Bittersweet Wreckage

by Erin Richards

  Jesse’s mouth froze on my neck and he turned stone still beneath me. “At least you and Jade have one thing in common. He hated her boyfriends. She brought a preppy friend of mine to dinner once and faked him out to get him off her back. Mostly, she kept them away when he came… home.” He choked a little on the word “home.”

  Jade brought boyfriends home at fifteen? I wasn’t allowed to date until seventeen, and then he had full approval rights, to maintain his corporate image. I hated the frigid edge of jealousy freezing my spine.

  Moving on was all I understood how to do. Life had become too delicious and unexpected to allow my past to define me any further. I just needed to figure out how to move beyond it.

  Being with Jesse helped. Opening up to him helped even more. “Your house was his home as well as this house. I understand. It wasn’t normal, but I’m not so weirded out anymore. It explains his constant traveling and disappearances, missed outings when he was supposedly working or doing guy things, or on the sailboat my mom hated.”

  Jesse trailed tiny kisses along my neck, holding onto me snugly, his hands exploring the hollow of my back. We held each other for the longest time, breathing each other in, giving and taking comfort. I hadn’t felt so accepted and wanted from anyone ever. I didn’t know how I’d survived so long deprived of a boy’s all-encompassing awareness, the push and pull of passion igniting hot coals under my skin. I loved the way his lips left a path of fire across my throat.

  Things needed to be voiced, before the road ahead led us onward. “We need to move on from him,” I said. “Whether we ever fully understand, we need to live in the here and now. I don’t want to destroy your good memories. Nothing will change what he did to us, but we possess the right and the means to change what we do to those memories and the future.” I repeated profound words I’d read in a fantasy novel, a hero understanding his quest to save himself and the world.

  “I know.” He breathed onto my skin, burning himself into me.

  This was the life I wanted. I knew that then. If Jesse was willing to share his secrets with me, I wanted to do the same with him. I wanted more than this explosion of sensation. I wanted that freedom, for that sarcophagus around my chest to break apart, for that door on the cage to allow the bird outside.

  In that moment, I wanted Jesse’s mouth moving, his breath burning lower, all over me. Wanton and I had never met, and I wasn’t sure what to do short of making a lame idiot of myself. Welcome to Ivy’s Virgin Emporium, the primo place for the innocent in you. We carry picture books and sex tapes for the educational. All items come bundled with a fan and a cold shower, free of charge.

  A low landscape light in the bushes flickered on near us, a second and third chased it. Jade’s voice intruded upon my weird and wonderful moment.

  “Holy crap, Jesse. You and Vine?” She gagged a little, and I swore her devil goat-slit eyes glowed red.

  I shattered into a million emotions. Jesse gently floated me into the bubbling waters and straightened, discreetly tugging at the crotch of his trunks. I floated to a seat, folding my arms around myself, trying to hinder the tangible lashes poised to strike me down. Or was it the guilt and shame of getting caught in the act of the forbidden?

  “The hell? Son of a princess bitch. I’m gonna hurl.” Jade pressed on her middle, bending over the bushes to one side of the back door.

  The sounds of her tossing her cookies sent a horrible, shameful fear through my twisting gut.

  Chapter 19

  Jesse hopped out of the spa, the drip, drip of water trailing him like drops of poison as he dashed to his puking sister. I’ll kill her for ruining the vincas I’d hand-planted one by stinking one. Ugh. Was I channeling the Tyrant again?

  I followed him out of the spa and tugged on my cover-up, pulling the edges tight across my chest. My desire to wear my bikini for Jesse failed miserably in the wake of our being called out. My life became a new nightmare every day.

  “Get the hell away from me.” Jade rammed her head into Jesse’s chest.

  “It’s not what you think,” he said. “Listen to me.”

  “Oh, what?” she sputtered. “You weren’t macking on each other?” She sank to her knees. A landscape light carved a golden slant across her black jeans, dead-ending on the flowers she’d decimated.

  Jesse crouched next to her. I draped a beach towel over his shoulders. I swear Jade hissed at me. I moved to the patio table to let him soothe her and her two emotions.

