Читать книгу The Remnant - Laura Nolen Liddell - Страница 8

I’m sitting in the kitchen, watching my mom ice a cake. Her knife slides up and down the straight edges, creating a series of perfectly even waves of blue frosting. Her other hand is spinning the base of the stand with surgical precision.

It’s mesmerizing.

West thinks so, too, and joins me at the counter. I’m mad at him for some reason or another, but I’m thirteen now, and turning over a new leaf, so I choose to ignore him. Even though he shouldn’t be here.

The cake is for him, for his birthday, and it’s a complete violation of family rules for him to see it before we light the candles, but apparently I’m the only one who cares about tradition around here.

Mom offers him a little smile, just enough to show the first hints of recently formed wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, and he returns it in full force, his stupid teeth gapping in my face.

West loves birthdays. I guess all nine-year-olds do.

“Can I lick the spoon?” he asks.

Mom purses out her bottom lip, pretending to consider the request for maybe half a millisecond, and hands over the entire bowl of sugary, leftover goo.

I am given the knife.

My icing is gone in two licks, one for each side of the blade, and I shouldn’t care that West’s far more enthusiastic efforts have barely made a dent in his supply.

New leaf. I’ll focus on my mom instead. She’s arranging the piping tip over a plastic sandwich bag full of red frosting, and her face takes on a calm, easy focus as she pipes a series of perfect tiny stars around the top.

It’s going to be a beautiful cake.

“Want some of mine?” West asks.

I turn, mimicking my mom’s lower lip-pursing, and pretend not to care. “Sure, if you’re not going to eat it all.” I shrug a little, making the point. “Whatever.”

“Open up,” he says, and I can’t help but match his goofy grin. He shoves an enormous glob directly in my mouth, and I bite down. It’s more icing than I can hold at once, and I’m starting to giggle in spite of my newfound maturity.

“You’re getting it everywhere,” I say, or try to say, and reach for a dishcloth.

West only laughs.

I’m scrubbing away a tiny speck of blue from the countertop when a thick splat hits the side of my neck. I swat at it in confusion, and my fingers come away covered in icing.

I’m glaring up at West, about to make sure Mom saw what happened, when I realize that he’s as shocked as I am. We turn to Mom, who’s suppressing a snort.

I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the idea of my mom voluntarily creating a mess of any kind when West fires back.

The glob catches half on her cheek and half in her hair, just below the ear.

She gives a little snicker. “You’re asking for it, buddy.”

Suddenly, West is covered in a thin stream of sticky red buttercream, straight from the piping tip. It’s simultaneously the strangest and the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. Without thinking, I reach into his bowl and launch the contents at my mother, who spares maybe one second to glance at her ruined blouse before reaching for the flour.

“Get down!” I shout, and we duck behind the bar together. The flour whispers by overhead, dusting us in a silent arc that ends on the floor far behind us, inches from the living room rug.

She has missed! We nearly choke with giddy laughter.

“We’re outta ammo,” I say, as soon as we catch our breath, and West nods seriously. “She’s got total access to the fridge, everything.”

“But we have the pantry,” he says.

“You sure about that?” our mother taunts us.

“Cover me,” I say, and roll toward the pantry.

I’m too slow. A blast of water catches me square in the back, and I’m completely soaked before I reach the door. I grab the first thing I can find, Cheerios, and rip open the bag in a frenzy. I toss it back to West, reserving a few handfuls for myself, and we begin pelting her in unison.

Some of the water has caught the cake, and for a moment, I regret everything. It was such a beautiful cake.

But then West goes flying over the top of the counter and jumps to land on the island, next to the cake.

“West, no!” I scream, but it’s too late. He shoves a fist way down into the delicate icing and lobs his sugary grenade straight at Mom. I follow him, grabbing for the flour at the same time as her.

The bag rips open, and the kitchen explodes into a feathery cloud of white.

Thin wisps of flour rain down onto the brawl beneath for several seconds. We are all grabbing at the cake, gasping with laughter.

Our mother is strong. Stronger than I expected, and I feel my face being shoved into the fractured remains of the lowest layer of cake. I’m powerless to stop it. My defeat is complete.

West is next. He emerges from the forced faceplant covered in cake and wonder.

She has won, she has won. There can be no question. We dissolve into helpless laughter, and the pain of the year lessens its vice around my heart, and the horror of my first stint in juvy shrinks and retreats into the darkest corner of my thoughts. For the moment, it is harmless. I breathe, finally. I smile even though I’m not laughing anymore. The sensation feels foreign.

My arm is around my brother for the first time in far too long. My mother is holding us both. I find that my skinny legs can still fold in far enough so that I fit entirely on her lap, and I am warm. West and I regard each other from twin positions under her chin.

No one speaks for a while, but my mother finally breaks the silence. “Things have been too tense around here lately. We had a rough year. I know that. But you’ll never stop being each other’s family. You can’t ever stop loving each other.” And she is squeezing us both, gently at first, and then more and more tightly, until it is too much, too tight, and I have to hold my breath, and still I do not try to stop her.