Silent Alarm

by Jennifer Banash

  I am steaming, my sweatshirt a sweaty, musky prison. Delilah looks at me uncomprehendingly, as if she doesn’t know me, her face perfectly white. She drops her eyes to the ground, wincing as if my very presence causes her pain.

  “I do,” she says quietly. “I do think about . . . how hard it must be for you.”

  She says this like we’re discussing my terrible track record in geometry, calmly, over a soy latte at Starbucks, notebooks open, pages ruffling in the air-conditioning. Like my world as I know it isn’t pretty much over, as if a bomb didn’t go off in my life, decimating everything in its path. My heart feels askew in my chest, dislodged, and I swallow hard to keep from crying.

  “You can’t even look at me, can you?” I cannot keep the accusatory tone from my words, and when she looks up, the hurt I see in her face almost makes me cry out.

  “I’m right here,” she says, her voice so low I have to lean forward to hear her over the chatter and laughter surrounding us, the sound of the church organ as a melody tinkles out the front door and into the night air. “And I am looking at you, Alys. But I just don’t see things the way I used to.” She shrugs as if she doesn’t know what else to say, giving up on me, on everything that stands between us. Stay, I think as she stares at me, wordless. Please stay with me.

  “I didn’t do anything,” I say, my voice getting smaller and smaller. “I’m not the one who’s responsible, D.”

  I wish I really believed this. I say it, but it doesn’t ring true. The words echoing between us.

  “I know that,” she says quickly. Almost a little too quickly, as if she’s not really sure. “I know you aren’t. But Luke is.” She grimaces, as if the taste of his name in her mouth is both bitter and painful. “And you—you remind me so much of him, of us, of everything. Just the way you look, your expression right now, you look so much like him that—”

  Her voice breaks and she looks out over the park, and I wonder if she’s remembering how small we were, hanging from those brightly colored bars, if she can still see us the way I can, running through the long grass of our backyards for one more game of tag before the sun went down, our mother’s voices calling us in for hot baths and warm meals. “It just hurts,” she finishes finally, digging down deep enough to find the words. “It hurts to be around you, Alys. It hurts to remember what happened. I can’t help it.”

  It hurts to be around you. The words Ben couldn’t say. Falling from Delilah’s chapped red lips, they sting like the sudden prick of a needle.

  “So I guess that’s it, then,” I say, my words as hollow as a dead tree, the roots ripped out of the ground.

  Delilah nods slowly, her eyes glistening, the whites radiating out of her pale face like bits of the broken moon. “For now,” she says in a whisper. “I’m sorry. I wish . . .” Her voice breaks off, and she reaches up, wiping away a tear, her face slick. “I wish things could be different. I wish everything could go back to the way it was.”

  “I know,” I whisper, my throat constricting. First Ben, now Delilah. My chest hurts, and I wonder how many more of these conversations I can take.

  This is the first moment I really know this to be true—I can’t go back to who I was before, that girl whose biggest problem was whether or not she’d get into some stupid music program, whether or not she’d be able to afford a better violin someday, whether she was really good enough to earn a chair in an orchestra or play concert halls in Vienna, London, Paris, Prague, Grace watching proudly from the confines of her red velvet seat, chandeliers draped in crystal sparkling above her head like an elaborate mobile, a fallen meteor. The girl who wandered through the halls of school mostly invisible, head down, music streaming through her brain like a river.

  Luke, you took their lives, and your own. Do you have to take ours too? Is there nothing you will let me keep? Nothing at all?

  We sit, me and Delilah, her name as fresh and beautiful as petals in my mouth, our legs barely touching, so close to each other that I can smell her sweet, clean baby scent that makes the water falling from my eyes run faster.

  No more tears.

  We stare straight ahead, breathing in unison with nothing left to say, no words to fill up the space my brother left behind when he aimed the gun at his first target and pulled the trigger.

