The Dead Inside Read online

  “Anyone wants her, she’s ready,” Rich says like a carnival barker.

  “How old is she?” asks another guy.

  “Thirteen,” Joanna says.

  Someone hocks and spits.

  “Jailbait.”

  So I’m “jailbait.” Which I guess means nobody wants me. I thought 501s were the right pants to get me in, but maybe not. I must need some zip-flys.

  3

  KNOCK ON ALL DOORS BEFORE ENTERING

  It’s hard going back to prison after you’ve been free. After you’ve been to Bridgeport. Being trapped in my house sucks even more now that I know what I’m missing. So I’m ready to fight, which is what I’m doing right now. Fighting. And it’s about time.

  My mother puts her fingers in her ears when Jacque decides to hunt me. Kim does too, when she’s here. They’re all, la-la-la-I-can’t-HEAR-you! But they’d have to be fucking deaf to miss the show tonight. And the show is me saying, FUCK YOU. Because I’ve got Bridgeport out there waiting for me. I’ve got an escape hatch, where people who get me are waiting. So finally, fuck you.

  I beat Jacque to my room and jerk the thumb latch out of my colonial-days door handle. Then I slam the door in his face. He’s right there on the other side of it, but he can’t get to me without the thumb latch. He’s a wasp, clacking on a window. Ha! I win.

  But he’ll get in here, watch. He’ll get a knife to lever the handle open, or else he’ll bust the door down. So I’m getting out the other way. I throw open my window, rip the screen off, and slip through like I’m greased. My feet slide a little on the ledge, and I look down to see what I would’ve landed on, if I’d kept sliding: a slab of concrete. It’s the septic tank lid, pressed tight into the ground. It looks like my father’s grave.

  In case you haven’t guessed, we really don’t talk about stuff in my house. But if you knew who my father was, you wouldn’t believe I have to live with scuzzballs like Jacque and his kids. I don’t know what kind of crazy my mother was to marry Jacque. Or maybe crazy’s not the word. Maybe desperate is.

  My mother met Jacque at Parents Without Partners, after my father died. You’d think she would have been grossed out by his doody breath and French accent, but no. My mother goes for weird shit, I guess. Plus we were about to get kicked out of our apartment for not paying rent. Plus Jacque had a house we could live in. So now we live with him.

  But I still say she’s crazy. Because she was crazy when she married my father too. Would you marry your college professor? Okay, maybe you would. But what if he was like thirty years older than you? Seriously, my father was married three times before he met my mother. He had a whole other family before us—and his kids from that first family? They’re older than my mother! See? Crazy.

  But my father’s fame canceled out his age, I guess. He was this big-time classical music composer, Alvin Derald Etler. Seriously, look him up. He was a mega big deal, which made my mother mega too, I guess. But when Kim was five and I was one, my dad got really sick and dropped dead. And then everything sucked for my mega-mother, the twenty-seven-year-old widow. That brand of suck lasted a few years, until Jacque came along. With Jacque, at least she had a roof over her head. But if my mother snagged a bigwig her first time around, why’d she take a loser the second time?

  You know, falling on this septic tank slab under my window isn’t a bad idea. If I landed the right way, it could solve all my problems. I’d be gone from this house, and maybe my mother and sister would finally believe what I keep telling them. Only then, it’d be too late for them to do anything about it.

  I can totally picture them kneeling at my grave, right next to my father’s, and banging their foreheads on my tombstone.

  CYNDY DREW ETLER

  We didn’t know we loved her

  ’til she was gone

  Kim would cry and cry, but my mother would wheel around and tear into Jacque, who, for some reason, would be standing right behind them. Then she’d beat the living crap out of him.

  I’m picturing my mom and Kim sobbing when a BAM! snaps me back from grave-side no-life to window-ledge real life. And what the fuck? My bedroom door punches open, and my doorway’s full of Jacque and his vein-bursting face. There’s a blast of voices, then Jacque’s hand rockets through the open window and clamps the fat of my arm. He’s dragging me back through the window, into my room. My arms and head are inside now, facing that dirty pink carpet I loved so much when I first moved here. But my legs are still outside, and my middle’s getting crushed by the windowsill. Jacque keeps pulling and voices keep screaming as my legs thump through the window and my head slams into the floor.

