Teen Phantom

by Chandler Baker

  “You should be grateful.”

  I crossed my arms. I wasn’t.

  Dad rolled his neck out. “Do you want us to go broke, Lena?” The shift in his tone was obvious.

  “No.” I stared at the ground, at the stocking webbed between my toes.

  “I’m tied for options here,” he said. “And, you know, I love her.”

  At that, I pulled a face. Exactly what, I wanted to know, did he love about her?

  I scratched my ankle with my toe, leaving a long run in the hose. “She ate the last of the doughnuts,” I said because this morning I found the entire box of my favorite powdered doughnuts, the ones I had to make a special, personal trip to the convenience store for, gone. I didn’t know why I was telling him this. “And she didn’t throw away the milk carton.” I knew that I sounded like a child, but I didn’t care.

  The telltale signs of a smirk tugged at his lips. “I can talk to her about that. Would that help?”

  I hugged my elbows. “I guess so.” Part of me knew that was a bad idea, but I wanted him to take my side even if it was just about doughnuts.

  “Consider it done.” He pushed his hands against his thighs to stand. “Okay, well, then I guess we’re finished here.” He nodded as if very proud of himself, as though we’d had a heartfelt father-daughter conversation, and I got the sense of looking at him through the wrong end of a telescope. “Oh and Misty’s made dinner. Hot Pockets and salad. You can come eat with the family.”

  He shut the door, giving me no time to protest. Family? I ground the word around between my teeth. It felt like chewing on glass chips.

  I stayed in my room. I sat hard on the floor, sending a jolt of pain through my tailbone, and pulled the bundle of letters out from under the mattress. I thumbed through them. Marcy, Marcy, Marcy, each one read.

  A surge of longing hit me. She would have known how to handle Misty. I pulled a piece of stationery out and wrote Marcy at the top.

  My pen hovered, my hand trembling slightly as I tried to form the first words of the letter.

  But through the thin wood of my door, I heard the voices of Misty and my father.

  I dropped the pen on the page where it left a squiggly blue mark and abandoned the letter for the door. I leaned my ear to the cool surface, but I could only make out that Misty was the one who was speaking and nothing of what was being said.

  Carefully, slowly, I twisted the brass knob and poked my head through the crack.

  Misty—“Young girls at this age, they can be difficult. That’s why you have me.” She purred at my father like a house cat. “She’s gone down a bad path. That makeup. The clothes. I’m just upset I didn’t get here earlier.”

  My breath caught.

  “Those posters in her room and the books,” my dad said. “They are a little disturbing.” His voice sounded gruff, like he was trying to talk to Misty about tampons.

  “The trick is,” she said, “you can’t let her act like a little bitch.”

  “Misty!” my dad said, but there was a chuckle underneath it, like the two of them were in on a joke and I was the punch line.

  Misty let out a three-note laugh, and I heard the beep beep beep of the microwave being set. “It’s how the kids talk these days. If you want to connect on her level…”

  The hum of the microwave muted their voices, and I tiptoed closer to hear what she’d say next.

  “See?” my dad said, the clink of a bottle coming from the refrigerator. “This is why I need you.”

  I peeked around the bend. My dad leaned over Misty to kiss her. She moaned into his mouth, and I was treated to the disgusting sound of saliva being swapped between tongues.

  Neither of them noticed me standing in the hallway. Either that or neither of them cared. I was a third wheel in my own home. Erased.

  Invisible.

  I walked the short distance and opened the door to my dad’s bedroom. Misty’s stuff was everywhere. Thick-wedge shoes lined the top of the dresser. My dad’s shirts were folded over a chair back while her clothes took up most of the closet. I seethed, realizing that my dad had bothered to tell me of Misty’s moving in only as an afterthought.

  I stepped deeper into the room. Years had passed since I’d been in here, but the last time I had there’d still been traces of my mom. Knowing her presence remained in our house—her half-full perfume bottles, nail polish remover, a jeweled pin she wore in her hair—made the weight of her absence bearable.

