As we rode that bus and her head bobbed on my shoulder and she chewed her bottom lip in her sleep, I felt stupid. How had I never seen this before? She was gorgeous. She is gorgeous. I felt like I'd never seen her before.

So I decided that after our last day of school, I would take her out and tell her. I'd take her on a date. A real date. I told her to dress up, and there was a curious look in her eye and she agreed. I had a suit and tie picked out, I was taking her to Baker's, a fancy place overlooking the river. I was going to tell her. Lay it all out. Take her hands in mine and look her in the eye and tell her the truth. Three little words I'd been dying to say.

I felt like it was the whole reason I had existed at all.

Unfortunately, my father picked that day to leave his office door open.

Curiosity, they say, killed the cat. I thought he was out of the house. I was still curious. I'd poked around and asked questions that whole year, I even talked to the medical examiner once. Everyone agreed my mom had a stroke. It was unfortunate, and unlikely, but those are the breaks, kid. You pays your quarter, you takes your chances. A doctor told me she might have had a heart arrhythmia she didn't notice and it clotted the blood in her heart, something like that. Just bad luck.

My father's office is on the first floor of the house. The whole house is huge, a sprawling monstrosity that could house ten people and have room for ten more. The office is a good sized chunk of the entire floor, and was originally a family room or something like that. One side is all gla.s.s block windows, the far side holds his desk and bookcases full of antiques. He kept his computer on the desk.

I stepped inside and felt like I was parting a veil, stepping across the threshold. n.o.body went in his office. I had no idea why it was unlocked, and the door open. It had to be something important, but I never found out. I crept across the room, weaving around the guest chairs and c.o.c.ktail table, and slipped behind his desk. The computer didn't even have a screensaver.

My fingers hovered over the keyboard. I had no idea what I was looking for. What would be on his computer?

I should check his email, I thought. I started typing the address in the bar and when I typed m-e by accident instead of m-a and the search autocompleted it as methyl iodide.

Curious, I hit the return key and let it load a search.

It was a chemical, a banned pesticide. One of the search results was methyl iodide poisoning, so I clicked that.

I read the list of symptoms. Confusion. Aphasia. Blackouts.

Stroke symptoms.

Then, my father walked into the room.

Alexis Now I clutch May's arm so hard she chirps, "ow!" and shakes loose of my grip. I crush handfuls of my shirt in my fists instead. Tom is right over there, looking at us as we slink away. G.o.d, he's going to smell Hawk on me. Great, now he's headed this way. As Hawk walks off with his brother, Tom strides down the sidewalk and May and I both stop. I may look calm on the outside, I hope I look calm on the outside, but I feel like I just swallowed a lizard and it's trying to eat its way out of my stomach. May looks to me for a way to handle this.

"Did he bother you?" Tom says.

"Bother me?"

"No, I was just surprised."

May looks nervous. She bites her lip and hugs herself the way she does when she wants to escape notice and slink into the background. She takes a half step behind me, too. I stand my ground, shoulders back. Nothing wrong here, I'm not hiding anything.

Tom sniffs the air. "You smell like pickle relish."

I swallow. "Well..."

He laughs. "I only meant that's enough for today. Take down the signage and close up the carts. I'll have one of my crews come get them. You two can run along home when you're done. You can make it for the fireworks if you hurry."

"Thanks, dad." I smile.

I want to vomit. Every time that word pa.s.ses my lips I want to shriek at the top of my lungs, you are not my father, I hate you I hate you I hate you, but I can't. I can't even call him stepdad or stepfather in his hearing. He, and my mother, insist we call him dad.

Like we're all one big, happy family.

I keep my cool. I don't think I turn green until I'm out of his sight; he's rushing off somewhere, and good, more power to him. Stay the h.e.l.l away from me. Every time I'm around Tom I feel like his eyes are peeling back the layers of my clothes, his gaze like an unwelcome touch. I remind myself that he's never touched me, and a tiny little voice always says, yet.