  “Ivy and I like each other,” Jesse said. “A weird insta-thing. Same thing you said happened to you and Ax.” The sincerity in his voice drove out a bit of my anxiety. But were we still only using each other to discover who we were, or to alleviate our grief? I rubbed my eyes. Confusion, meet Ivy.

  “But she’s our half-sister!”

  “You know that’s not true, for me. We’re not related.”

  “Gross. Oh, man, so gross.” Jade searched for another flowerbed to feed and destroy. “She’s still your half-sister by law. She’s not even your type. She’s too blonde, too pale, too yuppity-uppity. She’s a fucking vine. Withering like her stoned mother in their dead-end palace of fruit loops.”

  My mouth hung open and I balled my fists. “What color’s the sky in your world? We’re fruit loops thanks to you. You’re the bastard kid born from our dad’s mistress. How dare you treat me as if I’m the problem?” Unstoppable, my voice rose, and I vaguely realized we were standing beneath the master bedroom window.

  “You’re a pathetic loser who can’t snag a boyfriend and hits on your own brother,” Jade screamed. She stroked her middle finger across her neck in her stupid eat-shit-and-die gesture.

  “Take a chill pill. Better yet, choke on one.” What if I was a pathetic loser lacking a social life? A choice I’d made due to my less-than-stellar circumstances. Deflated, I whisper-yelled, “Keep it down. You’ll wake my mother.”

  “Good. I’ll wake her and tell her the nasty you two are up to. She’ll send us packing from this hell.”

  “We’ll end up in foster care,” Jesse argued.

  “We are in foster care,” she spat out.

  “No. We’re with family.” He rubbed circles on her back.

  “Not according to you.” She shrugged off his hand. “These bitches aren’t your family.”

  “We are yours, you stupid troll,” I said, an edge of distaste in my mouth. “Like it or not.”

  “I don’t like it. I don’t like you. I don’t like your dumb mother.”

  I wanted to cry. We’d been nice to her, going out of our way to give her space while she adjusted. Had I been wrong to not seek her out and befriend her? Was I wrong to chase Jesse over her, my own flesh and blood? I so sucked at life. I really did want to get to know her too. I was just as intrigued by her as Jesse, in a different way. Duh. Call it morbid curiosity, but she was my sister. What kind of life had she led? Maybe if we got to know one another, she wouldn’t be such a bitch. Would I have to back off from Jesse to get to that point? Is that what it would take to claim my life?

  “Let’s talk in my room.” Jesse helped her stand. “Just us two.”

  “Only if you agree to dump Vine.” Jade held her ground, black rivulets of eyeliner and mascara marring her smooth cheeks, stopping on a few pimples she’d tried to cover up using über pale foundation. She really needed Mom’s triple cover-up for bruises.

  Fed up, I said through gritted teeth, “My name’s Ivy. Ivy! Not vine.”

  “Kick off,” Jade snarled, and tromped off into the house.

  “I’ll talk to her.” Jesse touched my wrist for the barest second. “She’ll calm down.”

  “Maybe we were wrong.” I took a healthy step away when I wanted to crawl under his skin and dissolve into every cell of his body. Jesse stood there, making me feel like I wasn’t alone in this book of our new life. We’d read the same chapters, seen the same events unfold. Had we traversed taboo boundaries? Uncertainty masked him, and I wanted to kick off down to Middle-earth to
live with the Hobbits. Alone. Doing my thing, my way.

  “I’ll hang with her tonight. I’ve been neglecting her.” He left me standing on the patio. Alone, vulnerable, and dying inside. The way I’d always felt. Different day, same shit. My devastation lit me up inside like fireworks lighting up the sky. Unlike fireworks, my devastation refused to dim.

  The idea of Mom killing Dad and Ms. Jerome refused to bail, and the terror of it overshot my struggles with Jesse and Jade. “What can I do?” I cried later into my pillow, until I fell asleep.

  ~*~

  Sometime in the middle of the night, sounds awoke me, and I heard Jade giggle and Ax’s low rumble. A rattle chased the rumble and her window glided closed. Groggy, I slid out of bed, unsure if I’d dreamed the noises. It was a hair past midnight, Jade’s curfew. I supposed consequences didn’t matter, since Mom was the anti-parent.

