Delinquents (Dusty #2)

by Mary Elizabeth Sarah Elizabeth

  “Don’t worry about those,” Teri says.

  Guilt hooks me.

  I want effort from Leighlee. I want her to try, but the weight and threat of my choices and fuckups are tremendous and loud inside me here. In this perfect little kitchen, with her wholesome family surrounding me, I feel my unworthiness. Every shred of how undeserving I am of love bears down on me.

  “You can turn the television on if you want,” Mrs. McCloy offers. “You know you can make yourself at home here.”

  “Thank you,” I say.

  The judge looks over as he takes a drink of coffee.

  Excusing myself, I step out the front door. Cold nighttime air greets me, and I push the heels of my hands against my eyes. Sitting down on the top porch step, I try to abide not smoking, but give in after a few minutes. My hands stop shaking, but smoke and the bitter breeze are painful in my chest. Every breath feels like a sharper edge, and it’s unbearable to the point that I want to hide.

  Love’s sheltered here, but she’s my shelter, and knowing you’d die without someone isn’t romantic.

  But I would.

  Hopeless and homeless and wasted.

  I blow poison into the air and reach for another cigarette as I finish my first one.

  Craving tortures me from inside while cocaine calls to me from my glove compartment. Knowing I could have Her and that everyone inside would just go on with the conclusions they already assume anyway kills me.

  Exhaling through my nose, I rub my eyes again and take another hit of dead leaves and most-sacred-day-of-the-year air. I hold it until my lungs burn and hurt invigorates.

  Just two more years.

  Less than that if we leave right after she graduates.

  We just have to ride it out a little longer and we’ll be free.

  Stretching my legs, I shift my feet down a step and scuff a chip in the old wood with the toe of my new shoe. The splinter splits deeper and leaves a scratch on the white bottom of my black-topped Circa and I lean down, trying to rub it off when the side door opens and closes.

  Teri comes around the corner and the porch light reveals upturned and undoctored wrinkle lines in her face from years of joy and worry. She waves and I watch as she opens the garage. My grin takes over when I see the old Volkswagen Rabbit parked inside. Grass green and modest and unconventionally conservative, it’s nothing fancy, but it’s safe.

  I stand on the top step, laughing through my smile as the front door opens behind me. Leigh beams through the glass as she watches her mom back the car out of hiding and into the driveway. Out-loud excited and truly grateful, she beelines straight for the car as Teri parks it.

  Strawberry-blonde looks so pretty behind the wheel my sore heart skips.

  I can’t wait to kiss her right there.

  MY HEARTBEAT pulls me from sleep.

  Before I’m coherent, I’m hard. Sunrise burns around my curtains and waking hits me with a solid mass of resentment. The fact that I saw love last night doesn’t matter. Every morning I’m still a secret starts this way.

  My phone vibrates with my alarm and my eyes sting as they adjust to semi-light. Showering and dressing quickly keeps thinking too much and jonesing too hard at bay, but not completely quiet.

  Knowing She’s ready and waiting for me in the Lincoln gets me through.

  Downstairs, my family’s already left, and outside, the sky’s cloud-covered. Everything’s damp brown and frostbitten gray, but I put sunglasses on.

  Pulling my hood up as I get in the car, I turn the key and check my phone while I let the engine warm up. It’s almost eight o'clock. If I left right now, I’d make it to first period probably just as the bell rang.

  I pop the glove box and tug pure romance out.

  I take a hit from my pinkie like it’s nothing, and when She hits me, I feel it all the way down.

  My blood fucking sings.

  Lining up on the back of a notebook I keep just for this, I take Her swiftly deeper.

  Left.

  Right.

  My pulse throttles me and my lungs open wide.

  There you go, this slut coaxes, taking me too.

  Give me more.

  Left again.

  Right again.

  Left.

