Delinquents (Dusty #2)

by Mary Elizabeth Sarah Elizabeth

  I get out of bed and put on a tee shirt and a pair of gray cotton shorts and sneak out of her room and down to his door, but I’m afraid to go in.

  My mind races. Everything Thomas told me on the phone, everything I did with Oliver, crashes down on me so fast that when I do open his door, I’m already crying.

  Thomas stands in front of his TV. The remote’s in his hand, and he’s flipping through channels, fully dressed, down to his shoes, wearing exactly what he was at his graduation today.

  “Hey,” I say quietly.

  “Tell me,” he says. He turns off the TV and drops the remote but doesn’t turn around. His head drops and his hands run through his hair. “Say it, Bliss.”

  “I was with Oliver,” I cry softly. Tears roll down my cheeks.

  The hole in my chest, which usually goes away when I’m with Thomas, burns and widens. I move my hands from my face to my chest and clutch my faded cotton shirt. I cry harder.

  “Did you fuck him?” he asks. His voice is unstable and rough.

  I shake my head. “No.”

  My boy finally turns and his eyes are darker than the forest outside. They’re wholly black and entirely depleted.

  I don’t recognize this person.

  “Why not?” He smirks.

  I don’t say anything. I don’t move.

  “Why didn’t you, Leigh?” he asks again. The curve in his lips lifts slightly higher.

  “I don’t know, Thomas!” I yell, frustrated with his apathetic grin and broken glare.

  Yelling doesn’t make me feel better. It’s like punching in a dream; no matter how much insistence and effort I put behind it, it’s not enough.

  But it’s the trigger my boy needed.

  Thomas pushes me against the door with his left hand over my mouth. With his right hand pressed against the side of my throat, his forearm presses across my shoulder. He’s so tall, I have to stand on my tippy-toes to meet his eyes.

  His eyes cry like mine do. His chin quivers. His teeth grind.

  I hold onto his wrist. He isn’t hurting me, but I want him to. I can manage physical pain much more than this … This is killing me. This I can’t hold in.

  “Shut the fuck up before someone hears you,” he seethes.

  I breathe too quickly through my nose. Salty water blurs my vision, and the tips of my toes hurt from standing too tall. My cheeks burn and my lungs sting. The hole in my chest, the emptiness of my guilt, becomes a vortex, with everything I own and feel and have, falling right into it.

  I pull his hand away from my mouth.

  “Listen to me,” I cry out. I touch his face. I kiss the inside of his wrist. “Please. Please!”

  I manage to lift away from the door, but Thomas pushes me back into it.

  “No,” he groans. I clear away his tears. My boy whimpers.

  “It didn’t mean anything. Listen to me!”

  “Shut the fuck up!” he moans. “I can’t—I can’t do this, babe.”

  “I always forgive you. I’ve forgiven you for everything.”

  He closes his eyes and hides his face between my shoulder and neck. I feel his teeth on my skin, but he doesn’t bite. I wrap my arms around him while he cries, and I feel the shortness of breath through his chest. His heart beats quicker than ever before. The capability of his anger and hurt literally ripples beneath his skin. Muscles tense and shift. His fingers squeeze and clench. He’s keeping himself this close, but inside he’s moving so far away.

  He reaches behind me and opens his door. I try to close it, but he keeps his hold steady and secure. I turn between his arms so that my chest is to his back, and I try pull on his wrist from the doorknob with both of my hands, but he doesn’t budge and the door stays open.

  We scuffle and struggle and groan and cry, but eventually, I lose. He pushes me out and stands in front of the door so I can’t come back in.

  Defeated and tired, pathetic and heartbroken, I look up at my boy and wish things were different. Not only this, but everything … From the start. I wish we would have done things differently

  I walk away.

  “Leighlee,” he calls for me.

  I go to his sister’s bedroom where I belong.

  I sit on the floor beside the bed, wrapping my arms around my pulled-up knees. When the crashing and breaking begins echoing throughout the house from the room next door, everyone wakes up. Becka jumps out of bed and opens the door.

