Chemistry (9 page)

Gene’s music is probably too loud for him to hear my knock, so I don’t wait for him to answer. I don’t know what I expect to find when I open the door, but a ping-pong ball to my forehead is not it. It bounces into the hallway, and I shake off my confusion. Gene sits with his back to a disorganized study desk and laughs like nothing is wrong. He’s the polar opposite of his foster mother. Hell, he’s the polar opposite of me. He always has been.

“Claude!” He looks genuinely happy to see me, which probably means he wants money. My little brother is always at his most charming when he needs something. It’s not his fault, honestly. How else was he supposed to survive? I’m his family, but I have so little to give him, and no one else is obligated to love him. He’s not driven or responsible by nature. The only way he knows to get by is to charm everyone around him, which has turned him into a kind of charisma monster who says yes to everyone, even when he ends in self-contradiction or, God forbid, self-destruction.

“I’m so glad you’re here!” Gene says, loud enough for everyone in the house to hear. “I was just thinking I could use a good lecture from my big brother!”

“Really?” I catch on to his game and match his volume. “Because I’ve been hearing some very troubling rumors about you, Eugene!”

“Oh, yeah? Like what?”

I raise an eyebrow at him. Where is he going with this? “I’ve heard your grades are slipping!”

“Only by one place!”

“From a D to an F!”

“You’ve got to experience everything in life, even failure!”

“And you’ve been drinking!”

“Every experience, I tell you!” He’s such a ham.

“And partying!”

“Not a crime!”

“At your age!”

“Best to get it out of the way early!” He winks at me.

I lower my voice. “And your involvement with the kidnapping of Esmeralda?”

He leaps from his chair, pulls me into his room, and slams the door behind us. The game is over. “Let’s not go too far with this,” he says.

I stay my course. “Is that another experience you just had to get out of the way?”

He searches my expression, probably to gauge whether I’m serious this time. “You don’t really think I’d be involved with something like that, do you?”

I flop onto his bed and try to hide my disappointment. The joy I feel that my brother has not completely abandoned his honor wars with a sinking feeling that my last link to Esmeralda has just crumbled in my hands. Gene can’t help me find her.

“You know I wouldn’t,” he says. “Don’t you?”

I can’t answer him. When I think back to the well-intentioned kid he used to be, I know I’ve already lost him.

“Claude?” There’s so much hurt in his expression, but I can’t bring myself to lie.

“You’ve changed.” I won’t look him in the eyes. Instead, I stare at the red and blue pattern on his bedspread. “I don’t think I know you any more. I can’t even say why you do half the things you do, only that it must be my fault somehow.”

“Okay.” He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “They want to adopt me.”

“Who?”

“The Millers.”

I can barely hide my shock. His foster family wants to adopt him. He’s sixteen. This may be his last chance to have a real family. I should be elated for him.

He continues, slowly, like he’s unsure about whether he should. “I figure, if I can change their minds…”

“Change their minds?”

“If I cause enough trouble for them, maybe they won’t want me.”

“Why?” I do my best to read his meaning, but all I get is that this is not a joke. No, he’s dead serious for perhaps the first time in his life. “Why would you do that?”

Then it hits me, hard and heavy and utterly poisonous. He’s holding me to my promise—the one I made when we were both too young to know any better. I gave him my word that when I turned eighteen, if we hadn’t found a family that would take us both, I would adopt him myself. But I didn’t know then about what I could provide and what I couldn’t. I thought everything was so simple; a family was made up of people who stay together, no matter what. I never imagined I would be poor, homeless, and without the means to provide for anyone, let alone give them any kind of future.

“Gene…” The words I mean to say catch in my throat, and I can’t go on.

“Anyway,” he waves all serious talk aside like it’s a cloud of gnats in his way, “the point is I need money.”

Ah, here it is. But I’m through helping him self-destruct. “So get a job.”

He grins. “That’s way too much responsibility for me. You know that. I mean… think how my grades would suffer!”

“They can’t suffer any more than they already have.”

“Sure they can.”

“How?”

“I could drop out.”

“And get a job.”

He groans. “I’d rather pull my toenails out one at a time, and then eat them.”

“Qui non laborat, non manducet,” I say, testing him.

