Dead Apples

1- Prologue

My family's apple orchard died with my mother.

She was the one that cared for the orchard, harvested the apples, replenished the soil, fought off pests. It was like her third child, older than me and my brother. She took care of our acres of apple trees like it was her favorite thing to do, because it was her favorite thing to do. My father never really cared about the apples like she did. So when she died, so did her apples.

Now, we just have acres of land full of dead trees, dead dreams, and rotting apples. I hadn't been back into the trees since my mom had died when I was twelve. That is, until I was eighteen and my brother dragged me out there in the middle of the night, the night that he got arrested.

"Yaz!" My brother hissed my name in a loud whisper in an attempt to not wake our dad up just down the hall. When he saw my eyes open, he didn't waste any time. He was on the run from the cops and he didn't have long but I didn't know that yet. Grabbing my hand, he pulled me out of my bed. I felt incredibly startled by being yanked out of bed by my brother but when I saw his face, I could tell how alarmed he looked and so I stood up and when he started pulling me out of my room then down the hallway, I just trusted him.

"Robby, what's going on?" I whisper to him as we're going through the kitchen. He opens the back door from the kitchen and then we're outside. I'm wearing short shorts and a tank top, not something that I ever wear outside of my bedroom and it's chilly outside in the Iowan summer night.

He doesn't answer my question, he just turns to me and says, "Hurry, Yaz, you have to hurry."

And I do hurry. No questions asked. Starting now. With his hand still gripping my wrist, he starts sprinting into our backyard and then through one of the rows of the dead orchard. I try to keep up with him as he uses just the tiniest gleam of moonlight to maneuver through the evenly spaced trees planted in a neat grid. I trip over an old apple but Robby doesn't let up so I have to quickly find my footing again before he drags me to the ground.

"Rob, slow down," I plead. I mean, I'm still kind of asleep and he's way taller and faster than me. I'm struggling to keep up with him now and my foot hurts from the apple that I stepped on earlier.

He looks behind him, past me, to see how far away from the house that we are and eventually, he stops running and releases my wrist from his and we're both out of breath.

"We don't have a lot of time," He breathes out. "So you have to listen to me, okay? Listen really good."

"Well," I corrected him.

"Yasmin," He scolded me, using my real first name which really proved to me that he meant business. He never used my real first name.

"Okay, I'm listening," I relented and I tried not to look as terrified as I really am. I know that Robby tended to get himself into trouble and I was sure that this had something to do with one of his illegal adventures. In the dark, it's almost hard to see him but after my eyes have a moment to adjust, that's when I see the blood soaking on his gray shirt. I'm suddenly feeling more terrified than I was before. I knew that he wouldn't hurt me or anything but I was just afraid to hear what he'd done. Cupping a hand over my mouth, I started to sob hysterically.

"Everything is going to be alright," He assured me, putting a hand on my shoulder. "But you know that I've done a lot of bad things. This one is really bad."

"What did you do?" I choked out even though I didn't want to hear the answer.

"I didn't kill anybody," He said. I felt relieved. "I just need you to know that I love you. Alright? I love you so much. You're going to hear a lot of bad things about me but you need to know that I love you."

I could hear the sirens in the distance, probably on their way to our house to take away my brother. "Are you going to run?"

He shook his head at me. "No, I couldn't do that to you. I just needed to talk to you before they got me so I needed to buy just that much time. Yaz. You mean the world to me. You have to remember that."

I nodded but I was too stunned to say anything.

He squeezed my shoulder a little harder in his hand. "Tell me."

"I'll remember," I sniffled my promise to him, trying to comprehend what was going on, trying to breathe through my hysteria. The sirens were getting louder. Too close now to be going to any other house. Our house is too far away from any other house or building so they're definitely here for Robby. I stepped forward and hugged my brother because I didn't know what he did and I didn't know when the next time I could hug him would be. "I love you too, Robby, I don't want you to go."

"I'm so fucking sorry," He held me tightly against him as I cried like I was ten years old when in reality, I was almost nineteen. But if he really was going to jail, I had no idea how I was going to survive here on my own. Not just in our house with our distant, heartbroken father but in this small town where everybody knows everybody and it was suffocating. The only way that I made sense of it all was having Robby there to keep me sane, to laugh at this town with me because of how ridiculous all of the people were. He was my anchor to sanity.

"There's one more thing," Robby added, pulling out of our hug and then he grabbed something from his back pocket. It was a thick white envelope. I didn't want to know what was inside. "Hold on to this for me, okay?"

"What is it?" I asked him but I still took the envelope because I trusted him and the sirens got as loud as they could be, they had to be right in front of the house. Opening the envelope to answer that question by myself, I saw that it was a stack of money. Hundreds and fifties. I felt like I was going to vomit.

Again, Robby put a soothing hand on my shoulder. "Just hide it in your room or bury it out here or something, just keep it safe, okay? Yaz, you just have to trust me right now." Said my brother as he was covered in somebody else's blood. And I knew that it was crazy, but I did trust him.

There were people yelling now, I could hear them coming through the orchard in search of Robby. "I will. You have to go to them before they pull out their guns."

"You'll be okay," Robby assured me again, pulling me into one last hug. "Everything is going to be fine. You'll be okay. I swear to god, you know that I'll never let anything happen to you."

"I know."

"I love you," He told me again.

"I know," I repeated. "I love you too."

He kissed my forehead as a last goodbye and then he started walking back toward the house where the flashing lights and yelling voices were coming from. I saw the rays of flashlights coming from that direction but I couldn't see any people yet. Doing as he asked with the probably illegal money, I buried it in the yard by an apple tree and I marked that tree by putting a stick in the dirt sticking straight up. I'd come back the next day and put the money in a metal box so that it doesn't start decaying or weathering or whatever. The whole thing took longer than it should have because my hands were shaking and trembling from everything that was going on around me.

After the money is successfully buried, I start sprinting back toward the house. I didn't know why but I was convinced that maybe I could save him from the police. Even though he wasn't innocent, maybe I could convince them that he was. I needed him. They didn't understand.

Out front, I got to the house just in time to see them pushing Robby into the back of a cop car in handcuffs. Standing on the edge of the orchard, I collapsed to my knees and I started sobbing again. How could he do that to me? Just leave me here by myself like this?

Covered in blood, dirt, and tears, I watched the flashing lights take away my brother and my only hope at survival in this goddam town.