The Rules of Burken Read online

  I stepped out from Ian’s shadow. “It’s not like that. Ian’s leaving a lot of stuff out. He forgot to tell you that when he finds me … then he gotsta chase me and chase me until I hide again. We do that for three rounds. And then we play like we are beating each other up.” I gave a few wobbly air punches. “Then we’re done.”

  Brunette’s head popped up, and she looked at Ian how our mom would look at him when he sassed off. I figured that she was definitely older than Ian, because she acted like a mom. “Really,” she stated. “You beat her up?”

  “No, he don’t really hurt me. Just pretends. But sometimes I accidentally hurt him.” I looked at Ian apologetically.

  He sighed. “No, she doesn’t,” he whispered.

  Megan clapped. “Can we play?”

  “Uh, sure. If you think you can keep up,” Ian answered as my jaw plummeted. I turned my eyes up to Ian’s, and he winked at me.

  “Okay, well I want to be ‘it,’” Megan announced as she strolled next to Ian and crossed her arms, eyeing the group she anticipated to hunt.

  “No,” I spoke up. “That’s not how you play.”

  Megan narrowed her eyes at me.

  Ian concurred. “No one is ‘it.’ It doesn’t work like that. She hides, and I find her. That’s how you play Burken.”

  Megan grunted. “Why?”

  Ian and I looked at each other. We didn’t really know. We’d played Burken since before I could remember, and it was never an option for me to find him. The thought of it weirded me out.

  “It’s just the rules,” he replied. “Now come on, if you still want to play.” And he spun around and headed back toward the woods.

  I ran to catch up with him as the multiple trudges of our followers’ feet munched in the background. “Ian!” I whispered. “Why did you say yes? How are you going to be able to find—” I glanced back to see Megan, Kara, Chrissy, and Boy-On-Girl’s-Bike in our wake; Brunette had disappeared, apparently too cool for Burken school. “All four of us?”

  He snickered, his defiant strides forcing me to scurry along next to him. “All five of you,” he corrected. “And don’t worry, Charles. This’ll be the last time they ever ask to play Burken with us.”

  I didn’t know what that meant, but I grinned and grasped Ian’s hand as we dragged the others deeper into the forest.

  “It doesn’t matter, Charlotte. That behavior is completely unacceptable,” my mother lectured. Fanny Stahl—with the charisma of an air filter—had endured the visit from the police, the nasty looks from the neighbors, and the sarcastic quips of Kara’s mother when a search party had to rescue Kara and Chrissy, which afterward Kara had slapped me, and Chrissy had hugged me.

  Ian had tackled Boy-On-Girl’s-Bike and broken the kid’s wrist, Megan had tripped over a branch and needed six stitches to close her chin, and my father was nowhere to be found—leaving our mom to take the brunt of the havoc her children had administered upon the neighborhood kids.

  “Everyone in Cadillac already thinks we’re a strange family. That we’re lacking savoir faire.” Mom twisted the can-opener as it clenched a tin of stewed tomatoes.

  I curled my legs underneath me and rested my elbows on the table, the smell of pork sausage filling the kitchen. I disagreed; the only thing I found strange was the fact that my mother just said savoir faire to me.

  “I’m sick of people calling the house, complaining about the ‘little towheads running around outside … they’re nearly killing each other … and how dare you let that boy treat his sister that way?’” she mimicked as the blender roared on the counter.

  “Sorry, Mom,” I yelled over the noise. “I didn’t even want them to play with us.” I waited for her to turn the blender off before continuing. “Are we really strange?” I asked quietly as Ian entered the kitchen and dropped in a chair across from me, a pencil dangling from his lips. He stared down at a pad of paper.

  Mom pulled a bag of onions from the fridge. “I know you don’t understand, but just watch, Charlotte. Your father, especially. It’s not enough that he’s the administrator of Cadillac High, but he thinks he’s the mayor or something. Pay attention.”

  My face twisted up like a tourniquet. “Pay attention to what?” I was still playing catch-up after that savoir faire hurdle.

  Ian looked up. “Okay, Chuck. Give me a noun.”

  “Um, house.”

  Ian made a face and tapped his pencil on his pad. “Can’t you think of anything better than house?”

