Poison Ink

by Christopher Golden

  Sammi had played guitar, tried out her new song on the girls, and they had all enjoyed it. Letty had offered some constructive criticism, suggesting she slow it down to give it a more melancholy quality, and they all agreed that this made it better. Now they shared two large bowls of microwave popcorn, despite T.Q.’s mother worrying they might throw up after all that ice cream, and watched DVDs of the first season of HBO’s Entourage, their favorite show. Katsuko’s parents would not have approved, and that only made the show that much better.

  “So, tell us more about Cute Adam,” Letty said between episodes.

  “Yeah. You said he’s yummy. Elaborate.” Caryn slid off the bed to plop down beside Sammi on the spread of sleeping bags.

  Sammi shrugged. “Not much to tell. He’s just a cute guy.”

  “A cute guy you’re going out with on Friday night,” Katsuko reminded her. She pushed her black hair out of her face and arched a suggestive eyebrow. “There better be more to tell, or you’re sluttier than we thought.”

  Sammi gaped at her for a second, then leaned over and punched her on the arm. “Bitch.”

  They grinned at each other. From the bed, Letty reached down and gave her a little nudge. Sammi rolled her eyes.

  “Okay, fine. He’s…I don’t know, you guys. He just paid attention. He seemed interested in actually talking. I had this top on, you know that green stripy one? But he wasn’t spending the whole time staring at my chest.”

  “But some of the time, right?” Caryn asked. “I mean, otherwise it would be just weird.”

  Sammi shot her a look, feeling her face flush with the heat of embarrassment.

  “She’s not wrong,” T.Q. said.

  They all looked up. She talked so little, they always paid attention when she did, hoping it would encourage her. T.Q. had a mischievous smile on her face.

  Sammi sighed. “Yes, he looked. Just not the way most of the guys we know look. But that was just one thing I noticed. Mostly I just liked talking to him. You guys are making way too big a deal out of this, though. We met once. I talked to him this morning for, like, two seconds. Who knows if he’ll even follow through with this thing for Friday night? He’ll get distracted by some other girl once school starts, and that’s that.”

  Even as she spoke the words, she felt a twinge in her chest, and she realized how disappointed she would be if that happened. Guys did that sort of thing all the time, but it mattered with Adam. Sammi knew how stupid she was being, setting herself up to let some guy ruin her weekend by blowing her off. She just couldn’t help it.

  “I shouldn’t even have told you guys,” she said.

  They all looked at her with a kind of quiet horror.

  “You better tell us,” Katsuko said. “That’s not cool, Sam. We’re supposed to tell each other everything.”

  “And I did,” Sammi said. She slumped against T.Q.’s bed, lolling her head back. “Could we move on to another subject now? God, you all need to hook up with someone so we can talk about something else.”

  T.Q. saved her by starting the next episode of Entourage.

  Halfway through, they all heard the low vibration coming from someone’s cell and scrambled around to locate their phones. Sammi found hers and knew, even before she looked at the screen, that it would be Adam.

  A text. U havin fun?

  “Is that from him?” Caryn asked, crawling over to try and grab the phone.

  Sammi kept the phone out of her reach and turned to look at them. “Adam wants to know if we’re having fun.”

  “Tell him the football team just left,” Katsuko said.

  “And the cheerleaders,” Letty added.

  “You guys are terrible,” T.Q. said.

  Caryn laughed. “Depends on your perspective.”

  Yep, Sammi texted back. Lingerie party. No boys allowed. As she did, she read her message out loud. The girls replied with hoots and giggles.

  “Tell him to take a picture of himself,” Katsuko said.

  It amazed Sammi how much Katsuko had opened up since they had all become friends. The girl spent most of her time either with the swim team or swimming on her own, and the rest of it studying. In the summer, she taught swimming and was a lifeguard at the Covington Swim Club, a private pool in town. But when she was with the rest of them, Katsuko seemed to come alive.

  “Right now?” Sammi asked.

  Caryn scowled. “No, next week. Of course right now.”

