It's Just a Jump to the Left

by Libba Bray

  “There’s a lot people don’t know about me,” Leta said, hoping it made her sound mysterious, a spy working undercover whom everyone took to be a dork but whose hands were actually lethal weapons.

  “That was the last joint, but if you want to get high, I’ve got some primo weed in my car,” Tom said.

  Miss Shelton grinned. “Let’s go.”

  She hooked her arm through Leta’s and they followed Tom through the parking lot, over potholes and broken stubs of concrete barriers meant to keep the cars from banging into one another. Leta stole a glance behind her. A clump of fans stood behind the rope, and Leta had a fleeting wish to be with them.

  Tom’s car smelled of cigarette smoke and new leather. Leta climbed behind the seat into the back while Miss Shelton and Tom sat in the front.

  “Got this from a friend who was in Mexico,” Tom said, licking the rolling paper and forming a tight white missile of weed. Leta’s stomach fluttered. She didn’t want Tom to think she was uncool, but she didn’t want to get high, either.

  “Ulcer,” she mumbled apologetically, and Tom handed off to Miss Shelton who took a hit and held it for a long time.

  “You go to Texas Community?” he asked her.

  “Umm,” Miss Shelton choked out. “Poly sci.”

  “Cool.”

  The joint went back and forth a few times, and Leta’s head felt balloon-light from the secondhand smoke.

  “Nice car,” Miss Shelton said, exhaling smoke.

  “Yeah? Thanks.” Tom’s eyes were glassy; his smile seemed liquid. “You like Ozzy?” He popped Blizzard of Oz into the Camaro’s stereo. “Crazy Train” filled the car.

  “Bose speakers,” Tom shouted over the searing guitar licks. “Just put ’em in yesterday.”

  Leta glanced nervously at the line forming for Rocky Horror. It snaked into the parking lot. “We should probably get in line.”

  “Nah, it’s cool. I’ll just sneak us in the back way,” Tom said, his fingers lost in their air-drumming reverie, his eyes still on Miss Shelton.

  Just then, Leta caught sight of Jennifer, who had added a bowler hat to her ensemble. “Are you sure we can get seats? That line looks pretty long and they’re letting people in.…”

  “It’s just a stupid movie. You’ve seen it a million times, haven’t you?”

  “Yeah, it’s just…” Leta stopped. How could she explain that it was more than a movie to her? It was her home—the one consistent thing in her life. It didn’t matter how many times she’d seen it, she still got that funny feeling by the end that she’d been somewhere, that she had somewhere to go still.

  Miss Shelton sat up and turned around in the front seat. “You know what that movie’s about, don’t you?”

  Leta nodded. “Um, it’s about this couple who gets lost and they find this castle inhabited by aliens, and it’s a takeoff on all those 1950s horror/sci-fi movies where…”

  “Sex,” Miss Shelton interrupted. “It’s about sex.”

  “All right!” Tom gave a laugh and a high five to Miss Shelton.

  “Come in!” Miss Shelton shouted. It was a line Leta never really got in the movie and she didn’t get it now, but it made her uncomfortable. She wanted out of the Camaro. She wanted to be standing in that line ahead of Jennifer Pomhultz, Agnes by her side singing out loud. She wanted to find Cawley wherever he was and say she was sorry.

  “I’m just gonna go get in line,” Leta said.

  “Suit yourself.” Tom opened the door, and Leta stumbled into the parking lot. In her fishnets, gold jacket, and new short hair, she felt suddenly exposed, as if people could see all the way through to her soul. Behind her, Tom gunned the Camaro’s motor and drove off with Miss Shelton, leaving her alone.

  The movie was already starting when Leta sneaked in. She’d missed making a big entrance with her new hair and outfit. The place was packed, and Leta had to take a seat on the far left, stumbling over annoyed people on her way in. For the first time in months, Leta didn’t sing along. Instead, she watched the audience illuminated by the bright of the movie screen, their worshipful faces washed in a flickering blue, the light as inconstant as everything else. They sang, laughed, and spat back lines on cue. When the “The Time Warp” began, Leta was too tired to get up. Instead, Jennifer Pomhultz went onstage. The crowd urged her on, and by the end, she owned the part of Columbia. Jennifer took a little bow to wild applause while Leta sat numbly, her hands tucked under her sweaty thighs, feeling the fishnets bite into the skin of her palms.

