Delinquents (Dusty #2)

by Mary Elizabeth Sarah Elizabeth

  The second those boys are out the door, this place will be a war zone.

  “Bye, Mr. and Mrs. Castor,” Oliver offers politely.

  “Goodbye,” Tommy replies in a hollow tone.

  Becka comes out of the bathroom with puffy eyes as the front door closes, and she sits beside me with her phone in her hand. She doesn’t ask about Smitty or explain why it looks like she’s been crying.

  “Petey swears he didn’t know where Thomas was,” my best girl explains. She pushes damp hair behind her ear. “I don’t know if I believe him.”

  While I keep half of my life concealed from her, I’ve never once contemplated that Becka might keep secrets from me, too. She doesn’t cry. Not often. Never in front of the boys. But five minutes on the phone with Petey, and Rebecka returns having bared her soul to someone other than me.

  Studying the tattered ends of my hoodie, I brush my fingertip back and forth over frayed cotton to keep from looking at the girl sitting next to me. Her right arm lightly touches mine, and the almost non-existent contact makes me want to push myself up against the wall to put space between us.

  From my peripheral vision, I see Becka sit up straight and wipe her eyes on the sleeve of her sweater, packing up the vulnerability she gave my boy’s best friend behind closed doors.

  As much as she feels like betrayal to me, the pull on my heart from the troublemaker downstairs trumps.

  Love is picking and choosing.

  And I’ve already chosen him.

  My relationship with everyone besides Thomas has an expiration date.

  Including my friendship with Rebecka.

  I’ve put my entire life and everything in it on the line, and when my secret with Dusty is out, I’ll be the liar and backstabber. But he’ll get to keep them all, because no matter what, Becka will always be his sister, and Tommy and Lucas will always be his parents.

  Resentful doesn’t begin to describe what I feel.

  “Are you crying?” Rebecka asks. Her tone is almost wary.

  “No. I just yawned.” I shake my head and smile.

  Without warning, the fighting starts.

  “Get up,” Lucas orders. His anger echoes off the walls.

  In one swift motion, Lucas reaches for Thomas by the front of his shirt and jerks him up from the couch. As if his son isn’t over six feet tall, he shoves Dusty back, knocking him into the end table, bumping everything on its surface. Love’s foot gets tangled in a white lamp cord, and when Luke shoves Thomas a second time, it crashes and shatters against the floor.

  Father and son crush glass beneath their shoes as Dusty retreats and Lucas advances.

  “You got something to say?”

  He pushes Thomas back again, and this time he almost falls. Struggling for his footing, my boy, rain-soaked and lit, catches his balance by grabbing the staircase banister before his dad shoves him into the wall. It feels like the entire house shakes with the impact.

  Unable to help myself, I cry out.

  “Lucas, the girls!” Tommy calls out, stepping into view.

  Despite his wife’s pleas, Lucas doesn’t back down. He presses his forearm into Dusty’s chest, giving his kid no place to go.

  I hold my unsteady hands over my mouth to keep from crying out, and Becka grabs onto my arm.

  “Do you have any fucking idea—” His voice breaks, but his authority is iron-like.

  Thomas sniffs.

  Lucas takes a step back from his only son, but points his finger in his face. “You disgust me.” I almost expect him to spit at Thomas’ feet.

  “Where were you?” Tommy asks, sounding small in this house full of hostility.

  “Gone. I don’t know,” Thomas answers, straightening out his shirt. He isn’t as cocky as he was before. “I lost track of time.”

  “Not good enough!” his mother yells. “I was afraid you were—”

  Thomas scoffs. “What? Dead? Don't be dramatic.”

  “Did you forget who I am?” Lucas asks. His hands are in fists again. “What I do?”

  Dusty sniffs again.

  Lucas scoffs. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice? Did you think you’d walk in here and I wouldn’t know you’re dirty?”

  My boy lowers his eyes.

  “I've dealt with the weed and the drinking, but coke? Are you fucking stupid?”

  “It's not a big deal, Dad,” Thomas replies. He sounds bored and tired and uninterested. “My phone died, and I lost track of time.”

