The Pretty Ones (13 page)

There was silence among the boys.

Nell's heartbeat pounded at the base of her throat.

If they called her bluff, she was dead, but they'd have to be crazy to test her. They wouldn't. Not after how she'd pelted their stupid gang leader with rocks. Not after how he'd been humiliated.

One of the boys wasn't convinced. “You don't have no gun.” He snorted out his skepticism to the nervous chagrin of his peers.

Nell stopped walking.

All sense and reason screamed for her to not do whatever she was about to do.
Don't,
Barrett would have scrawled onto his notepad.
Keep walking. Don't be an instigator.
But if she continued on her way, they'd
know
she was lying, and that was something Barrett had taught her as well. If you were going to con someone, you had to ride it out all the way. If you were going to lie, you had to commit.

She turned her head, gave the group a
try me
look. “I'm pretty sure I do,” she said, her tone flat and even. “And I'm pretty sure I have a rock or two with your name on it too . . . before I blow your head off.”

A few of the boys grew wide eyes, stunned by her gall. The kid who had claimed she was lying gaped at her for a long while, motionless, as if carefully considering what to say or do next. Finally, he smirked and gave his gang a look.

“Eh, let's go,” he said. “
Esta perra es loca
.”

Nell watched them pedal away, fascinated by the fact that they were leaving rather than getting even for the rock attack. It was a revelation. An overwhelming sense of power. The same feeling that had nibbled at the arteries of her heart after she'd told Mary Ann where to shove her presumptuous bullshit. The gang's retreat was a reassurance that, yes, she
was
in charge, that she
could
decide what did and didn't happen in her life. If she could fend off a group of harassing boys, a couple of high-maintenance girls would be a laugh. Nell glanced down to the Gimbels bag in her left hand, as though she had bought a helping of courage off a sales rack along with her new clothes and shoes.

“
Es loca
,” she repeated to herself. She didn't speak Spanish, but she knew enough of it to know that
loca
meant
crazy
. And if they thought she was crazy, all the better. Because you had to be nuts to mess with a lunatic.

.   .   .

Nell unlocked the apartment door and Barrett looked up from his book. She gave him a smile, the paper of the large Gimbels bag crunching against the side of her left thigh. “Sorry I'm late.” Her good mood beamed out at him. After her lunch with the girls, her mini–shopping spree, and now her success at fending off those idiot boys, she'd never felt better.

Swinging the apartment door closed with her foot, she stepped across the shabby space to the kitchen table and draped the plastic wardrobe bag over the back of a chair. The Gimbels bag went onto the top of the table as carefully as a new mother would have placed a baby in a bassinet. Those two bags, Nell was sure, held the key to her new life, to new friends and new opportunities. She gazed at them thoughtfully, then turned her attention to her brother.

What's all this?
Barrett held up his yellow pad from where he sat, curious, but not quite curious enough to rise from his seat.

“I went to Gimbels,” she said. “After how my shirt and pants got ruined last week, I figured I was due for a few new things anyway.” Kicking off her scuffed penniless loafers, she dug in the bag for the shoebox that held her brand new sandals inside. “See?” She held one of them up by its strap, then took a seat, slipping her feet inside. Cinderella's life had been changed by a pair of shoes. Maybe she'd have similar luck.

“Aren't they cute?” She lifted both feet from the floor, turning her ankles left and then right, admiring her sandals in the dull kitchen light. She stood, pulled a pretty pink blouse from the bag on the table, and held it up against her chest for Barrett to see. “What do you think?”

I think they're fit for a hooker,
he scribbled.
The shirt too.
He remained in his chair, staring at her as though his sister had finally lost her mind.

“Oh, shut up, brother,” she murmured. “A hooker would never wear this.”

Neither would a fat chick.

Nell blinked at the callous comment he had scrawled across the square of yellow paper. Barrett wasn't one to mince words—each syllable was precious when it had to be written by hand—but he was rarely this cruel.

She swallowed against the sudden lump in her throat. Looked away from the way his mouth had turned down at the corners. She frowned at the floor in return, and delicately folded the blouse into fourths before tucking it back into the bag, where two more shirts remained hidden from view.

