Twice Shy (6 page)

"I'm telling you," Fey said, "you should press charges. And sue for damages."

Dylan fingered his chipped tooth with his tongue. "I'm not that damaged." He took a swig of beer. "Besides, they'll pay. Not with money, and not today. But I'll make them suffer."

Fey smirked. "You going to read them your poetry?"

Dylan's hands balled into fists. "You little—"

"You guys doing anything for Halloween?" Jake interrupted. Fey shook her head. Dylan shrugged.

"I'll be at the Lair," Ani said. "Travis has some big vampire party there every year, and he's paying double time. You?"

Dylan's smile was almost a snarl. "I'm going to cover myself in fake blood and shamble down the sidewalk scaring little kids."

Jake snorted. "You'll get busted."

Dylan shook his head. "Not with a mask. The cops can't catch me, even if they see me."

Zombie costumes had been outlawed in most states nine years ago, after a survivor ambushed some trick-or-treaters with a gas can and a propane torch. The ACLU took it to the Supreme Court, said it was an infringement on free speech. The Supreme Court upheld the ban on public zombie costumes, but struck it down for private events.
And here I spend most of my time trying not to look like a corpse.

"What if someone shoots you in the head?" Fey asked.

Dylan's eyes sparkled. "Can you imagine? That'd be awesome."

Fey rolled her eyes.

*  *  *

Red wine in bottles labeled "blood."
Hors d'oeuvres
shaped like eyeballs, fingers, ankhs, and werewolf claws. Ani had never seen so many Twilight haircuts and undead slut costumes in her life, and the Lair was packed with sweating, heaving bodies. Travis had been holding vampire parties for twenty years, but in the past few, they'd just exploded. That the youngest person there was at least thirty just made it all that much more pathetic.

Blood-red candles and strobe lights were the only illumination. The pulsing, flickering beat clashed with the haunting violin melodies of Leila Josefowicz on the cheap stereo. Even with the doors propped open, it was steaming hot. The whole place reeked of incense, perfume, and body odor—much like the black velvet cape Travis had talked her into wearing. She looked at the clock.

Ten thirty. An hour and a half left.
She put her hands in her sleeves and ran her fingertips along the crisscrossed scars. She'd pulled the stitches out a week earlier, and they'd left no marks. She took a woman's coat to the stock room—at least at this party, nobody commented if you didn't smile.

As she hung the coat, a hand touched hers. Travis jerked his hand back. "God, you're like
ice
."

"Poor circulation," she said.

Travis' face was blotchy, his eyes glassy with wine, and he stood so close she could feel his breath on her face. He looked at his fingers, rubbed them together. "I guess." He closed his eyes tight and leaned even closer, then popped them open. Ani wondered if double time was worth an uncomfortable moment with her intoxicated boss. He licked his lips. "I need you to get another two boxes of
hors d'oeuvres
and get them in the oven. We're getting low."

Thank God.
"Sure thing," she said, ducking past him.

She slipped out the back door and savored the cold night air. A siren wailed in the distance, and she idly wondered if someone had shot Dylan. She cut around the store into the alley, where Travis had stacked the food. A cat hissed at her, then bolted for the street.

"It's chilly." She jumped at the voice, then turned around. A figure smiled in the shadows, and the street light picked up straight teeth with a chipped incisor.
Dylan.

"I thought you were scaring little kids," Ani said. "You sure scared me."

"I can see my breath," he replied. She saw it too, a curling mist against the darkness of the cinderblock wall.

She turned around and picked up a case, shielding her face from his. "Help me with these, would you?" She turned around and shoved a case in his arms. He took it, but didn't stop looking at her. She picked up the other box and walked toward the door, keeping her back to him.

"What about you?" he asked.

She neared the corner. "I'm stuck here until midnight."

A hand on her arm spun her around. The box tumbled to the ground next to his. He grabbed her by the shoulders and stared into her eyes. His were blue flecked with gold—she'd never noticed before—and his pupils were huge. She breathed out very, very slowly, so that he wouldn't see it. She didn't flinch as he leaned in, close enough to kiss. She breathed in. His warm breath reeked of cheap gin.

