The Little Brother by Victoria Patterson Page B

parked at the curb and flinching, wanting it to be quieter. I noticed only a few cars on the road, headlights lighting up the darkness.
    I couldn’t find a place to park—if you’ve been to Balboa Island in the summer, you know what I mean—but I finally got a spot three blocks from the house. Running down the street in my bare feet, my teeth rattling and my sweatshirt flapping behind me, I had a strong urge to turn back around.
    But I thought about Sara crying and kept going.
    She was waiting for me outside the house near the patio, behind a tree, and she came out when she saw me, her hands wrapped around her chest, trembling. She wore a thin pale blue dress—at first I thought it a nightgown—and no shoes.
    â€œJesus,” she said, “hurry, hurry,” and she took me to the side of the house, a dark, small space, where something lay wrapped in a pink towel on the ground.
    â€œHurry,” she said, the tears coming, “hurry, hurry. Fuck, shit, I know they’re coming. Hurry, Even. What do I do? What do I do? They’ll be back for it,” and she unearthed Gabe’s Samsung video camera from beneath the towel, flipped the little screen open, pressed Play, and handed it to me.
    While I watched she spoke, frantic and scared, in one long, jumbled explanation, no longer crying, and not looking at the screen with me, instead looking all around her. “They showed up at about two this morning, your brother and this other guy, and they kept talking about what was on their video camera, sort of like bragging about it, but they wouldn’t say what was on there. Then Joe and this other guy said, ‘Let’s see.’ But they wouldn’t let them watch. Stupid shits. But then when they left the party, they forgot their camera, stupid fucking asses, dumb shits forgot it. Left it right on the couch. So everyone’s asleep, the party’s finally over, there’s, like, three people passed out on the floor near the couch, but I’m still wired. Did a line, can’t sleep, can’t tell Joe, he thinks I quit coke, so I open the thing and look at it, and oh my fucking god, what do I do? What is that, Even? Oh my god! What do I do, what do I do?”
    What I saw and heard on that small flip screen I still unwillingly see and hear, when I’m lying in bed or at the grocery store, or just taking a walk, whether my eyes are closed or not, because it’s imprinted inside me, and it can never go away.

15.
    JULY 6
    W HILE I WATCHED the video, Sara watched the street, and then she grabbed my arm and said, “Oh, shit, it’s them, they’re coming!”
    We stood frozen, staring down the street. A car’s headlights swooped past us in a left turn, and then the car disappeared.
    â€œWhat do we do?” she asked, taking the camera from me and turning it off. She wrapped it in the towel like a baby.
    â€œI don’t know,” I said. I felt numb, as if I were under anesthesia. “Why’d you call me?” I said, looking at her. My voice sounded whiny.
    She stared at me, some indistinct emotion coupled with a fearful awareness intensifying and connecting us, and then she said with a trace of an apology, “What was I supposed to do, Even?”
    A long silence, and then we heard the hint of another car in the distance, and she said, “Hide! Go across the street, behind that bush,” and she ran with the camera wrapped in the towel to her beat-up Toyota Tercel, the car engine noise coming closer, its headlights turning down the street.
    I did what she said and watched as she set the towel on the backseat, shut her car door, and slipped back inside the house like a ghost.
    This time it was Gabe and Kevin in Gabe’s truck, and they screeched to an illegal park in the driveway, half-extended into the street. Their car doors slammed, and they ran up to the front door.
    My heart banged against my throat, thinking of Sara inside