"Isaac," Avery said, wearing the cheap plastic smile she seemed to be born with. Or was it just acquired when she turned six years old... "How nice of you to come today. I know it's hard for you -" "What the fuck are you doing here." It was more of a statement than a question. I didn't really want to know why he was there; I just wanted him gone. And maybe he could get run over by a truck and left in a ditch to die along the way... "What, Jess?" he said innocently, as if nothing had ever happened that day. Oh, God, did I want him to die... "I've just come to pay my respects." "Like you haven't done for the past seven years?" Mackenzie came to my aid, though still partially hiding behind my trenchcoat. "Something's up, Isaac. Why did you come here this year?" So odd; to hear the name 'Isaac' come from the mouth of one who looked so much like Zachary...Zachary always used to call him Ike. Now the name brew informal from the mouth of Mackenzie. Zoe, too; neither of them really knew Isaac enough to even remember his nickname. It should have stayed that way. "Look, he's just here now, so why are we fighting about it? Isn't this a good thing? We're all here, right? So let's get this going, okay?" Zoe stepped into the fray, eager to continue on with the ceremony and leave as little space for mistakes as possible. With my teeth clenched and my anger near overboiling, I grabbed Avery by the elbow. "Can we talk for a second?" I said. "We need to talk about this...alone." Even though I hated to leave a murderer with my two youngest siblings that I was supposed to be caring for that day, it had to be done, and it had to be done now. We walked twenty paces away from the others. Only when we had spread enough distance between the two small groups of the family did I release my sister's arm. She took it back quickly, jeering. "You didn't have to do that," she mumbled. I barely heard it before I went off on my own anger-fueled rant. "What the hell is he doing here?" I demanded, pointing towards the rest of what could have been called a family. I was so furious, and the only way I knew how to use my anger was to hurl it at Avery. Avery was as cool to me as she would be to a grocery store cashier. "He's paying his respects, Jess," she replied, spitting back to me the same self words Isaac had said to me no less and two minutes ago. "Let the man do what he needs to do." But I wasn't going to take that as a plausible answer. I didn't take it from Isaac when he gave me that answer, and I wasn't going to take it from Avery. "Like shit," I said through my clenched teeth. "Jess, why didn't you ever get it? It was an accident. He had nothing to do with it." Avery's eyes were wide and innocent, as they had always been. They tried to protect the brother she thought was just an innocent bystander. She didn't understand what had really happened that night. She still thought he wasn't at fault. "Accident?" I rasped. "You don't know what kind of a fucking accident that was!" I heard my voice quietly bounce off of the stone tombstones around me. I had broken the Hanson Family Cemetery Rule Number One: keeping a cemetery voice, meaning, to keep my voice down. But I didn't care anymore. Avery was going to have to understand what kind of bastard she was protecting. "What the hell are you talking about?" Avery said, looking around wildly to see if anyone was looking towards us. I was torn between wondering if she was looking around because she was embarrassed someone might be looking at her, and wondering if she was looking around because she was embarrassed someone might see her with me. "You have to forgive him already, Jessica! I've forgiven him, and God has forgiven him. Why can't you?" "Because you don't know what he did!" I blurted out. I wasn't even going to get into that whole forgiveness by God thing Avery nearly broke open. "Well, why don't you tell me what he did." Avery was asking for it. I would have loved to tell her right there about her less than saintly brother, but I just couldn't. Something inside me told me that I didn't want to open that can of worms right then. Avery would have denied it, called me a liar and a heathen (yet again), and all that we had worked on that day - all of the agreements and pacts and deathly trials to stay sane - would have all been dropped down the toilet. "Why don't you ask him yourself," I muttered. "I'm not going to," Avery said. "I don't want to talk about the Accident anymore. They're dead. We all got that. Whatever caused it doesn't matter anymore. That conversation was exhausted years ago. It's over and done with." "No, it's not! You don't know the half of this story, and I'm not ready to tell you it!" I blew up at Avery. I couldn't believe she could say all that with a straight face. God, she wasn't the same girl I used to know. She had changed. We had all changed, and it was never for the better... "What the hell is wrong with you!" she yelled again. How was I supposed to get this through to her? "Look, Avery, you can stay if you want. But if Isaac stays -" I looked towards the gravestones of the two that never really loved me. The two that never knew me. I wasn't Jessie Hanson anymore; I was no Hanson anymore. "- then I'm leaving." Avery gave no emotion in her face as I sneered and turned my back. It was only until I reached the