The Scapegracers

by Hannah Abigail Clarke

  “That sounds sick. But no.” Witchcraft questions are always locked and loaded, and I could blow myself away if I worded the answer wrong. I opted for a half-truth. Half-truths are easier to swallow. “My dads own an antique shop. Lots of weird vintage shit in there. I found a lot of occult texts and esoteric lexicons in the back room. That, and the internet.”

  “Whoa, your folks own an antique shop? Which one?” Yates perked up and peered at me over her shoulder.

  “Rothschild & Pike. It’s the Addams Family-looking place on Main.”

  “For real? I love Rothschild & Pike! I buy all my jewelry from there. Is your dad Julian? I was just about to ask him for a job, because my mom thinks I need more work experience on my résumé. It’s a drag, but that’s fair, I guess. If I must work, I’d like it to be for him. He’s human sunshine.” Yates punctuated her sentence with a little shrug and a wink in my direction before she seized Jing’s foot by the ankle and swished a generous portion of nail polish across her big toe. Not the nail. The knuckle.

  “Twat,” Jing said with a jolt.

  “Yeah. Julian is my dad. One of them, anyway.” I snickered a little, rocked my head forward to make Daisy’s reach easier. The second braid was nearing the back of my neck, and I tried not to shiver when her nails brushed my spine. “Boris is the other half of it. The Rothschild half, that is. Also dad.”

  Daisy’s hands were on the tips of my shoulders, and my scalp still sang under phantom fingertips. I was going to be hooked on this like nicotine, whatever this was. Affection, maybe. Wasn’t sure. “So, were you adopted?” Daisy’s voice was distant, twinged with something chilly. It sounded like a challenge, but I couldn’t fathom what that challenge could possibly be.

  “Fucking obviously.” I made a sound in the back of my throat.

  The silence behind me was so coarse I could feel it. It felt like steel wool shoved up against my chest. Jing and Yates looked at each other for a second, then at me, and then pointedly at the slasher flick. My throat tensed up. Dread slipped down my sternum like a dry-swallowed ice cube, and the heaven Daisy was weaving into the back of my head dissolved into nothing. She finished my braids without a word. When she tied them off, she lowered them between my shoulder blades and leaned forward, rested her elbows on either side of my neck.

  “Tell me more,” she said.

  The back of my throat felt like tar.

  “Daisy, don’t,” Jing said under her breath. Something shifted in her shoulders. “Just don’t.”

  “No. It’s fine.” I jammed my tongue against my gums. “My mom’s dead. Julian is mom’s brother. He and his husband took me in.”

  A couple in a convertible was hacked to pieces, and their awful, campy shrieking echoed through the room. There wasn’t any other sound. The bedroom was a vacuum. I felt Daisy’s breath rustle the wispies on the back of my neck, but I couldn’t hear her breathing. Her nose was needle-close to my skull. Daisy’s body ran a few degrees warmer than mine, and it radiated like a faint young sun, faint but unmistakable down my back and around my sides.

  She was waiting for something. I wasn’t sure what.

  “Must be something in the weather,” Daisy said. “My mom croaked, too. She’s under that smug angel in the boneyard on Hickory Street. The one with all the garlands and Annabel Lee.” Her voice was hushed, just loud enough that I’d hear her. There was a crookedness in her tone, something sharp and red and raw. I recognized that tone of voice. It sounded a lot like mine.

  My mouth twisted upward. It wasn’t out of mirth. “We should start a club.”

  She extended her arms, crossed them over my sternum and twined them around my ribs. Her body burned. It let off a strange, violent energy, something that jolted through my bones like a fever. Daisy’s arms were a bit like witchcraft. It was almost too warm to breathe.

  “You’re nervous,” she whispered. “Don’t be. I just decided not to bite.” Then she released me. Cold air flooded my pores, and Daisy gave the room a drawn-out yawn. “I don’t like these braids.” Lazy, cocky. “I’m redoing them. Does anyone have any gum?”

  No one had any gum.

  Daisy clicked her tongue. Cracked her knuckles. She started unraveling the undoubtedly perfect braids she had just finished. I didn’t say anything to contradict her.

  Yates chanced a glance in my direction. “Which lunch period do you have?”

  I chewed on the inside of my cheeks. “C.” The suckiest one, naturally. “Why?”

  “Who do you usually sit with?”