"When you walked out here, I couldn't see your breath," Dylan said. He squeezed, hard, digging his fingernails into her shoulders right through the cape. His eyes blazed. "Breathe for me, bitch."

She brought her knee up into his groin as hard as she could. He grunted and stumbled back, falling to the side in a fetal position.

She stacked one box on the other and picked them both up. "Don't ever presume to touch me again, Dylan." He squirmed; his eyes rolled back so she could only see the whites.

She ducked inside in desperate panic, her heart beating in perfect, mechanical rhythm in her chest.

*  *  *

By midnight, she'd made five more trips to the alley and hadn't seen any sign of Dylan. The party had, for the most part, moved upstairs to Travis's apartment, and after she turned down an awkward invitation to "join in," he told her to go home. She ditched the stupid cape behind the counter, set the alarm, and left through the front door.

The night was quiet, except for the wind rustling the leaves of the few trees that still had them, and the bitter cold froze her hands through her gloves. She pulled her coat tight, not because she needed it but because someone might see her, and set off toward home. She heard a car coming up behind her, so she crossed to the left side of the road well in front of the headlights.

The car slowed as it approached. She turned to look and something splattered across her face. She smelled rotting apple, sickly-sweet and foul. Whooping laughs and shouts of "FREAK!" and "CUTTER!" accompanied spitting gravel as Keegan's rusty Camaro lurched forward. Rocks peppered her, and she slipped, trying to avoid them. Her head hit the curb at the same time as her hands.

Head ringing, she reached up and felt her face. There was a jagged tear in her right cheek. Her finger went right through and touched her tongue.
Gross.
She fingered the wound for a moment, then got up and hurried home, her hand pressed to her cheek.

If Mom sees this, I'm never leaving the house again.

*  *  *

Her mom was asleep when she got home. She half-slammed the door and tromped up the stairs to the bathroom—sneaking would inevitably backfire—and her mom called out from her bedroom. "How was the party?"

"Fine. I'm getting in the bath in a minute."

"Okay, sweetie," her mom said, voice groggy. "See you in the morning."

"Good night, Mom." She walked into the bathroom, turned on the light, and shut the door. She thought about locking it, but that would just make her mom curious.

She looked in the mirror.
Oh, crap.
It was worse than she thought. The wound was a quarter-sized gash from her jaw to her cheekbone, and she could see her tongue through the hole. She poked her tongue through, then pulled it back.
That's disgusting.
No amount of regenerative cream would fix that wound overnight. She got an idea, and headed to the sewing room.
If you have to be a freak, you might as well own it.

Chapter 9

The lights came up in the bath, and Ani pressed the button to raise the lid. The familiar hiss as the seal released was a relief—it always was. The coolant pump kicked on as she lifted the lid, and the gooey mixture of formalin and other noxious chemicals ran off her body into the floor drain her mother had installed between her bedroom and the bathroom.

She toweled off, got dressed, put on some vanilla perfume, and ran down the stairs. She walked into the kitchen while her mom had a spoon full of cereal halfway to her mouth. "Hi, Mom!" she said. The spoon froze, and her mom’s mouth with it. Ani smiled.

Her mom reached up and touched her own cheek. "What. Did you do. To your face?"

Ani ran her hand down the fourteen safety pins in her cheek, bunched so tight that the stitches in the skin beneath didn't show. "You said I could get whatever piercings I wanted to."

Her mom set the spoon down. "That's disgusting."

Ani grinned. "It's school picture day."

"Ah," she said. "I forgot." She pushed the bowl away and stood from the table, her face tinged green. "Rebel as you must, my darling child. Just keep your grades up."

"I will."

As her mom walked into the bedroom, Ani followed her.

"Hey, Mom, I noticed something yesterday."

"Oh, yeah, what's that?" Her mom had already showered and thrown on scrubs for the day. She always wore scrubs to work, called it a perk of being a nurse.

"In this cold weather, when I breathe out, there's no mist. What if someone notices that?"

Her mom sat on the bed to put on her shoes. "Huh. Good thought." She tied her shoes, thinking. "Keep a bottle of water with you, and just before you go outside, inhale a capful or two. That should do the trick."

"Okay, Mom, I'll try it on my way out to the bus. Love you!"

