I Like You Like This

by Heather Cumiskey

  “Good job, Little D, good job.” Jack beamed as he counted every curled, damp bill.

  That night, Deacon placed the Blow Pops box top underneath his pillow, along with the five-dollar bill Jack gave him, too stoked to even sleep.

  Deacon learned the trade fast, running Jack’s errands, occasionally encountering grown-up situations that he always managed to sidestep unscathed, keeping a low profile and remaining undetected by the cops.

  “You’re like Teflon, Little D—nothing sticks to you!” Jack would crow.

  By age twelve, Deacon had become a full-fledged dealer, a partner in Jack’s growing territory. Thanks to his cute, clean-cut looks, he fit in with the upper-crust clients and could deal to wealthier circles, ones that had eluded Jack before.

  When Deacon’s grandfather pushed to send him to a prestigious boys’ prep school in Massachusetts, it was Jack who saw it as an ideal opportunity for him to get into all those rich kids’ pockets—creating customers on his mean old grandfather’s dime. Deacon put on a good face, but inside he still felt like that kid hiding behind the park dumpster.

  At first, it wasn’t so bad. When the older kids at the new school discovered that the precocious twelve-year-old could supply their weekend parties with just about anything they wanted, they soon invited him everywhere, treating Deacon like their new best friend. It was fun to be so popular, even though they didn’t hang or talk with him the way Jack did. Meeting girls and getting teachers to overlook his late homework and struggling grades also got easier. But best of all, Deacon’s business grew; rich prep-school boys apparently came with an endless supply of cash. In just two years, he nearly tripled the business he had done in his four years with Jack. Still, Deacon never escaped the sadness that crept inside his chest late at night when he was alone in his bed, or when he saw the other boys still getting care packages of goodies and notes from their parents.

  “Hey D, how come you don’t ever get anything?” Thomas, a fellow classmate with a crooked smile whose father owned some big commercial transport business, asked him over lunch in the Dining Hall one day. The boisterous table, lined with teens in navy blue blazers with a gold-embroidered school crest on the pocket, suddenly went hush, all eyes riveted and waiting. Deacon had an audience.

  He slowly loosened his uniform tie away from his neck, his smirk spreading into one of his wide, handsome smiles. “I don’t need that sissy crap . . . I’m a self-made man,” he said haughtily, enjoying the look of awe in their eyes. “Besides, what I can get you is sooo much better. Real candy, you hear what I’m saying?”

  “Speaking of . . .” Thomas interjected, tipping his head in the direction of the new kid at school. He’d arrived just days earlier. The table all turned, checking out the guy walking into the dining hall. The kid looked lost and a bit dorky in a nervous sort of way. He was built like an athlete, with wide shoulders and stocky legs, and appeared as dimwitted as they come. Deacon bit into the side of his cheek as he eyed the new classmate. He shook his head and grinned; he’d groom him into a customer in no time.

  A couple of weeks later, Deacon was walking with the new kid back to the dorms when he noticed a hunter-green Jaguar convertible coming up the campus’s main drive. Like a flash from a camera, Deacon’s memory of sitting on top of his father’s lap and steering down their long driveway flooded his brain, disorientating him until he could blink away the floating spots and refocus. What in the world is he doing here? Deacon’s veins flowed—first with a rush of excitement, then by an old sense of queasiness. He kept squinting to get a better look. God, what am I going to say? His mind spun wildly.

  “Listen . . . Toby, right? There’s something I need to do—”

  But Toby kept walking, oblivious to him and waving to the car coming to a stop. Deacon froze. A cold, creepy feeling crawled up his neck. He quickly moved behind one of the buildings. Don’t look. Dammit, don’t look. Shit. Deacon stepped out in time to see his father’s face light up when he high-fived Toby. Then a private handshake commenced, full of fist bumps and waving gestures that ripped Deacon’s heart out, rolling it onto the cement and stomping on it until it stopped beating.

