Read Online Silent Alarm by Jennifer Banash - Free Book Online Page A

wonder what he’s doing right now, if he’s thinking about me or if he just can’t think about anything at all, if he’s pecking out notes at the piano, finding solace there in the music the way we always did, or if he’s gone as mute as I am right now. Beethoven deaf at the keyboard.
    Restless, I get up and walk down the hall, the muffled noises of my parents moving around in their bedroom echoing in the hallway, my father’s voice and my mother’s sobs, a sound that tears at my heart. I picture the tattered muscle in my chest unraveling further with every heartbeat. Hopelessly frayed.
    Luke’s door is ajar, moonlight peeking from inside in a strip of silver that falls across my feet when I push it all the way open. The room is eerily quiet. Clothes strewn across the floor, the pictures from the summer we spent at the lake with my grandparents in frames on top of his dresser. Maps of the universe on the ceiling, along with the glow-in-the-dark stars I stuck there when I was nine. A periodic table of the elements hanging over his desk, the earth broken into molecules. I switch on the desk lamp, sit down on the bed, pick up his favorite blue sweatshirt, hold it to my nose, and close my eyes. Dirt, shampoo, sweat, and that maple-syrup smell that seemed to seep from his pores when it had been a few days between showers. I hold the sweatshirt in my lap, petting it distractedly, hugging the soft, worn fabric to my stomach, aching all the time now.
    When I open my eyes, Luke is sitting at his desk, his hands resting lightly on the varnished surface as if any moment he’ll open his books and start reading. When I got home yesterday, I vaguely remember seeing the police combing through Luke’s room, and my mother told me later that they’d confiscated his laptop, his journals, and anything else they considered relevant, which was pretty much everything.
    He’s wearing the same clothes he had on yesterday, the last time I saw him—jeans and a black V-neck sweater, black jacket, heavy boots on his feet. His hair shines in the lamplight, lit with gold. He raises one eyebrow, blinking slowly, as if to say,
What are you looking at?
His expression is slightly blurred, as if I’m looking at him through a foggy window. I rub my eyes hard with my fists, but when I look back, he’s still there, patiently watching me.
    â€œHow many times have I told you to stay out of my room?” he asks, his voice lower in pitch than I remember. I shake my head in disbelief. It’s barely been forty-eight hours, and I’m already forgetting his voice. What will I lose tomorrow? How much will be taken from me before this is all over? Which, of course, implies that it might be, someday. Over, that is. As he looks at me, waiting for me to speak, he doesn’t seem angry the way he always used to be whenever I’d barge into his space without knocking, just vaguely amused and so Luke-like, so present and absolutely
there
that my mouth opens, but nothing comes out.
    You can’t come back, Luke. You’re dead.
    â€œAlways looking for a way to get in here and bug me,” he snorts. “You’re so predictable. Even now.”
    He opens a drawer, pulls out a piece of paper and a pen, and starts scribbling. I can see the hair glistening on his arms where he’s pushed the sleeves up. When I find my voice again, it comes out in a whisper, like we’re in church, someplace sacred, my throat raw.
    â€œI wish I could say the same for you.”
    Luke stops writing and looks over at me, his expression unreadable. “You shouldn’t be in here now,” he says as if it’s just another regular school night and I’m pestering him when he needs to get his homework done.
    â€œWhy not? It’s not really your room anymore. Is it?”
    I’m staring at my dead brother and trying to keep myself from losing what’s left of my mind. He was always someone I