The Smiley-Face Witches

by George Traikovich

  Their table seated five, but only four of the seats were occupied, because Clementine didn’t eat with them anymore. One day she was there, and the next she was gone, sitting with the Janes.

  “Why they call ‘em the Janes?” Spider asked. “Ain’t none of ’em named Jane.”

  “Janes like in Plain Janes,” Grady said. He took his cap off and let his scraggly blonde hair out. “And ain’t none of them plain, either.”

  “Nobody calls ‘em that,” Newton grumbled, “They call themselves the Janes.”

  “Yeah, yeah, but why?” Spider asked.

  “Dude, cause they’re hawt,” Grady said. “Hey Esteban, what’s Portuguese for hot?”

  “Picante,” Spider said.

  “They think they’re being ironic,” Newton said, “like my t-shirt.”

  Spider read the caption beneath the green ogre. “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful…”

  “But he ain’t beautiful,” Newton said.

  “And the Janes ain’t plain,” Grady said. “They’re picante.”

  “And that’s the first thing everybody says,” Newton explained. “They ain’t plain, they’re hot.”

  Spider grappled with Newton’s nuanced explanation. “They’re hot but they don’t want people to think they think they’re hot.”

  Grady loosened his hoodie’s drawstring. “That’d make ‘em stuck-up, dawg.”

  “Which they are,” Newton said. “But their preemptive public relations offensive lets them look humble instead.”

  Clementine looked up just as he was about to take a swig of milk, like she knew he was talking about her, but turned away as soon as he caught her.

  “Always thought her skin would freckle,” Spider said, “always thought her hair would frizz.” Her skin turned rose white instead, and her curls relaxed into loose red ringlets.

  Snow drifted by the cafeteria windows, adding to the six inches from the night before.

  “Dude,” Grady said, “I ever tell ya the first time I saw snow?”

  He had, but he was going to do it again. The novelty of being a California kid in the Midwest wore off long ago for everyone but him. Halfway through the story, he noticed the others were ignoring him more than usual. He turned his head to see why.

  “Parker,” Drew said, though it wasn’t as much an acknowledgement as an epitaph.

  The callow senior passed their table stroking a faint mustache that made him look like he’d just finished a glass of chocolate milk. Lateral creases in his cheeks invited comparisons to a shark’s gills, though the effect was far more subtle.

  “When did cosplay become cool?” Newton muttered.

  Parker was more poseur than provocateur, but part of a growing phenomenon. Weird wasn’t weird anymore, it was normal, and not just at Madison.

  “Dressing up like movie monsters ain’t never gonna be cool,” Drew insisted. “Know what I’m sayin’?”

  They’d grown accustomed to the patched-up clothes and the do-it-yourself body-modifications since Crypto-Punk went main stream, but that didn’t mean they’d accepted it.

  Spider shoveled another spoonful of corn into his mouth. “Some kid sued his school ‘cause they wouldn’t let ‘im dress up C-P style. Said they violated his rights or something.”

  “Where?” Drew asked.

  “California,” Spider said.

  Newton groaned. “Of course.”

  “Dude, they got this gel you shoot into your body,” Grady said. “It goes right underneath your skin and you can shape it into a ridge, or plate or spike or anything.”

  “Where’d ya hear that?” Drew asked.

  “They got a video online,” Grady said. “Call it the C-Punk challenge. Everybody’s trying to out do each other.”

  “Guess that’s where Jumping Dummy musta got it,” Newton said.

  Parker went by JD, giving playground stand-ups leeway for interpretation. Juvenile Delinquent and Jerky Dog were some of the fan favorites.

  Unlike them, Parker and his cronies had their own table, just a few feet away from the Janes. They watched him ease into their conversation without breaking stride, whispering something that made the girls giggle.

  “Gotta admit, dude is smooooth,” Grady said.

  “Smooth?” Newton repeated. “Pa-lease. I seen smoother monkeys on Discovery channel.”

  Grady popped the top on his Mountain Dew. “Ya know who’s smooth for a monkey? Dr. Zaius...”

  “From the Planet of the Apes?” Newton asked.