  Babette and her white limo appeared at school the following week. They were flying home. To his real home. His grandfather had dictated his marching orders to him the day before over the phone, something about the need to reassemble the family due to the fact that Kingsley’s promising political career had never been hotter and his Grandfather Pierre needed some fresh “plastic” connections.

  His family was reeling him back because he could be useful. And he was their captive. Absently, he began stroking the circular scar inside his left palm. He could see the lit cigar hanging out of the old man’s mouth by the way he spoke. He shuddered, remembering what burned flesh smelled like. All at once, he was six again and hiding, always hiding. He kept his eyes closed long after his grandfather hung up, imagining himself alone in a vast, black ocean, treading water just before a massive wave engulfed him.

  When she arrived, Babette looked years younger than she had the last time he saw her. She gave him one of her tight smiles, which seemed even more taut from the evident “work” that had been done, but little else. All the things he’d planned to say to his mother fell away within minutes during that car ride to the airport, solidifying his own cowardice. In its place, a grotesque weed grew, masked in their polite silence, as he breathed the same air as the woman who had abandoned him nearly nine years earlier.

  CHAPTER 35

  December 1984

  “MOM? MOM? WAKE UP, MOM ! MOMMY?”

  Hannah had come in the kitchen for a snack after school. She’d spotted the manicured talons first, reaching across the linoleum floor; then her mother’s arm jutting out from the bottom of the counter, frozen and bent like one of Kerry’s dirty baby dolls. Hannah lunged for her blindly. Her school bag and kneecaps smacked the floor just as the room pulled out from underneath her. She began rocking, as if in prayer, over her mother’s lifeless body. “No, Mommy! Wake up, wake up!”

  She got enough of a hold of herself to take action. “The phone—where’s the damn phone?” she shouted. She followed the phone cord around the house, smacking herself into the wall, until she found the receiver lying on the ground. Crazily, she dialed 911—then dropped the receiver. She took a big breath and commanded herself to calm down. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw them: Kerry’s little legs dangling from the corduroy couch, her fleeced Droge bear clutched at her side, her eyes glazed like an ice rink.

  “Oh my god, Kerry! What did you do?” Hannah’s head spun around frantically, searching the living room for something she didn’t want to find. “You’re just coked up on Fruit Loops, right Kerry girl? Nothing . . . more . . .” Then she saw the empty pill bottle on the floor. Childproof caps my ass!

  “Shit, shit! Think, dammit, think,” Hannah cried into the phone.

  “911 operator, what is the nature of your emergency?”

  Hannah took a deep breath.

  She stayed on the line with the operator until the ambulance arrived, long enough for her to hallucinate leaving her body and floating upward, hovering over her mother’s sprawled body then traveling over her little sister’s limp form just a few feet away. She imagined the three of them dead while she waited for their spirits to join her mid-flight.

  She stuck her head outside her bedroom, listening for sounds downstairs and from the floor above. She stepped warily into the hallway. Her head felt warped from crying so much, but she could still hear the starburst wall clock in the kitchen ticking like a drippy faucet. The house suddenly breathed differently now that her mom and Kerry were gone.

  Hannah had locked herself in her room that afternoon after going to see them in that facility—a cold, antiseptic institution meant for crazy people, not her mom and sister. She shook her head as if it were an Etch-A-Sketch, hoping to erase the vivid picture of them lying on those cots with their eyes closed, wearing paper gowns and covered by
a starched white sheet. The whole time she was there, she’d worried that the annoyingly affable staff would pull the sheet over each of their heads once she left. Please, God, no.

  Her stomach growled just as she switched on the kitchen light. She wondered if she’d find something in the fridge that wasn’t expired.

  “Oh!” Her legs wobbled at the sight of her father sitting at the table, sucking the oxygen from the room. “Sorry, I didn’t know anyone was here.” She began to turn back, but then heard a small, asthmatic-sounding breath escape from his lips.

  “Your mother, she sort of checked out when you were born,” said a weary voice that didn’t belong to her father.

  “What?” Hannah stopped short, confusing his meaning, thinking her mother was somehow already checking out of the facility.

