Cut Both Ways (22 page)

“They'll be watching out for the house,” she continues. “Any strange cars, any weird traffic, anyone but you and the girls coming in the door and I'll know about it. They've got my cell number. Jay's too.”

I nod. I don't know why I'm fighting this. Except it's kind of annoying and babyish.

“Jay and I . . . we just haven't had much time to ourselves in . . . well. A long time.” She laughs a little; an old, tired laugh.

I'm annoyed. Not because I wanted to bring Brandy here; I'd never get a second alone with her with my little sisters hanging around, anyway.

“And I know things have been very difficult with you and your father and everything,” she adds. “So leaving you alone wasn't anything I want to do. I've been trying to make that not happen, in fact.”

I nod. Because, duh: the calendar. But also: how am I alone with Taylor and Kinney climbing up my leg?

“Jay doesn't think we should go,” she says. “He thinks it's not good to leave you on your own. But I decided it would be okay. Every kid needs some experience with that and if there's no other opportunity for you to make good choices after we've seen you make bad ones, I don't know how I expect you to learn anything.”

“So, Jay doesn't trust me in his house. With his kids.”

“No! Not at all!” she says. “This is your house, too, Will! Don't you forget that! Jay knows you can handle Kinney and Taylor. He just thinks, well. He thinks you've been on your own too much, with your dad and everything. He thinks you've had enough of that already. He thinks . . . well, never mind what else he thinks. The fact is, we're going, and I'm going to be positive about it, because it'll be positive for Jay and me. For the girls too.”

She stands up. Puts a hand on my shoulder.

“So, here is me, trusting you,” she says. “Trusting that you can take care of your sisters. Trusting that you're okay to be on your own for two nights. That you won't do anything to endanger yourself or anyone else and you'll respect this house and the things in it.”

God, it sounds like something she read in a magazine. Like she clipped it out and memorized it.

“All right, Mom.”

“Trusting that you can handle this.”

Jesus
. Will she ever stop?

“It'll be fine, Mom. It's no big deal.”

“And I have Garrett and Kristin looped into what's going on,” she adds. “So they can drop by at any time and check on you.”

Fuck. Has she notified the local police, too? Ms. Demarest, the guidance counselor?

“Right.”

Then she hugs me. Tighter than I want to hug her, but whatever.

“I love you,” she says. “Go take a shower. You smell like a hamburger and fries.”

“Thanks.”

“I'll touch base with you in the morning,” she says. “Just wanted to have this talk before tomorrow, when everything'll be crazy.”

They leave the next day, packing up Jay's car with suitcases and duffel bags. Kissing Kinney and Taylor a million times, telling them to be good, telling them “Your brother will call us if you're not behaving”—like I want to do that! Interrupt their little love weekend because Kinney refuses to watch anything besides the goddamn Disney Channel.

Then they're waving good-bye to me as I stand in the doorway in my T-shirt and boxers, shivering, and holding the printout of directions and emergency numbers and crap my mom went over ten times while I yawned. The second they leave, Kinney and Taylor run upstairs to their rooms and I can hear them jumping on the bed. Kinney turns on some music and turns the volume way up, higher than my mom would ever allow, and yells, “Party time!”

I go to the kitchen and pull out the milk from the fridge.

Taylor bombs down the stairs, still in her nightie. “Woo hoo, Will!”

“Easy,” I say, as she whips past me to the cupboard.

“You don't have to worry about us,” Taylor says. “Not at all. Me: I'm gonna eat cereal three meals a day. Plus snacks. There's nothing to it, really!”

She pours a mountain of Cinnamon Chex in a bowl. I hand her the milk.

I watch her snarf down the cereal. If they weren't here, Brandy and me could have sex in every room in this house. This isn't a great thing to think, given the lockdown surveillance my mom's got, but still. It's worth a minute of consideration. A moment of silence for what could have been.

But then my phone beeps. And it's Angus:
you around?

And it's like Brandy is gone. Was never in my head.

Because no one minds Angus coming over. Angus, who Taylor and Kinney love. Angus, who could be in my bed all night. And doesn't even need an excuse.

