Slice Of Cherry by Dia Reeves Page B

his room and wouldn’t let her leave.”
    “I didn’t lock her in! I was locking things out.”
    “What things?” asked Kit.
    Gabriel stared at the jar of beets in his hand, shamefaced. “I used to think things were following me. Trying to get me. But I don’t think like that anymore. Hardly ever. I’m much better now.” He said this to Ilan. “Penny forgave me. We even go to Bible study together. Everything’s cool.”
    Nothing’s cool,
Ilan’s face seemed to shout, but he said nothing.
    Fancy almost felt bad for Gabriel, having a brother who didn’t seem to trust him, or even like him.
    Kit touched the cross hanging around Gabriel’s neck. “You got religion?”
    “Yeah.”
    “That work for you?”
    “So far.” He sidled closer to Kit, no longer ashamed. “That and being in the right place at the right time.”
    Fancy stopped feeling sorry for him. Instead she inched toward the back door, but Kit wasn’t paying attention.
    “Pig Liquor?” Kit squealed, laughing at Gabriel’s black T-shirt, which had a decal on the front of a fat pink pig floating inside a liquor bottle.
    “That’s our band name,” Gabriel said. “Stop laughing. We spent two weeks coming up with that name. You’re required by law to be impressed.”
    “Well, I do pride myself on being a law-abiding citizen,” Kit said as she picked lint off Gabriel’s impressive T-shirt, some teasing thing in her eyes, which turned to laughter when Gabriel slumped next to her against the counter, as if her touch had drained the strength from his legs. “Y’all going to Cherry Glade?”
    “Yeah.” Gabriel was scant inches from her, close enough to do who knew what, and yet Kit didn’t back away. “Had my fifteenth birthday last week.”
    “Fancy’s old enough too this year. We had to go shopping for new dresses and everything.”
    Gabriel studied Kit’s leggings. “Have I ever seen you in a dress?”
    “I haven’t worn one in years.”
    “This is why I believe in karma,” Gabriel told his brother. “We buy Miz Annice groceries, and now I get to see Kit in a dress.”
    “I’m your reward?” The hard tease in Kit’s eyes was replaced with simple surprise, and like Gabriel she slumped against the counter. “I never been anybody’s reward before.”
    “What do you think, man?” Gabriel asked his brother without taking his eyes off Kit, as though her sudden bonelessness were . . . appetizing.
    Ilan glanced at Kit. “She wouldn’t fit in the trophy case.”
    Fancy found herself smirking at Ilan’s ironic tone, glad she wasn’t the only one who found Kit and Gabriel’s behavior irritating.
    “I mean about seeing Kit in a dress.”
    Ilan looked at Fancy. “Not if it’s anything like what her sister’s wearing.”
    He lacked Gabriel’s artful hair, instead sporting a joyless buzz cut with ruler-straight sideburns. He lacked his brother’s height, as well, as if his own growth were happening more insidiously, not in a great spurt but in stages, slow and relentless as the Himalayas. He bent his craggy attention on Fancy. “You’re fifteen?”
    “Yeah,” Kit answered when Fancy wouldn’t.
    “You look it,” he said, ignoring Kit. “If you think a skimpy little-kid dress is gone hide all that,” he waved a hand at her body, “you’re wrong.”
    Fancy crossed her arms over her chest. He was long-boned like Kit, as if he’d been fashioned to spend his days chasing things through fields. He looked like he wanted to chase Fancy—something predatory and unsettling filled his eyes as he watched her.
    Ilan turned his disturbing gaze on Kit. “Y’all should have a family intervention about the way she dresses. It’s criminal.”
    “Don’t talk to us about family,” Fancy told him. “The way you treat your own family is what’s criminal.”
    Everyone gaped. The jar of beets Gabriel had been holding dropped to the floor and exploded like brains.
    “Am I dreaming,” Ilan said, “or did you just talk?”
    “She