Delinquents (Dusty #2)

by Mary Elizabeth Sarah Elizabeth

  It’s boys in men’s bodies and girls doing grown-up things. We’re all clueless and seeking, taking too many chances.

  I hate knowing that Thomas is the epitome of these choices. He’s the motherfucking king of this lifestyle.

  Right now it’s fun—fuck it, we’re young—but when things get serious, when it’s time to grow up, then what?

  Thomas won’t be the king of shit, and Valarie will be the girl who fucked her way through high school. Mixie will always wonder about the baby she didn’t have, and Casper will have to live with the guilt of introducing all of these kids to the big, bad, scary world.

  I press the palm of my hand to my forehead.

  Where the hell are you, Dusty?

  I’m a different kind of monster than these people. I’m crafty. I’m sneaky. I don’t fuck around, but I fuck around. These people rot from the outside in; I’m the opposite. My insides are made of tar and oil, blended with a little love for my boy. My heart lacks compassion for everyone but him, and when we get older and these lost people need to be found, they’ll probably come to a person like me for answers. I’ll be their therapist or their doctor … I’ll be their judge, when all along I was the girl who sat back and let it all happen.

  “There’s Tanner!” Rebecka yells over the music.

  I head in his direction. Someone spills beer on my shoe, another almost burns me with a cigarette. Every foot of this house is occupied by someone, making it nearly impossible to get to the kitchen untouched.

  I take another drink from Becka’s bottle of sorrow.

  There are as many people in the backyard as there are in the front. I thought I recognized a few faces, but they’re starting to all blend together. Everyone looks the same. Acts the same. Sounds the same.

  “Who are all of these people?” I bend down and ask in my girl’s triple-pierced ear.

  She shrugs before taking another swig. She cringes and speaks, “Who knows.”

  Tanner spots us from the other side of the kitchen. He calls my name and waves us over, but Kelly and Mixie run into us first.

  “What are you guys doing here?” Kelly’s hair is longer and less silk-like. Her dress hangs too loosely, and her eyes are dose-open and beamy. I haven’t seen her all summer, and like everyone else, this season has aged her.

  “We were invited,” I say. Someone bumps me from behind.

  “Have you seen my brother or not?” Rebecka’s unsteady on her feet.

  “Not.” Kelly looks bored.

  Mixie pulls apart her split ends. She looks the same as she always has: washed-up and bittersweet.

  “You should ask Dolly,” Kelly adds.

  Mixie rolls her eyes and drops the ends of her hair. “Let’s find Cas,” she says.

  “Who the fuck is Dolly?” Becka asks. She steps in front of me like she subconsciously knows I’m going to need to be guarded from this conversation.

  But I already know. I’ve always known. I’ll always fucking know.

  Kelly steps up on her tippy-toes and looks around the small house with a silly smirk on her face. “Over there,” she points to the other end of the house.

  In a blue-and-white striped bandeau and navy high-rise matelot shorts, her hair is long and dark, and her skin is pale. With a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other, this girl looks lost like everyone else.

  “Are you Dolly?” Becka asks, entering this girl’s circle with me in tow.

  “Sure,” she says. Her voice is low and even.

  “My brother is Thomas Castor. Have you seen him?” Becka blinks too many times.

  Her face is so static and unaffected that it’s hard to look at her. She’s pretty, but kept away, like looking through a veil. She is seduction and shame.

  She’s just like him.

  “I haven’t seen that dirty boy. Who are you?” she asks.

  Someone bumps into me again.

  “I’m his sister.” Becka moves a little closer. I grab her arm.

  “Can’t help you.”

  “You fucked him, but you haven’t seen him since?” Rebecka yells. She drops the bottle of rum and tries to shake me off.

  My best girl’s outburst grabs the attention of everyone near us. They’re all looking, waiting, and I’ve already been in one fight today. I don’t think my body will even work on command right now.

