Bone Deep

BONE DEEP

A Novel

By

Brooklyn Skye

* * * *

BONE DEEP

Copyrigh
t
©
2014 by Brooklyn Skye

Cover design by Okay Creations

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or
transmitted in any form, including electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

Other books by Brooklyn Skye:

STRIPPED

WITHOUT YOU

FRAGILE LINE

“Part your lips a bit more,
and I’ll swallow your fear.”

~Burn Me Up Inside,
Bone Deep

Chapter One

It isn’t ironic that instead of Jess feeling me up tonight it’s a cop.

Ironic would be if this officer was the same who searched Dad for syringes or tubes or those stupid
, bent tweezers before transporting him to a room secured with bars.

Ironic would be if these were the same handcuffs that touched Dad’s wrists, which means I’m touching him for the first time in a year. Or more, considering Dad’s never been the pat-on-the-back sort of parent.

Ironic would be if one of these drunk idiots sitting cross-legged in a line on the dirt recorded Officer Wells’s interrogation and sent it to Dad with a message that read:
Way to be a role model, Pops!
But none of my friends would risk the chance to move because all of them have everything to lose. Wells holds out his gigantic hand.

“ID?”

Now this is amusing. Because let’s say I did have my wallet with me, it’d be located in my back left pocket. But because Officer Shirt Too Small was suffering from short-man syndrome standing a foot below me, my ridiculously tight cuffs make it impossible to reach into my pocket. So
say
my wallet was in my pocket, what would be proper protocol?

Let him reach in and grab it?

Stick my cheek out to give him easy access?

I train my eyes on his forehead. “You already patted me down. Don’t you think you would’ve felt it?” Beside us, the fire swells; blots of orange and yellow crawl across his acne-pitted face. His small eyes shift to the half-empty beer on the boulder beside me. It’s not mine. I don’t care if he thinks it is.

“Age?”

“Eighteen.” I stare over the line of heads, some bowed in fear of being caught drinking under age, others tipped back for a better view of our sad, gray-starred sky. Just p
ast them, the edge of the cliff and a fifty-foot drop spilling into a deep ravine. I’m only twenty feet from it. Short Stuff is busy writing something down on a clipboard; I could make a break for it—

“Anyone you can call?”

“Call? Yeah, of course.” Flames lick my leg. I force a grin. “Do you, by any chance, know the number to Riverside County Jail?”

The pen stops. He looks up. “You being smart with me?” I open my mouth for my best
No, sir, I most certainly am not
, but his hand latches onto my arm and drags me to his unit all the while muttering something about not having time for show-offs like me. Behind me, whispering voices mingle with the cool, night air. I can’t decipher their words; so I pretend I can.

Poor
Ledoux.

Like father, like son.

And Jess:
Just be quiet, and do what they say.

I grit my teeth against the ugly feeling scraping its way up my throat, close my eyes
, and breathe through my nose.

“Have a seat,” the officer orders as he yanks open the
door. A cloud of musty air escapes from the backseat of the car. I want to ask him if it’s been wiped down with antiseptic recently because all I can imagine is spit and sweat and piss scuttling the pleather seats, but he continues with: “What’s your name, son?”

I cringe. “
Krister Ledoux.” My dull fingertips press into my palms as I wait for it—the name to register. It usually doesn’t take long. Seconds pass then, casually, he drapes his arm over the top of the door.

“Son of Stephen
Ledoux?”

“Regrettably.”

Quietly, he absorbs this. Perhaps deciding if it’d be unprofessional to tell me what he really thinks of my dad and, consequently, me. After a moment, he settles on mumbling under his breath something about “a waste of space,” and I have no idea if he’s referring to me or my father. Another cop behind him summons Ditty off the ground. Ditty’s shitting his pants, and if my name wasn’t simmering in my chest—hot and acidic—inside I’d laugh at the way my friend nods feverishly with each question. His answers are short and skirted with
yes, sir
s and
no, sir
s.

Like I said: Everything to lose.

After a moment, Officer Wells tilts his head, his chiseled face not breaking expression at all. “No one else to call? Your mother?”

