Thicker Than Water (9 page)

“Do you have any summer plans?”

I almost cringed at the lameness of my question. Lucas just shrugged.

“Get a job, I guess. Work on my car.”

“What about the fall?”

He shrugged again. “Community college, maybe? Honestly, I don't have the grades for much else. School's just not my thing.”

I nodded. That's how Cyrus was, too, but he always had to keep a 3.0 to remain eligible for soccer.

When our food arrived, I forced myself to take a French toast stick, even though I was anything but hungry. The still-hot grease burned my fingers, but Lucas was chewing his like he couldn't feel a thing.

“What's wrong?” He motioned to my stick, now drowning in syrup.

“It's too hot.”

He peered at it; a wisp of steam rose from one end. Then, leaning across the table, he looked at me, pursed his lips, and blew.

The steam disappeared. Inside my chest, something cold and hollow started to melt.

“So . . .” Lucas lifted an eyebrow at me, then dipped another French toast stick into the syrup.

“So,” I echoed. I could feel a warmth spreading over my cheeks and I forced myself not to bite my lip.

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

I blinked at Lucas and his smile was less curious and more
sure. Like he already knew the answer. I shook my head.

“No—I don't.”

“Hmm.” He chewed and swallowed, then leaned back in his chair. “Then I think I'm obligated to tell you that that information pleases me.”

I smiled shyly. “Oh—um, well . . . I guess I'm glad it pleases you.”

“Good.”

Lucas kept eating and I tried not to stare at his mouth. Boys had always made me nervous, and I forced my hands under the table and sat on them so I didn't start fiddling with my silverware.

I began thinking up mantras.

I will not write his last name behind my first.

I will not follow him around.

I will not ruin this before it's even started.

“You've got beautiful eyes, Cecelia.”

From that moment on, the way Lucas Andrews looked at me felt like a miracle. I licked my lips and reached for a French toast stick, no longer caring if I got burned—by anything—in the process.

THE FIRST TIME LUCAS KISSED ME, IT FELT LIKE A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
in my mouth. I didn't know how to reciprocate—not well, anyway. Everything I did seemed slightly off, as though my self-consciousness zoomed straight from my brain to my lips, practically paralyzing them against Lucas's soft, coaxing mouth.

As we pulled apart, he leaned back in the driver's seat and adjusted the radio, trying to get rid of some of the static. I wanted to tell him it was useless, that we didn't get reception in my driveway, but I was too busy noticing the way my mouth felt, even without his still on it. It was sort of numb, like I'd been shot up with Novocain.

“So, when you suggested coming to your house, did you mean inside or just in the general vicinity?”

He gave me a lopsided smile and I felt a surge of panic. I didn't know what scared me more—being alone in here
with Lucas or risking him running into Cyrus the Oxy-idiot. When he'd offered to drive me home from Edenton, it only seemed polite to invite him inside.

“I don't know . . .”

Lucas looked up at the interior light. The bulb was blue, making his skin a little zombie-ish.

“We could hang out with Cyrus or something, right?” he suggested, still looking at the ceiling. “Do you think he's home?”

Fuck.

“I'm pretty sure he's out . . . he had an appointment today. Or something.”

“Oh, okay. Some other time, then.”

Lucas leaned in and brushed his lips against my cheek. They were dry and, for some reason, I felt the threat of tears rising in my throat.

“So, I guess I'll see you around?” he asked. His lips traveled closer and closer to my mouth. I felt his breath and I wanted to close the gap between us. I wished he'd say he'd call me tonight. I wanted him to
want
to see me again.

But I said, “Sure. I'll see you around.”

Lucas laughed. “How about we make ‘around' be ‘ASAP'?”

I'd never felt so much promise in so few words. “Yeah, sure.”

Then I was out of the car and waving and he was on the road and out of sight, and I was standing in the driveway feeling dazed and throbbing, unable to stop my brain from
running in circles that had more words in them than actual thoughts. I touched my fingers to my mouth. I wanted to lick my lips, but I was afraid I'd lose their current sensation. It was almost like an aftertaste, an echo I couldn't quite hear. It was the first time I'd been intoxicated.

I tried to be quiet when I opened and closed the front door. As I made it to the top of the stairs, I heard the yawn of the furnace coming on a floor below me. Jane was still at work and Dad was making the two-hour trek to the closest farm supply store for more weed-and-feed. So, when I heard the scuffling, I knew who it was. It sounded like raccoons were digging in the garbage, but it was a different kind of bottom-feeder.

Dad hadn't had a lot of luck selling his seeds wholesale. He'd gotten some mail-order business, but he made most of his money from farmers' markets. Because he was naive or trusting or both, he kept his cash box in the kitchen. He really should have hidden it. Then again, he really shouldn't have had to.

