Ms. Babineaux huffed, then stomped off, growling, “I don’t have time for this.” I stayed hidden until I heard a car door slam and an engine start. I peered out and saw her pull away in a gray Prius. I slid out from behind the Dumpster, my heart still revving like the Indy pace car. I could almost feel the bacteria from my gross hiding place crawling over my skin and entering every bodily orifice. Would Graham Goren hide behind a Dumpster for a story? Probably. Even if he ended up with hanta-virus and Ebola and stank like fourteen-day-old cabbage and sweaty jockey shorts. I heard the phone ring again. I was about to lift the lid to find it when Maron’s loud barking voice came through the back door.
“Fine! Fine!” she shouted. “I’ll take care of it.”
I made a mad dash out of there.
As I was running back to Gladys, I realized why Tarren said it wasn’t fair that she lived down here while Helios lived on the posh north side. I could tell that the hood used to be a nice place, like a hundred years ago, because the houses were huge and the yards were bigger. But between the abandoned buildings, weed-choked lots, and the run-down Victorians, there wasn’t much else to see. Least of all people. You’d think the whole place had been deserted. I slowed down and caught my breath.
When I rounded the corner toward my car I saw a group of guys my age hanging out in front of a fried chicken joint. They looked harmless enough, jacking around with one another, but still, there should be a law against males between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five hanging out in groups of more than three. Put a bunch of girls together and we’ll combine our brainpower to make us smarter (and meaner, as I found out first hand). But if you put a group of guys together, they drain each other’s brain capacity straight into their pants and start thinking with their wieners, especially if a girl in shorts walked by. I considered crossing the street, but Gladys was only half a block past these jokers, so I’d have to cross the street, walk down half a block, and cross back, which would be weird. I decided to duck my head and plow past them quickly. Plus I could see some people hanging out on a front porch down the street. Surely these guys wouldn’t act too stupid.
Or not.
“Hey, baby,” one of them said as soon as I got near them.
I kept walking, head down, car keys ready in my pocket.
“I said, hey, baby.” A tall, lanky guy blocked my path. I could see his red boxers hanging out of his low-riding jean shorts and he had his Colts hat on cockeyed so only one lazy brown eye with a silver hoop above the brow was visible.
“Excuse me,” I said firmly then I tried to step around, but he sidestepped and stayed in front of me as if he were guarding me on a basketball court. “I never seen you around here.” The other guys snorted like the pigs that they were. “You live nearby? Maybe we could hang out.”
“No, thanks,” I said and stepped the other way, but he was quick and got in front of me before I could pass him. I stopped and put my hands on my hips. Most idiots back down the minute you confront them so I said, “I’m trying to get by.”
He held up his hands and shrugged. “And I’m trying to get with you.”
“Not going to happen,” I said, staying calm, but inside my stomach squeezed and my heartbeat quickened. It was only a short ride from this feeling to being spitting mad. I tried to breathe deeply like Charles demonstrated during group therapy so I wouldn’t do something I’d regret. “I’m on my way to meet my boyfriend,” I lied and tried to step around him again.
This time he reached out and pushed my shoulder. “He don’t have to know, baby.” The other guys behind us whooped and slapped each other five.
I stepped back, furious now. The only way I could get around the jerk was to walk into the street, but then I would be farther away from my car.
“I’m Drey,” he said, stepping closer. “What’s your name, babe?” Then he ran his grubby fingers across the belly of my T-shirt and I lost it.
There was a part of my brain that knew I was about to make the wrong choice, but that part got pushed out of the way by the other part that wanted to kick this a-hole in the balls. I knocked his hand away and shouted, “I am not your babe! Now get out of my way!”
“Oooh,” one of the guys behind me said. “A live one. She’d be fun on her back, Drey.”
With his chest out and arms bent, Drey towered over me. He shoved his face down in mine. “Why you gotta be so unfriendly?” A drop of his spit landed on my cheek. I could see the fury in his eyes and even though I was pissed, I was also scared. All I had to do was make it to my car and get the door open, but I had no idea how I’d get past him. Before I could figure out what to do, I heard another voice.
“Hey,” she said. “Back off, Drey!” Everyone, including me, turned to see a tiny girl storming up the sidewalk, red hair flying like a wild fire.
“Tarren!” I yelled, stepping around the giant jerkface in my path.
She stopped in her tracks. “Josie?”
“It’s me!” I ran to her side.
She put her hands on her hips and looked up at Drey. “Why are you always harassing my friends, huh?”
“Tare, baby. You don’t gotta get so mad. I didn’t know she was a friend of yours,” Drey said.
“And what if she wasn’t?” Tarren demanded. “Why would you be bothering her anyway? Poor girl, just walking down the street and you act like a pam dig.”
I see a couple of the guys try not to laugh at Tarren’s mistake.
“Aw, come on now,” Drey said. “Don’t get all psycho on me. I was just having a little fun, you know. Wasn’t gonna hurt her or nothing. Right, girlie?” he asked me.
“You scared me half to death,” I told him from behind Tarren.