  “His name was Michael . . . he came just a year before you were born,” he said slowly, looking down at his palms then flipping them over, inspecting them. A brief smile touched his lips when he lifted his head, reminding Hannah of her parents’ wedding picture, which made them both looked so young and carefree. “He was just beautiful, we were over the moon about him.” Her father’s hands started skimming the table, smoothing down a tablecloth that wasn’t there.

  “First-time parents, we were so nervous, trying to do everything right . . .” His hands stopped moving. The smile extinguished.

  Hannah brought a hand to her chest and held her breath.

  “Your mother found him that morning . . . blue . . . not even a week . . .” His breath caught before his face collapsed onto itself and he turned from her.

  Hannah cupped her hands over her mouth. She could see it all so clearly, and it hurt.

  “They told us he’d been born with a heart defect.” The last word hung in the air. It sounded so small and innocent, not like something that could kill a baby.

  He let out an odd laugh, and Hannah wondered if he’d been drinking. “It sounds morbid now, but your mom used to dress you in his clothes like you were her little prince. Drawers of clothes she’d gotten from baby showers . . . family . . .” He tucked his chin into his chest. “Your mom blamed herself. Thinking if only she’d checked on him sooner, just maybe . . . It didn’t matter what they told us. Our beautiful boy . . .”

  “So, I came along, and . . . and what?” Hannah started, wishing she sounded more benevolent, less accusatory. “I wasn’t enough?”

  Her father frowned. “You came along and she—and I guess a part of me as well—became afraid. That you’d leave us . . . too.”

  Hannah pulled a chair from the table, and only then noticed that her hands were shaking.

  “I know your mom and I haven’t always been there for you, especially these last few years. We thought having more kids would help us forget, move past it somehow. And it did. I thought it did. Kerry came along and your mother was distracted with having another baby around the house. You were clearly pulling away, and Kerry became her little doll. For a while, it seemed to work. I’m not saying it’s right, Hannah. But how can anyone forget losing a child?”

  How can anyone forget the child that lived? Hannah dug her nails into her upper arms, hesitating. “Did you . . . ever forget?”

  “No,” he said softly, staring into his hands again and drawing small circles on his palm.

  The motor in the refrigerator kicked on, and Hannah remembered her rumbling stomach. “Maybe you should stop trying.” She let her words fill the room above the hum. She re-crossed her arms over her chest and held on to her shoulders.

  “You’ve always been so smart . . . have I told you that?” he said, watching her now.

  “You just did.”

  CHAPTER 36

  THE NEXT MORNING, HANNAH MADE HER WAY TO THE BUS stop feeling strangely subdued. Her dad had actually been pretty decent and offered to get her excused from school the rest of the week, but she’d declined. She didn’t want to hang around the house; the dead air was too depressing, and she could still see her mom’s and Kerry’s bodies lying motionless everywhere she looked.

  “Hannah, I know you were the one who found them . . . getting the ambulance here in time . . .” her dad had said before heading up to bed. She knew it was the closest she’d get to a thank-you. So she took it.

  The afternoon when Hannah found them, all of the neighbors, ones she hadn’t seen in years, were miraculously out walking their dog or getting their mail in time to watch her mother being carried out on a stretcher, followed by her little sister. The buzz on the street heightened when Kerry’s heart got restarted just before the ambulance doors closed. Hannah glared at the parade of downturned mouths and shaking heads. Screw ’em, she thought and walked back into the house.

  It would be another week or two before Hannah could see her mom or sister again, something about their bodies needing to go through stages of withdrawal. The doctors used words with her dad like “possible seizures,” “chance of brain damage,” and “near death.” Please God, don’t let my mother and sister die.

  Her father told the hospital medical staff and social worker that he’d mistaken her mother’s pill bottle for Kerry’s vitamins, that he’d given her the pills by accident . . . with his poor eyesight and all. Different story, different day, Hannah thought. But it had been enough to keep Child Protective Services from taking her baby sister away.

