"Zoe," he said - a crisp stage whisper, eyes narrowed, beckoning with a series of twitchy finger bends. "C'mere, c'mere."
He turned without waiting to see if Zoe was so much as getting up from her seat.
That in itself was a further tell - she recognized it, and yet she still scanned him head to shoes in quick-flicking up-and-down double- and triple-takes as he headed up the stairs, back hunched and head ducked and hands shoved on into his pockets, elbows just-fanned.
Lucas hadn't tried to show her anything in quite some time.
Possibly years.
Sure felt like as much, at any rate.
And he hadn't been smiling as he beckoned.
This wasn't no trick.
In the instant before she stood, all the pale colors in her field of vision brightened when they imprinted on her brain. Sharpened. Made a just-short-of-harsh consistent ringing sound.
She wasn't just surprised - she was, albeit-tentatively, albeit-achingly excited.
She knew he'd been fixin' up something; there was just about one thing that could get him outta the house since some time in high school, and that was dump runs.
He enjoyed seeing trash pile up in the house - this she knew. After he'd already picked through old junk and worn-out bits and bobs, he'd be there tossing scraps and bones and bits of shell from supper or a Kleenex that'd been used for a dubious purpose, considering she hadn't seen him blow his nose beforehand, on top of a pile of other such things too flimsy or degradable or janky to use for arts and crafts, and then he'd grin like a squinting possum. Give her a look from the corner of his eyes that said "matter of time".
Hell - she swore to god he forced it sometimes, too. Had caught him at it at least twice. Stuffed spare bin liners with old rags and clothes he didn't want no more and stuff he reckoned she wasn't gonna miss, rooted to the bottom of the bin in the kitchen or the laundry room and snuck the filler bag underneath, covered it back up so it sure did look like the trash can was on the verge of overflowin'.
Her brother never could just ask for things.
Other times, Daddy snuck in promise of dump runs as bribes, for when he was headin' out into town proper.
Lucas didn't especially like that. He wasn't fond of being gamed - all-piss-and-vinegar minimal-bite contrarian to the core when it came to givin' any kind of authority the reaction it wanted. He flip-flopped between what he thought Daddy did it for, and thought both possible motives were stupid impositions: sometimes, that old man did it to make sure he got outta the house consistently enough, get some fresh air, and at those times, it was stupid and arbitrary that he did that, 'cause holing up in the attic whenever he goddamn could hadn't killed Lucas yet. Sometimes, fuckin' Jack-Ass was just doin' it so he could help with the shoppin' - haul hardware back into the car or whatever; wasn't about letting him scavenge for supplies.
Zoe knew both were kinda generally true, at the same time.
That said, as such, Lucas had a tendency to decline when Daddy went outta his way to put it on the table.
That hadn't happened once this past month.
Yeah, he'd groused and muffled snarls when he'd gotten out of his seat and slumped outta the living room to the garage, and flinched as if electrocuted when Daddy'd slapped him on the back, but he still had gotten up.
The trash had been fillin' up fast past few weeks, too.
No way he hadn't been stuffing it.
It wasn't like Mama hadn't noticed, 'cause of course she had. And of course, when she'd commented on it, he'd spoken up. "Just throwin' out some old shi - ...so - some old junk," he'd mumbled, and stiffly accepted the pleasantly-surprised thank-yous and laughing remarks about how it had been quite some time since she'd seen him clean.
That was 'cause he never did it. Lucas was a pack rat.
Zoe'd gone on all the dump runs, too - partly for the reason she usually did: to keep the mood even, to keep tension between Daddy and Lucas good and low, with Daddy often too softened-up to muster up the heat to be too abrasive with Lucas when she was around, and with her knowing better than anybody else in the house did how to reason with Lucas before he caved to the temptation to snip and start shit.
But also in no small part because he'd clearly needed things. He'd clearly been working on something.
If he was puttin' his pride aside in favor of puttin' up, instead, with ride after ride and trip after trip with that fuckin' bully of an old motherfucker - literally! then it surely had had to be something different. Even for him.
Important, in some sense. Despite it being him.
And she'd wanted to puzzle out what.
The only two ways to figure out whatever the hell Lucas was up to these days were either stumbling on a piece after he'd gotten done whipping it up or… just that. "Puzzling it out".
Fitting, with the guy's love of a good riddle.
Be it on those dump runs or simply seein' him at work at the table or counter or in front o' the TV in the late afternoon before dinner, neither Mom nor Dad would ever ask him what in the world he was even making. He'd given mono-to-disyllabic murmured answers to Daddy and attempted impatient and creaking-on-hinges explanations to Mama in the past before, back when they had been inclined to ask, but it'd still been all Greek to them; they no longer bothered. Askin' him was a no-go for her, too - it'd just get her a dead false rictus-smiling "Why do ya need to know…?" or "How 'bout you piss off?" or a whined "It's none a' your… business, Zoe! Leave me alone!"
No hints for no-body.
It was a shame, 'cause she'd thought, watching him collect his scrap, that this had been one of the times she could have used one. Whenever she did take a guess and subsequently did happen upon or manage to catch a glimpse of something Lucas had made, nine times outta ten the second part proved her guess wrong, but at least she had been able to guess.
This month, she hadn't had one idea what to make of the shit he'd gathered.
A gutted old TV with a cracked screen. Various metal boxes and panels - now, those could be for anything. A few pipes. A kids' water pistol - that one had thrown her in particular.
All toward something important.
