Thicker Than Water (10 page)

“Don't worry about it, CeCe—he's been a drain on all of us. Try not to give him any more money and maybe he'll actually get out there and apply for work. Not to mention—if you see him again tonight, tell him to clean up that hovel downstairs.”

She disappeared around the corner and I leaned up against the door jamb. Apparently, only the house could support me in a way my father and Jane couldn't. At least it was there for me to lean on. It may not have seen me, but it certainly stuck around longer than anyone else had.

I considered calling Natalie, seeing if I could come over and spend the night. She knew Cy was injured and living at home—knew we fought a lot and that he wasn't in college like the rest of his friends. She probably knew he was doped up, too, but we never talked about it. I never
wanted
to talk about it.

No, I needed to do something else—something for myself, something to get closer to being away from this family and closer to being out on my own.

It took a supreme effort to get down the stairs. When I finally made it to the bottom, I leaned on the washing machine and listened hard. Nothing. Not that that meant anything. Cyrus was usually dead to the world when he was blitzed. I reached over and started the washer, dumping in some nearby towels. Still nothing. No creaks, no shuffling,
no crumpled paper underfoot. I grasped his doorknob. It was unlocked.

When I was little, maybe four or five, I used to sneak into Cyrus's room at the old house. His walls were dark—navy blue or hunter green, I can't remember which—and whenever I went in there, it felt cooler than the rest of the house. Cooler like cold, but cooler like awesome, too. Already, he'd had trophies lining his dresser. I used to take them down, running my little fingers along the engraved plates at the bottom of each one. I'd press hard where it said
Cyrus
, and his name would be stamped in my skin for a few seconds before fading away. Sometimes I did it until it hurt, hoping to make the letters permanent like a tattoo.

There were some trophies down in the basement, too, but they weren't exactly a focal point. In a room like that, the disaster morphed and widened and somehow the sprawl looked different than the last time I was down there. I stepped over a pile of garbage and found what I'd been looking for—Cy's stash. First came the bile, then came the fury. I swallowed them both and reached for the box.

The foil was gone, but there were still some straws, some tipped with what had to be gray smoke smears. A little bit of powdery residue gathered in one corner of the container. The bottle of pills, now half full, was tucked under a folded envelope.

And then I saw the syringes.

There were five of them bundled with a rubber band, capped with orange plastic stoppers. A few used ones lay in
the bottom of the box, along with a spoon, whose handle was bent over in resignation.

I wanted to be shocked, but I'd run out of that emotion. Instead, I thought about how Cyrus used to be afraid of needles, how he'd scream in terror when it was time for booster shots or blood draws. I closed my eyes. Cyrus and his fury were waiting for me there. They backed me into a corner. The choking wasn't any worse in my mind. The only difference was that I was ready for it this time.

I pocketed the remaining Oxys. Each pill I sold would be a sucker punch aimed right at my brother's gut, and each pill I sold would get me one step closer to college, one step closer to Lucas, and a hundred steps away from this life I've been living.

“Did you count them?” Jason asked me. I nodded, trying to focus on the handful of little white pills in his cupped palm, and not on Lucas's gaze as it traveled over me.

“There's forty pills,” I said, shuffling my feet. “That's twenty-four hundred dollars.”

Jason didn't even bat an eyelash as he whipped out his wallet. I glanced around his well-appointed basement again—at the leather couches and a pool table and covered hot tub in one corner. I suppose it figured that a guy with that much money would want to flush it away on drugs. I couldn't decide if I felt guilty for fueling his downfall or giddy for finding available cash.

Jason tucked a wad of bills into my hand, and I tried to
decide if it was tacky to throw it up in the air and let it rain around me like confetti.

“Yo, Jay,” Lucas said, sauntering over to Jason and laying a hand on his shoulder, “you mind if CeCe and I play a game of pool?”

Jason nodded. “Sure—I'm taking this shit upstairs anyway. My parents aren't home.” He glanced from me to Lucas. “You all want to come up and hit this first?”

I wondered if Jason smoked or snorted his pills—or if he'd moved on to syringes like my brother. For a second, I just blinked at him, then shook my head.

“No, I—uh—I don't do that shit.”

Lucas gave a little shake of his head and Jason shrugged. He didn't look back as he headed up the stairs. I heard a door shut softly behind him.

When I looked back at Lucas, he was smiling. His lips were sexy in the way that guys' lips can be sexy—thick and full without any semblance of color or gloss or liner. The contradiction of sharp masculinity and something rounded. I could feel my own mouth begin to curve up.

