Alexander was heading for the main part of the dance floor, in full view of the balcony.
“No,” I said, tugging him back.
“What’s wrong?”
“I want to sit down.”
“But the seats are over there.”
Alexander looked at me with curious and confused eyes. If I told him that Jagger was still in town, he’d stay in Hipsterville even longer. I’d be forcing him to remain in town indefinitely, perhaps longer than whatever was mysteriously holding him here in the first place.
“C’mon,” he said. “Let’s go.”
But I was more concerned about Alexander’s safety. Even though he and Jagger had reconciled, I wasn’t sure how Jagger would react to our presence in the club. “I just saw…” I began. “I mean, I think I saw…”
“Saw what?”
“I just saw Jagger!”
Alexander paused. “Here, in the club?”
I nodded. “When I visited Hipsterville a few months ago, I first encountered Jagger sitting in the balcony when I thought Romeo was leading me to you. That’s where Jagger is right now.”
“What’s he doing up there?” Alexander asked.
“I was afraid if I told you Jagger was above us on the balcony, you’d never come back to Dullsville. But if he saw you dancing here when he thinks you’ve left town, I don’t know what would happen.”
Alexander led me back underneath the balcony and leaned against one of its pillars.
“It’s okay,” he said, brushing my sticky hair away from my face. “I’ll go back to Dullsville whether Jagger is here or in Romania.”
I lit up. “Really?”
“You have my word.”
I pulled him into me, my fingers wrapped around his T-shirt, and kissed him with all my might. I stared into his dark eyes. Maybe it was time to tell Alexander about the real Coffin Club. “I have something to tell you.”
“I do, too. I’d rather Jagger not know I’m here.”
“But after all you’ve done for his family. The least he could do is buy you a drink. I really need to—”
“Let’s not tempt fate. It’s best that he thinks I’m back in Dullsville.”
“Uh…okay.”
“Now, what were you going to tell me?”
“It’s time for another dance.”
8
Inner Goth
After Alexander gave me a kiss good night outside Aunt Libby’s apartment, he admitted he had prior plans with Jameson and wouldn’t be able to meet the following evening. I was disappointed, but since I hadn’t given Alexander any warning of my arrival in Hipsterville, I tried to be mature. Though I was totally bummed out my boyfriend and I would have a night apart, I hadn’t spent any time with Aunt Libby. We were due some family bonding time.
The following day, as usual, I got up late. Fortunately for me, Aunt Libby was not a morning person, either. By the time I woke up and dragged myself out of the cozy confines of her down comforter, I found my aunt wearing a knee-length kimono robe, drinking herbal tea, and listening to NPR.
“It’s after two,” I said, noticing her stove clock. I was shocked I’d slept as long as I did but even more surprised that my aunt was still not dressed.
“Well, you had a particularly long day yesterday. And I chose to have a lazy day, too.”
Aunt Libby poured me a cup of coffee and fixed me a veggie sandwich.
“I have the perfect place to take you tonight,” she said, placing the plate in front of me.
“You don’t have a hot date tonight with Devon?” I teased.
“Not until tomorrow night. And I told him you were coming with me.”
“Not on your life!”
“Sorry, but he’s taking us both to the Summer Arts Festival.”
“Well, you have twenty-four hours to convince me that that is a good idea,” I said between bites. “So what are we going to do?”
“There’s a club here in town that has teen night from nine until eleven.”
I rolled my eyes. I imagined a Chuck E. Cheese’s with a disco ball.
“It’s called the Coffin Club,” my aunt exclaimed.
“Excuse me?”
“It has your name written all over it. I don’t mean the coffin part, of course. But it’s very goth and I think you’d enjoy it.”
“I’d love to go!”
“I’m a bit old to be hanging out there, but hey, why not?”
That’s why Aunt Libby was so special—she didn’t care what people thought. Ever since I was a little girl, my aunt marched to her own drum, African or not.
“So we have a few hours to find something appropriate for me to wear,” my aunt stated. “I don’t have anything darker than yellow.”
