Destiny and Deception

Focus, Jessie, focus …

  Dice were rolled, numbers were scrawled on my paper by a doting Smith, and people began babbling knowledgably—even Amy and Max—about a game I was already struggling with.

  Smith seemed a bit disappointed in my lack of focus, but he coddled me, repeating things more slowly—and was he using simpler words?!—than with everyone else.

  Dude. I was frustrated, not stupid.

  Finally my character sheet was filled out and approved. By none other than Smith: self-appointed Dungeon Master. Where was Amy with a snide remark about the odds of that?

  But leaning against Max and looking as comfortable as I’d seen the two look together in a while, Amy merely yawned and asked, “What time is it?”

  “Ten-seventeen,” Max reported as Pietr pushed up a sleeve to check his wrist.

  Pietr raised wary eyes at his brother and nodded at the accuracy of his statement.

  “Sounds like time to call it a night, boys,” Amy said, slowly rising from her chair and stretching. “Some of us”—she reached down and tapped Max’s stubbly chin—“should call about the status of our job applications in the morning.”

  I froze, astonished by how focused she’d become on something other than Marvin’s funeral.

  Also in the morning.

  “And on that note…” Alexi tucked away his cell phone, rose, and looked at the character sheet sitting before him. “Am I supposed to do something with this?”

  Amy snorted. “Give it to me, Sasha. You’re enough of a character. I’ll make you into something new and shiny.”

  “Shiny is overrated.” Alexi looked at Smith. “Smith,” he said after a long pause that told me he was working on remembering the name, “thank you so much for starting us on what will surely be an exciting adventure of the imagination.”

  I blinked.

  Smith knew a dismissal when he heard one and clambered to his feet, quickly collecting his things. He cleared his throat, managing to get Hascal and Jaikin to look away from Cat. For a moment.

  “Oh.” They both stood, both apologized, both stumbled over themselves telling Cat what a pleasure it was to meet her … and both headed to the door, Smith lingering a moment longer to wish me good night.

  “It was a great deal of fun introducing you to the realm of D&D,” he said. “I hope we can make this a weekly event.”

  Oh, god.

  Pietr rose and came to where we stood in the foyer. “I intend to set a schedule of that sort,” he announced.

  “What if you get a job and have to work?” I asked, silently hoping. It sucked to spend a Friday night without Pietr, but if it meant spending a Friday night without Smith’s awkward advances and playing a game I somehow missed the point of, I’d send him away.

  “I’ll make it work,” Pietr countered.

  Smith nodded and the three of them left, leaving Pietr and me alone in the foyer.

  He reached over and gave me a hug, pulling away as soon as I started to relax in his grip.

  “You’ll make it work, huh?” I asked, looking up into his eyes.

  “Da.”

  I hoped the game night schedule wasn’t the only thing he’d find some way to make work.

  * * *

  I waited a few more minutes after Smith, Hascal, and Jaikin had gone and I cleared my throat to get Amy’s attention. She looked up from where she sat beside Max, playing with his hair, tugging at individual curls just to watch them spring back into place.

  Her lips pursed. “I know,” she muttered.

  I shrugged. “It has to be your choice. If you want to stay here tonight…”

  “Sleep all alone,” she added, her lips turning down at their ends.

  Max leaned back and shook his head. “We’ve had this conversation.”

  “I just can’t,” she whispered. “I don’t know why.… I trust you, but I can’t sleep in a bed with you. Even though I know nothing’s going to happen.”

  He shrugged. “Like Jessie says: your decision.”

  “I’ll pack a bag.” She brushed the hair back from Max’s eyes and then headed to the basement.

  I pulled out a chair and looked at him. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” he agreed, resting his head on the dining room table.

  “Are you going tomorrow?”

  “To her rapist’s funeral?”

  I waited.

  “You really need me to say it?” He rolled his head so that he could peer at me without lifting it off the table. “Let me say it like this: If he wasn’t already dead, I’d kill him.”

