by Ally Vance
I make it to the entrance of the living room and scuff the tip of my shoe against the dirty floor. I know I can’t make them anymore dirty than they already are, but I’m holding onto the hope that he won’t care either way.
I raise a fist to my mouth to stifle a cough. The fifth signal that it might be Garbageman sounds a little louder this time and is consistent with the instructions I gave him, so I close the gap between where I’m standing and the front door.
And when the sixth and final knocks mimic the very first that let me know that my guest had arrived and is making a melody against the old, beaten wood, I take a deep breath.
Telling myself that everything will be okay, I pull the door open and step out to greet my visitor.
“You look very pretty dressed up,” Garbageman says to me after the lady standing in the front area of the restaurant sits us down.
I don’t look up at him or acknowledge his compliment. Instead, I reach for the napkin that holds my knife and fork and unfurl it. Garbageman clears his throat and I give him a brief glance to let him know that I heard him, as I open the cloth napkin and place it on my lap.
“My dress has grass stains,” I say quietly.
“Does it?” he asks, a slight amusement sounding in his voice, “I hadn’t even noticed. Not that it would matter. I’m not here for your dress, Karolina.”
“My nails are dirty, and I didn’t have any shampoo,” I mutter as I fold my hands on the napkin.
Garbageman lets out a chuckle as he reaches across the table and gives my arm a quick rub. “All I see is a pretty girl, and that’s all you need to see too.”
A young woman comes over and sets down a card which I assume is a menu in front of me, then one in front of Garbageman. “Can I start you two with something to drink?”
I begin to chew the inside of my mouth nervously. I don’t remember ever having much to drink except for water when Mama and Papa remembered that I was still alive and in the house. I started to hate the banal taste of it but since it’s the only thing that I’ve ever been able to identify, it’s what I’ve kept drinking.
“I’ll have a Coke,” Garbageman says brightly, and when I don’t answer, he makes the choice for me, “and so will she.”
“I’ll be back shortly with your drinks,” the young woman says cheerfully as she walks away.
I raise my eyes and watch her disappear around a corner. She’s wearing black too, only instead of a dress, she’s got on pants and a short-sleeved t-shirt.
She looks clean and it makes me wish I had stayed home.
Garbageman chuckles slightly as he drops his elbows on the table and flips his menu over, “You can have whatever you want, Karolina. Don’t worry about what anything costs, okay?”
I look down at the numbers and letters before I gently push it away from me. I don’t know how to tell him that I can’t read; that my parents never cared enough about me to give me a basic education. I only managed to find Grace because I had become so frustrated with my computer that I kept mashing keys together until it took me somewhere.
And it led to Hell; the only place that I know we both belong in, only this Hell was beautiful, diabolical, and so fucking enticing that I never turned the computer off. That was the only way I knew I’d never lose her.
I cross my arms loosely over my chest as my chin drops to my chest. I’m trying so hard not to be miserable right now since he didn’t have to do this, but I don’t know how else to feel.
“Here you go,” the young woman says when she reappears again. She places a dark, fizzy drink in front of me and a straw next to it, then does the same for Garbageman.
“What are you having, honey?” she asks. I can feel her eyes on me, and when I shrug, Garbageman speaks up.
“I think we’ll have the loaded nachos to start, um … do you want the fish and chips or a steak instead, Karolina?” he asks me. When I don’t answer, he nudges me under the table with his sneaker and I take a deep breath.
“Um, fish.”
Fish is what was multiplied from one basket to feed many.
“I’ll take the steak then,” he continues, his voice still bright and cheerful. “And we’ll see about crossing the dessert bridge when we get there.”
The young woman giggles and I grit my teeth. She’s laughing at me. I knew that would happen; it usually does but I always lure those people away and make them pay for underestimating me.
I reach for the knife on the table and just as I’m ready to stand up and bury it in her throat, Garbageman reaches for my menu, stacks it on his, and hands them to her.
“We’ll have those nachos as soon as they’re ready,” he tells her. Another nudge under the table from him gets my attention and my eyes meet his. I can see the urgency in his eyes to not do what he seemingly feels is bound to happen.
I let out a breath, tighten my grip on the knife handle … then let it clatter against the table.
I promised myself that I would find out what it’s like to be normal.
It’s what I have to do to have a good night out for once and maybe this way, when I fall asleep tonight, I won’t walk into a nightmare.
“Um, I have to tell you something,” Garbageman begins as he starts to unwrap his straw. I look up at him expectantly before I begin to mimic his movements.
That’s when I learn to do things best; when I watch someone do them first then try them on my own.
“Okay,” I reply quietly.
“There’s a reason I keep coming by to see you, Karolina,” he continues as he pulls the straw out of the wrapper.
I continue staring at him and notice that he’s concentrating extra hard on placing the straw into his dark, fizzy drink.
With my silence maintained, I move my foot under the table to nudge him like he did to me and he shakes his head quickly as he raises his eyes, staring directly into mine.
“I’m your brother.”
