Chapter Thirty-One
Rocky
Should not have confronted Jake.
That thought has been ringing in my head for a full half hour while I pour my attention into helping my sister fix the Bride of Frankenstein’s broken nose. Carving pumpkins with Hailey and Oliver is my only attempt to try and forget Jake and the Burkes. Just for a moment, before something catches the corner of my eye.
I go still.
A familiar figure passes our carving station. Lithe and quiet, the person slips into the crowd like a shadow. My nerves spike, on high alert.
“I’ll be back,” I tell them and leave the table, following the white guy dressed in an expensive all-black suit with a black button-down. Tailor-made for his lean body. His dark hair brushes the back of his neck.
I watch him weave between bodies like he’s made from the sea, water slipping around rock. Closer to the stage, a Tears for Fears song thumps the ground and makes it hard to hear. He uses the opportunity to slip his fingers into a man’s pocket.
Wallet in hand for a solid three seconds.
Then he slides it back.
I follow him around the square, observing him as he picks the pockets of seven more locals. His fingers dip into purses. Satchels. Backpacks.
Each time, he returns the stolen wallet, never taking a dime. And then he settles in the long line at the beverage tent.
I stand right behind him, my muscles beyond tensed. He’s close to my height, and I bow my head forward to whisper against his ear. “Boo.”
He doesn’t turn around. “How long have you been following me?” His voice is calm and unsurprised.
“Too long, little brother.” Even from behind him, I see the corners of his mouth begin to pull in a smile.
“No one notices me.” He’s next in line, and we both drop the conversation while he fishes out his wallet and orders. “The hard apple cider.” He flashes a fake quickly.
The bartender is busy enough that she barely glances at it. After pouring his drink in a to-go cup, he pays, and we step out of the line together.
He has a slanted smile, and we only face one another when we’re under an ice-cream shop’s shaded overhang. It’s closed during the festival, and fewer people stroll past us.
We can’t hug or embrace the way that most brothers would reunite. Not in public. Not until we determine what we are to each other in this town. And I’ve wanted Trevor here—but I didn’t know he was coming.
Why now?
How did he even find us?
Stuffing my hands in my leather jacket, I stare at my nineteen-year-old brother head-on.
I remember when he was born—I was only six, and he was the first fragile thing I ever held in my arms. But the older he grew, the more I realized he was as fragile as a viper in a cage.
I have so many questions. Ones I can’t ask outright.
“Hey,” I say casually, not sure what alias he wants to use.
He takes the biggest swig from the apple cider, two signet rings on each of his fingers. He has a helix piercing in the upper cartilage of his left ear, but his hair is long enough that I can’t tell if he’s wearing an earring today. He appraises me in a slow once-over like I’m cattle he’s considering purchasing for his ranch.
“You let yourself go,” he deadpans.
“You’re still a twig. And see, one of us is bullshitting and it’s not me.”
His lip begins to rise. “I feed on misery and despair, so I should be satiated as long as I’m around you.”
“Oof.” I feign a wince and smile. “Thank God you took all the shithead genes.”
Trevor laughs, and I try to be happier that he’s here more than I’m on edge. But alarms are blaring so caustically in my head, my ears ring.
I nod to him. “You here for long?”
“Long enough.” He glances around, catching the eye of a group of young Caufield students who huddle together next to an outdoor heater. A few of the girls ogle him.
Trevor doesn’t feed into it and flirt back. He just turns to me. “Where is everyone?”
I lead him past the carving tables where Hailey, Oliver, and now Nova hang out. I signal to them that we’re going to my sister’s loft and they should follow, and all three make a casual exit from the festival.
The loft is on the same street, and from the living room windows, I can peer down and see Phoebe still on a date with Jake.
So I avoid looking that way when I enter the loft with my little brother, spare keys in my hand.
Trevor, however, fills the frame of the window, the wispy white curtains blowing on either side of him as he observes the festival below.
I curl an arm over his shoulders. “I’m glad you made it.”
“Me, too.” I hear tension in his voice.
Shit. What happened? I squeeze his shoulder before letting go.
The door bangs shut. Oliver, Nova, and Hailey are here.
Oliver hurdles the couch with his arms outstretched to Trevor for a hug. “Our little psychopath,” he greets him affectionately.
That nickname throws me back.
We were all at a coed boarding school in upstate New York for a short period. The six of us would sneak out every Thursday night and meet up at a cemetery a quarter mile from the school to catch each other up. One of those nights, Hailey and Phoebe were drunk on expensive vodka and giggled about how we were a part of some secret club. And we needed names.
We came up with six.
The mastermind.
The seductress.
The silver-tongue.
The chameleon.
The getaway.
And the psychopath.
Hailey, Phoebe, me, Oliver, Nova, and Trevor.
Trevor was the youngest of us. So to get him in the same grade, he had to come to the boarding school as a prodigy. We convinced everyone that he skipped four grades and was actually two years older.
