by D A Fowler
Dennis shook his head. “Nope. Just drop it, okay? We’re outta here.”
Lana pulled into her driveway at 11:55; five more minutes and the Buick would have turned into a pumpkin. She sighed and turned the key. The living-room curtains were ablaze with light.
Her mother was alone in the living room watching a late horror show. Luke was already in bed asleep; even Sam was being quiet out in the garage, dreaming his puppy dreams. When she timidly walked in, Carol smiled, an unexpected surprise. “I take it you made some friends tonight.”
Relieved, Lana closed the door. “Well, sort of…a really cute guy named Dennis. He and his friend Wayne were at the drive-in. We took Wayne home and went up this hill where you can see over the whole city.”
Her mother’s eyes narrowed. “You went off like that with a total stranger? My God, Lana, you haven’t got the brains God gave a turnip. Where’s your head?”
“Last time I checked, it was still on my shoulders,” Lana said defensively, reminding herself that it never paid to be too honest. “I’ve got good judgment. Plus, he’s only a high school kid.”
“So that makes him all right? You know better’n that,” Carol challenged her daughter. “Nice” girls didn’t go for rides with strange boys. And boys knew that. When a girl said yes, it gave them instant ideas. Ideas were like matches. Nice girls didn’t play with matches either. Carol couldn’t stand the thought of Lana losing her virginity. Ever. She would be better off becoming a nun, forgetting about love and romance and other such illusions.
“Nothin’ happened, Mom.” Lana went to the kitchen in search of a snack, hoping the issue would be dropped.
It was, after Carol’s final comment: “You were lucky this time, but make it a habit an’ some night I’ll be gettin’ a call from the hospital. Or the police.”
“Mother,” Lana called wearily from the kitchen, “I’m not gonna make it a habit. ’Sides, Dennis is s’pose to call me. I might have found myself a new boyfriend already.” She sauntered back into the living room munching on an apple she’d taken from the basket on top of the refrigerator. Her mother was again engrossed in her movie. Lana sat next to her on the couch. “Did you hear me? I said I think maybe I’ve found a new boyfriend. He’s got a few faults, but all in all I think he’s pretty nice. Not as nice as Greg, though.”
“Hmmm.”
Lana bit off another chunk of apple and mumbled between chews, “Aren’cha even interested?”
“I’m watchin’ the movie, Lana. Can’t we talk about it later?”
“Sure.” Sulkily, Lana reverted her attention to the television screen. A vampire was silently gliding toward his sleeping victim, a buxom brunette. The scene reminded Lana of the bloody rabbit, which made swallowing the piece of apple she had chewed somewhat difficult. The vampire’s fangs plunged, white ivory daggers sinking deeply into milky flesh. Trickles of blood seeped from the wound as the immortal leech drank. Lana got up and headed for her bedroom. “I’m gonna have nightmares as it is. Guess I’ll see you in the mornin’.”
It didn’t occur to Carol to ask her daughter why she thought she was going to have nightmares. She blew her an absent kiss. “All right, night, honey.”
The vampire raised his ashen face, his black eyes gleaming evilly, his crimson lips dripping the coppery elixir of life. A lone wolf howled in the distance, a lingering, pitiful wail. “Ah, the children of the night!” Dracula hissed, bringing both sides of his cape up like giant bat wings. The girl on the bed below him groaned softly. Dracula shrank to the size of a coat hanger in a cloud of special-effects vapor and flew awkwardly out the window.
The children of the night fell silent.
Nine
Lana woke to the smell of bacon cooking, the aroma teasing her nostrils until appetite forced her heavy eyelids open. She dragged herself into the kitchen, the dust of dreams still waiting to be swept under the rug of consciousness. Her mother was bustling in front of the stove. “Mornin’, sleepyhead.”
“Mornin’.” Lana pulled herself up on a bar stool at the counter and rubbed her eyes. “Aren’t you up kinda early for a Sunday?”
“Your dog started yappin’ about six o’clock. I guess you didn’t hear ’im, but I did, unfortunately. I finally gave up trying to go back to sleep around seven, which was about the time Luke got up. I guess he took the li’l pest for a walk. They don’t seem to be here now.”
