Scarlett Fever

by Maureen Johnson

“I’m not mad,” she said, smiling. “It’s just that I’d like to keep the last guests we have left. Also, you aren’t supposed to wear white after Labor Day.”

  “I’m the bad guy. I break the rules.”

  “Do you shoot more today?” Lola asked.

  “No,” Spencer said, checking to make sure he’d put his wallet into his fancy white pants. “It’s just a read through. See you later.”

  As he and Scarlett walked to Third Avenue, a few heads turned in their direction. Spencer glowed with contentment. By the time they reached the coffee and doughnut shop, he had actually started humming to himself, very lightly, under his breath. They took a spot in line behind an older man who was ordering a large box of cream and jam doughnuts and an iced coffee. As he waited for his food, he kept looking over his shoulder at Spencer, each look getting longer and longer until it was an outright and undeniable stare. Spencer wheeled around, turning his back to the man, and leaned down to Scarlett.

  “That guy is looking at me,” he said in a low voice.

  “You’re on TV now,” she whispered back. “And you just killed Sonny Lavinski. And you’re dressed like the ice-cream man.”

  “I know. I just didn’t expect anyone to recognize me. Like, that much.”

  The man at the counter wasn’t the only one. Two women stopped outside the window, pointing inside. Spencer turned back around and put on his most innocent smile, waving at the women.

  The man got his box of doughnuts and drink and paid, and only then did he ask, “Aren’t you that punk from Crime and Punishment?” “Yeah,” Spencer said, slipping the man a sideways smile.

  “I thought so.”

  He made a low sound, not unlike the first, tentative whir of a blender, and stood off to the side while Spencer ordered the iced coffees. While Spencer paid and batted his eyelashes at the woman behind the counter, Scarlett watched the man. There was something in his aspect that suggested that maybe some medication had been forgotten. He didn’t eat a doughnut or drink his iced coffee. He just stared at Spencer.

  “Here,” Spencer said, pressing a massive iced coffee with whipped cream into Scarlett’s hand. “Healthy breakfast.”

  He grabbed his own drink and shoved five dollars into the tip cup. They were just passing the man, and Spencer was just giving him a friendly nod of good-bye, when it started.

  “You son of a bitch!” he said in an even, angry voice.

  The smile dropped from Spencer’s face in an instant.

  “Sorry?” he asked.

  “You heard me, you son of a bitch.”

  “Okay,” Spencer said, quickly giving Scarlett a shove in the direction of the door. “Nice meeting you. Stay classy.”

  “What is wrong with that guy?” Scarlett asked as they stepped out onto the sidewalk. “Don’t people know the difference between fantasy and reality?”

  “He’s just a weirdo,” Spencer said, pulling the straw out of his cup and using it to scoop up some whipped cream. “Dime a dozen. You grew up here, you know that.”

  “I know, but…”

  Scarlett felt something smack the middle of her back. It wasn’t hard, but it was definitely solid. She turned just in time to see the man who had just yelled at them. He was following them with his box of doughnuts in his hand. He removed another one.

  “That’s the son of a bitch!” he yelled as he got closer. “That’s the son of a bitch!”

  Spencer turned in time to catch a cream one midchest. He looked down at his shirtfront, where he’d been struck.

  “Is he really throwing doughnuts at me?” he asked.

  “At us,” Scarlett said. “He got me, too.”

  “What?”

  Spencer stopped and changed position just enough to block Scarlett.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he yelled at their attacker. “You hit my sister with a doughnut!”

  “Let’s just go,” Scarlett said, catching Spencer’s shirt and attempting to tug him along. But Spencer would not be moved. Another doughnut took flight. This time, it was jelly, and it made clear, perfect contact with the side of Spencer’s head—cutting a streak of powder across his dark hair and exploding into a thick raspberry mess along his ear and neck. Against the white shirt, it looked like blood.

  “Son of a bitch!” the man screamed again.

