Keeping Her Love (13 page)

Can’t fault the guy for looking at nudie videos. It’s not like 99.5% percent of the male population doesn’t look at this stuff. I don’t see anything too weird here. Just your average videos from the major porn sites. I suppose he torrents these. He’s an engineer-in-the-making, but he’s not pulling in a ton of money right now. Maybe if he’s acting up I can somehow let mommy and daddy in on this little collection of his.

Giving up on poking through Max’s hard drive, he opened a browser and began clicking around through his search history. Rhett yawned as he scrolled through it all. By his approximation, it had to be the most boring browsing habits he’d seen in his life. If Max wasn’t checking out all of the technology blogs on the Internet, he was hanging around on engineering forums or his school’s website to upload homework.
 

Christ, this guy. I’ve got zero dirt on him so far, and this is probably the best place to find something worth dinging him on. Maybe I was wrong about him. He seems about as normal as any person I’ve met. But then, I haven’t really had the opportunity to look through the rest of his place. Lord knows there’s many layers to this room to search through.

Shutting the computer off, Rhett began looking around on top of the desks. He picked up a few of the pieces of electrical materials, observing them as if he were picking up the spare parts from a UFO.

What the heck does this guy do with all this stuff? He is studying to be an engineer. I guess that should answer itself.
 

Departing the desk, he checked out the bedside table that had a simple lamp placed at the corner, an old glass of water, and a ballpoint pen. Opening the drawer, he pushed some knick knacks aside before finding exactly what he was looking for: a fancy moleskin journal, frayed at the corners and looking like it had see more than a few hundred active days. He picked it out and flipped it open, seeing that more than half was filled with the thick black ink of Max’s hand. The first entry was from two years ago, far before Rhett had come into the picture, so he skipped ahead to the last page of the book.

Yes!
Thought Rhett.
That was the day after the beach trip. This should be pretty rich.
 

April 28
^th

I enjoyed my time with Layla and everyone else. I hope that Tula liked the gift I got her—a silver watch with some features that should help her with her baking career. The beach was beautiful and I feel lucky that I could get some time away from my studies to go to such a nice place. It’s a somewhat isolated location, surrounded by bluffs and ridges that have these beautiful trees that remind me of pines.

Oh, who cares about that?
Rhett paused to think.
Get to the juicy stuff!
He scanned ahead, trying to pick out words that would attract his attention.

…
I’m sad when I think about the fact that Tula will be leaving the house with her boyfriend, Rhett. He’s nice enough, but I get this strange feeling that he has some kind of sinister underbelly that the rest of us don’t see. I just get paranoid thinking about them being alone together. I wish that Tula had chosen someone from the church, someone that we could really fully approve of. Rhett just walked into the bakery one day and asked Tula out on a date. We don’t know anything about him.

Anyway, I revealed all of this to Tula that night on the beach. I held her so close and let her know how much the family cares for her and wishes her well. As twins, we have this special bond that no one else could possibly understand. It’s a gift from God, really. She said she understood, and that she loved us all so much. I can’t believe she’s going to be leaving us soon.

Rhett raised an eyebrow as he read the last of the entry.
 

It’s believable enough, I suppose. Especially his apparent disapproval of me. But something about it just seems strange. I don’t know what it is. It’s almost as if the voice in his journal doesn’t match the words that usually come out of his mouth. I don’t get it. Is this how this guy really thinks? It’s true that he’s usually a person of few words.
 

He sighed.

I don’t know. Maybe I should just go on and read more. I don’t want to spend too much time in here, but I want to get a better idea of who he really is. I don’t know if it’s my preconceived notions of him that makes it hard for me to believe that he’s actually like this. Am I the crazy one? Maybe the entire family just has a general distaste for me, and I’m targeting Max because he was just more honest about his feelings for me.

He meditated briefly on that last thought.

Is that it? Am I chastising him because he was the only one who actually showed his emotions? Tula told me before that her parents are too easy with their love, while it must be earned from Max. She also told me that Max is kind of in a confusing stage of his life. A nerdy engineering guy… Because of his natural good looks, it’s hard to believe that he would have trouble relating to people, but you never know. He’s not the most friendly person in the world.

He flipped through more of the journal, wondering to himself on what Max was like before he came into the picture. He’d settle on a random page or two with an old date at the top, typically from the year before, and just scan for key words that seemed important to him. Often he simply searched for Tula’s name, but he also kept an eye out for an instances of rage or perversion. Typically, Max’s journal was pretty bland in nature. He would most often write about events relating to school, like his teachers, friends, and difficult homework assignments. As Rhett analyzed the text more closely, he realized that a lot of the entries were pretty similar:

Woke up a bit late today. Finished my homework assignment at the last second. I really need to break that bad habit. Mr. Garrison did not seem pleased with me, especially considering that he says my handwriting is practically illegible. Garrison is kind of mean, though, so I don’t put a lot of stick into what he says. I just want to finish this class to the best of my abilities and be done with it.

Sang says that he feels the same way about the professor. He’s not as good at engineering as I am, so he seems to get twice the grief. I try to help him as much as I can, but this isn’t an easy field to slide through. He tells me that his parents are the ones who put pressure on him to go into engineering, otherwise he would have been an actor or photographer or something.

There wasn’t much about Tula and the family besides the occasional mention about a dinner they went to or a minor spat between two of the family members. Rhett couldn’t ascertain anything he wanted to find—namely, evidence of some kind of sexual fixation on Tula, or signs of pathology. Rhett had to admit it: Max seemed about as normal a person as any.
Shutting the journal, he set it back inside of the drawer as carefully as he could, trying to remember to place it exactly as he’d found it.
 