  My whole body heats and my heart makes haste. I feel my pupils stretch, and unequivocal potential soars through me while the best-worst taste tingles on the back of my tongue. Cocaine comes apart hard in me and I fucking want it. Gratification after too long without drops my lids and my eyes roll back. My head hits the seat as She rides through my veins, tethering Herself around my muscles, and my chest heaves breathless beats.

  Just like that, Dusty.

  Rapt and lit, I’m late for school, but I take the rush of being selfish at heart two more times in the parking lot.

  Inside, the secretary leers at me as I stride into the office unburdened and dauntless. Carelessness and cold wind cling to me, but all I feel is my pulse as I sign my name on the same clipboard I have a hundred times, just like all tardy motherfuckers are supposed to. Looking up, I give her a respectless smile and drop the ballpoint making it roll off the edge of her desk and hang from the chain it’s attached to.

  I abide the urge to knock off the pencil holder and stack of papers in front and show her both my middle fingers.

  As I swing the door and walk out of the office, the bell rings, ending first hour and dismissing students to fill the hall. Leaving my hood up, I take my sunglasses off and head toward the stairs. I don’t expect to see the only reason I come here until lunch, but my body picks up on love’s nearness right before she turns the corner.

  Binder held loosely to her chest, walking next to Oliver, L has a tight white sweater on and skinny jeans she looks poured into. Her smile doesn’t slip when she sees me, but blue-greens flicker defensive bitterness as she takes in my black.

  My blood beats a stolen split second faster, but my attention’s pulled behind my back.

  “Thomas!”

  The instinct to haul off on baby’s little skater bitch boyfriend seethes through me, but Kelly tugs my book bag. I turn, and her pupils are dope-wide.

  “Have you seen Val?” she asks.

  Reality checks me and I reroute my shit from impulsive love and violence to the question at hand.

  “She won’t call or text me back, and I haven’t seen her since Sunday,” she continues.

  Leigh walks by without the slightest falter, and Kelly loops her arm through mine like I’m some kind of gentleman.

  “I’m just worried,” she says, walking and making me walk. “She’s never disappeared for this long.”

  Between wishing she’d let go, pulling toward love, and flying high, I remember Valarie texting me Monday night, asking me to come out.

  I never replied.

  “Have you tried Cas?” My voice sounds ragged and I realize those are the first words I’ve spoken all morning.

  Blond curls and cheerleading ribbons sway as Kelly shakes her head.

  “I don’t have his number. Petey—”

  I know what she’s going to say. I don’t want my girl talking to him either.

  But that’s the thing.

  Valarie isn't anybody’s.

  She can’t be loved because she doesn’t let anyone near her, and really, who cares about the devil?

  Sometimes you just go nowhere.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I say to Kelly, loosening my arm. “Val’s where she wants to be.”

  Walking ahead, I type out two messages. One to Queen Slut:

  Call your friend.

  And one to Bliss:

  Talk to me.

  Ninety two minutes into chemistry, my phone vibrates with a message from the wrong person.

  I’m fine. Come over.

  I tap my pen against a blank page while another five minutes ticks by.

  Ten.

  Fifteen.

  Sixteen.

  My phone finally vibrates.

  Don’t be mad,
baby says.

  Looking up from the last seat in the back row, I sniff and think about walking out while cocaine tingles, indulgent for more under my skin.

  Why? I text back.

  A few seconds.

  A minute.

  Two.

  It’s just a show. It’s nothing.

  The bell rings, and I go straight to where I know she is.

  Strawberry-blonde’s easy to spot as she walks away from the French classroom. My steps remain even but my pulse doubles up, and I know love feels me. She looks up before I’m beside her.

  I keep my eyes straight, walking with her until we’re close enough to the library that I can reach in front of Leigh and push her inside.

  I’m uneasy, but I don’t give a fuck who sees.

  Stuffy silent compared to the hustle in the hallway, the library’s mostly empty. The girl who won’t say yes to me doesn’t push my hand away from her back as I continue pulling her left, then right, until we’re out of sight.

  “It’s my birthday,” she whispers spitefully over her shoulder. “We don’t fight on birthdays, remember?”

