Grasshopper Boy and Frank rushed at each other. They fell to the curb, pus spraying everywhere as they engaged in furious battle.
“Stop it!” Sue screamed. “Stop it! Please!”
Grasshopper Boy punched Frank in the face. More fluids spewed forth, but it really hadn’t been much of a punch, considering certain limitations regarding Grasshopper Boy’s arms.
The leaders of the two rival gangs stood up.
Frank lunged at Grasshopper Boy, switchblade extended.
Grasshopper Boy moved out of the way at the last second.
Sue let out a gasp of pain.
“Oh no,” said Frank, staring at the blade imbedded deep in her chest scar. “No, no, no . . . ”
Everybody else stopped killing each other.
“You stabbed her!” Grasshopper Boy said.
“I didn’t mean to! I was trying to stab you!”
Sue dropped to her knees and let out a gurgle. “Goat . . . heart . . . not designed . . . to have . . . a knife in it . . . ”
And then she died.
For a very long moment, nobody spoke.
“We did this,” Alan said, raising himself to the full height of his half-body. “We all did this. We couldn’t put our rivalry behind us, and it cost Sue her life. Why are we enemies? What’s the point? This senseless tragedy could have been so easily avoided, but we were blinded by hatred. Sue was right. We should be one gang. Maybe not the Awfuls—that’s a terrible name—but why not the Balerys?”
“He’s right,” said Grasshopper Boy, weeping. “And I vow that this will be Sue’s legacy. She brought us together.”
“Also, half of us are dead,” Frank said, “so it makes sense to join together from a numbers perspective.”
Coyote Kid pounced upon Frank and ripped out his throat.
“Sorry,” he said, licking the blood from his muzzle. “I’m in favor of ending the turf war, but he did kill your pregnant sister.”
Grasshopper Boy nodded. “I’m okay with that. But now Sue’s legacy begins. Now we are one.”
As police sirens sounded in the distance, they all knew it was time to flee, even if that meant leaving friends and loved ones dead on the sidewalk. And though they accidentally left Alan behind, and Joey Dead-No-More just sort of writhed around on the cement, the rest of the members of the two former rival gangs ran away . . . together.
* * *
JEFF STRAND is the author of over forty books, including Pressure, Dweller, and Wolf Hunt. He has never participated in a street race to impress the girl of his dreams, nor has he ever said “Daddy-O” except in an ironic manner, nor has he ever worn a black leather jacket, even that one year at Halloween when he went as a ’50s greaser. All he really did was roll up a pack of cigarettes in the shoulder of a white t-shirt. You can visit his website at www.jeffstrand.com, but he doesn’t even own a switchblade so it’s okay if you don’t.
* * *
THE SHE-CREATURE
by Amelia Beamer
A single loud laugh came from the shadows, as bold as the She-Creature in the movie . . .
* * *
WE WERE DOWN AT THE DRIVE-IN WHEN I saw this girl, and something inside me melted. The girl wore a white collared shirt, clearly borrowed from her dad, and rolled-up jeans. Her hair was flapper short, like Amelia Earhart. She looked to be about my age, as far as I could tell in the flickering light from the movie screen and the street lights. She was the most wonderful thing I’d ever seen. I burned with shame. Girls weren’t supposed to have those feelings for other girls.
She saw me looking at her, and I guess she wasn’t mad because she smiled at me. We had something in common, anyway, which was that we weren’t in our cars with our families watching the movie. She was by herself on the sidewalk, singing “Duck and cover, duck and cover,” only she was grinning like it was the biggest joke ever. “Kneel and kiss your ass goodbye,” she sang, and I wanted to laugh out loud. I’d seen that video of kids hiding from the atom bomb, and it was so scary. But it was hardly scary at all with this girl singing it.
