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The dog days of summer. That’s what my great uncle called this time of year when we came to visit him here when we were kids. I thought it was so funny.
He’s dead too. But then, he was old.
Dawson wasn’t even old enough to drink yet. Not legally.
He said he was going out with the Dolces last night. That we shouldn’t wait up. They came to pick him up in Royal’s Rover.
But he must have come home and then gone somewhere else on his own, because his car was gone this morning when we left for school. I didn’t think much of it. He has friends from high school here, and plenty of girls want to sleep with a college guy.
We pull up to the house we inherited from my great uncle, a big white antebellum style mansion with glaring white paint like all the others in the neighborhood. The lawn is perfectly manicured, the roses trimmed. Only I know that Mom goes out at night and does them herself with a flashlight because we can’t afford a gardener, and she doesn’t want anyone to know.
From the outside, everything looks perfect. We make sure to keep it clean and painted and spectacular, even though the inside is falling apart. It’s the same for our family, our lives, and our bodies. We’re all as fake as the big pretty house with the roses out front and the floors rotting through.
“Mom?” Eleanor yells when we step inside. The lights are off, even though it’s dim and stuffy inside. We can’t turn the air down too much, can’t turn the lights on during the day. Every cent counts.
Mom is sitting ramrod straight on the couch that came with the house, the pattern of pastel flowers leftover from the eighties. She stares with unseeing eyes at the TV, whereLocal News with Jackieshows the pretty brunette newscaster standing in front of the bridge to the Darling manor.
“The victim’s identity remains undisclosed while the family is being notified,” she says gravely, nodding with just the correct balance of professionalism and sadness. That’s a woman who knows how to fake it, who knows how to school her face into the appropriate expression for any circumstance. She lost a daughter a few years ago, but she’s still out there, doing her job, not letting it break her. Suddenly, I feel a kinship with her practiced smile and steadfast reporting. She’s a Jackie, too.
“He hung himself,” Mom says faintly. “My baby boy hung himself.”
My sisters dive onto the couch on either side of her, wrapping their arms around her and burrowing into their grief. The sound of sobbing echoes through the dimly lit room.
I turn and climb the stairs to my room.
I thumb my phone on and see a message from Dixie asking what happened. Everyone will know soon enough. It was on the news. They’ll text with fake sympathy, fake concern. They’ll pretend to care, and I’ll pretend I believe they do.
I power off my phone and toss it into the drawer beside my bed.
Then I run a cold bath and sink down into it, closing my eyes and letting the cold take me over until I’m too numb to feel anything, like I did that night last year, when Royal almost drowned in the river after he tried to kill Colt.
I know I should cry like my sisters, but I can’t remember how. The cold helps keep everything at bay by forcing me into my body so viscerally, like it did the morning after Royal didn’t die. I guess that’s why my brother hung himself instead of just jumping. Jumping doesn’t work. The bridge is too close to the water.
Except maybe this time of year, when it’s been dry all summer and the water is low.
He died in the dog days.
It strikes me as funny, and suddenly, I’m laughing. I promised I’d never cry for a boy again. So I laugh for Dawson instead, for my dead brother who didn’t know how to protect me, who couldn’t beat them so he joined them, just like me. We’re all survivors.
Until we aren’t.
I laugh harder, sitting alone in the cold bath, thinking I’ve finally lost my entire mind. I laugh until it echoes around the loose, faded tiles of the bathroom, until my stomach aches, until tears roll down my cheeks. They don’t count. They’re tears of laughter. I can’t stop even when I’m afraid I’m going to slip under the surface and choke on the water.
I guess Baron Dolce is right. I really am a crazy bitch.
nine
Rumor Has It… Willow Heights’ three queens were suddenly called out of class and checked out of school without explanation. Will we find out the reason for their quick and quiet departure, or is it a secret? Watch for more drops of Tea to be spilled today!
Rylan Woods
Revenge is supposed to taste sweet, but the bile in my throat is only bitter as I stand outside a back door of the school, resting my hands on my knees and trying to breathe. A discordant symphony is banging around in my brain, my thoughts clashing like twelve kids let loose on drumkits with no instruction.
Dawson Walton is dead.
That’s not what was supposed to happen.
I didn’t mean it, didn’t mean for anyone to die when I meddled like a little bitch in their family. I was just running my mouth. I didn’t expect my words to have that much power, to have real life consequences.
