The Ones That Got Away

by Stephen Graham Jones

  “A problem?”

  “Ticks,” Tammy almost whispers, as if saying it might attract them, or make them real enough to hear her anyway.

  Brianne laughs to herself, says, “He’s a dog, T. Why don’t you try to be paranoid or something for a change?”

  Tammy shakes her head in mock amusement, but is really studying the grass, for bugs.

  Where she should be looking is on her towel, though.

  One corner of it is trailing into the grass.

  Crawling up it, still flat and brown and coppery, a tick.

  That night while Tammy and Brianne are in the parking lot of the pool with all the other Danforth students, Brianne’s dad starts throwing up, can hardly catch his breath.

  Brianne’s mom calls them, tells them to meet her at the emergency room.

  This messes up everything they had planned for the night.

  “You go on,” Tammy tells Brianne.

  She’s standing by Bo Richardson, and never stops smiling as she says it.

  “You’re driving, T,” Brianne says, smiling too, her eyes so pleasant.

  “Show me later,” Bo says to Tammy, pushing her lightly away, his hand large on her shoulder.

  What he’s talking about are the tan lines Tammy’s promised him.

  The whole way to the hospital Tammy doesn’t say anything, and neither does Brianne.

  “Well?” Brianne says to her mom, finally.

  Her mom is eating a pastry from the snack machine. It sickens Tammy.

  “It’s poison,” Brianne’s mom says, leaning forward to touch both of them, as if she used to be them or something. “From the, y’know. Frederick.”

  “The tick medicine,” Brianne says.

  “He got it on his skin,” Brianne’s mom nods.

  “He’ll live though?” Tammy says.

  “Yes, dear. Don’t worry about—”

  By this time they’ve already stopped listening, are already, in spirit, back at the parking lot with Bo and Seth and the rest, Joy at the edge of that crowd, rubbing out cigarettes with the toe of her Wicked Witch of the West boot. At least that’s what Brianne calls it.

  And of course, the rest of the weekend, except for when they sneak out, they’re at Tammy’s mom’s house. Just because Brianne’s dad is too gross to be around. The next time they see him is Monday morning, before school. They’re only there to pick up Brianne’s belt for Tammy to wear. Like every time, Tammy makes a production of cinching the belt in over and over again, like it won’t get small enough for her.

  “What have you been eating?” she says to Brianne, on the way down the stairs.

  “Bo Richardson,” Brianne tosses back quietly, and Tammy pushes her. It’s in play—well, half in play—but Brianne stumbles forward anyway, into her dad, just rounding the corner.

  “Girls, girls, girls . . . ” he says, adjusting his tie.

  It’s the only thing he ever says to them anymore.

  “Dad,” Brianne says, stepping back, studying him up and down. “You look—how old are you?”

  This has to be a joke, though. Or an insult. Both. Her dad shakes his head like a sad clown and leaves. They get the story from Brianne’s mom later: over the last forty-eight hours, Brianne’s dad has lost thirteen pounds.

  Thirteen pounds.

  Neither of the girls can say anything.

  At the fitting for their bridesmaid dresses two days later (Brianne’s slut cousin Clarice is pregnant, and doesn’t have any real friends), they have the seamstress pin their dresses tighter and tighter.

  “It’s supposed to hang, though, sweetie,” the seamstress says to Tammy.

  Tammy’s studying herself in the mirror.

  “It will,” Tammy says back, and then her eyes catch Brianne’s, and they look away.

  In the ashtray of Tammy’s car, now, where it’s been since lunch, is the tick medicine.

  In what should be Texas History the next day, a Thursday, they’re standing in the girls’ locker room together. Nobody else is there. It’s just them and, on the plastic bench between them—wood would be unsanitary—one dose of Frederick’s tick medicine.

  “How much do you want to lose?” Tammy asks.

  “From where?” Brianne says back.

  They’re talking like they’re in church.

  Tammy smiles, nods to herself, then, all at once, moving fast so she won’t have time to think, she breaks the tip off the applicator and turns it over onto her fingertip, daubs a print of it behind each ear. Like perfume.