I pour myself a big bowl of cereal, too, and sit down by Taylor.

I text him back:
come over

“Nothing to it,” I repeat, and Taylor and me clink spoons in the way she likes, because she saw it on a commercial. “Nothing to it at all.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

I CAN'T THINK
about it. About what I'm doing. About Brandy. Because my sisters are insane. One minute, Angus and me are sitting in the kitchen playing Texas Hold'em, the next Kinney is screaming and Taylor is slamming a door and laughing.

Angus thinks it's all funny. Angus tickles Kinney and she runs away from him, hides in the TV room watching her show on Disney that no one can stand but her, the one where the family dog talks and runs a bowling alley or whatever. Which is fine. Taylor is being a giant show-off for Angus. She has him listen to music she likes, she sits at the table beside us, drawing in her diary with the shitty plastic-chrome lock, and making a big deal of how we can't see what she's drawing and writing.

Around four, we all go to the park where Taylor and Kinney snowboard, where the birthday party they're invited to is. I bring them to the chalet and check them in with the mom of the party and Taylor wants to introduce me and for once, Kinney is nice
and holds my hand, because suddenly she's shy and doesn't want me to leave.

“Can we call my mom, please?” she asks, whispering.

I think of our mom and Jay, probably in some hot tub drinking champagne.

“After the party, we'll call them,” I say. “It's too loud here.” I hand her the gift and tell the mom of the kid that I'll be here, snowboarding, and here's my cell number, like my mom instructed me to do, and she's all, “Right, Tess gave me your cell already,” and I feel extra responsible and weird.

Then, after I disentangle from Kinney, Angus tries to give me a lesson. Because just like I predicted, I got a snowboard for Christmas and I've only been out on it once. I really didn't get much of a chance, because the hill iced over in freezing rain that day and we had to go home early. Doing something that my sisters are automatically better at than me isn't on the top of my list, but Angus convinces me it's not that hard and so we go out on the baby hill to try it again.

I pretty much suck, is the thing. And I don't have snow pants; haven't had them since I was a kid, so I'm wearing a pair of Angus's sister's, which actually fit me. At least they're black.

It's not that easy, but it's not that hard, either. I've never skateboarded much, a fact I need to remind Angus of a bunch, because he keeps talking in those terms. After about an hour, though, I start to feel it. The rhythm that Angus keeps referring to; you get the rhythm of where and when, he keeps saying.

It turns out to be a good day. The sun comes out for the first
time in a long time and I get it, why people like to spend all the money on a thing like this. Snowboarding is expensive as hell—the equipment, the lift tickets—but it feels fucking good to be outside and in the sun and moving moving moving. Moving so fast. Only thing on my mind is the next thing I'm gonna do, the next thing I have to avoid, the next feeling that might tip me over or send me off the trail into the trees. Angus is laughing. His hair bobbling up under his blue bandanna and sunglasses. Sunglasses that must have cost a lot of money, but don't look douchey out here in the snow, because there's a point to them. Unlike all of Jay's equipment. The Helly Hansen shit I've got on under my jacket—there's a point to that, now. Here.

So many flashes of happy. Me, spraying Angus with snow. Angus, laughing at me when I wipe out in the worst way. Me, sailing down the snow hill, the scraping noise of the board on the icy edge so absolutely cool. Angus, seeing me smile on the chairlift, squeezing my thigh and pretending it's nothing.

Looking away like it's nothing. I know, right then. That he'll stay over.

At seven we pick up Kinney and Taylor. They're eating cake at the chalet but Kinney's being an asshole and won't eat the pizza the birthday girl's mom is serving everyone. I know she's probably starving—I'm eyeing the pizza myself after a few hours of being out and about—but her dickishness is driving me nuts. I leave Angus to deal with her because he seems concerned about solving all her little problems (“My coat is too tight! The zips on my snow pants are full of ice!” etc.).

Taylor and me drag most of the equipment back to Angus's car—he's got his mom's SUV, which fits more stuff than mine—while Angus carries Kinney on his shoulders. Taylor's peeved at her sister, I can tell, but she doesn't say anything so I let her sit up front with Angus, which unleashes another fit of bitching from Kinney.

