The Wright Brother (3 page)

His eyes as he’d stood beside Mrs. Wright on the stoop after the service accepting condolences had seemed lost and empty.

Dressed in bright yellow shorts, a black and green pinstriped shirt, one blue sock and one red sock, Julian looked like a kaleidoscope of color.

Elisa frowned at the snickers some of the kids made when they saw him. It was obvious Mrs. Wright hadn’t been in her right frame of mind when she’d allowed him to walk out the house as he was.

Julian was not only deaf, he was colorblind, too. Two conditions which had caused him to be picked on in school.

Her lower chin jutted out when she spied both Roman and Christian standing on the lawn out in front of the church surrounded by a couple of kids from their old class. They were chuckling and pointing at their brother.

Furious that Julian’s own brothers would be so cruel, she marched over to Jules’s side, and, tossing the boys an evil glare over her shoulder, stood directly behind Julian to shield him as best she could from their eyes.

“Jules,” she whispered and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. Her touch caused him to look at her.

Tears slipped soundlessly from the corners of his eyes.

Julian was tall for his age. Almost to her height. With a messy shock of black hair and those bold eyes, her heart gave a tiny pang. He looked so much like his father.

Her sign language wasn’t the best—she and Julian had learned to speak to one another in their own private language of finger taps and gestures—but she’d taken the time to practice a little while they’d been gone. It suddenly bothered her that in all the years she’d known Jules she’d never tried to learn it.

Tapping her pointer finger so that he’d glance at her hands, she spoke to him for the first time.

She didn’t actually know phrases—that’d been trickier to learn so quickly. But she’d learned the alphabet. Painstakingly she twisted her fingers into letters.

“I’m sorry.”

It took her close to a minute to spell it out. And he shuddered when she finished. His thin shoulders visibly trembled beneath his shirt.

Biting onto the corner of his lip, he nodded and did something back with his fingers. But he moved them so quickly it was a blur she couldn’t hope to understand.

Shaking her head, she gave him a helpless shrug. Hating all over again that she’d never learned to talk to him properly. Julian’s hearing was so bad, the doctors hadn’t even given him hearing aides, for him—they’d said—the aides would be totally useless.

He relied almost solely on sign language.

He wiggled his fingers at her again, but again, she couldn’t make out more than a couple of L’s and maybe an A. She wasn’t sure.

Shaking his head, as if to say nevermind, he then stepped into her and wrapped her tightly into his arms.

She held him tight, knowing it would be the last time she’d ever get to do it.

“I love you, Jules,” she whispered and then kissed the top of his head.

Three hours later the Wrights had gone back to New York State and Elisa’s world seemed suddenly grayer.

9 years later

“I totally think Joey’s gonna ask you to the dance,” Chastity giggled over the phone line.

Elisa rolled her eyes. Of course Joey was going to ask her. It wasn’t like it was the best-kept secret: he was a jock, she was a jock, it was a match made in jocky heaven. She snorted and crunched into the red apple. Rubbing her pink and black-striped socked feet together as she lay on the piles of pillows her father always teased were more than any one girl should need for a bed.

“I’m not sure I’m going to say yes. I have a swim meet that morning.”

“Ugh.” Elisa could practically see her goth friend rolling her heavily mascaraed eyes. “You are so frustrating, do you know that? You always have meets. When don’t you have meets? All year you’ve been saying you wanted to go to homecoming with Joey, and now he’s gonna ask and you’re not sure! I mean, hello!”

She chuckled. “Whatever. Ms. dark, black, and deadly, shouldn’t you be getting ready to do some voodoo alter chant or something?”

“Grr. I don’t even know why we’re friends anymore.”

“Whatever, freakazoid.” She laughed, swallowing her bite of apple, and then took another. “I think secretly you’re tired of playing goth so you live through me.”

“I am not a goth, I just like dark clothes, and you are just ridiculous.”

“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that and I’ll just pretend that you don’t actually have a voodoo doll hanging up in your locker.”

“I will stick a pin in you,” she growled, “just bet me.”

“Yeah, you go ahead and do that.” She shook her head. Her friend might be weird, but Elisa pretty much thought Chastity hung the moon anyway.

“Whatever,” Chastity snickered. “Anyway, homecoming. You going or what?”

