by Jay McLean
The man on stage is talking, but my fear has tuned me so far out of reality that I can’t even comprehend what he’s saying. In a daze of emotion, I keep my eyes forward, focused on Lachlan, and fist my hands on my lap. My heart pounds, pulse beating in my ears. I’m covered in goosebumps, and my stomach is rising, falling, flying, head-diving. I can’t breathe. I look behind me, back at the door I came in from.
I could sneak out.
Make another scene.
It wouldn’t matter; I’ll never have to see these people again.
But then Lachlan’s name is called, and I’m watching the stage again, my entire body lifting with anticipation. When he gets behind the podium, a step stool is offered to him, and the audience laughs. He’s the youngest one here, the others in their late teens, and the idea of his greatness brings a smile to my lips, a tear to my eye.
He says, into the microphone, “I was told that I had to say something about myself before I talked about the work I’d submitted. I don’t… I don’t really know what I’m supposed to say…” He shrugs. “I’m just a kid who likes to draw.”
I smile wider.
Lachlan adds, “I’m also a kid who likes to run. At one point, I thought it had to be one or the other… but then someone really special to me said something really important… she told me that I never had to stereotype myself. That I am who I am and I like what I like and that I never had to choose. It meant a lot to me—what she said—and I guess that’s why she became my muse for the artwork I submitted.”
My breath catches in my throat, and I find myself sitting forward, my hands shaking, my heart racing.
On the stage, a giant projector screen lowers behind Lachlan, and the lights dim, and then the entire screen is filled with what looks like a comic book cover. The girl on the drawing seems to be floating high above the buildings, bright blue leather covering almost every inch of her body, the letters RR across her chest, and enough red hair to fill half the screen. She’s holding a pen, a laser shooting out of it, directed at a body below her—a body of a boy with something strapped to his chest.
My mouth opens, and I force an inhale, hold it there.
Lachlan clears his throat, the single sound haunting the entire room. “Once upon a time, there was a superhero with fiery-red hair. Some people described the color of her hair as scarlet. She had an upturned nose with freckles all across it. In her village, she was known as The Red Raven…”
I choke on a sob, cover my mouth with my hand to muffle the sound.
“In the same village as Red Raven lived a boy. A boy who had a past that no one knew of, no one spoke of. A boy who hurt in ways no one could ever understand. This boy would spend nights alone in his bunker, tinkering with his tools, pulling apart electronics just to put them back together again. Sometimes, he’d incorrectly rewire the units just to see the destruction it would cause.
“One night, he gathered an old alarm clock, a camp stove, and a stereo and pulled them all apart. When he was done, he started the task of joining them all together, wiring them all wrong. But before he could, the boy gave in to fatigue, and instead of packing up all the parts, he fell asleep on his bed with all the parts next to him. When he awoke the next day, the pieces of his broken project had somehow attached themselves to him. Right across his chest.
“He startled as he sat up, confused, and that’s when he heard the tick, tick, ticking of the clock. When he looked down, he noticed that everything had been wired wrong. Too wrong. In his sleep, without his knowledge, his creation had become a ticking time bomb… right over his heart. The boy got up, stared at himself in the mirror, his blue eyes scared. And he knew that without meaning to, without wanting to, he’d become self-destructive.”
My eyes drift shut, allowing the silent tears to fall along with my silent cries.
“Meanwhile, The Red Raven watched the boy from just outside his window. She could hear the bomb ticking but could see no change in the time of the clock. There was no exact hour, minute, second. There was no countdown. All she knew was that at some point, at any point, the boy was going to explode. She looked down at her pen, her superpower, and knew that with a wave of the pen, a scan with the laser, she had the power to remove the bomb, to rewire it, to rewire him. But the problem was, she didn’t know him… this self-destructive boy who looked so broken, so sad…”
I wipe furiously at my tears, try to contain my cries as best I can. My hands settle on my lap, shaky and wet, and I inhale, exhale, too quick, too sharp, and I can’t catch my breath. Then a single sound echoes through the room, through my entire body. Logan sniffs. And I’m too afraid to look, too scared to watch.