  The fumes burn her eyes a little.

  She blinks fast, pretends it doesn’t hurt, and passes the applicator to Brianne.

  “Thirteen pounds,” she says.

  Brianne, trying to be careful, turns the vial upside down once, fast, on the thin skin of each wrist.

  And then it’s over.

  “Trig?” Tammy says, holding her breath a little.

  “You can’t smell it, can you?” Brianne asks, trying to nevertheless.

  “ ‘Safe for children,’ ” Tammy recites, and then it’s Trigonometry, and, an hour later, the nurse. Because they’ve each started throwing up. From the Chinese food they ate at lunch.

  The nurse doesn’t smile, just sends them home.

  By Saturday, the next time they see each other, Tammy’s lost eight pounds, Brianne six.

  “You’ve been eating,” Tammy accuses.

  “Could you?” Brianne says back.

  The answer is no.

  That night they float through the parking lot like runway models, their bellybutton rings glinting in the moonlight, and, this time when Bo and Seth and Davis ask them if they want to hit the Yogurt Shack, they do, and order all they want, and even pretend that it makes them a little drunk.

  Really it’s the fourteen collective pounds they’ve shed.

  From across the parking lot Joy watches them, and at one point Tammy sees her watching, and keeps smiling anyway, maybe even smiles more, then drapes herself across either Seth or Davis or that other guy from Ashworth or wherever.

  It doesn’t matter.

  On Wednesday, they’re going in for the second fitting for their dresses.

  To make it to size, on Sunday night in Tammy’s basement they lock themselves in the pool room and tap the tick medicine out from Brianne’s hollowed-out old lipstick tube.

  “The notes will still be good,” Tammy says, the applicator in her hand again.

  The notes are the ones the nurse wrote for them; they’re good until they’re well again.

  “Like I’ll miss Trig,” Brianne says, smiling with one side of her face.

  “Or ever need it,” Tammy adds.

  The blouse Brianne’s wearing is Tammy’s.

  A week ago, she’d have been able to fit into it, sure, but it wouldn’t have fit, either.

  Now, though—even Seth had taken a second look.

  This time they each lose seven pounds in forty-eight hours, and Tammy doesn’t ask if Brianne’s been eating anything.

  At school on Friday, Tammy sees Joy watching them again, and nudges Brianne.

  They’re in the cafeteria. Eating.

  The only thing Joy’s touched on her tray—she doesn’t ever go off-campus for lunch—is her pudding. The foil is peeled back.

  Tammy scratches at a spot under her hair and says, “I bet she’s got a whole closet full of those tights. One for Monday, one for Tuesday . . . ”

  Brianne laughs into her Dr Pepper, has to look away.

  “Maybe she wants to kill us,” she says behind her hand.

  “By committing fashion suicide then hoping we catch it too?” Tammy says back, and then they have to leave the cafeteria altogether. Not to the bathroom, though; this is an eating day.

  That afternoon in their lounge chairs in Brianne’s backyard—the pool boy’s there, and he’s even more fun to bother than Brianne’s dad—Frederick keeps trying to chase a butterfly. Either the same one or the first one’s twin, they can’t tell. It always dives
for the bushes though, then flutters back up a few minutes later, its shadow on the grass torturing Frederick.

  It gets him thirsty enough that he has to come over, lick the sweat from the sides of their legs.

  “The salt,” Brianne explains.

  “Pervert,” Tammy says down to Frederick, scratching the top of his head with her long nails.

  Frederick eats it up, finally creaks his body around to hook a hind leg up behind an ear, motorboat a furrow into his fur.

  “I thought he was fixed,” Tammy says, shaking her head away.

  “I don’t think you can get pregnant just by touching them, T,” Brianne says, lowering her leopard print sunglasses to see what Tammy’s talking about.

  “The stuff’s supposed to keep him from scratching like this, right?” Tammy says, sitting up, her top starting to slide off, the pool boy suddenly very still.

  “I told you,” Brianne says. “It all got on my dad’s hand. Not on Frederick.”

  “He didn’t do it again?”

  “You want me to remind him?”