“Do you play pool?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Not really.”

He shoved his hands in his jeans pockets, giving me the opportunity to watch the way his arms wore muscles.

“We don't have to play,” he said, nodding at the pool table. “I just wanted Jason to give us some time alone.”

His eyes traveled over the room and landed on the hot tub. He looked back at me, the same eyebrow raised.

“I don't have a suit,” I said, feeling a little flush travel over my cheeks and down my neck.

Lucas grinned. “Yeah, I guess that's a problem.”

I was positive that he'd tell me we could get in naked, or in our underwear, and no matter how much I wanted to feel Lucas touch me, I knew I wasn't ready to take off my clothes in any capacity. When he didn't push, didn't do anything but move over to one of the couches and flop down on it, I felt a loosening somewhere in my chest. Something was breaking free. Something like my guard was slowly coming down.

“We could just talk,” he suggested then.

And what was left of my guard crumbled apart.

It was hours later—almost midnight—when I pulled back into the driveway. I shifted the Honda into park and squinted up the hill at the seed shed. The lights were on. Through the blinds, I could see my dad moving from one side of the room to the other. I thought about the money he'd lost, the empty cash box he probably didn't even know about yet. It made the money in my pocket feel even more vital.

For the first few minutes of the drive, I was drunk on Lucas—on his eyes crinkled at the corners and his husky laugh and, most of all, the way his lips brushed along my jaw and down my neck as we sat, legs intertwined on Jason's basement couch. But once I'd made it halfway home, I'd been terrified of getting caught with that much cash and an empty bottle of OxyContin; I'd spent more time looking in my rearview mirror for flashing lights than I did looking at the road in front of me. Somehow, an internal GPS-like
voice, robotic and stern, had echoed in my ears. It ordered me down the street, out of the neighborhood, along the road, up the driveway, out of the car, and into my house. Do not pass Go. You already collected your two hundred dollars. And then some.

Once I was back inside my house, though, the adrenaline-fueled momentum had disappeared and I felt like I was wading through honey. There was a thickness to my stride and it weighed me down like guilt. That lasted only until I saw that the door to my bedroom was wide open, the same door that I'd shut tightly when I left. The honey around my legs became loose and liquidy. As I pushed the door open, my legs became loose and liquidy, too.

Inside, a tornado had hit and nothing had been spared. My desk chair was overturned and papers were strewn all over the floor. Clothes were pulled from my dresser and closet, only to be thrown on the floor. My mattress was askew from the bed frame.

Usually when something happened that was Cyrus-induced, like money gone from my wallet or mildewed piles of his clothes by the basement stairs, I found a way to ignore it. It wasn't worth getting Dad involved, especially when it put me on the defensive against two people desperate to deny the elephant stomping around the room. But this disaster was somehow bigger and louder than the elephant.

Of course, this time, I wasn't faultless. Still, when my dad started down the hallway toward me, sweaty and tired, I didn't tell him to turn back around. Instead, I stared at
the implosion and considered what my lifeless body might look like lying in the middle of the mess. What if I'd been here? Would the destruction have included me? I clenched my jaw against the thought, then winced at the immediate pain. It was a sharp reminder of what Cy had already destroyed today.

“What's going on?” my dad asked, for once attuned to my facial expression. I gestured to my bedroom's implosion and watched that ever-present optimism on my father's face slide off into the surrounding air and swirl, eddy-like, to the littered floor.

“Jesus, CeCe. What the hell happened?”

I looked at him, then back at the room. “What do you think happened, Dad?”

“Cyrus did this?”

I nodded.

“I can't believe it. What—why? Why would he do this to your room? Was he looking for something?”

“I—I don't know.” Lying felt beyond natural, like blinking.

Dad looked up at the ceiling, then back to the ravages of my room. I knew what he was doing in his head—trying to come up with excuses for Cy, reasons why he'd do this. This time, though, Dad's face looked broken. It reminded me of how I felt lying in bed earlier—fragmented. Shattered. Unable to hold it together.

“I don't think I really understood . . .” Dad trailed off, then shook his head. He stepped over a pile of clothes to look out
the window. “I should have put a stop to this sooner. I should have seen exactly how bad things had gotten. It's just—well, after your mother—after we lost her, I just didn't want to do anything to make you kids feel unloved. Unwanted.”

I blinked at his back, letting the lines of his flannel shirt crisscross through my watery gaze.

“I know you love me, Dad. I just don't think you see me.”

He looked at me then, his eyes filled with the same unshed tears as mine.

