Duplicity (8 page)

She hops out of the car. “I'm going to take that as a yes. Thanks for the ride.”

She skips up the stairs. I breathe out and crank Nirvana's “Lithium” as I turn the Z out to the street, and think that's enough Nice Guy karma to last me a month.

*   *   *

Or not.

I've barely closed the garage door when Dad confronts me in the kitchen with a turbo lecture about taking the Z (“No arguing, gotta be quick, conference call from China in ten minutes”). I kind of listen, substituting the nice things Principal Myer said for any sentence Dad says that includes “irresponsible” or “immature.” About halfway through, Dad pauses, one hand gripping the granite island counter.

“Did you dye your hair?”

“This is my normal color, Dad.”

“Oh. Are you getting over that rebel thing?”

Like it's a cold or the flu.

“No. Just, um, experimenting.” I shrug. “Project at school. Testing the impact of social image.”

“Oh, well, good for you,” Dad says, looking uncomfortable at having to praise me. “That's why you took the Z? If you need it for class, Brandon, you just needed to say.”

It's all I can do not to laugh. I thank Beretta, I thank karma, and I say, “Yes. Yes, I need it for class. And I
did
ask this morning, and you said okay.”

Dad paces again, then points an important finger at the ceiling.

“All right, can't argue with that. This week only, though. I'm not driving your Corolla to the office. And if you get pulled over even once—
even once!
—I don't care if it's because you paused at a stop sign, I'm taking the keys. Are we clear?”

“As glass.”

“Good.” He straightens his tie. “Now, go do your homework or something.”

Like that's going to happen. I trudge up the stairs, pull my phone out to text Sniper about playing Call of Duty, and freeze at the top. Seven feet away stands the paneled bathroom door.

It's open.

“Hey, Dad, have you been upstairs today?” I yell.

Twenty full seconds later, “What?”

“I said, have you been upstairs?”

“No. Why?”

Echoes of crinkling glass shiver through my memory, and when my cell beeps I jump so bad I have to catch the railing for balance. Sniper's reply:
Can't, out w/Ginge;)

“Lame,” I say. Not that I'm doing much better, shaking on the stairs, afraid of my own bathroom. I inch toward the door with my thumb over the emergency call button. If Obran did break the glass, I've got to clean it up before Mom gets home and fillets me. Skip class, get a new tattoo, fine. But for heaven's sake don't make a mess of Mom's perfect house or you'll be sorry.

I swing the door a little farther open with one finger. If I reach around, I can thumb the lights on without entering. I do so, back pressed against the wall like James Bond, iPhone armed. A yellow rectangle pops into the hallway.

It's quiet.

I peek into the room.

No icy splinters on the seashell-inlaid floor. No shards reflecting off the sandy counter.

No broken glass. The mirror's intact, perfect and whole and silent, hiding any evidence that it's actually a demon portal. I don't poke my head in far enough to see my reflection. I snap off the light and close the door like it's an Olympic event.

I click my phone and check the clock. Three-fifteen. Plenty of time to jet into town, grab some new dye and earring spikes, and start fixing the things Obran messed up. I'll wait on the tattoos until I figure out a way to get rid of him. I am
not
doing whatever that was in the locker room again.

I turn the music up on my phone, shut my bedroom door, pull off my sweatshirt—

“ARRRRGGGG!”

Obran smiles at me from a new, full-length mirror standing near my window. My entire room reflects inside it. I lurch for the door, smash shoulder-first into something hard, and bounce back onto the floor. My dresser? I glare at the mirror. Obran shakes his head and waggles a finger. On both sides of the glass, the dresser blocks the exit.

I've got to break the mirror. I search for something to break it with, but it seems Obran's thought of that already. I can't find the knife I keep in my desk, or any of my dusty textbooks, or even my boots. It won't fit out my windows without jacking up the screens. Maybe I can hit it. I study my scabbed knuckles and think that's not the best idea. Obran paces on the other side, but he's not doing anything (why?), and finally I snatch a steel letter opener off my desk and go for the glass.