  “What, you think he counts how many he’s got left?”

  “He’s kind of scared of it now anyway.”

  “Can’t you make him stop, though?”

  By that time the pool boy’s come to the rescue. Tammy just points down to Frederick.

  “What’s he doing?” she says to Brianne, drawing her legs up now.

  The pool boy smiles, kneels down by the dog and comes up half a minute later with a plump grey tick, its black legs pedaling the air.

  Tammy squeals and climbs the back of her chair. Brianne laughs.

  “Kill it!” Tammy’s saying, working up to a shriek.

  “Why?” the pool boy says, holding it out before him—Tammy’s forgotten about her swimsuit by now, and does have some stark tan lines—“When they’re like this, they’re full of babies, yeah?”

  “Then—then—?” Tammy says, the back of her hand to her mouth.

  “The toilet,” Brianne says for the pool boy, who still hasn’t looked away from what Tammy’s not worried about. “Right?”

  Which is when Brianne’s mom steps out to see what’s going on.

  Instantly, the pool boy’s posture changes and he’s already heading for the bathroom they’ve let him use once before.

  That night after dinner, stepping into the guest bathroom herself to check her face before Bo drops Tammy off, Brianne sees, smeared on the toilet seat, on purpose, the tick.

  Without the medicine, even, she throws up into the sink until her eyes are hot.

  When she steps into the dining room ten minutes later, Tammy’s waiting.

  “Start without me?” she says, touching the right corner of her mouth to show what Brianne’s missed.

  Brianne doesn’t answer, just calls out to her mom that she’s taking the Volvo and, instead of taking just one application from the shelf in the garage, she takes them all.

  “Why?” Tammy asks, far enough away from Brianne’s house that it’s safe.

  Brianne shakes her head no, doesn’t say anything.

  That Saturday between trips to Tammy’s upstairs bathroom, her mom calls up to the girls that Jill is pregnant too, now.

  “Slut,” Brianne says, smiling, teasing a fleck of vomit from her hair.

  “Three, two, one . . . ” Tammy smiles back. It’s the launch sequence; staying unpregnant is all about timing, they know.

  As her mom explains to them the next morning, though, what this means is that Jill is out of the wedding party. Because she’s only fifteen. “It wouldn’t look right.”

  “She’s showing?” Tammy says, stacking her plate with French toast she’s not going to eat.

  “It’s the principle, honey,” her mom says back, fixing both girls in her eyes for a second longer than absolutely necessary.

  “Then it’s off?” Brianne says.

  “The wedding?” Tammy’s mom falsettos, blinking fast to show what she’s meaning here, “heavens no. We just need an understudy.”

  “By Saturday?” Tammy whispers, incredulous.

  “I’m sure you have just scads of friends . . . ” her mom trails behind her, off to wherever. Church, maybe, after two hours of make-up and a handful of pills.

  In her wake, Tammy and Brianne are silent, and then the bite of toast Brianne tried to sneak works its way up her throat and she’s bent over the sink, dry heaving, Tammy guarding the door, waiting her turn.

  That night, showering before the parking lot, and whatever might happen after the parking lot, Tammy’s fingernail breaks off while washing her hair and the blood from her scalp seeps down over her face. The only reason she realizes its blood, even, is that it’s gritty. And then she’s throwing up again, and more, until her mom knocks on the bathroom door with the palm of her hand.

  At her house, her hair still in her towel, her body too, Brianne walks through her living room to the garage.

  What she’s carrying is the box the tick medicine was in.

  All that’s left in it now is one half-application. The other eight are in the secret pocket of her purse.

  The pool boy’s in the backyard again, too, doing his thing.

  Brianne smiles to herself, holds the towel on her head tighter than the one on her new body.

  In the garage it’s easy to see where the cardboard box had sat for however many months. It’s a small square of light-colored wood. The rest, all around it, is stained brown, and greasy. Brianne looks behind her, like the pool boy’s suddenly going to be standing in the door, and then follows the stain up the wall to the next shelf, all the gardening stuff.

  The bottle of fertilizer her dad bought off the infomercial is leaking.

