Weird Girl (21 page)

26

Still, she couldn’t quite shake the loneliness when she got
back. Even with Vera in the house, and an army of gardeners, Cleo was restless.
So, in August, when she finally got her driver’s license, she did two things:
she started breaking into houses, and she went to high school.

With her new blue Jeep, Cleo now had the mobility to go
anywhere, for any reason. Vera had never been good at being an authority
figure, and she had stopped trying sometime during Cleo’s time at college. So,
some mornings, Cleo would just choose a direction and drive, exploring her home
town and looking for interesting B&E opportunities. Occasionally, she would
pick a lock and spend a couple of hours watching talk shows in a stranger’s
living room while he or she was at work. One day while meandering in the car,
she happened to drive past a high school near lunchtime, when some students
were headed to the cafeteria and others (mainly seniors) were leaving campus
for the day. Intrigued, Cleo parked in the parents’ lane and watched them in
their little groups until a security officer tapped on the window. “Oh, my
gosh! I just remembered that my sister is home sick today. I don’t even have to
give her a ride,” she said, hitting herself on the forehead to emphasize her
ditziness as she slowly pulled away.

She couldn’t stop thinking about it. All of those people,
all of those
boys
…. The following week, she drove to the school and
parked until the midday bell rang, and then she got out of the car, squared her
shoulders, and walked to the cafeteria with the rest of the herd. It was easy
to pretend to be a student, since the school had around 2,000 enrolled. The
thrill of being where she shouldn’t was just as powerful here as it was when
she sat in someone’s home, except that here she could create an identity and
interact with people her own age. Cleo started working this into her routine
two or three times a week. And people actually
talked
to her now. She
was so mysterious—nobody had a class with her, nobody had seen her before, and
she was interesting, and enigmatic, and worldly. At five foot six, she would
never be considered tall, but the puberty fairy had given her perfect skin,
silky hair, and C-cups. She spoke
French
. Within a month, she was
integrated into the popular group from the junior class. Within two months, a
boy named Nick had started asking her out. Their first date was at a bowling
alley, and when he let her win, she knew he was up to something. Which was
good, because so was she.

On their third date, she let him kiss her. On the fourth, she
pulled him by the shirt front into the back of the jeep and let him teach her
how to French kiss. When she dropped him off at his house, and he kissed her
goodbye, she said, “I think next time, we should have sex, don’t you?” She
drove away, leaving him standing in the driveway with his mouth hanging open.

It took her three tries to lose her virginity, which she had
resolved to get out of the way, thinking that it was the last thing that kept
her from fully crossing the threshold to adulthood. The first time, Nick came
to the house with sunflowers. “They remind me of your eyes,” he said, somewhat
dramatically, at which point Cleo burst out laughing. To soothe his bruised
ego, she told him how handsome he looked in his red letterman’s jacket—and he
was. Nick had dark, slightly wavy, thick hair and blue eyes, and a dangerous
dimple in his left cheek when he smiled.

She took him on a brief tour of the house, ending in her
parents’ bedroom. As Nick wandered the room, gasping over the displays of
humanoid skulls, brightly painted spear shafts, and feathers and preserved
butterflies under clear glass domes, Cleo surreptitiously locked the door and
pulled the band out of her hair, allowing the chestnut strands to cascade
around her shoulders. By the time Nick had investigated every pressed flower,
preserved between glass panels and hung on the wall in matching frames, Cleo
had removed her shoes and jacket and was unbuttoning the top two buttons of her
blouse.

Then, he made it to the large, built-in bookcases. “The ones
my dad wrote are on the left, and mom’s are on the right,” she said absently,
as she slid her belt from the loops on her jeans and tossed it over her
shoulder.

“Dude, your dad’s name is Darwin?” he exclaimed. “Holy shit!
We learned about that guy in school last year. Whoa! Your dad is, like, a
hundred years old or something!”

