Learning Not to Drown (16 page)

“Here. I hope you're happy,” she says. “In the future use a little more discretion when discussing our family with others. I am extremely disappointed in you. Luke is trying to make a fresh start. He needs all of our support, including yours. Airing our dirty laundry to Drea's mother is not supporting your brother and our family. Don't do it again. Ever.”

Mom stops at the fish tank, gazing in, watching Melanie's dark body glide back and forth. Her brow wrinkles smooth. “You need to ask Dad and Peter about watching your angels while we're away.”

“I'll talk to them tomorrow.” I say my first words to Mom since I stormed out last night. “And I'll clean the tank before we leave so hopefully it won't be too gross when we get back.”

She nods. “That should be fine. Remind Peter to check the water level and the temperature, too. You're doing a good job caring for these fish. Their colors are so vibrant.” I can almost feel the compliment, almost enjoy Mom's words, until she adds, “I'd hate for anything to happen to them.” She leaves me with that final positive thought. Thanks, Mom, for giving me one more reason to hate this trip.

My cell phone is dead. I pull the cord from my desk, plug it in, and wait for a sign of life. The screen lights up. I've got some bars. I text Drea: “What's on tonight?”

Drea texts back immediately: “Movie night at Skye's. You free?!?”

After getting Mom's permission, I'm sitting in the driver's seat.

I turn the engine. The car rumbles. Dad put the battery back in. The happiness that floods me actually makes my eyes tear. Two weeks. Two weeks of friends. Of work. Of escape.

Haunted. I was sure Granny and Papa's second floor was haunted. Walking up the steps from the tiny kitchen, an invisible hand reached in to squeeze my heart, every time.

Alone, because I was the youngest and it was bedtime for me.

Lightning flashed every few seconds through the window, helping the single ceiling bulb illuminate the staircase. I stood at the bottom, looking up to the first landing, wondering what was past the corner. If I ran, I'd be past the stairs, in the big room, empty except for two beds and a wardrobe, left over from Mom's childhood. Then I could hide under the covers.

I ran. Up the stairs. The thunder rattled the old windows.

Into the room. Into the bed. Without drapes I could see far across the cornfields, could watch the lightning touch down. Please, please, let the lightning hit the rod and not the farmhouse.

I wished I were home. I wished I played soccer like Peter so I could be at camp this week instead of stuck in Granny and Papa's haunted farmhouse.

With eyes squeezed tight I held my breath and waited for sleep. That was when I heard the creak. The creak of the floorboards. Someone was in the room.

It was a demon, rising into a black form through the floor, coming closer. Clawing its way toward me, pulling itself up with nails sunk deep into the ancient bedpost. Staring straight at me.

Cringing, I forced an eye open. And nearly fainted with relief. It was only Luke.

“Luke?” I whispered. “I'm scared up here all alone.”

“Squeaks, what are you afraid of?” He turned on the lights, sat on the edge of my bed. It didn't help much. Yellow patches on the ceiling, discolored and never repainted from past leaks, made eerie designs of twisted faces. The wardrobe loomed massively. Anything could be hiding inside it.

“Everything,” I whispered. “I'm afraid of everything.”

“I'll protect you,” Luke said, hugging me close, “from everything.”

With Luke in the room sleep came quickly—until the sound of Skeleton's bones came clanking. In the shadows I could see Luke's empty bed. Could hear the creaks of a door opening and shutting, directly under our room. It must be Luke, I told myself. There are no such things as ghosts. I wanted to fall back to sleep, but my bladder wouldn't let me, no matter how hard I tried to ignore it.

I climbed from my bed, tiptoed down the stairs, pushed the bathroom door open.

Luke didn't see me at first. An empty pen connected his nose to the counter.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He looked up.

“Shut the door!” he spat. Frozen, I stared at him. “I said get out!” he yelled. He rushed the door, slamming it in my face.

“Clare Bear, go back to bed,” Dad's voice said from behind me.

“But, Dad, I—”

“Go on.” He gently steered me by my shoulders to the stairs, then headed back to the bathroom.

