Page 32 of The Burning
“Is she?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“Elodie said she is. So, will you go if Karina does?”
“Stop asking.” I gently pushed the nearly empty bottle against his shoulder. He was on his fourth—they were making the counter even more crowded with trash. Not that I really gave a shit.
“Whatever. You’ll go, I bet you one hundred bucks,” he said with certainty.
I looked at him with annoyance.
“Anyway,” Fischer continued, “that’s enough of that. Let’s get back to talking about Atlanta and the food and shit.” He smiled, eyeing his microwave meal. “How do you know all of this about the housing markets and real estate and movies?”
I laughed, readjusting my arm on the bare wood. “Imagine what you could do if you didn’t spend all your free time sleeping with women and playing video games.”
He scoffed, raised his beer to me, and chugged what was left.
“After basic, I’ll try to be more like you. Grown up and shit.” He grabbed another beer from my fridge and opened it with the buckle of his belt. “But for now, I plan on enjoying my last bit of freedom while it lasts.”
I nodded, wondering if he knew how little freedom he would soon have.
I touched my bottle to his and we both took a swig. The beer was so cold that it hurt my teeth. I was still getting used to having a fridge at my constant disposal again.
“Have you thought about your last meal yet?” I asked Austin while dragging my teeth through the pizza dough. It was just as chewy as it looked.
He looked up from his phone.
“Is that something I’m supposed to do?” he asked. “It’s not prison.”
I said nothing. Sometimes it was worse than prison. At least in prison you’re guaranteed a mattress and three meals a day, a toilet, no guns firing at you.
“But nah. Not yet. Probably a big-ass pizza. And beer. Lots of beer.” The end of his sentence was slurred. He was fidgety, moving his body in the smallest ways, but never standing still.
“You good?” I asked, tipping my head to the fresh, cold beer in his hand.
He nodded, believing that he was. I looked at him and it took me a second to organize my thoughts and try to assess his sobriety. It didn’t matter, anyway; he didn’t have anything to do tomorrow.
“I’m not that drunk. Iwantto be. I hope my sister stops being so pissed at me.” Then his voice went low, like he felt bad for saying it. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to bring her up. Again.”
I ran my hand over my mouth, pulling at my lips. “It’s cool. It is what it is.” I shrugged her off. Well, I tried to. “You did lie to her,” I added.
“We,”he said, lifting the beer to his lips.
“We. I know, but you’re her brother and you made that promise to her not to join. Not me. I only kept it from her because you were supposed to tell her.”
As I said it, I started to get pissed at Fischer again. While he was cowardly, waiting to tell his sister about his plans, I’d had to lie to her. Kiss and lie. Try to gain her trust and lie. That’s what I’d done.
“I know, but she doesn’t get it. You still think I did the right thing. Right?”
I nodded, thinking of the empty baggie of pills I found in his pocket when he was unconscious and so fucked up that my dragging him from my yard into my house hadn’t fazed him. I never found out who’d dropped him off. Not telling his sister was lying to her also. I seemed to do that a lot, even without trying.
“Doyouthink you did the right thing? That’s the real question here, Fischer.” I raised my brows, questioning his declaration.
“I don’t know yet. Well, not the lying-to-her part. That was pretty stupid and made everything worse.”
“Yep. I’d say.” It gave her a reason to run from me. She was good at running. It was a habit of hers that she found comfort in.
“If I were you,” Fischer began slowly, “I wouldn’t push her to forgive you. She hates that. Ask anyone who knows her.”
The thing was, I didn’t believe that anyone who had met her trulyknewher. I got close, but she bolted each time I neared.
