“Fuck…” I muttered, the second I hit the chilly air. What I’d seen swirled through my head. Poppy and Jeremy… Jeremy belittling her, screaming at her and potentially touching her?
What the fuck. I walked in a kind of daydream all the way back to my dorm and then leaned against the wooden post beneath my mattress and gazed steadily into space. Chloe appeared back in the room a few minutes later, along with her simmering tide of chlorinated smell. She dropped her gym bag and said, “What’s up? You look like you just saw a ghost.”
I chewed at my lip. I knew I could totally trust Chloe, but I still felt a little weird about spreading any kind of rumor, even about my number one enemy. “Nothing. Just spaced out. Hey, I was cleared from the doctor! November tenth, now. A little bit earlier.”
“Oh my god!” Chloe sprung forward and hugged me tightly. Then, she scrambled back to her bag and tugged out a bag of Sour Patch Kids. She yanked them open and recited, “We deserve to celebrate.”
“Ha. You do. You work harder than literally any other athlete I know.” I reached up and grabbed her bicep and squeezed. “God damn. You’re like a Grecian god.”
Chloe sighed. “I swear, I can’t wait till ten years from now when I can just have normal-looking arms and not eat like a ravenous bull but whatever. I’ll lean into it for now. Let’s watch a chick flick, huh?”
Chapter Nine
The following morning—Halloween itself—as we cut across the dying grass toward the breakfast dining hall, Chloe confessed she’d heard about the Halloween party, but hadn’t thought we would go. “I got Max to bring tons of candy so we could celebrate Halloween properly,” she told me. “But if you want to go binge drink with all our peers, I guess that’s also fine.”
“I just need this stupid ‘bad luck’ vibe to end,” I told her. “It’s exhausting and I just want to go rub elbows with everyone and prove to them that I’m not this scummy person they can keep ignoring. They’re all so malleable. They’ll forget about all of this the second I suggest it. But we need a costume. I’ve never dressed up.”
Chloe halted and gave me this big-eyed, curious look. “What did you just say?”
“Don’t freak.”
“Sorry. It’s just. Even as a poor kid in America, you always celebrate Halloween. I don’t remember a single year that I didn’t pull something together. I wore my bedsheets around my shoulders one year and said I was a queen with a really long cape,” she said.
I giggled. “Well, in foster care, there are always too many kids, which means too many costumes, which means… Sometimes, they would drop us off at whatever local church did some kind of Halloween thing, but we never wore any kind of costume. We would just inhale candy until somebody had a temper tantrum and everyone had to go home.”
“You really should write a book about all of this. It’s so crazy to hear about,” Chloe offered.
“Yeah. A book. About all the nights, I slept in a little closet-sized room and had to figure out how to raise an actual human baby, all before the age of seventeen. Sounds like a blast to read,” I continued and rolled my eyes at the thought.
Chloe’s grin fell. “I’m sorry. Really. I don’t mean to ever make you think your life was any less hard than it was. Let’s um. Let’s celebrate Halloween! Okay. Yes. You deserve this. We have to celebrate hard enough for you to forget about all the other bad ones.
I grinned and squeezed her hand. “Theo told me there’s a contest. You must have gone last year.”
“Of course,” Chloe said. “I wore one of my dad’s old football jerseys and everyone made fun of me. Great memory.”
“Ugh. I’m sorry.”
“It’s cool. Every single cent of my money goes into this school, so it’s not like it matters. But I don’t have anything to dip into for costumes,” she said.
“Hmm. We’ll figure something out,” I told her. “Let’s just dig through everything we own and…”
It turns out; we didn’t own very much. We appeared post-class at our dorm room and listened to the screech of the other girls getting ready down the hall. Chloe scrunched her nose and said, “I have a feeling we’ve already lost the costume contest.”
I laughed and snapped my fingers. “Chloe. I know what I want to be. And I think it should be easy.”
Amongst our things, we found a little tank-top, a tight black skirt, and a pair of black heels. Then, Chloe grabbed one of her headbands. We hollered down the hallway and leaped from doorway to doorway, demanding black construction paper, and we finally found it. We used the tiny scissors on toenail clippers to cut out triangles and then taped them to the headband with the spare tape we found in the basement closet.
“Ta-da!” Chloe said. She flickered her fingers as I rushed to the mirror.
“A black cat who crosses your path,” I snarled and then smiled. I adjusted the headband and grinned. “It’s perfect, isn’t it? I wish I could be all the bad luck things at once.”
“Oh… maybe you could bring this,” Chloe added. She grabbed a little compact and threw it at me. I opened it to find a broken mirror on the inside.
“You’re my a fairy godmother,” I joked.
“I know. What would you do without me?”
We busied ourselves with Chloe’s costume next. We found a striped shirt in my things (something Karla had bought from Goodwill for herself and had grown out of during her “inhale all the chips in the pantry” phase) and then added some black leggings. Then, we used Chloe’s makeup palette to paint a white face and little bright red lips. She looked like a perfect French mime, although we didn’t have the right hat. She shrugged and mimed, Whatever.
“You’re a natural,” I said.
