“Absolutely not.” Dad’s eyes were hard. “Do you understand me, Jeremy?”
That shut me up. Dad never used my first name. Neither of them did. I’d switched over to my middle name, Aspen, when I was eight, and I hadn’t looked back since. My parents only called me Jeremy when they were seriously pissed off at me.
So I nodded.
I could have fixed everything. Reached into Mom and taken away whatever had made her want to leave. Reached into Dad and taken away whatever it was that made him not want me to fix her. Reached into both of them, found the thing that had split them apart, and gotten rid of it.
But we have one unbreakable rule in the Quick family. We don’t steal from one another. We just don’t. And Dad was right about one thing: Mom was still part of the family, whether she wanted to be or not. So unless I wanted to admit that she wasn’t part of my family anymore, I couldn’t reach into her.
Which meant I couldn’t bring her back.
My morning wake-up call in Three Peaks was the smell of coffee and bacon wafting up from the kitchen. And it wasn’t even intended as an alarm clock substitute, really; Grandma figured if I wanted to get up, I’d get up. If not, that wasn’t her problem. As long as I was there when the Cliff needed me, she didn’t really care what else I did with my time. But I always got up when Grandma cooked breakfast. I mean, come on. Bacon.
That morning, though, the bacon-coffee smell came with a new addition: the sound of yelling, over in the east wing.
Usually, I stayed in the east wing when I came to visit. That was where both guest rooms were, so it only made sense. But this summer, Brandy and Theo had taken those rooms. One room each, if you asked Aunt Holly or Grandma. Me? I knew they were really both staying in Theo’s room.
I, meanwhile, was staying in Heather’s old room in the west wing. Not nearly as creepy as it sounds, since it’d been basically stripped bare after the funeral. There were still some clothes in the closet, and some random stuff in the drawers, but nothing out in the open. Nothing you could see without digging a little.
The yelling didn’t contain words I could make out—it wasn’t loud enough for that—but there was a degree of urgency that told me I should maybe go check it out before I headed downstairs. So I felt around for my glasses, paused in front of Heather’s full-length mirror to make sure my hair wasn’t doing anything too stupid, and headed over to the east wing.
“You’re being a baby.” Brandy’s voice, coming from Theo’s room.
I got to the door just in time to hear his response: “No, I’m not. You wanted space, right? That’s what you said. Space. So that’s what you get.” He said all this while pulling clothes out of drawers and shoving them into his open suitcase.
This was not good.
“Oh, I get it,” said Brandy, who was standing over him, arms crossed. Even scowling, she was the hottest girl ever. “You’re being noble. How sweet of you. How chivalrous.”
“Noble?” said Theo, shoving his phone charger into a corner of the suitcase. “Please.”
“Please,” mimicked Brandy. “That’s right, go running home. What about Aspen, idiot? You’re just gonna abandon your best friend at a time like this?”
A time like this, meaning while I was still dealing with my feelings about Heather’s death. But really, I mostly had feelings about Aunt Holly’s feelings about Heather’s death. Which was to say, I had a serious lack of desire to be anywhere near Aunt Holly while she was still going through her anger-depression-drinking-et-cetera thing.
That was it, honestly—but Brandy kept insinuating that I should be sadder than I was, or I should have issues to work through, or whatever. And since there was no way of correcting her without coming across as a callous douche bag, I just kind of didn’t bother.
“One of us has to go,” said Theo. “I sure as hell don’t feel like spending the rest of the month in the room next to you. Not after yesterday.”
“Then I should be the one who leaves,” said Brandy.
I tensed up. She couldn’t leave. Not when my chance was finally here.
“You?” said Theo.
“Obviously,” said Brandy. “You’re his best friend, not me. He only invited me because I’m dating you. Was dating you.”
Well, that was untrue.
Theo paused, a bunch of T-shirts clutched in his fist. “Oh. So you want to be the noble one.”
“Oh my god, you are such a baby!” said Brandy again. “Ugh. I’m gonna go pack.”
That was when she turned toward the door, saw me standing there, and stopped cold.
“Aspen,” she said.