  The girl points her beer bottle at Becka and says, “Get the fuck away from me.”

  Pill-careless and alcohol soaked, Becka pulls down on my wrist until I let go. She turns away from me and bumps right into Petey.

  He holds her at arm’s length. “Hey, pretty in pink, getting into trouble?”

  I’ve kept every secret, told every lie … I do everything for Thomas, and this is where I am: alone and resentful in a room full of monsters.

  I’m full to the brim and decaying.

  Tears pour down, unconfined. I don’t make a noise or move. I just let them slide down my warm cheeks.

  Dolly laughs, and I want to pick up the rum bottle and smash her face. I want to ask if she felt it while Thomas fucked her, because I feel it every single time he fucks me.

  In my chest.

  In my lying soul.

  In my eyes and my arms and my kneecaps. I feel it in every single fiber of my being.

  I wipe cries away and look around searching for nothing. What I need isn’t here. What I need is doing his own thing without me. What I need didn’t care enough to take me with him.

  He wants me to stop loving him. Fine.

  Done.

  I’m done.

  Ben’s suddenly touching my elbow. I pull my arm away from him as I turn. He looks concerned, and I detest him for it.

  “What?” I ask, trying to sound indifferent. “Where have you been?”

  Petey rubs his thumb under Becka’s lip, checking out her tooth.

  She broke it, fighting for Smitty, I want to say. She doesn’t love you wholly, Pete, I want to scream until my lungs bust. Fucking beware.

  The truth is not easy.

  My truth: I love a lost cause. I love a failure, and I lost myself in him when I was nine years old.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” Ben says. He hands me his beer, probably just to get me to do something other than stand and stare at how black his eyes are.

  I drink the whole bottle.

  Jammed and pressed against people, I can't breathe. The back of my neck sweats, and I search the room on my tippy-toes, over heads toward the open front door. I’m about to make a run for it when Valarie pushes her way between me and Ben.

  “Does your mom know you’re out so late, little sister?” Val asks mockingly. She reaches for Ben’s hand and laces their fingers together.

  “Be nice,” he tells her with a smile.

  Any calm Rebecka regained with Pete around vanishes the second she catches sight of Casper behind Valarie.

  Pete tries to pull Becka by her oversized black shirt, but she shoves him away.

  “Where’s Dusty?” she demands.

  Casper looks around, waiting for someone to tell him this is a joke.

  “Am I his babysitter?” he asks.

  “No, you’re his drug dealer.” Rebecka spits in his face.

  Petey forces Becka behind him with a shove.

  “She’s drunk,” Pete says with heavy breaths and tensed arms, prepared and willing.

  Casper wipes his face off on the sleeve of his shirt. He breathes out of his nose and smirks at Pete.

  “I don’t know where your brother is, Becka.”

  He’s lying. A liar knows a liar.

  I don’t wait around for an explanation or reenactments once Casper walks away. I turn and leave, and it’s Petey who chases after me through the door and out to the lawn. He hugs me, and I hug him back. I don’t worry about appearances, because there are none. I am totally stripped of everything but the complete agony I feel.

  My phone starts to ring. I know it’s him.

  “You going to answer that?” my guy’s b
est friend asks, taking a step back from me.

  I wipe my face with the back of my hand and slip my singing phone into my pocket. “It’s probably my mom or something.”

  “I can take Rebecka home if you need to go.” He reaches forward and wipes my eyes for me. “It’s sad when little sisters cry.”

  My phone starts ringing again.

  Petey and I share another smaller hug, and then he walks.

  With my heart in my throat, I drop my car keys twice before finally getting the door unlocked. I shut myself in and sit in silence for a few seconds between Thomas’ call going to voicemail and the time it takes him to dial my number again.

  I pull it out of my pocket and look at the screen.

  Accept or decline.

  I know what I need to do and say to him. I just have to do it.

  “What?” I pick up. “What do you want, Thomas?”

  “Where the fuck are you, Leigh?”