“I see you, CeCe. I see all of the good—
only
the good. It's why I can ignore trashed basements and doctor bills. When I look at my children and see nothing but love, my heart hurts less than it did the day before.”

I narrowed my eyes. “What about needles? Did you see those when you were ignoring everything else?”

He blinked at me. “What are you talking about?”

I shook my head, exhaling hard. The last shreds of respect I'd had for my father seemed to exit my body with my breath.

“He's shooting up, Dad. I'm not even sure for how long, but I know it's true. And I know that Cyrus is way, way beyond a pill-popping addict. He's a junkie.”

Dad's eyes narrowed as though he wanted to deny it, to deny it along with everything else he'd been denying for so long. Then he just swallowed hard.

“I—I didn't think it would ever get that bad.”

And I wanted to throttle him, to grab him by the hair and force him downstairs into the pit of Cyrus's waste and personal destruction. Instead, I wrapped my arms around
my middle and squeezed just enough to remind me of the bruises on my ribs and the ache in my heart.

“He needs help, Dad. We need to help him.”

Unable to meet my gaze, my father stared over at my window. The blinds were slightly raised and bent inward from something Cy had launched at them in his rage.

“You're right.” Dad said it sadly, then he sighed. “We need to get him help. Immediately. And I can't believe I've let it go for this long. I'm so sorry, honey.”

It was the only apology I'd ever gotten—through the doctor's appointments and heated fights and missed dinners and lack of money and everything Cyrus said and did, Dad had never admitted that there was something wrong. Or, at least, that there was something to be sorry about.

I almost said, “It's okay.” But that lie wouldn't have been quite as easy as the other one.

Instead, I let him pull me in for a hug, which felt like so many things at once. Mostly it was a consolation prize. I hugged him back and, somehow, bits of me were soldered back together. My dad was hugging me and I was crying and Cyrus had left or passed out or died and neither of us wanted to know which.

THE WORDS
VISITING DAY
ARE ONLY A POSITIVE THING WHEN IT
comes to zoos or grandparents and you're about five years old. When someone you love is planning to visit you in a treatment program, in a jail, it's not exactly an exciting prospect. So it's probably a good thing that no one's coming to visit me today. Usually, our only access to the unincarcerated is through a bulletproof window. But Barnes maintains that “family and friends are an integral part of the healing process.”

I watch Tucker as he walks across the room and leans up next to a motivational poster. His hair is curling a bit and is still slightly damp from his morning shower. I feel a shudder of something like desire race over my skin like goose bumps. Since the junkyard, Tucker has kissed me exactly twice—once when we'd somehow ended up alone in the hall and last night, when he'd pulled me into the shadowy side of the common room, next to the soda machine.

“You know that kissing is pretty much a carnal sin around here,” he'd murmured against my lips in the dark. I'd shrugged and looped my arms around his neck.

“It certainly won't be the first sin I've committed.”

I let my fingers drift up over his cheekbone and down to his lips. He grabbed my wrist and pressed a brief kiss against it before leaving me next to the humming soda machine, its warm side pressed into my back like a body intent upon sheltering me.

But today? Today we have to face our families. Or, at least, Tucker has to face his. I don't really have
one
to face anymore, and I certainly don't think my dad will be coming here today. I think part of me aches with this knowledge and the rest of me sighs with relief. I'm not sure what we'd say to each other now anyway.

Before long, the common room is overflowing with emotion and I'm a cannonball sinking into a pile of feathers—something heavy and immovable and everyone else can walk on air. People are hugging and I want to move away from it. The closer the bodies get to each other, the farther I fold into myself.

Next to the door, Tucker is still leaning against the wall. He glances down at his feet, then up at the ceiling. Then he looks over at me, grins, and looks away. When a woman, tall and lithe like a ballet dancer, hesitates in the doorway, he stands up a little straighter before reaching out to her.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Oh, Tucker. Hello, dear.”

Tucker's mother's face is blank as she moves farther into the room. He follows her like a puppy. I think about how I used to follow my mom that way, too. The gesture is so childlike and familiar, it's almost painful.

I try to switch my focus to the families that are starting to assemble in clusters around the room. A few head outside to walk along the concrete slab of patio.

“How's your recovery going?” Tucker's mother is asking him as they walk toward the sliding-glass door. Her eyes are a clear blue, the kind that are usually filled with light. But her face looks waxy and a light sheen of sweat glazes her forehead.

