by Nicole Thorn
I’m the one that takes up the alcohol. I’m the one that drinks it until I can’t feel anymore. I’m the one that let herself fall so far from the truth that it looked like an ugly illusion meant to keep me from doing anything.
I put my head between my legs because I felt like I would throw up. Jasper and Juniper immediately started stroking my back, and saying soothing things, and that was the other problem. They loved me so much that they’d always pull me up, dust me off, and get me moving again.
Because they had been in the same boat. They had different monsters under their skin, but they had been in the same boat as me. We had all carefully constructed a nice little glass coffin to lay ourselves down in, where we could look at the world, and see it the way we wanted, instead of the way it was.
Jasper had pulled himself out of his glass coffin.
And now they asked me to do the same.
That thin veil I had put around the world started to shimmered, and break, and I couldn’t stop it. Did I want to stop it? I didn’t know, because things made sense for the first time.
Zander called me an alcoholic. He had done it several times, whenever he got angry with me. Whenever he got scared for me. Over and over again, I had argued, but maybe he hadn’t been wrong.
I had to remember how to breathe, but I didn’t want to breathe.
There had been nights, so many nights, where I had come home and couldn’t coordinate how to get the door open. I would sit down on the porch, and sob because I couldn’t do it. Juniper or Jasper would finally open the door, and find me sobbing on the porch, and I never mentioned those nights. I never thought of them.
There had been times at bars when strange men and women would be talking to me, and there would be something about them . . . something in their eyes would make me want to run away. They had always looked so dangerous, and yet I spoke with them until they had gotten bored, and moved on to someone else.
I had been drugged twice, and only the bartender had been able to save me, because he had been a kind man.
I had been beaten up more times, walking home when driving wasn’t an option. I had called Jasper, bloodied and on the side of the road, needing a ride. I’d made my brother come and pick me up, dust me off, and take me home. I never once wondered how much that would hurt him.
The thoughts pinged around my skull like ping pong balls. Zander had called me an alcoholic and I ignored him, because he hadn’t done what my brother and sister had done. He hadn’t shown me just how screwed up we all were, and he hadn’t led me to the conclusion, and then waited for me to jump. He’d tried to push me over the edge, and now I was falling.
Falling, and I didn’t know when I’d stop.
Oh gods.
***
“All of it?” Juniper asked, standing by the fridge. I huddled up at the kitchen table. My crying jag had stopped, and now I tried to put myself back together. Falling to pieces was okay, as long as you tried to put yourself back together. I could reconstruct myself, piece by piece, as long as I went about it slowly.
I looked up at my sister. Her long hair hung loosely against her white shirt, and her tan skirt looked perfectly pressed. Her pale skin even paler under the kitchen lights, and her mismatched eyes seemed worried. She looked at me, waiting for me to answer her question.
Jasper and Kizzy stood in the kitchen as well. Kizzy sat at the table with me, trying to get me to drink some tea she had made. I was sure it tasted delicious, but I didn’t trust my stomach. Jasper leaned against the counter, and I could tell that he was prepared to catch me if I fell again.
Because that was what Jasper did. He kept us from destroying ourselves, even if that meant destroying himself in the process.
I looked back at Juniper. She hadn’t moved an inch. She was right. I knew she was right. I sucked in a deep breath, and nodded. “All of it,” I said. “Everything in there. Do exactly what you’ve always wanted to do.” The words burned coming up my throat, but I still said them.
Juniper nodded, and dipped into the fridge. She came out with all my beer. There wasn’t a lot. She didn’t want too much in the house, so we only had one full six pack, and one that had three left. She popped each tab, and started pouring them down the drain so that I couldn’t get them out of the trash later. Part of me wanted to be offended that she thought I’d be that weak, and the rest of me thought she was smart for thinking of that.
When it all vanished, she threw the cans away. Then turned back to me. “Is there any in your room?”
