Brother/Sister (4 page)

“Guess who?” he said. He was using his frog voice, sort of belching the words out.

I let my head fall back into his abs. Craig was really strong, even if, with his lanky surfer build, he didn’t look it. I reached around and felt up his calf muscles.

“Craig?”

“No, I’m not Craig,” he croaked.

Sometimes Craig liked to be goofy like this. I started listing off the names of his surfing buddies.

“Uh, Angel?”

“No.”

“Pauly?”

“No.”

“Tracer?”

“No.”

“Alex?”

His hand shot up off my eye for a second and he said, in his normal voice, “Hey! Don’t throw ice at me!” Then he clamped it back down and went back to the frog voice. “Guess!”

I’d run out of surfer dudes to rattle off, so I said, “Will?”

“Fuck no. It’s me, Ash,” he said, pulling his hands away and tipping my head back for an upside-down kiss. He’d been drinking. It was all over his breath. And in the slightly pushier, rougher way he was handling me. Annoying.

“Then why’d you say no when I guessed your name?”

“I was fucking with you, babe,” he said.

Still, I was glad he’d come. Craig was a much more social person than me. He could be a real party boy when he wanted to. When he wasn’t sunk in one of his moody swings, holed up in the dark playing video games, or out on the waves by himself in the dark.

I scooched over in my chair to make room for him next to me. He put an arm around my shoulder. Then he took it away again and picked up the slice of sausage and onion I’d been nibbling at, folded it in half, and took a humungous bite.

His buddies were all with him. They circled the table, high fiving the girls and stealing food along the way, until they found places to squeeze in and join the party.

And everything seemed to be fine for a while. There were more ice wars.

One of Craig’s friends, Pauly, had run into the guys on the golf team at the Exxon station that everybody bought their beer at because it never carded. Turned out Will had won. I was glad for him.

“Was he with them?” I asked. “Was he celebrating?”

I wanted him to be having the same revelatory kind of day I was.

“Naw. I didn’t see him,” Pauly said. “Anyway, those guys are tools. I can’t imagine even Will wanting to hang with them.”

For a second, I wondered why he hadn’t been in touch to tell me the news himself. I wondered if he was maybe not okay. But I didn’t wonder very hard. Not as hard as I should have.

“Hey,” Naomi said, “you should call and congratulate him.”

I must have known he wasn’t okay, actually. Otherwise I wouldn’t have protested like I did. “I’ll text him instead,” I said, whipping out my phone.

“And say congrats for me, too,” Naomi said.

While I typed in the message, Craig slid his arm under the table and started tickling all over my knee, running his finger up the inside of my thigh. I leaned into him a little, pressed my knee up against his to let him know I was glad he was here.

As soon as I was done texting, I reached down and held his hand and he slipped his fingers out of mine and started trying to play handsy with me, flicking his fingertips across my palm, lacing and unlacing them with mine, tickling, like halfway between finger dancing and groping. It made me twirl a little inside, to have Craig so conspicuously wanting me in front of everybody, but still.

“Stop it!” I mouthed.

“Stop what?” he said, looking around like,
gee whiz, who me?
And at the same time, he slid his hand off mine and started running his finger up my inner thigh again. He wasn’t doing it in an aggressive way, or he wasn’t trying to, but he was drunk and we were right there in front of everybody. It didn’t feel as good as I’m sure he’d hoped it would. I grabbed his hand and pulled it back to my knee.

“That! And shh! Everybody can hear you.”

“Ash. Asheley, Ash,” he said. “I can’t help myself. You’re looking so hot in that uniform.”

“No I’m not. And even so—” I tilted my head toward everybody around the table. They’d noticed, a few of them had anyway. Even if they were pretending not to, I could tell they were keeping track of us out of the corner of their eyes.

“You are, Ash. Polyester pinstripes. They make me crazy.”

Our jerseys are the kind that button up the front, and right there at the table with the whole team and all his surfer buddies as witnesses, he started fumbling with the top button.

“Stop it, Craig. I mean it. Not here.”

