Bittersweet Wreckage Page 19

  “Everyone gets a free pass tonight. Tomorrow we start fresh.” Mom yanked at the hem of her blouse in finality. I swear Dad’s ghost patted her shoulder.

  Mortified and pissed as all hell, I rushed out, hating that Mom accepted Jade’s sullen-angry behavior like her grand theft never happened, making me the bad guy. Most of all, I was ticked that what I’d thought was the best thing to ever happen to me had turned into an epic disaster. Tears rolled unrelentingly as Jesse ignored me and stayed behind with Jade, speaking in low murmurs. He’d given her a verbal slap on the wrist for her kleptomania, and for two seconds I believed she regretted stealing from us. I slammed my bedroom door, locking it and the bathroom door. If I spent another second in Jade’s presence, I wouldn’t be able to defend my craving to punch her pert little nose to the back of her skull.

  Worst of all, Mom had practically called me Dad in front of Jesse and Jade. How could she think me taking care of her, handling the finances, making her get a grip on her life, resembled anything like the way he treated her? I’d raised my voice. A little. I didn’t leave her to flounder in her drugs to party. I wasn’t cruel, insensitive, and abusive. That wasn’t me. Was it?

  I hugged my knees to my chest, dragging my pillow over my face, either to muffle my scream or to muffle my life. Figured, my mother finally went cold turkey to ruin the rest of my life after Dad had ruined my first seventeen years.

  Desperation made me pick up my phone to text Jesse, but I was unable to force my fingers to work. Instead, I received a text from Mom.

  “I’m sorry I compared you to your father. I know you’re trying your best to integrate Jade and Jesse into our family. You have to remember that Jade has lost her entire life and is just acting out. It will pass, as will your feelings toward Jesse. He’s the first boy to pay you attention, he won’t be the last. Stick with Will, he’s a keeper.”

  Refusing to dignify her pop psychology with a response, I sent her a devil emoticon and screamed into my pillow. I raised my arm to hurl my phone, and it buzzed again. I prepared to launch more emoticons at Mom, but Jesse’s message read, “Meet me at the Rosicrucian Museum tomorrow at noon.”

  A sigh rippled up my throat. He’d remembered how much I loved the Egyptian museum and planetarium. What did it mean? He didn’t text me our secret message. Would he end us for the sake of his sister and happier times in the funny farm? Or did he want to continue our relationship outside the house?

  Then again, maybe it was for the best that we killed our relationship. But if I accepted Mom’s mandate, I’d give up everything I’d always wanted. I’d give in to Jade, and I’d lose my one and only boyfriend. I’d lose the weird, warm, and exciting flurries Jesse created in me, the feelings of need and want whenever he wasn’t around. I’d miss the amazing smile he held only for me, the way his eyes slurped me up whole whenever he saw me, and his melting kisses that calmed and energized me. I’d miss his soul-wrenching music set to the poems from my heart. I couldn’t give it up. Nor him. We’d have to find a way around the mad maternal mandate.

  Mom said she’d not stand for us together under her roof. Well, so be it. Control what happens under your roof. Outside was another realm.

  I texted him back, “CU there. Nothing changes.” Picking my arm raw and willing my phone to chirp, I waited for a response I never received. I fell asleep gripping my phone, my lifesaver dragging me under.

  ~*~

  I dropped by Jesse’s favorite sandwich shop and bought lunch. As I approached the museum on foot, I looked for him among the white columns, and then took a perch at the bottom of the steps for a few minutes.

  My heart hung heavy in my chest. What if we had to break it off? I didn’t think I could live as brother and sister with him in our house. I would die a slow death pining away for something I didn’t have. Again.

  Dejected and barely able to lift one foot after another, I slogged up the wide steps to the columns near the entrance doors, peeking every which way for him. Since food and drink weren’t allowed inside, I stopped shy of entering.

  Hands tugged me between two rows of columns. Jesse’s familiar long fingers spanned my hips. He towed me to him, the bag of sandwiches squishing between us. Footsteps click-clacked, and conversations and laughter sifted around us. An airplane flew low overhead, preparing to land at the nearby airport, but all the sounds filtered away and it was just the two of us, the sound of our breathing.

