What if I just reached across the dishwasher and slapped his head off?
I had nothing to lose.
I remembered this other thing I’d asked for. I curled my upper lip. If Delilah had done it right, my one canine tooth would go ting!
Finally I’d distracted him. His concentration broke. He looked puzzled.
My mom’s footsteps came down the stairs.
I narrowed my glowing red eyes at him. That’s right, you jerk. Show a little respect from now on. Because it’s only gonna get weirder from here. How I wished I had the nerve to say it out loud!
As Mom came into the room, I smiled, then let my gaze slide down his front to his wet belly and lap.
His expression smoothed out and he turned toward her.
“Oh, Howard! You’re all wet! You’ll have to change.”
Whatever silent pissing contest we’d been in, it was over for the moment.
Thursday morning, I got ready for school.
I was already an inch taller since my meeting with Delilah. I stood next to my bedroom door and made a little pencil mark where the top of my head was. If I was going to grow ten inches over the end of senior year, I wanted to see every millimeter of progress.
I weighed myself, too.
Yup. Down ten pounds! I did a little dance around my bedroom.
As for my junk food binge in the coffee shop, I’d slept like a baby, even after my mom and stepfather came home, and though he usually insisted on kissing me good night, I guess he hadn’t felt like it last night. I knew, because I’d balanced a plastic pail full of marbles on top of my partly-opened door before I went to bed. I think just talking to Delilah made me grow a pair. I would never have done that before.
One thing she did, she convinced me that I really am going to escape these people someday. One way or another.
Not only was I ten pounds lighter and an inch taller, I was hungry enough to eat a marzipan horse with buttercream frosting. I wondered if Delilah could get me one of those.
After I’d marked the doorway and measured it with the seamstress tape from my Home Ec bag, I picked some stuff out of my closet I hadn’t worn in two years: a camel-colored wool jumper my mom made for me four years ago because no clothes you can actually buy look dowdy enough on her daughter, and a matching turtleneck. I put on navy tights. Boy, I hated camel and navy. When I’m a sex demon, I will never, ever wear camel or navy again. My legs looked longer than normal under that jumper today. If only I’d had some hot tights—something animal print or all crazy, with color—I shook my head.
On a whim, I put on the funeral shoes my mom made me get when my last stepfather’s mother died. They’re hardly funereal. More like fuck-me shoes with Cuban heels. Mom bought them with Cuban heels because I’m fat. “So you don’t ruin your ankles, honey,” was what she said, but, I swear, she would have bought the four-inch spikes if I’d been thinner. I think sometimes that woman is trying to pimp me out. “And you can wear them to school dances.”
Only on a planet where they like me. Not only don’t boys talk to me, but I’m not going to any dance where I have to walk into the girls’ bathroom in that school, alone, wearing nice clothes. I made a mental note to ask Delilah for kickboxing skills. And maybe a Taser in my index finger.
Then I remembered my glowy red eyes and ting! fang and felt better.
In fact, everything I looked at seemed to glow just a little. I smiled into the mirror and went downstairs.
My stepfather had gone to work before I got up, like he does on Thursdays and Fridays. My mom was almost out the door. “Your kohlrabi salad is in the fridge in your lunchbox, honey,” she said. “I left you a toaster pastry.” She winked.
Does she realize the mixed messages she sends me? Her husband never mentions it. Sometimes I think it’s a conspiracy. Other times, I think it’s that she’s just a parent. We learned about this in Sociology. Even smart people act stupid with their own kids.
All that dressing up had made me late. I grabbed the toaster pastry and ran out the door.
School. I wore the shoes, which hurt. Will fancy shoes feel good when I’m nine inches taller and fifty more pounds lighter?
Didn’t matter, because in heels I was now two inches taller than Bill Kummel. I breezed right by him when he stood in front of the door to homeroom as usual, and I angled my backpack so that it caught his fingers against the door frame just as he was reaching to pinch my boob, and I gave him a bump.
He howled and sucked his hand. But he got out of my way.
What the heck was happening to me? Was being a succubus turning me mean?