  I go blank for a second, then rip out a howl like you’ve never fucking heard. You know that sound Dr. David Banner makes when he turns into the Hulk? Mine is so much worse than that. It almost blocks out my mother’s screams—“Stop this! Stop trying to get attention!” And Kim’s—“I saw her out there! She was gonna jump!” My howl from hell scares them away from me. All of them, even Jacque. They clear the fuck out and I’m alone again, hate skidding through my veins. And it feels good. Today, I stopped him.

  I feel so fucking good, I decide I can just leave this house. I know where Bridgeport is, ten exits up the highway. I’ll get there somehow. I’ll work it out. I mean, the hate makes me that stupid.

  The hellfire in my brain gives me orders: “Cigarettes. Tiptoe. Front door.” I get there quick and quiet, ’cause they’re all still hiding from me. The soft click of the door behind me, the cold smash of October on my skin—they’re gas on the fire. I’m blind with hate as I run, stumbling down that gutted driveway, racing toward the plan that I don’t have yet. Ten exits. Twenty miles.

  It’s cold, and the stars look like they’re in 3-D. The death-smell of rotting leaves makes a thumbprint in my memory. I’m not crying anymore, and finally I’m not screaming. I can hear the clack-clack of stones beneath my feet in this dried riverbed of a road.

  Usually when I run from that house I bring my Walkman, because Zeppelin is a drug and Floyd is a magic carpet. But the fury tonight didn’t leave me time to grab headphones. So I’m alone out here. There are no lights on in my grown-up-friend Dawn’s house, no lights in the hermit guy’s house. Just the blue-death glow of TV in the old couple’s front window. It’s dark, and there are no other houses for half a mile. The cold takes a bite from my skin.

  Once I’m past the mailboxes, past the boulder at Shady Lane, I slow down a little. I crunch past the house where I used to hate babysitting—the Earwigs, with their red-headed kids and their science-experiment butterflies in the freezer. If Pat Earwig sees me, she’ll call the cops.

  Just past the Earwigs’ is this crumble-down shack. I’m telling you, there’s something in the woods there. I don’t know what, but I can feel it. Head down, hurry up, get through to the white house with the white fence. It’s all lit up like a party or something—who lives that way?—and boom, I’m at the end of Shady Lane.

  You couldn’t pay me enough to take the long, dark driveway up to Chalk Hill Middle School right now. It would make better hiding, but God only knows what’s up there at night. Fawn Hollow Elementary is low and wide open, but it will have to do. There’s nowhere to hide in this stupid playground, but who else is out here? Nobody. Just me.

  Pressed against the side of Fawn Hollow, I stop. The burn of the lighter on my thumb feels almost good; so does the punch of a Marlboro. I feel the cold grate of brick against my back; I see the white-blue glow of the stars. I hear silence; I taste Marlboro. It’s midnight in Monroe, Connecticut. No one’s around. No one’s awake. And no one has come after me. I’m alone, just me and my galloping heart.

  When my heart slows down, my thoughts come back. They remind me that Bridgeport is ten exits, twenty miles away. That Joanna is five miles, two parents, and a doorbell-at-midnight away.

  So. I’ll sit out there ’til I feel the dew, then I’
ll walk back home.

  I have nowhere else to go.

  4

  NO TALKING IN THE BATHROOMS

  The little shack house burned down. You know, the one on Shady Lane? By the creepy stretch of woods? No one knows how it caught on fire. I’m telling you, that street is shady.

  I’d escaped to my neighbor Dawn’s for the day when we smelled something weird. We went out in her backyard to see what was up, and this gray smoke was pouring into the sky from somewhere close. We put her kids in the stroller and followed the smoke past the boulder, past the Earwigs’, and right to the front of the shack, which was a box of flames. We stood there and stared as it popped and spit.

  After a while, old Pat Earwig crunched over the hill in her station wagon. You could see her eyeballs, bugged out and big as goose eggs, through the windshield. That woman hauled ass into her driveway, and five minutes later the fire truck showed up. Well, watching the shack fire was fun while it lasted. And now Pat Earwig has to live next to a giant charcoal briquette.

