Thicker Than Water (15 page)

I NEVER COULD HAVE PICTURED JASON OLIVER ON THE WITNESS
stand. Court didn't exactly seem like a place he'd want to be voluntarily. Then again, maybe it wasn't voluntary. I would imagine his testimony was quite a “get” for the prosecution.

Jason didn't bother dressing up for court, but I think he actually showered. His hair looks a little less greasy than normal. His face is pale in a way that makes me think he hasn't been eating. What had they promised to him if he testified against me? What had they threatened him with to force him up onto the stand?

Bruce Mason moves forward like a snake unfurling its body. He is practically stretched across the room from his table to the witness stand where Jason is sitting. He promises to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; still, I can see a kind of doubt on his face. This is the same guy who wore spikey wrist cuffs and worshipped serial
killers. Somehow, the obvious intimidation looks wrong on his face. If they were in a darkened alley, there'd be no question of who'd come out on top. Here, Bruce Mason is the heavyweight.

“Mr. Oliver. Tell us. How do you know Cecelia Price?”

Jason looks right at me, then quickly glances back at Mason.

“We went to school together.”

“And what would you say you knew about Cecelia, up until the last six months?”

Jason shrugs.

“Nothing really. She was quiet, I guess. Good student.”

“Uh-huh.” Mason has a finger pressed to his lips as though deep in thought. “So I'm sure it came as quite a surprise the first time she offered to sell you drugs.”

The empty chasm in my stomach widens to a canyon. I should have seen this coming. Add “narcotic solicitor” to my list of offenses. Jason never would have fessed up to approaching me first.

“Yeah,” Jason says, nodding, “I, uh—I didn't know she was dealing, you know? But I guess she said her brother had a supply of pills that was pretty steady. She made it seem like it wasn't a big deal.”

“But you never actually spoke with Cyrus Price?”

“Nah.” Jason wipes a palm on his jeans and I want to shudder. “I always just dealt with CeCe.”

“Thank you, Jason. Ms. Reinhart is going to ask you a
few questions now.”

Mason recoils into a spool of a man; everything about him is so tightly wound that, if given the opportunity, he'd either snap or strangle you.

“Your witness,” he murmurs to Jennifer, his eyes filled with something like amusement. I want to deck him. Jennifer scoots her chair back and clears her throat.

“Mr. Oliver, did you have classes with Cecelia Price?”

Jason shakes his head. “Naw. I think she was in a bunch of AP classes or something.”

“So, then, since you didn't have classes with Cecelia, how did she find you?” Jennifer says, eyebrows raised.

“Find me?”

“You know—find you to sell you drugs.”

“Oh, right.” Jason considered this. “The library, I think.”

“Hmm.” Jennifer moves back to the table and takes a paper from a folder in her bag. “Your Honor, I'd like to submit this as Defense Exhibit A—this is an affidavit from Mrs. Joyce Lennon, the librarian at London High School.”

She hands the judge the paper before facing Jason again.

“So, Jason, would you like to rephrase your statement?”

“Uh . . . would I like to what?”

“Rephrase your statement.” She doesn't wait for his response. “Your Honor, this affidavit states that Cecelia Price spent every lunch period in the school library. It also states that in March of this year, Jason Oliver came there to see Cecelia Price. In fact, the only time Mrs. Lennon
ever recalls seeing Mr. Oliver in the library at the same time as Cecelia Price was one day, in March, when Cecelia was assisting her by shelving books. According to the affidavit, Oliver approached Cecelia first.”

Judge Collins has eyes that scream “bored” or “hungry.” He waves a hand at Mason before taking the paper from Jennifer's hands.

“You may step down,” the judge says, and Jason stands. He looks a little wobbly, like a baby deer. If I blew hard enough, I might knock him over with the sheer force of my breath.

“Your next witness, Mr. Mason.”

As he passes by me, Jason's eyes flicker over and meet mine. I expected to see something like disdain or maybe anger—being dragged to court seems like quite the buzz kill for someone like him. But the only expression I can read in his gaze is something a little too close to pity. If I felt queasy before, it's nothing compared to the kind of sick I feel now. If someone like Jason feels sorry for someone like me, I've sunk into the furthest depths I can imagine.