Chapter Seven
He’s a liar.
“Wait, I want to hear what he has to say.”
“What?” he asks in confusion.
I shake my head and lean back against the booth seat, waiting for him to prove his lie when some new young person shows up with a big plate of what I’m assuming are nachos.
Garbageman holds up a finger toward me as stealthily as he can, while he thanks the person who has already turned to leave.
“You never knew about me because after Mom and Pop dropped off Paloma in the wilderness somewhere, they locked you in that room. They adopted me because they were damn determined to have the perfect child. You don’t know this, but those nights that you got the extra scraps of food and cups of water? That was me. I knew they were hiding something, but I never knew what it was exactly. Not until I was doing yardwork one day and you jumped out of the window. Remember? I helped you get to your feet before you shoved me away and ran.”
His tenor is desperate, his words are jumbled, and his rambling makes more sense to me than it would to anyone else, but I still don’t remember—
He’s … not lying?
“Look,” he says, blowing out his breath and reaching into his back pocket. He pulls out a worn, leather wallet and flips it open. Garbageman gets to his feet and gives me a gentle shove so I allow him to have some space next to me and he sets it down in front of me.
… Albertine.
I use the tips of my fingers to push it back toward him. I know Mama and Papa’s names and mine and Grace’s but that’s only because she taught me in case we ever got away.
“What’s the first word?” I ask him quietly.
“Jack,” he says softly as he slips two fingers into one of the small pockets and pulls out a picture. “And this is you and Paloma when you were little, isn’t it?”
I turn my face toward him without looking at the picture. There are too many painful memories to even risk looking at it and seeing what we once were and haven’t been in years.
“Grace,” I correct him testily. “She never liked Palo
ma.”
“Then Grace it is,” he agrees as he gives me a small smile. “And what do you prefer?”
“Karolina. I never did like Haight.”
When his eyes soften and he nods, I scoot away from him, pressing myself against the wall.
“Jack. Your name is Jack.”
“It is.”
“Do you know where Grace is, Jack?” I ask, resting the side of my face against the wall.
“No.”
“Charlie does.”
“Who’s Charlie?”
Don’t tell him yet.
“I can’t tell you.”
But you can show him.
He lets out a sigh as he reaches for one of the yellow chip things and dips it in what I think is cheese. Once it’s nice and loaded, he holds it out toward me.
“Karolina?”
I glance at him out of the corner of my eye, before I sit up again, lean toward him, and open my mouth.
As I begin to crunch down slowly on a new flavor that I’ve never experienced before, I smile slightly when I see the hope in his eyes again.
He makes me feel … safe. Remarkably close to how I felt when Grace was around, though not entirely.
Say his name.
“Jack.”
After he fed me my dinner, he went back to his side of the table and has been eating in silence. I wonder if he thinks I believe him or not, or if it’s even important to him, but I’m still trying to remember the boy that I startled when I landed on the grass and rocks outside of my window.
Look closer.
“Any closer and I’ll be inside of him.”
“You say something?” he asks, glancing up at me curiously. I shake my head as my eyes immediately fall to my lap.
They tried to pick a boy that looked like you and Grace. Blonde, blue-eyed, fair-skinned; it’s almost like they tried to replace you both.
“It’s okay.”
Jack levels a confused stare at me and I shake my head. He nods as he places his fork down onto his damn near empty plate, and then glances around the side of the booth for our server.
“Do you have room for dessert, Karolina? You can take it home to eat it later if you want.”
“I don’t know what that is,” I admit quietly.
He looks over at me with sympathy in his eyes and nods, “We’ll get you something to go.”
The moon is higher in the sky by the time we get back to my home. Jack walks me up the walkway and when I sit down on the porch, he takes the spot next to me.
Don’t take him inside.
“Shut up.”
He clears his throat but decides to sidestep asking me yet again if I’ve said anything.
“Did you have a good time tonight?” he asks, giving me a gentle nudge with his arm.
I nod, “Thank you.”
We sit in silence for a few more painful seconds before he clears his throat again and gets to his feet, “Okay, well. You make sure you eat that when you’re feeling hungry and I’ll see you next week.”
I tighten my grip around the white box in my lap and nod again.
“I’m glad I found you.”
He leans down, placing a soft kiss on the top of my head, and a tear rolls down my cheek. He did the one thing I still haven’t been able to do; he found his sister.
“Thank you.”
“Bye for now,” he says as he scuffs his sneaker against the bottom stair then turns to walk away.
I wipe the tear off my cheek and stand up quickly, the box almost falling out of my hand.
“Jack.”
He turns so quickly that he stumbles slightly but looks relieved that I’ve said his name again.
“Come inside.”
“Are you sure?” he asks, taking a step back toward me.
Karolina, why would you do that?
“Because I didn’t tell him who Charlie is.”
Jack rubs the back of his neck uneasily as I blink rapidly a few times. I turn around and walk toward the door, knowing that there’s no way he’ll follow me into the darkness now. But when I hear his footsteps climbing the porch steps, I let out a sigh.