  Her phone vibrated. that hrtz.

  Send me a pic of u, she sent back.

  Sammi expected him to hesitate or to ask for one back, especially since she’d told him they were all in lingerie, instead of the pajamas, shorts, and sweatpants they were really wearing. A couple of minutes went by, and then the phone vibrated again.

  Adam had sent his picture with a message. do i get thmbs up?

  “Wow,” Letty said as Sammi showed the picture around. “He is cute. What a smile.”

  T.Q. glanced away after checking out the photo. “Guess I have to learn to play guitar.”

  “He wants to know if he gets a thumbs-up from you guys,” Sammi told them.

  “Oh yeah,” Caryn said. “He passes.”

  You’re cute, apparently, Sammi texted him. Personally, i don’t see it. ouch, the message came back.

  See u friday, she typed. g2g. Night.

  Night.

  Only when she had closed her phone and glanced around did she realize that the others had gone on watching Entourage without her. For a couple of minutes, she’d been completely focused on her exchange with Cute Adam. Now, though, when she stuffed the phone into her backpack and slid over beside Caryn, she felt a moment of tension in the room.

  “You’re not gonna be one of those girls, are you?” Caryn asked. Her tone seemed light, but her expression was grim.

  “What are you talking about?” Sammi said.

  “You know. The girls who get a guy and blow off their friends.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  But she could see it was no joke, and as she looked around, she realized they were all waiting for an answer. Her stomach gave a little twist, and Sammi shifted away from Caryn, turning to face them all like they were some kind of jury and she the defendant. At the moment, that was how it felt.

  “That’s…” She shook her head, glanced away for a moment, and then focused on Caryn. “That really sucks that you would think that. You should know the answer to that question. Never mind that I, like, just met the guy and he’ll probably turn out to be an asshole. He could be Prince freakin’ Charming and I’d never do that.”

  Sammi looked at each of them in turn. “Being here with you guys…you know what it means to me. We’ve talked about it. Nothing’s as important as that.”

  She ended up on Caryn again, staring at her, and eventually Caryn looked away.

  “Sorry, Sam. I’m sorry. You’re right. It means that much to me, too, or I wouldn’t have said anything.”

  T.Q. piped up. “I hope he is Prince Charming, Sammi. I hope he’s the greatest guy in the world.”

  Katsuko reached out and took Sammi’s hand. “You deserve that.”

  “We all do,” Sammi said. “Except Letty. She deserves—”

  “Jessica Biel,” Letty interrupted.

  They all grinned. “Yes. You deserve Jessica Biel,” Sammi said. “Someday, you two will find each other. It’s destiny.”

  “Damn straight.” Letty rolled on her back and threw out her arms, closing her eyes as though offering herself up. “Come to me, Jessica.”

  “Maybe Cute Adam is your destiny, Sam,” Katsuko said.

  Sammi rolled her eyes. “And in a couple of weeks, we won’t remember his name. You guys know what my luck’s been like. Or have we forgotten Tim? And Matt? And Bobby McCann?”

  “Bobby McCann?” Caryn said, scowling. “Wasn’t he from, like, fifth grade?”

  “Still, it’s a pattern,” Sammi argued.

  “That just means it’s your turn,” Letty assur
ed her.

  “To answer your question,” T.Q. said, “yes, we’ve forgotten those guys. And so should you.”

  Sammi smiled. “Maybe.”

  Katsuko cried out and swung her pillow, and the girls turned their assault on Sammi, who surrendered in a fit of giggles.

  Letty stood on the bed like the Queen of the Mountain, looking around at them with the pillow in her hand, ready to defend herself. Then something in her face shifted. Her milk chocolate eyes narrowed, and Sammi saw a kind of light dancing in them.

  “I have the coolest idea ever,” she said.

  They all looked at her. Letty knelt down on the bed, and they crowded around her like schoolchildren waiting for the teacher to read a story.

  “We should get a tattoo,” she whispered.

  “Tattoos?” Caryn started to laugh.

