Just Get Home, page 6
7 PM
BALDWIN HILLS
9
When no one answered the door to the Greelys’ house, Beegie hopped the fence.
The Greelys had a key they left in a lockbox attached to their back porch. This was because Drew forgot his key at school a lot and Mr. Greely got tired of having to leave work to come home and let him in. Once Beegie moved in, they didn’t have to worry about it anymore. She was always there when Drew got home, and she knew better than to ever forget her key.
But she knew the code.
Or at least she used to. Depended on how thorough Mrs. Greely had been in eradicating Beegie from their life.
The moon was just starting to rise, but there was enough light bleeding from the neighbors’ house that Beegie didn’t have any trouble making her way to the lockbox. Her fingers had pressed the first three buttons before she saw the flashes of light through the sliding glass door.
Someone was home. Downstairs. Watching TV.
Beegie stepped away from the box and into the shadows under the deck. She moved in for a closer look, just to see if it was Mr. Greely, who might give her what she wanted, or Mrs. Greely, who definitely wouldn’t.
A sharp bark pierced the quiet, and suddenly Rooster was running up at the glass toward her. The dog’s small muscular body threw itself at the glass violently, claws scrabbling to get at her. Beegie backed away.
The door slid open.
“Beegie?”
It was Drew, though he’d grown up a lot since she’d left. He was still skinny, but coming into his height. He held Rooster by the collar. The dog kept barking, his paws clawing at the air.
“What are you doing here?” he whispered, his voice lower than she remembered it.
“I left something,” Beegie said. She hadn’t thought about Drew. He had seemed like such a kid when she left, but he wasn’t really that much younger than her. Less than a year.
“Mom and Dad are on a retreat.”
Beegie knew about these. They’d taken her on a few while she’d been with them. They said it was like a vacation, but when they were there all they did was eat and listen to people talk about God. Just like going to regular church, except it never ended.
“They left you here by yourself?”
“I have a project for school. Eric’s in charge.”
Beegie nodded. Rooster was still growling beneath Drew’s hand.
“Can I come in?” she asked.
Drew stepped aside and let Beegie pass through. He released the dog, and the creature threw himself at Beegie, his venom suddenly gone. Instead, Rooster whined and pawed at her ankles, recognizing her and begging to be loved.
Beegie ignored him. Rooster was Eric’s dog.
Drew was quiet. On the TV SpongeBob yammered something to Patrick. A can of Coke sat fizzing on the coffee table, an open bag of chips on the couch.
Beegie had forgotten that...the nice things about this place. The freedom.
“What was it?”
“Huh?”
“What was it you left?”
“Uh...” Beegie stalled... Her eyes locked on the screen. She saw her first scary movie in this room. With Eric and Drew and one of their friends. Drew by the DVD player to turn it off in case Mrs. Greely came down to check on them. She was against scary movies. Can’t sit down with the angels if you feast with the devil, she said.
What was that movie called again? Beegie wondered.
The Grudge. Beegie smiled.
“Is Eric here?” she asked.
“He’s out with friends.” Drew was still standing by the door. What had they told him about why she’d had to leave so quickly? Certainly not the truth. Couldn’t have big brother looking bad... Even his lies didn’t make him seem like the kind of person Mr. and Mrs. Greely would want as their son.
“It’s probably in your mom’s craft room,” she said, even though she had no idea. “Can we...”
She gestured toward the stairs. Drew held back. Deciding.
“Look, I just want my stuff. I’m not going to do anything.”
Finally, he nodded. Leading her up the stairs. Turning on the lights as he went. Mr. Greely was brutal about making sure no one wasted electricity. The habit ingrained in Drew.
The kitchen was dark. Clean. It smelled the same as it had the day she left. Like freeze-dried coffee and the dark waxy scent of a banana before it had been peeled. Mrs. Greely always had a bunch hanging from a ceramic monkey she said was made for that purpose and very rare.
Beegie fucking hated that monkey.
After she’d moved to Barb’s house, Beegie imagined smashing it. Over and over again. On the floor. With a hammer. Against a wall.
It was still there. A year later. Two sad bananas dangling from its paw.
She gave it a wide berth as Drew led her past it. She didn’t trust herself not to smash it for real like she had so many other times in her imagination.
Drew flicked on the switch in his mother’s sewing room, sending light flooding over her hoards of fabric and supplies. Shelf after shelf of folded material. More than anyone could use in a lifetime. Scissors and markers all neatly tucked into bins. A hundred different colors of thread, each one assigned its own peg on the wall.
Beegie’s hands ached to tear it all down. To pull the shelves from the wall and empty the cabinets onto the floor. Spill the scissors and notions and all that other crap everywhere.
“Are you sure it’s in here?” Drew was looking at her. He was a good kid. Dumb but good... No, not dumb. Naive.
Beegie had no idea what she was doing here. She had been on the bus and she had been angry and then like a gift she had been right here, in the Greelys’ neighborhood. The Greelys were a target, a real one so she didn’t have to be angry at herself.