Not that I wasn't there already.

I've been to a parade a couple of times. They're pretty popular in small towns—the cheerleading squads, the volunteer fire companies, and all the veterans who ever lived in a fifty-mile radius. In general, a parade celebrates something. If nothing else, it's a reason to clap and cheer and smile.

But the parade of witnesses Mason called was nothing to
clap or cheer or smile about. There was a medical examiner and an ER doctor. There were Cy's old soccer coaches from all the way back when he played Pee Wee ball. There were former classmates and teammates, ex-girlfriends and people who had just wanted to know Cyrus when he was in his prime. The tapestry they wove was of a doomed hero, a tragic figure of Macbeth-like proportions. They were painting what they knew five or ten years ago. Jennifer just kept asking them the same two questions over and over and over again:

“When is the last time you saw Cyrus Price?”

“When is the last time you saw Cecelia Price?”

And for most of them, the answers served her purpose.
Our
purpose. The Cyrus they knew hadn't existed for years. Some of them hadn't even seen him since Mom's funeral. Most of them didn't know me at all, or knew only what they'd heard.

But then Lucas comes through the double doors, and I feel all the bravado in my body melt down and condense. It quickly turns to nausea and, to my horror, tears. I haven't seen Lucas since the day before Cyrus died. It has been impossible to erase his touch for so long, I am almost aching now when I think of it.

I watch him walk up the aisle and into the witness box. Lucas's hair has gotten long. It's still as blond as ever. When I'd first gotten to BT, I'd sent him letters every day for two weeks. After I didn't get a response, I'd stopped trying. He'd never come to see me. Now we are magnets flipped over
and around; I'm drawn to him with a force beyond reason. He's propelling his body as far away from me as possible. He doesn't even look my way.

“Mr. Andrews,” Mason begins, “we've heard a lot about Cyrus Price from the people who knew him best. However, I want to ask you about Cecelia Price—I want the perspective of someone who loved her.”

I swallow hard. We never said that to each other, even if I'd felt it. So, really, Mason was already coming up short. Not that it really mattered.

“How long were you dating Cecelia?” Mason asks. Lucas clears his throat.

“A month or two.”

Hearing his voice is like a punch to the gut. I try to remember to breathe. Why did he still affect me this way, despite everything that happened? How can I possibly still feel his hand on my hip bone, tracing the waistband of my jeans?

“And what impression did you get about Cecelia's relationship with Cyrus?”

“Objection!” Jennifer is up like a shot. “Speculation, Your Honor.”

“Sustained,” the judge says, nodding. Mason almost shrugs it off.

“Mr. Andrews, how many times did you meet Cyrus Price?”

Lucas shakes his head. “I didn't meet him.”

“Hmm,” Mason taps his finger against his too-thin lips.
“But the pills Cecelia was selling—she told you they were Cyrus's medication, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And she made it seem as though he was in fact a part of the deal. That he was willingly providing the pills to be sold.”

“Right. That's how I understood it.”

I blink at him. I can't even squint.

“However, Cyrus got clean. He stopped taking medication. What happened after that?”

Lucas has a face that is almost too symmetrical. When he frowns, it's a perfect arch.

“That's when CeCe went to see Dr. Frank—er, Dr. Bethany.”

Mason moves away from Lucas and toward the prosecutor's table. He picks up a plastic bag with a prescription bottle inside. I already know it's mine.

“I'd like to submit this as Prosecution Exhibit A—a prescription bottle for OxyContin.” He walks back to Lucas and shows him the bottle. “Mr. Andrews, can you read me the name on this bottle?”

Lucas squints. “It says Cecelia Price.”

“And you remember when she picked up this particular prescription?”

“Yes, I was with her when she got it. She sold half to Jason, my cousin.”

“Thank you, Mr. Andrews. The State rests.”

As Jennifer scoots her chair out, I reach for her arm. She
looks at me and I shake my head.

