She went back inside and closed the window as I climbed down the tree. I sat on the ground and leaned against the trunk. This was going to be painful, but then again, hurting people seemed to be my specialty.
I was barefoot as I tiptoed down the stairs. I eased closer to the wall on the next to the last step, trying to keep it from squeaking. Mom had been in bed for a couple of hours, and before that I’d seen her down half a bottle of rum. I was pretty sure she was out. I probably could have driven a school bus through the living room and not woken her up.
I slipped out the back door and around the side of the house. Luke was sitting underneath a tree, his arms propped up on his knees. His face was even darker than usual, and my stomach tightened. Something was wrong.
“We’re back to our midnight meetings,” I said, trying to lighten the mood. I sat in front of him, our knees touching.
He raised his face to look at me, and even in the dark, I could see that his eyes were full of shadows. And disgust.
“We can’t see each other anymore,” he told me.
I heard the words, but I didn’t know what to do with them. “Okay,” I said. But it didn’t really make sense. I knew he wasn’t joking because his voice was blacker than I’d ever heard it. But I had no idea where this was coming from. He sure hadn’t acted like anything was wrong the other night.
His fists were clenched. “I shouldn’t have done that to Ian.”
This was about Ian. That I could understand. “Look, I’m sorry it came out that way. I just didn’t think it was fair to him anymore.”
“It wasn’t fair to him to begin with.” Luke’s voice was quiet anger. “Really, how selfish can you be? What kind of person dates two guys at the same time? And brothers at that?”
It felt like he’d just punched me in the gut. His words cut, mainly because they were true. He had every right to feel that way. But I would not be taking all the blame for this.
“You knew I was seeing Ian. That sure as hell didn’t stop you from sneaking over here in the middle of the night and taking me on some moonlit picnic.” My pulse raced, equal parts anger and guilt. “You’re just as much to blame as I am. Maybe more.”
“You’ve been cheating on
me
with Ian. You’ve been sneaking around behind
Ian’s
back with me. Now all of a sudden you decide you’re in love with me, and I’m supposed to know what to do with that? Well I’m sorry, but I don’t.” Luke stood up to go.
“Why do you push people away? What don’t you want them to see?”
The quiet of his voice was worse than any shouting could be. “Don’t you understand? We’re not good for each other. I don’t want someone who tries both boys out until she’s sure.”
Anger kept me from articulating all the things
I
didn’t want.
“You didn’t really think you were the first girl who tried us both on for size, did you?” he asked. His crooked grin was harsh. “I kissed his last girlfriend, too.”
I didn’t know what to do with that. “What happened?” I asked. I was surprised I could speak.
“She died. In a crash I was responsible for. I walked away, but Mandy died.”
My first instinct was to run. I wanted to fly through the trees and pretend he hadn’t spoken. But the truth was something I couldn’t escape. I needed to know more, but I didn’t want to know any of it. I tried to picture this girl who had come between two brothers and somehow died. But when I imagined her face, I only saw mine.
“It was an accident,” I said. It had to be an accident. A mistake. This was all a mistake.
“Do you think that makes a damn bit of difference?” Luke snapped. “Dead is dead. You can’t ever take that back.
I
can’t ever take that back!” He stepped away from me. “I told you, you picked the right brother the first time.”
And before I could argue, before I could say anything, he turned and walked off. I watched his shadow cross the yard and disappear into the woods behind the house.
Luke was right. I didn’t deserve either one of them. Ian was sweet and caring and I’d thrown that right back in his face, sneaking off behind his back with Luke. And Luke—well, it didn’t matter.
I wanted my life to go back to the way it had been before the McAlister brothers moved to town, but it didn’t. It couldn’t. I couldn’t erase the past couple of months. I missed them both. I wasn’t stupid enough to believe I would get both, or that I even wanted to. After months of not knowing what I wanted, I’d finally found the one thing I was certain I did want, and now I couldn’t have it. I missed Ian, too. We’d developed a solid friendship. And I missed talking to Luke and the way he kissed me. I missed that swoop in my stomach, the way I had trouble breathing. Being with Luke was like riding a roller coaster. Not being with Luke was like being forced to ride the merry-go-round. After experiencing the roller coaster, I couldn’t go back. I didn’t want to.
