Mayhem Read online

  “Has anyone survived not having the water anymore? Anyone not Brayburn, I mean?”

  “At least two,” Roxy says. “That’s enough to know it can work.”

  My heart twists.

  She tells me how when Boner and Marcy decided to detox, my grandmother and great-grandmother worked together to keep them hydrated and fed and distracted, how they played cards and made necklaces and how they slept. When it was over, they seemed to remember things, but as though they were things that had happened to someone else, long ago. Marcy became a psychic in her spare time, and Boner became a cop, continuing on in the same work in their own ways.

  She goes on, but I’m not listening much anymore, because I’m planning how I’m going to help my friends.

  THIRTY-TWO

  GIFTS

  The birds shuffle from side to side, squawk their greetings. Under them, gifts in bright wrapping with golden ribbons, so many the whole driveway looks alive: a cheese plate covered in cellophane, being feasted on by several of the crows, a tapestry of a rich red draped across the wood, cards in embossed pastel envelopes, and flowers everywhere, some in bunches, some single roses laid on the ground. There are always gifts to be picked up each morning and carefully catalogued, but this is different. There is so much.

  Roxy and I are out walking. She has a sheen of sweat building across her forehead and doesn’t want to stay still.

  “This is what thank-you looks like, Cookie,” she says. “The people in town know what’s what.”

  Everything takes on color. The house waits for us, and the birds, and Millie on the chair on the front porch, and Kidd and Jason on the swing sipping on lemonade.

  The phone rings, clanging into the peaceful early afternoon, and I twitch upward, eyes on the second-story window.

  Before Jason can even stand up I’m in the house with the phone in my hand.

  “Where are you, Lyle? What do you want?” I say.

  “Oh, hey there, Mayhem,” Neve’s languid voice returns.

  “Oh, hi,” I say. “Neve?”

  “I was just calling because there’s going to be a party tonight on the beach and I thought you might want to come.”

  I look behind me, hoping Jason will appear, but the hall is empty. “Do you want me to get Elle? I think she would really like to talk to you.”

  Truth is, I don’t know if Elle would talk to her. She seems pretty mad, said something about how Neve might be sick, but what’s underneath is still a different kind of sick.

  “Elle knows exactly how to find me if she wants to,” Neve snaps, then smooths again. “You guys should come down and help me celebrate. The Sand Snatcher is gone, the town is grateful.”

  “I know, they left presents—”

  “Of course they did.”

  “Neve, come home,” I say, “please.”

  “I don’t think so,” she says. “I don’t actually think that place is home for me anymore. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends, May. Best friends.”

  “Right,” I say, “of course.”

  “Pier Four, the beach, from nine till whenever,” she says. “Arrivederci.”

  The line goes dead.

  THIRTY-THREE

  STITCHER BRAYBURN DAUGHTER OF BILLIE

  1949

  I drank from the well the first day they tested the tsunami siren in Santa Maria. They had them all up and down the coast. I didn’t know whether bombs were going to descend on us and blow us all to shreds like we did to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or if we were going to die from not finding higher ground fast enough. Up on the hill I would have been safe from a wave. But I wasn’t on the hill. I was at the cave with my mother. She told me the water would make me shine. It was a shine that never left her, and it never leaves me either. It’s a shine that deflects, that makes people look at you instead of into you.

  She didn’t give me a choice about the water. I wish she had. I might have chosen no.

  That siren wailed after I took my first sip.

  It’s a test, Mom said. There’s no danger.

  And yet, as far as symbols go, as far as warnings, the timing of that siren wailing into the foggy air—well, it was a reminder that you can’t win against nature, and nature is in charge here.

  The spring is nature.

  We are servants of the spring.

  Mom doesn’t see it that way. She tells me the cave called to her, and to her mother before her. She says we are Brayburns, and Brayburns and the spring are one thing.

  After the first time I drank the water was when I started making everything. I made doll clothes and wove tapestries. I made the most elaborate dresses in pink silk. I took picture after picture. I couldn’t stop. My fingers can produce anything, and Mom never fails to remind me it is that extra shine. It took what was in me and magnified it.

  They call me the stitcher.

  And so I am.

  Most people never live at all, Mom says.

  There is a chant now. The town tells stories about the Brayburns, about what we do, poems recited by firelight. They don’t know if we are evil or protecting them from it. But they know something, all right.

  I have decided. I have made a decision to accept myself. I have decided that although this wasn’t my choice, I can choose it now. When I have a child, I will teach her as Mother taught me. I will not allow her to fall into it alone. We need our stories, to pass our traditions from one generation to the next.

  Meantime there are sock hops, and Peggy Lee.

  Life goes on.

  Let them whisper.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  MAYHEM BRAYBURN DAUGHTER OF ROXY BRAYBURN PARTY MONSTERS

  1987

  “No. No. No.” Kidd holds up a yellow polo I brought with me from Taylor, one of the few things I threw in a bag as we left. We’re in Roxy’s room. Roxy’s in Elle’s. Kidd and Elle did find the TV upstairs in the attic and dragged it down the other night, so Roxy’s watching Tootsie with the lights out and has forbidden me to come in. I can hear her pacing around in there. She won’t hear of me going in there with her so unstable going through withdrawals and everything, so now we’re all going to the celebration on the beach, where I hope I’ll find Neve so we can talk.

