***
Going to work and forcing myself to make it through two classes is torture. I am exhausted when the last dancer finally leaves. I trudge through the front door and scan the parking lot for Grandma’s Volvo. The sight of Zander’s truck sends a whole wash of emotions through me. Anger tops the list, but fear and disgust are there in pretty large concentration as well. It takes me a few minutes to collect myself and climb into the truck.
Before I can say a word, Zander says, “I know you’re pissed at me, but this needs to wait until we get home. It’s not safe while I’m driving.”
The fact that he is right makes me nod. Not knowing how to even start keeps me from saying anything. As we drive, I struggle to figure out what to say to him. What happened today is eating away at me, but how do I accuse Zander of killing someone? There is still some lingering hope that I’m wrong. If I break open something like that, it can never be taken back. Reluctantly, I hold onto the topic of murder and focus on my anger at Zander over Ivy instead. It builds quickly as I relive our conversation from that night. By the time we make it home to an empty house, I’m ready to let him have it.
Zander stops and faces me when we get to the living room. “Okay, go ahead.”
“That’s it?” I fume. “Go ahead? No explanation?”
“Just say what you want to say, and then I’ll explain. You’ll never let me get through it without yelling at me anyway,” Zander says.
His calm frustrates me more than I can even say. “Fine. If that’s the way you want to do this, then fine.” I take a deep breath and unleash every ounce of the frustration and anger that has been building over the last two days.
“What in the hell were you doing with Ivy Saturday night? Are you crazy? I told you I wouldn’t stop hanging out with Laney because of Ivy and you acted like I was insane! You got mad at me for not bailing on my best friend! I’ve spent the last week trying to find ways to vent my hunger so I don’t kill her, and you’re taking her out to dinner? She is dinner for you! You want to kill her! Why on earth are you putting yourself in that kind of situation? That’s not getting used to her, that’s suicide!
“One slip and you’ll be wiping her blood off your hands! Don’t you understand that? I can’t lose you too! I love you. You’re all I have left. How can you do this to me? What if you get sent to prison and I can’t visit you? What if you get sick? What if you die? You laugh at me because I think there’s something wrong with her, but I’m trying to protect you! I don’t want to see you locked up like Oscar, or worse. I’m doing everything I can to make sure she doesn’t hurt you, and you’re playing right into her hands! Why, Zander? Why are you doing this?”
I have to suck in a huge breath of air after my tirade. It lodges in my chest, held in anticipation of Zander’s answer. Given what I found out today, I am more scared than ever that Zander will kill Ivy. I can’t let that happen. Silence slithers through the air between us. It tightens around my throat and chokes me until I start to fear I’ll pass out. Zander stares at his feet, not answering.
“Why?” I ask again. “Why would you put your life, our lives, at risk like this?”
His lips finally part, but I’m not prepared for his answer. “Because I’m in love with her.”
“What?” I shriek. My left eye starts twitching. It’s never done that before, and for a moment it’s all I can focus on. It’s all I will let myself focus on. I must have misheard him. He can’t have really just said what I think he said. As if he knows I’m doubting my own ears, he repeats it.
“I’m in love with her, Van.”
“No,” I say. My head starts shaking back and forth. “No, no you’re not. You can’t be in love with her. You’ve only known her for a week. She’s not… you can’t… it’s just your hunger that wants her. You’re not thinking straight, Zander.”
My brother stands up and walks over to me. His hands on my shoulders fail to calm my mounting hysteria. “Van, it’s not my hunger. It’s me. I want her.”
“But… you want to kill her, too.”
“Yes,” he says through clenched teeth, “but I can handle it.”
“I don’t understand. How did this happen?”
Zander shakes his head wearily. “I don’t know. When I ran into her in the parking lot that first day, I stood there wanting to crush her windpipe, and suddenly I couldn’t stop staring at her lips. I realized how beautiful she was, and I wanted to protect her.”
I shove his hands away from me and fix him with my glare. “You’re the one you’d be protecting her from. Do you even realize that?”
“Of course I do!”
“No, this is stupid, Zander! You’re going to hurt her. You have to stay away from her.” It’s the advice he’s given me dozens of time, now coming out of my mouth. It’s a strange feeling, a flip-flopped kind of déjà vu I don’t like in the least. Even more disturbing is my usual retort spilling over Zander’s lips.