  What wasn’t fun was going back to my mother’s house. I’ve been spending a lot of time at Dawn’s, for obvious reasons. But when Dawn and them go out as a family, I’m not invited. I mean, who’s gonna pay my way? And I can’t stay with them full-time, because it would be kidnapping or something. Dawn could get in trouble with my mother.

  But I don’t know. That seems bogus to me, ’cause my half-sister, Shirley? She’s one of my father’s first kids, who lives in Virginia. She has a daughter in high school named Julie. And Julie has this friend who moved in with them, because her father was so mean or her family moved away and she wanted to stay in the same high school or something. How come that’s not kidnapping? People let other teenagers stay with them all the time, just not me. I must be so annoying that Dawn only wants me around part-time.

  At least this weekend I get to go with Jo to Bridgeport and see Steve. Steve D’agostino—did I tell you? We’re going out now! I can’t even believe it. I have an actual boyfriend, and he lives in Bridgeport! He’s so skinny that when we walk down the street, we must look like Kermit and Miss Piggy, but other than that, he’s totally perfect. When we’re together, he holds my hand and gives me cigarettes. And he loves making out. I just wish he wasn’t so drooly.

  What sucks is I can only see him when I go to Bridgeport with Jo. He can’t come to Monroe ’cause he has no way to get here. But we talk on the phone all the time, and he totally cares how fucked my life is.

  Dawn lets me hang out in her room by myself to call him, and it’s heaven, lying on her clean-smelling bed and looking at all her porcelain dolls with their hopeful faces and frilly dresses. Every doll has a different hairstyle, like a thousand blond ringlets or dark hair coiled into cinnamon buns. Lying there looking at those dolls and waiting for Steve to pick up, I almost feel like I can dive into a doll and become her, clean and pretty, living on a shelf in Dawn’s house.

  Then Steve picks up the phone, and his voice makes me forget about being porcelain. He does this thing I’ll never forget. He says to me, “Hold on.” Next thing I know, the opening bar of “Wish You Were Here” is playing through the phone. The banjo twang makes my stomach drop. There’s no sound more lonely than a banjo, but Steve playing that song into the phone is the anti-lonely. There’s that rumbly cough in the background, and as the song rolls on I’m frozen, trying to make time stop. Steve starts singing the chorus part, like he wishes I was there. For the rest of the song, we just listen together and breathe. I never had a moment so perfect.

  In exchange for my having Steve as a boyfriend, Joanna’s acting weird. She had a crush on Steve before, okay. But I asked her! I asked if she minded that we liked each other, and she said don’t worry about it. But still. She’s acting a little…I don’t know. Quiet, or something. Which makes me feel…I don’t know. Scared, or something.

  • • •

  It’s Thursday night, late, and I’ve got to get my stuff together for Bridgeport this weekend. My good clothes are in the dryer, which means whoever is in the TV room is gonna hear me get them out. When I snuck in from Dawn’s earlier this evening, I could hear the TV on, but now it’s past my stepbrother’s bedtime and there’s light under my stepsister’s door, which means my mother and Jacque are watching TV together. Gross.

  I’ve been waiting for them to go to bed so I could get my clothes, but it’s almost midnight and I’ve got to get up for school. So I creep down the stairs and whisper the laundry door open.

  No dice. Jacque’s French accent punctures my hope.

  “Vhat’re you doeenk, Cinny?”

  I bet he saw my clothes in the dryer and has been waiting for me to come get them. Vulture.

  “Nothing,” I mumble.

  “Cyndy, answer his question.”

  Ever-helpful, that’s my mother.

  “Leave me alone, Ma.”

  “Vhat are you doeenk, Cinny?”

  The plastic sofa creaks as he pushes himself up, all amped for a fight.

  “I’m doing nothing!”

  BAM! And it’s on. The door to the laundry room is ripped open, and he’s huffing booze fumes right at me.

  “You don talk do me that way!”

  Like a hunted animal, I go on instinct, not thought. I lunge into the tiny downstairs bathroom. There’s only one exit, and it’s now full of Jacque.

  “I was talking to my mother!”

  My voice, to him, is a shove. And he’s on me. He wraps a hand around my arm, and his beef-palm connects with my face. Once, twice, again and again. Through the tornado, I see his smile.

  I try to twist away, so he squeezes harder. Pulling my head down to dodge another blow, I spot my mother in the doorway. Salvation.