  Lowering his head, he kissed me hard, possessive, and oh so welcome. A slow blossoming happiness centered me. The incessant flurries electrified my body. Smiling, I danced a little mental jig, but my wariness slowed my steps. I nearly dropped our lunch to the cement stairs and fumbled the bag between us. We hid between the columns, holding each other tight.

  He withdrew and said the words I wanted to hear. “Nothing changes. Last night, I wasn’t sure. I thought it’d turned to crap. But I can’t quit being with you this way. I can’t be your idiot brother.”

  “But you’ll be my smart…” Oy vey, smart what? Boyfriend? Had we really progressed to that point?

  “Say it.” Eyes half-lidded, lips already swollen from our kiss, he caressed my cheek, one finger scorching trails across my skin.

  “Boyfriend?” I both asked and said timidly, mentally crossing all my fingers and toes, and all real estate in between.

  “Girlfriend.” He swooped in for another kiss, light as a feather, brushing my parted lips once, twice, three times, his breath minty fresh and soul-filled.

  One kiss, one word, and my decision had been made.

  He reached into his back pocket and handed me a pink rose wrapped in a pink ribbon.

  Eyes all misty, I smelled the sweet rose. “Thank you.” I took the flower and extended our lunch bag. “Not as sweet, but I bought you lunch.”

  “Girl, you know me well.” He smiled that heart-stopping smile he reserved for me. “Let’s go eat.”

  “I know the perfect place.” I led him down the street to the municipal rose garden. Five acres of glorious rose bushes and more. We sat on a bench in front of a round pool and tinkling water fountain. Rose bushes blooming in all colors of the rainbow became our backdrop, making my day extraordinary. The flowers perfumed the air, concealing the scent of our angst. I wanted to touch the entire world with Jesse. For now, we’d start at the rose garden.

  “I could’ve brought you a bouquet from here.” He bit into his roast beef and avocado sandwich.

  I playfully slapped his arm. “You’d suffer more than my mother’s wrath if someone caught you.”

  He chewed slowly, swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “About that.”

  I knew that conversation dangled around the bend, a bend I wanted to straighten. Then whack my mother upside the head with it. “That’s not my mother.”

  “I suspect she feared your father’s wrath and never had a voice.”

  I found it odd Jesse used “your father,” but didn’t call him on it. Had he kicked our father to the curb after discovering the real Leo Lynwood? I didn’t want him to suffer the total loss of his adoptive father. “Exactly. She was as pliable as wet cement.” As pliable as our future. “You know she takes drugs for anxiety and depression.”

  “I saw her pill bottles. Looks like she’s woken up after being his tool.”

  Curiosity killed the road we traveled. “What was it like between your mother and him?”

  He studied his sandwich, pushing a dangling piece of Swiss cheese inside the roll. “Loving. I never saw them argue except when Mom didn’t want to take the money he tried to force on her. I guess since they saw so little of each other, their relationship was special. It always seemed that way.” His bangs fell over his eyes and he swept them back. “I don’t understand. Your mother seems like a really nice, loving woman. Did the drugs push him away?”

  I chewed on my now tasteless salami and provolone sandwich. “No. He drove her to the drugs. He was physically, verbally, and mentally abusive to her, to me and Kristen. His black moods
worsened after she buried her head in pills to escape him.”

  Jesse threw his half-eaten sandwich in the bag and slammed it on the ground. “Jekyll and fucking Hyde.”

  “Let’s not talk about him. We beat him at his own game. I’ve wanted a summer of freedom from his colossal garbage forever. I have it now.” And I’ve wanted you forever, I feared saying the words and changing our moment.

  He slung his arm over my shoulders and pulled me into the haven of his body. A breeze ruffled the roses, swirling cleansing perfume around us. I breathed in deep to erase the taint inside me and make room for the goodness of us.

  “Let your mom believe you and Will are dating, even if you have to invite him over to the house occasionally.” He bumped his head against mine, tapping his fingers on his leg, fidgeting on the hard bench. “No touching.”

  “Aye, aye, captain.” Happiness glazed over my internal taint, lively and energizing. “Mom said we couldn’t be together under her roof.”

  “There’s here, Santa Cruz, and all the places in between.”

  “The pool house,” I replied, tangling my fingers in his.