  “Yeah,” Grady said. “He’s a pimp.”

  Newton waved him off. “He don’t count.”

  “How come?” Spider asked.

  “He’s technically an evolved orangutan,” Newton said. “And he’s wearing pants.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Any monkey wearing pants is gonna have game,” Spider said. “Girls are gonna wanna get with a styling monkey that can afford a pair of nice boot-cut jeans.”

  “Monkeys I saw didn’t have pants,” Newton said. “Didn’t need ‘em.”

  “What made the monkeys on Discovery channel so smooth?” Drew asked.

  “Why?” Spider asked. “Ya lookin’ to up your game?”

  “Monkeys I saw were pickin’ fleas off of each other,” Newton said, “supposed to put ‘em in the mood.”

  “Dude, that’s how my mom and dad met,” Grady said, and the others lost it.

  CHAPTER 2

  “It’s about the music,” said one kid.

  “I like the clothes,” said another.

  “Revolution, revolution through evolution,” said a third. “Naw…it’s about the girls!”

  The reporter turned to face the camera, mic in hand. Her powder blue suit matched her powder blue eyes, standing out against the convention center’s muted palette and letting the audience focus on her instead of the kids flashing their middle-fingers in the background. “But it’s not all fun and games at Cwyptopalooza…”

  She turned her r’s into w’s, but her audience was used to her speech impediment by then and translated on the fly. And while Robin Roper’s annunciation needed work, her earnest delivery made up for it.

  She held a vial of clear, colorless liquid up to the camera. “This is EZ8, a designer drug popular with C-Punks. First introduced in the late Sixties by new-age guru Gulliver Grimsby, we managed to obtain this dose on the condition that we didn’t reveal the dealer’s identity. Highly addictive and...”

  “Cut…”

  Robin pushed her earpiece back into place. “What’s wong?”

  Ivan looked up from his camera’s viewfinder. “Sorry, Robin. Gotta weird shadow in the frame.”

  She smiled and waited obediently for her cue to start again. She was nothing if not affable, and she never blinked. He wasn’t sure if it was because she was so focused or because one of her parents was a mannequin.

  The flannel-clad cameraman squinted until Robin came back into focus but he didn’t see the shadow. He wiped the lens clean with his shirttail and took another look through the viewfinder.

  “Where’s that damn shadow coming from?” he said, “unless it’s coming from behind…”

  He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see who was messing with him.

  Her back was to the light and the edges of her pale lavender suit glowed in the deflected radiance. She could have been an angel—but Ivan knew better.

  His ruddy face split into a sardonic smile. “Didn’t you used to be Molly Tuggle?”

  ***

  They strolled along the booths and attractions taking in the merchandising and promotional tie-ins. One band had finished their set and the next hadn’t started yet, so they didn’t have to shout to have a conversation.

  “You lost weight,” Molly said.

  “And some hair,” Ivan joked, running his fingers through what remained.

  “I know,” she said, “you look like a coconut after chemotherapy.”

  He uncorked the signature laugh she’d found so gr
ating when they’d worked together. “Yeah, guess I grew my beard out to compensate.”

  “So…How’d you get stuck with this gig?”

  He showed her the crumpled promotional poster he’d jammed into his pocket. “Found this stuck in my windshield wiper.”

  She read through the poster’s copy despite the eclectic font. “Cryptopalooza, a once in a lifetime celebration of Crypto-Punk music, style and culture…”

  “Get a few freaks dressing up like B-Movie monsters and you got yourself some kinda ‘palooza,” he said.

  She brushed her slender fingers through her platinum bangs. “Guess neither one of us can get away from this story.”

  “Guess not,” he said, and changed the subject. “Saw Jason lugging his camera around.”

  “Yeah,” Molly said.

  “He’s good,” Ivan said. “He was the only intern who ever showed up on time.”

  “I suppose...”

  “But?”

  “But he likes to work his hours and go home,” she said.

  “Imagine that…”

  His sarcasm didn’t go undetected. “He doesn’t have the same kind of…devotion you did.”