“Sam’s not a pest,” Lana argued. “He’s just a puppy, Mom. He’ll outgrow his bad habits.”
“Well, I know something he won’t grow out of, and there’s about ten piles of it out there on the garage floor. You’re gonna have to train him, Lana, or we’ll have to find him another home. The garage smells like…well, you know what it smells like. I can’t tolerate that. It’s disgusting.”
Lana rolled her eyes and sighed heavily. “All right, I’ll clean it up today, but Luke’s gonna hafta help me. If he wants Sam to be half his dog, then he’s gonna hafta clean up half the messes. But Mom, I don’t know the first thing about training a dog. What am I s’pose to do?”
“You should never have taken him without checking with me first,” Carol said, lifting the browned strips of bacon onto a paper towel with a fork. “We’re not equipped to have a dog, mainly. We don’t have a fenced yard, or a doghouse, or the money to be spending on vet bills. I don’t s’pose he’s even had his shots yet?”
“I thought Daddy was payin’ you five hundred dollars a month,” Lana said sullenly.
“Yes, he is,” Carol agreed, “but guess who’s gonna be payin’ for you and Luke’s college educations? Your daddy informed me that if I moved away with you kids, we’d be on our own except for that damn monthly check.”
Lana felt a little sick. “Doesn’t he…care about Luke and me anymore? Why did you leave, then?”
“I had no choice…”
“Liar!” Lana jumped off the bar stool and ran back to her bedroom, slamming the door almost hard enough to split the doorjamb.
Carol stared bleakly at her perfectly crisped bacon. “Damn.” She went after Lana, still clutching her fork unawares, her intestines knotting with turbulent emotion. Tapping Lana’s door lightly, she called out in a strangled whisper, “Lana? Let’s talk about it, okay honey?”
From the other side, bitter, insolent: “I don’t wanna talk. Go away. I tried to talk to you las’ night, but you were too busy watchin’ your stupid vampire movie. You don’t care about me an’ Luke either, or you would’ve turned down the transfer. You probably asked for it so you could get away from Daddy. You just couldn’t take seein’ him around town with his new girlfriend. It didn’t matter that I had to lose Greg and my other friends, that me and Luke would have to start a new school in the middle of a semester. You can’t have Daddy, so we can’t have him either. Thanks, Mom. You’re a real caring person.”
Carol couldn’t speak; she was drowning in a tidal wave of guilt. She went to her own bedroom and shut the door, leaning against it with a despairing sigh. How could she have been so selfish? Now, besides her husband, she’d also lost her daughter.
The reason she and Hugh had gotten married in the first place.
But nice girls don’t…
She crawled back into bed and covered her head with the pillow.
The phone rang shortly after one. After several rings Lana realized that her mother was not going to answer it. She threw down the pen she had been holding over a blank piece of paper for nearly two hours, waiting for the wretched prose to flow. She supposed it would help if her brother didn’t run in and out of the house every five minutes—with the sole purpose of distracting her, she was sure. She rushed into the kitchen and breathlessly picked up the wall phone. “Hello?”
Just as she’d hoped, it was Dennis. “Yo, Lana.”
She felt her spirits begin to lift. “Yeah, hi. I was hoping it would be you. I’m goin’ crazy over here
. Why don’t you come rescue me?”
“That’s why I called,” he said. “I was wondering if you’d like to go to the park. Everybody usually hangs out there on the weekends. I could introduce you around.”
“I’d love that,” Lana responded warmly. “I can be ready in five minutes.”
“See you in ten.”
“Great. ’Bye.” She hung up, her earlier cloud of depression all but gone. A trace lingered, but she decided to ignore it. Accept the things you cannot change, her father always said. A great piece of wisdom if one can manage to appropriate it. But coming to terms with the idea that her father no longer wanted to be a part of her life would take some doing. Maybe he hadn’t really meant what he’d said.
