How We Fall (7 page)

Chris rolled his eyes, and I didn’t even try to hide my smile.

35

Mom hovered over the gurgling coffeepot. Her blonde braid hung over her shoulder, covering up the embroidered “Julia” on her shimmery chocolate bathrobe. “Good morning, hon,” she said.

She stirred her coffee with the straw she used to keep the coffee from staining her teeth.

“Yeah.” I dropped into a chair at the table and squinted out the window at the rising mist. It took me about twenty minutes before I could form a coherent sentence in the morning.

Mom stirred in a spoon and a half of sugar and enough cream to turn the coffee a rich chocolate color before setting the mug in front of me. I would have smiled at her if it hadn’t been six-thirty. How she kept the five different coffee prefer-ences in this house straight, I didn’t know.

Even though four adults lived in this house, she was the only one consistently around. Aunt Shelly worked in the garden most of the day or “researched” at local greenhouses. Uncle Ward worked at the lawn and garden store in Harris, and Dad was closeted away in his office all day.

I picked up the mug. The warm ceramic made me even drowsier. “Mom.”

“Hmm?” She slid up the storm window in the screen door and a breeze gusted through the kitchen. The engine of a truck growled distantly on the blacktop.

Thankfully, today wasn’t my day for working the stand in town, which meant Marcus wouldn’t be there, either. Which meant if Sylvia showed up, she’d have to buy her vegetables 36

Kate Brauning

and leave like a normal person. “You dated guys besides Dad, right?” I took a sip of my coffee. The scald of the earthy liquid waking me up was almost a conditioned response by now.

Thank you, Pavlov.

Her eyebrows went up. “I went on dates, yes. I loved dating.

But your father was my first real relationship.”

My anything-goes mother had avoided relationships, too.

“Why was he the first?”

She shrugged. “Dates are fun. Relationships are hard.

They’re too much stress and distraction unless it’s likely to last.

Besides, I was picky.”

Likely to last. I swallowed a third of my coffee. “Why did you pick Dad?”

“Oh, lots of reasons. Why do you want to know?”

It was my turn to shrug. “You guys aren’t really normal. I mean, most parents don’t . . . ”

She laughed and refilled her coffee mug. “Honey, everyone is unusual if you look closely enough. There’s no such thing as normal.”

I swirled the last of my coffee as she left the kitchen and went to get dressed. I pulled on my tennis shoes without unty-ing them and stumbled outside. Pausing for a moment on the porch, I sucked in the cool air. Overwhelming as this family was, it was easy to breathe out here. Morning mist still hung in the low spots and rose like steam from the creek. Giant oaks and maples clustered along creek beds and fence rows, following the curve of the hills.

I turned on the faucet by the gardening shed and watched the sprinklers whirling streams of water. Soaker hoses ran along the ground too, but some of the plants liked water on their leaves. Water dripped off the cantaloupe leaves and ran straight into the ground.

Summer was warming up at breakneck speed. In a few 37

How we Fall

weeks, the afternoon sun would scald the tomato plants and nights would be barely cooler than the days.

Marcus came out while I was heading to the henhouse.

Wooden boxes circled the inside at waist height, and thirty chickens clucked and scuffled sleepily on the beams that stretched ladder-like from the floor to the ceiling.

Pulling eggs out of the nests made me nervous. Some old hen was always sitting on her eggs. Invariably, she’d stretch out her tiny head on her long neck, her eyes would widen, and she’d let loose the shriek of an unoiled door hinge. For two seconds, I’d be convinced I was going to die.

I let Marcus get the eggs and pretended to check on the duck. She was already paddling around the kiddie swimming pool we’d bought for her, happily picking bugs out of the water.

Duck eggs were too oily for me, but the duck herself was much more fun than the chickens.

Marcus left the door open to let the hens outside. They always returned to roost for the night, and they wouldn’t wander far enough to reach the end of our ten acres.

“Sorry about yesterday,” he said.

I shrugged. “I shouldn’t have freaked out like that.” I ven-tured into the henhouse long enough to open up the steel trash can of chicken feed and pour two scoops into the feeder.

