Suburban Dangers

by Megan Whitson Lee

  “I’ve lived all over.”

  “Where’d you go to high school?” She stalled for time, even as his hand rested on her thigh, and then slid her knee-length black skirt upward.

  Damien downed his drink in three quick gulps and turned to look at her. His breath was sweet from the whiskey as he leaned toward her. “Too much talking.” He lifted the glass from her hands. She heard the ice clink against the sides of the glass as he shoved it onto the nightstand next to his.

  He pushed her back onto the bed.

  She didn’t protest. She did everything he wanted. And afterward, she wanted to forget all about it.

  6

  Kaki

  Friday, November 10

  “I can’t believe you dropped out of track.” Kaki stood with Riley in the hallway as kids rushed by them in waves. The bell had rung signaling the end of the day, and there was a mad rush as freshman and sophomores moved toward the bus ramp, juniors and seniors toward the back parking lot. Riley was on her way to a big cross-country competition. The one Kaki had performed really well in the previous year. The one she would have been going to now if she had still been on the team.

  Kaki shrugged. “I just got tired of it.”

  Riley’s pale eyes were wide and she tugged at her wheat-colored hair, beginning to braid the ends of it as she so often did. “But you’ve been doing it forever.”

  “All the more reason for me to take a break,” Kaki said casually. Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed Molly Jones closing her classroom door and rushing off in the midst of the kids. She threw Kaki a smile and a wave, and Kaki returned the gesture.

  “But you’re abandoning me,” Riley mock-whimpered, her knees bending as she bobbed up and down.

  “Oh, come on. You’ve got Sarah and Jordan and Emily with you. You don’t even need me.”

  Riley shook her head. “I still don’t get it. Is it because of that guy—Damien or whatever?”

  “No,” Kaki said quickly. “No, I just need more time for homework and stuff.” That was a lie. She hardly did any homework these days. She didn’t have time. She was too busy sneaking out and meeting Damien three and four times a week. She’d gotten good at silently navigating the steps at her mom’s and her dad’s house. She just wondered how long she could keep it up.

  Riley sighed. “Well, I gotta go. Coach wants us all to be ready to travel at three fifteen.”

  “You’ll be great.”

  “I still wish you were going to be there.”

  “Maybe next year.”

  Riley tossed her gym bag over her shoulder and disappeared into the throngs of other teenagers.

  All of these kids were moving around her—dozens of them—walking to class, texting their friends, calling to one another down the hall. Some of them she’d gone to elementary school with, yet she didn’t know them. They didn’t know her, either. It was as if she watched someone else’s life happening around her. She didn’t belong here anymore.

  ~*~

  “Lana?” The house seemed empty as she arrived at her dad’s that afternoon.

  “I’m in the bathroom!” Lana called out.

  Kaki heard the toilet flush.

  Lana was enjoying her afternoon cocktail.

  Kaki threw her book bag on the chair in the living room and sauntered into the kitchen. She opened the fridge and spotted a bowl of grapes which she took out along with some packages of string cheese from one of the drawers. Then she sat at the island while unwrapping the plastic from the cheese and waited. Bzzz. A text appeared on the screen of her phone.

  Hey baby. Pick u up tonite by 11:30. Dnt make me wait.

  Why did he always say that? She had never made him wait. If anything, she’d been the one waiting most of the time. Slipping off the stool, she walked to the cabinet of glasses where Lana kept her hidden stash of vodka. Reaching to the back of the shelf, she pulled the bottle from behind all of the glasses, unscrewed the top, and swilled down a big swallow.

  Blech. It was even worse than whiskey. It was nothing like the drinks doctored with juice or soda that Damien gave her. But after a few seconds, the not-unpleasant warmth filled her insides. That sensation was becoming familiar to her now. Holding her breath, she took another swig.

  The front door burst open as Micah rushed in. Her younger half-brother’s feet clopped across the living room floor to deposit his book bag and turn on the television.

  Lana usually picked up Celia a few hours earlier, so she was probably napping now.

