“Halloween costumes,” I said.
“I promise we won’t find anything there,” she said. “Plus, they might murder us for even walking through the door.”
She waved a hand at our pastel-colored sweaters and tight jeans, our frosted lipstick, our straightened hair—none of it belonged in Hot Topic.
“We might,” I said, pulling her inside. With her arm in mine, I hid behind a tall rack of faux-leather jackets and watched Corvis and Kristen.
“What are we looking at?” Susan said, fidgeting.
“Shh.” The horrible music beat in my chest.
Corvis, who didn’t see us, ran her fingertips along Kristen’s thick waist. I couldn’t stop looking. It was almost like watching a fire burn—dangerous and mesmerizing.
“You should get them,” said Corvis. She looked kind of out of place too. Clearly, they were shopping for Kristen, who wore necklaces that looked like pit-bull collars.
“I don’t know,” said Kristen. “They’re expensive.”
Kristen turned and eyed the kid behind the register, who was in our grade but whose name I’d probably decided not to remember on purpose. His head was shaved, except for a Manic Panic bright-green Mohawk, and he had half-inch plugs in his ears. He was short and too thin, but his demeanor—confident and slightly annoyed, not unlike Heather—insisted on attractiveness despite these physical shortcomings.
“I really think they’re going to murder us,” Susan whispered. “Can we get out of here?”
“Just wait,” I whispered back, elbowing her.
Corvis turned and eyed the register kid, too, then slid her arm all the way around Kristen’s waist and kissed her on the side of the neck. I could not believe she did that in public.
“I’ll get them for you,” she said, picking up the boots.
As I watched the three of them while Corvis paid, I saw the slightest exchange between Kristen and the register kid. It was almost undetectable, her high-pitched giggle, the way she let her hand linger for a millisecond longer than necessary when he handed her the bag, but I saw it. Corvis must have too.
“Come on,” said Corvis. “I’ll get you some cheese fries.”
The more I watched, the more I saw that we were both fighting some kind of losing battle. “Never mind,” I whispered to Susan. “Let’s go.”
When we got far enough away from Hot Topic, Susan asked, “Why were we watching Corvis McClellan and Kristen Duffy? Why do you care about them?”
“I don’t,” I said.
She narrowed her eyes.
“I’m just trying to find a costume for Heather’s party,” I insisted. I recognized the defensiveness in my voice. “I don’t give a fuck about them.”
I only really gave like seven fucks, but they were all very obsessive.
As we walked into the pop-up Halloween store, full of cheap, slutty costumes, I decided I would buy one that covered my boobs. I went silent, wondering what the hell I would say to Brad at the party, and if he would corner me into planning a date.
“Are you okay?” Susan asked.
The Real Slim Shady
I tried to convince Susan to go to Salem with me for Halloween, because the witch museum was supposed to be decorated with skulls and fake spiderwebs. Plus, I heard they had actual witches there who could cast spells that worked; maybe they knew one that could make me straight. But Susan wouldn’t go, because of Heather’s party. I considered ditching the party—maybe trying to convince everyone to break into the abandoned tuberculosis hospital in the woods—but then Susan called three times to ask where I was, so I gave in.
I was pissed-off, so I tossed the costume I’d bought with Susan at the mall and dressed as a s’more. It was easy—Sandra had most of the supplies already. My hair was teased and spray-painted red and orange, with about a gallon of gold glitter in it, so it looked like fire.
“You’ve got a pillow around your waist,” Susan said when I got there. She was wearing a sexy Little Bo-Peep outfit, and her entire torso was exposed, even though it was only forty-five degrees.
“So?”
“A pillow,” she said again, shaking her head.
Standing on Heather’s porch, I heard a loud screech coming from somewhere else in Arrowhead, near the woods. Susan heard it too. I followed the sound with my eyes. By the edge of the clearing, close to the one house with a gigantic three-car garage, where a trash can had been overturned in the driveway. I saw a raccoon trying to carry an entire package of bologna up a tree. He kept dropping it, but he wouldn’t give up.
