2: Emma

A Chapter by J_Star

My back feels all sticky and sweaty and gross from pressing into the plastic of the pool chair. I shift my position and tilt my closed eyes toward the sun, trying to ignore the dizzy spin of Jay’s name in the back of my brain. Shut up, I tell it. I’m not listening to you.

It doesn’t shut up. Just loops around again, a little heavier, a little louder. Jay Jay Jay Jay JAY.

I huff out a sigh.

I’ve been pretending for ten days that I can’t feel him in there, telling myself what I always tell myself: It’s impossible. Nobody can have a barometer of another person’s mental state in their brain. I mean science.

But the weird spinny pressure doesn’t care about science. Doesn’t care that its existence is impossible. My twin brother hangs out in my head anyway, the glass of his barometer jammed like a splinter right between the parietal and occipital lobes of my brain. Breaking the laws of physics with the space he’s taking up.

Jay’s good at breaking things. Rules. Windows. Hearts.

I take my sunglasses off and sit up. It’s hotter than Satan’s armpit by the pool where Lexi and I have been dozing in the sun for an hour, the heat baking our bodies and brains into slurry lethargy. Her arm is slung over her face. “Hey,” I say.

No answer. I push the bottom of her chair with my foot and she jerks her head up, blinking in the blinding light. “I gotta go find Jay.”

She exhales and drops her head back down onto her chair. “For real?”

“Yeah.” I pick up my towel and wipe the sweat off my face. “Something’s going on with him.”

Lexi yawns. “When’s the last time you even saw him?”

“Week and a half ago.” I stand up and tie my hair into a ponytail, remembering the long, thin smear of blood on the bathroom sink, wiped away like there’d been a lot more of it. He’d seemed fine that morning, curled up in the big chair by his window with his headphones on, focused on whatever he was drawing in his sketchbook.

But then he left, and something changed.

Lexi sits up and stretches, then leans back into the chair. “Well, not to be a jerk, but you know he’s just gonna shut you down like he always does.”

“I’m going anyway.”

She shrugs. “Suit yourself. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

I suppress the eye roll, knowing that her ego never recovered from two years ago when she decided Jay was really hot and incessantly hit on him for weeks. The Leave me the f**k alone he scribbled across her locker in permanent marker finally did the trick.

I push my feet into my flip flops and Lexi stands up and folds her towel over her arm. “Are you working tonight?” she asks.

“At five. You going to the game?”

“No, Mark’s taking me out to dinner.”

“Oh. I’ll tell Dev. Maybe she can get that friend of hers to sub.” I wipe my sunglasses off with my towel.

“I don’t know why you’re so into it,” Lexi says. “It’s not like fast-pitch. It’s kind of boring. All those women are like… old.”

“They’re not old. They’re in their thirties. And why do you keep coming if it’s so boring?”

“Cuz you asked me to.” She steps into her sandals.

I don’t answer her. It’s getting so tired how she’s been torn between kissing my butt and being sarcastic to me since three months ago when she pretty much ditched me to start dating that dope Mark. Now she only comes over to tan and we never talk about anything that matters anymore.

I check the time on my phone. Half past three. Mom won’t be home from work for hours. Dad will come home at six, nuke some crappy frozen dinner, and butcher his neural connections with scotch until he passes out in the den. Nobody’s said a thing about how long Jay’s been gone. Not that I really want Dad to with the way he and Jay fight, because who wants to listen to that, but still. Ten days.

I text Dev, then Lexi and I gather up our stuff. In the kitchen she pulls her orange sundress over her bikini and picks up her keys and purse from the counter. “Catch you later,” she says. “Good luck.”

“Thanks.” I let her out the front door and close it behind her.

In my room, I pull on some bike shorts under a skirt. I take my keys out from where I left them as a place holder in a physics book and zip them into my pocket, then lift my arm. I don’t exactly smell like a summer rose. But where I’m going, I doubt anyone will notice.

Back downstairs I chug a bunch of water, then wheel my bike out of the dark, stuffy garage into the bright heat.

***

Some mulleted old guy who looks like a total creeper stares at me as I cruise down Sixth Street on my bike. I keep my eyes the other direction and pretend I’m looking at the bowed, mildewed roofs of the decrepit houses I’m passing, at the unseasonal lawn ornaments, the tire tracks and feral cats running through the scraggly yards. After I pass him I slow down at a stop sign with the word F**K spray-painted on it in dripping black letters, then roll over the crumbling pavement of the intersection.