“You know, I don't understand why you're upset,” she said softly, her back to him, trying to keep her voice steady. “It isn't like I spent a million dollars, and it's not as though
you
never stay out late now and again.” She paused in contemplation, her eyes fixed upon the interior of the Gimbels bag. “Sometimes I wait all night for you to come back from wherever you run off to. Sometimes it seems like you don't come back until morning, like you don't give a damn that I'm worried at all.”

She listened for movement. If Barrett shifted in his chair, she'd look over her shoulder to read his body language. If he didn't, it meant he had no response, and no response was Barrett's fail-safe. He'd just drop his pad of paper onto the floor and walk away. Meaning:
This conversation is over
.

As kids, she'd been the chatterbox while Barrett had been the silent one, even when he could still talk. Their mother liked the quiet. She constantly complained about Nell's inability to keep her mouth shut the way her brother could. Barrett, on the other hand, was an expert at playing ghost. During the only road trip the Sullivans had taken as a family, both Fay and Leigh had panicked when Barrett had disappeared into the back of the station wagon—odd for them, since they weren't overly cautious parents. He was so quiet for so long, they were convinced they had left him at the gas station fifty miles back, but he'd been in the car the whole time. Sometimes, Nell wondered what it would have been like if they
had
left him, left them both—if she and Barrett had locked themselves in a gas-station bathroom and waited for their parents to drive into the sunset.

“And since you're already mad, I may as well tell you,” Nell announced, still not looking his way. “I've decided that if I'm not happy, I should make more of an effort—you know, make the life I want. So, on occasion, I'm going to start coming home late from now on. And that's on purpose.” Her pointer finger drifted along the chrome seam of the table. She didn't want to see the look on his face, so she kept talking instead. “I had lunch with some coworkers this afternoon. Savannah and Miriam. At the diner across the street from the office.” Unable to resist any longer, she glanced up at him, crossing her fingers that this time his expression would be one of surrender rather than determined disapproval.

No such luck.

Barrett was sitting stick straight in his seat, clutching his little note pad.

“They're
nice
, Barrett. They're not like Mom at all.” Well, maybe
Adriana
was, but Nell didn't like her anyway. She didn't have to be friends with all of them, didn't have to bring up the likes of Adriana and Mary Ann Thomas at all.

“This apartment gets stifling,” she said, pleading for him to understand. “Isn't that why you go out, to get away from this shabby old place?”

Nothing.

“Barrett, I wish you would
say
something! Just once, I wish you would at least try!”

She turned away, clamped her teeth tight. For a long while, there was no movement from Barrett's side of the apartment. Then, all at once, he was out of his chair, charging her. Nell blinked at him, wide-eyed. She nearly crawled onto the kitchen table to avoid him. The Gimbels bag tumbled to the floor. Her new blouses spilled onto the hardwood. The wardrobe bag slid off the back of the chair. She lunged for it, trying to save her precious new things. But Barrett was fast. He swept a couple of the blouses up in an angry fist, crushing the fabric in his grip.

“Stop it!”

Nell grabbed for her shirts, afraid that he'd tear them to shreds if it meant keeping her home. He knew better than anyone that she was self-conscious about her looks. That she'd never go out if she didn't have anything to wear. But
this
was too much for him—the new clothes, the fact that she was planning on stepping out with the girls, and regularly at that. It meant hitting a place that served drinks, and if there was ever a fitting symbol for their mother's cruelty, it was a half-empty bottle of booze. Nell was sure Barrett would kill her before he ever let her become a carbon copy of the sloppy drunk who ruined their lives. But she yanked the blouses from his grasp anyway. He let go, and she stumbled backward, crashing into the kitchen wall. A picture frame fell, cracking against the floor.

“Stop it!” she repeated, screaming it this time. “Barrett, just
stop
it! I can't live like this anymore! We're separate people, goddamnit! You can't control me like this!”

He froze where he stood, glared down the length of his nose at her in a silent challenge.

Oh, I can't control you? Watch me.

“No,” she whispered, despite him not having said or written a single word. But she could see it in his eyes—the defiance, the objection, the determination to crush Nell's ridiculous whims beneath the sole of his sneaker. He was done fighting with her. It was high time he ended the whole thing with a win. Barrett turned away from her and marched out of the kitchen with his fingers balled into fists.