“I won’t do it. I can’t stay away from her, Van.”
Sudden, consuming fury blossoms in my chest and rips through my veins. When I manage to speak, the words have to squeeze through my teeth and are laden with venom. “So, when you tell me to stay away, I have to do it, but when I tell you to do the same thing, you tell me no? How is that fair, Zander? Explain to me how that’s fair!”
“It’s not fair, but that’s how it is,” Zander has the gall to say to me.
“That’s how it is?” I seethe. Thinking of Noah sitting down across from me, only to be attacked by Ketchup replays in my mind over and over again. Me running, Ketchup following, his promise and my secret reply, they all scream the injustice back at me. It’s too much.
My fist explodes right on Zander’s jaw. I can see the surprise on his face as he stumbles over the coffee table and lands on the floor. I don’t give him a chance to react. Pinning him down with my knees on his chest and my fist cocked back for another punch, I grab his shirt with my other hand and yank his face up to mine.
“How dare you,” I growl at him. “How dare you refuse to stop seeing her when you made me give up Ketchup! He was my friend since kindergarten and you never said a word about him. Not until I started developing feelings for him did you demand I stop seeing him!”
“I’d never met him before then,” Zander says, blood dribbling from the corner of his mouth. “His parents never let him come to our house. I had no idea I was going to react to him.”
“I don’t care!” In the back of my mind I know he’s right. I still don’t care. “I tried to make it work. I could have kept him away from the house.”
Anger flashes in Zander’s eyes for the first time. “He wouldn’t stay away! That idiot kept coming around, looking for you, stalking you. He was so determined to spend every freaking second with you that there was no way I’d ever be able to control myself when he was always here! I couldn’t be around you when he was there. It was a choice between me and him, your brother or some kid from down the street.”
“If you just would have let me explain to him…”
“Explain that we’re a couple of murderous freaks who lose our minds and kill people when we get hungry? You want to know what would have happened after you told him that?” He pauses to see if I’ll answer. When I don’t, he continues in a dark, frightening voice. “He would have left you, Van. He would have run and never looked back. At least this way, you still get to keep him as a friend.”
The hand I had been holding ready to slam into my brother’s face tightens, begging me to connect. “That’s not true,” I argue. “Ketchup is the only person who has ever wanted me for me. He wouldn’t have run. We would have dealt with it.”
“No he wouldn’t have.”
“Shut up!” I lower my fist. My head shakes back and forth quickly in an effort to clear my mind and get back to the main point of this argument. “This isn’t about Ketchup. It’s about you and Ivy. I won’t stand by and let you kill her, Zander. I refuse to lose another brot
her.”
“I won’t stop seeing her. I can’t stop seeing her.”
“If I can do it, so can you.” I didn’t get a pass with Ketchup, and neither will Zander.
My brother’s head falls back against the floor. His eyes close, and I swear I can see moisture hovering on the edges of his eyelids. “You don’t get it,” he says quietly. “You were able to walk away from Ketchup because you’re so strong, Van. You can do the hard things. Even the stuff I rail on you about, like having friends instead of keeping everyone at a distance like I do, you do it because you’re strong enough to keep control. You do what I can’t. I refuse to let people in because I know I’ll hurt them. I’m not as strong as you are, little sister. I never have been, and I probably never will be.”
“That’s not true, Zander. You’re the strongest person I know. You always make the right decision. I’m the one with the history, the mistakes, the dozens of close calls. I’m hotheaded and wild. You’re smart and calm. You can do this. Please, you have to walk away from her,” I beg. “You have to stay safe… for me. Please, Zander, I’m begging you.”
“You see yourself in completely the wrong way, Van. How many lives have you saved? How many have I?” His expression breaks and crumbles with some hurt I don’t fully understand. “Yeah, you have a temper, but you’re also the most passionate person I know. I wish I had even a portion of your ferocity. I hide. That’s all I do.”
My fists bang down on his chest. “You’re not hiding now! You’re taking Ivy out to dinner and planning study dates with her!”
“I want to stay away from her, Van, but I can’t. You don’t understand what it feels like when I’m around her.”
