There was a knock on the door and then it opened. Louise Baker stood in the entrance, and when she stepped aside, Hunter became visible behind her.
“Your friend is here,” she said stiffly.
Hunter smiled and squeezed past her.
“And next time you’re expecting company, you should be available to answer the door. It’s the polite thing to do, Cassandra. He’s never been here before. There was some confusion.”
“They,” Cassandra said, correcting her mom.
“What?”
“Hunter goes by they.”
Louise’s eyes flitted over to Hunter and her lips pressed firmly together, her eyes sweeping over them and lingering on Emma. She’d grabbed a towel from the bathroom and was sitting cross-legged on Cassandra’s bed in the ill-fitting borrowed bikini. Louise Baker’s eyes rested on Emma’s pudgy belly, cratered with fat pockets. “Is that bathing suit damp, Emma?” She asked.
“I have a dry towel under me, Mrs. Baker,” Emma mumbled.
“Please put your clothes on. Lying on the blankets with wet clothes makes them musty.”
“Okay,” Emma said. Hunter met her gaze. They had migrated toward Cassandra’s bookshelf, trying to look inconspicuous.
“Mom, leave us alone,” Cassandra said. “We’re not doing anything.”
Louise hesitated, then closed the door.
“Sorry about her,” Cassandra said to Hunter.
Hunter came to join them on the bed, eyes widening with surprise as they put their knee down. “Cool bed,” they said. “Retro.”
Cassandra grinned. “My mom and stepdad got it for me last month for keeping my grades up since we moved here.”
“Where did you move from?” Hunter asked.
“San Jose. My stepdad works at Google and they wanted to move him out to work at Silicon Beach.”
“Gotcha,” Hunter said with a head bob.
Their eyes roamed Cassandra’s room, taking in the brown shag carpet and old Charlie’s Angels poster with Farrah Fawcett, Jaclyn Smith, and Kate Jackson. The bright yellow analogue phone mounted on the wall covered in floral wallpaper and posters of vintage adverts. One featured a girl slapping her head and scrunching her face. It said, Wow! I could’ve had a V8. Another advert for Salem Longs cigarettes featured a woman sitting in a field. The caption read, We all smoke for enjoyment, remember? A record player with a collection of albums sat in one corner of the room. Old VHS tapes spanned the perimeter of her room on glossy walnut shelves. A handful of times, Cassandra had invited them over for a slumber party double feature movie night.
“You’re a 1970s buff?” Hunter said.
“If the girl could go back in time, she would,” Nisha said, then gestured at Emma. “This one’s obsessed with the eighties.”
“Oh, yeah? Me too,” Hunter said and held up their hand for a high-five. Emma high-fived them.
“This is GOAT though,” Hunter added in appreciation of the effort Cassandra had put into decorating her room.
“Thanks,” she said, looking pleased.
Hunter pulled their small backpack off their shoulders and opened it. “I made cookies.” They pulled out a Tupperware, lifting the green plastic lid to reveal little brown balls. Each of the girls took one.
“They’re raw cookies. I made them with raw chocolate, dates, pumpkin seeds, poppy seeds, cocoa powder, coconut oil, and spirulina.”
Nisha popped one in her mouth. “Mm,” she said with a grimace.
The other girls followed suit. “Do you want to be a chef or something?” Cat asked, nibbling at her cookie ball.
“I don’t know, maybe. I just like to cook. Healthy things, that is.”
“Yeah,” Nisha said. “I think we got that about you.”
Hunter laughed. “Could I use your bathroom? My bladder feels like it’s going to burst.”
“There’s one down the hall,” Cassandra said. “My toilet’s clogged again and I’m not supposed to run the water in my bathroom until the plumber has a look.”
“No problem,” Hunter said, hauling themself off the wobbly bed.
“I’ll show you,” Emma volunteered. “I have to go myself.”
The two left the room and made a right in the hallway. Emma could hear Sam’s husky laugh before they passed her room. The door was open. She stood in the middle of the room, vaping. Donovan sat in a lounge chair beneath the creepy poster of Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen with their eyes cut out and blood dripping from the gouged holes. At that moment, Sam’s eyes caught Emma’s.
