There’d only been one cashier working, an old lady who was writing up receipts by hand, so Alissa had been stuck in line long enough for the book on a nearby shelf to catch her eye even though she wasn’t much of a reader.
Afterwards, she could never explain just what about the book had seemed so desirable to her, and in time had come to believe that her attraction to it had been part of the magic attached to the book itself.
When she got home with her purchases and examined the book in the privacy of her bedroom, she realized a glamour must have been cast upon it to keep the pages out of the hands of the unworthy.
To the uninitiated, the book looked like an orphaned volume from one of those cheap science encyclopedia series—the kind with large print and big color pictures that are always slightly out of register. The book’s title was something like A is for Arachnids or S is for Spiders, or some similarly uninspired string of words. The cashier had looked at the title and the huge tarantula on the cover and shuddered. C is for Creepy, she’d thought, and tossed the book in Alissa’s bag without charging her for it.
Alissa had taken that as a sign of favor from the goddess who had already allowed Alissa to look beyond the book’s sticky cover and its broken spine and its pages glued together with hard little boogers to see it for what it truly was.
Once she was home, and the spell had sloughed off, and Alisa had seen the book in its ancient and glorious true form.
Alissa was dyslexic, and it was hard for her to read ordinary books where the words skittered off the pages like roaches fleeing the light. Even when the letters didn’t move, they seemed as cryptic as Viking runes, markings without meanings. But this book was different. As Alissa turned the pages, the goddess whispered the words in Alissa’s ears, so it was like listening to an audio book. The goddess welcomed Alissa as a believer and as an acolyte. As a sign of her favor, the goddess had directed Alissa to the Codex of the Red Spider and all the hidden knowledge it possessed.
From that moment on, Alissa had worshipped the goddess, and had been rewarded for her devotion with everything she’d always wanted.
One of the things Alissa had wanted was Tyler Bettinger.
Everybody wanted him. Tyler was just that special.
Depending on who you asked and how old they were, people would either tell you he looked like Liam Hemsworth or Chris Pine. Only better. He’d banged his art teacher in eighth grade and posted the video on YouTube where it went viral. Miss Santorelli was allowed to resign as part of her plea deal while Tyler entered high school with the kind of reputation you can’t buy. And while the art teacher was last seen doing tourist caricatures in Bricktown, people who claimed to know her state of mind said that she had no regrets. Of course, it helped that she’d avoided jail time by going to rehab for sex addiction. If she’d spent any time behind bars the incident might have ended in tears.
Until two years ago, Tyler Bettinger had never heard of Alissa Novak. Two days after her fateful trip to the thrift store, Alissa had sat down across from him in the cafeteria, glanced over at his tray—he’d gone with the shepherd’s pie, carrot coins option with raisins for dessert—and commented, “Looks like you got your $2.55 worth.”
“The breadstick’s pretty tasty,” he’d said with a curl of his lip he’d practiced in front of a mirror until it was second nature.
“I’ve got something a lot tastier in my car,” she’d said.
Tyler had been out of his chair before she’d even finished her sentence.
Everyone else at his table had listened to the exchange with amazement, mostly because the majority of them couldn’t remember ever even seeing Alissa before, and people they didn’t know just did not approach their table without an invitation, much less sit down across from the school’s uncrowned king.
When Tyler and Alissa rejoined them, he waved a hand in Alissa’s direction and addressed the table at large. “Everybody, this is Alissa,” Tyler had said, and just like that, she’d been accepted. “In with the in crowd,” as her grandmother would say.
Callie, sitting next to Jay-Jay at the end of the table, was the only one who felt the seismic shift of the social quake that had just happened. No one else seemed to have noticed that anything had even happened at all.
It was as if Alissa had been by Tyler’s side all along, his appointed consort, his special girl.
***
“What the fuck was that?” Callie had demanded as she cornered the school’s former biggest loser in the girl’s room where Allison had gone to fix her makeup before Spanish class.
Alissa had looked at Callie in the mirror and smiled. “I molted,” she said, and didn’t bother to explain that she’d left her old self behind, not as a transparent, chitinous exo-skeleton the way spiders do, but discarded in piles of unfashionable clothes, mounds of ugly shoes, heaps of cheap drugstore makeup, and tacky trinket boxes of costume jewelry. “I like your lipstick,” Alissa added as Callie stood there processing things. “Give it to me.”
Without protest, Callie handed over the tube of Urban Decay’s “Pulp Fiction” she’d just spent $22 on, and wordlessly watched as Alissa applied it to her plump, sex-charged lips.
“It looks good on you,” Callie found herself saying.
Alissa had blown her a kiss.
“I know.”
And that’s how it had been for the last two years. Callie might have once been the queen bee of Wilma Mankiller High School, but Alissa was now the Red Spider.
And spiders kill bees.
Chapter Two
The prey come willingly to their doom. Entranced by the dancing pattern of the spider-silk, they welcome the bite that kills them. –The Codex of the Red Spider
Callie wasn’t the only one making a special point of sucking up to Alissa. It was the day before Halloween, and everyone knew that sometime during the day, she was going to send out the invitations for Tyler Bettinger’s Halloween party, so everyone who was anyone—and many who weren’t—were taking care to say “hey” as they passed her in the halls, or smile if they caught her eye.