  Kaki hoped Micah’s arrival hadn’t woken her. The longer she slept the better. That little girl had an awful temper and was so hard to deal with most of the time. And whenever Kaki was there, it was an unspoken expectation that she would help with Celia. Kaki quickly replaced the vodka bottle behind the glasses and returned to her phone and her bowl of grapes at the kitchen island.

  “Mom!” Micah called out.

  “I’m in the bathroom!”

  Her stepmother just wasn’t the right sort of person to have children—she didn’t appear to even like children. When Lana was first pregnant with Micah she’d seemed excited. But her excitement had apparently faded as the pregnancy wore on.

  Kaki had been nine years old when she put her hand on Lana’s swollen stomach to feel the baby kick. That day Lana had been crying—her eyes were red-rimmed and her nose swollen.

  “Aren’t you excited for the baby to get here?” Kaki had asked.

  Lana’s reply had been delivered as though she were auditioning for a part in some dramatic play. “The excitement of having a baby has a shelf-life. And this one’s past due. The joy never lasts. It’s sort of like a bouquet of flowers presented for a celebration; the colors fade; the petals start out soft as velvet, but they become hard and brittle.”

  “Huh?” Fading colors? Petals?

  Her father later explained that Lana had passed her due date and was very uncomfortable. OK, that made sense. But there seemed to be something more behind Lana’s words.

  Lana’s cell phone jingled as it lay upon the island near Kaki’s bowl of fruit. At the same time the doorbell sounded.

  “Micah, can you get the door?” She lifted Lana’s cell phone. She didn’t recognize the number on the display—a 310 area code. She carried it to the door of the bathroom and knocked. “Lana, your phone is ringing.”

  The door opened a crack and a hand poked out and grabbed the phone. Then the door shut again.

  Micah appeared in the hallway and pointed behind him, “Miss Suzanne from across the street is here. And she brought a huge gift!”

  “It’s just me!” Suzanne trilled in her South Carolina accent. She held up a basket wrapped in red cellophane. “I hope it’s OK I popped by. I just got home from the salon and thought I’d better do this while I was thinking about it.” Suzanne’s heavily styled hair looked even higher than usual, and the streaks of blonde through the light-brown strands appeared freshly highlighted.

  Just then, a still sleepy Celia made her way down the stairs, her face smushed into a scowl as she rubbed her eyes.

  “Hey, sweetie!” Suzanne said to the little girl. “You look like you just woke up.”

  Celia scowled and whined.

  “Lana’s in the bathroom,” Kaki said to Suzanne.

  “Oh, OK. Well, I’ll just take this into the kitchen. I can’t stay a minute anyway.” Kaki followed in Suzanne’s perfumed wake as she walked down the hall and into the kitchen and deposited the basket on the island. She turned to Kaki, her hand on her hip, her perfectly lined and shadowed eyes peering down at her. “So how are you doing, Miss Katherine?”

  “Fine.” It was always awkward when adults asked her questions. She never knew what to say back to them.

  “Any boyfriends?”

  Kaki’s face flamed as she thought of Damien. Of course, no one could know about him. And why did adults always want to know if she had a boyfriend? “No.”

  Suzanne waved her hand. “Oh, well. Plenty of time for that. What grad
e are you in this year? Ninth?”

  “Tenth.”

  “Oh my! Moving on up in the world. I remember when my daughter was that age. It seems like yesterday. Time goes so fast.”

  The bathroom door sprang open, and Lana emerged, nearly colliding with Micah in the hallway. She grasped her son by the shoulders.

  “Miss Suzanne’s here,” he said softly.

  “I know,” Lana moved over to the island where Kaki and Suzanne stood together. “I heard her voice.”

  “Celia’s awake,” Micah added.

  “Take her into the den and get her some cookies or something.”

  Micah was good at things like that. He entertained his sister regularly.

  Celia followed her brother into the den, still rubbing her eyes and whining sleepily.

  Lana’s voice was unusually animated. “Hey, Suzanne. Great to see you. Would you like anything? Coffee? Or maybe something stronger?”

  Suzanne shook her head. “No, I just wanted to drop off a little Thanksgiving gift. We’re going out of town next week, and things have been so crazy with the holidays coming up and everything, so I wanted to make sure I brought it by.”

