“Overheating,” Jackson repeated calmly. As though he should have known it all along. “That’s why it’s always so cold in here.”
“And why I never let you play sports,” Ms. J explained, sounding relieved to share her secret.
“But why heat?”
“Jackson, sit down for a second.” There was a pause. “I’ve never told you this, but your great-grandfather was Dr. Jekyll.… He was a shy, gentle man, just like you. But sometimes his shyness held him back. So he created a potion that gave him courage, and made him more… forceful. He became dependent on it, and eventually… it killed him.”
“But how did I—” Jackson began.
His mother cut him off. “The potion was toxic and ended up corrupting his DNA. And the trait was passed down. Your grandfather and father had it too.”
“So Dad didn’t abandon us?”
“No.” Her voice cracked. “We met when I was a genetic research scientist, and… I did everything I could.” She sniffed. “But the mood swings became intolerable, and it… well, it drove him mad!”
Jackson didn’t respond. Ms. J was silent. The only sounds coming from the upstairs room were sniffles and heartbreaking whimpers.
Melody cried too. For Jackson. For his mother. For his ancestors. And for herself.
“Is that going to happen to me?” he finally asked.
“No.” Ms. J blew her nose. “It’s different with you. Perhaps it’s mutating. But it seems to affect you only when you get too hot. Once you cool down, you shift back.”
There was a long pause.
“So are you like, his”—he paused—“… his mother too?”
“I am,” she answered matter-of-factly. “Because he is you… only different.”
“Different how?”
“D.J. is comfortable in the spotlight, whereas you tend to be more shy. He loves music; you love art. He is confident, while you’re thoughtful. You are both terrific in your own way.”
“Does he know about me?”
“No.” She paused. “But he knows who his ancestors are.”
“How—”
Ms. J cut him off. “D.J. has done some digging into his past, but he doesn’t know about you. He thinks he has blackouts too. He can’t be trusted. No one can. You have to keep this to yourself. Promise me. Can you do that?”
Melody took that as her cue to slip out. She didn’t want to hear Jackson’s answer. She had heard too much already.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
GOTTA BOLT
Plan A was ready for activation. After a week of intense prepping and planning, it was the most respectable way for Frankie to get to the September Semi. But it wasn’t the only way.
“Mom, Dad, can I talk to you for a minute?” she asked, fresh from her evening charge and aromatherapy seam-steam.
They were on the sofa, listening to jazz and reading by the fire. Their Fierce & Flawless had been removed, and their neck bolts were exposed. Dinner had been made (thanks to Frankie), the dishes had been cleaned (thanks to Frankie), and there had been no indiscretions for seven whole days (thanks to Frankie).
It was time.
“What’s up?” Viktor put down his medical journal and took his worn UGGs off the ottoman: an invitation to sit.
“Um…” Frankie felt her neck seams. They were loose and relaxed from their steam.
“Don’t tug,” Viveka warned. Her violet eyes ripened to an eggplant purple against her green skin. It seemed criminal that others couldn’t enjoy how naturally beautiful she was.
“Are you nervous about something?” Viktor asked.
“Nope.” Frankie sat on her hands. “I just wanted to say that I thought a lot about my behavior last week and I agree with you. It was dangerous and insensitive.”
The corners of their mouths turned up just a smidge, as if they were unwilling to commit to a full smile until they knew where this conversation was going.
“Just like you asked, I came right home from school every day, I didn’t text, e-mail, tweet, or post on Facebook. And during lunch, I only spoke when spoken to.”
All of which was true. She’d even avoided eye contact with Brett. Which hadn’t been too hard, since Bekka had switched seats with him in science class.
“We know.” Viktor leaned forward and double-tapped her knee. “And we couldn’t be more proud.”
Viveka nodded in agreement.
“Thank you.” Frankie humbly lowered her eyes. One… two… three… GO!
“Sodoyouthinkyoucouldtrustmetogotothedancetonight?” she blurted before losing her nerve.
