Poison Ink

by Christopher Golden

  She clicked to open an instant message box and began to type.

  Hey. I know you don’t want to talk to me right now, and that’s fine. But I’ve already apologized. What else do you want from me? You know how things are with my parents. You’re all supposed to be my friends, but you can’t even TRY to understand?

  Tempted to delete it without sending, she got up and walked away from the computer. Outside, at last, a light drizzle sprinkled against the windows. The storm had been holding its breath all day, and now it exhaled.

  If her mother had been home, maybe they could have talked it out together. But she wouldn’t be home from the bank until five-thirty.

  Sammi strode back to the computer and clicked Send.

  Her phone trilled. She jumped a little in the chair, then went to answer it. The incoming call was from Adam, and just seeing his name gave her some comfort. A friendly, sympathetic voice would be so welcome right now.

  “Hello?”

  “You all right?” She could hear the concern in his voice, but also a kind of wary curiosity.

  “I’m okay. Mondays, y’know? Kinda butting heads with my friends, but I’ll survive. How did your Monday go?” She spoke too fast, the words running together, and anyone who knew her would understand how upset she was. But Adam didn’t know her. He probably thought she was just psycho.

  Way to go, Sam.

  “Kind of disappointing,” he said. “My clever plan for world domination failed.”

  Sammi laughed, maybe a little too much. “So what next, evil overlord? What’s Plan B?”

  “No Plan B. I met this girl, see. She’s a musician. Beautiful music, beautiful girl. Makes me think maybe it’s time to leave world domination schemes to my flunkies, stop and smell the roses, blah blah blah. Want to hang out Saturday night?”

  I so do, she thought. But she took a breath. Looking eager was never a good idea.

  “Well, if it means preventing world conquest by a tyrannical madman, it would be selfish of me to say no.”

  Adam gave a quiet laugh. “Throwing yourself to the lions. Admirable.”

  Her computer binked. Sammi glanced over and saw that Caryn had replied to her IM. The ice she had summoned up earlier re-formed around her heart, but the spark of hope burned there, too.

  “Hey. Can we talk later? I’ve got some stuff.”

  “Sure. If you have a chance. If not, we’ll catch up tomorrow.”

  “Thanks. Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  Sammi closed her phone. Catching up tomorrow might be better. Now that she’d managed to dig herself out of the pitiful text she’d sent Adam earlier, no way would she lay all of her drama on him. When she knew him better, maybe. But right now all she wanted to show him of herself was the girl he’d had so much fun with at dinner the other night.

  Sliding the phone into the clip on her belt, she went back to her chair, but never got to sit down. She put her hands on the back, staring down at the instant message window that stood open on her screen.

  You’re all righteous now? Caryn had written. Our bodies are branded with a mark that—for the rest of our lives—is going to remind us what a traitorous bitch you are. You didn’t ruin a moment. You put a stain on us that’ll be there every day in the mirror. That’s forever. Don’t even think about talking to me again.

  Sammi stared at the words, trying to make sense of the rage and regret that filled her, to put it into words. Something blinked on the right of the screen, and she focused on her friends list. The others were all there now. BrownEyedGirl93 was Letty. T.Q. used her real name, SimoneD. Katsuko hated when people called her Kat, but used KatScratch for her screen name.

  StylishCarA had vanished.

  Caryn had not just logged off. She had blocked Sammi from her friends list.

  And now, as Sammi watched, one by one the others all defriended her as well, blinking out. BrownEyedGirl93. SimoneD. KatScratch. They were all gone, leaving behind the names of a few people at school and several she knew only from the Internet, people who might be on her friends list but didn’t really belong.

  The girls had deleted Sammi from their lives.

  At half past five, Sammi’s mother came home. Sammi heard the door shut and called down to her, but didn’t get up immediately. She was in the middle of changing a string on her guitar. Homework left zipped away in her backpack, she’d spent the afternoon playing angry songs that made her feel self-righteous—Alanis Morissette, Fiona Apple, and even “What I Am,” an ancient tune by Edie Brickell and New Bohemians. Anything that she could sing well while pissed off worked just fine.

