Want (5 page)

“Well, then couldn’t you go to the mall with your friends or get a mani-pedi?”

I sit up and shoot him a look. “Did you seriously just say ‘mani-pedi’? Do you even know what that is?”

“Well, yeah, a manicure and pedicure. Hands and feet, you know?”

“Who
are
you?” I shriek, grab a pillow from behind me and lob it at his head. He ducks and it smacks the opposite wall in the hall.

“See? You’ve got a great arm, but you don’t play softball, you don’t play volleyball. You just…read. And practice. You’re going to be two tons if you don’t get up and
do
something once in a while.”

Ouch.

“Don’t you start with me,
too.
You know I get enough of that from
her
.” I lower my voice before I ask him what I really want to know. “Have you seen her lately? I mean, doesn’t she look different from when you were here over spring break?”

I pick up the book again, trying to find where I left off before R.J.’s rude interruption.

“You think
I’m
disgusting.
She’s
disgusting.” I find my place and begin reading again. I feel R.J.’s eyes still on me. “
What
? What do you want?”

“Nothing. I just thought maybe I’d see how you were. And I never said you were disgusting.” He peeks over his shoulder and down the hall. He drops his voice. “Everything okay? Seems to be, but I thought maybe I missed something. I mean, she’s still on your case, but no more than usual, right?”

Truthfully, things
have
been a bit better, but I don’t want to tell him why—because he’s home. Things got way worse after he left for college. He doesn’t know about that. I hate to keep a secret from him, but I don’t want him to find out and make that connection. It’d kill him. As much as we bicker, R.J. and I love each other.

“Nope, it’s been fine lately. Honest. I’d tell you if it wasn’t.”

Liar
.
I give him a little smile and he returns it, his eyes an exact reflection of mine. He turns to go down the hall.

“Hey!” He stops and ducks his head back in my room, a question on his face. Softly, so he knows I mean it, I tell him, “Thanks for asking.”

He nods and disappears down the hall.

Some things are better, that part is true, but others aren’t. He didn’t notice my long sleeves. R.J.’s the one who gave me the idea, though I never told him. He’d be mortified and blame himself.

He had an emo/alternative phase in high school
—
as much of one as you can have in a Southern household
—
and introduced me to some of the music. One song in particular lodged in my brain. It was about confusion and the things people do to vent when the pressure gets to be too much.

Reading is one way I cope. I go somewhere else for a while and submerge myself in the characters’ problems instead of mine. Practicing is the other way I deal, though things have gotten so serious since this New England Conservatory business. Now it’s not an escape. It isn’t enough. Rather, it’s more pressure I have to escape
from
. I’ll always love it. It’s my life. But right now, it’s in queue with the other chaos.

I’ve heard that in order to replace one habit, you have to start another. You’re supposed to replace it with a healthier one, but that doesn’t always happen. You know, like smokers who quit, but start overeating? Or Daddy, who stopped drinking, but spends a crazy amount of time at work?

I still practice day and night, but I’ve picked up a bad habit that even R.J. doesn’t know about.

Chapter Four

The scissors are in the drawer in my antique vanity. I keep them safe and secure, away from prying eyes. I open them and scrape the blade up and down, back and forth along the inside of my arm
—
elbow to wrist, wrist to elbow
—
like sharpening an old-fashioned razor. It stings and I bleed a little, but I don’t gush like if I cut across my wrist with a blade. I don’t want to die, after all. I just need a release.
Kind of a middle finger to the world.

It’s something she doesn’t know about. I like how it feels to keep secrets from her.

Scraping has its drawbacks, of course. For one thing, they’ll throw me in a padded room if they find out, but so far no one’s tried to stop me. Not my parents, no one at school, not even Mr. Cline or R.J. I always make sure to clean up my arms and put on antibiotic cream. If the scrapes get infected, I’ll have to show them to a doctor, and that means…I’ll have to explain myself. I’m not sure I can do that.

I don’t scrape all the time. Only when things are really bad, like when Mama has a long string of her bad moods. Lately I’ve done it more and more because I’m so anxious about the recording. But
it’s
still summer and I haven’t even nailed down the pieces yet. That’s what Isaac and I are working on when he notices the marks.

It’s a torturous midsummer day, so humid that I want to shave my head, but I still put on a
long-sleeved
T-shirt with my shorts. I got too close to my wrists, and the marks show when I warm up. I’m doing an arpeggio when he spots them.

“Christ almighty, Juli! What the
hell
is
that
?” He grabs my wrist and yanks back the sleeve, sucking in his breath when he sees the marks go all the way up my arm.

I wince. He’s loosened the edges of the scabs, and they throb.
Well, you see, Isaac, I’m pretty much numb, so I scrape myself with scissors to see if I can feel.
I pull back my arm, but he won’t let go.

“Is this that cutting stuff I’ve heard about?
You been
cutting yourself?”

Scraping, not cutting. There’s a difference.

“No, don’t be stupid.” I twist my arm away and pull the sleeve back down, careful not to further disturb the scabs. “I was walking Belle and Beaux and they got twisted up in the leashes. There was a toy poodle across the street, and they went wild. They scraped me up pretty good, but it really doesn’t hurt that bad. Honest.” I can’t look him in the eye, so I stare at the keys. “Can we finish this, please?”

“You ought to be more careful.” He doesn’t sound at all convinced. “Can’t your mama help with the dogs? They’re hers, aren’t they?”

I don’t answer. Instead, I plunge back into the arpeggio. I only glance up at him once. His face conveys skepticism, concern, and something else I can’t put my finger on. It’s something like disgust, but without repulsion.

