Sarah Dessen (9 page)

I looked at him, then moved my hand, hitting the automatic lock: click, and the button on his door shot up.

“—your problem,” he finished. He opened the door and got out, taking his bag o’ grease with him. Then he bent down, poking his head back in quickly, so that we were almost face-to-face. “Thanks for the ride. Really.”

“Sure,” I said. He didn’t move for a second, which threw me off: just us, there together, eye to eye. Then he blinked and pulled away, ducking out of the car and shutting the door. I watched as the dog on the porch suddenly got up and made its way down the steps, tail wagging wildly, when it saw Dexter coming. Meanwhile, I was noticing that my car now stank of grease, another bonus. I put down the window, hoping the air freshener hanging from my rearview was up to the job.

“Finally,” the drummer said, folding his newspaper. I put the car in reverse, then made sure Dexter’s back was still turned before brushing my finger over the gearshift console, checking for grease. My dirty little secret.

“It’s not six yet,” Dexter said, reaching down to pet the dog, who was now circling him, tail thwacking against the back of his legs. He had a white muzzle and moved kind of creakily, in that old-dog way.

“Yeah, but I don’t have my key,” the drummer said, standing up.

“Neither do I,” Dexter told him. I started to back out then had to stop to let a bunch of cars pass. “What about the back door?”

“Locked. Plus you know Ted moved that bookcase in front of it last night.”

Dexter stuck his hands in his pockets, pulling them out. Nothing. “Well, I guess we just have to break a window.”

“What?” the drummer said.

“Don’t panic,” Dexter said in that offhand way I already recognized. “We’ll pick a small one. Then you can wriggle through it.”

“No way,” the drummer said, crossing his arms over his chest as Dexter started up the stairs, moving to check out the windows on the front side of the house. “Why do I always have to do the stupid shit, anyway?”

“Because you’re a redhead,” Dexter told him, and the drummer made a face, “plus, you have slim hips.”

“What?”

By now I wasn’t even waiting for a gap in traffic anymore. Instead I was watching as Dexter found a rock around the side of the house, then came back and squatted down in front of a small window on the far end of the porch. He studied it, then the rock, readying his technique while the dog sat down beside him, licking his ear. The drummer stood behind, still looking miffed, his hands in his pockets.

Call it rampant control issues, but I couldn’t stand to watch this. Which was why I found myself pulling back up the driveway, getting out of my car, and walking up the steps just as Dexter was pulling his arm back, rock in hand, to break the window.

“One,” he was saying, “two . . .”

“Wait,” I called out, and he stopped, the rock tumbling from his hand and landing on the porch with a thunk. The dog jumped back, startled, with a yelp.

“I thought you left,” Dexter said. “Couldn’t do it, could you?”

“Do you have a credit card?” I asked him.

He and the drummer exchanged looks. Then Dexter said, “Do I look like I have a credit card? And what, exactly, do you need purchased?”

“It’s to unlock the door, idiot,” I told him, reaching into my own pocket. But my wallet was in the backseat, buried in my purse.

“I have one,” the drummer said slowly, “but I’m only supposed to use it for emergencies.”

We looked at him, and then Dexter reached up and smacked him on the back of the head, Three Stooges style. “John Miller, you’re a moron. Just give it to her.”

John Miller—his real name, although to me he was still somehow Ringo—handed over a Visa. I opened the screen door, then took the card and slid it between the lock and the doorjamb, wiggling it around. I could feel them behind me, watching.

Every door is different, and the weight of the lock and the thickness of the card are all factors. This skill, like the perfect toss of an Extra Large Diet Zip, was acquired over time, with lots of practice. Never to break and enter, always just to get into my own house, or Jess’s, when keys were lost. My brother, who had used it for evil at times, had taught me this when I was fourteen.

A few pulls to the left, then the right, and I felt the lock give. Bingo. We were in. I handed John Miller back his card.

“Impressive,” he said, smiling at me in that way guys do when you surprise them. “What’s your name again?”

“Remy,” I told him.

“She’s with me,” Dexter explained, and I just sighed at this and walked off the porch, the dog now trailing along behind me. I bent down and petted him, scratching his ears. He had cloudy white eyes, and horrible breath, but I’d always had a soft spot for dogs. My mother, of course, was a cat person. The only pets I’d ever had were a long line of big, fluffy Himalayans with various health problems and nasty temperaments who loved my mother and left hair everywhere.

