by Nolon King
Corban looked around their backyard, feeling a sort of awkward disgust.
“Sorry,” he said to Kari.
“What are you sorry about?”
“Everything.” He shrugged. “All of this.”
“Your family invited my family over when everyone else is being weird. Isn’t that a good thing?”
“Yeah, of course. But, you know, your dad, he’s not comfortable with stuff like this, right?”
Kari laughed, a light little twitter. “Yeah, I know my dad. If you expected him to ever be comfortable in any situation, then you don’t really know him well at all.”
“I guess.”
“After last week … I just want to be with you. And my mom was so happy to be invited. She’s been shut up in the house all week. She couldn’t even go to the grocery store.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
“I’m sorry that everyone’s whispering and staring when you hold hands with me between classes.” She looked sad. “If you stay with me, they’re eventually going to hate you too.”
“How bad do you think it’s going to get? You know, at school?”
“If they’d just find another suspect, then everyone will feel sorry for me. Maybe I’ll get enough pity votes to be homecoming queen.”
Corban laughed. “You’ll never be homecoming queen. You would have to kill Chelsea first.”
“That can be arranged.” Kari slammed a fist into her palm. “I know my dad is innocent. I just don’t know how to prove it.”
“If they don’t …” He didn’t even want to think about what would happen if Ollie went to jail. “No matter how bad it gets, I promise to stick with you, no matter what.”
“I know.”
“I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“I know.”
And now he wanted to tell Kari that he loved her, but Corban could already hear the I know on her lips, and he wasn’t sure he could stand to hear it. Not when he’d already told her he loved her once, and she hadn’t said it back.
Corban nodded toward the adults, his father turning the meat on the grill while the other three sat around a small table shaded by an umbrella. They’d already consumed what appeared to be a vacation’s worth of cocktails, and there was still more than an hour until dinner.
Everyone was laughing loud. Dad must be delivering some of his better one-liners.
“Where’s your brother?” Kari asked out of the blue.
Corban shrugged. “Inside somewhere. Probably playing HardCorp. His way of pouting, since our parents said that he couldn’t have any of his friends over while you guys were here. My mom said that this evening was about getting to know your family better.”
“That was nice of her.”
“Yeah, but he’s still inside the house like an asshole.”
“I think he’s mad at me.”
“He’s mad at me.”
“It isn’t the same between us, either. We always used to joke around, and now it feels like he’s always giving me dirty looks. Half the time when we talk, it feels like he’s insulting me.”
“That’s because you’re probably either standing next to me, or you’re going to be later and he’s trying to save time.”
“Maybe you guys should make up.”
An angry glance at his father, then Corban shook his head. “Maybe Levi should start caring a little more about this family, and the fact that our dad is a liar.”
There was a long pause, as though Kari didn’t really want to say the rest. But then she did. “You don’t have all the facts. What you saw could have been out of context. Or who knows, maybe your parents have an open relationship or something. Like Will and Jada Pinkett Smith.”
“They have an open relationship?”
“I’m sure I read that somewhere.” Kari’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Look. I’m sure you can guess that my parents are having a really hard time right now. Like, really hard. My dad is being even weirder than usual; last night he was wearing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle pajamas around the house. The kind with feet. I’ve never seen them before, but they were obviously old. So they’re either from when he was a kid or he bought them at Goodwill or something. But they were his size. Sort of. I didn’t want to ask. Anyway, my mom is just … sad. And it makes me sad.”
She looked at Corban, and waited until he was fixed on her eyes.
Corban didn’t know what to say to that, so he put his arm around her and gave her a quick sideways hug. She smiled up at him, looking so grateful it made him even madder that everyone had been so awful to her this week.
Levi came out a few minutes later. He shot about a hundred baskets or so, then drifted over to the adults, just moments behind Kari and Corban.
As they walked up, his mom was saying “… We just wanted to extend our support in what must be a difficult time.”
A spark of irritation crackled through Corban as he recognized her hungry eyes. His mother was hunting. For what he wasn’t sure. I should’ve known this wasn’t just about getting to know Kari’s family better.
Ollie didn’t look anywhere near relaxed, but he was also nowhere near the nervous wreck that Corban expected. His legs were primly crossed, and he was slowly sipping at his glass of wine. Across from him, Kari’s mom, Cynthia, finished her wine, then set it down on the table and emptied the bottle into it. Her eyes were glassy and her smile seemed wounded.
“People will think what people will think,” she said, raising her freshly-filled glass to Corban’s mom before taking another swallow. “This’ll all blow over. But thank you … for all of this.”
Adam turned from the grill to the group. “Right. Even if they don’t catch this guy, it’s summer. Someone’s gonna leave a baby in their car at Provisions, and then Almond Park will have something else to talk about.”
Silence. No one knew what to say to that. Then, Cynthia let out a wailing laugh, half-hysterical, half-distraught.
Corban turned to Kari. Sure enough, she looked as surprised as he felt.
Cynthia gulped more wine.
Ollie said, “I don’t think people will stop talking about this for a while.”