What would she have done if Drew hadn’t been here and she’d gotten in with the key? Trashed the place? Searched for her stuff? It had probably been thrown out.
No. Her things were Eric’s trophies. You don’t throw out trophies.
Drew cleared his throat. Waiting.
“Why did they tell you I had to leave?” she asked Drew without looking at him. Her voice small and weird as she said it.
“They said the people...that the state or the agency or whatever it is who takes care of you decided you should stay somewhere else.”
“And did you believe them?”
“Well...yeah. But it seemed weird. And then I heard...”
“What did you hear?”
“Well...someone said that boys at the school you went to were paying you to have sex with them. Like in bathrooms and outside and stuff. And that sometimes you even picked up guys...on the street.”
Beegie’s heart was thumping hard, smacking at her chest. She still couldn’t look at Drew, didn’t want to see what was on his face. “Did you think it was true?”
Drew took a breath. “I don’t know, Beegie...”
“So you did. Believe it.”
“Not really. ’Cause I figured if you were doing that you’d probably have a lot more money than you did, ’cause when you were here you were always broke.”
“Right.”
“And then Eric told me that you told him you’d give him a blow job if he paid you a hundred dollars.”
Beegie exhaled. Of course he did.
She could hear Drew swallowing hard. The hollow sound of his saliva moving down his throat. “That’s when I knew it wasn’t true.”
“Why?”
“’Cause Eric’s a liar.”
Right then, they heard the front door open. Drew’s brother was home.
* * *
The first time was in the middle of the night. A couple days after her fourteenth birthday. Beegie remembered that because there was still cake left.
She had woken up with Eric’s penis pushing against her lips, though she didn’t know what it was at first. She lay in the dark for a moment confused. Not understanding what she was seeing, what she was feeling.
She made a little sound when she realized. What it was. Who it was. Cried out a little but that only let him push farther. He knew she was awake then, ’cause he pushed his hand down on her face, pinning her to her pillow. He pushed hard, then harder, not saying anything but increasing the pressure, until Beegie felt sure her jaw would break. And then she opened her mouth a little wider and he pushed it in as far as it could go.
Beegie gagged against him.
And then, like that was what he wanted all along he just left. Stopped as soon as she choked. He didn’t say anything at all. Just left her room and closed the door. Like nothing had happened.
Beegie waited. But then she heard him snoring, and she sneaked downstairs for something to get rid of the taste. Birthday cake erased him from her mouth.
If not for that taste she would have thought that first time was a dream. But the taste was evidence. Mildew and Cheerios. It had happened.
Over breakfast the next morning Beegie sat across from him. He didn’t seem different. Didn’t say anything. Didn’t even look at her. Instead he ate every strip of bacon and no one stopped him or called him greedy. Mrs. Greely just called him her “growing boy.”
Beegie didn’t have an appetite.
* * *
Eric had two girls with him. The three of them stumbled in the door. The girls leaned on each other and laughed, their arms filled with grocery bags.
“Ah, shit, it’s little Miss Truant!” he said when he saw her. Grinning at her like seeing her in his home was a big surprise, a pleasant one. He covered his mouth and laughed before launching into a kind of little dance. Slapping his knee. The funniest thing he’d ever seen.
Eric looked past Beegie at Drew. “Ah, little bro. You should know I’ve already been there.”
The girls laughed at this while Drew blushed. It was clear now that they were all drunk. Or if they weren’t drunk, they’d been drinking. And from the way the bags the girls carried clinked in their arms they were planning on keeping the party going.
“You wanna get fucked-up with us?” Eric asked, leading the girls into the kitchen. “Mom and Dad aren’t coming home till Monday morning. We’ve got all weekend.”
“We’ve got all the limes,” one of the girls said, and they both giggled. Whatever the fuck that meant.
Drew and Beegie followed them. Awkward and tense. They watched as one of the girls set some music to play on the little speaker Mr. Greely used to listen to his podcasts before work. Eric took a knife from the block and began slicing limes right on the counter.
Mother Greely’s gonna freak, Beegie thought until she realized she didn’t need to care anymore. It was an old habit. And a bad one.
“I’m here for my stuff,” Beegie said.
Eric looked up at her from the slices of lime between his fingers. Behind him the other girl began opening cabinets, looking for glasses. She pulled out some of Mother Greely’s favorites. Cut glass ruby red tumblers. Reserved for holidays and special occasions.
Beegie’d never had even one sip from those glasses.
“What stuff?” Eric said. All innocent.
She stared at him. Eyes hard. Everything he did was an act. All of it lies. She wasn’t going to play into it.
Eric broke eye contact. “I threw it away,” he said, forced casual. He pulled a bottle of tequila from the bag. Ran a slice of lime around the rim of a glass.
“No you didn’t.”
* * *
Beegie didn’t say anything about that first time. To Kate. To Mrs. Greely. To anyone. It wasn’t something they would have wanted to hear, and even worse it would mean she had to move again.
And she liked it at the Greelys’.
