A lousy three hours of sleep and her alarm sounded, Torvi already up and in the kitchen cooking pork chops and eggs over easy for breakfast. He could afford to be cheerful when it was his day off. Cadi ate and took an hour-long nap on the sofa to be remotely functional, driving into campus and parking in the last open spot with five minutes left before first period ended.
The first mention of Spencer had been as the warning bell rang for second, Cadi passing a crowd of football players and cheerleaders asking each other if Spencer’s dad had called to learn his whereabouts. The Nychos cleaned up the scene so thoroughly that even Spencer’s phone and other belongings were gone. With no blood to indicate a crime, people assumed he was fighting with his folks and staying with an as-yet-undiscovered friend, or else he’d run away.
“He is really worried about college,” one girl said. “Maybe it was too much.”
“He had a C for English on his progress report and his mom was pissed,” another answered.
Everyone was so intense about grades, just like at Alary High. Cadi had gotten A’s and B’s at Alary, C’s and D’s at Murphy since she didn’t care. Two teachers commented on her progress report that she wasn’t working up to her potential, but it seemed like a lot of people busted ass in school to achieve full potential and still ended up serving coffee at Under Grounds. When Torvi opened the shop in Murphy and put up a Help Wanted sign, applications flooded in from people with degrees in business and law. College valedictorians, former owners of once lucrative companies, scads of doctorates, all excited because starting pay was two dollars above minimum wage. It didn’t look like striving for potential was a goal that paid off. Torvi did a decent job on her homework and it was left to fate what she might remember from lecture for exams. The only time she opened her textbooks was when a teacher was telling her to do it.
During lunch she sat alone behind the library, eating the leftovers from their dinner at Stars by Seven. In her backpack was a list of procurements, along with her supplies of an empty ampoule, a needle, scissors, and a syringe in her black case. She ticked off the ones she’d done that morning, hair, hair, and more hair. Lurking in the boys’ and girls’ restrooms during one class period, she had collected quite a lot. The dazzled proctor donated a lock of his shock white hair as well, and from the Billings twins she took saliva.
On the other side of Torvi’s list was a multiple choice for her to fill out with what activities she wished to do that evening. The good restaurants in Murphy were closed on Mondays, so Cadi selected the arcade and movie option. It was too hot for miniature golf, nor did she want to stand in a line with fifty people at the overflowing ice cream shop. The arcade was air-conditioned, and sold ice cream. They could freak out the employees by showing up there wearing the finest in their closets. Torvi had a monocle and a brutally bad British accent to go with his tuxedo; Cadi would wear her slinky black dress and a flowery derby hat.
Texting arcade, she received a wild burst of exclamation points as a response. Torvi had a love of pinball machines, the cheesier the better, and even had one in his room themed after the old science fiction movie They Came From Very Far Away. Little green aliens and spinning lights, a spaceship flying over the battleground, the first time he won, he’d raced into Cadi’s room at two in the morning to announce the world was safe. Cadi didn’t share his pinball fixation, but she liked the little boy’s joy on his face when they stepped into the arcade. She’d entertain herself reading movie reviews as he played. No drama, no documentaries, nothing thoughtful, she wanted slapstick and stupid, and they would pass a jumbo-sized bucket of popcorn between them and sneak into a second feature.
But first she had to get through the school day, and it was dragging. She wrote back and forth with Torvi on her cell phone as he made unguents and tried to calculate how much erectile dysfunction cream James needed if he had sex the country’s average of three times a week and achieved the average life expectancy of seventy-one for a man born in his year. Three times a week multiplied by fifty-two weeks multiplied by the estimated remaining years of his life came to just under six thousand four hundred sexual interludes requiring assistance, and with just under two dozen applications per container, he needed three hundred and twenty containers.
Are you actually going to make him that many? Cadi wrote.
Sex is very important to people, I notice, Torvi responded. It was fitting that no sooner had she read the text than Oscar jogged by in the direction of the school tree, yelling to some girls a group invitation to apply their oral skills upon his person. One must have called him a name, because he shouted back that it was a joke and she should shut her damn mouth. It was a shame none of Cadi’s emblems let her see into the future. She wanted the satisfaction of Oscar’s forlorn face behind bars for the assault he’d no doubt commit one day. It was just a matter of time.
