“Oh. Okay.”
I shut my bedroom door behind me, shed my clothes down to my underwear, and crawl into bed. It’s not even noon yet and I’m ready to forget this day. I drift in and out of sleep until hunger pangs force me from my bed. Henry and Eileen chat while Corbin watches some kid’s show at inhumane octaves.
Yay. Just what I love waking up to. Granted, it’s dinnertime, but still.
I dress in pajama pants, my dead bunny slippers, and an oversized black tee, then emerge from my room, squinting into the blinding light from the chandelier.
“Hey, how are ya?” Henry asks me from his armchair. “Your moth—uh, Eileen . . . says you’ve been sick today . . . ?”
“Yeah. Better, now that I slept all day.”
Eileen sticks her head out from the kitchen door. “Glad you’re feeling better. I made you some soup. Are you hungry at all?”
“Starved.”
“Oh good, you have an appetite.” She disappears through the kitchen doorway. “That’s good news,” she calls out to me. “I’ll have it ready in a minute. Want crackers with it?”
“Yes, please.”
Corbin leaves Henry’s lap and toddles over to me, arms raised. “Sissy hold you?”
Henry leans from his chair. “No, Corb, Gracie’s—”
“It’s fine.” I lift him up into my lap. “I doubt it’s contagious. Probably haven’t been getting enough rest.”
Corbin hugs me, then he’s bored with me, too, moving on to the toy box by the couch. I take my phone from my bra and check my messages—of which there are none—and I send Eve one: You okay?
Her response is immediate: Ya I guess. Slept all day. Bout to eat
Me 2. Did ur mom tell u she invited me 2 stay the night?
Ya she told me. Yay. That made me feel better
Same
Gonna bring your stuff?
Yup, we have work 2 do ;-)
Hell ya I’m ready 4 it. Have the Mindsetters come 2 ur house yet?
????
Army guys w vaccines. Mindset? I told u about it remember?
Oh ya but I didn’t know they were making house calls. Tonight?
Yup, they just came to my house. My parents said the vaccines hurt like a bitch. Well they didn’t say that, but ykwim...
I can’t wait
Minutes later, there’s a heavy knock on our front door, followed by a man’s voice. “United States Army.”
Henry rises from his armchair and Eileen comes from the kitchen with my soup and crackers on a tray. She sets it down in front of me and I read worry on her face, same as Henry’s. He shakes his head slightly as he passes on his way to the door, while Eileen puts Corbin in his highchair and turns down the TV. Henry opens the front door to two men wearing khaki fatigues.
The one holding a clipboard checks his sheet. “Mr. Vincent? Henry Vincent?”
“Yes, that’s me,” Henry says.
“We’re administering the Mindset vaccines in your neighborhood today. May we come in?”
“A bit late, isn’t it?”
“Sir, we’ve been at this since eight o’clock this morning. Please . . . don’t make this difficult.”
Henry steps aside with a reluctant sigh. “Come on in.”
The men enter our house, and Henry shuts the door behind them. The other man has a white case in his hand. “May we use the table here?” he asks.
“Sure.” Henry moves a stack of magazines from the center of the table to the bookshelf, allowing the men more room.
I pick up my tray and relocate to the desk in the corner. I’m not interested in being that close to strange, needle-wielding men in uniforms.
“Who all lives in the house?” asks clipboard guy. “Sorry, I’m Private Malone and this is Private Deanmon.”
“Nice to meet you.” Henry shakes their hands. “It’s Eileen and I, our son, Corbin, and our daughter, Grace.”
“How old is she?” The man points my direction as I slurp a bite of soup.
“Twenty. She’ll be twenty-one in a few months.”
“Ma’am,” he addresses me, “you’ll have one week after your birthday to go to your nearest Vac Clinic and get the vaccine, otherwise you’ll get a hefty fine.”
“Fantastic,” I mumble. “Can’t wait.”