Theo’s party started at eleven. It was a Friday night, and the air felt sinister and dank. A bulbous bright moon hovered above us in the dark sky, seeming unattached and apt to just float on down to our turbulent mountain range. I squeezed Chloe’s hand. Together, we entered the stream of other students in the hall as we rushed toward Theo’s apartment-like dorm, which was attached to Clinton’s via the bathroom on the very top floor of the boy’s dorm. Around us were witches and super-slutty witches and also mostly-naked witches. There was an Ariana Grande and a Leonardo DiCaprio in some Quintin Tarantino film and there were plenty of cartoon characters from cartoons I hadn’t seen (that Chloe had told me I absolutely had to because they were “for adults” now). There were Disney characters and sexy French maids and also several people who’d just decided to wear one of their performance outfits and call it a day. Nobody looked at me like I didn’t belong. For the first time, I felt frenetic and wild and not like the girl who’d gotten hurt, and I rushed toward the door of the boy’s dorm. I felt like this was a new start.
When we reached Theo’s apartment, we found ourselves in line to enter. The reason for the bottleneck was: when you entered, you had to write down your name along with your costume, and then everybody voted throughout the night to decide who “won” the contest.
I wrote down, “Rooney Calloway, Black Cat Who Crossed Your Path.”
“That’s amazing,” Chloe muttered. She wrote hers beneath mine, then followed me to the fridge, where we both grabbed beers and eased into the crowd. Max lurked near the window and gave a friendly wave. He was dressed as a vampire, with a long black trash bag hanging from his neck and a tiny bit of red “ooze” down his chin.
“What is that?” I asked and pointed to the red mark.
“It’s just lipstick,” he said. “I don’t really get into this whole costume thing.” He reached into his pocket and drew out a Hershey’s bar and cracked it open. Chloe and I both accepted a square, and the milky sweetness melted across my tongue.
As Chloe and Max huddled closer and started to dance to the pulsing beat from the speaker, I turned to assess the room. Like I’d suspected, most others’ costumes seemed high-caliber and, above all, expensive. I spotted Theo in the corner, dressed as a dapper Englishman, from the nineteenth century, with a perfect three-piece suit and his hair
kind of swept back. The three-piece suit made him look ridiculously handsome like I’d literally entered another century to find Theo’s great-great-great-grandfather at some English ball. My heart dropped into my belly.
Suddenly, Clinton caught my eye toward the kitchen. He had decided on something a bit more traditional, with a thick, hairy werewolf head, a snout that cut out over his eyes. He wore no shirt, and his perfectly-sculpted muscles showed all the dips and plains. His abs were flat and cut up over his jeans. His eyes found mine beneath the werewolf mask. I turned around fast, not wanting to be caught staring.
But before I could turn fully around, Clinton chased me down. He grabbed my shoulder and spun me back toward him. I hadn’t been touched or spoken to by him since he had come to my bed at the hospital, and rage swam up and latched itself around my tongue.
“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded.
Clinton bucked back and let me go. “I know what you are.” He seemed gruff and even more animalistic than normal. Of course, it could have been because of his costume: him playing his part and all.
“You think you can just be friends with me again after ignoring me for so long?” I demanded.
“You’re bad luck,” he recited.
“Give it a rest already. You’re superstitious like all the rest? This ridiculous ‘curse’ and ‘bad luck’ shit is getting old,” I began.
“No. That’s your costume. You’re a bad luck black cat. Like, if you cross our paths…” He burst into laughter and draped his hand across his stomach. His laughter went on forever until he hollered to Theo to come over. “You have to see this!”
Theo approached us. God, he looked so good as he walked with his shoulders thrust back and his blue eyes beaming toward mine. I knew that my costume was just something I’d tossed together from the scraps of Chloe and I’s clothing collection, but it still felt nice that they like it—that they noticed me.
“A black cat,” Theo said. His eyebrows lowered.
“Don’t you get it?” Clinton demanded. “She’s bad luck.”
I grabbed the little compact mirror Chloe had given me and brought it from my pocket. I popped it open to reveal the cracked mirror on the inside and beamed up at them. “I’m bringing as much bad luck as I can to this party,” I announced and flashed them a wicked smile.
Theo and Clinton laughed again. Theo’s hand found my shoulder and his fingers stroked my arm gently like he couldn’t resist not touching me for another moment. I shivered, but my smile was still wide.
“Let me make you a cocktail, Bad Luck,” he said. “You don’t have to drink the shit beer tonight.” He then reached down and grabbed my hand and snaked me through the crowd, with Clinton in tow behind us. We made it to the hallway and then cut over to Clinton’s apartment, where the party raged on. On the far couch, Poppy sat with her best friend, Ellison. Poppy and Ellison were dressed as slutty mermaids, with glitter scattered across their cheeks and their tits basically blowing out of their little string bathing suits. They wore green skirts and green tights, with stilettos. And when I walked in, both pairs of eyes were immediately on me and they looked murderous.
Again, I thought back to what I had seen—or what I thought I had seen in the locker room with Jeremy. The nosy person in me wanted to ask if everything that happened between them was okay, but I knew I wouldn’t.
