Poison Ink

by Christopher Golden

  “Not usually, no.” Ken smiled as if to say that might sound prejudiced, but it was also true. “Plus, she’s…”

  “You can say it. She’s gorgeous.”

  “Hey, you said it. But it’s no lie. She’s, like, the last person I’d expect to be able to play that well.”

  “And now she’s your perfect woman.”

  He paled a little. “I didn’t say that.”

  Sammi gave an apologetic shrug. “Sorry, Kenny. I can’t talk you up to her. Like I said, we’re kinda not talking at the moment. But go for it. Maybe you guys can play some one on one.”

  “Now you’re talking.”

  She held up a hand. “Enough. And, I’m just saying, gross.”

  The morning bell rang and they walked together until Sammi had to split off from him and go into her homeroom. Ken called out to someone and ran to catch up, and then Sammi stepped into the room, steeling herself to see T.Q. Her smile vanished and she put on a mask of stillness and calm.

  But T.Q. wasn’t in the room, and by the time the bell rang for the students to make their way to their first classes of the day, she still had not shown up.

  Only when Sammi walked into her fourth-period English class and saw that Letty and Katsuko were not in their usual seats at the back of the room—were, in fact, not there at all—did she realize that none of them had shown up for school. All day she had been on edge, anticipating that first encounter, but it wasn’t coming.

  When the bell rang signaling the end of fourth period, she flooded out into the corridor with the rest of the class. Her locker was on the other side of the school, and the growling of her stomach helped her decide not to bother switching her books around for trig until after lunch.

  On the west wing stairs, she looked out the window and saw them. All four of them were there, talking and laughing. They’d come to school after all, just hadn’t bothered to come inside. Sammi froze on the stairs, the flow of students moving around her, some of them muttering in annoyance. She ignored them.

  Caryn leaned against a tree, smoking a cigarette. Letty leaned her head back and pursed her lips sexily, then blew out a cloud of smoke before tossing her cigarette to the dirt and grinding it under her heel. She tossed her head toward the school. The bell had rung, and it looked as if they were finally coming inside. Maybe they were hungry.

  Sammi stared. Her friends didn’t smoke. They never had. It seemed a small thing, yet at the same time huge, as if she’d woken up in some freakish alternate dimension. She shook her head, trying to make sense of it.

  As if she’d seen the motion, Letty glanced up at the window.

  She probably could have bolted, moved away before Letty could have gotten a good look and seen it was her. Instead Sammi frowned and kept staring. They were maybe twenty feet below the window, in a small cluster of towering old-growth trees. Even from that distance, Sammi felt mesmerized by Letty’s milk chocolate eyes and what she saw there. No sadness. No resentment. No amusement. Just cold hate.

  Sammi shivered.

  Letty did not open her mouth, but the other three turned then, as one. Slowly and without a word, they looked up at her. Not one of them made a gesture, nor did their expressions flicker. They stared until Sammi backed away from the window, shaking her head, and started down the stairs again.

  She felt as if she might throw up.

  Was it really so awful, what she’d done? Did she deserve this?

  “Bitches,” she muttered, shaking it off. No more. Sammi had had enough of letting them make her feel that way. And how weird was that smoking thing?

  From the smell wafting out of the caf, she figured either pizza or meatball subs for the more aromatic course. It might be just salad for her today. Carrying her books under one arm, she went down the steps and into the throng.

  The entire time she spent in line, she kept glancing at the doors, wondering when the girls would come in. On Wednesdays through Fridays they were separated, but today they all shared this lunch period with her.

  With her salad and a small bowl of chocolate pudding, a beautifully balanced meal, she searched for a seat, for someone she knew, and was relieved when Anna Dubrowski waved her over. Sammi slid into a seat across from her and said hello to the group she was with. She knew most of them, guys and girls who were all pretty good students and who seemed to revolve around Anna.

  But she paid little attention to the conversation, always watching the doors.