After Oliver squeezes Trevor in a bear hug, my brother’s shifty gray eyes flash from Hailey to me to Nova. “We’re missing one,” he says.
I nod my head out the window.
Trevor rotates back to the festival. “She’s with someone?”
“The landlord,” I explain, not digging into Phoebe’s fake business with him.
Hailey has brought her pumpkin, mine, and carving tools with her. Of course she has. Nova carries both pumpkins for my sister. And she continues working on the thing on the coffee table.
“Why are you here?” I ask Trevor.
He’s fixated on Jake down below. “Is he a Sagittarius?”
That’s code for Is he the mark? But his casual brush-off of my question only tenses me.
“This is a no fun zone,” Oliver tells him, sitting on the armrest of the couch. Nova sips a beer, listening quietly.
Trevor frowns. “How wide is the zone?”
“The whole town,” Hailey says, glancing up from her pumpkin.
Trevor looks like he was told Christmas is canceled. “What the fuck? Why?” He looks back to Phoebe at the festival with more confusion. Probably not understanding why she’d be talking to Jake if it isn’t for a job.
I’m not explaining that shit in code. It’s a jumbled mess.
“I could use your help,” Hailey calls over our brother, nodding to my pumpkin. “Rocky quit.”
I roll my eyes.
Our brother says, “Sounds like him.”
“It does not,” I refute.
Trevor picks up the smallish pumpkin and a carving knife. Holding the pumpkin in hand, he starts expertly cutting it without any guidelines. His eyes draw to me. “You’re not replaceable, you know.”
There it is.
The truth he was reluctant to share.
“I tried to replace you at the Seattle job,” Trevor adds without remorse.
And that’s why he didn’t want to bail on Mom and Dad. He saw an opportunity to be in a role they rarely, if ever, put him in: face-to-face deception and manipulation. In the action, not behind the scenes.
My role.
For many, many years, I hoped my brother wouldn’t become like me. Bitter. Cynical. I never imagined, not once, that he’d want to be this person. I see him claw toward the darkness that I’ve lived and breathed and suffocated under for decades, and I just want to push him away.
I keep trying.
“How’d that work out?” I wonder.
“Mom wouldn’t even let me attempt it.”
Good.
“I was done begging, so I came here.” He scowls and sets the pumpkin back on the coffee table. Tossing the knife with it. “Oliver was geotagged on social media.”
“Shit,” Oliver sneers a curse and unpockets his phone, his olive skin flushed at the collar of his button-down.
I groan, raking a hand through my hair. “So they’ve found us.”
Hailey is frowning at Oliver. She crawls onto the couch beside him to look.
“I don’t understand how...” He shows her, and she cups his phone in her hands. Oliver looks to his brother. “I have no social media presence here. How could I be geotagged?”
Nova is rubbing his forehead. “I need to get Phoebe.” He’s out the door in a blip.
“One of your clients,” Hailey explains to him. “They took a photo of you during a session. Your face is clear. My dad could’ve done a facial recognition search, and your client tagged her location.”
Victoria, Connecticut.
Oliver sees the image. “Edith,” he says in displeasure, then to Hailey, “I’m sorry, Hails.”
She lifts her shoulders, then meets my gaze. “It was bound to happen.”
Yeah, but we all wanted longer for our sisters.
“They’ll be here soon, you know,” Trevor says at the window. I join him again, hands in my jacket, and Hailey comes over on the other side of me.
“What’s soon?” I ask my brother.
“The Seattle job only has two weeks left.”
Two weeks.
Jesus.
Everyone is quiet. My brother, sister, and I gaze down at the festival. Vibrant leaves paint the trees, pumpkin juices stain the cobblestone, and bright laughter bleeds into crisp autumn air that I feel seep through the windowsill. A Harvest Festival banner hangs high across the streets, and little kids drop pennies in the fountain. Idealistic. Content.
Happy.
“I don’t get it,” Trevor breathes. “Why is the zone so big?”
“Because of Mystic Pizza,” Hailey says just as quietly.
Trevor twists his head to her. “Wait, we’re not having fun because of your obsession with a Julia Roberts movie?”
It’s more than that. I know it is.
But I never learned what happened in Carlsbad, so I just keep my mouth shut with unanswered questions.
“It’s not an obsession,” Hailey says. “It’s a fascination.”
“Those are synonyms,” Trevor tells her, but they share a small smile, almost like a hello and I missed you.
Just then, my phone vibrates in my pocket. Digging it out, I recognize Victoria’s area code. I answer on the second ring.
“Hello?” Please don’t be my father.
“Rocky,” Jake says hurriedly.
I frown, glancing down at the festival again. I search for Jake, but he’s not at the fountain. Phoebe. I don’t see her. I only find Nova canvassing the crowds and coming up short.
I’m about to ask where she is, but he speaks first.
He tells me, “I need your help.”