Page 78 of One
“I thought they were all foster brothers to you. Why do you all keep specifying it anyway?” I ask him, walking into the kitchen while staring at my phone.
“Because since we were kids, Raph has been making the distinction between Sari and us, for some weird reason. We just like to fuck with him sometimes.”
I drink some water and then shake my head. “Where is he, Rami? He’s not replying.” I sound like a clingy bitch. But I need to talk to him.
“He’ll be here soon. Just relax and check out the satanic gecko.”
“The what?”
He pats the space near him on the sofa and then gestures to the TV. “He’s the black sheep of the gecko family, with those reptilian red eyes and wicked eyebrows.”
The gecko in question is mottled brown, with big eyes and a very long tongue. His tail looks like a leaf. But yeah, his eyes do look devilish with those projections over them. I sit next to Rami and tuck my legs under me.
“He reminds me of Raph.” Rami smirks, earning a bump to his shoulder.
“How was he as a kid?” I suddenly ask, feeling eager to know more.
“Was he ever a kid?” His eyebrows kick up in mocking shock. But then he adds, “He was aloof, cunning, and suspicious. It took time for him to trust us and feel part of thefamiglia.” He says the word in a horrendous imitation of Super Mario’s voice. “But to be fair, we were all wary around each other in the beginning.”
“I wish I was there,” I mumble.
“It was mayhem. I don’t know how Linda didn’t kill us all.” He smiles before adding, “And I’m glad you’re here now.”
I smile back.
“You weren’t all adopted, but you still lived together, right?”
He nods. “Raph and Sari didn’t have parents, but the rest of us had a drug addict mother, a father doing time, a drunk uncle… you get the picture. Meg and Linda wanted to adopt all of us, but it’d have turned messy. Those kinds of lowlifes are greedy. And the last thing we needed was attention on us. The government wanted to forget about what happened, pretending it never did. And shoved it under so much shit not even a dung beetle could find it.”
“Fuck,” I swear.
Instead of looking pissed, Rami’s lips are curled in an evil smirk. “Yeah. Don’t sweat it.”
“Really?” I’m astonished by his indifference.
“Karma took care of them all.” He clears his throat. “Anyway, Linda and Meg fostered us, but I personally never felt treated differently by Raph or Sari. I just happened to have a different surname. And fuck, don’t I feel lucky about that.”
I snort. “Bear-Stone sounds like a Jumanji made-up name.”
“Uhhh, I should use it for one of my characters,” he exclaims excitedly.
“Characters?”
“I create video games in my free time.” That sounds cool. “How about Snake-Stone… too Harry Potter? Gorilla-Rock… too Dwayne Johnson. Bird-Pebble… sounds like a drug order. You really don’t remember a thing?”
It takes my brain a second to realize that Rami asked me something. The quick change of topic confuses me.
“About being captive,” he adds.
“Lately, broken memories are resurfacing. But they’re too few, and messy. I can’t puzzle them back together. My dissociated brain is acting more like an old woman with dementia.”
“Dissociation, huh? Better than other brain processes, I can assure you,” he mutters, looking away. “Keep it that way, Mike. That’s my advice. We had years to work on that shit, and still, we need…” His words trail away.
“What?” A therapist? A weekend at the spa? A racketeering business?
“Look! The Trap-door spider. Scary fucker.” He points at the TV again. “He constructs his burrow underground and waits until he hears his prey close by, thenzap!He grabs it and pulls it down.” Rami grins at the ugly black spider on the screen. Guess the deep talk is over. “Let’s hope the radiation from one of the government’s fucked up top secret projects doesn’t turn one into a gigantic Godzilla. I’d be his biggest groupie, before he eats us all. Love a patient killer.”
Ooookay.
