Dad nodded while he chewed. “Professional pancake preparers.”
“You like them?” Darby asked through a mouthful.
Dad grinned and tugged Darby’s ponytail. It was an actual grin with teeth, and I wanted him to keep it there forever.
“I did something that no other fifteen-year-old has ever done in this house. We should mark today on the calendar and celebrate every year with a parade and cake,” I said.
His grin faded into nothingness as his gaze slid to Mom’s empty chair and back again. “What did you do?” He chased a piece of pancake around with his fork through the pools of syrup on his plate, but didn’t take another bite.
I made my voice all low for dramatic effect. “I made my bed.”
“It sounded like she was jumping on it,” Darby said.
I looked down my nose at her. She was ruining my moment. “What are you? A gravity enforcer?”
Darby frowned and continued to chew.
“Well, good,” Dad said, pushing his plate away. “Maybe you can clean up the rest of your room, too.”
That was it? No commemorative joke?
“Maybe,” I said and stabbed at a pancake.
“You’re still dressed in yesterday’s clothes, Leigh,” Dad said.
I looked down at my rumpled black funeral dress and shoved my plate away. It knocked over the syrup bottle.
“I’ll go change,” I mumbled and stomped to my room. I’m not sure who I was mad at, but anger bubbled up through the pancakes and rested at the back of my throat.
My dress was halfway off before I made it to my room. I wadded it up and flung it at Mom’s guitar. After I changed into skinny jeans and a black, long sleeved shirt flecked with poison-green biohazard symbols, the doorbell rang.
“Leigh, can you get that?” Dad called from the kitchen.
I sighed and trudged to the door. It better not be another Krapper resident who wanted to force a casserole or quivering gelatin salad on us to make us feel better. How could people think food would help? Who came up with that tradition? Here’s some food for you, now everything will be all better. Bullshit.
I was tackled with a bear hug as soon as I opened the door.
Jo released me and asked, “How are you?” Her brown eyes were too full of concern, too full of every emotion she ever felt, and I had to look away.
“Okay.”
“I wanted to call you yesterday after the funeral, but I didn’t know…”
“Did you tap on my window last night?” My voice came out squeaky.
“No.” Jo frowned. “Why? Someone did?”
I shook my head, forcing myself to chill. “I must’ve been between awake and asleep and imagined it.”
“Oh,” Jo said and took a breath. “Do you want to do something? Or no. Whatever you want to do is fine. I just came by to see if you’re okay.”
The clank of pans and running water sounded from the kitchen.
“I can do something. Hang on,” I said and shut the door in Jo’s face.
She hardly ever came inside. The no shoes rule freaked her out. She always said she would have to decontaminate herself and shroud herself in bubble wrap to come in.
“I’m leaving, Dad,” I hollered once I’d found my boots in my room.
He didn’t answer, but I figured it wasn’t a great mystery where he could find me.
As soon as I shut the front door, I darted a glance along the side of my single-story house where my bedroom was, the last window on the end. The rain had soaked the grass to a deep green, and leaves rustled on the large tree in the yard. My grief really had made me hallucinate the day before. Sarah hadn’t woken up and dripped black death everywhere. I squeezed the heels of my boots against my palm with relief and let the sweet, clean air wash the smell of burnt pancakes from my nose.
Jo kneeled on the porch and cradled one of Mom’s lilacs that grew on either side. The wind fanned her long, gauzy skirt behind her, covering her hairy legs. She said she wouldn’t shave them until Miguel from Spanish class asked her out.
I jammed my feet into my boots, aware that she was staring at me again. “I wish you’d stop looking at me like that.”
“Sorry,” she said and shifted her attention to a stray thread on her skirt. “Do you want me to poke my eyes out for you?”
I helped her up. “Yes.”
She laughed, and it reminded me of Mom’s, light and bubbly. My heart clenched while we walked from my house. I could turn back, but I had to leave the house sometime. Besides, the walls there didn’t vibrate with life anymore.