  SEVEN

  When I pull up to the house an hour later, tears are still drying on my face from the drive home, my face frozen, masklike. My father stands on the porch, his back to me, a bucket at his feet. He holds a large yellow sponge that drips onto the stone floor as he scrubs, the sleeves on his wrinkled blue dress shirt rolled above the elbow. He turns around briefly at the sound of the garage door opening, and his face is caught in the glare of headlights, weary and expressionless.

  When I get out of the car and walk outside, I can see red paint streaked across the front door as my father moves the sponge determinedly in a circular motion. Although he’s clearly been at it for a while, smudged as the letters are, I can still make out the word written in block print, marring the white surface like a raw, gaping wound.

  KILLER

  My hand goes to my mouth, clapping over it reflexively, as if I’ve said the word myself. At the sound of approaching footsteps, my father turns around and the sponge drops wetly to the floor. He’s pale, like me, corpse pallor, and in his face I see my own—the thick, straight brows I am forever plucking, the rounded cheeks. If he’s been drinking again, I can’t tell.

  “Where the hell have you been?” he barks, bending over to pick up the sponge, dipping it into the bucket. He wrings it out as if he wants to strangle it, his hands working furiously.

  “I went to meet Delilah. I was only gone for a little while.”

  He turns back around and begins scrubbing at the door again. If he’s cold out here, he doesn’t show it.

  “You need to tell us when you’re going out, Alys Anne. You know that.”

  My father only uses my full name when he’s extra pissed. Immediately I go on the defensive.

  “I did tell someone—I told Mom. Didn’t she tell you?”

  He keeps scrubbing. The only sounds are the exhalations of breath, the metallic buzzing of the streetlight outside our house, the low drone of the TV playing somewhere beyond the front door. I wonder if my mother is in front of it, stretched out on the couch in our den, trailing a series of flickering images across the screen. I wonder when the last time they talked might have been, if they’ve had anything resembling a normal conversation since the funeral, or if arguing is the only way they can relate to each other anymore.

  “Guess not,” I mumble, pushing past him, one hand on the front door, opening it wider so that it creaks loudly.

  “Alys.” My father grabs my arm with his one free hand, stopping me before I slip through. This close-up, I can see that he’s not drunk this time, just exhausted. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you.” His voice is softer now, almost gentle.

  I blink at him, my eyes tired and sore from crying, from the shitty amount of sleep I’ve been getting—or not getting—from looking at things that make me want to turn away and close my eyes indefinitely. Like my father’s face right now, so full of pain and regret and confusion that I long to collapse right here on the front doorstep.

  “It’s okay, Dad.” He releases me, and I tentatively reach out and pat his arm, my fingertips moving lightly over the material of his shirt as if he might bolt. My father hasn’t seemed himself, that cheerful, jovial presence I’d always counted on, since Luke

  (killed everyone)

  died, but in the past few weeks he’s become more and more of a cipher, slipping through the rooms of our house unnoticed, so far away from the dad who helped Luke and me orchestrate water balloon fights on the hottest days of summer, who made popcorn on Sunday nights, letting me carefully pour on the melted butter so that every piece was coated in a slick, oily sheen. Lately it feels a
s if he could slip out of our lives so easily, get into the car one night and just keep driving far away from me, from my mother, from all the memories that rush in every night like an avalanche, keeping us from the warm cradle of sleep.

  “It’s not,” he says, his voice tight in his throat, and begins scrubbing again, the word still clearly discernable on the white paint, no matter how hard he tries to erase it. “It’s not okay, Alys.”

  We are not, I know, talking about the fact that he snapped at me anymore, or that he was worried, or the fact that he thinks I left and went out without telling anyone. It’s in the set of his jaw, the way he is fixated on that tainted door, as if he wants to destroy it entirely, chop it into pieces, burn it as kindling.

  “Why can’t they just leave us alone?” he asks, gesturing at the soiled door, the white paint streaked with a cornucopia of pink smears.

  I feel Luke’s presence hovering somewhere nearby, feel the sudden agitation of his spirit. The sharp scent of rotting flowers, a struck match. But he stays hidden in the blackness, refusing to show his face.