  “Um … Uh…” I looked at Mom, who was throwing the empty cans in the trash, and turned back to Ian. “Can!”

  He rolled his eyes. “Fine. Can. Give me an adjective.”

  “Run.”

  He threw his pencil at me, laughing. “Run isn’t an adjective, dummy!”

  “Ian!” Mom slammed the onion peels in the trash, pulling the bag from the wastebasket. “Don’t call your sister names!” She snatched the pencil off my lap, waving it in Ian’s face. “And stop throwing pencils! Come on, you’re eleven years old. You’re going to poke an eye out! Now take this out to the trash.” She knotted the bag and dropped it next to Ian’s chair. Boof.

  Ian looked at it like it was full of skinned carcasses. “No, thanks.”

  “Dad’s here!” I announced as the door flung open and Tim Stahl paraded into the house.

  “Hi, Tim,” Mom mumbled and poured the blender contents into a pot.

  Two strangers—a man and a woman—lingered behind our dad in the doorway, and he motioned for them to follow him to the kitchen. “Fanny! Great news! We have dinner guests!”

  Mom dropped the spatula into the pot and slowly turned to him. “Dinner? Guests?” She raised her eyebrows at his companions, whose eyes formed perfect circles at the realization that she was unaware of their dinner invitation.

  “Oh, you didn’t … we should … we don’t want to intrude,” the woman stumbled.

  Dad brought his hands to his hips and blurted a belly laugh. “No problem at all, Sonya! Fan, bring down a couple more dishes for our guests. This is Phil and Sonya Deering. Phil’s going to be the new history teacher at the high school next fall. Thought I’d bring him and the missus over to our place, get better acquainted.”

  Mom glared at him as he removed his glasses and brought them to his mouth, huffing on them before diligently wiping the lenses with his sleeve.

  I grinned at Ian, who was pretending to bang his head into the wall, and I jumped when Dad barked orders for Ian and me to say hello.

  He clapped a hand on each of our shoulders. “These are my two kids. Purebred Swedish kids, right here. One-hundred percent.” He rubbed our shoulders harshly. “You’re a history teacher, Phil. You’ll appreciate this story. Remember me telling you about my great-great-grandfather? Olof Stahlhamdske? Well, he came here to Cadillac from Mölnlycke, Sweden back in 1881.”

  Ian tossed me a piece of paper. I peered down at it.

  If I have to hear this story again, I’ll throw up.

  It took me a few seconds to read the whole sentence, and I grinned up at Ian.

  He moved his lips and jiggled his shoulders haughtily, mocking our father, who never tired of telling people his family history.

  I slapped my hand over my mouth and forced myself to look away as Dad chattered on about Olof and his heroic escape from religious oppression, smallpox, and famine. Instead, I watched Mom storm to the pantry to grab another can of stewed tomatoes and a jar of chili beans, brushing off the woman’s offer to help. Something told me that my daddy was in a lot more trouble than Ian and I.

  “So he comes here to Cadillac as a lumber worker, right? The guy is eighteen years old, and—” Dad snapped his fingers, but the dry, rigid pad of his thumb weakened the snap into more of a fip. “Bam. Works for eight months at Michigan Lumber Works before getting his first promotion.”

  His arrogant stance was spoiled by his loafer landing on the trash bag by Ian’s chair, and I knew that the angry crinkle of his mustache was because hi
s story had been one-upped by trash, not because he’d actually stepped on it.

  “Ian! What is this bag of garbage doing here? Take this outside.”

  Ian twirled his pencil and stared at the ceiling. “Bag of garbage,” he repeated. “It’s a noun, but more like a noun phrase. Hmmm.” He clicked his tongue, looking down at his pad. “You think noun phrases are acceptable as nouns in Mad Libs?” He scratched his pencil across the pad, then held the pad at arm’s length and squinted at it, as if he were farsighted. I giggled because he wasn’t.

  Dad grinned and tousled his hair. He looked back at the Deerings, whose eyes had glazed over as they glanced at their watches. “My son. Ian. He’s in sixth grade. A real whiz with grammar.” He chuckled as Mom pushed past him.

  She stood over Ian and shoved two fingers in his face. “You have two choices. One, you can take the garbage out and play ball outside while I’m cooking. Or two, you can continue ignoring our instructions and be grounded this weekend. Your choice. You make the decision.”