Tucker doesn't answer his mother's question. Instead, he steers her in my direction and I feel myself start to panic. The hyperventilation starts in my stomach and works its way through all the veins in my body.

“Mom, this is Cecelia, one of my friends from the program. CeCe, this is my mom, Debbie.”

I give her a weak smile, not trusting myself to speak. She returns it, kind of. Both of us sort of stare around each other, but not at each other, as though trying to respect some sort of first-meeting-at-a-psych-ward-prison-combination boundary.

“Well,” Debbie finally says, gulping back her discomfort, “I'm glad that Tucker's making friends.”

I don't know what to say to that. Tucker sort of shuffles his feet and I realize he's nervous. Then I remember the stolen college fund and the car driven through the living room. I guess I'd be nervous, too.

“So—Dad's not coming today?” he asks. His mother gives him a noncommittal shrug.

“He—he just isn't ready yet.”

I look down at my shoes, trying to think of something to say to make me feel less awkward.

“Hey, Tucker.”

The three of us turn to see Mary Jensen, guest speaker extraordinaire, standing about ten feet away. The armchair in front of her cuts her off at the waist, making her look legless, like a life-size Russian doll.

I look at Tucker. His face is even paler than before; Debbie has moved from his side and starts to walk toward Mary. Before she reaches her, Mary rushes forward and gathers Tucker in her arms.

“I missed you,” she says, her voice muffled against his shoulder.

The fragments of this situation feel like kites on strings, but too close and tangled, impossible to separate. Then memories curl up and over me like a smoke I can't help but inhale. When I'd confronted Tucker about skipping the guest speaker, he'd said,
It was all stuff I've heard a million times before
. Now I can see the resemblance between brother and sister. I can't believe I didn't notice it when Mary had been onstage.

All at once, there's something with wings flapping around inside me, something clawing at my rib cage and trying to escape. I don't wait for a formal introduction or
handshake with anyone else Tucker loves. Instead, I leave him and his family reunion, feeling inexplicably tattered from the inside out.

Or maybe not tattered. Maybe just broken into pieces, with half those pieces missing. My dad. My mom. My brother. All my broken, jagged parts are completely unrecognizable compared to the person I used to be and the family I used to be a member of. I've never wanted to belong to something as much as I do right now—and I've never felt as alone as I do as I walk out the door, leaving everyone's family behind me except my own.

Trina is wearing a different pair of glasses today. Pink frames. They're weirding me out. I don't see her as pink—more gray or taupe. A good neutral color. Like a mass-produced household appliance.

She takes a deep breath. “You know, this is our last session before the hearing—”

“Yeah, I know,” I cut her off. My nerves are still rubbed raw from witnessing Tucker's impromptu family reunion. The last thing I want to talk about is court.

“Well, I thought you might want to dictate what we do today. Within reason, of course.”

I snort. “There goes my plan for hopping the red-eye to Vegas.”

Like Jennifer, Trina's eyes never look happy. They're either sad or sorry, at least whenever she's looking at me. I
wonder if she's that way with all her patients. Like a volunteer at an animal shelter, she has nothing but empathy for even the most useless, the too-far-gone.

“Anything on your mind?” Trina asks, settling down into the desk chair. We're in Dr. Barnes's office this time; most of the conference rooms and therapy suites are occupied with family sessions today.

“Not really,” I say, shaking my head. She eyes me skeptically.

“Somehow I don't believe you.”

“You
never
really believe me, so what's the difference?”

Trina shrugs, her shoulders sharpening into a place I can't lean on, even if I wanted to.

“I guess,” I begin, searching my hands for some sort of cheat sheet. I feel like I've left all the answers in my other body. “I guess I'm just done with people.”

“What do you mean, ‘done with people'?”

“Done like done—I'm tired of trying to have friendships. I'm tired of talking.”

“Why?”

“Because people suck.”

Trina crosses one leg over the other. “Want to be more specific?”

I shrug. “They just—I mean, I used to believe the best in people before—before everything went down.”

“And now?”

“And now I'm either just focusing on my disappointment or I don't give a shit anymore.”

“So what I hear you saying,” Trina says slowly, “is that people are always falling below expectations. That they don't live up to the hype.”

“Exactly,” I say, pointing a finger at her. “That's it right there—they don't live up to the hype.”

Trina watches me for a minute, then pushes her glasses back on her head, sunglasses-style. “Okay, I lied.”

“
About what?”

“I told you I wasn't going to make you do any more visualization, but we're going to try it one more time.”

