Complicit (2 page)

I make it, barely, sliding my ass into my first-row seat at the exact moment the tardy bell rings. Mr. O'Meara nods at the class and everyone takes out their laptops.

Except me.

“I'll need to use the voice recognition today,” I say in my most apologetic voice, and if anyone's rolling their eyes behind my back or flipping me off, well, I wouldn't know because I've gotten used to tuning that kind of thing out. It's all about tunnel vision.

“That's fine, Jamie.” Mr. O'Meara gestures toward the opposite side of the room. “Why don't you sit in the back where you won't disturb the other students. We'll be working on the theory papers this morning. You'll find a graded first draft in your folder.”

“Sure thing,” I say. One of the OT aides from the disability office comes in and helps me get set up. I relax a little. This is good. I need to work on this paper. It's the one I want to use so that I can apply to the cognitive science program over at Berkeley next summer. A whole four-week session, and I'd get to live in the dorms and everything. It'd sure be a nice escape from reality (and no, the irony of that thought is not lost on me), but to get in, I first have to write an essay on a philosophical issue. The one I've chosen to write about is fate, because it's something I believe in. You know, that our destiny lives inside of us. I think we're born with it, what we're meant to do with our lives. It's just up to us to find out what that is.

I look over Mr. O'Meara's notes. They're mostly positive, but he's telling me to go deeper, which is what he always tells us:
Go deeper. Don't be afraid to get your hands dirty.
Well, I can't do anything with my hands right now, so his figure of speech falls flat for me today. I quickly read over the rest of what he's written. Most of my paper is on Plato and Aristotle, but my teacher's suggested a bunch of other reading, like Emerson. Nietzsche. Sartre. I open the links he's given me and browse the online library. The texts he wants me to read look seriously dense.

I can't deal.

Soon my mind wanders. I let my gaze drift out the window, at tree-dotted hills, at black crows and tule fog. My eyelids droop. That phone call in the middle of the night has exhausted me. Not only that, it's disturbed me.

I have no proof it was Cate who called, but what if? My sister's spent the last two years in a juvenile detention center Southern California, locked up in a place where the sun always shines and there's not much else worth mentioning. Where would she go? Los Angeles? Vegas? I don't know. But I can definitely see her calling me on a throwaway phone in the dead of night. That'd be Cate all the way. I envision her standing on the side of the road, maybe outside some seedy truck stop in the middle of nowhere, thumb outstretched. Her jeans too tight. Her shirt too low. Her mood too black.

Just asking for trouble.

I take a deep breath. Not that Cate's ever done the right thing, but she wouldn't dare come back here. There's nothing for her in Danville. Well, nothing good. She knows that.

She
has
to.

Right?

FOUR

My sister Cate and I come from humble beginnings.

Our real mother's name was Amy Nevin, and she grew up in the backwoods of Oregon in a town known for nothing but logging, devout Christianity, and abject poverty. I've never seen a picture of her, but sometimes it
feels
like I have, as if her memories and life experiences were transferred to me along with her DNA. At times, it's like I can close my eyes and soften my mind and see a tall girl with hollow shoulders and black hair sitting on the steps to a trailer. She's bored. She's restless. She's miserable. Cate told me Amy ran away from home when she was sixteen. This could be true. It could be something Cate made up.

I have no way of knowing.

Amy hitched her way to San Francisco. Cate thinks she got pregnant on the way down here, lifting her skirt as payment for miles, for comfort, for survival, I don't know. For my part, I don't like to think about that. It's just as likely she was already knocked up when she left, or maybe it happened when she got to California and discovered San Francisco was way too expensive for a teenage girl with no diploma and no money. She ended up across the Bay in Richmond's Iron Triangle with some guy named Albert who worked nights cleaning bathrooms at the local junior college. Albert deserted for points unknown on the day Cate was born, which doesn't prove he wasn't her father.

It only proves he didn't want to be.

