Destined (6 page)

T.J. smirked. “What’s your problem?”

“You.” Luc lowered his voice. Other diners had started to stare. “I know what you’re about. So stay away from my sister.”

T.J. raised both hands. “She’s a big girl.”

“She’s fifteen,” Luc said.

“She can look after herself. Trust me. The girl’s grown.” T.J. smiled—his lizard smile.

Luc couldn’t help it. He shoved his chair back and was on his feet before he knew what he was doing.

“Luc!” Karen cried out.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” T.J. stepped backward, nearly stepping off the curb, out of Luc’s reach. He’d lost his confidence. Now he just looked sweaty, and oily, and sorry. “Look, I’m serious. I haven’t seen your sister. Not for a few weeks, at least. Look, I hear she got into some
trouble last week.” T.J. licked his lips nervously. “I’m sorry, all right? But I had nothing to do with it.”

Karen was gripping Luc’s arm. He could sense her staring at him, pleading with him, but he kept his eyes on T.J.

“Just get out of here,” he practically growled.

T.J. took off down the street. If Luc had been in a different kind of mood, he would have thought it was funny watching T.J. book it with his dark skinny jeans strapped halfway down his butt.

“He’s right, you know,” Karen said quietly, after Luc had sat down. “Your sister has to learn to take care of herself.”

“You don’t understand,” he muttered.

“Then try to explain it,” Karen said.

For a second, he imagined what he would say if he blurted it all out:
My dad’s been hitting the bottle again; my fifteen-year-old sister tripped out and had her stomach pumped. I’m worried she’s going to be like Mom
. Luc looked away. “I can’t.”

Karen crossed her arms. “Right. As usual. Come on, Luc. You’re not her father.”

“She’s my sister. She’s all the family I have,” Luc said, too roughly. Then: “Sorry. I’m just in a bad mood.”

Karen sighed and rubbed her eyes. “No, I’m sorry. I know you have … shit going on. Lots of it.” Karen spun her water glass between her palms. She kept her eyes on the table. “It’s just sometimes I feel like I’m on the outside of all of it, you know? Like I’m locked out.”

His anger dissolved. She looked so uncertain. Karen never looked uncertain.

“I’m sorry.” He took her hand and laced his fingers with hers. “I’m here now and you’ve got all of my attention. And I’m all yours at the party tomorrow night, too. I’ll even get there early, promise.”

“I hope you do.” There was an emotion on her face that he couldn’t quite read, but she blinked and it was gone. In its place was her trademark sexy grin. “You really don’t want to miss it.”

After dinner, Karen wanted to go over to her friend Margot’s house, which had its own private screening room; Margot was having people over to drink and watch old horror movies. Margot’s talent was inventing drinking games for every kind of entertainment.

But Luc was tired. He’d been at the gym at five-thirty that morning for weight-lifting and sprints and had run drills with the team for another hour after school. And that was
before
scrimmage—which Luc took as seriously as any real match. It went nearly two hours, and he played hard the whole time.

Karen had said nothing when they split up, just given him a hug and a quick kiss, no tongue—but he could tell he’d disappointed her. Again.

On his walk down Market Street, he tried listing constellations but got stuck after Cygnus.

The wind was picking up. He’d been dialing Jasmine’s cell nonstop, but it went straight to voice mail
every time. After what had happened last week, they’d made a deal: she had to check in every few hours and let him know where she was and what she was doing. And she couldn’t be out past nine.

But it was already ten, and it had been at least four hours since he’d heard from her. What if she OD’d again, only this time, no one was there to save her?

He caught a bus back to Richmond, pushing through the crowds of commuters and tourists. Standing at the back of the bus, he couldn’t help automatically scanning the faces, hoping for a glimpse of that small, stubborn chin and the long, familiar dark hair. But there was no sign of her. Luc held on to the overhead straps as the bus sped across the city.

It wasn’t long before the bus emptied out, until only an old man in a crusty-looking leather jacket remained. Luc sat down and turned, forehead pressed against the cool glass in front of him. The rocking of the bus, minute after minute, began to tug him toward sleep. Darkness broken by streaks of light—like multicolored shooting stars—raced in and out of view, hypnotizing and rhythmic.