  Pulling her elbow down some forsaken back aisle, surrounding us with dust and dead poets nobody cares about, I stop.

  “Your birthday was yesterday,” I tell her. “What are you talking about?”

  Princess-kid yanks her arm away and opens her binder to hand me two tickets to a show in Portland tomorrow night.

  “I thought you heard,” she says flatly, fixing her sweater sleeve. “Oliver was talking about—”

  “Don’t say his fucking name to me.”

  Taking a deep breath, my traitor starts over.

  “It’s just a birthday gift. You can’t—”

  “You’re not going,” I cut her off again, keeping my voice low.

  “Yeah?” Love that’s learned by example snatches the tickets. “Who’s going to stop me? You?”

  “You’re not going with him, Leighlee.”

  “You knew I wanted to go to this show. I’ve been talking about it for weeks.”

  I laugh. Out loud. I can't help it.

  “Please,” I say, extending my empty hands in invitation. “Explain to me how that matters?”

  When she can’t, when all she can do is stand tall in her indignation, I place my hands on the bookshelf behind her, on either side of her face and lean in. It’s softly raw, but her nerve is stunning as she tilts her neck, refusing to back down.

  Brash, unhidden, and provocative, love goes an eye for an eye with me, measure for measure.

  Love is the tables turned.

  “Why don’t you just say it?” I ask, dropping my stare from hers to the corrupted space between us. “You don’t want this. Just say it.”

  She swallows hard. I see her throat work. I watch her fingers clench, unclench, and curl into fists at her sides. Between her teeth, Bliss grinds her whisper out.

  “I’m dying for this.”

  I lift from her.

  “Have fun with your boyfriend,” I spit, turning and walking away because it’s not the same.

  Dying for this love isn't the same as wanting it.

  THERE’S NO sun to find or follow as I drive north on I-5. I don’t know where I’m going, but a glance at my tank assures me I'll get there.

  Cracking my window, I light a cigarette. Tar coats my lungs with menthol and carcinogens while my head spins, but I can’t think.

  I can’t do anything but feel love not want me.

  Gripping the wheel, I sniff hard and press harder on the gas while my stomach knots and twists.

  Time drifts, and when I still can’t focus but need to fill up, I take the first exit I see. It’s toward Tenino. I drive until I see signs for gas stations and when I’m finally off the freeway, I’m in fucking Aberdeen.

  Pulling into the first run-down station there is, I park and head inside to the bathroom with my slut in my pocket. The door’s barely closed behind me before I puke bitterness into a dirty toilet.

  Clearer, I wash my face with cold water that smells like metal and lock the door. Fluorescent lights buzz above me, tinting the dingy all-white bathroom sickly green and making my hands unrecognizably pale as I open coke on the edge of the sink. Eager and greedy, She moans between impatient heartbeats.

  Spreading Her shamelessly wide, I lower myself and take from this cunt until I feel nothing but numb.

  The rush swallows me whole, and when I lift myself, She breaks my ribs open and sets my mad-beating heart free.

  Hurt is a memory.

  Futility and insignificance are rumors I’ve never heard.

  Abandon fucking rings in me, and I swing the door open without a single care.

  Back outside, winter-tinted wind blows against me, cutting through my clothes, but I don’t feel cold.

  I leave my car parked in front of the pump without half a thought and pull my hood up. Sliding my hands into pockets that carry all I need, I step onto the sidewalk and head toward what looks like a main street.

  Passing failing mom-and-pop shops, ten-story banks, and private practices, I fall into stride beside the consumption-driven and the unsheltered hopeless. I step on trash, through traffic and across neatly kept lawns with struggling-against-the-frost flowers.

  Starving stems don’t bend.

  They break under my steps.

  Everything I set my eyes on gleams perfectly clear for seconds at a time and then blurs away. Nothing is actual in this town. Every face is forgettable. All the trees are dead or dying, and I have to keep turning because every street leads nowhere.

  Just like Heaven, She whispers, pleased and pulsing around my heart.