“What are you looking at?” She barked, and then marched over and shut her door. Emma scurried away, Hunter behind her.
“You can go first,” she said at the hall bathroom.
“I’ll just be a sec.”
“No rush.”
Emma pulled her towel tighter around herself, waiting. Seconds later, Sam’s door opened and she came out, heading for the hall bathroom. She stopped short when she saw Emma waiting.
“Hey, ugly, someone in there?”
“I’m waiting for Hunter,” Emma said, hunching her shoulders and feeling dirty and worthless. She stared down at her bare feet. Her skin prickled as Sam’s eyes bore into her.
“You don’t mind if I get in there after, do you?” Sam said. “The plumbing’s off in my bathroom.”
“No,” Emma mumbled.
The toilet flushed and there was the sound of the sink running, then Hunter came out, flashing Sam a smile.
“Are you in the ugly club, too?” Sam asked, eyeing them.
Emma wanted to disappear.
“Excuse me?” Hunter said.
“The club my sister and her little dweeb friends have going.”
Hunter’s expression hardened. “Are you harassing me?”
Sam looked taken aback. “No. Didn’t they tell you about their secret little club?”
“If it’s a secret, then why are you talking about it?” Hunter interrogated.
Emma looked at her friend with fresh eyes.
“Whatever. I was just being friendly.”
“You have a funny way of expressing that,” Hunter said, not missing a beat.
Sam’s face reddened. “Can you move? I need to get in there.”
“I believe ‘excuse me’ are the magic words.” Hunter stepped aside, and Sam went in, her face thunderous as she slammed the door.
“Who’s slamming doors?” Louise Dawson called out from somewhere in the house and Emma grabbed Hunter’s arm, laughter exploding out of her nostrils in a loud snort. The two ran back to Cassandra’s room, trying to contain their giggles.
“Oh my god,” Emma breathed into Hunter’s ear. “I can’t believe how good you just told her off. She’s creepy as fuck. Her room looks like a serial killer’s lair. She actually has a poster up that has profile shots of famous serial killers. Like, who wants to look at that?”
“I saw the poster of Mary Kate and Ashley,” Hunter said, widening their eyes.
“I know, right? So creepy. And she’s, like, twenty, but acts like she’s our age.”
The door to Cassandra’s room opened and Nisha stood with her arms folded.
“What are y’all whispering about in this dark hallway?”
“Nothing, just a run in with Sam,” Emma said.
“Oh. That bitch.” Nisha rolled her eyes. “Girl, you just gotta dish it right back at her. That’s the way to deal with hoes like that.”
Hunter and Emma went inside and Nisha closed the door after them.
“You should have seen the way Hunter dealt with Sam,” Emma said. “She couldn’t get away fast enough.”
“What happened?” Cassandra asked.
Emma repeated the exchange and the girls laughed, high-fiving Hunter.
When they’d settled down, Hunter said, “On a more serious note, we need to talk about your derogatory expressions toward women.”
The girls broke out laughing again, but Hunter didn’t even crack a smile.
“Oh, shit, you’re s
erious, Little They,” Nisha said.
“Very,” Hunter said. “There’s no reason to call ourselves or other women disparaging names. It’s belittling. You’re belittling yourselves.”
“Alright, alright, we got a budding feminist on our hands,” Nisha said. “I can hang with that.”
“Good,” Hunter said. “So what’s up with this ugly club? Sam said it was a secret?”
Cassandra punched her pillow, face red. “That bitch!” She stopped, face turning crimson. “I mean—well, you know what I mean. I told her something in confidence and now she’s just telling the whole world.”
“So you do have an ugly club?” Hunter squinted their eyes, uncertainty slackening their features.
“It’s like this,” Nisha said and told them the back story.
Hunter’s expression was pensive as they listened, and when she came to the part about Cat’s mom on the phone all those years ago, Hunter’s eyes softened.
“That’s unfortunate,” they said. “Everyone feels ugly at one time or another, but it’s too bad it got that deep, like with Wren.”