  By this point, all the passersby stopped to watch the display. Not all of them knew which particular son of a bitch Spencer was, but a few did. Those few were pointing and whispering the sacred name: Lavinski. The rest of the crowd was prepared to accept the spectacle in the spirit in which it was offered—just one of those things that New York occasionally threw in their path to shake things up.

  “He’s an actor!” Scarlett yelled back, stepping from behind Spencer. “And you’re a lunatic!”

  The man reached for another doughnut.

  “That box holds at least a dozen,” Scarlett said. “He’s got a lot more to go. Come on, Spencer!”

  Spencer just maneuvered her back behind him again and held his ground.

  “Seriously,” he said. “You do know it’s just a show, right? Right?”

  The cream doughnut that immediately followed didn’t rupture in quite the same way as the jelly had. It got him low on the torso, leaving a cream blotch on his hip. The next assault came from behind. A kid, maybe Scarlett’s age, decided to take advantage of the open food fight that seemed to be going on and lobbed half a granola bar in their general direction. It glanced off Scarlett’s elbow and landed on the sidewalk.

  “Okay,” Scarlett said, “that was just ineffective.”

  “A show,” Spencer was saying, still trying to reason with their primary threat. “Not a real gun. Not a real murder. Not even my idea…”

  Scarlett saw a cab with its light on stopping to let someone out. She took Spencer by the arm and pulled him toward it. He allowed himself to be moved this time, narrowly missing what looked like a very unstable blueberry jelly doughnut, which exploded on the back of the car.

  “One Hundred Fourth and the park,” Scarlett said to the driver, who already looked very sad that they were his passengers. “The faster you go, the less messed up your car gets.”

  Spencer got the door closed right before the man threw his iced coffee at the window. The window was half rolled up, which provided some protection, but not enough. The coffee drenched Spencer, soaking his face and side and pooling in his lap.

  “Are you okay?” Spencer asked.

  Scarlett’s heart was thumping in her chest. She looked down at herself. Tiny spots of powder and jam covered her shirt.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Just drop me at Dakota’s. I’ll borrow a shirt.”

  There was little point in asking Spencer the same question. The white clothes highlighted the damage. One side of his head and face was soaked with coffee-thinned jam. It dripped from his ear and down his shoulder. The majority of it was pooled in his lap. There were heavy impact marks of jam and cream on his chest and legs, which looked like someone had decided to make an abstract painting, using him as the canvas.

  Scarlett dug around in her bag. She had no tissues; paper would have to do. She ripped a few pages from a notebook. Spencer didn’t make a move. Figuring he was too stunned by the assault, Scarlett reached over to clean off his ear and cheek. As her hand drew near, he reached up to block her.

  “Leave it,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I have to make sure it stays this way until I get to the set.”

  “You want the jam on your head?”

  “Not much point in trying to clean up. I can’t hide this.” He tilted his head in the opposite direction to slow the dripping of the evidence. “It’s my one day of fame. Might as well enjoy it.”

  “I didn’t think this is what fame was like.”

  “Me neither,” he said.

  The cab stopped at a red light. The driver handed back a pile of napkins, indicating that he would like his backseat cleaned up a little. Spencer
took them and mopped up the space around him. Scarlett blotted her shirt. Mostly it just smeared the dots and made it worse. Her hand shook a little.

  Scarlett called Dakota to request the shirt, and Dakota was waiting at the curb when they arrived. She was unable to contain her shock at the view inside the cab.

  “Breakfast,” Spencer said. “I’m a really messy eater.”

  “We never give him soup,” Scarlett added.

  Spencer nodded gravely, waved good-bye, and the cab pulled off.

  “What. Was. That?” Dakota said. “Tell. Me. Now. What. Was. That?”

  “There was an incident,” Scarlett said.

  She explained the morning’s events as they walked up the three flights to Dakota’s apartment, where Dakota had already laid out a selection of new T-shirts on her bed. Scarlett picked through them and selected a basic white one, similar to the one that she had on.

  “Can you bring your jam-covered brother to my house every morning?” Dakota asked. “Why doesn’t he need to take off his shirt? He totally needed a new shirt.”