Part of me wanted to do what Hawk said I should do, only years ago- grab my sister and run, but I already know Tom's reach is long. There is no place he won't find us, nowhere we can run that we won't be caught. As the years have pa.s.sed, I've only watched his connections grow. Last year, everything went crazy and there was a kind of power vacuum, for lack of a better word. Tom would never have a shot at the mayor's office if three men- James Katzenberg, his brother, Adam, and James's son, Elliot, were still in the picture. James and Adam are in prison; Elliot was shot and killed over a year ago.

Everything has been insane since it all happened. Now Hawk is back, and I can feel the world drumming around my ears. It feels like I'm watching another person kill the gas burner under the hot dog steamer in the cart, furl up the sign and close the whole thing down. May is sitting on an upturned bucket, double-fisting hot dogs slathered in mustard and ketchup. I haven't eaten today, but I don't feel hungry. She presses one into my hand anyway and I sit there and eat it in three big bites, and then eat the next one more slowly while May chomps down a third and then fourth, and slugs back a can of c.o.ke. I don't know she puts it away like that and stays so skinny.

"Are you okay?" she asks, her voice m.u.f.fled by a mouthful of hot dog.

"Yeah."

She looks around, and lowers her voice. "Are you going to be Hawk's girlfriend now?"

"What? No!" I snap, "He's my stepbrother now. Our stepbrother. Whatever. It doesn't matter. No."

"Methinks the lady doth protest too much."

I glare at her and stand up. "Let's get home and get changed. I want to get out of here."

"Okay."

May and I finish packing everything and wipe our hands up on napkins. As we head home, May munches on her fifth hot dog and I find myself wondering how she can keep it down while walking in this stifling heat. By the time we get to our street, there's a big wet patch on my back and under my arms, so heavy I can feel it against my skin, and it doesn't do anything to cool me down. May is so sweaty she's shining.

The house stands on the corner in the best part of Paradise Falls, which is also the oldest. Only a few houses have been torn down and replaced with more modern ones, the rest are almost as old as the town. Ours isn't the oldest, but it's from before 1900 and it's enormous. It's Hawks' house, really, not mine.

It looks like the set of a cheeseball haunted house movie- at the front there's a big tower jutting up from the main structure with a little room inside that's only used for storage now. The bottom floor has a master suite, where Tom f.u.c.ks my mother, to put it bluntly. Besides that there's a dining room big enough for twenty people, a foyer, a den, Tom's home office, a huge kitchen and a big porch on the back. Second floor has five bedrooms, two of which are taken up by May and myself, in adjoining rooms. Lance has a room to himself on the third floor, which is otherwise empty. It's a big house for so few people.

Big enough to hold a lot of secrets.

I let May rush up the stairs to "beat me" to the bathroom, and trudge up the big wide staircase myself. Tom's office is right near the bottom, the door locked. I give it a glance as I pa.s.s, shuddering. We're alone in the house but I feel his presence anyway.

It's been almost four years of this. When Mom told me she'd gotten married I felt like I was going to puke out my liver. To him, of all people. I had no idea they were even involved.

Just thinking about it... ugh.

While May showers, and she'll be at it for a while, I sit on my bed and try not to smell the pickle relish. d.a.m.n you, Hawk. The moment I'm alone, he creeps into the back of my mind and I feel my eyes burn. I can't blink away the blur and a tear itches down my cheek, cutting a hot line. I thought I'd cut him out, put him away, but I can't forget his hands on my body, his mouth on mine, his fingers inside me. It was so strange seeing him. So different, and yet exactly the same. One look and it comes flooding back to me, all of it, from the first time I saw him in third grade to the last day of our senior year together when he told me at lunch to wear something nice, he was going to pick me up at six.

May finally finishes in the bathroom and calls out, "All yours," and I trudge inside.

