I stormed out of the room, trying not to tear up and fuck up my mascara. By God...how could he ever do this to us? Drinking...Ike never did that. He didn't do anything like this before the Accident, and I never knew him to do anything so...irresponsible! Didn't he understand he had lives in his hands! He wouldn't even give Taylor the keys...oh, fuck. This was going to be a real time going this year. Oh, I'll know a lot more - more than I ever wanted to know - this year, ad I won't ever go there and be the same again. I rushed down the stairs, grabbing my grey trenchcoat on the way, unconsciously knowing of the grey skies and overcast mood of the day. Zoe was waiting for me downstairs, wearing the same brown blouse and jeans I told her not to. She never listened to me, anyway. Always had a problem with authority. Kinda reminded me of me... Oh, God. I was tearing up again. I couldn't cry. I didn't want her to see me cry. I never cried, or showed any emotion besides anger towards her, and it would probably scare the hell outta her of I did it. Not to mention scare the hell outta me. I just wasn't going to start getting mushy today. "Where the fuck is your brother already?" I asked, checking me watch impatiently. I wanted to get away from this house as fast as I could. Zoe wasn't helping any. She wouldn't talk to me because of the whole CD fiasco, which I thought was absolutely stupid and trivial. She just shouldn't have been listening to that music, anyway. It was too cheerful for this world, and besides, it stunk. By God, she was turning into Avery. And what I didn't need was another Avery in the house. I looked at my watch again. Eleven-thirty. We had less than a half hour to get there, and Mackenzie was still not home. He was being a real fuck about all this. Just because I planned this day and forced him to come along every single year for seven years doesn't give him the right to stiff this day. It was important that he came that day - even if he never thought so. "Well, come on, we're going without him," I ordered Zoe, opening the door. I held the door open and wide, about to blast out the door and never come back the same again, when a blond wall of black fell in my path. I looked up at the thing, its blond hair stringy and unwashed, face of a little boy but brown eyes cold and unemotional towards the world. It was him. My mind flashed back then, to a time when that face was more innocent than it looked, those eyes warmer and loving, the boy not even old enough to be so angry at the world... I put my finger to my lips, the universal sign to be quiet. "Shhh," I said, and Mackie smiled. He loved it when people paid attention to him. Especially Jay Leno. His innocence made me smile, as I turned back to the banister, where I had a perfect view of what was going on. "Mommy and Daddy are yelling and they woke me up," he said, ever-so-innocently. His brow furrowed in a confused look. He cocked his head to one side and pouted. "Why are they yelling?" What was I going to say? I didn't even know why they were yelling so much. Ike didn't look that bad, and Tay and Zac weren't probably that bad off, either. They probably had to stay with the car or something...why were they getting so worked up over this? "I don't know, kiddo," I told him. Mackenzie stumbled to my side on the stairs, still half-asleep and inquisitive. He watched our parents walk back and forth from the kitchen to the livingroom, my father mumbling something to himself and my mother crying. "Something looks wrong, Jessie." I nodded. For a five-year old, he sure could spot the obvious. Something was definitely wrong. My brothers got themselves holed up in the hospital constantly, and I'd thought my parents would have gotten used to one of them doing something weird by now. With seven kids, something was going to be up at one time or another. And they never freaked this much. Something had to be wrong. My father opened the front door, and he and my mother rushed out of the house, a newly-bandaged Isaac in tow. The rev of a car engine confirmed my thoughts that they left to pick up Tay and Zac. It was most probably just a couple of scratches or bruises; my brothers had always been accident-prone. It was probably just a fender-bender, and Ike got hurt the worst. It was raining out and all; the car probably just skidded or something. Or maybe he let Taylor drive again. Even though he had his licensee, he still couldn't seem to stay in one lane. He probably was driving in the rain, not seeing here he was going, and ran into a cornfield or something. It couldn't have been that bad... I yawned, and only then did I realize how late at night it was and how tired I felt. Twelve-thirty. I never stayed up this late, unless it was New Year's Eve, and Mackenzie wasn't supposed to stay up past nine. His eyes widened as he saw his parents leave without saying goodbye to him. Like I said, he loved the attention. "Where are they going, Jessie?" he asked, tugging at the sleeve of my nightgown none too gently. "Where are they going?" I, also not being too pleased at my parents for abandoning their four youngest children in the house, grew angry at Mackie's constant questioning and lashed out. "I don't know!" I yelled, shaking him off my arm. "Go to bed! It's way past your bedtime." Mackie pouted again, and his eyes mirrored the hurt in his heart. "But I want to know where Mommy and Daddy and Ikey went!" he cried. "I wanna wait for them to come back!" I stood up, now towering over my little brother. "You will go to bed. Now." "But...he sniffled, never seeing the mean side of me before. "Get upstairs and don't fuckin' make a sound!" I screamed, using one of the bad words that I heard Tay use more