Bleed Like Me (15 page)

“Okay. Thanks, Dad. I'm going to take a shower.”

He leaped from my bed and hightailed it out of my room. Nothing mortified him more than the possibility of seeing his teenage daughter without clothes. It was why I knew I was always safe to cut.

I called Brooks as soon as Dad left the room. I needed his voice after the drama of the day. Ricardo. Dennis. My dad. I wanted to pour myself into him until it all went away. Until nothing was left but him, me, us.

“Hey. How'd it go with your appointment?” I asked when his gravelly voice picked up.

“Just fine. All clean and sober. That's a week since I've
been home from rehab and not one drug in my system. Sue's delighted.”

“It
is
pretty impressive.” I laughed as I heard him inhale what was probably his third cigarette in ten minutes. “How long do you have to keep taking drug tests?”

“Once a week while I'm still living with Sue.”

“So much for our E plan.”

He chuckled. “It was your E plan, sweetheart. If you recall, I was against you going there again. Not that you weren't awesome on E. But—”

“Yeah, yeah, compulsive personality. So you said.”

“What did you do this afternoon?” he asked. I bit my lip, playing over my conversation with Ricardo. Was it fair to put all of that on Brooks? It wasn't my way, asking advice. Hadn't been my way for a long time. Neediness repulsed me.

“Dad gave me a sex talk and a box of condoms. Then told me to come talk to him if I needed some more.”

Brooks choked on laughter and started to cough. “Fuck, yeah. Was it one of those value packs?”

“Shut up.”

“Well, if it wasn't, you'll probably be pounding on his door for more in less than a week.”

“You wish. And anyways, I'd rather bathe in a cauldron of hot, melted cheese then ask him to restock our condom supply. We can take care of our own protection, thank you.”

“Sucker. Free is free. I'm busting into that box as soon as I come over on Friday night.”

“I'm giving these back. We're buying our own condoms.”

He laughed again. “Spoilsport.” His voice dropped. “I wish it were Friday.”

My heart thumped. The events of the day faded into the background. “My brothers will be here.”

“Not worried.”

I bit my lip again. Maybe it wasn't the best idea to have Brooks help me babysit. He could be incredibly distracting.

“You're too quiet,” Brooks said. “You better not be backing out on me.”

“Well . . . ,” I started.

“I'm coming. Get used to it. Plus, you need my help.”

I snorted. Brooks actually being helpful was about as likely as an ice cube freezing a lake, but I kept my doubts to myself.

“I've gotta go. I'll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Okay,” he said. “But real quick, what're you wearing?”

“Fuck off.” I laughed and hung up.

My parents saw my brothers off at the bus on Friday morning and then gave me a long list of crap to do and a bunch of numbers I'd never use, except maybe 911, which I couldn't believe they'd actually written on the list. Then Mom gave me a tight hug and forced herself to get in the car. Dad smiled and winked at me.

I hoped for the sake of my brothers that their weekend alone helped things. I had my doubts, but if being together without the stress of my brothers improved their marriage, I was for it. Not that them being married or divorced made much of a difference in my life, but it would hurt my brothers if they split up. Their abandonment stuff ran deep, and even a dad phoning it in was better than no dad at all.

“So what're you doing this weekend?” Ali asked as I sat at our lunch table picking my sandwich apart.

We'd reached a tentative “don't ask, don't tell” agreement over the money situation. When I'd found her in the hallway to finally apologize for bailing on her, she'd refused to engage in a discussion about it and cut off all my questions with a clipped “I figured something out.”

We were at the end of a table of Punkin' Donuts poseurs and Ali was painting her chipped nails black and ignoring the food next to her. Lunch always went this way. Ali had weird food allergies and barely ate enough to sustain a fly. I picked at the crappy pseudo–deli sandwiches the cafeteria made and then mostly ate cheese fries.

“My parents went out of town so I'm watching the boys.”

“What? And you didn't tell me?”

“I thought you were grounded.”

Ali flinched, but then slipped her “everything's fine” mask back on. “No. I told you I figured it out.”