  I eased open my bathroom door. The night-light above the vanity gave the bathroom a dull yellow glow. Jade’s door was ajar, and I jabbed it open to find her lava lights throwing red, green, and blue shadows on her messy bed. The screen hung off to the side of the window. A sturdy trellis covered in flowering clematis vines decorated the wall between our windows in the backyard, easy to climb and classic movie dumb. Even all-icing-and-no-cake Kristen used to climb the trellis and escape the Lynwood beat cops. Miss Do Gooder Chicken Shit, never. Nope. I didn’t live on the wild side.

  I perched on the bed, wishing Kristen was home and not this sullen, spiteful half-sister.

  “Argh.” I groaned and fell back on top of a dozen black T-shirts and jeans layering her bed.

  Shadow bounded next to me, sending my heart into stroke zone. “Kitty, you just killed another one of my nine lives.” Purring, she head-butted me. Sitting upright and gazing around the room, I slipped my fingers into her silky black fur and her purring intensified, vibrating up my arm.

  Jade’s shrine called to my curiosity. I left Shadow on the bed to check out Voodoo Village. Several pin-pierced dolls circled a… wait for it… black candle. I didn’t recognize any of the dolls. Not that I knew her enemies, frenemies, or friends. Yet she’d made a new blonde doll, a pin stuck in the left arm. On cue, my arm itched and I sneezed three times.

  “Seriously?” I glared at the anger darkening my face in the mirror above the dresser. Shadow darted into the closet for cover.

  The doll covered a small notebook. I picked both up. Privacy in the Lynwood household just became as elusive as happiness. Rifling through pages of lame voodoo curses, I came to the curses she’d bestowed on me—from hives, to sunburns, to going bald—and notes she’d written for a new spell. “Invoke Bacalou and Ti-Jean Petro in breaking up Jesse and Ivy. Make Ivy undatable and unlovable.”

  Enraged, I tore the page out of her book and shredded it into tiny pieces. Then I ripped the doll to tatters, and making sure I didn’t leave any debris, I dumped the trash into my bedroom wastebasket. I sneezed again and scratched a persistent itchy spot on my upper arm.

  I flopped on my bed, punched the pillows behind my head, and propped my tablet on my stomach. With all my new world problems, I hadn’t spent much time enjoying my favorite passion. Less than a week ago, I was looking forward to a crappy summer running myself ragged for Dad. Instead, my old Before Death life had spewed out and I’d touched down in Voodooville. I needed grounding in a fantasy realm. But the words of my novel blurred as my mind refused to shut off.

  Jesse hadn’t sought me out after giving Jade the smackdown. I chewed on my bottom lip. Should I go to him?

  My phone beeped a text message. I’d never received a text so late. I grabbed my cell off my nightstand.

  “Nothing changes. Talk tomorrow.” An audio clip of Jesse playing his guitar accompanied the welcome text.

  My doubts and insecurities exploded instead of dissipating. Did Jesse and I need to break it off for all of us to truly become a cohesive family? Would it even matter if we all ended up in foster care?

  ~*~

  In the morning, I decided I wanted to confront my mother somehow, see if I could manipulate some hints out of her without sending her into a bottle of pills. But she was gone from her bedroom, so I used her shower to avoid Jade. The loose cannon had climbed through her window around six in the morning. If she didn’t get a handle on life in the palace, she’d find her ass kicked to the curb and squatting outside Anita Bryce’s office. For now, I’d leave it alone and try to get along.

  Mom entered her bedroom as I was finishing up in the bathroom. She wore shorts and another expensive flowery T-shirt, clothes I’d never seen her wear. “Morning, honey. Why are you using my bathroom?”

  “I didn’t want to wake Jade.” I’d love to take a bullhorn to her ear and wake her up every hour on the hour.

  “That’s nice of you.” She rummaged in her nightstand drawer. “Did you take cash out of my drawer? I had two hundred dollars in here. Thought maybe I put it in my purse, but it’s not there either.”

  “No. Maybe it slipped behind your drawer.” Classic Mom thinking she’d put something away. I used to trail her and pick up after her so the man didn’t have a category four cow.

  “I checked everywhere.” She shut the drawer, shrugged. “Guess I spent it.”

  Totally within the realm of plausibility, since she didn’t withdraw cash from the ATM often. Or had Jade stolen the moola? Not sure why my thoughts slipped straight to a klepto half-sister. Another reason to watch her like ice cream on a hot summer day.