Like my piercings, the handle vanishes in my fist. Obran clutches it instead, and for a blood-freezing moment I think he's going to stab himself and I don't know what that will mean. He doesn't. He flings it at me. I duck, but the opener doesn't get that far. The glass shatters, sliding to the floor in jagged shingles.

Slowly, I inch around the bed toward the wreckage. My reflection—my
real
reflection—stares at me from a mosaic of silver-blue shards on the carpet, looking scared and pathetic but looking like me. I nudge a few with my toe. No Obran. I pick up one of the larger pieces. Make a face into it. It mimics me perfectly. Has Obran … destroyed himself? I doubt it's that easy, but I should check one of the other mirrors—

“Brandon?”

Mom. I heave at the dresser in front of my door. It doesn't budge.

“Brandon, what was that crashing?”

I shove again. It yields no more than an inch. How did stupid Obran move it so quickly? I'll have to take the drawers out.

“Mom, go away,” I say.

“I'm not going to go away, I'm—” She tries the door. “What are you doing in there? That Ginger better not be over again. I thought you two broke up!”

“We did, like a year ago! I don't want to talk to you right now.”

“You let me in this instant or I'm going to get your father!”

I yank out the bottom drawer, full of jeans (Folded? Did Mom fold them?) and shove it aside. Pull out the next one. Gape at its contents. Boxer shorts and socks, all in neat rows, and none of them mine. Tommy Boy, Calvin Klein, Lacoste. All plain colors. No AC/DC lightning bolts or skulls. My mismatched camo socks have changed to dull argyles of brown, black, and white.

“Brandon, I'm going to count to three…”

“Mom, chill.” I rustle through the pairs, trying to find anything that's mine. “Did you take my socks?”

Pause. “Why on earth would I take your socks?”

I jerk another drawer out, one that used to hold my old Goth things from my days dating Ginger: belts with poison symbol buckles, spikey collars, chains, armbands, and my small but loud collection of weird ties. Now expensive watches and cufflinks fill the space, tidy as the other drawers.

Not mine not mine not mine—

“One,” Mom counts.

“One sec, geez.”

I toss the drawer away and throw my shoulder into the dresser. This time it yields, jogging reluctantly along the carpet and back into place.

“Two.”

I pull open the door, out of breath. “Mom, I'm not twelve anymore. Quit with the counting thing.”

“Could have fooled me,” she says. She strides past me and surveys the drawers, starts to ask about them, then shrieks.

“
You broke your new mirror?
That was two hundred dollars! What is
wrong
with you?”

“Mom, I didn't—”

“I can't believe this! I try to do something nice, I thought you must be upset about something since you broke your last mirror and that pretty girl hasn't been over yet this week—”

“But—”

“So I bought you a new one. Per usual, Brandon, my hard work is repaid with your knack for destroying everything.”

“Mom, if you'd just listen—”

She waves me off. “You know what? I'm done. I give up. Fail out of school, tear up your room, lose your license. I just can't … no time to deal with this…”

She stomps out, smearing angry tears off her cheeks, and slams the door behind her. I lose track of how long I stare at the handle. I thought she gave up long ago, but hearing it … hearing it stings on a level I didn't think I had anymore. It makes me think of burning things. It makes me think of lighting my room on fire, stealing the Z and my laptop and my lava lamp, and calling it my official emancipation.

I flip a lighter out of my pocket and thumb it on.

“This is why I don't care,” I tell myself. I tell the
weak
part of myself, that keeps trying to come out, that keeps hoping for things I have no business hoping for. I don't need Mom concerning herself with me. Or Dad, or Emma, or Principal Myer. I've made it this far alone. I'll make it farther.

The ache fades.

I watch the flame shiver and flick the lighter shut.

 

8. THEN LET'S TRADE

SINCE MOM DOESN'T CARE
anymore and Dad's still chatting it up with China, I snatch the Z's keys and peel down the street. Like nothing happened.

And, I tell myself firmly, nothing did. Nothing that matters, anyway.

