Page 5 of How to Hide in Plain Sight
“Eliot!” says Mom, covering my mouth with her palm.
Dad looks down. Everyone does. I have their attention. They’re waiting for me to go on, but I can’t. A strange feeling bubbles at the base of my throat. It’s hot. It’sboiling.
Is it anger?
No. I know anger. I’ve seen anger. It makes you say things you regret, not lose your speech entirely.
“Eliot?” Dad asks.
Did you burn my brother alive?
“Eliot?”
Is that what you did? Was he so hurt that you tossed his body into a bonfire and let it burn, like nothing more than a fallen tree?
I look at Dad. I can’t ask the questions. They’re gone. They’ve turned to air in my throat. Instead, I ask, “When?”
“When what?”
“When are you going to do it?”
Dad pauses. “Later this summer.”
Later this summer. Later this summer, Dad will dump my brother onto a bush and leave him there. Later this summer, the last traces of Henry will wash away in a heavy rain.
I can’t breathe.
Every spring, Henry and I counted down the days until summer. Crossed them off the calendar on the fridge. A week before our flight, we packed books and sweatpants and every bathing suit in our closet. For Henry and me, summers on Cradle Island weren’t just vacations; they were bliss. They were sunsets and swing chairs and writing musicals and forcing the Big Kids to watch. They were wild sun and roaring thunderstorms and white cheddar mac ’n’ cheese and the wood-burning sauna we stoked until our faces melted.
And now, here on this porch, Clarence’s hand on my shoulder, Karma clinging to Mom, my three living brothers standing straight-backed and flat-footed, just like at the first funeral, only now they’re dressed in patterned swim trunks instead of black suits—even now, Cradle is still all the things Henry and I loved. It’s just that now I have no one to share them with.
—
THE DAY AFTER HENRY’S SECONDfuneral, my family wakes to discover the island has been wiped clean of carbohydrates. Overnight, Mom cleared every last cracker, donut, noodle, and Lucky Charm out of the kitchen. Everyone is upset, but Karma, whose relationship with my mother is strained to begin with, is a living volcano.
“Are you shitting me?” she says, opening every single cabinet and slamming them closed when she finds they contain nothing but fruit and nuts. “What are we going to eat now?”
“Protein,” Mom says. She’s pan-frying scrambled eggs and cottage cheese. “And lots of it.”
“Why?”
“Protein is medicine for your muscles and immune system,” she says proudly. The line comes straight fromThe Zone Diet, which she read the night before.
“But I’m not sick.”
“Yes, you are. You don’t know it because simple sugars are all your body knows, but you are.”
A plate appears before each of the kids. Karma scrunches her lips with disgust, says, “Absolutely not,” slides off her stool, and storms out of the kitchen. For the rest of the week, she walks around Cradle with a sign taped to her shirt that reads,end child hunger now.
—
THE FIRST PASTRIES KARMA BAKESare macarons—the French kind, perfect little sugary sandwiches that look nearly impossible to get right. She’s never even made chocolate chip cookies before.
“Whoa,” says Taz when he walks into Sunny Sunday. “This looks illegal.”
Karma clucks. “Nothing illegal about a little bit of sugar.”
“Where’d you even get that?” he says, eyeing the wrinkled bag of Domino Pure Cane on the counter.
