Luna (14 page)

Must’ve been one of those pearls of wisdom.

It was pathetic, really, to see what my father had been reduced to. I always thought he was King of the World, Lord of the Rings. Guess Liam did, too.

Dad wasn’t glued to the TV the way I expected, although there was a bottle of beer on the coffee table, half empty. He was probably in the john. I made my own pit stop at the fridge for a Coke before heading to the basement.

My breath caught. The basement door was open.

The door was never left open.

It couldn’t be Liam. The Spyder was gone. It wasn’t Mom. She said this morning she’d be working late. It could only be . . .

“Dad?” I called from the top of the stairs.

No answer.

I stomped down, flatfooted, the creaking sound effects ricocheting in the stairwell. Across the row of PC’s at Liam’s long workstation, screensavers built skyscrapers in silent unison. Which wasn’t unusual. He had a habit of leaving his computers on all day. What freaked me out was seeing Liam’s bedroom door open. He never left it unlocked when he wasn’t home. Never.

Maybe he
was
home. “Liam?” I called.

“Regan, is that you?” Dad.

My feet paved a path through the computer components spread out on the floor. “What are you doing?” I drew up at Liam’s door, eyes sweeping the interior of the room. Everything seemed in order. Liam was too careful to leave evidence out in the open. Except, he had. There was a purse on top of his treasure chest, that tapestry bag. “How did you get in here?” I said.

“The door was unlocked,” Dad replied.

Liar.

“What are you doing home from school early?”

My face flared. “I, uh ... ditched.” Actually I’d sped out the nearest exit from the gym and just kept running.

A smile snaked across Dad’s lips. “At least you’re honest.” His smile faded. “You’re grounded. You don’t ditch.”

“Am I grounded again? Or still?”

Dad fixed on me. “Oh, forget it.” He waved a paw in my direction. “You’re ungrounded. Both of you. I don’t want you staying home because you’re forced to. I want you here because your old man’s such a stud you can’t wait to show him off to your friends.”

I snorted. Right, Dad. Sick. Suddenly my backpack weighed a ton. I let it slip off my shoulder and thunk to the floor. I had the strongest urge to run to Dad and hug him, the way I used to. To hold onto him, feel him lift me in the air and make me fly; spin me around until we were both giddy with glee. Daddy’s girly whirligig.

Instead, I took a glug of Coke.

“Let me ask you a question, Re. Come here.” Dad motioned me inside.

I didn’t like the sound of this. “Liam doesn’t want people in his room, Dad. Especially me.” You even more.

“Why? What’s in here? There’s nothing to take. I can’t even find his drug money.”

“Dad!”

“I’m kidding — I hope. I wasn’t going to steal anything. I was just —” He stopped. “What’s in that box?” He pointed to Liam’s treasure chest.

My blood froze. “How should I know?”

Dad looked at me, through me. “Because he tells you things. He talks to you. Which is more than he does with me or your mother.” Dad charged out the door, forcing me to jump aside or get trampled. “What is all this crap?” He waved an arm over the computer parts stacked along the wall, some still in shrink wrap. “Is he stealing this stuff? Selling it?”

“No.” I screwed up my face. “He builds PCs for people. You knew that.” What did Dad think Liam was? A stoner? A dealer? He was so
not
what Dad imagined.

Dad grunted. Surveying the components, all meticulously arranged and sorted, Dad said, “Well, at least he didn’t lie about that.”

As I reached over to close Liam’s door, Dad shocked me by saying, “Tell me this, Re. Is he gay?”

My hand melded to the doorknob.

“I need to know. Is he?”

Slowly I turned. “No.”

Dad’s eyes narrowed; burrowed into me. “You’re lying,” he said. He lumbered over to the sofa and perched at the edge, covering his face with his hands. “I’m not stupid, you know.” His voice muffled.

“Dad, I’m not lying.” I felt this sudden surge of sympathy for my father. Or empathy. I went and sat beside him, setting my Coke on the coffee table. “Believe me. He isn’t gay.”

Dad raised his head and twisted to face me. He blew out a shudder, the way you do after you’ve had a bad scare. “I don’t know. All this time, with Aly and everything. He’s always got girls down here so I figured he was all right. It’s just that lately —”

“He is all right,” I snapped.

Dad studied my face. “Does he date? You know, take girls out? Buy them meals? Go to the drive-in?”