I tried not to think about him. I wasn’t that girl. I wasn’t the type to fall in love with the first boy who paid her attention and then be devastated when he moved on. That wasn’t me. But here I was, feeling miserable because he didn’t want me, nauseated because he didn’t feel the same way I did.
I threw myself into work, deciding to finally clean out and organize the junk room in the back. There were years of forgotten and broken items stacked in sealed tubs, rotting boxes, and torn garbage bags. It would’ve been easier to set the place on fire. If I spent every day for the next year back here, I still wouldn’t get through it all. It was the perfect distraction.
I left Pops’s boxes alone. Mops and I had agreed that we wouldn’t touch them until Mom was ready. It was something we needed to do together. I was pretty sure they’d never get unpacked. Especially since Mom and Mops still weren’t speaking.
Mops knew something was up. She let me get sweaty and elbow-deep in a musty old box before she showed up and demanded to know what was going on.
“It’s about time someone went through this stuff,” I
said. “It needs to be organized. You can’t find anything in here.” I pushed my hair out of my face. The junk pile had gotten out of control.
“Why now? This stuff has been here for years. Why all of a sudden did you decide it needed to be done today?”
“Well, I’ll be going off to college soon,” I said, “and if I don’t do it, no one will.”
Mops wasn’t buying it. “Tell me what happened.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But I couldn’t look at her. I’d never been able to lie to Mops.
“This is about your mother,” she said with complete certainty.
It was about my life, which was about my mother and money and the McAlisters. It was about too much alcohol and too much anger and not enough strength to fix either one. It was about plans that fell apart and people who died and the fear that I wouldn’t ever escape any of it. But mostly, right then, it was about Luke. It was about finally realizing what I wanted and not being able to keep it.
“Go up front and put out the lunch sign,” Mops said.
“It’s only ten o’clock,” I argued, glancing at my watch.
She winked at me. “We won’t tell the boss. Meet you upstairs.”
By the time I’d locked the door, put out the sign, and climbed the twisting staircase, Mops had fixed us each a big glass of iced tea. No one made iced tea like Mops—it was so sweet it was syrupy. Perfect. She pulled a package of cookies out of the cabinet and plopped them on the chipped Formica table. Most of my childhood memories included this table. We’d eaten dinner here every night when we’d lived together. Mops’s house was bigger then, light pouring in from the windows that lined the east side of the kitchen. Pops’s hat was always hanging on a peg just inside the door, and Mops’s mean old cat, Dust, was lying on the rug in front of the sink and taking swipes at whoever walked by. That was before everyone moved out and started doing their own thing. Before Pops died and Mom changed. Back when things were simple.
I’d learned to read at this table. I’d colored outside the lines at this table. I’d made messes and glittered Christmas ornaments here, followed it from Pops’s house to Mops’s apartment. The table, with all its scratches and stains, held a piece of who I was in it. A piece of who we all were. It was scary to think it held my best piece. What if this was all there was?
Mops should have worked for the CIA—she could get anyone to talk. And there must have been some secret ingredient in her tea, because even though I didn’t want to talk about it, even though I didn’t really want anyone to know about Luke and what I’d done to Ian, I found myself telling her everything.
Almost
everything. I told her about meeting Ian and dating them both, choosing Luke and him dumping me. I skipped over the parts I was trying to forget—mainly those which involved Mandy. I refused to cry. It wouldn’t have done any good. Tears never changed a thing.
Mops didn’t interrupt once. She waited until I was finished, until I had lost my words and found the silence. Then she patted my hand and sat back in her chair.
“Rejection is never easy. Never. And I’m sorry. I’d tell you he was stupid and a damn fool, but if you care about him, he can’t be either. You’re too smart for that.”
I didn’t feel smart. Even though being with Luke was the most natural thing in the world, it made me feel emotions I didn’t have words for. Maybe there weren’t words to describe how it felt when Luke looked at me or said my name. When his lips touched mine.
When I was ten years old, I couldn’t wait to be sixteen. Now that I was almost eighteen, I was already looking forward to my twenties. I wondered if we ever got to the age we wanted to be, or if the minute we were almost there, we started wishing our way back. It was exhausting.
