Susan wasn’t on the newspaper staff. She was responsible for collecting all the discarded newspapers each week and putting them in a bin to be picked up and taken to the transfer station for paper recycling downtown.
“Anyone can use the smaller press, but you need a key to open the cover for the big one,” Susan said, eyes wide, as if the idea of using a key was almost too much to comprehend. “Groovy, huh?”
“Yeah. I suppose.” It wasn’t groovy at all, actually, but it did help pull an idea mulling around in Maureen’s head into a way forward.
Susan lifted the cart full of discarded papers. “Okay, this thing is full now. Let’s go.”
“I’ll catch up to you,” Maureen lied.
Simple Susan didn’t ask why Maureen wanted to hang out behind with the printing presses. She just flashed her toothy grin and skipped off with a groan as the cart wheels strained against the weight. “See ya!”
The size of the smaller press didn’t make it simpler to operate. Susan’s quick demonstration was enough to get Maureen in business in under an hour, though, and by then, all the kids had gone home. She hoped the same held true for the public high school ten minutes away, up on Claiborne.
She found the school mostly empty. A few scattered kids rushed to finish their tasks and get home. Those lone stragglers had a ruddy, dangerous look to them, in their contemporary clothes that contrasted to the wholesome and sterile uniforms of the private schools. One boy had burnt orange bell-bottoms and side-burns so long he could almost tie them under his chin. Another, a leather jacket and a cigarette tucked behind his ear, against his greasy blond hair.
They regarded her with the same look she trained back on them: foreigner. Intruder. But they said nothing, and so she went on her way.
This was a world she didn’t miss, but craved, the way her mother often had a hankering for peanut butter cookies.
Maureen found the boys’ locker room with relative ease. She looked both ways before slipping inside. The coast was clear here, too, and so she went about her work quickly, but with less fear of being discovered.
VIRGINS ONLY SECRET CLUB. This, the most important part of her whole message, was as big as the press could print. The rest of the details were smaller, so only those most interested would bother to read. SEARCY’S BOATHOUSE ON TCHOUPITOULAS. CUM STRAIT THERE TUES AND THURS AFTER FINAL BELL BUT ONLY IF UR SERYUS ABOUT HAVING UR MIND BLOWN. THE PLACE IS ABANDINNED. BRING BEER AND SUMTHING 2 LAY ON.
That was on Monday, and she wasn’t really expecting anything on the first Tuesday following her propaganda campaign. So when five boys showed up, her heartrate exploded into a thousand tiny stars before her eyes. Could she do this? She wanted to. She really wanted to. She needed to. She could accept Peter was a pervert who had used her, but she wasn’t content to leave it at that.
There was Calvin Abernathy, Greer Baldwin, and James Grant, all freshmen. Oscar Messick was a sophomore, and Owen Oakes a senior. All but Greer were nice-looking. She might have to pretend with him, but she was good at that from her experience with Peter, who was quite average—or had been, before Charles killed him. James she’d actually had a crush on since last year, and just before she made her speech, she thought to herself how things had a funny way of working out.
“You all know why you’re here?”
Nervous nods were her reply. Shuffling of feet. A few titters. Probably wondering if this was a trick, or the best thing that would ever happen.
Maureen stepped up on an old metal husk, some forgotten piece of machinery. “Do you solemnly swear you are all virgins?”
Variations of yes, and yeah, and even an m-hmm sounded in the abandoned warehouse.
“And you’ve each brought a hundred dollars?” Her hands splayed against her hips. “Put it over there, on that bench. I want to see it first.”
The five boys each dug into their pockets and backpacks, for money they’d gotten from who knows where. These were Uptown boys, who didn’t want for much, but it was unlikely their parents had just handed that much cash over, especially if they’d known what it was for.
“Swell,” Maureen said. Five hundred dollars! More than some made in a month… and this was only day one. Not that she was doing this for the money, but it would help. There were things Maureen needed to prepare herself to be an ideal future wife—charm school, a wardrobe suitable for someone older and more ready to raise a family—and so she’d simply have to fend for herself. She couldn’t wait for her trust to become available in a few years. By then, she’d be an old maid. “Who wants to go first?”
She realized in that moment that she wasn’t nervous at all. Not even a little. With Peter, she’d fumbled through the motions, desperate to be good enough, to not be a simpleton in the face of his great experience. Here, she was the queen, the one who knew her way around the bedroom. She was in charge.
They all exchanged uncomfortable glances. Oscar, finally, stepped forward. Maureen pointed to the blanket. He looked back at the other guys, with a question in his eyes.
“Never mind them. They can watch,” she said, for no other reason than she wanted them to feel the authority she wielded. To never forget it.
Oscar lowered himself to the blanket. He sat, awkwardly, awaiting instruction.
“Well, take them off!” she commanded. “Hell’s bells!”
His pants shuffled off; his excitement at the moment stood at full attention. He didn’t want the others to see, she knew that, but that was part of the thrill, and so was the next part.
Maureen wiggled her panties off and shimmied them to the floor. She stepped out of the pool of white cotton and slid her skirt up and over her waist. When she fell to her knees in front of him, she could see how hard he was breathing. His erection bounced with his heaving pants.
