Incense and Peppermints Read online

  Incense and Peppermints

  Cathrina Constantine

  Dedication

  For My Father

  You are in my Heart

  For My Brother

  I miss you

  CONTENTS

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  For all those who’ve lived through the riotous sixties, and to this day have held their tongues about what went on behind closed doors. Some things are better left in the past, but for unknown reasons, history tends to repeat itself and spreads like a cancer.

  I admire and respect my publisher, Sarah Brandon Davis, the mastermind behind CHBB Publishing. She is the sturdy cornerstone to this fabulous group of authors. Thank you, Sarah, for your inspiration, stability, and for saying yes to my writing and me. You’re always there when we need you, which is a Godsend.

  A huge Thank You to Catherine Stovall, my editor. I’ve worked with Catherine before, and I’m honored she said yes to this project. Her diligence in cleaning my mess until it’s pristine and shiny truly amazes me.

  To my friend who I never met in person, Nana Prah, a bestselling author and my beta reader. And the first person to read Incense & Peppermints and loved it. She’s the one who calms me during my doubts and anxieties.

  My cover artist, Rue Volley knocks my socks off. She’s phenomenal!! This cover rocks and I love her for it.

  Rebecca Poole formatted Incense and Peppermints, and I couldn’t be happier. She also formatted my other book, Don’t Forget To Breathe, and her work is outstanding and unique! Thank you, Rebecca, sending you my love.

  I’m forever grateful to the readers around the world who’ve supported me on my journey; I hope you’ll like Incense & Peppermints.

  I’d also like to thank my friends, Paula, Sherrie, Cheryl, Ellen, and Jennifer for their unending support.

  A great big hug to my cousin, Ellen. You were there. You understand. You know what I’m talking about. I Love You.

  For my Forever Friends, Debbie, Deb, Debbie, and Andrea, always remember our wild nights of dancing, laughter, all the parties, and the true friendship that has lasted until this day.

  For her encouragement and love, a warm embrace to my sister, Jody Andreessen. I love you with my whole heart.

  Last, but far from least, my family. Love you all to pieces!!

  CHAPTER 1

  September 1969

  The corners of my bedroom had dulled to a muddy gray by the time my brother leaned on, or rather wobbled against, my door. His glassy eyes floated in their sockets. Stoned, again.

  “Whatcha doing, Sis?” Stevie, my older brother slurred.

  My gaze slipped over the wiry hair sprinkled on his pasty chest, past his jockeys, and down to his stick-like legs. Did he realize he was only wearing saggy underwear? Normally, I’d say gross and mock him, but only because he treated me like a speck of toe scum.

  “Nothing much.” I slipped my diary into my sock drawer, away from prying eyes. Our parents weren’t home, and our little sister was asleep in her crib on the other side of my room.

  “You need to grow up,” he said. “Here, it’s party time.” Pinched between his thumb and finger, he revealed an ordinary aspirin as if he’d procured the magic solution.

  “Uh...I don’t have a headache.”

  “Hey, turd. It’s not an aspirin. Stop the nerd act and get with the program. Grow up.”

  Our sibling behavior toppled into the belittling and ridiculing stage. Though, I figured it was his way of helping me. Yet, staring at the pill, I was interested, despite a hootenanny of cymbals clashing inside my head and my sensible side screaming.

  You’ll puke! I hate puking. Wasn’t it only last week Stevie was tripping and heaving guts like a water hose?

  Shaking my head, I declined his kind and strange offer and tried using simple logic to get rid of him. “Not tonight. Mom and Dad will be home any minute. Go to bed. It’s late.”

  “They’ll be so-o plastered. I can’t stand them like that.” Dejected, he slouched his shoulders, and his body seemed to deflate until he tossed the pill, saying, “Catch.”

  Though he surprised me, my reflexes snapped into play, and I caught it.

