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“Shit, Remy.” A few steps is all it takes to be standing beside her. “I’ve got a secret handshake for you. Come out from under there and tell me what happened.”
We started making up the secret handshake when Remy was three, or maybe three-and-a-half. It pissed her off to be too young to play the same games Gabriel and Mason and I did, so thesecretaspect of the handshake was a big deal to her. We’ve added to it over the years.
There’s that throat-closing bullshit again. If I stay here, it’ll be for Remy.
She’d be happier if you moved out,a small, shrill voice argues.They’d all be happier if you left them alone and kept your constant, embarrassing flame-outs to yourself.
I flip off that voice. Remy’s crying in front of menow,and she hasn’t so much as poked a finger out from under her blanket-shield.
“Desperate times.” I brace myself on the edge of the mattress and vault over her, landing on the empty stretch of bed on her other side. My landing shakes the mattress, but is otherwise pretty smooth. Smartwater sloshes daintily in the bottle.
Remy sniffles from within her cotton fortress. “What are you doing?”
I roll onto my back. “Lying here, since you’re not at brunch.”
“You can go to brunch without me, you know.”
“Not so fast with the problem-solving onmybehalf. The real question here is whyyou’rein here crying instead of eating waffles.” All I want is for my sister to feel better, and it’s a physical pressure on my chest. I know from experience that I have to wait until she’s ready. Remy might be the one thing I have patience for. “It’s dark in here. And it smells like sad tea.”
Remy huffs. “Just go away if you don’t like it.”
“Why would I go away? You’re obviously having a breakdown. Cut to the chase and tell me who I should maim. Also, Rem, I know it’s a million degrees under there.”
She throws off the covers like she’s rising out of pure hellfire. “I don’t want to sit at brunch likethis,” Remy announces, and points at her face.
The dark is forgiving, but notthatforgiving. Rumpled hair. Mascara shadows under her eyes. Blotchy cheeks. “You look great.”
“Shut up.” Remy slaps me lightly, affectionately on the shoulder. “I’m a mess.”
“Okay, but, like…why?”
I watched Remy grow up. I was there to raise her, as much as a reckless asshole like myself could be. I’ve seen her filthy from falling in mud puddles and sobbing from a scraped knee and raging from a bee sting. I’ve never seen her like this. My heart pounds, and I can’t think of her when she was younger. I can’t. I imagine the memories surrounded in yellow crime scene tape. Wrapped up so tight I can’t see them, or hear them, or feel them.
Remy lets her head fall back and gazes at the ceiling. Laughter trickles down from the dining table, muffled like it’s coming from under her covers.
“Everybody,” she says, after a minute, “gets away with everything.”
“Not true. I’ve been arrested thirty times in the last two years.”
She tilts her chin down to meet my eyes. “I’m serious. There’s a guy in my class whobotherspeople, and he keeps getting away with it. People have made at least thirty reports about him, and nobody cares. They think that it’s in the past, so his victims should get over it and he should get to keep living his life, even though hestillhurts people.”
I sit up, too, the bottle of Smartwater bumping my knee. “What do you mean, victims? What do you meanstill?”
“He’s just…” My sister looks away. “He’s still a dangerous guy.”
I’m surrounded by sirens, every direction, all of them at top volume. “Did he do something to you?”
Remy lets out a defeated huff. “Promise you won’t lose it, okay?”
“I’m totally calm.”
She leans over and hits the remote on her bedside table. It brings up the lights in her room, and then Remy turns her back to me and lifts her hair.
My hand is at her shoulder before I know what I’m doing. My body demands confirmation of what I’m seeing. I run the pad of my thumb over the faint red marks on the back of her neck.
There are two, about an inch apart.
Cigarette burns.