  As gray daylight starts to fade, I head west. My phone vibrates in my back pocket for the first time since I left and it pulls me back to myself.

  But who I am is worthless.

  I keep walking, and what’s left of late afternoon fades into nighttime. Eventually, I’m back at the gas station where my car’s parked, but I still don’t know what I’m doing.

  Heading inside the broken-down excuse for a building, I’m bombarded by the jingle of bells against the door and the stink of incense, beer, and bleach. The gritty light’s too bright, and my stomach twist-turns. I want to spit, but my mouth is dry.

  “Hey!” the attendant yells from behind cigarette-sticker covered glass. “Take off your hood. You can’t wear that in here.”

  I push my hands into my sweater pockets, causing the hood to tighten over my head and cover more of my face because fuck him.

  Fuck everything.

  Filling half a Styrofoam cup with white cherry slush, I walk to the counter and pull out my wallet. The man behind bulletproof glass punches numbers into the register and I glance through the windows at the Lincoln.

  “Is that your car?” he asks.

  Grabbing the cup, I pull frozen sugar through a purple straw. Ice-cold sweetness cuts the chemical taste dripping from my sinuses and stings my chest.

  “You can't leave your car here,” he says, picking up a cordless phone. “We’re having it towed."

  I leave a twenty on the counter and walk out.

  I STOP and fill up at the next station.

  I had to carry a key attached to an old hubcap to get into the bathroom, even though it’s smaller and dirtier than the last one, but it doesn't matter.

  This gutter doesn’t mind.

  My easy fuck is unconditional.

  She loves it.

  The wider I spread Her, the deeper I go and harder I take, the sweeter She sings.

  Somewhere between lines, I hear the the sound of the door chime. A group of girls enters the station and muffled giggles float through thin plaster walls.

  Baby’s laugh swims through my lake of fire and for a second, I wonder what time it is. If she’s at home or if she’s with him. How her heart is beating while mine’s here pounding.

  Don’t stop, cocaine pleads, wet and wanton inside me. Don’t stop now.

  I take two rails back
to back without a breath, and I hope wherever Bliss is, her chest lights up.

  SUNRISE COMING in through my lids burns.

  Pressing my hands over my eyes, I curve onto my side and bend my knees up to my stomach. I fight waking, but reality setting in is brutally relentless.

  I don’t know where I am.

  Memories open up like clouds and blur together into one long, convoluted nightmare. I remember dirty bathrooms and frozen sugar, everything looking the same, and driving and walking.

  And walking.

  I remember the shitty broken-brick hole in the wall club that smelled like cheap bourbon and sweat, a sea of unforgettable faces and how easy the Xs on my hands were to scrub off. I remember the filthy but private little bathroom stall, and finishing Her straight from the bag, rubbing what was left into my gums.

  My stomach twists around barbed wire, and my eyelids pang with my pulse. My whole body tightens with hurt while my head throbs with retrospect I do not want.

  The giggle that stood out in the crowd and drew me near last night echoes in my sore eardrums. It fades from me, but leaves a pink dress, soft but wrong-colored curls, and small curves in its wake.

  “You think you're a princess?” I asked this stranger that reminded me too much of love.

  “Don't lie.” I dug at her in front of her friends before I lowered my lips to her ear.

  “Your dress covers up some ugly truths doesn’t it, liar?”

  I curl tighter in on myself, into my hoodie and an unfamiliar couch. My mouth tastes like dirty iron and misplaced hate, and when I swallow, the left side of my jaw is sore because it worked. The slut-wannabee-princess found some douche-fuck to come to her rescue, and that was what I wanted.

  Pressure from leftover violence weighs heavy on both of my temples and my hands ache. My knuckles might be broken, but I remember it not being enough.

  I remember standing over her knight and walking away, and then it comes back to me.

  I’m on a different girl’s couch. She wanted sex and when I didn’t, I laid here for hours, stuck on what it all comes down to.

  The tuth is excruciating.