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Resistance Is Futile

Thursday morning, I grabbed a quick shower, combed my hair, and grabbed one of the hair products I'd picked up over time to rake some gel into it. “Bedhead,” Julie'd said. I shrugged at my reflection and saw Kenny.

Lookin' good.
He ran his hands over his—my?—okay,
our
hair and grinned.

“Gotta go.” I wasn't in the mood to start off the day beating my head against Kenny's.

“Hey, bud, where's the fire?” my dad said when I nearly tackled him at the kitchen door.

“I'm picking up Brandon.”

“Brandon. Who's that again?”

“Kid at school.”

“The one you protected?”

I nodded and caught the frown he tried to hide. “What?”

Dad shook his head. “Dan, I thought we settled this last night. I worry how you'll handle this if you have to say good-bye.”

I sighed. “I won't. It won't happen. I promise.”

Dad put down the pair of coffee cups he held in each hand and gripped my shoulders. “Danny, I don't want to see you hurt again.”

I frowned. “Dad, I know what I'm doing.”

His hands tightened on my shoulders and he gave me a little shake. “What aren't you telling me?”

I raised my hands, spread them. “Dad, Brandon's in trouble. I think.” I blew out air. “Well, I'm sure. I just…you know…I'm not sure how to help.”

Dad looked at the watch strapped to his wrist. “You've got about five minutes before you're late. Condense it for me.”

“Okay.” I nodded, pulled in a deep breath. “He's got no friends. Only child with a ton of high-tech toys he uses to read all the lies and crap other kids are saying about him. Yesterday, I watched him bait the guy who's been hassling him. He wasn't happy I stepped in.”

My dad's eyebrows shot up. “Why not?”

“I think he was planning to get even.”

He was shaking his head before I finished speaking. “Danny, no. This is too much. You can't get involved.”

“Dad! I
am
involved. I can't ignore this, not when I know what I know.” I pulled out of his reach, grabbed my books.

“Dan.”

Frowning, I turned back.

“Why don't you take this up to your mother?” He held out one of the cups of coffee.

“I'm late.” I grabbed my keys and bolted, passing my grandfather on the way. He didn't say a word to me. He hadn't in a very long time.

————

At Brandon's house fifteen minutes later, he was outside waiting for me. “Hey.”

“Hey,” I greeted him. “Here. Keep it.” I handed him a tub of hair gel. “I've got like a dozen of these products.” He didn't need to know that I had so much because different hairstyles helped me conceal my identity.

He grunted, stowed the stuff in his backpack. “So, you up for more video games?”

I moaned. “So you can kick my ass again? Pass. I have to practice with the speech team today. Hang and wait if you need a ride.”

“Nah, I can take the bus home.”

“You sure? I don't want Dean to have another shot at you.” I pulled into a spot and cut the engine.

“I'm not worried. He won't have time to come after me for a while.”

Right. ISS.

“Still. His friends might try something.”

He jumped from the car and slammed the door. “I told you I don't need a friggin' baby-sitter,” he yelled over his shoulder.

Good
job, dick.

Shut up, Kenny.

Brandon never waited for me that afternoon. The next day, he avoided me. Saturday, when I called him, he gave me some lame excuse about having to rake leaves to get out of running on the beach with me. The days passed slowly, and Brandon grew more tense and weird, like he had some kind of internal clock counting down the minutes until some momentous event. When he wasn't actually avoiding me, he was too quiet, like he was there in body only.

I had to face facts. I wasn't helping.

Not one bit.

————

Julie did not look up when I walked in to first-period speech class on Monday morning. She was too busy with her close, personal, whispered conversation with Jeff. Jeff, unfortunately, did notice me and shot me his usual glare. Guess he thought it scared me.

As if.

Julie's head whipped around and then back again.

I stared at the back of her head for a long moment and finally jerked back to reality when Paul elbowed me. I never even saw him sit down.

“Come on, man. Stay focused. We need you.”

I tried, but it was hard to sit close enough to smell Julie and not touch her, not even talk to her. When the bell finally rang, I hung back, deliberately gave her the chance to apologize. She was the first one out of the classroom.