  But now it was gone, replaced by the cracked insides of Misty’s makeup compact, her lotion with the label that read SUGAR COOKIES, and an oozing bottle of fake tanner.

  A lump formed in my throat, pushing up in an angry swell that I had to bite back.

  I poked my head into the shower. An expensive-looking bottle of shampoo that promised color protection perched, cap open, on the edge. I snatched it, turned it upside down, and squeezed until the bottle let out a satisfying squelch, burping its goopy contents onto the tile.

  My heart hammered in my chest. Now fearing that Misty would know what I’d done and would tell my dad, I tucked the nearly empty bottle under my shirt and took it with me. I was good at making things go missing after all. At least for a little while.

  Ten minutes later, I was eating a pepperoni Hot Pocket with Misty and my dad, the grease dripping down my fingers. A reality TV show about babies in beauty pageants blared in the background.

  “I could give you a makeover, you know.” Misty thumbed a stray piece of cheese into her mouth. “Look at these girls.” She pointed to the array of toddlers wearing fake eyelashes. “With enough makeup, you can turn nearly anyone pretty.”

  I stared at Misty and wiped my fingers straight on the table.

  “Well, hey now,” my dad exclaimed with too much enthusiasm. “I don’t know much about this girl stuff.” He waved at the TV screen. “But that sounds like a nice offer, doesn’t it, Lena, honey?”

  I picked up my fork and stabbed it through the burnt crust. “Super nice,” I said, scraping the metal prongs across my plate.

  Afterward, with half a Hot Pocket sitting undigested in my stomach, I returned to my room where I’d stowed the shampoo bottle. Kneeling on the bathroom floor, I retrieved a jug of Clorox cleaner, twisted off the cap of the shampoo bottle, and carefully poured the bleach inside while I listened to the glug glug glug of liquid with mild fascination.

  Dear Marcy,

  I think I did something a tiny bit wicked.…

  FIVE

  Chris

  “Wait, is world history this way or…” I craned my chin over my shoulder, coming to a stop in the hallway next to Lena. Over the last couple of days, I’d managed to fall into a routine. I met Lena before first period, carried her textbooks since I was trying on this whole Southern-gentleman thing for size, and walked to her class, at least when she went to class, which apparently wasn’t always, and otherwise, we walked to mine.

  “Aren’t you from New York?” Lena asked. Her hair was twisted into a bun and held up with chopsticks, a detail that had immediately made me miss New York because—hello—good Chinese food, but pretty much everything made me miss New York. She had on rainbow leggings and a baggy black sweater that hung down to her knees. I chose to believe that she was avant-garde in her fashion choices, but I was starting to wonder if she wasn’t style blind instead. “Can you really still be lost?” she asked, clearly as amused as Lena Leroux was capable of looking.

  I slapped my hand over the back of my neck, exasperated. “New York is a grid, Lena. This school is built like a freaking medieval labyrinth.”

  “If only we had a Minotaur to go with,” she said.

  “Greek humor on point today, Leroux.” I held my fist out, and she stared at it until I cupped her hand in mine, curled it into a fist, and pressed her knuckles against my own. “I believe the rough translation in boy-speak is: Right on,” I explained.

  She blushed and hugged her hand to her chest. “Cool,” she said, staring down at her boots.


  “Red Hot?” I asked, holding out a half-full box. I popped a couple of candies in my mouth, my cheeks pursing in to suck on them.

  “I’m starting to worry you’re going to become an addict,” she said.

  My eyes widened as I shook the box directly into my open mouth. “I know,” I said, mouth full. “And they hurt my tongue. But I like it.” I noshed on the mushy red mass, happily enjoying the sugar buzz when I noticed a face I’d been successfully avoiding for days. “Shit.” I lowered the box.

  “They’re not that hot.” Lena snatched the Red Hots and shook one into her hand.

  “No. It’s not that. Just.” She followed my stare down the hall. “Nothing, it’s just John Mark and his miserable sidekick and that jerk from drama.” I sighed. “The trifecta of assholery.”

