Tantalize

by Cynthia Leitich Smith

  Most of the class, including Kieren, cared enough to wait rapt for Ricardo’s response. I took advantage of the shift in attention to indulge in my favorite pastime: drooling over my best friend. He had the longest, blackest eyelashes and the fullest lips. When he licked the bottom one, I squirmed in the institutional plastic chair.

  As Ricardo wowed the masses with his analysis of why Pretty Woman was more on point than She’s All That, my gaze slid to Kieren’s hands. One resting on the desk, one curled around a blue-ink pen. Imagined them in my hair, sweeping it aside as he leaned in to nibble my shoulder. Imagined them falling lower, caressing my spine before sliding farther down. Imagined them taking mine, drawing me to lie beside him. Remembered the closest I’d gotten, our hands intertwined. At Vaggio’s memorial on Mount Bonnell. In the back seat of the police car, his stained with Vaggio’s blood. At the railroad bridge, his stained with mine. Straining into claws. Piercing. Tearing.

  “Quincie?” Mrs. Levy called. “Are you with us this morning?”

  After school, I paced as Brad tried on a red satin shirt and black leather pants in the dressing room at Babes & Bikes on Sixth Street.

  “You’ve been out of sorts lately,” Brad observed from behind the curtain. “Your uncle is worried about you. He thinks it has something to do with your boyfriend.”

  “I don’t have a boyfriend,” I said. “I have a boy who’s a friend. Or, at least I do for now. He’s . . . moving away.”

  “Let me guess,” the chef replied. “Out-of-state college?”

  “Something like that.” I couldn’t help wondering if it was easier to fixate on Kieren’s joining a Wolf pack than whether he might have lost control with Vaggio. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get it out of my head. If Kieren hadn’t told me the whole truth about the pack, maybe he hadn’t told me the whole truth about that night, too. Miz Morales had seemed so convinced his leaving was the only way. Maybe it was her he’d talked to. If I still had a mama, that’s who I’d go to now.

  God, what was wrong with me? Why didn’t I know anything? One minute I wanted to jump Kieren and the next I wanted to run away from him and hide. One minute I thought we should be together forever and the next I just wanted him to go ahead and get the hell out of my life.

  I paced faster, turning without paying attention, knocking into a display of chain belts and wrist cuffs, causing it to topple over with a jangling crash.

  “Quincie!” Brad exclaimed from the dressing room.

  “Nothing’s broken,” I said, scrambling to restore order. “I’m just a complete spaz.”

  “If it makes you feel any better,” Brad said, “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Actually, it did. With things so uncertain between me and Kieren, Uncle D always off with Ruby or busy working, and Vaggio dead, it was nice to have someone new to talk to. I didn’t even mind Brad’s flirting. It seemed harmless enough, I thought, putting the last of the belts back on their hooks, and Kieren never flirted. He was so earnest, so careful around me. Brad made me feel like I was a girl somebody could really want.

  “Here goes,” Brad said, stepping out into the shop. He struck a pose, showing off the black leather and red satin. “Too slutty?”

  Wow. “Oh, yeah.”

  Brad glided through the dining room doorway. Black tux, white shirt, black dress shoes, white calla lily boutonniere. “Ta-da!” Seriously. He said “Ta-da!”

  “Are you taking her to the prom?” Uncle D asked. “Or are you two getting married?”

  Brad’s smile was wistful, showing fang. “Can we do both?”

  I wasn’t so chipper. Yesterday, we’d taken advantage of school being out for Labor Day to power shop. But with only ten days till the premiere party, Uncle D’s ruling was “no go.” We’d have to try again. Maybe look into express-ordering something online.

  “I do look kind of like a lounge lizard. But that’s no reason to waste the suit.” Brad extended his hand to me. “Would you do me the honor of this dance?”

  “There’s no music,” I said, feeling awkward.

  “There’s always music,” he replied, “if you listen carefully enough.”

  Brad had been trying out lines like that, now and then. Trying to get into character. So far, he sounded like a typical fan boy, not like the headliner.

  “Don’t you think dancing is kind of silly?” I asked.