“Then let’s go someplace else. Tracer’s Tahoe is right out back. Let’s climb in the back window and go for a ride. Get it?”

“Yeah. I get it.” I was starting to get fed up with him. It was like he was not taking the hint on purpose.

He’d never been like this before. I mean, he’d been frisky, sure, but usually he at least noticed a little bit whether I was feeling the same vibe as him.

“Are you crazy, Craig? How much did you guys drink before you got here? I’m with the team. I’m having fun. Can’t you see that? Have you ever seen me go out with the team before?” I was hissing at him now.

Naomi had inched down the bench. She was pretending to be part of the conversation Colleen and Amy were having, but she wasn’t saying anything and her head was angled perfectly to catch every little thing that happened with me.

“Don’t be like that,” Craig said. He let go of me. He folded his hands in his lap and sat there, staring at the names gouged into the table.

For a few minutes, we both sat there in silence. I watched Naomi watching Colleen and Amy and ran through things I might say to instigate a new conversation with her, but I couldn’t come up with anything to say. All I could think of was Craig sulking next to me like a slug, sucking all the happiness out of my evening.

Finally I turned to him. “What? You’re just going to pout now.”

“No.”

“Then what would you call what you’re doing right now?”

He cracked half a smile and threw me a mischievous look. “How about a kiss. Just one. With some tongue action?”

That was it. I couldn’t take any more. I leapt up and grabbed him by the hand and pulled him outside.

He camped it up, waving at everybody, doing the call me thing to his friends with his fingers like it was all a big joke, but he came with me. He didn’t resist.

I should say, Craig wasn’t always such an asshole like this. He really wasn’t. He was usually a pretty great guy.

He liked to pretend he was a kind of carefree lost boy, rolling like the waves across the ocean of his life, too zen to bother asking what it all meant. But that’s just the image he wanted people to see. Him with his shirt off, showing off his Polynesian shoulder tattoo, his bright patterned surfer shorts riding so low that you could see a wisp of blond hair floating over the laces. He was usually the kind of guy who would laugh along as the day took him wherever it went. Laughing and laughing at everything—sometimes, sure, in a cruel macho way when he was with his dudes, but not always. When he was with me, we’d laugh together at the crazy things my mother put me through—or his dad, his dad had put him through some kind of hell. It was like enough laughing would solve everything in the world.

I loved that about him. Together, we made each other feel better, no matter how horrible things might be. And anyway, if I wanted a serious conversation, I had Will for that.

That night, though, maybe because it seemed like I was auditioning for a bigger, better life for myself, I wasn’t seeing the humor in his games. I feel bad about that now. I feel like . . . maybe if I’d been less hard on him, then . . . I don’t know. Forget it. That’s a stupid thought.

I marched him around the corner of Shakey’s red brick facade so nobody would spy on us through the front windows, and then, arms folded across my chest so he’d know not to mess with me, I said, “Can we be done with this, now? I’m completely serious.”

“Done with what? I thought you were bringing me out here so I could feel up your boobies. Are you dumping me, now? Why? Because I can’t help being attracted to you? You’d rather have a boyfriend who thinks you’re ugly?”

God. I almost burst into tears right then and there.

I was able to sputter out, “I’m not dumping you.”

“So . . .” He sashayed up and wrapped his arms around me, pulling me toward his groin.

“I’m not dumping you, Craig,” I said again. “I’m just . . . They like me. The team. I did good today and now they want to be my friends. Can’t . . . I mean . . .”

I was completely breaking down, pounding my fists on his chest. The tears were rolling down my cheeks. Why did I have to spell everything out for him? It was so obvious. Didn’t he know anything? Couldn’t he see how important this was to me?

“Right. I get it, Ash. That’s why we’re celebrating,” he said. “So, come on, celebrate with me.”

I guess not. He didn’t get it at all. He was going to keep wheedling and rationalizing with me until I wore down and gave him what he wanted.

“Can we do that later? Please? Can I just have fun with my new friends first? Then we can go back to your house and whatever. Okay? Please? Just like another half hour?”

“Hmm.” He drummed his lip. “Okay, but how about a kiss to seal the deal?”