My own paternity is equally a mystery. I don't like to think about that, either. For almost six years, I lived with my mom and my sister in the basement of a drafty house surrounded on three sides by railroad tracks and not-so-quiet desperation. My memories of my mother are faint and few and far between, but the ones I do have can wake me up at night with their strength. Out of nowhere they come to me, pure sensory overload blowing in like gale-force winds to shatter my bones and break my heart: the sweet, sweet scent of cigarettes on her clothes. The primal warmth of the bed we shared, me on one side of her, Cate snoring on the other. The soft way her long dark hair tickled my face when she wanted me to laugh. It's easier to remember the good than the bad, I guess, but sometimes I can't help but remember other things, too, like the drugs and the men and her moods and being hungry and not having jackets when the weather turned cold. I loved her, though.

Deeply. Madly.

She was
mine.

What I don't remember is the day she died. We saw it all, I guess, but in an act of mercy, my brain has rejected those moments. Forever. I do know she was shot by an intruder. Multiple times. Blood gurgled out of her and my twenty-four-year-old mother died slumped against the wall near the bed where we all slept. Cate says she held me in her arms until it was over. She didn't want me to see what she saw.

Then she called 911.

The time right after our mother's death is a blur for me. Malcolm and Angie and Cate have helped me piece it together after the fact, but all I can recall is darkness and sorrow and a deep, deep well of pain.

I wanted her back.

I cried.

And I wanted her back.

We were placed in emergency foster care. Then we were placed in a group home. We had case managers and new schools and new teachers and people who tried to track down relatives willing to take us. There were none. At the home I pined and ate nothing. I refused to go to school and got sick when I had to. My only attachments were to my sister and a filthy silk blanket square I'd taken to calling Pinky. Cate did what she could, but it wasn't enough. I grew bony and pale and picked up lice and a lisp and a bad habit of pulling out my eyebrows that made me look odd and somewhat slow. When the Henrys agreed to take both of us, no one was more surprised than our social worker.

Miss Louise, of the permed hair, cat's-eye glasses, and heavy makeup, smoked menthol cigarettes on the car ride over. “I know I told you how hard it is to keep families together. Especially at your age. But Malcolm and Angie specifically requested a brother and sister who were both in grade school. Guess they must want to skip over the diaper-and-tantrum stage, huh?”

Cate giggled and held my hand. I desperately clutched Pinky in the other.

It turned out the Henrys didn't want to skip over anything. They'd already been through the diaper-and-tantrum stage with their own two children: Madison and Graham, who'd both been killed instantly in a tragic traffic accident involving malfunctioning railway signals. Their ages at death: nine and six.

Cate and I were meant to fit right in.

The Henrys gave us everything. They had the money for it. Danville was one of the richest towns on the outskirts of the San Francisco Bay area, nestled far to the east in a stretch of rolling California hills and mossy live oaks. We lived in a mansion, behind iron gates. We had our own rooms and our own toys, and we swam in a black-bottomed pool with a waterfall that overlooked ranch land and steep winding trails. Cate got a pony. I got piano lessons. We went to an esteemed private academy meant to nurture our individual talents.

Twin losses brought us together. Made us a family.

Almost.

FIVE

I know that guys my age usually look to athletes like LeBron or Brady or Lincecum for inspiration, but the person I admire most has got to be jazz pianist Thelonious Monk. Maybe that makes me weird or pretentious or whatever, but his music is the one thing in life that can make me feel relevant and make me feel free. Monk wasn't afraid to be different, you know? He cut right through what other people called dissonance and he played
outside
the chords. That kind of vision takes guts.

It's also the kind of vision I'm wishing I had during the morning break at school. That's when I catch sight of Jenny Lacouture standing by her locker in the hallway. Her soft blond hair's pulled off her neck and her slim legs are bare beneath her plaid skirt. We've been spending a lot of time together lately, Jenny and I, so I'd like to think she's standing there on purpose, just hoping I'll notice her.

How could I not?

I walk over to her with butterflies flapping inside of me, good ones, the kind that make me feel like I could float. Jenny's a junior like I am, and she plays piano, too, which is sort of perfect. Techniquewise, she might even be better than me, but that's a lot harder to admit than it probably should be.