“Drey?” Tarren said, her voice a low warning.
“What?” he asked, Mr. Innocent refusing to admit he was wrong.
“Apologize!”
“I ain’t apologizing for nothing!” He shook his head, but I could tell he was half thinking about it anyway.
“Come on, man,” one of Drey’s posse said. “You know how Tarren gets when she’s mad. Junk’s going to start flying around and pretty soon you’ll be lifting your leg to pee on that tree.” The other guys laughed, but it was a nervous kind of chuckle that had them all shifting from foot to foot, watching the showdown between tiny Tarren and the big galoot.
I was fascinated. What would she do? Would I get to see her in action? Could she zap him like she claimed at therapy? I didn’t believe her then, but after what happened at Johann’s house, I thought anything might be possible.
“I don’t want you mad at me, baby,” Drey said before Tarren had to pull out some badass faerie moves. “I thought we was blood.”
She softened a little, relaxing her hands and smiling. “Sure, sure,” she told him. “We’re blood. But my blood can’t be macking on my friends. And Josie here…” She pulled me to her side. “She’s my girl.”
Even though I was still pissed off at Drey, I took a deep breath and tried to regroup, thinking maybe I could salvage the situation if I was calm. Then, even though it sort of killed me, I stuck out my hand and I said, “Hey, Drey. I didn’t know you were a friend of Tarren’s. How about if we call a truce?”
“Yeah, well,” he mumbled. “Why you walking around in this hood by yourself anyway? Don’t you know it’s dangerous?” But then he held out his fist for a knuckle bump, which I gave him, awkward as it was.
Tarren turned to me and said, “What are you doing in this dump? I thought you lived in Rod Bripple.” She stopped and thought about this then tried again. “Dod Bripple? No wait, don’t tell me, I can get it.” She stopped, took a breath then said, “Broad Ripple!”
I nodded, relieved that a) no one laughed at her and b) she found the word before I had to correct her. “Community service.” I pointed toward HAG.
“Right. Come on.” She turned away from the guys who’d absorbed Drey back into their huddle but then she looked over her shoulder. “See you around. And remember”—she pointed to
her own eyes and then to him—“I’ve got heads in the back of my eyes.” I elbowed her and shook my head. “I mean, eyes in the back of my head,” she yelled. Then she turned to me and said, “That guy never learns.”
Tarren led me to a huge, ramshackle Victorian house painted twenty different colors with a wraparound porch, crazy turrets, balconies, and intricate gingerbread trim all around the eaves. The front yard was a riot of wildflowers and butterflies. We climbed the crooked steps to the porch where five people in gauzy, flowing clothes lounged in various states of repose across wicker couches, hammocks, and big pillows strewn all over the place. I saw more people on blankets in the side yard.
“Do all these people live here?” I asked.
“Spriggans, no. This is the result of good old haerie fospitility.”
“Hairy what?” I asked.
She raised an eyebrow. “Hostility? No that’s not it. Hos-pi-ti-li-ty…”
“Hospitality?” I asked.
“Yeah, that’s it! Faerie hospitality. We can’t say no if someone asks to stay with us. Literally. We are incapable of saying no.” Tarren picked up a pitcher of what looked like lemonade from a little rickety table and poured a big glass. “You want something to drink?”
“I should really be going…” I started to say, but Tarren picked up the glass and handed it to me. I took a sip of the sweet, cold nectar because I was parched and I didn’t want to be rude. As soon as it hit my stomach, the core of my body melted and I was so relaxed that the thought of leaving seemed ludicrous.
Tarren smiled at me. “What’s your hurry, honey?”
“No hurry at all,” I said and took another gulp of the shimmering liquid.
Tarren draped herself over a gold silk chaise lounge beside the table. She patted the cushion for me to sit, which I did.
“This is the most amazing thing I’ve ever tasted,” I told her and continued to drink. “What is it?”
“Ambrosia,” she purred, as she reached for the pitcher then she laughed. “No, that would be what Helios drinks, right?” She poured me another tall one. “Sorry if I stepped on your toes back there.”
“What? Are you kidding? You totally saved my butt.” I took the drink from her but before I sipped it, I looked her straight in the eye. “Why are those guys so afraid of you?”
She lifted her shoulder coyly. “You know why.”
I took the leap. If Johann’s mom was real, then Johann was real. And if Johann was real, then Tarren was, too. “But do they know?”
“Humans, ugh!” she said with a dismissive wave of her small pale hand. “They’re so boring after a while, don’t you think? Anything I do, they just explain away as some strange coincidence or force of nature. They think they’re so smart but really they’re blind to ninety percent of what goes on in the universe. Bee-prains.”
I sat up straight, ignoring her garbled expression because I was ready to defend my species, but then I remembered, Tarren thought I was one of her kind.
“Anyway why didn’t you take care of Drey yourself?” Tarren asked.
“Remember?” I said. “No powers.”
Tarren slung her arm around my shoulder and leaned close to my face. “Darling, we really must unleash your inner demon!”
“Demon!” I said, pulling away.
