Teen Hyde

by Chandler Baker

  All the while I kept replaying one sentence: There’s a dead body in the yard, there’s a dead body in the yard, there’s a dead body in the yard.

  “I hate you missing more school, Cassidy.” The corners of her mouth turned down. I saw her shoulders sag with them. “I already agreed to volunteer for Junior League today. But…” She dug for her cell phone. “I suppose I can cancel. Just let me call Mary Beth and—”

  Too far, I thought. If I overplayed the illness, I risked getting stuck with Mom guarding my bed and a never-ending supply of chili while she tried to get me to sweat whatever “it” was out of me. “Stop, Mom. It’s okay. I’m seventeen. I don’t need you to cancel your plans for me.” I sucked in a deep breath and channeled the old Cassidy, the one that she trusted. “Actually, I wouldn’t even be missing school at all.” I rested my elbows on the kitchen island casually. “But we have that big game with Lamar on Friday and I absolutely can’t be sick then. The girls have been working really hard.”

  There was a spark of appreciation in her eyes. “Maybe a little too hard,” she said with a knowing tilt of her head. But I could tell how secretly pleased she was. Oilerettes. Big game. Working hard. When it came to the daughter who cared, these signs were the trifecta. She immediately began to buzz around the kitchen, morphing into a mom who was concerned for all the normal reasons instead of a mom whose daughter was spiraling into a bottomless pit of depression. “You’ll be missing practice then,” she said as she pulled out a bottle of vitamins from a cabinet. It wasn’t a question. With a pang, I remembered the almost-coup waiting for me at practice and wanted to argue.

  Instead I gave her a weak smile and held up my hand while she poured two chewable vitamins into my palm. “The girls will be fine without me. Who knows, maybe I’ll even give them the day off. I’ll catch up on my work Monday when we have off school. Promise.”

  Mom leaned forward and kissed my forehead. “Fine, you girls all take the day off then. That’d be nice of you. Now go back to bed.” She pointed a finger at me and lightly touched my nose. My insides throbbed.

  I climbed the stairs, dreading being closed up in a room that now felt like a crime scene, even if it was just for a short time. At a glance, nothing in my room looked out of place. The ceiling fan whirred overhead. Light spilled in through the shutters and bounced off the glass of my vanity.

  But when I pulled back the sheet, the smears of blood jumped out. Sharp red and unmistakable. My vision swam. In the daytime, the stains were more visible. It now looked as if I’d spent the night rolling around in a slaughterhouse.

  There was a light knock on the door. I covered the gore with my duvet and spun to face the entry. A creak and then Honor’s face poked through.

  She had her backpack slung over one shoulder. Her long hair fell in angelic curtains around her face. “Sorry you’re sick,” she said. “Text me if you want me to bring you anything on the way home. Assuming you manage to dodge Mom’s chili.”

  And just like that, my kid sister was back. “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll text you.”

  “Oh, and you better not let her catch you out of bed,” Honor called as she pulled the door shut again.

  I stared down at the comforter. I did not want to crawl into a mess of someone else’s blood, but she was right. If Mom caught me out of bed, there would be the inevitable tucking in and taking of temperature, all with the distinct possibility of chili.

  I held my breath and shimmied between the covers. “Oh god.” I stifled a gag. This should so not be happening.

  For fifteen minutes I stewed in someone else’s spilled vital fluids until at last my mom came upstairs to tell me she was headed out for the day. I nodded and tried to strike a balance between pathetic and capable. She blew me an air kiss after which it took another five minutes before I heard the garage door screech open and her car start.

  I kicked the soiled sheets down to my feet and leaped out of bed. The next four hours, I spent washing and drying the sheets, spraying the lawn down with a power hose, running the dishwasher, and wiping the house clean of any stray drops. At the end, I collapsed onto the couch and lost myself in back-to-back episodes of whatever sitcoms were playing on syndication, too lazy and spent to change the channel.

