Silent Alarm by Jennifer Banash Read Free Book Online Page A

“So she’s okay? She’s going to be all right?”
    There is a pause, a long beat where I can hear the clock he always kept on his bedside table ticking. I can hear my own blood pumping, the thump of my own heart. Then that tone again as he says my name and the world falls away entirely.
    â€œThey had to go to the morgue. To ID her.”
    I close my eyes, tears running from the corners, snot dripping from the end of my nose. Ben and me and Katie running through the sprinklers in the summertime, the smell of freshly cut grass in the humid air. Luke blasting the hose and shooting it toward the sun, the prism of color trapped inside the wet diamond droplets. Katie’s small, elfin face widening into a smile, her hands clapping at the magic of rainbows and light. Katie helping Luke pour brownie batter into a buttered pan; fighting over the bowl, elbows jostling; the sweet, dense taste of the chocolate, dark and bitter as secrets.
    My eyes snap open and I sit up, gripping the phone tighter.
    â€œBut he loved Katie! Ben, he loved her! He would never hurt her. I know he wouldn’t.”
    â€œBut he DID, Alys. He did. He—”
    (killed her)
    â€œWell, then it must’ve been an accident! She must’ve gotten in the way somehow! Luke would never—”
    I am hyperventilating, the air in the room sucked out through an enormous hole in my head, my heart, a void of my brother’s making.
    â€œYes, yes he fucking
would
and he
did,
Aronson. He did.”
    Ben has never ever called me anything except Alys for as long as I can remember. All of those syllables hit me in the chest like so much dead weight. Like a corpse.
    â€œNo. It’s not true.” I whisper these words even though I know they are lies, and that there is nothing, nothing I can do or say that will make the jagged pieces of Ben, or of any of us, for that matter, whole again.
    Before I can say anything else, there is a rustling noise on his end of the phone, and I hear the creak of a door opening, murmured conversation, voices rising higher in pitch, a crescendo. Sweat breaks out beneath my underarms, cold and sour, and I am shaking uncontrollably. I feel like I’ve just drunk a hundred double espressos, my entire body vibrating at a frenzied pitch, a whine I can almost hear.
    â€œWho are you . . . Her? Dammit, Ben, give me the goddamn phone!”
    â€œWho is this?”
    Arianne, Ben’s mom, is suddenly on the line. At the sound of her voice, something inside me unfurls a tiny bit, relaxing, even though I know it shouldn’t. I can’t help it—Arianne has read me bedtime stories when my parents were out of town (I was always partial to
Goodnight Moon
), fed me innumerable dinners and lunches (tuna salad on toast was a real winner for a while), taught Luke how to drive and let him spin their old station wagon around the cul-de-sac at the end of our street until he got the hang of it, blasting AC/DC on the stereo, all the windows rolled down. She’s listened to me practice for hours on end, a smile falling over her soft features as she watched the bow fly through my hand as if it had wings. If anyone will understand, it is Arianne.
    But Luke killed her daughter. Shot her. How could anyone possibly understand that?
    â€œIt’s Alys, Arianne. I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry, I don’t know how to—”
    â€œAlys, you need to stay away from our family. Just stay away. From
all
of us.”
    The voice coming through the phone is alien and clipped. This is not the Arianne of the makeshift s’mores assembled over the kitchen stove, melted chocolate coating our fingers like wax, the woman who taught me to shave my legs the summer I turned twelve, guiding my hand so that the blade slid over my limbs effortlessly.
    â€œArianne, I didn’t—”
    â€œHaven’t you people done enough? Haven’t you done
enough already
?” Arianne’s