“So what do you want to do?” Jo asked as she leaped over a puddle on the sidewalk.
“I don’t know.” How many times had we asked that question of each other? Our options were so severely limited in Krapper that it might have been funny if it weren’t so depressing.
“I won’t drag you around with my petition today,” Jo said. “Unless you want me to.”
She was rallying the town for a recycling center since some of Krapper’s clever dwellers used their own lawns as landfills. She wished they would push their garbage just a bit further to the curb and maybe even separate the plastics from the magazines.
“I’m not really in the mood for pissy people who can only sign their name with an X. And it looks like it’s going to rain. Again.” Just as the words were out of my mouth, the sky boomed a warning.
“That’s okay. The petition’s almost filled anyway. Hey, I know what we can do,” she said, clapping her hands together as we neared her house. “My parents are at their restaurant, so we can steal Cal’s car and go to Whaty-Whats.”
I scraped the bottoms of my boots along the sidewalk to get the mud off. “Cool.”
My still-muddy boots and I entered Jo’s house and stepped on the carpet. The Monroes didn’t care as much about a spotless house as us Baxtons. Maybe that’s why it was dark in here. Thick curtains covered every window so no one could see the dirty home, but the lack of light couldn’t mask the smell of sweaty feet and the nearby sink full of crusty dishes.
“Cal’s probably still asleep, but even if he isn’t, he’s such a zombie, he won’t even know his car keys are missing,” Jo said and skipped down the stairs into a black void. The nothingness at the bottom of the stairs swallowed her up into a mouth that couldn’t close.
At the thought of zombies and open mouths, my heart picked up its rhythm.
Should I tell Jo what I thought I saw after Mom’s funeral and what I imagined I heard outside my window? We never kept secrets from each other, so even asking myself this made me feel like I was betraying her somehow. She was the last person who would try to wrestle me into a straitjacket, but since I only imagined it, why should I say anything?
I slid my hand along the wall, searching for the switch, and light soon flooded the basement and spilled onto the steps.
At the bottom, Jo had her face pressed against Callum’s door. She grinned as she turned the doorknob and pushed.
I crept behind her but stopped in the doorway. By the basement light and the blue lava lamp in Callum’s bedroom, I could see well enough.
Callum was face down on his bed with nothing covering him but his boxers. The Monroes’ cat, Elf, sat on top of Callum’s butt and stared at us, his eyes like perfect circles of reflective tape.
Jo tiptoed to Callum’s dresser. Her hand closed over the keys, and she turned back toward the door.
Callum stirred, but Elf managed to ride out the wave of him.
Her eyes wide, Jo hurried toward me.
“Weed,” a muffled voice said, “what are you doing?”
“Nothing,” Jo whispered. “You’re dreaming.”
“If you’re stealing my car again, I’ll tell Mom and Dad, and they’ll never get you your own car.”
“Whatever, Cal. I’ll tell them you snuck out last night even though you’re grounded,” she warned.
Callum muttered a string of curse words. Elf, still on Callum’s butt, settled down into a cre
scent shape and closed his eyes.
“How about I just take you where you want to go?” Callum asked with a sigh.
“Fine.” Jo crossed her arms across her chest. “We’ll wait upstairs.”
We watched television with the sound off while we waited. Making up our own dialog for commercials and shows was just one of the many exciting things Jo and I did for entertainment. Today, though, my heart just wasn’t in it.
“I’m ready,” Callum announced when he came into the living room. His brown hair was disheveled, but at least he had clothes on. “You still have my keys, Weed.”
Jo chucked them at his head, but he ducked. “Don’t call me that. You can call me Giraffe Girl, but Weed takes on a new meaning in high school.”
“Okay, Weed,” Callum said with an evil grin, picking up his keys. His gaze flicked to me and his grin softened into a smile. “Hey, Leigh.”
“Hey.” No rambling on or awkwardness around the girl whose mom just died. A smile fluttered across my lips and was gone.
“You’re taking us to Whaty-Whats. And to get more hair dye,” Jo announced.
