by Lex Thomas
Zachary scoffed. “Oh, please. Don’t act like you know. You’re only a legend because you burned bright and fast and disappeared. Try staying on top of a gang for as long as I have. I make it look so good that nobody even notices. That’s what takes real talent.”
Zachary patted down his face with the puff, sending little poofs of powder into the air like smoke signals.
“I believe it,” David said.
“Mmm-hmm,” Zachary said, unfazed. “So, what do you want?”
“We need to get into prom,” Lucy said. “Varsity’s going to be looking out for David. And I’ve got the Saints gunning for me.”
“We need to get my brother,” David said, “and get out of the school before we run out of air.”
A smile curled Zachary’s black-painted lips for the first time, and he turned away from the mirror to face them. He studied David, then Lucy, up and down, taking his time.
“I thought you two were lovebirds.”
Lucy looked up to David. His mouth was open as if he were about to say something, but no words were coming.
“If you want to say something, Zachary, just spit it out already,” Lucy said. “We don’t have time for—”
“Whoa, whoa,” Zachary said. “Easy does it, sister. I’m just trying to get the lay of the land. That’s all. So, tell me if I’m wrong. Batman just reappeared in your life, and you can leave now, but you’re going to give all that up, probably get him killed, just so you can make things weird again with Robin?”
Lucy felt nauseous.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Does Batman know about Robin?”
Now it was Lucy whose voice was stuck in her throat. She was having one of those clenching moments, when you’re suddenly aware of everything at once, and how far things are from being okay. Lucy thought about Will for the first time, really thought about him. She knew he loved her, and she knew that kind of love didn’t magically vanish just because her heart wanted something else.
“I know what happened,” David said. “It doesn’t matter. I need to save my brother.”
Zachary clapped his hands and stood. He looked tickled.
“Well, this I’ve gotta see. This is the real show. Way more fun than a spoiled brat with a gun. Can you believe she gave me twenty-four hours to transform the commons? Everybody always wants top quality but they never want to wait for it. Naturally, I made miracles happen. She’s lucky I’m a professional.”
“You mean, she’s lucky she has a gun,” David said.
“That too.”
“So, we’re good? You’ll sneak us in?”
“Yes.”
Zachary spun on his heels and walked away from them, quickly vanishing behind the dense walls of costumes.
“Uh …,” Lucy said, trading looks with David. “We need to go. Now.”
“You’re not going anywhere with me, dressed like that,” Zachary called out.
Hot water scalded the back of Lucy’s neck but it felt good. The heat seeped into her muscles. She soaped up a lather and gently washed the cuts she’d gotten from her fall. Looking down her body at all the damage, she recognized something positive for the first time—she was lucky to be alive.
She closed her eyes and enjoyed the warmth washing over her skin. When Zachary had gotten up close to Lucy, he’d called her “foul” and insisted that she use his private shower to clean herself up before he loaned her anything from the Geek’s huge supply of costumes. She didn’t refuse.
Lucy pressed her hands to her face. Everything was crazy. If she and David lived through this, she’d still have to tell Will about the baby. And about her feelings for David. Will was probably going to hate her forever.
Life refused to get any easier.
Lucy laughed. Then groaned from an ache in her side, and laughed again. She was going to her first prom. A dance, in a gown, with music from two years ago. Ridiculousness. She decided right then, right there, with thin streams of blood still running down her ribs, and her head still throbbing from a gasoline hangover, that she was going to try and enjoy it. Even if it was a pathetic excuse for a prom, it might be the only one she ever got, and it could be her last chance to enjoy anything.
Lucy finished cleaning herself and took a big breath before turning off the water. She dried herself off with a towel that felt so fluffy she wondered if it had ever been used. She wrapped it around her body and pushed open the bathroom door. Steam unfurled and sank when it hit the cool of the dressing room.
“What’s the ETA on a shirt?” David said.