tombstone of some guy named Lucifer Halston did she actually acknowledge the fact that I was leaving. "Okay, sure, Jess!" she yelled after me. The words she said brought stinging tears to my eyes. I knew she had it in her, but I never wanted to believe they all thought what she said. "Go ahead! Leave your family! That's just great, because you know what? We don't need you around here! We don't need another slack-jawed whore who's never been there for her family. You can just go to hell, Jessica Hanson, and we won't even care! We won't care! We won't..." Only when I heard her voice crack, and the sound of a startled sob behind me did I turn around, only to see Avery Hanson, the girl as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar, fall to her knees and cry. I didn't move a muscle to help her. Isaac was upon her, helping her to her feet, before I could utter her name. I don't think it was real love for my sister, or merely hatred for my brother, but some instinct inside of me was triggered the moment I saw Isaac near my sister. He killed two of my siblings. I was damned if I was going to let him get another one. I pushed Isaac aside ruthlessly, not even watching as he stumbled away from me, shocked at my aggression. I knelt down to help my sister up, who didn't look all that pleased. "What the hell do you think you're doing!" she yelled at me, her eyes full of the hatred and emptiness I had seen from them ever since the Accident. Her cry hit home; I had known someone else said that before. One of their last words... My head snapped back to see Isaac standing behind us, his eyes wide, his breath hitched in his chest. I knew he heard those words, and I knew exactly what he was thinking. "What's the matter, Ike?" I asked, the venom in my tone scaring even me. "Sound familiar to you?" I wasn't even watching Avery wipe her tears of anger from her cheeks, or Mackenzie holding a crying Zoe as they watched their lives fall apart again. I didn't even care anymore. I was out of sympathy for the day. Now it was time for someone to start listening to me. Isaac swallowed hard as he slowly backed away from me, desperately trying to find a quick escape. But the fear in his eyes told me he knew he was never going to escape himself. "No, Ike," I said, standing up. "You're not going anywhere. You can't just run away from this. You came here today; you stay here." Everyone else was gone to me now; in my mind, only Isaac and I were standing there. Two rivals. Two enemies. Good versus evil. Me versus Isaac. "What is your problem, Jess?" Avery shouted behind me. "Why can't you let it go?" "Why don't you go tell her why I can't let this go, Isaac," I said, never looking back. I never looked back anymore. "Why don't you tell her what you did?" Isaac glared at me, the emotion in his eyes a mysterious mix of hatred and fear. "I'm not going to tell her, Jess," he said, shaking his head slightly. "Not here. Not now." "Oh, but a half-hour ago, back at the house, was the perfect time to say it, right?" I blew up at him. This wasn't about the right place at the right time; this was about something else, and I knew it. "Do you not want to tell her because she's Avery Hanson, the church-going, charity-giving, all-around good girl? Ike, did you tell me about this because I'm the blasphemous Jessie Hanson, and my ears are able to take the evil of your deeds?" Isaac raised a pointing finger at my accusations, his arms trembling slightly. "Shut up," he seethed through clenched teeth. "Just shut up, Jess." "Isaac -" Avery called from behind me, her voice void of understanding or even of comprehension. She didn't know what the hell we were fighting about. And I was going to be damned if I let Isaac get away with allowing her never to know. He shifted his gaze onto Avery then, his voice taking on character that no one in this family ever knew existed. "Stay out of this, Avery," he said. "This isn't your fight. Just stay out of this damn conversation." Obviously, he didn't know Avery Hanson all that well. "I am not staying out of this!" she cried. "Why should I, Isaac? Am I not a part of this family, too? Or is this just an argument for the big kids, and little Avie isn't allowed to know anything that's going on?" I went to open my mouth, to spew all the facts and details of the Accident out into the open for Avery and all the world to know, but my tongue could form no words. The timid yet firm voice behind us spoke for us all. "Stop it. All of you. Stop your fighting. This isn't a time to be fighting. Stop it now, and listen to me." Nearly simultaneously, Isaac, Avery, and I whirled around, shocked by a voice we would never think to be the Hanson family's voice of reason. Mackenzie stood there in front of us, standing tall, a frightened Zoe clutching onto his coat. His eyes were narrowed, and ready to pounce. We knew he wasn't going to take our bullshitting and fighting anymore that day. And he wasn't going to take "no" for an answer.
mail. [email protected] � FTLOM"What the hell do you think you're doing!" he yelled, trying to pry his older brother's icy fingers from the steering wheel. An angry blow came from the older boy, and he went reeling away, more from the hurt of his heart than the hurt of the strike. Almost in a flash he was upon him, his fists attacking left and right...
