Deadly Design (9780698173613) (4 page)

I
walk into the kitchen, and Dad's sitting at the table reading the Sunday paper. Mom's combing through the coupon section. She's still wearing the oversized blue nightshirt with polar bears on it that she's slept in ever since I can remember. Dad's wearing his usual Sunday attire—a faded SeaWorld T-shirt and paint-stained sweatpants that declare that he will not be leaving the house today.

I pour a glass of orange juice and open the cupboard to see what sugary cereals we have.

“I can't believe Connor's not up yet,” Dad says.

I smile. About one
A.M.
, Connor and I decided to play story mode. We'd stayed up until three protecting the Pentagon from the undead.

“We stayed up pretty late last night,” I say, and both my parents look at me. “We were playing video games.”

They look at each other, and while my dad does a good job camouflaging his smile with a fake yawn, Mom beams. I bet we could have played all night, could still be playing now, and she wouldn't get mad at us or force us to go to bed.

“Could you go wake him up?” she says. “Emma's coming over this morning, and I doubt he wants to be in bed when she gets here.”

“Sure.”

I take out a box of store-brand, sugar-coated cornflakes and set it on the counter. Connor's room is halfway down the hall, next to the bathroom. I lift my hand to knock on the door, but hesitate. I can't remember the last time I went into Connor's room. Maybe it was to race Hot Wheels around a track or to bash Godzilla's head in with King Kong's fists. We were kids. I know that much. The last time I went into Connor's room for anything, we were kids.

I knock on the door, wait a second, and then open it. He's on his stomach, one leg sticking out from beneath the covers and one arm hanging off the side. His room is
so
clean. Of course the toys are gone, but there is nothing on the floor, not even a discarded sock. I have a feeling that if I open the closet doors, his closet will be clean and neat too. I'm pretty sure if I opened my closet, a Saint Bernard would have to come rescue me from the avalanche of shit I've shoved into it. I can't help myself. I open one door.

His clothes aren't arranged in any specific manner. As a matter of fact, there's a nice pile of dirty laundry in the middle of the floor. What strikes me is the row of trophies lined up on the closet shelf. They aren't in his room, not displayed anyway. They're all in here, all crammed together because there are too many. I take down a shoe box, and inside are ribbons and medals won during track or debate tournaments. I glance back at his room.

The only thing on his dresser is Emma's senior picture sitting in a frame made of looping metal hearts. On one wall is a bulletin board where he keeps the schedules for all of his meets and tournaments and his work as a lifeguard at the recreation center. He's got a few photographs pinned to the board, mostly ones of Emma. And there's a photograph of our family taken on the water ride at Six Flags in Texas about eight years ago. It's a horrible picture, one of those taken by a camera right as you plunge down a steep decline. Normally our parents wouldn't have spent the money to buy it, but Dad's baseball cap is flying off his head in the picture, and the expression on his face is hysterical. That was one of our last vacations before life got too busy for trips to theme parks and campgrounds.

“Time to rise and shine,” I say as cheerfully as I can.

He doesn't move.

“Connor, time to get up.” I nudge the mattress with my knee. “Come on. You don't want Emma to . . .”

Something's wrong. The sheets on his bed are black and against them his skin looks . . . it looks gray.

“Come on, Connor. Quit messing around!” I grip his shoulder and then recoil.

His skin . . . it's cold.

“Connor!” I yell and start shaking him like it's not too late. He can hear me. His spirit's standing by the bed or hovering below the ceiling and when he hears my voice, when he sees how desperate I am for him to be alive, he'll come back. His spirit will enter his body, and it won't matter that his skin is cold and turning hard; he'll be alive. “Connor!”

“Connor?” Mom rushes toward the bed. She grabs his shoulders, feels the cold, but instead of recoiling, she pulls him to her. “No! Connor!”

I back up. I keep backing up until I hit the wall and there's no place to go. Dad's there, calling 911, but there's no use. The operator knows it too, because even though she can't see the grayness of my brother's skin or feel the hardness creeping into his muscles, she can hear my mother's sobs. They are the worst sounds I've ever heard. They are the sounds of a living heart being torn from a warm body. They are the sounds of a mother who has lost her child.