Lucy giggled and covered her mouth. David was standing in the middle of the room, bare chested with his gas mask on. His arms were outstretched with different outfits draped off them on hangers. Zachary parted a curtain of costumes and climbed through them, carrying a pink button-down shirt. He approached David and held the shirt up against his chest. With his free hand, he pressed the shirt to David’s skin. Lingering. He tilted his head and leaned back, biting his lip.
“Mmm,” Zachary said.
“What?” David said.
“Nope.”
Zachary spun away from David and disappeared again among the clothes.
“We don’t have all day!” David shouted after Zachary.
“Maybe you should’ve thought about that before you hit a tanning bed every day. Yours is not an easy skin tone to match, David!”
David looked to Lucy, who was still laughing.
“Do you know how many shirts he’s tried on me already?” David said.
“I think he’s enjoying himself,” Lucy said.
David shook his head and let out a little laugh. “I should’ve listened to you. We could’ve been there by now.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Would it be weird to be excited about this?”
“What are you saying, you want to slow dance?”
Lucy grinned.
“Maybe.”
David lifted his arms higher, inviting her to dance. All the outfits dangling from his arms swung, and a few fell off.
“Am I the date of your dreams?”
“Yep. I always had fantasies of making out with an astronaut stripper man. So, this is like the next best thing.”
David started to writhe his hips like an exotic dancer.
“Is this doing anything for you?”
Lucy nodded. “Definitely. Whoof, how did Hilary ever let you slip through her fingers?”
“Well …,” David said, giving a grand finale hip thrust, “she dumped me.”
Lucy cackled, then covered her mouth.
“Sorry.”
“I think I’m over it.”
“What was she like?” Lucy said. “I mean, if you liked her, and it sounds like she was there for you in a tough time, was she someone else then?”
David chewed on his lip.
“I used to think she was a nice person underneath,” he said.
“Impossible. You dated Hilary ’cause you thought she was nice?”
“It was so long ago.”
“That sounds like a cop-out.”
“It’s not a cop-out,” David said, but he didn’t seem to want to look in her eyes.
“Just admit it,” Zachary said as he appeared with another shirt. “It was about the sex.”
Lucy felt a cold swell of jealousy in her body. It was the answer she’d assumed but she was still surprised by how much she didn’t want to hear it.
“She’s a nice piece of ass. And so are you,” Zachary went on. “Isn’t that why narcissists get together?”
“Oh, is that what I am?”
Zachary held out a blue-and-white pinstripe shirt.
“I’m thinking classic, with a skinny black tie. Put that other stuff down,” Zachary said.
David let the clothes drop, and Zachary held out one sleeve for David to slip into. “Now, button that up and tuck it in.”
“Was it really about the sex?” Lucy said. She couldn’t help herself, it slipped out.
David looked taken aback. He held her gaze as he put on the shi
rt. “Okay, I mean, yes, Hilary and I were good together that way. But that was back when everything was normal. We were dating. I don’t know what you want from me.” David threw his hands up, aggravated.
Lucy liked it that he pushed back and got frustrated with her. She couldn’t boss him around.
“Nothing wrong with having chemistry,” Lucy said, and smiled. She pulled the towel tighter around her body. “You can’t help what your body wants.” David smiled back, and he blushed.
It was nice to know she still had control over him in some ways. She felt more confident around him now than back in the Loners. She wasn’t just some swooning freshman anymore.
“You know all about being powerless to what your body wants, right, Lucy?” Zachary interrupted.
“Excuse me?” Lucy said.
“Remember that Geek show?”
Lucy looked at him, confused.
“Who was that boy you were riding in the front row in the middle of my best performance … ever?”
“Riding?” David said.
“It wasn’t Will,” Zachary said, pretending to muse. “It was somebody else you were all over … couldn’t keep your tongue out of him. Oh, right. It was that Nerd—Bart.”
David was looking to Lucy for an explanation. She didn’t know how to explain Bart without sounding like a real mess. Lucy glared at Zachary but he shrugged innocently.
“Nobody ever upstages me and gets away with it,” he whispered. “I thought you knew that already, doll.”
