Delinquents (Dusty #2)

by Mary Elizabeth Sarah Elizabeth

Because I’m fucked.

  I’m so goddamn fucked.

  “Hey.”

  Breathing in stings as I open my eyes to purple terry-cloth and all wrong knees.

  “You have to get out of here. I have class.”

  Blinking, I bring damp blond hair into focus as she walks away and closes her door.

  Sitting up, I rub groggy and wayward coke-sleep from my eyes while my entire diaphragm pulses, bruised inside and all throughout. Early morning shines in through translucent curtains, stinging my still-dilated pupils and illuminating a living room I don’t recognize for shit. Magazines, keys, an agenda for Grays Harbor College, and a pair of heart-shaped sunglasses lay scattered across a coffee table, and I grab the white plastic sunnies, leaving before the girl who let me stay comes back out.

  Even with my hood up and stolen shade hiding my eyes, morning glows too bright and too cold, unmerciful and disorienting. Nothing about the street I’m on is familiar, and craving makes everything worse, but as I start to walk, my body recalls steps my brain cannot. My feet know where to find my car.

  Alone in the front seat, I kick on the heat and drop my hood. My head swims as I push my hands through my hair, trying to fully wake up. I reach for my phone.

  Friday, October 25th, 7:49 a.m.

  Fourteen missed calls.

  Eleven voicemails.

  Twenty-nine new text messages.

  Nothing from Bliss.

  Closing my eyes, I clench screaming fists until raw pain is all there is.

  Opening my eyes, I glance at the gas tank.

  If I left now, I could make it to school in time for the second half of the day, in time to see all I want lit up like a candle for the first boy who ever gave her his sweater. I could walk by and make like she’s not killing me, or I could walk right up to her in front of everyone.

  I could call her right now.

  But love takes two.

  Tapping out a message to someone I'd rather chew glass than let Leighlee talk to, I drive south, but not toward school.

  When’s our girl coming by?

  Casper calls instead of texting back.

  “She’s on her way.”

  Music thumps and sluts giggle in the background.

  “We’re at this chick’s house,” he says, giving me the address. “Come on over.”

  A FEW miles outside of Newport, I’m in a cramped house that stinks like sex, flat beer, trees, and drywall. Unconcerned with bass beats and blaring pandemonium, a spider crawls in the corner of the smoke-stained ceiling, and Pete passes me a bottle.

  I drink without knowing or caring what’s in it or which way is up from down.

  I’ve done nothing but line after line since I arrived.

  I see laughs. I hear smiles. Everyone around me is high-lidded and forgiveness-forbidden. We’re all lost, and I fit right in.

  After another drink, I pass the bottle to Ben and he hands me a blunt. I pull smoke while Valarie looks at me with eyes I refuse to meet, and there’s no shortage of girls slinking in and out of the semicircle I’m standing in with my boys.

  Fuck ’em.

  Fuck all of 'em.

  I’m six feet deep in fuck-Bliss mode, which translates unmistakably into fuck life and every meaningless aspect of it.

  Taking another hit, I glance down as a blonde I don’t recognize slides up next to me.

  “Can I hit that?” she asks like we’re some kind of friends.

  I blow smoke in her face while I pretend to think about it, and then laugh as I pass the blunt around her to Katie.

  Someone ups the volume on down-tempo rhythms that sound spun under water, and across from me some brunette blows a raspberry on Ben’s cheek. Pete passes the bottle back to me, and he’s laughing.

  Everyone is.

  The young and doomed don’t have a care in the world.

  Turning, I head into the heart of the party and everything deepens. A hundred hard-beating, out of sync pulses surround me, and when I close my eyes, I can’t tell my own from anyone else’s.

  Rubbing my eyes, I find myself in a girl’s room. Mixie's next to me and we’re both face down in Her.

  I smoke a cigarette on the front porch.

  I knock a family portrait off the wall.

  I climb the staircase, and fingers slip pills over parted lips in plain sight. Hands grip and hips grind. Red-shot eyes look to empty eyes for guidance and assurance and for clean towels for bleeding noses. We pound on death’s door, but find only each other.

