A Taste for Red

by Lewis Harris

  "I think that would be fine, Ms. Bones—" Mom started.

  "Lenora!" the old woman insisted.

  "Lenora. But I don't know if Svetlana needs to be paid."

  What? I swung my leg under the table to kick Mom but missed.

  "If it's only a couple of hours a week, I'm sure she'd enjoy doing it for fun. Right, honey?" Mom was nodding at me, smiling.

  Was Mom out of her mind? The old lady wanted to pay me! It would probably make her feel better if she did.

  "Oh, no, I would have to pay a little something for her efforts," Ms. Bones insisted. "It'd make me feel better if I did." The old woman winked and reached over to pat the top of my hand.

  Dad cleared his throat. "I think that would be a good thing, don't you, Svetlana?" He was solid on the Svetlana.

  "Sure..."

  "Terrific." Lenora Bones scraped a last spoonful of soup from her bowl and swallowed it with a wet slurp. "I'm already looking forward to it."

  We decided on Saturday afternoon. Ms. Bones thanked Mom and Dad profusely for dinner and rose shakily from the table. As the joints in her knees and hips popped like splintering wood, she let her mouth fall open into a shocked "O." "Ouch," she joked, widening her eyes in mock surprise. "A body at rest tends to remain at rest—especially this old body of mine." She winked.

  When Mom returned to the table after seeing Ms. Bones out the door, she said, "That old gal's got a lot of personality."

  "Uh-huh," Dad agreed.

  "I believe you'll have a terrific time reading to her," Mom told me. "You're sweet to do it, and I'm very proud of you." She stooped and gave me a squeeze. "Shall we try milk and cookies for dessert?"

  It sounded like a good idea to me. The fresh-baked aroma escaping from the old woman's plate filled every corner of the room. Mom peeled the foil covering from the serving dish, revealing a mound of circle-shaped red cookies.

  "Well, take a look at that," Dad said, reaching and grabbing one. "Just the way you like them, Steph—Svetlana."

  Six

  On Wednesday, Dwight Foote was absent from school. But the following day, he was back in Dumloch's class for first period. His left arm was in a cast from thumb to elbow and strapped in a sling across his waist.

  "What happened to you?" I asked. Sandy Cross turned around in her seat, glaring at Foote. Her mouth was scrunched up as if she'd bitten into a lemon. Baubles of garish pink plastic dangled from her earlobes. Were those little legs hanging off her earrings? Were they ladybugs?

  "Ask her," Foote said, pointing his good thumb in Sandy's direction.

  "My father's taking down my trampoline because of you!" Sandy complained in a huff. Her insect earrings trembled with displeasure.

  "You should have seen it." Fumio Chen laughed behind me. "Dwight flew off the trampoline—and right onto the sidewalk."

  "It wasn't funny at the time," Foote murmured. "I could've broken my camera."

  "It's not funny now," Sandy said, bunching up her face. "Nobody invited you onto my trampoline, anyhow."

  "I swear," Fumio chuckled. "He landed on his head and broke his arm. I can't explain it."

  "I cracked my radius bone straight through." Foote traced a finger down his cast. "Sandy's dad's gotta pay for it or my dad's gonna sue her family into the dirt."

  "You're a moron!" Sandy cried.

  "All right, settle down," Dumloch demanded, waddling up and down the aisles, trailing cheap cologne and setting a ten-question pop quiz on each student's desktop. "Eyes straight ahead, and you've got fifteen minutes"

  The class gave a collective groan. Dumloch trundled back behind his desk and sat, staring up at the ceiling, chewing the paint off a pencil with his awful teeth. Despite his distracted gnawing, I finished the test in less than five minutes with a perfect score. Public school was a heck of a lot easier than my mom's home-schooling.

  The morning crept along, and by lunch I was starving. Dwight Foote joined me in the cafeteria. He indicated the cast on his arm and asked if I'd cut up his chicken-fried steak for him.

  "Good grief," I breathed, setting my tomato sandwich aside and sawing his meat into eight pieces.

  "Thanks, Svet. Do you mind if I call—"

  "I definitely do mind." What was I, a pet?

  "Well ... thanks, Svetlana." Blink. Blink. He shoved meat and gravy into his mouth, making cow eyes at me.