Lucy didn’t let her face even flicker.
“Where’s my dress?”
“Go nuts,” Zachary said and flicked his finger in the direction of the costumes.
Lucy didn’t look at David before she entered the costume maze. If she didn’t answer Zachary’s question, maybe David would forget. But as she tried on dress after dress, she worried that all the things she’d done in the past might not be so easy to shake. David might not want a future with her. She had to steel herself for that.
“Okay, time’s up,” Zachary called out to her. “We don’t have all day.”
Lucy rolled her eyes and pushed a path through the hanging costumes until she stumbled out into the area where David and Zachary were sitting. They stared at her in the pink dress she’d put on. The satiny fabric held her tightly, like the unopened bud of a rose. Lucy had picked it because it matched the faded pink of her hair.
“What’s wrong?” Lucy said.
David stood up. Zachary had worked magic. His blue suit looked tailor-made. Zachary had even dusted his gas mask with glitter.
“You …,” he said.
“Damn it!” Zachary said.
“What?”
“I really wanted to make fun of how ugly you looked, because let’s be honest, when you walked in, you looked like a raccoon that’d been scraped off the bottom of a car, but now …”
“You look amazing,” David said.
“She does!” Zachary said. He jumped up, ran over, and gave her a spin. “Ugh, I couldn’t have done better.”
“Really?”
“Really. I like. I wish I’d picked it out first,” he said. “Oh, I wish I had your skin. You don’t need anything. Except maybe …” Zachary looked around. He snatched up a tube of lipstick off the counter. “A pop of raspberry.”
Before Lucy could even poke out her lips, Zachary was smearing her with lipstick. He gave her a little push toward David. David couldn’t take his eyes off her.
“Look, about Bart. He was just this guy who—”
“It’s none of my business.”
Lucy smiled. “Thanks.”
“I’m not a narcissist, by the way.”
“I wouldn’t blame you if you were. You look pretty good right now.”
David laughed. He took her arm and looped it through his.
“As long as we’re looking sharp, that’s all that matters,” David said as they began to walk out of the dressing room, arm in arm.
“This is going to be hell,” Lucy said.
“I know.”
23
HILARY LED WILL ON A LEASH. IT WAS A nylon cord from a set of window blinds that Hilary had bleached until it was bright white. She’d made a Varsity loop it around Will’s neck, tight enough to change the color of his face. She held it with a delicate grip. Naturally, it matched her white dress. All other girls had been forbidden from wearing white at the prom. She’d spread the word in one of her prom announcements: Show up in a white dress and you’ll leave in a red one.
Hilary held the gun close, so Bobby, four feet to her right, or the Pretty Ones, ten feet behind her, couldn’t make a grab for it. It was a shame the gun wasn’t white. If she’d had the time to let it dry, she would have painted the thing to match her dress too. Come to think of it, she should have painted Will white, mask and all. Then he really would have looked like her dog.
She only thought it, and then it was. Will’s heavy breathing became tongue-lolling panting, and he was a white dog at her side. She laughed. So many of her hallucinations had been annoying, but this one she liked.
“Who would have thought, you and me going to prom,” Bobby said.
“You’re not my date, Freak,” she said, and looked over at him. “You’re my escort …”
Hilary lost her breath when she saw Bobby. He was as dejected as she thought he’d be, but the idiotic black stain that had covered his head was gone. Bobby looked like he used to look, before the quarantine. Baby blue polo shirt, floppy blond hair, and a backpack worn high and tight. She’d forgotten how preppy he used to be. Catalog perfect.
The entire hallway transformed. It sparkled like it had on the first day of school. The floor shined. The paint on the lockers was fresh. Every ceiling light worked and the hallway was bright as day from one end to the other.