Or was I just...letting the meanness out?
I had an opportunity to explore this question in detail later that day.
One thing at a time.
Homeroom, the usual spitwads landed on my notebook while I was writing. Couple remarks I didn’t really hear. Which was funny because I had decided to listen for once, in case anybody noticed I was thinner and taller. But I didn’t listen, not even when I heard my name.
Instead I focused hard on cutting my outraged-feminist book report on Madame Bovary down to the correct two and a half pages and then copying it over. Ms. Remirovski, my Literature teacher, wants us to type them, so I don’t. My handwriting is perfectly legible. I’ve never tried to give her an excuse or anything. I think she just assumes I’m some frumpy poor child with no computer at home. She knows who my mother is. Mom works down the hall, for Pete’s sake. Ms. Remirovski is in another world.
Gym was hell again. Volleyball. I caught a lot of balls in the face, as usual. On the other hand, I got to spike the ball extra hard, and being ten pounds lighter must have made a difference, because I could jump high and pound it right where I wanted to. Daisy Rawson must have got me three times. The fourth time, I saw it coming at me, and I jumped up and spiked it right back at her grinning face.
She went down on her butt, holding her nose, spouting blood.
It was...awesome.
See? Meanness.
Ms. Waroo told her to put some ice on it, and she wouldn’t listen when Daisy claimed I did it on purpose. She actually said, and I heard her say this, “You hit her three times and all you did was piss her off. She hit you once and she hit harder. Work on your spike.”
I was so shocked, I was afraid to make eye contact with anyone for the rest of the period.
But nobody touched me or my stuff, or squirted me with haircare products in the shower.
Huh.
In Literature, Ms. Remirovski called me up to her desk and complained about the wet spots on my book report. Ms. Remirovski actually kind of likes me because I like books, but nothing I do is ever good enough for an A. She also wants me to participate in class more. This has not won me sufficient academic rewards to make up for the punishment from my classmates. The spitwads fly in her class. You’d think she was blind.
Although she did notice those wet spots.
I realized, hey, I’m taller than Ms. Remirovski too. At least, when she’s sitting down, and when I’m wearing these shoes.
“You turn in such nice work, Melitta. There’s no excuse for letting it get wet.”
I leaned over her desk and put my hand down on top of my report. She looked up at me—and leaned back. Her eyes got a little googly behind her glasses. I spoke very quietly.
“My report is wet, Ms. Remirovski, because my classmates throw spitballs at me in class. They’re doing it now. When I turn around and go back to my desk, you will see spitballs in my hair, which are hitting my head right now.” This was true. I could feel them patting into my hair. “You notice wet spots on my report, but you tolerate, and therefore permit, this abuse in your own classroom, under your own nose. Silence equals consent, Ms. Remirovski. Are you trying to teach me to accept bullying until I self-destruct?”
I had prepared this speech in homeroom, actually, because I had known exactly what was going to happen in Lit. Now that it was happening, my voice was fading from menacingly low and l
evel to a squeaky hiss.
Ms. Remirovski shook her head. “Of course not, Melitta,” she whispered.
I remembered that I was an inch taller plus Cuban heels and ten pounds lighter and a trainee succubus. I delivered the rest of my prepared speech. “You might also consider assigning books from this millennium. Books where the woman doesn’t die because everybody around her is a jerk and just watches it happen.”
I turned on my heel and went back to my desk, catching a spitball on my cheek on the way. That sent me over the edge. Sanjay Halong grinned at me from his seat behind mine. He thinks we’re friends because I speak to him in the lunchroom. And then he does this stuff, because he hopes it’ll boost him off the target list with the bullies.
That kind of hurt. I kind of like Sanjay.
As I made a big dramatic twirl around and sat at my desk, I leaned over and stuck my sharpest pencil into the lower third of his Big Gulp, which he had brought into class against school regulations.
I didn’t look back at my handiwork. I just sat. I heard him thrashing back there, trying to find something to mop up his desk. I didn’t smile. But I did feel smug.
Meanness.
