The Big Sister - Part One (6 page)

I hesitated one more moment before getting out of the car. I was terrible at goodbyes. There was no way I could convey all of my feelings — gratitude, shock, friendship, and hope — to him. I started instead to my building, the door clicking shut behind me with no small amount of regret.

The sound of the window rolling down made me walk a little slower.

“Faith.”

I turned back to the car, my eyebrows raised. “Yes?”

“Did you have a good time tonight?” Marcus asked, sounding almost unsure of himself.

Instead of answering yes immediately, as I would’ve done for any other job, I actually took the time to carefully consider my answer. Marcus had treated me to a wonderful evening, shown me what it was to make love, and rewarded me so handsomely that I wouldn’t have to worry about things for quite a while.

“Marcus, I had an amazing time,” I said, smiling at him probably more honestly than I’d ever smiled at one of my clients. I was usually smirking, or pursing my lips, or giving my best sexy grin. No. I’d actually had a genuinely good time.

“I’m so glad to hear that,” he said, putting his hand over his heart.

“Be safe in your travels,” I said, wiggling my fingers at him as I stepped onto the sidewalk.

“Likewise,” he said, and the car took off into the night. I could understand now why Parker acted so strangely around him. He was different from the types of men who normally frequented the club. He had finer tastes that he wanted to share, and I found myself halfway wishing that he’d book my services for a solid week. I’d probably never have to work again.

I let myself into the apartment, more aware than ever of the slickness between my legs, of the foreign ache that spoke volumes about what I’d just done. Maybe, at the beginning of my dancing career, this would’ve shocked me. But the way I’d had to force the zipper shut on my purse for all of the cash it contained made all of this worth it. I’d more than made the money to cover Luke’s tuition payment, and I would do anything for my brother.

I’d done everything for him, even if it was too little, too late. God, if only I could’ve been there for him when he’d needed me the most. I wasn’t sure I’d ever forgive myself — or let him out of my life without a fight again.

My frown softened when I saw Luke and Jennet asleep together on the couch. She was a rock, a support system for us both. She was passed out on one end of the sofa, her mouth agape and snoring softly. My brother was on the other end, hogging all of the blankets in a classic Luke move, his mouth shut, breathing deeply through his nose. He never snored, not even when he had colds. It was apparently his prerogative in sleep to be just as quiet as he usually was awake.

I very gently brushed his unruly blond hair out of his eyes. That was something else we needed to do before the start of school — get a haircut. I reached down and gathered him into my arms, something that was getting more and more difficult to achieve. With a maudlin shiver, I realized that the time would come when I couldn’t just sweep my brother in my arms and take him away from everything. He’d probably shoot up like a weed when his growth spurt hit him. I’d known him so long as my precious baby brother that the thought of him towering over me, facial hair dotting his jaw, was as foreign as anything could be. I had to treasure these moments.

Padding softly across the tile floor of the apartment, I moved to his bedroom and sighed at the state of his bed. Maybe that was why he’d decamped to the couch — art supplies coated virtually every surface. My brother might have been quiet in real life, but it was in the creative world that he got to scream, sing, and shout his feelings. When he’d first come to live with me and lapsed into a worrisome silence, it was actually Jennet who’d turned him on to drawing.

I swept the pens and pencils and markers and crayons as quietly as I could to the rug beneath his bed and nestled him beside a stack of sketchpads. Luke’s mouth tugged downward, and he rolled away from me before easing into a deeper slumber. I moved the sketchpads to his desk, pausing to look at some of his work.

He was really quite good at drawing, buoyed by the praise we all lavished on him. It helped him come out of his shell a little and encouraged him to share his works. He was usually private, almost to the point of secrecy, and my greatest hope for his new school would be expert teachers who could draw a taciturn but talented boy out.

My brother was going to be all right because he had to be. If any of the horrors he endured left lasting scars, I didn’t know what I’d do.

Give up, I guessed. I’d be gutted if Luke didn’t make it out of this. I would move heaven and earth for him. He was my only family left.

At the very back of the sketchpad was a scribbled out image, waxy black crayon obscuring whatever my brother had drawn. I frowned. That was unlike him. I tilted the page, trying to figure out what he’d been so intent on hiding. Whatever it was, he’d pressed down so hard with the pen that some parts of the paper were ripped. I flipped the page over and saw the faint indention of an outline that I could easily recognize, something that chilled me to the very core.

It was a knife.

Luke and I hadn’t always been alone. We’d had parents, once, though he didn’t have any memory of them and mine was getting decidedly foggy. It was something that I tried not to give too much thought to. I’d drive myself crazy trying to remember the timbre of my father’s voice, or the smell of my mother’s perfume.

They’d died in a car accident when Luke was just a baby and I was his age now — ten. Losing them had been mind numbing, but I was just thankful I’d had my brother to think of. Even if he didn’t understand our monumental loss, even if he was still new to my life, I became fiercely protective of him, demanding to stay with him even as the social workers urged me to let him go and have a life apart.