I closed my eyes to think. Then I nodded. When I opened them, she held up her hand. “I’ll find it all. Don’t worry.” Juniper started for the stairs, and Kizzy jumped up to follow her. Jasper looked at me closely, his green and gray eyes seeing everything that I maybe didn’t want him to see.
“Is there anything in the rest of the house?” he asked.
My hands curled into fists around the blanket. I forced the words through my lips. “There’s a bottle of tequila in my bathroom, and I think there’s some in my car, as well.” There, I had said it. That had to be a good sign. I felt like I was dying, but that would pass, right?
Jasper nodded, and went to take care of those two things. I sat at the kitchen table, and felt like I floated outside my body as I listened to my family move around the house. Kizzy and Juniper appeared at the same time Jasper did, and it was a moment of shock for me, what they all had.
Then Zander came into the room. He stopped. Just stopped. He looked at our siblings, and he looked confused, almost. Juniper didn’t bother with an explanation, she just started pouring the liquid down the drain. Kizzy offered him a hesitant smile, and followed suit.
When they had everything poured out, and in the trash, Juniper looked back at me. “Is that everything?”
I racked my brain. “I think so,” I said. She nodded, and then looked pointedly at Zander, then pointedly at me. She walked away, without another word of encouragement, and I wanted to shrink into the table.
Kizzy and Jasper abandoned me as well. Zander still stared at the sink. He turned towards me, and there was a cautious hope in his eyes. “What’s going on, Jasmine?” he asked. “I heard a commotion, so I came down here to see what was happening.”
I swallowed through my dry throat. The very idea of not having anything to drink made me want to drink. Like I could crawl down the sink and get what had been taken away from me. That scared me almost as much as the realizations in the backyard had scared me. It made my heart trip against my chest painfully. I hadn’t known that a person could fool themselves this much before.
Sucking in a breath, I said, “I’m an alcoholic, you’re right. So, I’ve had them get rid of all the alcohol.”
Both his eyebrows popped up, and the hope started to beat out the caution in his eyes. “Really?” he asked. “How does it feel?”
“Like I’m dying,” I said, honestly. “But like I’m no longer burying the truth so that I can get by without having to be in pain. I’m not entirely sure that’s a good thing, but it doesn’t feel like a bad thing either. Does that make any sense, Zander?” I looked up at him.
He nodded. “Yeah. It does.” He sat down at the table. “What made you decide to do this?” Again, that caution crept in his voice.
I shrugged. “I don’t want to be an alcoholic, and when my siblings stopped letting me be in denial, it got really hard, really fast,” I said. I put my hands on the table, smoothing them against the wood. “This is why you don’t want to be with me? Because of . . . this?” I had already said it. I didn’t want to say it again.
“No,” Zander said. “I want to be with you, but I don’t want to be the reason you never get better.”
I looked up at him. Well, I couldn’t fault him for that, I supposed. Not that it would stop me from wanting to be with him. I had fallen down, but I wouldn’t stay down forever. Sucking in a deep breath, I shoved my hand into my pocket, and pulled out my car keys. I looked at them. They were my freedom, and would hurt, givin
g it up. I tossed them on the table. “Can you keep those for me?” I asked.
“Why?” Zander asked.
I swallowed. “Because I want to stick with this,” I said. “I want to get better so that you will be with me, but also because I want to stop digging my own grave. In order for that to happen, I have to trust myself with those keys, and right now I don’t. Keep them for me. Six months. I want you to keep them for six months. Until then, I won’t leave the house alone.”
He stared at the keys. For a second, I thought he would hand them right back, and say that he couldn’t help me. My heart tripped against my chest again, because those keys also acted as a lifeline. A way to keep him with me, to let him know that I wanted to get better. Proof that I could get better.
Some silly part of me worried that he would give up, and walk away. So, when he put the keys in his pocket, I breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t much, but we had a start.