“I'm not holding your hand today,” I tell her.

Jenny's brown eyes go wide and I can almost hear the wheels turning inside her head as she tries to figure out if I mean what I say. I do, of course, just not in the way she thinks.

“It's my nerve thing,” I confess. “I've told you about that, haven't I?”

She looks down to see the gloves, the way my arms are sort of cradled against my stomach.

“Oh,” she says. “What happened?”

“They went numb this morning. At breakfast.”

“But you'll be okay?”

“I should be.”

“What's it called again?”

“The neurologist thinks it's a form of cataplexy, but that's usually only seen with narcolepsy, and I don't fall asleep in weird places or anything. So it's idiopathic.”

“What does that word mean?” she asks. “Idiopathic?”

“It means they don't know why it happens.” I roll my shoulders and force a bland expression on my face. I don't tell Jenny about the other theory I have, the more embarrassing one: that it's all in my mind, that my hands going numb is some sort of anxiety symptom, set off by high levels of stress and my basic inability to
deal.

Luckily Jenny doesn't ask more questions. Instead she presses her lips together and smiles that smile I like so much, the one that's crooked and honest all at once.

“I've seen you fall asleep in class before,” she says. “You're kind of cute when you sleep, Jamie Henry. I think I'd like it if you had that narcolepsy thing.”

I try smiling back but it's weird. Sometimes the things Jenny says are so nice they can make me feel sad. Like right now. It's my own personal paradox, I guess—either my brain doesn't know how to be happy or my heart doesn't know how to let me.

“I'd like it too if it meant being able to see your face when I woke up,” I say softly.

Hector Ramirez makes a barfing sound as he walks past us. “Jesus. What the fuck is this shit? A Disney movie? Just hump already and get it over with.”

“Shut up,” I snap. Goddamn Hector. Jenny shouldn't have to hear crap like that. Ever. Unfortunately, I can't flip him off.

Hector pauses. “So is it true?” he asks me.

“Is what true?”

“That Cate's out.”

I tense. “Where'd you hear that?”

He lifts a dark eyebrow. “So it
is
true? Damn. That's one rumor I didn't want to believe, Henry. You know why. Crazy Cate.”

“Where'd you hear about Cate?” I repeat, although I think I might know.

Hector throws his hands in the air, feigning ignorance, and begins walking backward. “Dunno, man. Nowhere. Somewhere. Anywhere. But your sister's a bad girl. Bad, bad, bad. The worst, even. So you tell her she can come see me and we can talk face to face if she's got a problem with my family this time. Tell her she doesn't have to—”

“Stop,” I say weakly. “I'm not telling her anything, okay? I haven't even
talked
to her. You probably know more than I do.”

“You have a sister?” Jenny asks, and a loose strand of hair dances across her collarbone in a way that entrances me. Like it's got a mind of its own.

“Yes,” I say, pulling my gaze away. “Hector, you need to tell me what you heard.”

Jenny touches my shoulder. “Where's your sister coming back from?”

“Jail,” I say, then: “I'm serious, Hector!”

“I'm serious, too,” he yells. Then he's gone. Swallowed up by the crowd.

I turn back to Jenny. There're people all around us, jostling, shouting, shoving, but she's looking at me with concern.
Me.

I take a deep breath.

I push down the sad feeling in my heart.

“Jenny,” I say. “Would you go out with me Friday night?”

“Yes.” She answers without hesitation, and right then my hands come back to life. Like magic.

I show her.

“Look at that.” I wiggle my fingers.

“So you're all right?”

“More than all right. You did that.”

The look on her face is cautious. “I did?”

“Oh, sure,” I say earnestly. “You're like my sun in winter.”

SIX

There are no coincidences in life. That's part of believing in fate, I guess. I also think
fate
is different than
faith,
although sometimes it's hard for me to explain why, which is probably the reason I haven't been able to get out of going to church on Sundays. Either way, it still makes sense to me that the first time I went numb was when I heard about what Cate did.