Chapter 41 The Past #3
Lillian just shrugged. “We all lost our will to cry. Life is all about emptiness now.” She tapped the rim of her glass, empty except for a curl of melting ice. “What are you doing here?”
I shrugged and scanned the room as if the answer might be on a TV screen. “Avoiding home. You?”
She grinned, though it was a sad twist of the lips. “Me too. My mom is being a drugged up bitch. Needed to escape for a little bit.”
She looked at me finally, and there was nothing in her eyes but the weary, feral light of someone who had run out of things to lose.
“I get that,” I said. “My dad’s an alcoholic. He’s in one of his asshole moods tonight.” I didn’t really mean to say it out loud, but the whiskey was working fast and loose.
Lillian nodded in a way that told me she understood. She sighed and changed the subject before it got too dark. “You’re not even old enough to be in here, are you?”
I shook my head. “Not by a long shot. I’m eighteen.”
She seemed to like that answer, and slid her empty glass next to mine. “You want to get out of here? I got some weed and more alcohol at my place. Mom’s on a bender, so she won’t be home. Or conscious. Pretty sure Amelia left for the night to escape my mom, so we’ll be alone.”
I’d never been to the Langston house, but I could draw the blueprint from memory. The ghost of Amelia in every doorway, the quiet rooms.
I wasn’t sure what came over me, but I agreed. I needed a distraction, even if it was with the sister of my enemy.
Or maybe, just for a night, I wanted to be with somebody who reminded me of Amelia, just so I could have that sick taste of being near her, just to see what it might feel like.
I followed her out, side by side into the night. I hopped into her car since I had walked to the bar, and she drove in silence toward her house.
The driveway was edged with garden gnomes, their faces bleached and split by the cold. The house itself sagged at the porch, a rash of moss crawling up the shingles, the porch light dangling from a cord like a hanged man’s tooth.
Lillian waited at the door, keys in hand, her hair wild and unbrushed. She didn’t say anything until the door shut behind us.
She padded ahead on bare feet, stepping over it with practiced indifference. I caught the glint of her eyes in a hallway mirror and saw how little she cared about the mess, how little she cared about anything at all.
She led me to her room, all the way through a living room where the TV was tuned to static and a framed photo of the Langston girls glared at me from above the mantel. I didn’t look too closely at it. I didn’t want to see Amelia’s face or feel the old guilt gnawing from the inside out.
Lillian flopped down on her bed and patted beside her.
“Sit, man. You look like you’re about to bolt through the window.”
She fished a joint from her nightstand and flicked a battered Zippo to life, the flame licking up with a sweet, chemical snap.
I sat, more than a foot of space between us, and stared at the posters on the wall. Elliott Smith, some poet I didn’t know, a glossy cutout of a wolf’s head with the tongue scribbled in blue Sharpie.
She lit the joint, inhaled, and watched me through a half lid as she exhaled. “You can relax. I’m not gonna bite. Unless you want.” She grinned, showing teeth. “So. Baxter boy. What do you want to talk about?”
I took the joint when she offered. I was no stranger to weed, but this was strong, chemical and bright, and it crackled down my throat in a rush.
I coughed, wiped my mouth, and handed it back. “Wasn’t planning to talk,” I said, my voice rougher than intended.
“Not planning to hook up either?” she teased, but there was no real threat behind it. She was just watching me, seeing what made me squirm.
I shrugged. “I just didn’t want to be at home.”
She stared into the dark corner above her desk, where a string of fairy lights had half-burned out. “You want a drink?”
“Sure.”
She got up, winding her way through piles of laundry and books, and came back with bottles. She handed me one and watched me drink, then poured herself the same in a cup. “To bad decisions,” she toasted.
The burn was glorious. Sweet, just enough to drown out the static. I felt my whole body loosen, my limbs buzzing and my mind going white at the edges.
Everything in the room softened, lost its angles.
Except for Lillian, who somehow, through the haze, became clearer.
She perched on the bed across from me with her legs curled underneath her, swigging vodka like it was nothing more than water. “You’re a quiet one, aren’t you?” she said.
I shrugged, not trusting myself to speak. I was tight-wired, jittery; the inside of my head buzzed with the beginnings of a migraine and the clamor of everything I’d tried not to feel.
