24. Liz
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
liz
Twelve years earlier
The girl glares at her reflection, wondering at what age she will be beautiful.
She glances at the photo of her mother stuck to the side of her mirror and then back at herself.
Her hair is always a nest woven together like barrels of hay, with dead strands on the ends.
She narrows her eyes, turning to the side to see if she has developed anything around her chest yet...
Nope. Nothing. With a sigh, she leans closer to the mirror and opens her swollen eye, flattening the skin around the bruise. It’s ugly.
Why can’t I be beautiful?
She wants Kon to say she is. Even if she blushes and tells him he’s gross. She thinks about this on the walk to school and then feels strange about thinking it, so she stops.
When she is at school, it’s him that comes to mind again.
The girl knows he can’t wait until he is allowed to go to school, too.
He loves the idea of learning. With education, he can be anything he wants to be.
Not a dog like he is now. Anything he wants.
When he was six, he wanted to be a firefighter.
When he turned seven, he wanted to be an explorer.
When he was eight, a sports star. Now that he is nine, he wants to be a teacher, so that every kid can learn and be anything they want to be.
The girl wonders what he will want to be next year… She wonders why that makes her sad.
She watches her bunny slippers slide across the floorboards, their floppy ears bouncing with each step.
She giggles. She walks into the old kitchen and begins to make dinner.
Three bowls. Pasta. Cheese. Milk. Butter.
She is eight and she knows how to make a meal on a budget.
Pasta is fifty cents a bag and will feed four adults.
Cheese and butter, five dollars, last a week.
Milk is a luxury. The man at the deli gives her the expired stuff for a dollar.
She boils it up with the cheese and butter and never has a problem. Six dollars and fifty cents total.
Mrs Renalds from two streets over lets her take a few cobs of corn from her field during the season.
Kon loves sweet corn. She likes making him happy.
He is her little secret, the boy in the cage under the ground, safe from the sun, which her father says would burn him to a crisp if it ever saw him.
Four years now. She is safe, too. They are together.
She slides onto the brown futon with the three bowls and presses mute before the television is even fully on.
Across the room, her father is passed out in the recliner, a highball still in his hand.
She switches to the nightly news and watches him between glances at the screen.
He snores. She wonders if all men snore.
She isn’t allowed to watch the news. Her dad says the news will corrupt her soft heart. She loves the news.
The girl shovels the mac and cheese into her mouth, the sweetness of the corn exploding as she pops the kernels between her molars and watches the inaudible program.
Then she stops chewing.
His face…
She doesn’t swallow. She doesn’t move. The corn sits between her teeth. Her eyes go wide and dry and she forgets to blink. The remote is in her hand before she knows she has reached for it, her thumb finding the volume and pressing until the sound comes.
“Nerrock Missing and Beyond is an annual charity event that raises funds to assist with services necessary when a child goes missing, including law assistance and travel,” the voice says.
The bowl tips off her knee. She doesn’t look down.
“The boy who inspired this affluent event is none other than the famous Deakon Nerrock, son of Dustin and Madeline Nerrock, who went missing four years ago without a trace. Last year, just after the death of Madeline Nerrock, the charity CEO—”
Kon.
Deakon.
Her ears are ringing. The mac and cheese is on the floor. Her father is still snoring. She can hear everything and nothing. She realises her hand is over her mouth and pulls it away, and the air that comes in is too much and somehow not nearly enough. When did she forget to breathe?
He isn’t my brother.
Thud.
The blow comes before she can swallow. Her head snaps forward and the floor rushes up, her cheek meeting the carpet. The mac and cheese is in her hair.
Her ankle—his hand is on her ankle. The carpet peels at her face as she goes backwards and she cannot get her arms under her, her bunny slippers gone. The television is still on and the woman is still talking.
He isn’t my brother.
The scream that comes out of her doesn’t sound like her at all.
She didn’t even decide to scream, did she?
She decides nothing that happens next. She fights with her nails, her teeth, with the sound she is making, and the way her entire body has come alive with anger.
She has never been this loud before. She has never been like this.
My Kon.