“Actually…” I start. Ketchup’s fingers cinch around mine. I decide to let it go, for now. Oscar seems to notice our exchange, which is surprising, but doesn’t comment on it.
“Sit down,” he says amiably. Neither of us moves. “Come on, I won’t bite. Can’t even reach you if I wanted to.”
We look at each other and start forward at the same time. We slip into the chairs across from him, but keep our distance.
“You seem to be doing really good today,” I say.
“It comes and goes,” he says with a shrug. “It helps that Zander isn’t here, and it helps that Ketchup is. We should do this more often.”
“Why does it help that Zander isn’t here?” Ketchup asks.
Oscar’s eyes darken. “Because Zander is a liar. I hate liars. I hate, hate liars. Liars, liars, liars. All they do is ruin lives. Liars, liars, liars.”
My body tenses. Fear that this will become another ranting litany that sends him back to insanity forces me to interrupt him. I came here for answers, and Zander’s lies are chief on the list. “What is Zander lying about?”
“About what he did.”
“What he did?”
“To Lisa. To Lisa. Zander lied about Lisa. I know, but he won’t admit it. He can’t hide it from me. I can see through Zander’s lies,” Oscar mumbles.
I should go on, keep him talking while he’s lucid, but I can’t. I am too shocked. Thinking Zander had killed someone was hard enough, but Lisa?
I remember that night. Two months after Zander turned sixteen, just after he had come out of seclusion, I was sitting with Grandma in our living room. Mom and Dad were out and she and I were making tiramisu. Zander had gone out four wheeling with Lisa that night. Nobody called like you might think. I suppose they probably called Lisa’s family, but no one called us. Zander simply burst through the door and stumbled into the room. He fell to his knees before he ever made it to the couch. I’d never seen him like that. He always held everything inside. When Grandma reached him, he started bawling like a child. I was so scared, I dialed my parents right away. They raced home in a panic.
It took an hour to get him calmed down enough to tell us about how the four wheeler had slipped and rolled off the trail. Zander came through it okay. He thought he’d broken a few bones, but they were already healed. Lisa wasn’t so lucky. Zander said he tried to protect her, get her out of the way of the bulky machine, but it came down on her before he could do anything. Her neck was broken, her life ended.
At least, that’s what he told us had happened.
My hands start shaking. “What do you know about Lisa?”
“Pretty little Lisa, she couldn’t be scared away. She saw what Zander was, but she let herself believe. She closed her eyes and played pretend that he would love her ‘til the end,” Oscar says in his creepy sing-song voice. His eyes snap up to mine, the anger in them flattening me against the back of my chair. “He did. Zander did love her ‘til the end. Right up until he killed her.”
“What? No, man, what are you talking about?” Ketchup asks.
I shush him and force myself to meet Oscar’s gaze. “How could you possibly know that?”
“I could taste it on him.”
Ketchup goes very still. He looks over at me with fear and sadness in his eyes. He knows as well as I do that we were right. Even still, it is so hard to accept what Oscar is saying that I badger him for more proof.
“What do you mean you could taste it? What did it taste like?”
Oscar’s face screws up, as if he’s tasting death right now. “Every time he comes near me, I can taste it. It doesn’t taste like pain. Pain tastes like truffles to me. Not the chocolate kind, the prized fungus only the most refined restaurants use. The earthy, meaty exquisiteness of them are exactly how pain tastes to me, the most beautiful sensation. Death tastes different, stale and bitter. And it never seems to leave. It clings to Zander still. I hate the taste of death. I hate that he brings it here.”
I want to argue with him. I want to believe that if Zander did kill someone, it was someone bad, and for a good reason. I don’t want to believe it was Lisa. Lisa was such a sweet girl. She cared about Zander, and he cared about her. At the time, the guilt that poured out with his tears seemed too much for the enjoyment I know his hunger must have gotten out of her death. I’d wondered that night if something was wrong. The look on my grandma’s face said the same, but I never let myself question him. Zander was my brother. I didn’t want to believe something like that about him.
