Once, he had looked at a book on child psychology at the library in Chino because -- while he may not have believed in a helping hand -- self-help still seemed like a safe bet.
There he had discovered the phrase "magical thinking," how kids like him thought everything was their fault because they weren't "sophisticated" enough to know better. But what if it wasn't magical thinking, what if it was true?
Everywhere he was, there was trouble. That wasn't magical, that was a provable fact. If he hadn't come to Newport, who knew what might have been avoided -- Caleb's death, Kirsten's drinking, Sandy's midlife crisis? They were all, to one extent or another, traceable to him.
One of the first serious talks he'd had with Kirsten had come when she had entered the pool house one afternoon after school and told him Rosa had requested that he stop doing his own laundry.
"It's no big deal," he'd said. "I've been doing it for a long time."
Kirsten had looked serious, and sad, as though knowing how to run a spin cycle was somehow permanently damaging. And maybe it would be, to her, to anyone who'd grown up with hot and cold running servants.
"Ryan," she'd said in a quiet voice, and sat down on the edge of his bed, gesturing him to sit beside him. He had, reluctantly, and she'd picked up his hand in hers -- the first time he could remember her touching him voluntarily.
"I know that we can't fix your past -- we can't and you wouldn't want us to. But this time -- here in this house -- this is supposed to let you be a kid again. Or be a kid for the first time, at least for a little while. Let us take care of things for a while."
There had been a promise implicit in that, one that he hadn't quite believed, even if he'd let Rosa take over his daily chores. But when he returned to the Cohens the past fall -- after a summer of actually being an adult, not just playing at it -- he'd embraced it wholeheartedly. Let down his guard. And now look where he was.
He'd started doing his own laundry again last night -- That Night. Sandy had brought them home from the police station, and Seth was with Summer in his room. Sandy was on the phone with the hospital, trying to get word on Trey's condition, when Ryan realized that he was covered with his brother's blood.
He'd stripped off right there in the kitchen, down to his underpants ("Don't say 'underpants,' Ryan," Kirsten's voice singsonged in his head, and when had her voice replaced Eva's, replaced Dawn's, as the voice of mother in his head?), and thrown his clothes into the washer. He'd wanted to turn the water on as hot as he could stand, but that would have to wait for his shower. He hadn't been fooling anyone. He wasn't a kid, he wasn't an adult, he was an idiot -- a culpable, vulnerable idiot -- but even he knew that blood only came out in cold water.
He'd tried to be a kid -- tried to be a Newport kid, even -- studying hard and dating a normal, smart girl; staying out of fights and going to the Bait Shop and joining the Comic Book Club. He'd let down his guard, and been seduced by the promise of a carefree year. And had, in return, gotten blindsided.
The old Ryan would never have let Trey within a hundred feet of Newport, the old Ryan would have picked up the signs that Kirsten was drowning her sorrows. The old Ryan would have been too busy fighting and fucking and just holding it together to worry about what had gone down between his brother and some skinny rich girl he'd once dated.
He left his clothes in the washer and went off to stand under the scalding water of the shower for as long as he could bear.
This morning, after Sandy had left for the hospital ("Let me go, first, Ryan, and talk to your brother. Rachel's going to represent him, and I want to introduce them.") and Seth had left to take Summer to Marissa's, Rosa had come to the pool house with his neatly folded clothes.
He and Rosa had always had a warm relationship. Once she'd been convinced he wasn't going to murder them all in their beds, she'd seen through him at once and recognized the barrio boy within. She brought him leftover tamales, and caught him up on the same telenovelas that Eva had once watched, and talked to him in the rapid, familiar Spanish of home. She shared her agua frecsa with him, and when she learned his favorite flavors, he started finding bottles tucked into the pool house refrigerator.
He had protested, but she fixed him in a glare, and said in careful, deliberate English, "Don't make me feel like a poor old woman," and so he drank the strawberry sodas, the guava and the lime, and only said "thank you" when a new assortment arrived.
She laid his clothes on a chair, and he wanted to tell her to take them -- to burn them -- because, Cohen's generosity or no, he was never going to wear them again. She didn't glance in his direction, just set about opening the blinds, one after the other, taking deliberate care to make sure they were all even.
"I know you're awake," she said, "so don't try to hide."
He stuck a reluctant head up from under the covers, and she came and sat beside him on the bed without a second thought. Rosa, unlike Kirsten, had never had a problem invading his personal space.
She took a deep breath and looked at him seriously, and he was suddenly, incongruously, reminded of that conversation so long ago.
