Dead, Sweet Boy (Book One - Dead, Sweet Series) Read online

  “Don’t you think it’s a little strange that we’re both virgins Claud? I mean it’s not like we come off like sweet and innocent girls or anything.”

  “Strange? Not really. I’ve spent my life protecting my virginity from my mother’s failures in life. And you? Well Sunny, I know you don’t like to hear it, but you’ve spent your life protected. Look at this house. I mean that’s not a bad thing at all. I think every kid should have what they need. Oh, and you do come off sweet and innocent. Maybe not sweet.”

  “Yeah I know. Listen, I’m sorry you went through what you did Claud. I wish I knew you back then. Maybe things would have been different.”

  “Oh yeah? How? You wouldn’t have been my friend. I’ll bet Mack wouldn’t have let you.”

  I didn’t comment because she was right. It didn’t feel comfortable that she was right, but she was.

  We fell asleep talking, and when the nightmare came, she was there. My new friend pulled me close to her. Just knowing she was there helped me fall back to sleep. No pacing, no staying up the rest of the night. I slept.

  Chapter Ten

  Grey Seal

  And tell me grey seal

  How does it feel to be so wise

  To see through eyes

  That only see what’s real

  Tell me grey seal

  (Elton John’s, Yellow Brick Road)

  The best thing about being a freak that burned down a house is that not much was expected of me. My mother was thrilled that I had a girlfriend – go figure, and she was happy to supply us with whatever we needed to occupy our days. Claudia had spent two weeks at my house without wearing out her welcome, mostly because she was a sort of buffer between me and my parents.

  Three times a week I had to go to therapy, so three times a week Claudia would use my mother’s car to take me, and three times a week I would sit there and not partake in the therapy. All of my answers were yes or no, and when she tried to get to the meat of things, I would tell her that nothing was bothering me. It wasn’t going over real well, and my mother was asked to attend the next meeting.

  “Your daughter doesn’t want to talk about anything. I’m afraid when I report back to the court, I’m going to have to give her a negative report,” the old bag told my mother. Right in front of me.

  My mother gave me a sympathetic look before answering. “What exactly do you want her to say?” The doctor was a little put off with mom’s tone when she asked the question. My interest was piqued.

  “Sunny was convicted of a very serious crime. The court took into consideration that she had a clean record and that her childhood friend committed suicide. I’d say they were very lenient with your daughter.”

  “Yes, I understand that. What exactly do you need her to say?” Mom asked again. “She admitted to the crime and told everyone why she did it, and she has served a six month sentence. What should she be saying to satisfy the court?”

  The doctor shifted in her seat, clearly agitated. “Sunny is a troubled young woman. She needs to talk about what’s troubling her.”

  “Okay. Sunny? What’s troubling you?”

  “Nothing mom. Things are pretty good now.” This was getting interesting. Finally a session with meaning.

  “It appears that nothing is troubling her now,” my mother interpreted. “I think I can vouch for that. She has friends again and she is going out into the world. Our relationship is better than it’s been in years, and she seems to eat and take care of herself.”

  “That’s all very good, but Sunny won’t talk about Mack.”

  “Sunny? Talk about Mack,” my mother ordered.

  “Uh, okay,” I started, leaning forward a little in my chair. “Mack was my best friend and he hung himself in his parent’s house. Everyone in town is talking about him and they’re saying he’s haunting the town. That’s all I know about him now. He’s dead.”

  “How did it make you feel when he hung himself?”

  “How the hell do you think it made my daughter feel?” my mom blurted out. I couldn’t believe it. She put both hands on the doctor’s desk, like she was about to pounce. “It ripped her heart out. She and that boy were closer than twins. They grew up together and spent every waking minute together. What else do you want her to say about it? Because I can tell you right now that dwelling on it is only going to hurt Sunny. She’s ready to go on with her life. If you want to help Sunny, please move on to the next step – her life from this point forward.”