Viktor and Viveka exchanged a quick glance.
Are they considering it? They are! They trust—
“No,” they said together.
Frankie resisted the urge to spark. Or scream. Or threaten to go on a charging strike. She had prepared herself for this. It had always been a possibility. That’s why she’d read Acting for Young Actors: The Ultimate Teen Guide by Mary Lou Belli and Dinah Lenney. So that she could act like she understood their rejection. Act like she accepted it. And act like she would return to her room with grace. “Well, thanks for hearing me out,” she said, kissing them on the cheeks and skipping off to bed. “Good night.”
“Good night?” Viktor responded. “That’s it? No argument?”
“No argument,” Frankie said with a sweet smile. “You have to see this punishment through or you’re not teaching me anything. I get it.”
“O-kay.” Viktor returned to his medical journal, shaking his head as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing.
“We love you.” Viveka blew another kiss.
“I love you too.” Frankie blew two back.
Time for Plan B.
“All right, Glitterati,” Frankie said, taking her glitter-dusted confidants into the lounge area of the Fab. “This isn’t going to be pretty. Rules will be broken. Friendships will be tested. And huge risks will be taken. But they’re small prices to pay for true love and personal freedom, right?” She placed their cage on her orange-lacquered side table. They clawed the glass in agreement.
Blasting Lady Gaga’s “Just Dance,” Frankie tore open a box of hair bleach and painted chunky white streaks from her scalp to her ends. Spaced four inches apart, they would look just like her grandmother’s. While waiting for them to set, she reclined on her red pillow-covered Moroccan chaise and began texting Lala. “Here goes.” She sighed.
FRANKIE: Still boycotting?
LALA: Yup. Cleo, Clawdeen, and Blue r here. Love that ur txting again. Sure u can’t come over?
FRANKIE: punished
“This is the semi-manipulative part,” Frankie told the Glitterati. “I’ve saved this secret all week, and it needs to be released.” She typed a message and then hit SEND. “Don’t judge me.”
FRANKIE: FYI my parents were at that new girl Melody’s last weekend for some wine-tasting party and heard she was going to Semi w/ Deuce.
LALA: FYI they rented that house from my grandparents, u know.
That was hardly the response she’d been hoping for.
FRANKIE: Cool about ur grandparents’ place. Think it’s true about Deuce? Does Cleo know?
Silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… It was 6:50 PM. The dance would be starting in forty minutes. Where was—
CLEO: Is this true?
She sat up. Yes!
FRANKIE: That’s what my mom said.
FRANKIE: Wanna bust them?
CLEO: Totally but we don’t have costumes.
Yes! Yes! Yes! “It’s working!” Frankie told the Glitterati. She felt a certain degree of guilt for manipulating the situation. But everything she was saying was true. And her reasons for saying them were for her friends’ benefit as much as hers. Eventually, they would thank her. Everyone would. She just had to get them there.
FRANKIE: It’s Monster Mash! We were born in costumes! Amazing, glorious costumes.
FRANKIE: This is our big chance to see what people think
of us. The real us.
FRANKIE: We have to show em there’s nothing to be afraid of.
FRANKIE: If we don’t get over our fears they never will.
It was time to take a break before her friends accused her of sounding like a bumper sticker. But it was hard not to preach. She had never felt so strongly about anything. Not even Brett.
Silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence…
“What are they doing?” Frankie lay back down and sparked.
Silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence…
CLEO: Aren’t u grounded?
FRANKIE: I’ll sneak out bedroom window.
Silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence… silence…
LALA: Meet u at the top of Radcliffe in 5.
LALA: This better work.
FRANKIE:
She bicycled her moccasin-covered feet in the air. Yes! Yes! Yes!
Frankie blew a kiss to the Glitterati, turned off the music, and grabbed the garment bag she had pulled from the garage. Wearing nothing but sweats and a sheer coat of lip gloss, she wiggled through her frosted window and jumped the six feet to freedom, feeling more charged than a Visa card at Christmastime.