  “Surprise,” she singsongs to him, in her mom’s voice.

  It’s why the cardboard was so greasy. It makes her look at her fingertips. With a spade she nudges the box into place, steps away, and then finds a reason to step outside. What she’s pretending to look for is an earring she lost the other day.

  What she’s thinking about, though, on her knees in the grass with the pool boy, her towel barely there anymore—“Thinking about Tammy now?” she wants to say—is the blood on the toilet seat.

  If he would do that when her parents weren’t looking, what else might he do?

  Ten minutes later, her towel all the way off now, she finds out, and wonders if he’s even washed his hands since touching that toilet seat, and somehow that makes it even better.

  At the parking lot an hour later, Tammy appraises her and finally says, “You’ve been eating again, haven’t you?”

  “Something like that,” Brianne shrugs, no eye contact, and then the night swallows them again.

  Three days later, the Wednesday before the wedding, Tammy and Brianne are standing at Joy’s register again.

  “Like you don’t know me,” Tammy is saying.

  “It’s, y’know, policy,” Joy says back, watching a rounder of clearance shirts out by the aisle.

  The y’know was funny to her, anyway.

  “I see you at school,” Tammy says.

  Joy doesn’t say anything back.

  “You could be pretty, y’know?” Tammy adds, offering her license, holding it like it’s the most boring thing ever.

  Joy takes it, compares it to the signature on the card, and hands it back.

  “Gee, thanks,” she says, wanting to drill a dimple into her cheek with an index finger. “Who wouldn’t want to be prettier?”

  “Thinner, I mean,” Tammy says like a secret, flashing her eyes to Brianne.

  But Brianne’s not following yet.

  “How would you like to be in a wedding with us?” Tammy says then, now not letting Brianne catch her eyes.

  “This is a joke,” Joy says back, sliding the receipt across to Tammy.

  “No,” Tammy says. “The wedding’s a joke. The dress is already ready, though. It’s—you. Just about ten pounds lighter.”

  “It would look good with your boots,” Brian
ne adds, the muscles around her mouth tense like a smile.

  Tammy kicks her a little where Joy can’t see.

  “Bo’s going to be there,” Tammy says. “And the rest of them.”

  “And I care about that?” Joy says, too fast.

  “I wouldn’t know,” Tammy shrugs, signing the receipt, pushing it back. “Have you ever been in a wedding?”

  Joy just stares at her.

  Her mother’s, Brianne just manages to hold back.

  “Everybody’s looking at you the whole time, you know?”

  “At the bride,” Joy corrects.

  “Not this time,” Tammy says. “Let’s just say she’s . . . carrying more baggage into the ceremony than—”

  “The engagement photos were from the face up,” Brianne interrupts, in step at last.

  “It’s the part of her most guys prefer, really,” Tammy adds.

  Joy rings the register open, stuffs the receipt in, says, “So what are you trying to say here?”

  “I’m saying that you’re not . . . what? ‘Candy Cane’?”

  “Right,” Brianne chimes in, biting her top lip.

  “I don’t want to be like you, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Joy says.

  “Of course not,” Tammy says, her voice a bit colder now. “I’m just saying. The final fitting is at seven tonight. Here.”

  She writes the address on the back of her customer copy, slides it to Joy.

  “This is a joke,” Joy says again. “You said the dress was too little anyway.”

  Tammy smiles. “No,” she says. “The dress is just about the right size, I think. You just need to slender down a bit.”

  “By Saturday,” Brianne says.

  “Ten pounds?”

  “It’s not impossible.”

  “Look at us,” Brianne says, striking a mock-glam pose.

  “I’m not going to be there,” Joy says, sliding the address back.

  “Of course not,” Tammy says, but doesn’t take the address back either.

  Thirty minutes after they’re gone, Joy studies herself in the three-way back in the dressing rooms.

  A bridesmaid?

  She laughs at herself.

  But then she remembers the way that Brianne-one had angled her body over, to show how little extra she was carrying.

  Joy looks in the mirror again, and then turns sideways to look, and then shakes her head no, just keeps collecting clothes from the stalls.