SIX
I hate politics and everything that goes along with it, but I can’t help seeing those banner ads that spew off headlines on my ChatNow page every five seconds. I get sparse news from those. And from what I’ve gathered, our new President Marx is a whack job. He’s changed all kinds of laws since he got into office, the crime rate in our city alone has skyrocketed to insane numbers just in the past few months, and now this.
“What are the side effects?” Eileen asks.
“None that we’re aware of, ma’am,” clipboard guy says. “But I won’t lie—the injections themselves are not pleasant. You’ll have a bruise for a few days.”
“And if we refuse the injections?” Henry asks, but his weak tone says he won’t be refusing anything. The big pussy.
The men glance at each other, then at Henry. “Those who refuse are fined,” says clipboard guy, “a thousand dollars a day until the injection is received, up to two weeks. After that, any adult without the vaccine will be taken into custody.”
I gulp down the rest of my soup, stuff a cracker into my mouth, then stand to stretch. I lean against the desk to observe as the man taps the side of his syringe. The other one rolls Henry’s sleeve up past his elbow and ties a tourniquet around it. “Make a fist,” syringe man says.
Henry does what he’s told. Of course he does. He’s a member of the “I do what the fuck I’m told to do” Club of New America, reserved for the middle-class nobodies who spend their lives as sheep among wolves.
The man inserts the needle into Henry’s arm, and Henry flinches as the man pushes down the plunger. After three seconds, he removes the tourniquet, then the needle, and slaps a swab of cotton on the pearl of blood that erupts from the insertion spot. “Hold that there until the bleeding stops. Or if you have a bandage . . . sorry, but we ran out of those a couple hours ago.”
“That’s fine.” Henry folds his arm up towards his shoulder.
Corbin begins to cry in his highchair, arms raised, which is the universal symbol for get me out of this thing. If I were him I’d be nervous, too, with these strange men in my house, poking needles into my parents.
“Grace, could you hold Corbin?” Eileen asks. “I need to get a couple of bandages, and . . .” She takes him from his highchair again, then walks over and places him in my arms. “I guess it’s my turn now.”
I nod, though I want to scream at her not to do it, not to be a sheep. But it’d be futile. They don’t have money for fines, and they sure as hell won’t volunteer to be locked up over what they see as pointless defiance.
Maybe it’s the state of the world I’m pissed at as I watch her go into the kitchen for bandages, the echo of gunfire in the distance. Maybe it’s those assholes who burnt down the children’s home down the street last month, killing sixty-three children, ten caregivers, an elderly cat, and three hamsters. Or maybe it’s these assholes doling out vaccines which they, themselves don’t have to get, along with those bastard police officers from yesterday, who are part of the crime problem itself.
Yes, that’s it. It’s because this is pointless. It’s not going to stop crime. It’ll only make people unable to defend themselves against those who will now be free to screw who they choose, how they choose, when they choose. They’ll have a great advantage over those who are rendered useless by some peace-loving hippie mind-numbing drug.
That is, if this stupid vaccine even does anything. Crossing my fingers that it’s a bunk deal.
I sit on the couch with Corbin and flip through channels as the men move on to Eileen. Corbin yawns and rubs his eyes. “I wuv you, Sissy,” he says, then snuggles against my chest.
“Love you, too, Corb.” I set the remote down and pat him
. He begins to chatter about the animal puppets on TV, and I tune in to what’s going on behind me. Eileen inhales, a quick draw of air past her teeth as they inject her with a drug she doesn’t need.
These people couldn’t hurt a soul if their lives depended on it. Better hope nothing comes creeping in the night now, because without the “fight” instinct, which gives them the miniscule chance at defending themselves, they are one hundred-fifty percent screwed.
The men pack up their gear and, within minutes, they’re gone. Eileen comes to the couch with a forced smile for me. “Thanks.” She reaches for Corbin, tugging her sleeve over the bandage on her arm.
“How do you feel?”
“Oh, fine. My arm hurts, but other than that, I don’t feel any different.”
Corbin jumps to his mom, and I get up from the couch. “At least not yet,” I mumble.