Across the yard, Chris and Angie headed out to feed the calves, giant bottles of milk replacer formula under their arms.

Heidi, our German shepherd, trotted behind them. Angie insisted on having her own chores even though she was only seven, and since it saved me from bottle-feeding, I let her do it.

Marcus and I headed back to the garden and I turned off the water. Weeding was easier when the ground was damp.

I knelt on the mulch by the green onions and yanked out clovers and grass blades. Marcus headed to the other end of the row so he could work his way toward the middle. A few times 38

Kate Brauning

I caught him looking at me, but then he’d smile hesitantly and go back to weeding.

Before my family moved to Missouri, Marcus and I had only seen each other a handful of times—every other Christmas.

Even though we barely knew each other, we’d gotten along because we were the same age. Photos of our moms holding us as infants hung in the hall, side by side, his dated three weeks after mine.

When we moved here my freshman year, I’d sulked in my room for three months, missing California and hating the Missouri winter. But Marcus lay on my bed after school every day, poking fun at
Rear Window
and
Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Our evenings were ones like last night, where all of us cousins played games until late and Chris asked my sister and me a hundred questions about California.

By spring, I’d decided Missouri wasn’t so bad.

I uprooted a vining weed and cut myself on its rope-like root. “Crap.” Blood seeped from the cut. “We need to go on strike.”

“Can you keep going, soldier, or should I carry you back?”

He always mocked my whining. “No. Man overboard. This hurts.” I kept weeding, but it pulled on the cut.

He lowered his voice. “Ilsa, I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”

I halfheartedly chucked the uprooted weed at him and let him see my grin. Quoting
Casablanca
to mock me wasn’t fair.

When we met in the middle of the row, we switched to the carrots. The chill had left the air, so I unzipped my jacket and tossed it to the side. Marcus reached for his water bottle. “We need to tell the parents that Chris has to start helping. He gets away with doing a lot less than we do.”

“I thought our problems didn’t amount to a hill of beans.”

39

How we Fall

Aunt Shelly worked in the garden every morning, trimming and thinning and plucking, and every once in a while we’d have a mandatory “garden day” where everyone had to help, but for the most part, Marcus and I did the weeding and took care of the animals.

“I don’t mind that much.” He stopped weeding and watched me. “It’s nice to hang out like this with you.”

A strange feeling constricted my stomach, just like yesterday morning. He sounded like he meant as friends, but he didn’t.

“You’re pretty sentimental for a dude, you know that?” I had to get him off this topic. “If you like this so much, instead of making out next time, we can come out here and pull dandelions.

Sound good to you?”

He laughed. “I’m not sure I’m ready for that kind of commitment.” He sat back on his heels and his grin faded. “I mean it, though. I like doing things like this with you. That’s all I meant yesterday. I just wanted to hang out with you some place that wasn’t home or the stand or school.”

For some reason, my face flushed. After everything we’d done, I was turning red at this. “Maybe you need more guy friends.”

“I have plenty of guy friends. But we don’t talk about anything, really. We play video games. But you and I, we talk about stuff.”

Of course, I said the dumbest thing possible. “Well, then you need more girl friends.”

His eyebrows drew together. “Girl friends or a girlfriend?”

My stomach lurched. “I don’t know. Whatever you want.”

Irritation thinned his voice. “I like having you for a friend, Jackie. I like that you’re around and that we get along. If that’s a problem, if I’m not supposed to actually like hanging out with you, then whatever. I don’t know how this is supposed to go anymore.”

40

Kate Brauning

I hadn’t meant to shut him down. I wasn’t entirely sure why he was upset, so I didn’t say anything. I really liked that he liked hanging out with me, but the lines were getting blurred. Maybe I was worrying for nothing, but it didn’t feel like it.

“Yes, you do,” I said. “And you keep pushing it.”

He stared at me. “What is going on with you lately?”

“I’m just saying, we have to stick to our rules.”

“Jackie. Come on.”

I rubbed a clod of dirt between my fingers until it crumbled.

