I Like You Like This

by Heather Cumiskey

  “You’re disgusting! Don’t touch me . . . don’t!”

  “Please, Hannah. Don’t leave.”

  Hannah flew down the mansion’s long, winding staircase, frantically trying to remember the quickest way out. She swung open one of the large front doors, and the crack of the lion doorknocker rang out as if to say, Told you so.

  She looked back. He wasn’t coming after her.

  She took off down the snowy hill from his house knowing she probably looked like a freak show, considering she never ran anywhere. Out of nowhere, her boot caught on a sheet of ice, sending her down hard on her butt. She tumbled several times, only coming to a stop when she plowed into a snowdrift. A dog started yelping from inside a neighbor’s house. She slowly picked herself up, shaking off the snow caked from her hair down to her cold feet, stomping the ground until the tears came. She prayed that no one had seen her, especially him, and took the rest of the way down the hill more tentatively. Moron.

  Wet and shivering, she walked home trailed by the awful memory of the time her father kicked her out of the car. When will you ever learn, the voice inside yelled. Hannah gritted her teeth. Shit. She’d left her book bag at his house. There was no way she was going back. She kept moving, trying not to cry, while the wind picked up, taunting her and her relentless stupidity. She cursed herself for believing the fairy tale—the one where the oh-so-cute, popular boy fell for the unlikely misfit, taking away her misery. Her chest felt like he’d carved something out of it with a jagged, dull knife, leaving her hollow and grotesque. She punched one leg hard, then the other one. What a joke. Believing that Deacon Giroux actually elevated her somehow by liking her, sleeping with her, even. God, I’m no better than Taylor.

  She was about three miles out from her house when an old, green, two-door Chevrolet pulled up next to her. She ungracefully crossed the icy street to steer clear of whoever was driving it. She could hear its non-muffled engine sputtering along in the cold, its tires crunching the blackened snow. She picked up her pace, still avoiding eye contact.

  “Hannah!”

  Peter. She looked over at the car and shook her head. The last thing she wanted to do was explain.

  “Come on, I’ll take you home.”

  She thought about how much farther she had to go, and her resolve disappeared. “Thanks,” she mumbled, lowering her head and getting into the car. “You have a car?”

  “It’s my parents’. I get to drive it when they don’t need it for work.”

  The cranked heat hit her numb face immediately, along with the upholstery’s old potato smell. Within minutes her feet and hands started to thaw; it hurt, like razors were slicing her skin, but it was a comfort not to talk or feel the need to fill in the silence. Peter always seemed to give her that space.

  When they arrived at her house, Hannah mustered a small smile. “Thanks,” she said again before shutting the car door.

  CHAPTER 32

  DEACON ALL BUT VANISHED AFTER THE BLOW-UP OVER THE Polaroids. Hannah didn’t see him at school and he never came by her house, except when she found her book bag on her porch the next morning. Toby kept coming around, though, hammering her about Deacon’s whereabouts. She now understood how annoying the kid could be. He seemed so desperate and clueless at the same time. After a while, he finally got the hint—like the rest of the school, judging by their knowing looks—that she and Deacon had broken up.

  Somehow, she held it together in front of all of them as she numbly walked around school, even though she felt like a pyramid of cards ready to collapse at the first whisper of wind. The loneliness of being without him weighed heavily on everything she did. Seeing him leaning against her locker between classes or walking the halls with his arm around her—those were the moments she missed the most. Those moments and their friendship. Beyond being incredibly attracted to him, she longed for the friend she thought she’d had.

  The routine of school helped, but the everything-is-fine charade was exhausting. Every evening, she released the pain inside her bedroom walls, howling into her pillow and rocking her stuffed hippo until she wore herself out and slept. When she wasn’t ranting in her diary about the million things she wanted to tell Deacon, she tortured herself listening to the songs they’d shared, including the night she’d been “his girl” at the Halloween party and the day they spent at his house, mostly in his bed. Each song stabbed a different part of her.