  “Oh God,” Kidd says, holding the polo as though she’s in physical pain. “What is this?”

  “I know,” I say. “It’s bad, right? My grandmother who wasn’t really my grandmother bought it for me. I don’t know why I brought it.”

  “I don’t have a grandma,” Kidd says, pulling a handful of jelly beans from her pocket. “I really like the black ones. Some people don’t. What do you think?”

  “Love them,” I say.

  Kidd amazes me all the time, and all I can do is squeeze her more than she probably likes.

  “Hey, uh.” Jason peers in from the hallway and then averts his eyes like we’re naked, which we’re not. The makeup is out, though. “Holler when you’re good to go. I’ll be upstairs.”

  Kidd is busily picking through my things with a disgusted scowl. “Wear this,” she says, and hands me a red dress with lace at the bodice.

  “This isn’t prom,” I say. “It’s a beach party.”

  “It’s a party to celebrate what you guys did,” Kidd says. “You should look pretty. When it’s my first time doing something good for Santa Maria and there’s a party for me, I’m totally going to wear a pretty dress.”

  I kneel down. “You know,” I say, “maybe we should talk about that. It’s good that guy can’t hurt people anymore, but I don’t know if … that … is the answer either.”

  I’ve been thinking about it more. Maybe there’s a way we can work with the cops, Boner for instance, or something like that. There has to be something better than this. Eye for an eye is so Old Testament. We don’t know if a person is born broken or what they can even control. It can’t be right to kill them for being who they are, although having them loose isn’t right either. And if I can’t get rid of the water, I can at least work with it in a
different way. When my mother is done detoxing, we can figure it out. Still, it’s hard to feel bad about the Sand Snatcher. He had to go.

  “Your light is swirling,” Kidd says, then pats me on the head as if I’m too young and innocent to understand the complexities of the situation. “You should relax.”

  I can only imagine what it would be like to talk to someone from Taylor right now.

  So, whatcha been doing since you left Taylor, hon? How’s your summer been?

  Oh, you know, I been murdering serial killers, doing drugs, as you do. I’ve also done some heavy petting. Oh, and my best friend is possibly an unhinged psychopath. How’s church?

  I might be missing that little town right now, just for a second.

  Kidd is at my feet with Millie in her lap and takes a spritz of the water. “Put on the dress, please!”

  When I have it on, Kidd whistles. I’ve glossed my lips and given myself shiny cheeks and mascara. It seems wrong to get dressed up and everything with Roxy in the other room. But I tell myself if I can get Neve to come home it will be worth it. When everything is falling apart, you have to put it back together, step by step.

  * * *

  Punk blares from the speakers that have been set up on the beach. The bonfire looms above everyone like a drunk, bobbing and weaving. Boys with hair dyed blond from the sun, skin crisped to an unnatural brown, girls still in their bathing suits, colorful dots, eyes dancing; a Chicano crew, fully dressed, hangs together away from the fire. Some people clutch bottles in brown paper bags while others pass joints around. One guy has a bowler hat on his face. The Gecko brothers, in full fatigues, pace around the fire. The pinging of the rides, the slow circle of the Ferris wheel, the screams like sirens as the roller coaster flings its passengers into the night, are a reminder that though the curfew was short-lived, it’s not anything anyone wants to see happen again.

  Santa Maria is safe.

  As we approach, people part, making room for us. Jason and I hold hands as we walk through the crowd with Kidd a few steps ahead.

  “Good job,” one girl says.

  “You rocked it,” a surfer tells us.

  Jason gets several high-fives.

  Finally they break into cheers and whoops until they’re all standing around us. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this.

  “Well, hello,” Neve says, emerging from the middle. “Welcome.”

  “Thanks,” I say.

  Kidd runs to her. “Neve!” she says, and jumps into her arms.

  Jason stays next to me, but I feel him watching Neve, wanting to say something to her, wanting to pull Kidd back.

  “Jay, sexy as usual,” she says. “You look good in red, Mayhem.”

  She looks good, too. Blackberry lipstick, eyeliner winged out, black fingernails.

  “Full moon,” I say.

  Neve looks feverish. I notice there’s nothing around her neck. She looks up, then back down, disinterested. “Yeah, well, I wish I could stay and chat, but I have things to do. Enjoy all the gratitude. I have to go deal with something. Talk later?” She kisses both my cheeks and then both of Jason’s and gives Kidd a big hug. “I’m so glad you came,” she yells, “really!”

  “This is not good,” Jason says, when she’s gone.

  “No. Something bad is happening. I wish I could read her so I could know what.”

  Then I spot the guy with his stupid sunglasses, even at night, and swoopy hair, the one we saw the other day on the boardwalk who had taken his sister on the rides. He’s in a pink polo, grinning at everyone, no mirrored sunglasses on now, and Neve is headed straight for him. I wouldn’t want to take out another guy so soon, but Neve and I are different.

  “You okay?” Jason says.