  When Frank-N-Furter sang about going home, a small spot of pain flared behind Leta’s ribs. Sitting here with everyone singing the same words, she suddenly felt lost and small, like an alien whose spaceship had crashed on a foreign planet where there were three moons and nothing in the sky looked right to her. The film ground to a halt, freezing on an image of Frank-N-Furter tossing playing cards so that the cards hung in the air. The audience booed and hissed as the lights came up and a manager walked to the front.

  “Leta Miller? Is there a Leta Miller here?”

  Leta raised her hand shyly.

  “You have a phone call. Follow me, please. Sorry, folks. We’ll get the show going again in a minute.”

  Leta’s cheeks burned as she moved up the aisles, past the annoyed audience members. Behind her, the lights dimmed and the movie started up sluggishly.

  In the manager’s office, she took the call. “Hello?”

  “Leta?” Her mother’s voice sounded small and desperate. “I’m at the hospital. With Stevie.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “I can’t leave. I called Mrs. Jaworski. She’s coming to pick you up. Wait out front.” And she hung up.

  Mrs. Jaworski showed up in her Impala, her hair still in rollers, and they drove in silence to the hospital. It had rained, and the asphalt shone under the street lights.

  Leta stared out at the road and felt her heart beating faster. Was Stevie dead? She allowed herself to imagine that moment: Her father coming home, neighbors and church members bringing by casseroles, her friends consoling her, Cawley forgiving her. Maybe then her mother could stop feeling so angry and pay attention to Leta again.

  Mrs. Jaworski pulled the Impala up to the bright white lights of the hospital’s front entrance. She kept the engine running.

  “Thanks,” Leta said.

  Mrs. Jaworski patted her leg, and when Leta looked at her face, she could see that the old woman had taken the time to put on her orange lipstick. It lit up the dark like a flare. “I have a brother, lives in Alaska. A real pain in the ass. Family. They’re nothing but trouble.”

  Leta nodded numbly and went in. On the way to the ICU, Leta caught a glimpse of her face in the mirror by the nurse’s station. She didn’t recognize anything about herself and it was startling. Quickly, she put her hat on, tucking the ends of her new hairdo underneath, but it didn’t help.

  Her mother sat in the waiting room on an orange vinyl chair whose stuffing was popping out at the seams. She held fast to a white Styrofoam cup. In the corner above their heads, a TV was on but the sound was off.

  Leta slid as quietly as possible into the seat beside her mother. “What happened?”

  Her mother’s voice was flat. “He had a seizure. I found him on the floor, coughing up blood.”

  “Is he gonna be okay?”

  “It was a bad one. But he’s stable now. He’s stable.”

  “So he’s gonna be fine,” Leta said, and she found that she was relieved after all. “Did you call Daddy?”

  Her mother nodded. “He was going to fly home from Hartford, but I told him it was okay. We’re okay.”

  We’re not okay, Leta wanted to scream. “You should have let him come.”

  Her mother waved it away like she did most of what Leta had to say. “He’s working on that big account. And besides, the flights are so expensive.”

  Her dad should be here. More than anything, she wanted him to be here. She wanted them to sit at the kitchen table and ad
mit that everything had changed and none of them could stop change from happening; change was no one’s fault. They’d all been so careful, but Leta was tired now and she wanted to come off watch. She removed her cap, and her mother paled.

  “Jesus God Almighty, Leta Jane Miller, what did you do to your HAIR?”

  Leta put a hand to her newly shorn locks. It felt good against her skin, like freedom. “It’s just henna. It’s not permanent.”

  “Nothing ever is.” Her mother crushed the flimsy cup and dropped it into the wastepaper basket. “I was going to start my master’s degree, but I guess that’s gone now. I guess I’m just not supposed to do anything. I should never make plans.”

  “Stop it,” Leta said. “Just… stop.”