At that point, I didn’t have much of a choice. We kissed. A soft lippy kiss that I cut short as soon as he started to try probing with his tongue.

He raised his fists in the air and shouted “Victory!” real slow like Kevin Dillon’s always doing on
Entourage
. And we headed back inside.

When we got to the door, I realized I couldn’t let everybody see me, not like this. I had to at least get myself together first. I hung back and let him go in without me.

The whole table turned to look when he walked in. I was watching through the window. When he noticed he had their total attention, he did the “Victory” pose again and then shimmied around in this cornball knock-kneed dance. Like nothing had happened. Being goofy, fun Craig again.

I could just imagine what they were all thinking. But it’s not like I could do anything about it. They were going to think what they were going to think no matter what I told them had happened outside. No way could I go back in there and take my walk of shame. Not if it meant seeing Naomi and the other girls on the team laughing at me. Not today. This was supposed to be the day when things changed. For the better, I mean.

It was all too much for me.

I fled.

I jumped in my car and headed home. I feel horrible about that. Part of me—a big, aching part of me—wonders how things would have gone differently if I’d had the courage to stick around, to, you know, tough it out. Then maybe Craig and I could have talked through the problem and . . . I don’t know. Things could have gone differently.

The one thing
we’ve still got from back when Dad was around is our house. Everything else might be worn out and falling apart, second-rate, on the verge of being repossessed due to the mess Mom’s made of all of our lives, but the house keeps getting paid for. Dad sends a check every month.

It’s an amazing house. Dad’s an architect—or he used to be, who the hell knows what he’s up to now—and he designed it himself. Sort of a modern rustic vibe. Dark wood, exposed beams, lots of open spaces, sky lights and big windows. It’s set up so that each room almost has a floor to itself, like tiers, each one connected to the others by a couple wide steps and a series of platforms, spiraling around this huge, cavernous living room. It’s hidden away behind an acre of forest and the backyard’s huge too. This sort of hilly sprawl. Behind that, there’s more forest, redwoods and cedars, a prickly carpet of pine needles, like two inches thick, everywhere. And then the cliffs, which are hard to get to right behind the house, but if you follow the trail maybe half a mile south, you end up at an opening where you can sit right on the edge and look out at the bay.

That’s where I went after I left the country club. I didn’t even bother to drive all the way home, just parked along the side of the road and took the short cut where Paradise bends closer to the bay.

It’s my favorite place in the world. There’s a boulder there that’s, I swear, shaped like a rabbit. I like to climb up and huddle in under the ears, and just watch what happens. You’d think you were on the edge of the earth, a thousand miles from anything. There’s eagles sometimes, and hawks, and if you follow them long enough, you can see them dive bomb for fish.

I don’t know. It just makes me feel right, being there. Whatever’s going on, I get to that cliff, and I remember who I am. I can think straight up there.

That day, the sun was just setting when I got there. You get an unbelievable view from the cliffs: the shadows creep out, and different colors streak across the water—dark purples and yellows and reds.

My head was still spinning from the weirdness of how everybody’d been treating me. Here on the cliffs, all of that fell away. It was just me and the world—and my trophy. I studied it. Every inch. I placed it in various spots on the cliff and looked at how it changed depending on the background. Facing the bay, I held it with two hands high above my head, just like I’d done on the podium, and shouted, “I did it! Vindication! You happy with me now?”

Who was I shouting to? I don’t know. The birds. The rocks. The mountains. The ocean. For a second there I thought my dad might even hear, though how could he? He lives way down here in Mexico.

Then, having made my peace with the wilderness, I wandered back to my car and drove the final little stretch of road home.

I should have known as soon as I got there that Mom had gone all to hell again. The signs were obvious, once I figured it out. All the lights were on. There was a carton of orange juice out on the counter, not even screwed closed. The Guns N’ Roses—it’s always Guns N’ Roses—was blasting out of the speakers in the open living room area, filling the whole house. The door to her room, up there at the top of the platforms curving around the main part of the house, was closed. I was stupid though. Thinking she was fine. Thinking there was no way she’d fall down again.