Ten minutes were left before the bell when she finished her food. Going through her backpack for her trash book, a muscled guy on the cover and a beautiful woman collapsed in his arms, she opened it up to skim for the sex scenes. Even that was trashy; it would be a hot day in hell before Cadi got it on with a guy in a barn. No, thank you. She wanted a bed, preferably one with luxury sheets, and candles on the nightstand. Lukas called her materialistic, but he never explained to her satisfaction why that was a bad thing. She liked materials. She had the money to buy the best ones. So what was the problem? And it wasn’t like she wore her clothes nine or ten times and threw them out. She donated them, all still in excellent condition. Sheets she kept longer, rotating through six sets and redoing her room to match the color scheme. Extra furniture and decorations they kept in the spare bedroom and downstairs in their storage unit by their parking spaces. Her room was her pride and joy, stylish and relaxing with an end table covered in piggy banks, and her bed was California king-sized. Rereading the sex scene in bafflement, as the main characters had perfectly serviceable beds awaiting them in the inn next to the barn, she then picked up her phone. Texting Thread Count: Hay to Torvi, her attention was pulled to a car driving slowly down the road.
It was a tan four-door. Beaten up and with the blue-and-gold of old California plates, it traveled so slowly that the driver in the car behind hit his horn and swerved to go around. She watched the slower car crawl by, the interior and its occupants shielded by tinted windows. Peeling paint exposing metal on the hood, scratches on the side and dirty all over, the car was a mess. You didn’t need money just to give your car a once-over with a garden hose. Not that she’d ever touch the smooth champagne skin of her Pantheon with the spray of a hose, for God’s sake. She drove it to the dealer every month for special treatment.
The car aficionados at school loved it. She wasn’t too worried about it getting stolen with the proctor roaming the lot as often as he did. At home she parked and covered it in the underground garage next to Torvi’s gray Spance with a spoiler. A Spance was good but nothing special, and he wanted a Pantheon in midnight blue once they had the money for a second. Cadi adored hers. Putting the top down and taking it for a race along the ocean with her hair flying behind her was her idea of a good time.
The tan car rolled out of sight around the library, and she returned to her book. No more than three minutes had gone by before she noticed the car again, going up the other side of the road. It was not the Nychos; the car passed a woman walking her dog on the sidewalk and she did not react with fear. Just someone lost and looking for an address, and the driver turned right onto Shoreman. Deciding to head to her fifth period early, since it was across campus and Cadi disliked getting caught up in the hordes of students, she marked her page with a twenty-dollar bill since she’d lost her bookmark, packed up her belongings, and set off.
Her classes were everywhere this year, scattered among the eight open-air quads and keeping her criss-crossing the central quad all day long in the six-minute passing periods. Although each quad had four entrances, some were randomly kept gated and locked, blocked off with tarps, and bottlenecking
everyone at the others. It was hard to make it to class on time if you had to visit your locker or the restroom, and if you had to do both, it was impossible. The passing periods were kept short in the hopes of discouraging fights and drug sales, but the end result was only an epidemic of tardiness. Fights happened anyway, and everybody knew drug sales went on in the park during lunch, not at the lockers.
History plodded by with three I don’t know yets slyly texted to her brother at each occasion, and then she hiked across campus to creative writing. Cadi had made arrangements to meet up with Shawna in the science room after the last bell. Since the first week of school, she’d been glamouring the girl for procurements under the pretense that she was Cadi’s tutor for troublesome points in their studies. They had the room to themselves, the teacher leaving it open while he visited the lounge to make copies and get his mail. For answering some questions and donating personal items, Shawna made twenty bucks. Today Cadi was after her blood. It was a good deal for both of them. Shawna’s family was so poor that they put their names and wish lists up on ornaments at the bank’s gift program Christmas tree. Cadi had seen them there, and how Shawna wanted clothes. Everything the girl owned was handed down from her older sisters, years out of fashion, bleached of color, and with strings hanging from the hems. This time Cadi should pay her extra, since it was likely to be their last session.
