Silent Alarm

by Jennifer Banash

  “Mom?” I don’t want to scare her, so I speak softly, but she jumps anyway, holding the stack of loose leaf to her heart as if it offers some kind of protection.

  “Jesus, Alys, you scared me to death!” She puts the papers down on the desk, takes off her glasses, and rubs her eyes vigorously. I can see that she’s been crying again. Maybe she’s never really stopped.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “What are you doing in here?”

  She lets out a sigh, her shoulders slumping. “I have no idea.” She gestures toward the paper littering the desk. “Old chemistry tests, honor roll notifications . . . I don’t know what I’m looking for. The police didn’t leave much.” She lapses back into thought, staring down at the papers as if they might hold the answers to everything, if she could just make sense of them.

  I don’t know what to say to this. The obvious answer is that maybe there’s nothing to find. There’s no way Luke could’ve fooled us all for so long if he weren’t an expert at keeping the deepest, ugliest parts of himself a total secret. Sure, there were the dark moods that crept over him, sticky and thick, but I never thought him capable of such violence and rage, this

  (murder)

  I wonder if he laughed to himself every night at how stupid we all were. How blind. Funny, if you had asked me last week, I would’ve said that my brother was one of the most honest people I’d ever met—pathologically so. And not just because he was my brother, but because I believed it to be true. Luke always said what he thought. If anything, it was kind of his downfall. Brutal honesty, my father called it.

  “I’m going out for a little bit,” I say nonchalantly, as if going out for a walk on a cold night at nine thirty is par for the course for me, who would usually be watching episodes of The Real Housewives with Delilah or practicing for my audition, fingers plucking the taut strings. But most likely I’d be holed up somewhere with Ben, the two of us correcting each other’s Spanish homework in between kisses. The thought of kissing Ben, feeling his warm, smooth mouth against mine, fills my head with a searing pain that makes me worry that I’m having an aneurysm. But it passes just as quickly as it arrived, and I’m still here, still standing, but why, I don’t know. It feels like I died with Luke, alongside all of those kids who looked up from gossiping in the quad, from the useless pages of their books in the library, to meet the barrel of my brother’s gun, his face filled with hate. In a way, I died the moment Luke walked into that library, the moment we came face-to-face. Now I’m trapped in the land of the dead, a barren landscape, shards of bone cutting my feet, their voices a soft chatter, telling me to follow.

  “Now?” My mother wrinkles her forehead.

  “I won’t be gone long,” I say in my most persuasive voice, shifting my weight impatiently. “Can I take the car?”

  I can tell that she wants to protest—refusal is written all over her face—but the desire to sift through the detritus is too strong, and so she relents with a sigh, turning back to Luke’s papers and her own unanswered questions. “But have your dad walk you out to the garage, just in case the reporters are still there when you leave.”

  In the kitchen, I grab the car keys from a hook over the phone, my fingers closing around the sharp metal. As I pass the den, I can see my father sitting in the huge leather chair he loves, his feet up on the ottoman. He has a drink resting on the arm of the chair, the whiskey mostly melted into amber-colored water, the glass sweating onto the worn leather the color of an old saddle. He’s wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, the blue one with the letters MIT emblazoned across the chest. My dad went with Luke for a campus visit last October, and when they came home, Luke was as animated as I’d ever seen him, waving his hands excitedly at the dinner table as he described the campus, the town of Cambridge, with its picturesque squares and efficient train system—the blue line, he called it—how you could hear bells ring out in the mornings, and students sat in cafés drinking tiny cups of espresso. Not like high school, he said, where either you were a dumb jock or a loser. He described the colors of the falling leaves—redder, more vibrant than Wisconsin’s, he said—how the air smelled of smoke. Intoxicating. He actually used that word, rolling it around in his mouth as if even the syllables themselves were luxurious.

  I stand in the doorway, waiting for my father to notice me. Bob Dylan is playing softly on the stereo, his nasal twang reverberating off the walls. The CD case sits discarded on the floor beside my father’s chair: Blood on the Tracks. His eyes are trained on the ceiling, so I clear my throat, which I notice is slightly sore, and he blinks twice, then looks up at me, his face impassive. “I’m going out for a little while,” I say, holding up the car keys as what? Evidence?