  Breaking into a master bedroom, I lock the half-bathroom door so I don’t have to share Her with anyone.

  The bedroom’s full when I open the door, and my phone vibrates in my pocket, but it’s the wrong girl again. It’s two in the morning, and there’s still nothing from Leigh.

  My chest caves in around unstoppable beats as I move through the crowd.

  I try to remember where I am and sort through where I’ve been, but all that comes through is not knowing where love is, where she’s been. Dope-tilted and fearful, my mind tortures me. The only thoughts that ring clear feel like heart attacks back to back.

  His arm around her birthday-happy, high-shrugged shoulders.

  His hand in hers, wrong fingers and wrong palms pressed to skin I’m addicted to.

  The pride in his eyes the night she gave him her kiss.

  Coughing to clear my sinuses, I open and close my lids against tears so hot they’re sharp. I push my fallow, good for nothing, constantly and inconsequentially breaking heart back down my throat and make my way downstairs, searching for a place She can spin me numb again.

  “COME SMOKE this,” someone says.

  My eyes don’t want to focus. I don’t try to make them.

  Sinking down, I lean back into the worn-out love seat by myself. The music’s still going, but not as loud now. Or maybe I’m used to it.

  My foot taps and I pat my knee, my whole body coursing energy even as I smoke. I feel the devil’s eyes on me but I don’t give her mine. I hit the joint and hold it in my chest, seeking disconnection.

  Across from me on the couch, Pete’s phone goes off. Twice. I force my vision to focus long enough to see lines crease his forehead. He rubs his chin and I look away because Kelly’s here. Somewhere. And I know who the fuck he’s talking to.

  I stare at the cobweb in the corner of the ceiling while my gut kicks with want for free rein. Val’s eyes burn holes in my skin, and Petey’s phone goes off with another message from my sister.

  Who may or may not be with my girl.

  Who doesn’t really want to be my girl.

  Synth beats blend with melodramatic minor chords, and I stand up. Making my way from the living room to the kitchen, I head out the back door.

  Save for the faintest hint of slivered silver moonlight, it’s practically pitch-black outside. Freezing sleet rains down on all sides of the rickety awning above me, and when I stop to let my eyes adjust, I notice her.

  The stranger to my right is a burning cherry and rising smoke, but I know she is a she without seeing any more of her. She’s nothing but silent, spindling toxins, and I want that.

  I want to be that.

  The weight of how much absolutely nothing matters makes me forget what I was doing, and I step toward the girl I can’t make out.

  “Can I have one of those?” I ask.

  Abstracted and almost invisible, perched on the corner of the porch railing, she blows smoke up. Between darkness and my own haze, I scarcely bring a pale neck and pink glossed, poison breathing lips into focus.

  “Sure,” faceless says, pulling a pack from somewhere. She passes me a stick and sparks her flame, and the curve of her cupid's bow stands out in the glow.

  As I lean in, I catch her scent in the cold, wet air. She smells like the drywall inside the house and like cough syrup, like rust and spoiled apples and nothing good.

  Giving my lungs cool smoke, I step away not to be further, but in effort to better see her.

  I can’
t, though.

  All I see is her mouth, full of smoke.

  It’s so easy, I laugh as I turn.

  I step to the edge of the porch, not to get away, but to ignore her, because it’s the last thing a girl wants. Her silence says she doesn't care, but as wind blows between us and right through me, I hear her shifting. Illusory like a shadow, the sound of bare legs uncrossing and crossing again fills my ears.

  With all thoughts of leaving this place long forgotten and the cigarette almost gone, everything in me scrapes and claws and demands something stronger.

  But this moment is all there is.

  And I want to be buried in it.

  Flicking the dead stick, I blow smoke into the night. Behind me, mostly invisible exhales and sends her own little ember flying into the darkness too. More shadow-shifting sounds fill the silence, and they’re less elusive this time. Less a sound, more the feel of simple instinct, the whisper of bare legs uncrossing and remaining uncrossed calls to me before she does.

  “Come here.”