Lunch. Bill Kummel let me through the lunchroom doorway with no trouble. He was still standing there, but he kind of held back, and he put his arms way out by his sides, as if to say, See? My fingers are out of your way.
I walked by as if I couldn’t see him.
People looked at me and whispered. They usually did that, but I felt something different in the air.
The lunchroom stank. I could smell everyone else’s lunch. What’s more, I could look at a tray halfway across the room and narrow my gaze on it and somehow I could pick out the specific stench of their fish taco or their mac and cheese. Boy. Were these demon senses? My own toaster pastry was gross and gluey. The kohlrabi salad was okay. I focused on it really hard so I could make myself eat it.
Daisy sent me hate stares from her lunch-table-slash-viper-pit. Apparently the school nurse hadn’t allowed her to go home over a nosebleed. When I saw her at the soft-serve machine, her nose was all swollen and purple. I felt like a rat, even though my face still felt a little tingly from catching the ball three times. She’d never hit me that hard before today. Except that time after pep rally when she ran the Honey Badgers Spiritmobile golf cart over my foot and stopped it there. Hm.
Thinking of that made me clench my jaw a little. Was I a doormat or a minion of hell? How many times counted as turning the other cheek, one of my mother’s favorite remedies for bullying, and about as effective as those flower remedies she gives me for a sore throat, and when did I get to spike the ball back at her? How many spitballs were “just in fun,” and which one would break the camel’s back?
Sanjay wandered up to my table and I actually noticed him before he tried to sit down. I guess I looked mad, after my Daisy-induced musings. And, okay, I had just got to remembering Ms. Remirovski’s class and the spitball on my cheek and Sanjay’s Big Gulp spreading, effervescent and icy-fresh, all over his book report.
He stopped, holding his lunch tray in front of him, looking at me.
I let my eyes go red and glowy. Then I narrowed them. “You have to earn my friendship, Sanjay,” I said, loud enough that two people passing behind him turned their heads, saw me, and jumped back so fast, they spilled stuff off their trays.
Sanjay turned and blundered away.
He sat by himself at the end of the artsy kids’ table.
I sat by myself at the end of the chess club table.
I ducked my head and focused on kohlrabi salad and my classic Tanya Huff novel.
Social Studies. Mr. Dorrington. Mr. Dorrington is more of a menace than my other teachers because he is not just trying to get through his day without incident. Mr. Dorrington makes incidents, and he likes making examples of students, and I’m high on his list of favorite examples. He also talks to my mother during the teachers’ lunch hour. What is it with her and sneaky bullies? She married that guy, and she listens to Mr. Dorrington.
Mr. Dorrington returned everyone’s homework, slapping the papers down on our desks with his little personalized sarcastic remarks. When he got to my desk he said, “Did you read the assignment before you wrote this, Melitta?”
Well, you know how the rest of my day had been so far. At the risk of overusing my best special effect, I lifted my gaze very slowly from my desk, where he had pinned my paper with a big pink finger, and gave him the glowy eyes. Not content with that, I slipped over the edge of “untouchable insolence” into “stuff that can get you in trouble.”
“Yes, Mr. Borington, I did. Did you read my paper? Last time, you made four grading errors.”
So, yeah, I got sent to see the guidance counselor. Who is my mom.
“You said that to Mr. Dorrington?” My mother was not unreasonably flabbergasted.
“He’s so mean, Mom. You know he is. Why do you talk to him?”
My mom looked nervously at her shut office door. “Not so loud.”
I blinked. “Wait. You’re afraid of him?”
“Everyone here is afraid of him,” my mom said.
“Even Howard?” Howard, my stepfather.
Mom skipped over that. “Honey, what got into you? What’s the matter?”
I thought of my meeting with Delilah yesterday, and a deep sigh pulled into me. Was it just a dream? It seemed very far away. Here in Mom’s office, where she psychoanalyzed unwilling students and tried to get them to cry on her shoulder, I wondered if I’d imagined it all.
Then I looked down at my aching feet in the Cuban-heeled fuck-me-at-a-funeral shoes. I wondered what Mom would think if I made my eyes go glowy red on her. I didn’t feel any taller right now.