“Not with Skeevy Dave, though, right?”

She stared at her nails. “It's not your problem, Gannon. I took care of it. Now, are you having a party?”

My stomach tightened, but I didn't press any more. Ali wouldn't take the money from me now, even if I offered it. I rolled a piece of cheese into a ball and flicked it at her. “Did you miss the part where I'm watching my brothers? How can I have a party?”

She groaned. “Your parents are out of town and you're not having a party because of your brothers? You've got to be
kidding me. Do you think they're gonna tell on you?”

“Not exactly. But I wouldn't put it past the little shits to drink half the supply in my parents' liquor cabinet and leave me to take them to the ER with alcohol poisoning.”

Ali laughed. “Yeah. They probably would do that.” She eyed me from beneath her too-long bangs. “Still. Seems like a waste not to take advantage of absent parents.”

I rolled up another piece of sandwich. “Well, Brooks is coming over.”

“Oh my God. You slept with him, didn't you? You promised to tell me,” she said, too loud. Half the table turned their heads to look at us.

I flipped them off and hissed at Ali. “Jesus. Keep your voice down. You think I want all these losers up in my business?”

“They used to be your friends,” she said, and there was a hint of accusation in her voice. Was she talking about herself too?

“No. They were never my friends. They don't know anything about me,” I said, dropping my voice. “What's your problem? Is this about the money?”

She twisted the top back on to the nail polish. “No. And this is the last time I'm saying it:
I. Figured. It. Out.
”

“So why are you so prickly?”

“Listen, I don't give a shit who you hang out with. I'm just surprised, is all.”

“Surprised about what?”

She blew her bangs out of her face and leaned forward. “Brooks bailed on you and then he shows up and all is forgiven. You were kind of a moody bitch when he was gone and I at least expected you to make him pay for taking off. But it's all just sunshine and roses with you two.”

I snorted. “Sunshine and roses?”

She grinned. “Well, maybe tattoos and nipple rings, but you know what I mean.”

“He was in rehab. It wasn't his fault he took off.”

She drummed her fingers against the table. “Huh. Rehab for what?”

“His foster mom found his E.”

She sighed. “Gannon. I'm not trying to be all judgmental. Really. But I didn't expect you to be that girl, you know? I mean, I get that there are things we don't tell each other or whatever, but still, you've kind of flaked on me for a guy, and that seems really un-Gannon.”

I nodded. She was right. We weren't the sleep-over-and-do-mud-masks kind of friends, but still, I owed her more than just twenty minutes of bullshit chat at the lunch table.

“I might be in love with him,” I said.

She shook her head. “Of course you are. The two of you are like frickin' Romeo and Juliet. Everyone knows it. We're just waiting to see which one of you takes the poison and which one takes a gun to his head.”

“Nice.”

She shrugged. “Just saying. This one isn't exactly a love story for the masses, you know?”

My hand moved to my stomach. The cut Brooks had made around my belly button had scabbed over, but I could still feel it. The one on the back of my thigh was messier, possibly even infected, but I didn't want to think about it.

“Yep. I know.”

She looked at me for a long time before finally turning and dropping her nail polish into her bag. “Call me tomorrow morning. We can take your brothers to the House of Pancakes and then maybe to the rifle range so they can burn off a little excess energy.”

I laughed and reached out for her hand. She drew it back and waved her fingers to indicate they were still wet. It was quick-dry polish, they weren't wet, but I had no right to say so. The gulf between us was still uncrossable.

I should have let it go, but I couldn't help saying, “So you don't have other plans in the morning?”
With Skeevy Dave.

She heard the end of the sentence even if I didn't say it out loud. Her mouth pinched into a frown, but again she shook it off; then she lifted a shoulder and said, “I can work around things.”

I nodded. “Okay. Sounds good.”

•  •  •

My brothers were pathetically quiet when I picked them up from school. Mom had left me her minivan and asked that I drive the boys home instead of letting them take the bus so the day could seem more special. Staring at their sullen faces in the backseat almost made me burst out in laughter. This whole thing was about as special as root canal.