“The lab rat does what now?”

I shake my head. Gene used to play this game with such ease anyone would say he was possessed by a multilingual demon. Identifying languages was his childhood talent. It’s like he’s traded his brain for a soccer ball. “That was Latin for, ‘Wer nicht arbeitet, soll auch nicht essen,’” I say.

“Huh?”

“Which is German, for ‘El que no trabaja, no come.’”

He catches on and laughs. “That’s Spanish.”

“Good.” I can’t hold back a smile, but the real test is his French, which he should be able to translate. “Spanish for, ‘Il faut travailler, qui veut manger.’”

His grin twitches and dies. So he does understand. “That’s not funny, Claude.”

“But it’s true. ‘Those who won’t work, won’t eat.’”

“It’s a lie!” Gene leaps toward his desk for the sole purpose of pounding a fist upon it. “My God, I’ll prove it wrong or die trying.” He paces the room for effect. “This may be the most important thing I’ve ever done. Think of the difference I can make in the lives of the jobless poor. I can give them hope for a better tomorrow.” He plants his hands on his hips and stares up at an imaginary sky. “Those who cannot work need not fear hunger ever again.” Then he holds out his hand and grins. “Care to make a donation?”

I would be flabbergasted if this sort of thing didn’t happen every few weeks. “Gene, I don’t have money to give you.”

He frowns. “But you work, don’t you? And I won the game. I can still translate your stupid proverbs. You’ve got to have something to give me for that?”

“I spent it on Valentine.”

“What?” He presses the back of his hand to his forehead like he’s an actor in one of Peter’s plays. “You frittered all your savings away?”

“Most of it.”

“So there’s some left.”

“You can’t have it.”

“Why not?” Now he’s whining like a child. “Why does Valentine get more from you than I do? I’m your own brother, don’t forget. I’m your only family.”

This hits a nerve I wish would stay buried. He’s right. But I can’t afford to pay for his habits any more. “I can’t.”

“Fifty?”

“No, Gene.”

“Thirty-five. That’ll buy me lunch for a week.”

“You know I make less than minimum wage, right?”

“Fine. Twenty dollars now and twenty after you get paid again. It’s for charity, after all.” He winks.

I know he’s lying, but I fish in my pocket and pull out a ten-dollar bill. It’s the last of my cash, but I can’t say no to him. I’ve never been able to. Any time I consider making him suffer on his own, I see that little face in the hospital, crying because he had no one left. I can’t shut it out of my head.

He pockets the ten. “Well, that’ll buy a couple forties anyway.”

He doesn’t change. Ever. “Gene.” I hang my head, ashamed that I enable him. “You know where you’ll end up if you keep on like this, don’t you?”

“Hell?” He chuckles. “I can handle hell.”

“Not hell. You have to have a soul to go to hell.”

“Now that hurts coming from you.” He pouts and reaches under his bed to retrieve a half-eaten bag of cheese snacks. “You know as well as I do that I’m not nearly as bad as I pretend to be, and that you,” he pops a morsel into his mouth and crunches loudly before finishing, “are not nearly as good as you pretend to be.”

I can’t believe I’m hearing this from him. For years, I suspected my brother had checked out permanently, but now, his expression betrays him. He knows too much. I shove my hands in my pockets in a last-ditch attempt to look unassuming. “I don’t know what you mean,” I say. It’s only half true.

The smile fades from his face, the sparkle from his eyes. “I mean the kind of person you pretend to be is not the kind of person you are, and we both know it. You’re not a saint.” He stands up, and for the first time, I notice he’s outgrown me. He’s taller, stronger, and more confident than I will ever be. “You’re every bit as bad as I am, Claude Frollo. And sooner or later, the pressure you’ve created by keeping yourself contained will overpower you. You’re gonna burst from it. I can’t even imagine what that’ll be like for you, but I can give you a word of advice.”

I try to pretend I have no interest in whatever he’s going to say, but I don’t think I’m convincing him. He knows me too well. Apparently, he knows me better than I know myself because every word he’s saying to me right now is true. I wanted to be a passionless, responsible, reasonable person, but I’m not—I am so far from not, I recently stabbed a soccer player in the back and let the innocent girl I might be in love with take the fall for it.