I sat on the bottom stair and waited my turn. I really had to go. But Dad didn't wait; he flung the bathroom door open.

“What in the hell are you thinking?” he sternly said to Luke. “Bringing this into your grandparents' home! Get out of this house!”

An animal roar from Luke. Then he charged. Right at my father. Dad jumped out of his way.

The hall was full now, with Mom, Granny, and Papa, fresh from bed.

“Get out!” Dad shouted this time. “Get the hell out of this house!” He pushed Luke into the living room. Luke shoved Dad back. Hard. Dad fell, and Luke fled.

While the adults were arguing over what had happened, I snuck off the stairs to the bathroom. As I opened the door, I heard my mom gasp. “Oh, no! Clare!” She pushed past me into the bathroom.

“Mom! I have to go, bad!” I protested.

“In just a minute,” she said, grabbing the pen, wiping off the counter, looking under the sink. “Okay. All done. Bathroom, then straight to bed!”

Skeleton and I lay awake for a while, thinking about how it had all started—the pen and counter—knowing it had to be something to do with drugs. I thought about Dad yelling at Luke, and another memory tugged at me, one that started with broken windows. But I shut it down as soon as the trail of red circles appeared.

•  •  •

Papa's rooster was cock-a-doodling, and although I was really tired, I rolled over and looked at Luke's bed. Empty. I tiptoed downstairs. Everyone else was still asleep.

Luke was lying on the couch, dried blood coming from his nose and a crack on his forehead. He was still. I didn't know if he was alive.

I ran to Mom and Dad's room, then tiptoed to Mom's side of the bed and gently touched her arm, careful not to wake up Dad.

“Mom,” I whispered. As her eyes fluttered open, I whispered again, “Luke.” She pulled on her robe and followed me to the living room. After checking Luke, she nodded.

“He's okay, just sleeping.” She paused. “Thank you for getting me, Clare Bear. Why don't you grab yourself a bowl of cereal?” Another pause. “And, Clare, let's keep this between the two of us, okay?”

I nodded.

As I ate my cereal, I peeked into the living room,
catching Mom gently wiping away the blood on Luke's head and face while he slept. Adhering Band-Aids. Lovingly, but at the same time like it was her duty to clean it all up, cover it all up—his cuts, the blood, the truth—before he woke and saw what he looked like. Before Dad and Granny and Papa saw him too.

It didn't matter. Later that day Papa told Luke, “I can't have drug addicts in this house. You come back when you've been sober a year, or you never come back. You hear me, Luke?”

While Luke gathered up his stuff, I watched him, sniffling. It wasn't fair that Papa was just kicking him out. He said Luke was a drug addict. Why didn't Papa offer to give him help instead of making him leave?

Luke gave me a kiss and a big Luke-sized hug. And then he was gone. Again.

Icy blue air.

My screams break though my ears, break though the nightmare.

My eyelids fly open.

My room. The lights are all on. Luke is here.

“Squeaks? You were screaming loud enough to wake the whole town. I came running in! You okay?”

“Nightmare.” I swallow hard. My heart is beating so loudly that I swear he can hear it, all the way by the door.

“Damn. You still get nightmares?” Why is Luke still in his jeans? Has he been up all night? What is he hiding behind his back?

“Ugh. All the time.” I say.

“Will a little four-fourteen-a.m. snack help?” Luke suggests.

I rub the sweat off my forehead. “Okay.”

“Alright, Squeaks. One Luke special coming right up. Meet you in the kitchen.”

With all the confusion of the nightmare and Luke being there, I almost don't notice him drop my purse to the floor. Almost.

“Luke's been picked up. Again,” Mom told Dad as he walked in from work. Her voice was quiet and exhausted, her eyes red.

Did she realize I was sitting right there?

“Damn it.” Dad pressed his lips together. “What for?”

“The usual,” Mom said. I remembered the last time I'd asked about why he was in jail. The wrong place at the wrong time.

“What is ‘the usual'?” I asked, surprising myself and my parents.

“He was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Mom answered quickly.