  I couldn’t help it. First my mouth dropped open and then I laughed. The poor doctor blushed and my mother looked like she was ready to grab me and walk out.

  “Your daughter can’t go forward until she has dealt with the past.”

  “My daughter deals with the past every day she gets up. Let me tell you what I know about therapy. I have spent the last ten years in therapy. It got me hooked on pills. I’m done with that and from now on I’m facing life head on. Maybe I’ll write a report to the court telling them that you did nothing to help my daughter. Of course you won’t see it that way, but maybe you aren’t able to help my daughter.”

  Mom was shaking she was so furious. Blotches of red like the ones I get sometimes, splattered across her throat and chest. I never noticed this happening to her before. It made me consider that mom and I were more similar than different.

  “Obviously you aren’t willing to cooperate with your daughter’s treatment either. I will have to…”

  “How many times do you want me to tell the story? I’ve already told you what happened,” I yelled. “I’ve told you I’m sad, and I’ve told you that I’m sorry. That’s all I have.” I stood up and so did my mother. “You don’t get it. There’s nothing more I can tell you.”

  “Well at least you’re saying something now, and showing some emotion.” The doctor was motioning with her hands for us to sit down, and acting as if she meant for us to get that upset.

  “Is that what you want? Emotion? I can cry all day long if you want me to, but what good is that going to do? Mack is dead and I did something terrible.”

  “Okay, sit down. You’ve said more to me in these few minutes than you have said since you were assigned to me. I’m not here to pick on you Sunny. How can I know that you’re ready to move forward if you don’t talk to me at all.”

  My mother sat down, and I followed, even though I wasn’t too happy that we were staying. When I had a minute to catch my breath, my mother’s words caught up to me.

  “Mom? You stopped taking pills?”

  Mom gently smiled at me. The doctor kept talking about what the next step would be, but we weren’t listening. We were catching up with each other, with looks and smiles that only she and I could understand. The looks she and I used to share.

  “I think it would be a good idea…” the doctor started.

  “When you told the police that you went to my medicine cabinet to medicate yourself after the fire, I couldn’t live with myself.”

  “Oh mom.”

  “I’m so sorry Sunny. I’m afraid I wasn’t a very good mother.”

  “It’s okay mom, you…”

  “No it’s not honey. When they took you away…I…my heart broke. I knew for a long time that I had a problem. I’m so…sorry my baby.”

  “No mom, I mean that’s so great.”

  “The day they took you away, I checked myself into rehab and I haven’t looked back.”

  Mom and I reached for each other, and as if the other person in the room was just furniture, we had our own conversation.

  “You really went to rehab?”

  “It wasn’t easy, and it’s still a struggle sometimes, but I did it. I should have been there for you Sunny. You were too easy, and I guess I thought you didn’t need me. I wasn’t dealing with anything, and didn’t realize you were raising yourselves – you and Mack.”

  “We were okay mom, really.”

  “No Sunny. You weren’t okay. And Mack, he definitely wasn’t okay.”

  “Mom,
we…”

  “It’s not easy for me to say this Sunny. If I was a real mother before, I would have known what to do. We can’t go back, but you have to know that the relationship between you and Mack – it wasn’t right. Mack was not right.”

  I pulled away sharply. She was wrong.

  “Just listen to me sweetheart. Mack had some sort of chemical imbalance and wouldn’t take his medicine. His mother told me all about it. It was unfair, I know. They were having a terrible time helping him.”

  “No mom, you’re wrong. He was just…”

  “He controlled you Sunny. And you loved him so much my sweet girl.”

  “Don’t say that mom. You didn’t know him.”

  “Nobody knew him like you did sweetheart. You were so good to him, but he… well he had this dark struggle, and his parents tried everything to help him. He wouldn’t take his medication and instead, he started using drugs.”

  Her words were a slap in my face. They were lies and I wasn’t about to let her keep it up. I stood to leave, but she stopped me, grabbing my arm. “Let me go, you’re lying.”

