Birds of a Feather

I felt like I was stuck in a memory gone wrong. It had gone awfully, awfully wrong. Last summer it was the smell of tanning oil and now it smelt like her daddy's cigarettes. I remember walking down the beach looking for shops open and hiring. They were sitting on their wrap around porch, legs dangling off the side. They were together and they were happy. Or at least it seamed that way. Now they couldn't be father apart.

The sun was blazing hot just like last summer. Beating down on me as I climbed the back stairs to their house. The back door was ajar so I continued inside. All the pictures were gone, all the furniture too. The blinds were shut and the lights were off. It was unnaturally dark for their house. Life had been sucked right out of the house. Out of the entire town.

The broken-in rugs were gone leaving outlines of where they had been. Dust covered the railing and the banister. Everything was all wrong. There was no family running around. No big meals cooking in the kitchen. Jesse was in the only room with its door shut. It was their room, only fitting that she had locked herself inside.

I knocked on the door and called out to her but she didn't answer. I couldn't hear anything but I could see thin layers of smoke curling out of the bottom of the door. I threw my shoulder against the door jam and it popped open with little resistance.

The air swirled out of the room past me. Jesse sat in a bare room with a bottle of Jack and at least five packs of unopened cigarettes. A pile of ash at her feet. She had changed so much since last year.

"Shut the door you're letting all of the smoke out." Her eyes were dead and her hair a mess. Her voice was totally jagged. All I could see was a small, lonely girl crying out for help.

"Are you looking for a good time or what?" I looked up from the endless line of ocean to the house. It was grand even from behind. A large wrap around porch on both levels and lifted up from the sand by six foot stilts. Two girls were sitting on the bottom porch giggling to each other in the sweltering heat. They were nearly identical. They both had dark brown hair that hung carelessly over their shoulders. Big doe eyes that crinkled up at the edges from laughing so hard. Slender bodies that looked ridiculously good in their string bikinis and daisy dukes. But there was just something about the girl on the left. Something I couldn't put my finger on that made her more interesting. Each aspect of them was the same their voices their lips, everything. But that something was so hard to think of and it made her just that little bit more than the other.

"Depends on what you have to offer." I called back, jokingly at first but I would no doubt have agreed to do anything these girls asked.

"Come up here and let's talk a little." The southern twang in their voices floated easily in the air. Sweet and soothing, like they would bake me cookies while calling me y'all all day long.

"You're not from around these parts are you?"

"No Ma'am I'm not."

"So where are you from?"

"Vermont."

"Tyler we have a Yankee on our hands not don't we." They were both jumping out of their skin with delight.

"Daddy will not be pleased with this." Tyler looked me up and down and clicked her tongue against her teeth.

"What won't daddy be pleased with?" A very tall very muscly man with the same brown hair and the same doe eyes walked out of the house onto the porch. He placed his hands on each of his daughters shoulders and looked at me with a big smile.

"Daddy we've found a Yankee!" Whatever was going to happen would be none of my doing. Would I get chased off with a 12 gauge or would I be welcomed with open arms. I had never been down here and I didn't want to spend my first summer at the beach nursing gunshot wounds.

"Well well well." He climbed down the set of stairs and walked straight up to me. Looked me dead in the eyes and stuck out his hand."How do you do? I'm Daren."

"Pleasure to meet you, sir. I'm Matthew."

"Well Matthew, you have a nice firm hand shake and you look young and able. Tell me do you have a job already?"

"No sir I don't."

"Would you like one?"

"Yes sir I would."

I shut the door like she had asked me to. She quickly lit another cigarette and took a deep drag. Before exhaling she took a swig of Jack Daniels and laid back on the floor.

"What are you doing?"

"It's called a hot box. I'm not leaving this room until I am deader than a door nail."

"There are easier ways to kill yourself you know."

"Yessir I do. But this gives me plenty of time to think about how much I hate that dumb dead bitch." She spat in the pile of her ash and took another deep drag. I had never seen anyone look so disheveled in my entire life.

It was an easy job. Daren was aging so he had me fix things around the house, mow the lawn, really anything that needed to be done. The pay was good, the hours were good and his daughters were kind. They would bring me lunch and some of their mothers too sweet iced tea. I figured this had to be the life.

I learned that Daren has inherited this house from his father, and was responsible for keeping the doors to the beyond grand home open all summer long for aunts, and cousins, and distant relatives to visit.

On days in between extended family visits, it would just be Daren, his wife, Jenn, and their two twin daughters Tyler and Jesse, in the very large house. It seemed like the walls would try to swallow them but their constant laughter would fight back.

If I was painting the baseboards in one of the many guest rooms, I would be able to heard Tyler and Jesse making some sort of mischief down the hall. I could almost always hear Jenn singing in the kitchen and Daren making the same old cooking jokes as the day before.

They were the picture of perfect.

I waited for Jesse to say more but she just kept staring, and drinking, and smoking.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Do you wanna fuck off?" I cringed at her harsh words still standing behind her.

I sat down next to her and brushed my hand against her hair, she pulled away quickly. "Don't fucking touch me."

"Jesse," My hand hung in the air where her head had been, the skin suddenly cold. I couldn't remember a time that she had pulled away from me before.

"Don't." Her voice cracked and I could feel the impending tears. She took another swig from the bottle and I reached out for her again.

She didn't fight this time. She let me pull her into my chest and rake my fingers through her hair. Her sobs were silent but I could feel the shaking in her body against mine.