My Sweet Escape

  Still no word from Dusty. I hadn’t seen him on campus, either, even though I’d had several close calls where I thought I saw him and had to duck behind a bush, but it never turned out to be him anyway.

  Hannah and I spent most of the weekend holed up in the man cave watching endless episodes of Buffy and ignoring the calorie count for everything we ate. I’d gone nearly ten minutes without thinking about Dusty when Hannah brought him up.

  “I know I’m supposed to be all friend-y and not ask you about what went on with you and Dusty, but it’s been killing me for days. Will you tell me what happened?”

  “You’re one to talk about sharing secrets, Hannah,” I said, shoving another handful of salt-and-vinegar chips into my mouth. I really needed to shower, and I’d been wearing the same sweats since Friday night.

  “Okay, if that’s the way you want to play it, I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

  “Did you—” I said, moving away from her on the couch.

  “No, I did not mean to make it sound like that. Despite the fact that I haven’t gotten any action in I-don’t-care-to-remember how long, I don’t swing that way. Do you want to hear this or not?”

  “You’d be willing to do that?”

  “Sure, it’ll bond us for life or some such shit like that. I’ll go first, if you want.”

  Was I ready for this? I hadn’t told a single person.

  “Sure.”

  She sat up and turned the television volume down.

  “So you know I’ve got these awesome burns? Well, the truth is that my brother tried to set me on fire when we were kids. I was four at the time and he was eight, and we were out in the backyard. He’d always had a thing for fire, and had nearly burned the house down several times, but no matter how many times Mom hid the matches, he always seemed to find them. Aaron is smart. Like, really smart. Like, hack-into-a-government-database-with-one-hand-tied-behind-his-back smart. Anyway, so he told me to stand real still. I had no idea what the hell was going on, except he told me that he was going to give me candy if I stood real still. I just remember the snap as he struck the match on the box and the look on his face as he threw it at me.”

  I couldn’t even breathe.

  “From there things get a little fuzzy, but I think I somehow remembered something from one of those kids’ specials about stopping, dropping and rolling, so that’s what I did, and it saved my life. My mom ran out when she heard me screaming and stopped Aaron from completely lighting me up. A trip and a long stay in the hospital and tons of skin grafts and surgeries later and here I am.” She gave me a smile, but it was dark. Haunted.

  My mouth was so dry I had to take a drink of water before I could say anything.

  “What happened to him?”

  Hannah grabbed her can of soda and I saw her hand shaking.

  “They put him in a mental health facility, doped him up. He’s still there. It was either that or jail, and my parents chose that. He’s of age now, but he’s still too much of a danger to be let out. So, that’s my story. Now show me yours.”

  She flipped so quickly that I couldn’t follow. I couldn’t process what she’d told me. Once again, it was something that had been done to her. Something she’d had absolutely no control over. Hannah was a victim; I’d created one.

  “I...I don’t know if I can, Hannah. I haven’t told anyone.”

  She got up and sat on her knees right in front of me.

  “Look, we all have terrible shit in our lives. Every single person on this planet at some time or another has had a secret they would rather die than share. It’s part of being human, of being alive. Stuff happens and we can’t deal with it. But what I’ve learned is that we are stronger than what happens to us. You can’t let it define you. The fucked-up parts of you are just that. Parts. But I understand if you’re not ready. It took me a long time and a lot of therapy to be able to even remember what happened. I blocked it out for a long time.”

  My eyes skimmed over the scars on her face and neck and arm and I couldn’t even imagine the horror she’d been through.

  “I killed someone,” I blurted out. To her credit, Hannah didn’t gasp like I expected her to. Her eyes went wide for a second and she shook her head.

  “Okay, then. I think I’m going to need some details before I process this.” She got up and sat back down on the couch beside me. “Because that can mean a lot of things.”