Tyler’s parties were legendary. He’d been throwing the holiday parties since grade school, but they hadn’t attained epic status until his last year of junior high, when he’d thrown a party that cost more than what most people spent on their first wedding.
Callie had been away at a pageant in Texas, so couldn’t go to the party, but she’d heard plenty about it. That was the thing: back then; even if you didn’t get an invitation to the party, you heard all about it, because in their small town, it got more media love than San Diego Comic Con. They even covered it on Channel 5 one year, but then the reporter hooked up with one of Tyler’s friends and it caused kind of a scandal, so now the news stations stuck to the puff pieces about the “great pumpkin patches” and left Tyler’s party alone.
That suited Alissa. She’d explained to Tyler that having people talk about the party was fine, but the event would lose some of its allure if guests were allowed to post pictures anywhere they wanted to.
“It’s like celebrity weddings,” she’d explained to everyone at their lunchroom table. “People Magazine wouldn’t be interested in buying the pictures if all the guests had already posted pics on Instagram and Twitter.”
“You think People Magazine would buy pictures of the party?” Jay-Jay had asked.
Callie had punched him on the arm and quickly said, “He’s just kidding,” because she knew Alissa was serious about her “zero tolerance for social media” policy. People were welcome to talk as much as they wanted—getting invited to Tyler’s party was something to brag about—but anyone who posted a picture on any platform were banned from the party for life, not invited back no matter how hard they begged.
Alissa had no respect for the people who begged, but she did find it kind of entertaining to see how far people would go to humiliate themselves.
When he mentioned People, Alissa had given Jay-Jay the kind of tolerant smile you give a big clumsy puppy ri
ght before you tell your kids you think he’d be happier living on a farm upstate.
“If I hear you’ve even looked at a copy of People Magazine in the supermarket line between now and the end of the year, you are dead to me, Jay-Jay,” she’d said. He had laughed because he thought she was kidding. Callie had gotten a sick stomach. She knew Alissa was not kidding.
Callie was pretty sure she still had enough social cachet to warrant an invitation to the party, but she was still a little nervous, which was why she was making a special effort to be extra nice to Alissa today of all days. She knew the guest list was already in Alissa’s phone, the lucky ones’ numbers already grouped into a mass text blast that Alissa would send out with just a click of her manicured fingers.
She would have made sure that the “Group Messaging Feature” was off so that no one would see who else had been invited. Callie figured that was another of Alissa’s sick little games, but she never voiced her resentment out loud. She was convinced Alissa had super hearing and could possibly even read minds.
In truth, Callie didn’t need to worry. Alissa enjoyed the other girl’s fawning attention so much that she was happy to keep her on the guest list. It also amused Alissa to invite a revolving pool of social rejects to liven up the mix. Most of these “special” guests were one-time only, but there’d been a couple who’d exceeded Alissa’s limited expectations and earned a return visit.
Not everyone in school realized that Alissa was the one who made the final decisions about who would and would not get the golden tickets.
Three cheerleaders, one football player and at least two teachers, had offered to go down on Tyler in return for an invitation to the party. The only offer Tyler had taken up was the one from Mr. Wisnicki. Tyler had already been gotten early acceptance to his first-choice college, but he didn’t want to have to worry that his chemistry grade was going to slip in his last-ever semester of high school. Besides, he thought “the Wiz” was hot with his angular features and intense eyes.
Alissa had toyed with the idea of rejecting Mr. Wisnicki at the last minute, just to fuck with Tyler, but worried she’d have to deal with her boyfriend’s reaction when he found out. Tyler had an unfortunate tendency to get all passive-aggressive when things didn’t go his way. And while he knew in his bones that Alissa always knew best, it sometimes took him a while to accept it and move on.
Alissa’s birthday was in November, and she didn’t want him all pissy when he was buying her presents. She didn’t want a repeat of the Christmas when his annoyance with her had overridden his good sense and he hadn’t bought her a present at all.
She’d made him pay for that, and by New Year’s Eve, everything was back in balance. But it had been a chore, and Alissa really hated having to work for anything. It reminded her too much of the bad old days. Eventually, because she thought Jim Wisnicki was kind of hot too, Alissa decided to keep him on the list.
Maybe there’s a threesome in it, she thought, and the thought made her smile.
***
One of the reasons Alissa never sent out invitations until the day before the event was to make sure that nobody could get any traction with a rival party. Every year there was someone who planned a party in hopes of convincing her or himself that he/she didn’t really care they hadn’t made the cut.
Back in the day, Alissa had gone to a couple of those parties herself and they were just so sad. A bunch of losers getting baked in some kid’s basement while old Nightmare on Elm Street movies played in a continuous loop on an old television set, the kind with a cabinet that was supposed to make it look like a piece of furniture.