Because she was looking at me, and because she was by herself, I went up to her. The sidewalk next to the drive-in belonged to everybody, I told myself. I had every right to be here, although I didn’t know what I would say. My heart pounded. I had all of these fluttery feelings inside my chest and my belly, which I was not supposed to have. My mom said that I would have opportunities she didn’t get, I would go to college and get a husband and have a good life, but I didn’t want a husband and I wasn’t sure I wanted college. What I wanted, I didn’t have words for, but it was hard to know what to say now that she was here. I heard a tinny scream, from the movie. I’d seen this one already, The She-Creature. A pretty secretary gets turned into a prehistoric monster, all green limbs and fangs and muscles. Nothing’s that scary when all you can hear are tinny voices cackling from the speakers in people’s car windows.
“What’s your name?” the girl asked me. “I’m Gayle.”
“Joy,” I said, and blushed. I was the unhappiest girl ever named Joy, and I’m sure everyone could take one look at me and know I shouldn’t have been named that. I pulled my skirt, trying to cover my knobbly knees. “I like your jeans,” I said.
She nodded. “How old are you?”
“Sixteen,” I said, and tried to think of something clever to say. “Almost seventeen.” I wanted desperately just to be near her, to make her laugh, to have her smile at me again. I might as well have been trying to climb to the moon using a rope. Everything I could think of to say sounded awkward in my mind. “Which high school do you go to?”
“It’s summer,” she reminded me. “I guess I’ll start at Castlemont in the fall. I’m a senior.” She crossed her arms, and I felt bad for bringing it up. She was a transfer student, then. Probably someone who was used to moving around, because she didn’t seem worried about it.
But if she was going to be at Castlemont, I could be useful to her. “I’ll be a junior,” I said. “I’ll show you around, make sure you get your books and everything. There’s some nice people there, although it’s a lot of bossy kids, and mean kids too.”
She smiled, but it was only with her lips. Her eyes were flat. “Schools are all the same,” she said. “When I’m done with high school, I’m going to move to San Francisco and be an artist.”
San Francisco was only twelve miles away, but she might as well have said she was going to Mars. She was so bold. If I said something like that to my parents, they’d spank me and tell me I was ungrateful, and that they deserved better.
“I paint,” she said, answering the question I hadn’t asked. “I’m going to be a famous artist, and live the way I choose.” She looked at me then, and it was so intense I felt she’d see all of my secrets, but it wasn’t the way the girls at school looked at me, like they were cats and I was a half-dead mouse to play with. Gayle had a question in her mind, and maybe she answered it because the next thing she said was, “I’m going to break into Children’s Fairyland at midnight. You should come with me.”
“I’d love to.” My heart pounded harder. I shouldn’t have said yes. Good girls didn’t do things like that. I’d have to lie to my parents, and I wasn’t good at lying. Gayle might have cigarettes, or liquor, and she might want me to try them, which I was scared of but I knew I’d say yes because I’d do anything to make her like me.
“Good,” she said. She didn’t seem scared.
***
I WENT HOME WITH MY FAMILY in our Cadillac, after The She-Creature was over, and I guess Gayle went home too, and then I told my parents I was staying at Judy’s, from school. We have a telephone, but my parents don’t like talking on it, so I thought I’d be safe. I took my bicycle downtown to Children’s Fairyland, and I hoped Gayle would be there. The summer air was cool, and I wished I’d brought a sweater; Oakland was cold at night, but it had taken all my nerve to leave and there was no going back now. I’d have to stay out all night. Which I’d never done before, but I was gro
wing up and that meant that I didn’t fit into who I used to be, and I didn’t fit the grown-up everyone expected me to be either. So I was going to have to try things.
I put down my bicycle at the gate to Children’s Fairyland. Gayle was there already, and she smiled when she saw me. She wore a leather jacket now, like Elvis, on top of her jeans and collared shirt, and I felt that I might die right there from happiness. The idea of getting closer to her flitted through my mind, but it seemed so impossibly rich, like eating a whole cake to myself. Surely I’d get sick if I did that.
Looking at her was enough.
