Perri O'Shaughnessy - Keeper of the Keys

Instead, she bore alone the greasy-faced boys who recognized her and offered her rides she knew better than to accept, and the middle-aged men who stopped, goggling, wanting her in their cars where they would have power and she would have none. God only knew what would happen if she ever accepted a ride from them.

Many of those unhappy days, three girls followed her, harassing her. Kat thought about telling Jacki, but by then Jacki was in college, not living at home, useless. She told Leigh but Leigh, being Leigh, totally overreacted, insisting she get them expelled, kick their butts, etcetera, absurd suggestions in Kat’s opinion. She told Leigh she would, just to shut her up. She considered complaining to her mother, but Ma had problems of her own, an overworked husband and not enough money. And what would her mother do? Call their moms?

Then one day, the girls had come up quite close behind her, so close they didn’t need to shout epithets, they could murmur them, intensely more menacing.

“We could cut you right now,” one said.

“Walk faster,” the last one warned, “or we’ll catch you.”

She ran as fast as she could.

“Why are you running?” Tom said, catching up to her as she ran, sweating, the last steep hill.

“Where’d you come from?”

“Got a reprieve today. Coach got food poisoning.”

“Ah.” She slowed down.

“It’s too hot to run.”

“You’re so right.” She looked behind her, but the girls had disappeared, probably when they saw Tom, the quarterback, who, over six feet by the time he was fifteen, had the exaggerated musculature of a Batman comic character. She breathed deeply, trying to catch her breath. A jacaranda tree bloomed big and purple between the sidewalk and the street. Even in Whittier ’s yellow air, no doubt stunted by pollution, by dry soil, by neglect, these curbside trees displayed themselves like Vegas showgirls wearing their best feathers.

“So why?”

“No reason.”

“Liar. You never run for no reason. You look like shit lately, Kat. Even Ma noticed.”

“Thanks. I hate you, too. Did she tell you to talk to me?”

He nodded.

“I’ve got problems. Three of them. But you can’t tell Ma.”

“Never.”

Confiding in her younger brother for the first time in her life, trusting him for the first time, she told him everything.

The skin on his jaw tightened, and she, horrified, realized she might have unleashed a bad, bad genie. “Promise me you won’t hurt them.”

“Geez. Okay, but man, I don’t like things that force me to think hard.”

However, he must have, because, amazingly, after that day the girls avoided her in the hallways. They didn’t follow her home. No nasty notes got taped to her locker.

“What did you do?” Kat asked Tom after a few weeks.

“Gave them something else to think about, the friendly attention of a couple of guys on the team who owed me. Make your enemy your friend, right? They won’t bother you again.”

She had always thought of him as her little buddy. Right now, he was her hero. “Tommy, thank you. I mean it. If I were God, I’d put you in heaven.”

“But that won’t help me right this minute. Right this minute, I have this big paper due in American History,” he said.

“Done. And don’t worry, I’ll disguise it by spelling a few things wrong and making egregious grammatical errors.” She stayed up all night finishing his essay.

After that, she depended on him for everything, confidences, a shoulder to cry on, a minor revenge to be taken.

He protected her, but she had failed to protect him from falling in love with Leigh.

Kat returned to her breath and was mindful for about one split second, and then she was mourning Tommy again, missing him, slumping, so sad. Then she moved into the next usual phase, hating herself just like Jacki said. It wasn’t all Leigh’s fault, as she well knew.

She should make peace.

Breathe ten times, in and out, observe the breath coming in cold at the nostrils. Thought coming, thought going, how much longer…

The little oven timer rang. Phooey.

Later still, not sleeping, she Googled Leigh Hubbel, now Jackson, discovered Leigh made custom furniture-of course!-and then sought out the husband, who had hundreds of mentions. Kat looked at a few, admiring the buildings and his face, which was vaguely Italian, strong-nosed, framed by a lot of dark hair. Then she downloaded a map but did not print out the directions because she liked maps and liked deciding some things for herself. Leigh and her husband lived in Topanga Canyon, in a fine house which sounded not far from what Jacki had described, but she had an office in Venice Beach, near Santa Monica, where Kat’s appraisal company had its office.

Kat thought about haircuts, the ones they had gotten when they were fifteen.

Leigh had long blonde hair then, a perfect platinum running like a rushing stream, glistening in sunshine down her back. The two girls had hit a designer haircutter on Greenleaf Boulevard. “I’ll give you two dollies a break on the price just for the pleasure of slipping my fingers through your hair,” the haircutter had said. Kat thought he was nasty but Leigh thought he was funny, and she liked funny. Maybe reading their minds, he trimmed Leigh’s hair respectfully, then crew-cutted Kat’s red hair into a short fuzz.

Kat’s parents flipped, which Leigh loved. “It’s a fundamental requirement for kids our age to make our folks regret giving birth as often as possible.” She plucked at Kat’s scalp with fire-red fingernails. “When it grows back,” Leigh said, patting the fuzz critically, “let’s get that jerk to dye it blonde.”

“Why would I?” She liked her fiery hair.

“Men like it.”

“I ask for a good reason and you lob me crap?”

This was when she still loved Leigh more than anyone else, and long before Tom fell in love with Leigh.

Kat had a home address for Leigh and her husband, and a phone number for Leigh’s business. She called Leigh’s business number and left a simple message, asking for a call back.

Ray left his mother’s by eight. The drive from Whittier to Topanga Canyon at that hour on a Sunday night took him an unusually grueling two hours due to a pileup on the 605. He pulled his blue Porsche into the expansive, decoratively paved driveway of his home, pushed the remote to open the garage, drove in, and turned the key to off. He sat in his car.

He should be relieved. Leigh hadn’t said anything about anything to his mother. Instead, he felt a familiar-what he was starting to call-craziness. Confusion. His mother fed him, loved him, and never pried into his private life. She also never shared her own. He didn’t believe there wasn’t something behind all that moving they did, more than just wanting a change of scene or boredom. It didn’t make sense. And he didn’t believe her when she claimed it did.

At first, a year or so ago when he had started on the models, Leigh had laughed, saying he was saving a pile, doing his own therapy. Then things changed.

He had a strong feeling that his work in the downstairs studio was important, but he didn’t know why. He even believed it could somehow bring him and Leigh closer together, help them resolve the issues driving them apart.

Instead, his models destroyed what they had.

Heaving himself out of the car, he clicked the remote lock. Outside, he pushed the button to close the garage door, carefully avoiding the light sensor, stepped onto the driveway, then stopped to study his house.

The big home and eccentric plantings, bulleted by low-lighting that had taken him months to design, loomed over him, imposing, fearsome, if you had imagination. The house spoke to him, with grass-paper walls, sanded timbers, the glass lit from behind to act as a divider, all angles, sharpness, stone.