  “Don’t you think it’s kind of silly to dress up in a tuxedo and not dance?”

  It was hard to argue. I climbed off the chair, Brad spun me, and then we were waltzing, a skill I owed to the valiant six-week effort of a middle school gym teacher. Brad was good, a strong lead. I gazed up into his red eyes. He seemed ready to confide something, and I took a side step, not ready to hear. It would be simpler to keep dancing.

  As Uncle Davidson cleared his throat, we broke apart.

  Truth was, I’d forgotten for a moment he was standing there.

  “Quincie, honey,” Uncle D said, “mind if I have a word with you?”

  It was an ominously parental question.

  Excusing himself, Brad ducked out of the room to change clothes.

  My uncle waited until he was gone and motioned for me to follow him to the foyer. For privacy, I supposed.

  “The clock’s ticking,” my uncle began, using his index finger to wipe dust from the photo of Mama and Daddy. “Brad’s been busy with the food, and . . . Don’t get me wrong. You’ve done a top-notch job of managing him, but I’m ready to settle for a good cook and let Ruby play to the crowd.”

  Ruby again. Yuck. It was so unfair! Besides, what if she and my uncle broke up? Talk about your personal-professional wreckage. Uncle D wasn’t thinking straight. He was in some kind of sex haze. It was my duty as his niece and my mother’s daughter to save the restaurant. “But when Vaggio was alive, you loved the vampire chef idea.”

  Uncle D’s face fell. “Honey, Vaggio was a born showman. Brad’s not. We can still call him ‘the vampire chef.’ He’ll just stay offstage. But we need a star.”

  “Ruby, you mean.” I took refuge behind the hostess stand. Going off about her to my uncle wouldn’t help my cause. “One more chance,” I begged. “I can do this.”

  Uncle D considered a moment before backing down. “Okay, okay. You’re such a doll, always there for everyone else. Me especially. You can try again with Brad’s makeover. One more try.”

  I beamed at him. “Thanks!”

  With that, he retreated to the kitchen. A moment later, I heard his laugh, mingled with Brad’s. I opened Frank at the hostess stand to make a new to-do list.

  The phone rang, catching me off-guard. “Sanguini’s: A Very Rare Restaurant,” I announced. “May I help you?”

  “This is Detective Sanchez. Who’s this?”

  Oh my God, I thought, the police. Sanchez, Sanchez . . . I didn’t remember a Detective Sanchez, but the days surrounding Vaggio’s murder had been such a blur. Maybe he was the guy who’d come with Detective Bartok to the memorial service.

  “This is Quincie Morris,” I said into the phone.

  “Quincie, good. Listen, this call is confidential.” It was an order, not a question. “I don’t want to read about it in tomorrow’s paper or see it on News 8.”

  I tightened my grip on the receiver. “Understood.”

  I heard the detective take a drink. Coffee, I figured, imagining him, mug in hand, hunched over his messy desk at the station. Come on, I thought. Whatever it is, tell me.

  “I’m calling to urge you to be careful. The victim . . .”

  “Vaggio,” I said, glancing at his birthday picture. “His name was —”

  “Mr. Bianchi was an older man, but he was in good health. At the time of the crime, he may have had his guard down. The perp —”

  “Perp?”

  “The murderer, the shifter. It’s probably someone he knew. Which means —”

  “It’s probably someone I know, too.”

  “Quincie!”

  I jerked my
head up as Mr. Wu slammed his Econ book on my desk.

  “This is a class, not a slumber party. Next week, try caffeine like the rest of us.”

  Mr. Wu was the one teacher who hadn’t adopted The Tone since Vaggio’s death. At first I’d been grateful. Now, not so much.

  The bell rang, and I peeled out of there, turned into the filling hallway, and ran smack into Vice Principal Harding.

  “Good morning, Miss Morris.”

  Damn. “Good morning, Mr. Harding.”

  “It’s not too late for you to consider homeschooling.”

  Having just been awakened by the Econ teacher in front of my whole first period, I had to admit the idea sounded more appealing than it had initially. But then I remembered the main reason I liked school. He was in my next class.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I replied, dodging Harding on my way to my locker for my English book.

