The Breakers Series: Books 1-3 Read online

  Shawn nodded. "And tell him to stop letting his cat piss my bed."

  Ness rolled his eyes. It was idle talk. Shawn hadn't been able to keep hold of his own house; he'd never be able to afford rent. As for Mom, she'd been grumbling for years, and every time she said her piece, Ness went back to his games and she went back to hers. The matter dropped as swiftly as the water glasses Volt nudged off the table.

  Shawn sopped up his yolks with charred toast, kissed their mom, grinned at Ness, and walked out the door. His truck rumbled to life.

  Ness returned to his computer. Shawn returned hours later with a new gig. That night, instead of driving off to the Plant or Blue Mondays or one of the other bars where he tried to pick up disinterested college girls, he went to the WinCo and came back with a thirty-pack of Natty, which he took to the porch with his pack of Winstons. He was still out there drinking, smoke swirling into the cold mountain air, when Ness went outside to call in Volt.

  "You're gonna learn, Nestor," Shawn smiled from his folding camp chair, one beer in hand, another tucked into the cup holder built into the chair's arm.

  "What are you even doing?" Ness said.

  "A favor. For you. The best one anybody ever done you."

  "Trying to get me to die under a bridge, that's a favor? Then what kind of Hallmark card will you have to buy me if I take your shotgun to your face?"

  Shawn leaned forward and shook his head. His expression was perfectly sober except for his eyes, which swam as unsteadily as a fish Ness would soon have to scoop from the bottom of the tank.

  "You got to learn to take care of yourself, bro," he said. "One day, Mom won't be there. I won't be there. Then what?"

  "I'll do better as soon as the market rebounds," Ness said. "Anyway, they don't just let people starve."

  "Foodstamps? A Hook doesn't take fuckin' foodstamps."

  "Mom did after Dad died."

  Shawn crumpled his beer and chucked it at Ness' head. Ness ducked and the can soared past, spraying beer, and dented the trailer's siding. "Don't you dare compare yourself to Mom. She's never done less than everything she could. All you do is jerk off to elves in chainmail bikinis."

  The night smelled like wood smoke. Volt rushed in from the weeds. Ness bent to scoop her up and she vaulted to his shoulder.

  Shawn cracked a beer with a hiss. "Get a job, man. It isn't that hard."

  Ness went back to their room, put in his earbuds, and curled under his sheet. Shawn didn't understand. Ness didn't have any proper college. He'd managed an AA, but when he'd looked into applying to the state university in town, the numbers didn't add up. Even living as a commuter student, he couldn't afford the tuition. So what was he supposed to do? Get a job at the Subway? Toasting sandwiches for drunk frat boys wasn't a career.

  But it would pretty much have to be something in customer service and Ness just wouldn't fit. When one of his neighbors said hello, his only response was to smile. He didn't get how strangers held conversations—what were you supposed to talk about? Yet he was supposed to deal with a constant stream of them eight hours a day, five days a week? The idea horrified him worse than if he were to lift a spoonful of Lucky Charms and find a wolf spider swimming in the marshmallows. And the meds only helped so much.

  Anyway, the bus didn't come out to the hills. He'd have to get a driver's license and an old beater to drive. A degree he couldn't afford, a license for a car he didn't have, a hunt for a job he didn't want, the strangers he couldn't speak to—the whole thing overwhelmed him, made him as itchy as if he'd dived into a lake of hair. So he stayed at home, stuck in his online world. His mom had learned to stop complaining.

  Even so, he didn't like that he could barely pay for his own food. He didn't like feeling so incapable. At times, he felt like he'd been born in the worst possible point in history. In an earlier era he could have sold his ingenuity to the wealthy, finding a patron among the court or the merchants to take care of the quotidian details of life that overwhelmed him so easily, leaving him free to experiment and innovate. Meanwhile, in a later time, it would all be automated, computerized. He could work from home without ever leaving his laptop. Take classes, too. Deal with all the bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo. Everything handled remotely, cleanly, stress-free, on his schedule. It wasn't far-fetched at all. It would happen within a generation.

  In the meantime, he was stuck in a time he didn't belong in. Even so, he'd found a way to be happy, in his way.