  Lucas runs by, sleepy faced and in his pajamas. Tommy’s right behind him, tying her cream-colored silk robe with a panic-stricken expression on her face.

  The sound of Dusty’s fist going through his wall shakes my bones.

  I cover my ears.

  Every shout and struggle ricochets through the narrow walls in the hallway, intensifying the chaos. Tommy screams. Lucas fights back. Thomas storms past all of it with bloody knuckles and unfocused eyes.

  His mother chases him, pulling on the back of his blue button up. The heels of her feet dig into the carpet, but it’s useless.

  And when he leaves—when the Continental roars to life and speeds out of the driveway—I know.

  He won’t be back.

  It’s like we’re twelve years old again, sneaking sweets and telling secrets, hidden from the world in our own little existence built from imagination and, this time, desperation. We take every chair from the kitchen and every blanket from the closet. We strip my bed to the mattress and carry pillows, sheets, and stuffed giraffes downstairs. Mom calls us silly. Dad says we’d better clean up our mess.

  Becka and I make a fort big enough for the two of us. It’s quilt-draped and wooden chair sturdy, lit up by multicolored Christmas lights I begged my mom to pull down from the attic. They hang above and around us, twirl-tied around chair legs and in between layers of blankets.

  We use flashlights from my dad’s garage to read to each other. She recites Pale Fire, and I whisper from The Fault in our Stars. We take turns, page for page, reading chapters out of order until Vladimir Nabokov and John Green become the same person, and a new story is born from our favorites.

  My girl eats banana chips, and I chew on taffy. She drinks water, and I stick to cream soda. Our legs tangle and our toes wiggle together. My left arm pushes against her right, and while I read, she leans her head on my shoulder.

  “Okay, no more,” she cries softly, wiping tears out from under her eyes. “I can’t deal with fake funerals right now, Bliss.”

  I point my flashlight from the book to my best friend’s face, and her tears reflect in the low light. She fills her cheeks up with air and exhales slowly, smiling sadly.

  It’s been a week, and she’s been here every day since he left.

  I search her face and look from her eyes to her nose to her lips and chin. Her hair is faded pink and clean, left down and fanned around her head and shoulders. She’s in black boy shorts, and I’m in yellow. She’s covered in an oversized tee, and I’m wearing a peach tank. Her eyes are swollen, bloodshot and red. Mine aren’t.

  Maybe having Becka with me every day since Thomas took off has kept me from crying, or maybe I just don’t have it in me anymore, but since that night I haven’t shed a single tear.

  I can feel them building behind my eyes and pushing against my chest. My heart’s wrapped in tears, floating in perfect heartache. My sadness is under my skin, between my toes, and in my hair. It’s there when I go to sleep and on me when I wake up. My despair is vengeful, relentless, and mocking. It laughs in my face and says, “I told you so,” before clenching my heart in its firm grip knocking me off my feet.

  Maybe I knew all along this would be our conclusion, and that’s why I can’t cry.

  Becka’s clingy in her grief. Her parents are their own kind of crazy, and I knew she needed to be out of her house until they calmed down.

  Tommy’s a mess and Lucas isn’t any better. My judge father might be able to help them find their kid, but then my dad will know the truth about Thomas.

  “I’ll pick somethi
ng else then,” I say.

  I set my book aside and sit up for another one. We have them all: fairy tales and classics, fables and fantasies, fiction and biographies. I toss The Heroin Diaries aside because of the too-close-to-home content, and pass The Very Hungry Caterpillar because we read that first. I hold up Wuthering Heights, and Becka makes a face.

  “Boring,” she says. I drop the book.

  Scattered all around us, some books are in piles, but most are knocked over and open. The air in our tent smells like old paper, ink, and binding. Books are meant to be loved hard, used and abused. I’m not careful in my search to make this girl happy. I toss this book over there, and another over here. I accidentally rip a cover and get a paper cut.

  “How about this?” I hold up a romance.

  “No,” she answers easily. “Gross.”

  “This?” Stephen King.

  “Nah.”

  “How about this one?” I smile, showing her the cover to Dirty by Megan Hart.