“Don't.”

Her brows furrow. “Don't what?”

“Don't cross-examine him.”

Jennifer grits her teeth and leans toward me.

“CeCe—I can't
not
question him. He's a witness. He was your
boyfriend
. We need to prove his influence on you.”

I look up and over at Lucas and our eyes meet. For a second, I feel like I'm falling forward. I imagine there's a rabbit hole that I can't see, some kind of vortex that can suck me away from Lucas and into the floor. Instead, I just look at him and he looks at me and something inside me starts talking.

“CeCe?”

Jennifer's eyes are quickly becoming something between alarmed and irritated. I shake my head again.

“Never mind. Go ahead.”

Who am I trying to save here, anyway? We're all too far gone. The vortex begins to spin and pulse like a carnival ride and Jennifer heads right for it—the past, the present, the future, all swirling.

Here they are, my world in miniature: the judge, the ex-boyfriend, and the plastic bag holding the murder weapon.

“HOW DO YOU KNOW THIS IS EVEN GOING TO WORK?” I ASKED.

Lucas ran his thumb up the inside of my palm. Then he lifted my hand to his lips and kissed it.

“It's going to work. I promise.”

We were sitting outside Dr. Bethany's office. The Mazda was dark inside—between the tinted windows and the gloomy day, it was hard to see anything clearly. I looked down at the envelope in my hands. Jason ended up stealing an upper-body MRI from a friend of his mom. How much trouble could you get in for falsifying medical records?

I took a deep breath and ran through the sequence of events in my head. I'd pay the $250 office fee. I'd wait until it was my turn, then I'd tell Dr. Bethany about my imaginary neck and shoulder pain. Right now, it wasn't far from the truth.

“Listen,” Lucas was saying, “whatever he offers you, just take it. Oxys, benzos, whatever you can get.”

I nodded, my throat tight. I tried to remember my mantra:
I'm doing this for Dad. I'm doing this for the money. I'm doing this for college. I'm doing this for . . .

“Do it for me,” Lucas said.

I looked over at him, this boy who'd found a way inside me. Who'd found
all
the ways inside me. I'd given him just about everything I could. Feeling something like love was by far the most visceral and motivating force in my life. It was my drug. If I would do something this illegal for Lucas, what wouldn't I do?

Out of principle, I'd always stayed in the car to wait for Cyrus during his appointments. Today, I felt the pavement under my feet for the first time in the Bethany Pain Management parking lot. I looked around at the dozens of cars parked up and down the lot. There was even a makeshift auxiliary lot on one side of the strip mall. Like some kind of college house party, trucks and cars older than me parked in invisible spaces, their big bodies askew from what was the norm. I felt askew from the norm, too.

Dr. Frank's waiting room was like any other doctor's office, except there were no magazines and hardly any room between the dozens of patients. I didn't really mind either of those anomalies. I could hide among the others—the comers and goers, the waiters impatiently shaking one foot as they held MRI envelopes just like mine.

I moved toward the sliding-glass window where a heavy woman in scrubs sat at a counter with a stack of blue pocket folders at least a foot high. I approached with something like
trepidation. She felt like a gatekeeper. She
was
a gatekeeper.

“Good morning,” I managed, trying to smile. My lips, dry and cracked already, felt like they were splitting open. The woman glanced up at me, then back down to the clipboard in front of her.

“Name?”

“CeCe—I mean, Cecelia. Price.”

She scanned the paper, then reached for a folder. She handed me some forms to fill out.

“There's a HIPAA privacy notice in there,” she explained. “That's yours to keep. And I need to collect your fee. Office visit is two hundred and fifty dollars.”

“Do you accept cash?” I asked, fingering the stack of twenties in my pocket. She shrugged.

“Don't make a difference to me. You need a receipt?”

I shook my head. That last thing I needed was a record that I'd been here.

