Karen's been babysitting for her mom's weird co-worker for a whole week before she even realizes they have another kid. Zoe is drawing with her scented markers, the kind that smell like stale air freshener and sardines, and when Karen asks her to name the scrawled figures on the paper the last one sounds a lot like "brother."
"You have a brother?" she asks, confused.
Zoe nods and kicks her feet against the chair. "Yup. He's visiting his real daddy in New York."
Karen frowns and tips her head sideways, considering. Zoe likes to make up imaginary people sometimes, and no one mentioned another kid. There aren't any pictures of him in the house, either.
There aren't really many pictures at all in the house, though, just some baby photos of Zoe and a creepy picture of Lori and Alan from their wedding day. Alan has the same heavy grey beard, and one big hand clutches Lori's shoulder as she sits in a chair below him, wearing a shiny green dress with pointy shoulder pads. Something about it always weirds Karen out.
She's making tuition money for the summer science program at Bryn Mawr, though, and they're paying her more than her neighbor used to, so she ignores the way Lori always talks too fast and too loud and the way Alan always offers her a ride home, no matter how many times she says she rode her bike. Zoe's more fun than the neighbor kid, too; she doesn’t mind playing by herself and she leaves Karen alone in the living room to read Stephen King novels and watch Wimbledon. Pete Sampras is really cute.
A few days later she hears a car pull up as she's fixing Zoe a cheese sandwich for lunch, and then the back door bangs open. A guy about her own age comes in, maybe a year or two younger, short and skinny with floppy dark hair and a big blue Adidas bag slung over one shoulder.
"Mom!" he yells, dropping his bag.
"Um, hi," Karen says, still holding a Kraft single in her hand. He turns and frowns at her.
"Where's my mom?"
"Work?"
He sighs, exasperated. "Shit. I'm supposed to meet my friends at the movies. You don’t have a car, do you?" He eyes her, presumably to see if she's old enough to drive.
"Just my bike. But I think your – Alan is going to be home for lunch in a few minutes."
He gets a funny look, sort of careful and blank, and shakes his head. "No, I can't – I'll just call Mike." He picks up his bag and goes out of the kitchen without explaining further. She hears him pound down the stairs a while later when someone honks outside.
"Bye, Ryan!" Zoe yells from the living room, where they're building a house out of Lincoln Logs for Zoe's quintuplet dolls.
He's sitting in the kitchen when she arrives the next morning, eating Pops and playing with his Gameboy. He doesn't look up when she comes in to get a Capri Sun for Zoe, and later he's vanished. The next morning he's stretched out on the couch, feet bare and shirt riding up to show the waistband of his boxers, sticking out above his too-big jeans. He hogs the TV all day and she misses the Wimbledon quarterfinals, which really pisses her off. It's his house, though, so she can't really say anything.
She's used to being around boys, kind of, even though she goes to an all-girls school, since she has two older brothers and their friends are always over. It's not really the same, though, because they treat her like a kid sister and let her ride their dirt bikes and watch kung-fu movies with them, while Ryan just ignores her, taking up too much space.
If Zoe wants to draw with chalk on the driveway he's already out there, trying to skateboard. If she wants some goldfish crackers, Ryan's finished the bag. He's even floating in the Doughboy pool on the hottest day of the year, and there's no way Karen's putting on her swimsuit in front of him so she runs Zoe a cold bath instead and seethes.
She leaves Zoe putting on fresh clothes to go get her book, sitting on the arm of the couch in the den, and bumps into Ryan coming up the stairs. His hair is wet and plastered to his head, and his long swim trunks sag away from his flat stomach. He's really skinny, his chest almost concave, and there's a big bruise on his ribcage, the color of a too-ripe tomato, edged in green.
"What happened to your side?" she asks, without thinking.
He flushes, redness creeping up his neck. "Nothing. Um, I fell – at the skatepark."
"Ouch," she says. "My brother wiped out on the big bowl last year and cracked his skull. Mom makes him wear a helmet now."
"Huh," he says. "'Scuse me." He pushes past her, and she can't help turning to look as he goes up the stairs. There's another bruise on his shoulder blade, dull purple. It looks older.
He never brings his friends over, which she's grateful for. He doesn't even let them come in the door, though; if someone rings the doorbell he leaves them standing on the porch until he's ready to go and then he slips outside, barely opening the door wide enough to get through. She's wonders if he's embarrassed about his house or his sister or having a strange girl babysitting, or maybe all three.
