Twisted Read online

  Dad muttered something under his breath. He wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.

  Wisps of barbecue smoke and jazz drifted from the backyard. We came to a screeching halt as we rounded the corner of the house.

  “Whoa,” Hannah said.

  Yeah.

  A massive swimming pool, complete with hot tub and waterfall, took up a third of the yard and was ringed with a broad patio and burning tiki torches. A jazz quartet was playing at the far end, close to the bar. Right in front of us were two tented pavilions, one for food and one filled with tables and chairs. A pig was roasting on a giant spit, and a cook was slapping down hamburgers on a grill. Waiters buzzed around with trays of snack food, glasses of wine, and imported beer in dark bottles. The golf course (a Hampton Estates perk) stretched out beyond the rose garden.

  The place was packed: people standing, sitting, eating, drinking, dancing, flirting, frowning, laughing, practicing pretend golf swings, and watching each other. It was mostly adults, but the hot tub was filled with half of the lacrosse team, and a couple other kids from school were scattered around the patio. The rich kids, the really rich kids. You know what they look like.

  Mom yanked Dad out of view. “How could you do this to me?” she hissed. “This isn’t ‘casual’ and it is absolutely not potluck.”

  Dad frowned. “The memo said casual. Casual means potluck. Everybody knows that.”

  “Memo?” Mom’s voice went up. “What memo? You said Brice invited you personally.”

  “Be quiet,” Dad said. “Here comes Doreen.”

  Mom handed the pasta salad to Hannah, who turned and handed it to me.

  “Get rid of it,” Mom whispered.

  I bent down and stuck the bowl behind a bush. When I stood up, Bethany and her mom were talking to my parents. Bethany was wearing a long Hawaiian-skirt thing tied around her hips and a see-through lace shirt over her bikini top. The peanut butter–colored cat she was carrying obstructed my view. Mrs. Milbury was an older and thinner version of her daughter, with a tan that made her skin look like a tired leather sofa, and very large, very white teeth.

  Mrs. Milbury gave me the once-over. “My goodness, Tyler,” she said. “You used to be four-foot-nothing and skinny as a beanpole. You certainly have grown up.”

  “He’s six-three and one ninety-five,” Mom said. “Growing taller every day, like a cornstalk!”

  Hannah snorted.

  “Ah,” I said, cringing. “Ha.”

  Dad tapped his foot and waited a suave two seconds before he blurted out, “So, where’s Brice?”

  5.

  Brice Milbury, CEO of Milbury Brothers Trust (“Trust Milbury Trust!”), was the tall man with the perfect tan and fat gold watch motioning to Mrs. Milbury from the farside of the pool. Three shorter guys were grouped behind him, all wearing lime-green golf shirts with the company logo. As we walked up, his son Chip did, too. Chip Milbury: Bethany’s evil twin brother, four-year lacrosse starter, fairly good offensive linebacker, and all-American jerk who majored in beating the crap out of me in middle school.

  We did more of the fake-polite handshaking thing. Mr. Milbury held on to Dad’s hand an extra moment. “Surprised to see you here, Bill,” he said. “Didn’t know your department was coming.”

  The short dweeb guys looked at each other. I knew in the pit of my stomach that Dad had screwed up. You didn’t crash parties in Hampton Estates, even if you were the new Vice President of Oversight and Compliance. Not cool.

  Dad gripped his boss’s hand harder. “You know me, Brice, always looking out for the company’s best interests.”

  (Yeah, he said that.)

  “So, Nerd Boy.” Chip punched me in the shoulder. Hard. “They let you work out in prison?”

  “Tyler didn’t go to prison—” Mom shut her mouth when Dad shook his head once.

  Mr. Milbury looked me over. “You playing football, Tyler?”

  “No, sir,” I said. “I’ve just been working.”

  “Part of his parole,” Chip said.

  “My job,” I said slowly. “I work at Pirelli’s Landscaping.”

  Mr. Milbury squeezed my bicep. “Maybe you should do some manual labor, Chip. This guy’s made of steel.”

  Chip stood up straight, trying to make himself as tall as me. “How much can you press?”

  “I have no idea.” Two fifty-pound sacks of mulch in each hand, douche bag.

