Audition (North Security 4)

A wave of residual fear and guilt sloshes through my belly. The one night I’m home, she comes looking. If this had been another night, with me down in that basement club that doesn’t check IDs, pressed up against Joshua North…a shiver goes through me. She would’ve woken the neighborhood. A flare of anger burns away the guilt. This is what comes of getting involved with men like that. I never should’ve trusted him, not for anything. I walk with Mamere back up the stairs. “I couldn’t sleep. I needed to move, and I didn’t want the noise to wake you up.” I give a rueful laugh. “I guess it did anyway.”

She puts her hands on either side of my face and pulls my head down to kiss my forehead. “Whatever’s troubling you, it’ll look better in daylight. Sleep, child. Don’t fight your demons in the dark.”

Back on my bed I sink into the mattress. There are no more demons to dance with now. Josh isn’t coming tonight. We’re not together, so he had no obligation to stop by. He had no obligation to tell me that he wouldn’t be coming. None whatsoever. But if he believed in common courtesy, he’d have done it anyway. Josh obviously doesn’t believe in common courtesy. But he did come here every night for five nights in a row. What’s different about tonight? My thoughts go around and around in circles.

You know. You know exactly why he didn’t come. The awful, terrible truth of it circles my other errant thoughts. Because he wanted to see if you’d put out for him. That’s all anybody’s interested in. Your legs spread for a man or for an audience. On a bed or in the air. They all only want one thing.

I want this not to be true for Josh. The things we’ve done haven’t involved beds or even nudity. Only the hot press of his mouth and the expert graze of his fingers. I keep coming back to the same conclusion. That’s what he wanted. My mouth. My touch. That’s it.

Sleep drifts close, only to tease me and run away again. Over and over and over. I refuse to look at the clock on my bedside table. I don’t want to know how much of the night he’s stealing from me. At some point I squeeze my eyes closed and resolve to listen to Mamere. Don’t fight your demons in the dark. I’m trying not to do it, but damn. They won’t leave me in peace tonight. He won’t leave me in peace. And he’s not even here.

Done. I’m done. I’m leaving it behind me. It was a momentary lapse of judgment. That’s it. It won’t come with me to the future. He won’t—

The pebble on my windowpane is like a boulder crashing through water. My thoughts scatter like frightened guppies. My heart pounds. I throw back the blankets and leap to the window. A silent prayer—let it not be a branch, or a bird, or anything else—

It’s him.

In my scramble to climb out the window I don’t get a good look at him. As soon as my feet hit the ground I’m turning, words tumbling from my lips. “Where were you? I thought you’d be—what happened?”

“What do you mean?” His voice is harsh, mocking. “What makes you think anything happened, sweetheart?” His hands are buried in his pockets. The cocky stance only highlights the dark stain on his shirt. The stain is almost as dark as the expression he wears. It’s made worse by the hard relief of the moonlight. The shadows cut across his face, splitting his sneer in two. “And here I thought I looked handsome.”

“You have blood on your shirt.” There’s not enough oxygen to say anything else, though I probably sound ridiculous. There’s probably some perfectly reasonable explanation. I was walking on the sidewalk and tripped. “Where were you?”

“At a party,” he spits. “A gathering of some close friends. It was a celebration. Can’t you tell?”

He’s so big, so solid, and so angry that it makes me want to shrink away. But I’m not going to shrink from this. Not a chance in hell. My heartbeat is louder than any of the familiar night sounds. It blocks them all out until I feel like I’m standing on the inside of a bass drum. I swallow an acid fear. I take a step closer. “How did you get the blood on your shirt, Josh? Who did this to you?”

He looks away with a huffed breath. I brace for another mean response. Shock comes off him in waves. I’ve felt it coming off my brother before. I’ve felt it gathering on my own skin. At that time I was only six. I didn’t know what it meant, only that it felt like all the world was collapsing in on me. Caleb was the o

nly one holding its crushing weight at bay. You weren’t here. The urgent whisper crawls up from the darkest corner of my memory. You were in your bed, sleeping. When we woke up in the morning, we found him like this. Go to sleep. Go back to sleep. We weren’t here.

Josh turns back to me slowly, like he’s not quite sure I’ll still be standing in front of him when our eyes meet. I don’t move. His cheek twitches. A line of blood divides the skin there, too. “It was Caleb.”

No. “He did this to you?” My lungs cave in. “Why? Did you have a fight?”

“Did we have a fight,” he whispers under his breath. “You were lying to me before. You had to have been.”

“Lying about what? I wasn’t lying about anything.” My palms start to sweat. “What are you talking about?”

He forces his fingers through his hair. “You acted like you didn’t know anything. How could you not have known about this?”

“Whoa.” This is so horribly unfair. “Hang on. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Tell me what you’re talking about.”

“He’s in deep.” Josh’s voice drops to a deadly softness. “Deep in some shady business. And I’m not talking about a local drug ring. I’m not talking about small-time black-market bullshit. It’s way bigger than that.” He’s studying me like I might give something away. I have nothing to show him except a creeping sense of dread.

“I knew he was…I knew he sold things. Guns.” My voice trembles. Why? Why can’t I sound strong and sure in this moment? “Weapons. But—” What possible defense is there for what my brother does? I know it skirts some laws. “No. He sells guns to people who want them. That’s all.”

“Well, when you say it like that, it sounds perfectly reasonable. Jesus, Bethany.” Josh’s expression darkens into incredulous hatred. “He’s not selling guns to gang members. It’s worse than that by orders of magnitude. Are you really this naive?”

“I’m not naive,” I shoot back. “I know he’s not a good person, okay? I know that. But I don’t believe—what could be worse?” I throw my hands up. Try to get a handle on my voice. “What could be worse than what he already does? Maybe you’re the one who’s naive.” It’s a losing argument and I know it. I just can’t stop. “What could be worse than what he already does?” The question comes out plaintive and small.

“He sells weapons, Bethany. But he’s not selling them to homegrown killers, which is already a fucked-up thing to do, if you ask me.” Josh’s voice has gone absolutely even. Almost casual. He tilts his face to the moon. It was better when he was angry. A million times better. “He sells them to foreign operatives.”

“F-foreign operatives?” My brother has always flirted with the wrong side of the law, ever since our father died. I knew the army was a means to an end. I knew he’d find a way to twist it for his own purposes. “I’m sorry, I—How is that so much worse?”

Josh nods, understanding dawning on his face. The understanding that I really am this stupid. I’m not stupid, I want to scream at him. You have blood on your shirt and my brother is to blame. “How do I make this clear?” he muses at the moon. Then he looks me dead in the eye. “He sells to enemy governments. Terrorists. People who dedicate their entire existence to killing Americans by any means necessary. Do you know what that is, Bethany?”

My name on his lips in this context freezes me where I stand. Because I do know. On some level I know what Josh is about to say. I paid attention in US history class. I made As on every test. This isn’t that hard to figure out, but I don’t want to know the answer.