"I heard, mijo, about what happened, with your brother," she started, and then switched from Spanish as she searched for the right words, "And with your -- Kirsten."
Ryan started to turn away from her, but she put a hand on his shoulder and he froze.
"I'm not going to tell you none of this is your fault. You know that you should not have gone to that apartment, feeling so angry. But brothers fight like brothers, since Cain and Abel, and that is where it should have stayed. The gun was not yours, mijo. That choice was not yours."
"I went over there to hurt him," Ryan blurted, suddenly, and Rosa nodded, as though he'd confirmed something for her.
"I know you did. All year, I see you -- playing at being a little boy. You have a man's temper, querido, but you acted like that little boy last night. Estupido.
Ryan had never felt more relieved in his life. Someone, finally, recognized his fault, his sin. He bent his head as though in confession, but she forced his chin up with a gentle hand.
"Why did you hurt him?"
"He hurt Marissa. He did it to -- to get to me."
He'd spoken it out loud. He'd broken the Atwood code. What happened in the family stayed in the family. But, Rosa was family, too. The Cohens were family. He was too tired to remember anymore which lines he was allowed to cross now.
She patted his cheek gently.
"You did a bad thing, but he did a worse one. So isn't he guilty, too?" she asked.
He looked up, looked her in the eye for the first time.
"I think that he was leaving. I think -- I should have just let him go," he confessed.
"You never let your family go. You know that. Even when they're gone, they follow you."
Ryan looked at the folded clothes, piled so neatly on the chair. Forever, he would see each and every drop of Trey's blood on them. Even if he threw them away. Even if he burned them. He would see Dawn's shadow over Kirsten's angry words to him that day in the kitchen, feel his father's fist behind Sandy's comforting hand on his shaking shoulders that night.
His family had followed him here, to Newport, to taint the Cohens, to fracture their family He had meant to try being a boy here; instead, he destroyed the safe childhoods of Seth, of Summer and of Marissa. He was the cancer, but he could also be the cure.
He stood up, suddenly, swaying as a wave of pain and dizziness overtook him. Rosa grabbed his arm and steered him back towards the bed, angrily.
"What are you doing?" she demanded, as she pushed back down onto the soft sheets that still smelled like the Cohen's detergent, like Trey's faint cologne. How long would those scents remain mingled -- in his sheets, in his clothes, in his memories?
That Night, it was a blur to him, a series of overexposed snapshots in his mind, but he remembered Trey's weight against him on the floor. He remembered that -- under the smell of gunsmoke -- he had smelled stale cigarettes and cheap booze and old pot and bloodbloodblood, but also picante sauce and organic toothpaste and the Cohen's expensive lavender detergent. Trey had smelled like home, and home. And so had Ryan.
"I have to go," he said, but his voice faltered, betrayed him. The doctors had said his throat was damaged. Everything was damaged.
Rosa was standing now, staring down at him with her hands on her hips and a frown on her face.
"Don't you listen? You can't run. It always follows."
"I did this. I brought -- this -- here," he choked, and she shook her head at him again.
"You think this is all you? You think, if you were home, the Cohens would be okay, your brother would be okay?" she asked, and he nodded, despite himself.
She held him in bed with a look before she went over to the minibar and returned a moment later with a cold soda -- guava -- and a glass of ice.
"Drink this. It will make your voice better," she said. He took them from her, but fumbled with the bottle cap, and moments later took them back from his shaking hands, opening them for him without another word.
"Your problem," she continued, as if she had never stopped, "Is that you only see what was. You have to learn to look around you."
Ryan wanted to protest, but the cool soda felt so good against his throat that he let her continue.
He saw everything -- that had always been his curse, and his gift. He knew that his father hadn't gotten their new television when it "fell off the back of a truck." He always knew the moment, the hour, when Dawn would lose her latest tenuous grip on sobriety. He knew when the boy friend of the week was going to hit him when he opened the door after school, and when he was going to let him pass by the living room without a single word.
And he knew Trey. Really knew him. Newport was torture for him -- all that acting rehabilitated, only to find out that even Newport bars were too good for him, while his kid brother tied his tie for him and worried that he would somehow rub the Chino right back into his skin.
Trey had hurt Marissa, but Ryan -- Ryan had hurt Trey, had kept right on hurting him up to the bitter end. Ryan did the worse thing -- no matter what Rosa said -- but he didn't know how to explain that to her -- to anyone.
"I know what you're thinking. You're a smart boy -- a watcher. But you see like this," she said, holding her hand flat in front of his face, palm up, "And the world is like this." She put her two hands together to form a rough globe.