She looked back at the people in her wake who had been commanded to keep their distance—the Freaks and the Pretty Ones and Varsity. They filled the hall, but their blue and yellow hair was gone. Instead, she saw natural hair color, of every variety. Every outfit looked fresh and new like they’d just been to the mall with their parents’ credit cards. It was a new year, and everyone wanted to make a big first impression. Hilary was thrown off by the innocence of their faces. They still had their baby chub. Their eyes were naive and unguarded. Some of them were girls who hadn’t left her side in years, and she barely recognized them.
“Ready for your grand entrance?” Bobby said.
He stood at the closed double doors to the commons, ready to pull them open for her. The prom waited for her on the other side. Bobby was sparkling. She was waiting for her hallucination to break, but it didn’t. She wondered if maybe she’d gone too far down the rabbit hole. Maybe she should skip her prom and head straight to the quad to be lifted out.
But what a waste of a dress. What a waste of an updo. Of a precision makeup job. Of an opportunity to be the most important girl in the world.
“Open the doors,” she said.
As the doors opened, she forgot her worry. Springtime’s colors flooded her eyes. Where the commons should have been, was a meadow in bloom. A gust of wind blew a cloud of flower petals, leaves, and pollen spinning past her. The meadow’s grass was silky and verdant and it swayed slowly, like sea grass. Thousand-year-old birch trees with wide trunks were spread across the meadow, and their high branches intertwined overhead, providing cover from the blazing sun. Dappled light shined down through the breaks in the branches and it made the grass glow lime green in spots, and made the tops of people’s heads flare bright like they were catching fire.
Everyone was dressed worse than her. Every girl, in every gang, had inferior hair. Their makeup either tried too hard or not enough. They were all riddled with flaws. Fat upper arms, premature wrinkles, acne, enormous thighs, lopsided tits, no tits, weak chins, hook noses, beady eyes, huge foreheads, low foreheads, hairy arms, cavewoman eyebrows, tacky nails, recycled dresses, dirty sneakers, stubby fingers, girl mustaches, blubber asses.
>
This was heaven.
She switched her focus to the boys. Their clothes were all stupid but she didn’t care. What mattered was the way they were looking at her. Some smoldered. They wanted to ravage her body. The others had pleading, helpless eyes that told her they knew they’d never be good enough for her. Both reactions were wonderful, and together it was like a chocolate vanilla swirl of soft-serve.
A gathering wind ruffled her dress. Leaves began to blow off the trees and get caught in the vortex of wind circling the meadow. The vortex spun slowly all around them. Hilary and the others were standing in the eye of a lazy hurricane. A light flashed in the corner of her eye. There for an instant and then gone. She saw another flash. A sparkle.
There were mirrors flying through the air. First just a few, then there were a hundred. No matter where the mirrors were in the hurricane wind, they were facing her at all times. A hundred reflections of Hilary. From every angle, from every height, she was perfection. There was no point of view from which she looked bad. It wasn’t possible.
She tugged on Will’s leash. It was time to dance. With the first swing of her hips, the mirrors shattered to dust. The music came blasting in. She pointed her gun out in front of her and spun, so everyone would know to give her space. The other kids backed up without question, and the center of the grassy dance floor was hers.
Hilary knew how to move. She based all of her dance moves on the positions that showed off her features the best. She simply transitioned between her favorite poses to the beat. Every slight movement was a gift to her audience, allowing them to see a new aspect of her precious form. She hoped they were grateful for the chance to look at her, to be moved by her grace, by her limitless beauty. They should be happy … because I am happy. She knew that the light that she had inside was shining on them now, and they all felt it. They’d remember this night forever.
They watched her, encircled her, but didn’t dare to come close. Soon she could see nothing but their eyes. The mirrors, and the meadow, and the wind faded away until there were only eyes. Jealous eyes. Heartbroken eyes. Awestruck eyes. Then, she could no longer see their expressions. They became disembodied eyeballs, floating at head height. Wet Ping-Pong balls with capillaries and corneas. More eyeballs popped into existence. So many that the eyeballs crammed in close to each other to get a look. More and more appeared, until they were so densely packed together that they formed a dome over her, like she was nestled inside a giant igloo, and they stared and stared and stared.
