Sons of Liberty (15 page)

“No, no, no.” Not tonight. Not this night, before the test. He would be too tired. Social studies was after lunch. He couldn’t make it till then. He’d fall dead asleep.

“You hear me, Rock? It’s raining and the leak’s back, and now your mother’s concerned about it, too. Thinks the roof’s gonna fall down on us. You wanna blame anyone this time around, blame your mom.”

From the other room, Rock heard the springs squeak as Cliff jumped out of bed and stomped over to his dresser. Rock pressed his palms against his closed eye sockets to block the light. “I’m not,” he whispered. “I’m not getting up.”

“Cliff, your brother seems to be having a hard time. You want to help him out?”

“Rock, how about doing a headstand to get the blood going?” Cliff said earnestly. “And then maybe head down to the basement to grab some shingles? They’re right under the corkboard on the ice chest. I bet the ones we nailed in last time came loose, huh, Dad?”

“Could be.”

“I can’t,” Rock whispered. He sat up. “I can’t!” he hollered. He felt sick with fury. “My test, my paper. I can’t.”

“Sure you can, Rock,” Cliff answered. His voice was cruelly cheerful.

“Listen to your brother. Where’s that head-stand? Maybe you should practice it outside, get that cold air to rouse you.”

Quickly Rock rolled out of bed and into a headstand against the wall. He felt the warm carpet of blood roll down from his frozen toes to his face.

“Good man,” their father said. “Meet me outside, guys. It shouldn’t take too long, but who knows. Who knows.” He stomped down the stairs, slamming the front door behind him. Cliff dashed into Rock’s room in the next instant.

“How’re you feeling?”

“If you’re just in here to laugh about my social-studies test, you’re an even bigger jerk than I ever thought you were.” Rock flipped down from his headstand, panting.

“Hey, don’t take your problems out on me.” Cliff looked bright-eyed, almost frantic, like he was about to start laughing or breaking things.

“I’m not, but this is like the worst …” Rock felt too tired to finish the thought. All he knew was that he’d rather be anywhere than inside this moment, knowing he was going to spend the night hammering shingles on the roof while his one hundred percent in social studies slipped away from him.

“We’re leaving for Arizona tonight.” Cliff’s words jolted Rock awake in a rush more dizzying than a thousand headstands. “It’s a perfect opportunity. We got the car, it’s raining enough to get the leak going, and he’s all the way up on the roof, so if we’re quick—”

“Get out of my room.” Rock began jumping into his clothes, the one decision he felt secure making. Cliff studied him for a moment.

“Mom and Bront are already awake. Hurry up.” Then he was gone, clattering down the stairs.

Rock shoved his feet into his boots. He tried to make his mind a blank, to use his instincts, instead. His instincts took him downstairs and out the front door, into the wet and frostbitten black air. They led him around the house. I’m sorry, Cliff, he thought grimly. I’m sorry I’m not a betrayer, like you. But I’m not going to up and leave for Arizona because you decided you want to.

He could just barely hear his mother and Cliff and Brontie, whispering and padding through the halls and bedrooms. If you didn’t pay attention too hard, it could have been just the usual tense noises of an Interrupted night. Rock tried not to pay attention.

His instincts carried his feet with careful steps up the ladder propped against the side of the house. His father was sitting on his ankles, hunched over the same area of roofing they had worked on only a few weeks before. Through the spattering rain, his face was a smear of white, half-hidden by the blur of his dark wool hat. Rock pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers and willed his eyes to focus.

“Strangest thing. Looks to me like someone or something ripped off all these new shingles we’d just put in. What do you make of that, Rock?”

“Strange.” Rock gulped. He knew in a moment it was Cliff who’d done it, impatient to leave and trying to fix an Interrupted night. Spineless gutless jerk. If he’d wanted to leave, he should have just sneaked off. Taken their mother and Brontie and scuttled away. But no, Cliff had to stick it to their father. Make him realize that he could be tricked by the kind of underhanded trick Rock hated most. Cliff set this night up out of spite. Rock’s head was beginning to throb, a delayed reaction from the headstand.

He squinted into the drizzling blurry night. Every edge of tree and rooftop was smoky and shapeless. “I think my eyes’re getting worse,” he mumbled. “I can barely tell what I’m looking at.”

“They won’t get worse if you have a positive attitude. Mind over matter.”

“And I got a headache. I should go get my glasses, maybe.”

