Silent Alarm

by Jennifer Banash

  When I open my eyes, Luke is sitting at his desk, his hands resting lightly on the varnished surface as if any moment he’ll open his books and start reading. When I got home yesterday, I vaguely remember seeing the police combing through Luke’s room, and my mother told me later that they’d confiscated his laptop, his journals, and anything else they considered relevant, which was pretty much everything.

  He’s wearing the same clothes he had on yesterday, the last time I saw him—jeans and a black V-neck sweater, black jacket, heavy boots on his feet. His hair shines in the lamplight, lit with gold. He raises one eyebrow, blinking slowly, as if to say, What are you looking at? His expression is slightly blurred, as if I’m looking at him through a foggy window. I rub my eyes hard with my fists, but when I look back, he’s still there, patiently watching me.

  “How many times have I told you to stay out of my room?” he asks, his voice lower in pitch than I remember. I shake my head in disbelief. It’s barely been forty-eight hours, and I’m already forgetting his voice. What will I lose tomorrow? How much will be taken from me before this is all over? Which, of course, implies that it might be, someday. Over, that is. As he looks at me, waiting for me to speak, he doesn’t seem angry the way he always used to be whenever I’d barge into his space without knocking, just vaguely amused and so Luke-like, so present and absolutely there that my mouth opens, but nothing comes out.

  You can’t come back, Luke. You’re dead.

  “Always looking for a way to get in here and bug me,” he snorts. “You’re so predictable. Even now.”

  He opens a drawer, pulls out a piece of paper and a pen, and starts scribbling. I can see the hair glistening on his arms where he’s pushed the sleeves up. When I find my voice again, it comes out in a whisper, like we’re in church, someplace sacred, my throat raw.

  “I wish I could say the same for you.”

  Luke stops writing and looks over at me, his expression unreadable. “You shouldn’t be in here now,” he says as if it’s just another regular school night and I’m pestering him when he needs to get his homework done.

  “Why not? It’s not really your room anymore. Is it?”

  I’m staring at my dead brother and trying to keep myself from losing what’s left of my mind. He was always someone I could count on, and before yesterday, I’d always thought that, in spite of the moods that made him snap at me suddenly, without warning, he felt the same way about me. A given. Now I’m not so sure.

  (—the gun, a sinuous black snake, Luke’s face blown apart by the blast. Unrecognizable. How long, exactly, had he been that way? A stranger—)

  “That’s beside the point,” he says, turning back to the sheet of paper in front of him, the intricate doodles and shapes he scratches into the paper in black ink. His skin looks spookily translucent, or maybe it’s just the light, my exhaustion. Still, I have the unsettling feeling that if I touched him, my hand would sink right through his skin. “Shouldn’t you be practicing, anyway?” He smirks, his face twisted, but not exactly unkind. Not yet. “The great virtuoso? Surprised you even have time to come in here at all and bother with us little people.”

  I recoil, leaning back on my hands, suddenly unsteady. My brother had come to every performance and recital, had helped me with my application to the summer orchestral program, patiently correcting my grammar on the essay portion and driving me to the post office to mail it, watching, bemused, as I kissed the envelope for luck. The idea that he was

  (is)

  resentful of me, my playing, is ridiculous. Laughable. But the anger in his voice is unmistakable. A slow burn. A smoldering.

  He turns to look at me, the bookshelf behind his head shimmering through his skull, and I’m just about to answer him, the hurt coloring my face, the corners of my mouth turning down in anticipation of tears, when the doorbell rings, making me jump. I turn toward the door, startled, and when I turn back, he’s gone, the desk clear and empty. The air smells strange and heady, lilies mixed with the scent of burning paper, leaves maybe, the smell of something dry and dead and charred all the way to ashes. My heart is skipping out of beat, out of time, as I get up and run downstairs.

  SIX

  My father is at the door before I can get to it. It could be the reporters, still, but at nine p.m. it’s a little late—even for them. He stands there, one finger pressed to his lips, his normally neatly combed dark hair standing on end, the temples graying more than I remember, still wearing the same bathrobe he sported this morning. His expression is frozen, that glazed-over look I’m sure is pasted all over my own face, what we are wearing these days instead of actual feelings. He looks out the peephole, and I watch as his body relaxes slightly, the tension draining from his face.

