by Vi Lily
And why in the world would she want to go the gas station bathroom to get cleaned up? Alex frowned. It was like she was reverting back to her old ways. That dirty bathroom in the gas station had been where she’d washed her clothes — and her body — as best as she could for the past year or more.
Why she’d be going back to her old ways was beyond him. Surely she knew that she’d always have a home with him…
He frowned at that thought. Maybe she didn’t know. He had never told her how he felt, that he was pretty sure he was in love with her too. He’d planned to, wanted to make it somehow special, but that was the night Steve had that party. That was the night when his world had tilted on its axis.
Alex’s chest clenched as it always did whenever he thought of Steve and how he died. Of how Alex’s last words to his brother had been filled with disgust, with hatred. How his brother had died thinking his brother didn’t want him around.
At the time, Alex hadn’t wanted him there. But that was because Steve had broken all the rules. He knew that Alex didn’t want any drugs in the house, which was even more important after Ari had moved in. He’d warned his brother about having people come over too, especially when he wasn’t there.
Steve knew all those things, but it was like he’d thrown Alex’s rules in his face. A big “eff you.” And it had been enough to make Alex want to choke the life out of his brother.
Minutes later, the drugs had done that for him.
He couldn’t forgive himself, couldn’t get past those last words. They haunted him, like Steve’s ghost. Everywhere he looked, there was a reminder of Steve. Even though they’d both lived in that house just a short time, Steve had shed memories all over the place. The sofa, where they’d battled through video games; the kitchen, where Steve had cooked some delicious — and some not so great — meals; the third guest bedroom that Steve had claimed as his own, because it overlooked the pool, and he’d been looking forward to the time when it was warm enough to swim and they could have “hot chicks in bikinis” over.
There was also the fact that if he’d checked on his brother when he fell, he might have been able to save him. It wasn’t like he keeled over dead. He’d passed out, then died while sprawled out on the floor. Right where Alex had left him, disgusted by his stupid brother.
As far as he was concerned, he might as well have killed his own brother.
But, was there anything he could have done to save Steve? he wondered. Not that night, maybe, but before? Like insisted that the guy get some help, go into rehab or something. Talk to a psychiatrist about how their dad screwed them up so badly that neither one of the Johansen boys could function like normal human beings.
Alex always wondered why they’d ended up so different. Steve turned to drugs, partying. Alex turned to anger, with wrestling as an outlet for that anger so he didn’t end up in jail. They both internalized their crap though. Then numbed the Edward Johansen shaped demons that taunted them.
At least Steve had enjoyed life. Seemed to, anyway. He was personable, outgoing, friendly. People liked him. Unlike Alex, who people avoided like a plague-infested rat, people were drawn to Steve. Like Ari, who’d become closer to his brother than Alex ever had.
He was surprised to see that he was already nearing the edge of town. He turned left and headed to the gas station where he’d found Ari that first day. For some reason, he knew that was where she would have gone.
The bathroom doors were locked, and she didn’t open up to his pounding, so he had to tell the attendant that he was worried about his girlfriend, that she might have passed out or something.
She wasn’t in either bathroom, so he tried calling her again, but no luck. He the texted Vato as he headed back to the Charger, knowing he wouldn’t be able to answer the phone, since he’d be in class. He always hated texting thanks to his dyslexia, but at least with autocorrect, he’d get most of it right.
Alex: did Gwen say anything else bout ari
Vato: like what?
Alex: like after drop her off she stay or go
Vato: ? not sure what u mean but Gwen said she left Ari at the station cuz she said to
Alex frowned. Now he had no idea what to do. But then he thought of Ogre and knew that Ari would want to check on him, so it was likely that she went to his house. With that thought, he put the Charger in gear and once again left rubber in a parking lot.
Ari wasn’t on any of the streets near the station, so Alex headed to the house. He frowned, though, when he realized that even though she knew the alarm code, she didn’t have a key. The house wasn’t equipped with one of those fancy digital door locks, and he’d never thought to give her a key, because she was always with him.
