Page 27 of Them Bones

Shane nodded numbly and turned to walk down the hall, Jerry trailing after him and pushing the bathroom door open.

“Hey Jerry?” Shane asked. Jerry paused in the bathroom doorway. “What happened to Laney’s cat?”

Jerry frowned and turned to face him. “I known Cary a long time. Since he was little. And he has his virtues. But Cary don’ share.” He looked Shane dead in the eye. “I’m tellin’ you, you be smart about that girl. Consider it a… a condition of yer employment.”

And then he shut the door, leaving Shane emotionally, mentally, and physically wrung out, his stomach turning over as he thought about the photo of that orange cat on Laney’s wall. He wondered if he should ignore Jerry altogether, grab Dustin, throw Laney over his shoulder, and run.

In retrospect, he really wished he had.

LANEY

Laney slumped against the foot of her bed. She felt like a city bus had parked itself on her chest, a bone-deep exhaustion caving in her ribcage.

It was after 2:00am before Sarita finally managed to drag Cary into his bedroom, the hall filled with distinctly pornographic noises shortly thereafter.

She’d known Cary would come home eventually. He showed up every month or two, wreaked havoc on the house, on Dustin, onher,and then disappeared back to the apartment above his shop.

She hated him when he was like this. He had That Look, the one that made even his friends edgy and nervous. The one that usually ended in broken glass or worse.

She wished Ma were home.

Ma breezed through two or three times a year, tearing up her wardrobe, complaining that nothing fit because she wastoo fatnow, sucking back everything with alcohol in it but her expensive perfume while throwing things and yelling at her and Dusty so hard she’d spit.She’d palm whatever cash was around and waltz back out, back to whoever her latestboyfriend was, and leave them to pick up the pieces. But for all her faults, she was the only one who could keep Cary in check.

Ma and Cary avoided each other like the same sides of a magnet, both of them too intense to exist in the same space. If Cary wasn’t home, she treated Laney and Dusty like houseflies buzzing around, only worthy of being cursed and swatted at. But when Cary and Ma were hometogether, Ma was different.

She watched Cary. And she hovered, especially over Laney. Sometimes she’d tell Laney to sleep in Ma’s room with her, patting the bed and braiding Laney’s hair.

Cary watched Ma, too. They never spoke directly to each other, a prison-like unbreakable glass wall between them that had been erected long before Laney could remember. They edged around each others’ space like it was toxic gas. It frayed everyone’s nerves, but Cary usually cut his time at the house short and disappeared sooner than later. Once Laney had skipped school for two days after he left, so weary from the palpable tension in the house and four sleepless nights that she had collapsed into bed, only able to rise to pee. Dustin had spoon-fed her soup from a can in bed.

It was still better than being alone with Cary.

Cary had pointedly ignored Shane for the entire night, but she could feel her brother’s awareness of him, darkness slithering behind his eyes. It was like the air warped around Cary, sucking the energy out of the room, feeding the invisible monster in him.

Laney had done the only thing she knew how. The only thing that had ever worked, other than Ma’s watchful presence. And she hated herself for it.

She hated the small touches on Cary’s arm, the soft looks, the lowered voice that nobody else could hear. She made herself all for him. Nobody else existed.See, Cary? I’m your sister. I’m yours.It always made her feel queasy and shameful.

She wanted to explain to Shane. Didn’t want him getting… the wrong idea. But she’d forced herself to ignore him, to tune out his presence entirely.

It had been far from a raging success.

Her body was too aware of Shane, the look on his face in the driveway – before the interruption – a distraction she couldn’t afford. But after several hours she guessed she'd done well enough, because Cary had finally relaxed a little. He leaned back into Sarita, stroking her bare thighs, and Sarita had taken the opportunity to whisk him away down the hall, glaring at Laney behind Cary’s back like it was some kind of twisted competition.

You can have him, she thought. She had disappeared downstairs and collapsed onto the floor in her room the moment he’d walked away.

There was a small creak outside her door and she sucked in a breath. Cary wouldn’t come to her room, bedrooms seemingly one of very few things he respected as private. She knew it was Shane. She could feel him, on the other side of the door.

“Come in,” she said softly, and he slid inside, closing the door but then pausing, and cracking it back open a few inches. She fought a smile.

“Hey,” he whispered.

“Hey,” she whispered back.

He palmed the back of his head before letting out a loud, audible breath and sinking to the floor across from her. Her room was so small that there was only a few inches between their feet, flat on the ground, her back against her bed and Shane’s against the wall.

“I got a job,” Shane said unexpectedly.

“You can’t work for Cary,” Laney hissed.

---