  Once she’d replaced the string, she fiddled with the guitar for a few minutes, making sure it was in tune. Trying to shake off her mood before seeing her mother, she picked out the first few notes of “Summer Girl,” a song of her own she’d been working on that followed a single girl’s emotional arc over the course of four seasons, from autumn to summer. She had another that needed work—“Invisible”—but it involved school and friendship, and she wouldn’t strum a note of that one today.

  Sammi sang the first verse and chorus of “Summer Girl” before she realized that the house seemed awfully quiet. Her mother had come in but had not yet come upstairs to say hello to her. No cabinets were banging, no pots and pans, so Mom hadn’t started on dinner, and she didn’t hear voices, so Mom wasn’t on the phone.

  Curious, she stood up, propped her guitar on the stand in the corner, and went downstairs. Several windows were open, and the curtains rustled lazily with a cool breeze, heavy with the moisture of the damp day. Television voices droned from the living room, and Sammi followed them.

  Her mother lay on her side on the couch, a pillow under her head and her eyes closed. On the cooking channel, a skinny British girl flashing tons of cleavage mixed some kind of concoction in a bowl, smiling and chatting away as though talking to her best friend—her audience.

  Sammi stepped into the room and her mother opened her eyes. She didn’t seem to have been sleeping, and her attempt at a smile looked as though it pained her.

  “You okay?” Sammi asked.

  “I’ve had better days.”

  “Me too.”

  Her mother frowned and sat up. For the first time, Sammi noticed the uneven line of her mascara, as though she might have been crying but done her best to eliminate the evidence.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  Sammi shook her head. “Nothing important. Teenager stuff. It’ll pass.” Lies. All lies. “What about you? Something bad happen at work?”

  A wry smile touched her mother’s lips and she shook her head. “No. Work’s fine. Listen, I really don’t feet like cooking tonight, and I’m in even less of a mood to go out. Any objection to just ordering pizza?”

  Sammi tried searching her eyes, but her mother glanced away. A selfish voice inside her began to whine. Her mom had been the one person she’d hoped to talk to about her falling-out with the girls, but now she had her own burdens, whatever they were. It didn’t seem fair.

  But at sixteen, Sammi had already learned that life wasn’t fair. It was selfish to think only of herself when her mom was obviously hurting, too.

  “Pizza’s fine. Are you hungry now? I could order it.”

  “Thanks, sweetie. Mushroom and pepper sound good?”

  “It’s pizza. Pretty much any pizza makes me happy. What about Dad, though? Should I get half pepperoni, do you think?”

  Her mother winced. Then she smiled as though catching herself doing something foolish. “He won’t be home for dinner.” She sighed, shaking her head with a soft laugh of disbelief. “We’ll have to see if he makes it home for breakfast.”

  Sammi’s stomach lurched. “What’s that mean? Did you guys have a fight?”

  With great deliberateness, her mother focused on her, as though for the first time, her gaze kind but forlorn.

  “He’s thinking about leaving, your father. He’s trying to decide if he wants to leave, and I’m trying to
decide how long to wait before I take the choice away from him.”

  Sammi’s mouth hung open in a little “o” of surprise. There had been many days when the tension in the house made her hide away in her room, but she had never let herself believe it could come to this. Her parents could be cold to each other, navigating around the house to avoid having to speak, but that wasn’t all the time. She’d heard them fight about money, but mostly the conflicts revolved around the amount of time her father spent at the office, the nights he came home late.

  But this? Had he been cheating on her, or had they just gotten sick of each other? Sammi stared at her mother, eyes narrowed, trying to make sense of this new information, something that would not have seemed possible to her only minutes before.

  “You guys…you fight all the time, but you make up. He’ll come home.”