  “Tanner’s,” I answer.

  With the phone on my ear, I drop my forehead to the steering wheel.

  “I can’t be this person anymore,” I say.

  He laughs.

  My heart shatters.

  “We’re not good together. And you don’t think enough about me.” I cover my mouth with my hand and sob.

  “Leighlee—”

  “I can’t anymore, Thomas.”

  “Don’t fucking do this,” he insists. “I’ll burn that whole motherfucking town down.”

  His attempt is hollow and falls on surrendered ears.

  EVERY MEMORY I have worth remembering can be tied to Thomas. Everything I’ve done has revolved around our relationship.

  I spent time with Rebecka to be with him. I went to school to be near him. I stayed on the phone all night to talk to him. I told my dad I accidentally broke the lock on the back door, but it was actually my boy. He lit my sparklers, he played hide-and-seek, and he gave me my first sip of alcohol. Thomas showed me why three joints are better than one. He was the first boy I ever slept next to.

  He was my first kiss. My first love.

  Memory after memory plays like an old film behind my closed eyelids—broken, scratched, and not completely clear. One after another. Good and bad.

  I can’t deal.

  I jump out of bed and open my closet. I dig through all of the clothes on the floor until I find it, the first present he ever really gave me.

  My favorite thing ever.

  With half-shut eyes and tired tendons, I take the hoodie downstairs. After all of this time, smoky-vanilla and uncheckable-trouble lingers on washed-worn cotton.

  I miss him so much more.

  I open the washing machine and shove the hoodie in. I twist off the top of the detergent and pour half of the bottle on the navy blue baseball hoodie. I turn the water on. I set it on heavy.

  But I can still smell him in the air.

  The washer fills up with hot water, and I keep waiting for the smell of cigarettes and mint gum and disorder and crazy love to go away. It’s pore-deep in my skin, though, and thread-tied in wet cotton.

  I unscrew the bleach and pour the entire bottle in.

  The fumes choke me, but that doesn’t stop me from looking into the tub just to make sure midnight blue turns patchy-purple-pink-white. I cough and my eyes painfully start to run. I reach into the washer drum and submerge the sweater completely. Hot water and bleach pierce my broken cuticles. Tears slide off my nose into soapy liquid. When it’s full, it begins to spin.

  With dripping, burning hands, I turn off the washing machine and pull out my sweater. I fall on my bottom with my back against cold white metal and hold Thomas’s hoodie against my chest, bleach spotting my black romper, and I cry.

  I can’t smell him anymore.

  TWO DAYS later my fingers still smell like bleach.

  “Do you need my help with breaking down the basement?” I ask, putting the orange juice back into the refrigerator.

  Mom ties her hair into a ponytail before pouring herself a cup of coffee. She’s dressed in one of dad’s old flannels and has excitement in her eyes over the gym they’re going to build down there.

  “It’s okay.” She passes behind me to get the creamer out. “Where did you get that dress?”

  She slips her finger under the halter. I step away from her before she spills black java on my white eyelets.

  “I bought it a while ago.” Lie. It’s from Tommy.

  “It’s pretty. Do you have plans?” She takes a hesitant sip from her mug.

  I shake my head. “Not today.”

  “If you need me, your dad and I will be down below all day.” She waves over her shoulder on her way out of the kitchen.

  I take my orange juice up to my room and lie stomach down on my bed and am taking the “How Do You Know He’s The One” test in Seventeen Magazine when I hear the familiar engine’s rumble.

  My heartbeat flies. My cheeks redden. My skin tingles. My shoulders straighten.

  I know.

  Dusty’s here, ready to burn everything down.

  “When did you get back?” I run my fingers through my mother’s willow tree, keeping my voice low and my head down. Long, green velvet leaves tickle my arms, and chills rush from the tips of my fingers through my elbows.

  “Just now,” he says, walking behind me, peeking between the willows. “I came here first. I haven’t been by my house.”

