Chapter Nine
When I was fifteen, Rei handed me a thick workbook and told me I should begin studying for the GED.
“You have completed the required high school curriculum. I don’t see why you should wait. You can take the GED and apply to college. You’ll get a scholarship. I’m sure of it.”
Her words thrilled me, but I thought immediately of Amir. Schoolwork had never come easily to him. Rei had brought only one GED workbook.
“What about Amir?”
Rei sighed. Her face was etched with lines that reminded me of the cobwebs that appeared in the corners of my bedroom overnight.
“You and Amir are not one person,” Rei said. “He has his pace of learning and you have yours. He has his future and you have yours. Already, you spend too much time together.”
Her reproach made my cheeks grow warm. I knew that she felt our bond was unnatural.Siblings should not be so close,shehad told me recently.But we aren’t siblings,I replied. This did not satisfy her. I remembered how Bear had said that our father would have thought that our relationship was disgusting. Amir and I were not supposed to have the feelings that we had for each other, feelings that I had become too ashamed to allow myself to linger on even in the privacy of my own mind. I longed for him in a way that made me self-conscious; I worried that my desire for him was visible on my skin.
Whenever I looked at Amir’s lips and thought of kissing them, I felt a rush of humiliation that could be overcome only by convincing Amir to explore another house with me. Over the course of a year, we’d let ourselves into nearly a dozen houses. If anyone in Osha was aware that houses were being broken into, the news never reached us. And yet, though we never took anything more than snacks—and, that first time, a sandal strap—surely some owner along the way must have noticed something slightly off about his home upon his return. The half-eaten tub of ice cream? The throw blanket inexpertly refolded? The once delicately curved red lipstick now flattened within its golden tube after being pressed too hard to the lips of a girl who had never worn makeup? As far as we knew, no one was perturbed by these subtle trespasses.
In those houses, there were no consequences for our transgressions. And so, in those houses, I allowed myself to look at Amir with all the longing that I felt for him. I did not silently berate myself when he returned my gaze. In those strangers’ homes, my attraction to Amir felt untethered from the mortification thataccompanied it at Horseshoe Cliff. When his hand, on occasion, grazed my skin, or mine his, I enjoyed the thrum of pleasure that ran down my spine.
Our touches grew more frequent, and it was difficult to say what would have happened between us if we had not, that summer, stumbled upon the house at which everything changed.
THE HOUSE WASso high in the hills that we were out of breath by the time we found it. On some outings we never found a house to explore, and I had been beginning to feel a needle of disappointment that it might be one of those days. When I saw the small dark house nestled within the fog and trees, a flutter of excitement moved through my chest. The driveway was steep and curved and lined with tall plants that were dotted with bursts of orange flowers. There were no cars parked in front, no dogs barking from within, no lights glowing through the fog, and no security company stickers warning us away.
The sliding door at the back of the house was locked. I cupped my hands around my eyes and peered through the glass. On a round white table there was a bowl of fat cherries with skin so shiny that I knew they were perfectly ripe. I imagined their taut skin bursting as easily as a strained seam.
When I pulled back from the glass door, I noticed a window at the far corner of the house. It slid open silently. Amir climbed through first. His hands held mine as I stepped through the window and then straightened. I felt his thumbs run over my skin. A presence beside me made me turn with a start, but itwas only our reflection. We were in a bathroom: black tiled floor, bathtub surprisingly deep and round.
In the mirror: a line of dried blood above Amir’s eyebrow from the wall that Bear had shoved him against that morning. As I’d helped Amir clean the cut, I’d felt as though it were my own skin that had split open, my own bright blood that ran down his face. His cut was my cut; his blood, mine.
Now, Amir studied the wound. Anger transformed his face, making his languid eyes glitter. He was always controlled around Bear, infuriating my brother with his measured voice and the detached expression that communicated that he was better than Bear. But I knew that Amir’s hands tightened into fists when he saw Bear approaching. Amir seemed to get a little taller every day, and I wondered what would happen when he stopped having to look up at Bear and instead met his bleary gaze straight on.
“You know not to listen to him, right?” I put my hand on his. “You’re not nobody. You’re the opposite of nobody.”
“I’m everybody?” Amir’s smile was sad. I ached to run my fingers over his long black eyelashes, to cup his face in my hands.
“You are to me.” I would do anything for him. And he would do anything for me. The intensity of this realization made me feel jittery. I looked around the room. “Check out the size of that tub. Whoever owns this house is a giant.”
Amir smiled, and the anger in his face disappeared. “Giants eat a lot.” He went off in search of the kitchen.
There was a bottle of something called rose water on the countertop beside a strange-looking toothbrush. I stuck mypinkie into the bottle and then dragged my pinkie up and down my arm. The scent was a thick floral smell that I loved. It made me think of Rei, who always smelled of sweet things. For a moment, I considered taking the bottle as a gift for Rei, but I knew I would never be able to explain how I came to have it.
In the bedroom, a large white bed seemed to float over the pale floor. A few photographs of the beach near Osha were framed on the walls, and a tall bookcase lined with books stood next to a large chest.
It was a quiet house. The boards below my feet did not creak and the sides of the house did not complain when the wind blew. I heard only the sounds of cabinets and drawers opening and closing as Amir looked for food. I remembered the cherries on the table that I’d seen through the window and was about to walk out of the bedroom when the chest caught my eye again. Inside, below a stack of neatly folded blankets, was a box.
It was big enough to hold a quilt and decorated with shells and thin gray stones. The beach at Horseshoe Cliff was rife with those stones, round as coins and veined with delicate white lines. Amir and I would have contests to see who could stack them higher and I always lost, stacking my stones too quickly so they wobbled and fell, while Amir took his time building a tower that reached his waist. I liked to sneak glances at Amir while he stacked those stones; his face grew still, the curves of his cheekbones hardening, his eyes steady with concentration. He held each stone in his palm as though warming it before placing it at the top of the stack. His long fingers never shook. I thought that Amir’s hands, as callousedand scarred as they were, were easily the most elegant things at Horseshoe Cliff.
Whoever owned the box was careful, too. An artist. The stones formed a pattern of cresting waves. Sea froth was made from gold-flecked sand, a beach of perfect shells below. I ran my fingers over the pattern, wondering if I dared to take the box with me when I left, if its owner could possibly miss it as much as I would cherish it. My fingers found the small latch hidden in the waves.
Inside, there was money. Stack upon stack of hundred-dollar bills tied with red string. I stared. I reached out to touch the money and started when I realized Amir was calling my name. His voice had a strange catch in it.
“Mer—” he said, appearing in the doorway. His eyes widened when he saw the money. Quickly, before I could think better of it, I picked up a thick pad of bills. I looked at Amir. The sight of the cut curving above his black eyebrow caused my heart to pound.
“Amir,” I said. I knew he already knew what I was thinking, that I didn’t have to say a word more. A sort of breathless excitement took hold of me as I cradled that money. “We could leave. We could go anywhere we wanted. We could go to San Francisco! We could stay in a hotel and order room service.” It was something I’d wanted to do since readingEloiseas a child. “We could buy luggage and fill it with new clothes. We could leave right now, just start hitching rides until we’re far away from here.”
I stopped talking only when I saw the funny look on Amir’s face.
“We can’t take that money,” he said.