  When the bell rang to end the period, the girls still had not shown up. She wondered where the hell they were if they hadn’t come into the school yet. And then she worried that the whole year would be like this, her so focused on them that she ignored the people around her.

  “You okay?” Anna asked as she took her tray up to be cleaned.

  “Just a little spaced, sorry.”

  “That thing yesterday? With your friends?” Anna said.

  Sammi felt grateful not to have to explain. She nodded.

  “Don’t let them get to you. We’re all just marking time here,” Anna told her with a smile. “After graduation, all this is going to be like a four-year dream.”

  “Or a nightmare,” Sammi said.

  “Or that.”

  “Oddly enough, that makes me feel better.”

  The day seemed to last forever. When Sammi walked into her last class—twentieth-century American history—she faltered at the sight of Letty seated in the back row. The Puerto Rican kids in Covington tended to hang out together: strength in numbers. Letty had explained it to Sammi once upon a time, said it wasn’t a matter of prejudice, but of shared experience. They might become friends with others, but their parents all knew one another and they had grown up sharing the culture of their neighborhoods. And if anything went badly, they circled the wagons and shut out the rest of the world.

  Other groups did the same thing, defined not by heritage but by loyalties nearly as strong. Football players and cheerleaders, theater and band geeks. They backed each other up.

  Letty sat in the far corner at the back of the room, bathed in afternoon sunlight. At the desk beside her, Rafe Navedo sprawled in his chair, leaning toward her with a wolfish, suggestive smile on his handsome face. Rafe had thick, curly black hair almost to his shoulders and killer eyes, the type of guy who knew precisely how good-looking he was and made the most of it.

  He whispered something to Letty, and she giggled quietly, flirtatiously.

  Sammi felt as if she’d seen a ghost. Once upon a time, back when she’d spent all of her time hanging out with Las Reinas and guys like Rafe and Eddie Ocasio, Letty had kissed her share of boys. She’d flirted and put on the mask of hard-edged sexuality that Las Reinas all seemed to project, mostly as a way to tell the boys what they couldn’t have. But once Letty had come out, once they knew she was gay, they’d cast her adrift. They were still loyal to her, and she to them, but Letty had felt a rough static between herself and the community of kids she’d grown up with. She had confessed once to Sammi and the other girls that if Las Reinas ever circled the wagons, she feared she’d be left on the outside.

  At the time, Katsuko had assured her that they had their own wagons. The phrase had become a kind of shorthand to them for the way they promised always to look out for each other.

  But the girls had circled the wagons, and it was Sammi who’d been left on the outside.

  Sammi moved down the aisle near the door, toward the back of the room and an open seat in the second to last row. When she glanced back toward the far corner she caught Letty staring at her. The moment they locked eyes, Letty leaned toward Rafe and whispered something in his ear. Rafe glanced over at Sammi and made a small laugh, almost like a bark, before turning to Letty and lolling theatrically upon her shoulder. The two of them snickered together while Sammi slid into her chair.

  “Surprised you decided to honor us with your presence,” Sammi said, voice low, the sting of their laughter too much for her not to respond.

  “I had a doctor’s ap
pointment. Not that it’s any of your business.”

  Right. Four doctor’s appointments? Sammi might have spoken the thought aloud, but the shock of Letty actually speaking to her kept her silent. Long seconds ticked past as she tried to decide how to respond. Curiosity got the better of her. She had to know what the girls were up to.

  Sammi started to say her friend’s name. She didn’t get past the first syllable. The death glare that Letty shot her stopped her cold. If looks could kill, Sammi thought.

  Even Rafe seemed shaken by that look. He laid a comforting hand on Letty’s thigh. With a string of hissed Spanish curses, Letty dug her nails into the back of Rafe’s hand. He swore and pulled his hand back, and Sammi saw the red streaks where blood welled up in fresh scratches.

  “Crazy bitch. What’s the matter with you?”