  “You nearly did before.”

  “Da.”

  “So you won’t go. You won’t be there for her.”

  “I can’t. I’d tear the place apart the moment they started saying nice stuff about the bastard.” He raised and lowered his shoulders. “I know my limits. At least in this.”

  I nodded slowly. “We always deify the dead.”

  “Da. Asinine. What is it I’ve heard Amy say: ‘Call a spade a spade’?”

  Again I nodded. “So you want to be remembered accurately when you die? Not glorified in any way, shape, or form?”

  “Da. Let the priest number my sins—at least it will give him material for an interesting sermon.…” He smiled at me with a wicked turn of his lips. “I’ve made mistakes. Bring them up at the end,” he rumbled. “I’ve always done the best I could—he didn’t.”

  “What if he did?”

  He drew back from the table, his eyes narrow and cruel. “Think before you speak,” he warned. “He raped your best friend.”

  “I know.” I reached forward to roll a die that had been left behind in the nerds’ scramble to leave. “But what if he was so damaged…”

  “Nyet.” He leaned back in his chair and, crossing his arms over his broad chest, glared at me. “Just because you’re damaged doesn’t mean you must damage others. You have choices. We all make them every day.”

  I blinked. “Good point.”

  “Free will. It sucks because it means we’re responsible for our actions. There is no destiny, just difficult decisions.”

  “That’s one way to look at it.…”

  “I’m ready,” Amy announced from the foyer as she dropped a duffel bag onto the carpet. “Heyyy, what’s got him looking like Mr. Grumpy Pants?”

  “My fault,” I said by way of apology.

  “Da. Free will at work. You have a choice, too, Jessie,” he added, rising from his chair to give us each a hug. Amy’s was much longer than mine.

  “My mother would’ve wanted—”

  He shrugged again. “I’ll drive.”

  We rode in an uncomfortable silence, his words in my head. When we finally got to the farm and stepped onto the porch, he lingered, watching Amy. Worried. “And I will see you back at the house—back home—tomorrow afternoon?” he asked her.

  “Yes,” she assured him, slipping her arms around him and resting her head on his chest. “Tomorrow afternoon can’t come soon enough.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Jessie

  My mother would’ve wanted me to go. My mother would’ve wanted me to go.

  That’s what I kept telling myself standing before the bathroom mirror, fists balled and pressed on the countertop, staring at the brown eyes studying me—eyes that’d turned more red than brown with stress, anger, and tears. I was dressed in my black “Sunday best” as my mother would have joked: a long-sleeved blouse with subtle satin trim and a modestly cut skirt.

  I tried adjusting the emphasis of the words: My mother would’ve wanted me to go.

  Damn it. So why wasn’t I already downstairs waiting by the door? The funeral service for Marvin started in forty minutes. People were waiting for me. Downstairs my father was probably already standing by the door, watching Annabelle Lee as she put her coat on and braced against winter’s chill.

  And Pietr would be there, too, knowing that it was the proper thing to do. Even after everything, Pietr still tried to do the right thing.

&nbsp
; My elbows were locked, my shoulders stiff. But I tried again. My mother would’ve wanted me to go.

  “Jessie! Hurry up!” Dad yelled. “We have to go.”

  Max’s words popped into my head.

  I pushed them down.

  I sighed and forced myself away from the mirror and out of the bathroom. Down the short flight of stairs I went trying to keep my new mantra in my head. My mother would’ve wanted me to go.

  Max’s words swam through my brain. Free will. I could decide for myself.

  At the bottom of the stairs, I paused, realizing what made me hesitate from actually attending Marvin’s funeral.

  Amy stood there, dressed in sun-bleached black, her long red hair pulled back and tucked under into a conservative hairstyle to mark the formality of the occasion.

  Drawn tighter than her hair was her expression.

  “Jessie,” Dad said. “We have to go.”