Adam glanced back at his meat, seemed to determine that it was perfect as is, then settled into the group. “You’re probably right. But all you need for people to stop talking about Ollie Harris is for the situation to get really bad.”
“I’m sorry?” Ollie looked up from his chair at Adam.
“Imagine that instead of these quiet, silent deaths, the killer really went to town. Made McNuggets out of the family. Left their eyeballs floating in the soup. I mean, gruesome shit. Bloody. Well, no one could ever think that was you, could they?”
“They could,” said Ollie tightly.
Again, shockingly, Cynthia laughed. And then she finished her wine, reached for the bottle of red, refilled her glass, and turned the final swallow of white into a dark rosé.
“What if he set up a croquet game outside? But with limbs for the mallets and—”
“Adam.”
“—heads for the balls.”
Cynthia was still laughing, but this wasn’t funny.
Ollie’s big eyes were even bigger than normal.
Kari was dead-white, her mouth open.
Mom looked like she wanted to kill Dad.
And Levi was smiling. Corban wanted to smack him.
Dad looked wistful, like he always did just before a well-tailored punchline, then said, “Just imagine all the blood!”
But a punchline that was not.
“Adam …” Mom repeated.
He turned to her with what would surely have been a sneer if they didn’t have company. “What?”
“I think you might be making our guests uncomfortable.”
He looked at Cynthia, still trying to stop the wracking laughs that were almost sobs.
“I doesn’t look that way to me.” Dad picked up his mostly empty bottle of beer, swallowed the rest of it, then set the empty at the end
of an already impressive row. Corban wondered how many he’d had before their guests had arrived.
“Has anyone seen Mars is On Fire?” Kari asked. No one responded, even after she added, “It’s really good.”
Dad said, “So, who’s ready to eat?”
Everybody was. Please let the show be over, Corban prayed. Unfortunately, there was an unrequested encore.
“Maybe I’m the killer,” Adam said, grabbing at Cynthia’s attention. “No one’s found the body because we’re eating it.”
Mom turned white, gasping. Dad ignored her as he poured a red wine reduction over his very rare steak, “and here’s the blood.”
Cynthia shrieked like someone was tickling her and murdering her at the same time.
Ollie said, “Can we please stop talking about blood?”
Mom sighed, trying not to lose her shit. “You just ruined your steak.”
“See,” Adam grinned, nodding at Ollie’s pallor. “No way anyone’ll blame you if this gets bloody.”
“Dad!” Corban was out of his seat.
Still grinning, Adam looked up at him. “Corban?”
“Sit down,” Levi said. “Nobody wants to hear what you have to say.”
Corban turned to his brother. “Without your posse around, no one will ever want to hear what you have to say.”
Mom looked from one to the other. “Boys.”
Cynthia was trying not to laugh.
Kari was trying not to cry.
Corban was trying not to charge his brother and bash his head into the planter behind him.
They should be in this together, both of them working to bring their father back in line. To protect Kari, and her hurting family. And theirs.
But apparently it was every man for himself.
Chapter Thirty
Levi felt sick to his stomach.
He swiped through LiveLyfe like he’d been doing for the last hour, feeling worse by the minute.
Tomorrow would be miserable. Not for him, but definitely for Kari, and for his brother, if he kept holding her hand in front of everyone like he definitely would.
It wasn’t the DMs asking for dirt.
It wasn’t the speculation about whether or not Kari’s dad was guilty.
It was the meme.
Someone had found a picture of a murdered family from an old newspaper article and put a caption across the top in a silly font that said, Ollie was here!
Levi had no doubt that it would go viral. If it hadn’t already.
Corban had no idea — he wasn’t on LiveLyfe and he hadn’t been for a while.
And Levi doubted that he’d listen if Levi tried to warn him. Things were already bad between them before that bullshit at dinner with Kari’s parents. Levi felt bad, because Corban was right, their father had definitely taken things too far. It hadn’t been funny, even with Kari’s mom laughing like a hyena beside him. But when Corban criticized Dad, it felt like he was picking at Levi too.
He hadn’t been able to stop himself from lashing out. Even though he knew better.
Maybe if he apologized …
Levi knocked on the door, but Corban ignored him. He knocked again. “Hey Corban, it’s me.”
From the other side of the door: “Congratulations.”
Levi opened the door and stepped inside. “Hey.”
“What do you want?”
“To talk.”
“Text me.”
“You haven’t answered one of my texts in weeks.”
Corban finally looked up. “Maybe that’s because you’re an asshole.”
That wasn’t completely unfair. Levi sighed. “Can we just talk for a minute?”
“Just go.”
“Go as in my minute just started, or go as in you want me to leave right now?”
Corban looked at his brother, eyes alive with impatience. “Spit it out, Levi.”
“I just want you to be prepared for tomorrow.”
“Prepared for what?”
“People are talking, you know, about Kari’s dad. Things are going to be rough for her tomorrow … and you if you’re with her.”
“What is it you want me to do, Levi? Abandon her? Leave her to fend for herself against people like you?”