“Too bad,” I say to her.

“Next time,” Angus says.

“There won't be any next time!” Kinney says. She's crying. God, I want to smack her.

“What do you want to do, Will?” Angus says, looking at me in the rearview mirror. He looks upset, but his voice sounds casual.

“Let's go get some food,” I say.

So we go to a place where they serve pizza and plain butter noodles and chicken fingers, which are Kinney's main favorite foods in life (and which makes me crazy, because, butter and noodles, who wants to spend actual money on that shit?). But Angus is trying to make her happy, he keeps asking her what she wants, and I let him handle the ordering, because we like the same crap on pizza and because him asking her all these questions at least minimizes her complaining. The only time I step in is to order a pitcher of Sprite instead of Coke.

“They'll be up all night with the caffeine,” I tell him.

“After snowboarding all day?”

“It was a few hours, not all day,” I say, staring at Kinney, who's giving me her evil glare. “Trust me.”

After the food comes, sure enough, Kinney stops acting like a
pain in the ass. The twins bubble their pop with their straws and twirl butter noodles and pizza cheese around their fingers and pretend the chicken fingers are cigars and it's dorky but Angus laughs. Which the twins think is totally hot shit; they are crazy and showing off more.

After we get home, Taylor and Kinney want to play video games, so we do that, even though it's annoying because Kinney keeps making us pause it so she can sneak more snacks into the TV room and I let her but after a while I bust her and say no and then she's bitchy again. Then I'm not sure if I should make them take a bath or what, because I don't know the rules of that. I mean, how gross can you get when your sweat doesn't stink yet?

So, they watch a movie they've seen a thousand times, about this time-traveling orphan girl. Taylor looks half asleep, slumped on the other side of Angus, under her ducky blanket. But I'm worried that if I tell them it's time for bed, they'll revolt and freak out. That's how they usually roll with my mom and Jay.

Brandy's texted me a couple times. I don't text back. I click the phone off and put it on the bookshelf behind me.

“All right,” Angus says, the second the credits wrap. “That was super good, but we should get you guys to bed.” Taylor is asleep. Kinney is pretending, but I don't know if Angus can tell. I pick up Taylor, ducky blanket and all, and carry her. She farts as I lift her up, which is funny, but she doesn't even wake up from that.

It's kind of miraculous, how we get them into Taylor's bed. They have to sleep in the same room, even though they each have their own room, but they each have a double bed, because they've
always slept with someone else and can't go to sleep on their own. Taylor is pretty much comatose and barely moves once I lay her down. Kinney I'm not sure about, though her eyes are closed. But it's pretty much the easiest bedtime I can remember for my sisters.

Angus slips downstairs, his feet in socks light and invisible. I turn on Taylor's green swirling pinwheel lamp that they use for a nightlight. They both have the same one. If Kinney wakes up without it, she screams. The second I do, though, Kinney wakes up.

Fuck.

“Will?”

“Yeah?” I almost don't want to answer.

“Is Angus staying over, too?”

“Yes,” I say. Though we've not talked about this.

“Oh good,” she says. “Let's have pancakes with him tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay,” I say. And she curls up toward her sister and shuts her eyes. I stand there for a couple more minutes. Worried any move I make will make her eyes flip open again.

I listen to the whir of the pinwheel light. My sisters' breathing. Angus turning on the sink in the kitchen. I wait a long time, breathing slow like they are. Like I want to fall asleep standing up. It feels like forever but I want to make sure.

When I get down to the TV room, Angus is on the couch, flipping through the channels, trying to switch the TV from the DVD player, which no one really knows how to do but me and Taylor and Kinney. Jay usually just quietly asks Kinney to fix it
for him so he can watch his own channel, or slips upstairs to the bedroom to watch his own simple TV. My mom thinks TV is terrible and never bothers with it until she wants my sisters out of her hair.