  “You’re grounded.” Lucas sounds blank, unsure of his own conclusion, like he doesn’t know what to do. He defends for a living; he doesn't know what to do when intimidation doesn’t get the job done.

  But he’s grounded?

  Thomas should have been grounded years ago when he started ditching school and missing curfew. Luke and Tommy should have put Dusty on restriction when he started getting into the liquor cabinet or when they found his bag of pot.

  They shouldn’t ground him for coming home high on cocaine.

  They should intervene.

  But the Castors have never gotten this part right.

  Thomas laughs. “You can’t ground me. I’m almost eighteen.”

  “You're seventeen for the next four weeks. No car, no phone—nothing.” Lucas runs his hand through his hair.

  “Fine.” Thomas gives in. He drops his cell phone, his keys, and his wallet to the floor and starts climbing the stairs.

  For the first time since he walked through the door, I get a good look at trouble. Beginning to dry, his hair sticks to his forehead, and his gray shirt is darker in some spots and not others. He’s noticeably paler than he was the last time I saw him. As my heart races, our eyes meet, and his are nothing less than disturbingly dark.

  He stops his ascent. “What?”

  Rebecka gets up and goes to her room. The walls rock again as she slams the door.

  A contradiction to everything, he smiles at me. I don’t know if he expected me to welcome him home with open arms and a soft heart, but it’s not happening. Standing up, I turn and follow Becka’s steps—only I don't slam the door.

  He doesn’t get my anger.

  The one who ran away deserves nothing more than my silence.

  Becka’s in front of her stereo, scrolling through her iPod, distracted by these worries. Chewing on her thumbnail, she absentmindedly bites away chipped nail polish and peels away cuticle and skin until she bleeds.

  “Shoot,” my friend mumbles, sucking the bead of blood.

  I walk over and circle my arms around her stomach from behind and lay my forehead on her shoulder. “I'm sorry he did this.”

  “Me, too,” she answers.

  After Becka chooses a song, and the stereo begins to play a slow melody and soft-spoken lyrics, contradiction strikes again from down the hall.

  Rebecka walks out of my arms as the uproar of Thomas destroying his room vibrates through the wall. More glass shatters, and the sound of a blunt object hammered against the wall over and over sounds as if the house will collapse.

  Lucas and Tommy rush up the stairs.

  “What’s happening?” I take a slow step forward toward the door where Becka stands.

  She opens it as her parents sprint by, Tommy behind Luke.

  “Let me in, Dusty.” Once disgusted, Lucas sounds nothing less than frightened for his boy. He tries the handle, but the door is locked. He tries knocking, but his son isn’t listening.

  So he breaks it down.

  Becka and I move into the hallway as the frame splinters and the door opens.

  “Get out! Get the fuck out,” Thomas yells. Another break. Another crash.

  I start the short walk I usually experience in secret toward love’s room, determined to do something, but Rebecka jerks me back by my hoodie. It’s a sudden reminder that it’s not my place to do something for Thomas. I’m only supposed to be his little sister’s best friend.

  “Stay with me,” she whispers, hiding behind my body.

  My mouth goe
s dry, and pent up anxiety tightens my throat. I tug at the neck of my sweater, helpless and hopeless, unable to do more than stand back and listen while the boy who made it a rule that I have to smile whenever he is around makes it near impossible.

  “Dusty, don’t!” Tommy yells.

  Becka and I both cower as his computer chair comes flying out of the wrecked doorway. It hits the wall and shatters, destroying plastic and metal and paint and plaster.

  Followed by Thomas’ body-rocking cries, desperate and throaty, the next one comes out louder than the one before it.

  “What the fuck is wrong with me?”

  REBECKA AND I have surrendered under her doorway. With her head in my lap, I run my hands through her long blond hair while she quietly weeps. Lucas and Tommy sit in bed with their son in his room. The house is quiet-still, destroyed but cleansed.

  “You don't have to stick around for this,” Rebecka reminds me again. “Someone can take you home.”

  “It’s okay,” I tell her, leaning my head back against the door frame.