There was a car in the drive he didn’t recognize, and he frowned as he pulled in beside it. He wondered if maybe Ari had gotten a ride home from someone, but that didn’t explain why they would still be there. His frown deepened to a scowl when he thought that he wasn’t due home from school for another couple of hours… and maybe Ari had invited someone over.
Maybe it’s a guy.
The jealousy he felt at that hit him hard, so hard that the gear shift made a cracking sound under his hand as he squeezed it. He had to force himself to relax his grip, then climbed out of the truck.
As he walked up the path to the front door, he remembered his earlier thought that Ari didn’t have a housekey, so it wasn’t likely she let someone into the house. The only other person who’d had a key had been Steve.
He frowned again, wondering if his idiot brother had given a key to one of his druggie friends. Then he felt guilt for thinking of Steve as an “idiot,” and had to push that aside. He felt enough guilt already.
The door was unlocked. He looked around, trying to figure out who was in the house, but then he noticed her sitting on the sofa, holding the urn in her lap while Ogre sprawled on her feet. His heart caught in his throat when she looked up at him, tears streaming down her face.
“Hi Mom.”
Chapter 7
Ari
I DON’T REALLY have a plan. I’m just wandering around the streets of Bearing in wet clothes that are still bloodstained. Gas station hand soap just doesn’t make good laundry detergent.
My mind keeps going back to the jumbled mess that was this afternoon. It’s safe to say that I wasn’t in my right mind. In fact, if I get arrested for what I did, that’s going to be my defense.
“Your Honor, I was completely insane in that moment.”
Really, nothing else could explain how Ariel Kane, at not quite five feet and topping the scale at a whopping one hundred two pounds, managed to beat Devon Kane at five feet eleven and maybe one hundred sixty — but strong because he’s drugged out — nearly to death with a bong.
Just because I was pissed.
What kept churning through my turbulent mind as Gwen drove me to my former house was that my brother killed Steve. Regardless of the fact that he hadn’t held a gun to his head and forced him to snort the laced coke, he’d killed him just the same by lacing the coke in the first place.
My brother is — was — a horrid person.
Gwen also told me that Raine thought Steve was my lover, that I was “doing” both him and Alex. That’s apparently what she told my brother. She also said Devon “lost it” when he found out I wasn’t a virgin any longer, because I wasn’t worth anything to him anymore, and that he said, “that bitch is going to pay.”
Turns out he was wrong about that. He’s the one who wrote me the check, in his blood.
Once I walked into the formerly beautiful mansion and Devon — sprawled out naked on the living room floor, high on whatever, but alone, thankfully — managed to drag his sorry butt up and threaten me, I lost it.
“Well, look who’s dragged her sorry ass back here,” he taunted, his eyes wild as usual. “Come back to apologize?”
I hadn’t said anything, just stood there with breathing hard, trying to figure out how in the hell I was related to the piece of
crap standing in front of me, looking like a zombie with sunken eyes and bleeding sores, so thin that it looked like skin had been stretched over a skeleton, with his junk on display and not caring that his little sister was witnessing it.
It was with no small amount of horror when I noticed that “junk” was becoming aroused.
By his little sister. Ugh!
Devon’s eyes traveled over me then, like he was seeing me for the first time. He actually licked his lips, like some B-movie pervert.
“Damn,” he breathed as he took a step closer to me, “I was right — you did clean up nice. Real nice.” I remember shuddering so violently in disgust that my teeth rattled.
He reached for me then, but I easily sidestepped him. That ticked him off and he made a move to grab me, but I jumped out of his reach. Being high and as sick as he looked, he was unstable and his movements jerky. He stumbled and fell onto the couch.
I used that opportunity to grab the first thing that caught my eye, and that was the big water pipe he used to smoke weed that was sitting on the coffee table.