I felt like that raccoon. Like, I wanted the entire package of bologna and I wanted it at the top of the tree.
“Ew!” Susan said, squirming and gripping my arm. “Look at that raccoon!”
The hairs on my arms stood when she touched me, and I wished we could just go home together.
“Raccoons shouldn’t be eating bologna,” I said absently, watching him try to carry it up the trunk again.
Susan spotted a group of lacrosse players and started tugging me toward them, but I pulled away.
“Where’s the keg?” I asked.
Susan pointed toward the back porch.
The living room was full of people, and already a vase had been broken, the jagged pieces of it forgotten on the rug. Through the sliding glass door that led to the manicured yard, I saw kids in slutty costumes crowded around the keg, laughing, holding each other around their waists, slapping each other on the back, stepping in Mrs. Flynn’s garden. I went to school with a bunch of kids who got great pleasure out of destroying things.
I headed for the porch.
“Taylor!” someone called. “Come do a shot with us!”
I ignored whoever it was.
It was hard, weaving through a crowd while wearing giant cardboard graham crackers, but at least I wasn’t cold. I got a Solo cup and left the porch immediately. All the people made me nervous. When I got back inside, I sat on the couch next to Heather, who was dressed as a sexy French maid.
“A pillow?” Heather said, with a frustrated look on her face. “What exactly are you trying to hide?”
“It’s the wrong weather for those costumes,” I said. “You think you look sexy, but you just look cold.”
Looking around, I saw that every single guy was dressed like Eminem: white guys in white tank tops, white hats, too-baggy jeans.
“God,” I said to Heather. “Those costumes.”
She smirked. Tonight, her blond hair was curled and her lipstick was blood red. Heather’s makeup was perfect. She was especially talented with eyebrows. She crossed one long leg over the other and touched her bottom lip suggestively.
“Who’s the real Slim Shady, do you think?” she asked, looking out at the room.
“Where’s Brad?” I asked Heather. I tried to seem interested, like I wanted to see him, but really I wondered if I would have to make out with him. The cardboard graham crackers were partially to make that more difficult.
“He has strep throat. Didn’t you know?”
“Oh,” I said.
Brad and I still hadn’t spoken properly since I told him we could be together. So far, we’d smiled at each other in the hallway and that was it. Actually, we were talking less than usual. I knew what was expected of me, and I wasn’t sure I could go through with it.
Scottie danced his way over and put one arm around each of us. His eyelids were at half-mast, and he reeked of whiskey.
“Taylor’s here,” he said. “Now the party can actually get started.”
Halloween could have been the best holiday, where you would get to smear fake blood all over yourself and bob for apples, and everything felt a little bit scary, and ghosts were definitely real. Instead, everyone wanted to show off their bodies and play beer pong.
“Yeah, you guys are lame, just sitting around like this,” I said,
squeezing out from under Scottie’s arm.
A terrible song was playing, and everyone sat in clusters. I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted, “Why aren’t any of you assholes dancing?”
Being Taylor Garland meant you always had to be the first to dance.
Even if you didn’t feel like dancing.
Even if you just wanted to go home.
I danced as crazy as I could, flapping my arms and shaking my ass, and everyone followed me. I got really into it, and eventually I was so sweaty that I almost forgot about Brad and Susan, and Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.
I found Susan and pulled her into the middle of the crowd. She held my hands while she danced with me, and I let myself enjoy it. I almost wished I didn’t have the pillow around my stomach.
Even though Heather glared at me all night—maybe because she was jealous that I was Brad’s girlfriend—I knew she was glad I was there, if only because I got people moving.
I reached out and touched Susan’s dark hair, and when I put an arm around her waist, she didn’t move away.
* * *
—
On the way home, I slowed down in front of Corvis’s house and stopped just far away enough so that no one could see me from inside. I turned off my headlights and looked through Corvis’s bedroom window on the first floor.