You don’t want to know. Please don’t ask any more questions.

He looks at me funny for the rest of the day, but he doesn’t pry. I might imagine it, but I swear he keeps staring at my arms, like he can see through the fabric.

Don’t be paranoid. He doesn’t care about your problems.

Funny how I’ve lived in the same house with two other people
—
three before R.J. went to college
—
for seventeen years, but none of them ever notice. I spend a couple weeks with Isaac, and although he doesn’t know it, he’s already in possession of two of my deepest secrets.

***

It’s been four days since Isaac found me out. Tonight, Daddy missed an important Mardi
Gras
society meeting with Mama. They belong to one of the oldest, most prestigious secret societies in Mobile, the Mystics of Dardenne. The only thing Daddy puts ahead of the Mystics is his law practice.

I hear Mama, though she’s not even in the house yet. Here’s how it usually goes: First the car door slams, followed by the garage door. Then the muttering makes its way through my bedroom window from below
—
words no mother should use, words no kid should hear. Next, the kitchen door slams and rattles the fragile leaded windows throughout the house.

Should I lock myself in the closet? Hide under the bed? Grab the scissors out of the drawer?

One time she took my closet door clean off the hinges. When I hid under the bed, she grabbed my hair. I don’t dare get the scissors in case she turns them on me. I have to do the only thing I can: take the brunt of it and wait for her mood to pass.

She laughs to herself as she stomps up the stairs
—
twelve, thirteen, fourteen, then five steps to my door. Just before she throws it open, I wonder what the excuse is this time. It doesn’t matter. Something happens and she goes dark. I’m the scapegoat. My stomach churns and I could throw up. I shake too hard to make my feet work.

Maybe this time will be different
.

No matter how many times we do this, I always hold onto a tiny string of frayed hope, though I know the string will be stretched taut and eventually snap. When it does, I’ll snap, too.

For now, I jump up on my bed and back into the corner. I won’t really fight her. How can I? She gave me life, and this isn’t really her. It hasn’t always been like this. Besides, once she gets it out of her system, she’s good for a couple of weeks. But it still makes me feel just a little better to see what’s coming. Plus, it’s softer to land on the bed than the floor.

I close my eyes. I swear I can smell her stinking, rotting breath mixed with manufactured peppermint. When she growls my name, I hear her ironic smile, feel the air displace when she stalks across my room and over to the bed where I shake, shake, shake. For a moment, I’m glad I haven’t had much to drink today, or it would run down my leg. Her slight weight depresses the mattress when she climbs onto the bed.

Then the world goes blank. I don’t faint exactly. I hear myself beg her to stop, but I don’t see anything. Truth be told, I don’t really feel anything.

Afterward, I wonder how much more I can take before someone gets seriously wounded. I’m not sure if it will be
me or her
.

***

I run through a dark brick tunnel again, but I can’t see what chases me. There’s weird piano music that sounds like the tinny tunes that accompany silent movies
—
where the bad guy with a handlebar mustache ties the screaming blonde to the train tracks. I try to find the source and get a glimpse of Mr. Cline sitting at an antique upright. His back is to me. I call out to him, but each time I do, he and the piano slide away. I can’t catch up.

I turn a corner and see Isaac’s face directly in front of mine, eyes full of pity and panic. I blink. The strange piano music is replaced by chirping birds and muffled traffic. I bring my hand to Isaac’s cheek to see if it feels as real as it looks.

Why is Isaac in my dream?

“Julianne?”

“Mmm.” I smile at his perfect French and sink into the warmth of his voice.

“Who did this to you?” His voice vibrates through my hand, still pressed against his smooth, newly shaven face.

“Hmm?” I’m
sure
I’m still in the house, curled up on my bed, sleeping off injuries I’ll have to hide from him for one more day, and then another, until they heal and the cycle repeats. I open my eyes again. This time, I see him search my face.
For real.

Crap.

I half-remember dragging myself outside and into the studio where I must have fallen asleep. I’m huddled on the tan loveseat, my cheek smashed into the armrest. An attractive wet spot remains when I raise my head.

He’s bent over me, hands in midair, as if he’s looking for a place to touch me that won’t cause pain. “Who…
what happened
?”

His voice breaks, and I withdraw my hand when I realize this isn’t a dream. It’s a continuation of last night’s nightmare. I need to think fast to come up with a whopper of a story. Can I blame the dogs, or have I used that excuse? It won’t explain why I’m in my studio in yesterday’s clothes.

Oh shoot, he probably already knows.
His uncle suspected. Did he pass on the information to Isaac? From the look on his face, I don’t think so.
Think, moron, think!

“Um, I went to Felix’s last night.” Oh, it hurts to talk. “I got mugged on the way home.” My throat and torso are so sore.

“You were at Felix’s last night?”

“Yeah.” Single-syllable lies are good.

He stares a hole through me then, and I wonder if he’ll call my bluff. He frowns but doesn’t say anything. Seconds tick by.

“Can you stand? Need to get you cleaned up. Where’s your mama?”

Not here, I hope.

“I don’t know. What time is it?” Truthfully, I don’t even know what day it is.

“Nine. We have lessons today.” He takes my elbow and lifts me to a sitting position.

Red and black stars burst in my peripheral vision.
Don’t pass out. Hold it together.

“Right.” I wince. I have to gather strength to say more. “Um, then she’s already at the gym.”

“Wouldn’t she notice you weren’t in the house this morning?”