“That stuff’ll warp your brain more than it already is,” Callum said.
Jo shoved him out the door, and I followed.
“Such a chick magnet,” Jo said as we neared Callum’s car. It was clunky and gray with trash all over the seats and floor. When Callum unlocked the passenger door, a gust of wind picked up an empty bag of chips from inside the car and threw it in the street. Jo ran after it.
“Sorry.” Callum dove headfirst into the passenger seat and shoveled the garbage into the back. When he scrambled out, he gestured with both hands for me to take the semi-spotless seat.
“Thanks,” I mumbled and got in. The smell of cinnamon and tacos filled my nose.
Jo appeared next to the car again, the escaped bag crumpled in her fist.
Callum nodded to the backseat. “You’re in the back, Weed, with all your friends.”
“Bite me,” Jo said and climbed inside.
Callum laughed as he took his seat next to me. I’d never been in his car with him in it, too. It was always just Jo and I on a joyride. One nice thing about Callum’s junk mobile was that at least a dozen other people in Krapper had one just like it. Nobody ever claimed to see underage and license-free Jo driving around town, especially since she wore dark sunglasses and parked as far away from our destination as possible when she drove. But today she sat in the backseat, preaching at Callum about the need to recycle while she rustled through the trash.
He didn’t interrupt her, but I could sense him looking at me every once in a while. I tried to focus on the sky, which finally released its weight of rain, but I had to admit his sudden curiosity piqued my own.
But maybe it wasn’t so sudden. All those times in junior high when I’d caught him staring at me while Jo and I hung out at their house kind of made me wonder. But when he’d gone on to high school, I never saw him. Now that we went to the same school, I still never saw him.
Tires squealed as Callum slammed on his breaks. My hand shot forward to brace myself against the dashboard. An oversized pickup truck barreled through the intersection and missed us by an eyelash’s length. I glanced up at the streetlights hovering above us. Ours was green. Oversized pickup asshole’s was red.
Callum looked at me. “Are you okay?”
The concern in his eyes was intense, and I could only nod.
“Fucker!” Jo yelled at the pickup truck. “Pay attention to where you’re going!”
Callum’s jaw clenched as tight as his grip on the steering wheel. He drove the rest of the way in silence while Jo continued to preach at him.
As we neared Whaty-Whats, the rain eased. The used clothing store was disobedient by design. It dared to be two stories high on a street where almost all the other buildings were leveled at one. Its cracked, wooden sign was so faded that only one word could be clearly seen. What. Jo came up with Whaty-Whats after we decided the inside was just as rebellious as the outside.
Callum parked, and only a few raindrops joined us in our parking space. When the little bell above the door dinged a welcome, the twin grannies who owned Whaty-Whats waved at us in perfect synchronization. Jo and I waved back while I breathed in the smell of musty cedar. We left Callum behind and trotted up the creaky stairs to where the women’s clothes were kept. Jo went straight for the rack of skirts, and I searched for my usual black or plaid.
Jo found a blue skirt with flowers on it for her, and I found a black t-shirt with one word scrawled across the front in red letters that dripped blood: Girrrl. It was absolutely perfect.
We decided the skirt and shirt were all we needed, so we headed back downstairs to pay. Callum, who’d been relaxing in a chair by the door, stood when he saw us.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Some of us civilized people pay for our purchases before we leave a store,” Jo told him.
“Civilized, my ass,” he said and turned away from us.
At the mention of his ass, I willed myself not to look at it even though I wanted to. Absolute boredom seemed to have replaced his sudden interest in me, but curiosity still fizzed on the surface of my skin. To focus my attention elsewhere, I admired the jewelry cases on the counter while the twins took Jo’s money.
I skipped over the one filled with rings that resembled mangled bugs in pain. They were too creepy, even for me, because I’d never been a fan of anything with more than four legs.
A silver ring in the next display over caught my eye. I ran my thumb over the engraved design, which looked like lilacs. Mom would’ve adored this ring just as much as her lilac blooms.