The joint spun between us, a slow spiral from her lips to mine, and I took it each time with fake nonchalance, holding the smoke until my lungs crackled.
The room was hot, but the booze and weed made my skin tingle, brought every nerve to the surface.
Lillian watched me with a smirk, like she was waiting for me to break and didn’t even care if I did. “You’re not very fun, you know,” she said. “I thought you’d be all brooding and rage. You’re famous for it.”
I ignored the bait, knocked back more vodka. “I’m just tired tonight,” I said. “Tired of being angry.”
She shrugged, and for a moment she looked almost childlike, hunched there, drinking with a stranger and pretending it didn’t matter.
“So what’s your deal?” she said. “You always look like you want to punch the world. Or maybe just yourself. Which is it?”
I didn’t answer. I just drank and let the warmth spread from my chest to my fingertips.
“It’s complicated,” I mumbled.
Lillian laughed. “It’s always complicated. That’s what everyone says before they do something stupid.” She leaned in, close enough that I could see the tremble in the hand that held her glass. “You ever try just letting it out? Not the hitting. The talking.”
I rolled the bottle between my palms, thinking how stupid it would sound to spill my guts to the sister of the girl I’d spent years tormenting.
I was supposed to hate her, and everything about this house, but instead it felt weirdly safe, almost comfortable. Like I’d stumbled into a parallel reality where nobody expected shit from me.
“What about talking it out with my sister?” Lillian cocked her head and studied me. “Resolving whatever anger you have toward her.”
A bitter laugh pushed out of me. There was no way I could explain the origin of my hatred, how it all came back to my father, and the abandonment of my mother.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Amelia gets under my skin. Always has. She’s weak, but she’s not.
Makes me feel like shit just by existing. There’s no fixing it.”
Lillian’s smile faded. She took another hit. “She’s not as delicate as you think,” she said. “You think you’re the only one walking around with splinters inside?”
She let the bitterness hang there, then shrugged it off. “You two are more alike than you know.”
That scraped something raw inside me. I didn’t respond. I drank instead.
“It’s easier,” I muttered. “To numb it.”
I drank until the room began to spin.
“Maybe I just need to get her out of my head. Beat it out, fuck it out, whatever works.”
“If you want to fuck her out, you’ll have to get in line,” Lillian shot back.
She uncapped the vodka and poured them both another, the overflow beading on her knuckles.
“I’m only half kidding. Guys have been sniffing around her since middle school and she barely looks at them.
You think you’re the first one to want a piece? ”
I grimaced, the burn in my stomach suddenly colder. I didn’t want a piece, I wanted the whole fucked-up animal thing, wanted to turn her inside out and see what was left, if there was anything beneath the rot and brokenness.
I drained my glass, waited for the world to come back into focus. “I was never in line,” I said, voice thick. “I’m not even in the running.”
Lillian watched me like she was measuring how close I was to the edge. “If not with Amelia,” she said, voice low, “I can help with being a distraction. Only if you want.”
I heard the dare in her voice, the recklessness. I should have left, should have put my head through the window and walked back into the sleepy churn of my father’s disappointment.
Instead, I reached for the joint, took another hit, and let the smoke spool tight in my chest. “You saying you want to help?” I asked, my words thick with the warp of vodka and weed.
Lillian tilted her chin, her hair swinging forward to curtain her face. “I’m saying you don’t have to be alone with your poison.”
I didn’t answer. I just watched the way she moved on the bed, the way she rolled the joint between her thumb and forefinger, the way her mouth curled around the filter. If I squinted, I could almost see Amelia’s shape in her. The same set of brow, the same dark drift in her eyes.
Something in me twisted nasty. I wanted to insult her, to cut the moment open with cruelty, but nothing worth saying came to mind. My tongue felt huge and useless in my mouth.
Lillian slid to the edge of the bed, her thigh pressing against mine. “You ever just let go, Caiden?” she said, her voice low. “Or do you always have to be holding the knife?”
I flinched at the sound of my name. It was too intimate, too real. For a second, it was Amelia’s voice saying it, not this older echo, but the girl I’d spent years trying to erase from my own bones.
I put the joint to my lips and inhaled until my vision swam. When the smoke left my lungs I felt a little lighter, a little more suspended. As if, if I cut every anchor, I might just float through the ceiling and dissolve with the heat.