I know Oscar is telling the truth. I don’t know what to do with that knowledge, though. So, I do what I did last time. I stuff it down deep, and ask the next question I don’t really want the answer to.
“Why…why can’t I taste it on him all the time like you can?”
Oscar’s interest perks up. “All the time? Does that mean you taste it some of the time?”
“It’s really random,” I admit quietly. Oscar nods slowly.
“You’re too young to taste it all the time. Van, Nessa, Nessie, Vanessa, you’re still too small, just a baby hunter with chaotic, crazy hunger. But you’ll mature. You’ll turn sixteen and you’ll be able to taste the real pleasures and evils of this world.” His hands tighten into fists and pull at the shackles that won’t let him go. “Just wait until you turn sixteen, and then you’ll taste Zander’s secrets all the time too.”
My head drops down. I was already worried enough about my birthday. Ketchup shifts in his chair, reminding me of his presence. I glance over at him with hooded eyes. His hand is still in mine, but his body is rigid. Everything Oscar just said rings in my ears. Tasting, pain, death, even me turning sixteen and changing, I can’t imagine how that must have sounded to him.
He let me slide on the bare minimum before, but I think he just got a lot more in the way of answers than he wanted. Seeing the familiar indicators, I relax my fingers and attempt sliding them out of his grip. I get about half way before he grabs me back and holds me tighter than before. He doesn’t look at me, though.
There’s nothing to do but let Ketchup make his decision and get on with what I came here for.
“Oscar, I need you to tell me what it was like before you came here. What changed? Did Mom and Dad say anything to you about how you were acting?”
Oscar’s face screws up in disgust. “I don’t want to talk about that. Why do you want know?”
“Zander’s been acting strange,” I say after a moment’s pause. “I think he’s going to get in trouble.”
“I told him. Told him. Told him. I would see him here soon.”
“Oscar,” I snap. His mouth stops blabbering and he looks up at me. “I need to know if Zander’s in trouble.”
“Trouble,” Oscar says. He nods deeply. “Tell me everything.”
So I do.
I force myself not to look over at Ketchup once during my explanation. I hadn’t been planning on letting him in on the secrets of our family right now, or any time, to be perfectly honest, but what else was I going to do. There was no chance I was going to ask him to step out. Not only would that be incredibly unfair after I forced him to bring me here, but also, as much as I love Oscar, I do not want to be left alone with him. My mouth spills out the details of Ivy and Zander’s bizarre relationship as I pretend Ketchup isn’t listening to a word of it. I tell him about our hunger reactions, my suspicions, Zander’s love, his likely confession, and his slip that Ivy was somehow going to help him.
At that last part, Oscar’s entire body goes rigid. His eyes latch onto me like a barbed dart, painful and difficult to be free of. “She thinks she can help him?” Oscar says. “She won’t. She won’t help him. She doesn’t really want to. Ivy, Ivy. Ivy is lying. Ivy Guerra. I don’t like her name. Vines and War, that’s what her name means. She will wrap herself around Zander and strangle the life out of him, start a war that none of us can win. Ivy Guerra can’t be trusted.”
“I…what? Her name means war? What are you talking about?�
��
Oscar tsks at me, one finger of his bound hand bobbing up and down. “I told you to keep up with your Spanish, Van. It’s always useful to know languages. Shows you things that others miss. Guerra means war. Ivy is here to start a war.”
“How could you possibly know that?” Not that I disagree with him, but he’s actually crazy. I suspect Ivy is trouble because of what I’ve seen. I want to stop her, but I’m not going to launch a full out campaign against her on the word of my murdering, psychotic brother.
The dull thud of Oscar’s head hitting the metal table startles me. I look down at him. Panic creeps under my skin. Is this the end of his lucidity? It can’t be. I have more questions still. “Oscar. Oscar! How do you know Ivy is here to start a war? You have to tell me or Zander might get hurt.”
“Oh, Zander will get hurt.” The muffled slur of his words makes them even more ominous. “That girl is no good. If you want to save Zander, you have to stop her, but he’ll still get hurt. Save him and hurt him, don’t save him and hurt him. Pain, either way. Delicious pain. Hunger will be the only one that wins. Hunger always wins.”