She placed herself over him and pulled him inside her, with a disinterested look that she hoped conveyed she’d done this so many times it was nothing at all. He shivered and cried out at the sudden burst of pleasure, and somewhere, beyond, the other boys groaned as well. Yes. This. Now, this was hers. Not Peter’s. Hers.
Why, Maureen?
“Because I can,” she whispered.
Not quite an hour later, all five had gotten what they came for, and Maureen had never, not once in all her life, felt more alive, more in control. Only the soreness between her legs and the distant pang in her chest warned her otherwise.
The schools had of course gotten wind of the fliers and kept a vigilant watch over the locker rooms, but by then, word had gotten around and she was easily able to communicate the changes in locations by word-of-mouth alone.
For two months, Maureen lorded over the young men of the different high schools she’d plastered fliers in, making men of boys, and with each capture of virginity, breathing a new life into herself. One that no one, not Peter, not the ghosts ruining her life, not her mother, not anyone could take from her.
And it was all perfect bliss until the morning sickness started.
* * *
“Why, Maureen?” Peter’s sad eyes followed her as she changed into the shapeless smock her mother placed in her closet for the terrible event.
“Did you know I shagged two dozen of the boys you taught Shakespeare to, Peter?” Maureen chirped with a sugary smile.
“Why, Maureen?”
“Charles was right to kill you. You’re such a terrible bore,” Maureen accused. “A hack in the sack, too.”
The tears started without warning.
Was she really in control, ever? Ever? Not long after the first of her Virgins Only Secret Club meetings she’d started to hear the rumors about the little Uptown prostitute. She wanted to scream in defense of herself, but then she realized that’s exactly what she’d been doing. Selling sex for money. Almost five thousand dollars was rolled up in her sock drawer as evidence. An unthinkable amount of money for someone her age. For anyone, of any age.
And now one of those four dozen boys-to-men was the father of her child. There would n
ever be any way to know which one, even if she had the child.
“You have more than enough money to get out of here, Maureen. You have more than what the average adult makes in a year. You are so much better off than you think,” Madeline said, and she was crying, too. Was it really crying when the crier was a ghost? Maureen didn’t know. She’d never know.
“And do what?”
“Anything! But you’d have your baby. And time to figure things out,” Madeline pleaded.
“I’m not like you, Maddy.” For the first time, the words weren’t an indictment. A small part of Maureen wished she was like Madeline, free to roam the world aimlessly, without thought to her future. But Maureen had always known what her future would be, and though it gutted her to follow her mother’s demands, she was practical enough to understand she would not find a husband with a child born without a father. “I’m just not.”
“You can’t go back from here,” Madeline said. “If I believed this is what you wanted, I would support you, but I know you don’t… I know in your heart—”
“Whatever heart I might have had was ripped out and ground into meat years ago.”
“I know you feel alone, but you’re not. I promise, you’re not.”
Maureen sniffled, laughed. “You mean you? I have you? My dead sister?”
“Not just me, but yes, if whatever gift you’ve been given allows me to stay, I’ll stay. I want to help you. You don’t know what it’s like to have regrets you can’t fix… if I can help you, I’ll do anything it takes.”
Maureen pulled the silk headscarf over her hair and tied it. “Well, you can’t. No one can.”
“Why, Maureen?” wailed Peter from the corner.
Madeline lowered her head and sighed. “I was never a very good Catholic, Maureen, but I know you still believe in God, so I’ll be praying for you.”
* * *
Elizabeth’s feet dangled over the linoleum floor. She wasn’t quite tall enough for her feet to reach, though she’d spent enough time in the vice principal’s office to attempt several different positions, sliding up and down, to see if that made the difference.
It didn’t, but most of the other kids she saw in and out of the back room of shame had the same problem. She suspected the height of the chairs was intentional, to remind them they were still just children and that someone else was in charge.
She hated this chair. This vice principal. This school. Somehow, this school turned out to be the worst one of all, and after her last episode, she didn’t think she’d be here much longer. This should feel like relief, but instead she had only the undying pit of dread growing in her stomach. This was her… fifth school? Sixth? She’d lost count, but she knew her mother was running out of options for places to send her when this one inevitably told them they could no longer handle Elizabeth Deschanel’s antics.
Elizabeth couldn’t handle them, either, and that was the problem. She wished she could be literally anyone else. Anyone else in the world, even the starving child in Africa her mother threatened to send her uneaten food to, because even they had flashes of peace. Moments of clarity. Elizabeth lived in a world that perpetually showed her how bad things could be, and then she was forced to watch as these bad things came to pass. Every hour of every day.
Her father called what each of his children had gifts. But this was not a gift. It was a curse.
She would’ve thought she would have learned to keep her mouth shut by now. Sharing her visions had never led to anything good. Bullying, cruel notes in her locker, suspensions, expulsions. But sharing what she’d seen was the only relief Elizabeth could ever find. When she told others what she’d seen, it was more than sharing, it was an unburdening of sorts, where she transferred some of that pain out into the world. It was the only way she knew how to survive, but each and every time her world grew more strained and less available.