  “How are you for cash? What about Jade and Jesse? Do you kids need anything? You know I’ll receive a monthly foster care stipend.”

  “I still have your credit card.” I gave her a wicked wink.

  “Like you’d ever abuse it.” She straightened the framed pictures on her dresser. “Will you make sure Jade and Jesse have spending money until they sell or rent their house when you two go over the finances? He seems responsible for a boy his age. They both seem pretty independent.”

  “We’re teenagers. We’re built that way. Sure, I’ll hook them up.” Hope Jade didn’t expect me to give her one dime for her voodoo crack habit or for another tattoo or piercing.

  “The dealership will arrive soon. I already cleaned out the car.” Mom hugged my shocked rigid self. Every day was a new party of firsts.

  “Anything in the car, you know, about the Jeromes?”

  She stilled. “Should there be?”

  “I waded through his office papers and found a copy of his will and an envelope of Jerome photos. Apparently, Dad gave Jesse the convertible, but I didn’t see it specified in the will. Was it updated?”

  “No. Our lawyer has the original. Your father left his entire estate to me.” Her voice dripped well-deserved indignation. Or was it a murderer’s glee?

  “What about giving Jesse the car?” I clutched my pendants, my fingernails digging into my palm. I had entered verboten terrain.

  “No. I don’t want that stupid car here. He’s fine driving his mother’s SUV.” She began her windmill dance, practically smacking me upside the head with a flapping arm. “Do you know your father bought that car on Jade’s tenth birthday, the day he also adopted Jesse?”

  Aha, she knew Jesse was adopted. Dad’s secrets and lies created a tapping in my skull. “How do you stand having them here?”

  A droop to her spine placed her desolation on center stage. “I’m doing my best.”

  A knock on the wall rose behind me. I wheeled around and spied Jesse hulking in the doorway, his fists balled at his sides. He glared at me as if I’d killed his mother, then he spun around and sprinted away.

  “Oh, Lord, he heard us.” Mom twisted her wedding rings around her finger.

  Giving up one eight-hundred-pound gorilla for another, I tore from the room. “Jesse!”

  Back rigid, fists curling, he halted in the open front door. “So how can you stand having me here? By playing me? That how your mom kept your father here?”

  “No.” I stepped close to him. “You and
I are the only ones who get it.”

  “Get what?” His glower didn’t diminish.

  “I asked how she was handling it. That had nothing to do with my feelings. After all, he cheated on her. He lied and kept dangerous secrets from her, his legal wife.”

  The gullies on Jesse’s forehead smoothed out, and his fists unfurled. A flatbed tow truck pulled up the driveway, its chugging diesel engine piercing the air of despair. He shut the door, his escape.

  “We’re all Leo Lynwood’s victims, not only my mom or Jade. At least you and I are talking through our feelings.” Kissing and touching our feelings. Maybe we were using each other. I inspected my fuchsia-pink toenails, noticing I’d spread more paint on my toes than my nails in my haste last night. “Is it wrong of us? Should we try family therapy? Do we need to do more?”

  We were the before and after, the Lynwoods and Jeromes, meeting and fitting our jagged edges in the middle. Jesse and I had taken the lead. We were meeting and we’d soon fit, albeit a tight fit with a few tattered edges that may never iron out.

  Jesse stepped into my bubble of no-man’s land. “Nothing changes.” He whispered in my ear, “I want you more now than ever. I want you to feel the same about me. I don’t want pity or sympathy clouding your want.”

  The sweet sound of his raspy voice cut to my heart, cut through the gunk in my head. I had no willpower to resist what he represented—the boyfriend I’d always wanted, someone who got me. Without sparing a second thought, I pushed him against the wall hidden from view of the staircase, my palms flat on his chest. His hands landed on my hips and he pulled me against him. Instantly, my hormone factory shifted into overdrive.

  “Nothing changes.” I breathed the words against his mouth. A tango of heat and passion danced around us.

  “We keep this from Jade. I told her I’d break up with you.” He feathered his lips over mine, setting off a fluttering deep inside my core. His hands on me chased the tingles roaring to life in answer to his touch. His lips feathered my neck, a slow seduction that buckled my knees.