Devon laughed. “Wanna hit before I tap that fine booty?” he cackled as he pushed himself back up. My eyes had widened at his words, shocked that he’d want to have sex with his own sister.
But that thought had led to the time Steve had told me that their father used to abuse Alex that way, when he was little and defenseless. And that thought reminded me of the two men that I loved with all my heart.
And that there was no love at all in me for the last of my blood relations standing in front of me.
That thought was what made me swing at my sick, twisted, addicted brother, catching him in the temple with the stem of the bong where the weed went. I almost laughed at the black soot the blow left in his blond hair.
Of course, that hit only served to tick him off further and he lunged at me, but I brought the pipe up and clocked him under the chin with it, then jabbed it into his sternum before slamming it into his nose, which cracked immediately and blood poured out. He fell back onto the couch, screaming.
And that was when I really let him have it.
Years of fear, frustration, helplessness and despair unlocked some sort of animal within me and that animal nearly killed the last living relative I have.
Hell, I might have actually killed him. I really don’t know. Or care.
I might have managed to get some small vengeance for Steve and Alex. Their mom. And myself, honestly. And it felt good. Real good.
But now I’m coming down from the high of my “kill.” My entire body is shaking, and I’m pretty sure it’s not just because my clothes are damp. I think the adrenaline is leaving my body and that’s turning me into a quivering, quaking mess. I’m rethinking telling Gwen to just leave. And I’m pissed all over again at Devon because he apparently sold my mom’s Navigator, since it wasn’t in the drive.
At least I had the presence of mind to grab my stash of money I had hidden in my old bedroom closet. It’s not much, but at least I’m not completely broke.
I keep walking and trying to sort out my mind while willing my body to normalize. Neither is happening and before I know it, I’m on Alex’s street. Well, it used to be my street too. But I’m pretty sure once he finds out my brother is responsible for killing his, I won’t have a home here any longer.
But I need to get my things. If Alex will let me keep them, anyway. He might not. He might say that he bought them, so they’re his. I doubt it, because he’s not like that, but at this point I have no clue.
If nothing else, I’m getting Ogre.
My feet trudge down the street toward the house and I can see Alex’s Charger in the drive, but it looks like another vehicle is on the other side of it. I can’t really tell, because the Charger is so big it’s blocking it.
As I near the house, a thought brings me to a stop. If I do have to leave, what about Ogre? I can’t just take him with me when I have no idea what I’m going to do, where I’m going to sleep. It wouldn’t be fair to drag the dog into homelessness with me.
And, regardless of how he feels about me, I do know that Alex would take care of Ogre.
I walk up the drive alongside the Charger and once I get to the front of it, I see that there is another car in the drive. It has Pennsylvania plates, but that doesn’t mean anything to me. I wonder if it’s a friend of Alex’s, or maybe Steve’s.
The front door isn’t closed all the way, so I push it open and step inside silently. I don’t want to disturb Alex and his guest. All I really want to do is sneak upstairs and get these wet clothes off, then throw them in the washer to get them cleaned properly. It’s going to take a half gallon of hydrogen peroxide to get all the blood out.
My heart sinks when I hear Alex’s voice coming from the living room, which means I won’t be able to sneak up the stairs after all. But then a female voice stops me in my tracks.
Alex has a girl here? That thought has my heart nearly pounding out of my chest. But then Alex’s next words calm me.
“No, Mom, I didn’t think of that,” Alex replies, his voice dripping with sarcasm. I’m surprised his mother is here, but I’m glad he was able to finally find her. He never told me he had, though, which kind of hurts.
I start to make my presence known, but then I pause. His mom probably doesn’t know about me, and this isn’t the time to say, “Hey, Ms. Whatever-Your-Last-Name-Is, I’m Ariel. I’ve been sponging off your son for the past few months. Oh, by the way, I used up all your amazing bubble bath.”
Yeah, no.
