The Accidental Siren (28 page)

“Dog-nabbit!” exclaimed Mrs. Greenfield. She
was stuck in jail and had just failed her second attempt at
doubles. She held the die to her ear, shook them in cupped hands,
and smiled so big her eyes became tiny slits.

Ryan provided an obnoxious drumroll on the
table. When a pair of twos landed face up, he raised his arms and
said, “Way to go, Mrs. G!”

Mara caressed my ankle with her toes. She
knew my struggle.

Livy slipped her arm beneath Ryan’s and
wiggled her head into the crook of his neck. She whispered
something, then fingered her new hoop earrings. For the nineteenth
time since he arrived, Ryan glanced at Mara, then glared at me,
then returned his attention to the girl at his side. Mara’s pinky
rubbed a patch of color into my white fist.

Dad began his turn.

Mom caught Mrs. Greenfield staring at the
lovebirds with a clear look of concern. “They’re teenagers, Norma,”
she said. “Believe me, I’d fend the hormones off if I could.”

“They’re just so innocent! Don’t you just
wanna hold ‘em till they’re thirty?”

Ryan straightened his back, gently forcing
Livy from his side.

“I do,” Mom said. “Luckily, this evil little
prince is a good kid.”

Dad reached over Livy and ruffled Ryan’s
hair. Then he rolled the die, moved the shoe seven spaces, and
declared, “Reading Railroad. Who do I owe?”

Ryan grinned. “That’ll be a hundred dollars,
Mr. P!” he said, then glanced at Mara for the twentieth time.

“Don,” said Mrs. Greenfield, nudging her
husband. “Did you tell the kids about your new toys?”

His eyes brightened and the gap in his teeth
rose behind his ‘stache. “Do you kids know what a modem is?”

Mara nodded. I shrugged.

“It connects right to the IBM in my living
room. Let’s me send messages through the phone lines at nearly
twenty-nine kilobits per second!”

“That’s what it’s
supposed
to do,”
said Mrs. Greenfield. “Don’s been having a little trouble with the
set up.”

“It was delivered right to our front door,”
he continued. “Norma thinks we won a magazine contest. I think it’s
an answer to my prayers!”

“You know how Don loves to tinker!”

“Maybe your friend in the wheelchair could
give me a hand,” he said, “to show me the ins and outs.”

I nodded.

Livy rolled the die and landed on Community
Chest. “You have won second prize in a beauty contest,” she
declared. “Collect ten dollars.” She returned the card to the
bottom of the deck and muttered, “Yeah, right.”

Ryan missed the hint, leaving the comment to
dangle awkwardly in the silence.

“What were the other new toys?” Mara asked
Mr. Greenfield. Her interest was genuine; our feet were no longer
touching and she didn’t even notice.

“Well,” he said, “the guest room has a brand
new furniture set!”

“Real oak,” added his wife. “And a king-sized
bed to boot!”

“Cool,” Livy said. “Your turn, Mom.”

“There’s more!” said Mrs. Greenfield.

Her husband pinched the tip of his mustache.
“What am I forgetting?”

“The thing you spent all weekend setting up?
Remember? In the backyard?”

“Of course!” he said. “The trampoline! Aw,
kids... she’s a beaut! A sixteen-footer. Top of the line. Got her
at cost.”

“Rad,” Ryan said. Mara and Livy nodded their
approval.

I was disinterested and confused. Aside from
the fact that Mr. Greenfield referred to his trampoline as a
“she”... why were he and his wife trying so hard to win us over?
They were my parents’ friends, not ours, and they lived over an
hour away. Their only child was eight years older than us. Did they
really expect us to spend the night in their new guest room just to
jump on a trampoline?

(How blind I was...)

Mom took her turn and landed on Free Parking.
“I’d be a millionaire if we were playing by the house rules.”

“That’s why we play by the book,” said Mr.
Greenfield, waving the rules above his head.

Ryan glanced at Mara for the fiftieth time
and it happened, so subtly that a less-attuned boy might have
missed it. His lips
pursed
. While fixating on Mara–
my
girlfriend
–Ryan’s lips
pursed
.

“Samantha’s coming in for The Lakeshore
Celebration,” Mr. Greenfield said. He might have rolled too, but my
eyes and brain and soul were focused on the minuscule creases
around Ryan’s mouth.

“That’s exciting!” said Mom.

“She can’t wait to see your movie!” Mrs.
Greenfield added, presumably looking at me.