I ignore his last question, shift my bound arms out from behind me, and say with a sigh, “I do. I’ll need my hands
, though.”

Ten minutes later
Wrenn emerges from her Camry, cigarette stuck to her bottom lip and a god-awful Hawaiian skirt hanging to her ankles. A pea-sized clump of clay clings to her jagged bangs, the color of cement and dried to a crisp.

“Jesus, K,” she says, tugging her skimpy
tank top over her bellybutton.

Nope, this isn’t embarrassing.
At all.

“Officer,” she says, polite and unrushed, “I’m so sorry—”

Wells holds up his hand to stop her. “No need to apologize. Are you his sister?”

“I am.”

A laugh bubbles out from my lips. They both lower their gazes to me, Wrenn’s stare hardening. I look away, resisting the urge to ask some brotherly question that’d embarrass the impending mock lecture right out of her and tune them both out until I’m in her car, spans of orange groves sailing by as we drive deeper into Chanton. Wrenn lights another cigarette, and the heavy scent of orange blossoms fills the car as she rolls down her window. I press my head into the headrest.

“Sister?”

She shrugs, the tip of her cigarette glowing. “It’s just easier.” Smoke trails out her nose. “People look at me, you know. When they figure it out—who you are. And me.”

They look at her because she’s
dating my dad who’s almost double her age. Because her skin’s too smooth and tits too tight up against his crow’s feet and love handles. I suppose it could be worse; Dad’s taste in women could’ve spanned into cougar territory, sticking me with some old hag who interrupts my showers with a knock and a reminder to wash behind my ears. Someone who’d question why I was in the canyon with a few cases of beer or not let me out of the house at all after what happened the last time at Krispy’s.

Wr
enn’s cool; I’ll give her that.

Ahead, downtown
Chanton glimmers bright. I roll my head to the side. “They can’t believe you’d stay with him, that’s why they look at you.” I don’t soften my tone. Eight people dead; three words floating down from the ambiguous dark, coating my tongue with a bitter film.

Wrenn
follows Stone Road to the back entrance of the complex. The metal gate swings wide, and she says in her deep, calm voice, “He’s a good man, K. People are allowed to make mistakes.”

I
glare at her. She doesn’t see.

“Speaking of…” Her words trail off, followed by a whisper of the other two she doesn’t need to say:
your father
. She slips a small envelope from her purse and hands it to me. “This came today.”

Cream
colored like the last one. Addressed simply to Wrenn’s apartment; no recipient name, no return address. Still, my fingers burn as I tug at the stiff, paper flap.

“You didn’t open it?”

Wrenn’s lips purse around her cigarette. “You can’t take that stuff seriously.” My gut clenches at her indifference. The paper emerges just as the car shuts off. The door opens and closes, and then it’s just me with a line of words scorching like fire in my hand. The writing’s no different than the others; precarious letters filled with anger and hatred so strong they move as if they have a life of their own, scream at me from the small square of paper, finalized with a puddle of ink where the pen must’ve thrown up at the thought of ending the sentence. Discolored stains polka-dot the page—tears, most likely, considering who sent it.

Shall we admire the pattern forming?

Murderous filigree.

I lean against the dash. Whichever one of them wrote this thinks I should’ve died, too. Been found mangled and twisted in metal upon the freezing
, winter ground.

Here, the only pattern forming is the more letters I get the more pissed off I become. And I’ll be damned if I sit quietly while some psychopath slowly hunts and kills me with little
, white envelopes.

Wrenn
shouts from the front door of the apartment, “You want me to pitch a tent out there for you?” Maybe the note’s for her. She was more involved than I was, texting Dad
I love you
s and
what do you want for dinner
s and pictures of the day’s output on the wheel just before the train crashed. Probably herself, too, even though the investigation never proved that.

I fold the paper and slip it into the envelope, add it to the contents of my pocket and join
Wrenn in the tiny kitchen.

“Another useless message,” I say with as little emotion as I can manage, leaning against the dingy countertop. “Something about a bloody, twisted design?”

