He’d like me to answer with some sarcastic remark so we can bicker back and forth as usual. I would if I had the energy but I don’t. I say nothing and walk outside behind Jules.
Danny heaves a sigh before following.
Last night I heard Jules tell him that he needs to come along for the ride today whether he wants to or not. Danny has never been in the habit of letting himself get ordered around but that was before. Lately when our big sister tells him to do something he tends to cooperate with no argument.
Jules holds open the passenger door of the Prius that used to belong to Dad, who won’t be needing it anymore.
Danny jumps into the backseat without a protest. He knows he can take the shotgun seat on the way home from Ithaca since I won’t be in the car.
“Seatbelt,” Jules singsongs brightly as she starts the engine. She pats my leg like I’m four years old.
I snap my seatbelt into place.
It’s only when Jules begins backing out of the driveway that I remember I’ve never spent more than two days away from Lake Stuart. My eyes search for the flat green hill hugging the horizon. It is too shallow to be called a mountain. From here its lonely shape looks like someone began painting stage scenery and soon walked away in boredom.
The Rosebriar Resort is there.
What’s left of it, anyway. A moldering summer corpse that has changed hands four times since my father sold it and still awaits a different destiny.
The local teens trespass up there all the time, drinking and partying and doing god knows what else. The rumors around school point to Danny as one of the ringleaders. Both him and his best friend, Trent Cassini. I’ve never been invited and don’t care to see for myself what my brother’s crowd does amid the bones of our family’s lost inheritance. Rosebriar gives me the creeps even without the mental image of teenage orgies.
“FUCK!” shouts my brother, starling me into a gasp.
Thoughts of things I’ve never seen vanish. There are flashing lights ahead and I remember things I did see and wish I hadn’t.
“Damn.” Jules exhales heavily and slows the car so she doesn’t hit the crookedly parked police cruiser at the end of the street.
Now I understand why everyone is upset.
The house on the corner resembles a sleek collection of boxes outfitted with floor to ceiling windows. The design is modern to the point of ugliness but I’ve heard my father grumble that it’s worth twice what our house is worth. I’ve never been inside but Danny has. His best friend lives there and now his best friend is being led from the house in handcuffs by a pair of granite-faced cops.
Danny rolls the window down. “TRENT!”
Trent Cassini freezes. He’s barefoot, wearing only a pair of red plaid boxers and a gold cross on a chain. A savage bruise discolors the space beneath his left eye and the tattoo on the right side of his chest must be new. Trent loves to show off his chest and I haven’t seen that tattoo before. I can’t tell if the shape is supposed to be a dragon or a snake but this shouldn’t be a point of focus right now when Trent is clearly in the middle of being arrested.
Trent’s eyes, dark and angrily impenetrable even in good times, are now downright blazing as they bore into me.
Trent is Danny’s age, a year older than I am. I’ve known him nearly all my life and can’t recall sharing a single conversation worth remembering.
We aren’t friends and we aren’t enemies.
We’re nothing.
He’s Danny’s sidekick. Or, more likely, Danny is his. They’re a pair of sports-obsessed, obscene and careless best friends used to wading through lesser mortals and always getting their way.
In any case, I’ve known Trent for far too long to be intrigued by him. Since he’s never given a sign that he cares what I think one way or the other, this works out for everyone.
Like Danny, Trent is good at sports, indifferent to academics. Girls go wild for his Italian good looks and shitty attitude. I used to think Trent’s crappy home life was no excuse for his bad behavior but now that I have my own crappy home life I’m not so sure. His mother died three years ago and his father is increasingly senile. He has one brother, Liam, who moved in about a year ago to assume management of the family brewery. I don’t know much about Liam. He’s much older than Trent and as the son of his father’s first wife, he grew up down in the city instead of up here in Lake Stuart.
I do know Trent hates him.
Judging by the look on Liam Cassini’s face as he stands in the front yard and watches his younger brother getting shoved into a police cruiser, the feeling must be mutual. Liam isn’t exactly grinning but he’s pretty close. Until now I never took notice of how much Liam and Trent look alike. Both of them are black-haired, dark-eyed and square-jawed. But Liam has had time to pack on a lot more muscle and while Trent is bigger and stronger than a lot of guys at school, he’s still only a sixteen-year-old boy. When I look at Liam Cassini I feel like I’m gazing into Trent’s future. I doubt Trent would be pleased by this observation.
Danny is so distraught at the sight of his best friend getting hauled off in handcuffs that he jumps right out into the fray.
Jules whirls around. “Shit! Danny, stop!”
One of the cops stiffens and puffs out his broad chest before stepping up to block Danny’s path to the police car.
My brother yells to Trent again but Trent is now closed inside the backseat of the cop car and gazes straight ahead with furious defiance.
Before last summer I’ve never watched anyone get formally arrested. My father didn’t struggle at all when the cuffs were slapped on. He hunched his head down and lifted his shoulders up until he looked like a turtle trying to crawl into a shell. At least he wasn’t taken away in his underwear like Trent. After consulting with his lawyer via telephone, he dressed in a suit that had become far too tight and he waited on the front porch for the police to arrive.
I wonder what Trent has done. He is forever getting into trouble at school and anyone foolish enough to challenge him quickly understands that Trent doesn’t back down no matter how bloody and bruised everyone gets.
The truth is, Trent makes me nervous. He’s not a loudmouth like Danny but I get the feeling there are things going on in his head that I wouldn’t want to hear about.
Almost as if he can sense my critical thoughts, his face swivels in my direction. We stare at each other from behind separate panes of window glass.
The day I started screaming in math class, Trent showed up right after Mrs. Reinholtz slapped me. Somehow my purse had fallen, spilling out makeup and tampons and hair scrunchies. Trent picked everything up without thinking twice. He handed my bag to me and then yelled at the kids crowding in the doorway that they ought to back the fuck up and keep quiet if they wanted to stay healthy.
That was the only nice thing he’d ever done for me and I don’t think it matters that he almost certainly did it for Danny’s sake and not for mine.
Jules inserts herself between Danny and the cop and she says something that makes the officer relax. Though Danny is far bigger than Jules, she succeeds in dragging him away from the scene.
Trent’s eyes are still on me and he smirks, which is weird. I don’t see anything funny about what’s happening. He’s in the back of a Lake Stuart police car and I’m being taken to a mental health facility in Ithaca.