“He’s just a baby,” they told me, one of them patting my back as I held Luke in my arms gently but firmly. “He’ll have a better chance if you let him go. Everybody wants to adopt babies.”

“Wherever he goes, I go,” I said, stubborn. Being driven, having a purpose, helped me ignore the pain of losing my parents. I couldn’t lose Luke, too. That just wasn’t going to happen.

“Don’t you want your baby brother to have a good life?” they asked. “He can have the chance to start over. You’re going to be very difficult to place, Faith, and it’s always harder to get foster homes — let alone adoptions — for multiple children.”

“We’re a package,” I said, bouncing Luke a little when he started to cry, just as I’d seen my mother do dozens of times. “I’m all he has, and he’s all I have. We’re family, and we’re sticking together.”

They told me I was being a selfish girl, that I could visit Luke with whatever family adopted him, but I rarely let him out of my sight, even when it was time for me to return to school. It was important to me to take care of him. Taking care of him was a wonderful distraction from having to take care of myself.

We stayed in a youth facility while the social workers scrambled to find a foster family willing to take two kids — one of them a surly ten-year-old — under their roof. Things weren’t good there. I couldn’t stay with Luke because we were divvied up by gender, and I didn’t trust any of the boys there to look out for my brother. I found myself in constant trouble as I repeatedly turned up in the boys’ wing at all hours.

The reality that Luke wasn’t getting the attention I thought he deserved forced me to make a decision that was too much for my young mind.

To save my brother, to obtain the care that I thought he needed, I was going to have to give him up. I had to grow up in the blink of an eye, had to put my own needs on the backburner in order to see my brother’s needs fulfilled. It was something that became second nature to me as an adult, but at the age of ten, it was an upheaval of my natural order.

“I want to be able to visit him whenever I want,” I told the social workers, glancing down at a list of demands I’d scribbled before requesting to meet with them.

“Within reason, of course,” one of them said. “You’ll be attending school, and you’ll have to ask permission from both your family and his.”

“No,” I said. “He’s my family — my only family. Find two neighbors to take us in if you can’t just find one home. Tell them that this is what’s required.”

The social workers exchanged a look, but indicated that I could continue.

“Luke gets the better family,” I said. “Even if the better family wants me because I’m a girl and he’s a boy, they have to take them.”

“We’re going to find wonderful homes for both of you,” a social worker assured me. “One won’t be better than the other.”

“Examples,” I said, holding one finger up. “If one place has a dog, Luke should go there.” I’d always wanted a dog, but I wanted it more for my little brother. “If one place has a pool, Luke should go there — but only if the people promise to teach him to swim and make sure he always has floaties.”

One of the social workers looked suspiciously close to laughter, and I eyed her balefully before reaching the next item of concern.

“I don’t want to call the people who take me in my parents,” I said, squaring my shoulders. “And Luke shouldn’t be expected to, either.”

“Your brother’s not talking yet,” a social worker observed. “I don’t think you have to worry about him just yet.”

“We’ve already had parents,” I said, ignoring her. “We don’t need more. We just need places to sleep and food to eat.”

“Then why not stay here?” one of social workers asked. “This facility has places to sleep and food to eat?”

I scowled. This was where they were going to get to say, “I told you so.” I hated being made a fool of.

“This place isn’t enough,” I said. “There aren’t enough grownups, and there are too many kids. I don’t need people to watch me, but Luke does.”

“You both deserve to have families,” one of the social workers said gently. “You both need families.”

“We are family,” I said, my bottom lip jutting out in spite of my steely resolve not to cry. “We just need each other, and when I’m old enough, I’ll be on my own and I’ll take care of Luke. That’s real family, not the fake stuff.”

Breaking my vow that my brother and me were a package deal, the social workers were able to swiftly locate a family to take Luke in. Contrary to my demands, I didn’t get to meet them the day they came in to arrange the paperwork. The social workers later explained that Luke’s new family felt too guilty that they were only able to take him, and not me, and therefore wanted to avoid me to soothe their own guilt.

Or at least that’s what I interpreted when the social workers sat me down to explain everything. I did, however, inspire enough pity in the nicer social worker for her to help me sneak into Luke’s room that night to say my goodbyes to my brother. I’d already had to say goodbye to my parents. It wasn’t fair that I had to let my brother go, too.

The social worker slipped discreetly away as I sidled up to Luke’s crib, looking down at him as he slumbered. I tried to take him gently into my arms, to snuggle him and smell his hair, to try to memorize everything about him, but I instead woke him when I inadvertently jostled him while trying to get him into a comfortable position against my chest.

Sleepy, he blinked at me and frowned so terribly I thought he’d cry and get me in trouble.

“It’s okay,” I whispered. “It’s just me, Faith, your big sister.”

Gradually, the frown eased, even if his eyes remained droopy.

“Don’t ever forget you have a big sister, all right?” I murmured, picking him up and holding him against my chest. I could feel his little heart beating inside of his chest, and I knew that the blood pumping through it was the exact same blood making my own heart thump. I would never forget him, but he was just a baby. Unless his new family was actually planning on letting him know that he still had a sister who was still alive and still loved him, he would never remember me.