“We don’t have drive-ins anymore. We have cineplexes.”

Dad widened his eyes. “Don’t be a smart-ass. Answer the question.”

I stood and crossed the room; switched on the TV. “He doesn’t tell me everything.” Which was the truth, at least. “Probably he doesn’t bring dates home because his father’s such a studly guy and he’s worried about the competition.” I smirked over my shoulder.

Dad rested an arm along the back of the sofa. “But he does like girls.”

Drop it, Dad, I thought. Grabbing the remote off the top of the TV, I surfed through the channels, hoping he’d take the hint.

“Regan?”

I wanted to scream in his face, No! He’s not into girls, okay? He likes guys. We both do. That doesn’t make him gay. It makes him as straight as me because inside he’s a girl, Dad. Just like me. You have two daughters, okay?

I settled on
Scooby Doo.
The remote control dangled at my side.

“Well.” Dad pushed to his feet. “I guess I’m satisfied.”

Like Liam, Dad saw what he wanted to see. Heard what he wanted to hear. A genetic defect.

Dad approached from behind and looped both arms around my shoulders. “Tell him I promise to behave myself. Tell him if he brings a girl home and introduces her, I might let him borrow the VW.” He gave my lifeless body a quick squeeze.

I forced a smile, but my heart ached. Liam could never tell him. Never.

At the top of the stairs Dad called down, “Tell your brother to lay off the cologne, too, will you? It smells like a brothel in that bedroom.”

Liam got home around ten-thirty that night. From the middle of my bed, where I was doing homework, I heard him sit in the desk chair and start clicking away. My body begged sleep, but I had to get through these chemistry problems. I was two days behind on worksheets and late with a lab assignment. Bruchac dropped our grade a notch for every day late, and he wasn’t giving anyone a break. Especially me, it seemed. He’d waggled a fat finger in my face as I’d slithered past him after class today.

I thought about asking Liam for help, but he had enough on his plate. Now he had to worry about Dad breaking into his room. I’d better warn him. Why did Chris have to drop? I would’ve helped him. We could’ve flunked chem together. Which is probably what would’ve happened if he’d stayed. My interest in the class would’ve hovered somewhere around absolute zero, since I’d have spent the whole hour making goo-goo eyes at Chris. Better not to have the distraction. For some reason, this inexplicable desire to live up to Bruchac’s expectations consumed me. Like it was my big opportunity to glorify the sisterhood or something. Glorify myself.

My bedroom door flew open. “Look at this.” Liam rushed in.

“Don’t you knock anymore? Doesn’t anyone around here respect people’s privacy?”

He slid to a stop. With exaggerated steps, he tiptoed backward and closed the door behind him. He rapped twice.

What a dork. “Go away,” I muttered.

He rapped again.

“Liam, I’m busy.”

“I just want to show you something.” The door cracked. “Please? It won’t take long.”

I exhaled exasperation and remoted off my
Carmen
CD. “You have thirty seconds,” I informed him. “Twenty-nine.”

He bounced up onto my bed and curled cross-legged opposite me. “What are you working on?” he asked, his gaze skimming over the comforter, where all my papers were strewn.

“Chemistry,” I droned.

He picked up my half-finished worksheet from yesterday and said, “You got brutal Bruchac?”

“How’d you guess?”

“Looks familiar. Speaking of looks . . .” He bit his lip. Whatever he was hiding behind his back, he whipped out and slapped on the bed between us. “Check this out.”

I eyed the printout. Lifting it, I brought it closer to my face and scanned the page. It was a blurry picture of a guy — a pimply guy with glasses. It appeared to be a blow-up of a bad driver’s license. “Yeah, so?” I set down the page.

“Now look at this.” Liam placed another printed photo on top of it.

My eyebrows raised. “Wow. Who’s this?” I picked it up. It was a girl. A beautiful girl with long black hair and blue eyes. She was posed like a model or something, for a studio sitting. I glanced up from the photo to find Liam grinning at me. “That’s Teri Lynn.”

“Really?” I examined the photo. “Wow.”

“They’re both Teri Lynn.”

“What? No way.” I snatched up the nerd picture for closer scrutiny. Studied both side by side. There was no resemblance at all. “You’re kidding.”

“I’m not.” Liam let out a little laugh. “She’s amazing, isn’t she?” He picked up the female photo. Gazing into it, his eyes caught fire.

