[Hemsworth Brothers 01.0] The Slam Read online

  “Thank you,” Adelaide said simply. “I like to take my Porsche out onto the racetrack at least once a week. I just love the track, you know... how everything is amplified... the speed, the noise, the inertia, the body roll, pitch, yaw, everything. And nothing beats that feeling of my car slipping, gripping, stopping and moving in ways I’m just not used to.”

  Adelaide’s still an adrenaline junkie, I thought.

  “You drive a Porsche?” Edric couldn’t keep the surprise from his voice.

  “It’s a vintage 911.” She glanced at the rearview mirror, meeting Edric’s gaze briefly. “Jeff left it to me when he passed away.” There was a hint of sadness in her voice.

  A new silence settled in. “I’m sorry about your grandfather,” I said at last.

  Adelaide kept her eyes on the road and gave the smallest nod. Then she said nothing more of it. When we came to a stoplight, she applied the handbrake and shifted into neutral.

  “You don’t have to use the handbrake,” I informed her.

  Worry creased her brows. “But if someone rear-ends me and my foot gets knocked off the gas pedal, the car will go out of control.”

  I shrugged. “If there are stopped vehicles in front and behind, you won’t go very far if you’re rear-ended, so I wouldn’t bother.”

  She thought about this for a second. “Not using the handbrake would result in a failed driving test back home.”

  I shot her a quick sideways grin. “Do you always follow the rules?”

  “Always,” she deadpanned.

  “You know what?” Edric’s voice boomed from the backseat. “There’s a time and place to break the rules. It’s called college.”

  “What are the rules?” she asked.

  “The rules are...” Edric let out a large yawn. “There ain’t no rules.”

  Thirty minutes later he was fast asleep with his mouth open, snoring like a congested walrus. The lights caught the reflectors on the road as Adelaide drove up the long and windy street leading to our house.

  “Turn up there,” I said.

  The headlight beams lit the front of the house as she pulled into the driveway.

  Edric woke himself up with his own snoring. “We’re home,” he mumbled groggily.

  “We’re on a driveway,” Adelaide corrected. Then quickly, as if catching herself, she said, “Sorry, I should probably stop blurting out whatever I’m thinking.”

  Edric smiled politely, but he sent me a look as if to say, She’s a strange one.

  As she killed the engine, I reached forward and my hand brushed hers in the dark.

  “Eeeps!” she squeaked like an overwrought mouse.

  “The keys,” I said calmly. “I need my keys.”

  “Oh,” she said, her shoulders relaxing a little. “Sorry. I’m just a little tired and that makes me jittery sometimes.”

  “Hey, don’t worry,” Edric teased. “He won’t bite.”

  “Neither do I.” Adelaide bared her perfectly straight teeth. “Unless you ask me to.”

  Edric sent me another look that said, Should I fear for my life? Will she be wearing my skin tomorrow?

  Puzzled by his reaction, Adelaide flashed him another toothy grin, one just as menacing.

  Jingling the keys in my hand, I got out of the car, jogged down the flagstone path and unlocked the front door. As I switched the lights on and looked over my shoulder, I caught Adelaide taking in her surroundings. “Good gravy!” Her eyes swept through the wide expanse of the front hall. “This looks like Wayne Manor.”

  “Wayne Manor?” Edric said, dragging her suitcase across the foyer.

  “Stately Wayne Manor,” she added. “Where bachelor millionaire Bruce Wayne was able to give houseroom to his youthful ward, Dick Grayson, without attracting the attention of social services.”

  “Oh!” Edric said with a sudden flash of comprehension. “You mean Batman and Robin’s crib?”

  “Correct,” she murmured, her head rotating on a swivel. “How do you guys even afford this place?”

  “It’s called Mom and Dad.” Edric grinned broadly. “They help out with our tuition. And Camille helps out with our room and board. Actually,” he added, “this is Camille’s place.”

  “I see.” She worried her lower lip between her teeth. “So did Camille ask you to let me stay here?”

  “More like strong-armed,” I muttered under my breath.

  “More like insist,” Edric said diplomatically.