  When I slid behind the desk next to Kieren, he was leaning over his notebook, the highlighted short story spread open in front of him. That’s when I remembered. Friday’s scheduled quiz. Hawthorne. “Young Goodman Brown.” I used to calendar out all of my assignments in Frank, but lately, I hadn’t bothered. I didn’t even have Frank with me today for some reason. I put my hand on Kieren’s forearm. “I didn’t do the reading —”

  “Again?”

  “I had to work. What’s the story about?”

  “It’s this sledgehammer study in symbolism with —”

  The bell rang and Kieren paused, glancing at Mrs. Levy.

  “Go on,” I whispered.

  But before he could, Mrs. Levy said, “Please put your books and notes under your desks.” She passed out the quizzes to the first person in each row, and they passed them back. After a few more instructions, everyone got to work.

  I squinted, trying to make some sense of the questions. The words looked blurry. What was it with English teachers and their desperate need to quiz? I wondered. Did they enjoy torturing students? And where did Kieren get off judging me, just because I wasn’t spending every minute with my muzzle buried in a book? The whole thing was so stupid, so pointless. So juvenile. I, I didn’t . . .

  “Do you need to go to the nurse?” Mrs. Levy whispered at my shoulder.

  “Why?”

  “You’re crying,” she told me in The Tone.

  When I finally escaped the nurse’s office — guest-starring the school counselor as “I thought I’d say ‘Hi’ and see if you wanted to talk” — Kieren was leaning against the manila hallway outside the door, his backpack slung over one shoulder.

  “Shouldn’t you be in calc?” I asked.

  He took my English book. “I thought we’d cut out for the rest of the day. Do you need to stop by your locker for anything?”

  I glanced at the text in his hand. What was this, the 1950s? He didn’t usually carry my books. Of course he didn’t usually cut school either. I had been planning to hit chem before taking off, but so what? “I guess not.”

  “Good.” Kieren turned toward the front door. “Let’s go.”

  Passing the fountain next to the administration office, we fell silent and walked together out of the school. Not one secretary had looked up.

  “You feeling better?” he asked halfway down the walk.

  “Better?” I spread my arms, soaking in the freedom, the sunshine.

  “Than you were in class this morning?’

  Oh. “It was nothing. Cedar, I guess. My eyes started watering.”

  “You don’t have allergies. I do, and I’m fine today.” Stepping onto the parking lot, he added, “If you don’t want to talk about it, I understand.”

  It was my second offer to talk in the past hour. Inside Kieren’s truck, I tuned the radio to a Los Lonely Boys song and listened to that instead. I had no idea where we were going, but I was so glad to be with him and not in chem that it didn’t matter.

  The mystery held while we stopped by his house. Miz Morales waved to me and handed him a picnic basket at the front door. Brazos bounded out behind Kieren and leaped into the truck to sit between us. Then I rolled down the passenger-side window, changed places with the overgrown pup, and scratched behind his ears as he panted out the window. I’d always wanted a dog, but Uncle D had said we worked too much. Brazos loved me though, and it was mutual. “Your mama doesn’t mind that we’re cutting?”

  “No, not at all. She sends her love.”

  When Kieren turned into the white-stone pillars at the entrance, I understood.

  It was September 6, my parents’ wedding anniversary, the day I’d set aside to honor them. The day they’d become a family. Kieren had remembered when I’d forgotten. He must’ve assumed I’d been emotional in English because of today’s date.

  Last year I’d counted down the days, starred the box on my September monthly calendar page in Frank.

  This year, nada.

  What kind of an excuse for a daughter was I?

  The cemetery was small, lined with a wrought-iron fence, located about twenty minutes from my house. The older tombstones stood upright, many faded, several guarded by stone angels or lambs. The first year, Kieren and I had taken a bus, and last spring, he’d driven us. The picnic basket and Brazos’s company were new.

