Do Not Become Alarmed(41)

George had a beer in front of him, and Raúl had something that looked like a rum and Coke. Maria kept bringing them drinks. Fresh ones before the last ones were finished.

“Marcus,” Isabel said. “Get me one of those drinks.”

Marcus looked at her, surprised.

“The old ones,” she said. “They won’t notice.”

He hesitated.

She nodded at him. “Go on.”

So he sidled over and snagged a half-finished glass and a beer bottle. The brothers didn’t pay him any attention. Marcus moved toward the sink, as if he was just clearing the table. He checked that Maria wasn’t looking, then doubled back to the couch where Isabel sat. He sank down next to her, breathing hard.

“Good work,” she said, and took the cocktail and sipped. Even with the ice melted, it was sweet and strong.

Marcus brought the half-filled beer bottle tentatively to his mouth. He drank, and something crossed his face: not dislike, but surprise. Maybe concern. He shifted the front of his shorts with his free hand.

Isabel laughed. “I get that feeling, too.”

His cheeks flushed.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” she said.

She’d never talked about the feeling, that twinge of unexpected pleasure that came with the first sip of alcohol, the heat in her underwear. From listening to her friends talk, she didn’t think everyone had it. It was oddly comforting that Marcus did.

“They’re having a competition, for us,” she told him.

“They are?”

“We need George to win.” She wondered if they could help him cheat. “Do you play poker?”

Marcus shook his head.

June spotted the beer bottle in her brother’s hand. Her mouth dropped open. “Marcus!” she said.

“Shhh,” Isabel said. “It’s okay.”

Marcus put the bottle on the floor.

Isabel sipped her drink and watched the poker game. George still had the bigger pile of chips. Nothing happened for a while. The brothers played in silence. Maybe they were so absorbed that she could get upstairs to a computer and send a message.

They had finished another game when George got up and went to the bathroom on the other side of the kitchen. Raúl put his head down on the table to rest, like he was taking a nap in school. Isabel stood, with a moment’s light-headedness from the drink, and moved toward the stairs. June was hunched over the bunny. Penny and Sebastian were playing tic-tac-toe on the floor. Maria was rummaging in the refrigerator. Marcus saw her, of course, but she put her finger to her lips. Raúl didn’t look up. She climbed silently.

Upstairs, there was a door immediately on the right. Isabel turned the doorknob and it opened. Inside were two big computer monitors and an open laptop. She eased the door closed behind her. One of the monitors had a screen divided into six parts, with grainy black-and-white images in each box. She recognized a shot of the door they had come in, from outside. And one of the gate at the end of the driveway. A shot of the stables with the white horse. It wasn’t even that fancy a security system. Some of her friends had better ones.

She slid into the chair and tapped the laptop keyboard to wake it up. The screen asked for a password. She blew the air out of her cheeks. Her dad always wrote down his passwords. She opened the drawer in the desk. There was junk, paper clips and pens, and a yellow sticky note. It said “panocha” in handwritten letters. She thought of her own triangle of hair and she blushed, but she entered it as a password and it worked. She guessed it was Raúl’s password. That guy was a dick. She opened a browser window to message her brother.

The computer was slow and she was still waiting for it to open Facebook when she heard steps behind her on the stairs. Her heart started going twice its normal speed. She typed her login and password but then the door opened. She quit the browser before a hand grabbed her chair and swiveled it around. Raúl was standing behind her, leaning close. His hand was on the back of the chair, behind her towel-wrapped head.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

If she were a spy caught like this in a movie, she would kiss her enemy, to distract him. Then she would punch and kick and climb on his head to break his neck with her legs. But she didn’t know martial arts.

“You have to let us go,” she said.

“Do I?”

“Please,” she said.

A weird look had come into Raúl’s eyes. He wasn’t listening to her. He pulled the towel from her wet hair. She grabbed at it, but it dropped to the floor. He put a hand on her breast, through the white T-shirt, and she jumped.

“Please don’t,” she said.

“It’s okay.”

“Stop,” she said, pushing at his hand. “Stop!”

He pinned her arm to the chair and slid his free hand down over the T-shirt and moved the shorts aside. Then he slid a thumb inside her, as if investigating something. She tried to shove him away but he was so strong. His hand was locked over her pelvis. She couldn’t move him.

He lifted her out of the chair with one arm. He was so much stronger than she was. He kept his thumb inside her, fingers splayed across the front of her shorts. She felt frozen, paralyzed. Her throat constricted, and she couldn’t scream as he carried her down the hall. And if she did, what would the little kids do? Would Maria help? She felt like a bowling ball in his hand, with his thumb inside her.