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Chapter Thirty-Five

Dylan

A bunch of Phil’s family is coming to Sandy Haven for Christmas. I’m about as excited for it as I was about starting at SH Prep when I first moved here. Although, that’s turning out to be okay, so maybe the extended family Christmas thing won’t be so bad either. None of them are staying at our house, at least. That was Phil’s thing; he wanted everyone to stay at a hotel, so it isn’t too overwhelming. I didn’t push back, because I’m already finding the whole Christmas thing kind of overwhelming as it is.

If I thought the Brauns made a production out of stuff on regular days, it’s nothing compared to the production they make out of everything leading up to Christmas. Knew a lot of people made a big deal out of the holidays, but this is next level. They haul out truck-loads of decorations, for inside and outside the house. Watch a different Christmas movie almost every night, promising me every time “you’re gonna love this one!”

I haven’t loved any of them. They’re cheesy as fuck and have plotlines as predictable as Chloe’s moods on Monday mornings. Think maybe they’re an acquired taste. Like, maybe, if I grew up watching them every year, I’d think they were the bomb. I’m determined to keep watching them, so that maybe a few years from now, I’ll get what the fuss is all about. Got nothing to lose. Besides a few dozen hours of my life I’ll never get back, I guess.

Then there’s the special Christmas music they play on a twenty-four-hour loop. Special Christmas dishes and towels and throw cushions and… just, it’s endless. Kind of cool. But also—a lot.

Phil’s aware it’s a lot, though. Diane, too. They’re being cool about it. Trying to back off when they think maybe it’s all getting to be too much. So I’m trying to give it a chance. Did the whole tree decorating thing, which I always wanted to do. Didn’t hate baking gingerbread men with Kenz and Chloe, either. Watching how serious they are about decorating them, like they’re being shipped out to be judged by some award-winning magazine or something. Like they didn’t get the memo they’re all gonna get eaten and crapped out in a few days.

“You’re missing the point.” Diane laughs when I make comments like that. “It’s about making memories—not making the actual cookies. You can decorate them however you want, as long as we’re all doing it together.”

So I flip the script on the girls and make mine as butt ugly as I can. Give them zits and chest hair and saggy boobs and eye patches. And sure enough, it is sort of fun. And soon Kenz is dying laughing. Starts adding gnarly scars and knobby knees to hers. Chloe acts like she’s scandalized, but I can tell she’s totally holding back from smiling. Then she makes one of hers cross-eyed and duck-lipped, and Kenz laughs so hard, Chloe commits fully after that. Forces me to up my game. Pull out the big guns and accessorize. Use Chicklet gum to make them buck-toothed, licorice to give them devil tails.

And Diane is taking enough photos to fill an entire hard drive. “I’m going to let you guys explain this one to our guests.” She laughs. “So they know I had nothing to do with this.”

“I’m gonna say I decorated them all!” Kenz squeals.

“You can’t say you made Dylan’s,” Chloe shoots back. “His are the best. He gets to take credit for the ones he did… At least the gingerbread guy with the huge boil oozing puss.”

Think maybe I’m starting to get the point of the Christmas tradition thing. Not gonna lie, I’m already thinking up ideas for the gingerbread houses we’re making on boxing day. Made a special list of stuff for Diane to get at the grocery store. Gonna knock Chloe’s socks off once I’m done with my double-decker house.

Everyone shows up for dinner on Christmas eve. Five cousins—two of them Chloe’s age, one who’s eight or nine, and a couple in college. Three sets of aunts and uncles, and both sets of grandparents. Phil’s parents both cry like he did when they meet me. Forgot how awkward that part is. And about the hugging. But they seem nice. Especially my grandmother, who shows up in a sweater with a picture of a cat on it wearing a striped sweater. It’s the ugliest piece of clothing I’ve seen in my life, and I can’t stop staring at it.

“Oh, are you checking out my new cat wearing a sweater sweater, hon?” She beams when she catches me staring. “Don’t you just love it?”