  Until Shawn had come home.

  * * *

  A week later, Shawn walked through the front door, sweaty, begrimed, and cobwebbed from squirming around in some professor's crawlspace, and thunked a wad of cash onto the table. He fanned it out and whistled, a high-pitched blast meant to call in the dogs.

  "Cold cash," he said. "So when does Ness move out?"

  Ness closed the fridge. Their mom leaned out of her chair and limped to the table. She fixed her reading glasses to her nose and poked the wad with her index finger, sliding one of the bills from the pile.

  "If I didn't know better, I'd say this was legal tender."

  Shawn folded his lower lip between his teeth and smiled, showing his canines. "I'd say it's March rent."

  She removed her glasses, tucked her chin, and gazed at Ness. "Looks like you get to find yourself a job."

  "Mom," he said.

  "Tomorrow."

  "You know no one's going to hire me."

  She rolled her eyes. "McDonald's hires retards. You can't handle a retard's job?"

  "I can't talk to people, Mom. What am I supposed to do?"

  "Walk through the door and ask for an application. You need me to drive you?"

  Ness blinked at the linoleum. "This isn't fair."

  "Fair?" She planted her palms on the table and leaned over. The wooden legs squeaked on the slick, dirty floor. "You know what isn't fair? You expecting me to feed you until the day I'm feeding worms instead."

  Shawn didn't say a word. He didn't have to. Ness went outside to call for Volt and so they wouldn't see him cry.

  The next morning, his mom made him hashbrowns and coffee. He dressed in his collared shirt and his black shoes and put on deodorant and combed his hair. Shawn was already at work.

  At the door, she smiled, eyes crinkling. "Good luck, Ness."

  "Thanks." He walked down the hill out of the trailer park and took Rodeo Drive (pronounced not like the famous Los Angeles street, but like the popular bullriding and roping event) through the subdivision to the highway. There, instead of waiting for the bus by I-95, he doubled back through the vacant lots and hiked over the mountain to the Rogers' farm. Widget barked from the porch, but nobody answered the door.

  He wandered around the fields, scaring baby grasshoppers. He was missing a guild raid. He should have brought his laptop to Tim's, but his mom would have asked too many questions. In the afternoon, he walked back to the highway in case they were watching, then doubled back to the trailer.

  They were waiting for him at the table. His mom grinned. "Well?"

  Ness headed for the bathroom. "It went good."

  "Where's your applications?" Shawn called.

  "I dropped them off already."

  "You filled out that many on the spot?"

  "I didn't want to have to take the bus again." Ness closed the bathroom door. Footsteps creaked down the hall, following him.

  "How'd you get them your ID?" Shawn said though the door.

  "I'm in the bathroom!"

  "I mean, you left your wallet on the desk."

  Ness flushed and took a long time washing his hands. He opened the door. His mom stood outside, arms crossed over her chest.

  "Did you even look?" she said.

  A blush flooded his face. "I made a list of where I want to apply. I'll do the actual applying tomorrow."

  "Goddamn right you will. Because I'm going to drive to every business in town, and if you don't walk out the door with an application fluttering in your hand, I'm going to drag you back in by the ear.
"

  "You can't do that."

  She laughed and glared down the hall. "The free ride just crashed into a wall. You come with me tomorrow, or I call the police and tell them I got a trespasser in my house."

  He stared numbly. "I need to go clean my aquariums."

  He didn't—the only algae on the walls was in the crab tank, which he hadn't cleaned in a while because removing the lid from the mesh was a hassle—but he needed to be with his fish. He dropped a crab pellet into the tank. It blooped into the gravel and began spitting tiny grains of feed into the water. Ideally, the tank would be self-sustaining soon. That was the concept: to form a functional ecosystem. He'd already managed it in one tank, where the sunlight fed the algae, the algae fed the snails, and the snails fed the puffer. Supposedly, the crabs could consist solely on the waste of the tiger barbs they shared their tank with, but he wanted to be certain they'd adjusted to the environment before he took them off their pellets.