“You've got to be kidding,” I groan. At this point, anything I “visualize” won't make a damn bit of difference. I'm still going to court next week. I'm still stuck in here. My brother's still dead.

“Go ahead and get comfortable,” Trina directs me, and I ease myself back against the chair. We do some breathing exercises, which always piss me off. Breathing is one thing that I can do by myself, thank you very much.

“All right, CeCe,” Trina says quietly. “Go ahead and close your eyes.”

I tilt my head up toward the light above me; eyes closed, I try to imagine it's the sun, that I am ten years younger, and that I've never heard the words
Piedmont
or
OxyContin
or
visualization techniques
.

“I want you to picture yourself in a safe place,” she begins, her voice sort of lilting and rhythmic. “Imagine you are in a location you always found comforting when you were growing up or a place you thought of as home.”

I clench my jaw. It's hard to remember a time I was safe or comforted. When a memory actually surfaces, I'm floating in the middle of Lake Erie.

“Now,” Trina's saying, “try to picture a moment that makes you feel warm inside. A moment that is both present and past.”

Mom's family is from upstate New York. Every two years, we'd drive up for the family reunion, staying outside Buffalo in a waterfront cabin. I remember how the lake was so big, it reminded me more of oceans than any lakes I'd seen at home. On the second day, my aunt or cousin or someone had brought a canoe and Cy was determined to try it out. I was far less interested.

“C'mon, CeCe,” he'd said, his voice cracking from the onset of puberty. “It'll be fun.”

“Why can't you just go by yourself, then?” I'd asked.

“Because, stupid—it's a CANOE. Canoe means TWO.”

“Don't call me stupid!” I'd screeched, chasing him down the dock.

“Can you tell me what you see?” I hear Trina ask. But I'm not ready to leave just yet. It's the first time I've seen Cyrus this kind of alive in years. It's the first time I've really wanted to remember him.

Once we'd made it into the canoe without tipping it over, Cy tried to show me how to paddle. I was pretty bad at it; my arms were short and my oars barely reached the water.

“CeCe, I might as well be out here on my own,” he'd complained. I remember his oars tugging us through the water, his arms doing all the work my arms couldn't.
I remember thinking about how he was starting to look like Dad, like a man instead of a boy.

“Nah,” I'd said, giving up on paddling and lounging back in the sun instead. “You'll never be out here on your own. Canoes mean two, remember?”

“Yeah, well—not if you're not helping.”

“I'm helping you not tip over,” I'd said. “We're keeping each other afloat.”

And then the canoe and the lake and my brother vanish, snapping back into my head like a rubber band on fire. My eyes fly open and my face is still tilted toward the fluorescent lights above me.

I don't look at Trina. I don't look anywhere but up.

When I close my eyes again, I can still feel the sun on my face and the rocking of the water below. For a minute, it's like my brother is there across from me.

And then, just like that, he's gone.

“Open your eyes.”

Trina is peering at me and I blink at her, then let my eyes flicker over the room. They drag along the creases, where the walls meet the ceiling and the floor. They feel like folds. I feel boxed in.

“Can you share with me what you just experienced, CeCe?”

I swallow hard. I don't want to share this memory—it feels like a gift. It feels like a secret.

“It was about my mom,” I lie. “I was thinking about my mom.”

Trina nods slowly. “And what about your mom?”

I sort of shrug. “About . . . about her smell. What she smelled like—it's something I try really hard not to forget.”

For a lie, I sure am managing to make it true.

“Smells are often an impactful memory,” Trina is saying. “They pull us backward rather than propelling us ahead.”

That makes a lot of sense, considering what I think about when I remember my last moments with my mother.

“I'm going to ask you to do something for me, CeCe.”

I sniff. “Okay.”

Trina pauses, then clears her throat. “I want you to tell me about your mom when she died.”

I let my gaze grow fuzzy and I bite my lip. I want to say no. I want to run. I want to catch fire or drown or freeze or fizzle up. I want to be anywhere but here.

“Very soon, you are going to have to answer questions about your family,” Trina says, her voice softer around the edges than my vision. “Maybe it would help to tell me something right now that's true.”

I swallow hard.

I could say no. But I've said no so often lately—no to Tucker and no to Barnes and no to Cam and no to Jennifer.

But something about Trina—maybe her glasses or her slim build or her overwhelming genuineness—makes me want to say yes.

I take a deep breath.

“Can I write it?” I sort of croak.

She thinks about that.

“How about this? You tell me one memory now, then you write something in your journal later. That way, you've shared two things—and we're two steps closer to you being more comfortable exploring your feelings.”