fifteen
Duke Dolce
“Are you happy?” I ask, glancing sideways at Mabel as I pull through the gate into our old neighborhood.
She thinks about that for a moment before she asks, “How can I tell?”
“You know,” I say. “You feel happy with your life. Like good, in general. You like the way things are.”
“I think so,” she says. “I’m satisfied with our arrangement, if that’s what you mean.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Why what?”
“I mean, why would you be happy with that? Baron’s a monster to you.”
“And you’re not.”
I cruise along past Devlin’s place, then turn into our drive. “But how can you be happy with us?” I press. “He hurts you. I hear you screaming.”
“But you don’t hear anyone else screaming,” she says calmly.
“So you’re happy with him because he doesn’t fuck other girls?”
“Exactly.” When I park, she picks up the basket from under her feet and climbs down from the car without waiting for me to go around.
I meet her at the front of the car. I catch her elbow, and she stops and looks up at me, waiting.
“Are you happy with me?”
“Of course.”
“You’re happy with both of us?”
“Yes.”
“Who are you more happy with?” I insist.
She hesitates. “Why do you ask?”
“I just want to know,” I say. “If you had to pick one of us, who would you choose?”
“I don’t have to pick,” she says. “That’s the agreement.”
“What if you did?”
“I wouldn’t be happy.”
I sigh. “You like us exactly the same amount?”
“If I had to,” she says slowly. “I’d choose you. Of course I would.”
“Why?” I ask, narrowing my eyes. She has to be lying. No one likes me more than Baron. He’s the special one, even more special than Royal. He was always the favorite.
Mabel smiles and touches my arm. “Baron would be upset, but he’d be okay.”
She turns and walks into the house before I can answer.
I pull out my smokes and light one.
Baron would be okay. That means she’d only choose me because she doesn’t think I would be. Because I need her, and she has to take care of me. That’s what they both think. That I couldn’t make it on my own.
After tossing my cigarette butt in the gravel, I stomp into the house, where I hear voices in the kitchen. When I step through the door, I find them in the breakfast nook.
“Where’s Mabel?” I demand, looking around for her.
“She went up to look at the nursery with Devlin,” Crystal says, scooting down to make room. “She said she wanted to talk to him about their grandpa. Have you eaten?”
Maybe she’ll see the nursery and change her mind about kids, and I’ll have something to look forward to.
“I’m not hungry,” I mutter.
“It’s my birthday,” Olive says, picking up a glittery, plastic wand with streamers on the end. “That means it’s Everything Day.”
“Shit,” I say. “Why didn’t you tell me? I would have gotten you something.”
Harper gives me a funny look. “I texted you last week.”
Of course she did. But I was high when I read the text, and I didn’t remember it until now, when she says it, and I have a vague memory of opening my phone and seeing her message.
“Well, happy birthday,” I say to Olive, trying to smile and look like everything is normal and I didn’t fuck up as usual. “What’s that thing? Are you a fairy or something?”
I meant it as a joke, but I hear my father’s words echoing in mine, the accusatory tone. I’m sure he said those exact words to me a few times.
“Some kid at the park gave it to me,” she says, waving the wand around, so the silver streamers flutter and the baby on Crystal’s lap reaches for it. “Isn’t it dumb?”
She grins, so big I notice she’s missing a molar, but I’m not sure if I’ve seen it before, so I don’t comment.
After my fuck-up with her birthday, I don’t want her to think I don’t care, that I don’t listen to her when she’s yapping or notice when she loses a tooth.
I also don’t want Harper or Royal to realize that I’ve been high around her. They probably wouldn’t like that.
“Sit down, have a bagel,” Royal says, nodding to the platter in the center of the table.
I sit.
“They’re everything bagels,” Olive says. “Because it’s Everything Day. Crystal says parties should have themes, so that’s our theme. Do you like it?”
“Who doesn’t like everything?”
“Right?” she says, biting into her bagel and then squirming in her chair as she chews, trying to finish so she can talk more.
She barely swallows before she goes on. “When we went to New York, Royal found out I’d never had a bagel before, so he drove us all the way into the city to get one.
He said he knew the best bagel shop. We got all the bagels so I could try them. ”
“Let me guess,” I say, picking one up. “Your favorite is the everything bagel.”
“Yep,” she says. “Have you ever had one before?”
“Sure,” I say. “Lots of times.”
“Royal says everything bagels are a lie, because they don’t really have everything,” she says, glancing at my brother. “Not even everything you can put in a bagel, like blueberries and cinnamon and asiago. That’s a kind of cheese.”
“I know.”
“It’s pretty good, but not as good as American cheese.”
“That crap you like isn’t even cheese,” Royal says.
“To us it is,” Harper says, shooting Olive a conspiratorial look. “But it’s cheap, and we don’t have to eat it anymore.”
“I like it,” Olive declares. “And I think it’s fancy. Each slice has its own wrapper.”
Royal shakes his head like she’s hopeless.
“Every single slice?” I ask. “No way. That is fancy.”
Olive grins and shrinks down in her seat, biting into her bagel again before glancing at Royal to see his reaction to my amazement. She’s clearly pleased to have impressed me with her poor-person food, which makes me feel about ten times better about forgetting her birthday.
“This one time, I asked why they don’t make everything anything else. Like why don’t they have everything pizza or everything cookies? So we went to a pizza place, and Royal had them put everything on one pizza. There was so much on it that it kept falling off.”
“I bet.”
“It wasn’t that good, so we’re not doing that for my birthday,” she says.