Wrenn turns from the fridge, taking a second too long to find that maternal, don’t-be-silly smile. “Quit taking it personally, K.” Ashes fall from her cigarette onto her shirt, and she swipes them away. “These people are releasing their anguish, purifying their souls after a horrible accident. Let them get it off their chests. They’ll stop eventually.”

Eventually. I try to make it fit—envision a day when crinkled paper and words of animosity don’t populate
Wrenn’s mailbox weekly. When the life stolen from me will be kindly returned and memories of this past year will mutate into something less torturous. But I can’t, because “eventually” feels too far off.

In my room
I shove aside my blowing gloves, forcing away the urge to slip them on and sink back into my old self—remember the feeling of melting away the world with the deliberation of wrapping beads and dipping punties—and instead pull out the wooden box and drop in the note. The felted bottom and padding of cream-colored envelopes silences its landing. The lid creaks closed and from beneath I peel the folded square of paper, the tape so old and dry it barely clings to the wood anymore. I scan The List of names; six sliced with a single line. Two intact. Evan Bencich is next. Maybe he’s the one.

Chapter Two

It’s not really what I expect. I mean, someone who was riding the train, living in
this
house? If that’s what you’d call it. Mansion might be better fitting with its mile-long driveway, bushes shaped like stuffed animals, and spewing fountains. You’d think the guy could afford a car. Or three.

Quietly I catch a line up the side of the huge, manicured lawn, sticking close to the fence as possible to avoid being spotted through the lamp-lit windows. Bushes conceal me up the driveway, and then I make a b
reak for the side of the house.

Evan
Bencich. Seventh victim of my dad’s “mistake.”

Maybe he was the snooty
, city-boy type who went his entire life without learning to drive. Or was so rich he had an on-call driver around the clock to take him wherever he wanted. Guess that wouldn’t explain why he was riding public transportation, though, unless the driver was sick or something.

With my back pressed tight against the stucco wall, I check my watch. 7:36.
This needs to be quick if I want to make it to class on time. I scale the low, wooden fence to the back, land in a crouch, and say a quick prayer that the Bencich’s don’t own a guard dog. No food bowls, kennels, or shit shovels adorn the cemented side yard. Hopefully that means I’m safe.

I move soundlessly to the rear
of the house and, just as I round the corner, a black box with a circular lens along the fence stares at me. Of course a house like this would have a security camera. I duck my head and lift my hood, careful to pull my sweatshirt over my palms before scaling the patio railing. The windows along the back are shrouded with heavy curtains, and useless. Wrapping around the other side of the house, I find myself on the porch again, in front of the lone, uncovered window.

I lean in. A circle of breath swells over the glass. Inside, the house is just as elaborate as the front. Chandeliers dangle from the ceiling, fancy pillows garnish the uncomfortable-looking couch; all l
ooking very unused and avoided.

I start for the porch steps, thinking:
This might be the first house I don’t get a first-shot clue
. Thinking:
Ms. Huckins won’t be the only one giving me dirty looks if I slip in late again
when unexpectedly a shadow passes over the tiled floor. I freeze, wishing—
ho
ping—whoever’s in there hasn’t spotted me and will keep on walking.

To my right, the monstrous
, wooden door creaks open. Shit, I’ve never approached any of them before. Never spoken a word. Unless you count Don Koelsch, husband of Elsa, who prayed in the park for God to “help my lost soul” when really I was watching him feed the pigeons, thinking:
he’d never write me those letters,
and
it’s a good thing ’cause I don’t want to punch an old guy in the face
.

Quickly, I squat behind a potted plant, use its wide leaves to cover the majority of my face. A second passes. A car whizzes by on the street below. Then I let out a breath and straighten; I refuse to be caught hiding behind a plant like one
of America’s Dumbest Criminals.

The door swing
s open to a woman in a bathrobe with gray-streaked hair, kinked and sticking out on the sides.

“Can I help you?” she says, raspy like she just woke up. I stare at her
, the hollow in her neck and wrinkles crawling out from it. I bet she’s his wife. Widow. She holds out her hand, palm facing the morning sky as gravelly words tumble out of her thin-lipped mouth, each one as heavy as a boulder. “Is Joe sick today?”