  I jumped to a sitting position when I heard the doorbell ring. My mom never rang the doorbell. My first thought was: cops? Bleary-eyed, I looked up to realize it was evening and I must have been sleeping. I peeked out the back door and saw that Mom’s car was back in the garage. She must have snuck in and let me sleep. I should have been figuring out what to do next, formulating some kind of plan. But what kinds of plans were available to someone who may or may not have killed someone in her backyard?

  That was a stupid train of thought. I should have been trying at least.

  Still dressed in my pajamas, I wandered to the door, on the other side of which, to my great relief, I found Paisley waiting. “Ugh, I can’t tell if you’re either really sick or just plain sad,” she said, letting herself in.

  Funny, neither could I. “Come right in, I guess.”

  She turned and looked back at me from the foyer with a look like, please. She was right. Up until the last few months, Paisley and I had practically lived at each other’s houses. We’d traded clothes, slept over on school nights, and shared an unlimited supply of inside jokes. But ever since this fall, sometimes it’d seemed like someone had taken our photograph and torn it in half. Thinking about it, I felt a ballooning in my throat. Turned out, I actually missed Paisley.

  I hovered close to the open front door, which I knew didn’t exactly say make-yourself-at-home, but whatever. I was already at a disadvantage seeing as how she’d found me in my ratty pj’s and would probably tell the whole squad how I was headed for breakdown city.

  “I brought your assignments,” she said. “Mrs. Van Lullen didn’t want you falling any further behind this year after … well, you know. After everything.”

  “Great.” I took the short stack of work sheets and folders from her and tucked them underneath my arm. “But don’t worry. I’ve got it completely under control. I’ll be back to school tomorrow.”

  She raised her eyebrows. Paisley Wheelwright was the Zen master of saying every condescending thing she wanted to without actually ever saying a word. Sure, it was convenient when you were in on the joke. But now? It was just a pain in the ass.

  “Well, friend to friend,” she said, “I’ll just say that the girls thought it was a little strange you missed practice the day after your big rally cry.”

  “Really? Because Ava texted me to let me know she was worried about me and hoped I felt better,” I lied. “You know, friend to friend,” I added. I pulled back my shoulders and attempted to look as dignified as possible for someone wearing elastic-waisted pants with kittens on them.

  A frown flitted across Paisley’s face and then disappeared. “That was nice of her.” Her voice rasped just a touch at the end.

  I was Homecoming queen. I was a perfectionist. I was Cassidy Hyde. I smiled and it felt like I’d glued on somebody else’s. “Well, thanks for this. I’ll see you tomorrow, I guess.”

  Paisley nodded and moved past me toward the door like a stranger. “Yeah, take care of yourself, Cass.”

  “I always do.”

  As soon as I shut the door behind her, I twisted the lock into place and pressed my back into the wood, breathing heavily. All around me it felt as if reality was crumbling and I was standing at the bottom of the rubble heap waiting to get buried.

  My hands trembled. I wanted to feel good. I wanted to get the old Cassidy back, the way I had this weekend. I didn’t want to look at her through the wrong end of a telescope, barely recognizing the person I used to be or the person I’d become. I was too good for that.

  But when I returned to my room and pulled the small plastic bag from the inside of my music box I felt a twinge of misgiving as I stared at the yellow pill balanced between my fingers. Something wasn’t right about these, or was
it that something wasn’t right about me? I knew I needed to figure it out and I promised myself that I would start first thing tomorrow.

  For now, exhaustion and depression picked apart my willpower until all that was left was crumbs. I spun the pill around and around in between those two fingers. Around and around. Until the crumbs were picked over, too.

  Only half, I promised myself. That was all I needed. Just a half and then the calm would be there to carry me away.

  Just a half and I’ll be okay.…

  TEN

  Marcy

  Whoever said murder was an ugly business hadn’t tried it. The way the world bloomed red had been nothing short of poetic, but not even I had expected it to feel that good. With my fist closed around the knife as it sank through his skin, slipped between his ribs, and found his organs, I felt like a goddess. His blood had been warm—just how I’d imagined freshly churned cow’s milk—spilling over my fingers.