I stop in front of Randy’s house and stand there for a minute, trying to work up the nerve to go up to the door. It’s clear why Jay refers to this dump as the Pit of Despair. The entire thing could fit into our two-car garage. My eyes move over the ratty blankets hanging over the insides of the two front windows, one of which is cracked and has duct tape over it. The wooden front porch sags under the weight of an ancient fridge. Baseball-sized rocks litter the warped and mildewed roof.

Looking at its crooked, squalid dumpiness makes me realize how much Jay must hate being at home if this is a more appealing alternative.

I drop my bike next to a rusty blue car with its hood propped open and climb the three steps to the porch, skipping over the half-rotted top step. A stack of cracked ceramic pots has fallen across the porch boards. I push a few terra-cotta shards aside with my flip-flopped foot.

The gray metal front door looks like it’s been kicked in a few times. I stand in front of it and hold my breath.

The velocity of a body remains constant unless the body is acted on by an external force.

Jay’s velocity is unknown. I am an external force.

I knock.

A skunky stink of pot and nicotine hits me as soon as the door opens. I wave the smoke out of my face. When I finish coughing, some guy is standing there holding a cigarette and staring at my chest. I take a step back and fold my arms. “Is Jay here?” I ask around my fear. The dude easily has 70 pounds on me and is maybe five years older. Not to mention he’s looking at me like I’m a steak and he’s hungry.

“Uh,” the guy says. His patchy facial hair is the epitome of disgusting. He finally tears his eyes off my body and turns his head. “Hey Jay!” he yells into the house.

“What!” I hear my brother yell back hoarsely from inside somewhere. My fear unwinds, just a little, when I hear his voice. I can’t see very far into the house. Too bright out here and too dark in there. There’s no cool air coming out with the smoke stink, so I guess there’s no A/C.

“Some chick’s here for you,” the guy shouts. “She’s hot!” He grins at me and wiggles his eyebrows, stepping out onto the porch. I wrap my arms tighter around my chest and take another step back, angling away from him so he can’t stare at me.

I hear the door creak open further and I turn. Jay’s slumped against the doorframe like it’s the only thing holding him up. I raise my hand to my mouth. He looks… awful. Awful. Like he’s lost a ton of weight and been beaten. A big red line cuts across his flushed left cheek and through the greenish remains of a bruise around his eye. Both his eyes have dark circles under them like he hasn’t slept for the whole time he’s been gone. It doesn’t look like he’s showered in that long either.

“F**k off, Mike,” he says to the guy, who’s still standing there. “She’s my sister.”

Mike snorts. “Whatever. She’s still hot.” He goes back into the house and I breathe out the tiniest sigh of relief. Jay steps out and shuts the door.

“Sorry,” he says. “That guy’s a d****e.”

“Jay, my God. What happened to you?”

“What? Nothing.” He coughs hard into the crook of his arm. His skin is covered in a sheen of sweat.

“Nothing my a*s. Have you looked in a mirror?”

“I tripped and hit a doorframe.” He won’t meet my eyes, but I can see his irises are dark. His eyes seem to change all the time. Now they’re such a dark blue they’re almost black.

“You tripped? Were you high?” I know he and Randy do that over here.

“No.”

“Are you high now?”

“No, God. What the hell.” More coughing. It’s awful, liquidy and hacking.

I don’t think I believe him. His eyes look so strange. “You sound really sick.”

“It’s just a cold. Randy has one too. So does Frankie.”

“Who’s Frankie?”

Jay pauses like he has to think about it for a minute. “Joe’s kid. He’s six.”

I don’t even bother asking who Joe is. “Is Randy even here?” Somehow I wouldn’t be surprised if he weren’t. For all I know this is just someplace to crash that isn’t home.

“Yeah, he’s here. What are you doing here, anyway?” He coughs without looking at me.
I start to answer, but realize I’ll sound like an idiot if I tell him my Jay-dar was going off. “I was just--”

“Is anybody messing with you?” he interrupts.

“What?”

He lifts his eyes to my face. “Quit riding your bike at night. And don’t answer the door if nobody else is home.”

I stare him until he looks away. “What on earth are you talking about? Do you think I’m six years old?” I overheard some kids at school once talking about how pot can make you paranoid.

“Nothing. Forget it.” He kicks a shard of pottery off the porch. “We’re playing GT6 and I’m up next. So if you don’t mind…” He glances at me and sees me staring right at his face. His eyes dart away to the jumble of junk on the lawn and his shoulders hunch forward.