“Oh, um…” I ease back a step. This is really awkward. “I don’t know who Joe is. I’m—”

She jabs her hand out farther. “I don’t need to know your name. Just give me the damn package.”

Someone like her could’ve written the letters, announced it should’ve been me and not her husband lying lifeless on the ground in h
er strange, poetic way. My worn-out shoes hold my attention. I shake my head.

“Ma’am,” I say, displaying my empty hands. “I’m not a delivery guy. I don’t have any packages. I came here to talk about Evan
Bencich.” This is really, really stupid—mentioning his name. Still, more words spew out of my mouth. “The one who, um, was in the train wreck last year? He lived here, right?”

Her breath catches, and then silence; the moving sort that swishes like water in my ears. She tips her chin, a bizarre look of
recognition crossing her face.

“
Did you know Evan from school?”

“Was he a professor?” This question is stupid
, and I realize this about two seconds after it comes out. A teacher’s salary could never afford
this
house. Not the crystals above her head, the fancy tile she’s standing barefoot on, the freakin’ glass atrium behind her overflowing with brown, shriveled death.

A squiggly line crawls across her forehead. “Professor?” She looks me up and down and manages to crack a tiny smile. “Evan hated school. Didn’t want to go to UCLA like his dad, didn’t want to go to college at all.
He’d never become a teacher.”

Didn’t want to go to college? So that means: “He was in high school?”

She nods, standing a little straighter. “A senior at Bennington. Did you know him?”

All at once, I feel sick. How did I not realize he was a senior? It wouldn’t have been that hard to find out more about him—that he was fucking
seven
teen. Not forty.

I shake my head. “I don’t live…” I start to
tell her my imprisoned father would never have enough money to live here in Sunset Heights, send his son to Bennington High, even before he had to peddle his tiny, two-bedroom house to pay his legal fees, but stop. I don’t want her to know who I am. Don’t want to see her face twist furiously when she finds out my last name is the same as the man who killed her son.

I jam my hands in
to my pockets. Her face crinkles again, lips pucker with another question, and maybe this was a bad idea. Coming here. Butting in. I don’t care if it was her. The letters.

“I have to go,” I say and hop down the steps. “Sorry to bother you.” I get five feet away, thinking the big, fancy door should be clicking shut any second now but then—

“Did you ever see him play?”

For a reason I can’t explain, I stop. Turn. “Play?”

“The Gas Caps.” She steps out onto the porch, sunlight highlighting the dips in her cheeks, the sickly collarbone clawing out of her skin. I have no idea what The Gas Caps are, but I want her to stop talking, want to get out of here, so I tell her, “Yes, I’ve heard Evan play,” and run down the driveway with her dull stare burning into the back of me.

In my car, I g
oogle
The Gas Caps
from my phone. It’s the name of a bar in Ohio, and of a hat store in Colorado, and the third listing down…

A band. The Gas Caps is a local, Southern Californian band. And they’re playing tonight at the Underground.

~*~

“You look hot in handcuffs.” Ditty claps me on the back, replacing the last image I saw of him—quivering lips and bulgy eyes—with a smile.

“Better than with a piss stain on my jeans?”

Jess rounds my other s
houlder. Her blue-eyed stare slides over the side of my head. I don’t look at her.

“Seri
ously, though,” Ditty continues. “Do you get off on making a scene? You could’ve been—”

“Ryan,” Jess cautions Ditty. Their gazes meet, a “not here, not now” warning passing from her to him. In my
pocket, my fist clenches.

“What?” I ask Ditty. “Arrested?” Around me the rest of
Chanton Community College moves as if nothing’s changed; typical Monday morning haze. As if something less final, less of a massacre ever happened. A year since the deaths and they continue on fluidly, with ease. How can they get over it so quickly?

Weights like lead sink to my feet, bury into my heels. Ditty shakes his head, his eyes growing just the slightest bit wider. In reaction, Jess starts to reach for me, but then thinks better of it. Still, she’s close enough to feel. Her warmth. Her breath. The sof
t brush of her elbow on my arm.