  “There’s Tahoe.” He took my left hand and kissed my fingers one by one. I dissolved into a weightless puddle of tingles.

  When I returned home alone, Mom flew on the attack. “Where were you this afternoon?” she asked, her eyes narrowing. “Where’s Jesse?”

  “Jesse’s at band practice.” No lie there. “I was at the Rosicrucian. With Will,” I tossed in for added benefit. The lie came easily, but burned my tongue. Big mistake number one hundred and ninety-nine.

  Mom’s eyes narrowed further and she crossed her arms over her chest. “Really? You want to rethink your answer?”

  I shrugged. “Why?” I pulled my ticket stub out of my back pocket and handed it to her.

  “Because Will came by a while ago looking for you.”

  Dread twisted a knife in my stomach.

  “What’s gotten into you? You’ve never lied to me before. I won’t put up with you turning into your father. Not you, Ivy.”

  Once again, her words were a slap across my face. Aghast, I stood there, knowing her truth and loathing the comparison to the lying liar who lies. “I was at the museum, then I went to the rose garden to chill. I just thought you’d get mad if I told you I was alone again. I need my alone time. This house is driving me crazy. Can I go now?”

  Her eyes popped and she nodded.

  I slammed my bedroom door, sucked in a deep breath of reality, and stared at the reincarnation of Lying Lunatic Leo in the mirror above my dresser.

  Chapter 23

  After the day at the museum, Jesse deliberately made himself scarce to avoid my mother. He went to band practice, hung with his friends in Santa Cruz, even looked for a local job. I felt like I was back in prison, and it gave me too much alone time in my head. Not long ago, I would’ve embraced that alone time. Not anymore. I wanted Jesse too much and I missed him terribly. And it hurt like hell to realize I might be turning into my father. At least my relationship with Jesse wasn’t hurting anyone the way Dad’s did. That idea consoled me. A smidge.

  Mom rarely left the house, never gave Jesse and me alone time. She went out to the pool house occasionally, using fake excuses to clean or to move decorations from place to place as if we didn’t know her true intentions. Every time Jesse and I found ourselves in a room together, her hawk eyes devoured us, ready to swoop down and poke our eyes out. Even Jade stalked us, auditioning for a world record for spewing the most snark.

  Will stayed busy helping his dad move when he wasn’t working, and was unable to meet for lunch. He’d called a few times to vent, and I was happy to focus on him and his upheavals. He let me rant about my sucktacular new life—without Jesse as far as the outside world knew, as I had to withhold my feelings for him deep in the cavern of my chest.

  Welcome to Crap Creek. Sorry, we’re all out of paddles.

  That summer I’d discovered it took a lot of give and little take to maintain an equal friendship. My new relationships sucked me drier than a drought in the Sahara. Maybe I had always sucked at friendship. Given the brief time Jesse and I had spent together, and the lack of true progression in our relationship, maybe I wasn’t meant to have a boyfriend. Mom wanted me locked in the chastity dungeon until I turned forty.

  I read and lazed by the pool alone. Fantasy novels and my music refused to divert my mind from my train wreck life. I kept waiting for all the shoes to drop and the police to raid my prison. Deflecting, I filled my time writing poetry, but my poems resembled chalk marks a cave girl had scrawled, and wound up crumpled in bin number thirteen. For the most part, Jade stayed in her own bubble. We did our best to stick to our boundaries. I didn’t try to befriend her. She’d tromped on the older sister gene when she betrayed me and Jesse to my mother. She sulked, gave me the evil eye, spewed out her snark, and sifted in and out of the house within curfew, tame as a panther in a flaming cage. She continued her bonehead voodoo curses, and my rash worsened until I invited an aneurism. I scratched my arm raw and continued sneezing, hard sneezes that jerked on my ribs. My happy meter danced in the red.

  Thursday morning, I stormed into Jade’s bedroom without knocking, an infraction against the new regime—Mothers Against Happiness—and stomped over to her pathetic shrine, kicking half-empty boxes out of my way in the dim room reeking of cat poop and cigarette smoke. If Dad saw this room, he’d go into Mofo mode, taking no prisoners.

  Scrambling off her bed, where she was watching a lame reality show about tattoo artists, she shrieked, “Get out, shrinking vine.” She puffed a bitter blast of cigarette smoke in my face.