  “It’s Delilah,” he says, unlocking the door.

  At the mention of her name, something dormant and still leaps up in my heart, and I motion frantically for him to move out of the way, fingers scrabbling at the nubby material of his robe.

  The door opens and she’s there, all five feet three inches of her, her black hair curling around her shoulders, blue eyes wide and startled and rimmed with red, her cheeks pink from the cold, the promise of snow on her clothes. She’s wearing a red sweatshirt and the pajama pants printed with martini glasses that I know she sleeps in every night, scuffed Ugg boots on her feet. This tells me that, most likely, she’s snuck out, that her parents don’t know she’s here, which is not a good sign. If she had to sneak out to come here, that means her parents don’t want her in my house. Or around me at all.

  “Hey,” she says, coming toward me, arms open, and I fall into them, releasing the stress I’ve been bottling up all day, the fear that I’ll always be alone now, no friends, no one who will talk to me or even bestow a kind glance. It’s not as if I was so screamingly popular before the

  (shooting)

  Ben and Delilah were pretty much my whole world. But it was more than that. I didn’t like drawing attention to myself in any way. I was wary of even raising my hand in class—even when I knew the right answer. Instead, I sat there, the unsaid words scalding the inside of my mouth. It wasn’t that I had nothing to say, but that I didn’t know where to start. I was a coward. Worried about being wrong all the time, terrified of failure. I watched my peers with barely contained fascination, as if they were exotic pets—how they spoke in class, their entitlement palpable. I was never so sure about anything. Except maybe music.

  “That’s a story you tell yourself, Alys. It doesn’t mean that it’s true, or that it will stay true forever,” my mother would say when I questioned my inability to step outside of the life I’d made for myself and make new friends, stop relying so much on routine and habit. Practice. School. Home. Practice. Study. Repeat. In my sophomore year I wanted to try out for the cheer squad, but when I walked into the gym for tryouts, the minute the door opened and a sea of faces swiveled in my direction, I lost whatever strength and momentum I’d built up, just to get in the room. I’d stood outside the gym with Delilah, her fingers squeezing mine, my palms an ocean of sweat. “You can do this,” she’d said confidently, sure I was so much more than the tentative face I presented to the world every day.

  Girls milled around the gym, the members of the squad dressed in Plainewood’s school colors, navy and gold. As I stood there, Simone Sanders, last year’s captain, looked me up and down, then turned to the girl standing next to her, mumbling something low and unintelligible in the small space between them. Laughter broke out, turning me to ashes, my face crumpling like parchment. I could only imagine what she said, what everyone thought as I walked down the hallways, hurrying to class, my head down.

  That’s Luke Aronson’s sister. I don’t know . . . some kind of weird music freak? It’s like a fucking mouse trying out for cheer. And I have no idea what Ben Horton sees in her . . .

  And in my bleakest hours, I couldn’t help wondering whether I was little more than j
ust a collection of other people’s thoughts and ideas. Ben’s. Delilah’s. My parents’.

  Luke’s.

  Delilah’s grip is strong and sure, all lilac soap and baby powder—she’s addicted to anything with a powdery baby smell, and has been using Johnson’s “No More Tears” since we were kids. It reminds me of nurseries, of tender baby skin and soft, knitted booties. “I wanted to come sooner . . .” She pulls away, sniffling, wiping a tear from my cheek with one finger, her touch tentative and featherlight. “But . . .” She shrugs, her expression bashful.

  But things have been crazy because my brother is now a mass murderer and everyone in town thinks I’m a pariah?

  My father is still standing there, his face creased with rough lines that I’m not sure were as deep before the shooting, dark stubble creeping in and obscuring the line of his jaw. He looks spent and colorless. My dad is the kind of guy who fills out a suit with aplomb, barrel-chested, solid as a tree trunk, his handshake firm and uncompromising. I’ve never seen him look so small, so fragile and unsure, like he might break apart at any second.