I nodded.

“How do my fireworks look?” asked Mr.
Greenfield. “I pointed them right where the director told me!”

I nodded again.

Ryan caught me scrutinizing his advance and
looked away.

Mara caressed my leg with her ankle, but it
did little to settle my anger.

Mrs. Greenfield landed on a space already
occupied by her husband.

“No trespassing!” he said and she giggled.
“And speaking of trespassing–”

“Don’t even bring it up,” Mom said. “Macho
Man over here tried to handle it himself.”

Dad’s face flushed, though I couldn’t tell if
it was out of embarrassment or anger. His eyes flicked to Mara.

“It’s sick,” said Mrs. Greenfield. “What kind
of boys do something like that?”

“Perverts and punks,” said her husband.

“It’s not just boys,” Dad added. “Women
too.”

“The women with the scones?”

“Tammy Bakker nut jobs...”

“It’s Tammy
Messner
now,” corrected
Mrs. Greenfield. “And that woman turned her life around.”

Mom rolled her eyes. “The Andersons agreed to
keep Fantasia until school starts. She doesn’t need to be around
this stress. We called the sheriff–”

“Sheriff Beeder?” asked Mr. Greenfield. “Good
man. I sold him a croquet set last fall.”

“He offered to patrol the woods for a night
or two. After what happened yesterday, we thought it would be
best.” Mom scanned our faces, probably wondering if the
conversation was appropriate with Mara in the room. “Olivia and I
ordered new curtains from the JCPenny’s catalogue, didn’t we
honey?”

She shrugged. “Yeah, but I’m stuck with
trash-bag curtains until they get here.”

“Somebody should check those women for brain
tumors,” suggested Mrs. Greenfield. “Mara must have been valuable
to their ministry. That’s all I can figure.”

Grownup logic at its best,
I thought,
from adults who never heard her sing.

“You never need to worry about those
creepers,” Ryan said. He was speaking to Livy, but his eyes were on
Mara. “I won’t let anyone hurt you.” Then it happened again–fully
formed this time–his lips pursed. His eyes closed. He blew my
girlfriend a single, invisible kiss.

I looked at Mara. She was placid,
but
smiling
as if Ryan Brosh never called Livy that terrible word.
Did she even care? Had she already forgiven him? Bestowed him
penance and a single Hail Mary for being a racist jerk? Where was
her anger? Where was the outrage that once released unspoken terror
on Little Trevor Tooth Fairy? Did the stint on the hill–Mara’s
unanswered plea for rescue–make her indifferent to the earthlings’
moral code? Was she still restrained by an invisible force?
Restrained because Whit asked us not to tattle? Did her promise
bind her magically to his command? Here sat Ryan Brosh–eviler than
any toothless, neck-jabbing buttwipe–and Mara’s blood-stained eye
didn’t even twitch. Here sat Ryan Brosh, grinning, spouting
flattery to “Mr. P” and “Mr. G”, laughing as if he was one of the
family, tonsiling my sister to prove his love, trampling her
self-esteem, her self-worth, her eventual acceptance of her dark
skin as she teetered the brink of a hopeless adolescence; a
terrible time for normal kids, down-right shitty for adopted girls.
Ryan didn’t understand my sister’s delicate mindset any better than
I did, a mindset cultivated by my mother, reinforced by my father,
broken again and again by her ignorant peers, then built back up
with a careful balance of love, distance, and discipline that was
never made apparent to us kids.

It was Dad’s turn but I didn’t care.
How
many times I forgave Ryan’s manipulation.
The lies to Mara in
the basement, the seemingly innocuous flirtation, the
zombie-ferrets in my trees because–somehow–they too were his fault.
Now he was in my home, air-kissing my girlfriend, boiling with
jealousy because I had succeeded where he had failed.
She’s
mine, Mr. Brosh,
I thought as I bore holes through his face
with lasers from my eyes.
I’m the boy who saved her from that
witch. I’m the boy who carried her up that hill. I’m the boy who
helped bury her cat. Not you, Ryan Brosh. Not you.

Every time he brushed a braid behind Livy’s
ear, he was unknowingly flicking the latch on Pandora’s box. And if
Mara cared, she didn’t show it.

Livy counted spaces and slid her battleship
to Marvin’s Gardens. “I’ll buy it!” she said.

“Good call,” said Ryan.