  I stepped forward, my hand reaching out to Amy. Taking her hand in mine, I searched her face, noting the stress that made her look so much older than eighteen. The words played in the back of my head, rushing to repeat themselves until it became a dull hum, a new mantra: So much more than eighteen, So much more than eighteen … “No, Dad,” I said. “We don’t have to go.”

  Dad looked at me, his jaw hanging open in surprise. “Your mother would’ve wanted…”

  “I know.” But I couldn’t live my life according to my mother’s desires. I could only live my life knowing what she would’ve wanted and making my own decisions based on what I and the ones still left alive needed.

  And in the back of my mind I knew plainly what it was that held me back from going to Marvin’s funeral.

  It was my redheaded best friend. And the irony was it wasn’t Amy’s intention to stop me at all.

  Had Marvin died a few months earlier—before I knew how he’d treated Amy, before I’d seen the bruises that colored her body everywhere that clothing covered—I would have gone. I would’ve cried and mourned the loss. But I realized willing myself to move forward—to act as if he never raped Amy—was impossible.

  Darn Max for being smarter than me.

  A knock at the door signaled Pietr’s arrival, along with Alexi and Sophie. They were later than I expected. But even they understood the social convention of an entire town attending one teen’s funeral. But more importantly they understood Amy would need me and I would need them to make it through this event.

  Slipping my arms around my best friend, I said, “Do you want to go?”

  She blew out a breath like she’d been holding it forever and shook her head so hard strands of red drifted free of her bun. “No,” she admitted, looking only at me. “No. I don’t want to go.”

  “Then we don’t go.” I linked my arm with hers and guided her to the kitchen.

  Everyone else stood, stunned, in the mudroom.

  “Decide if you’re coming or going,” I said over my shoulder. “You. Sit.” In the breakfast nook I pulled out a chair for Amy and went to the pantry to drag out our old game of Scrabble. “Wanna play?”

  “God, do I,” she replied, tearing at her hair until it fell free around her shoulders.

  In the mudroom a conversation went on without us.

  “I’m going to get set for players to draw tiles…,” I warned as I dumped the box onto the table and helped Amy flip tiles facedown and slide them around.

  Pietr stepped in briefly and leaned over my shoulder. “Alexi and I will go to represent the family.”

  I shrugged, fighting disappointment. “It seems appropriate,” I agreed. “Soph?”

  “I love Scrabble,” she responded, dragging a chair over for herself.

  “Annabelle Lee Gillmansen?”

  She groaned at my use of her full name. “Count me in. I will thoroughly trounce you.”

  “You boys okay without me?” Dad asked. I looked back toward the mudroom. He was pulling his coat back off and hanging it up.

  Pietr and Alexi nodded.

  “I’m just afraid I’d say somethin’ that might call into question the Brodericks’ parentin’ skills.…”

  And five of us sat down to play Scrabble, all dressed in black but much happier for exercising our free will and not blindly following social convention. Today we’d play by the rules that felt right to us.

  Or what my mother would’ve wanted me to do, I realized.

  Alexi

  I folded the newspaper and set it down to showcase the headline:

  Strange House Blaze at Edge of Town

  I did not like seeing the term “strange” in the local newspapers—especially if I had no idea what the real story was. Now that Dmitri had left Junction and the company had been routed, it seemed strange—no, bizarre—to see so many odd little things still cropping up in the area. Abandoned houses did not just go up in startling blazes for no reason.

  I thought back to the other recent headlines:

  Graffiti Colors Junction

  Vagrants Spotted Near Caves …

  Something strange was definitely happening in Junction.

  I grabbed my coffee and considered my options.

  I could call Wanda and ask what she thought of the new anomalies. My stomach curled at the thought. She was again making herself scarce—though there was no reason for her to be stalking us now: All her questions had been answered, and she knew we were not in a position to just leave Junction on a whim, not without help.

  I could call Nadezhda, but that would be more pleasure than business. No matter what she knew about me and regardless of her father’s intense curiosity about my family, I did not like the idea of entangling her further into the troubles we continually encountered stateside. So much the better if I could keep it that way.