“So Mom left money for pizza,” I said.

Luis snorted. “Can't trust you to turn an oven on but thinks you're fine to handle the three of us? Nice. Good to see how valuable we are.”

“Shut up and stop acting like such a baby. It's one frickin' night. What're you so pissed about? That you don't get to terrorize Mom for twenty-four hours? Sorry to disappoint you.”

Alex's mouth dropped open, but Luis didn't even blink. “Don't worry. We're not that pissed,” he said, lifting his chin. “We'll just terrorize you instead.”

I groaned. “And I'll tie you to your bedposts and lock you in your rooms without dinner.” I grinned at them in the rearview mirror.

Miguel elbowed Luis and I bit my lip, trying not to laugh at the look of worry they shared. Maybe the night wouldn't be so bad after all.

Two hours later I was eating my words along with a pile of cheese on my plate. I'd let the boys serve up their own pizza
and they'd pulled all the cheese off and divided up the dough between them, so I was left with a hill of mozzarella and my brothers' laughter.

I wanted to spit on their crust, but Mom's voice reminding me to make sure they ate pricked at my conscience. Their shouting and laughter calmed me so much more than their sullen silence in the car. Loud, annoying boys I could handle; the quiet ones were the problem. I stabbed the mass of cheese with my fork and then decided to dump the whole thing down the sink.

The doorbell rang and my heart thumped at the hope it was Brooks. Even if he wouldn't be any help to me, he was another body and could probably wrangle at least one of my brothers. The boys raced to the front door and whipped it open so it banged against the wall in the hallway.

Probably shouldn't have let them have Coke with dinner.

Brooks leaned against the doorjamb, wearing a too-big coat and holding three cans of Silly String.

“Boys,” he said with a smile. He tossed a can at each of them. “Try not to waste it. I have a dozen more cans in the car, but they need to last the rest of the night.”

My brothers squawked and snatched them from his hands, shaking the cans so the clicky noise filled the house.

“And for my girl,” he said, and pulled out a DVD tucked in the inner pocket of his coat.

“
Halloween
. Classic. Good choice.”

A stream of Silly String hissed in the background, followed by my brothers' familiar battle cry.

“They're gonna trash the place,” I said, stepping toward Brooks.

He twisted his finger around a stripe of my hair and tugged me closer to him. “So?”

“I'm going to have to spend most of tomorrow cleaning.”

I shivered as his tongue traced a line down my neck. “I'll help you,” he whispered.

He pressed against me and I felt his hardness on my thigh. “Are you just gonna take me here with the door wide open so all the neighbors can see?”

He chuckled. “That was the plan.”

“No.” I pushed him away and clicked the door shut behind us. “Not with my brothers racing around.”

He grabbed the neck of my shirt and pulled me into a tight hug. His freshly shaved face rubbed over the top of my head. “Okay. Okay. You win. I'll wait until they crash. Did you give them sugar?”

I grinned. “Yeah. And caffeine.”

He moved toward the living room couch and plopped down, extending his feet onto our coffee table. “So it's gonna be a long night.” He sighed.

Miguel raced past me and squirted a long pink string into Brooks's face. I laughed. “Yeah. Looks like it.”

•  •  •

By ten o'clock the boys had fallen asleep in front of the TV. There was a twenty-four-hour
SpongeBob
marathon on and they'd vowed to stay up for it, but they'd lasted through only three episodes.

I shoved the pizza box into the trash and looked at the Silly String decorating the house. The boys had gone through all fifteen cans before they got distracted by
SpongeBob
. As I looked at their sprawled-out bodies draped over the couch, I eyed Mom's to-do list. How was I going to amuse them for an entire day?

Brooks slid behind me and pushed my hair away to expose the back of my neck. He nipped at it. “Finally asleep.”

I nodded. He moved to his coat and pulled something out of his pocket.

“I have a surprise for you,” he said with a grin.

“More Silly String?”

“Not quite.”

I raised an eyebrow.