But that was contingent on her last class ever finishing, which it showed no signs of doing. Digging for a deeper answer from Cadi, Mr. Mitchell pressed about the T. H. Byly poem. Cadi shrugged and fumbled, the man like a terrier not wanting to let go of a sock, and finally after she echoed his own thoughts back, he left her alone. The poem was about trees. If the poet wanted Cadi to think about the sadness of time passing, the rings of their lives going around and around, he should have written about a clock with a sad face. That was what she drew during Visual Art time that ran from the middle to the end of the period, Mr. Mitchell sighing overhead since he was one of those teachers who felt she wasn’t living up to her potential. She wanted to ask if being a high school teacher was Mr. Mitchell living up to his childhood potential, but then she’d be kept after school for detention, and she wanted to go home. Torvi was making her favorite gluten-free peanut butter cookies around his unguents, and after she ate a dozen of them and took a bubble bath, it was time to play.
In the last minute of class, the teacher received a call from the office. Phones appeared, the sound of a game snapped off, and Cadi read the texts keeping her updated on how far along Torvi had gotten in sparing James’ penis from humiliation. It was looking good through 2025. Guys in the back whispered about Spencer, if it were true he’d run away from home. Rumor said his bank account was wiped clean. The conversation didn’t catch on much farther than the back, since no one else knew who Spencer was. Cadi would not let herself think of his screaming . . . no, not until the time came when she had to drive away from Murphy. Thinking of Christmas alone tore at her. They went all out every year, bedecking the rooms, three trees swarmed with gifts and lights twinkling along the ceiling from kitchen to bathroom. It was tradition for them to spend Thanksgiving Day putting up decorations, holiday music and the smell of fresh gingerbread filling the air before they went out for Chinese. She couldn’t do that without Torvi, decorate a place just for herself, shop all through December for her own gifts instead of his, fill her stocking on Christmas Eve. There was nothing to be merry about if she were alone. Her eyes stung.
“Put those away, people!” Mr. Mitchell chided, but then the bell rang. Before anyone saw her watery eyes, Cadi shot out the door, heading around the quad and down the stairs to get to the one with her locker. In a city that was ninety percent flat, Murphy had chosen the one slope in miles to build its high school. She should be grateful the school wasn’t up in Murphy Hills at the base of the San Bernardino Mountains. Dumping off her binder and all of her texts, her backpack was nearly as light as air when she zipped it back up. Then she started to cross campus yet again to reach the science classroom.
It was hot, too hot for October, girls dressed in tank tops and a boy taking off his shirt to douse himself with a water bottle in the central quad. The only air-conditioned place on campus was the office, everyone else stuck with rattling fans if they were lucky and thoughts about ice cubes otherwise. She stopped at the water fountain, inspecting it for gum before pressing the button, and drank. The water was revoltingly warm and had a slimy texture. When she straightened, the hair on the back of her neck prickled.
She turned. Not Nychos, who had her on edge; it was just a blur of movement in the corner of her vision like someone had stepped rapidly around the side of the main office. Cadi adjusted her backpack and continued cutting through campus. Her phone chimed with texts, the first yet another update on how far into the future James could expect successful sex, and the second a response to her thread count about hay. Some women do not find hay an attractive bedding material? Noted. I will inquire beforehand.
She should have at least insisted on being on top, Cadi wrote in disgust at the idea of romance in a place smelling like manure. We finally beat Thread Count: Sand. Note that, too: sand in sensitive areas is an uncomfortable experience, not a sexy one. Lukas had liked that fantasy of rolling around in the surf, ignoring how cold the water was. They broke up in June before he had the chance to suggest it for a summer date. Her phone chimed again.
Give me the book tonight. I’ll give the scene a dramatic reading for your bedtime story.
She snickered and almost walked into someone. Mumbling, “Sorry, sorry,” she kept going to the science quad. Sweat rolled down her back. Usually California heat was dry, but today it decided to add an oppressive touch of humidity to boot. They never should have left the northern half of the state.