  “You two boys should work out together,” Mr. Milbury said. “Looks like you’d be a good match.”

  “We’re not matched,” Chip said.

  The band broke into “La Macarena.” A few women jumped out of their seats, formed a line at the edge of the pool, and flailed their arms around. Mom and Mrs. Milbury both wiggled their hips. Hannah slunk off towards the food tent. Bethany managed to look incredibly bored and incredibly hot at the same time.

  “You could bring Tyler to the gym,” Mr. Milbury suggested to Dad. “I’ll meet you there with Chip. We’re always looking for someone to push him to the next level.”

  Chip blinked fast and pretended to watch the pig turning on the spit.

  “That would be great,” Dad said. “I’ll tell Linda. Now, if I could just borrow you for a few minutes, Brice. The situation in Omaha is uglier than I thought. The new regulations…”

  One of the dweebs whispered something into Mr. Milbury’s ear. Dad snapped his mouth shut and tried not to frown.

  “This isn’t the place for business. You can call Stuart here on Monday,” Mr. Milbury said. “We’ll set up a meeting.” He turned away from my father and patted my shoulder. “I don’t know, Chipper. I think Tyler might be out of your league.”

  “Let’s find out.” Chip sat down at a small table and placed his elbow square in the middle, palm open. “What do you say, Tyler? Think you can take me?”

  “Knock it off, Chip,” Bethany said.

  “Chicken?” Chip asked.

  “Great idea,” Mr. Milbury said. “I’ll bet you a round of golf, Bill. Your boy against mine. What do you say? You golf, don’t you?”

  “Braaaaawck,” Chip clucked softly.

  “I love golf,” Dad lied. “Go ahead, Tyler.”

  “All right.” I sat down across from Chip and planted my right elbow next to his.

  A crowd quickly gathered around our table. He wiggled his fingers, then grabbed my hand. I let him squeeze without fighting back. The left corner of his mouth twisted up in a half-grin.

  There were no calluses on his palms.

  “This won’t take long,” Chip told his buddies.

  “On my count,” Mr. Milbury said. “Start on ‘three.’”

  Chip opened his hand and regripped. This time I squeezed before he did. He blinked.

  “One,” Mr. Milbury said. The band played “La Macarena” faster.

  “Two.

  “Th–”

  Chip didn’t wait for his father to finish the word. I didn’t think he would. I was ready. When he pushed, my forearm hardened into a steel girder planted in cement. Chip frowned when my arm didn’t budge. He took a deep breath and tried to curl his hand over mine. I drove it back and tested the strength of his arm. He had nothing on me.

  The lacrosse guys yelled at Chip to put me away. Chip glanced up at his father.

  I kept staring straight at him.

  Our arms were shaking, making the table wobble on the uneven slate. Chip was breathing harder. I could smell the pizza he ate, the beer he drank, and the Tic Tacs he used to cover them up.

  Mr. Milbury stepped closer to the table. “Looks like we have ourselves a draw, folks!”

  “No, we don’t,” Chip said.

  My father moved behind his boss, pretending he wanted a better angle to watch.

  “Want to quit?” I asked.

  “Shut up,” Chip said.

  The song ended.

  “Do it, Tyler!” Bethany said.

  Boiling blood filled my arm, white-hot with strength.

 
; “Do it!”

  Staring dead into Chip’s eyes, I powered his arm backwards one inch. Another inch. I could see how this was going to end. I would take him down smoothly, pushing his hand to the tabletop and forcing him out of his seat so his shoulder wouldn’t be ripped from the socket.

  And then I made the mistake of looking at Dad.

  He shook his head, just a little bit, from side to side.

  I closed my eyes and let my enemy win.

  6.

  Chip leaped up, balled his fists, and screamed, “Yeah!”

  The crowd around us fell silent. A couple lacrosse players congratulated Chip and jumped in the pool. The dweebs reached for new beers. Mrs. Milbury drifted towards the band. Dad watched the guys in the water. Bethany was the only person who looked me in the eye.

  “Good job, fair fight,” said Mr. Milbury. “He almost had you there, Chipper. Better watch your back! Ha-ha. Now shake hands like men.”

