Strawberries & Cigarettes

Chapter Nine

            “Moet.”

            The pale-haired girl freezes, looks up from her bag that she was shuffling through, and widens her eyes in shock at the figure standing before her.

            “Oh. Hello, Quinn.” Regardless of her somewhat awkward feelings around the gruff, brown-eyed boy, she felt a bit happy at seeing that he was alright. Feeling a small smile forming on her face, she glances at Quinn’s hulking figure that stood a bit hunched over with his hands in his pockets and those big, brown eyes focused on the ground. As if startled by the cheerfulness in her tone, Quinn’s head snaps up and he looks her up and down for a moment and then shakes his head. Leaning in closer to her, Moet catches a whiff of something that smelled like the crisp scent of grass.

            Without a word, Quinn reaches out, wraps his hand around Moet’s upper arm, and starts dragging her towards the direction of the parking lot.

            “What are you--” Moet starts to ask.

            Quinn shrugs, releases her arm, and unlocks the doors to his car. “Just thought we’d go get lunch. And besides,” his expression grows dark. “I needed to talk to you about something.”

            Moet’s own expression grows dark as understanding floods her brain. She wordlessly climbs into the passenger seat of his car and fastens her seat belt. He does the same, starts the car, and the two of them head off.

            “What would you like, dear?” A matronly woman named Teresa asks Moet.

            Looking down, Moet quickly scans the menu for anything low-calorie. She had to watch what she ate now. Unfortunately, the restaurant favored greasy, flavorful foods. Lifting her head back up, she replies, “I’ll just have water.” As if suddenly rebelling against her, Moet’s stomach chose that exact moment to grumble obnoxiously loud. Her cheeks burn red in embarrassment as Quinn raises an eyebrow at her. He murmurs his order to Teresa and turns back to Moet once the waitress had left.

            “I know you know where Dakota is.”

            Shocked, Moet lifts her round, hazel eyes to meet his and stammers, “W-what?”

            Quinn didn’t look angry. He didn’t even look mildly annoyed. Instead, he just looked… blank. “I’m not stupid, Moet. I can tell when you lie to me. Just… tell her that I love her. If after that, she tells me to leave her alone, I will,” he mumbles and looks away.

            Suddenly, Moet felt the urge to cry.

            She felt so terrible for keeping this from him. All he wanted was to know that Dakota was alive and well. Plus, something was eating her up inside about keeping this secret. Besides, Quinn already knew—what harm would there be in telling him the details?

            Drawing in a quick breath, Moet says, “I don’t know exactly where she’s living. But she’s been visiting me at night recently.”

            Quinn’s eyes snap back to hers with sudden interest. “So she’s alright?”

            “Yes,” Moet says. “But… I haven’t spoken to her in a while.”

            “Why?”

            “We… we got into a fight.”

            A ghost of a smirk tugs at the corner of Quinn’s lips. “Can’t be too serious… you two are the closest pair of siblings I’ve ever seen.”

            “Yeah…” Moet trails off. Should she tell him? Would it worry him even more? Oh, but keeping this secret was killing her inside! She needed to tell someone now! Before she could burst, Quinn intercepts.

            “So, what was it about?”

            Even though the feeling never really went away, all of a sudden, the need to cry became ten times more intense. She didn’t know what was wrong with her. “S-she lied to me.”

            Quinn’s eyebrows rise. “Oh… well, that’s not too bad. Siblings lie to each other all the time.”

            Burning hazel eyes glare into warm, brown ones. “Not us. Never us.” The words were spoken with an intensity that startled even Quinn. Then, Moet’s voice softens into a broken whisper. “The thing is… she’s doing something dangerous. And I’m really, really scared for her.”

            “What? What is she doing?” Concern molded a hard edge into his tone of voice.

            “She’s… selling her body for drugs.” The words disgusted her. It felt like an imaginary coat of slime slicked over her tongue when the words left her mouth.

            “No. No, she would never do that.” His outright denial didn’t startle Moet. She knew he held extreme faith in her older sister. “You and I both know her. And she would never in a million years do that.” Apparently, the words disgusted him too for a scowl materialized on his face towards the end of his sentence.

            “I know she wouldn’t, but she didn’t deny it when I confronted her.” The picture of Dakota’s sad, sad smile entered Moet’s mind again. She furiously tried to shove the image from her brain, but it wouldn’t go. Desperate, her eyes darted across the table for anything to arrange, anything to control the thoughts invading her mind. Spotting a set of silverware, she took a napkin and polished each fork, spoon, and knife, then set them down in order of shortest to tallest. Then, she rearranged them by sharpness. Then lastly, as she felt the thoughts slowly fading from her mind, she shuffled them into order of usage. Spoon first, fork next, then knife.

Quinn watches the whole thing with a furrowed brow. This was new to him. Moet had never shown any obsessive-compulsive tendencies before. His eyes dart to her wrists and he notices that they looked bonier than usual. An over-sized sweater concealed the rest of her body to his scrutiny. “Hey… are you alright?”

            “What?” Moet looks up, startled. “I’m fine… why?”

            Yes… something was wrong. Her cheekbones stood out a bit more than usual, and her eyes looked as if they took up more room on her face. He shook off the thoughts as paranoia and murmurs, “No reason.”

            At last their food arrived, and as Quinn takes a bite out of his hamburger, he notices how Moet stares hungrily at his plate and twirls the straw to her glass of water in a nervous, twitchy gesture.

            Quinn pushes his plate towards her. “Eat,” he commands.

            “Huh?” Her eyes take a bit of time to unfocus on the plate of food and refocus on the teenage boy in front of her.

            “Eat,” he repeats.

            She agressively shakes her head. “No… I can’t. I’m full.”

            “No, you’re not.” Quinn blatantly states. “Eat,” he commands a bit more forcefully this time.

            “No.” Moet nearly shouts. Feeling the eyes of the other customers on her, she rubs her eyes in a frustrated gesture and climbs out of the booth to head towards the parking lot.

            Yes. Something was terribly wrong.