  “You know why,” I say softly, staring at my hand on the door, the long fingers that are so much like my mother’s, so much like Luke’s

  (dead)

  hands, hands that once held me up. Hands I thought I knew.

  “Don’t we have the right,” my father says, the words coming thick and forced from his lips, “to get on with our lives? Don’t we, Alys?”

  I turn to him, and the naked bewilderment I see on his face stops my heart. How can I help make sense of what I don’t understand myself? Of what has happened to my father. To Luke. To all of us.

  “I don’t know,” I whisper, dropping my eyes away. “I don’t know if we have the right to do anything anymore.”

  Without saying another word, I shuffle inside, leaving him on the porch with the bucket. The sound of the TV echoing through the foyer is reassuring, calming my thudding pulse. Even though I know my mother has heard me, that she’s probably sitting up on the couch, rearranging her face into a pleasant mask, I don’t go to her. Instead, I walk up to my room, thinking of bed, of white sheets and the cool pillowcase that will lie beneath my cheek. How I will stare up at the ceiling, waiting for oblivion, sleep that I will chase around the room all night long and never quite catch. My feet move soundlessly on the stairs, the banister cold and smooth beneath my palm, the leaden weight of Luke’s presence following in my wake. My whole body aches for something, anything, that will make me feel that things haven’t changed, that I have one thing left in my life that is recognizable to me, that is familiar—besides my dead brother walking so close behind that I can feel his hot breath on the back of my neck, smell the stench of a burned-out campfire sticking to his clothes.

  In my room, I stare at the case of my violin for a long moment before finally unlocking it, wondering, even as the metal locks click under my fingers, if what I said to my father downstairs was true, if I have any right to get lost in the tilt and sway of music. I hold the instrument in my hands, turning it over. Luke is sitting at my desk, his face expectant, quieter than usual. I put the violin down on the bed and grab my block of rosin, adding more to the tip of the bow than to the midsection, the way I always do, my hands moving confidently, without thinking about it. His eyes lock on to me as I attach the shoulder rest, tuck the violin beneath my chin, and pick up the bow, bringing it down on the strings so that they trill out into the room in a sudden burst of brilliance. After weeks of neglect, my violin is hopelessly out of tune, so I have to spend a few minutes working with my digital tuner until I get a perfect tone. As always, I start by playing a few scales, some arpeggios, thirds, sixths, fingered octaves. If Grace is in a particularly bad mood, she’ll sometimes have me play scales in D flat major as punishment, a key that I hate with a passion. After a few minutes, my fingertips are smarting and sore, which tells me that the weeks I’ve spent not practicing have taken their toll, that I’ve started to lose my calluses ever so slightly, those hard pads that make it possible to subject them to the tyranny of strings for hours on end. Luke’s eyes follow my movements, the corded muscles in my forearms, my jaw set in concentration. If he speaks, I will stop, throw the violin to the floor, and never pick it up again. I will run from the room, my feet thumping against the carpeted hall, race down the stairs, out the front door, and into the night.

  But he stays quiet, and so I weave the bow over the strings, beginning the Brahms in D minor, my hands moving in intricate patterns through the warm air, the heat from Luke’s body spreading out over the room, filling it, the haunting melody soothing as a slow slide into warm water. My arms move through the air, their surety mocking the chaos that surrounds me, the world of rage and death that Luke has left behind, pain that not even music as beautiful as this can ever assuage. Miranda pushes open the closet door with one hand. Her eyes blink out at me, slowly as a kitten’s, the irises glowing out of the darkness, a green not found anywhere in nature. Her head lolls to one side, the dried blood on her face the color of the inky sky outside the window.

  I watch as Luke slips down to the floor, breathing deeply, his back against my desk, his face half hidden in the shadow thrown by the desk lamp, its gooseneck as graceful and curved as the bow in my hands, the musical notes that dance and flow beneath the lids of my eyes as they flutter closed. Even if tomorrow comes, as it will, and the thought of picking up the violin at my lesson with Grace, or even in the morning light, is laughable, right now I’m grateful for this respite, this one waking moment that finally feels something like oblivion—a quiet that settles over the room and moves through the walls of the house, bringing with it a kind of peace.