“That’s Monkey,” Dexter called. “Him and me, we’re a package deal.”

“Too bad for Monkey,” I replied, and stood up, walking to my car.

“You’re a bad ass, Miss Remy,” he said. “But you’re intrigued now. You’ll be back.”

“Don’t count on it.”

He didn’t answer this, instead just stood there, leaning against a porch post as I pulled out of the driveway. Monkey was sitting next to him, and together they watched me drive away.

I glanced at my watch. It was 6:03, which, according to Chloe and Lissa and everyone else who had always made
me
wait, meant I was well within the bounds of the official within-five-minutes-doesn’t-count-as-late rule. But something told me maybe I shouldn’t point this out just now.

“She’s here!” Chris called out over his shoulder, then shot me the stink eye as I walked in, shutting the door behind me.

“I’ll be right out,” Jennifer Anne replied, her voice light. “Offer her something to drink, would you, Christopher?”

“This way.” Chris started into the living room. As we walked, our shoes made swishy noises on the carpet. It was the first time I’d been to Jennifer Anne’s, but I wasn’t surprised by the decor. The sofa and the love seat were both a little threadbare and matched the border of the wallpaper. Her diploma from the community college hung on the wall in a thick gold frame. And the coffee table was piled with thick, pretty books about Provence, Paris, and Venice, places I knew she’d never been, arranged with great care to look as though they were stacked casually.

I sat down on the couch, and Chris brought me a ginger ale, which he knew I hated but thought I deserved. Then we sat down, him on the couch, me on the love seat. Across from us, over the fake fireplace, a clock was ticking.

“I didn’t realize this was a formal occasion,” I said, nodding at his tie.

“Obviously,” he replied.

I glanced down at myself: I had on jeans, a white T-shirt, with a sweater tied around my waist. I looked fine, and he knew it. There was a clang from the kitchen, which sounded like an oven closing, and then the door swung open and Jennifer Anne emerged, smoothing her skirt with her hands.

“Remy,” she said, coming over and bending down to kiss my cheek. This was new. It was all I could do not to pull back, if only from surprise, but I stayed put, not wanting another dirty look from my brother. Jennifer Anne settled down beside him on the couch, crossing her legs. “I’m so glad you could join us. Brie?”

“Excuse me?”

“Brie,” she repeated, lifting a small glass tray from the end table and extending it toward me. “It’s a soft cheese, from France.”

“Oh, right,” I said. I just hadn’t heard her, but now she looked very pleased with herself, as if she actually thought she’d brought some foreign culture into my life. “Thank you.”

We were not given the opportunity to see if the conversation would progress naturally. Jennifer Anne clearly had a list of talking points she had culled from the newspaper or CNN she believed would allow us to converse on a level she deemed acceptable. This had to be a business tactic she’d picked up from one of her self-improvement books, none of which, I noticed, were shelved in the living room on public display.

“So,” she said, after we’d all had a cracker or two, “what do you think about what’s happening with the elections in Europe, Remy?”

I was taking a sip of my ginger ale, and glad of it. But finally I had to reply. I said, “I haven’t been following the news lately, actually.”

“Oh, it’s fascinating,” she told me. “Christopher and I were just discussing how the outcome could affect our global economy, weren’t we, honey?”

My brother swallowed the cracker he’d been eating, cleared his throat, and said, “Yes.”

And so it went. In the next fifteen minutes, we had equally fascinating discussions about genetic engineering, global warming, the possibility of books being completely obsolete in a few years because of computers, and the arrival at the local zoo of a new family of exotic, nearly extinct Australian birds. By the time we finally sat down for dinner, I was exhausted.

“Great chicken, sweetheart,” my brother said as we all dug into our plates. Jennifer Anne had prepared some complicated-looking recipe involving chicken breasts stuffed with sweet potatoes topped with a vegetable glaze. They looked perfect, but it was the kind of dish where you just knew someone had to have been pawing at your food for a long while to get it just right, their fingers all in what now you were having to stick in your mouth.

“Thank you,” Jennifer replied, reaching over to pat his hand. “More rice?”