  “I’m fine,” I drawl. “That guy over there isn’t going to be for very long, though.”

  Kidd comes over and hugs my waist. “It’s a party over there! Don’t you want to celebrate?”

  I wonder how much water Neve has had, how many times she has fed and how many is too many. I wish I knew more about how all this works.

  Kidd is breathing hard next to me.

  “Take some water, Kiddo,” I say, but she’s focused on the boy at the fire with Neve, the one whose air is crystallizing around him as he dances.

  She hides her head against my leg. “He’s not good,” she says.

  “Stop looking, Kidd,” I say. “You can make it go away if you want to. Tell it you don’t want to talk to it right now.”

  She shakes her head. “I can’t. It doesn’t work anymore. I can always only see.”

  “Hey,” Jason says. He taps on her cheek, and she drops her jaw long enough for him to spray inside. Her breaths come a little further apart, her chest rising and falling more normally. We wait a few moments until she smiles up at us looking like herself again.

  Still, Jason looks at me worriedly.

  A girl with glitter in her hair comes over and takes Kidd to dance. “Can I?” Kidd says. “Can I go dance?”

  “Sure,” Jason says. “I’ll be watching you.” When she’s gone he says, “What’s going to happen to her if she doesn’t have it? The water, I mean.”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I’m working on figuring that out.”

  “How else am I going to keep her protected? What about when she’s grown and she doesn’t want her big brother trailing after her everywhere she goes? You think anyone’s going to mess with her now?” He shakes his head. “No. No one is going to ever be able to mess with her, and if they do, she can defend herself. She’s stronger than all of them, right?” He nods toward the guys our age and older, dancing around the fire. It’s true, with the water, Kidd is more powerful than all of them. For now.

  “The water is dangerous to people who aren’t Brayburns,” I say.

  Jason looks at me, sharply enough that I want to recoil.

  “I read it in that journal Elle put together. That’s what Neve was talking about this morning. She didn’t tell you?”

  He shakes his head.

  “I wasn’t sure what to say. I don’t even really know what it means for you guys, except you shouldn’t have the water anymore, just in case.”

  “Elle knows about this?” he says.

  “Well, yeah, but I think she was hoping since you found the cave on your own you would be immune.”

  He’s frowning hard.

  “She really loves you guys. She wouldn’t do anything to hurt you on purpose. Anyway, you got to the water before she could stop you. It was already too late.”

  “She should have told us, though. What else do you have to drop on me?” He comes closer. He’s really asking. “What are you hiding in there?”

  “Nothing.” I pull him close. He only resists for a second.

  Kidd has stopped dancing and is scanning the crowd, eyes widening. She starts walking toward Neve and the boy like she’s being pulled by an invisible rope.

  “Kidd!” Jason says.

  Kidd stops like she’s dazed, then lurches back in our direction.

  “Oh man, this is not working out. She can’t be in public right now. I’m going to take her home,” Jason says, pulling on me.

  I pull back and he drops my hand. Neve is dancing with that boy, and I don’t want to leave her here.

  “I’ll be back up there soon.”

  “I don’t like it,” he says, watching Neve and the boy.

  “It’s okay for you not to like it,” I say. “I’m going to stay anyway. I’ll be safe. I just want her to hear me out. If she decides not to come home with me, I’ll run up the hill. No big deal.”

  “Okay,” he says.

  He kisses me before getting Kidd and heading toward the van.

  I approach Neve as the boy takes her in, his eyes lingering on Neve’s butt and legs. He’s chiseled, with rock-solid pecs like he’s an athlete. He’s also obviously wrecked, unable to stay focused on anything.

  Apparently he’s the only person in Santa Maria who doesn’t kno
w who Neve is and exactly what this party is about.

  “Hey.” I sidle up to the guy. “Did you drive here?”

  He raises his eyebrows smugly. “Why? You need a ride?”

  “Actually, I was thinking you should get out of here,” I say. “Like now.”

  “I don’t remember inviting you over here.” Neve is clearly annoyed.

  “I need to talk to my friend here, and I think you should get out,” I say, with even more force.

  He grabs Neve’s waist. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Oh,” Neve says, “she’s a total bummer. Don’t pay attention.” Neve runs a finger along his cheekbone.

  In a honeycomb a girl is sleeping and he is on top of her. I look away, because if I get drawn in I won’t be able to stop myself from sucking the life out of him.

  “So I’m here,” Neve says. “What are you going to do about it?”

  Neve eyes him seductively, and he dances in her direction, looking like a complete moron.

  “Neve!” I’m desperate for her to hear me, but she only has eyes for him. I can tell she’s not just going to walk away from this one.

  I look away. He does smell good, like he would melt in your arms, like he would be so satisfying. I bite the inside of my cheek.

  Neve checks the party. One guy swings a girl over his shoulder and everyone pours beer on her and shrieks. Neve is standing now. She’s heart to heart with this guy, taking a sip from his beer, smiling so her teeth glisten in the night.

  “You should go home,” I say to him again, and it’s like throwing the fruit bowl at Lyle, the way it bounces off, like it’s nothing. I take the boy by his arm. “You go home,” I say to him.