  “No, no. Not tattoos, not like we go together and everybody picks out something different,” Letty went on. “We should get a tattoo. The same one for all five of us, something totally unique that nobody else in the world would have.”

  “I don’t know,” T.Q. started to say.

  But Caryn began to nod. “That’s brilliant. Something that’s just us, that, like, represents our friendship, so no matter what happens for the rest of our lives, we’ll never forget what we all mean to each other.”

  “And you can design it, Caryn,” Katsuko said.

  Sammi laughed softly, in disbelief. She stared at Katsuko. The idea seemed crazy, but wonderful at the same time—a permanent reminder of the bond they shared. But she never would have thought Katsuko would go for it.

  “I love it,” T.Q. said. She reached around to touch the small of her back. “I could get it right here. That would look so cool.”

  “What would the design be, though?” Sammi asked.

  Caryn smiled. “I could come up with something. Or I’d do a bunch and we could all choose the one we like the best.”

  Several seconds ticked by without another word. The only sound in the room was the television and the breathing of the five girls. They all wore smiles of mixed disbelief and excitement.

  “Are we really going to do this?” T.Q. asked.

  “Definitely,” Sammi said.

  Letty let out a whoop of joy and jumped down off the bed, hugging everyone she could reach.

  But Katsuko had gone silent, and her smile had disappeared.

  “I can’t,” she said. “It would be amazing. To share something like that with all of you, I would love it. But my parents are never going to let me get a tattoo. And I don’t think anyone’s going to do it for us without permission from our parents. Nowhere good, anyway, where we could be sure they’d be safe.”

  Caryn and Letty started to try to persuade her, but then T.Q. swore.

  They stared at her. T.Q. never swore.

  “My parents, too. I don’t think they’ll go for it.” She looked up. “What about you, Sammi? You know your parents would kill you.”

  Sammi only nodded, heart sinking with disappointment. That would be all her parents would need right now; something else to argue about. They all seemed to have deflated.

  Then Katsuko spoke up again.

  “Screw it. I’m so sick of being a good girl, always having to worry about what my parents will think. This means too much to me. They’ll never understand, but they don’t have to. It’s got nothing to do with them.”

  “Yeah, but you were right,” Sammi said. “You have to be eighteen, I think, otherwise you have to have a parent with you. I mean, Rachael Dubrowski has a tattoo shop, but I can’t see her breaking the law for us, even if she is dating my cousin.”

  Caryn shook her head. “No. There must be places where nobody will ask questions.”

  T.Q. slumped back onto her sleeping bag. “Places we could get the ugliest tattoo ever, where they could mess up big time, or use a needle with disease all over it. If we could even find anyone willing. These guys have to be licensed, right? If they break the rules, they get shut down.”

  “Damn, aren’t you Little Miss Sunshine?” Letty said. “C’mon, Simone, don’t be like that.”

  T.Q. shrugged. “Just being realistic.”

  “So we just go out of state,” Caryn said. “New Hampshire’s right up the street, girls.”

  For a second they all brightened. This time it was Letty who shot it down.

  “Not gonna work. T.Q., you’re the only one with a driver’s license, but you can’t drive anyone under eighteen without an adult in the car. If we got pulled over, you’d be screwed.”

  “We’ll do it ourselves,” Katsuko said, darkly serious.

  They all stared at her.

  “Seriously,” she went on. “We take the right precautions and we’ll be fine.”

  “No way,” Sammi said. “If I’m going to have ink on my body for the rest of my life, I want it to be something beautiful. Even if it’s Caryn’s design, who’s going to actually carve it into my flesh? Somehow I’ve got a feeling it’s not going to be a work of art by then.”

  “Plus, infection,” T.Q. said.

  They all looked at Letty, who had gone very quiet. When she realized they were staring at her, a sly smile spread across her face.

  “What?” Caryn asked.