  I took the deepest breath of my life and started from the beginning. How I’d met Nathan randomly at a party that I’d gone to in order to satisfy my stupid friends, and how we’d formed an odd friendship and how he’d started making me open my eyes to the world and music and having fun and then how I’d begged him to go to the concert, and then drive me home, and how I’d called him and begged him to come get me.

  “He was just hanging up with me when it happened. They figured he must have been looking down at the phone, or have dropped it, or something. He never saw the tractor-trailer truck, and that was it. Nathan is dead because of me.”

  Saying the words had been as hard as slicing into my soul and bleeding them out, word by word, drop by drop. Whoever said the truth was freeing had never held a secret like this. Somewhere around the middle of my story, I’d started crying again, but I was kind of used to it by now. It was a bit like being a leaky faucet.

  I tried to turn my tears off and waited for Hannah to process.

  “So you think you’re the reason Nathan hit that truck.”

  “I am the reason, Hannah. He never would have been on that road at that time, and he wouldn’t have been distracted. I’m responsible for all of it.”

  “You. Are. Mother. Fucking. Crazy,” she said before she dived at me, putting her arms around me and pulling me close in a rib-crushing hug. “How in the hell have you convinced yourself that it’s your fault?”

  See? That was my exact fear. That whoever I told would try to convince me that it wasn’t. That it was just an accident and no one’s fault, etc. No. I wouldn’t go for that. People had used that excuse for thousands of years to get themselves off the hook for the horrible things they’d done. Not me.

  Hannah wouldn’t let go of me, and I was having trouble breathing.

  “You need to let go,” I sort of gasped.

  “Oh, sorry.” She pulled back, but kept her hands on my shoulders. I couldn’t look at her.

  “So there, I told you. Now you can get off my back about it.”

  I tried to get up, but she wouldn’t let me.

  “No way. You are not going anywhere. You’ve carried this alone for too long, and I’m not going to let you carry it a second longer. What happened was an act of God or a shitty day or a whole host of things. You’re one of those people, Jos, who can’t stand not having an explanation for something, a reason. There was no reason for this. There wasn’t a reason for my fucking brother to set me on fire.” She couldn’t compare the circumstances. They just weren’t the same. I wrenched myself free from her grip.

  “I knew this would happen if I told someone. I knew they would try to talk me out of feeling bad, but I don’t want to stop feeling bad. He was a wonderful person and he didn’t deserve to die. The world is a worse-off place without him, and I’m the one that caused that. I won’t let you take the pain that I should be feeling away from me. If I don’t have pain that he’s gone, then who will?”

  “I don’t know where you got such fucked-up logic from, but I’m going to stop you right there, because this is crazy. Bat-shit crazy.” She tried to grab my shoulders, probably to shake me, but I backed away.

  “Great, now you think I’m crazy. Thanks so much, Hannah. I feel so much better that I finally told you.” I went for the stairs, because it was the only escape down here.

  She blocked my exit. Damn, her reflexes were good.

  “I told y
ou that it took a lot of therapy for me to get where I am, and part of that very expensive therapy was letting go of my anger toward my brother. I had to let it go or I would never be free of him and what had happened. I’m not saying I’m the poster child for letting go, or that I’m even okay, but the one thing I do know is that you have to let go of this guilt, Jos. It’s going to kill you, and I don’t think Nathan would have wanted that.”

  I exploded.

  “How the fuck do you know what he would have wanted? You didn’t know him. No one will ever get to know him again.” My yelling brought the pounding of footsteps, and the door at the top of the stairs opened.

  “What’s wrong?” Renee came rushing down, with everyone else just behind her.

  “Why can’t you all leave me the fuck alone?! I just want you all to stop trying to save me, because I don’t want to be fucking saved, okay?! JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!” I had nowhere else to go, so I went for my bedroom, managing to get the door shut and locked before they could catch me. I waited for someone to bang the door down, but it didn’t happen. I waited and heard quiet talking and people going back up the stairs.