You
have
to
catch
up
to
her, find out what's wrong.

I already knew what was wrong. She regretted it.

Oh, come on! You probably just suck at kissing.

Really not helping, Kenny.

I kept my head down the rest of the day, and by dismissal, I was over her, certain I'd finally convinced myself she was better off not knowing me. I got in my car, started driving.

I ended up on Circle Court, parked in front of her house. Fifteen minutes later, the bus squealed to a stop, and there she was.

The line between her eyebrows made another appearance. She looked up and down the street and finally approached.

“You can't be here now.”

Why
the
hell
not?
Kenny demanded.

Good question. “Why the hell not?”

“Because it's not a good time.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Oh, sorry. Why don't you tell me what time
is
good and pencil me in?”

She smiled a big, cheesy, fake grin. “Sure. How about when hell freezes over?” With a flounce of hair, she strode into the house and left me standing out in the cold.

What
the
hell
just
happened?

I huffed out an unhappy laugh. “I'll let you know when I figure it out.”

The Spare Girl

It was Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving and a four-day weekend. I had to drag my ass out of bed that morning. I lay there, mentally counting all the people avoiding me. There was Brandon, the only friend I'd made in like five years. My mother, who'd cook big meals each night but mysteriously fall ill when it came time to eat them. And Julie, a girl who had no idea what I was but kissed me anyway and then couldn't stand the sight of me. And rounding out the list, the grandfather who hadn't spoken a civil word to me in freakin'
years
.

My life couldn't possibly suck worse than it already did.

Stop
whining. What more could possibly happen?

Kenny had a point, so I pried my butt out of bed, showered, and dressed. All too soon, I was parking in front of the school, my breaths coming in pants against the cold lump of dread that sat like day-old oatmeal and stuck to the sides of my gut. A knock on my window stopped the hyperventilation. And the flow of blood. And possibly the operation of several vital organs.

Julie stood outside my window.

I sucked in air, winced at the burn, and powered down my window. “What?” I demanded without facing her in what I hoped was a preemptive strike, a sort of cold offense, my flat tone pretty damn believable. Zac Efron had nothing on me.

“Not a morning person, are you?”

I frowned. “Just following your lead.”

“Yeah? How's this for a lead? Let's cut class.”

My head whipped up.

Julie's hair was down. I loved it best when she wore it like this, a gold halo. Today's glasses were pink with purple flowers that matched the pink jacket she wore. The bag was hanging off one shoulder, making her hunch a bit, and I realized I was grinning. I couldn't help it. Julie smiled, and it was like the sun came out.

Unlock
the
doors, jerk.

My hand reached for the control before I remembered I wasn't listening to Kenny. My eyes tracked Julie as she hurried around the car, climbed in the seat beside me. She tucked the bag into the well beneath the glove compartment, and I couldn't resist a poke. “You ever leave that beast at home, where it can, oh, I don't know, gestate or mutate or something?”

She speared me with a fierce look. “This,” she said and stabbed a finger at the bag, “goes everywhere I go. I never leave home without it.” And then she blushed. “Except for that one time when you took me for dinner.”

There was something in her tone, something almost feral that made me believe the bag was a kid and Julie its mother. I made a mental note not to tease her about it again.

Good
idea.
Kenny flipped pages in a pocket-sized pad in my mind.

Great. I was hallucinating secretaries now.

“So,” Julie was saying, and I focused my attention on her. “Where should we go?”

I cocked an eyebrow at her. “You're serious about cutting class?”

She shrugged. “Why not? Yesterday was, uh, intense. I figure we could use some down time. Together.” She put extra emphasis on that word, and my stomach flipped.

“Together. That's, um, funny. You haven't been able to look at me since we kissed.”

Kenny groaned in my mind
. Jeez, man. She's trying to apologize.

Okay, I conceded. That did sound pathetic, even to me.

Julie, however, didn't think so. “Can you forgive me for that?”

I started the car and didn't answer even though Kenny was chanting
yes
in my head. “Where do you want to go?” I asked once I'd hit the main road.