  Ian growled as he jerked himself from the chair and scooped up the bag, marching from the room.

  Dad turned to her. “How’d you do that? He never takes the trash out when I tell him.”

  She flipped her wrist toward the door and turned back to the stove. “Options, Tim. With kids like Ian, you have to give him options. Make him think he’s in charge.”

  Phil Deering cleared his throat. “Tim, we should probably go.”

  “Oh, relax, Phil. Fanny’s almost done. Now, as I was saying, Olof actually helped Ephraim Shay revolutionize the Shay Locomotive! One day, he met the manager of the Detroit branch of Ford. Björn Thunström and his daughter Lana. Follow me, I’ll show you Olof and Lana’s wedding picture.”

  I watched my dad hauling his victims into the living room, and I scampered in behind them in time to see the droll look in their eyes as he swooshed his hand in presentation of the drab décor, the furniture loitering about like indolent plebeians—a mishmash of garage sale bargains, family vestiges, and Black Friday clearance items from Sears.

  The focal point of the room—the exact moment when their droll look converted into a pleasantly disdained shock—was a pillowy chair the color of discarded shrimp tails. An afghan of sparkly vomit-colored zigzags lay overtop the ambiguous piece, too big to be a recliner and too small to be a loveseat. Ian and I had named it Razzle Dazzle, and it was fantastically atrocious.

  I scurried over to it and plopped down before anyone else could.

  My dad marched them to the wall and pointed to a black-and-white photo, the same one that hung in Cadillac High between the trophy case and a picture of KISS performing at their 1975 homecoming.

  “There they are. That’s when they got married.” He dragged his finger to another one. “And this is their first son, Frederick. That was when Olof dropped the latter part of his last name, anglicizing them as the Stahl family.” He puffed his chest out and nodded at the couple. “He made quite a few advances in the automotive industry, as well. He moved to Lansing for a while, but came back to Cadillac eventually. Raised his family here. And we’ve been here ever since!”

  Sonya Deering yawned.

  Phil Deering stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Wow, Tim. You’re quite the history buff. Seems you should be the history teacher.” He chuckled.

  Dad ducked his head like that was the greatest compliment ever. “Well, I do like history. And for the record, I’ll be the one subbing for you if you go on vacation, or come down sick, or … you know, die.”

  The Deerings offered asymmetric courtesy chuckles as he continued his tour. “Now Fanny is a direct descendent of the Swedish toolmaker, Carl Johansson, you know…”

  I was beginning to figure out the definition of savoir faire, and yes—my daddy lacked it.

  It’s late evening—I’m guessing 8:30 since the sun is still hovering over Lake Cadillac—but with my phone still on the kitchen table, I can’t even check the time. I’ve no idea where I’m going. I’m eerily calm, considering my life was just threatened by my brother—my brother!—and I’m assuming it’s because I’m in some wacked-out form of denial that’s going to suck to come out of. I can already tell.

  I keep a steady pace, even though I can’t hear Ian behind me. I have to be getting close to Eagle’s Nest Road. But then what? Round three of Burken is supposed to end with Ian’s arm around my shoulder the whole way home—a sign of brotherly affection, but that I am nevertheless, his prisoner. And then birthday cake—dammit! I was really looking forward to cake.

  I get an idea, and if Ian wasn’t going to kill me before, he’d certainly kill me if he knew I was heading to the movie theater to talk to Dana.

  Dana was my friend. Then she was Ian’s girlfriend. Then she wasn’t. Now she’s my estranged friend. And by showing up at her work, I’m breaking all kinds of codes and raising all kinds of flags, but it’s either that or spilling all kinds of blood, and right now, this is my only option.

  I cross Eagle’s Nest Road and bear right, heading downtown toward the Cadillac 5 movie theater. I’m feeling better now that I’m out of the woods and heading toward hundreds of upright citizens—who would undoubtedly frown upon a man axing his sister in public, right? So once I hop on the sidewalk of 55, I canter downhill past the Victorian homes toward the beach, spotting the theater sign in neon lights cascading down the tallest building in downtown Cadillac. I brace myself for Dana’s long overdue I-told-you-so.