  Letty’s upper lip curled in disgust and she stood, moving toward the middle of the room, where a single seat still stood unoccupied. Rafe started to get up to follow. Back off, Sammi thought. For the first time, she started to think of Letty as dangerous.

  A rustling at the front of the room drew her attention, kids opening their notebooks as Mr. Geary walked into the room. Maybe fifty years old, he had an earthy quality that Sammi liked. She imagined that once upon a time he’d been a genuine hippie. His hair always seemed in need of a cut and he wore a shaggy beard. But his eyes were kind and a little sad. She’d had him for history first semester last year as well, and had never learned so much in one class, mostly because his lectures were so memorable.

  “Good afternoon, my friends,” Mr. Geary said as he settled his books on the desk. He pulled out a purple folder, and from within, a stack of papers that looked all too familiar. “We’re going to do a little research together today.”

  He held up the papers. “This is a test.”

  The groan of the entire class echoed off the walls and could probably be heard in the hallway and outside the windows, where the warm, glorious afternoon had already begun to slip away.

  “Before you drink the purple Kool-Aid and go toes up in the aisles, I assure you that your performance on this test will not be counted toward your grade.”

  An exhale. A sigh of relief.

  “That wouldn’t be at all fair. It’s a surprise, after all, and only a week into the school year. What can you have learned when you haven’t even started paying attention yet?”

  Mr. Geary laughed at his own joke and reached up to stroke his beard.

  “No, this is merely a test to see how much you know. I’ll study the results tonight, and then I’ll have a better idea where to focus our efforts this semester. So, no pressure. Just do your best.”

  He went along the front row of desks handing a small stack of tests to each student, who then began to pass them back.

  “If you have any questions, I’m at my desk, preparing some notes for tomorrow’s class. I’ll also be working up the assignment for your first paper, so try not to be disruptive, please, or an eight-page paper might turn into eighteen pages.”

  Some of them laughed politely at the joke. Enough so that Mr. Geary smiled, nodded, and went to sit down. He shifted some books around on the desk and then he was gone. As she took the tests from the guy in front of her and passed the rest back, Sammi thought this was when Mr. Geary was at his happiest, just lost in his books and research.

  Sammi wrote her name on top of the test and gave it a quick once-over before answering any questions. Most of it was multiple choice, but there were fill-in-the-blanks as well. Those would probably tell a lot more about what the class knew than anything else. The multiple-choice stuff would be easy, so she skipped down and started with the blanks.

  Soon she found herself calmer than she’d been in days, at least without her guitar. Music could soothe her, slip her sideways into a calmer place where her troubles seemed far away. Without the pressure of a grade looming over her, the test provided the same escape.

  When she had finished the fill-in-the-blank questions, she paused before moving back up to the multiple choice. As she did, she glanced up the aisle at Letty, and the muscles in her back and neck tightened anew. Her grip on the pencil hurt her fingers. She longed for the weekend, for two full days without having to see the girls who’d turned their backs on her. Maybe then she could really uncoil the wires of tension that seemed to twist around her.

  For a moment she closed her eyes. Sammi took a deep breath to clear her head, opened her eyes, and studied the first multiple-choice question. But something about her glance at Letty stuck in the back of her head and, slowly, drew her attention back up the aisle.

  She studied the back of Letty’s head. From this angle, she could see the right side of her face as the other girl studied the test in front of her. While Sammi watched, Letty frowned at the paper, glanced up at Mr. Geary, and then leaned over and looked at the test of the girl beside her. Andrea Cooper gave her a sneer, shielded her test with her arm.

  “Quit it,” Andrea whispered.

  Mr. Geary looked up, but by then both girls had looked down at their tests. Frowning, he went back to taking notes.

  Letty reached out and tapped Andrea’s arm.

  The look she gave the girl made Sammi shudder, and it wasn’t even directed at her. That glance held the dark promise of violence, and it was one that Sammi had never seen on Letty before. Las Reinas were legendary for the way they would punish other girls in the parking lot after school, but Letty had never been like that.

  Not before today.

