by Jay McLean
“Possession of what exactly?” Lucas asks. “Marijuana?”
Misty inhales deeply, exhales the same way. “I wish that was all it was, Luke.”
“How bad is it?” Tom asks.
“Cocaine and heroin.”
I stop breathing.
Tom runs a hand across his face. “Jesus Christ.”
Leo says, “He’s never done this before.”
“That we know of,” Luke replies.
Misty adds, “You can pick him up from the station whenever you’re ready.”
Tom grabs his keys, slips on his shoes. Lucas and Leo are right behind him. They don’t ask if I want to come.
“You shouldn’t go,” Lincoln says, freezing everyone to their spots. All eyes turn to him.
“What did you say?” Tom asks him.
“You shouldn’t go. Not right away. Let him rot in there. Think about what he’s done to all of us! We’ve all sat here for days praying he wasn’t lying dead somewhere, and now we find out he’s on some kind of bender? No, you guys. It’s not good enough.” He shakes his head. “It’s not good enough for us, and it sure as hell isn’t good enough for Aubrey!” He points to me. “I mean look at her. Look at what this has done to her!”
I hold back my cry, but I can’t do the same for my tears.
“If you want to go get him, then go, but understand that when he gets back, I’m not going to coddle him. I’m not going to hug him and be grateful that he’s here. And I won’t support him. I just won’t.”
Tom sighs, looks to Lucy.
She’s crying silent tears beneath silent heartbreak.
Tom asks Liam, “Is this how you feel, too?”
Liam hesitates a moment, then nods slowly. “Yeah, Dad. It is.”
“You guys,” Lucas says, his eyes wide in disbelief. “This isn’t up for discussion. We have to go. He’s our brother. Our blood.”
It takes approximately five hours to drive to Myrtle Beach. The same to drive back. Take in another couple hours for stops and whatever they need to do to get Logan out, and we’re looking at a twelve-hour wait.
The twins have locked themselves in their rooms.
Lucy and Cameron whisper quietly to themselves.
Mom leaves and comes back with food.
I eat what I can. For her.
On the eleventh hour, Lachlan comes home accompanied by his Aunt Leslee, a woman I’ve only met twice. He lies down on the couch, rests his head on my lap. “Is it true?” he asks. “Logan’s coming home?”
I nod, unable to speak.
He wipes a stray tear off my cheek with the tip of his finger. “You remember what I told you about him, right?”
I nod again, and this time, I wipe away my own tears with the back of my hand. I can barely look at him. Blue-blue eyes and dark-dark hair, and he’s the reason we’re here—Logan and me. If it weren’t for him shoplifting all those months ago…
“He’s self-destructive, Aubrey,” Lachlan says. “It’s just the way he is.”
Opposite me, Mom sniffs back her own cries. Whether she’s crying for me or crying for Logan, I don’t know. I don’t ask. “Maybe there’s a reason for it all,” she says. “Maybe…”
“Maybe what?” I push.
Lucy answers, her gaze unfocused, “Maybe the twins are right.”
It’s 3:30 in the morning when the Preston men return, and I see my heart’s desire for the first time in four days. But he doesn’t look like Logan, not the Logan I know. He’s still in his work pants and work boots and a plain white shirt with too many stains. His eyes are bloodshot, dark circles beneath them, days worth of stubble cover his jaw. Lachlan wakes from his position on my lap, and everyone stands.
Waits.
Lachlan cries.
Lucy cries.
My mother cries.
And I… I am dead, dead, dead inside.
“I’m glad you’re alive,” Lachlan says through a sob, and then Lucy is moving forward, her arms open for Logan.
He lets her hug him but doesn’t return the embrace.
Leo shakes his head.
Mom says, “It’s been a long few days and a late night for everyone.” She attempts a smile. “Why don’t we get you and Aubrey home?”
Logan’s gaze lifts for the first time, his eyes right on her. “Did you know?” he asks, and my gaze snaps to Mom’s.
“Know what?” I ask.