“You know this doesn’t mean we can get together?” Zander said. “I’m so . . . so happy that you’re trying, but this . . . ” He gestured between the two of us. “Still isn’t a very good idea. I’ll help you if you really need it, but we cannot be together just because of this.” He sounded so stern when he said it.
I felt the smile start slow. Then begin to grow, until I had to look like a maniac, but I didn’t care. “Zander,” I said. “If you think this bump in the road is going to stop me, then you don’t know me very well.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO:
Words Are Knives
Zander
It didn’t surprise me to wake up in the morning with Jasmine in bed with me. She huddled her body up to my side, her arm wrapped around me. I laid there when I should have gotten up, and I ran my fingers across her arm until I felt like I could breathe again.
It was such a good thing that she wanted to get better, but she didn’t understand the rest of this. It wasn’t as simple as getting together after she stopped drinking. It had been more than the drinking. It was a wonderful first step, but she needed to also know how to live her day to day life on her own, not leaning on anything to get her by. Because things ended, and she couldn’t go running back to drinking when she lost whatever became her new crutch. She needed to survive all on her own.
My problem was that I didn’t know how to do that for myself. Kizzy had always been there, and then she moved on. When left to flounder, it made me overprotective and mean to the one other person who gave me the time of day. I latched onto her and it made me into someone that she didn’t even like sometimes. I couldn’t do that to her or me. I couldn’t become a person I didn’t like. More importantly, I needed to know I could survive on my own. How many more decades did I have with her? They wouldn’t be enough.
Jasmine sighed in her sleep and wiggled against me, moving closer.
She seemed so sure of her choices, that we could be together and it would be fine. That if she stopped doing what hurt her, then we could be just fine. The problem of course being that she wasn’t the only broken one. I murdered two people and took infinite pleasure in it at the age of thirteen, and I had finally become aware of that. Nothing about me felt healthy, and it was bad for the both of us if we jumped into something without our relationship blowing up. We needed a solid foundation.
Carefully, I snuck out of bed. Jasmine reacted by shimmying over to my spot, and soaking up all the warmth I left in the bed. I pulled the blanket up and tucked her in, leaving a kiss on her forehead before I left to start on breakfast.
I never used to wake up this early. There had been a time where I would sleep in ‘til noon, and not think twice about it. Now, my body dragged my ass out of bed at the crack of dawn. It was why I started making breakfast for everyone. Sure beats sitting at the table and doing nothing. At least Kizzy had plants to take care of when she couldn’t sleep. That, and doing things with Jasper.
Dammit.
I cracked a few eggs into the buttered pan, and I began pushing them around, breaking them up and beginning to scramble them. Jasmine liked scrambled eggs . . .
I started in on the other stuff while the eggs cooked, juggling so much stuff that it would make Juniper twitchy if she saw all the running around and the scrambly way I did things. No order to it at all, and the chance of burning breakfast and ruining everything seemed more than likely. But I had some fancy new skills I’d gotten from weeks of doing this, thanks to no sleep. Nothing got burned on my watch.
I set the cinnamon rolls onto the counter to cool as I started plating everything up. Kizzy and Jasper shuffled into the kitchen right on time. My sister wore her pajamas, looking like a mess as she yawned and patted my shoulder as a thank you. Jasper however, looked all put together and awake. He must have been up long before her.
Jasper put the food on the table while I finished up the frosting, and then put away as many dishes as I could without risking a cold breakfast. Juniper would have to live with me doing the rest in an hour. She came downstairs next, and I handed her the breakfast I made special for her. Egg whites and fruit with a glass of water. I tried not to sigh when I handed it to her.
When Jasmine came down, she still wore that shirt of mine she stole. A total of three went missing since I last checked, but I got to watch her change into this one. Right in front of me . . . she stripped and put it on. She had been shameless, and it was a real effort to not throw her onto the bed and let her know what I thought of that.
This time, Jasmine added shorts that I could only see when she bent down in front of me, pretending to examine a scuff in the floor. Fine, try and tempt me all you want, I’m a rock.