Yeah, they were strict. But they also always had a ton of food in the fridge, and a tablet they’d let her use when her homework was done. Mrs. Greely was even talking about sending her to the school they sent the boys to next year. Beegie liked hearing her talk about plans. Next year, when you’re fifteen we’ll go to the Grand Canyon... Maybe this spring we’ll go see the poppies bloom.
She knew better than to trust any of it...at least trust it all the way...but that didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy pretending.
Besides that thing with Eric had been such a strange... What? Interaction? Occurrence? It was almost like something she had dreamed. And the more days that passed since that night, the more it seemed like it was just something she’d imagined.
She did, however, start locking her door at night.
She just added it to her nighttime routine. When Mother Greely called for lights out. Close book. Get out of bed. Turn off lights. Push lock. Run back to under the covers.
It was easy. And since Eric hadn’t come back into her room since that night, she figured it had worked.
That’s what she hadn’t had at Janelle’s. A lock on her door. That’s all she really needed. Or thought she had needed.
But then things started disappearing.
Little things at first. Stuff she thought maybe she’d left somewhere else. A necklace. The book she’d been reading. Her Lakers sweatshirt.
But then it was stuff that Beegie couldn’t think of a good reason for it to be missing at all. The little jewelry box that looked like a bunch of smiling fish that Beegie had put on her dresser. Erasers that looked like desserts that she’d gotten from a teacher for answering a question right. The headphones she used when the Greelys let her borrow their tablet, that Beegie remembered putting back in her top drawer, but weren’t there the next time she opened it.
But still she didn’t think anyone was stealing from her. She just thought maybe things weren’t quite how she remembered them. Maybe she just needed to make sure she paid more attention.
A little voice inside her head wondered if that’s how it started for her mother. Just forgetting. Thinking you’d done one thing when you’d done another.
But then her papers went missing.
And she knew.
The papers were mostly stupid stuff she’d put in an envelope. Christmas cards from people she didn’t remember. A ticket with a picture of T-rex bones on it from a class trip. A test she’d gotten a hundred and ten percent on that her teacher had written “WOW” across the top.
But there were also two photographs. One of her mother. Not looking like Beegie remembered her, but pretty and young. Normal. And the other one. Of Jasmine. On the swings.
Beegie knew that no matter what, she wouldn’t have lost that envelope. It was in her bedside drawer and it was too important. Even if she went crazy, she wouldn’t forget how important it was.
So over dinner she asked Mrs. Greely if maybe she had taken it. Accidentally, she said. Maybe while she was cleaning. Maybe she didn’t know it was important to Beegie because it didn’t look important.
But it was.
Mother Greely sipped her soup and shook her head. She would never. She said, “I’ll help you look for it after dinner, dear. Maybe you just forgot where you put it.”
But even while they looked, Beegie knew. Even while Mrs. Greely shrugged her shoulders and said she’d keep an eye out for it.
Eric was sitting on her bed with the envelope when she got home the next day. He was usually at lacrosse after school, but he’d skipped it so he could be there when it was just her and no one else. Mr. and Mrs. still at work. Drew not dismissed yet.
“You know I almost pissed my pants last night watching you and Mom search in here. ‘Did you look under the bed, my dear?’” His voice pitched in a breathy whine on this last part. A decent imitation of his mother.
Beegie just stood in the doorway. She didn’t say anything. Didn’t need to. She knew Eric would let her know what he wanted eventually.
“I’ve been thinking about that night. That we were together. The noises you made.” He tapped the corner of the envelope in the cup of his hand. Beegie could hear the papers within it shift, each time it slammed against his hand. “You think you could make those noises again? Like the exact same ones. Those are the noises I think about when I think about you at night.”
He paused here. Waiting for her to say something. Waiting for her reaction.
Beegie kept her face blank. But she felt sure he could see all the blood rushing to her face. The way the panic was coursing through her body.
When she didn’t say anything, he continued. Disappointed she hadn’t given him the satisfaction of fighting back. “You know how you’re gonna get your stuff back, don’t you? I’m going to give it back to you, one piece at a time.”
* * *
Eric didn’t say anything in response. Just dipped the glass in a dish of salt. The crystals stuck to the rim of the glass, like snow on flowers.
“Jesus, just give her her stuff, Eric,” Drew shouted behind her.
The drunk girls startled at Drew’s voice. The one on the floor yanked her hands from the dog like he’d bitten her. Until that moment they didn’t even know there was something strange going on.
But now they were watching. Their eyes passing from Eric to Beegie to Drew. Trying to figure out the story between them.
“Okay, I got it,” Eric admitted. His lips were smiling, but his eyes were not. “I’ll give it to you, Beegie.”
He held out one of the glasses. Tequila, salt, lime juice. “Drink.”
Beegie glanced back at Drew. He shrugged.
They both knew she was going to have to do it. The only way Eric ever gave you anything was if you let him win first. If she didn’t drink, he’d do something...underhanded, mean, something. It was who he was.
Beegie took the shot and downed it. The tequila was liquid sandpaper, scratching the walls of her throat as it burned its way down into her stomach.
She coughed. Her body folding over.
Eric and the girls laughed.