In one hour, you can get a manicure, watch a soap opera, or get a prescription for a month's worth of OxyContin. I was used to the view from the parking lot as I waited for Cyrus during his appointments. Now I could see the patients up close as they filtered in and out of the waiting room like they were getting no more than handshakes and Happy Meals. This place was less of a doctor's office and more of a drive-through. Or walk-through, as it were. In the front door with your desperation, out the front door with a square of paper and the promise of something bordering on relief. Or release. Or whatever the fuck you wanted it to be.

Dr. Bethany practically demanded I call him “Dr. Frank.” So much of him was “almost” something. His hair was almost completely gray, with a hint of black. His body was almost fit, with a bit of a belly. He was almost a good doctor, too. The way he sat down next to me in his office, instead of behind the desk, made me think he wanted me to feel comfortable. That there should be a sense of camaraderie. But when he put his hand on my knee and squeezed, I realized that camaraderie was not exactly the feeling he was going for.

“Do you, uh, want my MRI?” I asked, scooting my legs out of reach so I could get the envelope. Dr. Frank stood and moved to his desk, glancing down at the blue folder with my name printed on the front.

“Cecelia. You're here for . . .” He glanced at a paper in the folder. “Neck pain?”

I could only nod, then I wanted to hit myself. If I had neck pain, nodding would hurt.
I am an idiot.

But Dr. Frank either didn't notice or didn't care. He took the MRI envelope from my hand and pulled out the printed report. He didn't even touch the films. After all the time we'd spent making the MRI look like it was mine, it probably didn't even matter whose name was on the damn things.

He moved closer to me. His scent was anything but doctor-like. The aftershave he wore was cloying and sweet.

“Can you tell me if this hurts?”

He reached over and tested a few spots on my neck, then pressed on my shoulders. I winced now and then, hoping
my pain looked believable. My heart was pounding and I felt like I might throw up or burst into tears.

Dr. Frank stepped back and wrote something in my folder.

“Your neck is stiff—really stiff. I'm thinking some heat therapy will do you wonders. Do you have a heating pad at home?”

“I-I think so,” I stuttered.

He opened a drawer and pulled out a white prescription pad and a pen. “And I would imagine a month of painkillers would be helpful as well?”

“Um, yes. That would be great.”

Dr. Frank gave me a knowing smile, which made me think
Cheshire Cat
and also
The Joker
.

“Are you allergic to any medications?”

I swallowed and shook my head, unable to speak. Could it be this easy?

It was.

When I turned to leave, prescriptions in hand, Dr. Frank leaned in and touched my shoulder.

“I'll see you in a month, Cecelia.”

I gave him a painful, chapped smile because I felt like I had to. I imagined blood gushing over my lips and down my chin. For a second, Dr. Frank looked like a vampire. And then I realized he was—a vampire that sucks the life from your body and replaces it with something else. Something dark and dangerous and inhuman. Something that makes you come back, again and again, for more.

Getting the prescription, filling it, bringing the bottle home—it had all been uneventful in the best possible way. Lucas was disappointed that I hadn't asked for the benzos, but he got over it once we left the pharmacy. When he dropped me off at my house, he leaned in for a long, slow kiss that promised so much more than kissing. I felt the breath in my chest turn to helium and I wanted to rise up off my seat and float to my bedroom with him behind me.

“I'm gonna go pick up Jason and come back, okay?”

I nodded, smiling. “Sure. Text me when you're on your way.”

As his car backed down the driveway, I gripped the paper bag in one hand. No more relying on the unreliable. I had my own resources now and I could make my own way. Going to college for the first time must feel like this—independence personified.

It must have been a while since someone had checked the mail—the stack inside the mailbox was almost too thick to hold in one hand, and I had to put it down on the porch chair to unlock the front door. I didn't really think about going through it until I was already up the stairs and in the kitchen, looking for something to eat. I started flipping through the bills after I stuck an Easy Mac in the microwave. I couldn't help but wonder what other bills Dad wasn't paying—if he couldn't afford the mortgage, would we be losing water or electricity soon, too?

Chase Visa.

Potomac Edison.

Verizon.

Capital One.

The envelopes were like a roll call of Fortune 500 companies. Until I saw the one from Edenton University.