They past a block under construction, half-finished, littered with
KEEP OUT
signs and wooden barricades. Luc saw rebar protruding from cement, the spokes of unhung metal signs, chunks of concrete.

Steam hissed out from a grate just behind a section on the street. Luc stared at it, watching the steam twist and curl, as though trying to condense into a solid shape.

Then it
did
—condense, take shape, change.

The bus seemed to slow to a crawl and everything went silent. He watched a woman step into the steam, her long black hair billowing around her head. The mist undulated around her body like a serpent. He blinked. In an instant, she had faded away into nothingness, as if she had disintegrated into the fog itself.

Sound and motion returned, bringing Luc straight up in his seat. His forehead banged against the glass when he pushed forward, trying to look back at the site, toward the vanishing woman.

Nothing.

What the hell?

He turned toward the old man in the leather jacket, seeking some kind of confirmation that he wasn’t crazy, but the man’s eyes were closed and his body rocked in time with the motion of the bus. Luc pressed the heels of his hands over his eyes. People didn’t just disappear into thin air like that.

He dropped his hands and returned his gaze to the window, half dreading another vision, but the city sped by, same as always: looming dark buildings, pinpoints of light. He must have imagined it, or fallen asleep for a few seconds.

At his stop, he jumped out and half jogged the six blocks to their apartment, sucking the cool night air deep into his lungs until it burned.

The breeze coming off the ocean carried a familiar fish smell, mixed with the unmistakable aroma of clove
smoke. Above him, on the second-floor fire escape, a figure was sitting cross-legged. Against the muted light of the open window behind her, he could make out her familiar silhouette, her long dark hair, the flash of her ring as she brought the cigarette to her mouth.

His sister
had
been home all along. He didn’t know whether to feel relieved or angry. For the past week, every time he saw her, he saw the other her, too: pale, unconscious, her dark hair scattered across the hospital pillow, her nails blood-red against the white sheet, still wearing some awful glittery shirt cut practically to her belly button. A little bit of puke at the corners of her mouth.

His sister—his baby sister.

The memory made his throat tighten. “Jas,” he called up.

She stood, then grabbed the ladder at the end of the small platform and gave it a tug. The ladder descended, squeaking and shuddering.

He climbed carefully, never quite trusting the way the metal creaked under his weight, then pulled himself onto the small grated platform. Jasmine had leaned back against the bricks, one arm slung over her knees. A clove cigarette dangled from her fingers. He knew it was more for show than for actual smoking, but it still killed him. The smoke made its way into her clothing, into the couches, into his bedroom, even—then he went to practice smelling like a hippie’s ashtray.

She wore black skinny jeans and a torn, off-the-shoulder
gray sweater, definitely not her usual club getup.

“Where were you tonight? I tried to call a hundred times and you didn’t answer. Remember our agreement?” He sat down hard next to her.

Jasmine shrugged, trying to detangle some of her long, curly dark hair, then giving up. “I was home before nine, if that counts for anything.”

She fiddled with the ring with little circle cutouts he’d won her at the carnival years ago. Then she took another drag from the clove cigarette, blowing out the smoke without inhaling it. She always fidgeted.

Their mother used to smoke the same type of cigarettes, though Jasmine probably didn’t remember it. Every time he caught a whiff of the familiar aroma, it made something twist in his stomach—half longing, half nausea. They were so alike, Jas and their mom—both thin and stubborn and always moving.

Sometimes Jasmine would say something or gesture with her hands and it would bring back a memory from the dark place Luc had buried it.

He rubbed his eyes again, feeling the exhaustion sink down into his bones. The accident. The fight with Karen. Looking for Jas. Everything seemed to catch up with him at once, just like after an overtime game, and he wanted to close his eyes for a week.

“So, how come you didn’t answer your phone?”

She picked at an invisible thread from her sweater for several long moments before she answered. “The ringer must have been off.”

“Yeah, but you could have been hurt, or …” His voice trailed off as he thought about the woman slumped over that steering wheel.

About the girl with those crazy eyes.

“Dead of boredom?” She pulled her phone out and made a production of turning the ringer back on.

