“Seriously?” Bette asks as she reaches the foot of the stairs—she came the normal way for once, figuring that rosebushes and windows were most likely not all that linen-skirt-friendly. “Who gets beaten by the computer?”
“It’s on ‘hard’ setting,” Tommy objects defensively. “Let’s see you do better!”
“Soon as you hand that controller over,” Bette promises with a smirk. She suspects her face still looks a little wobbly and morbid from all the moping (her mom would call it sulking) she was doing before. Luckily, Rose and Tommy are just about the least socially observant people on the face of the earth, and don’t notice.
After proving to Tommy that computer-controlled opponents are easy as shit to beat and seriously, he plays like a girl, Bette stretches her legs out in front of her and wiggles her bare toes, visible through the crisscross straps of her black sandals. “I had to do family stuff today,” she says.
“Need a drink?” Rose asks, and Bette knows she’s just being helpful but Bette fucking hates it when Rose is drunk, she’s sick of it, and it just makes her mood worse. She gives Rose a hard look, but can’t be sure if Rose was drinking before Bette got there—she might just be happy because it’s the weekend and it’s warm and she’s painting and hanging out with Bette and Tommy. Rose’s needs in life are simple, if specific.
“Nah,” Bette shakes her head. Then, on an impulse, because she hasn’t actually been thinking about this at all, “I’m thinking of going straight-edge. No drinking, no substances. I feel like that would leave me less shit to worry about all the time, you know?”
“Like when Billy Corgan shaved his head,” Tommy agrees, because sometimes Tommy is just as random and weird as Rose can be. Bette gives him a look, but he just nods. “No, for real.”
“That guy in The Smashing Pumpkins?” Bette asks.
“Yeah. He shaved his head so he didn’t have to think about his hair anymore.”
“Hah,” Bette replies. “I figured he was just going bald.”
“Okaaaay… done!” Rose says suddenly. “Bette, come see. I made you something.”
The picture is of a pair, a man and a woman, in old-fashioned clothes. They’re holding a baby between them, a tiny beautiful little girl, and all three of them are smiling joyfully. Beneath the hem of the baby’s lacy dress are a dozen long, waving tentacles, like those of a pink octopus.
At the bottom of the canvas, in uneven calligraphy, is written ‘For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.’
“To remind you that there’s usually a more hopeful way to look at things,” Rose says, putting her arm around Bette’s shoulders. Bette continues to stare at the picture, unsure of what to say to express how touched she is by the gift. The picture is brilliant, the best Rose has ever done, and it was done for Bette.
“I love it,” she manages quietly. “Thank you.”
“I think I’m gonna dress up tonight,” Rose declares. “A skirt and everything. Tommy, you gonna come out with us?”
“I can’t. Going out with Michelle. Want to invite Jay instead?” Tommy asks. Bette shoots him a Look.
“What?”
Tommy holds out his phone. “Invite Jay. Don’t give me that look. I know you think we just stand around being cooler than everybody, but he’s my best friend. We do talk about things occasionally. I know you two hooked up.”
The look of happy pride on Rose’s face crumbles. “You hooked up with Jay?” she asks. Bette doesn’t know how to answer that, so she grabs Tommy’s phone and goes upstairs to get good reception.
“Tommy?” Jay answers.
“No, it’s Bette,” Bette says, then bites her lip. She doesn’t know what else to say. “Um. We’re maybe going out tonight. Just me and Rose. And you, if you want. Do you want to meet up? We’re not going anywhere special. Just hanging out. But you can come if you like. But you don’t have to. But —”
“Bette, it’s cool,” Jay says, and even in his deadpan tones she can hear the smile. “That would be nice. Where should we meet you? Oh, is it okay if my friend Timothy comes too?”
“Yeah, sure. Is he from school?”
“Um. No. He’s… kind of a night person,” Jay says, putting ever-so-stealthy emphasis on the final phrase. Bette snorts.
“Oh, right. I’m pickin’ up the subtext that you’re puttin’ down there, you code-talker you.”
Jay laughs. He’s got a nice laugh. Oh god, when did Bette turn into a teenage girl.