  She always wanted evidence that we were some happy family . . .

  (Weren’t we, Luke?)

  “No, no,” he says, struggling to his feet and weaving there for a minute. “You need to stay here.” He’s trying to sound dad-like, authoritative, but he’s so blitzed, it would make me laugh if it weren’t so sad. If you’d asked me a few days ago, I would have told you that my father was not the kind of guy to dive for solace at the bottom of a whiskey bottle. But here we are, and this, like everything else that’s happened the past two days, makes me feel like my life has been hijacked, like everything I knew about the world has been an utter lie. Including my parents. Maybe especially my parents.

  “It’s okay, Dad,” I say softly. “Mom said it was okay. I’ll just be gone for a little bit.”

  He still looks unsure, so unsteady on his feet that I wonder if he’ll fall over without me there to prop him up.

  “Why don’t you just walk me to the garage so we can make sure the reporters aren’t there when I pull out?”

  “Reporters,” he mutters. “Yes, yes, let’s get you taken care of,” he says in a falsely jovial tone of voice. He reaches out and musses my hair, the way he’s always done since I was a kid, his palm lingering on the top of my head. His eyes are rimmed with purple, and his clothes smell stale, as if he’s been wearing them for days. His hand moves down to cup my cheek, and I feel the calluses on his palm from afternoons playing b-ball with Luke in the driveway, back when Luke would still play with him. Back when Luke still cared about things like sports.

  When I get into the car and open the garage door, clicking the remote, the driveway is blessedly empty, and I sigh in relief, watching my father in the doorway, his hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans, his eyes vague and unfocused. Miranda stands in the shadows, behind my old red bike with the sparkly blue banana seat, her eyes glittering. Be careful, she mouths, the sound of blood dripping on the concrete floor masking her words.

  We wouldn’t want anything to happen to you . . .

  My father raises one hand in a wave as I pull out of the driveway, dipping his head slightly as he retreats back into the house. I step on the gas hard, too hard, moving backward into the night.

  NINE

  I drive through the winding roads. Every block I pass a land mine of memories, the tree-lined streets at once so familiar and alien. The parking lot near the dry cleaner’s where Luke first learned to skateboard when he was twelve, the hill we all sledded down whenever there was a snow day, cheeks flushed from the cold winter air stabbing our lungs. Everyone always says that Plainewood resembles a postcard of what a small, Midwestern town is supposed to look like—the tall, leafy oaks, their branches curving protectively over the streets, the stately pastel Victorians, the town square—it’s right out of a Norman Rockwell painting. You almost expect to see an old-fashioned soda fountain at the back of Ray’s Drugs, its blue neon sign and fifties façade still intact, the wrought-iron, old-fashioned streetlights peering down from every corner. This is a town where kids play outside well past dark in the summertime, their sweet, thin voices echoing in the air. Where you can walk your dog late at night without fear, where people sit out on porch swings in the early evening in the warmer months as dusk begins t
o fall, suffusing the day in muted blue light. A place where kids still make their own lemonade stands, charging fifty cents a cup, loudly proclaiming that they squeezed the lemons THEMSELVES, and where not contributing a dish to the local bake sale or potluck is considered not only downright un-neighborly but borderline treasonous. Basically, we’re a total cliché, but I can’t imagine living anywhere else. All of the things that my mom seems to find abhorrent about Plainewood are what lull me to sleep at night, make me glad to wake up each morning and walk out into the calm streets, pavement still wet from sprinkler overspray.

  Tonight, the streets are mostly deserted, everyone inside after dinner. My hands are cold against the wheel, and it feels strange to have nowhere to go, no one to talk to, the feeling lonely but liberating all at the same time. I think about getting on the interstate and just driving, the miles ticking by on the odometer, wind whipping by the windows as the scenery gradually alters before my eyes, brown bare branches giving way to flat rocks and endless warm desert skies as I drive farther west. The urge to flee is so tempting that I have to force myself to point the car away from the interstate entrance and back toward town.

