A Density of Souls by Christopher Rice Page A

Stop!” Greg spat. Brandon was threatening to bring Greg to the linoleum floor.
    Meredith watched in rigid silence as Brandon spun Greg around by his neck. Brandon’s laughter was growing more high pitched as the other boy struggled. Their tussle had turned into a mad dance of flailing arms and stumbling feet. It was the first time she had seen anger, envy, and joy so confused.
    She brought the plastic cup to her mouth. The first slug tasted foul, but she drained the entire cup and felt the veins in her neck constrict 44
    A Density of Souls
    her burning throat. Brandon finally hurled his friend to the kitchen floor. Greg landed on his back, both hands going up to block any possible blows. Greg’s smile was weak and defeated.
    “You dog, man. You’re a fucking dog, Darby!” Brandon shouted.
    He pivoted and faced Meredith, looking her up and down the way he and Greg had done on the first day of the school year.
    “Am I any different?” she asked, with gin-induced bravery. She managed a sarcastic smile.
    Greg lifted himself off the floor with one hand clenching the edge of the counter.
    “Naw, you look pretty much the same. Course, if you were naked maybe I’d be able to—”
    “Brandon, man! Shut up!” Greg groaned between guffaws.
    Meredith and Brandon locked eyes, but Greg didn’t notice. She often directed the same glare at Greg, but he had met it with only bafflement. Brandon, on the other hand, gazed back at her evenly.
    Greg moved into the adjacent living room and flopped down on the sofa beneath a photograph of Jordan, a Gothic building with naked vines behind him. Jordan looked like his brother, but a larger more perfect version executed by a master sculptor who had known better than to give Jordan the sharp angularity of Brandon’s rigid features.
    “You’re happy for him?” Meredith whispered to Brandon.
    Greg switched on the television and flipped through the channels.
    He had lost his virginity and wrestled his best friend—plenty of accomplishment for one night.
    “What’s up with you, Meredith?” Brandon asked softly.
    “You’re relieved, aren’t you?” Meredith said.
    His dark, narrow eyes slanted with suspicion.
    He’s afraid of me, she thought. He snorted and followed Greg’s path to the living room. He sat next to Greg, who was intently watching the big-screen image of a car flying through a bridge guardrail in a shower of sparks. Meredith poured herself another drink.
    “Brandon?” she called.
    “What?” he barked back.
    “You’re not supposed to mix alcohol and Gatorade. Gatorade’s got electrolytes in it and it puts the alcohol right in your bloodstream . . .”
    “That’s the idea . . .”
    He lowered his voice, finishing to Greg, “. . . you stupid bitch.”
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    Greg exploded into laughter and cocked his head toward the kitchen with a mischievous grin.
    Later that night, she wrote in her journal what she had wanted to tell Greg when he smiled at her so wildly. Drunk, she had to tense her entire shoulder to keep the pen against the page.
    I know more of your whispers than you think I do. And sometimes I think both of you would do to me what you did to Stephen. But instead, you both kept me. That’s really why you wanted to do it, isn’t it, Greg? Not because you like my body. But maybe because the only way to keep me from being a link to the past, a link to what you want to forget, is to fuck me. Am I different now? I think so. One time, a time that seems so long ago but really isn’t, I was one child among four. Now I’m owned by two.
    6
    D uring his first days in Rome, Stephen seemed intoxicated.
    Monica watched with pleasure as the city’s Baroque beauty caught him by surprise, transforming his jet lag into gleeful delirium. Monica had booked the penthouse suite of the Hotel Hassler. Situated five stories above the Spanish Steps, their suite’s plate glass windows offered a spectacular view of the Roman skyline more believable on a