“Nah, nothing wrong with your eyes, you’re just feeling whiny. You’re sure a whiner tonight, aren’tcha, son? Attitude like that’s not gonna get you too far in this world. Where’s your brother?”

“I don’t know,” Rock mumbled. Why do you always do that? he wanted to ask his father. Let’s just admit it. My eyes are bad. And sometimes my head gets dizzy when I don’t wear my glasses. It’s a fact. A simple, stupid fact.

From below, Rock heard a dull shuffle of footsteps on the gravel driveway. His father’s head snapped up.

“What’s going on down there?” he asked. “Sounds like a passel of mice broke loose.”

“Yeah, I think everyone’s awake,” Rock replied faintly.

“Why’d you boys rip these shingles off the roof?” his father growled after a few minutes had passed. “Some kind of joke I’m not in on? Since you might have noticed I’m not laughing.”

“I didn’t rip off those shingles. I’m not laughing either.”

“Then what’s going on here, Rock? You gonna tell me what’s happening in my own household? Don’t you think, as your father, I got a right to know what your brother’s up to?”

“I don’t know what’s going on.”

“You tell me now, Rock. You know you’re the only one I can trust.”

His father’s words set a lump in Rock’s throat. Was what his dad said really true? Did he only trust Rock?

“I don’t … I don’t know,” he stammered, rubbing his temples. “I don’t think I know what’s going on.”

“I think you do.”

“I guess all I know is a little bit of the story.”

“A little bit is a good-enough amount to start.” His father’s voice was as soft as his mother’s, persuading him. He leaned forward and clasped his hands together, waiting.

“They’re leaving Sheffield.” Rock felt the confession that had been burning inside him now escape in a tiny, traitor’s hiss through the rain. “ ’Cause of how it is, with Mom being scared of everything, and Brontie with Wynona in the mud-room, and no one getting enough sleep.” Rock’s words became sloppy in the explaining. “How it is around here sometimes. All the rules nobody understands and my index cards and that kind of thing.”

For a long minute neither of them spoke. The silence stretched and lengthened and separated them.

“Your brother thinks he’s so damned smart,” his father snorted. “Thinks he can save the world and everyone in it. He can’t do anything. He’s a loser, an idiot. They won’t survive a week.”

“They said it wasn’t for permanent.” Rock shivered and blinked back the rain, trying to look off the roof to the driveway below. From up here he could see nothing. Cliff hadn’t exactly said if they were coming back, not really. Maybe they were leaving Sheffield for good. Liza had said she was coming back, and that had proven to be untrue. Who knows what happened to people when they decided to leave their homes? Rock suddenly felt light-headed, thinking of all these people deserting him. Why would anyone come back to Sheffield, if they found a way out? He began whispering the names of the old Kindle soldiers to steady his mind.

“Well, I’m not going down. I’m gonna stay right up here and take care of this,” his father said. He laughed suddenly, a short, unhappy laugh that took Rock by surprise. “And I bet when I’m done, they’ll all still be down there, dithering around, idiots such as they are.” He laughed again, and then they sat together, unmoving, in the soaking darkness.

“I’d miss them, if they went away for good,” Rock said through closed teeth. His father said nothing in reply. “Would you miss them?” Rock asked finally.

“Life goes on,” his father answered. But his words did not match the thoughts that pained his face nor his shallow breathing, which iced the wet air. Yet he made no move to leave the roof. He seemed frozen, struck numb by his family’s rush to independence.

“I’d miss them,” Rock repeated. Until Liza, Rock had never missed anyone, not even his old half-remembered friends in San Diego. Everyone he’d known had always been right there in reach. But when Liza ran away, she’d left him confused by her almost-presence, like how people who got their arms or legs amputated say they still feel the pain and movement of their lost limbs. It was worse than frightening, the idea of being left behind again. Worse than losing his arms or legs. Worse than anything he’d ever known before. He was not a betrayer. He was a patriot, he was a Kindle. “I’d miss you, too, Dad,” he said.

“Yep,” his father answered matter-of-factly. “You’d miss me, boy. That’s how it is with family.”

“I’m gonna go get those extra cedar shingles, okay?” Rock said. “Down in the basement.”

“They’re on top of that old ice chest,” his father grunted. When he looked up from the roof, Rock could see the distinct glow of the whites in his eyes, they were open so wide. “You coming back, aren’t you, Rock?”