  Many moons ago, in sixth grade, Dakota developed a crush on Spencer. It was an obsession that had long faded into a ritual joke that was important for them to perform every once in a while. Or, it was important to Dakota to perform and for Scarlett to nervously tolerate because she loved her friend and sometimes friends do these sorts of things…because sometimes friends think they are joking when they are not joking at all.

  “How much do you think he would charge to take off his shirt?” she went on, to Scarlett’s dismay. “I know he’s famous and everything now, but everyone has a price.”

  “I don’t know,” Scarlett said. “A quarter?”

  “Really? I like how cheap he is.”

  While Scarlett changed, Dakota fell back on her bed, imagining something Scarlett would undoubtedly find horrible.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked. “Your brother just killed Sonny Lavinski.”

  “Do? I don’t do anything. No one knows he’s my brother except for you guys. And he’s just going to be on the show for a while.”

  “But you guys got attacked,” Dakota said.

  “Yeah, well, it was just some freak,” Scarlett said. “I don’t think we’re going to have any more problems like that. And who’s even going to know?”

  “Dissection,” Ms. Fitzweld was shouting in eighth period, “is not the same as slicing to bits. You are not cutting up a pork chop.”

  Actually, she wasn’t shouting. Ms. Fitzweld just happened to have one of those natural speaking voices that was sharp and pointy and overly loud—like she could see someone off in the distance ramming her car repeatedly with a shopping cart and could do nothing about it except take it out on sophomore Biology students.

  “You do as little cutting as possible!” she raged on. “Do you understand me? Now, one person from each station come over here and get your fetal pig. Bring your dissection tray.”

  Scarlett put on her plastic apron and a pair of goggles and made her way toward the barrel, tray in hand. She winced as her classmates walked past with their little plastic-bagged pigs on trays. The formaldehyde was overwhelming. It smelled like a sterilized headache.

  “I see Slax is skipping today,” Dakota said, coming up beside her.

  True enough, Max’s seat was still empty.

  “That’s sad,” Scarlett said. “I feel all dead inside when he’s not here.”

  The pig supply had run low. There were two left, at the very bottom of the barrel. Scarlett adjusted her ill-fitting plastic glove and leaned in, her nose almost touching the rim. She tried to lift a pig by the corner of the bag, but it was too heavy.

  “Stop being squeamish,” Ms. Fitzweld said. “Pick it up.”

  Even through two layers of plastic, the heavy wetness of the pig was palpable. Scarlett grabbed it and plopped it on the tray. Back at her seat, she read through the instructions. Task one: sex the pig. She was glad Max wasn’t around for this. She quickly examined hers and found it was a boy.

  “Sorry, piggy boy,” she said quietly. “I really am.”

  The classroom door opened, and Max sauntered in. Today, he was wearing a striped tie loose around his neck. Scarlett fondly remembered all the ways you could choke someone with a tie.

  “Where have you been?” Ms. Fitzweld snapped.

  “The bathroom,” Max said with a smile.

  “Thank you for sharing. Do it again and I’m docking you half a grade on the next exam. Get over to your station.”

  “Actually, I was reading the Internet,” Max said, sitting down and pulling on his gloves. “But I thought saying I was in the bathroom sounded cooler. Guess what I found out. Someone was throwing doughnuts at your brother this morning.”

  Scarlett stopped what she was doing.

  “Where did you see that?” she said.

  “It was on Spies of New York. I’ll read it to you.”

  He pulled out his phone and held it low, just under the desk.

  “Let’s see. ‘Sonny-Killer Wears White After Labor Day, New York Responds. On seeing Sonny’s killer, one loyal fan responded with a volley of doughnuts that sent him running for a cab in the company of an unidentified blonde’…That’s you I assume; they probably think you’re dating him or something…Then it says, ‘After covering Martin in jam and cream, the assailant dumped a cup of iced coffee on him before the cab drove away. We thoroughly applaud this man’s civic action and encourage other like-minded citizens to avenge our Sonny.’ Guess it was his lucky day for some random nut job to come along with a box of jelly doughnuts.”