  “Mr. Aronson,” Delilah starts, turning to face my father, “I’m so sorry.” She puts a hand on my father’s arm, and I watch as he flinches, his eyelids fluttering uncomfortably. The last time Delilah was here, almost a week ago, her delicate hands were slicing cucumbers and tomatoes at the kitchen counter, my father adding olive oil and lemon zest to the dressing. At dinner, I tried not to notice that Luke just pushed piles of meat and scalloped potatoes from one side of his plate to the other, finicky as ever, his eyes trained on the white china plate in front of him, the swirls in the Formica table.

  My father nods at Delilah and looks away as if he doesn’t know her, has never seen her before, and shuffles toward the kitchen.

  “Jesus,” Delilah exhales, her eyes fixed on his receding figure. I hear the unmistakable creak of the cabinet where my parents keep their liquor, the freezer door opening and closing, the clink of ice hitting a glass. My father has never been a big drinker—a few beers while watching baseball, a glass of wine with dinner. For a few years when Luke and I were kids, I’m pretty sure my parents still smoked the occasional joint, the weedy stench permeating their bedroom on warm summer nights, that feral, skunky odor of burning herb, my mother’s high-pitched giggle floating out from behind their locked door. But in recent years, that’s all stopped. I picture him standing at the kitchen counter swallowing heavily, his lips wet with the sting of scotch, face slack, his eyes closed in something like relief.

  “I know,” I say. “It’s pretty bad.”

  “Where’s your mom?” Her brown eyes dart around, searching.

  “In her room, I think. C’mon.”

  I hear the liquor cabinet open again as we climb the stairs, and I walk past Luke’s room quickly, too freaked out to even look and see if I left the door ajar or if the desk lamp is still on. I feel Delilah staring as we move past, her hand in mine, her body tensing the way it does when you know, absolutely, that pain is imminent.

  Luke, are you in there?

  In my room, door closed, I start to feel a little better. This is an old story—Delilah and me sitting on my bed, knees close. Delilah looks around my room as if she’s never seen it before, her eyes skittish. Is this what shock looks like, because I don’t know what we’re all supposed to be feeling, what I should do or say, and everything that comes out of my mouth feels wrong.

  “I’ve been calling you forever,” Delilah says, picking at a loose thread on her pants. “I tried texting too.”

  “I’ve had my phone off for most of the day.” I take my iPhone out of my pocket, the display a black mirror. “I turned it on for a few minutes this morning, but freaked out and turned it back off. Reporters have been camped out here all day, and I had to go with my mom to buy a stupid dress for the funeral tomorrow.”

  “So you’ve been offline all day?” Delilah scrunches her forehead up, incredulous.

  I nod, walking over to my desk and powering up my laptop, while turning my phone on too. If Delilah is here with me, I can face whatever is waiting for me out there.

  “I talked to Ben,” Delilah says carefully. She stops for a moment. “You heard about Katie?”

  “Yeah.” I turn away and fiddle with my laptop so I don’t have to look at her. “I heard.”

  “I can’t believe it,” Delilah says, shoving me over so she can sit next to me on the chair. Just the warmth of her tightly coiled body makes me feel better. Saner. Not like I’m going to fly off into space at any given moment. “I can’t believe . . . any of it,” she says, her voice seizing up in her throat. “I mean, Katie . . .” She stops speaking, her words evaporating in the quiet of the room. She doesn’t have to finish her sentence. I know exactly how she feels, what she means to say.

  “I know,” I say, opening my e-mail and scanning it quickly. The first message that comes up is from an address I don’t recognize, and in large, black letters proclaims:

  I HOPE YOUR BROTHER DIED IN AGONY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  “Oh my God.” Delilah rears back from the screen as if she’s been hit in the face with hot coals. Her hand reaches for mine, cradling it in her lap, her nails painted the sheerest shade of pink. I am shaking, my heart pounding furiously. The next message reads:

  FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE MURDERER!!!!!!!!!!!! HAVE FUN WITH SATAN.