My mom’s shaking her head, lips parted, eyes wide.
“Know what, Mom?”
“Know what?” Tom repeats.
Logan shakes his head. “I’m going to my room. Nobody wake me for, like, five days. I’d really appreciate it.”
He climbs the stairs two at a time, while I watch him and Lachlan watches me. “That’s not his room anymore,” Lachlan says, his voice low so his brother doesn’t hear. He looks to his father. “This isn’t his house anymore!”
“Let’s go, Aubrey,” Mom states. “I’m sure this family has a lot to discuss.”
I start for the door, my legs heavy, my mind numb. Lachlan takes my hand, looks up at me with those eyes so similar to The Boy Who Destroyed Me. “I want to go with you, Aubrey,” he struggles to say though his withheld cry. “I don’t want to be here.”
“You can stay with us, Lachy,” Cameron says. “We can watch movies, eat junk food. Whatever you want, buddy.”
Lachlan holds my entire arm to him. “I said, I want to go with Aubrey!”
My mom could only stay for so long. After Logan came home, she dropped Lachlan and me back at my house and headed home herself.
Lachlan lies on Logan’s side of the bed, his head on Logan’s pillow. On the wall behind us are the words I once lived by, words I no longer believe in.
You + Me.
Lachlan turns to his side and faces me. “You should try to get some sleep, Red.”
“I can’t,” I whisper.
He asks, “Want me to tell you a bedtime story?”
“Sure.”
He clears his throat. “Once upon a time, there was a superhero with fiery-red hair. Some people described the color of her hair as scarlet. She had an upturned nose with freckles all across it. In her village, she was known as The Red Raven…”
I finally give in to fatigue and fall asleep to Lachlan’s words, my liquid pain hidden beneath my closed lids.
43
Aubrey
Tom picks Lachlan up for school.
I go back to bed, lie under the covers and stare up at the ceiling. Occasionally, I’ll hear noises outside and stop breathing, just so I can hear them clearer, make sure the sounds are real and I’m not just imagining them. I’m always imagining them. His car is still here. So are all his clothes. At some point, he’ll come for them. Truth is, I don’t know if I want to be here when he does.
At midday, there’s a knock on the door. Hope pulls me out of bed, forces my legs to move, one foot in front of the other. Hope dies when I open the door to a dark-haired girl with clothes too tight and eyes too wide. She takes a drag of her cigarette, the end lighting fire in my vision. Then she exhales the smoke into the house, onto me. I choke out a breath, wave it away. “Can I help you?”
She drops the butt onto the ground, stomps it with her black leather boots. “Yeah, I need you to open the garage door.”
“Why?”
She rolls her eyes, fishes keys out of her pocket. She holds them out between us, gripping the plastic keychain containing a picture of Logan and me. His car keys are there. So are the keys to this house. “Logan asked me to pick up his truck for him.”
“And you are…?”
She quirks an eyebrow. “The girl he’s been with the past few days. Who the fuck are you?”
I slam the door in her face. If she wants his truck, she can break the fucking garage door down. If Logan wants his truck, he can come here and face me.
I am no longer The Girl Who Breathes.
Or The Girl Who Blinks
Or The Girl Who Is Pathetic.
> I am The Girl He Destroyed, and I let that destruction carry me to the bedroom, where I jump on the bed, take down the stupid canvas and bring it to the kitchen. I drop it on the table he made me and rip it to shreds with the biggest, sharpest knife I own. I tear through his words, his declarations, his promises. I pull at the fabric, ignoring the red that bleeds through the canvas. I cry. I cry so loud my throat aches with the force of it. Tears fall too fast, too free. And when I’ve worked on it long enough to make his words disappear, I take the knife to the table, scratch and stab, until the days of sanding and staining and laughing merge into my brokenness.
I cry.
I stab.
I spear.
I cut.
I tear.
I wound.
I sob at every word. Every memory.
And then I stop.
Drop the knife.
Hold my hand to my chest and fall to my knees.
I drown in my emptiness, and I don’t come up for air.