"Wish somebody would throw away an ATM," Lucas had said breathily, climbing back into the car after dusting his hands off at the end of one of those scrounges.
Daddy had laughed and said that that would be a one-in-a-million find, all right. Lucas had glared at him as if disgusted.
She'd written it off as a joke much like their dad had, it seemed, instead of taking it as a clue.
She didn't dare assume that he was gonna just up and deliberately spoil the answer to one of his own riddles. And then she remembered that that had just been a game she was playing.
He wasn't spoiling nothing.
He was offering to share, with her, a secret.
...Lucas paused on the steps. Peered around his shoulder like some kinda cartoon alley-dog peekin' around a corner. Scrunching up its snout at the smell of trash.
"You wanna sit there all slack-jawed?" he said - in polar opposition to the look on his face, with a false-effusive flutiness. A jerk of his head up the stairs. "Or you wanna do as I said?"
She was used to the way he put things. Lucas was all about what he wanted - not in the remotest about manners. She only hesitated in getting out of her seat due to another moment of processing. Caught up to him at the base of the steps in an "indoor jog", ascended to a stop behind him with long steps.
Looked up at him unblinkingly.
Questioningly.
A moment of silence.
Before Lucas's eyes pressed narrow. He… huffed, face twitching and lips pullin' up just enough to show the briefest, tiniest, most half-assed flash of his teeth before he started striding on up again. She filed after him to their old room in the steps of a very-old, likewise, routine. He stopped in the corner, picked his old trophy-remote off the bureau, stared up hard-eyed into the open attic trapdoor.
Clicked the big red button. The ladder chnked down.
They filed up and onward - Lucas not lookin' back at her for a second, and her never taking her eyes off him or the space in front of him.
At the top, Lucas straightaway made a left turn to the attic's far end.
Zoe slowed. Processing again.
She already saw it.
The shine of a screen in some kind of big console.
Lucas snapped his fingers. "Hello?! 'S right here; hurry your ass up!"
He punctuated that with a bright-eyed grin.
Zoe took in a breath and held it for just one second, feeling that this thing had to be important, now, too, before she hustled after him.
As they both slowed to a stop in front of it, she sized it up. Many colors on the thing - it was colored with big, lumpy stickers and decals. She recognized the cracks on the screen - unmarked - and the lemon-lime-ade green of the kid's water pistol slotted into the front.
Pff… somethin' dryly amused vibrated in her chest; it was obvious now…!
Damn her.
His stance had rested and he had put on a fixed, lazy smirk by the time she sidled 'round to inspect the side of the machine, eyes fixed on her in their corners.
CarnEvil, said the decal on the side.
"An arcade machine," she said, blinking and balking and spinning to face him.
From a smirk back to a gawping grin, wide and toothy, standing a few inches taller.
She flinched on the THUMP as Lucas smacked something on the side. Fans whirred; the screen lit up in grays and whites of an opening movie and Zoe blinked rapidly again to get the goddamn stars out of her eyes in the dark.
He bit his lower lip and licked his upper around his teeth. Scrunched his nose, picked somethin' out of his pocket and slipped it into the coin slot - disappearing clinks - and slinkily got into position in front of the machine, shiftin' his weight one-two and stretchin' his legs to plant in a wide stance. Pulled out the gun. Squared his shoulders.
"How the hell did you build an arcade machine? "
Lucas scoffed. His tongue poked out again as he flicked the gun to the right and took a shot on a menu. A jester popped up on the screen. She was fully prepared to accept that she had been ignored when he nodded her way, a sec. Still smiling. "'S called an emulator, Zoe," he said. "You can play this shit on the computer."
A high-pitched oop! as the machine emanated a buzzing. Zoe tossed a look at the screen. A reticle flew every-which-scattered-way over the screen and pfeew-sounds popped as Lucas opened fire on a swarm of bugs.
Once they cleared, Lucas gave a gaaaasp of satisfaction.
He grinned at her again. His voice sizzled. "I just put together somethin' nicer to play it on. ... And - " He shrugged one shoulder. Tone chirpier. " - I didn't have to pay for anything but the decals!"
His face looked downright boyish for a whole second. His large blue eyes round, his smile pinning on up into 'em.
And then a voice came from a machine, and he grunted and grimaced and lifted the gun again, turning his eyes back up to the screen.
There was only one gun, Zoe ambiently registered more pointedly.
One gun, which Lucas was in the process of usin' to blast at a grinning face that kept on grinning even when it was nothing but blood and eyeballs and teeth.
Whoof.
When the enemy dropped, Lucas snickered. She looked back at him, somewhat attentive.
Pupils flicked her way, then backed onto the screen. His eyes narrowed.
His head began to move in a meandering shake. "Don't tell Mom and Dad I got this or you're gonna have a hard time sleepin' at night wonderin' where I hid the cottonmouth. Or spiders, or somethin'."
He squeaked, seized, and squinted harder as he opened fire on another enemy wave, trigger clickin' away.
Zoe looked from him to the show. Open and gray-blank.
She knew that wasn't an empty threat. Not a damn thing Lucas ever did seemed like that big a deal to him.
'Cept stuff like this.
But she wasn't thinkin' of that. Not even a reason to worry.
"Wouldn't dream of it," she said, contemplatively just-warm in the base of her throat.
She watched and listened as he hiccuped and hooted and hollered and hissed curses and clickclickclickclickclicked on that trigger, pretending that it felt like enough that he wanted her to see him happy.