  She gave an apprehensive smile. “So you don’t have a problem with me staying here?”

  Instead of answering her question, I led her to the guest room, which also doubled as our home gym. “This will be your room,” I said. “Sorry, I didn’t have time to move all this crap out of your way. I only got Camille’s letter today.”

  “It’s okay.” She shrugged off her backpack. “There’s a bed and a desk. That’s sufficient.”

  In a sudden flash, the orange tabby cat hopped off the bed, sashayed over to Adelaide and arched its back, rubbing up against her ankle.

  “That’s Mimi,” I said. “She’s Edric’s cat. She likes to sleep in here sometimes.”

  “Hello there, kitty.” Adelaide reached down to stroke the feline’s head.

  The cat purred in response and nestled closer. Adelaide scratched her behind the ears and the cat rolled onto her back, spreading her legs wide open.

  “Look!” Adelaide cried with delight. “She’s presenting herself!”

  “That cat’s a slore!” Edric shouted from the living room.

  “A slore?” She tilted her head slightly. “What does that mean?”

  Edric yelled again, “It means she’s a slut and a whore!”

  “My brother has supersonic hearing,” I said without expression. “He can hear everything.”

  “Oh,” she said, giving the cat a belly rub. “I see.” Then she spoke to the cat in confidence, her voice dropping to a smoky whisper. “Don’t you listen to your Uncle Edric, Mimi.” The cat purred in response and she went on, “I think you’re a charming pussy who’s terribly misunderstood.”

  While Adelaide and the slore got acquainted, I began moving the barbells and weight bench out of her room and into mine.

  It didn’t take me long and when I was done, I said, “I’ll dismantle the pull-up bar tomorrow.” She nodded, and after a pause, I added, “Can I get you anything?”

  “Just water. I need to stay hydrated. Then I just want to take a shower and go right to bed. I have to factor in one day of recovery for every time zone crossed for my body to adjust to the local time. Which means it’s going to take me thirteen days to fully recover from my jetlag. I need as much sleep as I can get.”

  “Right.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “Your freshman orientation starts tomorrow. I’ll give you a ride to campus. Try and be ready by nine.”

  “I’ll be ready,” she said. “Oh wait! I need to call Camille. Just to let her know that I made it here and I’m doing fine.”

  “Sure. Why don’t you take some time to get settled in? I’ll give her a call later.”

  “Not much later, right?” Her words were awkward and stilted. “I must get to bed soon to get over my—”

  “Your jetlag,” I finished. “Right. I’m aware of that.”

  “Terrific.” She got on her knees, unzipped her backpack, and started unpacking.

  I paused at the doorway. “The bathroom is at the end of the hallway. And the towels are in that closet to your right.”

  “Thanks,” she said without looking up.

  Scrubbing my face, I headed for the kitchen, grabbed a beer out of the fridge, and joined Edric in the living room.

  He spoke first. “Adelaide’s pretty cool... but damn, she talks like she’s eighteen going on eighty.”

  “I know.” I stopped when I heard the bathroom door open, then close. When the shower came on, I continued, “She was always like that. It’s like she skipped childhood entirely and went straight to adulthood.”

 
“Humph,” Edric grunted. “I’m guessing she didn’t have many friends.”

  Dropping onto the sofa with a loud sigh, I cracked the tab and took a long pull from my beer. “We were her only friends.”

  “Apparently, you were her titty buddy.” He gave a snort of laughter. “What was that all about?”

  Shaking my head, I reclined on the sofa, thinking back to when I’d first met Adelaide.

  “We’re bosom buddies.” She’d smiled at me. “It is a literal translation from Latin—sodalis pectoris. And it means friend of the soul or bosom, because the Romans believed that the heart and the chest are the seat of the soul.”

  I’d just stared at her as if she had been speaking Swahili. Adelaide was only five at the time, and I was seven.

  “Bosom buddies?” I’d said to her. “Sure, whatever.” A pause. “Can I call you Addy?”

  “No. My name is Adelaide. I think I have every right to be called by my chosen name. How would you like it if I called you End instead of Ender?”