Scream played on her television—it was the very beginning, where Drew Barrymore ran around the house, gripping the telephone. The only light in Corvis’s room came from a neon-pink lava lamp. Kristen was there, too, and they were dancing their faces off and eating giant Pixy Stix. There was no beer pong for Corvis and Kristen. They danced like they weren’t hiding.
If I stayed home on Halloween with my best friend, the world would stop turning. My phone would ring and ring until I finally showed up, so I wouldn’t be able to enjoy any of it. Plus, Susan would never stay home with me in the first place.
Then I heard the cars crunching over gravel. Drunk, stupid voices.
“Hey, it’s Taylor’s car!” someone shouted. “Guess she thought of it first!”
Scottie’s pickup truck pulled in next to my ancient Volvo, screeching to a stop. I saw Heather’s face through the glass of the shotgun window, and PJ’s face in the back seat. Then another car pulled in, and another.
Like I was saying, parties dissipated quickly when I left, and Brad wasn’t there to keep it going for me.
Scottie, red-faced, ran over and pounded on my window. I rolled it down, and a gust of freezing air blew in.
“What are you doing?” I whisper-shouted. I don’t know why I was whispering—everyone else was yelling. I glanced at Corvis’s window, and this time, she looked back. I’m sure she didn’t see my face in the darkness, but she had to see that her street was full of cars and people.
Scottie held up a carton of eggs.
“It’s not a good Halloween if you don’t egg someone’s house,” he said. “Come on.”
Susan walked behind him, a nervous expression on her face. I got out of the car, and she grabbed my forearm.
“Why did you leave?” she asked me. She was shivering uncontrollably in her tiny costume, her teeth chattering.
We watched as they started throwing eggs at Corvis’s car. It was like a nightmare—a bunch of guys in Eminem costumes with cartons and cartons of eggs, laughing like monkeys.
“Happy Halloween, dyke!” Scottie shouted.
Heather pulled a package of toilet paper out of Scottie’s trunk, and people started throwing that too—all over the house.
“Here, Taylor!” Heather ran up to me and handed me a roll.
I could have stopped them. All I would need to do is call them fuckasses and tell them to go home. They would listen. Their hearts weren’t really even in it—they were just drunk and bored. Usually, we did this to Principal Deftose’s house. Scottie had probably thought of Corvis because she’d stopped in Emmylou’s the other day, or maybe Heather had suggested it. Either way, if I told them to stop, they would.
But I couldn’t. What if they suspected I was a homo too?
If Brad were here, he would have stopped it. I knew, in that moment, that he was a better person than I was. I pictured a graph, where a line indicated how good each person was, and my score, just like on the standardized math test, was way below the red line that said you should be at least here.
I dropped the roll of toilet paper. Everyone’s voices, though they were right beside me, sounded muted, like I was underwater.
I watched Corvis come to the front door and open it. I watched her scream that she would call the cops if we didn’t leave, and I watched an egg land on her shoe.
Dyke.
The word bounced around in my head, echoing.
I shrunk back against my car next to Susan, hoping Corvis wouldn’t see me. The word cops sort of scared everyone, and they started backing off.
“Come on, Susan,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”
One last look at Corvis showed me that she wasn’t crying. She just stood in the doorway, daring them to throw another egg.
The Unicorn
When I got home, Sandra sat at the kitchen table, drinking whiskey on ice from a coffee mug. She’d changed from her work clothes into a white terry-cloth bathrobe, but she hadn’t taken her makeup off. With her hair down, kinky from the bun she wore at The Mooring, and her lips still stained red, she looked beautiful and mournful. But her nose, a perfect ski-jump, didn’t match mine.
“Happy Halloween,” I said in a deflated voice. I couldn’t get the image of Corvis in her doorway out of my mind.
“What are you supposed to be?” Sandra asked, and the question seemed like a thousand questions wrapped into one.