“From what you’ve told me,” Mops continued, “it sounds like Luke feels pretty bad about stealing you away from his brother.”
“I’m not a toy. It’s not like Ian had me first and Luke took me away. I’m a person, and I can make up my own mind. I chose Luke.”
“But it’s more than just your choice. It’s Luke’s too, and I’m sure he doesn’t want to hurt his brother. My sister and I fought every day of our lives, but I would’ve died for her. It’s just the way siblings are.”
I knew she was probably right. Becca always complained about her little brother, but she adored him. I just didn’t know what it was like to have a brother or sister. Most times I was glad I was an only child, but sometimes it was a little lonely having to put up with my mom all by myself.
“I know it hurts, but stressing and worrying about it won’t make it any better,” she said. “You just need some time. If it’s meant to be, he’ll come back.”
I didn’t know if I wanted him to. After everything he’d told me, I shouldn’t have. I was mad at myself for getting distracted when what I needed to be focused on was saving money and getting into a good school. I wanted my senior year to be productive. I wanted to qualify for state in cross-country. I needed to improve my ACT score by three points at least. I had to make sure my mom was better by the time I graduated so that I
could
leave. And out of all the things I needed to do, none involved Luke. But no matter what my head said, my heart argued. It wanted to hang out with Luke at the lake. My heart wanted to stare at the stars and beat in time with his. Stupid heart.
“Feel better?” Mops asked.
I felt a lot of things, but I wasn’t sure better was one of them. I just nodded. Sometimes giving my thoughts a voice scared me.
She smiled. “Good. Now what?”
“Now we get back to work.” But I knew that, no matter how busy I kept myself, I wasn’t going to be able to ignore the bruises Luke had left. Whoever said words didn’t hurt was either a damn fool or a liar.
Ian hadn’t spoken to me for days—not that I’d tried. I was staying in my room, away from everyone. Sleep didn’t come as often as I would’ve liked, and when it did, I dreamt of tree houses and walls that became mazes with no way out. But I felt weirdly disconnected from Ian, like I’d been snipped in half. We’d always known what the other one was thinking. It had always been like that. I thought it was completely normal until I got older and realized not everyone had that. Not even all identical twins thought the same. But we had.
Ian was always the one person I’d trusted. We’d done everything together—Little League, the tree house, building forts in the woods and damming up a little stream behind our house in Colorado. We’d even gotten chicken pox at the same time. When his appendix had ruptured, it’d felt like someone had shoved an ice pick into my stomach. I screamed before he did. I was outside working on the tree house, and I’d dropped the hammer and hollered. At first I thought I’d somehow stabbed myself with the nail, but then I’d heard Ian scream, and I’d realized that I wasn’t hurt. He was.
I ran inside and up the stairs before Mom even made it out of the laundry room. I’d been so scared. Ian had never made a noise like that before, and I knew it was bad.
He was pale, a light sheen of sweat covering his face. He was curled up on the floor, his hands shaking. There was a pool of vomit next to him.
I don’t remember much after that. The hospital had been bright and made my eyes water. I must have looked really bad when we got to the emergency room because a nurse took my blood pressure and pulse. I’d fought her for a while. Ian was in the bed next to me, Mom holding his hand. Dad was at the base, of course. They gave me a shot. I slept. I hadn’t woken up until Ian was out of surgery. He was groggy and in pain, but he’d pulled up his gown and showed me his stitches. He’d been proud of them.
I’d hated them—they made us different, distinguished one from the other. It kind of scared me how much I cared about that. I hadn’t realized how big a part of my life that identicalness was. It just always was. We tricked our teachers. We tricked our parents. When we were little, we pretended Ian was the real boy and I was the reflection. I liked the idea that I had stepped out of a mirror from some other world, like Wonderland or something. But the scar broke that.
So that night, after my parents had fallen asleep, while Ian was still in the hospital, I’d snuck downstairs and cut myself with a knife. It hadn’t hurt as much as I thought it was going to, but there had been way more blood than I’d expected. I never forgot the look on Dad’s face when he flipped on the light—it still haunted me. He looked dead. All the color drained out of his face, and for a split second, there was absolutely no emotion. Then there was panic. Later there would be anger. He was furious once he’d realized I wasn’t going to die.