Page 6 of Turn

“Where’s Tristan?” Brecken asked.

Where’s Tristan? Where’s Tristan?

The question bounced around my head. I wished I knew the answer.

“He’ll be here soon,” I assured the kid even though I had no way of knowing whether it was true. “Now let’s take a look at that math.”

After an hour of struggling with Brecken’s math homework, we managed to get through most of it. I wished I could offer him more help. Silently I cursed myself for my own failures in school. In my sophomore year, after months of chronic ditching, I got the news that I wouldn’t pass to the next grade so I’d said fuck it and quit on the spot. I’d been sixteen at the time, even younger than Tristan.

“Time to get ready for bed,” I said. “Don’t forget to brush your teeth.”

Brecken tossed his math book into his backpack and then gave me a rather withering look. “I’m thirteen,” he reminded me. “I know that I have to brush my fucking teeth.”

I scowled. “Language, please.”

My brother stared at me for a few heartbeats and I wondered what he was thinking, if he was remembering the way I used to be, full of bad attitude and furious words. Even when I was at my worst I’d tried to shield my brothers from knowing too much but I had no doubt they’d managed to pick up on a few things. I wasn’t the best role model but these days I was all they had. And I was trying every day to do better.

“Okay, Curtis,” Brecken said quietly and then headed for the bathroom. The door closed and a few seconds later I heard water running.

As I listened to the sound of my little brother brushing his teeth I settled into the armchair and mulled over how I’d gotten here. I’d been living in a hardscrabble town called Nedry, just on the other side of the state line in California. I hadn’t exactly been a model citizen, reselling stolen electronics in a back room of a bar owned by a buddy of mine. It wasn’t outstanding money but it was more than what I needed. More importantly, it didn’t involve blood or violence and I could breathe a little easier because no longer was I beholden to a toxic group of lowlifes like the fuckers I’d gotten in too deep with in Emblem. It was a laidback, day-to-day existence and occasionally I’d find a pretty face to hook up with for a while, the sort that partied hard and didn’t care much when I stopped calling.

That was the way things stood when I got the call from home.

My mother had been arrested for insurance fraud. She and her chiropractor boss had been running all kinds of bogus claims for years. They might have gotten away with it if they hadn’t been idiots and gotten greedy at the same time the new district attorney wanted to make an example out of someone in order to stem the tide of similar crimes. My mother and I hadn’t been close for as long as I could remember. Even before my father caught a stray bullet in the throat at a convenience store she seemed perplexed by a son who was growing up too fast and already finding trouble way beyond his years. But she wasn’t a terrible parent. Even though we’d exchanged some harsh words at times she was never a deadbeat or physically abusive to me or to my younger brothers. So when I heard her voice on the phone hyperventilating about charges and prison time I could hardly believe it. By that point I hadn’t been home to Emblem in three years. There’d been a big crackdown and most of my old friends as well as my enemies were either in prison or dead. And yet I didn’t think twice before I packed up and drove across the state line back to Arizona, and back to Emblem.

I didn’t know what I expected at the time. But nothing had prepared me for the reality of soon finding myself homeless as well as the guardian of two teenage boys.

“Is Tristan still not home?”

Brecken had crept out of the bathroom while I was brooding.

“Nope, he’s not home yet,” I said, hating the sound of the word ‘home’ and the fact that it was connected to a crummy rented room at a seedy motel on the edge of a bad neighborhood.

Brecken sank down on one of the sagging mattresses. “He should be home.”

“He will be,” I promised.

Brecken yawned and pushed his hair out of his eyes. I always worried that he didn’t get enough sleep here. I knew I didn’t.

“I’ll turn out the light,” I told him. “I don’t mind sitting up in the dark.”

Brecken hesitated and then crawled under the blankets. He slept in one bed and Tristan in the other. Both had offered to trade off so I wouldn’t be spending every night in the shitty armchair but I always laughed and lied that I really liked sleeping upright.

The minutes ticked by with no soundtrack but my little brother’s breathing and the occasional shout from the parking lot. Brecken was sound asleep and the hour was close to midnight when Tristan finally rolled through the door.

He waved me off and headed straight for the bathroom. “I don’t want to fucking hear it.”

I was standing on the other side of the door when he opened it again and I pushed him inside, closing the door behind me before he could do anything. Tristan blinked at me in the garish light of a single hundred-watt bulb and for a second he looked apologetic. His expression quickly tightened into a stubborn tough guy scowl when met with my angry glare.

“You were drinking,” I said. I didn’t need any confirmation. The smell of cheap malt liquor was all over him. Even more concerning was the brand new shiner under his left eye. I tried to touch his face but he recoiled. “Who raked you over?” I demanded.

Tristan rolled his eyes and swiped the back of his hand across his cheek, as if to prove that the bruise above it didn’t hurt. “Nobody.”

“You walk into a wall then?”

He eyes narrowed. He had the same eyes as Brecken with the warmth and innocence drained. That hadn’t all happened on my watch. He’d already been going in this direction when I saw him again after missing out on the last three years. It was just the kind of evolution that came from being an invincible seventeen year old with a bad attitude who had no one around capable of reigning him in.

“Maybe.”

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