Brother/Sister (21 page)

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”

But I wasn’t listening anymore. I was paying attention to what he was doing with his hands, snaking them under my sweatshirt, flicking them across my skin, probing in a way, way too directed manner for any of this to be accidental.

“It’s okay,” I murmured, more to me than to him.

“But, hey,” he said. “We’re in Mexico. Far, far away from Morro Bay. That’s the good thing. And we’ve got each other. What else do we need?”

When his hand began inching up my stomach toward my bra line, I reached up and held it still. He spun me slowly around so I was facing him and he steadied me with his hands on my hipbones.

The look on his face! It told me everything. It filled me with revulsion. He thought this was some sort of honeymoon for us and that we were going to melt together now. How could he have thought that, though? Had I led him on? I couldn’t stop thinking that this was all my doing, even though I’d never once—not once—treated him like anything more than my brother. Yeah, we’d cuddled a few times earlier in the summer—chastely, just holding each other in fear, basically—but, I don’t know, I had this sense that I’d misunderstood his feelings . . . that I’d been thinking all along that he was trying to protect me like any brother would when actually he had other ideas entirely.

I was nauseous. Seriously. I came about
this
close to throwing up.

And what would he do to me if I said no to him?

He nuzzled his face into my chest.

He started kissing me.

“Wonder Twins, right?” he whispered in my ear.

“Yeah,” I said. “Wonder Twins.” But everything inside me was shouting,
No, no no! I’m not your Wonder Twin, not if this is what you meant by the phrase!

He’d gotten it all wrong. The thought of a sexual relationship with him was so sickening to me that it made me want to turn my body inside out, to leave my body and its curves behind forever, go whispering away to a place where my body didn’t exist, where nobody would ever desire it again.

But it wasn’t that easy.

He was kissing me on the lips now. He was using his tongue!

I was terrified. I had to get away from him. As fast and far away as I could. The only safe choice I had in that moment, though, was to resist as subtly as I possibly could and endure until I found a way to get him to let me go. I’m pretty good at psychologically arming myself—I’ve been doing it for years in order to deal with Mom. But if Will turned violent—which I was afraid he might if I disobeyed him—if he physically restrained me from leaving the room, I had no defense against that. He’s way, way stronger than I am. I had to be careful, keep him thinking that I had infinite trust in him.

My arms still wrapped around him, I gazed deep into his eyes, hoping that instead of my fear, he’d see the expression on my face as lusty. I ran my finger along his scruffy face. “I desperately need something to drink,” I said. “I saw a Coke machine out by the office. One of those old kinds, with the bottles. I’m going to go get one. Then I’ll be right back. Okay?”

And oh my God, it worked. He released me.

I patted his knee reassuringly.

“I’ll be right back,” I said again. “Promise.”

And somehow I managed not to start running until the door was shut tight behind me.

It took me ten minutes
to start getting worried.

I kept thinking about the smirk the guy at the front desk had given me as he handed over our key. He’d practically pissed himself when he’d seen Asheley, like jaw dropping, eyes bulging, drooling, the whole works. What wouldn’t he do to get his hands on her? My guess was there wasn’t much. He figured she was just an American whore, and who’d notice or care if he carted her away and used and abused her, then dumped her body along the side of the road when he was done. Happens all the time. These guys think women exist for their own pleasure. You could see it in his face—those dark hollow eyes, that crooked mouth and rat nose—he wasn’t above anything to get what he wanted.

And Asheley out there all alone. Stupid. So stupid.

And me still lying there on the hotel bed, waiting around for the inevitable tragedy to occur. Jesus.

I leapt up. I raced out the door into the dry hot air and looked around. A wide-open parking lot, a dumpster in the corner. Those low, whitewashed concrete walls that line every street in town. Now that it was getting dark out, there was something ghostly to the place. Like all of a sudden the dead were up walking around with the living.

No sign of Asheley and the rat boy, though. Fuck.