“Yeah.” I throw a glance at Phil, who’s trying to hide his laughter. Bite down on my lower lip to keep from cracking a grin. “It’s something.”

“I can get you one next time I’m in Florida, if you'd like. In a more masculine color, maybe? Do you like navy, hon?”

“He’d love a navy cat sweater, wouldn’t you, Dyl?” Phil calls from behind the bar, where he and Chloe are placing crackers on a tray around some kind of melted round cheese thing with brown sugar on it. No idea how that’s supposed to be a Christmas thing, but whatever.

“For sure.”

And guess what Scarlett’s gonna be getting this year for Valentine’s day?

Christmas morning is how I always imagined a perfect Christmas would be. I mostly watch Kenz—the smile on her face when she checks the plate of cookies she left out last night and realizes Santa came and ate them, and when she opens all the presents in her stocking, so excited she’s literally jumping up and down. But then keeps asking Chloe and me every few seconds, “What did you get?” “Do you love it?” “Can I see?”

Too bad it all goes to shit at lunchtime.

We’re eating Christmas turkey and potatoes and everything that Diane and a couple of my aunts and an uncle helped make, and it’s the best meal I’ve ever had in my life. Hands down.

Then there’s this brief lull in the conversation. Everyone’s too busy stuffing their faces to talk. But Lucy, the cousin who’s eight, says, “Cass said Dylan looks like sex on a stick.”

And everyone freezes, forks paused midway to their mouths, wine glasses set back beside plates. My eyes snap up to Cass, the cousin who goes to college somewhere in Maine. Plays basketball. Went to a Taylor Swift concert last month and mentions it every five minutes.

Her face blushes almost as red as her lipstick. “What the heck, Lucy! I didn’t say—”

“Yes, you did. You told Miriam you found out you have a cousin who was raised like an animal and looks like sex on a stick. That’s what you said!”

The way she looks around, you can tell she thought that was gonna get her solid laughs. She gets crickets. And my cutting glare. Ragged breaths I can’t contain because of how hard I’m fighting to contain everything else. To keep myself from hurling my loaded plate against the white wall just to hear it smash. Or kicking a chair until it splinters and buckles. To keep myself from flipping the entire fucking table.

I bite down on my tongue so hard I taste blood. Shove my chair back from the table even harder. Suck in the metallic taste coating my tongue. My teeth too, as I slide my tongue across their surface. When I get to the hallway, I hear Phil say, “Jesus Christ. ”

Not under his breath like most of the few other times I’ve heard him cuss. He sounds pissed.

Then, Mackenzie: “Daddy, you’re not supposed to say—”

Phil cuts her off. “Real classy, Cass,” he says. “ Really classy.” Sounds like a guy you don’t want to mess with. Like a guy who’s reining it in as much as I am.

Hear him push his chair out. Probably coming after me.

“She didn’t mean it the way it sounds, Philip,” Cass’s mother says. Phil’s sister… My fucking aunt. “No one thinks Dylan is an animal or… Or anything like that. She meant the man who kidnapped him. That killer—she meant that he’s an animal. For what he did. No one feels anything but sadness for Dylan and everything he went through.” She clears her throat. “And any way he acts that comes across a certain way—none of that is his fault. He can’t help how—”

“You’re not making this any better, Heidi.” Phil sounds so mad, think he might forget altogether about coming after me for once. “There is something very wrong with you, if you think that Cass saying Dylan is—”

“Oh, please. He plastered himself half naked in provocative ads across the entire country, Philip! With all due respect, I’m sure Cass is not the first eighteen-year-old girl to say—”

“She’s his cousin!” Phil roars. Never heard him yell before. Ever. Holy shit. “It is not understandable to me that she called him—what was it, Cass? Sex on a stick? ”

Hearing Phil say it is even worse than when Lucy said it. Than if I heard Cass say it.