  “He overdosed three times Sunny.”

  “No, shut up! I won’t let you talk about him like…”

  “Sunny you have to listen,” she shouted, shaking me. “His system was full of drugs when they found him.”

  “No, he didn’t do drugs! Not like that,” I cried. “It’s not true, stop it.”

  And then my mother, who never took control of anything in our lives, took control of the situation. She made me sit down and she made me listen. She pulled copies of police records from her purse and she even had the coroner’s report. I had no choice but to see a side of my sweet boy that I didn’t know about. I broke down, and my mother took me into her arms and cried with me.

  “I’m so sorry Sunny. I let this happen to you. If I were being a mother… well I would have intervened. I might have known what he was doing.”

  “He told me… he said he was in the hospital because he had a blood disorder. I thought his pain was physical. He said that the doctors couldn’t do anything.”

  “His poor parents were lost. They decided the only thing they could do was to call the police and have him arrested for the drugs in his room. After he was arrested, they went away for a couple of days, knowing that he would call them and… well his mother couldn’t take it. Mack threatened to kill them as the cops took him from the house.”

  “When did this happen?” I cried.

  “The night he took his life. His friends bailed him out. They didn’t know better.”

  “Rick?”

  “I don’t know Sunny. I think they all got the money up and … well, we know what happened when he got home.”

  There was too much to take in and I couldn’t understand it all at once. It frightened me that I could be deceived like that, so easily. And it infuriated me that I took care of him, eased his pain and thought only about him and his comfort.

  “There’s one more thing Sunny. Linda Cook? She broke up with Mack, because her mother made her break up with him. Mack was rough with her, and more than once he hit her. Linda’s mother told me that they were still sneaking around.”

  Somewhere around that part of my mother’s reveal, the doctor stepped into the conversation, and for the first time, I was enlightened about my need to talk to someone. The threads that had held my childhood together were dissolving before my eyes. Nothing was how I thought it was. I had more to tell. The darkness I tasted was his. He gave it to me and I owned it.

  Chapter Eleven

  Salvation

  A chance to put the devil down

  Without the fear of hell

  Salvation spreads the gospel round

  And free you from yourself

  (Elton John’s, Honky Chateua)

  When we got home, Claudia had cooked dinner for us. All she made was chicken noodle soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, but mom went on and on about what a wonderful meal it was. My father was out again.

  “You need to eat Sunny,” my mother insisted.

  “I’m not hungry. Excuse me.” All I wanted was the darkness of my room, but unfortunately, the makeover had begun and Claudia and I had been camped out in the little TV room. It wouldn’t do. My old room was the only refuge I could find in my house. I didn’t want to cry anymore. I didn’t want to sleep either. One more dark nightmare might be too much.

  The doorbell rang, and it brought a quiet knock on my bedroom door.

  “Sunny?” Claudia whispered. “Rick is at the door.”

  “I don’t want to see him now.”

  “Okay, what should I tell him?”

  “I don’t care.”

  Quietly Claudia closed the door to my bedroom and I could hear voices. It should have been a short conversation, but it wasn’t. I just knew my mother was filling my friends in on Mack. It felt wrong.

  I was just about to doze off when I heard a familiar tap on my window. I jumped from my bed, thinking that Mack was downstairs, throwing pebbles at my window. The rush of excitement I always felt when he would do that almost made me forget he was dead. It was the next pebble that brought me back to the present. My heart sank. Another pebble hit, just the way it sounded when Mack threw them.

  “Mack?” I whispered. My room seemed to get darker the more I woke up. The window was waiting for me, like before, when he would come to me. The hairs on my arms stood straight up and a chill passed through my shoulder up through my hair. I wanted to turn the lights on but the window was closer than the light switch. Maybe if I just stood there, he would go away.

  A whole handful of pebbles hit next.

