Especially Ian—he can run faster, but I’m more agile.”

  Jack shakes his head. “This poor, poor town.”

  “You’re not the first person to say that,” I comment as we fly under the overpass where I’d wrestled Ian the night of the axe swinging.

  “You know, my dad sponsors lots of corporate events. There’s a 5K next week. You’re still my employee. You should sign up for it.” Jack winks at me.

  “You mean I haven’t been fired yet?” I ask in mock surprise.

  “Oh, you’re totally on probation. You’re, like, one smartass
comment away from being axed. Pun intended.”

  “You really just said that?” I say, because I can’t believe he just made a joke about Ian killing me, and I’m not even offended.

  “Too soon?” He grins.

  “No, actually. Turn left here.”

  Jack slows down as he moves the car onto a rural winding road, following my pointing finger into a dirt driveway with a brown tri-level speared at the end. I jump out of the car before he can stop completely and sprint to the door, rapping on it until Dana’s face emerges. Scooping me into a melodramatic embrace, she keeps poking her finger into my shoulder blades. “You’re not really standing here. You’ve got to be a ghost.”

  I bat her finger away. “Stop, that tickles.”

  Dana turns to the vehicle idling in the driveway, a scruffy head silhouetted in the driver’s seat. “Who’s that?”

  I follow her gaze. “Oh, that’s Jack. He’s … my chauffeur.”

  Dana looks at me incredulously. “Chauffeur? You ran away from home, leaving everything you’ve ever owned—including your cell phone, which you might have about five hundred missed calls from me, sorry about that—and you’re going to tell me you have a chauffeur? A really good-looking chauffeur?”

  “Never mind that, what is it you have to tell me? Come on, I drove all this way.”

  The flirtatious juices drain from Dana’s eyes. “I take it you haven’t been by your house?”

  I rip my head back and forth. “No, dummy. I came right here. Like, the last time I was out of that car was somewhere near Saginaw.”

  “Saginaw?”

  “Dana, you’re killing me. What’s going on?” I beg.

  Dana leans against the doorframe. “You have to go see your house. And get your phone, for crying out loud.”

  I growl and spin off the porch steps, racing back to Jack’s car and insisting he go to my house. Jack peels out of the driveway, chasing my navigation finger. “What did she say was wrong?” he asks.