“We’ll see you two at the mall, okay?”
“Okay,” Jay says. “See you there.”
JAY
The mall isn’t eerie when it’s closed. Just vacant, empty.
“Like a doll when it’s not being played with,” Timothy says, in response to nothing in particular, and Jay smiles at him because they’re on such a similar wavelength, it’s kind of creepy and cool at the same time. Jay doesn’t click that well with many people, and when he does it’s usually people who don’t talk much. Like Tommy, and Michelle. Jay loves them, but they’re introverts, like him. Timothy is an extrovert. Or, at least, he might be an extrovert when extenuating circumstances aren’t screwing him up five different ways at once.
Tonight Timothy’s dressed in one of the weird formal outfits that the vampires sometimes wear when they go out, like they have to periodically play a role of a member of their pack in public or people will forget. Jay doubts anybody could forget how dangerous Blake’s gang is, no matter what they’re wearing, but nevertheless tonight Timothy’s sporting an ivory-colored brocade coat over pale grey pants, a matching vest, and an off-white shirt. There’s a silver pocket-watch chain on his vest and a silver pin holding his dark grey silk tie neat. He even manages to make it all look cool, somehow, which Jay finds very impressive.
“They leave the pets in the store overnight? Seriously?” Bette yelps, pointing at the faint glow of night-lamps in the glass window-pens at the pet store. Sure enough, there are a few kittens in one case, and a lone puppy in the other.
“Hey there, little guy,” Rose says to the puppy, which is a mongrel of white and black, with out-of-proportion ears and paws and dark, wet, mournful eyes. “I think this might be my spirit animal. Seriously.”
“Please.” Bette snorts. “If someone locked you in a box with food and toys and somewhere comfortable to sleep, there’s no way you’d be making little whimpery noises in the hope that someone would let you out. You’d wanna stay in there forever if you could.”
Rose kicks her in the shin without much malice. “You’re a douche.”
“You’re a double-douche. With, like, baking soda and feminine deodorant and thrush medication in it.”
Jay makes a disgusted noise. “Can’t you two at least pretend a little feminine mystique? For the sake of the menfolk present?” The protest would probably sound more convincing if Timothy wasn’t cooing gently at the kittens in the next window over.
“I wish I could get him,” Rose goes on, still having a staring contest with the puppy through the clear Perspex barrier. “But —”
“But he’d probably get lost under a pile of Tommy’s old T-shirts and end up as the first of a race of mutant filth-dwelling hell hounds?” Bette guesses. Rose tries to kick her again, but Bette skitters out of the way and takes cover behind Jay.
“But, I was going to say, before I was so rudely interrupted,” Rose huffs. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to have puppies in our neighborhood right now. Apparently there are a couple of total sickos doing awful shit to dogs. I overheard Mom talking about it on the phone, one of her customers lost both her schnauzers.”
Jay and Timothy exchange a brief look, and Jay clears his throat. “Uh, that won’t be happening anymore.”
Rose looks confused for a minute, and then comprehension dawns across her face in the form of a wide smile. “Really? You’re not just shitting me, right? Really? You killed that guy?” The last question is asked of Timothy, who shakes his head. “Oh, uh. Bette told me. That you’re a vampire. We don’t care
. I hope you don’t mind I know. We knew some vampire hunters but they were sort of jerks, a bit. So we’re neutral on the whole thing now.”
Timothy blinks. “Oh. Okay. No, it wasn’t me. It was someone Jay and I know.”
“That is so fucking cool!” Rose’s smile manages to get even brighter and broader.
Bette has edged away from Jay, away from the pet store and the three of them and further into the stark crowdless open area of the dark mall thoroughfare. She looks at Timothy, Rose and Jay with an unreadable expression.
“That’s kind of fucked up,” she says uncertainly. “I mean…”
“He was killing dogs, Bette. Puppies. In really awful ways —” Rose starts.
“I know that!” Bette snaps, cutting her off. “But it’s still… I’m not really okay with hearing about people getting killed, you know? It kind of doesn’t jive so great with my worldview.”
Timothy looks miserable. “I’ll go.”