  After driving around in circles for a while, I find myself drifting in the direction of school, yellow caution tape wound around the fence that surrounds the school like a birthday present gone wrong, the redbrick façade looming just beyond. Letters and posters are tacked to the fence, rows of candles in glass jars, religious and otherwise, burning at the foot of the makeshift memorial. Flowers are stuck at random angles into the holes of the chain link, blossoms of red, purple, and white, cool green leaves decorating the sharp metal. WE WILL NEVER FORGET YOU, one hand-drawn placard proclaims in shaky blue marker, and I feel my eyes begin to mist over. A group of teddy bears have been arranged on the sidewalk, heaps of stuffed toys. A baby lamb catches my eye, its white, woolly fur matted and stained. I pull over to the curb, my fingers scrabbling on the seat belt, yanking it from across my body. There are a few adults milling around, their faces drawn with sadness. One woman I don’t recognize gets down on her knees next to the fence, her lips moving in soundless prayer, eyes closed.

  I touch the flowers, fingertips lingering against the cool, silky petals, and try to avoid looking directly at the notes, the anguish and desperation contained in them searing my eyes. There are pictures hanging from the gate, yearbook photos and casual snapshots, baby pictures—tiny, fat feet and chubby hands waving at the lens. I scan them, my eyes glazing over as I begin to recognize faces, a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Mila Germain. Alexis Peterson. Randall Perry. Camille Montrose. Jared Liebowitz. My brother is responsible for these deaths—all of them. The knowledge hits me squarely in the chest, and I almost sink to my knees, the joints buckling, cold air whipping through my hair. Camille Montrose once let me borrow her calculator during an AP Bio exam. Randall Perry would have been homecoming king this year. Alexis Peterson wanted to go to Michigan State, but she worried, Delilah told me conspiratorially, that she wasn’t smart enough to get in.

  Katie Horton.

  Oh, Katie.

  I reach out and trace the contours of Katie’s cheeks, dark hair tumbling around her face, still plump with baby fat. She looks straight at me, so much like Ben, her smile clawing a new hole at my core. It’s your fault, she seems to be saying, her eyes wide, accusatory.

  The school is quiet and dark, and the candle flames flicker, but don’t go out. One of the candles has a picture of the Virgin Mary embossed on the glass jar. She stares at me benevolently from beneath her sky-blue hooded robe, her gaze full of sorrow and compassion, one hand stretched out in front of her, reaching endlessly. I lean my head against the fence, the metal pressing into my skin. I’m sorry, I think, though I don’t know whom I’m talking to anymore—Katie, Luke, Ben, or maybe just myself. I’m so fucking sorry.

  “Are you okay?” A voice directly behind me makes me jump, spinning around so quickly that I almost lose my balance.

  It’s dark, and he is half in shadow, but when he moves forward, reaching one arm out to steady me, a sliver of light illuminates his face.

  “Alys?” His grip on my arm tightens. “Is that you?”

  “Riley.” The word leaving my lips is a sigh, relief coursing through me.

  “What are you doing here?” He releases my arm and takes a step back, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his worn leather jacket, the one he got in the tenth grade and has been wearing religiously ever since. I can’t look at Riley without thinking of Luke. I can’t remember a time when they weren’t locking themselves away for hours to play video games, set off stink bombs, and do God only knows what else, though all Riley had to do was flash that wide smile of his and everything was usually forgiven. And later on, Riley just hung in there through Luke’s moods, patiently waiting for them to pass, never trying to force him out of them.

  Riley’s tall, like me—except he’s well over six feet—something I think he was kind of self-conscious about before he became the school’s basketball and cross-country star, which I can totally relate to given that I feel like a lumbering giant most of the time. Everything about him is long and lean—he’s what my mother calls a tall drink of water. I’m not sure exactly what that means, but I always thought it sounded kind of gross. His dirty-blond hair hangs a bit past his ears, and his eyes are the color of the water in Fiji: blue, then green, then blue again, their depths bottomless and crystalline. People are always asking him if he’s a surfer, which amuses him to no end. “Does this look like California to you?” he’ll snap, pointing out the window. This is especially funny when there are two feet of snow on the ground.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask defensively, crossing my arms over my chest. My hair falls across my face, sandy and streaked as Luke’s, and I shake my head briefly to clear it.