  “Don’t read them, Alys. Don’t. Just close it.” Delilah shoves my hand aside. I feel like I’m dying. I bend over at the waist, pulling away from Delilah, and wrap my arms around my stomach. She turns to look at me, her eyes narrowing with concern. “Alys? Are you breathing? Alys, you have to breathe!”

  (LukeKatieLukeKatieLukeKatieLukeKatieLukeKatie)

  Delilah rubs my back the way she did when we drank too much of her dad’s Jim Beam last year and I puked all over her bedroom floor. The feeling now is similar, the room tilting, stomach heaving, brain revolving in circles. Everyone used to just ignore me mostly, and now they hate me. How can we still live here? How can I go back to school, the same place where Luke walked in with a gun and shot down our classmates like a vigilante in some video game? How can I go on at all when he’s not here anymore to do everything first, to teach me what to do, where to go next?

  When my heart finally slows, I sit up, leaning heavily against her, my chest rising and falling in time with her breath.

  “You should shut down that e-mail address completely and open a new one,” she says. “If you give me your password, I’ll do it for you if you want. Facebook too.”

  I hadn’t even thought about Facebook since I barely use it anymore, but now a wave of dread crashes over me as I imagine the posts, what’s waiting for me in my inbox, the obscenities written on my brother’s wall. Oh God, his page is still up . . . Strangers rifling through his public photos, his thoughts and dreams, judging him.

  And why shouldn’t they judge him? Doesn’t he deserve it after what he did?

  The answer to this is undoubtedly yes. But Luke isn’t here anymore to face the music, so judging him is, in effect, judging me. Judging my whole family. I sit up and open Safari again, hit the bookmark for Facebook, and watch as the page loads instantly with its familiar blue-and-white graphics. I have fifty-six wall posts and sixteen messages in my inbox. I ignore all of them and type my brother’s name into the search function. When I pull up his page, I am stunned. His wall is an atrocity, a massacre. Expletives everywhere. I can barely read it or take in what I’m seeing; the words all blend together in an endless diatribe of hate and anguish.

  “Holy shit,” Delilah breathes as I scroll through the litany of posts. “Do you know Luke’s password? If you do, we can shut down the page.”

  I shake my head no, my eyes hypnotized by the words scrolling across the page. “I don’t.”

  “I think that you can write to Facebook and tell them Luke is . . .” I turn to look at her, willing her
to finish the goddamn sentence.

  Just fucking say it—he’s dead.

  I don’t know why I’m suddenly so angry, but I am. With Delilah, with Luke, with Ben, with myself for letting all of this happen in the first place, for not noticing something was wrong before it was way, way too late. “Anyway, they’ll take the page down then.”

  The thought of having to write such an e-mail makes me even more tired than I already am. How would I even begin to explain what has happened to my brother, a person I am connected to by blood. What’s in him is also in me. The thought is terrifying.

  I shut the laptop, unable to deal any longer with what I see there. My head hurts like the worst hangover ever, my stomach rumbling insistently. That piece of toast this morning was the only bit of food I had all day. At the same time, I can’t imagine going downstairs, opening the fridge, and shoving food into my mouth. Opening containers. Chewing and swallowing.

  “Do you think . . .” Delilah takes a deep breath before continuing on. “Do you think that Katie . . .” She looks at me, her eyes pleading with me to finish her sentence, but I stay silent, waiting, digging the nails of my right hand into my leg. “Do you think that maybe it wasn’t . . . an accident?”

  “What are you saying? That he did it on purpose?”

  She doesn’t answer, just sits there looking away from me, her eyes fixed on the wall behind my head, and everything she’s not saying sits between us like a time bomb. An accusation. She pushes her hair back from her face, her cheeks white as ivory. “Alys, Luke . . . hurt a lot of people yesterday. I’m just asking what you think, that’s all. You know I loved Luke.”

  Loved.

  “You think he shot her on purpose. You really think that.” I stand up, pacing the confines of my room, which is growing smaller by the minute.

  Finally she looks at me, her eyes angry, but hurt too, welling up with tears. “I don’t know what to think, Alys. I practically grew up with him! You, me, Ben, Luke, Katie! I don’t know what to think about any of this; I hope it was an accident. I pray that it was.”