Pain tugged at my heart. I wanted to go back home and bury my nose in those purple flowers. I could sing to them and hope my touch made their petals spring open, but I knew I wouldn’t be enough for them. Withdrawing my thumb from the cool metal, I put my new-used shirt on the counter.
“Did you want the ring too, honey?” one of the twins asked, her gray eyes shining eagerly.
“Umm, no. I was just looking at it.”
“It might make a nice gift,” the other twin said.
I said nothing while one of them pecked at the cash register and the other folded and patted my shirt into a plastic bag.
Old picture frames covered the wall behind them. Some had pictures, others bordered the chipped wall in decorative wood and metal. The picture in the middle of the pretty red-head with bright blue eyes always stood out. She was looking down at something unseen, her happy smile captured in a single press of a button. Even though she had red hair, she kind of reminded me of Mom. I looked away and slid some money across the counter.
When the shirt was officially mine, the twins, Jo, and I waved goodbye, all of us in perfect synchronization like we were performers in some strange interpretive windshield wiper dance.
Outside, the sun was shining. Stray dark clouds drifted away as if their work here was done. In an hour or two, the sky would probably drop a blizzard on us. That’s freaking Kansas for you.
As a squad of news vans zoomed down the street, we jumped puddles to reach Callum’s car. He sloshed through them a few seconds later and joined us.
“I wonder what that’s all about,” Jo said, nodding toward the news vans. “Hair dye next, Cal. My roots are showing.”
Callum shook his head and sighed as he unlocked the doors with a push of a button this time. I guessed he didn’t want to open my door for me again.
Jo climbed into the backseat. “Some of the stuff I found back here can warp your brain.”
Callum glanced at me before shooting a glare at Jo. “Shut up.”
When we got to the drugstore, we found Jo’s VeggieColor in red, though it was more of a brassy orange on her. I preferred my blonde tresses to anything bottled.
The blue-smocked store clerks didn’t see us—or chose to ignore us—as we stepped up to the cashier’s desk. Three of them huddled together, whispering, their eyes wide. The dark mak
e-up around their eyes reminded me of mud. I pushed that thought out of my head.
“How could something like this happen?” one of them asked.
Another one crossed herself. “It’s a miracle.”
Jo put the dye down on the counter and waited for their attention, but they still didn’t notice us. I picked it up and slammed it back down with a satisfying whack. Attention was received. As soon as Jo exchanged money for the now dented box, the three clerks huddled once more.
“It must be National Distracted Day and someone was too distracted to tell us,” Jo said as we stepped outside. “Maybe that’s why all those news vans are here. To interview all the distracted people.”
I shrugged. Whatever was on the minds of our fellow Krappers, it was probably the kind of small drama that Jo and I never concerned ourselves with.
The drive back home was uneventful except for even more news vans racing down the street, this time from TV stations that didn’t look familiar, and Jo’s continued sermon about proper recycling procedures. Callum said nothing and neither did I. He was busy stealing glances at me. I played cool and pretended not to notice.
When we entered Jo’s house, the phone was ringing.
“It’s probably Mom and Dad checking up on you, Cal,” Jo said, racing to answer it.
I looked into the dark mouth of the basement and the palms of my hands grew sweaty. Jo’s bedroom was down there, and I wanted to try on my new-used shirt. I’d been in the basement hundreds of times. My hallucinations of dead Sarah were turning me into a wuss. I flicked the light switch and sighed my relief at the familiar surroundings.
Callum cleared his throat behind me. “Leigh.”
“Hmm?” I said and turned to face him.
“I’m sorry. About…your mom.” He looked in every direction but mine while he spoke.
There was the inevitable awkwardness I hadn’t missed.
“Thanks.” I toed at some mud on my boot and sighed.
“I…uh…got you something.” He searched the pockets of his jeans. A small silver circle engraved with lilacs lay in his outstretched hand.
My mouth dropped open, but I couldn’t breathe because my lungs were being crushed by a swell of emotion.
Legends of the Damned: A Collection of Edgy Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels Page 3