  His heartbeat slowed to normal. Tending to his tanks always calmed him. He could found them, tweak them, perfect them. Raise them from rocks and water into tiny closed worlds. If he did it right, he could become a watchmaker god, setting his creations in action, then leaving them to grow and flourish on their own.

  That night, Shawn went to a bar for the first time in a week. To celebrate, no doubt. While he was gone, Ness put his pillow in the litterbox, sifted it with a handful of litter, and placed Volt in its center. She pawed, squatted, and peed.

  He had too much coffee in the morning. His mom beckoned him out to the old Subaru. He prayed it wouldn't start. She took him to the Burger King, the Taco John's, the Jack in the Box, where she bought him a bacon double cheeseburger. The parking lot smelled like fry grease. He crossed the lot to the strip mall and picked up applications from the UPS Store and the shoe store and the Papa Murphy's. Back at the car, his mom made him go back out and get papers from the tanning salon, too. After the Office Depot and the Albertsons, she even drove him over the hill south of town to the Plant, the bar where Shawn spent so much of his money on the red mixed drinks they served in oversized mason jars. By daylight, the wooden floors were filthy, scarred in thin stripes by the too-high heels of drunken girls.

  At last, they drove home. From the bedroom window, Ness heard the tinny sound of a woman orgasming through computer speakers. Shawn shut it down by the time their mom unlocked the front door.

  He nodded at the papers rolled in Ness' hands. "Nice haul."

  Ness brushed past his shoulder. The bedroom smelled like lavender air freshener, Winstons, semen, and burnt fireworks. Shawn's bed had been stripped bare of sheets and pillows. He smiled when he thought Ness wasn't looking.

  At bedtime, Ness called for Volt for thirty minutes, staring into the darkness every time the cold north wind stirred the weeds. His heart grew tighter and tighter.

  He closed the door. Mom glanced over from her computer, where she was breaking blocks. "She'll come back in the morning."

  "She never stays out."

  "She'll be back."

  Ness knew better. He closed his fists to control the trembling. In the bedroom, Shawn lay shirtless on his mattress, freshly laundered sheets draped across his waist. Pistols gleamed from the pages of the glossy magazine spread over his knees. A shotgun stood propped in the corner.

  Ness reached for it. "Did you shoot my cat?"

  2

  When Tristan Carter told her parents she intended to move back in after graduation, they exchanged one look and laughed.

  Tristan set her fork into her risotto al funghi. "I hope that's sympathy laughter."

  Her father smiled his indulgently bemused smile. Tristan had seen that smile often, back when she'd been small enough to lurk in his office without causing embarrassment to those who came to see him. He donned it whenever a member of his management approached for a raise without bringing the data to back it up.

  "Guess again," he said.

  "I'm about to graduate."

  "The defining feature of a graduate is his or her degree," her father said. He owned the Redding Marriott. When she'd been accepted to Berkeley five years ago, a different smile had warred with a scowl for his face: he loved the prestige, but hated the students. "They typically employ this degree to get themselves employed."

  "I've looked."

  "Look harder."

  "Dad." She looked to her mom for help, but her mom regarded her with lifted eyebrows, a sweating glass of pinot gris paused halfway to her lips. Those eyebrows were as slim and perfect as ever. She needed them to be for the realty signs all across town, but she hardly needed to pluck; she was in her mid-40s, but still had the ability to make Tristan feel as dull as sand-worn glass. At Tristan's elbow, Alden dropped a wadded-up marble of bread into her water. "Dad, I know you know about the economy."

  He pushed his frameless glasses up his nose. "And I know you are two months away from a double major at Berkeley. Anyone who can't get a job with a double major from Berkeley is unfit to operate her own fork."

  "You don't think I'm trying?"

  "I think you're trying to move home."

  "Right, that's always been my dream," she said. "To live with my parents forever. To be the Cheetos-stained belle of the shut-in's ball."

  Her mom set down her wine glass. "Isn't this something you should have been working on since the start of the year?"

  Tristan poked an unfamiliar species of mushroom half-submerged in the creamy risotto. "Right now you have '08 grads who are still working internships. Unpaid. It's not like you guys had it. When you stepped off campus and the firm threw a net over you and hauled you off to your brand-new job."

