Teen Phantom

by Chandler Baker

  The light from the mirror cast stark shadows around the backstage and dressing areas. The bulbs lit only the edges of things, leaving pockets of darkness to the imagination.

  I walked carefully after banging my already-skinned knee against a set of rolling stairs. A pair of thin, white masks hung on a nail. I jerked away when I saw their hollowed-out eyes staring back at me.

  “Ridiculous,” I muttered under my breath. But as I moved around in the murk, I felt the pinprick sensation of eyes watching me.

  I shook it off the best I could.

  Knickknacks and odds and ends filled the theater. A king’s scepter leaned against the wall. Buckets of paint and crusty old brushes. A tarp that tangled around my feet and a cardboard cutout of a convertible balanced on its trunk.

  I breathed in the scent of wood and mothballs. My hand brushed against fabric, which was followed by a metal creak. I caught the pole running across the top of a clothing rack as the wheels began rolling it away. The hangers swayed.

  Now we’re in business.

  I flipped through the various outfit choices—I could be a court jester, someone from a Shakespeare play, a cow, a mad scientist, a princess, a Revolutionary War militiaman, or what I assumed was any member of the Jackson Five. I was feeling the bleakness of my options when I came across a varsity letterman’s jacket. I pulled it off the rack and dusted the leather sleeves. A giant felt R was glued to the chest. It wasn’t my style, but I thought back to the students milling in the hallways earlier this morning and cheesy letterman jacket wasn’t that far off from the fashion of the day. After, I found a trunk near the rack and soon had successfully foraged for a pair of black jeans, two sizes too big, as well as a white T-shirt, one size too small.

  I dropped the gym uniform and shoved the sweaty wad behind a couple of antique-looking chairs. When I’d wriggled my way into the jacket and jeans, I returned to the mirror.

  The bad news was I looked like a character out of Grease, and not the cool ones with the leather jackets, either. The good news was that I thought I actually might pass for a student at Hollow Pines and one without bad post-PE hygiene.

  I glanced at my watch. Already halfway through third period. I sighed, not eager to leave the quiet darkness of the empty theater. My shoes made soft sticking noises as I walked onto the stage and sat down at the edge so my feet could dangle. This was the first moment of calm I’d had. I felt the buzzing of my mind like a bee had flown between my ears. It was still midmorning, but it felt so much later.

  I missed my friends; I missed my dog; I missed home; I missed New York. I pulled out a rolled-up paperback from my satchel—or purse, depending on whom you asked around here—and opened the pages of Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

  I quickly became lost in the pages, each new paragraph like pressing on a bruise, as I read about Holly Golightly in her brownstone apartment on the Upper East Side. The book was a poor choice for my first day at my new school, but I devoured the words like they could satisfy a very specific craving.

  A long whine of metal sounded from directly behind me, and I was on my feet, quick as a gunshot. Spinning, I turned my back to the empty audience chairs. “Who’s there?” I asked, folding the paperback and sliding it into my back pocket. I scanned the stage but made out nothing. “I hear someone back there.” I listened to the sound of a person moving. There was no mistaking the noises, but the exit lamps cast only faint red and white light, barely enough to see by and I’d been reading only by the light of my cell phone. “Are you messing with me?” I asked, knowing full well that an already bad day could get plenty worse if my new pals from gym class decided to make it so.

  “Reveal yourself.” At that, there came a faint laugh. “What’s so funny?” I peered harder into the darkness, scrunching my nose as if that would help me to see any better.

  Swathes of velvety curtains hung from the ceiling. The hairs on the backs of my arms stood on end.

  “Sorry.” A girl stepped out of the curtain shadows. She was too thin. An oversized black sweater hung off the side of her skinny shoulder, deliberate holes cut through the fabric showing off the dark-purple camisole underneath. The sweater covered most of a pleated black skirt, worn over tattered tights. She’d dyed her hair a shade of black not found in nature and painted the outline of her large eyes with thick liner. If she weren’t so short, she might have the look of a New York City runway model, the ones that sometimes roamed the street, reminding me vaguely of feral cats, underfed and with their ribs showing. “It’s just that, well, you sounded like you might be trying to cast a Harry Potter spell or something with that whole ‘Reveal yourself’ bit,” she said, lowering her voice to mimic mine. “It’s just me, though.” As if that explained a thing.