“A s’more.”
Sandra shot me a disapproving look, but she still poured me a cup of coffee to prevent a hangover. I joined her at the table and realized that one of Johnny Moon’s movies was playing on the countertop television. I followed her gaze, to a frame of him driving through an unimaginable desert, and I wondered if that landscape could possibly exist.
“How’s Brad?” she asked, her eyes never leaving the screen.
“Sick,” I said. “Strep.”
“Why aren’t you taking care of him?” she asked.
“I don’t want strep,” I said. “Sandra?”
“What?”
“What was it like when you met him?” I asked. “Johnny Moon.”
“If you’re not careful,” said Sandra, “you’ll lose him.”
I needed to call Brad back. I knew I needed to call him back.
I watched Johnny Moon park the car recklessly and pull a handgun out of his pocket.
In addition to writing letters, I sent Johnny Moon a wallet-sized school photograph every year, but I didn’t know if he got any of them, because I just used the fan mail address.
I told him about school being closed for an entire week in fifth grade, when we had that giant blizzard. I told him about how Susan wanted a baby so badly that she walked around her bedroom pretending to breastfeed her stuffed panda bear.
Johnny Moon was kind of like a diary to me, but then one day, I got angry with him for ignoring me, sick of receiving only printed-out photographs with fake signatures on them in return, and I never wrote again. I was not the kind of person who was supposed to act desperate.
“You lose people all the time,” I said to Sandra. “You love losing people.”
“I don’t love losing people,” she said. “It’s just been a while since I’ve found a man I didn’t want to shake off.” She pulled the glass ashtray closer and lit a cigarette.
I imagined these men as loose pieces of sand in her shoes, which she shook off before entering the house. But Johnny Moon wasn’t sand; he was sea glass.
Still looking at the screen, in kind of a desperate vo
ice, I asked, “Is he my father?”
She looked at me, holding her cigarette to her lips, smoke curling out of her nostrils like a dragon. When she pulled her hand away, the filter was dotted with red lipstick.
“Honey, I’ve told you—I don’t know who your father is.”
“But did you know Johnny Moon?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, tossing her hair. “I did.”
“What was he like?” I asked, which I knew was a little bit dangerous. This could either work in my favor or cause us to get in a giant fight. When I asked questions about my father, it made Sandra feel bad about herself, and she usually took it out on me. She criticized my hair or makeup, told me I was gaining weight, or just plain ignored me. It didn’t help, I’m sure, that I was dressed as a s’more.
“You know,” she said. “He was a movie star. He showed up, got everyone excited, then disappeared.”
“But what was he like?”
“Taylor,” she said, “he was like a unicorn.”
The Game
Susan and I spent the summer between fifth and sixth grade out in the woods behind my house, pretending to be pirates.
No one else was invited.
We dyed my old bedsheets with coffee and made dirty-looking clothing out of them, braided our hair, and didn’t wear shoes.
We built elaborate forts and covered them with moss, pretending they were ship cabins, and wrapped tiny twigs in maple leaves for dinner, with a handful of baneberries on the side. Those were poisonous, so we only pretended to eat them. Sometimes I stole whiskey from Sandra’s unlocked liquor cabinet and we each took a sip, calling it liquid courage.
I always chose to be Blackbeard, coloring my chin with Sandra’s black eyeliner and bragging about my fourteen wives, of whom I pretended Susan was my favorite. She was Rachel Wall, the only female pirate in New England. In real life, they weren’t alive at the same time, but we didn’t care.
I remember one night very clearly. It was mid-July, and I didn’t want to go inside because Sandra had a man over, a man who I disliked more than the others because he was always slapping my butt or tousling my hair, calling me “my little monkey” and trying to get me to kiss his cheek. Susan sat by the edge of the firepit, tired and swatting at mosquitoes. She wanted to play that we had a baby, and I wasn’t interested in that, but I needed to keep her outdoors with me.
We Were Promised Spotlights Page 4