Dead Set
Page 23
After stashing her books in her locker, she went outside and around the corner of the building to Absynthe’s secret hangout. The other girl was there already, smoking a pink Sherman Fantasia.
When she saw Zoe, she jumped down from the steps and hugged her, then took her hand and looked her over appraisingly at arm’s length. “Let me get an eyeful of you,” she said. After checking Zoe out for a minute, she said, “Scars on children are wolves in their skin; the scars of young lovers are the moon shining in; old scars are the damage and the medals we win.”
“Who said that?” asked Zoe.
“Nick Valéry, an old poet who wanted to fuck Patti Smith. It didn’t work.”
“What does it mean?”
Absynthe drew her over to the steps and they both sat down. “It means you’ve got a story to tell me,” she said. “What the hell happened to you? I was starting to think you were dead or kidnapped by a satanic cult or something.”
It made Zoe happy when she heard the genuine concern in Absynthe’s voice. It was funny. Absynthe didn’t seem quite so formidable anymore, or her look and public persona something to aspire to. Yet Zoe found that she also felt more affection for her now that she didn’t see her as the zenith of cool, but just another high school kid trying to figure out how to cut through the boredom, frustration, and bullshit of it all.
“You sound like my mom,” said Zoe.
“Oh no,” Absynthe said, wagging a black nail-polished finger at her. “Don’t change the subject on me, young lady. Tell me a story.”
“I want to tell you the truth,” Zoe said, leaning forward, resting her elbows on her knees, and wincing a little. Her shoulder still hurt, but she refused to wear the sling the doctor had given her to school. “But I’m still trying to wrap my brain around some of it and I don’t know if I’m ready to talk about everything yet. I hope that doesn’t sound too weird.”
“From the way you look, I know it will be a hell of a story. I’m cool with waiting,” said Absynthe quietly. Then, in a more serious tone than Zoe had ever heard her use before, she asked, “What’ll it take for you to know when you’re ready?”
Zoe thought about it for a minute and nodded to Absynthe’s necklaces. “All that stuff you wear, the crosses and pentagrams and magic symbols. Do you really believe in any of it?”
Absynthe took a puff of her cigarette, held it, and let the smoke out slowly. “Sometimes.” She shook her head. “Sometimes not. I’m not really sure.”
Zoe sat back on the stairs, using her finger to loosen the tops of the new, used leopard-print Chuck Taylors that her mother had bought her at Goodwill over the weekend. “When you know and can tell me absolutely truthfully, I’ll tell you everything. Okay?”
Absynthe nodded thoughtfully. “Deal,” she said.
“Some friends from my old neighborhood, Julie and Laura, are coming to town this weekend. They’re having a punk night at an all-ages club downtown. You’re invited, too, if you want.”
Absynthe looked at her appraisingly. “Sounds like fun,” she said. With two fingers, she flicked the remains of her cigarette away. “So, do you ever listen to music recorded in, I don’t know, your lifetime?”
“Not so much,” Zoe said. She’d been so nervous about going back to school that she’d only had some toast for breakfast. Her stomach rumbled with hunger. “Do you want to get some lunch?”
“Sounds good,” said Absynthe.
Zoe stood up and said, “I guess I don’t know that much about any new bands.”
Absynthe smiled one of her big feral smiles and looped her arm in Zoe’s. “Will you let me play you some? As much as I love old-school punk, living in the past is kind of a dead end, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, I do,” said Zoe. “I’d really like to hear something new.”
About the Author
New York Times bestselling author RICHARD KADREY has published eight novels, including Sandman Slim, Kill the Dead, Aloha from Hell, Devil Said Bang, Butcher Bird, and Metrophage, and more than fifty stories. He has been immortalized as an action figure, his short story “Goodbye Houston Street, Goodbye” was nominated for a British Science Fiction Association Award, and his novel Butcher Bird was nominated for the Prix Elbakin in France. A freelance writer and photographer, he lives in San Francisco.
www.richardkadrey.com
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Also by Richard Kadrey
Kill City Blues
Devil Said Bang
Aloha from Hell
Kill the Dead
Sandman Slim
Credits
Cover design by Adam Johnson
Cover photographs: woman © by Andy & Michelle Kerry/Trevillion Images; forest © by Roy Bishop/Arcangel Images; all other images © by Shutterstock
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Harper Voyager and design is a trademark of HCP LLC.
DEAD SET. Copyright © 2013 by Richard Kadrey. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 978-0-06-228301-6
Epub Edition NOVEMBER 2013 ISBN: 9780062283023
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