“Sorry,” she says in a rush.
The thought of touching her, combing my fingers through her short, blond hair floats through my brain for a half second. It could be easy.
Should
be easy.

Instead I turn and make my way to class, the brisk
, morning air filling the widening space between them and me. A few corners, a musty classroom, and then my fingers loosen, knuckles aching. I close my eyes and suck in a deep breath, mentally flipping the bird to my father for this fucked-up life he threw at me.

Seconds later, Ditty collapses into the chair beside me. Breathless, he says, “Dude, I’m sorry.”

Focus on my desk. English book out. Pencil. Breathe. “Don’t apologize just because Jess put you up to it.”

“She didn’t
pu—”

I glare hard,
daring him to finish this lie.

“Okay,” he says, hands up. “She did, but that’s not… It’s just…”

“Just what?” I snap. Heat floods my face, the last tenuous threads of self-control quickly slipping away.

“It’s been a year, you know? And—”

“I should be used to this by now?”

He swallows, starin
g at the ground. “Yeah, maybe.”

“Fuck you, Ditty.”

Ms. Huckins enters the room donning a yellow sweater and a laptop bag over her shoulder. “Language, Krister,” she says without looking at me.

“It was an accident,
” Ditty says softly, ignoring Ms. H because she’s on autopilot at the moment—setting down her Starbucks, shuffling papers to the side of her desk. “You can’t hate your dad forever.”

“He crashed a fucking train! And if it was an accident, he wouldn’t be sitting in a cell under vehicular homicide charges right now!” My words flourish throughout the half-empty room. Curious ea
rs tune in, and right on cue, Ms. H points to the door with a look of disappointment twisting her face.

“Settle this outside,” she says to me.

“Jesus,” I mutter, shoving away from my desk. Back in high school, an outburst like this would’ve been dismissed with a sympathetic eye roll.
Poor Ledoux. Did you hear about his father?
Now, it’s all I need to do to get out of class. I collect my books and, rather than breathing deeply for a few minutes and returning to class, I head to my car.

~*~

“Six thirty-eight,” the cashier says, bagging the Butterfinger and pretzels.

That word: eight—if I close my eyes, it sounds a lot like…
hate.
Invisible hands position around my throat. Tighten. Squeeze until my head feels like it’s going to explode.

The woman is staring at me. Her Palm Liquor shirt with a lizard on the front is staring at me
, too. Inhale. Exhale. Fingers close around a ten. Hand it to her. Wait for my change. Even still, an image of the article flashes before me:
Metro-transit train collides with freight train. The worst U.S. train crash in fifteen years.

135 injured.

8 dead.

24 texts sent.

21 received.

And
one
boy’s life ruined.

I snatch the bag off the counter and push through the glass door, welcoming the blast of
warm air.
Inhale. Exhale.
Across the street, up the grated steps, I slink through the crowd, my unsteady footsteps drowning in the click clacks
and scuffs and soft pads of all the other footsteps on the wooden platform.

Sometimes I come here when I don’t have to.

Today the crowd is angry; Monday morning, just-get-this-day-over-with angry. I find a bench far enough away from the tracks so I can’t see the rust that looks the color of blood, smell the seared-metal stench when the trains come to a halt, hear the slight gasp of the passenger who’s never ridden Metro-transit before. And sit.

All these people. In line. On benches. Waiting, waiting, with no idea what they’re
really
waiting for. No inkling their lives could end with one ticket, one step over the yellow line, one fucking red light “accidentally” unseen.

All these people who don’t realize how easy it’d be to die.

The
brriinnggg
of the bell signals the approach of the train. White, with its faded ribbons of red flowing down the sides. I remember when they went from blue paint to red. The comment my dad made back then about his pay raise going to the cars’ attraction. That I had to go another year with the same beat-up shoes—my toe peeking out of the top like a gopher checking for its fucking shadow—not to mention the clothes I so inconveniently outgrew as soon as the words “no money” came out of his mouth.

Doors slide open, spitting out bodies that made it this time, but may not be so lucky the next. They don’t even look relieved. They just put their lives in
to the hands of some stranger and are oblivious to the fact that they’re walking away safe and sound.