  Her dad laughed. "When I was your age, I worked in a Sears shelving blenders."

  "And that's why you sent me to college? To shelve blenders?"

  He smiled angrily. "Can I still tell you to go to your room? Honey, am I allowed to banish her?"

  Her mom tipped back her chin and considered Tristan. "I think a child who wants to live with their parents—even a child who can legally vote and enlist and drink all our wine—remains legally and eminently banishable."

  Tristan spooned up the wad of bread Alden had dropped in her glass, slipped it under the table, and splashed it into her brother's lap. "This is my future we're ha ha-ing about."

  Her dad sawed the fat from his pork. "Well, you sound like you want your future to look a lot like your past."

  "I feel like it would be easier for me to find the kind of job I went to school to get when I'm not busy flipping burgers all day just so I can scrape by in a one-room apartment with a communal toilet shared by the whippit-heads down the hall."

  "Whippit-heads?" her mom said.

  "So you want us to continue supporting you," her dad said, "for an additional and indefinite length of time."

  Tristan drank around the crumbs floating on her water. "Well, when you put it like that, it just sounds disgraceful."

  "Tell you what. You want to move back home, you have to be our maid."

  "And chauffeur," her mom said. "I hardly have time to keep up with Alden's schedule these days."

  "Make that our maid/chauffeur/nanny."

  "Wow," Tristan said. "Your terms are almost as generous as the firms who want me to work as an unpaid receptionist for six months before deciding to keep me on for six more unpaid months."

  "Would you rather flip burgers?"

  "When am I supposed to have time to look for a job when I'm acting as chief steward of Carter Manor?"

  "Your father and I both have jobs," her mom said. "We still manage to keep the house looking just mildly nuked."

  Her dad dabbed his mouth with his napkins. "That's the offer. Take it, or start memorizing the Taco Bell menu."

  Tristan's risotto had begun to look positively gruelish. "I don't think this is especially fair."

  "Alden has his kung fu lessons tomorrow," her mom smiled. "Why don't you drive him there and then start bitching about how tough your life is?"


  Tristan decided to leave it at that. After dinner, she found four texts waiting: three from Pete, one from Laura. She replied to Laura, who was busy that night, but was free for drinks tomorrow. By the time their conversation ended, Pete had sent a fourth message. Tristan ignored it. It was her spring break. She was supposed to be enjoying herself. Instead, she was back in her middling mountainous hometown, two hundred miles north of the Bay Area, and her only options for company were a younger brother who was already off with his online shooter and a boyfriend she had no intention of speaking to any time soon.

  She told her parents she was going to see Laura at the bar, then took her hand-me-down Lexus to the lake up past the mountain road. It was a shitty drive, gravelly and far too dark, and she could never quite shake the dread of running into a bear or a bearded killer, but the pines were black, the stars were bright, and the waters were calm. She squelched down the shore, small round stones grinding under her shoes.

  She hadn't known what to expect from her folks, not really. She'd hoped they'd say yes, no questions asked, and that would be the end of it. Graduation had come out of nowhere, looming like the Titanic's last date. Months ago, she'd applied for many, many dream jobs—the ones her music degree might conceivably qualify her for, from whom she'd heard back exactly nothing—and shied away from the communications-centric ones, largely from fear she might actually land one. More recently, though, she'd been applying for anything and everything that hadn't sounded obviously god-awful. She had been offered internships and the promise of return calls that never came.

  She'd begun to doubt she could even find a nightmare job, at least in time to start paying rent by the end of school. And quite frankly—although it would sound horribly bitchy to speak aloud to friends like Laura who had been working since high school—she resented the very idea of having to apply as a dental receptionist or a server or whatever. If that was all she could do, why had she worked so hard in high school to attend a good college? Why had she studied so hard at said college? What was the fucking point?

  Especially when her parents were more than well off enough to go on paying for a few extra groceries and gallons of gas while she lived at home and searched for the job she'd spent the last eight years working toward. It wasn't like she felt entitled to that support, exactly. Her parents had already done more than enough for her. But if they did just a little more, at the cost of three, maybe four hundred dollars a month, they could spare her years of misery.