As she got dressed, she wondered if she should bother to tell her mother she was leaving. No. Why should she? What consideration had her mother shown for her? She frowned at her reflection in her dresser mirror. Her hair needed to be shampooed; due to its fineness, it had to be washed every day to look decent, but she didn’t have enough time. She’d chosen a black long-sleeved jersey over white slacks because Greg had always said she looked good in black. She tried on a pair of white dangly earrings, decided they looked too something or other, and took them back out. Under close scrutiny her eyes appeared too small; she took a tube of mascara from her makeup case and applied it to her lashes, then blushed her cheeks with a fat, tangled brush and smeared her lips with tinted gloss. Dabbed on perfume. Fluffed her hair with baby powder. Puckered her mouth like models often did on the pages of magazines, then stuck out her tongue. Impressing people was such a hassle.
Dennis arrived at one-fifteen, announcing his arrival with a blast of his car horn. Lana thought it was a little crude, but she bounded out cheerfully to greet him. Luke was playing in the front yard of a house several lots down; he had found a couple of friends his age. The three were flinging a hot-pink Frisbee back and forth, a jubilant Sam scampering around their feet.
Dennis gave Lana an appreciative once-over when she got in the car. “You sure look good. Smell good too.”
Lana smiled. “Thanks. You look good too.”
“But I smell like an ape, right?”
She laughed. “Oh, no, no. I didn’t mean that. You…” He smelled like cigarettes, but she didn’t think he would appreciate being told that, so she lied and said, “…don’t smell like anything, really. You don’t stink.”
“Whatever.” Dennis backed out and headed west. “Nice day, huh? It usually stays fairly nice until November. Takes forever for summer to come, though. Guess it’s a trade-off.”
“I’ve never been in snow,” Lana mused, looking through the window at the cloudless blue sky. “It does snow here, right?”
“Up to your ass sometimes. Never seen it snow, huh? That’s weird. You’ll hate it…at least I do. I don’t much like anything that falls from the sky. Except stars, maybe. I get off on falling stars.”
Lana had a romantic vision of the two of them star-gazing together. “Oh, so do I. An’ I know you’ll probably think it’s dumb, but I still make a wish whenever I see one, like I did when I was a little girl. Those wishes never seem to come true, but I do it anyway.”
“Maybe you’re aiming too high,” Dennis said, as if he really cared.
Lana felt a tightening in her chest. “Maybe so.” Marla’s Cutlass was nowhere in sight when they arrived at the park, Dennis noted with silent anger. But Jay Gorman’s Charger was there, and that was good enough. He parked beside it and stepped out as Lana did, and they slammed their doors in unison. Meeting in back of the car, he asked her politely, “Is it okay if I hold your hand?”
Smiling shyly, Lana answered by preferring her right hand. Dennis took it firmly in his left and they sauntered toward the small group of teenagers hanging around the gazebo. Other groups were scattered here and there, playing Frisbee or bouncing Hacky-sacks on their feet, tossing sticks for dogs they’d brought along, flirting, running, walking in aimless circles puffing on cigarettes. Heads turned to look at the approaching couple. Whispers flew.
Jay and a boy named Bruce Meadows were arm wrestling on the round white iron table set in the center of the gazebo. Bruce was winning, but Dennis’s attention was drawn to Jay, old Pizza Face, whom he barely recognized because the severe acne that had acquired Jay his nickname had suddenly and completely cleared up. Jay’s arm was finally pinned, and those watching the spectacle cheered.
Then all eyes were on Dennis and Lana, and the group fell silent. Most of the attention was focused on Lana, the two other girls present taking an immediate and obvious dislike to her, the two guys scoring her on the one-to-ten scale, wishing they had X-ray vision.
Jay was the first to speak. “Well, who have we here, Dennis?”
The unspoken question hung in the air, which only Lana was unaware of: And where, pray tell, is Marla?
“This is Lana. She just moved here from Texas. She a fox, or what?”
Lana blushed, shyly dipping her head in embarrassment. “Stop it, Dennis.”
She ignored the guys and sought acceptance in the eyes of the two girls. They were glaring at her. Lana’s ears prickled with heat. What was the deal? Why were they looking at her as if she were their enemy?
Dennis couldn’t help but remark about the dramatic change in Jay’s complexion. “Hey, doesn’t look like I’ll get to call you Pizza Face anymore. You finally get laid, Gorman?”
The dark-headed girl standing behind Jay spat, “You watch your mouth, Dennis.”