Whatever my Aunt Libby did, whether it was drumming so hard she got calluses or performing so much she lost her voice, she put forth 110 percent. Hanging out at a nightclub with her sixteen-year-old niece was no exception.
“Where are we going?” I asked as we hopped into her car. “Hot Gothics?”
Aunt Libby let out a loud laugh. “I have to find something that I can fit into, right?”
A few minutes later, we were driving into a gravel parking lot and walking up the stairs of the vacant elementary school, which was now home to the Village Players Theater.
Along with a car key, mailbox key, building key, and door key, my aunt possessed a Village Players Theater key. It took her a minute or two to figure out which key opened the front entrance door, but she eventually found it.
We sauntered down the main hallway, passing Village Players posters of West Side Story, The Sound of Music, and South Pacific, an empty principal’s office, and a cafeteria.
We passed a tween-sized water fountain, which still had a wooden step stool placed before it, and stopped in front of a door marked “3.” What was once a classroom for ten-year-olds now had a sign above it that read: COSTUME SHOPPE.
The blackboard and filing cabinets were still in place, but the teacher’s and child-sized desks had been removed, perhaps sold at an auction or sent over to the new elementary school. Dozens of boxes, labeled BROACHES, HATS, SCARVES, sat on the floor in the front of the classroom, while racks of dusty costumes were lined in rows where the students’ desks once belonged.
The room was filled with the combined scents of thrift store clothes and textbooks.
Aunt Libby and I stepped over boxes and dug our way through the old clothes with the sole purpose of bringing out my aunt’s inner goth.
“This is so awesome,” I said as I began looking through a rack of clothes. “I don’t know anyone else who would do this for me.”
“Are you kidding? I live for this stuff.” My aunt beamed as she sifted through a rack of dresses. “That’s one of the reasons why I love acting. I can always wear a different style than what I’d normally wear. I’ve been stuck in the same look for decades.”
“I couldn’t imagine you any other way. The way you dress is who you are. It’s more than beads and bangles. You aren’t doing it to be like someone else, or fit in.”
“I gave up fitting in years ago,” my aunt said with a laugh.
“That’s what my mother doesn’t understand about my lipstick and dark clothes. I don’t wear tattoos to freak her out; I wear them because I have to. It’s me.”
Aunt Libby paused.
“My mother never understood my inner style, either,” she confessed. “That’s what it is, really,” she said wisely. “It’s not about designers or labels but about self-expression. And attitude.”
I smiled inside as well as on the outside. Aunt Libby and I dressed as differently as day and night, but we shared the same values.
“It took me years to figure out who I was,” she said. “But really, I’ve always known who I was, since I was your age. It was just that so many people around me wanted me to be like them and tormented me when I wasn’t. Your dad grew up and blended in nicely with the establishment. But I always kept my hippie beads, Pink Floyd a
lbums, and left-of-center ideas. I eventually found people who dug me the way I am.”
“That’s why it’s so cool and meaningful to me for you to change your image for one night on the town together.”
“Well, now we’ll be more alike than ever.” My aunt smiled.
“Here’s a black corset,” I said, taking a costume off the rack.
“I wore that in A Midsummer Night’s Dream when I played Helena,” my aunt gushed. “I couldn’t breathe for a week.”
“How about this?” she asked, modeling a witch’s hat presumably from an over-the-top production of The Wizard of Oz.
“I think it might be a little overkill,” I offered.
Aunt Libby found a Puritanical high-collared black dress. “We wore these in The Crucible. If I hike it up a few inches…it might be quite fabulous.”
“I think it would be ghastly,” I complimented her.
Cardboard boxes marked MEN’S, WOMEN’S, and CHILDREN’S lined the wall underneath the windows.
I removed a box from the top of the stack labeled WOMEN’S, 9 and sifted through it. The box was full of everything from cowboy boots to tap shoes, galoshes to stilettos.