Poppy could take care of herself. She had made it her mission to destroy me—to poison me on my first day, to belittle me at try-outs, to make me fall and hit my head off the balance beam, and finally to try to make me drink acid. Just because that time, she had ended up under the acid-shower in science class, didn’t mean she’d redeemed herself.
And I was sure that what I had seen… hadn’t been what I had seen. Right? That sort of thing didn’t happen at Denver Athletics.
Zed also sat on the couch, but a bit off to the side. He was dressed like a Ghostbuster from a film I’d only caught bits and pieces of over the years, but it really suited the funny side of his personality.
Clinton stormed up to a few girls who drank at his kitchen counter, including Veronica Rollins, a swimmer from the basement, and Ashley, the swimmer who Chloe had just-barely beat at mid-semester contest. She and I had been at Theo and Mr. Everton’s mansion for the pre-mid-semester dinner, which meant she knew about my little “foray” with Zed and Theo in the bathroom. I mean, she hadn’t seen anything, but she suspected. And she had also seen Poppy verbally attack me throughout dinner. I wasn’t sure what to make of her, especially since Chloe had beaten her (and hadn’t been expected to beat her). But Ashley’s eyes turned from me to Clinton and Theo, and she said, “Um. Hey there. Good party,” and gripped what looked like a vodka tonic and shared a genuine smile.
“Hey,” Clinton said. He shot a finger toward my body and said, “What do you think she is? It’s perfect.”
Ashley arched her brow. “Um. A cat?”
“Not just any cat. A black cat,” Clinton offered. He waggled his brows and waited for her to get it. When she didn’t say anything, he blurted, “Like, bad luck. A black cat who crosses your path and…”
“Ahhh…” Ashley said, twirling her hair.
My cheeks burned with embarrassment, but at least everyone had decided they could interact with me again.
“That’s actually cool,” Ashley said. “And funny. Fuck, I didn’t… Hmm.” She seemed to toss around the idea that I had been a complete outcast the past few weeks. “I’m really sorry I didn’t say anything after everything happened. I mean, how fucking gullible can we all be. Believing some bullshit story that you’re like, brought here to ruin all of us. I mean, we all saw it for what it was in some ways. That Poppy was jealous and just wanted to fucking…”
About ten feet away, Poppy still seemed tapped into what happened. She jumped up from the couch, grabbed Ellison’s hand, and dragged her outside. I watched them go as Ashley finished her apology. She fumbled her words and then grabbed a bottle of vodka and shrugged.
“What the hell. Do you want some of this? Clinton showed me where the good shit is.”
“Of course,” I said. “And listen. I might be bad luck, Ashley. But I’m only bad luck for myself.”
“Cheers to that,” Ashley cried. “We’re all our worst nightmare.” She dotted the side of her head with her finger and said, “I know Rooney, but we all still have to play along to appease our dear Poppy!”
“Yeah, I can see that.” For the very first time ever, I felt like I just might have a grip on this damn bully thing.
“You look great by the way, Rooney,” Ashley said, flashing me a genuine smile. She drank her vodka drink back as Clinton shuffled around to prep mine. “At least now, I know my next goal—nationals in Seattle. I know you’ll be there too once you’re all healed up. When are you cleared again?”
“November tenth,” I answered.
The date had taken on a new aura of like golden trumpets playing in my ears. I did a little jump, and Theo grabbed my shoulder again and forced me back down. “Hey. Calm down. Don’t muddle up that head of yours all over again. We need you out on the mat.” He then turned back to Ashley and added, “You should have seen her in the hospital.”
“You went to see her in the hospital?” Ashley asked.
She gave a little smile, and Veronica whispered into her ear just loud enough to hear. “Wow. I wonder if Poppy knows that.”
“Fuck, Poppy,” Theo blurted.
A few people around us, between the couch and the kitchen counter, peeked up at Theo. The words were certainly rarities in Denver Athletics, even if everyone kind of thought them in their minds. Clinton passed my drink to me and I clinked it with Theo’s. “May the best man win,” is what I said, and Theo burst into laughter. He wrapped his hand around my lower back and eased me against him. His lips perched just against my ear, and his voice was husky and intimate.
“Everyone here always tries so fucking hard, Rooney. And you’re just here as yourself. Just doing you and not givi
ng a shit when others try and intimate you or bully you or hurt you. You just move on and wipe the bullshit off your shoulders. It’s refreshing and I love it,” he said, smiling and pulled me in closer.
His hand flickered lower until I thought he was about to grab my ass. He didn’t and stopped right before. I sipped more of my drink down, and his eyes sparkled as he looked at me.
“Do a British accent,” I said. “Come on.”
“No,” he returned.
“Then your outfit isn’t good enough,” I scoffed. “You can’t win best costume when you’re dressed the part but aren’t willing to play the game.”
Theo groaned. After a long pause, he ran into a very-bad English accent, and said, “Say, darling, do you reckon you’d lik’ta have some tea?”
My face shifted. I scrunched my nose and laughed out, “Oh god. That really was so bad, wasn’t it?”
The Accident Page 7