I was more angry at myself than her. It wasn’t her fault everybody found her sexy. She was born that way. But me, I was aware of the situation and so I should have tagged along to ward the bastards off.

In a far dark corner of the parking lot, a group of four guys were passing a bottle around. Mexican guys. Squat and round, wearing faded guayabera shirts that looked like they might be as old as the guys were.

“Hey!” I shouted, stomping toward them, peacocking, pointing at them, so they knew I meant business. “Where’d they go?”

“Where’d who go?”

One guy did all the talking. The others just hung back, snickering to each other.

“You know who. The girl. The fucking desk clerk.”

“I don’t know. We just got here, man.”

I was on top of them now, hulking over them, stepping in too close, letting them know I wasn’t afraid of anything they had and they better deal with me or there’d be consequences.

“Bullshit you just got here. You want to get into it? I can get into it if that’s how you’re gonna be,” I said. I took a step forward, puffed out my chest. I grabbed the bottle away from him and waved it around like a weapon.

“I’m serious, man. Go ask the guy at the desk if you don’t believe me.” He pointed at the office.

Through the plate glass window, I could just see the top of the clerk’s head above the check-in desk. He was still there. I raced toward him.

“Hey, man, give us our tequila back, hey?”

I stopped. And I looked at them. And I don’t know why, maybe just cause I felt like it, cause I was surging with aggression and rage, I reared back and threw the bottle as far as I could toward the buildings and streets out past the cement wall. The guys ducked like I’d just thrown a bomb, kept their heads down, waiting for the sound of shattered glass in the distance. Then they stood back up and started shouting at me in Spanish.

“Gringo asshole,” they said. “You owe us another bottle of tequila.”

But I didn’t care. I was already yanking the door to the office off its hinges. Storming in and pounding my hands on the counter.

“What’d you do with her?” I said. “Give me my sister right now, motherfucker, or I swear, I’ll tear you into a million pieces.”

The guy had been watching soccer—I know, I know, “football,” whatever—the guy had been watching soccer on a beat-up old TV mounted in the corner of the room, and he took his smart-ass time getting around to looking at me. And then he just stared—he didn’t say a word. He had a bag of tortilla chips open in front of him, and a mess of crumbs all over the desk. And every few seconds, he’d pull another chip out and chomp down on it, making a loud crunch.

“Problem?” he said.

“My sister. What the fuck did you do with her?”

“Your sister? You mean that girl I saw go running past half an hour ago? Man, I’ll tell you what, she was crying, man. What did you do to her?” Really. That’s what he said. Then he crunched into another chip and shrugged. “Sorry, man,” he said. “Can’t help you there. I don’t get involved in domestic disputes.”

And that was it. He went back to staring at his soccer game.

So, why didn’t I lunge across the desk and smack him up? Good question. I don’t know. He didn’t have Asheley. So fuck him, I left. I hopped in the Eagle and peeled out of the parking lot, figuring the town’s not that big, I could drive up and down every single street and I’d have to find something, right? Asheley’s sweatshirt or a shoe or something. And when I did, then . . . motherfuckers better watch out.

Up and down and up and down, from the foothills to the beach back to the foothills to the beach. And I didn’t see another living soul. It was like the whole town knew what had happened to Asheley and it terrified them and they’d all locked themselves in their houses for the night. Like the night was for the ghosts and the gangs and the fools willing and stupid enough to challenge them.

For the next, like, five hours, I drove like a madman all over town and I couldn’t find her anywhere. I’d probably still be driving around, but at some point, as my thoughts bounced through the possible scenarios, I realized: Dad.

I checked the slot on the dash where I’d stuffed the address. It was missing.