“But what did they
accuse
him of doing?” I was thirteen. That answer wasn't good enough for me anymore. I knew people didn't keep getting randomly thrown in jail if they didn't do anything wrong.

Mom looked at Dad. He ran his hand over his head, then shrugged, giving my mom permission to tell me that Luke had been caught possessing drugs, but he'd claimed he'd been wearing a friend's coat. They'd also said he'd stolen something. She added,
“Now, Ms. Nosy Pants, didn't I ask you to vacuum your room?”

Turning toward the closet where we kept the vacuum, my ear caught one more important piece of information.

“Do we know what he's facing?”

“His lawyer says with his priors he could be looking at four to six years.”

Four to six years? My brain raced. Four years at the very least? In four years I'd be
seventeen
when he got out again! Four years of summers. Four years of Halloweens, Thanksgivings, Christmases, Easters. Four years without my brother.

And four years of Luke being in prison. I swallowed hard. I didn't know what that was like, but I knew it had to be awful.

Watching the dirt disappear in neat little stripes while I listened to the roar of the vacuum, I let my mind go where I rarely allowed it. Luke probably was never in the wrong place at the wrong time. My parents just told me that because I was a little kid. So before, had it been drugs? Theft? Or something different?

And this time . . . What kind of drugs? And if it had been his friend's coat, did his friend go to jail too, or just Luke?

It didn't make sense to me that he'd steal something. Luke had a job. And he got to stay here and eat here, and Mom didn't charge him anything, so why would he steal? Maybe he had a really good reason, like maybe he was trying to help someone who was really poor. Like Robin
Hood did? I told myself to stop being stupid. Robin Hood was just a story, and Luke was going to jail. And a drug habit was expensive.

I imagined all the questions I had being sucked out of the air and into the vacuum. I put the full bag in the trash outside. Left my unanswered questions there too.

Bing Crosby is crooning. “It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, everywhere you go.”

Which wouldn't be strange, if it were December. But it's July. And I was asleep. Finally sleeping deeply and soundly, like a log, which I always thought was a weird saying, but in some ways a good saying because logs don't have nightmares.

Bing keeps singing. As my eyes open, a tiny tree decorated with lights and little paper ornaments slowly comes into focus.

“With candy canes and silver lanes aglowwwwwwwww,” Luke's voice joins Bing's just as he slides into view in front of the tree.

I point out the obvious. “There's a Christmas tree in my room.”

“I know. It's great. Ma never throws out anything. The attic's like a fucking junkyard, but I found this, and look, ornaments made by you and me and Peter. You were, like, six years old. Do you remember? Man, I loved making those with you guys—all the glitter and cotton balls and paint. We should make some today.” I
can barely keep up with Luke. Is he talking fast, or am I thinking slowly?

“But why is there a Christmas tree in here?” I sit up and start to survey the room. Everything else seems normal enough. My fish are still swimming, my duffel bag is waiting for me to fill it with clothes for the trip out to Granny's. My purse is on the floor next to the bed, exactly where I left it once I made sure nothing was missing after I saw Luke drop it. And I'm assuming the two twenties and the ten that I took out of my wallet and stashed in my sock drawer are also still there.

“Because. We're gonna celebrate Christmas. To make up for the last few ones that I missed. So here. Merry Christmas.” Luke hands me a small box. Wrapped in gold paper, a red supermarket bow from Mom's ribbon stash stuck on top.

A necklace. Silver locket, no inscription, just an oval of smooth metal.

“Open it.”

Inside is a tiny photo of a teenage Luke holding a baby Clare.

“It's you and me, Squeakers, from your first New Year's. Right after Ma brought you home from the hospital. You were like the size of a football.” Luke looks so young. “Ma made me wear those dorky red pants. Oh, and you spit up all over me right after we took this picture. Ma said, ‘Oh, Clare Bear, why did you do that? I hope we have one good picture.' And we did—this one.” Luke is still talking at hyper-speed. I'm afraid to look at his eyes. Afraid they will be red. Afraid to smell his
breath. I don't want this moment to be ruined. I'm just going to assume he's excited and happy, and that a substance has nothing to do with this morning.