  “Just in case you change your mind,” he mumbled. “I guarantee a cosmic night.” His saggy underwear melted into the darkened hallway.

  My inner geek gawked at the pill as if I was holding nitroglycerin.

  I decided a taste wouldn’t hurt and lapped it with my tongue. It stuck. The pill began to dissolve, tasting chalky. I panicked, plucked it from my mouth, and rammed it under my pillow.

  A melody by Eric Clapton seeped through the walls from Stevie’s bedroom. I wished he’d pass out already. My heart strummed faster than Clapton’s riotous guitar, I dreaded a repeat of last weekend when all hell broke loose. I heard a noise coming from the back of the house. Mom and Dad were home, and the music ended. I breathed easier, at least for the moment.

  Flicking off the light, I curled sideways beneath the covers, feigning sleep. Anything could happen after one of their nights of drinking and gambling. Tonight, they hustled into their bedroom, and within minutes, heavy footfalls penetrated my room.

  Peeking at Dad as he hovered over Lucy’s crib, I noticed a pair of pale legs and saggy underwear in the shadows. Gross. He padded away.

  Grinding my eyelids to eliminate the sight, I realized the images were already ingrained in my brain. I retrieved my transistor radio from the end table, corked the lone bud into my ear, and tuned to the desired station. I planned to purge the past hour with rock ‘n’ roll. My hand eased under my pillow and bumped into Stevie’s solution for growing-up.

  Every semester, I managed high honors, fueling my nerdy-geek. Was it time to rectify that social stamp? I was home and close to a toilet if puking was involved, and I couldn’t possibly make a boob of myself while lying in bed. Feeling reckless and gathering a dose of spit, I choked it down.

  A half hour later and feeling fairly phobic, I stared at the door that Dad had left ajar. But now there were two door frames. In the recesses of my psyche, there was the riff of a guitar, a baritone bass, and a cool drum roll. The tune “Purple Haze” revved my eardrums. Wiggling my butt cheeks in beat to the music, my Gumby-like body wanted to dance. That’s when the iridescent ceiling splattered in crystal light. I was blown away by the psychedelic storm going on in my head. A vexing kaleidoscope clashed like detonating bombs, pumping my brain with infinite colors.

  Oh, no. I felt an unfavorable stomach lurch. Prying my eyes from the prismatic ceiling, I stumbled into the bathroom, where I spent the remainder of the night wrapped around the porcelain throne.

  I made
it to school dressed in mismatched socks and with my hair resembling a mangy thicket. In English class, Mr. Carlson wore a kind smile and droopy eyes like an old basset hound.

  During his lecture, my endless yawning drew his sympathy, or maybe he was exasperated with my cavernous oral cavity and red-rimmed eyes. Mr. Carlson asked if I wanted to go to the nurse.

  “I’m fine. Just couldn’t get to sleep last night.”

  He nodded as if he wholly understood.

  In his expressive voice, Mr. Carlson addressed the class. “Take out paper. Today, we’re going to write a five-paragraph essay—”

  Groans churned around the room.

  “Okay, okay.” Throwing his hands in the air and fanning them, he attempted to subdue the sulky students. “This is your junior year, and you need to buckle down and get ready for college entrance exams.”

  This caused students to lean into their hands.

  In flowing cursive, I wrote my name at the top of the ledger paper—Marilyn Monroe. To my personal dismay, my parents had assumed going through life named after a sexy actress would be clever. Wrong.

  The teacher scrawled, “How would you help our returning veterans?” on the blackboard. His essay question produced further mumbling and head lolling. The Vietnam War had been going on for like forever, and I seldom listened to the news updates.

  “If any of you clowns watched the newscasts,” Mr. Carlson went on, “you would know that President Nixon announced a withdrawal of thirty-five thousand troops from Vietnam.”

  I raised a limp hand.

  “Yes, Mary?”

  “What do you mean by helping the vets? Like us, personally?”