Lachlan goes on, “And so she made a promise to herself to get to know the boy, to see if he was worth saving…”
I can’t see through the tears, can’t breathe through the heartache. And then a stroke of warmth flows across my wrist—Logan’s finger. My throat closes, and my eyes drop to the connection. He shifts my hand until the back of it rests on my leg. The tips of each of his fingers connect with mine, dragging them up, up, up, opening my hand for him, revealing the Hope Penny I’d been holding on to since I got here. His heavy breath lands on my head, and then his fingers are sliding through mine, lacing, joining, curling, and then…
Then he holds my hand.
He holds my hand and everything inside me breaks, crumbles to ashes. A second later, his lips are on my temple and my eyes are closed, and I feel all the broken pieces, the leftover ashes formed by our destruction, get swept away with the touch of his hand, and I’m being rebuilt, rewired from the inside out, and Lachlan continues: “The self-destructive boy glanced out his window and saw The Red Raven watching him. Their eyes met, and they held each other’s gaze: the boy’s pleading, the girl’s concerned. And then the boy blinked, pulled them out of their stupor. He walked to the window, lifted the glass, and said the few words that would forever change them…‘Save me, Red.’”
57
Logan
As soon as Lachlan’s off the podium, Aubrey and I stand and walk out of the theater with my hope held between our hands.
She leans against the wall just outside the theater door, her head lowered, face hidden. She’s in a red coat, the hood still on, and I joke, “You look like Little Red Riding Hood. The porno version we watched that time.”
She laughs once but keeps her head down.
I notice a scar across her eyebrow I swear wasn’t there before. I lift my free hand, run my thumb across it. “What’s this?”
Her shoulders lift.
Fall.
I sigh, squeeze her hand. For months, I’ve thought about this moment, dreamt about it, and every time I did, she was looking at me. Seeing me. She’s not seeing me now. “Why won’t you look at me, Red?”
“I’m scared,” she whispers.
“Of what?”
“What if… what if you look at me, and you see him?”
“Aubrey,” I breathe out and lift her chin with my finger until her tear-filled eyes are on mine. Air fills my lungs for the first time since I saw her, and I take her in completely: all the pieces of her that I love, that I miss. And then I tell her the truth I’d been dying and hoping to say, to feel: “I don’t see anyone but you. Even in my lowest, darkest moments, Aubrey, I only ever saw you.”
I hold our joined hands behind her back, bring her closer to me. She smells like summer, like late nights and lake water and star-filled skies.
She says, holding back tears, “But… what if… what if one day that’s not what you see? What if—”
I lean forward, cutting her off. “What if we try, Red?” I kiss her neck, her jaw, her cheek, all the parts of her I’ve missed. I ask, repeating the words that were once written with hope, “What if we try, and what if that was all I could promise you? Will that be enough?”
Her eyes drift shut, her lips finding mine, and then we’re kissing, touching, and there’s a calmness in the moment, as if we know…
We kn
ow that this is our future. Right here. Right now. Each other. And we can’t ever let the people in our pasts, and the pasts we created, define who we are and what we stand for, what we live for. What we love for.
Her tears fall against my cheek, and she whispers the words I’ve held on to, the words I imagined hearing as I lay in bed at night, thinking of her, lost in the stillness, “I love you, Logan.”
I rear back so I can look in her eyes. “God, Aubrey, I love you so much. Please stay,” I beg.
“What?”
“I’m asking you to stay, Aubrey. For me…”
And she says…
She says…
“Okay.”
Epilogue
Logan
“My Girl” by Otis Redding plays through the entire house, and I hold my niece in my arms, pull a penny from behind her ear. “What’s this?” I whisper, smiling back at her the way she’s smiling at me. She grabs my chin with her chubby little fists, and I spin us around the living room a little too fast for Dad’s liking. “Take it easy, Logan. She just ate.”
“I got her,” I tell him, then look back into her eyes—eyes just like my mother’s. “Your uncle Lo’s got you, doesn’t he, Princess?”