It was a bigger envelope. The kind that colleges send—thick paper, logo in the corner—and I immediately felt my heart rewind itself. It was late November and snowing the day I'd gotten my acceptance. It was March and about to rain when I'd found out they weren't offering me a scholarship. What else could Edenton have to tell me?

            
Dear Ms. Price,

            
The Science Department of Edenton University is proud to offer you a Freshman Fellowship for the upcoming school year. This fellowship provides a stipend of $10,000 per academic semester. All Freshmen Fellows were nominated by their high school science teachers and applications were assessed through a judging panel at the university. Details will be forthcoming about your duties as a Freshman Fellow . . .

I blinked at the words, almost expecting them to disappear.

I couldn't believe it. I didn't believe it. And I knew better. Really I did—when something seems this good, something else has to go wrong. It's just the way things work—it's like a rhythm written by nature. A scientific fact.

I tucked the envelope into my bag just as my cell phone vibrated from the inside pocket. I glanced at the screen.

      
On my way.

      
- L -

I'd promised that Jason would have first dibs on the Oxys and I knew he had the cash. I hated the idea of Jason in my house, but it really made the most sense to have him come here. Cyrus was finally well enough to go out, so Dad had taken him to get some new clothes. Everything he had was ruined by the hovel he'd lived in—mildew ran rampant and the trash was practically procreating. None of us had breached the basement boundaries yet; the cleanup would be a job of epic proportions. Half of me was scared I'd get jabbed with a needle when I started the process of purging the house of Cy's old life.

When I opened the front door a few minutes later, Jason looked as greasy as ever, but his eyes were almost gleeful.

“How many you got, Price?”

He was practically licking his lips and I felt a shot of revulsion roll through me. I looked at Lucas, who shrugged and gave me an easy smile.

“I've got ninety,” I said. “But you don't get all of them—so, how about half?”

Jason crossed his arms over his chest, looking pissed. “If I've got the money, why the fuck won't you sell me the
whole bottle? You know I'm good for it. Shit, you gave me double that much last month.”

“Yeah, but I'm not going back to Dr. Frank until next month. You want more—you can buy more later.”

For whatever reason, my conscience was screaming at me to be the voice bordering on reason. Jason had gone through dozens of pills in a few weeks. If he was going to OD, it wouldn't be on my watch.

He rolled his eyes at Lucas, who punched him in the arm.

“Be grateful, dude. Did I get you the hookup or what?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Jason's voice was grudging and I felt a little put out. I'm the hookup, now? Shouldn't I get a little more credit than that? Lucas only drove the getaway car.

I shook half the pills into a Ziploc bag and counted them out by fives.

“Forty-five pills—that's . . .” I swallowed, looking back at Jason. “That's twenty-seven hundred if I cut you a deal—twenty a pill.”

Jason whipped out his wallet and counted out the money by hundred-dollar bills.

“I thought it would be more than that,” he said, stuffing the leftover money back into his wallet.

Lucas smiled at me again, then nodded at the doorway. “We really need to get going. Family dinner tonight. You know how it goes.”

He really couldn't have picked something I was less
familiar with than a family dinner, at least now, but I just nodded. He shuffled toward me a little bit and dipped down to kiss my neck. I smiled up at him shyly and grabbed my bag off the table.

“Hey—I, uh, I got this today.”

I handed him the letter from Edenton. He scanned it, then smiled at me.

“Nice—that's what you wanted, right?”

“Sort of.” I shrugged. “I didn't know the fellowship existed until today. I guess Dr. Schafer nominated me. Makes me feel kind of shitty for skipping her class so much.”

“Eh, I wouldn't worry about that.” Lucas tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. “I think we learned quite of bit of chemistry in my car at the park.”

I felt the blush curl up my neck and I glanced at Jason. He was obviously getting impatient.

“So, do you want to come back over tonight and pick me up?” I asked Lucas in a low voice. “After your dinner thing?”

Lucas shrugged. “We'll see. I'll hit you up later, okay?”

I nodded and he gave me a quick kiss before turning back to his cousin. They were out the door and down the stairs before I even had a chance to exhale.