  “Not exactly,” he said in an impassioned tone. “What kind of Government programs or special reimbursements would you initiate for our soldiers who fought for freedom? It’s believed the Vietnam War is a complete travesty, a waste of time, and a purposeless conflict. How would you feel if your brother’s life was wasted in a war that no one seemed to care two licks about?”

  Apparently, some of the kids had actually studied government policies in history class and were acquainted with Nixon’s strategy. Heads bent over their papers as students scribbled away. I wondered if Mr. Carlson’s option to go to the nurse still stood.

  After class, I snagged my lunch bag out of my locker and griped as I headed for the cafeteria. My history textbook had reduced the bag to a pancake. It wouldn’t be the first or the last time I ate a mushed sandwich.

  Since my brother had started going out with a classmate of mine, Candy Bradford, she’d taken me under her wing and into her clique. I wasn’t duped into thinking we were besties. She used me as a spy to garner details on my brother, and my purpose was a step-up the social ladder. I teetered somewhere between nerdy-geek status and one of the popular girls, which were also labeled as the hard chicks.

  Stevie’s girlfriend and now my friend, Candy, ushered me to their reserved table. The popular girls retained a prime position under a file of windows overlooking the athletic fields. Watching the boys practicing whatever sport was in season, especially football was highly anticipated. I circumvented the table where my grade school friends watched me in wonder. I smiled and finger waved. Debbie nodded, and I snared Ellen and Andrea exchanging exaggerated eye rolls. I read them loud and clear. Turncoat. Suck-up. Brown noser.

  Exactly where I belonged seemed a mystery, and some days, I missed my friends and their unpretentiousness. Last week, I’d made the mistake of joining them for lunch.

  Dee Sorrentino, who regarded me as a minor fraction of the clique had lambasted me, saying, “You can either hang with those geeky-nerds or stick with us. Your choice.”

  I’d chosen popularity.

  After eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with gusto and slurping the last drops of chocolate milk, I felt better.

  “Mary, what’d Steve do last night?” Candy asked as she shredded a piece of her sandwich and daintily placed the bread on her tongue.

  “Umm-m…” What do I say about last night? God forbid I ever tell her the truth. While in his underwear, Stevie gifted me drugs so I would grow-up. “I think—” a gulp stuck in my throat “—he hung out with Dave and those guys.” I wasn’t certain, but he had mentioned Dave as he’d bumped through the house.

  “Man, I hate those guys. Don’t you?” She clicked her fingernails on the table.

  Dithering like a chump, I bobbled my head, but I really didn’t know those guys. “Is Stevie… I mean Steve, in school today?” My brother told me Stevie was dead. I’d forgotten, but I had better start calling him Steve. “His car was still in the garage when I ran for the bus this morning. Hasn’t he been driving you to school?”

  “The jackass picked me up late.” Candy dabbed her mouth on a paper napkin, leaving red lipstick smudges that looked like blood. “I was almost late for homeroom.”

  I delayed responding and bit into Mom’s homemade chocolate chip cookie, a rarity. She hardly ever found time to bake anymore.

  “That’s why I wondered what he did last night.”

  Bewitching eyes lanced into my soul as if she knew I wasn’t telling her the full story.

  “‘Cause he didn’t call, and he looked like puke this morning.” Her eyes hardened as if she were waiting for further clarification of my brother’s exploits.

  I was off the hook when Gwen chirped, “O-o-o-o, Jimmy Pender took off his shirt.”

  All the girls twirled to the windows. If I listened closely, I could hear them breathing as they goggled over Jimmy’s sculpted body, glossy in the sunshine. Skimpy shorts hugged his hips, and his leg muscles convulsed as he ran downfield, tossing a spiral pass. His blond hair skipped around his head in the afternoon breeze, making the girls say, “o-o-o-o” some more.

  “Too bad he’s so conceited,” said Dee.