The Halloween before Alissa had heard some freshmen talking about one of the pathetic parties that had already taken place while changing out for soccer practice and into the costumes they’d wear the rest of the day. “It was so cool,” one girl dressed as Lara Croft had said, knowing Alissa was listening. “Conor had the basement all fixed up to look like a dungeon. And he found these little Jell-O skull molds so when we did shots it was like we were zombies slurping brains out of squishy little heads.”
Alissa had smiled at the freshmen, thinking, You are so never going to be invited to my party, and said, “Sounds like I missed a great time.”
The girl who’d been talking beamed. “You totally did,” she said.
Her companion, though, had stared boldly back at Alissa, and said, “Fuck you, Alissa.”
“Maybe some time,” Alissa had replied, looking at herself in the cloudy mirror of the girl’s locker room and admiring the blue crescent moon in the middle of her forehead and the filigree tracery that framed her hairline and trailed onto her shoulders. The theme of Tyler’s party that year had been inspired by the House of Night books that were like Vampire Academy, only better. All the guests had been given temporary tattoos to match the HON characters, and since almost nobody had scrubbed them off, the party guests were still marked as special a week later.
Everyone at school had been so jealous.
Jeremy Adama had tried to make his own tattoo with blue ballpoint ink and had been practically laughed out of school. He’d tried to play it off, telling people that he was making fun of the others, showing just how silly it all was.
No one believed him.
Jeremy Adama was definitely not ever going to get an invitation.
One of the few people who Alissa always granted an invitation was Katie Winters. Alissa and Katie had been best friends when they were in elementary school, close enough that Alissa had let Katie wear her tiara sometimes when she came over to play.
After Alissa found the codex, she’d tried to talk to Katie about it because she thought her friend might have some insight into the proper way to worship a spider goddess.
Katie’s mother was Osage, and Alissa had heard her talk about “Grandmother Spider.”
But Katie didn’t like to talk about Native American things, especially not after her mom got involved in the big boycott against FedEx trying to get them to change the name of their football team.
Katie was a cheerleader and dating a college guy who’d been scouted by the Redskins, and the last thing she wanted to do was get involved in a sports controversy. Or anything even remotely edgy for that matter.
She was horrified when Tyler and Alissa announced what they had planned for the Halloween party to the lunchroom table.
“You know that old church out in the woods?” Tyler said, so pleased with himself he was almost wriggling. “It’s gonna be there.”
”A church?” Callie said, sounding horrified.
“Isn’t it kind of small for a party?” Jay-Jay said.
“I think that’s a little disrespectful,” Katie said, which was kind of a buzz-kill.
“You don’t have to come,” Alissa said, narrowing her eyes.
“I just don’t know if I want God watching some of the things I do,” Katie said, backpedaling hastily.
“It’s been de-churchified,” Tyler said.
“Desanctified,” Alissa said automatically, because she was an English major and words were important to her. And besides, Tyler thought he was so smart that she liked reminding him that he wasn’t as smart as he thought he was, and not nearly as smart as she was.
Tyler waved her correction away good-naturedly.
“Who knew you were such a good little girl?” Tyler teased Katie, oblivious to her genuine discomfort. “We’ll put the DJ in the choir loft,” he continued, “and the bar where the altar used to be.” Alissa let Tyler prattle on, presenting her ideas as if they were his own. She enjoyed watching him hold court. She knew, as he did not, that he was going to peak in high school. His good looks would always open doors for him, and his daddy’s oil money would keep those doors propped open, but he’d never again enjoy the kind of uncritical adulation and adoration he’d experienced at Wilma Mankiller High School. He’d put on weight as he aged, and though he’d buy nicely tailored suits to cover his paunch, the young women he occasionally lured into his bed
would be revolted by his excess flesh and not eager for a return visit.
By contrast, Alissa’s life would only get more awesome. By the end of senior year, she would have moved on to someone more interesting—Tyler was already growing tiresome—and though Tyler would tell people the break up was his idea, everyone else would know better. They’d pity him a little, and that would be bad for Tyler’s reputation.
But worse would be knowing that Alissa had judged him and found him wanting. There was always the possibility he would kill himself then, and she’d hear about his suicide in an email from her mother. “Didn’t you used to go out with that boy?” her mother would ask, and when Alissa confirmed it, her mother would mention the connection to the ladies in her book group so they could all share a shudder. Then they’d go back to talking about what a great book Life of Pi was.
Poor Tyler, Alissa thought, and smiled at him. Smiling back, he took her hand in an act of proud possession. “It’s going to be a great party, babe,” she said, and he smiled even broader.
No one doubted it was going to be a great party.
***
Up until two years before, there’d been a school-sanctioned Halloween dance, sort of a warm-up for the Homecoming Dance in November and the winter ball in January and prom in May. The dances brought in a lot of money that went to support various extracurricular activities, and in a cash-strapped school district, every little bit of extra money was important.
And then a group of tight-assed Christian parents had complained about the “pagan” influences and the satanic elements that were creeping into the costumes. They particularly wanted to prohibit anyone from wearing costumes inspired by the Harry Potter books, which everyone thought was just ridiculous, but even though everyone agreed the complaints were coming from a bunch of nutburgers, it was a public high school, and the administrators had knuckled under.
A Cursed All Hallows' Eve Page 3