  Fucking, I sat with nobody, that’s who. Just me and myself by the stage. Who the hell was there to sit with, anyway? There were the Drama kids, but we weren’t friends-friends even when we did hang out. I hadn’t been forgiven by most of actors for being given an understudy part despite being an oh-so lowly crew kid. One of only two crew kids, to be specific, and the only one who can even lift the planks of wood when we’re building sets. Also, there was still beef over the time when I might’ve gotten into a physical altercation with the stage manager. The person I was the closest to was Mickey-Dick (technically Michael Richardson), who I was friends with in a class-partner way but not a hanging-out-after-school way. He was still weird about the fact that I might’ve fooled around with his ex-girlfriend at the world’s most terrible improv camp last summer. Not that there are . . . like, great improv camps. And they weren’t even together at the time! Anyway, the point is that none of them had any interest in sitting with me, and I didn’t particularly covet them, either. “I move around,” I said. “Why d’you ask?”

  “We have C lunch, too.” Yates gave me a little nod. “So, you should sit with us, if you want.”

  “Yeah, I’ll think about it.” I tangled my fists in the carpet. The fur was about the same consistency of a Valentine’s Day bear, cheap and sugary. Something told me that if I gave it a good tug, it’d come out by the bushel. I fought the urge.

  “Think about it? Excuse me, Sideways, but did I just hear you say you’ll think about it?” You would’ve thought I’d called Daisy every slur in the book, the way she bristled. Her voice was nasal, accusatory. I didn’t have to see the snarl to feel it.

  The air knocked out of my lungs.

  Daisy weighed substantially more than she looked. She slammed me down face first, and she rolled me over before she pinned me. Her fringe swung with momentum. Daisy broke into a grin, and she braced her knee against my diaphragm, leered down over my face. “You have to sit with us. You can’t curse a fuckboy with us and share a sob story without being one of us, Sideways Pike. You ain’t got a choice.”

  My stomach split its seams. I bucked, grabbed her around the middle and tossed her on the rug beside me. She hit the floor with an oof. She flashed a grin.

  “Y’all should’ve warned me that friendship with you three was mandatory. Is there a contract? Are there terms and conditions for me to reckon with?”

  “Yeah. Rule one: I always win play fights.” Daisy clambered back on top of me, moved like she was going to shoulder check my neck. I broke into a laugh, but my laugh flatlined before the sound could leave my mouth. Daisy’s body crushed against mine. Her ribs poked my ribs. She made a sound like a squeak toy underfoot.

  A slender, bracelet-bound wrist flopped by the side of my face.

  Yates. The extra weight was Yates.

  The air squished out of my lungs.

  “Jesus,” I wheezed. I jerked one of my arms out from under Daisy’s stomach and reached out to absently claw at the carpet, but it was damn clear where the leverage was here. The leverage was not with me. I couldn’t toss them off. A sloppy smile slapped across my face. “Mercy. Fucking have mercy. Yates. Daisy. I’m dying.”

  “Yeah, guys. You heard the woman. She’s dying.” Jing, out of the corner of my eye, cast her arms behind her head and kicked her feet up on the pile, suave as a pinup at a tropical resort. Give her a Bloody Mary and beach towel and she’d be perfect. She pursed her lips into a faux smile.

  Laughing
hurt. Goddamn, did I hurt.

  Brightly, from the corner of a table, warbled Morrissey.

  That’d be my ringtone.

  “Off,” I moaned, wriggling under the triple girl weight. “That’s my phone! Off. Daisy, damn it . . .”

  Jing reached one of her long arms over to my phone and plucked it up. She nonchalantly tapped at the screen, and the ringing stopped. She pressed it to her ear.

  She’d guessed my password.

  I was as horrified as I was impressed.

  “Hi. Eloise can’t come to the phone right now. Can I take a message?” Jing twirled a lock of hair around her finger. She spoke with the high, over-polite timbre of a girly receptionist, and her expression twisted into something grotesque. Smug bastard. I contemplated punching her squarely in the neck. Lucky for her, I couldn’t presently move my arms.

  Muffled surprise from the other end. I couldn’t make out the words.

  “Oh! One second.” Jing cradled my phone against her heart and gave me her best patronizing whisper: “Sideways, it’s your father.”

  Fuck. That could be either really good or really bad. “Which father?” I hissed between my teeth.

  She returned the phone to her cheek. “Right. Which father?” She paused, nodded, then cleared her throat and resumed her previous pose, iPhone to sternum, lashes fluttering like a bird mid-flight. “It’s Julian.”