  “Mack!” I screamed, as I ran to the window. It was so hard to open in my panic. I couldn’t see him, but I called out to him, over and over until the voices from downstairs came up to witness the scene. Someone turned on the light; it made it harder to see what was down there. At that point of my hysteria, I wanted to see him, the way others had. I wanted to confront him.

  “Where are you?” I yelled, as Claudia pulled me away from the window. “He’s out there.”

  “No he’s not. You were dreaming again,” Claudia hushed me. I wouldn’t let her put her arms around me.

  I wanted to see Mack for myself. I was angry at him. “He threw pebbles at my window, like he always does. He’s out there, I know it.”

  Rick ran outside while my mother and Claudia took me downstairs. I tried to run outside too, but they wouldn’t let me. When Rick came back in, he had something in his hand. The pebbles. The cement driveway to my split level house is under my window. The pebbles were from my mother’s rock garden on the other side of the house.

  “Did you see him?” I pleaded.

  Rick just shook his head to say that he hadn’t, while he carefully let the pebbles fall from his hand to the coffee table in the living room. No one could deny that the pebbles were thrown at my window. I wasn’t dreaming.

  “Who would do that?” my mother asked Rick. “What a terrible prank.”

  “It’s not a prank mom. It was Mack. He’s done that a hundred times before, I know it was him. Oh my God, I know it was him.”

  Claudia picked up the pebbles and examined them as if they would tell her something. Maybe she was looking for ghost prints. I knocked the pebbles from her hand and turned to Rick, giving him a big shove. “You knew about him, didn’t you? You knew he was sick,” I accused. His answer didn’t come fast enough, so I shoved him again.

  “Sunny,” my mother scolded.

  “No mom, I want my friend Rick to tell me what he knew.” The look on Rick’s face was both shocked and hurt. All I knew was that I didn’t want him around if he had lied to me too.

  “I didn’t know. Not until after he hurt himself.”

  “Hurt himself? He killed himself!” I yelled.

  “Okay, he killed himself, but I didn’t know anything until afterwards. The police told me when they questioned me the next day. Me and the boys bailed him out. We had no idea
…”

  Rick’s legs seemed to give way, as he landed himself on the couch. “We had no idea that he would hurt himself. You have no idea Sunny. I think about it all the time. If I hadn’t of bailed him out, he might still be here.”

  I looked down at the floor. It seemed that Mack had left us all with some parting gifts of sorts. Rick’s was guilt.

  “Oh my God, so it’s true,” Claudia squealed, “this guy is really haunting the town. What the Frick Sunny. I thought it was just some scary story. This is too much.” She took my mother’s hand, “What are we going to do? He’s really out there.”

  “Don’t be silly,” my mother scolded again. “I wouldn’t put it past that Cook girl to do something like this. I’ll bet Mack told her that he threw pebbles at your window.”

  It could’ve happened. At least for a minute it helped to believe that it was a sadistic prank pulled off by Linda and her friends. Rick wiped his face on his t-shirt, and Claudia seemed to be breathing better. I on the other hand, felt awful for taking the massive day out on Rick, so I sat next to him.

  “We’re getting all worked up for nothing. That’s just what whoever did …” my mother started, but was interrupted. The lights in the living room flickered on and off as if we were about to lose power. The rest of the lights in the house stayed steady. Claudia screamed and I put my face in Rick’s chest. My mother put her hand over her mouth. I think she wanted to scream too.

  “Are the doors locked?” Rick snapped.

  “Are you kidding?” Claudia looked at him like he was stupid. “Ghosts go through doors Rick. A lock isn’t going to keep them out.”

  “And if it isn’t a ghost?” He jumped up from the couch and went from door to door, to window to window; making sure that the whole house was locked up. When he came back he sat down next to me again and very carefully took my hand into his big warm paws.

  I think we were all waiting for my mother to have an explanation, and when she didn’t, the fear in the room escalated. Claudia sat on the other side of Rick and took his other hand. The phone rang, making us all jump. My mother seemed relieved to have something to do. It was my father.