She fastened her seat belt. “How about the beach?”

My eyes widened. “I'm always up for the beach, but are you sure? It's freezing.” It hadn't snowed yet, but it was cold. I had a blanket in the back of my car. My mother worried I'd get stuck in a snowbank or something. There was probably a packed picnic basket back there too. A spear of pain pierced my heart when I thought of Mom. I would apologize when I got home later, I vowed.

Julie and I were silent as I drove to Smith Point. Long Island had a lot of beaches, one of the things I loved most about living here. I'd spent a satisfying—if lonely—summer exploring them, starting with Jones Beach. I'd been to Sunken Meadow (didn't like the rocks), Montauk, which was good for fishing and surfing but not much else, Robert Moses, and the Hamptons. I liked Smith Point because it wasn't very far from my Holtsville home. I liked to walk around the memorial erected to honor victims of the plane that crashed off the coast years before I'd moved here. It was peaceful.

The access road was deserted, except for the occasional Parks vehicle. I pulled into a spot near the Pavilion, closed for the season, and cut the engine. A few brave gulls battled the cold, circling the beach. I jerked my head toward them. “Must be fish near the surface. See how they hunt?”

Julie watched for a minute. “Wanna walk?”

I glanced at her feet—beige suede boots. “No, it's too cold. You're not dressed for it. Those Icks things you're wearing will be soaked in under a minute.”

She laughed. “They're called Uggs.”

“Same thing.” My eyes followed the boots up the curve of her body. She wore dark jeans exactly the same shade of blue as her eyes. She'd unzipped the pink jacket. Underneath, I could make out a purple shirt whose buttons strained over the swell of her chest. My face grew hotter, and I quickly averted my eyes, fixed them back on the circling gulls. I waited for Kenny to make some smartass remark, but he was strangely quiet. I did a quick scan for him, found him in his corner, lounging with his hands clasped under his head, his legs stacked one over the other.

Weird.

“You hungry?” She grabbed the bag and foraged for a minute. I had this bizarre image of her in a helmet with a carbide lamp. She emerged, a wide smile on her face, bearing two breakfast bars.

I took one, unwrapped it. Strawberries and cream. Mm. Good. I hadn't realized I was hungry until she suggested it. “Seriously, if I ask for a scalpel, a flashlight, and a skeleton key, are you gonna dive back into that purse and find all three?”

She shrugged. “Flashlight, yes. No scalpel. No skeleton key.”

“You know what's in there?”

“Every item.”

“Is it bottomless or enchanted or something?”

Her smile widened. “Oh, like Hermione's bag in the last Potter book? I wish. It would be nice to carry something smaller.”

“Then why do you carry it?” Curiosity burned in me.

Her smile dimmed, and her eyes misted. “Remember when I told you about my brother?”

I nodded. It wasn't something I was likely to forget. “You have his Lego project in there.”

“Yeah, I have a lot of his stuff in here. To protect it.” She focused her attention on the bag's zipper. “When I was thirteen, my brother…um…died. Well, half-brother really.”

I swallowed hard, wishing I could ease the pain I heard in her voice.

“It was hard. After the funeral, I wanted to be with my dad more than anything, but my mom said Dad and Erica were having a hard time just taking care of themselves right now. It would be easier if they didn't have to take care of me too. My sister had already taken off with her boyfriend, and my dad…just seemed to forget about me. Days passed. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore. I cried and cried until Mom took me to his house. I had to see him. I had to—I don't know—feel that connection, I guess.”

Julie stared through the windshield, the cereal bar in her hand forgotten. “I ran up the front steps and into the house. At first, I didn't think anybody was there. And then I heard this sound. It was coming from upstairs, so I followed it, even though I didn't know what it was. You ever hear the howl a cat makes when it's in pain? That's kind of what I heard. I ran up the stairs into…into my brother's room and found my dad having…like this fit or something.”