I
t's hot outside, bright and hot. In movie funerals, the weather always matches the mournful mood of the characters. But there are no clouds, no rain today. The only dampness is from tears and sweat. The church parking lot is boiling over with cars. Trucks and compact cars and piece-of-shit cars driven by teenagers line the main road and side streets. People, all dressed in the appropriate drab colors, filter in through the double doors, past a life-sized crucifix hanging on the wall. The church hall is actually the Catholic school's cafeteria. Once all the sack lunches and fish sticks are devoured, the tables fold up against the walls and the basketball goals come down. It's table time now, and the goals are tucked high against the faded blue ceiling. I could go for a little basketball right now. I could go for jumping up and crashing down and plowing through sweaty bodies and running. Running until I collapse with exhaustion. Running until I drop . . .

I didn't go to the funeral. I couldn't, and I don't think people could have handled seeing me there. A person can't be dead and alive at the same time. There can't be one of you reposing in a coffin while another one is sitting in a pew singing or praying or . . . existing. It's weird because I always thought about how different Connor and I looked. It wasn't until last year that I had a growth spurt and caught up to his six-foot-two stature. My muscles—and my tan—have never caught up. But I see him now when I look in the mirror. I see the same sandy blond hair, the same nose, same chin. I see the same eyes and how mad they are that we lost our chance.

We had one, a chance to be brothers again, like when we were little. We felt it. Hell, we lived it the night before he died. And it was so simple. We played a video game. Connor reached out his hand, and for the first time since I'd missed that fucking basket, I took it.

We played—together. And we saw it, the years ahead of us. The trips I'd take to see him in college, the beer he might let me drink as long as I promised not to tell Mom and Dad. I would have been best man at his wedding and uncle to his kids, and even if it took years to finally be the brothers we were supposed to be, we'd have gotten there. But now it's too late.

We missed so much in the past, and now the future's been taken away. From both of us. And I see the pain and anger in his eyes when the mirror looks back at me.

I take a deep breath, standing in the doorway to the cafeteria. Mom and Dad understood that I couldn't go to the funeral or the cemetery. But Dad suggested I come to the dinner.

I walk in, and there they are huddled against the back wall, my dad shielding Mom from the onslaught of condolences that threatens to bury them. Suddenly the hum of conversation stops. A hundred eyes are staring at me, and almost every pair is asking the same question. “Why couldn't it have been him instead of Connor?”

I start to back up, wanting to get away from the stares and the whispers. Suddenly a hand takes mine and pulls me hard, back into the entryway and then out into the sunlight.

Emma yanks me past the two-story brick building that serves as the elementary school, and once we reach the playground, she drops my hand as abruptly as she'd taken it. Her blue eyes squint against the white, glaring sun as her hands search out something new to hang on to. Her hand falls on the ladder of a tall metal slide, and she grabs it like she's about to collapse. She doesn't look like she's breathing. She's pale, her skin ghostly against the black dress she's wearing. I see her start to fall, and I rush forward, catching her in my arms and lowering us onto the grass.

My back rests against the hot metal slide as she sobs. The metal is burning me through Dad's thin dress shirt, the bottom rung of the ladder branding my lower back. I think about that, about the heat and the pressure and the pain as I stroke Emma's hair.

She cries for a long time, long enough for me to watch the shadows of trees moving slowing across the grass. Long enough for Cami to come looking for Emma and see me holding and soothing her. She smiles sadly and sweetly at me before she returns to the dinner; I expect to see gratitude on Cami's face because she knows I'm comforting her best friend. But her face, colored only by the slight sunburn she'd gotten at the track meet, is full of concern, and somehow I know it's for me, because no one is holding me.

Finally, Emma stops crying, and I don't know if it's because she's temporarily out of tears or because she's just too tired to give birth to any more. I hold her awhile longer, the trembling of her body coming less and less, until she's still.

She looks up at me. I know what she's realizing. She's realizing that the arms that are holding her are made of the exact same DNA as the arms that she's missing.

“It's so strange,” she says, her voice mostly air and little tone. “You're him. Your eyes. Your mouth.” She combs her fingers through my hair, making my spine tingle. “That's better,” she says. She looks at my lips, her fingers gently touching them. “You're him, but you're not.”

Her eyes shine with tears, and it kills me inside. I'd do anything, anything to lift the pain from those eyes. Not just because she's Emma, but because she's Connor's Emma. She needs him, and they were supposed to be together.

For a second, I see myself running to the cemetery, pounding against the casket, and telling God that I'll take Connor's place. We won't even have to switch bodies. My soul can just go wherever, and Connor's can jump into this body and then Emma can be happy again. They can both be happy.

“I miss him so much,” she says.