  Just who? I scratched the back of my arm, feeling the hairs go back down. I felt silly. It was only a girl. “All right, ‘Just Me,’ but why were you hiding?”

  She slipped something into the waistband of her skirt and pulled her sweater down over it. “I wasn’t. I was just sitting.” She pointed. I followed the direction she pointed, staring up into the rafters, a wood skeleton of beams, lights, and decks perched high above the stage. I frowned, impressed. “Taking a break from people,” she added.

  “Me too,” I said.

  “Yeah, and you stole a costume.” She sat on the stage and began retying the laces on one of her boots.

  “Desperate times. Think you can keep that a secret between us?”

  At that, she looked up at me. Her face seemed both too young and too old all at once. Her lips were thin and only danced around the possibility of a smile without ever breaking into one. She wasn’t at all what I expected out of Hollow Pines. “It’s actually kind of my specialty,” she said.

  TWO

  Lena

  He didn’t know about my collection of secrets. It wasn’t the kind of thing I could show off like an album of baseball cards, so he couldn’t possibly know that I already had a virtual museum full of secrets.

  At this very moment alone, I could catalog two teen pregnancies—one an already-scheduled abortion, the other an upsetting conversation with a sixteen-year-old boy waiting to happen; a herpes outbreak; drug deals in the bathrooms at eleven and three; the password to the librarian’s computer; an affair between our math teacher, Mrs. Dolsey, and our physics teacher, Mr. Roy; and a football player cheating on his Spanish tests.

  Then there was a boy who stole a costume.

  It wasn’t salacious. For a girl who occasionally traded on classified information, it wasn’t the sort of tidbit that could earn me money to pay my cell-phone bill.

  But the secret itself was never the fun part. It was always what it said about the person hiding it. That was what I liked figuring out.

  “Well?” he said, then he actually twirled for me, holding out his arms so that I could examine him. “How do I look then?”

  I pushed myself from the ground where I’d been tying my boot laces. Seconds ago I’d been floating above the stage, as invisible and alone as ever, and now, this interaction felt like a strange twist. “You look good,” I said slowly. “A little like you’re about to break out in song. But good.” His dark hair was disheveled. Thick eyebrows hid behind the frames of his glasses, and a small twitch kept up at the corner of his mouth.

  I was used to people telling me things. It was easy to tell the quiet, lonely girl things you wouldn’t tell anyone else. People loved to tell. People loved to be heard. And I was there, as harmless as wallpaper.

  But I wasn’t used to being asked things.

  I pulled my oversized sweater over my knuckles. Instinctively, I tapped the wad of cash stashed in the waistband of my skirt through the fabric. When I found out a group of kids liked to smoke pot on the roof of the school before first bell, I offered to keep watch. It was a win-win for all parties involved.

  “I’m Lena,” I said for no reason in particular. I liked the sound of his voice. I liked that he was looking right at me. I already knew I wou
ldn’t sell any of his secrets.

  “Well, you’re also the first person that’s been nice to me all day, Lena,” he replied, bowing his head ceremoniously.

  The way he said my name made it sound important. Usually, it was a throwaway—Lena, pick up some milk at the store; Lena, get the mail; Lena, grab me a beer while you’re up.

  “Not exactly hard to do.” I surreptitiously thumbed a three-star tattoo inked into the skin at the base of my wrist.

  He tipped his head back and studied the rafters from which I’d climbed. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you seem kinda different than the other girls around here. Or maybe it’s just cool that you came from all the way up there. My dad always said that in any show, the most important thing is to make an entrance.” He squinted. “Good work.”

  I searched for words that wouldn’t ruin this completely normal human exchange by being too Lena. “Right, yeah,” I said. “It’s nothing really. I know all the best hiding spots.” I hooked one of my boots behind my other ankle, scratching at my calf nervously. Why was I mentioning hiding spots to him? We weren’t ten-year-olds playing a game.