  Blood everywhere. So much blood. I replayed the moments, a reel of the night’s greatest hits, and grinned like an idiot at the memory. Each recollection sat in my mind like a gift that could be unwrapped over and over. There was the second when he realized he’d made a mistake. The one when he knew with utter certainty that I wasn’t the quarry. The heartbeat when he saw the knife. The shriek when he felt the first stab of pain. The space in time when at last the light went out in his one remaining eye.

  I wanted to celebrate. I wanted to raise my glass to justice. And revenge.

  I twisted my hands around the steering wheel impatiently as I drove along the dead street of Grimwood. At stoplights I revved the engine, craving the roar of it in my chest. I wanted more. I reached over toward the passenger’s side and snapped open the glove compartment. Fishing around, I felt the phone and wallet I’d stripped from the body, the things that told me Mick Holcolm was dead. That was Short One’s name, it turned out. I bypassed both of these things—for now—and pulled out the two scraps of paper with jagged handwriting scrawled across it that I’d found last night discarded in the cup holder. When pieced together, I’d recognized the name.

  Lena.

  I could easily picture the face that went with it, staring up at me from the pavement with big, frightened eyes.

  Lena Leroux.

  I read the numbers and punched them into the keypad. The phone rang in my ear. I was about to hang up when a breathy voice came on the line. “Hello?” I waited, listening to the thud of my beating heart against the phone. “Hello?… Is that you?”

  * * *

  THE GAS STATION at Third and Mulholland cast a flickering, fluorescent glow that made it look like the inside of a freezer display case. Oil stained the concrete in slick puddles. An overstuffed trash can spit up plastic soda bottles and cardboard. I found Lena standing underneath the white, cascading light, hand clutched around the top of a six-pack of beer.

  I pulled the car halfway between two parking spots and rolled down the window. “Where’d you get that?” I asked. Lena wore a long-sleeved fishnet top that showed off thin, fuchsia spaghetti straps that poked out from underneath it. Faded gray jeans hugged her skeleton-skinny legs all the way down to a pair of black boots that stopped at the ankle.

  Lena rested her elbows on the side of my car. Her chunky black bangs fell against her eyelashes. She jerked her head to gesture back at the gas station. “Inside. I paid the cashier twenty bucks to give it to me. You said you were in the mood to celebrate, didn’t you?” I nodded. She reached up and parted the bangs to push them from her large, cartoonish eyes. “May I?”

  I nodded again and Lena tucked her bony knees into the seat beside me where she cradled the beer in her lap.

  Inside, the cashier who’d sold Lena the beer watched us over the top of a National Enquirer. “Were you sleeping?”

  She shrugged. “Barely. I have insomnia. It blows.”

  “Me too,” I said. The car felt ten degrees warmer with her in it. “But I don’t mind it.”

  She hugged the cardboard carton to her chest and the cans rattled. “That’s good, I guess. My dad says nothing good happens after midnight.” She turned her face toward me expectantly. Everything about Lena was a paradox. Her wide eyes gave her a look of innocence and sweetness at odds with the dark fringe of hair that masked most of her face. She seemed equal parts helpless baby deer and streetwise feral kitten.

  “Your dad’s full of shit.”

  She laughed and I could tell she didn’t mind. “Where are we going?”

  I tapped my foot idly against the brakes. “I don’t know. Should I know?” I’d wanted to burn off my energy with another human being, but now that she was here, there was still energy buzzing through in small shock waves, filling me up with the need for topsy-turvy anarchy but with nowhere to find it. “That’s why I called you.”

  She hummed what sounded like classical music under her breath. “There’s an old grain mill out there.” She pointed past the gas station toward a field and the border of the forest known as the Hollows out back. “Not far. A few of the theater kids smoke out there sometimes. They invited me twice.” I could tell by her tone that invitations for Lena were a rare occasion. “Cops never come that way.” She tapped the six-pack.

  The fact that she knew cops never came that way instilled in me a sliver of trust. “All right,” I said, not much caring where we went as long as it was somewhere. “Lead the way then.”