“Here’s some Mary Janes. With a pair of black tights and that Crucible dress, you’ll look like…”
“A grown-up Wednesday Addams,” my aunt said halfheartedly.
“Perfect!” I declared enthusiastically.
Now was time for a Raven Madison Extreme Dream Makeover. The closest I’d ever gotten to being a fashion or cosmetics consultant was when I applied pink blush to Becky when she was preparing for a date with Matt.
If I ever had my own style show, I’d tear into a suburban style-challenged participant’s closet and throw out anything pastel, floral, or rhinestoned and replace it with bloodred tones, acid hues, and morbid blacks.
Today was different from anything I’d experienced when consulting Becky. From her auburn-topped head to her lime-green-painted toes, I got to transform my aunt from a flower child to a lady of the night.
While one hand soaked in lavender water, I painted her other hand’s fingernails bat black.
“So, tell me all about the date!” I prompted her like a professional cosmetologist.
Aunt Libby giggled as if we were best friends as she described her dinner date with Devon.
“He is unlike any other man I’ve ever met. He’s very patient and intense. He listens to everything I say.”
“Do you have a picture of him?”
“We’ve only had one date. Besides, he doesn’t like to have his picture taken.”
Curious, I thought. While Aunt Libby’s nails were drying, I toned down her warm glow and sun-kissed face by applying a soft, pale white powder. I drew her heavy eyeliner to a point and spread coffin black eyeshadow on her lids. I overapplied her mascara and finished off with two-tone vampire red matte lipstick.
I dolled her up with a hemlock lace choker necklace, rose dangle earrings, and chunky black bracelets. Then I zipped her into her recently hemmed Crucible dress.
I quickly unpacked my clubbing clothes and felt like I spent more time getting ready in my aunt’s bedroom than riding the bus to Hipsterville.
“I think I’m melting out here,” she hollered, knocking on the bedroom door. “Hurry, I want to see what I look like, too.”
I sprayed my hair and opened the door.
“Wow! Get a load of you!” she exclaimed.
I twirled like a model in front of her, wearing a black minidress with a violet and black stretch bodice and jagged skirt, midnight-colored fishnets, and Demonia black leather buckled-up monster boots. I felt confident in my skin and clothes. I’d passed for a vampire in the Dungeon and a young adult in the Coffin Club and I was just being myself. It was electrifying that I had the opportunity to return as myself—much less with my aunt Libby.
Only she didn’t think so. “Next to you I look like I could be your grandmother!”
“Get out! We look like sisters.”
“As long as you give me props like that, I’ll hang out with you wherever you want. Where to next, the cemetery?”
“Now, are you ready to see yourself?” I asked.
“For like an hour….”
“Drumroll please…” I began, and presented her in front of her full-length bedroom mirror.
When my aunt saw her reflected image, she didn’t recognize herself. She gasped as if she’d just seen a ghost.
“You look beautiful, don’t you think?” I beamed.
“Well…it’s certainly different from what I’m used to.”
“I made you look like me,” I said with admiration.
There was dead silence. Then, as if she thought she’d hurt my feelings, she said, “No one can look like you, Raven. You are unique and beautiful.”
“I can tone it down.”
“Don’t you dare.” She grabbed a handheld mirror and fluffed her hair. “This color is very slimming.” She puckered her vampire red lips like a morbid Marilyn Monroe. “Black is a girl’s best friend.”
9
Ghouls’ Night Out
Look at that line!” Aunt Libby shrieked when we arrived at the Coffin Club. “It’s as long as a New York hot spot’s! This will not do—follow me.”
Aunt Libby headed straight for the entrance and right up to an unfamiliar bouncer.
“Excuse me, my name is Libby Madison. I’m with the Village Players and…”
“Libby?” the bouncer asked skeptically.
My aunt scrutinized him. “Jake?” she asked, suddenly recognizing him. “What are you doing working here?”
“It’s just part-time while I go to school,” he said, taking the five-dollar teen-night admission fee from a girl in line. “I almost didn’t recognize you.”