CHAPTER TWENTY
IS THIS FREAK TAKEN?
“Okay, one more picture!” Bekka’s father hurried out of the red Cadillac SRX. He was dressed in a burgundy fleece, Dockers, and blue slippers.
“Dad!” Bekka stomped her satin stilettos. She pointed at the school’s front steps, which were spotted with giant green footprints and flecked with costumed kids acting too cool to enter the dance. Fog seeped from the blacked-out double doors, dragging thumping bass beats with it. “Brett’s waiting for me inside.”
“It’s okay.” Melody put her arms around Bekka and Haylee. “One more picture won’t kill us.”
“No,” Bekka mumbled as a cluster of senior cheerleader zombies skipped by. “But the embarrassment will.”
“Smile!” Mr. Madden insisted, lifting his glasses onto his bald head.
Bekka and Haylee complied. Melody tried. Recovering from facial surgery had been easier. Yes, she was healthy, almost asthma-free, and part of a loving family. But was it so much to ask for a relationship that lasted longer than a kiss?
All week Jackson had avoided her. Blaming homework or headaches, he had thwarted every one of Melody’s requests for hang time. And like a respectful friend-slash-eavesdropper, she had said she understood. But Melody wanted to help. She wanted to be his shoulder to cry on. To share his burden. To tell him she had felt like a “monster” her whole life. To tell him that she understood. But obviously he didn’t want her shoulder, or any of her other body parts. Which crushed her chest more than asthma ever had.
Alone in her box-filled room each night, Melody resisted the urge to confide in Candace. Jackson’s secret was too damaging to share. Instead, she tried to convince herself that his distance had nothing to do with his Melody feelings and everything to do with the promise he’d made to his mother. But there was only so much self-love she could administer to the wound. After a while it just felt pathetic, like sending herself flowers on Valentine’s Day.
Melody couldn’t really shake off her mood, but she had managed to get herself dressed for the dance. She didn’t want to let down her two new friends: the Bride of Frankenstein and her Flower Ghoul.
“You girls look great!” Mr. Madden gushed, shuffling back to his open car door. “I’ll pick you up at ten, sharp,” he announced, then drove away.
His taillights faded in the distance, taking away any hope Melody had of leaving early. Why had she agreed to leave her purse in the car? Bekka had said it would “free them up.” Ha! It would do the opposite, by trapping her for two and a half hours with the wrong guy.
“Can you please try to have fun?” Bekka pleaded, as if reading her mind.
Melody promised she would. “You look great.”
“I’d better.” She sighed shakily, lifted her train, and began wobble-mounting the steps in her four-inch heels.
Bekka treated her role as Frankenstein’s bride more like an audition to be Brett’s bride. Every part of her body had been colored bright kelly green—even the parts that her mother had stressed were “not to be seen by anyone except God and the inside of a toilet bowl.” Instead of wearing a wig, Bekka had teased and then shellacked her own hair into a windblown cone, and she’d used female-mustache bleach to create white streaks. Her seams, made of real suture thread, had been attached to her neck and wrists with clear double-sided costume tape because drawing them with kohl would not have been “honoring the character.” Her Costume Castle dress had been exchanged for something more “authentic” from the Bridal Barn. If Brett didn’t see his future in her heavily black-shadowed eyes tonight, he never would. Or so she believed.
“You look great too, Hayl,” Melody added.
“Thanks.” Haylee grinned, looking like a possessed child beauty pageant contestant. The Flower Ghoul wore a shiny yellow dress, white tights, and a face full of white, black, and red makeup. She carried a basket full of rubber insects.
No one complimented Melody on her costume. And if they did, she’d know they were lying. Dressed in black leggings, her mother’s black Chanel blazer, black ballet flats, a beret, and a face full of red and black horror makeup, she was Freak Chic. Everyone agreed it was better than her Killer Wave idea.