And I knew what had happened, it was all suddenly clear. She so idealized him. The asshole. You know, there was one day, right near the end, like a month before he disappeared from our lives for good. It was already obvious that he and Mom hated each other, that all they’d ever do was make each other’s lives hell. I’d been out on a playdate. Hanging around at one of my little friends’ houses, and he’d been supposed to come pick me up. I can’t remember all the specifics, who the friend was, why I’d been over at his house, but I do remember that for some reason his family was going out that afternoon. Some important thing, I don’t know. And there was a kind of a tight window during which Dad needed to come get me. And he didn’t come. We called and everything, and nobody picked up. And eventually my friend’s family told me they couldn’t wait any longer and they locked me out of the house, left me there to wait. And wait. And wait. And it got to be, like, three hours and I was still waiting there, sitting on the lip of their front stoop. And . . . I ended up eventually walking the whole way home. Like ten miles. And when I got there, Dad was out in the front lawn practicing his putting, just totally oblivious to what he’d done to me. And this is the part that’s stayed with me most vividly. He grinned at me. He winked. “Hey little man,” he said. “Where’ve you been?” He’d totally forgotten. That’s how important I was to him. I burst into tears, bawling uncontrollably. Feeling the void, the absolute emptiness of the world around me. Terrified. Sure that the world would gobble me up. And nobody would care. When I pulled it together to speak, I said, “Dad, I was waiting for you. Why didn’t you come pick me up like you said you would?” He bent down on a knee to meet me eye to eye and said, “Is that what I said?” I nodded. “Well, I guess that’s a lesson to you, huh? You found your way home. You don’t need me.” But I did. I did need him. The real lesson was that he didn’t care. And what would happen when Asheley realized this too? She’d shatter. She’d crumble. She’d be ruined by him. All the things I’d spent my whole life trying to protect her from.

I headed toward his address. One Ensenada Road. I trolled my way there slowly, hoping against hope that I’d see Ash stumbling down the street along the way and be able to pick her up, and maybe, I don’t know, convince her of what a bad idea this was.

My big worry at that point was that she might have beat me there, that she might have to confront him all by herself.

It must have been two or three in the morning by the time I arrived. Dad’s house was warded off, away from the street, not by one of those low cement walls that were everywhere, but by a much bigger wall, white stones carefully bonded in place, tapered pillars every six or eight feet. Through the wrought iron gate blocking off the driveway, I could see the estate. It was huge. Like, acres of land spanning all the way to what must have been a private beach, and the ocean. The house itself was almost identical to ours, the same rounded walls, the same multilevel sections, the same off-kilter windows, everything. Dad’s style, it turns out, hadn’t changed all that much. But where ours was a dark woody brown, this one was a pinkish, yellowish white, the color of scallop shells, or that’s what I gathered from what I could make out. It was pretty dark out there. The lights were all out. Dad and whoever else he might have in that house were asleep.

So I sat at the corner of the driveway and leaned against the wall and waited. Asheley would find her way here eventually. And then, she’d see for herself how much love Dad had to throw her way. What would happen then? Who would she have left?

Me, that’s who. Me and only me.

This was my last chance to stop her. To save her. And if I failed? I knew what would happen then. Game over. We’d end up in the hands of you guys. And she didn’t deserve that. I’ve said a thousand times, none of this is her fault.

I ran and I ran,
until I couldn’t run anymore, then I walked, for hours, it seemed like, along the beach, along these dark residential streets packed with tiny Spanish-style houses with ceramic roofs that looked like they were made of glued-together shards of broken pottery, along stretches of garden dense with floral scents, all these shadows and nooks and crannies where who knows what might have been hiding, Will, or who knows, some other dangerous guy—every shift in the wind, every fluttering of the leaves, made me jump—and then the big houses started up, the villas and mansions and then, my God, there it was: Ensenada Road.

The tears came crashing back—tears of relief this time—and I didn’t try to stop them. I was seeing myself ringing the doorbell to Dad’s house, seeing his face peer out the window for a moment, checking to see who it was, and then, when he recognized me, opening into a smile. He’d throw open the door. He’d gather me into his great arms and hold me tight and safe. It was about to happen. It was moments away.

I wandered down the road, checking the numbers on the houses. It was pitch-black outside, total darkness. The moon had set hours earlier.

I was nervous. I was starting to get a little squirrelly with hope.