On the night of her sixteenth birthday party at the mini-golf course, to which she's invited her cousins and most of her class and her entire softball team, she spends a long time in the bathroom getting ready. She looks at her braces, which were supposed to come off last spring except she didn’t go in regularly for tightening so now she's stuck with them until Christmas. She runs her fingers over her nose, always freckled (she hates wearing a visor when she pitches because it gets in her way). She tugs at her hair, lank and frizzy, yanked back into a ponytail like always. It's not like she doesn't know how to put on makeup or fix her hair; it just seems easier, most of the time, not to bother. She goes to an all-girls school, after all.
Monday morning she almost puts on a pair of earrings, little gold hearts that have been in the bottom of her jewelry box for months, but in the end she puts them back.
One August day Alan's car is still parked in the driveway when she rides up. Inside, Lori whispers that he's feeling sick today, her pale eyes wide and kind of bulging.
"Oh," Karen says. "Do you still want me – " Lori starts nodding vigorously, her curly red hair bouncing everywhere and her big glasses sliding down her nose.
"Oh, yes, dear, certainly, yes," she whispers. "Alan won't want to take care of Zoe today. You'd better not disturb him, really."
For a moment Karen is worried Lori will ask her to take care of Alan too, but she just smiles a crooked smile, her coral lipstick coming off at the corners, and squeezes Karen's shoulder. On her way out the door Lori pauses, hand on the knob.
"Maybe you should spend the day at the park," she says. "And – take Ryan with you. Tell him I said so. He spends too much time in his room."
Karen stops herself from raising a sardonic eyebrow at the thought of telling Ryan anything, and waves goodbye instead.
Ryan comes downstairs as she's packing up Zoe's little Sesame Street backpack and loading the wagon with blankets and snacks. He's wearing a long white undershirt and baggy plaid pajama bottoms, and he yawns, scratching at his messy hair.
"Hey," Karen says. "We're going to the park."
He looks confused, like he's not sure why she's talking to him.
"Um, your mom said to tell you to come with us."
He looks even more confused, if possible, and she adds, lowering her voice, "Um, Alan's home sick today. So – "
Ryan doesn't let her finish, just nods and goes back up the stairs again, walking really quietly. In three minutes he's back, dressed and wearing a baseball cap, carrying a stack of car magazines under one arm. He goes into the kitchen and comes back with a box of Pop-Tarts, which he tosses onto the wagon.
At the park Karen pushes Zoe on the swings and Ryan lies on his stomach on the blanket in the grass, reading and eating most of the Doritos she brought. Zoe makes friends with another little girl and they run around playing hot lava monster on the monkey bars. Karen wishes she could go lie down and read her book, and then decides, grumpily, that there's no reason she can't.
"Scooch," she says, in her best babysitter voice, like she's his big sister. Ryan looks up at her, putting a hand over his eyes to shield them from the noon sunshine. He scooches.
She takes her bookmark out of The Stand and sits next to him, cross-legged, on the patch of blanket he's vacated. She reaches into the bag of Doritos near his hip and eats a handful of them.
They read in silence. The air is warm and moist, filled with the sounds of kids screaming and laughing. She glances over at the playground once in a while, making sure Zoe's not dead or bleeding, but the other girl's dad is keeping a pretty good eye on them.
"What school do you go to?" Ryan asks her suddenly.
"Sacred Heart," she says, without looking up.
"Are you Catholic?"
"Sort of."
"How can you only be sort of Catholic and go to Catholic school?"
She looks at him, raising an eyebrow. "Like, half the girls at school aren't Catholic. It's just about getting a good education."
"Oh," Ryan says. "Is your family rich?"
She raises both eyebrows this time. "No. Not that it's any of your business, but I'm on scholarship."
"Cool," Ryan says, and she feels dumb, like he's going to think she's some big dorky brain now. Not that she really cares what he thinks.
"Do you wear – " he starts to ask.
"Dude. Do not ask me about my school uniform, OK? Gross."
He looks embarrassed, to his credit, and goes back to his magazine. After a second she feels kind of guilty.
"Sorry. I just get sick of the whole Catholic school girl thing with guys. I usually wear ugly navy pants and a white polo shirt. It's not very exciting."
He just nods. The little thread of conversation seems to have sputtered and died, and she tries to kickstart it again.
"Uh, are you going to go visit your dad again this summer? Zoe said he lives in New York?"
"No," he says. "I mean, yeah, he lives in the city, but I'm not gonna see him again."
"Oh," she says.
"This summer," he clarifies. "Maybe next summer. He just has a lot of stuff going on at work. He's a lawyer."
"OK," she says.
"We were going to go on this yacht that one of his clients owns, only it turned out that it was a different kind of party so he had to take his girlfriend Vanessa instead. But we're definitely going to do it next summer."
"Cool," she says, stretching out the word. She feels kind of embarrassed for him, and wants to get back to her book.
"What does your dad do?" he asks.
"Insurance," she says, hearing the challenge in his question.
"What about your mom?"