The instant Bekka opened the school doors, Melody’s chest constricted. “I can’t go in there!”
A skeleton and a Cyclops entered instead.
“Melly, get over it, okay?” Bekka snapped.
“No,” she said, wheezing. “The fog machine. My asthma. Puffer’s in your dad’s…”
“Just go!” Bekka pushed Melody through the thick layer of gray smoke and guided her toward the gym. She leaned on the silver pump-handle, and the door hissed open.
Darkness. Black lights. A Rihanna remix. Trash bags taped to the walls. Gigantic cocoons filled with fake dead people dangling from the ceiling pipes. The smell of rubber soles and duct tape. Snack tables divided into allergy zones and marked by gravestones. Round tables littered with fake body parts. Chairs wrapped in white sheets that were splattered in red paint. Costumed girls dancing on the dance floor. Costumed boys working up the courage to join them. As she struggled to breathe, these details rushed her senses, as if begging to be appreciated before she collapsed.
“Here.” Bekka handed her an inhaler.
Melody took a big puff. “Ahhhhhhh…” She delighted in the steady exhale. “Where did you get that?”
“I took it from your purse before we left the car.” She handed it to Melody. “Principal Weeks loves that machine. He even uses it on Thanksgiving. He says it was foggy the day the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.”
“Thank you.” Melody smiled and knit her brows at the same time. “If Brett doesn’t propose to you tonight, I will.”
“Forget the proposal. Just promise me you’ll try to have a good time.”
“I promise.” Melody raised her palm. It was the least she could do.
Deuce approached them with a confident swagger.
“Here comes the Mad Hatter,” Haylee announced.
Wearing a tall red velvet hat, a matching tuxedo, and his signature sunglasses, Deuce looked mad hot. Melody decided that if she had to be stuck at a dance with someone else’s boyfriend while missing her wish-he’d-be-my-boyfriend, Deuce was the guy.
“Hey… crazy beret girl,” he said, trying not to insult her ambiguous costume.
“I’m Freak Chic.” She flicked her cap and then rolled her eyes at her own patheticness.
“Oh yeah, I kinda see that now.” He smile-nodded.
“We’re going to look for Brett and Heath,” Bekka announced, then quickly took off with Haylee before Melody could stop them.
Suddenly left alone, they couldn’t help but notice the fun all around them.
Monsters of every imaginable sort mingled, greeting one another with compliments and yanking reluctant partners toward the dance floor.
“So, what’s with the shades?” Melody asked, trying to make conversation. “It’s so dark in here. How do you see?” In the spirit of flirty party banter, she pulled them off.
“Give those back!” he shouted. He was so angry, he couldn’t even look at her. Instead, he looked past her shoulder, quickly shut his eyes, and then felt for his Oakleys as a blind man might.
“Here.” Melody placed them in his tanned hands. He put them on with urgency. “Sorry, I was just—” She cut herself off. What was she doing, anyway?
“That’s okay,” Deuce said sweetly. “I should probably check in with Cleo. She’s home alone and everything, so… you cool here for a minute?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Great,” Deuce said, accidentally knocking over a lone stone statue of a witch, and then sprinted for the exit.
After steadying the toppling witch (who looked a lot like a girl from her English class), Melody set out in search of Candace and, more important, cab fare. So what if she lived only three blocks away? Walking home alone from a dance was just as lame as couching it with Ben & Jerry’s. If the feeling were an ice-cream flavor, it would be Sour Grapes.
Now that it was pushing eight o’clock, the too-cool-for-punctuality crowd ambled into the gym. With swaggers implying that they had other, more happening places to be, they examined the decorations like prospective buyers. Clinging to one another in clusters, they resisted the urge to bombard the dance floor when Jay-Z’s “On to the Next One” began playing, making it next to impossible for Melody to spot Candace, who was dressed as a Scary Fairy. Most brunettes used costume parties as an opportunity to go blond, and blonds never went brunette, so this was a needle-in-a-haystack situation, at best.
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