Jay looked equally peeved; he apparently didn’t appreciate such a personal question, especially voiced in front of his peers. “I just quit eating so much chocolate,” he growled, reaching up to squeeze his girlfriend’s hand. Nancy stopped hurling mental darts at Lana long enough to bend over and kiss him on the cheek.
The rebuke didn’t bother Dennis, who had the sensitivity of a clump of crabgrass. “Well, you sure look a lot better. Just think of all the money you’ll save, not having to buy gallons of Clearasil.”
Jay’s eyes narrowed into slits.
Dennis shrugged and went on, “Say, did you hear a scream up on Beacon Hill last night? We were up there and saw your car.”
Jay and Nancy both reacted like he’d just thrown a bucket of ice water in their faces. Lana immediately realized that Dennis had lied to her when he’d said he had no idea who might have killed the rabbit. Now she had a reason of her own to glare, and did so. The two certainly looked guilty about something.
“We didn’t hear anything,” Nancy said coldly. “We hiked down the north side of the hill to where the Boy Scouts set up camp.”
Jay confirmed with a nod.
“You both must be going deaf, then,” Dennis declared. “Anyway, it came from the graveyard, so I went to have a look. All I found was a dead rabbit somebody had just killed.”
Bruce Meadows leaned forward, his brows knitted in disbelief. “Say what?”
“A white rabbit,” Lana said, her heart sinking at the memory of the poor bloody creature. “The kind they sell as pets, with pink eyes. Somebody stabbed him.” She turned an accusing stare on Jay.
“Hey, don’t look at me. You don’t know that it was a person, anyway. It could’ve been an animal. You must have scared it away from its supper. It was probably an owl or a hawk.”
Dennis knew of no animal that painted strange symbols around its prey, but he didn’t want to bring that up.
“I have to go home, Jay,” Nancy said suddenly. “My mom’s taking me shopping this afternoon for some new clothes. They’re having a sale at Woolworth’s.”
The girl standing next to her, Jennifer Parks, whispered something in her ear, and both girls giggled. There was no doubt in Lana’s mind that they were laughing at her—at the way she talked—which inflamed anew her anger at her mother for setting her down in a place where she was an outsider. She’d never been tre
ated this way in Tyler, where everyone talked just like she did. She’d been able to empathize with Spiro’s plight before, but now she was learning firsthand what it felt like to be shunned. It didn’t feel very good. But she hardly wanted to be friends with rabbit killers anyway.
Jay stood up. “Yeah, and I have to help my dad clean out the garage. He’s been on my case for weeks.”
The mention of garage cleaning reminded Lana that her own was still mined with Sam’s droppings; after the incident with her mother, she hadn’t given any more thought to her promise. But her mother was feeling guilty now—as well she should—so she wouldn’t get rid of Sam, at least not until everything had been patched up. And if possible at all, that was going to take some time.
Jay, Nancy, and Jennifer muttered their good-byes— to Dennis and Bruce—and walked toward the parking lot in a conspiratorial huddle, exchanging comments in hushed tones. Dennis flicked his tongue against his bottom teeth with satisfaction; in ten minutes or less, Marla would be fully informed. He led Lana into the gazebo, and they sat down across from Bruce, still holding hands.
Bruce was still thinking about the rabbit. “Hey, like maybe the Obers did it, you know?” He transformed his face into a good likeness of a werewolf, jutting his jaw forward, curling his lips back, plunging his brow. “Could be they’re up to their old tricks.”
Lana giggled, having no idea what he was talking about, but she found the face he was making quite comical.
Dennis scowled. “Yeah, right. Don’t tell me you believe in all that horseshit.”
“What horseshit?” Lana sobered and looked from one face to the other. “Who are the Obers?”
“Dead people.” Dennis laughed. “Fucking dead people. They’re in a tomb up there in the cemetery, and the date on it says they both died on Halloween about seventy years ago. So, you can imagine the dumb shit things people like Bruce here come up with because of that. Died on Halloween, so they had to be witches, right? People just love to believe in crap like that.” The image of the strange markings he’d seen around the rabbit’s body resurfaced again, but he shoved it back down.