  Her voice scratches the moment, but I step toward where she is. Bare feet and ankles sway slowly as I approach, and when I breathe her in again, she smells sterile and filthy at the same time, like rubbing alcohol and squalid regret. This girl smells like the ebbing of life and makes me want to know what the valley of the shadow tastes like.

  “Give me another cigarette,” I tell her.

  Sliding the sole of her foot against my leg as light as dust and ashes, she takes her pack back out. As she reaches to hand me one, I stand still, just feeling blind fingers brush my stomach and side through my clothes as she searches for my hand.

  When her creeping fingertips touch my thumb, I take the stick from her and light it.

  Standing still between bare knees, I exhale smoke through my nose. And when I inhale again, her scent hits like megadeath in my chest, and I feel her pulse, working without wanting to. Every beat reverberates in the air like an atrocity, and I take a step closer to the heart mimicking my own.

  Naked knees press and brush against my hips as unfit for goodness shifts. Pink lips open and I purse my own over them, breathing formaldehyde-filled breath across her mouth as I lean down.

  This kiss is an open grave, worm-eaten and welcoming, and I tilt her head back because I want nothing more than to tuck myself into it.

  I want to drown, and this girl is all-encompassing.

  My cigarette is gone and we’re moving, stumbling, and falling. Her clammy hands go from my neck to the door behind me, but I press her against it and myself against her, and snow-bitten fingers return to me. They slide under my hood and push it off while her legs wrap around, and the heart of darkness burns me, but I can't lift from her mouth. It’s bottomless and dangerous feeling, but when she bends to kneel, I welcome her descent.

  Throbbing to the agonizing beat of a purely self-seeking heart, her pulse covers my own as her mouth covers me, and I drown in every slide and swallow. I want to disappear, and she’s oblivion, opening.

  The breath I take when she lets me up tastes frost-burnt and dirty.

  No longer cold hands move all over me as she stands, dragging greedy teeth and a sticky tongue along my neck. We fall together onto a couch, and the scent of mildew and wet ashtrays rises as we sink. Shadow weight rolls fire into me with her hips, but I want more. I want inside, and I know she’ll have me, because suicide is like this.

  Salacious.

  Profane.

  But we all die.

  Sitting up, I push her down my thighs and reach for my wallet. My trespass doesn’t make a sound as she takes the condom from my hands and puts it on me with her mouth.

  Fever-hot and hemming me in tight circles, she moves with me inside, and I ride enfolding wrongdoing just as hard as she rides me.

  Every time she lifts, I breathe pitch-black. Every time she comes down, my stomach coils like wires, and my connection to everything not slick and sinful falters. Every push twists and thrills, filling me with miserable, insatiable lust, and I cut myself adrift inside the girl with pale ankles and a mouthful of smoke.

  She moans as she takes me deeper, and her voice is the only part of her that’s not welcoming. It feels like fiberglass in my ears, clearing my clouds, and I hear my own moaning too. She slides, God-awful and slow, and when I turn her, she moves compliantly.

  Pushing her into the couch, I rise behind her, and when I slide inside, my name pours obscenely from her.

  “Dusty …”

  My knotted-tight stomach turns.

  Pressing a face I've never seen into dirty cushions, I clench my eyes and fuck just to come. I move with desperate intent to forget, to disappear, but she moans and shakes and pleads for more.

  She comes.

  And I hate it.

  But I move deeper, harder. I press down on her skinny spine, right between glinting shoulder blades and grip her bony hips so tightly my busted knuckles burn fresh. I fuck with all of my muscles, but anger rises in my throat, overriding everything because I need this, and I can't—

  Hatefulness consumes me and I push nameless and faceless away, cursing and stumbling as I pull myself back, kicking everything nearby off the porch and into the night.

  I follow it all.

  “DO MOM and Dad know you’re here?”

  Pink from the cold, Rebecka’s face gives away everything I knew I’d come home to: sick and tired unease, resentment, and disgust.