Theo looked over at me, startled. “Oh. Hey, man.”
“Hey,” I replied, and for a second we all just sort of stared at one another. I had to figure out how to smooth this thing over, stat.
“Okay, your choice,” said Brandy, who’d recovered fastest from the awkwardness. “There’s a one o’clock bus back to the city. Which of us should be on it?”
“Neither of you,” I said. “Come on. I’ll switch rooms with Theo if it’ll make it less weird. But don’t leave, okay?”
They glanced at each other and had one of those two-second-long silent conversations that only couples ever seem to have. And recently-ex-couples, I guess.
“Just pick one,” said Brandy, sounding suddenly exhausted. “We won’t be offended. Promise.”
Theo’s face went tight, and I could tell he’d be very offended indeed if I chose Brandy to stay.
“Come on, guys,” I said with an exaggerated sigh. “Can we at least eat breakfast first? Like, have some coffee and actually talk about this?” There would be no talking, of course, because that meant there’d be a chance I wouldn’t get my way. But I needed time. Just a few minutes, so I could figure out what to do.
Another silent conversation. Then Theo said, “Yeah, I guess.”
Brandy nodded sharply and marched past me, out of the room, and downstairs. Theo looked after her, his face creasing with hurt. Hurt from the breakup. Or hurt at the thought that I might choose Brandy and send him home, when he’d finally, after years of bugging me to bring him along, gotten to come upstate for the summer. Whatever the reason, I knew I had to get rid of what he was feeling. Especially since I’d caused all that hurt in the first place.
“You got my texts?” His voice was even more gruff than usual. I nodded. “Man, what the hell, right? Just. Out of nowhere. Bam. I said something that set her off, and then she’s like … done with me. Forever.”
I made a sympathetic face. “That sucks. It really does.”
“You don’t even know,” said Theo. He was still holding those T-shirts.
I totally did know, was the thing. Well, not exactly. But I still remembered how I’d felt the night I’d found out they were dating, and I couldn’t imagine this was any worse.
“Sucks,” he said one more time. Then sighed. Then said, “Breakfast?”
“You go ahead,” I said. “I just wanna put in my contacts first.”
Theo threw the T-shirts onto his suitcase, then headed for the stairs. I went slowly toward the bathroom—but as soon as he was out of sight, I doubled back. I grabbed a shirt off Theo’s suitcase, then went into the blue room, where Brandy was staying, and grabbed one of her hair clips off the dresser.
I reached into the hair clip first. Immediately apparent was the empty space where, only yesterday, I’d stolen her love for Theo. It hadn’t healed just yet, and in the jagged spaces around it, there were tendrils of resentment and annoyance that her former love had been keeping at bay.
I took hold of her negative feelings and pulled them away. Then I took away her very small, but very present, desire to leave me and Theo and Three Peaks behind.
Inside Theo’s shirt, the desire to leave town was a little stronger, a little more difficult to wrap my will around. But I stole that, too, along with the desire he felt to get back at Brandy for breaking up with him so suddenly, not to mention so publicly. And then, finall
y, I stole his desire to try and get back with Brandy.
It was a lot of effort. By the time I was done, I had to sit down and shut my eyes. Just for a second. Just long enough that the reaching hangover faded away, and I couldn’t feel their minds inside my own anymore.
By the time I got downstairs, where Theo was spooning eggs onto four plates, Brandy was already murmuring apologies from her seat at the table. Apologies for breaking things off without any warning. Apologies for the name-calling. Apologies for no longer having the feelings she thought she had.
Grandma stayed silent through it all, but as I sat down at the table, she caught my eye and smiled. She knew what I’d done. Oh, yeah. She definitely knew. I gave her a slight nod, even though it wasn’t really necessary.
Theo, oblivious to our silent exchange, just listened to Brandy’s apologies and went, “It’s fine. Seriously. Don’t worry about it.”
We decided, as usual, to go to the lake. Personally, I was kind of ready to change it up a little, but in the interest of keeping things as normal as possible among the three of us, I gave in.