  The one who would know the most and make the best guess regarding the most recent oddities because she was local was also one of the youngest in our number: Jessie. Her curiosity and willingness to do sound research had given us an edge before.

  Rising from the table, I stalked to the dining room window and considered the convertible: cherry red now dusted with the white of last night’s additional snowfall.

  “It looks like some fabulous dessert,” Amy said, sneaking up beside me. “Like a decadent cherry pie sprinkled with powdered sugar.”

  I nodded. “It is lovely, da?”

  “Yes.”

  “Perhaps too lovely.”

  She switched her focus from the car to me. “What are you thinking, Sasha? And don’t reply with some clever modification of something from Pinky and the Brain—they’re clever enough,” she said with a fleeting smile.

  “Pinky and the…?”

  “Never mind.” She waved the idea away. “What are you thinking?”

  I took a long sip of coffee. “That Pietr does not know how to drive stick. That I am a poor teacher and that Max would surely compare driving a stick shift to something so overtly sexual anyone listening would blush.”

  “So there’s no one to teach Pietr to drive the car?”

  “Da. She does not get good gas mileage, and money is tight. And her body is far more fiberglass than steel.…”

  “You’re thinking of selling her.”

  “Da.” And thinking that I would never again enjoy driving her knowing she’d transported Mother’s body to an unmarked grave and taken us to an event people called a funeral but was more truly a celebration of a rapist’s life. No matter how Max might shine the convertible up, she had lost her appeal for me. “Da. I should sell her.”

  Amy disappeared a moment and returned with the paper. “Place the ad. We can find something cheaper,” she assured me with a shrug. “It can be hard to let go,” she muttered, “but sometimes it’s necessary.”

  As she often was, Amy was correct: Two days later we found a used car that fit our budget and thoroughly offended any sense of style we shared. Or any sense of style at all, I thought, regarding the vehicle with disdain.

  But Mr. Gillmansen looked under its hood, kick
ed its tires, took it for a spin, as he said, and finally announced, “She’s good to go.” Receiving his approval we drove it home: our less than impressive, three-color Volkswagen Rabbit. Fitting the entire Rusakova family inside made it look even more like a clown car.

  But finding a buyer for the convertible would mean a huge savings for the family.

  Marlaena

  I paused in the shadow of the thin tree line by a river, a bridge spanning its width not far from where my furred toes itched with cold. A girl was out for an evening jog, her hair—a flash of red proving to be a shade or two darker than Gabriel’s when she passed by a streetlight—flew behind her in a long ponytail that snapped in the growing breeze.

  She paused on the old bridge, letting the darkness that puddled between lights swallow her up. Her hair fought the band binding it, tendrils of red dulled by the dark. Did it sting her face? A small branch tore off a nearby tree as the breeze changed direction, tossing clumps of snow into the air once more and uncovering a few brittle leaves left from autumn. They rattled a moment on the branch before snapping free and flying into her face with a crunch.

  She barely flinched, barely blinked. “I’ve had worse,” she snarled into the wind, daring it to hit her with something harder. “Come on—take your best shot!” she dared, gripping the bridge’s rail and pulling herself up onto her toes to lean more fully into the biting breeze.

  I liked her attitude. The sharp way she challenged even Mother Nature. The girl may not have balls, but she acted like she did. That I could respect.

  For a minute she froze there—a statue against the wind, casting her gaze into the swirling water far below.

  Pieces of ice ground along the bridge’s support columns, one minute sounding like old men mumbling over a game of cards, the next squealing against one another like piglets sent for slaughter. They danced in the frigid froth of the tumultuous and inky waters beneath the bridge.

  What was she thinking?

  Did she wonder what would happen if she just leaned over too far…? Did she wonder if she plunged into the swirling water how long it would be until her absence was noticed? Who would miss her?

  Her foot moved, sliding closer to the wall, the toes of one sneaker stroking up its rough edge.