A wave of fatigue flooded over me. I yawned and said, “Tell her to share her makeup secrets, okay?” I stretched my arms over my head and heard the cartilage cracking in my shoulder blades. Stiff, achy.

“It’s not all makeup. She’s had surgery. A chin implant and nose reduction. But she says the hormones made the difference.”

“So take the hormones.” I handed him the boy picture so I could get back to work.

“I am.” He scooted off the bed, leaving the boy picture behind. Cradling the view of Teri Lynn’s new face like it was a sheet of gold leaf, he padded out, leaving the door open behind him.

An alarm sounded in my head. Liam’s taking hormones? What hormones? Those were serious drugs. Where was he getting them? Off the Internet? That had to be illegal. I clambered to the end of the bed, then stopped. Did I really want to know about this?

Yes. But not tonight. It was too late to get into a deep discussion about hormones and surgery and transitioning. My mind needed to focus. On
my
life, for once.

I shut the door and resumed my homework. We had to calculate the molecules of acid rain yielded by copper ore conversion — big thrill. My concentration lagged. My eyes came to rest on the picture Liam had left behind.

Teri Lynn’s other face. Her false face. It wasn’t the difference between the male and female that struck me so much as the change in demeanor, the attitude, the confidence. Teri Lynn, the male, seemed to be another person altogether. A dead person, the way Liam appeared sometimes. Sad, vacant. The other Teri Lynn, the real one, had blossomed and sprung to life. The way Liam broke free when he morphed into Luna.

Like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis, I thought. An exquisite and delicate creature, unfolding her wings and flying away. Except in Luna’s case, the butterfly is forced to rein in her wings and reinsert herself into the cocoon every day. Every single day, she has to become this shell of a person.

Tears stung my eyes. It wasn’t fair. Why him? Why her? She was such a good person, Luna. Liam. The best brother ever. I remember, after I got my tonsils out, Liam had put on a puppet show for me. He’d built a stage and dressed up sock puppets. In skirts, of course. My throat hurt so bad, I can still feel the rawness sometimes when I swallow. Every night at bedtime he’d read to me, before I learned how. He’d try to teach me . . .

Once, in first grade, when this bully on the playground kept chasing me and pulling my hair, Liam came over and socked him in the face. That was the only time he ever hit another person in his life.

No, it wasn’t.

There was that time at the mall with Mom. She was looking at purses. Liam was, too.

He loops a purse over his arm, copying Mom. I get bored and wander off. Behind me I hear Mom say, “Put that back, and go watch your sister.”

“Let me try it,” I say to Liam, grabbing for the hat.

“Okay, here. I’ll put it on you.” He places a felt hat on my head and adjusts it so the feather sticks up in front. I hold my neck stiff because the hat feels like it’s going to slide off. It’s way too big. Liam tries on a green hat with a silk bow in back and netting on top. He delicately draws the netting down over his eyes.

We model the hats in the mirror. Liam puts a hand on his hip and prances around like a model. It makes me giggle. I mimic him. When Liam returns to the counter for another pair of hats, something happens.

I’m on the escalator and this man is holding my hand. I hear Liam’s voice behind me call out, “Regan?”

I glance behind and catch Liam’s eye. “Regan!”

I suddenly realize I don’t know this man. I scream. I try to twist away, but can’t. He’s got me tight. Liam comes charging down the escalator steps, falling and picking himself up. We’re almost at the bottom before Liam catches up. He lunges and tries to wrench my hand out of the man’s. “Let her go. Let her
go
!” He pounds on the man’s back. He fists the man’s arms and side and stomach.

Liam’s yelling and kicking this man and I’m falling and someone is lifting me up and Liam’s hugging me hard and I’m crying and he’s saying, “It’s okay, Re. I’ve got you now. It’s okay.”

Mom lunges off the escalator and yanks me out of Liam’s arms. She hoists me up and clutches me to her chest. She yells at Liam, “Why did you let her out of your sight? I can’t trust you for a minute!”

She makes him cry.

Mom, it wasn’t his fault. It happens to kids all the time, even when their parents are right there. It happened to Cody at the playground. Elise said she turned her back for a minute and a man approached Cody out of nowhere. If Liam hadn’t saved me . . . If he hadn’t been there for me ...I shudder to think.

Liam’s so needy now, I thought, I’m forgetting all the times I needed him. He’s always been there for me. Always.