Page 1 of Defect
EZRA
The deep thump and boom coming from my brother’s room let me know he was getting his head ready for the homecoming game. That’s how Everett got in the zone. He listened to rap on high until the last possible minute when Mom came banging on his closed door.
My room was across the hall from his and it was also much quieter. He liked rap and I was a fan of R&B. He liked to go fast and I liked to take things slow. He was the star varsity football player and I was…well, not. We were twins but we were like night and day. Never stopped us from being close though.
When I heard Mom shuffling around in her room, I knew she was about to bang on Everett’s door and tell him to cut that rap shit off so we could go. I hopped up and made my way to his room before that happened. I couldn’t stand hearing her fuss at him. She may as well have been fussing at me. It caused the same reaction.
“Yo, Ev, Mom is getting ready to come in here raising hell. Let’s go,” I said, pushing his door open. His walls were covered with football posters and beautiful girls. My walls were only covered with beautiful girls.
“Shit, is it time to go already?” He turned down the music and looked at the clock on his phone. He had to be the school hours before anyone else so that meant we had to leave early. Mom told us we couldn’t ride with our friends and we couldn’t drive ourselves because according to her we didn’t know how to behave responsibly so she was our ride.
Only we’d be that fucking lucky to have our mother drive us to the homecoming game. “Yo, Sierra is going to be at the game and the dance. If you shoot your shot, I’ll let you ride shotgun.” Everett laughed and grabbed his lime green Nike bag, tossing it across his body. I looked at him like he was crazy.
“Ride shotgun? The fuck are we twelve?” I shoved him and he shoved me back.
“Okay boys, let’s go. I don’t want to be late.” Mom was right behind us and we didn’t even hear her walk up.
“Ma, can you please drop us off and not stay the whole time,” I begged.
“Ezra, you should have thought about that when you and your brother decided not to obey curfew. Came waltzing in here at one in the morning on a school night. So this is all your fault. Both of you. Now, let’s go.” Her walnut brown eyes bored into both of us at the same time. It was a look she’d perfected over the years. She clearly meant business.
When she marched out of Everett’s room, he sighed and said, “She acts like we’re not already eighteen though. Shit, we’ll be nineteen in July and she’s still treating us like kids.”
“Countdown until college life because…fuck this shit. I can’t live like I’m on lockdown.”
“Just think Ez, we’ll be across the country at NYU. Ma will have to hop a plane to come bitch at us at that point.” We laughed and slapped hands before heading downstairs. Neither one of us wanted to hear our mother’s mouth.
It wasn’t that we hated her but she could be stifling and overbearing. She wasn’t always like that but after Dad died, she tightened the reins on us and we hated it. We were eighteen-year-old seniors with a nine o’clock sharp curfew. Our jobs revolved around that curfew and if we absolutely had to work late, she had to drop us off and pick us up.
Naturally, we rebelled whenever we could.
Everett’s friends didn’t like me for shit but he always made sure I was included in everything he did. So when the football team threw a party for all the popular kids, Everett got an invite and I didn’t. He made sure I came anyway.
“What the fuck are they going to say?” He’d said defiantly. He was right. Who the fuck in their right mind would tell the captain of the football team no? It wasn’t going to happen.
So right after school, we went to his best friend, Antonio’s house and told Mom we both had a shift at the movie theater we worked at. She didn’t question it because Everett wrote it down on the family calendar beforehand. He’d been putting the plan in motion for days.
We partied a little too hard and ended up coming in around one in the morning. Mom was livid. Actually, livid didn’t properly describe the way veins bulged from her forehead when she yelled at us. That’s why we ended up getting escorted to homecoming.
I can’t say I regretted the party even though I wasn’t the social twin. I got the chance to get close to Sierra Gellar. She was one of the popular girls that never paid me any attention unless I was standing next to my brother. That should have turned me off but Sierra was fine as hell. She was the most beautiful girl in West Palm High in my opinion. I’d just about cut off my right arm to be her man.
“So, if Ma drops us off, I’m going to tell Sierra that you want to talk to her. That way the ball is in your court.” Everett nudged me and I groaned.
“Don’t. I know how to handle myself,” I told him.
“I can’t tell. You were at the party with her for hours and all you did was talk to her.”
“What was I supposed to do? Knock her down and pull her titties out?” I laughed.
“No, but you didn’t even get her number. Come on, man. How are you my twin? I would have left with her number or something.”
“I’m good, Ev. I make moves in my own time.” He shook his head at me and we hurried out of the house to get in the car because we knew if we didn’t, Mom would chew us out.
Yeah, college couldn’t happen fast enough.
“You want shotgun?” Everett asked me. We were standing on the passenger side of Mom’s black Ford Explorer. The sun was just starting to sink into the earth and the air had a chill in it that settled uneasily into my bones. It wasn’t unusual weather for early October in LA though.
“I’ll take shotgun, I told him with a nod.