“That girl was not ugly,” Nisha said.
“Yeah. Too bad she didn’t know it.” Hunter looked from one to the other of them. Their words lingered in the wake of silence that followed.
Emma felt something small and hard burst inside of herself. It was like Hunter had punctured an air pocket of toxic wind that had been encasing her mind.
“Seriously, though,” Cat said. “I can’t believe Wren offed herself. I’ve never known someone so high on life. I mean, we weren’t close, but happiness radiated off of her.”
Hunter looked sad and crossed their legs. “I know. One time, I asked Wren why she was so happy, and she just shrugged and said she was born that way. She said when she was small and her dad walked her to school in the mornings, an older neighbor lady used to keep her window open so she could hear Wren singing when she passed her house.”
“Aww,” Cat said.
“How did she end up with Donovan?” Emma asked.
“I don’t know. I never asked her. But she seemed happy with him.”
“You don’t think he was too old for her?” Cat challenged.
“I do,” Hunter said. “But it wasn’t my place to have a lot of opinions about who she was dating. Besides, when people are in love or deeply infatuated, it’s like a drug. Have you ever heard of Helen Fisher?”
The girls shook their heads no.
“She’s an anthropologist and human behavior specialist. I was listening to a podcast interview of her on NPR.”
“What’s NPR?” Nisha asked.
“National Public Radio,” Cassandra said.
“Exactly,” Hunter said. “Anyway, Helen Fisher ran a series of studies on college students who are in love. When researchers put the students who were in love through an MRI machine and looked at their brains, they found this little area at the base of the brain where dopamine cells are found. Dopamine is part of the brain’s reward system. It’s associated with cravings, wanting, and motivation. It’s the same part of the brain that gets, like, stimulated when you feel a rush from cocaine or you’re experiencing romantic love. What Helen found was that the college students’ brains—the people in love—looked a lot like a drug addict’s brain. When you’re in love, your love interest can become an obsession so that all you want to do is think about, talk about, and be with the person you’re obsessed over.”
“Damn,” Nisha said. “That’s some crazy-ass shit.”
“Isn’t it?” Hunter said. “That’s why being in love is often referred to as love sickness, and Wren was really lovesick over Donovan.”
Cat scratched at a bump on her leg, her newly plucked brows drawing together. “It’s strange then that she killed herself because of depression if she was naturally so happy and in love.”
“Maybe Wren and Donovan broke up and she just hadn’t told anyone yet. A breakup could make a person depressed,” Emma said.
Hunter stared at Emma. “They were going to go to Disneyland. Maybe they did break up. That does make sense.”
Emma nodded.
“Homeboy was trolling Emma’s feed a week ago,” Nisha said.
Hunter made a face. “Really?”
“And no offense, Cassandra, but anyone hanging out with that sister of yours has got to have some issues,” Cat said.
“None taken,” Cassandra said.
Cat’s shoulders shot up and she shuddered.
“Ooh, girl, someone walking over your grave?” Nisha asked.
“It all just gives me the creeps,” Cat said.
The memory of the sketch at Gumption’s flashed through Emma’s mind. She hadn’t said anything about it to the other girls. Mostly because she knew Nisha would get defensive. Nisha’s reverence for Gumption bordered on fanaticism.
Chapter 12
It was 4 PM. The temperature had dropped to the low eighties. A gentle billow of conditioned air lowered the temperature inside the house to a comfortable sixty-nine degrees. Gumption had asked Candace to bring her sketch to her studio—the sketch she had started of Wren Mahoney, and which Emma had been eying earlier. The canvas, all rough lines, and feathery shadows was the beginning of something beckoning to Gumption. It now sat next to her newest painting of the naked young woman chowing down her cereal of high-profile rapists and pedophiles. The cereal box next to the bowl was labeled:
I Tried to Fuck Her
She was Married
Sugar Pops
Breakfast of Narcissists
Gumption reclined on her chaise, smoking and thinking. Finally, she got up and went to her computer, pulling up YouTube and Wren Mahoney’s channel. Fascinated, she watched Wren create a new brow look on a friend of hers who she introduced as Poppy.
