“I mean, just the places I told you about earlier,” Keithanswered.
“Any new friends you know of? Is Jake playing with a new band,maybe?”
There was something so unsettling in Dad’s anxious words that shivers crept along my skin. I crossed my arms, trapping thebreeze.
“No, Dad. I don’t know,” Keith said, lowering Grace to the ground. She ran to the table and dipped her hand in the cheese. Mom didn’t bother to stop her. She was preoccupied, on the phone, calling everyonesheknew.
Six-year-old Quinn had joined Grace in dinner. Neither was particularly skilled at putting a taco together, and within seconds all the fillings were strewn across the table. Normally such a sight would annoy me to no end, but the nagging anxiousness settling deep in my belly kept me silent. I watched restlessly as the kids chatted happily with one another, blissfully unaware of the panic beginning to take form around them. The oxygen in the room began to thin, making it harder to breathe as my thoughts focused on Jake and Kyle.Wherewerethey?
Mom, still on the phone, had the high pitch of a woman on the verge of hysteria. Her lips trembled as she asked the same question: “Have you seen my sons?” Not to be outdone, my father paced the floor, repeating the same words over and over again. “Should we call the police? What shouldwedo?”
Time passed slowly as an ominous feeling of doom settled over the whole lot of us, and the longer we waited, the darker and more sinister the possibilities became. The police were called by 8:15, and as we waited for them to arrive, frantic screaming from somewhere down the street brought the four of us to our feet. We raced from the kitchen into the darkened night and followed the sounds of hysteria. There was no doubt in any of our minds that our questions were about to be answered in the cruelestofways.
We met Kyle several houses down, his nostrils flaring and his eyes wild with fear. He flung himself into our mother’s quaking arms. He was speaking so fast and so frantically that none of us could understand the words. Mom, her face contorted in horror, gripped my brother’s small body and pushed him back, getting a first look at her injured son. Blood from a wound on his forehead traced lines through the dirt on Kyle’s face, and his arm hung at an awkward angle by his side. Mom grasped his flushed cheeks and lifted his head. All she managed to saywas, “Jake?”
Kyle drew himself up and then burst intotears. “Gone.”
2
Emma, Present Day: RestingBitchFace
Waist-deep in a pile of clothes,I clawed at the stack with increasing frustration. Hippie chic? What exactly did that mean? Could one even put those words together into a coherent whole? When I wasn’t wearing light blue nursing scrubs at the hospital, I preferred a more classic wardrobe, which was precisely why I had such a high credit card bill every month at the Gap. Their business casual or jeans and blazer looks suited me well: crisp, clean, and tailored. Just like me. Just likemylife.
“What do you think, Cynthia?” I asked, holding up a chiffon top I’d dug out of the pile. My initial search for the perfect outfit had begun in an orderly fashion, but then I noticed some items falling off their hangers and decided this was as good a time as any to rehang and reorganize everything in my closet – hence the messy stack of clothing now fanned out around me. “I need your opinion, pretty boy. Is this hippie enough? Do you think I’ll look goodinthis?”
With his signature blasé arrogance, my fluffy gray and white cat glanced between the shirt and me and, for a moment there, I thought he might actually be considering my options. But then he went all predictable feline on me, folding his limber body into a scissor pose before getting down and dirty on his furry littlebehind.
“Everyone’s acritic.”
I guess I couldn’t fault Cynthia for his lackluster approach to life. He had never really forgiven me for his feminine moniker. I blamed my father and his stupid pet-naming policy. By the time we’d realized that Cynthia was really a Charles, it was too late. Every suggestion I presented as an acceptable alternative was met with overly enthusiastic booing by my opinionated family. So Cynthia it remained. I figured since he was strictly an indoor kitty and wouldn’t need to worry about getting name-shamed by a gang of macho alley cats, what was the harm, right? Wrong! My brothers never gave poor Cynthia a break. He’d become a running family joke, and my misunderstood little fluff ball didn’t like itonebit.
I held up my favorite light gray pantsuit, the one I’d rocked at the hospital Christmas party the year before last – seriously low-cut and clinging to all the right curves. I recalled feeling incredibly sexy that night. I also remembered the males loving it; so much so that I’d been rewarded with a steamy night in the arms of Logan, our hospital’s Dr. McDreamy. All I can say about that was, with a few drinks in me, it had seemed like a good idea at the time. I should have known better… on so many levels. Logan was one of those guys who knew he was hot and wanted the rest of the world to appreciate his scorching awesomeness right alongside him. And that night, after he’d rolled off of me for the final time that balmy winter’s evening, we both immediately realized our mistake, and neither one of us could get away from the other fastenough.