Logan
I managed to escape the prison cell of the house under the pretense of a nonexistent therapy appointment.
Instead, I go to Denny’s place.
Mary is here.
But her friends are not.
Apparently, Denny doesn’t want me playing with them.
Apparently, I took things too far in Myrtle Beach.
Apparently, me being here could get him shut down. Not just shut down but jail time.
Apparently, none of that mattered when I showed him the wad of cash I had ready to buy back my whore.
Charlie and Denny left Myrtle Beach the same day I did. If I’d waited a half hour, I would’ve been in the car with them. Maybe. Either way, I wouldn’t have passed out on the fucking sidewalk and been picked up by the cops. I was too out of it to know what was happening. I didn’t even fight back when they searched me. I don’t remember the police station or the holding cell or even Dad and my brothers coming to get me. It wasn’t until I walked into the house and saw Aubrey that I realized where I’d been, how long I’d been gone, and what the consequences were.
I couldn’t face her.
But most of all, I couldn’t look at her.
Because I was too damn scared of what I might see.
Nightmares are one thing.
But when those nightmares are real…
Denny’s front door opens, and Charlie walks in with her usual zero-fucks swagger. “She wouldn’t open the garage,” Charlie says, dropping my keys on my lap. “You still owe me a hundred.”
“What do you mean she wouldn’t open the garage? Did you actually speak to her?”
Charlie flops down on the couch beside me, takes my joint without permission. “She slammed the door in my face, dude. I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“What the fuck did you tell her?”
Charlie shrugs.
I take back the joint, stand, and shoulder my backpack, where the majority of Mary is hidden from view.
“What about my payment?” she calls out once I’m at the door.
“Fuck you.”
The house I briefly called home looks the same, but my feelings toward it are completely different. Even before Aubrey and me became Aubrey and Me, I had always felt comfortable. Always invited.
Now, I hesitate.
My keys are in one pocket; Mary’s in the other.
Fear and restlessness cause havoc on my mind, but for once I ignore Mary’s voice. As lit as I am, even I know that the sooner I do this, the quicker Mary and I can be alone again. And right now, that’s the only thing I want. The only thing I need. Because Mary is right: Aubrey had to know. There’s no other reason she’d end up here, with me, pulling me into her hell, into her destruction.
I use the key to enter the house, expecting Aubrey to rush at me, but the house is quiet, still. Perfect. I head to the bedroom and pull out the same bags I used to move in here. As fast as I can, I throw in as many clothes that will fit and take one last look around the room. Something is different. Something has changed. I spend way too long trying to work out what it is. Mary calls to me from my pocket, I need you, Logan. And I forget everything but my addiction.
I rush through the bathroom, the living room, and stop in the doorway of the kitchen. Splinters of wood are all over the place, bits of canvas torn to shreds. I make out the black marker used to scrawl the words I spent hours thinking up. My heart slows. Stops. And then I see the table, the mars of angry scars running along the wood. Recollections of her laughter fill my ears, my heart, and I look down to the bags in my hands, get lost in the memories: hot pink boots and tiny shorts and a flannel shirt tied just under her breasts. Her pale stomach on show, her hair up, hidden beneath a bright red bandana. She looked like a 1950s poster girl for Girl Power, ridiculously adorable, and when I told her that, she grinned from ear-to-ear, told me that it was the look she was going for. And as cute as she looked, as hot as she was, I didn’t feel the need to strip her naked and take her right away. We blasted music through the stereo, back and forth with our alternate song choices. We sanded, we stained, and she taught me how to slow dance. She’d laughed when I messed up, and so I messed up some more just so I could hear that sound again and again and again.
I realize I’ve stopped breathing, the memory knocking all air from my lungs. I drop the bags, run my finger along the indents on the now ruined table, and ignore Mary’s plea to leave, to get me alone, to have her way with me. A knife sits on the table, the point ruined, and what the fuck did you do, Aubrey?
And then I see red.
Not scarlet.
But blood.