  Chip ignored his father and shadowboxed one of his henchmen, a kid named Parker with perfect teeth and acne scars.

  “Chipper,” Mr. Milbury repeated, a little louder.

  The last thing Chip wanted to do was shake my hand. Instead, he shoved Parker, who backpedaled and fell into the pool, hitting the water with a loud smack.

  “Son!” Mr. Milbury’s voice snapped through the air like a wet towel in a locker room.

  Chip froze for a second, then walked back to me, his hand extended. “Fair fight,” he said.

  “Something like that,” I said. I smiled and squeezed his hand until the bones rubbed together like dry twigs. He grunted and covered his pain with a cough. I kept squeezing.

  Mr. Milbury had no clue. He patted me on the back. “Maybe we should have Tyler do our landscaping,” he said. “I bet he’d work faster than those illegals Doreen is always hiring.”

  “Sure thing, Mr. Milbury,” I said, releasing Chip’s hand.

  Dad stepped forward. “Brice, I don’t think this can wait until Monday. If we could sit down for a few minutes…”

  “Ah, time for a toast.” Waiters were hurrying through the crowd passing out champagne. At the microphone, Mrs. Milbury tapped her glass with a spoon.

  “Have a drink, Bill,” Mr. Milbury said, waving over a waiter. “Whatever the problem is, I know you’ll fix it. Relax. Enjoy being out with the family.”

  One of the dweebs snickered. That’s why I wasn’t ready.

  Chip reached out and patted me on the back, like his father had. But instead of a friendly pat, he smacked me as hard as he could. The blow sent me flying towards Bethany and the waiters loaded with champagne trays.

  The world downshifted to slow motion.

  The waiters stumbled, and their trays flew up. Bethany stepped backwards, then fell. My arms tried to catch her. My legs fought for balance. All the dads and dweebs stood, frozen, mouths open. The trays came down, and fifty champagne glasses hit the patio.

  A million shards of glass and champagne exploded.

  Bethany screamed.

  As time sped up, just before I hit the ground, I noticed one more thing.

  Bethany was barefoot.

  She screamed again.

  We went down in a heap speckled with glass and blood. Chip vanished into the roses.

  7.

  Half of the Milbury Brothers Trust’s board of directors were doctors. By the time the ambulance arrived, they’d stopped the bleeding and taken out most of the glass, but Bethany needed a shot and stitches in the bottom of her left foot.

  The ambulance left, lights flashing, no sirens.

  My mom retrieved her pasta salad from the bushes and put it in the car. Then she came back and patted my hand while one of the doctors looked me over and patched me up with a half dozen butterfly bandages. Hannah stayed next to me.

  Dad had disappeared. We finally found him practicing spin control with his boss, trying to convince Mr. Milbury to sue the company that laid the slate around the pool because they clearly did a shoddy job, which had led to such dangerous conditions and the unfortunate accident.

  Before we left, I found one of the doctors who had helped me and quietly asked him to slit my throat.

  The guy said no and suggested I talk to my family doc about antidepressants.

  8.

  I spent most of Friday night playing Tophet. The graphics weren’t that great and it made my computer freeze regularly, but it was better than lying awake and loathing myself for hurting Bethany.

  Tophet was Hell. The point of the game was to make your demon as powerful as possible and survive through the sixty-six Levels of Torment. After that, I wasn’t sure what would happen. Either he’d escape to Heaven or descend to the Final Pit and be crowned Lord of Darkness. It was unclear which option was better.

  As soon as I opened the game, a herd of fallen angels swarmed my demon, Gormley. They tied him up and stuck him in one of the boiling cauldrons. It took forever to annihilate them. My fingers hit the buttons in the right sequence over and over. It normally sounded cool when he scored a kill—lots of hissing and yowling—but I had to keep it down so Dad didn’t hear me playing.

  See, that was why I was a bad son. Lack of respect.

  Miller men were disciplined. Miller men followed rules. Miller men toughed it out; they ate dirt and went for the kill.

  That last one was a real quote. Dad said it to me when I was eleven, after I lost the Little League championship. The ball had been hit square to the shortstop and I took too much of a lead so I was trapped between third and home. Dad screamed for me to go, so I went, and I slid and was tagged by the catcher.