She gives him a dirty look. "Dude. She works with your mom."
"I know – what does she do?"
"She's the school nurse."
He nods. His mom teaches first grade. Karen always wonders if it scares the little kids, the way Lori's big eyes bug out behind her glasses and how she's always adorned and clinking with a hundred different necklaces and bracelets and rings.
"Are your parents still married – oh, right, you're Catholic."
"Catholics get divorced."
"Not as much. Anyhow, you're lucky."
"I guess," she says. "My parents fight a lot, though. And you get two Christmases and two birthdays, right?"
He shrugs, as much as he can while lying down. "It just means I have to pick where I spend which holiday. My mom always makes me feel really guilty if I go to my dad's, and sometimes he can't get the time off anyhow."
"Well," she says. "You've got Alan." She says it casually, deliberately, and looks at him out of the corner of her eye.
"Yeah," he says shortly. He starts reading his magazine again, and they don't really talk for the rest of the day.
At four she rounds up Zoe, covered in sand and orange Dorito dust, and puts her in the wagon to pull her home. Ryan walks a long way behind them, baseball cap pulled low.
Alan's sitting on the couch when they get back, watching a Phillies game. He doesn't seem very sick, Karen thinks as she unloads the wagon, just kind of bleary and tired. Ryan goes immediately upstairs and shuts the door to his room, leaving his magazines in the wagon. Zoe climbs onto the couch to sit with Alan, who smiles and brushes the sand from her hair.
"Thanks, sweetie," he says to Karen. "You can go on home now."
"You don’t want me to wait for Lori?" she asks, shifting her weight uncomfortably.
"No, hon, I'm OK. Just needed some sleep." He pulls Zoe onto his lap and tickles her stomach, making her squeal.
"OK," Karen says. She darts a glance upstairs, then goes to get her backpack.
"Did, uh, Ryan come home with you?" Alan calls from the living room.
"Yeah," she says.
He shakes his head. "Goddammit. He was supposed to clean out the garage today."
"Uh, Lori said he should come with us."
"Of course she did."
Karen doesn't like the feeling in her stomach, tight and nervous. "Well, he helped keep an eye on Zoe," she lies. "He's faster than I am."
"Sweetie, I know you can take care of little Zoe just fine on your own. It was nice of you to put up with that smartass."
"It was no problem," she says. "Really."
Alan is still frowning, distracted. "Well, thanks again. We'll see you tomorrow, I guess."
"Um – I forgot something upstairs," she says quickly. "One second." She grabs the stack of magazines and goes up, then down the hall to Ryan's room. She knocks, very quietly.
He doesn't answer, and she can guess why. Squeezing her eyes shut, she opens the door a fraction.
"Hey – oh," she hears Ryan say. "What do you want?"
She opens her eyes. Ryan is lying on his bed, stereo blasting Tupac.
"I brought your magazines," she says, offering them.
"Just leave 'em there," he says, without getting up. The room is neat the way her brothers' rooms are neat when her mom makes them pick up – magazines and papers stacked up everywhere, and the closet door shut suspiciously tight. She drops the magazines on top of the dresser by the door, and then looks back at him.
"What?" he asks. She crooks her fingers, making a hesitant face. He pulls off the headphones and comes to the door, looking annoyed.
"I think you should get out of here until your mom gets home," she says quietly.
His eyes, a few inches from hers, go wide. She wants to say more, but it's hard to know what to say.
"He's in the living room, so I'm going to tell him that my bike has a flat and I need your help, OK?"
He doesn't say anything, just keeps looking at her with that frozen expression. She's never noticed how blue his eyes are before, a deep color like the ocean in winter, standing out in his pale face.
"And maybe you should start cleaning out the garage. I think he's really mad about that."
He sighs then, a long, tired sound. "Karen…" he says, shaking his head. "It doesn't really matter what I do."
She hates the resignation in his voice. Quitters piss her off, and he looks so pathetic, like he doesn't even care enough to stand up for himself.
"Well, if you think it'll be OK – "
"It's not going to be OK," he says. "But, you know, whatever."
She just looks at him. "Whatever."
They look at each other for a moment longer, and then she turns and walks away.
"Thanks," she hears him say quietly, over the pounding music, but she just shrugs and keeps walking.
School starts a week later. Her softball team goes to the all-city championship and loses by two runs in the ninth. She gets a job selling magazines that makes her a ton of money, and changes her mind about both babysitting and biology. They move to Hartford in the spring, when her dad gets transferred, and she doesn't really think about that kid Ryan ever again, except maybe remembering the last time she saw him, sitting on the porch with his too-big clothes and his too-cool sunglasses, reading a magazine and pretending he wasn't watching her ride her bike home.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
sophia_helix is the author of 19 other stories.
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