It was maybe a twenty-minute drive, and the car was super quiet the whole way. But the good kind of quiet, not the kind where everyone’s silently plotting everyone else’s death. I played DJ from the passenger seat. Theo played steering wheel drums to every song. And in the backseat, Brandy doodled on her bare arms, like she always did.
When we arrived at the lake, I grabbed the pile of beach towels that hid the remaining three-quarters of yesterday’s bottle of vodka, Brandy grabbed the bottle itself, and we headed down the well-worn sand path to the beach.
It was kind of overcast, not to mention a weekday, so aside from us, there weren’t that many people around. We dropped our stuff in a random spot, and Theo and I went over to the boathouse while Brandy put sunscreen on.
“Kayaks today?” asked Theo. “We haven’t done kayaks yet.”
I remembered wanting to try a kayak yesterday, but today, for some reason, my stomach twisted just thinking about it.
“Nah,” I said.
Theo shrugged. “Canoe again?”
We’d done a canoe yesterday. My stomach lurched at the memory. Ugh, maybe going out on the lake wasn’t a good idea today. All those waves, all that rocking …
“Or a paddleboat? Come on, man, pick one.”
I put a hand on my gut, willing it still, and shook my head. “You pick. I might sit this one out.”
Theo peered at me. “You okay?”
Was I? I wasn’t sure. I hadn’t woken up feeling like this, but maybe it had started at breakfast. Maybe the bacon had been undercooked.
Except Brandy and Theo had eaten the bacon, too, and they both looked fine.
“My stomach’s just doing something weird,” I said. “I dunno. Maybe I shouldn’t get out on the water today.”
Theo looked dubiously at the lake. Then shrugged. “That’s cool. We’ll just chill on the sand.”
“I mean, you guys can still get a boat if you want.”
“Hm,” he said. “Maybe.”
Ha. Here he was, ready to rent a boat with Brandy, when just this morning he’d been packing to go back home, just to avoid being near her. I was so good at my job. Ha-ha.
We made our way back to Brandy, who’d spread all three of our towels in a neat row. She was sitting on the far left one, but she got up as we approached. “Is there a wait?” she asked, looking pointedly at the lack of crowd around us.
“I thought maybe kayaks today,” said Theo. “But Aspen’s sick.”
“I’m not sick,” I said. “My stomach’s just doing a thing.”
“Aw,” said Brandy. “Well, hey, how about this. My arms are still kind of tired from rowing yesterday. So why don’t you get a kayak, and I’ll keep Aspen company?”
This couldn’t have turned out better if I’d planned it. And I honestly hadn’t. But damn, if I’d known a stomach bug, or whatever this was, would result in alone time with Brandy, I’d’ve faked it a lot sooner.
“That cool, Aspen?” asked Theo.
“Go for it,” I said.
And off he went, back to the boathouse. Brandy and I watched as he strapped an ugly orange life jacket over his T-shirt, then dragged a bright yellow kayak all the way to the water’s edge. “Whoosh,” said Brandy, as Theo pushed off from the shore and began paddling. His rhythm was even, and the boat moved fast. He could probably win races or something.
“So,” I said, settling on the middle towel. “You dumped him, huh?”
Brandy blew out a long breath and flopped back onto her own towel. “Is it too early for vodka?”
“It’s never too early for vodka,” I replied, and dug out the bottle. It was actually an empty Sprite bottle that we’d filled with vodka, because there were cops on this beach sometimes, and keeping up appearances was often easier than reaching into people to fix whatever mistake you’d just made. I took a sip, then Brandy took a sip, then I asked, “What happened?”
“Ugh, I don’t even know,” she said, passing the bottle back to me. I put it aside. “Look, I’m really sorry it happened while we were up here. I didn’t want to have all that drama on your family’s turf, but, like … I just had this moment of clarity, you know? At the diner last night.”
“Clarity?”
“Yeah. Like here’s this perfectly nice guy that I’ve been seeing for five months—six months?—and he’s a great person and stuff, but we have nothing in common. Nothing. Like zero things. We can’t even see movies together, because every time I go see one of his ridiculous sports-underdog-makes-good movies, I want to stab myself in the eye, and every time he sees one of my movies—”
“Where someone literally gets stabbed in the eye,” I said. I was very familiar with Brandy’s taste in movies. It was more or less the same as mine.