Jasmine smirked when she sat back down.
I sat at the table, and focused on my breakfast, not Jasmine’s ass. I had to stay strong and think of other things, like bacon and WWII, because those seemed like safer topics. Those topics wouldn’t make me throw a person over my shoulder, and then bring her to the nearest room for some naked times. Mmm, naked times.
NO! Think of bacon! Crispy, crispy bacon, in all its salty glory. So innocent, so pure. So, yummy in my mouth. Jasmine would also be yummy in my mouth . . . AH! Do I have no self-control!?
I looked up from my plate, and Jasmine eyed me, slowly drinking from her glass. She set it down, and then licked her lips, crossing her legs, and sitting up. Her lips felt so soft, and I bet they tasted nice from the juice. She’d let me find out if I wanted to. She would be willing and up for anything I wanted. That made it so much worse, how much she wanted this. Me. I kept her from something that we both wanted, and I felt badly for it. I really did.
I stabbed at my food again instead of thinking about how easy it would be to get Jasmine upstairs and back into bed. I couldn’t cross that last line, and the ones I did cross had been bad enough. God, I let things go far.
“What’s on the agenda for today?” Kizzy asked, looking at me.
Was I the responsible adult here, in charge of what we did? When did that happen? I didn’t have any more answers than the rest of them did when it came to this baddy. I mean, Arachne? How did we fight a spider lady with a dozen tricks up her sleeve? Jasmine couldn’t even think about her without flinching, and her siblings wouldn’t be much help in a fight. If Arachne summoned a few spiders that bit the seers, they would die and there wasn’t a thing to be done. So easily they could get cut down, as scrappy as they could be. If we kept getting tangled in these messes, the seers would meet a battle they couldn’t win. The same went for Kizzy and me.
“Not dying,” I said, pointing to my sister with my fork. I smiled, and stuck a piece of egg in my mouth.
Kizzy sighed, looking utterly put out. “Well obviously, you giant dork. What do you wanna do about the abundance of monsters in the woods, at the wreckage of that camp, and what do you want to do about Spider-Bitch and her band of merry gorgons?”
I dropped my fork and groaned into my hands. “I don’t wanna deal with gorgons.” I held my head up on my hands, leaning on my elbows. “I mean, send as many furies, cyclopes
things, the fucking minotaur, but leave the snake ladies out of it.”
Jasmine giggled and rubbed my back, setting her chin on my shoulder. “You’re very good at slaying them, so I wouldn’t worry.”
Though I knew I should shake her off, I didn’t. I didn’t want her to move, and I didn’t want to hurt her feelings during such a delicate time. Jasmine wanted to be better so badly. I had her keys to prove how much she wanted it, and how much she trusted me. I would help her stay sober, and that meant being careful with her for the time being.
“As good as I am with a sword,” I started, making her eyes get distant with memories. “I’d rather not have to use it.”
Jasmine looked like she didn’t agree with me on that one. She got happy when I used the sword, and it made me want to practice with it in the backyard. She’d get all hot and bothered . . . NO! Bad Zander. No hot and bothered times allowed. I should keep that sword away from her so that I didn’t risk it. So many things could set us off and we’d start going at it again.
What the hell would do now? I couldn’t leave, and I couldn’t touch her. She made it clear that she wouldn’t back down for anything, and she was stubborn enough that I believed her. It would be a tidal wave of this girl, and I only barely wanted to fight it. I was selfish enough to believe I would give up and keep her before she was ready for it. Before either of us were ready. I didn’t want to ruin what we had, and I could see the doom ahead.
“You should teach me how to use it,” Jasmine suggested, perking up. “I can get me some sword skills and kill gorgons myself.”
I gave her a look. “Not a chance. If anything, I’d only trust you with a dagger.”
Juniper almost spat her drink on herself. Thankfully she didn’t, or she would be panicking as she tried to clean it. “Um, let’s not give her anything sharp. I like her having all her limbs.”