Today, the vision had sent her to her knees. Eleven little ones at the Montessori down the road would lose their short lives in a terrible school fire. Her classmates had first yelled at her, and then some came in with tears, for they had siblings in the school. And by the time the teacher cut through the mess of children clawing at Elizabeth for her words, the fire trucks were racing by; the damage done.
Her lip was bloody and the bruises over her body ached, but she couldn’t say a word about it. She couldn’t risk Charles hearing and doing something else he couldn’t take back.
Elizabeth watched as parents came and picked up the children whose siblings had lost their battle that day… the haggard, accusing looks from both parent and child thrown in her direction. But she hadn’t caused it! She’d even tried to stop it!
Which was pointless, anyway, because there was no changing the future.
One by one they left with their parents, until it was only Elizabeth, hunkered over in the chair that was too tall for anyone, too exhausted for the tears she wanted to cry.
The creak and swish of the office doors opening piqued her attention. She looked up to see Connor Sullivan shuffling her way.
“Hey, Lizzy.” He jumped up onto one of the chairs, missed, and hopped forward on one foot to regain his balance. He made it the second time, but his cheeks were flushed. He pressed his dark hair out of his eyes, blowing madly when he failed at that, too.
“What are you doing here?”
He lifted his shoulders. “I snuck out.”
“Why?”
“So you wouldn’t have to be in the dungeon alone.”
The dungeon. That was Elizabeth’s name for the dark holding area for all the bad students in need of discipline. Connor knew this because she’d told him. He was her only friend. Not just at present, but ever. He was the only good thing that had come from being transferred to this school, but that would soon be over, as everything was.
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know.”
“Mrs. Perkins will murder you if she finds you’ve run off to see me.”
Connor grinned. “I know.”
That was the thing about Connor. He was a good kid and mostly played by the rules, but he had a twinkle of mischief he reserved for the occasional mild, low-grade anarchy. She hadn’t yet seen his future, but she suspected it would involve some mid-level office job and the occasional speeding ticket.
Elizabeth shoved her hands deeper into the crevasse between her knees. “Well, thanks.”
“Where’s Caldwell? He ever gonna call you back into his office?”
She sighed. “Probably went home. Forgot about me. Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“I’ll call down to Galatoire’s and have them bring us supper.”
Elizabeth couldn’t help but smile. Connor was an odd kid, but so was she, and that made him the only person suitable to share her secrets with. And she had. Some of them, anyway.
“Just no duck, please.”
Connor clutched his chest. His green eyes sparkled. “Do you take me for a heathen, madam?”
“I really do think Caldwell forgot about me,” Elizabeth said. “Which means he forgot to call my mother, too.”
“Are you gonna sleep over, or just give up and go home?”
“What do you think I should do?”
“Join the circus,” he said without hesitation.
Elizabeth nodded. “Ah, yes. The circus. My talents would be better suited in the Big Top than middle school, that’s for sure.”
“Elizabeth, Sensational Soothsayer Extraordinaire!” Connor cried, sweeping his arm across the imaginary marquee.
“Or Super Freak.” In her head, she started to hum a song by Rick James that wouldn’t come out until 1981. Great. This again.
“How does that song go again?”
“You’re not supposed to know about it, and I’m sorry I ever told you!”
Connor laughed and smacked his hands on his knees. “Forget songs, Lizzy, we need to know what stocks to invest in so we can be independently wealthy and live off our earnings.”
; She started to tell him that wasn’t how this worked, she couldn’t choose what to see and not see, and besides it was dishonest, but something in his words sparked a desire in her that had been brewing for years. “If I had the money… I’d run away.”
“Like actually run away, or just camp in the backyard until things blow over?”
“Actually run away.”
Connor frowned, nodding. “Okay, but we need a plan. We can’t just eat out of dumpsters and curl up on discarded mattresses. My mother has a nice tent, but we need supplies, and—”
“I’m not joking!” Elizabeth exclaimed, and the sting of tears that would never fall returned. The last of her tears dried up when she’d first predicted the death of her sister and then watched the eventuality and actuality of the terrible news tear through her family like a relentless cancer.
His face changed. “Yeah, I know you’re not. But if you run away, Elizabeth Deschanel, I’m going with you, and so we need a plan.”
Four
The Odd Bird
Colin had chosen Antoine’s for the occasion. It wasn’t really an occasion, as far as Charles was concerned, and as far as most of society was probably concerned. A “year-and-a-half” anniversary didn’t exist, and was far too imaginative for Colin Sullivan to come up with on his own, that was for damn sure. But Cat wasn’t the type of fanciful chick to demand silly things, either, so the idea must have come from somewhere else.
But Charles would have taken Cat to Antoine’s every night of the year if she wanted. He wouldn’t need occasion to spoil her; to see her soft, pretty face illuminated in a smile, night after night after night. To know he was the cause.
He’d been so raptly listening to Cat’s entertaining story about how the mice had escaped the lab in her class earlier that he’d completely forgotten his own date. Jessica, and he only remembered her name this time because Colin had repeated it in his ear a hundred times on the drive to collect the women. I can’t stomach another double date with you botching your date’s name, Charles. Especially not tonight.
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