  I glimpse over my bare shoulder, chancing a look. Thomas’ eyes are tired and his skin is colorless. His normally short blond-brown hair is long and dirty, curling slightly over his ears. The black jeans his legs are in and the gray tee shirt his thinner-than-usual chest is covered with are brand new.

  He looks disgustingly beautiful. Perks of a sinner who has money.

  “Leigh, I said I was sorry,” he apologizes, swatting at tree branches.

  You always are.

  “It’s not like you’re my girlfriend.”

  I turn around and Thomas is closer than I anticipated. He’s almost touching me, surveying my movements with hopelessly dark, apologetic eyes and slumped shoulders. There’s a cigarette behind his left ear, and I know he carries a more disgraceful addiction in his pocket.

  “You’re right,” I argue. “I’m your victim.”

  “I’ll always want you,” he whispers, brushing his nose along the ridge of my jaw.

  His sudden proximity is overwhelming after time apart. I don’t have a moment to adjust before he takes my hand and presses my palm against the pulse point in his neck.

  “Do you feel that? Do you feel how fast it beats?”

  I do.

  “You make my heart flutter, princess.”

  I feel it.

  He’s further gone than he’s ever been, and his eyes are imperceptible black, but love’s pulse is as sure and quick under my touch as it’s always been.

  This, I know.

  Thomas removes my hand from his neck and kisses my knuckles. He flashes his curved smirk, turning my butterflies to pins.

  “You’re high,” I whisper.

  “I am.”

  He smiles.

  I move away from him, extending my hand to tickle the willow. “Were you with her?”

  “With who, Bliss?” he asks, losing the grin.

  I laugh. And not because this is funny, but because this is pathetic.

  “Don’t call me that,” I say, shaking my head in disbelief before turning away.

  Unimpressed with my built walls, I feel him studying my every move and detail trying to find his way in. It’s surreal to be able to smell him again: dank green grass and Doublemint. I’ve tried hard to forget this scent, but I used to love it on my own clothes, in my hair, all over my skin. I used to savor it.

  That was before.

  I close my eyes, imagining for a moment that my heart isn’t broken, that he loves me as much as I love him. I try to convince myself behind shut eyes that Thomas doesn’t continuously choose drugs over me. I play myself a fool by believing one day it
will only be him and me.

  “What do you think?” I cry, brushing tears away as they fall.

  His silence slaughters.

  “What do you want to hear?” he finally asks softly. Thomas reaches out, claiming me. “Who do you want me to be?”

  Whispers of forever and outcome touch the spot below my ear with his lips. “When you turn eighteen, everything will be different, Leighlee.”

  Excuses.

  Like he never left.

  But he did.

  “You look pretty in this dress. Let me take it off and love you,” he begs, declares, and promises. “Let me be with you.”

  I know he loves me. I never doubt his love. I doubt his intentions and respect. I distrust his motives and allegiance.

  Love?

  I smother in dictating love.

  He’s love's traitor.

  “My parents are home,” I say.

  Thomas leans down and kisses the side of my throat, running his hand up the back of my white dress. He tugs the hair at the nape of my neck. “What did you do while I was gone?” he asks, his voice calm as tension rolls through him.

  I laugh sorrowfully in his arms. “You mean, who was I with when you took off for over a month?”

  Thomas groans in my ear, pulling my hair a little harder. He tightens his fingers into a fist and presses his nose to my jaw. “I swear to God.” He breathes. “I’ll kill him.”

  I grip onto his arm and dig my nails into his skin. The bricks stacked higher every night he was gone, and like that, I crumble.

  “No one,” I say, moving my hand underneath his chin. Forcing him to look at me, I hold Thomas by his face.

  This isn’t the boy I grew up loving; this is a man who brings me along for his ride.

  “Because I love you.” I refuse to allow fear into my voice. “Because I love you, nobody else will ever touch me. Even though you are constantly touched.”