"You think -- 'If only I didn't bring my brother here,' but he's a grown man, and he didn't have to take advantage of his hermanito. You think 'If only I didn't go to Chino with Theresita,' Seth woulddn't have gone, Ms. Kirsten, she wouldn't be gone.' You don't see how Seth was going, anyway, so unhappy. How without you, Mr. Sandy, Ms. Kirsten, they might not even have noticed him gone. You think 'I bring my troubles to Newport,' " she said, and reached over to refill his glass, "Not, 'everyone in Newport has troubles.' "
"But," he finally croaked, but Rosa shushed him by raising his refilled glass to his lips.
He wanted to say no to her. Despite the pain he was in, part of him was itching to protest, to say no, to flee into the morning sunshine and find -- what, exactly? He used to pray to leave Chino behind, but when his prayers had been answered, he'd turned right around and returned.
Back in Chino, he hadn't known how to be Ryan Atwood anymore -- how to be Theresa's boyfriend and Dawn's no-good kid and the runt of the construction crew. He hadn't been very good at it in Newport, either, where he couldn't be a Cohen or a Nichol or even Trey's baby brother anymore. He had a feeling that Ryan Atwood might be gone forever, leaving behind the shell that Marissa had rescued from his one-time protector That Night.
There was nowhere, now, that he could go. Nowhere he could lose himself, or find himself. Wherever he went, he missed something, something vital.
"Do you think you're el Dios or el Diablo?" she demanded when he finished drinking at last. Ryan nearly choked on his last swallow.
"What? God or the Devil? You think I'm the Devil?" he whispered.
She snorted and looked him over for a minute before finding an unbruised spot on his shoulder to slap lightly.
"You think you made all this happen -- who else can do that? Only God, or the Devil. So which is it?"
Ryan's head hurt and the morning sunshine wasn't helping, He stared at her silhouette, backlit in front of him, baffled.
"See. You're just a boy, mijo. A good boy who made a bad choice. Somehow, I don't think it's a lesson you'll learn twice," she said softly.
Suddenly, he thought of Trey's bloody lip -- and the shock on his face when the bullet tore through his shoulder. He thought of the way the cops wouldn't put him in the ambulance without handcuffs attaching him to the gurney. He thought of Seth, louder and calmer than he'd ever seen, protesting until Ryan had been spared the same treatment. He thought of Marissa sobbing and Summer saying, fiercely, over and over, "She wants a lawyer."
He thought of Sandy, breaking into manly, choking sobs when as he touched Ryan's battered throat, never saying a word, of Julie's awkward hug as she thanked him for trying to protect Marissa, of Jimmy calling Trey filthy names as he demanded to press charges.
He wanted to go back, to that kid in the corner of the Chino Hills Library branch, and tell him not to bother. That no matter what books he read, what spells he cast, he was always going to end up in the same place. Atwood luck, Atwood genes, Atwood temper -- whatever it was -- it was always going to lead to Trey and Ryan locked in each other's arms, fighting a battle with no end and no beginning.
But Trey had smelled like Newport and Ryan had smelled like Chino, and someone had tried to stop them -- even if it was with a gun. Trey was in the prison ward of Hoag, but his brother's guardian was trying to keep him out of jail less than 24 hours after he'd tried to kill his baby brother by choking the very breath from his body in a fit of panic and resentment and rage.
And Ryan was sitting in a pool house in Newport beach, with the woman who cleaned up after his second alcoholic mother's mess, who brought him Goya Guava soda from the old neighborhood, who ironed his $100 jeans and scolded him in Spanish and washed the blood from the clothes he was wearing the night he tried to kill his brother for almost raping his girlfriend.
Maybe, just maybe, this was what passed for an Atwood happy ending. Maybe leaving Chino meant that no one ended up raped, or dead, or gone into the bottle forever. Maybe it meant being able to apologize in person -- someday -- and to find the bits of the young boys that they had both thought they had left behind. Maybe it meant crossing all the lines, but still somehow not breaking the code. Maybe it meant that family followed everywhere, but maybe it meant that family was Cohens and Atwoods and Roberts and Coopers and Rosas, and Theresas, too.
Ryan hadn't replied, but Rosa must have seen something in his eyes. She leaned over and brushed a kiss across his forehead.
"Sleep, mijo. I'll wake you in time for lunch with Seth and Mr. Sandy," she said.
Ryan nodded, and laid back on his pillows that smelled like home, and home. He was already drifting when he heard the soft click of the pool house doors, so he didn't notice until later that Rosa had taken his clean clothes with her when she'd gone.