  Letty lay sideways on the bed, lounging like Cleopatra, her grin broadening. “There’s a new place in my neighborhood. The guy’s got the windows blacked out and the only sign is the one that says Open in, like, blue neon. It’s always on, day or night, as far as I can tell. The guy, Dante, does tattoos. My cousin Ana says his work is beautiful. Not that it makes a difference to me, but Ana also said the guy’s a total smokin’ hottie. I say we go by there and talk to him.”

  They all looked at each other, each waiting for someone else to object.

  “No harm in talking,” Sammi said.

  Letty smiled.

  Sammi felt a sudden rush of fear, as though she had just reached the top of the roller coaster and whatever happened now was completely out of her control. The pain of the needle wasn’t what bothered her. But the idea of her parents’ finding out troubled her deeply. They had always trusted her, and if she shattered that trust, she knew how hurt they would be. She had always been honest with them, and it frightened her to think about throwing that away.

  But when Letty put her hand into the middle of the circle they had formed, and one by one the other girls followed suit, Sammi took a breath and put her hand in as well. Their bond had been made deeper just by the idea of what they were planning, and by the secrecy that would be required of all of them.

  The pact had been made.

  3

  T he buses were late on the first afternoon of school. Sammi stepped out through the metal doors and saw the mess of kids milling around on the grass and walkways in front of Covington High. The teachers were trying to keep some kind of order, as if there had been a fire drill, but with the excitement at the end of the first day, their efforts were hopeless.

  Sammi peered over the tops of people’s heads, searching for red hair. At her height and with that hair, T.Q. was hard to miss. She weaved her way through the hordes as they laughed and shouted to one another, but saw no sign of T.Q. anywhere.

  “Hey, Holland!”

  She turned to find Caryn striding toward her, dressed impeccably, as always. Sammi knew her friend could take just about any piece of clothing and make it look great—today’s combination of sheer blouse over tank top and slit-leg skirt presented a perfect example—but she could never figure out how Caryn managed not to spill any food on her clothes at lunchtime. Only the first day of school, and she’d already managed to dribble Sloppy Joe sauce on her chin and tray without getting it on her clothes.

  Superpowers. The only answer.

  “How was the rest of your day?” Sammi asked.

  “Very cool,” Caryn replied with a half nod. “I could live without the bio class. Mr. Pucillo bores me out of my skull, and just the thought of the lab sessions grosses me out. Other than t
hat, it’s kinda good to be back.”

  “Thumbs-up from me, too,” Sammi said. “I’ve got Intro to Psych. I think I’m gonna like that, as long as there aren’t too many papers.”

  With a groaning of engines and a squeal of brakes, the buses began to make their appearance in the parking lot. While the first bus pulled up at the curb, Sammi glanced around.

  Letty stood on the sidewalk, waiting for her bus.

  “Hey,” Sammi said, tapping Caryn and pointing Letty out.

  They hurried over to her. Letty hefted her backpack and pushed her hair out of her face. When she looked up at them, she squinted at the sun in her eyes.

  “You guys, I so cannot wait until I get my license,” she said.

  Sammi rolled her eyes, sharing Letty’s frustration. Riding buses had been fun back in elementary school, but they were smelly and cramped and the total opposite of cool.

  “Next year, we’ll be carpooling,” Caryn said.

  “I guess Katsuko is at some swim team thing, first meeting of the year or whatever,” Sammi said, “but I didn’t see T.Q., either. Did you guys see her?”

  Letty adjusted the strap of her backpack. “Yeah. She’s at tryouts for basketball.”

  Sammi and Caryn stared at her in surprise.

  “Seriously?” Caryn said.

  Letty shrugged. “Guess she figures she’s tall enough.”

  “That’d be cool if she makes it,” Sammi said.

  Caryn raised an eyebrow. “Except it’ll mean we have to go to the games. But I guess we’ll survive.” She turned to Letty. “So, are we all set for Saturday night?”

  A troubled look passed over Letty’s face.

  “Is that a no?” Caryn asked.

  Her eyes brightened and she shook her head. “No, no. We’re good.”

  Sammi studied her. Letty glanced away a second and then met her gaze, and Sammi saw a soft sadness in her eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.