  Andrea moved her arm and pretended not to see Letty copying off her test—a test whose grade meant nothing.

  Sammi shivered in disgust and went back to her own work, but in the back of her mind, one question had started to loom much larger than all of the others for her, and it wasn’t multiple choice.

  Could she really have been so wrong about the girls she’d chosen as her friends? She’d thought they had so much in common, that they believed in the same things, and that there were a lot of things none of them would ever stoop to. In just a few hours, that faith had not merely been shaken, it had been torn down brick by brick.

  When the bell rang to end class, it seemed to wake Mr. Geary out of a trance. He looked up as though he’d been napping instead of taking notes.

  “All right, everyone. Bring your tests to my desk on the way out. Make sure your names are at the top. Have a good night, and I’ll see you all tomorrow.”

  They filed past the desk to deliver the tests and then streamed out into the corridor. Sammi’s mind was already rushing ahead to homeroom. She would check out, get her things from her locker, and get on the bus. The ride home would seem like an eternity today. All she wanted was to get home, to have time to relax with her guitar or just flop in front of the TV before her mother came home from work.

  And then she remembered her father, and she knew that instead of relaxing, she would be spending the afternoon wondering if her father would be home for dinner tonight. He had been there this morning when she woke up, so that was a good sign. Maybe the fight her parents were having would blow over and her father would apologize for what he’d said.

  Sammi hoped so. She had nowhere else to go. Nowhere she could exhale.

  As she left the class and headed for homeroom, she saw Caryn leaning against a row of lockers. Her nostrils flared when she spotted Sammi, but then her expression changed. Caryn looked past her. Sammi turned to see Letty coming along behind her…and Rafe following after, trouble brewing in his eyes.

  “Hold up, Letty. Something you oughta say to me.”

  With a condescending smile, Letty rolled her eyes and kept walking, a bounce in her step as if she’d just gotten a compliment. She carried her books against her chest like some wholesome 1950s schoolgirl.

  Rafe grabbed her arm.

  Letty froze and turned to look at him, fire in her eyes. “Canto de cabrón. No me jodas más.”

  “¡Marimacha! What is your problem?” Rafe snarled. Sammi could tell he was furio
us, but he was looking around, uncomfortable with so many people watching them.

  Letty tried to pull her arm away but he held on tighter. She went to slap him and he grabbed her wrist, trapping her free hand.

  She laughed then, mischief glittering in her eyes. “Careculo,” she said.

  Rafe’s anger turned to confusion. “Are you on crack? The hell’s wrong with—”

  He didn’t get to finish.

  Caryn went by so fast, Sammi almost didn’t realize who it was. Rafe looked up, blinking in surprise at the black girl in the stylish skirt rushing at him. He didn’t even have time to defend himself.

  “Let her go!” Caryn shouted, her hands balled into fists.

  She hit Rafe so hard that the sound echoed down the corridor. He staggered two steps backward. As he reached a hand back toward the lockers to steady himself, Caryn shot a kick at his balls.

  Rafe went down on the floor, curled into fetal position, sucking and wheezing air into his lungs as if he were having an asthma attack.

  Letty stood over him, looking down with open amusement. She shook her head. “Careculo,” she said.

  Then she giggled and started away, with Caryn falling in beside her. They laughed together, linking arms. Peering down the corridor beyond them, Sammi could see T.Q. coming toward them.

  She looked at Rafe. For a moment she considered trying to help him, but then she remembered the way he had snickered at whatever nasty crap Letty had said about her when she’d walked into history class and figured he could deal on his own.

  “What’s going on here?”

  At the voice, she turned and saw Mr. Geary staring at Rafe. In a kind of wonder and bafflement, the teacher looked around for an answer, but the students in the hall started scurrying away.

  “Samantha?” Mr. Geary said, turning those sad eyes upon her. “What’s going on?”

  She clutched her books against her.

  “I wish I knew,” Sammi said.

  Then she turned and headed for homeroom, the strangest day of her life finally come to an end.