Julie pushed the hair off her face and sank lower into the leather seat. “He was crying and charging through my brother's room, smashing stuff, swiping things off shelves into a big pile in the center of the room. He'd brought all the garbage cans in from the yard and was just shoveling stuff into them. I knew he was grieving. I knew how much pain he was in. I swear I knew. I thought he'd regret it. When he calmed down and saw all of my brother's stuff destroyed—gone—he was going to hate himself. I didn't know what to do, so I did the only thing that came to mind. I wrapped myself around him in a huge hug, you know, because I didn't know what to say, but—”

She broke off, raised a hand to her cheek, and rubbed. A shiver of dread ran over me when the significance of that gesture hit me. I shook my head. “No.”

“He hit me. He hit me so hard I landed across the room. I was so stunned, so hurt I couldn't even cry. I just…shut down while he raged about how it should have been me, not my brother. It should have been
me
because I was the spare girl and he had only one son.”

Tears rolled down her face, and I thought about Liam. Is this how I made his father, his sister feel? Did Liam's sister carry around his treasures in a huge bag so they wouldn't be lost?

Doubt
it. Dad said he didn't have siblings
, Kenny reminded me, but it did little to soften the ball of guilt that sat petrified in my gut like crappy cafeteria food. I'd
done
this. Maybe I hadn't done it to Julie, but I'd done this, made somebody else feel as horrible as she felt. And the old familiar urge to drown myself in the pounding surf caressed me.

“My mom and Carl, my stepdad, stopped him from doing any more damage. They took me out of the house. I never went back. Everything I have in this bag is all I could rescue from the trash.”

I took her hand, squeezed it. “I'm sorry, Julie. I'm so sorry.”

She tugged her hand free. “That's not the worst part of the story.”

Oh God. I waited for her to continue.

“Do you know what happened to my brother?”

I shrugged. “Only what you told me.”

“I was there that weekend. I was the one who found him, hanging from the rod in his closet.”

My body went numb. Liam had hanged himself. And during my first month in juvie, a kid also hanged himself. It's not a clean, fast death like it is in the movies. If the noose isn't tied right, your neck doesn't break, and you slowly strangle. Your face mottles and swells. Your tongue and your eyes protrude. I had nightmares for weeks, seeing Liam's face on this kid's body, knowing it was my fault, that I was responsible. The guilt chasing me, biting my ankles, finally caught up to me, and I had nowhere to go. I had to turn and face it.

Don't ask her, man. Please don't ask. Please
, Kenny begged.

I pressed my hands to my ears in a futile attempt to silence him. I wasn't even sure what difference knowing would make. I only knew I had to know.

“Julie, please.” I whispered. “What was his name?”

She paled. “I…I can't, Dan. I'm sorry. I can't say his name. Please don't make me. It hurts too much.”

And she was in my arms, sobbing into my shoulder. I smoothed her hair, pressed a kiss into it. “It's okay, Julie. Shhh. It's okay.”

But—big surprise—I lied. It
wasn't
okay. It was light-years away from okay. Was I the one? Did I kill Julie's brother? Destroy her family, carve the groove deep into her forehead? The questions were eating a hole through my heart.

Bro, relax. If you'd been the one, do you think she'd be crying on your shoulder?

She was quiet for a long moment. I glanced at her, wondering if she was disgusted. Shocked. Plotting my imminent demise. Something. But she just stared back at me, eyes dark and brooding.

Finally, she took a deep breath and lowered her eyes. “My dad lived in…in um, Maryland, when we lost my brother.”

I shut my eyes and let my head fall back against the seat. It wasn't me.

It. Wasn't. Me.

I wanted to shout it up and down the beach. I'd grown up in New Jersey, not Maryland. Relief so profound filled me, and for a moment, I thought I had actually swapped places with one of those gulls. It was the lightest I'd felt in years.

Still, the similarities were, like, eerie or something. I drove a kid to suicide and then fall for a girl whose brother died in exactly the same way.

You
know, some people don't believe there's any such thing as coincidence.

I sighed. Kenny, can't you just leave well enough alone for once?

I frowned as I mentally counted all the ways he always shut the sun out of my life. Something else she'd said finally registered. “So you're already eighteen then?”

“Yeah. Last April.”

April, huh? “Mine's in April too. The thirtieth. When's yours?