Exactly a year ago today, Baby Katie was born. It wasn’t easy on Lucy, and I’m saying that as someone who has absolutely zero knowledge of the labor process, but Lucy, probably the strongest of us all, struggled. Bad. She was in labor for fifteen hours, completely drug-free—because that’s how Mom had done it—and she wanted to be just as strong as Mom. When it got time to push, things got worse, and Katie—she was beached. No. Bitched. No… wait… breeched. Yeah, that’s it. She was upside down or something, probably facing the butthole instead of the vagina—gross—but anyway, they had to do a last-minute emergency C-section.
Swear to God, I’ve never seen Lucy that scared.
When they wheeled her out of the room, we were all waiting for her in the hallway. She wouldn’t stop crying, and it wasn’t the physical pain that made her that way. She kept saying she couldn’t do it, that she’d failed as a mother… and then, the saddest part of all, she kept crying out for Mom. Broke my damn heart. Dad’s, too. I gave her the lucky penny from around my neck, told her it was Mom’s, and that Mom would be in that room with her. She looked up at me, cried some more. “But it’s yours,” she said, and I shook my head, told her it was going to be Katie’s, anyway. It was. I’d planned to give it to her the minute she was born. Besides, I don’t need luck anymore. I had Aubrey. Who sat by my side the entire night, holding my hand, and telling me everything would be okay.
An hour after Lucy was taken into the OR, Cameron came out, covered in scrubs from head to toe, and blood. So much blood. I thought that something horrible had happened. And then he broke down in tears and said, “She’s so perfect. God, she’s so perfect.”
And she is.
My baby niece.
My little princess.
“My turn!” Lachlan shouts, arms up, reaching for Katie.
I set Katie on the floor, make sure she’s steady on her feet before letting her go. “Be careful, okay? She’s only little.”
Lachy rolls his eyes at me. “I’m not a dummy, Logan! Jeez, you gotta give me room to breathe, bro.”
Lucas sways past, dancing with Laney, and smirks, “You play stupid games…”
I shake my head. “Shut up.”
Dad smacks the back of my head as he walks to kitchen. “Don’t talk to your brother like that.”
And then Leo’s coming down the stairs. “Yeah,” he says. “Don’t talk to your brother like that.”
“You don’t even know—”
“Everything’s good to go,” the twins shout, their heads poking through the front door.
I look at my watch. “What time does the party start?”
“In an hour,” Cameron says, picking up his daughter. “Where’s your girl?”
“Wherever yours is.”
The song ends, the back door opens, and Aubrey walks in: hair down, long summer dress with palm leaves, flowers in her hair. I ask her, “Have you seen my friend, Wilson?”
“Who?” she says, making her way through all the people to get to Katie. She kisses her cheek, then wipes off the lipstick she left behind.
“My friend, Wilson,” I repeat. “Because you look like a castaway.”
Cameron shakes his head, chuckles. “Poor effort, dude.”
“You’re an idiot,” Aubrey tells me. “And why are you still in your underwear? The party starts in an hour.” She flicks her wrist, shooing me out the door. “Go. And you, too, Lachy.”
I grasp both her hands in mine and smile; I can’t help it. “My clothes are up in my old room.” I kiss her quickly. “And I was kidding. You look beautiful.”
Had it not been for Aubrey’s four-poster bed, her move in to the garage apartment with me would’ve been just as stealth as my move in with her.
She hasn’t left my side.
I won’t let her.
Neither will my family.
And, sure, we could’ve gotten our own place, but truthfully? I don’t want to be far from my family—my support system—and after the first night of You + Me 2.0, when Aubrey caught me up on everything going on in her life, it was pretty clear she needed a support system of her own. And my family—my dad especially—was more than happy to be that for her.
She now runs Lucy’s bookstore.
“Why do I have to dress like this?” Lachlan asks, fidgeting with his tie. “I feel like a jackhole.”
I sit on the edge of my parents’ bed and shake my head at him. “You hang around me way too much.”