  “Wyatt,” Lena supplied the name of the miserable sidekick. “And the guy from drama is Drake. When did you meet Drake?”

  I retreated toward the wall, pulling her after me. “Meet is a strong word. And are we sure those are their real names?” I asked through the side of my mouth. “Because those seem so, I don’t know, aspirational for those two.”

  I watched John Mark walk the hallway like he’d taken a ten-year lease out on it. His elbows swished horizontally, twisting his entire oversized chest as he made his way toward us. It hadn’t taken Sherlock Holmes–level powers of deduction to figure that Drake had heard the story of my clothes being stolen from John Mark or Wyatt, but watching the three of them walk and joke together felt like I was up against the Dark Force or something.

  “Are these guys, like, popular?” I asked Lena, feeling silly for saying it because back in my school at New York it was gauche to acknowledge there was a social hierarchy at all. We would have called it “being well liked” or “connected,” you know, something that made us seem more enlightened, but I didn’t know the correct terminology here at Hollow Pines.

  “Not exactly. But they’re thick-headed enough not to realize it.”

  I turned to Lena, trying to hide my face by casually scratching at my hairline. “Still time to slink off with my tail between my legs?” I whispered.

  But John Mark and Wyatt had already zeroed in on me.

  A sharp grin twisted the angles of John Mark’s face. “Shame we haven’t seen you in gym class lately.”

  I forced a laugh.

  “Thought you’d headed back to The City.” I could hear Wyatt capitalize The City in a way that made my face heat up.

  As he passed us in the hall, John Mark jammed his shoulder into mine and I stumbled back a few feet. He turned and cocked his head, now walking backward. Meanwhile my shoulder was smarting worse than I thought it should. “Too bad.” He pouted. “Guess that was just wishful thinking.”

  “I didn’t mean The City like—like—” I groaned. They were already disappearing down the hall and I was resisting the urge to rub my sore arm.

  “What was that for exactly?” Lena asked.

  I shook out my arms and hands. “Nothing like a little guy humor. Isn’t that fun? Cretins,” I muttered. My jaw was tense, but I was under control. I’d never hit another person in my life and though the President and Vice President Elect of Assholery may have been trying to needle their way underneath my newbie skin, it was going to take a lot more than that to get a rise out of me.

  “Come on.”

  Lena trotted after me, her boots clomping. “They said they wanted you to move back to New York,” she said, breathing harder than was warranted by the speed we were walking. “That’s crazy,” she insisted. “You’re not listening to them, right?”

  “No … Maybe. I don’t know,” I said without looking at her. “I wish I could, I guess. Get away from guys like that anyway.”

  Look, I knew this wasn’t the answer Lena was looking for. And I wasn’t actually listening to them. Not really. Sometimes I just hated the ritual of being a dude. Yes, there were plenty of evolved specimens to befriend in the wild, but there were and always would be guys that felt like they had to piss all over their territory. “You have to ignore them. They’re scum,” she insisted.

  I relented. I stopped and stared down at her, feeling a tickle of annoyance because this really wasn’t about her. “Lena, it’s okay. It’s no big deal,” I said. “I’m a big kid.”

  Her eyebrows knitted. “It’s not okay. People don’t want you to go back, Chris.” Her words spilled out in a rush. Where was all this emotion coming from? She had to have met a bully or two in her life. She was wearing rainbow leggings for Christ’s sake. “I don’t want you to think that everyone wants that.”

  I tilted my chin to the ceiling, trying to remember that it wasn’t Lena that had spoiled my mood. It probably wasn’t even the President and Vice President Elect of Assholery. I missed home. Plus, I’d woken up to a calendar reminder telling me I had front-row tickets to Hamilton for Saturday. To think that I had actually forgotten. I was clearly already losing my mind in this place. “I don’t. In fact, I don’t want to think about them at all,” I said.

  I picked up the same route toward world history, managing to head in the right direction this time.

  Lena paced beside me, mumbling under her breath every few feet.

  “I can feel you over there still thinking about them, Leroux,” I chided.