“I’m tired of taking crap, Mom,” I mumbled.
“What did you say?” Mom doesn’t hear me swear, ever.
This speech came pouring out of me:
“People throw spitballs at my face and they slam volleyballs into my face and they insult me to my face and they pinch me on the boobs and on the butt and Ms. Remirovski is never satisfied with my work and Mr. Dorrington thinks I’m a verbal punching bag. Even the people who think they like me are afraid to be seen being nice to me. I’m done. I’m over it, Mom. I want to be treated well. And if I’m not, I’ve decided to hit back.”
I couldn’t believe my mouth. What had happened to it? I just blurted all that out.
Mom was getting red. “Really. And what do you plan to do to earn this good treatment?”
I took another breath and the pressure built up in my chest until I couldn’t stop the next rant, either.
“I’ve been earning it, Mom. Years and years. I don’t fight, I don’t cheat, I don’t pick on other people, I don’t violate the dress code, I don’t smoke or chew gum or text in class, I show up on time and I do my homework well and I’m quiet and respectful to the teachers. And I get nothing for it. No friends. Not even the grades I deserve. That’s it. It’s over.”
There was no way I could say a word about my stepfather to her. She decided long ago that she needed a man in her life, and she was fine with Howard being the man who stole her promotion, and she was willing to overlook his inappropriateness with her own daughter. She believed in his head games. So I shut up and watched her, not expecting anything good to come of my outburst, but feeling floaty-free.
I’d said those things and I hadn’t died. Why had I expected the consequences to be so terrible?
Maybe I did believe in Delilah and her miracles.
Mom had that set look that meant she had stopped listening a long time ago. “You’re grounded.”
I shrugged. “Okay,” I added, so she knew I wasn’t sassing her.
“Don’t sass me,” she snapped. “No chess club. No candystriping. You do your homework and you go to bed.”
“Okay.”
“I’m taking your bicycle away.” Mom was upping the ante, poking at me, trying to get a reaction. She wouldn’t stop coming up with p
unishments until she had the reaction she wanted.
Normally I would work with that. I’d get angry, let her yell at me, cry a little, make her feel in control again.
I still felt floaty. I wonder how much weight I’ll have lost by tomorrow. I wonder how tall I will be. How tall is Mom? When do you think she’ll notice I’ve outgrown her?
I leaned forward. I didn’t have the nerve to go glowy-eyed on her. But I said in my low, level, letting-Ms.-Remirovski-have-it voice, “You don’t get it. You now have a rebellious teenager on your hands.”
“You still live under my roof, young lady,” Mom said, her voice rising. She opened her mouth to explain exactly how much I owed her.
“Only if I want to,” I said. “I’m nineteen.”
She shut her mouth. Then she opened it. “You have no money.” But she didn’t say it very strongly.
“Actually, I have a job. I can move out if I want to.” I hadn’t seen the accommodations Delilah had alluded to, and I was afraid to count on them too much, so I didn’t get specific. “All those troubled adolescents you talk to all day long? You’re bringing one home tonight. Unless, of course, you don’t want me to live there any more.”
Mom stared at me like I had a squid coming out of my mouth. “How could you have a job?” she said incredulously. I didn’t answer. After a long moment, she said, “This isn’t over.”
I shook my head slowly. “You’re right about that.”
I got up then and walked out without her permission. I was floating, but my legs felt like rubber.
As I started to shut the door, she snapped, “Your father will hear about this.”
I felt a shiver squiggle up my back, and then I remembered showing him the glowing red eyes and the water spreading over his pants and me winning the stare-down.
I thought for a moment how I would handle it if he came into my room and shut the door and said gravely, the way he did sometimes, Melitta, I think we have to talk.
I turned in the doorway. “He already has.”
I smiled absolutely without humor and let my one canine tooth go ting! Then I walked out and closed the door quietly behind me.
Coed Demon Sluts: Omnibus: Coed Demon Sluts: books 1-5 Page 39