  Then...silence. The door shut and I waited for someone to come and try to talk to me through the door. Nothing. I moved to the crack between the door and the frame and listened, just to make sure. Nope, it was quiet.

  Wow. That was the first time someone had listened to me. I wiped my eyes and blew my nose and tried not to fall further apart. I’d cried so much already, been in so much pain, but this, this was the worst.

  This was what was below rock bottom, whatever they called that. They probably didn’t have a name for it.

  * * *

  The next few hours involved me crying more tears than I knew were possible and going through an entire box of tissues as I sat on the floor of my bedroom and wondered what the fuck I was going to do. I went through several options, but none of them seemed viable.

  What I wanted, what I really wanted, was to go to a new place. Just cut my losses and pick up and leave. Everything, including my family. Invent a new person to be, a new person that people wouldn’t ask questions about. It’s what a girl in a movie would do. I’d have to cut and/or dye my hair, though, and get completely different clothes for it to work.

  I was delusional. I couldn’t start over, because they wouldn’t let me. Hannah had said she was jealous of how many people cared about me, but I’d willingly hand them over to her. She needed it more than I did. How horrible it was, what had happened to her.

  When I was finally able to get myself to move, I went to my computer and put Coldplay’s “The Scientist” on repeat. My below-rock-bottom moment needed a sound track. I really had to pee, which was insane, given how much water I’d already let out of my body through my tears, but I wanted to make sure there wasn’t someone camped outside my door. After listening for a little while for the smallest sound, I unlocked the door and poked my head out.

  Empty. I breathed a tiny sigh of relief and scurried to the bathroom in case they were listening and waiting for me to emerge from my room to attack me. I wasn’t going to take any chances. I thought I was home free when I opened the door of the bathroom, but someone got up from the couch. He’d been so freaking quiet I had no idea how long he’d been there.

  “Dusty.” I breathed his name and it was both a blessing and a curse at the same time.

  “Hey, Red. We need to talk. I know you don’t want to hear what I have to say, but I think I can change your mind.”

  “Did Renee send you down here to drag me out so they can do whatever they’re plotting to do with me?” The mind reeled with possibilities. I bet she wouldn’t be above forcing me to go to a facility. I’d been threatened with that more times than I could count, but this time they might actually be able to do it, even though I was of age.

  “No, I came on my own. She wasn’t going to let me in the house, but Hunter convinced her that I was the only one who could get through to you. Would you just listen? You don’t have to do anything else. Just listen.”

  “Dusty—”

  He put up his hands, like I was holding him at gunpoint.

  “Just wait here. I have to get something. I swear, I’ll be right back. Yes, you could just go in your room and lock the door and I will respect that, this time, but I beg you. Please, Joscelyn.” He was brave to come near the house, what with Renee on the warpath and a target on his back.

  “Okay.” Moving slowly from behind the couch, he kept facing me, probably so I didn’t make any sudden movements. He even walked up the stairs backward and had to grope for the door handle. If I wasn’t so far from laughing, I might have found it funny.

  For a split second, I considered going into my room and locking the door, just to get this over with, but something told me he’d be back and he wouldn’t give up.

  I heard voices, and I wondered for a moment if he’d set me up, and they were going to come storming down the stairs, all dressed in riot gear. My suspicions turned out to be nothing more than that when Dusty slowly opened the door and came back down the stairs, cradling something to his chest with one hand. A tiny sound told me that it was Napoleon.

  “So you think you’re going to use your adorable kitten to get me to listen to you, huh?” Napoleon poked his sleepy head out from the folds of Dusty’s sleeve. Why did he have to be so freaking sweet?

  “I play dirty. Here.” He held Napoleon out to me, and Napoleon protested at being moved. “It was a job to get him away from the ladies upstairs, I’ll tell you that much. I’m pretty sure this house is going to be full of kittens next week.” I had no choice but to take hold of Napoleon. I put him up to my face and he snuggled under my chin and started purring. This was the key to world peace, I swear. Kittens. Start dropping those in the Middle East and problems solved.