Chastity and her family had moved from Trinidad and Tobago to Sunny Cove three years ago. At first everyone had avoided the dark-skinned girl with dreds that fell long and heavy down to her butt. She’d been like a bird of paradise stuck inside a monochromatic garden of white roses. She just stuck out. But Elisa had seen beneath the unique exterior to the intelligent, cool girl beneath and in no time the two of them had developed a tight bond.

Eventually Chastity had won almost everyone over; with her hint of an island accent and her silky, dark skin the boys had fallen prey to her charms and she’d gone from being the outcast to the girl everyone wanted on their speed dial.

“I don’t know, probably, I guess. If he asks.”

“Jeez, could it have taken you any longer to get that out?”

She stuck out her tongue, curling her fingers through the worn threads of the one and only afghan blanket she’d ever attempted to crotchet. The colors were a mix of black, green, and blue. Colors she’d always loved. “Well, if I’m going, you’re going too.”

“Nah, I don’t do dresses.”

Which was entirely true. Chastity had one outfit. Tight black jeans, tight white tops, and a crucifix. Always the crucifix. She was the strangest pseudo goth/voodoo priestess Elisa had ever seen.

Of course, she was the only one Elisa had ever seen, but that was just semantics.

“Elisa!” Her mother’s shrill yell came up the stairs. “Please come here!”

“Oops.” She jerked. “Coming, Mom. Chas, I gotta go. Dinnertime. Maybe we can go shopping for some gowns tomorrow.”

“Keep dreaming, girlfriend.”

With a cheery laugh and another goodbye, Elisa hung up. Slipping the cell into her pocket and holding the apple between her teeth, she flew down the stairs and skidded to a complete stop at the sight that met her eyes.

It wasn’t dinner sitting on the kitchen table but the group sitting in the living room that’d made her mother call her down. Four people who’d become merely a memory to her.

Mrs. Wright was no longer as tall as Elisa had once recalled her being. Her skin was pale, attesting to the fact that they no longer lived next to a coastline. Her once shiny sandy blonde hair was cut to bob length and now had thick strands of gray between the blonde.

But she wasn’t the reason why Elisa suddenly felt like running back upstairs to her bedroom and locking the door.

Three extremely tall males surrounded their diminutive mother. Realizing that she still had the stupid apple stuck in her mouth, she spat it out and rubbed it on her shirt. Which was kind of weird and dumb, but yeah, Elisa was completely taken aback.

Mom smiled. “Okay, I’ll leave you guys to have your reunion.” She took Mrs. Wright’s hand and led her back into the kitchen where the banging of pots and pans resumed.

“We’re back,” Christian, or Roman, said the moment the four of them were finally alone.

It was really hard to tell the two apart. They looked almost identical. From the Hollister hip jeans to the collared polo shirts. They weren’t nearly as pale as their mother, but they weren’t as sun-kissed as she remembered them being once upon a time, either.

Their hair was cut stylishly short and curled around the napes of their necks. She might be eighteen and them a few months shy of sixteen, but it was obvious to her that they were turning into super good-looking guys.

The girls at school would eat them up.

Their lips twitched and then the one wearing the red polo spoke up. At a guess she’d say he was Christian, since his hair was just a little bit lighter than the one wearing the blue polo.

“We look kind of different, huh? You too, Lisa.” His pretty blue eyes sparkled. “I’m Christian by the way.”

She snorted. “I knew that.”

“Yeah, right.” He yanked her into his arms.

It felt strange being hugged by him. What had once felt so normal now felt awkward. She patted his back, but her eyes drew like magnets to the third Wright boy sitting on her couch.

Unlike his brothers, Julian wasn’t the all-American boy next door. Dressed entirely in shades of black and white, his hair was long. Hanging in a kind of skater style around his shoulders. Soft and wavy looking, and it was bizarre that her heart suddenly started to pound as hard as it did. Especially when she noticed a hint of black swirls on his wrists peeking out from under the cuffs of his shirt.

Did he have tattoos?

She wet her lips, jerking her eyes away from his, hoping it might help her to breathe a little easier.

And maybe it had something to do with the intense way he was staring at her, his gaze unswerving from her face, his breathing just this side of heavy, that’d caused her heart to thump so violently, or maybe it was just the shock of seeing people she’d sworn she’d never see again.