  Her mother grimaced, swallowing hard, and lifted a hand to cover her mouth. Her eyes glistened wetly, but she did not cry.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know which would be worse.”

  “I do,” Sammi said quickly. She wanted to stomp her foot and cry, to try to force her mother to realize that only one outcome made any sense at all. They had to stay together. They were her parents, and they belonged here in the house with her. The way it should be. Her father might not be the most attentive dad in the world, but she couldn’t imagine never having Sunday morning pancakes with him again.

  “I’m sorry, Sammi. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “No. You should. I’m sixteen, Mom, not some kid. I just…it’s so hard for me to imagine.”

  “Well, don’t try imagining it right now. Let’s think about happier things and not worry about what we can’t control. Your father and I aren’t going to do anything crazy, not without talking things over. I’m sure of that much. You go and order the pizza. Is your homework done?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Why don’t you take care of that, and after dinner we’ll watch a movie. Something funny.”

  Sammi nodded, wondering if there existed a movie in the world funny enough to lighten her heart tonight. The shadows of the day’s events hung over her, made her feel a little queasy. It seemed surreal, not having her friends to call right now, not having them to talk her through what was going on with her parents. But they weren’t her friends anymore. And so much for talking to her mother about the tattoos and the way the girls had turned their backs on her. Linda Holland had enough troubles of her own.

  Sammi gnawed her lower lip, holding back all the things she wanted to say. Her guitar waited upstairs. All her confusion could be put into the music, exorcised like a demon.

  But first she would keep her mother company for a little while. Sammi went into the kitchen to get the phone. She called the Aegean, the local pizza place they liked the best, and then went back into the living room.

  Homework could wait. She sat down next to her mother on the couch and they leaned into one another, huddling together the way they always had when Sammi had been very little. Mom handed her the remote control and she started surfing channels, not paying much attention, just looking for something to make them smile.

  7

  W hen Sammi stepped off the bus Tuesday morning, it felt like the first day at a new school. The gloomy weather of the past few days had at last abated, and the blue sky stretched forever in all directions. September always seemed a tug-of-war between summer and fall. Autumn would win in time, but on that morning summer had the advantage. Sammi wore cotton pants that zipped at the hip and a loose, short-sleeved burgundy shirt over a white tank, and she felt much too warm.

  She’d been lucky in her life. Her family had always lived in Covington. Maybe that would change if they split up—God, how can I even be thinking like that?—but other than kindergarten, she’d never had to start a school without at least having some kids around that she knew. Still, she understood what that experience must be like, everybody studying the new kid out of the corner of his eye, checking her out, watching to see if she had two heads or a weird accent, waiting for her to define herself for them.

  Today felt like that.

  She crossed the quad in front of the school through a sea of familiar faces, but most of them glanced away quickly. No one spoke to her. Several people whose groups she’d floated in and out of over the years smiled or nodded to her, but no one came over to talk. Had she done that to herself? Alienated them? Or were they just keeping clear so they wouldn’t be infected by the humiliation she’d suffered in the caf the day before?

  Sammi threw her backpack over one shoulder and held her head high. The notes of her song “Summer Girl” were playing in her head, and she sang a few lines softly to herself and hummed a little as she made her way into the school. The corridors rang with voices and slamming lockers, and she found odd comfort in the familiarity. The rest of the world might be falling down around her—her parents’ marriage, her friendships—but at least she could rely on the routine of high school.

  She didn’t look for the girls, but she watched out for them warily. It would take time for her to adjust to the way they’d defriended her, but the more she thought about it, the more confident Sammi felt that she’d been wronged. Should she have been honest with them right up front? Yeah. But trying not to hurt anyone’s feelings shouldn’t be grounds for just cutting someone off.

  Whoever they were, they obviously weren’t the girls she’d thought they were. It hurt. God, it hurt. But she’d survive this. And she cruised the corridors that morning cautiously anticipating the moment of first contact. Sammi needed that, needed to know she had the strength to ignore them. She had no doubt that they wouldn’t be speaking to her—their bumping her from their IM friends lists had made that clear. But she had no interest in trying to talk to them, either.