  “There was nothing random about it,” Scarlett snapped. “It was because of the show last night. He had to give a speech about doughnuts. That’s why the guy was throwing them.”

  “I know,” he said. “I saw it. My mom turned it on because she wanted to see what kinds of jobs your boss is getting for her clients.”

  “So a crazy person attacked us.” She pushed the dissection pan toward him. “Cut the pig.”

  “Not me,” he said. “I’ll just screw it up. We’ll both fail. I’d hate to drag you down with me.”

  Scarlett dragged the pan back with a bitter heart. Hers, not the pig’s—though the pig couldn’t have been happy about it, either.

  “Does your brother always wear white?” Max asked as Scarlett began the unpleasant task of the first incision with the scissors. “It’s kind of a weird outfit. It’s like something you would wear if you wanted a lot of people to look at you.”

  “He wears, whatever…I don’t know.”

  “All I’m saying is that it seems like a good outfit to pick if you knew someone was going to, I don’t know, throw jam doughnuts at you. And you wanted it to show up well in pictures.”

  “I was there,” Scarlett said coldly. “It just happened. It wasn’t planned.”

  “Sure,” Max said. “There’s no way that an actor would lie or pretend or stage something.”

  “He would have told me.”

  “Of course he would,” Max said. “Whatever you want to think. All actors care about is that you spell their name right. Trust me. I live with one.”

  “So do I,” Scarlett said.

  “Fine,” Max said, holding up his hands. “Ignore me. I’m wrong. Your brother is different from the rest. It was all a coincidence.”

  Try as she might, though, Scarlett couldn’t ignore it. Max’s idea immediately took root in her mind, and soon its tendrils had spread in all directions, crowding out other thoughts. There was something wrong about that morning.

  “You know I have a point,” he said, leaning close. “Bet it drives you crazy.”

  Demo version limitation

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  THE VISITOR

  There was a collection of Martin family photos on the hallway wall right next to the Jazz Suite, covering the life histories of all four Martin siblings. There were the usual baby and school pho
tos, but there were also a few signature candids. There was one of Spencer as a sophomore dressed in a gangster suit with a fake mustache for Guys and Dolls. There was Lola looking demure and lovely in her Easter dress when she was ten. There was six-year-old Scarlett riding her bike out on the sidewalk, her expression unreadable under the cloudlike mass of blonde curls that covered her head like a weather pattern. There was Marlene, aged eight, in the playroom at the hospital giving a rare smile.

  In the center of the collection was one group photo that, if you studied it closely enough, would tell you all you needed to know about the Martin siblings. At the time the picture was taken, Marlene had just gotten out of the hospital. The chemotherapy had caused her hair to fall out, and a reddish fuzz was just growing in. She was making a sun-in-the-eyes scowl. Lola stood behind her, her arms clasped around her shoulders, a radiant smile on her face. Spencer had just hit the same height as their dad, and he seemed to tower over them all.

  Scarlett was on the edge of the picture. It was taken just before she realized that, for her, longer hair just meant bigger hair and that there was a secret point just below the nape of her neck—the magical line past which her hair became a nightmare.

  So she looked a bit wild in the picture, longish blonde curls blowing in all directions. Her braces had recently been removed, and her teeth still felt huge and strange in her mouth. She was wearing one of Lola’s old dresses (some things never changed), which was just a little too long on her. She was the only one not looking at the camera. She was turned halfway back toward the hotel, and the expression on her face clearly said, “Am I the only one seeing this?”

  Because in the background, a man could plainly be seen stealing the lid of their trash can.

  After the photo was taken, Scarlett reported the theft of the lid to her dad, who said, “It must have just gotten knocked off. No one steals trash can lids.” Which was a reasonable enough assumption, except that it was false—a fact he admitted when he saw the picture and said, “Oh yeah. I guess you were right.” They still had that trash can, and it still had no lid.