  Grandpa Miller told Dad I was a pansy for not taking out the catcher’s legs and I didn’t want it bad enough and Dad agreed with him. Mom lost it in a very controlled way and told them they were both lunatics. She dragged me and Hannah home so I missed going with the team for hot dogs after the game.

  I got stuck on Level Forty-Two. Gormley couldn’t get past the sulfur pits. Every time I tried to teach him how to swim, he drowned.

  Stupid demon.

  I made a note to myself to look for a lifejacket he could buy, swallowed four ibuprofen, and went to sleep just before three thirty.

  9.

  My alarm went off at five the next morning. First thought: It was a bad dream.

  Second thought: No, it wasn’t.

  Third thought: Crap.

  I tried to eat some potato chips for breakfast, but I couldn’t choke them down. I threw a bunch of lunch stuff in a grocery bag, grabbed a gallon of iced tea out of the fridge, and headed outside.

  Yoda was waiting for me on the steps, holding the lunch his mother packed for him in an insulated bag. His energy drinks were in the cooler that he was sitting on. He looked up from his comic book. “Thought you might have left the country.”

  Yoda wasn’t his real name, of course. Calvin Hodges was renamed Yoda after he flipped about Star Wars in fifth grade. He spent way too much time gaming (more than me, even) and he could mind-meld hard drives. But Star Wars, that wasn’t a geek thing for him. It was his religion. When the assholes of the world beat him up for this, he’d act like a Buddhist monk being tortured by Communist soldiers. He’d smile. Freaked them out. The Force was with him.

  “You heard?” I asked.

  “Everybody heard, moron.” He picked up the cooler and followed me down the walk. “They heard that you went on a rampage and attacked Bethany Milbury. That you got hauled away in handcuffs again. That Bethany almost died.”

  “It wasn’t like that at all. It was an accident. But I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Did you punch Chip in the mouth?”

  “I’m going to punch you in the mouth if you don’t shut up.”

  “All right, all right. God, you’re so touchy. There’s the truck.”

  It was a fifteen-minute ride in Mr. Pirelli’s pickup to Evergreen Haven, the nursing home where we sent my grandparents to die.

  Pirelli gave out the assignments. The Honduran gu
ys were in charge of mowing. Yoda had to edge the flower beds and blow the sidewalks clean. I had to run the weed whacker and dig a hole for a blue spruce using a pick and a shovel.

  “Ask your buddy for help,” Pirelli said when I complained.

  We both looked at Yoda slathering SPF-50 sunscreen on his arms. He was hired out of desperation after most of the regular crew went back to college.

  “Good luck.” The boss chuckled as he jumped into his truck.

  I decapitated dandelions all morning, leaving carnage and death strewn in my path.

  When Yoda whistled for our lunch break, I walked over to a white oak that would give us some decent shade. I stripped off my shirt and hung it over a branch, then poured ice water over my head and let it cut through the sweat and dirt caked around my neck.

  Yoda was eating the white-bread-mayo-lettuce-bologna sandwich cut into four pieces he’d had every day since first grade. I pulled out the half loaf of bread and peanut butter and jelly jars from my grocery bag and slapped together three sandwiches which I inhaled, stopping only to guzzle iced tea. The Honduran guys found their own patch of shade to eat in.

  I dumped out some Oreos and tossed the package to Yoda.

  “So, like I was saying,” he said as he pulled out a cookie, “everybody thinks you got busted again.”

  “You weren’t saying anything, and we’re not talking about it.”

  He twisted the Oreo open. “Are we talking about school?”

  “Hell, no.”

  “How about my new Sith Lords in Congress theory?”

  “Not.” I looked in my bag again. I’d forgotten the Doritos.

  “Can we talk about Hannah?”

  I put the jars back in the bag and drained the last of the iced tea. “Friends don’t date friends’ sisters. It’s a rule. Back to work.”

  “Rules are made to be broken. We’ve been IMing every night, you know.” Yoda scraped the icing off his Oreo. “She thinks I’m ‘sweet.’” He stuck the two cookie halves together and devoured them. “Look, this Bethany thing will blow over. Relax, you should.”