  I snatched up the new voodoo doll in my likeness. The eyes were crossed out, tear drops fell upon pink cheeks, pink pouty lips, exaggerated boobs, and stringy blonde hair. A skull and crossbones decorated the back of the doll’s pink shirt. The left arm had a brown scorched mark, mocking the rash on my upper left arm, and a pin pierced the doll’s splintered, black heart. Jade was as subtle as a fire-snorting dragon skipping down the street. I held the doll above my head, wanting to squeeze out the stuffing and shove it up her back door.

  “Don’t touch my stuff.” Jade jabbed her fists into my torso, rolled me to the carpeted floor and tried to seize the doll out of my hand.

  “What’s going on in here?” Mom stomped inside the bat cave. She pulled Jade’s black hood, yanking on her hair, trying to stop her fingers from circling my neck. “Back off, Jade. Now.”

  Mom forced us to sit side by side on the foot of Jade’s bed while she stood guard, our pretty-in-pink firing squad. With ginger fingers, she stubbed out Jade’s half-burnt cigarette in an overflowing ashtray. The voodoo doll hung listlessly in my hands, the neck torn, straw and stuffing drooping out. Great. I’ll probably be beheaded and dead by morning. Shadow jumped onto Jade’s lap, head-butting my arm until Jade shifted the cat to her other side. Hey, I didn’t foster fleas and sprout rabies until you joined the club.

  “This needs to stop. What’s wrong with you two?” Mom threw up her hands, clenched her head, and slid her hands down to her hips. The dance of the deranged. Reel it in, before you hurt yourself, Mom. “Can’t you two get along somehow?”

  “She made another voodoo doll of me.” I held up the tattered doll for Mom’s inspection, the head dangling to the side by a thread. Her baseball-sized eyes strayed from the doll to the voodoo shrine she’d never seen, her first foray into Kristen’s old room since the Jeromes had infected our lives. Twisting her rings, she took tentative steps toward the dresser.

  Jade stalked her. “It’s just fun and games.”

  I pointed to the red, raw patch on my upper arm. “This isn’t fun and games.”

  Mom’s gaze shot from my arm to the voodoo doll. “Let’s take you to the doctor.” She flicked the doll in my hand. “No more, Jade. This is strike three on the voodoo dolls. Play your games on anyone else, not family.”

  “Or what?” she taunted, letting Shadow g
o. The cat escaped to the elusive hallway.

  “The cat needs fresh air.” Mom gave a wrinkly-nosed sniff. “This room needs air. Look, if you don’t end this nonsense, I’ll ground you.”

  Jade smirked, arms crossed over her breasts. “Puh-lease. You won’t ground me. Kick me out. I’ll go live with Ax.”

  “Were you born dumb, or do you practice? You’ll go live in a group home or with a foster family at best. Is that what you want?” I found myself asking.

  She flipped me the bird. “I’ll run away.”

  “Bye. Don’t let the door hit your black ass on the way out.”

  Mom gave me one of Douchebag Dad’s withering glares. “You want to test me?” She inclined forward, forcing her threat upon Jade. “You’re grounded until we leave for Tahoe. No leaving the property.”

  “You’re not the boss of me.” Jade leaped forward, fists curled. For a moment, I thought she’d strike my mother.

  I stepped between them, forcing them to separate corners of the ring. “You’re grounded, Jade. Deal. With. It.”

  “What about her?” She sliced her middle finger across her neck. “She barged in.”

  “I’ll deal with Ivy.”

  Sure, deal with me. Let me make you an Ivy Spitini with a twist of your drug cocktail.

  Fake tears brimmed Jade’s eyes and she bowed her head to hide her face. “Can Ax come over tonight?” she asked in a conciliatory tone.

  “He may join us for dinner and stay until ten outside your bedroom.” Mom huffed out a tired breath and her relief sagged her into a pile of boneless flesh. She slogged to the door, and I followed, the decapitated voodoo doll squeezed in my right hand. One quick glance back and I saw Jade crumpled on the floor against the bed, her knees pulled up under her chin.

  Mom made a doctor’s appointment for me, and we left the house, the voodoo doll sitting on the center console.

  “That’s why I confronted her. The rash is driving me bonkers.”