He took a moment to consider whether he should continue looking through the rest of the room, which consisted mostly of the bookshelf and the closet. Max seemed to already prove to Rhett that he wasn’t the mastermind he’d thought he was. Why continue filtering through things when there wasn’t anything to find?

I still just can’t shake the feeling that there’s something more behind all of this,
Rhett thought as he picked up another one of the indiscernible pieces of electronic equipment.
But what can I do? He’s completely clean. It really must be some kind of male-on-male aggression instinct coming up in me. I can’t explain what motivates me otherwise. Max explained himself in his journal on why he seemed so close to Tula that night. I can’t find signs that he’s been sabotaging the relationship between Tula and I. Maybe I’m just barking up the wrong tree.

He paused to check his watch. 10:30 AM.
 

It’s still early. What the hell else am I going to do with the rest of my time if I give up the chase?

Momentarily, he considered following up the inspection on Max’s room with a quick sweep of Mr. and Mrs. Florian’s room.

No, I can’t go that far. If I were ever caught going through their stuff, I’d be tossed out in a second. I have my suspicions about them, but I’m not gonna go searching through their stuff.
 

He looked up towards the shelves on the wall, covered with a long line of books of every shape and color. Rhett took his shoes off, stepping up on Max’s bed to get a closer look of the collection. The titles ranged from science fiction to textbooks, and didn’t seem to be ordered with any kind of system of logic.

The textbooks didn’t hold any interest for him, so he didn’t check them out. What hidden secrets could he possibly find in the pages of an old pre-calculus book? He did pick up a few of the fiction novels—just some sci-fi and thriller titles—checking out the titles and blurbs before briefly flipping through. He checked on what was behind the books occasionally when he pulled one or two out. He only really found a thick layer of dust, some bookmarks, and some old unlit emergency titles.

It was only right before he hopped down from the bed—when he was sure that there was nothing of interest to find—that he discovered something special. He almost didn’t pick up the hardcover, thinking it a waste of time to search through something vainly, but some little voice in his head told him he should be thorough. It was a non-fiction book by his approximation, one of those titles that might be under the self-help category of a book store.
Finding Your True Self
was the title, and when he motioned to flip it open, something felt very peculiar about the motion.

It was only on closer inspection that he realized that half the book was glued together.

“What in the hell?” He mumbled to himself, pulling back the flowing pages of the first half of the book. When he set back the last free page, he saw something rather interesting. Cut into the glued half of the book was a small rectangular shape, and inside of that was a key. He picked it up, trying to figure out where this key might go from the shape and texture of it.

It seems to go to some kind of file cabinet or safe,
he thought, feeling at the square shape of the head. The lower half of the key had sharp, jagged cuts into it. It seemed like a sensible idea to take the key and try to find where it belonged to, since it very likely went to somewhere inside of the room.
I just can’t forget that I took it from here. If that guy came in here and discovered that it was gone, he’d have a shit fit. If I can’t find where it belongs to in here, I’ll have to come back another time. I could always follow the guy around for a day and see if he reveals the secret himself.
 

He was about the close the book before he realized the there was something else there. Pasted above the rectangular cutout was a wide inset. Poking his finger inside, he felt around for a piece of paper. The thick paper was no bigger than four inches wide and had a watercolor flower on the front. He opened it, recognizing immediately the handwriting of Tula.

Just want you to know that I’m thinking of you, brother. You’re such a deep soul, and I’m afraid that most people won’t realize that about you. Karma told me this book really helped him find himself as a person, and I enjoyed it, so I thought that I’d give it to you. You’ll find your way in this world, I promise.

I love you with all of my heart,

Tula

He flipped it around, wondering if there was anything more to this little note, but didn’t discover anymore details.
 

It’s nothing too odd. I wonder why he felt the need to keep it. And further, why he had chosen to glue this book together when it was a gift from his precious sister. I guess I’ll never know.
 

He shut the cover closed and put it back, keeping the key in his pocket. Stepping down from the bed, he saw that there was another shelf opposite to him, but the only thing up there were a bunch of stuffed animals and statues that appeared to have been made in some kind of high school pottery class.
 

To the closet.

He opened the door to the little room, facing walls of hanging clothes. It seemed about as ordinary as any closet he’d ever seen, but figuring he might as well, Rhett stepped inside to take a closer look. As soon as both of his feet were firmly inside, the door slammed closed behind him. The space was relatively dark, the only light coming from a small sliver of a window seven feet above him.

What in the hell?

He tried to twist the doorknob open, but it wiggled left or right to a minuscule amount. Stepping back, he heard something from the corner of his ear. It was like a mild creaking, and when he looked up see what it was, it was too late: two large glass tanks were tilting over in a mechanical manner, unleashing hundreds, if not thousands, of spiders.
 

Before the first one landed on him, he screeched out in acute horror. He wanted to reach up and push the tanks back before the contents spilled on top of him, but knew deep down that it would be a useless task even if he could manage it in time. Instead he covered his head and tried to dart to one of the corners of the closet, screaming bloody murder at the top of his lungs.

“HELP!” He screamed to any soul that might be of any relatively close distance to him. “HELP ME! GET ME OUT OF HERE!”

He could feel them crawling all over them, their tiny legs scurrying and stepping about on his bare skin. He struggled to wipe them away, furiously shaking his hair to get them off of him. There were copious amounts of daddy long-legs, black widows, wolf spiders, and even one fat, hairy tarantula spilling about, clinging to clothes and crawling along the carpeted floor in alarm. It was a veritable living nightmare for Rhett to be in an enclosed space with so many arachnids, since he was a man who had a deep phobia of spiders.

Rhett banged against the door, trying all he could to rip the doorknob off if he could. He kicked and kicked with his heavy boots at where he knew the weakest point of the door to be, hoping with all his might that he could be free of this hell.