With a shake of her head, Bette holds her hands up in a ‘no, stop’ gesture. “You don’t have to do that. I’m… we’ll… let’s just talk about something else, ok? We’ll just pretend that this whole conversation happened to some other people. Some people who are living in a Wes Craven movie or something crazy like that.”
Timothy nods. “Got it.” He takes a deep breath, with Jay knows is just for show, just to make Timothy seem more normal. Jay appreciates that he’s making the effort, and he gets the feeling that Bette and Rose do too. Timothy’s not really fooling anyone with the whole “normal” thing, not under half-dim fluorescents in an empty mall, anyway. Maybe it would be a more convincing act in a crowd.
“Let’s go out,” Jay suggests. “To a club or something.”
“Tommy said he and Michelle were going to go see Remember the Stars at that little downstairs place,” Rose says. “The one with the mural.”
Jay feels bad that he didn’t know what Tommy and Michelle’s plans were for the evening, but the feeling passes soon enough. They’re a couple, after all. He shouldn’t be expected to hover around being a third wheel every time to two of them felt like a night out.
“We could go do that, then?” Rose asks, sounding uncertain, giving Bette one of those weird mind-meld silent conversation looks that the pair of them do, like, all the time. Jay doesn’t know if they’re aware of it or not.
“Remember the Stars were a band I liked before I knew any of the members as people,” Bette says decisively, like she’s settling a complicated argument with herself, or maybe with Rose.
“Yeah,” Rose echoes with a nod of her own. “Let’s go see them. It’ll be like old times.”
Bette glances at Jay, then at Timothy, and her mouth curls up in one of her smarmy, smartass smirks. “Well, no. Not really that much like old times,” she says.
They catch the train into the city centre, Jay and Bette in one double seat and Rose and Timothy in the one in front of them. Jay thinks that the seating arrangements probably ended up like that because Timothy and Rose are trying to give Jay and Bette a chance to hang out and talk to one another, but what actually ends up happening is that Jay and Bette sit and eavesdrop creepily on the conversation Timothy and Rose are having in front of them.
“I don’t feel like I’m not meant to be a girl,” Rose is saying. “I just… I’ve never felt like I am meant to be one, either. I’m just sort of… me.” She shrugs helplessly, twisting her fingers together in her lap, plucking at the dusky velvet of her skirt idly. “Then, I don’t know, this probably sounds super-lame, but when I was thirteen I got some money, because I won some stupid essay competition about the environment or something pathetic like that. And it was nearly Halloween, and we always do kind of a big deal for Halloween because it’s badass and silly all at once, you know? Everyone gets to dress up awesome and eat candy and watch horror movies, and Bette always ends up getting in trouble for TPing the trees of all the teachers who’ve given her detention.
“So I spent the money I’d gotten on this Jedi costume. You know, from Star Wars?” Timothy is nodding. Rose smiles. “Of course you know Star Wars. Everyone knows Star Wars, even vampires. So anyway, I put on the robes and the cloak and everything, and… I felt really powerful. Not in, like, a Jedi way, obviously, but in a way where I was suddenly fearless about what people might say about me, or what they thought about how I was dressed. Suddenly it didn’t matter what they thought about it, because I knew I looked awesome and I felt kind of, I don’t know, invincible or something.”
Rose gestures emphatically, like she can make her point clearer through forceful movement. “It was this totally insane feeling and I’d never felt anything like it before. It was amazing. And… this is going to sound so dumb and lame, I know it. But I kind of feel like that when I wear this dress? Like, it doesn’t matter how I look to anyone else, just like it didn’t matter if people were smirking at me when I went out that night in the Jedi costume. Because I feel so beautiful, and so I’m completely fearless and invincible. It’s like I’m playing a character. This is my costume. My Rose-as-a-girl drag.”
Timothy waits for her to finish, and then nods. “That’s cool. That you’re so aware of the ways it makes you feel. Most kids aren’t that self-perceptive.”
Rose laughs softly. “I spend a lot of time in my own company,” she says in a quiet voice, and then glances away from Timothy and out the darkened window at the light-lit city rushing past. “Do you ever start forgetting who you are?”