  “He’s a cameraman, not to be confused with Ivan Cameraman, flannel-clad, denim wearing news photographer by day, flannel-clad, denim wearing news photographer who can fly by night.”

  She granted him a polite laugh. “So…How’s life at WXYL?”

  “The pays a little better even if the company isn’t,” he said.

  “How long you been workin’ with Elmyra Fudd back there?” she asked.

  “Her name is Robin…”

  “Wobin? That’s just too easy.”

  “Laugh if you want, but the audience loves her,” he said, “the speech impediment separates her from the rest of the cookie-cutter blondes…no offense.”

  Molly’s green eyes narrowed to an indignant squint. “Hooway for Wobin.”

  He paused to try on a life-like Crypto Halloween mask hanging from a rack. “Guess there’s a certain satisfaction knowing we were first.”

  There wasn’t. The book Molly wrote about the disaster at the amusement park sold, but not like she’d expected. Some kid hacked into the station’s servers and released a found footage movie edited together from clips Ivan shot on Transylvania Island. Rumors of their involvement in the movie’s viral marketing campaign persisted. They fired Ivan and her career stalled. Now she did car shows, and flower shows, and whatever this was.

  They passed a booth playing do-it-yourself body modification videos.

  “You know your getting old when trends and fashions start looking weird and scary.”

  Molly sipped from her diet Coke. “Speak for yourself.”

  “I forgot,” he said, “we’re coming up on your twenty-ninth aren’t we?”

  “Sweet of you to remember,” she said, but how could he forget? They’d celebrated the same milestone three times before.

  “What I still can’t get over is how fast C-P spread,” Ivan said, “like a virus, jumping from one kid to another.”

  “Same thing happened in the Sixties…”

  “I know,” he said, “Remember the hippies we interviewed after we got back from the island?”

  “Gotta be the music,” she said.

  “Wouldn’t know,” he said, “not really my style.”

  “C-P doesn’t have a style. It swallows up every other kind of music and spits it back out without digesting it. Rap, rock, electronica, you name it. You can still listen to what you like but now there’s a C-P flavored alternative.”

  “We’re a cut and paste culture,” he said. “And I don’t suppose there’s ever anything that’s ever really new, just remixed and recycled.”

  “I suppose some kids are more vulnerable than others,” Molly said, “comes with the territory. Hormones and all that.”

  Their conversation came to a stop, interrupted by a fuzz-faced kid swaying to an unheard rhythm.

  “Can you hear the music?” the wide-eyed kid asked.

  They couldn’t, so they moved aside to let security deal with him.

  “That’s how I picture you in high school,” she said.

  “Not even close,” he said. “I was a jock.”

  “A jock?”

  “Full contact chess team,” he said. “We won the state championship my senior year.”

  “Suppose being king of the nerds counts as some kind of achievement.”

  “What about you?”

  “What about me?” she asked.

  “What were you like in high school?”

  “Normal,” she said.

  “No. You were shy, and you never got any dates.”

  “Good guess,” she said.

  “Not really. You’re tall…tall girls are tall early. You were taller than the boys, so they never asked you out. By the time they caught up, you were probably already on the pageant circuit.”

  “What makes you think I was a pageant kind of…”

  “I Googled you,” he said. “Big hair, big smile. Bet you’ve got your tiaras organized by…”

  “Alright, ya got me,” she said. She finished her Coke and grabbed him by the arm. “Hang on…What’s this?”

  The booth demonstrated the engineering integrity of a sixth grader’s science fair display, but what got Molly’s attention was the pile of white-label chocolate bars stacked like gold bullion next to the vintage records.

  Molly grabbed a couple of bars and paid the hippie chick behind the counter with a twenty.

  “I hear vinyl’s making a comeback,” Ivan said.

  The hippy chick rose to get Molly’s change, letting her flowing caftan tail behind her. “Nothing beats vinyl if you’re really into the music.”

  “Can’t say I ever heard of any of these bands,” Ivan admitted.

  The hippy chick ignored him, and focused on Molly. “Hey, you’re that lady on the TV…”

  Molly smiled. Her well-rehearsed reaction was the perfect combination of aw-shucks surprise and poised self-confidence that came off well when rubbing shoulders with the commoners.