than once in a Scrabble game against Ike. I didn't know where it came from, but I had said, and I said it to my little brother, and now he was crying because of it. I made him cry. The weird thing was that I didn't regret it at all. Mackie started to run away up the stairs, forgetting his bear behind, its position teetering on the ledge until it finally fell onto the hardwood floor downstairs. He turned around to face me, his baby face frowning and beaming with mistrust. Tears streamed down his cheeks, and his mouth turned into a pout. "You're a bitch, Jessica Hanson!" he cried, and disappeared to his room. I couldn't care less. I resisted the strong urge to slap him across the face. I needed control here, and if I got into a fist fight with my brother, I would surely lose. Instead, I clenched my jaw and tightened me fists, furious. "I don't give a shit if I'm a bitch or not," I said evenly, so as not to lose my temper. "You're going, and that's final." "But I just got home!" Lord, was he making this tough. I didn't want to do this today, especially after what I had just learned. I just wanted to get out of that house and never look back. But I couldn't get out of the house because of some twelve-year old hoodlum who wouldn't listen to me. Well, he was sure about to listen. I wasn't going to fuck around that day. "Do you wanna know what you've got coming to you of you don't go today?" I asked him, looking him straight in the eye. I haven't backed down from a fight yet with my family members today, and I wasn't going to back down now. Mackenzie was going to get what he asked for. "What are you gonna do, huh?" he challenged me, with a sharp tone that startled me, coming out of this angelic looking boy's mouth. Sure, the little prick was angelic looking, but he was far from being any angel I knew of. "You're gonna try to beat the shit out of me and drag me there, huh?" He snickered, knowing that I couldn't anymore. I didn't even know what I was going to do next year, when I knew he'd be way too uncontrollable to control. "You can't do shit to me, Jess. You can't make me go there anymore, and you know it." I leaned in, my face inches away from his. I was planning on making my point. "Oh, yes, I can." I matched his snicker, loving the idea that had just popped up into my head. I knew Mackenzie wasn't going to like it as much as me. "You see, if you don't go today - and you know I'll do this, you little rat-bastard - I'll make sure you rot in juvenile until you're eighteen." His eyes widened slightly at the thought of going to juvie. "You...you can't rat on me, Jess," he said, his voice quickly losing its edge. "I'll say that you've been helping me sell those drugs, and then you'll go to prison, which, believe me, is much worse than juvie." But I shook my head. That wasn't how it was going to work. "Oh, no, brother dear," I said, emphasizing the word dear. God, how I loved being sickeningly manipulative. "You see, I'm not going to rat you out. I know I could be an accessory, and I'm not going to prison. I'm going to wait for you to get busted again - and I know you'll get busted again - and then I'm going to relinquish all legal action." I smiled again, knowing that a public defender wouldn't do shit to keep a drug dealer out of jail. He was as good as dead in that detention hall, and he knew it, too. "Y...you can't do th...that...can you?" his eyes were as large as all hell now, the full realization of what I wanted to do visible on his face. He knew he wouldn't come back alive, or sane, if he went to juvenile. "You don't control the money in this house...Mom will bail me out, she always would..." By then I simply laughed in his face. "You think Mom's going to get up off her wasted ass to help you out of jail? That's laughable. I'm going to make sure no one gets you an attorney that will give a damn about you going to juvie." I gave him a smile, my evil smile I had learned to make after so many years of neglect and mistrust. I knew exactly how to get to Mackenzie. And this was much easier than any of my other siblings. I didn't even have to raise my voice. I added something special, something I knew Mackenzie would die for, something he hated living with for so many years. I fingered his long blond locks, the same locks I remembered on another boy, in an age I can't always remember, on a boy that didn't deal drugs to pay for his supper. "And you're a Hanson, boy," I said sweetly, Mackenzie's teeth clenched behind pulled back lips, Zoe watching both of us intently, never saying a word. "And you look like Zac no less -" It was then that Mackenzie threw my hand away from him, disgusted. I knew I hit a nerve. "I don't look anything like...him," he seethed. He hated being compared to Zac, the brother he only remembers from pictures. "Don't say that." I smiled ever sweeter than I had before, which only made Mackenzie fear me more. It was never a good sign when I looked like I was normal. Anyone in my family, and perhaps all of Bixby, knew I was never normal. "But you do, sweetie," I said calmly. "And if you go into juvie, don't expect your ass to feel the same when you get out. Everyone always said Zac looked like a girl, and boy, I'll be surprised if you don't become someone's 'girlfriend' in there -" "All right!" He yelled, knowing fully well that what I was saying was true. He wasn't going to come out of there sitting the same way he did when he got in there. He sighed, defeated, and I knew I won. I smiled triumphantly. My family was no match for me that day. And I just wanted to get out of there. Fast. "I'll go." "Good," I said, grabbing my car keys with one hand and Zoe's wrist with the other. "Then get in the fucking car." "Jess! Mack's -" "No I'm not, you little puss-bag!" "You can't talk to me that way!" "Watch me, squirt." "Jess!" I shot one look at both of my siblings through the rear-view mirror, by stare ready to shatter glass. "If either of you say another fucking word," I said in a lot voice. I was not going to fuck around with this today. "I will personally rip out your vocal chords." Looking back at them, I saw their faces; the faces of the siblings I was supposed to care for, look after, love. But it was too late for all that. We wasn't the family we used to be. Zoe's eyes bulged out of her head, and she immediately sat up straight against the back car seat, her mouth almost clamped shut. Mackenzie, however, wasn't going to take my idle and violent threats seriously, and I knew it. They weren't ever going to work on him. You'd have to threaten something serious to scare off Mackenzie Hanson, Bixby's answer to a quick fix. Like no legal action. Like going to juvie hall. I knew what I was doing. Mackenzie simply smiled at me, his face eerily transforming to a darker, more troubled version of an older brother of mine I used to know. I shivered, thinking about how fucked up all of this became. I shouldn't be doing this, none of us should... "Fuck off, Jess," he said playfully, though I damn well knew he meant what he said. I turned my attention back to the road, the fog of typical Midwest spring almost blinding me on the road. I didn't want anything to happen that happened seven years ago. Though now I knew I would never let something like that happen. Damn Isaac... I heard a crumpling of plastic behind me, and an all-too familiar smell that made my cringe. "Jess, Mack's got weed in the car!" Oh, great. This was exactly what I needed right now. Why couldn't he have just left his business at home... Almost immediately, after giving a small shove to Zoe, Mackenzie gave an excuse for the pot in the car. "Hey, Jess, people get depressed over there," he said jokingly, though I knew Mackie never joked anymore. None of us did. "I'm just here to give them a little...relief." A pill was dangled in front of my face, the light peaches-and-cream fingers holding it belonging to a very annoying and soon to be very dead little man. I knew enough about drugs to see a Dexedrine dangling before me. "You look like you could lighten up a little. Here, free, just 'cause you're my sister -" I clenched my teeth tightly, trying to keep my mind on the road, not wanting to remember the flashbacks I had that day or the information given to me just this morning, by my own older brother, the killer. I didn't want to remember, but on a day like this, it wasn't going to be avoided... "Now, I only had a couple of drinks there...or so I thought..." I shook it out of my head. I wasn't going to be like Isaac. I was never going to do that to my family, dysfunctional as they may be. I had to get there, right away, before I was too fucking shaken to even drive... "Mackenzie, put that shit away, and leave it in the car when we get out," I said in an even tone. I didn't want to lose my temper, or someone was going to get hurt. Or pulled over. Then, I really wouldn't be having a good day. "But -" "You leave it in the car," I said, making sure I was getting my point across. "Or we go to the police station, now. See if they need some 'relief.'" I heard silence in the car then, knowing that my threat hit home. If it was one thing this boy was afraid of, it was getting caught. Finally, after minutes of peaceful yet eerie silence that seemed like all of eternity, the large church spire came into view through the fog like a ray of light cutting through the clouds. Oh, God. That just sounded like something Avery would say. Turning the car into the parking lot of the Our Lord the Savior Protestant Church of Tulsa, I noticed many other cars leaving the premises, some of their inhabitants murmuring about the service, or "those poor boys," and some who turned to peer into our car like we were animals in a zoo. "Those poor boys"...oh, God. Mass had already let out for the day, and there was no doubt a certain sister of mine asked them all to say a prayer for the dearly departed. Why couldn't she have just left this to the family? I didn't want the place to be crowded with gawkers, let alone infested with those horrible fans that couldn't let go... "Jess, look." Zoe pointed towards the church, where a single solitary person was standing at the large oak doors, awaiting our arrival. I had hoped, wished, that she didn't come here today, that she might have been the first one to leave Mass that morning, that she got lost in the crowd and didn't see her family driving the beat-up Buick through the church parking lot. But, I had a sinking feeling, that today wasn't going to be the day my wishes were granted. Today wasn't going to be the day I had planned. Avery Hanson was waiting for us since Mass had ended five minutes ago. And I couldn't be less enthused.
mail. [email protected] � FTLOM"Jessie, what's going on?" a small voice asked from behind. I whirled around from my crouching hiding spot behind the banister. It was Mackie, wrapped up in his pajamas, dragging his old, ragged teddy bear behind him by the arm. He yawned, and started to rub the sleep out of his eyes with his free arm.
"You're a bitch, Jessica Hanson, and you know it!" Mackenzie yelled at me, mouth curling into a snarl. He was refusing to go again, just like he did last year. But every year before, I could simple drag him by his too-long hair and force him to go. But I couldn't do it this year. Not because of the principle of the matter. Not because he was supposed to be old enough to make his own decisions. He had just gotten too big to literally drag.