“What?” Timothy sounds taken aback by the question. Rose looks away from the window and back at his face, as if she’s surprised by the sharpness of the way he asked the question.
“Well,” she says, screwing her mouth up in a lopsided scrunch as she searches for the right phrasing. “What you’re wearing is a kind of drag too, isn’t it? And sometimes, if I wear this for too long, I start feeling like I’ll forget what makes the real me who I am. The person I stay underneath when I dress up. It’s like I get… blurry. That’s not the right word, but I don’t know what the right word is.”
Timothy doesn’t answer immediately, and when he does the pace of his words is measured and deliberate. “Yes. I know what you mean. And it does happen to me, sometimes. But… I don’t hold together properly except when I’m letting myself get blurry. The character I’m playing is realer than the me underneath, most of the time, so if I took him off I’d be nothing much of anything.”
“But, but, that’s not true!” Rose protests. “You’re… you’re you. I’ve only just met you and I can tell that. People who are more pretense than truth are horrible. You’re not horrible.”
“I’m not even actually a people, either,” Timothy points out, a little twist of sadness in his tone and the set of his profile. Bette and Jay are listening so intently that Jay suspects they would both stop breathing, if they could, in order to hear the conversation better.
“Oh, like I give a shit if you’re a vampire.” Rose snorts. “I don’t like most people, and I don’t even have the excuse of being a different species to them. I’m way worse than you.”
Timothy reaches across and squeezes her hand. “No. I think you’re pretty cool, actually. I love the way you wear your makeup. It’s very old-school kinderwhore, like early Hole or Babes in Toyland.”
Rose’s eyes get comically wide, and Bette digs her nails into Jay’s thigh like she’s trying to distract herself sufficiently that she’ll avoid bursting out laughing. Jay’s not sure exactly how causing him pain is going to act as a useful distraction for Bette, but it seems to be working well enough.
“Oh my god, you are the first person to get that! That’s totally what I was going for!” she says delightedly. Timothy grins, the happy effect only spoiled a little by the fact of his fangs.
“I love all that stuff. My cat is named Bikini Kill, after the zine and the band. I still have the original issues of the zine from when it came out, somewhere at home. I could dig them out, if you’re interested?”
The noise Ros
e makes in the back of her throat might me politely described as a yelp, or maybe a squealy squeak.
“Timothy manages to find the one girl for whom ‘come see my collection of vintage riot grrrl crap’ sounds like ‘you must come up some time and see my etchings, my dear’,” Jay whispers softly in Bette’s ear. She giggles, turning a little, and suddenly her face is very close to his, and Jay can see the light pinkness across the bridge of her nose where sunlight has given her a very mild burn.
Her eyes are dark, the pupils dilated wide.
“I thought we were supposed to be the young lovers here,” she quips, voice very quiet and a little breathless.
“No reason it can’t be a double date,” Jay points out, and kisses her. She tastes like spearmint and the stale crackle of cigarettes.
At the club they meet up with Tommy and Michelle, the six of them cramming into a booth off to the side as the band set up. After a second, Bette says “hang on”, and walks over to Remember the Stars. They pause in their setting-up to chat to her, but their postures all seem tense to Jay. He shakes himself and turns back to look around at his friends. A smile spreads across his face.
“Get Rose’s phone off her,” Jay orders Tommy in a whisper, nodding in the direction of where Rose and Timothy are talking. Their topic of conversation seems to have moved to the work of Francis Bacon. Or Kevin Bacon. It’s hard to be completely certain. Either way, they’re talking animatedly, obviously enjoying themselves.
“Rosie doesn’t carry hers. The battery’s always dead,” says Tommy. “Why?”
“I was gonna put Timothy’s number in it. Couldn’t hurt, right?”
Tommy quirks his eyebrows, readjusting his glasses on his nose. “I have a whole bunch of friends who are teenage girls already. You don’t have to fulfill that role.”
Jay punches him in the arm. “Cockface. They’re having fun, aren’t they?”
Tommy looks over just as Rose starts giggling at something Timothy said. They look so much like ordinary love-struck kids that Jay thinks it’s kind of nauseating.
The Wolf House: The Complete Series Page 17