“Then tell me!” I explode.
Zander scrunches his face, and says, “Every time I see her, I want to hurt her. My hunger craves her more than with anyone else I’ve ever met. I lied to you when I said it wasn’t any different.”
My hands cinch tighter around Zander’s shirt. He hurries on.
“What is different with Ivy is that I love her more than I want to kill her. Sometimes my hunger flares and it tries to overpower how I feel about her, but she laughs and it pulls me back. As much as I want to sometimes, I could never hurt her. I love her, Van.”
The honesty and ache in his voice finally breaks through my manic day. He means every word of it. My brother loves the girl I am positive is only here to destroy us. There’s no chance I’m ever going to convince him to walk away from her either. I breathe out a sigh of absolute defeat.
“Does she know?”
“No. I can’t tell her, yet.”
“Don’t.”
“Why?” Zander demands.
“Because… just don’t, okay? I know you don’t believe me, but Ivy is more than you think.”
“Leave her alone, Van,” he demands.
Resentment shoves my hands against his chest, hard. “If you don’t have to leave her alone, neither do I. I won’t let her hurt you.”
Zander doesn’t argue. He glares at me fiercely, silently.
“What is going on in here?” Grandma demands.
Both of us glance over at her in surprise. I didn’t even hear her come in. She looks just as startled as I feel. Her eyes sweep over the scene of me kneeling on Zander’s chest, my hands keeping him pinned to the ground, Zander trying to push me off of him, and both of us looking like we’re ready to kill each other.
“What are you two doing?”
I can see her shock quickly turning to fear, so I push off my brother and stand up. “I was just giving Zander some dating advice.”
“Dating ad…” My grandma’s face momentarily brightens before going completely white. “Dating? Zander, she doesn’t mean that Ivy girl, does she?”
“I most certainly do,” I say, glancing at my brother with a brutal scowl.
“Grandma, it’s okay. Don’t worry about it,” Zander says.
My grandma doesn’t take orders well. Her cherub features, still holding onto their youth, flash scarlet. “Young man, do not tell me what to worry about. I have seen more, felt more, and lived through more than you can even imagine. I know exactly what I should and should not worry about. You will meet me in the kitchen as soon as I hang up my purse and sweater.”
She doesn’t wait for him to agree. His affirmative “Yes, ma’am” is a foregone conclusion. I screamed at him, hit him, and his only response was anger or frustration. A few short sentences from Grandma and his head drops doggedly. Fear of the little old woman who used to be a pastry chef drags him slowly toward the kitchen.
For an hour, I listen to them argue. It is an eerie sort of fight, one where neither of them actually raises their voice. I can barely hear their argument, but it is fierce and heated all the same. She asks, demands, and threatens my brother. The dangers of letting him see Ivy again are clearer to her than anyone else.
Zander, Oscar, and I aren’t the first in our family to have to battle our hunger. It’s a curse our family has held for endless generations. When it will strike comes randomly, passing my dad and my grandma, but not her father. She was three years old, her mother long gone, when she lost her father. Her last memory of him was watching him gut a young girl he had picked up somewhere on his way home, and seeing the police gun him down in their living room a few minutes later.
Grandma knows the risks, horrors, and pain of what we are, but when she walks out of the kitchen shaking her head and drying tears from her eyes, I know she has failed. Zander won’t give up this one duplicitous girl for anyone or anything. He has chosen the path sure to lead to her death and most likely his as well.
Long minutes later, Zander comes out of the kitchen, stopping when our eyes meet. I stand up and walk over to him. I can’t summon up any sympathy for him, not with thoughts of Ketchup filling my mind.
“I’ll play nice with Ivy, not because I think you’re making the right choice, but because I believe you that you love her, and because you’re my brother and I don’t want to hurt you. Don’t think this is over, though, big brother. At some point, I’m going to ask you to do something hard for me, and you’re going to do it. No matter what it is, you’ll do it, carte blanche, no questions asked. Got it?”
Zander swallows hard, the only sign he’s ever given me that he might be afraid of something. For a moment, I wonder if he’s thinking the same thing I am, and I’m afraid he’s going to deny me. Slowly, his head nods. “No questions asked,” he agrees, the dread of my unspoken request already hanging over him.