Upstander by James Preller (free ereaders .TXT) 📕

It started to rain that night, the kind of violent downpour that pounds the houses and floods the streets. The winds thrashed and tree limbs crashed to the ground. A car alarm screamed down the street, blaring into the night. Dogs barked with madness. The electricity went out, power lines down.

“It’s always something, isn’t it?” Mary’s mother observed, bringing up a battery-operated lantern for Mary’s room.

Mary didn’t get much studying done. Her thoughts fishtailed all over the place, like a car on an icy road. She raised the shades and opened her bedroom window, letting the angry wind and rain billow the curtains into her room. Emotions were like seasons, Mary mused. She accepted all the colors of the four seasons, the tender greens and deep blues, the brilliant oranges and the gray, washed tones of winter. Some people wished for endless summer, forever clear skies and sunshine. That sounded dreary to Mary. Monochromatic and dull. Things shouldn’t always remain the same. That wasn’t real life. She poked her head and shoulders out the window, leaning into the howling night to better know the storm. She thought of Jonny alone in his room, departing early tomorrow. If only she could learn not to love, if she could harden her heart, then the pain would diminish. It wouldn’t hurt so much.

I hate loving you, she thought.

Mary had no choice, though she sometimes wished it otherwise: She loved her brother through and through. It’s what made this year so impossible. But for now, for tonight, she wanted it no other way.

Mary knocked on Jonny’s door and pushed it open. Jonny lay face-up in bed on top of the covers, one knee bent, hands hammocked behind his head. Mary walked softly on stocking feet, set the lantern light on low, placed it on the floor at the foot of the bed. Jonny shifted and with that movement wordlessly invited Mary to join him. They didn’t talk for a long time. Just lay there together, wandering the pathways of their private thoughts. Eventually, he asked, “Don’t you have a test?”

“I don’t care. It doesn’t matter,” she told the ceiling.

Jonny turned, propped up on an elbow, looked at his sister. “You should care, May.” He touched her nose with his finger. “You’re so smart and good.”

Mary didn’t feel that way at all. But she nodded for him, not meaning it.

“Promise you’ll do better.”

“Sure,” she said.

“You can’t be like me,” he said. “I have something wrong inside of me, May. I don’t know if I can be fixed. Promise me, May. Promise me.”

Mary felt the warm pressure build behind her eyes, the tears beginning to come. To hide those tears, she reached her arms around Jonny’s neck and buried her head in his knobby shoulder.

Her whisper came so softly that Jonny had to strain to make out the words: “I’ll never give up on you,” she promised. “Never, never ever. I’ll never not love you, Jonny Bear.”

37[stones]

At Jones Beach, when Mary was little, she used to beg her parents to try the coin-operated sightseeing binoculars on the boardwalk. They almost always said no, explaining that they didn’t have enough quarters. Yes, she realized now, maybe there was a faint remembrance of a fatherly presence in those early memories—a jingling pocket with coins, two hands lifting her up, strong thick tobacco-stained fingers enclosed around her tiny rib cage. The binoculars didn’t last long before time ran out, the machine wanted to eat more quarters, and Mary had to squint and shut one eye to see properly. She always felt desperate to see everything as quickly as possible. Most of all she marveled at the way she could spin the metal dial to focus. The picture would look all blurry and then, slowly, the scene came into crisp focus. Shapes, colors, details emerged with superhuman clarity.

That’s how she felt about the past few months, from a lazy summer spent lounging at Chrissie’s pool all the way into blustery November. Her blur period. It was strange to Mary how she could see a person many times, in dozens of different situations, and then suddenly see them. See them fully as they were, as if the metal dial turned and they became clear. For Mary, it was happening not only with Eric, but with everyone in her life. Griffin, Chantel, Alexis, Jonny, even Ernesto and her mom.

A new clarity.

When Ernesto started taking Zumba classes with her mother, Mary knew it was only a matter of time. For this was the act of a man hopelessly in love, because Ernesto in no way struck Mary as a Zumba class type of dude. He went because he loved her, that was all. Ernesto came home from the YMCA that past Saturday and popped open a beer while Mary’s mother showered upstairs.

“Is that part of your Zumba training regimen?” Mary joked, nodding at the beer can.

Ernesto pressed three fingers against the back of his leg and grimaced. “That Zumba’s no joke. I may have pulled a hammy.”

“Are you the only guy?”

“There’s another, but I’ve got better rhythm,” Ernesto said. His expression changed, eyes lifted toward the ceiling, indicating her mother’s bedroom. “I love her, you know. I’m going to ask your mother to marry me. I hope that will be okay with you.”

Mary wiped her hands against her pants. Otherwise she stood as quietly as possible, unable to speak, but feeling the weight of the moment. Seeing the look of concern on his face, his earnestness, Mary smiled. “No, it’s good. I’m just … wow. She’ll be ecstatic.”

“I don’t know about your brother,” Ernesto said doubtfully. “But Jonny will have to deal with it. Tough, right? This is our life. But he’ll be okay. Don’t you think?”

Mary answered, “He’ll be fine.”

She beamed at him, a wide, embarrassed smile.

Ernesto stood and took a half step toward Mary. He awkwardly lifted an arm like one raised wing, an invitation to embrace. Mary instantly walked into his arms with all her