“Not by choice,” he says. “You’re just wherever Red is, and I actually like her.”
Aubrey giggles as she buttons my sleeve.
“Why can’t I just wear jeans?”
“Because…” I start. “Because it’s Katie’s first birthday and Lucy wants to get some nice pictures of all of us today.”
“That’s dumb,” he mumbles.
“Listen, Lachy,” I say, my voice firm. “Lucy and Cameron—they were told they’d never have a baby, and it’s something they’ve wanted for a really long time. Besides, Lucy and Cam—we owe them a lot. I know…” I look down, a knot forming in my throat. “I know you were really young when Mom died, but afterward, Dad—he didn’t take it too well, and if it weren’t for Luce and Cameron and Cam’s mom, we might not even be here.”
“What?” he says, his eyes narrowed. “Like, we’d be eaten by zombies?”
“No,” I laugh out. “I mean, we wouldn’t be here, all together like this. We may have been separated. And could you imagine that… all of us living in different places?”
“No,” Lachlan mumbles. “That would suck.”
“Right? So, I think we can dress like penguins for one day a year. I think Cameron and Lucy deserve that. Don’t you?”
He nods.
Then Katie cries, and I look to the door, to Lucy and Cameron standing there, watching us. “You’re a jerk,” Lucy cries out, wiping at her tears.
Aubrey sniffs, and she’s crying, too.
I sigh.
Lachlan does the same. “Girls are so weird.”
“They’re not that bad,” Cameron says, laying Katie down on the bed. She’s in a frilly purple dress, my lucky penny hanging from a gold chain around her neck. Blue-blue eyes and dark brown hair and more cheeks than you can squeeze between your fingers.
“You make good kid,” I tell Cameron.
He nods, his eyes doing that crazy distant thing whenever he looks at his daughter for more than a second. “Fuck, yeah, I do.”
Lucas says, walking into the room with Laney right behind him. “At some point, we’re going to have to cut it out with all the swearing. She’s going to start picking up on it.”
Laney laughs, her head throwing back. “Remember that time Lachlan thought pussy-whipped meant that you didn’t like cats and you whipped them?”
&
nbsp; Everyone laughs. Everyone but Lachlan. “Wait. That’s not what it means?”
The twins come in then, all of us around the king-sized bed, looking down at Katie. Lincoln says, “Aunt Leslee just got to the gate.”
We all groan.
“Guess who’s with her?”
“Who?” Lucy asks.
“Vagina.”
“Ew!” Lachlan squeals.
“Virginia?” I ask. “Our old nanny?”
“Uh huh,” says Liam, but he has that sly smile on his face that can only mean one thing.
“Wait,” Lucas says, unable to hide his smirk. “Does that mean Mia’s here, too?”
Liam nods. “Yep.”
All eyes go to Leo, who’s covering his face. “Nooooo!” he whispers into his hands.
“Who’s Mia? And why is Leo…” Aubrey trails off.
“Mia’s Virginia’s daughter, and she fucking loved Leo,” I say through a chuckle.
“Loved?” says Lucy. “She was infatuated.”
“How long do I have to stay at this thing?” Leo mumbles.
“Remember that time she made Leo a cake with her face on it?” Lucas laughs out.
I say, “Oh, my God, and it was at that really bad stage. When she had that—”
“Brace face!” Liam shouts. “And acne.”
“Oh, my God, so much acne,” Lincoln adds.
“Didn’t Virginia send her to fat camp?” I ask.
The room goes silent.
“We’re such assholes,” Lucas says.
“Yeah,” Lucy agrees, frowning down at her daughter. “We’re the worst.”
“The worst,” Liam agrees.
“She was a really nice girl,” I add. “Like, super sweet.”
“We’re the meanest, most judgmental bunch of whorefaces in existence,” says Lucy.
Leo sighs. “I mean, yeah, we are, but still… if y’all could be my buffer, I’d appreciate it.”
“You’re on your own, bud,” Lucas says, slapping his shoulder.