  The real truth Hannah knew in her heart was that her mother had gone from doctor to doctor, just about anyone she could charm, to write her—or Hannah—prescriptions. To. Just. Not. Feel. Anything. Hannah guessed that her mom hadn’t banked on the inevitable—craving her little helper to the point of obsession and at her youngest daughter’s expense. To cover her tracks, her mom had even filled her scripts at a number of pharmacies outside of town, always with little Kerry and Droge bear in tow.

  Just six years old. Hannah’s guilt consumed her when it came to Kerry. She should have been watching out for her. What the hell had happened to her family? She still couldn’t believe that there had been another baby. The thought of having an older sibling sent her mind awhirl. If he had lived, maybe she wouldn’t have been born at all. Or maybe they would have grown up together, been best friends. He would have shown her the ropes. No bully would have ever touched her with a big brother at her side. Even now, he would be protecting her. Hannah sighed at all the what-ifs.

  The December wind blasted her face as she neared the top of the street, causing her eyes to tear. She pulled her hair from her mouth with a new thought. Maybe her brother hadn’t survived because he wasn’t meant to be born to save her, protect her from all the teenage crap and people like Deacon. Perhaps she had to learn to go it alone.

  You are better than them. Smarter. Braver. Stop getting in your own way. Believe in yourself. You, Hannah Zandana, can be and do anything. They’re afraid of you. Now act like it. Go.

  Taylor stood alone at the bus stop in another one of her varsity football jackets. She seemed preoccupied, pacing back and forth with her arms folded over her chest. What a drama queen, Hannah thought. But then again, she could just be cold.

  She glanced around. Where were the other girls? She smiled at the idea that the coven had finally imploded on itself. Still, Taylor was acting strangely. She drew closer, and when she spotted the embroidered name on her letterman jacket, she did a double take.

  “You’re dating Toby now?” Hannah stopped in her tracks, her outburst practically knocking the girl over.

  “Yeah, why do you care?” Taylor replied, her voice sounding more damsel-in-distress than tough-girl. Hannah almost felt sorry for her.

  “He’s sooo not your type.”

  “Shut up, like you would know. Heard Deacon dumped you, finally.”

  Hannah took a step forward, looking Taylor squarely in the eye. “Maybe you shouldn’t believe everything you hear.”

  She stomped onto the bus and slid into her usual seat next to Peter.

  “You doing all right?” he asked in a low voice after Taylor had made her way past their
seat.

  His steady kindness brought tears to Hannah’s eyes. She quickly blinked them away before they had a chance to drop. She knew he was alluding to the ambulance at her house. By now the whole school must be abuzz. It was only a matter of time until everyone started drawing their conclusions about what happened, if they hadn’t already.

  “Not really,” she said, keeping her eyes locked on the back of the bus driver’s greasy, flake-filled head.

  “Looks like you defrosted from the other day,” he said with a small smile.

  “Thanks, Peter.” For not asking me to explain.

  He stayed close to her when they got off the bus, holding the door for her as she walked underneath his arm and escorting her to her locker. His presence was comforting. Even after he left her side, with a small knowing nod, she felt safer knowing he wasn’t far away.

  Hannah sighed, looking at the mountain of books in her locker. She felt dazed for a moment, trying to figure what she needed for her next few classes. But the quiet moment didn’t last; suddenly, Gillian and Leeza descended on her like vultures.

  “So, skank, what’s the deal with your mom and sister?” Gillian shouted into the hallway, screwing up her face like she’d just smelled rotten eggs. Hannah wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction, though her insides were already twisting. She pursed her lips and turned back to close her locker.

  Gillian grabbed her shoulder and spun her around, setting Leeza off into a gale of nervous laugher and making her Queen of Hearts “Elect Me!” button jiggle on her boobs.

  “Don’t fricking touch me!” Hannah glared at Gillian— the same little witch who’d never played nice in the sandbox, who’d always tormented people just for kicks. Feeling the blood rise in her face, she clenched her right hand, shaking more with fear than hatred. But then Toby’s Neanderthal presence came out of nowhere, taking up space next to Gillian, and Hannah felt her anger transforming into tears.