“Fine. I want to back off a little. You said you didn’t want to hurt me, and you’re not.” I took a deep breath and steadied my hands on my dirt-streaked thighs. My voice turned into a whisper. “But I feel so guilty all the time. Like Uncle Ward and Aunt Shelly can see it on me. I hate sneaking around. I hate being angry that you’re the reason for it. It’s not your fault, exactly, but—”

“But what?” His voice was flat, but I couldn’t look at him or I wouldn’t be able to say it.

“I don’t like what it does to us,” I said. “All the guilt. All these things we can’t do. Feeling like we break up every time we go inside. I can’t keep it separate. It’s making me resent you.”

“Resent me.” His voice dropped off on the last word.

“Not for real. It’s just getting hard to keep things separate,” I said. I finally looked at him, and his face was completely blank.

No expression whatsoever.

He didn’t answer me. After a few minutes of nothing but the pop of roots, he stood and strode to the house. He disappeared inside and let the door bang.

I sank onto the grass and stared at the laces on my shoes. It would be so much easier if we weren’t friends. If he was just a guy from town I barely cared about.

He shouldn’t be mad. Everything I’d said was true. We needed more than our rules if we were going to keep things 41

How we Fall

from getting screwed up between us.

My sister would know what to do, if I could just talk to her about it. I wanted to text her, but there wasn’t a thing I could say about the situation that would make sense. If Ellie had stayed in town, I couldn’t have told her, but I would have wanted to.

I should have kept up with Ellie. She’d been my only friend my first year out here, and my closest friend until she left. A little quiet, maybe, but I liked that. She’d always tried to set me up with her guy friends, because she always said unless I had a boyfriend, I wasn’t really in high school. I’d laughed it off as a joke, but sometimes I did wonder if she really meant it.

I wouldn’t put it past her to run off with a guy, but she would have contacted her family by now. She wouldn’t leave them wondering, grieving, like this. Something was definitely wrong, and I couldn’t believe she’d run away or gotten into drugs.

If Marcus hadn’t taken all of my attention for those first several months, maybe I would have kept up with her. Maybe I would have known where she went.

A car pulled into the bricked driveway, so I stood up and walked down to the drive. A blue Buick four-door. I glared. I’d seen that car twice this week already. How did she even get our address?

Sylvia rolled down her window and the faint scent of lilacs drifted toward me. “Hi,” she said. “Hi. You’re Jackie, right?”

She couldn’t want more produce. She’d come to the stand yesterday. “Yeah. Was something wrong with the tomatoes?”

Sunglasses held back her layered blonde hair. She tapped her forefinger on the steering wheel. A shade of aqua I’d been trying to find colored her nails. “No, no. I just wondered—you’re Marcus’s sister?” She had a put-together, cutesy look, but her back seat was heaped with trash—fast food wrappers, shopping bags, old soda cans.

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Kate Brauning

“His cousin.”

“Oh. Is this your place, then?”

“It’s ours. Our families share the house.”

“It’s a nice house.” She kept looking toward the front door.

“Thanks.”

“Is Marcus here?”

“I’m not sure.” After he’d walked off like that, I wasn’t going to go find him and let him know admirers were lining up in the driveway.

“Can you give him something for me, then?” She dug a notebook out of her purse and scribbled on it, then tore out the page and folded it over.

“Um. Okay.” I took the note.

“Thanks.” She rolled up her window and backed out of the driveway.

I unfolded the paper. Her number was scrawled across the top. Underneath that,

Text me sometime.

- Sylvia

Throwing it out sounded like a great idea. Or burning it.

Cramming it down the garbage disposal.

The dust from her car had barely settled when another engine sounded. A truck rolled past the trees that hid our house from the road. That white truck again. The same one I’d seen at the produce stand this week. Frowning, I crumpled the note in my hand.

No one around here drove that slowly. The road was too far away for me to see his license plate. The driver turned the corner and sped up.

I stuffed the note into my pocket. If I didn’t give it to Marcus, Sylvia might mention it, and then he’d want to know why I hadn’t given it to him.

He had every right to text Sylvia. I was being childish. He’d 43

How we Fall

said there was nothing to worry about.