“I didn’t hurt you.” He was barely audible, and I wasn’t sure I heard him correctly until he said it again, more loudly and more strongly. “I didn’t hurt you.”
I couldn’t believe it. A skinny kid and he thought he could hurt me. Worse, he thought he
“You didn’t fail any test,” I stated firmly. “There is no test, Michael. I’m here to help you, nothing else.” He didn’t reply, and I let it slide for the moment. “You hungry? There’re some candy bars in the glove compartment. Help yourself.”
I didn’t expect him to immediately go for it and he didn’t. It was almost fifteen minutes before he would even look away from the side window and face the front again. His face was smooth and unruffled. I knew that he wasn’t frightened of me; I had my suspicions that he wasn’t frightened of anyone except the man who’d invaded the van. I was relieved he didn’t feel threatened by me, but I did wonder at it. You didn’t have to know me to think I was one scary son of a bitch. You only had to look at me. The scar, the gallows behind my eyes—Prince Charming they did not make. It was strange, damn strange, that he wasn’t more wary, but for now I was grateful.
“They’re Three Musketeers,” I coaxed. “You used to eat those by the pound.” I’d bought them at the drugstore the day before. They had been on the bottom row in their cheerfully shiny wrappers. It was ludicrous and a little pathetic, but bending over to pick them up was one of the harder things I’d done in my lifetime. Two candy bars that should’ve weighed literally nothing—why were they the fucking
I had bought them anyway, fighting against the superstitious certainty that I’d also just bought myself some bad luck. And now I watched as Michael finally opened the glove compartment and took out one of them. He turned it over cautiously in his hands as if he were defusing a bomb before ripping the wrapper neatly. The bite was just as neat and economical. A trace of surprise showed in the quirk of his eyebrows as he chewed and swallowed. It was as if he’d never tasted one before. He ate the rest of the candy bar quickly, and as an encore he polished off the second in fewer than four bites.
“Good?” I ignored the ripple of unease that passed through me. It was his favorite snack; yet he obviously didn’t remember it. Everything of Lukas was gone, large or small . . . gone. “Guess you didn’t get too much of the sweet stuff in that prison.” Moving my eyes from the stranger sitting next to me, I shifted my attention back to the road and reminded myself that it wasn’t forever. We’d get those memories back or we’d make new ones, whatever it took.
“You talk a lot.”
I couldn’t help the jerk of the wheel beneath my hands. It was the first genuinely unprompted comment that my brother . . . that Michael had made that didn’t involve the mysterious “tests.” “Yeah?” That was not a statement that normally would have applied to me, but in this situation he was right. I didn’t know what to say. How did you talk to a kid you couldn’t know, no matter how much you wanted to, and who’d been plucked from bizarre circumstances that you didn’t understand?
“It’s a sign of insecurity. All the more classic psychology textbooks say so.” He peered into the glove box once again. There was no sign of disappointment on that inscrutable face when no more chocolate was to be found, but I knew better. He was a teenager. Raised in a combination of a school, prison camp, and laboratory, that might be true, but some part of him was still a teenager, no matter how suppressed or denied.
“And what do you know about psychology, junior Freud?” Guiding the car with one hand, I dug under my seat. Bypassing cold metal, I pulled out a box of Double Stuf Oreos. We might be on the road for a long time and I’d stocked up on instant sources of cheap energy. Tossing them into his lap, I instantly heard the rustle of cellophane as he opened the package.
“He’s not the type of psychology we study. His way of thinking isn’t useful.” There was the soft crunch of a cookie. “But I’m sure he would’ve had something to say about the size of your gun.” There it was again, the mixture of child and man. The ravenous inroads he was making into the Oreos was the picture of a hungry Little Leaguer after the big game. The psychological point of view combined with a swipe worthy of Saul himself put him in the range of a cynical and caustic forty-year-old.
Bemused, I felt my lips curve. “Keep up with the sarcasm and I’ll take my cookies back.” I didn’t mean it of course. If anything, I was happy, fucking delirious to see a hint of humor in him. It made him seem a little less than a galaxy length out of reach.