  She turns her head, and I watch sadness fall down her temple, into her hair. “My family’s crazy, right?”

  I smile and shake my head.

  She sits up and rubs her face dry with her hands. “I need a sleeping pill. Want one?”

  “No.”

  “Your loss,” she says, lifting to her unsteady feet and stepping past me in the direction of her parents’ room.

  I hang out under the doorjamb, waiting to hear Thomas’ voice again, or to see him walk out of his bedroom. Instead, his parents do, tired-faced and defeated. They’re expressionless, until Lucas spots me and smiles.

  Bending down to my level, Lucas’ hair is uncharacteristically unruly.

  “I’m sorry this happened while you were here, princess,” he says.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I lie, looking down.

  “My son makes some bad decisions sometimes, but …” He pauses, tilting my chin up so I have to look him straight in the face. “We’d like to keep this within the family, Bliss.”

  The head of this household can be intimidating, but he’s tender. It’s in the careful tone of his voice and the blue eyes he shares with his children. It’s the polite way he’s holding his wife’s heels in his hands regardless of everything that’s happened, and the consideration he had to kneel to my level instead of towering over me.

  “I understand,” I reply.

  Lucas leans forward and kisses my forehead. “That includes you, Leighlee. You know that.”

  “I know.”

  “You girls should get some sleep. Where’s my daughter?” Tommy asks, barefoot behind her husband.

  “In your medicine cabinet,” I say.

  When Luke and Tommy chase after Becka, I get up and go to bed.

  Not the one my heart calls to, but the one I have to force myself into.

  “Look.”

  Peeling back my eyes, Rebecka stands beside the bed with a small white pill in the palm of her hand.

  “Mom said I’m not old enough for sleep aids. Meanwhile, my brother is coked out of his mind.”

  Becka drops it on her tongue and smiles as she swallows.

  “Smitty and I fucked at the beach today,” she says, jumping into bed next to me. “I missed him.”

  Sleep heavy, I fall deeper beside her, hoodie warm and best friend safe. I didn’t like the feeling I had with Becka earlier. I don’t like being detached from this girl. That’s our future, not our right now.

  “Tell me what it felt like.” I roll onto my side and snuggle my face into her neck. “Tell me what he sounded like … and tasted like. Tell me.”

  “It was like the sweetest, hardest Christmas explosion ever.”

  She’s asleep in no time at all.

  After I slip out of bed, I cover up my girl. Sleepyhead is dead to the world and snoring. Her room is lit, and the stereo plays the same song over and over while the ceiling fan spins. The scarves hanging from the blades coat the walls in pinks and greens, and oranges and purples. The rope lights Smitty bought her years ago, sparkle and shine even though a few of the bulbs have burned out.

  I change into one of Becka’s band tees and turn the lights down before I leave the room. Tiptoeing down the hallway, I carefully step over broken pieces of plastic and drywall: a reminder that we’re not the only things damaged in this house tonight.

  Approaching the room with no door to open, I don’t hesitate, and my eyes fall on Thomas right away. Taking a deep breath, filling my lungs with the scent of vanilla and delinquency, I lean my right knee against his mattress and carefully climb on the bed beside my sleeping boy.

  “You're always supposed to tell me where you are, remember?” I whisper into his ear. The warmth of his body is on my lips. “What's the point of these stupid rules if we don’t follow them?”

  Dusty’s eyes open slowly, baring black irises. He reaches up with an unsteady hand and touches the side of my face.

  I kiss the inside of his palm.

  Love is so fucking tolerant it makes me sick.

  “I hate you,” I whisper into the dark.

  Trouble places his cold hand over my mouth. “Tell me you love me, Bliss.”

  I shove him away. “Like I could ever not love you.”

  IT’S THE morning after Thomas returned home, and I’m in the living room watching Dora the Explorer while Lucas and Tommy are at the hardware store, purchasing a new door for their son’s room and Becka’s in the kitchen on the phone, begging Smitty to forgive her … again.

  My head is lack-of-sleep heavy, and my eyes sting every time I blink. Exhaustion is set deep within my bones, aching and sore.