I swear her blue eyes aren't just glistening with tears; they're turning into tear-filled orbs.

“I wish . . .” My voice falters. “I wish . . .”

Emma knows what I'm trying to say, what I'm feeling. I mean it too, I really do, but what I really want is for her to shake her head and tell me not to wish for that, not to wish that I could take Connor's place. But she doesn't. She just stares at me and wonders, like everyone else, why I'm alive and Connor isn't.

I
open the refrigerator and scan the contents. There are five glass bowls and pans wrapped in plastic. Most of them haven't been touched. I don't get the whole tradition anyway. Someone in the family dies, and friends and neighbors suddenly get paranoid that everyone else in the house is going to starve to death, so they make casseroles that even a starving person wouldn't want to eat. Not to mention worrying about which casserole came from which neighbor.

Mrs. Carson, three houses to the south, has at least seven cats. Her three mutt dogs are always getting into the neighborhood garbage, and rumor has it, she just bought a pet rat. Does anyone really want to eat something out of her kitchen? And Denise Parker, across the street and two doors to the north, has been rumored on more than one occasion to have cooked meth in her kitchen.
That
casserole might be interesting to try, but . . . I don't think so.

If Dennis Kingsbury baked something up, I'd be inclined to eat that. He's been diagnosed with obsessive compulsive personality disorder, which basically means surgery could be performed on his kitchen table with no fear of the patient getting an infection. If he brought something over, though, he forgot to place a crisp yellow sticky note with his name and precise heating instructions on it.

There is a bar of plastic-wrapped cheese covered in green mold and numerous bottles of nearly empty condiments, but not much else.

“There was plenty of food at the church. You should have eaten something there,” Dad says, startling me. He's wearing his lounging pants. Connor gave them to him last Father's Day. They're a thin, navy flannel with four-inch trout swimming up the legs. He's also wearing the “Just Fishing” shirt I bought him. Connor and I actually coordinated gifts. Dad looks exhausted. The bags under his eyes have bags.

“I didn't feel like it,” I say, knowing that he and Mom evidently hadn't felt like it either.

“You and Emma have a good talk?”

“Not really.”

Dad peers over my shoulder into the fridge. “Slim pickins.”

“That's okay.” I shut the door. “I'm not that hungry.”

He stares at me through bloodshot eyes. It's more than just staring, he's . . . examining me, but he can't
see
what he wants to know. He can't see inside of me. He can't see what it's like to lose a brother, a twin, just like I can't know what it's like to lose a son.

“What have you eaten today?” he asks, resorting to what he can deal with: the physical.

“Counting breakfast and lunch?”

He nods.

“Nothing.”

“That's what I thought.” He nudges me out of the way and opens the refrigerator door again. “There are eggs. I can whip up one of my not-so-famous omelets. Besides, I need to talk to you about something.”

“What?”

Dad starts cracking eggs into a bowl. “I talked to the principal today. She wants you to do her a favor.”

“Drop out or transfer?”

Dad pours the eggs into a pan, shakes salt and pepper over them, and shuffles them around with a big wooden spoon.

“She wants you to give Connor's speech at graduation.”

The little appetite I'd worked up vanishes. “What?”

“You don't have to memorize it. He gave her a copy last week. She'll give it to you at graduation. All you have to do is read it.”

“But . . . why doesn't she just read it, or you?”

“She said it needs to be you. It's what Connor would have wanted.”

“How does she know what Connor would've wanted?” I know what he'd want. He'd want to give his own goddamned speech. He'd want to be alive.

“She said it has to be you.”

Dad takes a plate and nudges the eggs onto it, then he stares down at the pile of yellow mush. He's thinking about all the eggs Connor used to eat. He's thinking about carrying a plate over to the table and setting it down in front of his other son, the one whose head will be forever resting against a satin pillow. Lavender, I bet. Or maybe they chose blue, blue for their baby boy.

“Okay,” I say, because I can't tell him no, even though I don't think I should do it.

Connor worked his ass off for the honor of giving the graduation speech. I have a straight-C average and a piss-poor attitude when it comes to school. He got straight A's—in honor classes. I don't deserve to stand up there and speak his words.

I don't want to eat the eggs. They look curdled now, like they've gone sour just like my stomach has. And I don't want to give the speech. Einstein should come down from the spirit world and shove a graphing calculator into a stone. Whoever pulls it out is worthy to give Connor's speech. But it wouldn't be me. Same DNA or not, Connor was and will always be better than me.