  Rebecka bolts up with huge open eyes and takes the novel from me. “Is this … sex?” she whispers.

  I take it back and look at the cover. It’s an image of a couple in a bathroom stall. All you can see is their shoe-covered feet and their position.

  “I don’t know where it came from,” I say.

  “I bet it’s your mom’s, Bliss. Under all of that floral print and Birkenstocks is a freak.” She picks the book from my hands and lies back against our best-friend-made bed. “She probably likes Christmas Explosions as much as we do.”

  I slip in beside her with my elbow on the pillow and my head on my palm. I shudder. “Let’s not talk about my mom and orgasms, okay?”

  “Your dad’s mustache probably tickles.”

  “Rebecka!” I let my face fall into cushy cotton.

  “What?” She tilts her head back and laughs loudly, until her teeth show. Like his do. “Your dad’s mustache is sexy.”

  I turn onto my back and cover my flushed face with both of my hands. “Can you just read?”

  “Fine,” she says, still laughing. “But if this gets me all hot and bothered, you might have to touch me after.”

  I hit her with a pillow. “Touch yourself.”

  “Or we can do that.”

  “Becka,” I groan, beyond mortified and thriving in the first back-to-us conversation we’ve had in six days.

  “Okay. Okay.” She opens the book and reads.

  WE READ from the book for a while, narrating the words in silly voices, trying to make it ridiculous. Rebecka makes sex sounds, and I blush like crazy. When she’s sure she read every blow job, finger fuck, and love making scene, she finally puts it down.

  Swimming in sexual tension, I bite my fingernails, and she rubs her thighs together. We avoid looking at each other, and it’s awkward and funny and embarrassing, but normal. We’re able to be ourselves for an hour. For sixty minutes, I don’t feel the gaping hole in my chest.

  “No more books,” Becka finally says.

  We open up the front of our tent and let out the scent of printed paper and turned-on teenager, and power on the TV. We watch Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for about twenty minutes before the feeling of comfort shifts right back into apprehension. The hollow point in my body throbs, and my friend isn’t smiling anymore.

  “Do you think that’s how it is for him?” she whispers. “Do you think he’s lost like that?”

  “He isn’t looking for the American dream in the Great Red Shark, B. Thomas …” I swallow. “He’s fucked-up. He’s addicted. He’s an addict.”

  It’s like speaking fire and flame. The words burn, but we’ve spent years tiptoeing around the truth: Thomas has problems. Not once has anyone come out and said it.

  Speaking the truth doesn’t make us feel any better. Becka doses herself and falls asleep, and I’m wide awake, surrounded by children’s books, in a tent lit by Christmas lights in June. My mind won’t shut off.

  Is he with Her?

  Is he with Valarie?

  Is he with anyone?

  I worry until my stomach flips and tumbles and stirs until I clutch all ten fingers into my chest and try not to scream into my pillow. I kick my legs, pushing all of the blankets away, burning my knees on the rug. I bend my toes until they ache. I scratch into skin, trying to break through to the bone and blood and veins and arteries that’s between me and where it hurts the most. My heart beats his name, his touch, his smell.

  Cry, cry, cry, cry.

  I’m sweating. My body is too warm. I breathe, in and out, in and out. My face tingles. My jaw hurts. I sit on my knees. My head hits the top of the fort. I shuffle over books and knock down one of the blankets that played our roof.

  Out from beneath the covers, and away from the girl who laughs like my boy, I stand up and walk to the kitchen. Cool air touches my skin, forming goose bumps. My sticky feet form to unwarmed tile, making a soft suction sound with every step. I go to the sink and turn on the water. I hold my hair over my shoulder and cup my other hand under the liquid bringing a mouthful to my lips.

  I rinse off my forehead and press wet hands against my panicked cheeks. I remind myself how to breathe: easy, steady, normal. Water drips from my lips, my forehead, my chin. I look at the clock; it’s a quarter past four in the morning.

  My phone rings.

  I don’t know if it’s my legs or my heart that rush back to the fort. I stub my toe on East of Eden and catch my right wrist in holiday lights. My phone stops ringing.

