Thicker Than Water (16 page)

IT HAD BEEN A WHILE SINCE I'D GIVEN THE HOUSE A GOOD CLEAN
ING.
The kitchen table was covered with incoming junk—the various items that entered the house and never made it where they were supposed to go. I grabbed two of Dad's jackets from the back of a chair and took them out to the hall closet. If nothing else, I could at least start getting this place in order. It wouldn't be long before we were packing things in boxes and getting ready to move.

“CeCe?”

I spun around to see Cyrus at the top of the stairs. He was leaning against the railing wearing a look that could only be called enigmatic. Usually I could read Cy's face; at that moment, he looked like a stranger.

“Uh, hey,” I said, slowly. My heart was in my throat and I turned back around to hang the coats. My fingers shook as I zipped them up. “I thought you went out with Dad.”
Shit, what did he hear?

He shook his head. “I wasn't feeling great, so I stayed here.”

“Oh.”

I faced him and waited for what I already knew was coming. Cyrus ran a hand through his hair and I noticed how much color his skin had—it was all coming back, all the blood and health and life. I hadn't known that was possible.

“So, I've got a question for you,” he asked.

I tried to school my expression as “impassive” or “apathetic” despite the fact that I felt anything but either of those emotions.

“Sure,” I finally said, swallowing. “Shoot.”

Cy scratched his nose. “Do you remember Mom's macaroni and cheese?”

Not exactly what I was expecting him to say . . .

I nodded. “Of course I remember.”

He turned and flopped down on the couch. A dust mote rose and flickered in the sunlight filtering through the bay window.

“It was the best. When I think about things I wish I'd asked Mom, I really wish I'd asked her for that recipe.”

I smiled and shook my head. “I have it somewhere around here—if you want, I can teach you how to make it.”

His eyes brightened. Cy's sober eyes were so much more vital, more focused than I'd become used to seeing.

“That would be awesome. Eating it was my favorite postgame meal.”

I glanced across the room where Cy's soccer portraits scaled the wall, then gestured to them.

“Think you'll try to start playing again?”

Cyrus inhaled deeply before shrugging. “I want to. I don't know how many of the guys are still around. But summer break is coming up—I might be able to join an intramural league or something while people are home from college.”

I smiled at my brother.

“That sounds amazing, Cy.”

His cheeks reddened a bit and he shrugged again.

“We'll see how it goes.”

I bumped his shoulder with mine, then slapped the thighs of my jeans. “You know what? I'm going to see if I can find that recipe now. Maybe I can make it for dinner.”

I was standing, then walking, then almost out the door when Cyrus's voice broke through my hazy, foreign happiness.

“So, who were those guys?”

I stopped in my tracks, then turned around. “What guys?”

Cyrus gave me a look that said,
Seriously?

“Those two guys who left a little while ago.”

“Oh, them.” I fiddled with the beads on my bracelet. “Lucas and Jason—I go to school with them.”

“Uh-huh.” Cy crossed his arms and watched me. I could feel something within me begin to puddle around my feet. It was either resolve or bravado.

“So, did you tell Dr. Frank I said hello?” he finally asked.

I just stared at him and his strange expression began to
morph into a sort of sad smile. I shook my head. “I don't—I mean, I didn't—”

Cyrus held up a hand.

“Come on, CeCe. Even if you hadn't just sold half a bottle of Oxys in our kitchen, I would have known. I took the appointment reminder call yesterday. I knew you were going. I just had no idea you'd become such an entrepreneur.”

I swallowed hard but I didn't say anything.

“Did Dad tell you about the foreclosure?” I asked.

Cy nodded. “Yeah. So, is that why? You're trying to save the world?”

“Not
the
world.
Our
world.”

I felt bitter all over again. Cyrus, on the other hand, was getting some kind of sweet satisfaction from this role reversal.

“Does that mean you're the new head of the household?” he asked, snorting in disbelief. “Should I ask permission before I go out?”