  “Would you like to sit?” Dusty gestured to the couch as if he was an old-time gentleman inviting me into his parlor for tea. I nodded and went to sit on the couch, still holding the sweet Napoleon, who was playing with my hair.

  “Don’t eat that,” I said, taking some of it out of his mouth.

  Dusty made sure he had quite a bit of distance between us, but I remembered how that had gone last time we’d been on this couch. This time, though, there would be no kissing, even if I wanted to.

  “Joscelyn?”

  I looked up from the adorable kitten to meet Dusty’s hypnotic eyes. Two very different things, but equally captivating.

  “Hannah shared with me what you told her earlier. About...about Nate.” His voice broke a little on Nathan’s name. “And it’s just not true, Jos. It’s not.”

  “I can’t believe she told you,” I said, looking back at the kitten because it didn’t hurt as much as looking at Dusty.

  “Don’t be mad at her.”

  “I’m not mad at her.” I wasn’t really mad anymore. I’d gotten to that place where you just don’t feel anything. It was kind of nice. Emotional purgatory. “So go ahead—talk.”

  “It’s not your fault that Nate died. It’s mine.”

  “Yeah, you said that.” I looked up from the kitten and wished I hadn’t. Dusty was crying, and in the second it took for me to realize he was crying, I snapped out of my emotional purgatory from a moment earlier.

  “Yes, I did. He was coming to get me from my parents’, and I was on the phone with him just before it happened. If he wouldn’t have brought me to Maine from the concert, he wouldn’t have been on that highway.”

  With that, I went back to petting the kitten as tears rolled down Dusty’s face and splashed on his shirt. He didn’t bother to wipe them, which made it worse, somehow.

  “Joscelyn. He was coming to get me. I’d gotten arrested, again, for drinking underage. The charges were later dropped, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that I asked him to come and bail me out, and that’s why
he was on that highway. To save my stupid ass, again. I can’t count how many times he drove home for me, and...” The tears finally became too much and he sobbed, leaning toward me.

  “How could you blame yourself, you beautiful girl? How could you ever think you were responsible?”

  “How could you?” I said, turning it around on him. “I’m carrying this blame. Not you. It’s mine, and mine alone.”

  He moved closer to me and seized my hands.

  “No. You will not carry this alone. It’s not yours to carry.” He let go of my hands and held my face, and I couldn’t breathe. Napoleon protested at being squished, so I moved him.

  “It’s not yours,” I countered.

  “Look, we can play this game all night, or you could let me kiss you and we can put the blame aside for a little while. I need to show you how much I missed you.” He didn’t wait for an invitation and his lips descended on mine. He tasted salty from the tears, but behind that was the familiar Dusty taste that I had missed, more than I would ever admit to him.

  “Kitten,” I said as I broke away from him for just a second. Dusty picked Napoleon up and set him on the floor, where he cried. “Take him upstairs?” Dusty nodded against my mouth.

  “Be right back.” He scooped up the now-grumpy kitten and took the stairs two at a time. I lay back on the couch and ran my hand through my hair.

  What was I doing? I shouldn’t be kissing Dusty, no matter how good it felt and how much I wanted to. It was wrong. We were wrong together. It would never work. There would always be something between us, and it might not be a problem now, but down the road it would separate us. It would.

  Dusty came back and straddled me.

  “Where were we?”

  I put my hand on his chest.

  “I can’t.”

  He made a frustrated sound and shook his head.

  “Yes, you can, and you want to.”

  Yes on both counts.

  “We shouldn’t. We shouldn’t start, because then this will turn into something and I can’t let it. I can’t let this be something, because I don’t want to lose it. It’s better not to start at all than to get into it and then have it gone. I couldn’t deal with you being gone, Dusty.”