  Shit.

  Jing looked me in the face and wordlessly understood. Her eyes stretched wide. She pressed my phone to my cheek and I coughed once, scrambled to hook my hand around the quickly slipping phone.

  “Hey. Right. What’s up?” I pressed my cheek against the rug in an act of submission to whatever righteous onslaught heaven was about to deal me for being a bad kid. I probably deserved it, whatever it was. Julian Pike was the single most kind-hearted human being on the face of the earth, and anyone who made him nervous deserved to rot. Fucking Julian. Why couldn’t it have been Boris?

  “Eloise?” I cringed, shaped a string of compound cuss words that didn’t leave my mouth. Eloise. He was definitely nervous. “Sweetie, could you kindly tell me where you are and that you’re not dead? Your father has been up all night worrying about you,” he said slowly, sugarly, sounding earnest. He was not being earnest. The father he was referring to was Boris, and Boris was a huge advocate for me “experiencing my youth uninhibited.” He always went on about measured indulgence in “whatever my spirit told me to pursue,” which included all the nonsense I’d tangled myself in, the fight club that didn’t happen, and my habit of disappearing for a night whenever I was too tense to be home. Boris sure as hell wasn’t worried. He wouldn’t be worried until two days from now. Julian, on the other hand? The fact that he was framing it this way stung like a boot to the face. He was being polite, which meant he didn’t want me to feel yelled at, which means he really ought to be yelling at me. Which of course yanked the bubblegum off the hole on my Hoover Dam of guilt. It sloshed out cold and soaked my insides, and I was drenched in it.

  I gritted my teeth. “Oh, man. Look, I’m sorry, I’m sleeping over at a friend’s house. I thought I’d texted you. Must not have. Sorry about that. Wouldn’t want Boris to worry or anything, I really wouldn’t,” I said, but I felt myself trail off.

  Silence buzzed on the other end.

  Me running away to live in Cuba with a washed-up rock star would’ve sounded more plausible than me sleeping over at a friend’s house.

  Julian didn’t ask who those friends might be, thank God. He went quiet for a moment, and after an agonizing breath, he cleared his throat, sounding as dad-like as can be. “Well, then. Are you having fun?”

  “Oodles,” I said.

  Daisy cackled.

  “When will you be home? Will you need a ride?”

  Yates, from the top of the stack, hiked her voice up an octave higher that it usually was. “I’ll give her a ride! She’ll be home tomorrow! Thanks, Julian!”

  A weary half chuckle from Dad’s end. “Right. Okay, well. Text me if you need anything at all, Lamby.”

  Lamby. Yikes.

  “Capisce. Gotta scram. Love you,” I said, and I hung up directly after. I released the phone. It clattered to the floor beside my cheek.

  “If he isn’t the nicest guy! He’s so chill about things. Envious,” Yates yawned. She repositioned herself on top of Daisy and made herself comfortable, which triggered a line of impressively prickly cuss words out of Daisy. For some reason, I hadn’t thought that pretty girls could curse like the rest of us. Misconception noted.

  “Language,” Yates said breezily.

  “Life is hell,” Daisy snapped.

  I coughed into my shoulder. “Says the chick in the middle of the stack.”

  Jing swung her feet off our girl pyre. She popped upright, slinked across the room, and slid open her closet door, and there was a rustling, a shuffling of fabric against fabric. A thunk as something hit the bed. Her voice, when she spoke, had royal gravity to it. Genuine confidence. “Sideways. What’s your dress size?”

  “Why?”

  “We’re going out. You’re still in crusty booze smelling clothes from yesterday. I wagered you might want to borrow a dress,” she mused. There was a swish sound as she pulled more fabric from her closet and flung it on her bed.

  “What, that new slasher flick you keep going on about? The showing was at eight thirty,” Daisy said. “Why get dressed so early?”

  “Because it’s already seven o’clock, Daze. Did you losers not notice it get dark outside?”

  “Kind of hard from down here,” said Daisy with a groan. She writhed under Yates, which drove her elbow into my guts. I jolted, but didn’t shove her back. Even with her cheer abs, Daisy was smaller than me, and accidentally snapping her in half wouldn’t bode well for this newfound friendship. Assuming this was a friendship.

  “Right,” I said. “Yeah. I’m not your dress size.”