I navigate through The Pinery's overpriced custom homes, out onto the highway where I let the Z open up. I press twenty over the limit, thirty over, then screech onto a side street and circle around in the hills for God knows how long before I somehow end up in Stroh Ranch, which was probably a real ranch ages ago but is now covered in cookie-cutter houses so close you could reach from your window to your neighbor's.

I stop across the street from one very particular cookie cutter, with gray-blue siding and white trim and a black F250 pickup in the drive.

I shouldn't be here.

I don't leave.

On the second floor is a room full of Emma's toy horses and picture books and clay handprints from when she was three that have been in that exact room since she got them, because she's never known anyplace else. Through the first-floor windows, Mrs. Jennings grabs a steaming roast out of the oven and disappears around the corner where the dining room is. Where the whole family will be.

The ache starts again.

I take the long way home.

*   *   *

Wednesday morning, six forty-five
A.M
. I haven't moved the drawers from the floor or cleaned up the spilled glass by the window. Or done any of my homework like Dad ordered after I got home yesterday and asked when we were going to eat. I did, however, invest three very important hours into Call of Duty on Sniper's personal account, which I hacked just to make sure I still could. Not really eager to try anything on my laptop yet.

Someone knocks.

“You awake?” Dad asks from the other side.

“Yeah, Dad. Getting up.”

The contents of my drawers haven't changed overnight. Since Mom said nothing about shopping, I blame Obran and his stupid quest to turn me into Justin Timberlake. I step over the drawers and pull open my closet.

And snarl out a chain of words that would make inmates blush.

Pink, peach, lavender, and ivory hang in a hideous display everywhere I look. I've never seen so many collared shirts in my life. Vineyard Vines. J.Crew. Ralph Lauren. All in freaking pastel. I finger through them, desperate to find anything black or grey or even just blue, and whoop in triumph when I catch a glimpse of dark fabric. I yank it out and fling it to the floor like a spider when I see it's a pair of slacks.

I yell another word Dad shouts I should never say again.

Obran's gone too far. Wristbands? Fine. Dye? Whatever. Tattoos? Well, I'm still pretty pissed about those. But corner me into Calvin Klein.… And This. Means. War. I storm into the hallway, ignore Dad asking me what's wrong, and shove open the bathroom door. I stand in the way so it can't close on me and flip on the light.

“Give me back my clothes!” I yell at the mirror.

Obran blinks innocently and tugs at the collar of a nauseating baby blue polo he's wearing over tan slacks, and … God, no … under an argyle sweater vest. Hair combed. Hair
gelled
. The room gets hot, and I touch my head. Needle-fine hair meets my fingers.

“Brandon, what are you—oh, hey, son, you look good!”

Dad stands at the top of the stairs, smiling like I haven't seen … maybe ever. I look down at my polo, slacks, and that freaking sweater vest and a funny cross between a shriek and a laugh comes out of my mouth. I brace myself on the door frame.

“I will find a way to kill you,” I growl at my smirking reflection, and I slam the door.

“What's that?” Dad asks.

“Nothing. Last day of the project, enjoy it while you can.”

I spend the next ten minutes tearing up my room, trying to find a scrap of dark clothing Obran has overlooked. No such luck. Not so much as a black undershirt or boxers. I rip off the sweater vest, undo the first two buttons on the shirt, and roll the sleeves sloppy to both elbows. Swap the slacks out for a pair of “7 For All Mankind” jeans (whatever the hell those are) and fume out the garage door. I hop into the Z, tear the glass out of the rearview mirror and the side mirrors, and toss them next to the trash cans. The engine churns to a satisfying roar.

It's not going to be a good day.

*   *   *

Suck factor one appears, predictably, in the form of Rachel Love, who's parked her yellow Cobalt at the far edge of the lot in anticipation of my arrival. I wheel the Z to the first row to avoid her. She can't trot across the pavement fast enough in her hooker heels to catch me before I push through the front doors.

Suck factor two: everyone else. Yesterday I got a few double takes, a few raised eyebrows, a few snorts of laughter as people read the rumors on Twitter. Today books drop, jaws drop, kids run into walls, and conversations cease when I pass. The president of student council welcomes me to the school and says a very unpresidential word when she recognizes me.