My fingernails are digging into Ketchup’s skin. Pain ripples around his wrist, but I pay it no mind. All my focus is on Oscar. “How do you know about any of this, Oscar?”
“They didn’t want me to know, but I found out. Someone tried to help me, and I didn’t believe them. I searched and asked and demanded and screamed until someone told me. They didn’t want me to know, but I found out. I found out, and it made me angry. So, so angry. Furious. Irate. I wanted blood and pain and death when I found out. Nothing could feed my hunger enough, not after being starved for so long. I found out, and they paid for it. I made them pay.”
“Oscar,” I whisper, his words making more sense to me than I wish they would. He made them pay. They didn’t want him to know. He made them pay. My shaking rattles the uneven legs of my chair against the floor, a skittering noise that fries the last of my barriers. I ask my last, most frightening question. “Oscar, why did you kill Mom and Dad?”
“Because,” he hisses, “because, because they lied to us. They knew. All along they knew who we were, what we were, but they tried to pretend, change us, turn us into something we aren’t, starve us, deny us, make us suffer for years and years and years! They said they loved us, but they lied! They lied! They lied! THEY LIED!”
I’m almost running as I drag Ketchup down the concrete stairs of Peak View Hospital. The orderlies dragging Oscar out of the room and down the hall when he wouldn’t stop screaming topped off an already disturbing experience. I wanted to ask him more, find out what my parents lied about, but there was no more talking to Oscar at that point. Admitting it hurts, but part of me was glad they drug him away. Do I really want to know what lies I’ve been told since birth?
When I reach Ketchup’s car, I finally find the strength to drop his hand. He doesn’t move, but I sag against the back of his car and hang my head. The silence of the parking lot is soothing after Oscar’s outburst. At least for a few minutes it is. Then my floundering brain nudges me, reminds me that Ketchup is still standing next to me, not speaking a word. I know I need to say something.
“Ketchup, I…” That’s as far as I get.
I work to find something, anything, but before I can, Ketchup’s hands are suddenly on my face, pulling me toward him. His lips press against mine fiercely, crushing me, and sending a rush every bit as strong as my hunger coursing through my body. The last hour evaporates from my mind. The last two years are forgotten entirely, and I’m suddenly back on my porch with Ketchup, a silly girl with unrealistic dreams. Except my dreams don’t seem so far away now. My hands slide around his neck and pull him closer. He deepens the kiss hungrily. I want more. I want nothing else in this world.
Ketchup shoves me away from him without warning. The angry glare on his face knocks me back. “You should have told me!” he snaps. “The hunger, the urges, the fact that your brother wants to kill me! You should have told me, Van. You shouldn’t have run away from me. You should have given me the chance to understand and help you. I wouldn’t have run. I wouldn’t have left you.”
“Will you now?” I ask, barely managing to make myself heard.
His anger holds for a few more seconds. In that brief moment, I fear my heart will explode. Then his shoulders slump and he pulls me against his chest. As his arms wrap around me, I know I will never feel safer than I do in his arms. He leans down next to my ear and says, “I’m not going anywhere, Van.”
For the first time in two years, I give in to him completely. I cinch my arms around him and bury my face in his chest. “Ketchup, I’m so sorry.”
“I know,” he says. “It’s okay.”
There’s so much more I want to say to him right now. I want to tell him how much I love him, how I’ve loved him this whole time. I want to tell him to kiss me again, but this time, in the way I always imagined our first kiss would be. My heart is begging me to tell him it will be like this forever.
Reality keeps my mouth shut tight. There’s still Zander. If he gets too close to Ketchup, there won’t be any forever. There will only be death. As he holds me, I can’t bear to say anything of the kind. So I don’t let myself speak at all. The wishes and the truth both stay buried until I can figure things out.
Ketchup is the first to break the silence. “Did you understand any of what Oscar told you today, because I didn’t. I’m not even sure we should believe him.”
“We should definitely believe him.” I may not have understood half of what he said, but this is one thing I’m sure of. Ketchup isn’t.