So now I’m trying to figure out what to do. Should I leave… but go where? I honestly don’t want to be out walking around any longer now that I’ve come to my senses and realize that the cops might be looking for me, although I kind of doubt it. In fact, they might just want to shake my hand for beating up Bearing’s biggest — and probably only — drug dealer. It’s a small town, and small towns, especially those as rich as Bearing, don’t take kindly to criminal elements. Not the blue collar type anyway.
I don’t want to make myself known, not until I talk to Alex. Plus, I really wouldn’t want to interrupt a moment between mother and son. It sounds like his mom is crying, which is understandable. I just hope Alex comforts her like he’s done with me these past weeks. The sarcasm in his voice a few moments ago says otherwise though.
He’s never spoken highly of either of his parents, but, unlike his douche dad, he’s never really said anything bad about his mom, just hasn’t really said anything good either. He shrugged it off whenever I asked, just saying that his mom has a “new life now.” Like that’s grounds for ignoring your child, even if he is practically a grown man.
And then there’s the way she turned her back on Steve. Yeah, I get that tough love thing and all, but the guy needed help. Serious help. Surely she could see that. It pisses me off that she just tossed him out of her life because he was damaged.
But Alex explained that an addiction counselor had told his mom that she needed to be tough on him, to force him into making better choices. Said “he has to hit a bottom before he can claw his way back up,” or some crap like that.
After living with two different addicts, I’m not entirely sure that works. They seem to just become bottom feeders.
I won’t judge his mom for the choices she’s made, though. From what I understand, she had it pretty bad with her husband too. And supposedly she didn’t know about the sexual abuse going on with her husband and youngest son. But that doesn’t excuse the fact that she let her boys get beat so severely as to leave scars — both physical and emotional. I would have packed up my kids and left.
Maybe. I sigh at my thoughts. Again, I can’t judge her actions, because I’ve never been in that situation. Who knows what all went on behind her closed door. I only know what happened behind Steve’s and Alex’s.
That was bad enough.
They continue talking in murmurs and I stand there in the foyer like some eavesdropping weirdo, trying to figure out what to do.
But then I hear something that makes the decision for me.
His mom’s voice gets a little louder suddenly in the middle of her sentence, and she sounds angry, her Texas drawl thick. “—Ari has to go. It’s no different than the crap with Steve.”
My heart pounded at hearing those words, but then I know that Alex only has a little over a month left in the house before he has to leave. We haven’t really talked about what he was going to do after that, but he’s sort of hinted at me moving with him, so I figure it isn’t that big of a deal if his mom insists I leave. I know Alex could probably talk his mom into letting us stay until he graduates.
Hopefully.
But that isn’t what he does. He doesn’t try to talk his mom into anything. His next words break my heart into a million pieces and leave me confused and completely disillusioned.
Alex’s drawl is thick, too, when he answers. “I know. The damn moocher’s been needin’ gone for a while. I’ll take care of it.”
I spin as bile rises up in my throat and I run back out the front door. I manage to make it to the sidewalk before I hurl into the neighbor’s boxwood hedge.
Some voice in my head tells me I’m being an idiot, because I had walked into that house thinking that Alex was going to tell me to leave once he found out what Devon had done. But I guess hearing it from his own lips was more devastating than I’d thought. Especially when he called me a moocher.
For months, I’ve been saying the same thing, that I didn’t want to just sponge off him, that I needed to get some sort of a job to help pay the bills. He’d insisted that he had money and that I wasn’t sponging, that I did help around the house, which is sort of true, since I’ve been cleaning and cooking. But when my ribs were broken, he hardly let me do anything.
It doesn’t matter now though. Whatever was said is in the past. It’s obvious he doesn’t want me around and was planning on getting rid of me anyway. Now I just have to figure out what the hell I’m going to do.
I pull my phone out of my back pocket and stare at it. I think about calling Gwen now that I have her number, but I know she’s living with her oldest brother in Clemens, which is a good twenty miles from Bearing. At this time of day, she’s probably already home.
