บท 7: Disasters
After that disastrous Christmas when she was ten, Valentine got to spend holidays with Aunt Judy and Aunt Ali at the lodge, while Brenda, Brandi and Dad went to Brenda's parents' house. The family dropped her off on the way and picked her up on the way back, and everyone was much happier. Valentine even got to spend the following summer at the lodge.
That June, the triplets were born. Brenda had been taking fertility drugs because she was over thirty-five, and the drugs really worked. All three of them were girls, two identical and one not. The technical term for that was a dizygotic pregnancy, Dad said. They were named Cherie, Kristal, and Remy. Remy was the one who wasn't identical.
Once the triplets were born, everything became about them. Endless laundry, diapers that had to be changed over and over again, tons and tons of work. Brandi and Valentine were both supposed to help out, but somehow Valentine always wound up doing more of the actual work. She turned out to be pretty good at soothing, feeding, and entertaining babies—especially Remy, who was the odd one out.
That had the effect of smoothing things over with Brenda, who grudgingly admitted that Valentine was a help—but it also meant no more summers at the lodge, because Brenda couldn't cope without her.
However, there was still Brandi, who encouraged kids at school to pick on Valentine, who took whatever she wanted to from Valentine's things on the grounds that they were sisters, and sisters shared, yet never let Valentine borrow anything in return.
And so five years passed…
Valentine is Fifteen:
Valentine shut her book and frowned at her bedroom door. The steady thump-a-thump-a of dance music downstairs had so much bass to it that things in her room were vibrating. Brenda and Dad had gone away for the weekend, leaving the triplets with Brenda's mom and leaving Brandi and Valentine home alone.
That had been a mistake on their part. Brandi was very good at pretending to be an angel when adults were watching, but the moment after the parents left, her friends started showing up.
Valentine heard a shriek of laughter and glass breaking from outside on the patio. She crossed the room to look out the window, where she saw someone puking in the bushes while people pointed and laughed. Whether or not Dad had locked the liquor cabinet and the wine cellar, they were open now.
There was an unwritten Teen Code which said 'Don't Snitch.' Don't tell people's parents, don't call the police, don't let the teachers know what's going on. It didn't matter what was going on, whether it was illegal or dangerous or even life-threatening—telling would get you bullied and beaten up, or worse. There was no surer way of committing social suicide than being a snitch.
However, this was Friday night. Sunday afternoon, when Dad and Brenda would be back, was a long way off. Valentine had a very bad feeling about what the house would be like by the time they got home.
She went downstairs, ignoring the couple making out on the bed in Brandi's room when she saw neither was Brandi. (Making out was too mild a term for what was going on—with the door open, too!)
Brandi was in the family room playing a video game with a knot of her friends. "Oh, look, it's Chinky-ching-chong," she said sarcastically. "What do you want?"
"Come on," said one of the guys, "Don't talk like that to your little sister. Come sit down with us and have a drink, little sister." He patted the sofa.
"Um. No, thank you," Valentine told him, trying not to make him mad.
"B***h," he said, and belched.
Valentine ignored him, "Brandi—. Is your party going to be over soon? Because it's after eleven already, and it's so loud."
"It's not a school night, so what do you care? Just go back to your room," Brandi ordered.
"Okay," Valentine spread her hands out defensively, and went to the kitchen for some juice.
Somebody was puking in the kitchen sink, so she stepped around him carefully. In the backyard, a group of people were playing around on the triplets' swing set, and as she watched, it collapsed.
Would there even be a house left by Sunday? Valentine took her juice upstairs, took out her phone, and called 911. Making her voice sound quivery like an old woman's, she said. "Oh, is this the emergency line? I think my neighbor's house may have been broken into. Can you send help?" She gave her home address.
It didn't take too much acting to sound quivery, because when she thought about what would happen if Brandi and her friends found out it was actually her who called, she felt like a puppy which had wandered into a dogfighting ring.
It took twenty minutes until the police actually showed up, by which time one of the party goers had decided to turn on her dad's new inboard boat, which was on its trailer in the driveway, until the engine burned out and the boat caught fire.
The aftermath was horrible. All the partygoers who were still there were given Breathalyzer tests. Brandi turned out to have a blood alcohol level of .24, and she wasn't even the worst. Valentine was given one as well, since she was in the house, and she was the only one who hadn't been drinking. Everyone else was arrested.
Of course the police called her dad.
Of course he and Brenda came home immediately.
Of course Brenda started screaming at Valentine instead of Brandi, because she didn't stop Brandi from throwing the party, even though Valentine was a year younger.
Plus while the party was going on, somebody had stolen everything out of Brenda's jewelry box, her dad's watches, cufflinks, and tie pins, two laptops and a tablet.
Brandi was grounded and her phone was taken away. They would have taken away her computer, but the thief had already done that for them.
Three months later:
"Didn't you hear what I told you? Michael is a lawyer. Do you know what that means? It means, if I marry him, we'll be living in a house instead of a crappy little one bedroom apartment. It means money. It means a future for both of us. If his little girl hates you, do you think he's going to want to marry me?"
"So," and then Brandi's mom grabbed a fist of her hair and twisted it, making Brandi cry out in pain, "you will go back in there and say you're sorry or I will make you even sorrier, you hear me?"
That was what Brandi's mother had said and done the first time she met Valentine. She had hated them both for it—both her mom and Valentine.
So Brandi apologized—she had to—but she refused to suck up to the little chink. And as for what happened with Uncle Jack—some of her mother's ex-boyfriends had done as much or worse to her, and her mom never listened. That was one good thing about Michael—at least he never put his hands all over her.
Growing up with Valentine was awful. Everyone always praised her for being so good—good in school, well behaved wherever she went, so helpful with the triplets, never any trouble at all. Even Brandi's own mother praised her! It made Brandi sick.
Then when adolescence hit, Valentine shot up to be two inches taller than Brandi, with better skin and hair. How was that fair? The weird part was, Valentine was so pale she was even whiter than most Caucasian people.
But the party was the last straw. Since their phones were all on one family plan, Brandi could access the records, so she knew Valentine had called the cops. If Valentine hadn't, Brandi could have cleaned up the mess and come up with some sort of story to account for the boat and the stolen stuff.
Well, now it was payback time.
The senior boy was waiting under the bleachers, just like he said he would. He had a greasy smirk smeared across his face.
"So did you get the pills?" Brandi asked.
"Yeah, got them out of my grandad's medicine cabinet. They're just acetaminophen with codeine." The kid took out a bottle and shook them.
"Great. Do they say, like, codeine on them or anything?" Brandi asked.
"Look for yourself." He tossed her the bottle.
She opened it. They were just generic white pills with a few numbers on them. "Perfect." Taking out a bottle of over-the-counter menstrual pain relievers, she tipped the innocent pills out and replaced them with the opioids.
"Glad you like them," he smiled again. "Now as for payment…." He lifted the hem of her skirt.
Brandi closed her eyes as he did what he wanted to. As for her, she didn't feel shame, or pain, or pleasure in it. There was more pleasure in anticipating what would happen to Valentine in a couple of weeks, after she made an anonymous phone call to the school to tell them Miss Perfect was abusing drugs.
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