  My parents’ graves were shaded by a magnolia tree, marked with a single flat stone. It had a built-in vase, and before I could feel worse about not bringing flowers, Kieren reached into the basket for a plastic-wrapped bouquet of pink sweetheart roses and a bottle of water. I knelt down to scratch Brazos’s belly while Kieren busied himself. He set up the flower arrangement, spread a moss green blanket, put out a snack of sliced apples, pecans, feta, and whole-wheat crackers on moss-green paper plates, and handed me a moss-green paper cup with matching napkin. Our names had been written in curly silver metallic ink on our cups, both with hearts over the respective I’s. We sat side by side, and Kieren poured me some sparkling cider before noticing the panting dog.

  “Sorry, boy.” He opened the basket again for another bowl and a bottle of water.

  “I take it your mama packed the basket for you.”

  “What makes you say that?” he asked.

  I laughed.

  Instead of talking about Wolves or vampires or Sanguini’s or the murder investigation, Kieren and I remembered my parents. Remembered how Mama could eat a heaping plate of Vaggio’s calamari all by herself. Remembered how Daddy would spend hours combing the beach in Galveston for seashells. Remembered how long they’d debated over what colors to paint the house before settling on green and purple. Remembered how often they’d held hands. It was the best I’d felt all day, but then I realized, who would come here with me when Kieren left for the pack? From the way Miz Morales had been talking, it sounded like he’d be gone long before next year.

  During an electrical storm later that night, watching the news with Uncle D, I learned that there was a flash flood warning for Westlake Hills and that a dead body had been found near the Four Seasons Hotel on the hike-and-bike trail.

  It wasn’t far from here to that new murder scene. Within walking distance.

  Walking distance from my house. Walking distance from Kieren’s.

  I thought back to Detective Sanchez’s warning and hit MUTE on the TV remote. “It was Mama and Daddy’s anniversary today. Kieren went with me to the cemetery.”

  “You could’ve asked me,” my uncle said. “Or Brad.”

  “Brad?” He’d never even known them.

  Uncle D glanced at the coverage of college football. “He’s ‘Bradley Sanguini.’ That makes him family now. Like you said about Vaggio.”

  Remembering the fuss he’d made when I’d hung Vaggio’s photo, I was surprised to hear my uncle say that. “You and Brad really seem to have hit it off,” I said.

  “And you’ve had a tough day,” Uncle D observed, “visiting your parents’ graves and all. Can I get you something? A glass of wine?”

  I thought about the body just found, about loved ones lost. Abo
ut Kieren. I wished I could mute my emotions the way I had the TV. It would be easier not to think at all, at least not for the rest of the night. The wine could help. “Sounds good,” I replied.

  I understood that Brad had to get the food order in, but did he have to look at his watches every minute? The restaurant supply shop on South Lamar wasn’t that far away after all. Flipping through the rack of classic uniforms, I asked, “Do you have to do that?”

  “Do what?” he asked, all innocence.

  I didn’t bother to bicker about it. “I wish you could just turn into a bat. Like poof! Very dramatic. That would solve all of our problems.”

  “Would it?” Brad looked amused. “I’m sorry to inform you that only the Old Bloods can do that. Changing into a wolf is easy, a beginner’s trick. Any well-established vampire — say, between fifty and a hundred years old — can dissolve into mist or dust, too. But a bat is harder. The extra mass has to go somewhere. It’s a bigger, more powerful magic.”

  He sounded like he knew what he was talking about.

  I paused, giving him my full attention. “Is that true?”

  Brad’s fang-filled smile had become familiar. “I did my homework, remember?”

  He had mentioned that.

  “Oh! Oh, wait,” I said, back on task. “Check this out.” Holding my breath, I pulled out a men’s large tall uniform. Black with red piping. Cotton, not polyester.

  He shook his head. “Too ‘Iron Chef.’”

  I exhaled.

  “Try not to take it too hard,” Brad told me. “My faith in us is eternal.” He reached out and tucked a stray hair behind my ear. “How’s that broken heart doing? That boy going out of state to school?”

  “I don’t have a broken heart. It’s . . . he’s still my friend.”

  “Quincie, we all have first loves,” my chef replied. “At the time, they seem more significant because we haven’t had anything to compare them with yet. But there’s a reason they’re called ‘first.’ More often than not, there’s a better love yet to come.”