Nell found herself alone, clutching her new shirts in clenched hands that matched her brother's. Tears stung her eyes, ran hot down her cheeks. She let her fingers unfurl as she tried to steady her breathing. Maybe he was right. Maybe going out with the girls would turn her into something insufferable, something that she was never meant to be. Perhaps the whole idea of making friends to save herself from the pain of losing Barrett would circle in on itself. Maybe it would make Barrett leave instead. But she couldn't go on like this for much longer. If she didn't try, if Barrett took off and Nell found herself alone, what then?

It seemed as though there was no answer. Every solution she came up with was wrong.

“Oh God.” She whimpered the words into the silence of the apartment. “Barrett, I'm sorry!” But Barrett didn't answer, and he didn't bother resurfacing from his room.

She tossed her wrinkled shirts onto the table and approached his door, but he wasn't there. She turned her attention to his window, the sill dotted with a couple of houseplants. He'd gone down the fire escape, his usual way of exiting the apartment. Nell rushed across the room, shoved the pane open and jutted her head out the window. “Barrett!” she yelled down to the street below, but he was long gone. All she saw was a tall, Latin woman being harassed by a couple of guys. They looked up at her with raised eyebrows, pausing their argument. “Where did he go?” she asked them. Maybe they would at least point her in the right direction. If she hurried, she could catch up to him before the city swallowed him whole. But all they did was give her blank stares before going back to their caterwauling. The Latina took the opportunity to lift her arm and smack one of the men with her giant purse.

The tears came again. Nell shoved the window closed and left Barrett's room, plucked her new things off the table, and made her way into her bedroom. But as she gathered a few hangers out of the closet, a sob hitched in her throat. One of her old shirts was crumpled in the corner, lying next to a pair of her ratty old loafers—ones that were far too old to wear to work. The stupid thing must have slid onto the floor, the filmy satin never wanting to stay in place on the thin wire hanger. She kneeled down, caught the shirt between her fingers, and swept it off the ground, only to drop it with a gasp. Taking a step back, her gaze fixed on what looked like rust-colored polka dots tarnishing the otherwise cream-colored fabric. Nell was naive, but she immediately knew what those spots were.

He was getting back at her. Those spots, they were Linnie's—

No.
Don't even think it!

She pushed the shirt toward the back of the closet with her foot, turned to face the new clothes she had placed on the bed, and froze. She couldn't just leave that shirt on the floor, not without running the risk that someone would find it and put two and two together. Turning back to the closet, she started to cry again.

“Everything will be okay,” she told herself as she gathered up her ruined blouse. “You can do this. You're in charge.” Except, was she? “Yes, you are,” she sobbed, pressing the heels of her hands into the sockets of her eyes. Reaching the kitchen, she shoved the soiled shirt into the almost-full trash can, pushed it deep into the garbage and tied the bag tight.

“He said so,” she whimpered to herself as she stalked across the house to Barrett's room. “
He said so
,” she murmured. She shoved the window open. Stepped out onto the fire escape. Let the bag drop from her hands to the Dumpster three stories below.

“The revolution has come.”

It's what the boy in the street had yelled at her when she had asserted herself against those bike-riding bullies.

The revolution had come.

The revolution was her, and Barrett would have to deal with it, whether he liked it or not.

.   .   .

But, as usual, it was hard for Nell to disregard her brother's angry response. She tried to read but couldn't concentrate. She tried to eat but wasn't hungry. She folded down the sheets and prepared herself for bed. But once she lay down, she found herself staring up at the ceiling, wide awake, her head pounding like a bass drum without a beat. Eventually, she rolled out of bed, showered, put on her new skirt and sandals and one of the blouses she had bought, after ironing out the wrinkles Barrett had put in the fabric. She tied a fresh ribbon in her hair and left the apartment instead. Because if Barrett was going to go out, headache be damned, so was she. He couldn't keep bossing her around like this. She had to show him that she meant to do what she said. He couldn't keep disregarding her, couldn't keep treating her like she didn't matter.