He’d spent the following week trying to hide from me. It really was quite humorous to watch him morph from a mature professional into a commitment-phobic adolescent the moment our tryst was completed. Avoiding me seemed his only mission, even going so far as to duck behind the nurse’s stations or escape into storage closets when our paths would invariably cross. What Dr. Chickenshit hadn’t realized was that he’d met his fornicating match. I didn’t want a relationship any more than he did, and once he figured that out, the randy physician was more than happy to keep reaching out for snacks… or asking for tickets to my brother’s concerts.As if.Asshole. That’s what I got for picking the winners. I scrunched my nose in protest of the memory… yeah, maybe not thepantsuit.
So that was my last coitus, not that you probably cared. Not that I even cared. When it came to men and sex, I could take it or leave it. And more often than not, I left it. It wasn’t that I was some hardcore feminist who reveled in pummeling men in their nether regions just for the sake of it, although that did sound strangely entertaining. No, my reasons were far simpler and less violent. I’d found over time that the only men with balls big enough to approach me were cocksure dipwads. And despite what my appearance and demeanor obviously said about me, I wasn’t used to men like that. All the guys in my life, my father and my brothers, were dynamic and sincere. Sure, they made mistakes, and could at times be giant walking, talking assholes, but at least they tried to do the right thing. I liked to think my brothers treated women with as much respect as could be reasonably expected, given they were of the male species and thought primarily with their frontalgenitalia.
Even if the nice guys were to come hither, it’s not like I’d know what to do with them. I’d spent my adulthood avoiding congenial men. The fact that I didn’t want what nice guys wanted – namely, marriage and a family – pretty much excluded them from my rather emptyplaybook.
So, what should I do?my sister Grace texted. She was having boy problems and naively believed her big sister had all the answers. Ahh, bless her. Honestly, she’d have better luck asking some middle school hussy than me but, sure, I’d pretend for her. Why the hell not? Okay, so let’s see, the guy in her English class just told her he thought she had a thick ass –thick, for all you pre-Kardashians out there, now meantdeliciously scrumptious. Does she a) engage him in conversation; b) ignore him and make him want more: or c) rub her thick ass all over the douche to give him a taste of what he’s been missing? Okay, seeing as this was my baby sister, c) was most definitely off the table. Selection b) would be my standard protocol, and we certainly didn’t want Grace to be anything like me, so there was really only oneoption...
Find someone else. This guysucks.
Emma! He’s one of the hottest boys inschool.
All the morereason.
You’re not helping. I really don’t know what to do. Does he just like me because of my last name or does he like meforme?
It sounds like he likes you for your ass, which means my earlier advicestands.
Ugghh… you’re impossible sometimes. I’m going to ask Amberinstead.
Fine. I didn’t want to be her Oprah anyway. Relieved, I shifted my focus back to the pile of clothing and begrudgingly acknowledged that it really didn’t matter what I found in my closet; nothing was going to get me out of a shopping date with my brother’s fiancée, Casey. I’d been putting her off for too long, and now it was crunch time. Somehow I’d agreed to let her help me pick out two ‘music festival appropriate’ outfits for the coming weekend. My brother Jake was headlining the three-day line-up and, because it was our father’s birthday, had invited the entire clan out for some fun in the desert sun. But although I’d been looking forward to the event for weeks, finding something to wear was another storyaltogether.
The Sun Desert Music Festival was known as much for the fashion stylings of its concertgoers as it was for the music. And that’s where Casey came in. Since sayingyesto my brother four months ago, my future sister-in-law had been trying her best to bond with me. I was fine with our friendly arrangement of seeing each other only when Jake was around – after all, I wasn’t known for having female friends – but apparently that didn’t fly with girlfriend-centric women like Casey. She wanted a deeper connection with me, and even though I had trust issues with other women, I’d promised Jake during our last phone conversation that I’d try harder to get to know his soon-to-bebride.
I mean, how difficult could it be? Casey seemed fairly straightforward. I couldn’t imagine there being some hideous beast hiding under all that smiling. Normally I didn’t trust anyone whose lips were perpetually curved upward, but with Casey, I truly believed she couldn’t help herself. Don’t get me wrong – I didn’t dislike Casey or her bubbly personality. On the contrary, I found her a breath of fresh air in my brother’s previously stale life. She’d found a way to pierce his steely surface to find the person inside – not the rock star or the crime victim, just the man I knew and loved. And for that I bowed down to her. But becoming best buddies? That didn’t seemlikely.