Cyrus had the metal box up on the counter, the top tray pulled out and tossed aside. He knew the bigger bills were at the bottom. I watched him stuff the money in his pants' pockets.

“Cyrus.”

His name tasted like poison. It used to slide over my lips like a smile. Cy jumped a little at the sound of my voice and whirled around.

“What the fuck are you doing home?”

His eyes were completely black. The warm golden brown
irises we used to share had been overthrown by the strength of something dark and needy. In the past, drugs had made Cyrus lazy and tired, absent and unable to function. They'd never made him like this—driven by something ugly.

“Cyrus,” I repeated, trying not to let my voice shake. “Don't do this. Please. Dad needs that money.
We
need it.”

“Just shut the fuck up.”

He turned back around and grabbed the rest of the cash before shoving the box back against the Mr. Coffee. I stepped forward and touched his shoulder, and it was like I had electrocuted him. Almost instantly, he had me pinned up against the pantry door and his hand was at my throat.

“Jesus, Cy,” I managed to croak, “relax. I'm just—”

“You think you're so perfect.” His breath was hot and rank. I struggled to breathe.

“You never make mistakes, do you, CeCe? You always do everything right. And you think that makes you so much better than me.”

“Cy?” Tears filled my eyes. I squeezed them shut.

“Oh, please,” he scoffed. “Bitches don't cry. They don't have feelings.”

That word—
bitch
. That word snapped me into action and I pushed him away.

“Go to hell!” I yelled into his face. “Don't you realize how much you're costing us—costing
all
of us? We've already lost Mom and now you're just trying to make the swiftest fucking exit possible? Don't you care what that would do to Dad? To me?”

I shook my head then, the venom racing through my veins.

“But you know what? You wanna fuck up your life? You want to spend your days and nights in an Oxy-stupor that's going to ultimately kill you? Then do it—but you better do it right. Because it would be a hell of a lot easier—and a hell of a lot
cheaper—
for all of us if you just overdosed and ended it.”

I didn't get a chance to say anything else before Cyrus shoved my face backward and my head slammed into the pantry door with a crack. The last thing I saw before I hit the floor was the cash box, gutless and gaping like a victim.

“Fuck you, Cecelia. Fuck your perfect, bullshit life.”

The pain swiftly migrated from my head to my ribs as his boot connected with my body. I tried to open my mouth, to speak, but there was something about words that felt too impossible to even attempt.

“You think I like this? You think I
want
to be this way? I had everything, CeCe. I had the kind of life people dream of. I didn't ask for my knee to get fucked up. I didn't ask for my soccer career to go down the fucking tubes. I have nothing left—don't you get it?”

With all the strength I had left, I turned my head to see his face. His eyes were crazed and glassy and I wondered if he could even see me.

“I have nothing left,” he repeated under his breath.

I curled up in a ball, prepared to ward off another kick.

“You stay the fuck away from me—you stay out of my
business and out of my life.” He leaned down and grabbed my chin. “And if you breathe a word of this to Dad—I'll fucking kill you.”

When his hand slammed my head back into the floor, I felt everything all at once.

And then I felt nothing. Or, more specifically, I felt
like
nothing. Like the world was nothing and I was nothing and my body was inexplicably cracking in half, starting at my heart and working outward.

When I opened my eyes, I was lying on the kitchen linoleum. I don't know how long had passed. I put a hand to my rib cage and winced. There was a tender place right over my heart; something was broken in there. I felt fractured. Torn apart.

Cyrus was gone. Maybe his pills saved him from a sense of guilt or responsibility. Then again, it was what we'd become—I was perpetually broken and Cyrus,
my
Cyrus, had disappeared for good.

I couldn't remember a time before that day that physical violence entered the doors of our house. In fact, the only time Dad ever spanked either of us was the time Cy played with matches. It was evening and cold out in our playhouse. Cy collected branches and tore up some newspaper—it wasn't thirty seconds before the flames reached the four-foot-high ceiling. Dad put out the fire with a bright red extinguisher, and I was little enough to think it was exciting, as though he were a real live fireman, the kind I'd read about in books.

When the smoke began to clear, Dad grabbed Cy by the
arm and turned him over his knee, right there in the yard. Cy didn't cry. He just took it, absorbing the hits like a sponge soaks up something sopping and liquid and easily disguised. Dad said that he wanted Cy to learn a lesson, but he never said what it was. Seems that the lesson my brother learned that day was how, when someone does something wrong, you can hurt them with your hands. That and, as long as you're stronger, you're right.