  “I’m not,” she lied, and I watched her out of the corner of my eye. “I’m not.” But I could see her molars chewing on the inside of her cheek.

  At least I’d learned one new thing about Lena. The girl could hold a grudge.

  SIX

  Lena

  Depression can be a genetic condition, I’d overheard a doctor tell my father the night my mother died. I would consider getting your daughter evaluated as soon as possible.

  That was the night that changed everything.

  There’d been no evaluation, not even a discussion. Instead, I felt the prognosis trained at my head as I waited for it to fire.

  Here were some true things about my mother: She was beautiful with porcelain skin and thin, expressive eyebrows and a beauty mark over the left corner of her mouth. She liked Janis Joplin and cats even though she was allergic. Sometimes she forgot to eat for a day or more. She cried a lot, usually for what seemed like no reason. She didn’t have friends, except for her manager at work, a chain-smoker named Krista. She never got mad. She loved me, but not really enough, as it turned out.

  During my worst times, I liked to cross-check myself against the list of things I knew about her, looking for signs that the disease was finally coming for me, too. I was scared to die, even more scared that it would be my choice. But with each passing year, I felt depression gaining ground. It was impossible to argue with genes and DNA. I felt trapped, hardwired. It was as though the world already knew I’d be gone and had set to work forgetting about me.

  Except recently, I’d felt a change, small but distinct, like I had a trick knee and a shift in the weather was making it act up.

  Someone had seen me.

  For the first time ever, I was being woven into the fabric of someone else’s life. I was involved in a daily routine. If I didn’t show up for school, someone would notice. Chris would notice. The feeling felt large inside me.

  So I thought about change and whether people could. My dad never did, except to drink more and more and talk to me less and less, but that was the same behavior only amplified. My mom had never changed. She was a spiral constantly tracking downward, and I think that I knew, even before it happened, how her life would end.

  I could draw the same diagram of my own life, trace it out to the end, let it be the inevitable truth of my bloodline.

  But someone knew me.

  And not like Marcy had known me. This was different. This was normal. It made me feel the things a normal girl felt. The roots of something better had taken hold in my gut. A seed had been planted. I didn’t want for it all to be wrenched out of me. Not now. Not yet.

  Seeds needed the right conditions to grow. They needed
sunlight and water and protection from the elements; they needed tender care and attention. They needed to be rid of weeds.

  Strong roots were better. They couldn’t be wrenched out as easily.

  I needed to pull out the weeds.

  I didn’t go to class, but for the first time I felt a little bit bad about it, because Chris thought it was important to go to class and so it seemed I should think it was important, too. So I would skip the class, but it would be for a good reason and I would feel bad about it and everything would be fine since I was going to make it fine.

  I sank down in an alcove at the door of an unused classroom and pulled out my ledger. With the hallways empty, the school felt drained of its life. I could hear the air-conditioning unit buzzing and water whooshing through the pipes hidden behind the walls. I could hear my own heart beating. I scanned the dozens of secrets that I kept—the unrequited loves, the cheating, the strange addiction to swallowing toilet paper, the eating disorders—I knew John Mark had a secret. Everyone had a secret.

  And there it was, written last year, in blue ink. My slanted handwriting memorialized the details of his Adderall habit. Adderall was a drug that could treat attention deficit disorder, but outside of a medical use, it was abused as a cognitive and athletic performance enhancer. John Mark played baseball and got decent grades and didn’t have a prescription. Today wasn’t going to be a good day for John Mark.

  I kept a diagram of the school. It had taken time to create, but it came in handy as it told me which classrooms were usually empty at what times, where the unlocked emergency exits were, the places the school had security cameras as well as the spots where it didn’t, where the janitor took his break, and where and when kids who were looking to make a trade would make a trade. I liked knowing things.

  Snapping the notebook shut, I tucked it back into my bag. I checked the time. I’d been noticing time differently, too, now. When I was alone, which was most of the time, the minutes passed with painstaking slowness, but when I was with Chris, they miraculously and nearly instantaneously sped up.