  They sat in the hallway on unforgiving plastic seats under hospital lights that bleached them into gray ghosts of themselves while orderlies moved up and down the hallway, pushing carts stacked with laundered sheets, plastic water pitchers, tissue boxes, cups of ice—small comforts for the sick and weary.

  “I’m sorry we’re too much for you,” Leta said, and she wished it hadn’t come out sounding sarcastic, because she meant it sincerely.

  “That’s a terrible thing to say,” her mother answered, but she hesitated, and the pause held the truth. Leta’s mother reached over like she was going to hug her. Instead she picked a piece of popcorn off her sweater. “We’ve just had a scare is all. Everything’s okay now.”

  A doctor called Leta’s mother over for a hushed conference by a gurney. Leta stared up at the ceiling until her eyes burned. She blinked fast, but the tears came anyway. It seemed a good time for tears. She cried for the way things had been, the way they would never be again. She cried for Agnes in a backseat with Roger, Agnes who had left Leta alone in a between-world of horse models and Rocky Horror and kissing boys in bathrooms. She thought about Jennifer’s perfect dance steps, the way she’d let that faker steal the moment from her, and she cried harder. A nurse passing patted her shoulder and then she was gone.

  Later, Leta took a cab back to her house while her mother stayed on at the hospital. It was late, around three in the morning, and the street was hushed. A soda can glinted in Mrs. Jaworski’s grass. Leta picked it up and tossed it in the big green trash can beside her garage.

  “Leta?”

  Leta started at the sound of Agnes’s voice. She was sitting on the front porch, huddled under Roger’s jacket, looking small and frail.

  “I was waiting for you. I figured you’d be home about an hour ago.”

  “I was at the hospital. Stevie had another seizure.”

  “Oh, my god! Is he okay?”

  Leta only shrugged. “For now. I thought you were at Roger’s.”

  “I was. Roger and me, we… you know. We did it,” Agnes said, and Leta couldn’t be certain if there was pride or sadness in it.

  “Oh. Um, congratulations. I mean, was it… are you okay?”

  Agnes’ bottom lip quivered. She started to cry. “I’m so stupid.”

  “Aggie. Hey. What happened? Did he do something… weird?”

  “No!” Agnes said, laughing through tears. “He was super nice to me. Look, he gave me his motocross ribbon.” She opened the jacket so that Leta could see the red ribbon pinned to her shirt.

  “Hey, you won first place in the Losing Your Virginity contest,” Leta joked. Agnes burst into fresh sobs, and Leta felt a surge of panic. “Sorry. It was just a joke.…”

  “It’s not the stupid joke.” Agnes dragged her fingers over her eyes and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “It was fine, I think. It was nice. He told me I was pretty. I just…” She shook her head and took two deep breaths. “I’m different now. I can’t go back. You know?”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  Agnes’s face screwed up into fresh crying. “I started thinking about my mom, how I wished I could tell her about it. That’s totally stupid, isn’t it?”

  “No,” Leta said. “Of course not.” Her breath came out in a puff of dragon smoke. When Leta and Agnes were kids, they’d put straws to their mouths and blow out, pretending they were smoking like the smiling women they saw in magazines who played tennis or lounged poolside, looking impossibly glamorous. In the yard, the trees stood small and naked. The sky above the houses was dark and unreadable, and Leta shivered in the cold.

  “I really do love your hair. It’s totally cool.”

  “Thanks,” Leta said. “My mom had a cow.”

  “Even better,” Agnes said with a giggle. She quieted. “If I call Diana to come pick me up now I’ll never hear the end of it. Can I stay here?”

  “Sure,” Leta said.

  The house was full of shadows. Leta turned on a lamp that only illuminated the emptiness of the living room. Leta gave Agnes a pair of her pajamas and they pulled the quilt off Leta’s bed and spread it over the carpet in her room.

  “Oh, Charlie!” Agnes took Leta’s Appaloosa from its place on the horse shelf and gave him a kiss. She tucked Roger’s jacket under her head and clutched Charlie to her chest. The girls lay together on the floor, shoulders touching, and talked about who was the cutest guy in TeenBeat, whether Leta should let her hair grow out or keep it short, if it would be totally fourth grade to stage Rocky Horror with the Barbies in the morning. As Agnes’s words became softer and fewer, fading at last to a light snore, Leta stared at the glittery flecks in the ceiling and imagined they were stars winking out a message only she could understand.