Cleo smiled and exhaled slowly between clenched teeth. After
all, she hadn’t chosen Nick for his brains. She was reminded of this when he
finally caught sight of her, in the midst of undressing, and smiled. That
dimple would get him far in life.

He shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it over a heavily
carved chair. Reaching behind his head, he grabbed the collar of his t-shirt
and pulled it off, flexing some impressive muscles in the process. Cleo removed
her blouse and jeans, waiting for him to do the same. When they both stood in
their underwear, she opened the top bureau drawer and handed him a jar of blue
paint. “Here, you get started with the body paint, and I’ll put on the music,”
she said.

Nick was confused, but a male will do almost anything a
female asks, as long as he has a hope of getting laid. “Ummm…where should I put
it?” he asked nervously. “All over,” she replied as she dug through a wooden
crate full of record albums.

He dipped two fingers into the goopy mass and began smearing
it on his pecs. It felt gross, and it was cold. Once his chest was blue, he
grimaced and carelessly wiped his hand across his abs. Suddenly, she was right
in front of him. “No, like this,” she said, dipping her fingers in the jar and
slowly drawing irregular stripes down his abs. In the blink of an eye, Nick
felt all of his trepidation vanish, and a warm feeling began in his belly,
right in the vicinity of Cleo’s cool fingers. He caught her wrist with his
hand, stopping her mid-stripe. “I think you’d better let me finish that,” he
said, a new roughness in his voice. He took the jar away and continued painting
the stripes all the way to the waistband of his boxers.

Cleo painted a pattern of dots on her torso, above and below
her bra, followed by wavy lines on her thighs. Smiling with much more
confidence than she felt, she said, “Okay, time for the music,” and then turned
on the ancient phonograph.

Nick flinched at the sounds that erupted from the metal
funnel on top of the record player. He had been expecting something along the
lines of vintage rock, but what he got was pounding drums and war cries. When
Cleo solemnly handed him a gourd with a large hole in the back, and strings
attached to the sides, his heart acquired a very irregular rhythm, and he
started to sweat. “What am I supposed to do with this?” he asked nervously.

“You put it on…you know,” she said, nodding at his nether
regions.

And with that, the wind suddenly left his sails, so to
speak. Nick stood there, paralyzed. Here was a seminude girl. She was willing
to have sex with him. She had
asked
to have sex with him. It was a sure
thing. His brain wanted sex. But…his body was no longer so sure. The pounding
drums reached a crescendo, and an ear-splitting yodel came out of the dusty
speaker. “I don’t think I can do this,” he said, reaching for his pants and
hurrying to add a layer of denim to hide his shame. He was dressed and out the
door within ninety seconds. Cleo was pissed.

***

She made him suffer for two weeks, forcing him to grovel at
her feet on a daily basis, not even batting an eyelash when he told her that as
soon as he got home that night, he realized what a huge mistake he had made (
sex
sex sex sex
, his brain had said). So, she invited him over again. “No body
paint this time,” he begged, and she agreed.

The second time she tried to lose her virginity, Nick showed
up with a heart-shaped box of chocolates. “They remind me of your eyes,” he
said, because that is the extent of any high school boy’s knowledge of romance.
She rolled her eyes, grabbed him by the hand, and took him back to her parents’
room. This time, he started by kissing her. She was wearing a sundress and
cardigan this time, an outfit carefully calculated for its easy access. Nick
slid the cardigan down her arms and dropped it to the floor. Next came the
dress, swishing down her body to pool on the carpet around her feet. He shed
some of his own clothing and resumed kissing her, tangling his fingers in her
hair. Finally, she pushed him away with her hands and looked him dead in the
eye as she took her bra off. The sight of her breasts jolted him into
overdrive, and within seconds, he was completely naked and ready to do anything
she asked. This time, there was no breakdown in communication between his brain
and body.