Gene watches my face with growing interest. He must see the torment in me. Probably he’s seen it all along. Probably he knows how close I am to bursting. “Let it out a little at a time,” he says, leaning back on his bed and popping another cheese snack in his mouth. “Drink a little. Lie a little. Get laid. Punch someone you hate. If you release the pressure a little at a time, you’ll be less likely to explode from it. Trust me.”

I’m not sure what I think of Gene’s advice. It’s contrary to everything I’ve worked for, everything I hope to become. And he’s not in any position to be giving advice, anyway. Just look at him. Look what he’s done to himself.

I am such a hypocrite. “You’re wrong, Gene. That’s just not who I am.” I am such a liar.

I turn to go, but before I can open the door, Gene says, “The old greenhouse behind the church. I would look there. The team tends to gather there whenever they want to hide what they’re doing.”

I pause, trying to discern what he means.

“Esmeralda. You want to find her, right? That’s the real reason you came here, isn’t it? It was never about me.”

My heartbeat throbs all through my body, and I wonder how I can hear anything over the sound of it. “How did you…”

“It’s obvious. The way you watch her, like something is drawing you toward her, and you can’t stop it. I’ve never seen you look at anyone else that way.”

I keep my back to him. I don’t want to see him. I don’t want to know how he looks at me now that my disgusting self is exposed. “It’s not what you think,” I say.

“Of course, not.” I can hear the smile in his voice. “Just remember that too many lies corrode you from the inside. Sometime, somehow the truth is going to come out. It always does. And if you’re not ready for it, it’ll turn what’s left of you to ash.”

My attempted laugh disintegrates when I realize how right he is. “I think,” I lay my hand on the door handle, “the end is going to be bad for both of us.”

“Probably,” he says, as I open the door. “But all that means to me is I’d better make sure the beginning was damn good.”

IV

I can’t slow down. The sun is sinking too fast. I can almost feel the planet spinning and racing along its path, as though the universe wants me to arrive too late. As though someone far more powerful than me is twisting the strings of Esmeralda’s fate and mine, binding them together, and then lighting them like a fuse. If I stop for one second, I’ll catch fire before I can do anything to alter this course.

Valentine watches me stuff a bottle of water, an apple, and some sliced cheese into my book bag. He signs, “Where are you going?” when he sees he’s caught my eye.

I respond, “Out,” and leave him to wonder.

The chill night air bites at my skin, so I pull my scarf over my face and tighten the drawstrings on my hood until only my eyes are exposed. The unexpected result of this is that I feel much braver. If anyone sees me, they will not recognize me, which is for the best. The Claude they knew would have called the police immediately, regardless of the girl’s situation. He would not have thought about winning her love with any kind of masked heroism. He would be much, much too smart for that.

Tonight, I know I’m being stupid, and I don’t care. I know I’m being more reckless than I have ever been. But for the first time in my life, I think maybe my brother knows something I don’t. Maybe it’s not too late for me to taste life outside this prison of an identity I’ve created. Maybe it’s not too late for a rebirth.

The old greenhouse lurks beyond the edge of a small belt of conifers that have effectively hidden it from anyone who doesn’t already know it’s there. No wonder the team likes to use it for their illicit little parties. There’s no chance anyone will find them. No one uses the greenhouse any more. I know I shouldn’t blame myself, but I’m appalled that anything like this has been occurring on my watch. The old Claude feels like an utter failure. But the new Claude is high on adrenaline and anticipation. I’m battling myself, but no matter how the fight inside me rages, my feet keep moving forward.

By the time I reach the greenhouse, the rain has settled into a steady rhythm. It’s heavy enough that the combination of raindrops and a generous layer of mildew on the glass has completely obscured my view of anything that might be going on inside. But occasionally, I see movement and a glimmer of flashlights, and I want to punch myself for not thinking to bring one.

Then I hear them. “Fuck! Fuckfuckfuck! She’s sick. She’s real sick. What are we supposed to do now? We can’t take her back like this. We can’t just take her back.”

“Well, we can’t leave her here either.”

Someone laughs. “So what? We kill her?”

“Absolutely not. I’m not going to jail for the rest of my life over this bitch.”