“What do you want to watch?” I say, taking the remote from him and sitting down on the other side of the couch and hitting the right buttons to make it go back to being regular TV. My mom and Jay have about three trillion choices of regular channels, plus every sports pass, plus a million pay-per-view things. We could watch an entire show in the time it takes just to scroll through the menu of options. It's fucking annoying as hell.

Plus I'm annoyed, too. With myself. Because we're alone and I know what I want. But I don't know how to make it happen.

“Hey,” he says.

“What.”

“Jay got any beer?”

“Probably. But I wouldn't bother with it.”

“Why?”

I explain how my mom talked to me before they left. Not that Jay counted his beers or anything, but I just didn't want to deal with it.

“All right.”

“You out of weed?”

“No.”

“Did you bring it with you?”

He looks at me like I'm an idiot, this
well, yeaaaahh
look on his face.

“So,” I say. “Let's smoke out.”

“There's not much left.”

“But you just bought a bunch from Carl's roommate?”

He shrugs. I think for the first time, that unless he shared that bag he just bought, that he smokes kind of a lot of weed.

“It's kind of shit weed,” he says. “Plus, I just don't feel like it. I feel like drinking. Do you have any popcorn?”

“Yeah,” I say. We go into the kitchen and I do a couple of bags in the microwave while he looks through cupboards.

“Look!” he says. “Boxed wine!”

“God,” I say.

“Ah, who gives a damn,” he says. He gets out two plastic cups, the kind Kinney and Taylor use for their milk at dinnertime, and fills them up.

“Easy on that,” I say.

He hefts the box. “There's a shit ton in there. They'll never notice.”

“Want to play cards?” I ask.

I don't want to go back into the dark TV room again. So we play a few rounds of hearts, but it's boring with two people.

He gets up for more wine.

“You know the guy who's living at your dad's now? That guy whose house we went swimming at?”

“What?”

“Roy,” he says, handing me a full plastic cup again. “What's his deal, anyway?”

“He's living at my dad's?”

“That's what he said,” Angus says. “Ran into him at this coffee shop in Uptown. I was trying to get a gig there but the guy was a dick. Roy was there, getting coffee or whatever. Told me he was back in town. Helping your dad out. Staying at the house, too. His parents are pissed that he bailed on college, I guess.”

“Whoa,” I say. “I mean, I can see why they'd be pissed.” Then I fill Angus in on Roy, the whole secondhand story he told me, about the drugs and the jail and the dead baby and how he's a lot older and everything.

“He's twenty-five?” Angus asks. “He's as old as Carl.”

“Carl's twenty-five? He seems so much younger. Or older. I can't decide with him.”

“Roy seems older to me,” Angus says. “But I think that's only because he has, like, a decent family. Money and stuff. Carl's had a fucked-up life. Did you know his mom used to make him and his brother eat cat food? And she would beat the shit out of them, too. He said she'd hold his hands to the stove fire until he'd blister.”

“What?”

“I know,” he says. “He told me he was happy when she died, because then it was just him and his brother.”

“But didn't his brother die, too?”

“Yeah,” Angus says. “I mean, talk about shit luck. He lived in, like, seven foster homes, too. And that was in only two years, before he turned eighteen.”

“How do you know all that shit?”

“His roommate told me,” he says. “I went over there last week.”

I'm surprised he went over there for more pot, especially if it's
crap. But I'm also surprised he'd just go over there alone, without me. Not that I want to supervise his pot deals, but I wouldn't have done that. I'd have felt shy and weird about it. And anyway, how much fucking weed is he smoking lately?

“Where'd Garrett dig him up, I wonder.”

“Maybe he just applied for a job.”

“Huh,” I say. Swigging more wine. It seems like Carl's been working at Time to Eat his whole life. Like, if Time to Eat were a box that you open up, like a kit you assemble, Carl would just come with the whole set.

But Roy? At my dad's? What the hell is that?

We play another round of cards. It seems like every game we get sick of even one time: Gin, Gin Rummy, Crazy Eights. Next thing I know we're playing Go Fish, which is stupid, but I'm feeling a little buzzed.

“So,” Angus says, laying down a match of two sixes. “I went out on a date with a girl last week.”