  They enter the kitchen together, but I don’t look at the girl standing next to my sister. The one making my worn-out pulse race and ache. The one who can come to me every bit as easily as she thinks I can go to her. The one who kept me in the dark for days.

  “What do you think?” I answer, filling a cup with crushed ice. Tipping it back, I crunch pieces between my back teeth and walk past them.

  Not acknowledging love is easy.

  It’s not kicking the island over, grabbing her by the arms, and jerking an honest explanation out of her that’s difficult.

  What keeps me in check is knowing.

  My pulse isn’t the only one affected. Just like every time we see each other in the halls, just like when I pulled her out of her princess-bubble and into the street light, just like when I brought that stupid lizard to her and Becka at the picnic table when we were kids—

  Bliss and I have never not been heart and soul attached.

  I realized it first, but I knew she felt it too, even then, because the same cadence flows through us. We’re cleaved at the heart, bound by rib-caged, fist-shaped muscles that beat out blood to the same tempo.

  Love will come to me.

  In secret, because that’s what she wants.

  And when she does, she can work for her shakes.

  She can earn every ounce of forgiveness, just like she makes me.

  PUSHING A hand through my second-shower damp hair, I cut Her into two skinny lines on my bathroom sink. Lust that's never enough hums through me as I sniff, and as I stand straight, I hear my bedroom door open and close.

  Laced with dirt, my codependent pulse pulls toward love.

  Rubbing what’s left of Her along my gums and the tip of my tongue, I wash my hands and glance at my born-in-black eyes before opening the door to my ends and means.

  Leighlee’s back is to me while she looks through a mess of unfilled-out applications on my desk. Red-blond pulled messy-high, she has on a sleep tank with tiny flowers all over it and the top of her gray sweats are rolled down, showing skin she knows I crave. For a second, all I want is to wrap around her.

  For just a single second, I just want to be held in love.

  But then I remember, “It's a school night, Becka.”

  And “I don't want to be with you anymore.”

  And “I deserve more than you are to me.”

  And his name on her lips and every “no” she’s fed me, and I’m right back to fuck this.

  She doesn’t move as I step behind her, but as I stand there, I can see her chest moving with deeper,
quicker breaths. My fingers close at my sides, containing the urge to reach and hold while my arms sting, sore to encircle and fold closer, and my stupid, stupid heart...

  It hasn’t learned or doesn’t care that baby’s a liar and a fake.

  My hopeless, defiant heart flutters just to be near her.

  Turning slowly, Leigh looks up at me. She stares right into me, because chemically numbed as I am, I’m still ripped wide open.

  But love’s defenses are cruelly high. She’s miles from backing down, and I break our three-day silence with a snort.

  “This is fucking stupid,” I say, walking around her and sitting down because she didn’t come here to say she was sorry, or that she wants this. I pick up the first book my hand finds and she just stands there, and I feel how stupid we’re being this time. I feel how stubborn and wasteful we are, but I don’t look up.

  And Leigh leaves without a word.

  SLEEPING WITH Her is fickle.

  It’s impossible to know how long I’ve been in or out of consciousness, because it always feels like just a few seconds. I have no idea how long I’ve been drifting when I hear my door finally open.

  Just like I knew she would, my girl creeps into my room and crawls to me on her knees.

  Love’s a glowing outline as she climbs on top of me.

  In the barely illuminated hours before dawn and through the dizzy haze of coke-sleep, I breathe in the sound and scent and feel of her, all honey-dipped tea trees, pajama softness, and needy little inhales from my neck.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispers, kissing my chest through my tee. She pushes it up my stomach and her tears cut through my skin, but these razors are the first things that have felt right in days. “I’m so sorry, Dusty.”

  I groan as she kisses my stomach. It twists and turns audibly for nourishment, and love cries harder. She wraps around me, and this life goes from high stakes and bottomless pains to totally effortless.

  Pushing her shirt up and off too, I let my hands find her full little curves. Baby presses and slides and rocks easily, sweetly perfect and home to me, and need I’ve carried longer than I can remember aches hard against precious softness.

  “You know nothing happened,” she whispers. Her tears have stopped, but her voice is broken.