  The air between us fell quiet. Generally, I didn’t mind quiet, but it’d been months since I’d had a nice conversation and I liked trying the feel of it on for size. He fidgeted, and I realized I’d already managed to ruin the ease between us simply by standing here. I was terrible at social interactions. “I should go, though,” I said self-consciously. And I was about to hop off the stage to leave when—

  “Hey, Lena.” He caught my arm. His fingers were warm on my skin and they were touching me and they were so, so real. His eyes made a direct line to my own. I felt the contact like a lightning bolt. “Maybe you could show me around the school? Keep me from being the weird new loner kid?”

  “I—I—” I studied him for signs of a trick, for signs that he wanted something from me, which could mean a hundred, thousand things. But he had kind eyes. And he wore glasses and whoever heard of someone being mean that wore glasses? “I didn’t even catch your name,” I said softly.

  “Chris.” He removed the hand that was clutching my arm and instead held it out for me to shake. Our palms fit together like puzzle pieces. “And I’m really glad I met you, Lena.”

  * * *

  AFTER I’D SHOWN Chris the cafeteria, warned him to never eat the mashed potatoes, explained to him that we called all sodas “Coke” in Texas, pointed out where the juniors could park, and walked him to every one of his classes, Chris bought us each a box of Red Hots from the vending machine because he thought they sounded disgusting but I told him that everyone here ate them all the time.

  When I got home, I was humming the melody of a Hawthorne Heights song and not one of the depressing ones, either. And my mouth still tasted like cinnamon.

  “Dad?” I called into the murky hallway of our cramped two-bedroom home. Somehow it had never felt cramped when my mom was living here and that had been a whole extra person. “Dad? You home?” I asked, following the tight hallway maze of wood-paneled walls.

  “In here,” he called back, voice coming from the living room and not his bedroom, where he often spent his time sitting in his recliner and drinking lukewarm beer.

  I froze in the doorframe between the kitchen and den. A woman sat on the plastic-covered couch beside my father, the side of her too-short jean skirt pressed up next to his dirty Wranglers. She smiled up at me. Her curled brown hair was burned jagged at the ends, and the skin on her thighs and arms had an orange tint to it.

  My chin jerked back involuntarily. I crossed my arms. “What’s she doing here?” I asked in a tone not exactly fit for company. Though, it wasn’t as if I couldn’t guess. Since my mom left, my dad had treated dating like a sport. But to his credit, he was never tactless enough to bring women home.

  I’d never met this woman, but that didn’t matter. I knew her well enough without even knowing her name.

  My dad cleared his throat, nervously scratching behind one ear. “Lena,” he said in a voice that said don’t embarrass me. “This is my friend Misty.” The fact that he called her his “friend” made me want to puke. I was in high school and the attempt at euphemism made me feel as if I were on the outside of an inside joke between the two of them.

  I didn’t like it. “Okay, what’s Misty doing here?”

  Misty tugged at the hem of her skirt while shimmying her butt, managing to draw the fabric down her leg another quarter inch as if that could make it any more modest.

  For his age, my dad had a lot of hair, graying only at the patches near the temples. He swept his hand through it the way he did when he was nervous or frustrated or both. “I thought it would be a nice time for you two finally to meet.”

  “You … did.” My fingers dug into the bulb of flesh at the base of my thumb.

  Misty stood up, closed the distance between us, and placed her hands on my shoulders. Then she pulled me into her silicone chest and hugged while I stared over her at the darkening yard where my mother’s ashes were scattered.

  It reminded me that my mom didn’t just leave us. She left everything.

  I felt the balanced weight of her memory teetering precariously on its hinges, threatening to crash over me.

  My mother’s ashes were in our backyard. As if killing herself hadn’t been final enough, my mom had asked in her will to be cremated, because, of course, her one and only child might not have wanted—I didn’t know—a grave or something to visit. Not that I believed Mom meant for us to scatter her remains on our lawn, but she didn’t leave any instructions about that part and my dad thought she should be put to rest close to home. There were times I thought he was being sweet, others just lazy. Today, the absolute latter.