  EIGHT

  I’m sitting in history class the next morning, stats on WWII filling the dusty chalkboard, when my phone buzzes from the depths of my backpack. I reach down and pull it out when Mrs. Williams turns to write a long list of treaties on the board, my eyes glancing fearfully at the screen, not sure what to expect. Sometimes my phone stays quiet for days, a small, sleeping child lying prostrate on the desk, buried under piles of papers and books, abandoned and forgotten. Riley’s name pops up on the screen the minute I unlock it, and I feel my body relax.

  Joe’s. 12:15. Eat something.

  I smile at the screen, my face stretching in a way that feels so awkward and foreign to me now that I almost immediately stop and look around to make sure no one’s noticed. Mrs. Williams is still scribbling on the board in her strange, loopy handwriting, and everyone else is bored, staring out the window or surreptitiously checking their phones beneath their desks. Joe’s is a diner a few blocks from school where seniors with off-campus privileges eat most days in order to escape the dreaded cafeteria fare, a place juniors like me sneak out to at least once a week, hoping they won’t get caught. The food’s not exactly gourmet, strictly grilled-cheese-and-burger territory, but if you’re really hungry, it’s not half bad.

  When I walk through the door, the small, tinkling bell overhead signaling my arrival, he’s already there, ensconced in a red leather booth at the back, the seat cracked and fading. The strong, meaty reek of burgers and onions sticks to me in an oily film I’ll need a shower to erase. The linoleum underfoot is an ivory-and-lettuce-green checkerboard, the walls a yellow that might have been a cheery yellow at one time but now resembles the dirty haze chain smokers leave behind. There are a few seniors I don’t really know huddled at tables near the front door, and I walk past them, head down, hoping they don’t notice me. At the counter, I stop dead in my tracks for a moment, mesmerized by the zinc surface, the stools lined up neatly as soldiers.

  When I was still in grade school, Luke would take me to Joe’s for a milk shake sometimes, my feet kicking against the shiny chrome, my legs barely able to touch the ground. It made me feel grown-up to sit at the counter, important. I loved to spin around until Luke reached out one hand to steady me, the room whirling crazily before my eyes. There was some
thing comforting about those milk shakes, the sweet blandness, the red, syrupy cherry perched on top of a cloud of whipped cream. Sometimes, as a joke, Luke would drink all of mine when I went to the bathroom, and when I returned, he’d just order me another, his smile a crooked half grin.

  (—don’t think about the sound of his laugh, deep, guttural, but still somehow musical—)

  “Alys. Over here.”

  I blink at the sound of my name, forcing myself to look away from the counter and at the booth where Riley is waiting for me, hunched over the remains of a cheeseburger and fries. The sight of the ketchup smeared across the white plate undoes me entirely, and I have to look away.

  “How long have you been here?” I ask, slipping into the booth, which creaks companionably beneath my weight. “Lunch just started.”

  “I had a free track before lunch,” he says, swallowing hard, then wiping his mouth with a paper napkin, “so I just walked over. I was fucking starving.”

  “So I see.” I raise one eyebrow at his almost-empty plate.

  “You should try it.” Riley smirks, glancing at my pitiful frame wrapped in a navy sweater now a size too big. Riley takes a long drink of water, and before I can answer back or protest, he summons the waitress with the raise of his hand. “She’ll have a cheeseburger and fries.” He jabs his thumb in my direction as he speaks, but she barely looks up from her pad, her black pen scribbling across the paper with mind-numbing efficiency. When I glance over at him, Riley is busily opening packets of sugar, emptying them into his soda. It reminds me so much of Luke that I am rendered speechless. Luke was forever dumping sugar into just about everything—but especially Cokes—a habit most people found disgusting. “How can you stand things to be so sweet?” I repeatedly asked my brother, shuddering as he added yet another packet to the fizzy drink. “Maybe I’m just that bitter,” he’d say, grimly stirring the dark liquid with a straw. Watching Riley add one packet after another into his glass, I am overcome.