  “We’ll see.” Jing leaned down beside us. A lock of her bleach-blond hair dangled by my cheek. Then, with a sneer, she seized Daisy by her shoulder and her waistband and hurled her off me, sending Yates toppling in her wake. Yates and Daisy hit the ground beside me with matching sounds of pain. Jing took me by the hand and hauled me upright.

  “You’ve got a helluva arm,” I said.

  “I know,” she replied. She cocked her brow and gestured behind her. “Now, try this on, would you?”

  The dress was mighty tight. Mighty tight and very short. Dangerously short.

  I’d seen Jing in this dress before. When she wore it, it barely touched her. The bloody violet velvet always drifted a half centimeter over her skin and fell around her knees in a loose, easygoing line. It made her look elegant. On me, it was tight. It fit snugly over my ribs and my stomach and my hipbones, and the knee-length hem was suddenly thigh length, and only just. Spaghetti straps threatened to snap.

  Daisy and Yates had their hands clasped over their hearts.

  “Jesus, Sideways.” There was an element of genuine awe in Daisy’s voice. Her eyes fixed on my torso, and I shifted, crossed my arms over my chest. The braids on either side of my head swung off my shoulders and dangled down my back. Daisy leaned closer. “You’re kind of a babe in that, you know. You could get so much dick in that dress,” she said. She smacked her lips. “Making me question myself, girl.”

  Ha, no. “Getting dick has never been a big concern of mine,” I snapped. Well, getting girl dick, maybe, but whatever. Wasn’t what she’d meant. I crossed my arms over my chest and rocked back on my heels, made a point of not looking in the mirror. Looking in the mirror felt like a potentially catastrophic move.

  “Daze, get it right. Sideways is dressed to be a lady-killer. She’s a lezzie magnet,” Jing drawled, and she rotated her pointer finger in little circles. Spin for me.

  Stupid. This was stupid. My body was obedient, nonetheless. I pivoted, half expecting all the seams to pop, and Jing let a smirk flash across her face.

  “Erm. Jing. Shou
ld you say that word? Isn’t it a tad inappropriate for a straight girl to say that sort of thing?” Yates cocked her head to the side and knotted her brows. She slipped her pinky between her lips and gnawed on the nail. “I feel like it is.”

  Jing shrugged. She leaned back against the vanity table and watched me for a long moment, evidently satisfied with herself. She narrowed her eyes a touch. Bit the corner of her lip. “Probably,” she said.

  “Jing,” Yates started, but she trailed off.

  “I don’t know, man. It’s, whatever,” said Jing. She leaned back, stretched her arms above her head, and gave me a look that sank somewhere deep in my core. Wordless, with feline fluidity, she turned her back on us and plucked up a vial of lipstick. She uncapped it and leaned toward her reflection, pressed the rouge to her bottom lip.

  “Cool,” I said.

  Yates and Daisy looked at each other, and then at me, as if I would tell them what they hadn’t telepathically understood. I shrugged.

  “Yeah.” Jing put down the lipstick and leaned back, gave herself a once-over in the mirror. Her reflection met my gaze. “I’m bisexual. I’m pretty goddamn sure about that.” Her tone was casual, nonchalant, but I heard the edge in it and understood. “Discreetly, that is. For now.”

  “Roger.” I nodded, and Yates and Daisy gave their scattered agreements.

  Jing snapped three pale clips in her hair, tossed her head back, and looked down her nose at herself. “Good,” she sneered. She bounced on the balls of her feet and whirled around, snatched a jacket off her chair. “Let’s go seize the world.”

  FOUR

  AT THE LATE-NIGHT DOUBLE FEATURE PICTURE SHOW

  There were three theaters within a reasonable drive from Sycamore Gorge. Two of them were part of huge chain corporations, their tickets were expensive, and the snacks were subpar. No one went to either. Instead, the dive of choice was the Gorge’s own dilapidated Queen’s Cinema. It ought to be condemned. It was a crumbling ramshackle slot at the end of Main Street, splattered with spray paint and dripping hairy vines, and the second light-up E in QUEEN’S had been broken for the past three years. A group of cardinals had nested inside it. Through the industrial doors, the inside smelled like pickle brine and caramel. Outdated movie posters sat crooked and warped behind cracked glass cases, and seedy pop music mixed with the techno jingle of arcade games. The staff wasn’t paid enough to give a damn about mopping up the slushy splatters or the crushed popcorn, so every step on the bowling-alley carpet crunched underfoot.