Droplets on the table, leading to the floor. I follow the trail toward bare feet and bare legs and the face of a girl who once bared her soul.
My eyes fill with heat, my heart pounding, kick-starting my shallow breaths. She sits in the corner of the room, her back against the cabinets, clutching her hand to her chest. Bright crimson seeps into white cotton, and I drop to my knees in front of her. “Jesus fuck, Aubrey, what the hell did you do?” I find what little courage I have and look up at her. Mouth open, eyes wide, dried tears on her cheeks, wet tears in her eyes. She stares into nothingness, the same nothingness that’s plastered all over her face.
I look away, because if I look at her any longer, I might recognize the source of my nightmares. “Aubrey.” I don’t touch her. “Did you slit your wri—”
“No.”
“Do you need me to call an ambu—”
“Did you fuck her, Logan?”
The content of my stomach rises, rises, rises some more, and I swallow it down, down, down.
“Did you?” she whispers. Her voice is as broken as she looks, and Mary taps on my shoulder, whispers, She deserves to be broken.
“I don’t fucking remember,” I mumble.
Aubrey clutches her stomach with her blood-covered hand and cowers farther into the corner, her sobs slicing through the air, through her heartbreak, through my armor.
“I’m sorry, Aubrey,” I plead, my words cracking. “I was really fucking messed up…”
Her shoulders shake, her eyelids closing, releasing tears Mary won’t let me touch. “Make sure you get everything you need, okay?” The strength in her voice weakens my own.
“I got it all.”
“Good. And leave your key. I don’t want you coming back here, Logan. I don’t ever want to see you again.” She keeps her eyes closed as I remove the key from my set, place it by her feet. And she stays silent as I gather my bags, walk past her and into the garage where my truck awaits.
I sit in the driver’s seat, start the engine, Mary’s pulse beating in my pocket. I wait for the roller door to rise, and when I reverse out of the garage, I see the remains of the single piece of mail that brought us here.
I am nine years old, and the leather cracks beneath my weight. The car still smells new, even though I’ve been in it for months. The dash is gray. I can barely see over it. In the pocket of the door, there�
��s a tube of hand lotion. It’s pink. I wonder who it belongs to. “Are you all buckled in?” he asks, looking down at me.
I nod, and he smiles.
“So…” he says. “How are things at home with your mother?”
I frown. “She’s getting worse.”
I drive to a skeazy motel on the outskirts of town and pay for a week in advance. When I get to the room, I crash onto the bed, Mary in my hands, on my mouth, all around me. I let her fuck with my mind, my body, all while I ignore the sounds of my sobs and the tears that accompany them.
44
Logan
When my week at the motel is up, I pay for another week. I don’t go to work. I don’t answer anyone’s calls besides Lachlan. I’ll always talk to Lachlan, my best friend. He’s the only one who uses the home phone, so I know it’s safe. He wants to meet up soon. I tell him I want that, too. I miss the kid. I miss Aubrey.
Misty calls.
Messages.
Court dates.
Hearings.
Probation.
Rehab.
I ignore every one.
I do everything I can to make sure the rest of my family give up on me. Mary said it was for the best, and Mary is always right. We don’t leave the hotel room. Don’t let anyone in. I breathe her into my bloodline until she’s part of me, until she becomes me. I pass out, wake up, pass out, wake up, and every second my eyes are open, so are Mary’s legs, begging, pleading to be fucked.
Sometime during the second week, Mary wakes me from my sleep, her hand squeezing my heart. I miss my friends, she tells me. Don’t you miss my friends, Logan?
I raise my hand against the bright sunlight weaving into the room and murmur, “You want to see your friends?”
Yes. And you want to make me happy, right?
Within hours, Mary and her friend, Cocaine, have used and abused every inch of my body. When I wake up, the sun is setting. I have no idea how long I’ve been out, but my stomach is screaming and my mouth is dry, and so I slip on my sweats, grab the loose change sitting on the nightstand. I tell Mary I’ll be back and open the door, stop in my tracks. “Luce?”