“Come on,” she said. The gate to Children’s Fairyland was locked; it was purple and had two golden silhouettes of fairies facing each other, about to hold hands. One looked like a boy, and one a girl, and I wished for a moment that they could both be girls, as shameful as that was. I thought I must be the only person who felt like this, and there must be something wrong with me.
I followed Gayle around the side of the amusement park, where there was a hole in the fence. She held the fence up for me, and I got under it without ripping my shirt. I brushed dirt off my legs and pulled up my socks for warmth.
We were inside Children’s Fairyland, and I couldn’t see anything but lumpy figures in the distance. It was so dark here, no streetlights, and I could feel Gayle more than I could see her. In the distance I heard an occasional car passing, and somewhere a cricket singing, but it was quiet. So quiet it almost felt like we shouldn’t talk. I had the sense we shouldn’t be here. That we were disturbing something.
“You must be cold,” she said. “Want my jacket?”
I wanted nothing more in the whole world. Before I could stammer out a reply, I felt her jacket around my shoulders. The inside lining was warm from her skin. I felt that feeling again, like I could have died from happiness. The leather smelled rich and it was soft. “Thanks. Won’t you be cold, though?”
She shrugged. “I’m used to it.” She gave me that look again, as if she was trying to look through my eyes to see the contents of my soul. My heart beat fast. I wanted to be good enough. I wanted to be whatever it was she was looking for. And there was no way I could say any of what I felt.
“Come on, let’s walk around,” she said.
It occurred to me, I would have been excited to be in Children’s Fairyland, if I wasn’t so excited to be here with Gayle. “I’ve always wanted to come here,” I said. “But I can’t see anything. I should have brought a flashlight.”
She took my hand. “It’s okay, I know the way around.”
The logical part of me wanted to know how she knew the way around, when she was clearly the new kid in town. Maybe this was a trap, and some boys would spring out from the darkness and laugh at me, or worse. Surely we would get caught, and then my parents would be angry with me. But I had a girl holding my hand, and I couldn’t think about anything else.
“You grew up in Oakland,” she said. “You’ll remember. See, the puppet stage is off to the right. The Ferris Wheel for the little kids is over there.” She pointed, but I felt more than saw the direction she meant. “A lot of the figures, the Three Men in a Tub, the Alice in Wonderland stuff, are all around here. The chapel’s farther back that way. The Wild West is in the back.”
It all sounded wonderful, although I’d have to take her word for it that the darkness contained such things. “I’ve never been here.”
“Really? I thought you grew up in Oakland.”
I felt emboldened by the darkness. This girl didn’t know my last name. She couldn’t run and tell my parents, or my teachers, or the ladies at church. I could say anything. “I did. Grow up here, I mean. I was ten when Children’s Fairyland opened, I’d never heard of an amusement park before, and I wanted to go more than anything. But my parents never took my brother and me because they thought it wasn’t Christian. And I don’t know if that’s true, because all the kids I go to school with had been when they were kids, and they still say ‘Under God’ during the Pledge of Allegiance.”
She squeezed my hand. “You are so cute, do you know that?”
And my heart flipped inside my chest because I realized that maybe, just maybe, she felt the same way I did about girls. But that couldn’t be true, because I was the only one. And I knew it was wrong to feel like this. Maybe I just wanted her to feel the same way I did, so I wasn’t alone. She was so close, a breathing, living, wonderful-smelling she-creature right next to me, holding my hand. We were alone, here, where nobody would see and nobody would care, if we kissed. I wanted to, but I swallowed it down. If she got mad, and left me, I wasn’t sure how to get back to the hole in the fence by myself. By the time I’d had all of these thoughts I realized she’d asked a question, and she was waiting for me to say something. “I, uh, nobody ever says that.”
“Well, that’s their fault. You’re super cute.” She walked slowly, and the ground was paved so I could find my way easily enough, but now I felt like I didn’t even touch the ground at all. Somewhere I heard a cricket sing.
“Can I tell you something?” I said. I didn’t know this girl, but I felt like this was my chance. I had to admit who I was.