  “Adelaide,” I’d said through gritted teeth. “I can already tell you’re twenty types of trouble.”

  “Ender,” she’d replied sweetly. “I can already tell we’re gonna be bosom buddies.”

  In a way, she had been right. We ended up being inseparable by the end of the summer, exploring the outback and roaming the desert until dusk.

  Edric’s voice cut into my thoughts. “I remember meeting her when Camille and Jeff had started dating. Adelaide was always around and the three of us... we formed a wolf pack, didn’t we?”

  “Yeah.” I took another long pull from my beer. “We did.”

  Adelaide was one of the boys. One of us.

  Sturdy, tough, and tanned as a nut from spending all her time outdoors, she roughhoused with Edric in the mud and wrestled in the dirt with me, never crying or complaining when she got cuts and scrapes. Skinned knees, bumps and bruises—that was typical for Adelaide. And if she had dirt stains on her shorts and mud on her face, it was a good day for her.

  After a pause, Edric said, “Did you know she had Asperger’s back then?”

  “Nah.” I shook my head. “I didn’t even know what Asperger’s was.”

  I just knew she was hard-wired differently from the rest of us. When we played a game of Simon Says, Adelaide would say, “Simon says jump!” and we did. Seconds later, she’d yell, “Simon didn’t say land. You’re all out!”

  She wasn’t being sarcastic. She was dead serious.

  Another time I told her I was going to catch a bus to the store, and she said, “Make sure you have a really big net.”

  Adelaide took things literally—very literally—and now it all started to make sense.

  In time, Edric spoke into the silence. “I wonder if she’s expecting to tag along with us. Fuck, I hope not. Natasha’s gonna flip.”

  “I don’t know what she’s expecting.” I tipped the last of my beer above my mouth, draining it dry. “Natasha coming over tonight?”

  “Yeah.” He held back a groan. “Much later, though.”

  “Your girl’s the jealous type, eh?”

  His expression grew remote. “She’s mental. Yesterday she looked at the calendar on my phone and wanted to know who April was.”

  I laughed. “That’s ’cause you have an ex named January Moore.”

  With a clipped sigh, Edric picked up the remote and flicked on the TV, effectively ending that conversation. “Just in time,” he said as the US Open men’s singles finals started—Kei Nishikori vs Marin Cilic.

  “Unreal, isn’t it?” I commented.

  “I know.” He stretched out on the couch, propping his feet on the coffee table. “You can say that again.”

  The last thirty-eight grand slam finals had all featured at least one member of the Big Four—Fed, Rafa, Djoko, and Murray. Earlier this summer, the odds on Nishikori or Cilic winning the title was 250/1. Yet here they were, playing at the finals.

  “You know what, brotha?” Edric remarked. “That could’ve easily been us. Easily.”

  “Don’t remind me.” I frowned, keeping my eyes glued to the screen. “Now shut the hell up so I can watch the match.”

  By the middle of the second set, the match was essentially over. Cilic had completely crushed his opponent. I reached for my phone and called Camille.

  She answered on the third ring. “Ender! Please tell me you have Adelaide.”

  “Grandmother, please tell me why you didn’t just email her itinerary and let me know she was gonna be staying with us? Better yet, why didn’t you just pick up the phone and call me?”

  “Ender, please don’t use that word.” And by ‘word’ I knew she meant ‘grandmother.’ “I really don’t like it,” she said. “It has so many connotations of old age and decrepitude.”

  “To me it has so many connotations of fun, love, and warmth.”

  “Ah, there you go buttering me up, young man.” She chuckled. “And I didn’t call to let you know because I didn’t want to give you a chance to say no.”

  Typical. There was a fine line between getting people to agree and tricking them into agreeing with your wishes, and Camille had always toed that line. And if that didn’t work, she’d nag a person into a yes or strong-arm them until they saw things differently.

  There was no point in arguing with my grandmother. “How are you doing, Camille?”

  “I’m fantastic. All this modern medicine is keeping me alive and healthy, and I’m spending away any chance of you and Edric having a decent inheritance. Hah!”

  I smiled. “Are you ever going to come back to the states? Or is Australia your permanent home now?”