  Across the cafeteria, Ms. Larch followed Dumloch through the swinging door into the teacher lounge. Sandy Cross stalked by, throwing Foote a menacing glare and me a not much better one, which was fine with me. She sat at the next table over with her back to us and was joined shortly by Madison and Marsha, each glancing daggers in our direction. All three girls wore the same hideous ladybug-shaped earrings. I half-heard their giggling and complaining. Their trilling brought to mind a nest of begging baby birds. These were the cool kids? I'd thought that MTV and the Disney Channel had prepared me for the lameness of school, but I was colossally unprepared.

  The school day crept like molasses.

  Later, in science class, Ms. Larch appeared wholly uninterested in teaching. The stench of rotten garbage was so strong, I could hardly concentrate on her lecture. "What is that awful smell?" I whispered to Foote, but he didn't know what I was talking about. Perhaps he had bounced on his head yesterday. Nobody else in class seemed disturbed by the odor. Behind her desk, the science teacher droned on, looking haggard and tired. At one point, she caught me staring, and her eyes narrowed into mean slits.

  What are you gawking at!

  Her invading voice erupted in my head, making me jump in my seat. Nobody else heard. Larch continued to look unhappy and distracted, even as a smile spread across her face at my obvious discomfort. Halfway through class, she ceased lecturing, popped in a documentary, and hurried from the room, as if she were about to be sick.

  Foote leaned over and whispered, "I thought she was gonna blow chunks."

  When the final bell of the day rang, the film (hyenas and their tenuous coexistence with lions) was still playing. Ms. Larch had yet to return to the classroom. Everyone looked about, uncertain what to do. I got up and hit the lights, and everyone scrambled for their belongings, bolting to freedom.

  Lemmings, I thought.

  Seven

  Have you ever known a person who thinks she's it on a stick? The center of the universe? Someone who seems to never have any doubts. Who acts as if she's always right (when she's almost always wrong!)? A person who believes she's the most beautiful (hardly!) and the smartest (right!). Someone who annoys you right down to the bone—simply by breathing?

  What do you do with someone like that? I remember reading somewhere that the things you find to criticize in others are really the things you wish to improve in yourself. I wouldn't discount the idea. I'm a student of the human condition. I'm aware that my social skills need a lot of work, and I'm far from perfect. Still, when I'm around a girl like that—someone like Sandy Cross—I just want to punch her in the nose.

  I was unlocking my bicycle from the bike rack after school. Sandy and her minions were there as well.

  "Why do you dress like you're going to a funeral?" Sandy asked from across the rack. Her wannabe-clever mouth labored around at least three gobs of sugar-soaked bubblegum.

  Is wearing black a crime? What was the big deal? I like black! It's very slimming.

  Next to Sandy, Madison pulled away the chain that locked her and Sandy's and Marsha's bicycles together, the links rattling over steel. "She dresses like she's the one being buried," Madison quipped.

  "You know that's not a Goth look, right?" Marsha said, eyeing me critically from head to toe. "You don't have enough eye makeup on. You need to wear heavier boots, and wristbands with metal studs—a collar, maybe. You need a fat black belt, too. You need more silver."

  "No" Madison disagreed. "That's the Metal look"

  "It's Goth."

  "What we're trying to say," Sandy interjected, blowing and popping a pink bubble, "is that you need help."<
br />
  Could these three possibly be serious? I took the U-lock off my bicycle and tossed it into the front basket with my book bag. What could I say to these bimbos? "You're wearing matching earrings," I noted. Did they think that was cool? Did their parents dress them? "You have pink plastic bugs dangling from your ears."

  "We're not trying to fight with you, okay?" Sandy said. "And we're not trying to put you down, either." She pulled a string of blond hair away from the corner of her mouth and continued chomping her bubblegum. Smack. Smack. Smack.

  "So lighten up, Metalhead," Madison told me.

  "And chill out," Marsha added.

  The two beanpole girls pushed their bikes toward the sidewalk.

  Sandy guided her bicycle around the rack next to mine. "You know, we wouldn't even talk to you if we didn't think you were all right, okay?"

  Smooth—the old switcheroo. Now I was the jerk. Well, that was fine. Mostly I just wanted to be left alone. "Whatever," I said.