I crawled like a dog down the hall to my room, where I managed to hoist myself into my bed. The sun was still high and bright when I fell asleep; when I woke up again, my room was dim in the fading dusk and I felt like I'd been hit by a car. I teetered to standing and moved in front of the full-length mirror to assess the damage. I looked like an art project—evidence of Cyrus's freak-out was splayed across my chest and shoulder. The what-would-be-bruises were still red, the blood beneath having leached to the surface. There was a shadowy mark along my cheek, which must have been caused by my run-in with the kitchen floor. When I moved my jaw, it clicked.

I heard someone moving around in the living room. When the TV came on and football blasted down the hall, I was sure it was Dad—and that meant I needed to make a decision. I'd been here before—standing in my room, debating whether to tell my dad another truth about Cyrus that he would find a way to forget or ignore. I grabbed some concealer and started smearing it on my cheek. Maybe this way, I'd be the one to forget or ignore.

Dad was getting ready to go back out to the seed shed when I made it out to the living room twenty minutes later.

“Hey, sweetheart.” He glanced at me briefly, but he didn't really see me. I may not have needed the makeup after all.

“Hey.”

“Any plans tonight?”

I shook my head, then immediately regretted it. The pain was immediate and so sharp, I could almost hear it.

“All right, well, I'm gonna be in the shed if you need me, okay?”

The sliding-glass door screeched open and the pounding in my temples spawned a wave of nausea. I gripped the edge of the table and tried to swallow the bile in my throat. After a few deep breaths, I managed to microwave a mug of water, then found a peppermint tea bag in the back of the cabinet. Through the window, I could see Dad raking the recently tilled beds as clumps of dirt and rock scattered at his feet.

I held the mug in both hands and slowly sipped the barely steeped tea. Directly across from me on the refrigerator was the last picture we took as a family before Mom died. It was the Fourth of July. Mom had on a sparkly headband with glitter antennae over her wig. My dad was smiling in a way I hadn't seen in years, and Cyrus and I were both holding sparklers. It was a time when stuff like hanging out as a family and playing with fire didn't feel so dangerous.

I finished my tea and tried to lie back down, but every time I closed my eyes, I saw Cyrus. His face was screwed up with rage—red and somehow jagged. He looked at me like I was a traitor. An enemy.

Outside, a patchy fog was settling over the farthest fields. On evenings like that, I could usually see all the way to the tree line. At that moment, I couldn't see past my house, my brother, and the disaster that had bloomed around me.

When the front door opened, then closed, I panicked. I wanted to hide, and I went so far as to look around the room at what I could possibly crawl under or into. When I heard Jane's high heels click along the wood floors, though, I exhaled. Cracking the door an inch, I saw her hanging her coat in the hall closet.

If Dad can't see me—can't see what's happening here—maybe it's time I talk to Jane . . .

But, of course, talking to Jane involved
talking to Jane
—something I'd never been particularly good at, despite the fact that she'd been in my life for years.

Mom had been dead for nine months, three weeks, and two days when Dad told us about Jane McPherson. He'd met her at the grocery store. They had both reached for the last pint of Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia. Apparently a similar taste in ice cream was enough to base a relationship on.

I wanted Dad to be happy and I could see how he lit up when Jane was around. At first, she seemed to understand where there was room to slide into. She made dinner for us, but never wore Mom's apron. She watched movies with us,
but never sat in Mom's recliner. It wasn't until later that she became integral instead of extraneous.

My first high school dance was the spring of my freshman year. Jane volunteered to take me dress shopping, something everyone seemed to recognize as a rite of passage and a Mom-Job that had been left vacant.

But once we were at the mall, Jane tried on more dresses than I did. She looked beautiful in black and green and even orange. “It's my coloring,” she told me when I said something about it. I couldn't disagree. She bought two dresses for herself and one for me that I didn't even try on.

Jane had a new wardrobe. Dad had a new girlfriend. I had a dress I never wore to a dance I didn't even go to. Sometimes the picture you paint is more important than the life you're living, I guess.

Now I cleared my throat and Jane turned toward me.

“CeCe?” She blinked at me and I noticed she was wearing more eyeliner than normal. “I was just getting off work—is your father in the shed?”

“Yeah.”

My voice was little more than a croak. Jane frowned.

“Are you sick?”

I thought about that for a second. “Sort of—I, um . . . I had a run-in with Cyrus.”

Jane rolled her eyes. “I've been telling your father that we need to get that boy out of the basement and into a job. What did he do this time? Hit you up for money?”

I'd have laughed at the irony of her statement if there was
anything funny about it. Instead, I opened my mouth to tell her the truth—but Jane had already turned to walk back to the kitchen.