In the classroom, Mr. Hauser shuffled papers at his desk. “Quick tutoring session again?”
“Yeah, Shawna’s a great help,” Cadi said, pulling out a chair at the back table. Shawna wasn’t there yet, having P.E. last period and that was the farthest quad away.
The teacher marked a page of a workbook with the papers and drank the last of his soda before tossing the can in the trash. “All right, I’ll be back in twenty minutes, and I’m locking the door. Just make sure you close it all the way when you leave.”
He stepped out as Shawna stepped in, sweat beading her forehead. Cadi was glad that she had P.E. in the morning, even if it meant she was forever late to her next class because she refused to spend the rest of the day with her skin tacky and salty from dried sweat, her hair rumpled and gritty. The showers were individual at Murphy, thankfully. Her geometry grade was being reduced for tardiness, but that didn’t stop her from showering, changing into a new outfit, and redoing her hair and cosmetics. When Murphy High offered P.E. in an air-conditioned gym, then she’d be free to skip the shower and arrive at class on time.
“You changed again,” Shawna said. She thought it was funny how Cadi came to school in one outfit and often left in another.
“I’m a clothes hound,” Cadi said, standing and turning so that Shawna could see the new outfit of a flirty little LaRan skirt in brilliant blue, paired with a white pom-pom confetti top by Pergie. With her hair up, it looked sharp; with her hair down, it was sweetly sensual. Although she preferred the look of the latter, the heat forced her into a ponytail. To finish it were suede platform basket-weave wedges, the straps the same brilliant blue of the skirt. Her other outfit she had left in her locker. That could go home on Friday for dry cleaning.
Once the girl took the seat next to her, Cadi pressed her glamour emblem. Fingers stilling on her backpack, Shawna was enthralled. While she sat there staring, Cadi took out the needle and syringe before activating her speed emblem. It felt like nothing rapid as she prepped Shawna and then removed the blood, but in actuality, she was moving much more quickly. It wasn’t an emblem Cadi could use in P.E. without creating attention, and it ran out fast so she couldn’t sustain it anyway.
Wh
en the needle was out and everything put away in the hard black case to protect it, Cadi checked the girl’s arm. Bleeding a little, so she pressed her bloodflow emblem to make it cease. The skin was puckered from the intrusion of the needle, and she rubbed an unguent on it to make it heal rapidly. Torvi could heal punctures merely by touching his emblem for them and then touching the wound; Cadi had to use his cream for that. It was one of the very few Ceilidh spells that needed no procurements. With the cream, the mark would be gone in minutes. Had he been there and touched it with his finger, healing would be instantaneous.
“That smells good,” Shawna said dreamily. Torvi added a chocolate scent to the cream.
“Doesn’t it?” Cadi agreed. “I have something for you, a little present.”
“What is it?” the girl said in rapture. Seeing the necklace, she squealed, “Ooh!”
“This is a thank you gift,” Cadi said, putting it around her neck. The cord was blue and the pendant a slate gray oval with a tree imprinted upon it. “Do you know Norse mythology? The god Odin hung for nine days and nights from the World Tree in order to gain knowledge, and then he shared it with others. It made me think of you, working so hard at school and then taking the time to help me out, too. When I saw this in my brother’s store, I knew I had to get it for you. Do you like it?”
“I love it!”
“I want you to wear it all the time. It will bring you luck. Will you do that for me?” Cadi gave her a sweet smile. It probably wouldn’t work, but she had to try.
“Yes,” Shawna said at once.
Touching her emblem a second time to stop the glamour, Cadi put on a show of being confused by the day’s lecture and asked Shawna to sum up in ten minutes the main points about cell division. Shawna took out her notebook and focused on the starred items, Cadi nodding along and asking occasional questions. Then she pushed fifty dollars over the table, Shawna protesting that it was too much. Slinging her backpack over her shoulders, Cadi said, “Nonsense, that’s twenty for tutoring and thirty for one of those Elle Barque tees at Mindy’s on your walk home. They’re on sale and really popular, so get there fast. You’ll look good in the green.”
The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set Page 180