It’s like he’s shrinking, devolving into a former version of himself. Except for all the piercings in his ear, he sort of looks the way he did back when we were ten. When our cat Merlin died and he blew all his fuses. “I do mind. Why aren’t you answering my texts?”

“My phone died. I left the charger at home.”

“Oh, come on. How many lies are you gonna tell me? And even if you did trip, it’s not like you would’ve lost ten pounds on the way to a doorframe. I know Dad did that to your face.” The blood on the sink… though Dad’s never hit Jay’s face hard enough to draw blood before. That I know of.

“I told you, I tripped. Get off my case.” He shifts away from me on the cluttered porch and wraps his arms around his body.

My brain tries to puzzle out the message he’s telling me without words. The tenseness of the sternocleidomastoid muscle in his neck, the orbicularis oculi around his eyes that twist his face into an expression that’s somehow saying “go away” and “help me” at the same time.

What angle to take?

About a thousand lifetimes ago, when we were small, we had our own made-up language. Cryptophasia. Lots of twins do it when they’re kids. The words faded away as we grew up, but it had more to it than words. Gestures I haven’t forgotten. Facial expressions. Games we played.

One game in particular.

“Blue Jay.” I open my hand, palm-side toward him, and hold it up. Asking him with my face if he remembers.

When his eyes fall on it, he looks like I’ve just told him something he loves is dead.

I touch the back of his arm. His skin is hot and he shrugs my hand off. “Just tell me what’s up. Please.”

He keeps swallowing, like he wants to say something and can’t. His skin has gone from flushed to drained. “I’m sorry,” he finally says. “I know I look like s**t, it’s only a stupid cold. It’s fine.” He turns to open the door behind us, but has to stop moving for a minute to accommodate the cough. That’s definitely more than a cold. He can barely stand up. The longer it goes on the more flat-out scary it sounds. My stomach starts feeling weird.

“Jay. Please.”

He gets control of the coughing, then he clears his throat. When he speaks again, his voice is hoarse. “Look, if they bother to ask where I am, just tell them I’ll come home in a few days.”

“You’ve been gone ten days and they haven’t noticed. The hell with them, you’re freaking me out. I think you have a fever.” I reach for his arm again. “And if you’re so worried about me all of a sudden, why don’t you come home so I’m not there by myself all the time?”

Jay jerks away from my hand and his eyes widen like he’s afraid of me, but before he answers, Randy opens the door holding a game controller. A little kid peeks out from behind him, maybe six years old. He looks a little like Randy, minus the baditude. I guess that’s Frankie. “It’s your turn,” Randy says to Jay. “Hey, Emma.”

“Hi,” I say, staring hard at Jay before I glance at Randy. “How’s it going?

“Same old,” he says, looking down at me. “You?” A hank of slick dark hair falls over his eyes. Randy would be cute if he’d cut his hair and take a shower every now and then and stop wearing those stupid death metal shirts. He rests a split-knuckled hand on the little kid’s head.

“You don’t have a cold, do you?” I ask Randy.

“Huh? No.” He brushes his hair out of his face while he turns to Jay. “You coming back in or what? Joe’s waiting.”

Jay takes the controller out of Randy’s hand and ducks back into the house. “See you,” he says to me as he goes. The kid follows him.

Randy watches Jay for half a beat before turning back to me. “Uh. So, you need anything?”

I sigh in frustration. “No. Just… oh, forget it.”

Randy looks at me for maybe three seconds, almost like he wants to say something else. But then he turns and looks into the dark house. I don’t know him well enough to press it.

I pick my way back across the crowded porch, pissed that Lexi was right, that I stepped in it with Jay just like every other time I’ve tried to get him to talk to me since we were kids. He wants to be like this, shut me out all the time, fine. I can’t leave this stupid town and this messed-up family for college soon enough. Two months and I am out of here.

“Hey,” I hear behind me.

I turn around. Randy’s standing in the doorway watching me, his body angled toward the inside of the house.

“Yeah?”

“Um. He’s--” His expression is intent as he looks at me. The pause stretches right up to the boundaries of awkward. “Watch that busted step,” he finally says.

He moves into the shadows of the house and closes the door behind him.

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© 2013 J_Star

Author's Note

Updated 8/18

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Featured Review

KAOlmsted

Wow...I am really loving Angie's voice. How'd you do that? ;-) She used to be kind of flat to me, you know? A little...not quite there. You've really fleshed her out beautifully, J...this entire chapter is just one amazing sentence after another. I really cannot wait to get back into this. Holy cats...there goes my whole writing schedule...AGAIN *laugh*

xoxo