I had become a champion at sitting on my
hands, bitting my tongue, and repressing the longing in my gut
(caught between the molten desire to make Mara sing, the anger
demanding the head of Danny Bompensaro, the craving to herald
“She’s mine!” to the world, and the pining prayer for Ryan to purse
his lips
one more time
just so I’d have a reason to strike
him dead).

It was Ryan’s turn. He looked at Mara,
snatched the die, and blew them for luck. But as he blew, his mouth
tightened, the lines around his lips pursed, and I pounced.

My thigh rammed the table, knocking over
tokens and sending hotels to new properties.

Ryan’s chair clattered to the floor. He was
on the ground in seconds, back against the tile with my knuckles
pummeling his throat.

“James!” Mom shouted, but I ignored her plea,
raised my fist above my head, and jammed it into the soft parts of
Ryan’s body over and over again as if he too killed Mara’s cat; as
if three months of push-ups had prepared me for this very
fight.

The dads pushed aside their seats and fake
money fluttered to the floor.

“You’re hurting him!” Livy screamed.

Dad took an elbow to the ribs and fell
backward into my sister.

Ryan’s knee jerked and connected hard with my
crotch. I tumbled sideways, but before I could shout “racist pig”
his hands were tightening around my throat.

“Do something!” cried Mrs. Greenfield.

I felt the heat rising to my cheeks as I
gagged and gasped for air. His hands were huge. His eyes were
black.

Mr. Greenfield forced his arms between us and
finally pried us apart. He held Ryan at one side of the table. Dad
caught me and held me at the other.

“I’ve had enough!” Mom said.

“What’s gotten into you kids?” Mrs.
Greenfield asked, hugging Mara on the back of the couch.

Ryan huffed.

Mara knew what I wanted to do. She shook her
head and mouthed,
“No James.”

I wiped spit from my lips with the back of my
arm. I coughed and I winced. Then I looked my nemesis right in the
eyes, ignored Mara’s silent plea, and growled, “Ryan called Livy a
nigger.”

* * *

T-minus three days until the Fairytale
premiere.

I managed to pee one time before the usual
commotion overtook the shared bathroom. I noticed a pillow in the
bathtub and wondered if it was Livy or Mara who had claimed the
porcelain bed.

For the next twenty-four hours, I did my best
to ignore the clamor of cosmetics, muffled cries, screaming sobs,
lectures, encouragement, and the awkward bouts of laughter. The
bathroom had become a spaceship airlock; if my door wasn’t closed
when Livy’s opened, the castle would implode. Steam hissed through
the cracks as my sister sucked the furnace dry with hour-long
showers.

Because Mara was entitled to her privacy, Mom
used
my
bathroom door whenever she needed to check on Livy.
She always knocked... but if Livy didn’t answer immediately, she
jimmied the lock with a paperclip and barged in, releasing a
chemical-cocktail of nail polish, hairspray, and artificial fruit
into my room.

Around noon I heard a strange sound from the
bathroom;
tink-tink-tink-tink
like a semi-automatic pellet
gun. The sound continued in bursts over the next forty-five
minutes, but I wouldn’t discover the source until that evening.
Beneath the piano was a plastic toy bin. Inside were Livy’s hair
beads–a hundred at least–rolling around the bottom between wooden
blocks and Tinker Toys.

Mara and I spoke only once that day. I caught
her praying on the bedroom floor. Her ratty sweatpants and faded
orange tee seemed like a hopeless attempt to look scrubby. “We
shouldn’t be so affectionate,” she said. “’Specially around
Livy.”

“Yeah, but–”

“She’s sad, James. If she sees us hugging,
it’s only gonna make it worse.”

I grimaced, but took my punishment like a
man. At least Ryan Brosh was out of my life for good.

“Does your throat hurt?” she asked.

I lifted my chin and massaged my Adam’s
apple. “Only when I touch it.”

“Here.” She unzipped a polka-dot bag, fished
out a plastic clam, opened it, and tenderly powdered my neck.

“I’m sorry I told her,” I said.

Mara inspected my flesh for patches of purple
and dabbed them with a pad.

My father was in the bathroom now. His words
were smothered by the cosmetic cloud and brick walls, but his tone
with Livy was empathetic. It sounded like he was offering her
advice, but her replies were short, sharp, and defiant.

“Do you think she knows?” I asked.

“Knows what?”

“That Ryan was using her to get to you.”

Mara placed the pad back in its shell and
snapped it shut. “Yeah,” she said. “She knows.”