  Deacon’s sudden abandonment only fueled Hannah’s fear that he’d been using her. Still, she didn’t understand how he could be so cruel. Peter had tried to warn her. But Hannah knew she’d just wanted to believe someone actually cared for her—loved her, even.

  It doesn’t matter, she told herself; somehow, she’d survive this. And at least life without Deacon meant being free of the constant worry of his drug-dealing world pulling her down with him. But what about those pictures—what was he going to do with them? Part of her wanted to believe what he’d said, but still, he’d been a monster. Giving her that powerful drug then taking advantage of her and posing her like some nympho. She shuddered at how free she’d been with him. Slut. Whore. She pushed the words down again, growing sadder with every passing day—and stepping closer to the belief that he’d been laughing at her this whole time.

  CHAPTER 33

  THE HALLWAYS EMPTIED AS GILLIAN HEADED TO HER locker, ignoring the bell for seventh period. She checked her Swatch, wondering if she had enough time to get to Jade’s school before dismissal. She pushed aside the nagging feeling that her girlfriend was pulling away, creating a chasm between them that felt less and less reparable. If things weren’t complicated enough, this unaccustomed sense of desperation piqued Gillian to no end. I have to stay focused, she told herself. She had to hit first before they came after her. They couldn’t find out. Ever.

  Ugh, there’s that skank again. Gillian had to resist the urge to wring Hannah’s neck every time she saw her, like now—at least until she could figure out what to do about her. She knew Taylor could be coerced into helping, as could her stupid boyfriend, Toby, the latest flavor of the month. But Taylor was acting weird lately—distracted. Then there was ever-driven Leeza and her nauseating quest to get elected Queen of Hearts at the upcoming winter formal. Leeza went on incessantly about it over lunch, especially how great it would look on her college applications, while Gillian surreptitiously rolled her eyes and kicked Taylor under the table.

  What lit Leeza’s fire to try and get ahead in life meant nothing to Gillian; she just didn’t see the point. Besides, her best friend was never going to survive her biggest secret, the one Leeza had blurted out after too many Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers one night. The Leeza-lites—Gillian’s pet name for Leeza’s parents—were secretly broke and had been for a while. Like, straight off of Walton’s Mountain broke. Gillian snickered at the thought of Leeza’s social-climbing parents, the biggest wannabes in town, the couple who always found endless ways to flaunt their “decorator showcase” of a home and two leased sports cars in the driveway, now suffocating under a pile of debt and a please-don’t-tell-anyone pending home foreclosure. What a bunch of posers. Gillian sniffed. She wouldn’t be able to hold on to Leeza’s secret for long.

  She cocked an eyebrow, taking in the familiar dark figure coming down the hall, and grabbed her chance to play. “I see you’re back,” she sneered, giving Deacon the once-over and wondering how far she could push him. Jade’s involvement in Deacon’s operation had always irked her big time, and now she was using. Her girlfriend was pulling away, and Gillian wasn’t going down without turning it into a blood bath. Deacon or Hannah—someone was going to pay for Jade’s new craving.

  Deacon said nothing, just kept walking toward the glass exit doors. His hunched shoulders and fisted hands gave him the appearance of a captive lion, and his bloodshot eyes and ashen face made him look like he hadn’t slept in a week.

  “Why do you care about that little skank? She’s just another notch—”

  He smashed a fist into o
ne of the doors, nearly shattering the glass. “Shut up, Gillian,” he snarled. “You have no idea.”

  CHAPTER 34

  1972–1981

  “WE’RE GOING ON A LITTLE TRIP, DEAR.”

  “Will we be gone for long?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why?” Deacon could feel his lips begin to quiver. Once again, he tried so hard to be the tough guy like his father had taught him—“No tears, never any tears,” he’d scold his six-year-old son—but Deacon didn’t want to leave; he wanted to find out who that little boy in his father’s arms had been days earlier. The one that had made his father look so different. He’d never seen him look like that before, like the fathers on TV.

  Deacon could tell his mom was getting annoyed. She was already twisting and re-twisting her pearls, her thin lips silently counting to five. Never a good sign. He couldn’t seem to please her, either.