Don’t hurt him.
“I won’t.”
Chapter Eight
Once Jack is inside, I hand him the white box then reach for the door and push it back into place.
“It’s kind of dark in here,” he says nervously.
“Follow me. I know where everything is,” I tell him in a banal tone. “Nothing in the dark can hurt you; I won’t let it.”
He’s going to run.
“Leave me alone,” I hiss under my breath.
“Oh. Um, okay,” Jack says, and I turn to glance at him in confusion.
“I wasn’t talking to you, Jack. I was talking to her.”
He clears his throat but doesn’t say anything else. More importantly, he doesn’t try to leave either.
“Put your hands on my shoulders and I’ll help you around,” I offer as bravely as I can, taking the box from him.
I don’t like to be touched, it’s something that I only ever allowed Grace to do and any time she did it was almost always for hugs or fixing each other’s scrapes and bruises.
“Lead the way,” he says nervously, and I do as he asks. I lick my lips as I lead him toward my small bedroom and once inside, I walk us to my dresser. I put the box on top of it like the treasure that it is because no one has ever made a point of continuously giving me gifts before, then reach up for his hands.
“Wait here,” I say to him, placing his hands on the old, rotten wood.
“Where are you going?” he asks me as his feet shuffle toward the dresser.
“To get some light.”
I can hear his breathing becoming heavy as my shoes scrape along the wooden floor. It only takes three steps to reach the table and then I’ll just need to flick my wrist to turn the key for illumination.
“I want to tell you who Charlie is,” I begin as I lean against the table. It creaks slightly under the weight of my body, and I can only hope that it won’t break before I’m done telling him what he needs to know.
“Okay, Karolina. Go ahead.”
“Charlie is Reade’s brother. Reade was a boy who loved Grace; at least I think he did. I’m sure she tried to love him too, but her mind had already become muddled by then. She did what she could, but he was mean to her.” I pause to take a deep breath, remembering the last time I saw Grace on camera.
You’ve gotten this far, keep going.
“I saw what he did to her. Grace had a show on the computer, and I found it one day by accident. Reade was a bad man, but Grace was always stronger than I could ever hope to be. The last time I saw her, she showed him the error of his ways. Ever since that night, I’ve stared at the computer screen hoping to see her again, but I never did, you know? I found out that Reade had a brother by accident too. They just looked so much alike that it was the only thing that made sense to me. But he wouldn’t tell me where Grace was. He ran from me every time he saw me. Every fucking time,” I seethe, my body beginning to tremble slightly.
“Take a deep breath,” Jack says into the darkness and I do as he suggests. It helps; something as simple as slowing down and trying again actually makes sense.
“The last time I saw him, I was able to convince him to come see me here. I told him that if we could just talk, then I’d leave him alone forever.”
“Did he?”
I take a deep breath, then let it out slowly as I place my hand on the key of the lantern and begin to slowly turn it.
“Yes,” I say when the room is bright enough for Jack to see.
He blinks a couple of times, smiling when his eyes come into focus as they land on me. But it’s not me he needs to see, it’s what’s behind me.
The reason I haven’t slept on my bed in months.
The reason why Charlie won’t tell me where Grace is.
“Holy shit,” he finally says when his eyes drift behind me.
A smile cree
ps across my lips.
I don’t have to turn to see what has Jack’s full attention because I already know what’s there.
“Karolina, is he …”
“When he refused to tell me, I chewed on his tongue until it fell out of his mouth and nailed him to the mattress.”
My words are rushed, and my breathing is becoming labored, but I’ve never felt prouder in my life.
The only thing that will eclipse this feeling will be seeing Grace in person again.
Jack begins to shuffle forward slowly. I’m not sure what I’m expecting him to do but maybe he is an Albertine after all because he doesn’t seem to be as distressed as I expected him to be.
Of course, growing up in a house under the ironclad and tyrannical rule of Adam and Evil can numb the senses of any seemingly normal person.
“Did he scream?” he asks as he stops in front of me, looking down into my eyes.
My eyes close as I begin to relieve the carnage.
“He tried.”
We sat on Charlie’s chest, remember? When he opened his mouth to scream, you pulled his tongue out and bit down on it as hard as you could.
“Did he bleed?”
There was so much blood. The taste of copper hasn’t really gone away yet has it? Remember how it ran down our chin and landed on his body? How excited we felt?
“More than I ever did when Mama and Papa would beat me.”
“Why did you keep him?”
Nailing him to the bed was the only way to keep him from running away. I think we could have done something else, but it’s a nice fuck you to Mom and Dad, don’t you think?
“To show Grace.”
Our beautiful, damaged sister. All alone in the world somewhere with no one to guide her.
“Why?”
She’ll love what we’ve done.
“Because I want her to see how much I love her. I carved our names into his body as he lay dying.”
Jack places a hand on the side of my face and it takes everything in me not to jerk away from his touch.
“But if he’s been here this entire time, why were you looking for him?”