  "If you want to go to the mall with us, you're invited," she said out of the blue, arching a sculpted brow over her left eye. "You can even hang with us at the Spring Fling Carnival this weekend—if you're not too cool for that. What do you say, Stephanie?"

  A challenge.

  Stephanie.

  "That's not my name," I whispered.

  "Well, would Svetlana care to hang out?"

  Marsha and Madison waited on the sidewalk with twig-like arms crossed, leaning against their bikes.

  Right.

  "No, thanks," I said. Surprisingly, the idea wasn't completely unappealing, but what could I really do with these Barbie clones? Look at clothes? I didn't have any money anyhow.

  "If you want to be the Lone Ranger, that's up to you," Sandy said, shrugging and pushing her bike away. "But you're getting a little old to be playing in a tree house, and you're not gonna have my trampoline to spy on anymore."

  The three girls climbed onto their bikes. One of the twins, I couldn't tell which, shouted, "Later, Lame-o!"

  Sandy laughed, tossing back her mop of straw hair. She pedaled away, screaming, "See you tomorrow, Stephanie!"

  But she was dead wrong.

  Eight

  Nobody thought much of it when Sandy was missing from Mr. Dumloch's class the next morning. Her desk sat empty as Dumloch mummified us into a state of complete boredom with his bland regurgitation of Egyptian history. He plodded up and down the rows of desks trailing an eye-burning cloud of aftershave, droning on like a dying fan, but far less interesting.

  "You've gotta smell that, right?" I whispered to Foote, holding my nose after Dumloch had passed.

  Dwight stuck his finger down his throat in a gagging gesture.

  Fumio leaned forward and whispered, "He must bathe in the stuff."

  "What was that, Mr. Chen?" Dumloch asked, rotating his rotund body.

  "I said 'Those pharaohs sure had it tough,' sir."

  "I'm sure you did," Dumloch said, eyeing Fumio with obvious doubt. He went behind his desk and dropped into his chair. He smiled strangely at me over Sandy's empty desk. Without her annoying explosion of blond hair to hide behind, his beady eyes bored directly into me from the doughy folds of his face. I could hardly believe it, but I actually wished Sandy Cross were in class.

  Dumloch said, "I think history should be tough, too, so I think we'll have another pop quiz today."

  Grumbling rippled through the classroom.

  Gym class wasn't any better; the sit-ups were getting out of hand. I was obviously going to have to Google and print out some data for Coach Cooper. Didn't she realize the damage sit-ups inflicted upon our still young and developing bodies? A classmate sat on my feet as I was forced to curl into thirty painful sit-ups. Alison Finch, redheaded and sporting a billion freckles, held my legs and counted as I groaned through the crunches.

  "Twenty-one, twenty-eight, twenty-nine ... and thirty," she called.

  At least my gym partner had some sense. Between the two of us, we managed to short Coach ten lashes. I thought the purpose of gym class was physical fitness. The popping in my spine said otherwise.

  As I limped from the gym to the cafeteria, I passed two police cars parked in front of the school office. Some of the kids inside the cafeteria were hanging around the windows staring out at the cruisers.

  "What do you think that's about?" I asked Foote as he took his seat.

  "Beats me," he said, focusing on drawing mustard stripes across his meatloaf.

  Today, I'd brought bologna on white bread (extra mayo) along with a cup of cherry tomatoes, some cranberry juice, and three of the sugar cookies Lenora Bones had baked (delicious!). I cut the crusts from my sandwich and watched the kids who were lined up along the windows staring outside. I didn't see the beanpole twins, Marsha and Madison, anywhere which kind of made sense, since they were surgically attached to Sandy Cross.

  "What do you think Sandy and her robots are up to today?"

  "Who cares," Foote said. "Something stupid, no doubt."

  Everyone in the room quieted, and the kids at the windows took their seats as Principal Talbot led two uniformed police officers through the cafeteria and into the teacher lounge. When the swinging door closed after them, the room erupted into a murmuring buzz.

  "I bet it's about Mr. Boyd," Foote decided. "The authorities probably caught up with him or got a hot lead."