Until Cleo leaned forward to examine him more closely. “Is
it supposed to be that color?” she asked. There was no judgment, only
curiosity. And Cleo’s curiosity, as always, was endless. “How big do you think
it got? Wait—I have a ruler somewhere….Wow, that’s harder than I thought it
would be. Why is it turning purple? Can I touch it here? OW! My eye! Why did
you do that ohmigod I think I’m blind!”

***

Nick was a pretty good sport about it. He came to her house
unannounced the next night. This time, he brought half a bottle of whiskey and said,
“Let’s go upstairs.” It was music to her ears.

She drank enough to get pleasantly buzzed; he swigged once
from the bottle, just for courage. “Are you sure you still want to do this?” he
asked. When she said yes, he took a red bandana out of his pocket and rolled
it. “Then I’m gonna blindfold you, just so you don’t get distracted. Or, you
know, what happened last night. But if you tell me to stop, I swear I’ll stop.”

Cleo considered the blindfold and shrugged. “As long as I
get laid before I’m an old lady. Let’s do this.”

She undressed and let him tie the scarf over her eyes before
leading her to the bed. Then, she felt the mattress dip as his weight settled
beside her. The alcohol numbed the nervousness, and his lips along her jawline
did the rest. She had just started experiencing enjoyable little tingling
sensations from head to toe, when Nick mumbled, “Okay, let’s go,” she felt a
sudden pain, and then he groaned and collapsed on top of her, nearly
suffocating her to death. She waited patiently for a minute or so for him to
get the tingles going again, but all he did was roll off of her, pat her
awkwardly on the stomach, and mutter something entirely unintelligible.

“Is that seriously all you’ve got?” she demanded. “Are you
fucking kidding me?” Cleo sat up a little too swiftly, swaying a bit as she
ripped off the bandana. Once the dizziness had passed, she glared at Nick, who
was lying on his back looking simultaneously tired, satisfied, and confused.
That really pissed her off.

“Don’t look at me like you don’t know what I’m talking
about, you moron. At what point do I get taken care of? I expect more than a
shove, a grunt, and a snore.” His blank expression sent her off the deep end.
It was Nick’s first experience with Cleo’s rage.

“Your. Job. Is. To. Make. Sure. I. Enjoy. Myself.” She
slapped him on the face and chest with the bandana to emphasize each word.
Then, she slapped him once with an open hand, just for good measure, before
rolling out of the bed. “Asshole!” she screamed, throwing one of his shoes,
with remarkably accurate aim, at his head.

Angry Cleo terrified him. But, she was also naked, and as
she unleashed her fury, it had a remarkable effect on Nick’s manly regions. The
sudden surge in testosterone had him standing up, although he had to duck as a
wooden figurine narrowly missed his left ear and bounced off the headboard. He
walked up to Cleo, weighed the possibility of death and dismemberment against
the absolute necessity of having sex with her again, and grabbed her wrist.
“Come here,” he said, dragging her back to the bed. He may not have been book
smart, but Nick was a boy who didn’t mind taking a little direction.

Cleo used Nick for sex until the end of the school year, and
then broke up with him (publicly, just to see how he would handle it), citing a
need for a boyfriend who was more of an intellectual equal. She may have been
sixteen, technically, but mentally, she was much older.

27

She continued breaking into houses, jotting down notes about
the eccentricities of strangers, enjoying their snacks, feeling like she was a
part of their lives. If the furnishings were threadbare, and the pantry nearly
empty, she would often spend the day hiding money—a twenty in a jacket pocket,
a five shoved between the sofa cushions, a crumpled hundred dollar bill in the
inner pocket of a winter coat.

On a sunny morning in July, Cleo was curled up on a white
leather sofa watching porn (it was already in the DVD player when she got
there, and she was just skimming it out of curiosity). Suddenly amid the
gasping sounds issuing forth from the television speakers, she noticed another
sound: the front door being unlocked. She immediately turned the television off
and started looking for a place to hide, catching a glimpse of a man (John
Parsons, the owner of the house—she had found his Passport in a drawer) kissing
a blonde woman up against the front door. The couple went left, toward the
kitchen, and Cleo darted down the hall and hid in the best place she could
think of: the master closet.