Christian stepped back and then Roman took his place. Giving her a quick side hug.

“Jeez, I forgot how boring this place was,” Christian snorted when she stepped back.

It took everything Elisa had to ignore Julian’s hard stare. But she felt it move all through her.

“Boring? You’re boring.” She swatted his shoulder. Her legs were jittery as she made her way over to her father’s favorite worn blue recliner and sat on the edge of it.

The boys sat down beside Julian and Elisa was suddenly upset that her mother had failed to warn her that company might come over today. She was in short blue jean shorts and a Minnie mouse crop top.

She brushed her fingers down her shirt; thank God it was clean at least.

“So…umm.” She giggled—that was always her thing when she got nervous. It was a terrible habit. “You guys here on vacation? Can’t imagine you’d be happy to trade in the bright lights of New York for Maine.”

Resting his arm on the back of the couch, Roman crossed his leg over his knee. “Nope. Here for good. Yay.”

She curled her nose, tossing a quick glance at Julian. Her heart thumped loudly when she realized he was still looking at her. All three of them looked so different from the boys she remembered and yet she could have picked Julian out in a crowd.

There’d just always been something different about him. Something uniquely Jules.

She gave him a little wave.

But instead of waving back, he turned his face and studied her father’s running magazine on the end table.

“Ignore him, he’s still just a freak,” Christian said with a roll of his eyes.

She frowned. Feeling that weird need to defend him, which was ridiculous. Julian was no longer a little boy and she was no longer his sister.

They were all pretty much strangers now.

“He’s not a freak,” she said anyway.

Roman scratched the side of his jaw. “Yeah, and how would you know? Not like you’ve been around for a few years.”

“Ouch. That was mean.” She crossed her arms. “When did you become such a jerk, Rome?”

Christian shrugged. “He doesn’t mean it, Lisa.”

Roman rolled his eyes again.

Clearly things hadn’t been good since the Wrights had left Sunny Cove. She glanced back at Jules. He still wouldn’t look at her.

Mrs. Wright came out of the kitchen. “Okay guys, we gotta get the bags moved out of the car. You look so gorgeous, Elisa. As tall as your father.” She hugged Elisa and then kissed her cheek.

It was weird how much a scent could ingrain itself into a person’s brain. How even after years of not smelling Mrs. Wright’s perfume of lavender and verbena, suddenly the smell of it transported Elisa back years.

Memories of seaside barbecues, birthday parties, movies under the stars in their backyards, and all the wonderful times they’d spent together.

She hugged her back hard and smiled; those had been some of the best days of her young life.

“Right, boys? Isn’t she beautiful?” She looked directly at Julian as she said it.

Elisa’s pulse pounded hard in the back of her throat when Julian’s sea-green stare turned to her.

From the corner of her eye she could see Christian and Roman nod. Julian never answered; instead he stood, shoved his hands into his pockets, and walked toward the front door.

Mrs. Wright’s smile wavered just slightly. “Anyway, it’s really good to see you guys again.”

“You too, Mrs. Wright.”

“Call me, Lori,” she said and patted Elisa’s cheek. “I think you’re old enough now.”

And just like they always seemed to do, the Wrights walked away from her again. But this time they were back, and for Elisa it was like something in her world had changed forever.

“Hey!” A loud male voice caused Elisa and Chastity to turn in the crowded hallway. It was Roman. With his stylish jeans and funky turquoise blue and orange chuck sneakers on, he was hard to miss.

It’d only been two weeks since the boy’s return, and Elisa’s thoughts had been proven correct. Christian and Roman, regardless of the fact that they were only sophomores, were already the big men on campus.

Girl’s heads swiveled on their necks whenever the boys walked past. Jocks would high-five the brash soccer duo. Roman fist-bumped the varsity team’s longhaired goalie as he sailed past to reach her side.

“Roman?” Her lips twitched when Chastity’s brow rose. She was probably one of the few girls at school who hadn’t fallen under their spell. “What’s up?”

He shrugged. “Nuthin’. Waiting for Christian to get out of Mr. Speller’s class. Saw you, decided to grace you with my presence.” His grin was all teeth.