“Just forget it.” I started to walk back down the hall, but Cyrus grabbed my arm.

“Give me the rest.”

I pulled back, hard enough that I heard my shoulder crack.

“What? Are you serious?”

Cy nodded, his expression almost grave. “You aren't the only one who needs cash, CeCe.”

“Maybe not—but why would I give them to you after you got clean?”

“So that I don't tell Dad,” he said. “And because you took pills from me.”

I bit down hard on my lip, feeling cornered. It's not like I
liked
selling drugs. I liked the money it brought me. I liked the potential it gave my future.

But if Cyrus could get rid of them for me?

Then I could like the money and the potential without having to face a moral dilemma on the regular.

“You aren't going to take them?” I asked. “I mean, like,
take them
, take them . . .”

Cyrus shook his head. “No—of course not. It took me this long to get clean—you think I'd jeopardize that? Look—here's the truth: I know more people in the game than you do. Your boyfriend and his buddy are small-time. I can get more money than you can and I don't have any allegiances.”

He moved closer and looked me in the eye.

“You can trust me this time, CeCe. I can start making things right.”

There was nothing “right” about any of this, and I knew it. I'd known it all along—but something made me press forward. Something made me want the cash more than to be able to look at myself in the mirror.

“Think about it,” Cy said, “I won't have to ask Dad for money. It'll take some of the pressure off. Don't you think he deserves that?”

Which was ultimately what broke me. Not quite in half, but into two unequal parts. One fragment held my heart, which wanted to wrap itself around my brother and squeeze.
The rest of me—my brain, my hands, my wide-open eyes—saw the promise of some kind of redemption. I didn't consider failure an option. That was my biggest mistake.

Lucas never called that night.

When I got to school the next day, he wasn't there, either. I tried not to let it bother me. Instead, I went to Chemistry and paid attention as though it were the day I'd learn everything I'd need to know for the rest of my life.

I don't know if Dr. Schafer knew the reason, but she seemed happy to have me back. I thought about what life would be like in the fall—working on research projects as a Freshman Fellow, being able to help out Dad with rent, and, hopefully, still going strong with Lucas. He wasn't interested in going away for school and he'd seemed happy that I was still planning on living with my family. I was honestly starting to think that it was possible to love someone and not lose them.

I stayed after class to talk to Dr. Schafer about the fellowship. I suppose she knew why I was hanging back, because she greeted me with a grin as I approached her desk.

“I take it you got the letter?” she asked.

I nodded. “I did—I can't believe it. It's so exciting.”

Dr. Schafer beamed. “You earned it, CeCe. When it came down to it, you were the only candidate in my mind. You were the only person I recommended.”

I felt a pleased blush spread across my cheeks. “Thank you so much. Really—I don't know if I would be going
to college at all, and definitely not Edenton, without your help.”

It was true—even with the money I'd saved, Dr. Schafer's lessons and now her recommendation letter to the Freshmen Fellowship panel were far more influential than anything else in my life.

A shadow passed over her face then. “Of course, I wrote that letter before you started skipping my class—so I still expect you to attend every day, just like we talked about.”

“Of course.”

She smiled at that, then splayed her hands wide on the desk in front of her.

“Congratulations, Cecelia. I know you're going places—and I truly hope I'm around to see where life takes you.”

I bit my lip on the smile that felt a little too wonderful to be real.

“I hope so, too,” I said shyly.

And I meant it.

I felt almost idyllic on my drive home as I thought about next year. When I got home from school, however, the house was quiet in an uncomfortable way. That morning, Cyrus told me he was meeting up with a few buddies to kick the soccer ball around. He'd seemed so happy about it that I couldn't help but grin back at him. It had been a while since Cy had attempted to kick anything but me or his bad habits. He hadn't said so, but I was pretty sure his plan was to sell the rest of the Oxys today. When I'd mentioned that his soccer friends had always seemed to have
disposable income, he'd just smiled.

“Cy?”

I knocked on his basement bedroom door, but he didn't answer.

