Page 115 of Worse Than Wicked
I pause before stepping into his room, as if someone will stop me. As if I’ll turn and see Royal and King watching, like they always watched in high school. Waiting.
But the wait is over. I’ve done the worst thing. They know what I’m capable of now.
I remember when King called me harmless, and I want to laugh and cry at the same time.
We both made mistakes.
I open his door, the door to the room that used to be mine. For one painful, half-second, I remember it as it was the first time I saw Duke’s room, with his huge shoes kicked off haphazardly, a hoodie hanging on the back of a chair, a couple silk ties draped over the arms.
But his room is neat, not a thing out of place, just like it is every day. The maid put anything he left back in order a long time ago. They didn’t repurpose his room, though, and we’ve been sleeping here instead of in Baron’s room. It’s still his, with framed posters of football players and professional boxers on the wall, a championship ring in a shadow box from when they won the state championship one year. A crucifix hangs over the bed, his rosary hanging from Jesus’s hand.
Seeley jumps onto the bed and lies down at the foot, like he’s adopted the bed as his own already, and starts to clean himself.
Since I’m alone and Baron won’t tell me I’m odd, I go to his closet, remembering how I hid in there for hours when my parents were fighting. I cut my name into the wall beside the door, before I ever cut myself just to feel, to make sure I was still alive, when I’d been floating out of my body for so long. Since Olive knew my name, I know they didn’t replace that section of the wall before selling the house. Probably, they didn’t even notice. Most people don’t turn around inside a closet and look at the inside of the door or the wall beside it, especially not at the bottom.
I hit the light switch and step inside. My breath catches, and I slide down the back of the closet, just like I did all those years ago. In my mind, Colt was sitting with me, his back to the wall beside mine. Now that I see it, though, I remember how many times I lay in here alone, staring at the names, tracing my fingers over them.
I know I didn’t imagine it, that he was here when I wrote my name, because he wrote his right beside it. We didn’t put a plus sign between. Even as kids, we knew that’s what you did for boyfriend-girlfriend. For a brother and sister, we didn’t add anything between, just a space.
“MABEL” And a foot away, “COLT.”
Except someone did see our names. They didn’t replace the panel. They replaced my brother, scratched out Colt’s name, carving a deep, angry X into the wall over the letters. And underneath, he replaced it with,“+ DUKE.”
Tears sting my eyes, and I squeeze my lids closed so I won’t see the wish he so fervently made for us to end up together.
After a minute, the closet feels claustrophobic, and I crawl out and stand again, my legs wobbly now. I think about leaving, about finding Baron and taking comfort in what remains of Duke. Instead, I find myself staring at his desk that sits directly across from the closet. Three photos sit there—a graduation photo, another of him and one of the Walton twins at prom, a third of their whole group crammed into the frame at Homecoming—all official, matted in the school frames they came in. A black leather folder with the Willow Heights crest embossed in gold on the front lies on his desk, his diploma behind the plastic window inside. His proud father is no longer here to frame it and hang it on the wall.
That death is not on my hands, but I wonder, when Duke stood back and watched him burn, did he think of me? Is that why he didn’t try to talk the others out of it, even though he loved his father and had a tender heart?
I pull open the drawers on the desk. The top one is full of condoms, along with two vibrators and a bottle of lube. I quickly shut it, but not before I glimpse the edge of a magazine under all of it.
The middle drawer is full of stuffed animals, all of them new, with the tags still on.
I’m not sure why I pause then. Maybe because I suspect he bought these for Olive, and Olive is the only thing that stopped Baron from avenging his brother. Even a man with no heart can understand that Duke’s love makes her sacred.
I sink onto my knees, and it becomes something more than aimless wandering.
I lift each animal from the drawer carefully and set them on the edge of the desk in a row. Most are sloths, but there are two stuffed koala bears too. When the last one is arranged, I look into the bottom of the drawer, where only an old, faded and threadbare blanket remains. I lift it out reverently, spreading itout on the floor. In the corner, his initials are monogrammed in silk thread—DAD.
Tears blur my vision, and I snatch up the blanket and hold it to my hammering heart. If Baron finds the baby, I will wrap it in Duke’s baby blanket, let it know his smell before it’s gone. But because I’m selfish, I lift it to my face, inhaling it first, trying to find a trace of the boy I loved and hated so much. I can’t find it, though. There’s only the slightly musty odor of clothes left for several years in the bottom of a drawer.
I start to replace the animals, until we know. If there’s really a baby, they can have them. For now, they belong to Duke. But I’m keeping the blanket either way.
I’m settling one into the back corner when I feel a lump under the velvet lining of the drawer. I press down on it, and it gives slightly, then rises when I let go. I take the animals out again and pull up the corner of the lining. It’s been pressed tight around the edges, but underneath, a plain manilla folder is concealed. I peel back the lining and pull it out, my heart skipping and faltering. For a second, I just stand there with it unopened in my hands. I’m not sure I want to know what’s inside, not sure if I have a right to know what he wanted to keep hidden.
But my curiosity wins, and I flip it open. The first picture is Colt’s graduation picture, his cap tilted slightly, a cool look in his eyes like he’s staring down the camera.
Odd.
I turn it over, and find a hundred more—not the posed graduation portrait, but everything else. Pictures cut from the yearbook, senior pictures in color, the other classes in black and white. Activity photos from the pages of the yearbook featuring clubs and sports.
A dozen photos of Colt on the field, stretching to make a catch or with a football tucked under one arm, during the two seasons he played before the Dolces ruined his football dreams.
At first, I think they’re just high school friends of Duke’s, but after a half dozen, the pattern becomes clear. My heart starts beating erratically as I flip through them faster.
My brother is in every single picture.
There are local newspaper clippings of the beating that took his memory and almost his life; printouts of the online school newspaper articles about it.