  “Oh, you didn’t have to do that.”

  Suzanne smiled. One of her front teeth was smeared with butterfly-pink lipstick.

  Lana picked at the cellophane wrapping that covered the basket of cheese, crackers, summer sausage, and a bottle of champagne. She plucked a small, red mesh bag tied with a white bow and filled with cosmetics—moisturizers, mascaras, lipstick. For the past three years, Suzanne had sold cosmetics through a company called Prism. “This is beautiful! Thank you so much!”

  Suzanne motioned as though shooing away flies. “Oh, please. It was just a little something. Nothing much at all. I added a bag of goodies just for you. It’s our winter line. I can get one together for you, too, Katherine. There’s a really nice trial-size bottle of perfume in there. Lilac scent. Let me know if you want to order any more of it. And, Lana, like I said before, if you’re interested in making a little extra money, I can set you up with your first in-home party.”

  Lana smiled. “Thanks, but my mind hasn’t changed.”

  Even though Suzanne said it was due to Prism’s microdermabrasion cream, Kaki knew through a girl at school whose mother worked at a cosmetologist’s office that Suzanne had recently started using Botox. With her wide, neighborly smile, Suzanne’s face should have crinkled with laugh lines, but due to the paralysis from the injections, her forehead was as smooth as Lake Placid.

  Shrugging, Suzanne held up her perfectly manicured hands. “Can’t blame me for trying. I think we’d have fun together. In a few years, Katherine, you might want to make a few extra dollars with Prism.”

  Kaki almost laughed out loud at the idea.

  Lana pulled the bottle of champagne from the cellophane, shifting it in her hands. “Would you like some, Suzanne? I’d be happy to open it.”

  Suzanne shook her head emphatically as she pulled out a chair at the kitchen island and settled in. “Oh no, no, no. I’ve got to get back. Dale will be home soon, and I need to start thinking about dinner. You enjoy that with Tyler.”

  A look of disappointment crossed Lana’s face as she put the bottle aside and sifted through the other contents of the basket.

  “Did you hear the police cars the other night?” Suzanne asked. “I couldn’t sleep anyway, and when all the cop cars started rolling down the street, the walls of our bedroom just lit up like a Christmas tree, and I just kept thinking, is this what we’re in for now? Is this what we can expect in this neighborhood from here on out? And this is a good neighborhood!”

  “No, I didn’t hear a thing. I must have slept right through it.”

  “I think it was Sunday night. It was loud.”

  “Did you find out what it was?” Lana asked.

  “Oh, you know. Some kind of domestic altercation or something.”

  Kaki sank down on one of the stools positioned in front of the kitchen island, just as the kids started to scream at each other in the den.

  “You got to watch your show yesterday, Micah! I want to watch Princess Pepper!”

  “You’ve only seen that stupid movie like forty-million times! You can watch it whenever you want! I want to watch Ghost Aliens.”

  “No! I was here first! Mommy!”

  Kaki caught Lana’s imploring glance. “Katherine, would you go check and see what’s going on in there?”

  Kaki hated it when she was asked to police the kids. “Why don’t you let them fight it out?” It was so exhausting to referee their spats.

  “Suzanne, I’m sorry. Excuse me a second,” Lana said.

  Kaki held up her hand and slid off of the stool. “No, I’ll get it.” Otherwise, Lana would be all annoyed with her.

  “Thank you, Katherine.”

  She sauntered into the living room where Celia’s shrill voice escalated into a scream and an all-out tantrum as she attempted to wrench the television control from Micah’s hands.

  Micah looked up as Kaki entered the room, his expression melting from resolve to resignation. He thrust the control at his sister, and she stumbled backward. “Fine! Take it! I don’t care.”

  Kaki was thankful Micah had given in. It relieved her from having to break up a fight. She wasn’t their mother.

  The swigs of vodka from earlier warmed her, and she was tempted to go by the bathroom on her way back to the kitchen to take a few more swallows from Lana’s other stash. But she didn’t want to leave her phone unattended in the kitchen for too long. Damien might text.