“With any luck, yes,” she said, shooting a grin at me. “But yeah, he can’t stand it. My movies either gross him out or bore him to death. And it’s music, too. And video games. And books and school and, just, the way we live life, you know?”
I nodded. I did know, because I’d been thinking the same thing for basically the entire time they’d been dating. Theo was a good dude, but he was also kind of a nerd sometimes, and Brandy deserved someone better. Someone who liked to read real books instead of comics, for instance. Someone who liked movies that were actually fun instead of just award-baity.
“Ooh, I forgot to ask,” I said, “have you seen Blood of Jupiter yet?”
Brandy perked up immediately. “Dude. Twice. You saw it?”
“The day it came out,” I said. “Wasn’t it great? I actually thought of you when they blew up Mars—oh, and when the thing with the fingers happened.”
“The thing with the fingers!” She sat up a little straighter. “Right? The alien, and the guy’s fingers, and I can’t even deal, that was so gross and awesome and awful and aaaahhhh, I want to see it again!”
“I’d see it again with you,” I said.
She grinned, pushing her sunglasses up her nose. “Aw. But Theo wouldn’t want to come, and I’d feel bad ditching him.”
“Theo didn’t like it, huh?”
“God, no. Afterward he just kept going on about how, like, spaceships couldn’t really be shaped like that, or there isn’t really life on Jupiter—”
“I mean, there isn’t life on Jupiter,” I said. “But that’s hardly the point of the movie.”
“See?” she said, and I could see excitement spreading across her face again. “That’s exactly it. The point isn’t science. The point is that stuff blows up and the baddies die at the end and some guy’s fingers get chopped off, tiny slice by tiny slice, until—”
“Ugh, stop it,” I said, giving a shudder, only slightly exaggerated, at the memory.
Brandy laughed. “You know you loved it.”
“Ugh,” I said again.
“Ooh,” said Brandy, leaning back on her hands. “Finger Slices. That’s a good one.”
&nbs
p; I paused, trying to figure out if I’d missed something. “Wait, a good what?”
“Sorry. Band name.” She gave me a secretive kind of look—the kind that made me wish she weren’t wearing sunglasses, so I could see her eyes. “I have this dream where I’m suddenly super talented, and I start a band. So I kind of keep a list of band names I could use, in case it ever happens.”
“Finger Slices,” I said, nodding. “Yeah, that’s a good one.”
She thought for a second. “And our first album could be called Rivulets of Blood.”
I laughed. “Lead single: ‘I Can See Your Tendons.’”
“See?” she said excitedly. “You get it. I should have known you’d get it.”
Well, obviously I got it. And Theo was a moron if he didn’t.
That was when Brandy’s phone chimed. She rummaged in her purse, pulled it out, and made a face.
“Your dad?” I guessed.
“Right in one,” she said, then cleared her throat and read the text aloud. “‘Hey honey. Tornado on the news today. Just making sure you’re all right.’ Then three smiley faces. Three.”
“Tornado?” I said. “We don’t get those here.”
Brandy rolled her eyes. “It was probably in the Midwest. Doesn’t matter. Hurricane in Florida? Dad texts me during English class. Tsunami in Japan? Dad’s suddenly sure I’m dead.”
“He’s just overprotective,” I said, but she didn’t answer, because we both knew that wasn’t true. Ever since Brandy’s parents had split in junior high, her dad had become certain that Brandy would disappear, too. And there was a very fine line between wanting to make sure your kid is safe and, say, pulling her out of school for two days because there’d been a news story about a school shooting two time zones away.
Basically, it was a goddamn miracle that he’d let her come upstate with me and Theo for an entire month. Well, a miracle shaped like my dad telling her dad that it would be good practice for when she went away to college—but still. Miracle nonetheless.
“Here, this’ll help,” I said, passing her the bottle again. “Good thing Theo’s the designated driver, huh?”
Brandy took a swig, wiped her lips, and laughed. “Sucks to be him.”
Rocks Fall Everyone Dies Page 3