It didn’t turn out to be a very smart option, as the man and
woman could soon be heard moaning and gasping their way down the hall,
punctuated periodically by a thud and rattle as someone was shoved against a
wall hard enough to make all of the artwork crooked. They made it to the
bedroom, where the man promptly picked the woman up and threw her onto the king
sized bed, and both of them began hurriedly removing their clothing.

What followed was a series of gasps, dirty talk, and
barking, along with an impressive amount of flexibility from both parties that
held Cleo’s rapt attention. She watched through the louvered slats of the
closet door until the couple moved out of her line of sight, and then she
cracked the door open so that she could get an unobstructed view with her right
eye. After a brief rest, they were at it for round two, and Cleo finally saw
the woman’s face. It was not the same face that smiled happily from the wedding
photo on the dresser.
Well, cheater, cheater,
she thought.

Panting, the man rolled over onto his back and stared at the
ceiling. The woman rolled out of bed and left the room. The shower started, and
the man went to join her. Cleo took this opportunity to leave.

Cleo made a careful study of this particular house for the
next three weeks. In that time, she learned the following: 1. The bimbo’s name
was Rachel. (John liked to yell it while he was pounding her.); 2. Her boobs
were not real. (Or she rubbed anti-gravity cream on them every day.); 3. The
man’s wife was out of town.

John and Rachel came to the house on Mondays, Thursdays, and
Fridays at 12:30 in the afternoon, presumably on their lunch break. They
christened the kitchen counter, the dining room table, the living room floor,
the washing machine, and all three bedrooms. Cleo sometimes hid in the house;
other times she just parked on the street and watched through the windows.
(Someone should tell John to close the curtains.) She didn’t get a sexual
thrill from watching. Rather, it was more like a scientist observing animals in
captivity.

***

On a Friday, Cleo was once again ensconced in the master
closet, listening to John and Rachel with a fairly jaded attitude. When the
couple were finished, John suddenly stood up and said, “Quick, help me strip
the bed and change the sheets. My wife is coming home today, and I’ve got to
get to the airport. Her flight gets in at 4:10.”

Rachel complied, and the bed linens went into the washing
machine, along with the towels from their joint shower. After exchanging a
passionate kiss, John said, “I’ll just drop you off at the office. I need to
pick up flowers and champagne for Nancy’s welcome home.” Cleo heard the jingle
of keys, and the front door opening and closing.

Hmmm…so he thinks he’s going to get it from Nancy,
too.
Cleo decided to introduce a new variable into John’s controlled
system. She stepped out of her underwear and left them in the middle of the
walk-in closet.
Let’s give John and Nancy something to talk about.
Then
she spent a few minutes putting porn DVDs into the living room and bedroom
players, and turning the volume up to maximum on both televisions. A quick trip
to the bathroom yielded a handful of condoms, which she removed from the
packages and threw in the kitchen trash can, covering them up with wadded up paper
towels. She crumpled the condom wrappers and tossed a couple behind the sofa,
one under the dining room table, a few in the bathroom trash can, and one just
under the edge of the bed. As a last finishing touch, Cleo put the framed
wedding portrait face-down on the dresser. Then, she let herself out the front
door and drove home, wishing that she could see the look on John’s face when Nancy
found the underwear.

She didn’t see his face, but the next morning, Cleo drove
past the house just as a fire truck was pulling into the driveway. There was a
flaming pile of clothes in the yard, and a petite woman with short black hair
was throwing shoes into the fire. Then, she was throwing shoes at the firemen.
Taking advantage of the distraction, John, wearing only boxer shorts and a
button-down shirt, darted out of the house and took a dive over the neighbor’s
hedge. Cleo laughed and sped away.