  “Celia’s just become so obnoxious lately,” Lana was saying to Suzanne as she came back into the room. “I thought the terrible twos and threes were all I needed to worry about—not the fearful fives. So anyway, what was your big news?”

  Suzanne smiled and reached across the island, her bony fingers grasping Lana’s, pinning them to the granite. “Well, you know how our daughter is living in Myrtle Beach now? Did I tell you that? She got a job as a dental hygienist there a few months back. She moved because a young man was sort of ‘on the scene’ at the time. Well, they’re engaged now!”

  Lana smiled. “That’s wonderful! Congratulations. I remember how excited my family was when Tyler and I got engaged.”

  Suzanne beamed, her eyes sparkling and her face flushing. “Yes. We’re really excited, as you can imagine. And she’s our only daughter, and Myrtle Beach is just so far away. So, we’ve decided to move to South Carolina to be near her.”

  “That’s wonderful. You and Dale must be so excited,” Lana said.

  Lana was jealous. At least it sounded that way to Kaki.

  “Oh, we are,” Suzanne said. “We’re putting the house on the market next week. But you know, we’ve lived there for fifteen years. It’ll be weird to pack up everything and…start fresh, I guess. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know before you saw a For Sale sign in our yard. And of course, you, Tyler, and the kids have an open invitation to visit any time you like.” Suzanne patted Lana’s hand. “Well, I gotta dash, sweetie. I’ll stop by later in the week, and maybe we can have coffee. Also, I have a great new hand cream I want you try.”

  Once Suzanne left, Lana began opening and shutting cupboards in the kitchen. She took down a canister of cocoa, sugar, and flour. “You wanna help me make some brownies?”

  “Sure. I guess.”

  “I thought I’d make some for your father before he comes home. They’re his favorite.” Lana took mixing bowls from the pull-out drawers on the island and set them on the counter. “That was an interesting phone call I got. A friend from college. We studied theater together. She lives in California now.”

  Kaki nodded. “Cool.” Lana passed eggs and a mixing bowl across the island to her, and Kaki began to crack the shells against the side of the bowl.

  “Yeah, she runs a talent agency in Santa Monica. It’s been very successful, and she says they have an opening there for another agent. I think she was calling t
o see if I might be interested.”

  Kaki looked up. “In California?”

  “Well, you know…your dad and I have talked about moving to California before. I know he’d like to be somewhere sunnier, and Micah and Celia are old enough now that I could go back to work.”

  A funny vibration burned in the pit of Kaki’s stomach—a panicky, anxious sensation. Were they moving away? “What about me and Brandon?”

  Lana measured out the cocoa and poured it into a separate mixing bowl. “You guys could come visit whenever you want.”

  “California’s a long way away. It’s like…the other side of the country.”

  “Who knows? Maybe you’d love it. Maybe you and Brandon would even want to move out there.”

  Kaki felt as if she was standing on a tilting platform. Leave her mom out here all alone? Her mom wasn’t stable enough to take care of herself. She was bipolar and needed a lot of help. And what about Damien? If her dad and Lana were really moving away and leaving her and Brandon, then she needed Damien more than ever. Suddenly, he seemed like the most stable thing in her life.

  7

  Tyler

  Friday, November 10

  “Tyler, could I see you in my office when you have a chance?”

  Tyler had been on his way to the elevator, but now he changed directions, moving instead into his supervisor’s office. It was strange to hear John Cabrisi’s voice, since he hardly ever saw or heard the guy. John was an office dweller and left most of his supervisory tasks to the underling micromanagers.

  Tyler yanked the coat from over his shoulder, tossed it on the back of the chair, and dropped the plastic grocery bag containing his half-eaten lunch onto the floor.

  “Go ahead and close the door,” John said.

  Tyler’s thoughts fast-forwarded through the possibilities. Was he in trouble? Or maybe a raise was in the works? He closed the door and moved to sit in the chair across from John’s desk. As far as he knew, John had occupied this office for years, but it didn’t look like it. No pictures or books adorned the shelves. Nothing identified this as a personal space.

  John was in his sixties and nearing retirement, and he appeared worn out—graying and balding, leathery pouches under his eyes.