“I like Kari.”
“Sure, you do. But that still wouldn’t stop you. Not if you thought you could get a laugh, or become that much more popular.”
Corban wasn’t making this easy, trying to pick a fight when that was the last thing Levi wanted right now. When he was genuinely trying to help.
“News travels fast whether we like it or not.” Levi tried again, looked at his brother with pleading eyes, silently begging for him to listen and not make this any harder than it had to be. “Everyone knows that the police interrogated Ollie. So naturally, a lot of people think that he did it. And even those who don’t might like to get in on the pranking. I’m just saying that—”
“He did work for two of the three families, so of course they’re going to question him. But did they arrest him? No. Because he’s innocent. Anyone who doesn’t see that is an idiot.”
“Okay, I hear you, but—”
“The problem is that you’d rather join in the fun than stick up for your friends.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is true. Just look at last night. You were laughing, Levi. When Dad was saying all of that shit, you didn’t say anything, and then when I did, you refused to back me up. Fuck you.”
Levi left the room without another word, quietly closing the door behind him.
Because what else could he say, when everything inside him knew that his brother was right?
Chapter Thirty-One
Most of the other kids had already filed outside of Mrs. Ellison’s physics class, but Kari was still inside.
Corban waited. It wasn’t that he was impatient so much as worried about what might be happening to Kari, inside the classroom where he couldn’t see. Mrs. Ellison for sure wasn’t watching.
Sure enough, she came out last, still pretending that she wasn’t being harassed, same as she had been all morning.
“I just don’t understand why everyone gets to their junior year and turns into an idiot. Why is everybody fixated on the same two dozen colleges? It’s stupid. Just because your grandmother hasn’t heard of your school doesn’t mean it’s a shitty university that isn’t worth the money. Seriously, people will spend their money on the stupidest things. Like degrees that don’t mean anything. And everyone is always complaining about how they don’t have any choices. Are you kidding me? We have more choices here than anywhere else in the world.”
Corban didn’t interrupt, just fell in beside her as she headed to her next class. He’d made a point to walk her everywhere today. He’d vowed not to let anyone hurt her.
“You know how people move here from like everywhere on the planet? It’s so that they can get a good education. They just need English and the willingness to work hard. Wherever anyone at this school ends up, that’s not what’s going to define them. I mean, the only people who ever give a shit about where you went to college are people who need you to give a shit about where they went, right?”
“Right.”
“Juniors should just chill the fuck out. The best thing a junior can do is to know that senior year is right around the corner, and then the end is just after that. And the rest of your life. Junior year is a zit. Even the worst ones go away eventually.”
He could feel the stares as they walked down the hallway. Kari had to feel them too.
Why didn’t she care? How could she pretend this wasn’t happening?
It had been relentless. All morning. The stares, the whispers, the names.
The printouts of Ollie’s meme all over the school. Taken down by faculty, but not before Kari saw several.
The calls of Olly-Olly-Oxen-Freak!
The looks of shame-faced pity or worse from both teachers and students alike.
Demon Seed written in lipsti
ck on her locker. And a black scarf with what looked like dried cum stuffed inside it. On top of a picture of Kari with her father, probably taken from LiveLyfe, where some primitive Photoshop work made Ollie look like he was leering more than he was. His speech bubble read, Nice tits, Kari! Mind if I kill you?
If Corban ever found out who’d done that one, he might murder someone himself.
But Kari kept talking, ignoring the long whispers and hurried stares.
They were almost to French. He would see her inside, then hurry to Language Arts.
Fifteen feet from the door, someone shouted, “Hey Spawn!”
Kari didn’t turn around, making it the final few steps and only stopping with her hand on the classroom door.
“Hey Spawn! Offspring! Demon Seed!”
Kari clenched the knob in her white-knuckled fist. It looked like she might break it off the door. Corban didn’t know what would happen when she turned around.
“It’s Matthew Decker,” he whispered. “Just ignore him.”
“I know,” Kari said, low through clenched teeth. “I’d know that asshole’s voice anywhere. Because it always sounds like he’s talking through the hole in his tiny little dick.”
Corban wasn’t even sure what that meant, and he didn’t want to laugh with Decker staring daggers at the back of his head, but he couldn’t help it. There was no way Decker could have heard her, though he surely knew where Kari had aimed whatever she said. But he tensed anyway, because the way things were going, anything seemed possible.
“Thanks for walking me to class.” Kari reached up, kissed Corban on the cheek, opened the door and said, “You better hurry or you’ll be late for LA.”
She slipped inside the classroom, closing the door behind her.
Decker muttered, “Murderers are hot” as Corban passed him.
Unable to help it, Corban channeled his brother. “Too bad your mom isn’t. That’s why I make her wear a paper bag.”
He kept walking, knowing that he’d pay for that later. Decker wouldn’t try anything now, with Mr. Weston watching the hall. But he’d be back, and probably with his idiot friends. And he couldn’t count on Levi or the rest of the guys for help anymore.
He was on his own.