*  *  *

Her breath fogged nicely as she waited for the bus. Kids gaped in astonishment as she got on, and murmurs accompanied her to her seat. This time they amused her—she might be falling apart, but she'd beaten the rules, and beaten the odds, again. She was still free. She could deal with Dylan.
If he even remembers anything.
She sat down and turned her head to the window, feigning sleep as the bus stopped in front of the Daniels's House.

Fey dropped into the seat beside her, and a glance revealed perfect hair, perfect makeup, a polished nose stud, and polished eyebrow rings.

"Hey, Fey. You look nice today."

"Thanks," she said. Ani turned toward her as Fey handed her the iPod's right headphone. "So do—holy shit! What did you do?" Her eyes wide, she reached up and ran her fingers down the safety pins. "That is some crazy shit, Ani." Without further comment she sat back, put the other headphone in her ear, and closed her eyes.

*  *  *

Dylan wasn't in school. Jake texted him, and he claimed to be hung over after waking up freezing in a dumpster.
I hope that's true,
Ani thought. In the bath last night, she'd had plenty of time to think about how far she'd go to keep him quiet.
Could I do it?
Ignorance is bliss. She wasn't even sure what "it" was at this point.

She got more disgusted looks by the end of the day than she'd had all year, and the only one that hurt was Mike's. She'd walked into Trig and he looked up, grimaced, and looked away. He didn't say a word to her through the whole class.
Yeah, well, if I didn't do it I'd never see you again.
She'd rather gross him out than be a memory.

Fey was acting funny by the time they got on the bus. It wasn't quite the silent treatment, and it wasn't the I-don't-care-about-anything malaise. It was monosyllabic, standoffish, and grumpy. She scowled down the aisle, arms folded.

"What's up?" she asked.
Don't ever ask emo kids "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Fey said. She turned her body toward the aisle and didn't offer the headphone.

Ani nibbled her bottom lip.
Do I pursue this one, or let it go?
"Are you pissed at me?"

Fey rolled her eyes. "No. I'm not pissed at you. Why would I be pissed at you?"

"Then what?"

Fey sighed. She rolled her head to the side to look Ani in the eyes, then shifted her body to face her. "Look at you."

Ani looked down at herself, then back at Fey. Fey’s eyes were bloodshot, her skin flushed pink under the heavy pale makeup. "I don't know what to say, Fey. What do you see?"

Fey reached over and ran a finger down her unblemished left cheek, an oddly intimate gesture. "Everyone was talking about you today. Everyone."

"Yeah," Ani said. "About what a freak I am."
And at least today I deserved it.

"No, you don't understand, that was just the kids. They don't matter. They ain't nothing. Who cares what a bunch of morons say?"

Ani shook her head, confused. "What are you saying?"

Fey crossed her arms. "The teachers. Bariteau. Weller. Those guys. Every time someone starts talking shit, they say something nice. Ani's a good artist. Ani's a great pianist. A great composer. She works hard. She's going somewhere. She gets out of here, she cleans herself up, she gets a life."

Ani didn't know what to say, so she said nothing. Fey tapped Ani's forehead with her finger, the nail digging at her skin.

"Hey, Ani? You in there? You understand what I'm saying here? I'm not pissed at you. I'm pissed because of you."

Now she was really confused. "Fey, I... Why would that make you mad?"

"Because if I had the balls to show up to school with a bazillion safety pins in my cheek, and kids talked about me, you know what the teachers would say?"

Ani came up blank. "No."

"Not a damn thing."

She handed Ani the headphone.
Damn. I was hoping she'd forget.
They rode home to My Chemical Romance.

*  *  *

When she got home, the Audi was already in the driveway. She walked in the house and her mom was at the kitchen table, a paper with school letterhead in her hand. "What is this?"

"Uh..." Ani said. "I don't know, Mom. What is that?"

"You'd think it'd be about your face, but it can't be, because this is postmarked last Friday."

"Mom… what? You have to tell me what it is."

"Conference requests. Weller. Gursslin. Johnson." She gestured to a chair. "Sit." Ani sat. "Explain."

"Mom, my grades have slid a little." Her mom's eyebrow went up.
I hate that eyebrow.
"Not much. Nothing less than a B- minus."
I hope.