“Cyrus?”

It was slightly ajar, so I pushed against the buildup of trash behind it and slipped through. I couldn't believe he was sleeping down there again. We'd clean it up next weekend. Between the three of us, we could make the basement livable again.

But livable wasn't something the basement would need to be.

As soon as I saw him, I knew. He was sitting, sort of, at an unnatural angle on the couch. His head was slumped over as though it weighed more than what you'd expect.

“Cy . . .”

I kept saying his name, over and over and over again. At least until I got closer and saw the syringe still balanced in the crook of his arm.

“Cyrus!”

I practically threw myself forward, terrified to touch him and desperate to check to see if he was breathing. When I tentatively pressed two fingers against his wrist, and then again to his neck, all I could think about was thunder—it echoed in my ears and shook my body as though the world were ending and I'd never be safe.

There was no pulse.

There was no breath.

There was nothing but my brother's body and I felt the panic rising up and over me like a tidal wave of guilt.

When Cy and I were little, we used to play this game called Rabbit Hole. During a thunderstorm, we'd pull the big blue blanket off our parents' bed and drape it over the dining room table. Underneath, we'd stash all the things that were important to us—his Redskins hat, my ballerina music box, his soccer ball, my Harry Potter books. Then we'd take some canned vegetables from the pantry and some rice or pasta—just in case—and we'd wait for the storm to end. Sometimes we'd fall asleep there, curled up inside the blue cave we were so sure would protect us from danger.

I hated Cy's room more than any place I'd ever been—even the hospital, even the funeral home. But, still, I sat there for a while, holding his hand and staring at his body. I just couldn't leave him.

I wondered if I stayed long enough whether he'd start changing color. When does the blue begin on a corpse? Is that a morgue thing—blue by refrigeration? Or does blood just say “fuck it” and leach out of pores like sweat?

I thought about my dad. I knew he missed Jane in a way he'd never let himself miss Mom. The difference between Dad and me was that he needed a replacement. I didn't want someone there that wasn't my mother—someone who would never be enough.

Would I be enough to fill another new void in Dad's heart? Or would he break down into a million pieces, unable
to find his way back to whole?

A pile of magazines chose that moment to lose its battle with gravity; as though in slow motion, they toppled from the desk and came crashing to the floor. They made the kind of noise that would wake someone if they were sleeping. I forced myself not to hope for a miracle. I needed to be rational. I needed to think.

We were losing the house. The seed business had gone under. Dad was looking for a job. The only money I had was contingent on selling drugs. My Edenton fellowship wouldn't be enough to pay for school by itself. There were no open windows to make up for closed doors, and funerals were expensive. Shiny wooden caskets, engraved granite headstones. It all cost money that we didn't have. I might as well bury Cyrus in the backyard like a dog. At that moment, my brother and I had approximately the same number of options.

As though in slow motion, I reached over and gently pulled the syringe from Cyrus's arm and tossed it in the nearby trash can. There was a drop of dried blood where he'd injected himself. I wanted to throw up.

No. I was
going
to throw up.

I leaned over the side of the couch and gagged. Not much came up. Still, when I straightened, I felt even emptier than before. I wouldn't have thought that possible.

I looked at the table next to the couch. The bent spoon, the cotton ball, a lighter—the cliché leftovers of a drug overdose. I picked up the spoon and examined the charred underside. Next to it, my Oxy bottle was tipped over beside
the lighter. Then I looked back at Cyrus.

His face had lost all sense of life—not just the moving and breathing part, but the sheen of sweat and the tinge of color in his cheeks, what little there had been. I dropped my head into my hands. As the tears coursed down my face, I tried to remember beautiful things—my mother's smile, my dad singing in his seed shed, Cyrus on the soccer field. But I could see only things I wanted to forget—Dad writing checks to Dr. Frank, Cyrus lying on the floor in his own vomit, being thirteen and sitting in the waiting room of the hospital. Being seventeen and doing the same thing.