  “Mommy, I want to go back home! Please let me stay!” Deacon began to cry. He sat on the floor, refusing to sit next to her, but he grabbed onto her leg like a security blanket when the town car began to pull away from the house. Panic rose up inside his throat. Wait! Where’s Daddy, why isn’t he coming for me? Desperate, he started to thrash about, pounding the back of the front seat, but both the driver and his mother ignored his tantrum.

  The big trees were getting farther away. He had to do something. Now.

  He dug his fingernails into his mother’s fleshy calf, ripping her sheer, nude-colored pantyhose and bringing up red droplets that started heading for her Halston heel. She gasped and kicked her son off of her. Deacon’s head hit the window, causing the driver to glare at him over his shoulder, before he slid back onto the floor, dumbstruck, his head throbbing. He touched a hand to his face and was momentarily transfixed by the red stickiness on his fingertips. Then he wept, silently but hard, yearning to fall through the car’s vibrating floorboards. His chest ached for his father, his home, his toys, and especially his blue bedroom with the glowing stars on the ceiling—convinced he’d never see them again.

  There they are again. Deacon crouched behind the park dumpster, waiting for the five of them to leave—the same kids who’d been torturing him ever since he arrived at his grandfather’s estate nearly 730 days ago. Not like he was counting. For some reason, they’d come back. Probably to mess with him more.

  Deacon bit into his lip, grimacing and holding his crotch. His front teeth sank down further, bringing up a salty iron taste. He couldn’t take it; he bolted over to the park bathroom, praying the other boys wouldn’t see him. He leaned back with all his might to pull open the heavy men’s room door, then ran to the nearest stall and gratefully gave in to the bottle of Coke he’d drunk an hour earlier.

  His eyes snapped at the sound of someone running the faucet outside the stall door. Was it one of the bullies? He panicked, clenching his butt cheeks until he heard whomever it was singing a jumbled rendition of “Sweet Home Alabama.” He knew then it was someone else. Someone older.

  He sucked in his breath before exiting the stall. When he got to the bathroom door, he glanced back at the skinny teen washing his hands. The stranger smiled at him, revealing a toothy, horse-like grin above his “Led Zeppelin America” T-shirt and black leather vest. A chrome chain wallet bulged from his Levi’s.

  You could hear Jack singing before you ever saw him coming; he was always belting out a cacophonic repertoire, regardless of who was listening. His teeth, yellow from his chain-smoking, made him appear years older than seventeen, and when he smiled, it looked like a snarl. Still, the park kids flocked to his side to hear his animated, often hilarious rant about some new band or movie. The charismatic teen soon commanded the park, speaking in a soft manner that made all of the kids take notice, even the rough ones—and most of all, Deacon. And Jack didn’t seem to mind him following him around.

  “It’s getting dark,” he said one night. “Where are your parents, Little D?”

  “I live with my grandfather,” Deacon said, jumping off the top of the picnic table where Jack was smoking.

  “Where’s he at?”

  Deacon shrugged. “Someone else is supposed to watch me,” he said, kicking a rock.

  “Like a babysitter?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Where are they?”

  Deacon shrugged again and searched for more rocks to kick.

  “Are you rich or something?”

  “No.”

  “I kinda think you are. Ya go to school?”

  “Doesn’t everybody?”

  “No, not everybody.” Jack looked away then. “Ya like school?”

  “Not much . . . well, just swim team. But that’s after school.”

  “Ahh, a swimmer . . . I can see that.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Do you wear those little banana hammocks?” Jack snorted.

  Without thinking, Deacon hurled a rock over his head.

  “Watch it, you little fucker!” He grabbed Deacon by the back of his jeans, lifting him off the ground.

  “Put me down . . . put me down!” Deacon cried.

  Jack yanked him up a few more times before finally releasing him. Deacon spun around and charged at him headfirst. Jack grabbed Deacon’s wrists while he fruitlessly fought. The more Jack laughed at the boy’s efforts, the more Deacon’s fury grew, until finally the tears sprung like an uncorked dam, eventually drowning him. He collapsed to the ground and buried his head in the crook of his arm.