  She’d miss what they had all shared, but she had always been a floater. She would adjust.

  “Morning, Sammi,” a voice said.

  She turned around to find Kyrie McIntosh falling into step beside her. “What’s happening?”

  Sammi smiled. “Nada. Getting back into the rhythm, y’know?”

  The dark-haired sophomore had a retro-goth look that suited her. Short and petite, Kyrie seemed much younger than her age until you looked into her eyes and saw the intelligence and wisdom there. She was part of the theater crowd.

  “I know. Nice not being a freshman anymore. Feels like I can exhale.”

  “What show are you guys doing this fall?” Sammi asked.

  Kyrie rolled her eyes. “It’s a big debate. I’m fighting for Sweeney Todd, but the dweebs want to do High School Musical.”

  Sammi shuddered in sympathy. “Good luck.”

  “Thanks. And if I win the debate, you better audition.”

  Kyrie was always telling her to audition. Sammi’s response never wavered. She always just said, “We’ll see.”

  But not today. “I might just do that.”

  They reached a T-junction and split up. Kyrie waved and said goodbye and Sammi made a beeline for her locker. She half-expected to find rude graffiti scratched on the door or painted in lipstick. The way the girls had been behaving, it wouldn’t have surprised her. But it didn’t appear that anyone had disturbed her locker. In some ways that was worse. They’d forgotten about her, just like that.

  Maybe that’s best.

  She slid her backpack to the floor between her feet and spun through her combination, then popped open her locker. As she dug out her books, Sammi glanced up and saw Ken Nguyen coming down the corridor with a couple of the other guys on the basketball team.

  “Hey, Ken.”

  He glanced her way and smiled, then broke off from the other players to join her at her locker.

  “Sammi, what’s goin’ on? I haven’t seen you once since school started.”

  The towering senior’s laid-back manner set her at ease. She slid her backpack into her locker. “Since June, really. I don’t think we’ve seen each other since school got out in the
spring.”

  Ken nodded. “Yeah. True. You look great, by the way. Being a junior agrees with you.”

  Sammi arched an eyebrow. “Was that some kind of line?”

  He laughed. “Maybe a little. Doesn’t make it untrue.”

  “Dude, you are so going to have to work harder than that. I don’t just mean with me, but in general. You could do with lessons.”

  “Are you suggesting I’m not smooth?”

  “Chunky peanut butter. Extra chunky. Especially from a guy I’ve known since, what, fourth grade?”

  Ken hung his head in mock shame. “I’m deeply wounded.”

  Sammi laughed and shut her locker, holding her books in the crook of one arm. “Somehow I think you’ll survive. When’s your first game?”

  “This Friday. You gonna come cheer us on?”

  “I was never much of a cheerleader. The uniforms are creepy fetish objects for drooling, unshaven pervs desperately in need of a bath.”

  Ken shrugged. “All guys love girls in cheerleader uniforms.”

  She shook her head. “Still, creepy.”

  “I just figured you’d come, with Simone on the girls’ team and all.”

  Sammi blinked. “She made the team?”

  “Didn’t you know?”

  Innocent enough, the question still erased the smile from her face. Sammi glanced away a moment and then gave him an apologetic look.

  “We’re sort of not talking at the moment.”

  Scratching the back of his head, searching for something to say, Ken settled for the obvious. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “It happens. I’m glad she made it, though.”

  Relieved to be back on comfortable terrain—basketball—he nodded. “Yeah. She surprised everyone. Sure, she’s tall. A lot of people think that automatically means you can play hoops. But that’s just stupid. Tall people are just as clumsy as anyone else. But Simone’s way more athletic than I ever would’ve thought. I mean, she edits the school paper.”

  Sammi arched an eyebrow. “So nerds can’t play sports.”