I take a towel, but forget my robe, and it doesn't hit me until I've already stripped down and locked the door. May left the water running and steam coats every surface, strokes against my body and heats my skin. I break out in a sweat again, itching my back and legs even before I slip under the hot stream and turn it up higher to flush away that relish smell. Water runs in hot fingers down my back, between my legs, soaks my hair and paints it down my back. Leaning on the wall, I let the spray flow over my head, drumming on my scalp.

This house lacks nothing for luxury. I turn the water down just a tad and lift the shower head from it's cradle, it's on a hose. I spray under my arms and down my legs, hang it again and soap myself up. I'd stink even if I didn't smell vaguely of pickles. It takes forever to scrub the sour sweat smell away with the soap. When I lift the shower head again, I rinse off.

I bite my lip, and swallow, shift my feet apart and slip it between my legs, spraying the water on my mound. I try not to do this too often but it feels so f.u.c.king good, it makes my toes rise from the floor.

I feel... coiled. Somehow that release of tension I had this afternoon didn't really do the job. The memory of his touch lingers, but more of touching him. Feeling his skin under my nails as I traced out the fine lines in his tattoos. I didn't get enough. I want to see the parts that were hidden, the parts that reached below his waist and remained covered up by his jeans. I crouch and sit down on the tub floor and lean back against the wall and settle the shower head between my legs and let the water flow. A little twist and the water pulses, sending little shocks spreading through my body.

I remember grabbing him and feeling his c.o.c.k stiff, so urgent I could feel its shape even through denim, and the way he shuddered all over when I brushed his b.a.l.l.s. I turn up the pulsing and the water goes a little faster, pulsing against me. I've never seen Hawk fully undressed. I think the closest I ever came was seeing him in swim trunks. He used to have tan lines in the summer- the outline of a tank top after he took it off. He did a lot outside, sometimes worked outdoor jobs in the summer. One year we both worked at Hertrich's Nursery, selling people plants and caring for trees. We were both bronzed by then.

I miss his tan lines, but the tattoos turn me on somehow. I want to finish what I started, lay on top of him and study those tattoos inch by inch, ask him where he got them and why, what they mean. I can't stop thinking about the feeling of his c.o.c.k under my hand. If he was here right now, I'd undo that belt and tug down that zipper and pull him free. As I imagine his shaft in my hand I slip a finger into my body and move it along with the rhythm of the water and crank the dial so it goes a little faster.

Very softly I moan as I picture lying on top of him, pushing his jeans down while he wriggles out of them, feeling his c.o.c.k against my stomach. I could feel how hot it was even through cloth, how thick and heavy. I can imagine sitting up and rolling my hips, trapping his shaft against my lips, grinding on it to wet it with my arousal before taking him inside. Riding and tempting him, guiding his hands to my b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

My leg starts to shake and I turn up the water a little more, and a second finger enters my body and joins the first, stroking. Before, Hawk occupied my fantasies as a phantom, an imaginary version of the man I thought him to be. Now I see him clearly in my mind, imagining him rolling me onto my back, as I look down to see his c.o.c.k rock hard, so urgent it's curved, throbbing. I take my hand and run it along his length and his whole body jerks, thrusting into my hand. Then I take the shaft and hold it and feel it press against my entrance.

My legs snap together and I moan softly until I bite my lip, and turn the water all the way up. I tip the hot water over with my foot and warm it up a little, and it's bliss. I know Hawk's c.o.c.k will be much bigger than a finger. I can imagine him shaking as he holds back, so gentle even as he fills me up and I lick my lips in satisfaction and he kisses me as he grinds against me, filling me, taking me to the root. His imaginary thrusts match my fingers and the heat builds in my body until I feel like I'm going to burst, like my soul is stretching against my skin. My heels skid on the floor of the tub and I cry out, silence myself with my hand and the shower head falls to the bottom of the tub with a dull thud as I shake through a climax that leaves me drained, like I've been stretched out.

Shaking, I stand up and lean on the wall, pull the shower head back up, rinse myself off and hang it back up, step out of the bath tub and wrap myself in a towel.

When I open the door, Lance is in the hallway.