“Sure I am,” Rock said weakly. His father lifted and stretched his arm, and then his hand clamped heavy on Rock’s shoulder, wet fingers pressed light against the nape of his neck. “You’re a good son,” his father said gently. “It’s you and me now, sailor. Maybe that’s all we need. It’d have hurt me the most, if you’d gone, too, on account of I always knew you were the most loyal. The others …” He lifted and dropped his shoulders, then looked down into the darkness again. “Ice chest,” he repeated. “Hurry on back so we can finish this up.”

“Don’t you want to go down, maybe talk to them?” Rock heard the quiver in his own voice, although his father seemed oddly at peace.

“Naw. You go. Go on, now.”

Rock moved quick, scaling down the ladder. Even through the freezing cold rain, his neck and the backs of his knees were hot and damp with sweat.

He walked quickly around to the back of the house. He would say good-bye, and while he was there, he would ask them how long they were planning on visiting Aunt Louisa. His breath was short, as though he’d been running for miles.

They were already in the car: His mother’s hands gripped the steering wheel, and Cliff sat beside her, Brontie and Wynona hunkered in his lap, the seat belt pulled across them all. Rock squinted. The backseat was piled high with luggage, but a small space had been cleared. Rock’s space.

Cliff cracked the window. “Took you long enough,” he hissed. His eyes darted past Rock, up to the roof. “Get in.”

“I’m not going. I told you I wasn’t going,” Rock whispered back, wondering why he bothered to whisper at all. “I can’t.”

“Rochester, please don’t make us leave without you.” His mother’s voice was thin, and squeaked at the end. Her hands gripped the steering wheel. “Please.”

Brontie said nothing. She chewed on a piece of Wynona’s hair, and her hands were locked around Cliff’s wrists.

“I can’t,” Rock repeated. His temples were pumping too hard against his brain. He could practically hear the steady bumping of his blood.

“No time to argue.” Cliff’s eyes darted frantically to the roof. He shifted Brontie’s weight, and leaning forward, he picked up something that had been resting between his feet. “These are yours,” he said. He unrolled the window a couple inches and held out the items in his hands for Rock to take. Rock’s glasses. And the final printout of his history paper, with his pen tucked inside the blue ribbon. Cliff jabbed his thumb toward the backseat. “You can take your suitcase out of the car. It’s that plasticky brown one on top.”

“Why … ?” Rock took the paper with one hand and held it tight to his chest to protect it from the rain. He slid on his glasses, and now Cliff’s face crystallized out of the surrounding shadow. His brother sighed.

“I thought that once we got to Arizona, you might want to mail it to that lady, that Ms. Manzuli.”

“Except that I’m not going with you guys.”

“Now I know that. Also, I want you to know, Rock, that since you’re not coming with us, my other plan’s to forget all about you.” Cliff smiled angrily. “I’m gonna make myself forget everything, every single thing, about you.”

“So what?” Rock felt as if he were being slowly filled with ice water. His face was frozen into its hard stare.

“In fact, you’re about ninety percent forgotten by the time we get to New Mexico,” Cliff continued. “I’ll probably never say your name again. So get out of my face. Go be with Dad, you idiot. Go follow his orders and be his little deputy and beat up other kids and flunk out of school and freeze to death in that house. But get away from us.”

Rock could see his brother’s profile, each feature cut into ridges and curves that were perfect and distinct and more familiar than his own.

“You better not,” Rock whispered. He brushed his fingers against the dampening feather of his goose pen; his hands without gloves were so numb that he felt only the lightest impression. “You better not forget about me.”

“Definitely I will.”

“But I’m your own brother.”

“Real families stick together,” Cliff said.

“Then you should stay here, with Dad.”

“Dad isn’t letting the rest of us be a family,” his mother interrupted. “Can’t you see that, Rock? But we can still be a family if the rest of us stay together. We can start again.”

“I’m not a betrayer,” Rock said. I’m not. I’m not like you.

“Was Liza a betrayer?” Cliff asked.

“Don’t leave,” Rock insisted. “All of you. You can’t leave me.”

“Get in the car,” Cliff whispered. “None of us is getting out.”

“Cliff.” And then he couldn’t go on. His brother’s name, spoken in the darkness, all at once filled Rock with a burst of emptiness and the ache of a thousand memories. All their secret plans and private conversations, their lives played out in the hidden foothills and trenches that separated them from the adult world, from everyone else. It was almost unbearable now, studying the crisp, sharp angles of Cliffs face. Rock’s eyes prickled. He was not a betrayer. He was not.