  Jack lit up another cigarette, wearing one of his snarling smiles, and picked some small pieces of tobacco from between his teeth. “Wanna shoot hoops?”

  “Yeah,” Deacon said, wiping his nose onto his shirtsleeve. He grabbed the ball from Jack’s hands and took off toward the courts.

  Late one night, Jack lit up another type of cigarette—one that was creased and twisted tightly at either end, more like a large worm than one of his Marlboros. He inhaled it differently too, maximizing his intake and holding it for several seconds before exhaling. It released a sharp sweet smell that made Jack’s eyes sparkle.

  Jack had shared other cigarettes with him, so immediately, Deacon asked for a turn. He tried to imitate the cool, easy way he saw Jack do it, but instead it burned his throat and he coughed like crazy.

  “That’s okay, little man.” Jack laughed gently and his top lip peeled back, revealing his gums. “There will be time enough for that.”

  “Nah, I can do it, really,” Deacon said.

  Jack took another hit and held in the smoke, his eyes widening. “You know what would really piss off your grandfather, that fucker? Hmm, I’ve got a novel idea. Is that cool— if we try a little experiment?”

  “Sure, I guess.”

  “It’s a package I need delivered. Let me write down the address.” Jack ripped off a piece of a cardboard Blow Pops box from a nearby garbage can and scrawled the information on the inside. “Now, I’m trusting you, Little D—don’t let me down.”

  “You want me to go now?” Deacon asked, looking at the darkening sky.

  Deacon’s heart hammered nails into his chest as his little legs frantically pedaled his candy-red Schwinn Deluxe Stingray—the coveted bike all the kids wanted, with chrome fenders, a bucket banana seat, and wide handlebars, complete with sissy bar shock suspension—down the sidewalk. This probably wasn’t the use his mother had in mind when she sent the bike from Europe as a Christmas present.

  Deacon kept rechecking the address on the cardboard box top he’d wrapped around his right handlebar. He was worried he’d never find the place. But when he heard the music and saw the clouds of billowing smoke from the apartment building’s third-floor windows, he understood what Jack had meant when he said he couldn’t miss the “party scene.”

  Deacon took the flights two steps at a time before reaching the door, which was vibrating from the music blasting behind it. He knocked and waited for a minute. Impatiently, he rapped again—this time more loudly, using his fist—until the door swung open and a y
oung, pretty redhead in a green bandana and brown suede fringe vest with nothing much underneath appeared.

  “Jesus, what do we have here? Hey, little man, what’s your name?” She crouched down to make them eye level and started to pull him into the party like he was a toy.

  “Stop it! Stop it!” Deacon wailed. “I’m here to see Gunther.” He wiggled out from underneath her grip. Her hands felt sweaty and hot, and worse, she reeked of beer and stinky cheese.

  “Come here, little boy, don’t you want Maggie to give you a kiss?” She grabbed his hand and slid it inside her vest, rubbing it across her hard nipple. “Doesn’t that feel good? Bet you never touched a girl before—”

  “Stop it, Maggie, leave the kid alone.” A tall, rangy man pushed her aside, and the party absorbed her back into the chaos. Deacon’s rescuer resembled more of a caveman than a human, with black snarly hair that hung past his shoulders and a long, scraggly beard, the longest Deacon had ever seen. He wore dark round sunglasses and purple bellbottoms without a shirt, and lots of beaded necklaces flapped over his tan, round belly.

  “I-I, I’m here to see Gunther,” Deacon stammered, scared he would pee his pants.

  “That’d be me.”

  “Here,” Deacon said shyly, without looking up. He thrust the small package into the man’s hand and took off down the stairs. He was nearly at the bottom when the guy started shouting. Deacon froze, unsure what to do next.

  “You forgot the dough,” the man yelled to him. Shaking his head at his stupidity, Deacon walked back, more confidently this time.

  “Take it, kid,” the guy said and handed him a wad of cash before slamming the door.

  Deacon had never seen so much money before. Pedaling back, he felt alive, filled with a mixture of pride and relief. He practically flung himself into Jack’s arms back at the park, the money gripped tightly in his hands.