Tarren giggled and sipped her glass of the yummiest drink ever. “What? You don’t consider shape-shifters and vampires demons?”
I hesitated. “Avis and Johann seem like nice guys.”
Tarren nodded. “They are. I mean, Johann’s annoying and all, but he’s not evil.”
I leaned in close. “His mother tried to take a bite out of me.”
Tarren smacked my thigh. “Get out! Couldn’t she sense you were one of hers?”
This caught me off guard. “I suppose the werewolf in me threw her off?” I said, but it came out like a question.
Tarren nodded. “Makes sense.”
“Anyway Johann stopped her,” I said, and then it hit me. Today was the second time someone from my group kept me safe. I might not have known what they were, but it was clear, they weren’t going to hurt me. I studied Tarren for a moment. She was so small that I could probably have wrapped my hands around her waist. “You guys really watch out for one another, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she said. “We do.” Then she lifted her glass. “And now,” she said, clinking hers against mine, “you’re one of us.”
Slowly I raised the cup to my lips and took a long drink which filled my body with a warm, happy buzzing. “Seriously,” I said. “What’s in this stuff?”
“Flutterby milk,” Tarren said then laughed. “I mean, butterfly milk.”
“And how do you milk a butterfly?” I asked, half joking.
“Like this,” she said and without taking her eyes off me, she reached up and snagged a blue-winged critter flapping by. “First you catch it.” She brought the bug close to her mouth. “Then you ask for its forgiveness.” She whispered something near its soft, fluttering wings. “Then…” She snapped her fingers closed. I cringed, not wanting to see the mess in her hand as she opened her fingers one by one, but in the center of her palm was a little pool of shimmering liquid. “You turn it into the essence of itself.” She tipped her hand and poured the milky stuff into my glass.
I stared at my cup, not sure what to do.
“It might sound funny,” Tarren told me. “But that’s kind of what I think our group is.”
I stared at her, uncertain. “The group is a smashed- up butterfly?”
“No,” she said. “It’s a place to find your essence. We can’t let the world define us. We have to be true to what’s inside us no matter what some stupid Council says we can and can’t do.” She reached out and tapped her finger against my sternum. “What’s inside there, Josie Griffin?”
“I…I…” I stammered because the truth was, ever since Kevin and my two best friends betrayed me, I’d been trying to find my center again.
“You should come back to group,” she said.
“What makes you think I’m not coming back?” I asked, embarrassed that my reticence about the group might have been obvious.
“You seemed pretty weirded out by everything. And after you ran away from us at Buffy’s we weren’t sure we’d ever see you again. You are coming back this week, aren’t you?”
I looked into my glass and thought about my essence. Who was the real Josie? And could this group help me find her? I lifted the glass to my lips. It was still delicious. “I’ll be back,” I told her.
“Good,” she said and gave me a quick wink. “It’ll be nice to have another girl around.”
chapter 10
i nearly attacked my laptop when I got home because I was dying to post about how little Tarren saved me from Drey the douche. I didn’t think anybody would comment on the post I’d made the night before, but I was wrong. PissyGrrl said, “Are the guys in your group cute?” Sadie said, “Have you done a drive by of Madison’s house lately?” And BitterBrit wrote, “Is there group therapy for people who get dumped?” I couldn’t believe it. They’d completely missed the point. They were so caught up in their own drama they barely noticed what I posted. Only KKLaLa, as usual, had something interesting to say. “Zowie!” she wrote. “Those freaks in your group are weirder than my friends. And talk about a nightmare family! J’s mom makes mine look almost normal. Maybe you could sic the freaks on Kevie Boy. They could rip his heart out like he did yours.”
I chuckled at the thought of Kevin, who fancied himself an amateur demon hunter, being hunted by the paras and I posted a reply to her comment, “I wish! I’d love to be able to hex his butt!” Then I spent the next ten minutes writing a post about my first day of scrubbing toilets at HAG (complete with the photo I snapped), hiding from Atonia, and being rescued by Tarren.
Just as I was finishing, I got a text.
Sorry to bum u out 2day…overactive imagination :) And I was sad that Rhonda went AWOL. Can I still borrow Sense and Se
nsibility and Sea Monsters? Thnx KKLaLa
When I saw her signature, I did a double take. How many KKLaLas could there be in the world? I quickly texted her back.
R U the KKLaLa who reads JosieHatestheWorld?
A minute later her response came back.
OMG!!!! U R that Josie! Just read your post about HAG!
For reals u read my blog?
For reals u write that blog? Everybody at HAG loves it! U R a freakin’ celebrity!
I leaned back in my chair and cracked up. I couldn’t believe the girl I’d scrubbed toilets with was the same girl who been posting comments on my blog. Although when I thought about it, it made sense. I remembered from her earlier posts that she had a preggie scare a month ago and her parents kicked her out then her jerkwad boyfriend dumped her when it turned out she wasn’t pregnant. My heart broke for the girl I’d met earlier that day. I had no idea what a mess her life was.
Josie Griffin Is Not a Vampire Page 7