  “I’ve been so anxious to meet you, Lena,” Misty said, pulling her breasts off me. “Your dad’s wanted to keep you all to himself.” She said this as if it were a secret between us. “But I wore him down.”

  “She’s exaggerating,” my dad said.

  Misty reminded me of a particular brand of girl from my high school that I hated, only she was all grown up. Like milk with a curdled layer over the top.

  He smiled, visibly proud of how the interaction was going. “Don’t worry, don’t worry. I know you have schoolwork and all that, so we won’t take up much of your time. But Lena, Misty’s going to be around a bit more often.” A bit more often than never? “I think it’ll be good for you. I think it’ll be the answer to a lot of your problems. Having a woman in your life. Someone to look up to, you know?”

  I didn’t know. I stood there dumbly until my boots felt like they’d planted roots in the disgusting, mustard-colored carpet. My father and I stared at each other ten seconds too long until he slapped his hands over his knees and hoisted himself off the couch. “Well, don’t let us cramp your style, love,” he said, taking Misty’s hand. “Plenty of time to get to know each other. We’ll be in the bedroom for some adult time if you need us.” I felt my mouth hanging open.

  Misty waved her fingers over her shoulder at me as she followed my dad. “Oh, I left some egg rolls in the fridge,” she said. “Feel free to help yourself.”

  I waited until she left. “Wow, thanks, Misty. Egg rolls. That will make ‘adult time’ on my dead mother’s bed just fine,” I muttered. But I shamefully walked over to the refrigerator and took out the white cardboard box of Chinese takeout and carried it to my room.

  My bedroom was directly across the hall from my dad’s and already the muffled sounds of “adult time” were filtering through the paper-thin walls. I turned on the old stereo sitting atop my nightstand and twisted the knob to high volume, crunching into a cold egg roll as I plopped onto my bed.

  I considered turning off all the lights and trying to go to bed if only for it to be over. But outside the sky was still a hazy yellow-blue, and I wasn’t tired anyway.

  Instead, I fumbled for the open book that sat on the unused pillow, placing my thumb in the cracked spine and turning it over to read. Th
e violin of a Black Veil Brides song blared feverishly through the speakers.

  And I flipped to an illustration of a faerie woman. Her ragged wings dripped with blood. A lethal-looking scythe curled around her knee as she hunched on a rock with a dying man’s head cradled in her lap. It was one of my favorite images of Keres, one of the female death spirits from Greek mythology, and in the past few months I’d studied many. The artist captured beauty and grace in her savagery, choosing to depict the faerie nude save for a cloth wrapped around her waist from which a longsword dangled.

  Keres, the caption read, daughter of Nyx and goddess of violent death, the vengeful sprite gorged herself on human blood in the battlefield.

  I traced the curve of her spine with my fingernail. It had been several months since my own real-life Keres had been cast into an insane asylum. Marcy was just as beautiful and as vicious, too, and she’d loved the idea of the violent death sprite so fiercely that she had become one herself, leaving behind a wake of blood and bodies.

  And me.

  In many ways, it was easier before Marcy came around. I’d been numb to the constant aloneness. I’d become used to being invisible. All that changed once someone saw me, even if that someone was crazy.

  Last year, Cassidy Hyde had been head cheerleader at our school until a sexual assault had split her personality irreversibly into herself and her alter ego, and my savior, Marcy. Marcy had saved me from the same boys and from a fate that may have ended me forever. But she was still bloodthirsty Marcy and her revenge on the boys had cost her her freedom.

  Lying on my stomach, I reached under the bed and felt around for a pen and paper. I laid the paper carefully over the illustration of Keres and traced the edges with my pen until the outline of her body and of the scythe were copied in my own hand. Then, I began to write around the picture. It was always easier to write to Marcy than to say the things in my head out loud.

  Marcy,

  What did you ever see in me? Mom died four years ago. I’d say that she would have liked you, but that would be a lie. She probably would have hated you. She would have thought you were mean. But she would have been wrong.