  “Help me, Ma,” I bleat. “Ma!”

  My mother stands still. Her eyes are quiet, her mouth is soft. She doesn’t say a word. She just watches.

  I’m so gone.

  • • •

  The Shady Lane shack is where I end up, ’cause where else am I gonna go? I’m trying to avoid the charred spots, to stay clean. The firemen got the flames out before the whole ground floor went up, and I’m hoping they saved a circle big enough to lie down on.

  I feel weird, hyper and exhausted all at once. My backpack is gonna be my pillow. It’s not the most comfortable, but it’s something. Lying back on it, I’ve got everything I need: my music, my cigarettes, and a place to hide. As long as the roof doesn’t fall in on me, I’m okay for tonight.

  It’s gotta be, what, two in the morning? Perfect time to lie back and sleep. But tomorrow night and the next, where am I gonna stay? Well, shit. I may not know where I’ll be for my fourteenth birthday in two weeks, but I know where I won’t be. I won’t be in that house.

  Maybe I can stay with Steve. I could work for Mr. D’agostino on his lobster boat, keep Steve and me in cigarettes. Maybe even eventually Mr. D’agostino would adopt me. Yeahhh.

  I can feel the back and forth of the waves rocking Mr. D’agostino’s boat. I hear the TIP-slap of the water against the sides, and the grrrrr of other boats’ motors as they pass. They’re rushing past fast. Their tires grind through the gravel, flinging it sideways, and—wait, what? That wasn’t a boat whizzing past, that was a dream. No, that was a car! A real car, racing up Shady Lane in the middle of the night!

  Who the fuck could that be? None of these old people would have a visitor at 2:00 a.m. That car has to be after me. But who’d be driving here? I’m okay, though. No one knows where I am. So I’m just gonna lie here ’til the sun comes up, take the bus to school, find a dime and call Steve. He’ll get me to Bridgeport, and I’ll be rescued. Everything’s fine. Everything’s—oh my God, footsteps? Fucking, heavy breathing?! My heart’s a guitar string pulled too tight; my chest twangs ugly. He found me.

  “Cyndy!”

  The footsteps have stopped. The air is silent. I smell burnt ho
use. Gravel crunches twice, and a jellybean of light pops up on a blackened window square.

  “Cyndy, it’s Dawn! Are you in there?”

  “Dawn!” If she hadn’t heard my voice, she’d have heard my twanging heart.

  “Come on, Cyndy! Rudy’s at your mom’s house!”

  Rudy? Who the fuck is Rudy? “I’m not going back there, Dawn.”

  The silence gives us both time to think. A wind kicks up; it rustles the dry leaves overhead. They sound like shaking dice, like gambling dice. Dawn crunches closer.

  “C’mon, Cyndy,” she says. “I’m not going to make you go back.”

  I got found, the story of my life. So really, I have no say. I push myself off the charcoal floor, grab my backpack, and step outside.

  “Who’s Rudy?” I ask.

  “The Monroe police youth officer. Your mom called the cops on you.”

  “The cops? Are at my house? Looking for me?”

  “Come on. You’re staying at our house tonight.”

  Like a fish on a hook, I’m yanked back up the hill toward Jacque and that house. Dawn slings her arm around my shoulder and goes, “I’ll make you some Swiss Miss.” Which would feel great, if it was a long-term commitment.

  5

  NO OVERALLS OR WHITE T-SHIRTS IN GROUP

  On the morning after my big, tough runaway, when I get off the bus at school, there’s no Jo. She’s not in her usual spot, sitting on the dumpster lid, waiting for me. I find her in the smoking pit with the renegade kids from Beacon Falls, the ones who get bussed up to Masuk ’cause their town’s too small for a high school.

  She’s leaning, super-chill, on the slanted wall behind her. Me, I can’t be un-chill enough.

  “We still going tonight?” I jackhammer out.

  “Yeah,” she says back.

  She scans the pit with her eyes, then points a finger at her denim’s front pocket. I can’t think of anything other than getting to Bridgeport, but still, I raise my brows. She spreads open the pocket so I can see what’s in there: a brass tube, thick as a thumb, with a green metal cup at the end. A little pipe. So we’re gonna get high before Bridgeport tonight? Fuckin’ A.