“Wow, Jas, thanks for the extra effort.” Luc stretched out his legs on the narrow iron stairs. “You know, I heard somewhere that the point of phones is so people can actually call you.” But he was relieved. “Anyway.” He nudged her with his shoulder, “What the hell
did
you do tonight?”

“I rode the bus for a few hours.” Jas pushed him back with her shoulder, something they used to do for hours while sitting on the couch watching cartoons when they were younger. It became a game, who could get the last nudge in. “Some crazy artist lady talked my ear off. It was kinda funny.”

“Why funny?”

Jasmine didn’t answer directly. An expression—almost of pain—passed quickly over her face, but it was gone before Luc could identify it. “Don’t worry,” she said abruptly, stubbing out her cigarette, “I’m sorta over late-night bus riding now. Besides, I’ve heard the real crazies hang out under the boardwalk.”

“Yeah. And the serial killers.” Luc rubbed his forehead. He was still wound up. Jesus. He needed to relax. “Karen’s party is tomorrow,” he said. “You could come with me.”

“I thought I wasn’t allowed out after dark.” Jasmine
rolled her eyes. “Besides, Muffy and Buffy and the rest of them make me want to puke. Seriously, Luc, you could do better than Karen. She isn’t going to magically make everything better, you know.”

Jasmine’s words—sudden, unexpected,
true—
shocked him into silence for a second. Jas was like that: flaky, fidgety, distracted one second and the next saying something that cut straight through Luc, straight past the layers of bullshit.

“I like Karen,” he said shortly. Karen was smart and funny and made him feel like someone. Any guy in his right mind would be in love with her. Most guys
were
.

“What do you two even talk about? Trust funds and Jet Skis?”

Luc could feel Jasmine staring at him, but he refused to meet her gaze.

“Karen’s super smart, Jas.” He tried to work up a sense of outrage on behalf of his girlfriend, but he was simply too tired. “She got into Stanford on early admission, remember?”

“Doesn’t her dad have some campus building named after him?” Jasmine asked. “That’s how it works with rich kids, right? They don’t have to earn anything. It’s just handed to them.”

“That’s not how it is with her.” He paused. “Besides, it’s not a building. It’s just a decorative bench.”

Jasmine snorted. “La-di-da.” She nudged him again, and finally, Luc couldn’t help but smile. He would never admit it to Jasmine, but sometimes, he felt the same way
she did. He never
exactly
felt like an outsider, but the thought was always there, in the back of his mind:
Different
.

“Just come with me,” he said. “It’s on Karen’s houseboat. That’ll be cool, right?”

“In what universe is that cool?” Jas said, raising her eyebrows.

“It’s cool, trust me.” Nudge. “Got you.”

“We’ll see.” She leaned her head back against the bricks and closed her eyes. “Why not use their on-land mansion I’ve heard so much about?”

Luc shrugged. “Maybe they’re having the tennis courts cleaned.”

Jasmine cracked a smile. “Maybe they’re getting the vomit cleaned out of their pool from the
last
party.”

“The great thing about a houseboat is people can barf right off the balcony, no cleanup necessary.”

“Well, when you put it
that
way …” Jasmine laughed.

This time, Luc laughed with her, and they eased into a natural silence. He gave his sister a sideways glance; at certain angles Jasmine’s resemblance to their mom was striking. She tilted her chin up toward the sky with that same restless look in her deep-set eyes.

“Seems funny to care about all this bullshit,” she finally said, “when the universe is so much bigger than this … than us.”

“Funny,” Luc said noncommittally.

“Seriously, though. Think there’s life out there somewhere?”

God, she was so innocent. He knew Jas was attached to the idea that something must come after death. It was probably the only way she could handle what happened to their mom. “Not really sure,” he finally answered. “You?”

“Oh yeah.” She smiled. “It’s everywhere.”

Lanie Bross was born in a small town in Maine, where she spent the next eighteen years dreaming of bigger places. After exploring city life, she and her husband and two young sons ended up going right back to the wilds of Maine. They live just one house down from where she grew up. Fate, perhaps? Lanie loves chasing her rambunctious kids, playing tug-of-war with her ninety-five-pound Lab, and writing for young adults.
Fates
is her first novel.