  “Shit. Shit … Shit.” I untangle myself and push my pillow away.

  Dope-sleepy blue eyes open a little. I look at her, but she isn’t there. They close again. She’s out.

  My cell lights up.

  Dusty.

  Decline or Answer.

  I silence the ringer and listen for my parents, but it’s hard to hear over the echo of my heart’s pulse.

  “Thomas,” I whisper into the receiver.

  “Hi, baby.”

  Like nothing ever changed.

  But then it happens.

  I cry.

  I bunch a sheet under my arm and bolt out of the blanket-made home. I step through the kitchen, unlock the backdoor, and walk out into the early morning night. Wrapping myself up, I sit in a cracked, sun-bleached green plastic patio chair while my eyes drip freely. My chin quivers. My nose stuffs up.

  “Where are you?” I whisper, heartsick and moved.

  “Princess girl … Baby, baby, baby,” he says gently. His words are thick and drawn out. I don’t hear anything on his side of the phone other than the sound of his breathing and soft speaking. “My girl.”

  I sit back, holding a hand over my mouth to keep my cries soundless. “Thomas”—I squeeze my eyes shut—“please come home.”

  “You’re mine, right, sunny side? You’ll always be mine?” Little tap, tap, taps litter the silence behind him, and I know She’s there. He’s cutting Her up into little lines.

  I listen to him breathe cocaine in through his nose.

  He groans.

  He laughs.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” he says.

  “I’m where I belong,” I answer, broken voiced. Pulling my feet up, I set my forehead on my knee and use the sheet to wipe my face. “It’s you I can’t find.”

  He laughs loudly. I think of Becka earlier with her head tilted back and her teeth showing. My face crumbles, and I sob.

  “I’m right here, Leigh!”

  “I’m supposed to always know where you are, Thomas. Remember our rules?” The stupid dog next door starts to bark.

  “Are you smiling, baby?”

  “No.”

  “Rule breaker.” I can hear the smirk in his voice. I can see it in my mind, but it’s blurry.

  Then it’s not so quiet where he is anymore. Someone’s knocking.

  “Give me a minute,” he calls out absentmindedly.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  “Come home.” I’m not crying anymo
re. I’m more desperate than that. I sit at the edge of my seat, biting my nails too low. I can feel my heartbeat in my face and in the tips of my fingers.

  “I’ll be home,” he says, distracted.

  “When?”

  Thomas laughs. “I don’t know. Whenever. Why?”

  Let him go, my conscience whispers. Tell him you don’t need him. You don’t love him. Lie to him like you lie to everyone else.

  “Because I love you. I miss you.” Tears slip over my lips. I’m crushed, suffocating under the weight of our situation.

  Tell him his degree of difficulty isn’t worth it. Tell him his addiction is too harmful. Tell him you can no longer be what he needs you to be.

  “I’ll be your girlfriend, but swear you’re coming home, Thomas.”

  “Yeah?” He’s amused. “Just like that, Bliss?”

  “I want you back.”

  “I didn’t want you to fuck Oliver.”

  “I didn’t.” A feeling of being trapped creeps in. It’s as if my arms are pinned at my sides and my ankles are tied together. I can’t breathe out of my nose, and more air comes out of my mouth than in.

  “You should have,” he says in a calm, clear voice.

  “I don’t love him.”

  “Stop loving me.”

  “No,” I answer, exhausted.

  He’s quiet, listening to me cry too hard, breathe too deeply, love too much. I can’t take a breath. I can’t catch up with myself. My tears drown me.

  “Calm down,” he says, sounding annoyed now.

  I’m pouring. Draining. Depleting.

  “Baby.” He’s a little more concerned. “Leigh, listen to me.”

  “I can’t!” Not a lie. I can’t hear anything over the sound of my own panic.

  “Tell me a secret. Come on, little girl, tell me something.”

  I still don’t know where he is or how to fix this. I don’t know how to be without him. I need our secret. It’s all I know. It’s my backbone. This boy’s my heart, and I’m alone.