“What’s that?” She switches Corbin to her other hip, away from the sore spot on her arm.
“Nothing.” I head to my room. “I’m going back to bed.”
“You planning on going to school tomorrow?”
“Yeah. Oh, and I’m staying the night at Eve’s. Her mom invited me.”
She cocks a disbelieving eyebrow. “Her mom . . . invited you?”
“It shocked me, too, but yeah. She even apologized for not letting me over.”
“Oh. Well, that was nice of her.”
“Yeah. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight . . . Ophelia.”
I get the urge to hug her, but as always, I push it away, resigning to a nod instead. I close my bedroom door behind me, realizing now how scared I am. But of what? I have no clue. The monster under my bed tonight has no face—or perhaps too many faces to clearly make one out. But whatever it is, it fills me with the strongest need to protect . . . and be protected.
From my top dresser drawer, I remove my bag of Spirit Stones, along with my birth mother’s usual dark blessing. I light my candles: the black one that dispels the evil lurking in the shadows, and the white one that draws the angels of protection nearer. Once I’ve lit my sage, I summon them as I cleanse my room in the shape of a pentacle—the star of life—and I recite the words my foster sister, Aislynn, taught me, high on opium. I bite my quivering lip. I’m determined to make it through these words tonight without crying.
“Mother Goddess, I invoke thee.
Protect us, and we in turn will protect
Guide us, and we in turn will guide
Feed us knowledge of heart, soul, and mind
Help us to see the beauty of the light in the dark
The dark in the light, spinning
around one another for eternity
We stand where the sun touches the shores of darkness
And we offer safe passage to others who seek the Absolute Truth,
which is this:
And as I read her words aloud, I hear her, see her in my mind, those perfect lips puffing the end of a cigarette in the alleyway of our old foster home.
“This is some fucking life, ain’t it?” she’d said, ad-libbing a chant to the gods because she was so high. “Just as beautiful as it is fucking devastating. So why not hold them both, love them both as the whole parts they are when they’re together?”
Though I hadn’t the faintest clue what she meant, my nine-year-old self scratched her words on a notepad as she spoke, completely entranced with every minute particle that was Aislynn’s sixteen-year-old existence.
“One couldn’t be without the other,” she’d gone on. “Light cannot be without the dark, so why hate the dark? It enables the light to shine.” She’d then extinguished her cigarette on her forearm with a straight face. “Teach us to embrace both the Darkness and the Light, Goddess.”
I miss you so much, Ais.
I miss you, too, Baby Cakes, I hear her say just the way she would . . . if she could.
Once I’ve successfully cleansed my space with minimal spilt tears, I toss myself into bed. I don’t want to be there; I’ve been there all day. But I don’t want to be anywhere, really, except for high with Eve, playing with dark Magick . . .
Aislynn had warned me to be careful with It, but she still showed me some things. I’m grateful she did, though in the end, none of it—light nor dark—saved her from her inner demons.
I wish I could say I was more optimistic about the Goddess favoring me, but the fact is . . . I’m probably a space-filler; an unnecessary waste of oxygen and light.
Disposable. Replaceable. Forgettable.
Darkness is the only thing that’s ever felt right from the beginning. It welcomes me with a loving embrace, an understanding. I don’t have to explain anything to it; it knows me. When I look into its mirror, it reflects my whole self back to me: Empty. Nothing. Gone.
Just like Aislynn. Yet, somehow . . . I’m still here.
SEVEN
Eve’s makeup is darker today, a sharp contrast to her corpse-like, pale skin. A flawless frame for those forlorn eyes that tell me all of her secrets. She didn’t sleep last night. She stumbles down the hallway toward me, bumping into at least five people on her way. Drunk.
When she gets to me, I hug her, hit by the scent of pot and whiskey. “You okay?”
She grins, gives me a thumbs-up. “Fantastic. Want some?” She holds up a flask.
I guide it down to her side and escort her to the girl’s bathroom, pushing her inside a stall. “Evie, you’re drunk?”
“Maybe a little.” She shrugs, uncaps her flask and takes another swig, then hands it to me.