  Though Dee was beautiful on the outside, the jury was in-session concerning her inner-self. Oodles of silky black tresses with shimmery highlights carpeted her shoulders and back. I was jealous of her pimple-free, olive complexion and brown eyes that lifted at the edges—an alluring oriental nuance.

  “Jimmy doesn’t do it for me,” bashed Candy, scrunching her nose. “I think his body is yucky. Too muscly and stuff.”

  Now I knew why she liked my scrawny brother.

  “Hey,” Candy said in a conspiratorial tone. She dipped low to the table, so everyone knew to lock heads. “Steve said he’d be waiting outside for us after lunch. We’re skipping out. Whose game?”

  Gwen was the first to speak. “I had detention last week. If I get another one, my parents will ground me.”

  I liked Gwen, a girl with a sturdy frame and who was growing out last year’s pixie cut. Wispy golden hair trickled to her shoulders, complimenting sharp gray eyes and a round face.

  Candy knew persuading Gwen to go against her will was rare, and she turned on Dee like a cobra. “You’ll come, right?” she asked with a reproachful grin. “You always say your life is so dull and ordinary. Let’s have some fun. Steve said there’d be a bunch of guys at the park.”

  Dee stalled and cut her eyes to meet Gwen’s. “I don’t know, sounds risky.” She then poked her chin in my direction. “Are you going?”

  Taken aback by her question, I was still chewing over the aspect that Stevie was outside of school instead of inside. Sneaking out of school had never been on my to-do list. “Ahh… er...”

  “Of course, she’s going,” Candy answered for me.

  My mouth hung open. I glanced over to my old friends, wondering what they were talking about. More than likely, they were debating their favored movies or gossiping about boys or us.

  “C’mon. Dump your trays and follow me.” Candy exited the cafeteria with Dee sidled beside her while I jerkily trailed after. My head rotated like a lighthouse beam, searching for the hall monitors. Their number one job was to slap a d
etention slip in our hands for roaming the corridors without a pass. Skipping out resulted in a harsher punishment—suspension.

  One hall monitor, Mrs. McCreedy—nicknamed Dragon Lady—was in the midst of marching into the art room but halted.

  CHAPTER 2

  The Dragon touted supersonic hearing, eyes in the back of her head, and the power to rain fire with her words, plus the ability to assign students detention.

  “Quick. In here,” Candy ordered, and dodged through a door.

  My conga drumming heartbeat expected the fire-breathing dragon to fly in. Our eyeballs bugged out of our heads as we gaped at one another, waiting for the inevitable. My comfort came with the ringing of the bell that signaled the change of classes. No Dragon.

  I placed a palm on my chest, sucked in a cleansing breath, and coughed. You’d think I’d be used to the oppressive tang of cigarette smoke that leached into my clothes like stinky eau-de-perfume.

  “Let’s hurry this up. It’s a cinch.” Candy instilled encouragement. “Steve won’t wait all day.” Evidently, she’d practiced the ploy before.

  With minutes to spare, we left the refuge of the girl’s restroom and merged with the students in the halls. We reached the spot of no return as the trilling bell announced the start of the next class. Candy and Dee shouldered the double doors to a shady exit, and I followed like a dumb zombie.

  “Oh, shit,” hissed Dee as she flattened her body against the building.

  Candy and I imitated her stance. Slathered against the bricks, coolness emanated through my cotton shirt and a shiver raced up my backbone. Dee peeled her head from the wall and looked to the presumably empty corridor, then jerked her chin, signaling for us to move it. We collected on the sidewalk behind the school and meandered as if we belonged outside.

  Candy raised a quizzical brow at Dee.

  “I saw the Dragon,” Dee said. “Hope it’s not a bad omen.”

  “If that’s the case,” Candy said, picking up the pace, “then let’s make it a day to remember.”

  We loped to the corner of the school with our bell-bottom jeans flapping around our legs. The area was deserted, of course, because everyone was inside.