“Okay, all my YouTube peeps, I’m going to show you how to get that bleached brow look without actually bleaching your brows. You guys have been asking for this one and I’m totally excited to show you what you can do. Ready, Poppy?”
Poppy grinned, shoving a lock of pink hair off her shoulder. “So lit.”
Wren talked a mile a minute, taking the viewer through the steps, the two girls laughing and making comments along the way. The video had 715,000 views and Gumption watched until the end where bubbles of different links appeared. She let it roll to the next video, “How to Create Kissable Lips”.
She watched half of it before pressing pause and scrolling through Wren’s other makeup tutorials, looking for nails. There was nothing on multi-colored nails.
The sound of shouts coming from the street tore at Gumption’s concentration, and she glanced out her window to see Candace standing outside by the gate. A tall young man with dark hair and black hip hop-style clothing leaned toward her, yelling and jabbing his finger in her face. Next to him stood Cassandra Baker’s older sister, her arms crossed. Every few seconds, she did a little toss of her head to keep a lock of hair from falling over her left brow as she watched the altercation.
Gumption opened the window just as Candace turned away from the man. He grabbed her arm below the shoulder.
“I’m talking to you, bitch. What did you do with the money you owe me?”
“What do you think?” Candace said calmly.
He yanked her to him. “You think I’m fucking playing around?”
“No,” Candace said.
Gumption leaned over and yelled through the window. “Everything alright, Candace?”
The young man glanced toward the house, but his hand remained on Candace’s arm.
She said nothing. Her eyes remained on him as if she were negotiating the movements of a dangerous snake, ready to strike.
“Right, then,” Gumption muttered to herself and left her studio. She strode through the sunroom, the parlor, the breakfast room, and into the pink room, where she opened a small sliding panel cabinet beneath a painting of red balloons adrift in a stormy grey sky and retrieved her Smith and Wesson.
Gumption opened the fr
ont door, concealing her right arm. “May I help you?” She called out to the man. Cassandra’s sister peered at her curiously.
“Just get back in the house, old woman. This is between me and Candace.”
“Really?” Gumption said. “Seeing as Candace is a valued employee of mine, it appears I might also have a stake in this little quarrel.”
“I told you, this is between me and this scrawny-ass bitch.”
“Are you a fan of guns, sir?” Gumption asked.
The young man’s eyes snapped back in her direction, taking notice of the angle of her body, her right arm tucked away from view.
“Smith and Wesson are a favorite of mine. Model 63. Compact. Nifty. Quite convenient, one might say. Great for old biddies like me. I used to be quite a shot in my day. But I’m old, as you’ve noted.” She gave him a pleasant smile.
The man’s grip loosened on Candace’s arm.
“Come on,” Cassandra’s sister said in a low voice. “She’s crazy. I told you.”
His hand slipped the rest of the way from Candace and he took a step back.
Across the street, the Bakers’ door opened and Louise Baker stepped out. “What’s going on?” She demanded.
“Hello, Louise,” Gumption called out. “Heat’s gone down. Looks like it’s shaping up to be a nice evening.”
Louise Baker’s eyes skipped from Gumption to Candace, and she patted at her frosted blond hair.
“Samantha, come inside please.”
“Why?” Samantha said. “We were about to go for a walk.”
“Dinner will be ready soon.”
“Mom, it’s four. I’m going for a walk. I’ll come home when I’m ready.” Glowering at her mother, she linked her arm through the man’s and said, “Come on, Donovan, forget about that junky.”
He took a step back, then spit out a thick, wet loogie at Candace’s feet before following Samantha down the street, where they made a right and disappeared from view. Louise Baker crossed over to Gumption’s side where Candace still stood, staring at the frothy spit by her foot.
“This is a decent neighborhood,” Louise hissed. “I won’t stand by and watch drug deals happening outside my window. If I see anything like that going on here, you can bet I’ll call the police.”
The Ugly Girls' Club: A Murder Mystery Thriller Page 8