  Love comes downstairs, during the backpack song, in a pair of cutoff sweats and a white tee, with wet hair and the same black eyes. My heart stops.

  “Morning,” he mumbles, taking the seat next to me on the couch.

  I turn the volume up like I give a shit about Dora’s bag.

  “You’re going to ignore me?” my boy asks. His tone is rough, like it hurts to speak.

  He reaches for my hand, and it takes everything in me not to reach back and smack him. Looking into his dilated eyes and sick, grayish skin, there’s no sympathy for Thomas in me.

  “I said I was sorry,” Dusty’s lips are tinted blue, and his hair is overgrown, covering the tips of his ears. Rib bones show through his thin tee. Anxious or frustrated, his knee bounces up and down, shaking the entire couch.

  I scoff. “Actually, you never did.”

  Thomas sits forward and scrubs his hands up and down his face. His spine is visible through his shirt, too.

  “I didn’t do anything, Bliss. I—”

  “He forgives me.” Becka comes in from the kitchen, cutting her brother short, ignoring his presence completely. “Smitty said he gets it. I think we’re going to meet up tonight. Can you come?”

  “I have to go home,” I tell her.

  Dusty gets up and heads back toward the stairs.

  “So, do you want to talk about you and Oliver?” my best girl asks, rolling her eyes as Thomas walks past her.

  I can’t help it. I smile. “Not really.”

  “You suck,” she says, sticking her tongue out at me.

  An hour later, I’m in the car with my mom, driving away from the Castors’ house. Her curls are frizzy, and the skin around her eyes is starting to wrinkle, but the high smile on her face is genuine. The woman who gave me life is happy I’m coming home.

  She’s so unaware.

  How many lies have I told her this week? This year? Since we’ve moved here?

  I tell myself I’m dishonest because if she knew the truth, what would happen to me? But when she finds out, because she will, what will it do to her?

  Compared to all the lies I’ve told her, this newest secret seems to be the worst of all: Thomas is on drugs.

  His family knows.

  And they’re not doing anything about it.

  “How was your weekend?”
Mom asks, making conversation.

  “It was good.” Lie.

  “Did anything exciting happen?”

  “No. We watched movies.” Lie.

  Mom laughs. “For four days?”

  “Yep.” Lie.

  “Was that a door Lucas was carrying into the house?” she asks, turning onto our street.

  “Yeah.” Not a lie. “He was moving new furniture into his office and busted a hole in the old door.” Lie.

  Mom nods. She believes me. Because I would never lie to her.

  Lie.

  The house is bright and morning-lazy when I walk through the front door with my mom behind me. All of the windows are open, and the curtains blow from the breeze. My dad sits in his recliner watching TV, wearing pajamas with a cup of coffee on the table beside him.

  “Have a good time, Bliss?” he asks.

  “Yeah, Dad.” Lie.

  “You look tired, kid.”

  “I slept all night.” Lie.

  At the Castors’ house, everything’s comfortable because everything’s oversized. At my house, everything’s comfortable because it’s all lived in. The moment I sit on our couch, I succumb to the lack of sleep and yawn until my eyes water. Mom runs her fingers though my hair, and with the sunlight warming my skin and my dad’s laughter in the air, I fall asleep thinking, it’s okay to be taken care of.

  When I wake, the sky is dark, and I’m in the living room alone. Light from the kitchen dimly illuminates the area around me, casting shadows on the walls. My parents keep their voices low, but I can hear them whispering about me. When I hear my freedom threatened, I get up.

  “I’m only saying that maybe we shouldn’t let her stay over there so much,” Mom suggests as I intrude on their conversation.

  Side by side at the kitchen table, Mom’s hovering over a mug of tea, and Dad’s beside her, twirling the end of his mustache. I grab a bottle of water from the fridge.

  “What are you talking about?” I ask as if I didn’t overhear what was said.

  “You slept for six hours,” my dad says.

  “I was tired.” Not a lie.

  They’re so cut and dry, so black and white, so predictable. I can’t even take a nap without them questioning why.