“I wasn’t being sarcastic,” he said seriously, flattening my cheer instantly. “The weapon is obviously an attempt to overcome your insecurity in many areas.” Fingers prying the next cookie from its row, he finished matter-of-factly, “You’re vulnerable. You should watch that.”
Now what the hell could you say to that, I thought, nonplussed. And my 9mm was a perfectly normal-sized gun, no bigger than . . . shit. Cutting off that train of non-productive thought, I frowned with confusion. “Aren’t you at all curious, L . . . Michael? I swoop in and drag you off in a scene straight out of a movie. Don’t you have any questions about that?” Just one normal question to let me feel as if I had some control over the situation?
“No.” Finally done with the cookies, he’d placed them carefully on the floor by his feet. “Either this is a test and you’ll lie or you’re an enemy and you’ll lie.” He rested his head back on the seat. From the corner of my eye I watched as he closed his. “Or you’re a crazy man and you really do think I’m your brother. It’s still lies, only then you’re lying to yourself.”
Our first conversation in ten years was considerably different from our last regarding sidekicks and sand- castles, heroes and horses. Right then I was more than ready, cowardly enough, for the grown-up in Michael to be gone and the child to reappear. The child I could handle, but this unwavering brick wall of a young man—I wasn’t sure I could. I wasn’t even sure I could see him . . . truly see him at all, not as he really was. That would involve letting go of the vision of a seven-year-old tag-along who had shadowed me silently into adulthood. I didn’t think I would ever be willing to do that.
Beside me I could see him chew his bottom lip, leaving a smear of chocolate. The motion didn’t last long, not with this self-possessed kid. His mouth relaxed as his jaw conversely tightened. He was tired; with the night he’d had it wasn’t any surprise. The one thing, the only thing, he needed now was to rest. No one had accused me of having a soft heart . . . not the ex-girlfriends and not the men who’d ended up on the wrong side of my fists or gun. But this was my brother, no matter what he thought. For him I had a number of emotions. They were ancient ones and rusty from disuse, but they were there and chief among them was a mile-wide protective streak.
“Go to sleep, Michael,” I directed, not ungently. “It’s a long drive.” Especially when you had no idea where you were going. I’d picked a direction and gone with it, not that I had much choice in that. There weren’t many options this far down in the state. For now I was simply running. Determining the destination would come when I was positive there was no pursuit.
He opened his eyes to give me a searching glance. There was no fear, but there was no trust either. “Come on, Freud,” I assured with rueful patience. “You’ve been kidnapped, shot at, and fed cookies. What else could possibly happen? Take a nap already.”
From the skeptical narrowing of his eyes I realized he thought that argument lacking, but he slid down in the seat, twisted onto his side as much as the seat belt would allow, and rested his head against the door. It wasn’t long before I heard the deep and regular respiration of sleep. Looking away from the road, I took in the sight of his loose shoulders and the lax line of his spine under the white cloth.
He was here. He was really here. I could stretch out a hand if I wanted and lay it on his arm. I could touch him, flesh and blood that held genetic hands with my own. I could, but I didn’t. He might have woken up or he might have disappeared . . . a soap bubble popping under reality’s touch. I wasn’t willing to risk either option.
I drove for nearly half the night. Around four a.m. I pulled off the interstate and checked us into a cheap little motel. Shabby and run-down, it had about twelve rooms and a night desk guy a few short chromosomes away from Norman Bates. He grunted, took my money, and didn’t bother to ask for the fake ID I was prepared to fork over with the registration. Within ten minutes Michael and I were behind a locked door and at the visual mercy of ancient shag carpeting and orange and turquoise striped bedspreads. I dumped the duffel bag on the bed nearest the door and asked, “You want something to drink? There’s a machine outside.”
He shook his head and sat on the other bed, his toes digging curiously into the long strands of the carpet. His toes were uncovered. Frowning, I switched on the bedside light for a better look. Was that . . . ? “Ah, shit.”