  Riley looks out at the school in the distance, scraping his feet against the rough pavement. “I don’t know. I just couldn’t stay in the house anymore, you know? Couldn’t deal with my folks having such a tight rein. Ever since the shooting, it’s like they’re afraid to let me out of their sight. It makes me feel like I can’t breathe. So I went out for a walk.”

  I like that he says “shooting” like it’s just another word; he doesn’t try to sugarcoat it. Still, when I hear it spoken aloud, released into the air where it can’t be taken back, my right eye begins to twitch inexplicably.

  “I guess I just ended up here. I’ve never had insomnia in my life, but now, even though I’m so tired I can barely see straight, I just stare at the walls.” He pauses for a moment. “It doesn’t help that the fucking reporters won’t leave us alone. They’ve been in front of my house ever since it happened, wanting to talk to me, my parents, whoever they can get ahold of.” Riley stops, clearly frustrated, kicks at the fence with one foot and knocks a candle over, red wax spilling on the concrete. I watch, transfixed, as it spreads across the pavement, cooling rapidly, a large, crimson stain. I reach down and right the glass jar, thankful it didn’t shatter. “Nobody gave a rat’s ass about this town before last week, and now . . .”

  “We’re news,” I say quietly, finishing his sentence. “Did you talk to them?” I ask, not really wanting to know the answer, but compelled to ask anyway.

  Riley shoots me a look of astonishment.

  “The reporters? Hell no. But a lot of people have. Celine Carruthers has been on every network blubbering about how well she knew your family, and how grateful she is to have made it out alive.” Riley snorts in disgust. “It’s getting to the point that every time I turn on the TV, I see her brainless face.”

  Celine Carruthers is the captain of the cheerleading squad. Hair the color of autumn leaves and skin like a fresh pail of milk, a smattering of freckles dotting her cheeks. I think the last time I hung out with her was in fifth grade, when my mother forced me to invite her to my birthday party because Celine had cried when I’d sent out invitations
and she didn’t get one. At the party, Celine noisily opened my presents before I did, then threw a temper tantrum, eating most of my cake with her hands before her parents dragged her out kicking and screaming. Good times.

  “She didn’t know me—or Luke.”

  “Well, no shit,” Riley says with another snort. “But people are opportunists. And this is a big story.”

  A big story. My brother, who went out of his way to fly under the radar.

  (Until now.)

  “I had to talk to the cops, though. Then after they left, I couldn’t sleep at all. I just sat up, staring into space like a zombie.”

  I look at him more closely. There are pouches under each eye, valleys of discoloration, and his skin is white and papery.

  “I slept for five hours this afternoon,” I say. “Maybe six.”

  “Just rub it in, why don’t you,” he says with a smile. It feels good to bullshit with him, to talk normally with someone, even if it’s only for a moment.

  “After the funeral, I was so exhausted that I just crashed.” I stop, the word “funeral” catching in my throat.

  (—the sound of the earth falling on his coffin like the lash of a whip, the wind searing my cheeks to raw red apples. Luke trapped in darkness, his lips sewn shut—)

  “I really wanted to go,” Riley says, looking away. “Even went down to the church wearing the suit I wore to prom last year, but the ushers wouldn’t let me in. I looked like an asshole.” He runs his fingers hesitantly over a photo of a girl, maybe two or three years old, holding a teddy bear in her lap, smiling brightly for the camera.

  “Yeah, my mom made it a closed service—just immediate family.”

  A hurt look crosses his face. Judging from how much time he spent at our house, Riley always struck me as looking for any excuse to put off that moment where he’d have to walk home in the night, alone at last with his thoughts. He was kind of a mooch too, if you want to know the truth, used to getting a free ride. You know, the kind of guy who somehow always knows to show up five minutes before dinner lands on the table? I’m sorry . . . Did I come at a bad time? Hey, are those pork chops, by the way?