“Please.” Chris smiled at her as she dished food onto his plate, and I realized, not for the first time, that I hardly recognized my brother anymore. He was sitting there as if this was the life he was used to, as if all he’d ever known was wearing a tie to dinner and having someone fix him exotic meals on what clearly were the good plates. But I knew differently. We’d shared the same childhood, were raised by the same woman, whose idea of a home-cooked meal involved Kraft dinner, Pillsbury biscuits, and a pea-and-carrot combo from a can. My mother couldn’t even make toast without setting off the smoke detector. It was amazing we’d even made it past grade school without getting scurvy. But you wouldn’t know that now. The transformation of Chris, my stoner brother with a police record, to Christopher, man of culture, ironing, and established career of lubrication specialist was almost complete. There were only a few more kinks to work out, like the lizards. And me.

“So your mother and Don get back Friday, correct?” Jennifer Anne asked me.

“Yep,” I said, nodding. And maybe it was those meticulously made chicken rolls, or the fakeness of the entire evening thus far, but something suddenly kicked up my evil side. I turned to Chris and said, “So we haven’t done it yet, you know.”

He blinked at me, his mouth full of rice. Then he swallowed and said, “What?”

“The wager.” I waited for him to catch up, but either he didn’t or was pretending not to.

“What wager?” Jennifer Anne asked, gamely allowing this divergence from her scripted dinner conversation.

“It’s nothing,” Chris mumbled. He was trying to kick me under the table, but hit a leg instead, rattling Jennifer Anne’s butter dish.

“Years ago,” I said to Jennifer Anne, as he took another swipe, barely nicking the sole of my shoe, “when my mother married for the second time, Chris and I started a tradition of laying bets on how long it would last.”

“This bread is just great,” Chris said quickly to Jennifer Anne. “Really.”

“Chris was ten, and I must have been six or so,” I continued. “This was when she married Harold, the professor? The day they left for the honeymoon, we each sat down with a pad of paper and calculated how long we thought they’d stay together. And then, we folded up our guesses and sealed them in an envelope, which I kept in my closet until the day my mother sat us down to tell us Harold was moving out.”

“Remy,” Chris said in a low voice, “this isn’t funny.”

“He’s just mad,” I told her, “because he’s never won yet. I always do. Because it’s like blackjack: you can’t go over. Whoever comes closest to the actual day wins. And we’ve had to really be specific about the rules over the years. Like it’s the day she tells us it’s over, not the official separation day. We had to establish that because when she and Martin split Chris tried to cheat.”

Now, Chris was just glaring at me. Sore loser.

“Well, I think,” Jennifer Anne said, her voice high, “that is just horrible. Just
horrible.
” She put down her fork carefully and pressed her napkin to her lips, closing her eyes. “What an awful way to look at a marriage.”

“We were just kids,” Chris said quickly, putting his arm around her.

“I’m just saying,” I said, shrugging, “it’s like a family tradition.”

Jennifer Anne pushed out her chair and picked up the chicken dish. “I just think that your mother deserves better,” she snapped, “than for you to have so little faith in her.” And then she walked into the kitchen, the door swinging shut behind her.

Chris was across the table at me so quickly I didn’t even have time to put down my fork: he almost pierced his own eyeball. “What the hell are you doing?” he hissed at me. “What the
fuck
is wrong with you, Remy?”

“Gosh,
Christopher,
” I said. “Such language. You better not let her hear you, she’ll make you stay after school and write a report on those Australian blue-footed boobies.”

He sat back down in his chair, getting out of my face at least. “Look,” he said, spitting out the words, “I can’t help it if you’re a bitter, angry bitch. But I love Jennifer Anne and I won’t let you play your little games with her. Do you hear me?”

I just looked at him.

“Do you?” he snapped. “Because dammit, Remy, you make it really hard to love you sometimes. You know that? You really do.” And then he pushed out his chair, threw his napkin down, and pushed through the door into the kitchen.

I sat there. I honestly felt like I’d been slapped: my face even felt red and hot. I’d just been messing around with him, and God, he’d just freaked. All these years Chris was the only one who’d ever shared my sick, cynical view on love. We’d always told each other how we’d never get married, no way, shoot me if I do it. But now, he’d turned his back on everything. What a chump.

I could hear them in the kitchen, her voice quiet and tremulous, his soothing. On my plate my food was cold, just like my hard, hard heart. You would have thought I’d feel brittle too, being such a bitter, angry bitch. But I didn’t. I felt nothing, really, just the sense that now the circle I’d always kept small was a little smaller. Maybe Chris could be saved that easily. But not me. Never me.