“Well, I’m out clubbing tonight. Do I look the part?”
Jake smiled and stamped a fourteen-year-old who had more piercings than I had. The stamp barely fit on her tiny hand.
“Raven, this is Jake,” my aunt began proudly. “Jake, this is my niece, Raven. Jake played Lenny in the Village Players production of Of Mice and Men.”
“It’s nice to meet you.” He stamped a bat on each of our hands.
“Don’t we need bracelets?” I asked.
“Not tonight. The bar is dry until eleven oh one.”
“How did you know about the bracelets?” my aunt whispered.
“Uh…I saw it in a movie.”
Jake hopped off his stool and, like the valet at a five-star hotel, kindly opened the coffin-shaped doors.
My aunt and I paraded through the doors like we were royalty.
“When I grow up, Aunt Libby, I want to be just like you!” I exclaimed.
My aunt took a moment to take in the Coffin Club, beginning with its neon tombstones.
“I love it!” she blurted out.
I, however, was taken aback. The mood of the club had totally changed from the previous nights I’d visited. It was like a cryptic sweet-sixteen party. No amount of white powder or Graveyard Gray lipstick could hide the pimples, braces, and bubble gum attached to the teens running amok throughout the club. Sure, some teens were bopping to the macabre music or experimenting with a darker fashion palette, but for most it seemed a chance to be away from Mommy and Daddy and play dress-up for the evening.
Aunt Libby couldn’t have cared less, even if she’d known. She was absorbing her surroundings like a tan addict enjoys the sun.
“This club is amazing!” she said. “I didn’t realize there were so many of you.”
“Neither did I,” I said.
“Who is this singing?” she asked, swaying to the music.
“The Skeletons.”
“I’ll have to get this album,” she said. “I mean download it. Whatever.”
As we made our way farther into the club, I did notice an older group of goths dancing and partying. They, like me, seemed to gaze at the younger set with disdain. Perhaps I should have been more open-minded.
&n
bsp; “I want to quench my thirst,” my aunt said when she spotted the spiderwebbed, bottled bar.
“Sure. My treat,” I offered.
“Absolutely not.”
The same woman from last night waited on us.
“Hey, didn’t I see you before?”
“Uh…no.”
“I swear I saw you in here last night.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“You were here with your boyfriend. He’s tall and really hot.”
“It wasn’t us.”
“Sadly she was at home,” my aunt confessed. “I had her chained in all night.”
“Well, you must have one of those faces.”
“My niece? She’s as original as they come.”
My aunt read the virgin drink specials, etched out on a gravestone next to the cash register.
“We’d like two Insane Asylums, please. No alcohol.”
“That’s all we’re serving tonight. We don’t make much at the bar on teen night.”
“Well, we’ll remember that when we leave a tip,” my aunt said. “I was a waitress for longer than I care to tell you. I understand completely.”
Aunt Libby had a way of talking to anyone like a friend.
Just then I spotted Romeo out of my peripheral vision.
He came over to get some cherries from the plastic condiments container in front of me.
I ducked, hiding my face by rooting around aimlessly in my purse.
“He’s cute,” my aunt said, nudging me.
“Aunt Libby!” I said.
“Don’t be shy. But what am I telling you for? You’ve got a boyfriend. By the way, when am I going to meet this Alexander Sterling?”
“Shhh!”
“What. Did I say something wrong?”
Romeo stopped in front of us. He pointed his finger at me as if trying to remember my name.
“Didn’t I see you…?”
“You have her confused with someone else,” Aunt Libby said. “C’mon, let’s dance.”
And with that we finished our drinks and hit the dance floor.
I was surprised that Aunt Libby danced as well as she did. But after all, she was an actress and spent most of her life onstage. I’m sure she had to tap, twirl, and jitterbug her way through various parts in her career. The Coffin Club’s dance floor was just an extension of my aunt’s performance art, and she was rocking as if she were dancing for an audience of thousands.
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