“But the next day, we went to the store and got everything you can put in a cookie, and we made everything cookies. Those were good. So we’re having those tonight, and everything ice cream.
And we’re going to watch every kind of movie I like. ”
“How many is that?”
“A lot,” she says. “We’re starting out with The Fast and the Furious , if you want to watch.”
“ The Fast and the Furious ?” I ask, glancing from her to Harper. “What happened to Tow Mater?”
“That’s for babies,” Olive says, wrinkling her nose.
All the good feeling melts away as I think about how much I’ve missed, how much she’s grown up and changed in just a year.
When she was talking about bagels, I kept thinking how nice that sounded, which meant I should have been happy for her.
After all, she deserves all the best things, someone to spoil her. And now she has it.
But it doesn’t make me happy because I’m a selfish bastard. All it does is make me wish I’d been there to take her to the bagel shop, that I’d thought to make her cookies when she lived with me. Not that I know how to make cookies. But I should have learned. For her, I should have.
I didn’t, though, and now it’s too late. One more time I didn’t see what was important until it’s gone, and I can’t go back.
“And then we’re going to watch a show about koalas,” Olive rambles on. “Oh! Can I show him what we got?” She turns from Harper to Royal, bouncing up and down in her seat.
“Go,” Royal says. “It’ll give us a break from your yapping.”
Olive ducks under the table and races off, and Harper swats Royal’s arm. “Be nice,” she says. “It’s her birthday.”
“You should be nice to her every day,” I say, scowling. “She’s been through a lot. She lost her sister.”
“She didn’t lose her,” Harper says. “That makes it sound like she’s dead.”
Fuck.
“Don’t you think she would have come back if she was alive?” I ask.
“Let’s hope that’s not true,” she says. “I tried to find her, but obviously I’m not that good at stalking people online, and there were like a million Greens in Oregon, and most of them didn’t answer when I reached out. But I’m sure Baron can find her.”
The bite of bagel I was chewing lodges in my throat, and I start coughing so hard everyone makes a fuss. By the time I get myself under control, Olive is back.
“Look what I have,” she says, holding up a fuzzy grey onesie with feet and a hood. “It’s a koala!”
I shrug and take a drink of orange juice. “A sloth would be cuter.”
“No, it’s not!” she howls in protest, picking up the other two huge piles of grey fluff she dropped beside her. “Here’s Harper’s, and we got one for Royal, but he refuses to wear it—” She pauses to stick her tongue out at my brother before finishing, “So Harper said we could bring it for you.”
“Really?” I ask, turning to Harper. “You brought it for me?”
She shrugs. “I mean, we already bought it. Might as well get some use out of it, and I figured you don’t mind looking like a dumbass.”
I know I’m supposed to shoot back an insult, but my throat’s all clogged again even though I haven’t taken another bite, and I can’t think of anything to say.
I thought she hated me for bashing Olive’s head in, but she doesn’t care either.
Maybe it’s just because we share something now, the murder of my father, or maybe she just forgives me.
It seems like she does. She even brought me a matching suit to include me in their movie night.
And all I can think about is that Baron’s pretending to look for Blue, and I know what happened to her, and if I told them, they’d never speak to me again.
So don’t tell them , whispers my demon.
We spend the day doing everything Olive wants while the party planner takes care of the setup at the house.
Later that evening, everyone comes for the birthday party.
When Baron walks in, all the ugly, churning, mixed-up feelings come rearing up—resentment, anger, hurt, frustration, helplessness.
I hate that I can’t hate him. After spending the day with Olive, I want to, but I can’t.
He’s still my twin, still half of me, and I can’t stop loving him any more than I can stop breathing.
When Olive blows out the candles on her cake, she grins around at all of us.
“I wished my sister would come home,” she announces.
“You’re not supposed to tell anyone your wish,” I say, glancing at Baron.
He shows absolutely no sign that he knows her sister is Blue. But he does. He knows, and he knows that he killed her, and that she’s never coming back.
“I always wish for that,” Olive says.
“I bet this year, you’ll get it,” Harper says, smiling at Baron. “I have a good feeling about it this time.”
“Me too,” Olive says, plopping down in the chair and waving her sparkly wand. “Now, what does everyone else wish for?”
“It’s your birthday,” Crystal explains. “Only you make a wish.”
“I know that,” Olive says, rolling her eyes. “But I want everyone to get their wish. So you each get to say what you wish for. It’s my birthday, so you have to do it.”
She holds up her wand expectantly.
“Okay,” Crystal says. “I wish for a healthy baby.”
Devlin wraps his arms around her from behind. “Me too. And a healthy delivery.”
“Now you,” Olive says, pointing her wand at Harper.
“Well, since it’s your birthday, I’m going to wish your sister comes home too.”
“I’ll also wish for that,” I say when Olive points at me. “Three’s the magic number, right?”
I feel a pit in my stomach, but my demon is pleased. Or maybe it’s just me, being shitty and smug that I got away with it, that she still loves me even though I let her sister die.
“You,” Olive says, pointing at Mabel.
For a second, our eyes meet, and I’m sure she’s going to say something. But then I remember that Mabel doesn’t even know who Jane was.
At least, I don’t think she does. She did go down in the basement and talk to her that day.
What did Blue say to her?
“I wish for justice,” Mabel says. “For all who deserve it.”
“Damn,” Harper says in approval. “That’s a good one.”
But a cold chill has wrapped around my spine. Mabel says she forgives us, but if she wants justice to come to those who deserve it, doesn’t that mean justice in every sense of the word? Justice isn’t just for victims to receive. It’s also for villains to face.