With a heavy sigh, I take it from her and down the rest. It’s the least I could do. “You’re welcome.” I hand her the empty flask.
She peers up at me with her glossy blues. The warmth from the liquor spreads through my body, calming my nerves and lighting a small fire in my soul. I smooth Eve’s hair back, and my stomach spins when I catch her gazing at my lips. She stands on her tiptoes, and then her tongue is in my mouth and mine’s in hers . . . somehow. After a rush of blood to my head and between my legs, I push her back gently and take her hands. “We should get to class.”
She sticks out her lower lip in a pout. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
She straightens her black, skintight hoodie down over her tiny black tutu, then stands and takes a deep breath. “How’s my makeup?”
“It’s good.” I unlatch the door. “You look amazing, as always. See you at lunch.”
“Aww, ty. Later, Ophelia.” She tugs at the straps of her tiny black backpack, pulls her long, dark hair over her shoulder, and exits the bathroom.
I close the door and rest against the wall for a minute, feeling the warmth of Eve’s lips on mine. The feeling of her in my mouth. I won’t lie and say I’ve never thought about what it would be like to kiss a girl—Evie, specifically—but the thought of being any closer to her than I am already scares the shit out of me.
At lunch, I find Eve in our usual spot in the courtyard. Stuart sits across from her shuffling his Magic cards, blabbing away. He adjusts his glasses with his middle finger when I approach, and slides a hand through hair that probably hasn’t been washed since some time last week. “Hey, Ophelia, how’s life?”
“Same as always.” I take a seat and bump him over with my hip so I’m across from Eve.
“Dang, you could just ask me to move.”
“Can you excuse us? I need to speak with Eve in private.”
“Sure, whatever.” He stands and stuffs his cards down into his pocket. “You two coming tonight?”
“To what?”
He bends closer. “Acid bash. Ladies trip for free.”
“You’re bribing us with free acid to be your ‘date,’ aren’t you?”
“That’s how I roll.”
I look to Eve, and she shrugs.
“Let us talk about it and I’ll text you later,” I tell Stuart.
He stands and stretches, giving us an unwanted peek at his Batman boxers. “Sounds good. Laters.” And he crosses
the courtyard holding his high-water jeans at the waist to keep them from falling down.
“Do you want to?” Eve asks me.
“Have you ever tripped before?”
“No, but you have, right?”
“Yeah, a few times. The first time when I was eleven. But it’s been a while. Since before I met you.”
“Damn. But you could still show me the ropes, right?”
After a moment’s contemplation, I sigh. “Okay. We’ll do the spells first, then we’ll go.”
She claps her hands, and those old, familiar butterflies in my tummy flap against their cage. They’ll soon be set free.
Advanced Data Entry ends, finally, and I squeeze through the crowded doorway to the food court, to our meeting spot by the vending machines. She waves at me, grabs her soda from the dispenser, then shoulders her backpack and laptop case strap.
“How are you?” I ask when I get to her.
“My head’s freaking pounding.”
“Well, that’s what you get for getting drunk for breakfast.”
“True.”
We make our way through the crowded hallway toward the front door, where a group of students has gathered in a circle, screaming and cheering. Another fight.
“Wish they’d give that shit a rest,” Eve mumbles.
Officers Rice and Truitt race to them, and the bystanders dissipate. Rice grabs one of the guys. Truitt grabs the other and holds him until Rice gets the cuffs on them both. Bloodied and panting, they’re escorted past us toward the front office.
We push through the crowd to get to the front doors, sliding past the entrance metal detectors and through the exit door. Still cloudy. I can’t remember the last time the sun was out.
“How many fights is that this week?” Eve asks.
“Four.”
“What’s the deal? Why’s everybody gotta be so angry?”
After collecting our weapons from Artillery Drop, we hop down the front steps, and Eve takes her afterschool joint from her bra and lights it.
“Goddammit, Evie, can’t you wait until we’re off school property?”
Dysphoria and Grace Page 3