  I felt jittery and a little silly as I followed Lena out of the car. Another girl who seemed equally at home in the dead hours of the night and the wee hours of the morning. We crossed behind the gas station into the field where the grass was unmowed and we had to high-step through it while the blades tickled our kneecaps.

  The artificial glow cast by the gas station awning and the traffic lights faded until the only light we had to see by was the silver moon. We crossed through a thin layer of trees before I noticed the clearing.

  The mill was a rectangular building with rows of windows that had long since lost their glass and now hovered like gaping eye sockets within the concrete’s peeling red paint. Above us, a sign on stilts attached to the building’s roof read, Golden Heart Flour. I couldn’t guess how long since the mill had been open. Ten years? Twenty?

  “It’s a little … creepy, I guess, at this time of night.” Lena’s voice was a soft whisper in the night.

  “Not if you don’t have anything to be afraid of,” I said, and pushed open the door. With a creak it opened up into a murky cavern.

  The soles of our shoes scraped through sawdust. Lena pointed her cell phone screen outward and we stared up into a maze of wood beams overhead.

  I ran my hand over a giant cogged wheel, then took a seat at the bottom of a metal staircase that spiraled up into levels unseen.

  Lena giggled nervously. She handed me a can. The aluminum was barely colder than room temperature. “You drink beer?” she asked.

  “Not really.” I cracked the tab. The sound echoed in the abandoned mill and the amber liquid fizzed into a head of foam. I slurped it off the top.

  She watched me. A funny little grin tugged at her lips and it reminded me again of a cat. “But since we’re celebrating then,” she said, opening her own. “What are we celebrating anyway?” She wrapped one hand around a metal cord that hung from the ceiling with a pulley attached to the bottom of it.

  I took my time answering. “Us,” I said.

  She let go of the pulley cord and it swung in a lazy pendulum arc. “I didn’t know there was an us.” But there was. I’d been her, the stupid girl who went off with stupid boys because they were loud and handsome and older. The only difference was there’d been no one there to save me. “I didn’t think you’d call,” she said.

  I let my head rest against the rusty railing. “Those guys were assholes.” Like that was a response.

  Lines of graffiti sullied the carcasses of empty grain carts. Lena’s breathing was loud. The metal siding of the mill groaned eerily as if it were a part of the conver
sation. Holes in the roof let in light from the moon and stars.

  Lena held her can of beer out to me. “To us,” she said, meeting my gaze and holding it.

  “To us,” I repeated and we clinked cans and each took a long sip.

  I noticed the three stars tattooed on her wrist. She seemed so young and insubstantial to have something as permanent as a tattoo. “Where’d you get that?” I pointed.

  She turned her wrist over and looked down at the stars drawn in navy blue ink against her pale skin. “A girl I know.” She touched the tip of her finger gently to the center of each one. “So that I’ll always have three wishes. In case I ever need them,” she explained. “You know how it goes. When you wish upon a star…” Her voice took on a melody and she whistled another bar of the song.

  I watched as she idly traced the outside of the ink and felt interest grip me. Maybe it was that two-thirds of my can was now empty or maybe it was that I needed to feel the rush of last night in some lasting way. Whatever it was, the yearning for something crazy found its foothold.

  “I want one,” I said. “Take me.”

  “To get stars?”

  “No, to get a tattoo. Will this girl you know, will she give me one even though I’m too young, too?”

  Lena stood up straighter. “You’re serious.” Her eyes shone.

  “Deadly.” My mouth spread into a wicked smile.

  “You’re a little bit insane, Marcy. You know that?” She dropped her empty can on the floor and crushed it underfoot.

  “Oh, trust me, I’m more than a little bit.”

  After another beer each, Lena and I headed the short distance back to where my car waited, a healthy buzz vibrating through us for encouragement. I drove and she directed me. She kept casting me sidelong glances like I might chicken out. She didn’t know me. I didn’t chicken out. When we arrived at the location, it was a freestanding shop with a slanted roof, neon signs, and a mural of a skull and roses painted on the side.

  “They’ll be open at this hour?” I asked, following her around to the front door.