  The hippie chick reached beneath the table and whipped out a worn-out copy of Molly’s book. “Would ya mind?”

  Molly signed the title page while Ivan flipped through the albums until one in particular caught his eye. “What’s this?”

  The girl ran her fingers through her long, brown hair. As thin as she was, her weak chin stretched the skin beneath into a waddle that vibrated when she spoke. “Got no name, but Acolytes call it the Zero Album.”

  “Acolytes?” Ivan said. “Never heard of ‘em.”

  “Acolytes are like, the fans,” she huffed, “The Smiley-Face Witches are like, the band.”

  “Never heard of them either,” Ivan said.

  “They were Crypto-Punk before it was cool,” the girl said. “They broke up a long time ago, but I hear they’re totally getting back together.”

  ***

  Snarling canines roamed the barbwire boundary enforcing the ‘No Trespassing’ sign, but the feral pack let the torchlight procession enter the oak grove unchallenged, sensible enough not to bite the hands of those that fed them.

  Penelope surveyed the funeral party from the edge of the grove. The Smiley-Face Witches didn’t get around like they used to, and seeing the band together after so many years apart evoked bittersweet sentiments. “Better turnout than I thought there’d be.”

  Brocade robes and ceremonial masks donned for the occasion preserved anonymity, but she recognized her baby sister’s hourglass figure among the mourners gathered beneath the moonlight.

  She lifted her mask and greeted Lucy with a peck on the cheek. “Ya look thin. Ya lost weight?”

  Penelope’s maternalism came naturally, even as the middle sister, even as they neared their seventies. She’d inherited the trait from their paternal grandmother, along with the slight underbite and gray eyes common to women from their part of Appalachia.

  “I�
��m fine,” Lucy insisted. “You look fit as a fiddle.”

  “Went to the beauty parlor today,” Penelope said. “The years didn’t melt away but I reckon they shaved a few minutes off.”

  Lucy sighed. “Any word?”

  “Not a peep,” Penelope said.

  “I can’t help but think something terrible has happened to her.”

  Penelope’s forced smile was unconvincing. “She’s well over twenty-one. She can take care of herself.”

  “Hain’t none of her other acquaintances heard from her neither,” Lucy said.

  “Remember when she shacked up with that magician fella? What were his name…”

  “Ronco the Great…”

  “Yeah, remember how long she were gone then?” Penelope asked.

  “She were gone for almost …”

  “Two years and not so much as a phone call,” Penelope said. “And three years the time before…”

  Big sister was the talented one, and the pretty one, and the smart one, but most of all Lazy-Eye Susan was the restless one, who came and went as she pleased.

  But Penelope’s argument left Lucy unconvinced. They’d seen four years pass since stepping through the rift they’d opened inside Susan’s library, four years since witnessing the apocalyptic vision of the days yet to come. “Where tomorrow’s shadows end,” Susan called it, but she could always turn a phrase. Big sister’s latest disappearance coincided with the revelation, but whether she’d gone or been taken fueled the uncertainty gnawing at Lucy. “This just feels different this time…”

  “Hush,” Penelope whispered, “Someone’s a comin’ over.”

  The stranger lifted her mask high enough to reveal the wrinkled face beneath. It’d been years since last they met, but they’d have recognized Tabitha’s gap-toothed grin anywhere.

  “What a tragedy,” Tabitha said, “to be taken from us at such a young age.”

  “Poor Nancy,” Penelope muttered.

  Poor Nancy, indeed. She’d been out of frame in every picture ever taken, the last one invited to every party ever thrown, left behind on every stop the tour bus ever made.

  Lucy dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief. “Just goes to show you can never tell when the Grim Reaper might come a calling.”

  “Was her own fault, I suppose,” Tabitha said.

  “What do ya mean?” Penelope asked.

  Tabitha leaned in and lowered her voice. “She decided to grow her bangs out long, trying to shave a few years off, I suppose.”

  “How old were she?” Lucy asked.

  “Seventy-three,” Tabitha said.

  “Well, she looked seventy-one, seventy-two tops,” Penelope said.