“Why? Just because Ivy’s last name is Guerra doesn’t mean she’s here to start a war. It sounded crazy, Van.”
Pulling away from Ketchup enough to look him in the eye, I say, “I know Oscar is nuts, but he isn’t a liar. You saw how upset he got when he talked about my parents lying to us. That’s always been a huge deal for him. He’s never once told a lie to anybody.”
“Still…”
“Ketchup, please. I know what I’m talking about.”
He shakes his head. “Fine, what are we going to do about Ivy?”
“We’re going to find out what’s in Ivy’s garage and why she spends her Sundays locked up in there,” I say.
“When?”
I take a deep breath, knowing this might be a huge mistake. “Now. Let’s go.”
***
Climbing over Ivy’s wooden fence proves easy enough. Making sure nobody was home before we could hop over the fence was the trickier part. When we first arrived, there weren’t any cars in the driveway, but neither of us knew for sure whether or not her mom worked during the day. We had to watch the house for a long time, eating lunch as we did, and wait for some sign that anyone was inside. Eventually, we decided it was safe enough to get started and made our move.
Ketchup and I stand at the door to the converted garage, my hand on the locked doorknob. I jiggle it again just for good measure. Not discouraged yet, I look around for other options. There aren’t any windows, which seems a little odd. I slip around each side. Nothing. My hope for a backdoor that isn’t locked is foiled too. There isn’t even a door. I head back to the front of the garage, but Ketchup stops me halfway. He points up. My eyes follow, and I groan.
“Seriously?”
He nods, “Sorry, but it looks like that’s our only way in.”
The skylight on the roof is one of several. “They look like they’re screwed down. How are we going to get them open? I don’t want to break anything or she’ll know someone was here.”
“How about we get up there, and then try using these,” Ketchup says, holding up a pair of screwdrivers.
“Where did those come from?” I ask.
He shrugs. “My car. I have a tool set in the trunk that my uncle gave me.”
Hmm. The longer I watch him, the guiltier he looks. Ketchup sucks at fixing cars. His uncle wouldn’t even think of letting him try to tighten a screw f
or fear of the whole car exploding. We’ll come back to this later.
“So, are you going to boost me up, or what?”
A few seconds later, we’re both on top of the roof twisting out screws as fast as we can. We’re much more exposed up here. Even still, as I’m unscrewing the second to last screw on my side, I look over at Ketchup and ask, “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”
“Breaking into a garage? Can’t say that I have.” He pauses. “Well, I did have to break into our garage once when the garage door opener jammed.”
“Ketchup…”
“What?” He pretends for a moment longer, but then he sighs. “Okay, breaking into things isn’t exactly a new thing for me,” he admits, “but it’s not like I steal stuff. I just practice. It’s a useful skill to have.”
“Where do you practice?”
He shrugs. “Houses in my neighborhood mostly. Cars too.”
“Have you ever come to my house at night?”
The squeaky noise of his screw fighting to get loose is suddenly the only sound. I don’t push him, but I wait. Finally, he gets the screw loose and looks up at me. “It’s not what you’re thinking.”
“What am I thinking?”
“That I peek at you through your windows, or something,” he says. “I just get really worried sometimes, Van. After what Oscar did…well, sometimes I can’t sleep knowing you’re there with only Zander and your grandma. What’s your grandma gonna do? And Zander, with the way he’s looked at me since that day on the porch, I’m not always sure he’s going to protect you either.”
He looks back down at the remaining screws. I want to reach across the half-loosened skylight and kiss him. I don’t. I wonder if he’s trying not to do the same thing, because he doesn’t look at me when he speaks again. “I’ve never broken into your house, though.”
“Then why?”
“Just in case I ever need to.”
I know Zander would never hurt me. Regardless, a little dash of reassurance that Ketchup will be there if I ever need him lightens my mood. We finish our work quickly after that, and Ketchup lowers me down. I land badly because of the strangely uneven floor and stumble. Ketchup lands right behind me, and steadies me. My eyes linger on the warmth of his smile for just a moment before turning away and staring wide-eyed at the room around me.
Wicked Hunger (Someone Wicked This Way Comes) Page 23