  But that wasn't the case. After lunch, Fumio Chen found us in the hallway and told us that the cops were actually looking for the three girls. "What I know is this," he said, taking a deep breath. "Tony Cassini was in the office seeing the school nurse because of his messed-up breathing, and he heard Mrs. Stiles tell Mrs. Fry that she needed to report pronto to the teacher lounge because the cops were asking all the teachers questions about Sandy and Marsha and Madison because they never got home from school yesterday." He finally sucked another breath into his beet-red face.

  The girls never got home yesterday? "Are you saying they're missing?" I asked.

  "I don't know—I'm just saying what Tony said."

  And by last period, everyone in school knew what Tony had said.

  Ms. Larch rapped a ruler across the top of her desk as the bell rang for the start of class, but kids continued to whisper. "Be quiet now," she told everyone, rapping louder.

  Her lips were painted in rich red. She seemed somehow taller today. I glanced down the length of her sleek black dress to her stiletto sandals and crimson toenails. A silver toe-ring wrapped the littlest toe on her right foot. Her face was flush with color, like a rose. She glowed with vigor—not at all like yesterday, when she'd been sickly and seemingly on the verge of throwing up. She surveyed the class slowly, finally settling her eyes on me, letting the look linger. I tensed, half expecting her voice to blossom inside my mind, but she only smiled and looked away.

  "It's time to shut down the rumor mill and begin class. I know everyone is buzzing with gossip, but I'm certain the authorities would rather we did otherwise." Ms. Larch lifted the science text and instructed us all to turn to worms on page ninety-seven.

  Did you know that the largest earthworm ever found was twenty-two feet long? Does anyone need to know this? I wasn't the least unhappy when the final bell brought an end to Lumbricus terrestris.

  "Svetlana, a moment, please," Ms. Larch said after class.

  The rest of the kids filed into the hallway while I waited nervously before the teacher's desk, clutching my book bag in hand. The classroom door closed with a hollow click after the last student. Larch drummed painted nails on the desktop. Her other hand was propped beneath the point of her chin, her index finger tapping thoughtfully over smiling lips.

  "Your father's not picking you up today?"

  "I rode my bicycle."

  "I've never ridden a bicycle," she said. Am I missing anything?

  The question was asked after her lips had ceased moving. There was something soothing in the way the words whispered to life behind my eyes.

  How do you do that? I
thought. And asked, without thinking.

  The corners of her mouth curled toward her eyes. How do you do it? Her emerald eyes laughed.

  Did I hear her laughter inside my head?

  I stood with my book bag clutched to my chest. I stared and found myself falling into the swirling greenness of her eyes. It was as if I was tumbling from a great height toward a frothing sea far below. I reached for the edge of the desk and steadied myself. Was there music in my head? A gentle piping?

  Have you ever spoken in thoughts to anyone else? she asked. Have the thoughts of another ever come to you, Svetlana?

  I felt the words in my mind, but something else, too, like a hand feeling its way in the dark, rummaging through an unfamiliar drawer. Ms. Larch was in my mind, searching. I forced myself to look away, and the feeling evaporated.

  "Very good," she said, her smile dissolving into something unreadable. "You can protect yourself. But you have nothing to fear from me. I'm your friend, Svetlana."

  "I'm..." I didn't know what I wanted to say. I was suddenly dizzy.

  Ms. Larch chuckled and came around the desk and stood very close. She searched my eyes, lowering her face to mine. Cherry breath blew from her lips. I detected the clicking of a lozenge against her perfect teeth. The unpleasant rot of rancid meat was still there, but only slightly, perhaps only a memory.

  "The other day," she said. "Why did you say to me what you did? That you were a vampire?"

  "I..."

  Is it because of this? The sharing of thoughts? And the taste of red?

  "You're the same," I said. "You only eat what's red."

  Her lips peeled back in a serpent smile. "Most certainly red," she breathed.

  "And do you sleep under your bed?"

  The question seemed to surprise her. "Under my bed?" A puzzled expression settled on her face. "You sleep under your bed?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, I don't know what that's about."

  "We're the same," I said. "Vampires."

  Ms. Larch touched my cheek, the icy smoothness of her palm stingingly cold against my bare skin. I flinched from her touch and the slight scent of something spoiled.