“I love you, Luke,” I said, rocking him a little. I felt my insides clench up, and I tried not to cry. “You know, if you want to call them ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad,’ I wouldn’t be angry. You deserve a family. You just don’t forget your big sister Faith, okay?”

“Faith,” he said, clear as a bell. I nearly dropped him in shock. My name was my baby brother’s first word. It was only a small victory, of course, but it still made me feel infinitely better about tomorrow.

“That’s right,” I cooed, rubbing his back and smiling as he pressed his face into my neck. He was so tired. “Your big sister Faith will always be your real family. I’ll do anything for you.”

Anything. Even if that meant I wasn’t a part of his life.

I eased him back into the crib, exhaling softly when I realized he was already asleep, and crept back to my bed without getting caught.

I stayed at the facility for a few more weeks after my brother left, and the loneliness and boredom almost crushed me. I was too fierce to easily make friends with the assortment of kids there, so it was almost a relief when my social worker told me she’d found a foster home that would take me in. At that point, I didn’t care where I was going as long as I could leave the orphanage. It had become a personal hell for me.

My two guardians — Harry and Charlene — were strict, no-nonsense people, and we butted heads often. They didn’t tolerate any disregard for their rules, and I was at an age of rebellion — or at least I’d been rebellious ever since I’d taken exception to my parents dying and from being ripped away from my brother. Harry and Charlene tried everything they could think of to encourage me to mind them — taking away my television privileges, eliminating dessert from my diet, banning me from inviting my nonexistent friends over to play — but I continued to do what I believed to be best. This included everything from roaming the streets at all hours in search of my brother’s new family. For whatever reason, my young mind was certain that he was hidden in plain sight from me, and I knew I just had to catch his new family unawares. They had to live somewhere close to me.

I would sneak out of Harry and Charlene’s place at any hour of the day or night, hoof it from block to block, and peer into the windows of unsuspecting families’ houses, making mental notations of clues that would set my heart beating. If there were toys for little boys scattered throughout the front yard, I would pay particular attention to my reconnaissance efforts, waiting at the windows for movement inside.

Of course, almost inevitably, one night I scared a housewife half to death when she saw my pale face outside in the bushes, looking in. I’d been taken into custody by the police, Harry and Charlene had been called, and they sat me down and had a stern talk about what kinds of things I could expect if I continued my ludicrous search for my brother.

“What in the world do you think you’re trying to do?” Harry demanded of me, sitting me down at the kitchen table as soon as we got back home.

“You can’t keep me from him,” I fumed, furious that they’d figured out the only thing that mattered to me — finding my brother and reuniting our small family. I wondered if he was walking and talking at this point. I wondered if he still remembered how to say “Faith.” I could do without kids’ shows and sweets. Those tiny points of joy paled in comparison to what I really desired. My brother was a different story, a different animal that drove me to do things that didn’t make sense to anyone around me.

“Can’t keep you from who, sweetheart?” Charlene asked, raising her eyebrows at her husband. “Who were you trying to see at that house?”

“He’s my only family, and I’m his only family,” I said. “We need each other. I need to find my brother.”

“Is that what this is all about?” Harry asked, dumbfounded. “You’re out at all hours looking for your brother? I don’t think you realize this, but you’re a little girl. The streets — and the people in them — are dangerous. Anything could happen, and it’s obvious you have someone watching over you, or else something might’ve already happened.”

I opened my mouth to form another retort, but nothing came out. My throat seized up, and I realized that it was my parents who were watching over me, guiding my path through the dark and helping me find my way — if not to my brother, than back to safety each time I tempted fate.

If they were looking out for me, then they were most certainly looking out for Luke.

“I know things are hard for you,” Charlene said, covering my hand tentatively with her own. I wasn’t really a child who inspired hugs and physical demonstrations of affection, but I allowed this contact just because my mind was reeling. Even if they were dead, our real parents weren’t really gone. They were looking out for us.

“You need to keep yourself safe,” Charlene persisted, even though she had to know I was only half listening. “When you get old enough, you can ask to be the guardian of your brother — if that’s what you still want to do, and if you think he’d agree to it, too. Courts don’t want to keep families apart. They just want to make sure families can take care of each other. Right now, though, you need to learn how to take care of yourself, Faith. Stop putting yourself in danger. Figure out how to do well at school and make friends so that you can be successful enough in your future to get what you want.”

After that night, something inside of me changed. The realization that I still did have a family — albeit not a very traditional one — brought me comfort and enabled me to follow the rules at Harry and Charlene’s house. I’d followed rules for my own parents. It wasn’t impossible. And more of my guardians’ words affected me than I knew. I had to be normal, had to get past this so that I could be reunited with Luke. A girl who snuck out of her foster home at night to peep in windows and get arrested wasn’t going to impress the court system. But a girl with perfect grades, a girl who fit in beautifully during any social situation, a girl who could prove that she could overcome anything — that was going to be me on my eighteenth birthday, showing the judge that I could raise my brother, that I could pick up our family where we left off. Anything was possible if I really tried hard enough.