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  Continue reading for a peek at Libba Bray’s bestselling novel The Diviners.

  A LATE-SUMMER EVENING

  In a town house at a fashionable address on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, every lamp blazes. There’s a party going on—the last of the summer. Out on the terrace overlooking Manhattan’s incandescent skyline, the orchestra takes a much-needed break. It’s ten thirty. The party has been on since eight o’clock, and already the guests are bored. Fashionable debutantes in pastel chiffon party dresses wilt into leather club chairs like frosted petits fours melting under the July sun. A cocky Princeton sophomore wants his friends to head down to Greenwich Village with him, to a speakeasy he heard about from a friend of a friend.

  The hostess, a pretty and spoiled young thing, notes her guests’ restlessness with a sense of alarm. It is her eighteenth birthday, and if she doesn’t do something to raise this party from the dead, it will be the talk for days to come that her gathering was as dull as a church social.

  Raising from the dead.

  The weekend before, she’d been forced to go antiquing upstate with her mother—an absolutely hideous chore, until they came upon an old Ouija board. Ouija boards are all the rage; psychics have claimed to receive messages and warnings from the other side using Mr. Fuld’s “talking board.” The antiques dealer fed her mother a line about how it had come to him under mysterious circumstances.

  “They say it’s still haunted by restless spirits. But perhaps you and your sister could tame it?” he’d said with over-the-top flattery; naturally, her mother lapped it up, which resulted in her paying too much for the thing. Well, she’d make her mother’s mistake pay off for her now.

  The hostess races for the hall closet and signals to the maid. “Do be a darling and get that down for me.”

  The maid retrieves the board with a shake of her head. “You oughtn’t to be messing with this board, Miss.”

  “Don’t be silly. That’s primitive.”

  With a zippy twirl worthy of Clara Bow, the hostess bursts into the formal living room holding the Ouija board. “Who wants to commune with the spirits?” She giggles to show that she doesn’t take it seriously in the least. After all, she’s a thoroughly modern girl—a flapper, through and through.

  The wilted girls spring up from t
heir club chairs. “What’ve you got there? Is that a wee-gee board?” one of them asks.

  “Isn’t it darling? Mother bought it for me. It’s supposed to be haunted,” the hostess says and laughs. “Well, I don’t believe that, naturally.” The hostess places the heart-shaped planchette in the middle of the board. “Let’s conjure up some fun, shall we?”

  Everyone gathers ’round. George angles himself into the spot beside her. He’s a Yale man and a junior. Many nights, she’s lain awake in her bedroom, imagining her future with him. “Who wants to start?” she asks, positioning her fingers close to his.

  “I will,” a boy in a ridiculous fez announces. She can’t remember his name, but she’s heard he has a habit of inviting girls into his rumble seat for a petting party. He closes his eyes and places his fingers on the scryer. “A question for the ages: Is the lady to my right madly in love with me?”

  The girls squeal and the boys laugh as the planchette slowly spells out Y-E-S.

  “Liar!” the lady in question scolds the heart-shaped scrying piece with its clear glass oracle.

  “Don’t fight it, darling. I could be yours on the cheap,” the boy says.

  Now spirits are high; the questions grow bolder. They’re drunk on gin and good times and the silly distraction of the fortune-telling. Every mornin’, every evenin’, ain’t we got fun?

  “Say, let’s summon a real spirit,” George challenges.

  A knot of excitement and unease twists in the hostess’s gut. The antiques dealer had cautioned against doing just this. He warned that spirits called forth must also be put back to rest by breaking the connection, saying good-bye. But he was out to make a buck with a story, and besides, it’s 1926—who believes in haunts and hobgoblins when there are motorcars and aeroplanes and the Cotton Club and men like Jake Marlowe making America first through industry?

  “Don’t tell me you’re scared.” George smirks. He has a cruel mouth. It makes him all the more desirable.

  “Scared of what?”