  I spin left onto Xander Street and suddenly feel like this is probably the stupidest place to go. Like those neon lights are actually arrows pointing at me, blinking things like, Charlotte is right here! or, Murder her while she’s hot!

  I duck past the ticket window and into the theater, the air conditioning hitting my glistening forehead. The Tuesday crowd is scant, and my chances at being inconspicuous are disintegrating.

  I rest my hands on my knees, catching my breath while my eyes adjust to the dim lobby. I finally spot Dana’s frizzy, mouse-colored bob bouncing around behind the guest services counter, talking to a teenager working at concessions. Dana glances at me, does a double take, and her eyes go wide and her hands go to her face.

  “Oh, my gosh! Charlotte, you’re bleeding!”

  Those are the first words she’s spoken to me in two years.

  She rips an apron from the teenager’s hands and hops over the counter, coming at me and scrubbing my neck with it.

  “It’s not my blood, Dana.” I cough when she accidentally punches me in the throat. “It’s Ian’s. I forgot it was there. I’m not bleeding, don’t worry.”

  She freezes, the apron draped over her hand like a bloody puppet. “Ian’s? What happened to him? Where is he?” She gazes out the front windows frantically. “He’s not coming in here, is he? What are you doing here? How’d you know I was here?”

  I remember now why I wasn’t too upset when our friendship ended. “I heard you got a manager position. Congratulations.” I smile shyly. Sadly. Apologetically. Once upon a time, we would’ve celebrated this promotion with clove cigarettes by the pond in the woods. Now we’ve blocked each other on social media.

  She surveys my silent surrendering, and just like Dana, she’s the opposite of gloating. She looks mortified that her theories—the ones that ended our friendship—are coming to pass. Dana would rather be wrong than to say “I told you so, Charlotte.” And now I feel so guilty for ever abandoning her. She smiles tightly. “Thank you. And I heard you graduated college, got your teaching certification, and will be the PE coach over at McBain High this fall.”

  Whoa. Maybe she hasn’t blocked me. “I’m also the new track and field coach,” I boast, and for the first time in years, I genuinely smile at Dana. Although I always genuinely smile when discussing my new position starting in just a few weeks.

  Dana smiles. “Come on, let’s talk. Somewhere away from these windows.” She takes one last nervous glance outside before grabbing my wrist and pulling me toward concessions. Dana doesn�
��t want to see Ian any more than I do.

  She snatches a bottle of water from the counter and shoves it at me, dragging me down the hall, and oh, the perks of knowing the manager! Why couldn’t she have been manager and given me free drinks back when we were friends?

  I twist off the top and start chugging as she pulls me into Theater 4, and we trudge up the stairs and plop in the back row as a Quentin Tarantino preview roars on the screen. I set the empty bottle in the cup holder and count heads to see exactly how many people are going to hate me once Dana and I start talking.

  “Okay. What happened?” Dana folds her hands in her lap like an expectant psychiatrist.

  “I’m scared, Dana!” Receiving our first dirty looks from a couple a few rows ahead, I lower my voice. “I’m … I’m really scared. I don’t know what to do.”

  “What happened?” she repeats calmly, although I see her foot twitching as it dangles from her cross-legged position.

  I whisper Ian’s threats into her ear as Scarlett Johansson races cars and shoots chauvinistic men on the screen. I wonder if she can hear me over the screaming previews, but the way she’s wringing her hands tells me she can.

  “I knew this was coming. What are you going to do?” she asks.

  I square myself to her and grasp her hands, like we’re still friends who speak every day. “Give me your advice.”

  The light from the projection hovers over me, and I know Dana sees the tears in my eyes by the pitiful way her shoulders slump. She’s always been a sucker for my and Ian’s eyes, saying they’re the color of static electricity. She squeezes my hands before retreating hers. “You promise not to get mad?”

  I nod.

  “Okay,” she sighs. “I still think your brother’s a psycho and has potential to do dangerous things.” She blinks at me, a silent request to continue.

  I sit still, so she does. “I know you and Ian have this great relationship. I know what you guys have dealt with together. I know he’s your brother, your best friend, and even your parent for the last few years of your childhood. But something isn’t right, Charlotte. He’s … he’s losing his mind or something.”