  “Oh, I love it here, Ender. The people here took an arid rock and turned it into an island paradise.”

  “Really,” I said flatly. “I always thought Australians lived in two or three cities on an otherwise uninhabitable wasteland. Enjoy the giant-ass spiders and venomous snakes in the desert of death.”

  “Don’t be silly, Ender!” she chided. “You boys used to love it out in the bush! You and Adelaide—the two of you would spend hours in that desert of death, messing around with all those snakes and spiders. I’m surprised either of you made it to adulthood.”

  “I know.” I laughed. “We did. I’m just joshin’ witcha.”

  “Now tell me,” she said in a serious tone. “How is my darling Adelaide?”

  “Why don’t you ask her yourself?” I said, getting to my feet.

  Jogging down the hallway, I knocked lightly on her door. “Adelaide?”

  There was no answer.

  Turning the knob, I peered inside and found her fast asleep. Quietly, I shut the door and stalked back to the living room. “Sorry, Camille. She’s already hit the sack. Why don’t I call you again tomorrow and you can talk to her?”

  “Ender, the girl needs her own phone. Do me a favor and take her to the AT&T store. Get her set up with an iPhone.”

  “Sure,” I said easily.

  “Good,” she said. “Good. Good. Now tell me, what have you boys been up to?”

  “The usual,” I replied. “Got a tournament next week.”

  “Edric, too?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I bet Adelaide could break you on the tennis court.”

  I smirked. “I highly doubt that.”

  “Oh, yes she can! She’s very athletic, you know. That girl’s been playing competitive tennis for eight years; she was the number one singles player on her high school varsity team.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  “What about volleyball?”

  “What about volleyball?” Camille asked.

  “Is she a beach volleyball player?”

  “No.” Camille sounded confused. “Why?”

  “Never mind,” I said, closing my eyes. “Forget I asked.”

  There goes my fantasy.

  “Well,” Camille said thoughtfully. “Adelaide has excellent ball-handling skills and she doesn’t mind bei
ng on her knees. She owns a pair of kneepads and she loves to get sweaty, so I’m sure she’d be great at beach volleyball.”

  I pressed my fingers against my eyes, suppressing a grin. Camille didn’t even know she was dropping sexual innuendos left, right, and center.

  “Adelaide’s great at everything she applies herself to—sports, studies, you name it!” she went on. “That girl pushes herself a lot. With her, it’s all or nothing. She has a strong will and a limitless determination to achieve what she sets her mind on. And when she sets her mind on tennis, you better watch out.”

  “Interesting,” I said. “I didn’t know she played tennis.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “Camille,” I said dryly. “It’s been ten years since I’ve seen her, and back then she didn’t play any tennis. What else can you tell me about her?”

  “Well...” she hedged. “I know she lacks self-awareness and she can be too honest at times, almost to a fault, but try and understand that with Adelaide, getting things right isn’t about being right all the time or being a know-it-all. It’s more about having things as they should be.”

  “Is that because of her... erm, condition?”

  “It’s her black-and-white thinking. Her brain’s just wired differently than us neurotypicals. She takes mostly everything at face value.”

  “Neurotypicals?”

  “Or NT for short. That’s how Adelaide relates to you in her mind. It’s what Aspies call normal people.”

  “Are you sure you don’t have Asperger’s?” I said in a teasing voice. “You’re not exactly normal, Camille.”

  She laughed. “What’s normal anyway? That’s just a setting on my washing machine. Totally mundane if you ask me!”

  “You and Jeff practically raised Adelaide.” I weighed my words before continuing. “Was it ever a challenge? I knew a guy in high school with Asperger’s and he—”

  “Enderson James Hemsworth,” she cut me off. Camille only used my full name when I was in trouble. “If you’ve met one person with Asperger’s, then you’ve met one person with Asperger’s. They’re all different in their own ways.”

  Okay. But Camille hadn’t exactly answered my question. Before I could press her further, she said, “I’ve gotta go, love. I have to pick up some lunch from Maccas soon. And then Vickie and I are going to sit around the bush telly and sip some wine.”