“Anything,” she said. “I’m not like those girls at your school.”
“I think I might be a Communist.”
She burst out laughing. “Do you even know what a Communist is?”
The feelings I kept bottled up rushed out then, and I probably sounded angry although I didn’t mean to. “I know that they’re bad, and that they go against the American way. And I don’t want the American way. My mom always talks about how I’ll have a better life than she did. I’ll get to go to college and find a husband who’s educated, and I won’t have to go work in a factory like she did when I was a baby, and I feel so ashamed because I wish that we could have another World War, not a bomb war, but an old fashioned war like my dad fought in, so I could wear pants and work in a factory. I could make bombers, like the old posters.”
She was laughing again, and the warm sound filled the darkness, and she squeezed my hand. I felt like even the shadows were laughing. And I was embarrassed, but I also felt better for saying it aloud. “Isn’t that a Communist?” I hadn’t even said the part where I wanted to kiss girls. I wasn’t brave enough. That really was against the American way.
“You’re not a Communist,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with you. It’s them that are wrong.”
Something creaked, like metal. Maybe a Ferris Wheel got rocked by a breeze. Only there was hardly any wind tonight. We stepped deeper into the darkness. I felt there was something watching us, curious about us, maybe. But I was having such a good time with Gayle, I didn’t want to say anything about the noise. Surely it was the wind.
“I always thought I was a Communist,” I said. “I guess it’s silly, now that I say it out loud.” And then I gathered my courage and leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. Girls did that, with other girls, it wouldn’t be a big deal. She could think it was me saying thank you, and nothing more. Except when I felt her skin against my lips, I felt a burst of emotion, deep down in my belly and in between my legs, and I wanted something very much, I just didn’t know what it was. My heart pounded.
She stopped walking, and as I was starting to feel scared she would be upset, she put her arms on my shoulders, and kissed me full on the mouth. I’d never kissed anyone like this before, it wasn’t a closed-mouth peck, and for a moment there were noses everywhere, but then I got the hang of it, and it was wonderful. She tasted of horehound drops. My She-Creature, she was something more than human to me. She had power. She was natural, and no rules could control her.
I could have stood there all night, drinking her in, but then we heard a cackle in the distance . . . We weren’t alone.
“There’s someone here.” I grabbed her hand. Fear made me bolder. “Did you invite someone else tonight?”
I’d adjusted enough to the darkness that I saw her lip tremble in the moonlight. “No.” She paused
. “But I heard it.” She whispered now. “We should go back.”
We’d been walking for a while, and we’d stopped, and my heart beat fast to think about what we’d done when we stopped. I felt so special, so lucky, and at the same time so scared that someone had seen us. God Himself might decide to come down and show me who’s boss. “Which way back?”
Gayle faced one way, and then another, spinning on her heel. Even in my fear I thought her movements were beautiful. “I have a secret,” she said. “I haven’t been here before. I don’t know the way back.”
“I thought—” I started to say, and then shut my mouth. She had pretended to know her way around, I guess to impress me, only she’d thought I’d know my way around, so I’d let her down. “Never mind, let’s just get out of here. Calm down for a second and think.” I looked up at the sky. “When we came here, the moon was over there,” I struggled to remember.
I heard peals of childish laughter coming from somewhere. No way were there children out there at midnight. So whoever it was could fake children’s laughter. I guess they wanted to scare us. It was working. Whispers circulated, only I couldn’t understand anything they were saying or even if it was English. “Just stay calm. It’s probably some boys who don’t have anything better to do.”
A single loud laugh came from the shadows, as bold as the She-Creature in the movie, regressed into her past life as a sea monster.
I looked up at the sky, trying to remember where the moon had been. “It was,” I pointed, “that way when we got here. So we need to go that way.”
“We just have to go back the way we came,” Gayle said. She seemed like she was close to tears. “I’m sorry, I just wanted you to think I was cool.”
Pop the Clutch Page 27