“Have you seen the ads, Philip? Because it’s pretty obvious Cass is only voicing what they wanted eighteen-year-old girls to say when they saw them. And I’m sorry if Dylan didn’t realize the extent of—”

“For Christ’s sake!” Phil yells back. “Do you really think he knew what he was getting himself into when he agreed to do those ads? He didn’t know about the lewd slant they were going to take! None of us did! Or about the sick slogans they were going to slap underneath those photos of him!”

“Really? When they asked him to take off his shirt and flash his underwear, it wasn’t a clue that—”

“How the hell did your daughter making rude comments about Dylan turn into somehow being his fault?”

“Heidi, I think Phil’s right,” another aunt chimes in. “Dylan has been exploited enough, without his own family making derogatory comments about—”

“Look, please…” Diane cuts her off, too. They’re all cutting each other off. I’m about two seconds from cutting them all off. “I think everyone needs to just rein things in… Phil included. And let’s all agree to—”

“I’m right fucking here!” I scream from the bottom of the stairs, turning away from them and towards the front door instead. Because, screw it, I’m dipping. Anywhere that isn’t here is where I want to spend the rest of my Christmas. “Might be a fucking animal,” I yell, not bothering to tamper any of the rage splicing my voice. “But my hearing still works just fine! Gonna get out of your hair now, though. So no need to hold back anymore. Knock yourselves out talking about me some more, by all fucking means.”

Two seconds later, Phil appears in the front hall, Kenz right behind him.

She latches onto my legs. Grips me harder than she ever has before. “Dylan, don’t go, okay? You can’t go on Christmas! I made you a present, and I don’t want you to go! I don’t think you’re sexy on a stick, kay? Me and Chloe don’t think that. And daddy yelled at everybody not to say that stuff about you, so you gotta stay.”

Her face is blotchy pink, and she’s full-blown crying. Makes her eyes look twice as big as they usually do, and seeing them sad and shiny with tears instead of the happiness from this morning makes me bite my tongue again just so I can taste the blood. Because I’m the one who put that look on her face. One more thing I can’t deal with right now. That I’m the reason Christmas lunch turned into a family bloodbath.

“Dylan…” Phil looks like he’s gonna throw up any second. “I don’t know what to say… I’m so sorry.” He runs a hand through his hair that’s usually neat and perfect but is a mess right now.

I try to pry Kenzie’s hands off my legs, but this kid—man, she’s way stronger than she looks, gripping my pant legs using her tiny fingers like claws. I don’t want to pry too hard and hurt her. “Kenz… You gotta let go of my legs,” I tell her, biting back the anger breaking through the surface.

“You got to promise you’re not gonna leave.”

“Kenz, sweetheart…” Phil wraps an arm around her belly and tugs her away, which makes her wail even louder.

“No! I don’t want you to leave, Dylan! It’s Christmas and Santa’s gonna know if you leave and maybe he’s gonna take your presents back that he got you! And I’m not gonna give you my present either if you leave!” Her face is wet with tears and snot smeared with the pink glitter eye shadow she was so excited about putting on this morning.

“Kenzie.” Phil uses his stern voice. The one he only uses with the girls, but never with me. “That’s enough.” He deposits her on the stairs with a gentle push at her back. “Go up to your room until you’ve calmed down. Dylan isn’t going anywhere.”

Like hell I’m not.

Kenz stomps down the two stairs, stopping right in front of me. “I’m not gonna give you my present I made you!” she screams, hands fisted at her sides.

Phil grabs her around her middle again and she kicks out, barely missing my shin.

“I’m never gonna give it to you ’cos you’re leaving on Christmas and now everyone is fighting, and we never even got to eat the special stripey trifle Grammy made!”

While Phil is distracted with Kenz, who collapses like a rag doll on the stairs, kicking her feet against the wall, I slip through the front door.

“Diane!” Phil yells. “Can you come deal with Kenz?”

I jog down the front steps two at a time.

Phil is right on my heels. “Dylan!” he yells. “ Dylan! Get back here right now!”

I run faster.

So does Phil.

In the end, I run farther.