"What the h.e.l.l are you doing in there? I need to take a p.i.s.s."

He's still in uniform. He has his sungla.s.ses on. In the house. It doesn't matter, he rakes me with his eyes anyway. The towel covers all the important parts but I feel naked anyway; all I'd have to do is bent over and I'd be indecent. I have to brush the wall to get past him, and he makes a point of craning his head to stare at my a.s.s as I dart away from him and into my room. I pluck the bottom of my towel down but it doesn't help, and when I slam the door, a deep breath goes in and comes back out a ragged near-sob.

I hate that son of a b.i.t.c.h almost as much as I hate his father. Lance isn't a monster, he's just a creep. Ever since our parents married and I moved in, he's been eyeing me...

Or, as she gets older, May. One time, at our precious Sunday Dinner, Lance pointed out that May was filling out. That was a real Kodak moment. Ever since, I've been on edge, trying to make sure she's never alone with him. Not that there's anything I can do, other than stay on Tom's good side and put a word in his ear if I think something inappropriate might happen.

G.o.d, I want to cry. How did it come to this? We're prisoners here. No one will help us, not even our own mother.

Someone would.

No, he left me. He left me! He left us here and f.u.c.ked off to who knows where and never sent so much as a word, left me wondering if he was even alive.

I couldn't believe he'd just leave.

I hear May's door open.

f.u.c.k, Lance might still be out there.

I stand up, squeeze the towel tight and open the door, and let out a slow breath as I realize he's gone.

May takes one look at me and ducks back into her room.

I dress quickly, just shorts and a t-shirt and my beaten up hiking boots. I've had them so long they feel better on my feet than sneakers. Once they're laced up I step out and knock on May's door, and she slips out with me and we start the walk back.

By the time we get back to Commerce Street everyone has started moving towards the park. The carnival has emptied out for the most part and the rides are just going through the motions. In a few minutes, they'll shut off the lights. The church will kick them off the grounds tomorrow, it's Sunday. Tonight the main event will be the fireworks display.

I know, I help set it up. Tom put everything he could spare behind it to make it the most spectacular display possible.

It's dusk now as we walk up the street. May hums to herself, I say nothing.

I don't feel any better. I could start screaming. I want Hawk now, even more than before. A fantasy isn't the real thing, but just thinking about him makes me angry.

What if... he wouldn't just abandon me?

It makes me sick to think about it. That's what I thought happened to him at first- somebody dragged him out of town, did something to him. Forced him to leave. I couldn't deal with the idea that he'd tell me to dress up and just blow town. I had an idea what he wanted to say.

I wanted to say it myself but every time I tried, it just came out wrong.

We pa.s.s through the wrought iron gates into the memorial park. It's name for the big World War I memorial at the entrance, commemorating war dead from Paradise Falls. There are memorials for World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, too, and a smaller one for the wars that came after. The list of names grows up through Vietnam and then shrinks as the town got smaller. Further ahead, half the town or more is set up on the meadow, on blankets and lawn chairs while trumpeting music plays from loudspeakers and the sun dips towards the horizon.

It'll be full dark soon.

We pick up our pace and I scan the meadow for my mother and stepfather, and hope Lance isn't off duty, or he's found someone else to bother tonight.

"Hey," May says.

"Huh?"

'Hey!" she hisses, louder. "Look."

Hawk leans up against an ancient oak, arms folded, watching me. My eyes are immediately drawn to his.

He changed his shirt, at least.

"You should go talk to him," May insists.

"Why?"

"Because he likes you!"

I sigh, exasperated.

"Just do it."

"May, I can't. You know what will happen if Tom has even a whiff of me messing around with Hawk."

"So you want to mess around with him?"

"What? No. I don't. It's over."

"So he's not your boyfriend?" She sounds dejected.

"What? No. May-"

"He can help us."

"Help us how?"

She shrugs. "He's really big. Look at him."

"I've looked."

"You like him."

"I do not!"

I'm too old for this.