“Ms. Murphy, I don’t know if that’s really conductive to therapeutic success…”
Mindy edged hysteria into her voice. “Because in my dream, the coyote rips my throat out, and that brings all the other coyotes, and they’re all licking up my blood as it runs out of me and there are so many coyotes, Mr. Pletsky!”
A card came loose from its house. Let your therapy partner know the last way he made you unfulfilled. “That is just inaccurate, now. All it is, is that animal attacks don’t happen in one place. Quentin was probably wounded in some initial attack, then he ran for it, ending up at the side of that road with the aforementioned blood loss. Of course it wasn’t there. He put up a real fight, Quentin. A real fight.”
The edge of hysteria slipped. “So there wasn’t any blood where they found him?” Mindy didn’t claim to be the best at this.
Mr. Pletsky got defensive. “There was some blood…”
“But not two liters,” Mindy guessed. “Not anywhere close to two liters.”
Pletsky nodded a little. “Let’s not let this dominate our thera-versation. Now, do you do any afterschool activities? Not many people know this, but we have a mock-UN. I’ve heard from multiple anxiety sufferers that an hour in the UN, and the tension, it just melts away.”
Mindy had to be going crazy, because she was thinking crazy thoughts. She was thinking of Lucia walking with Quentin, all boyfriend-girlfriend, teasing him, playing with him. Maybe waiting for it to get dark. Maybe it was already dark. She hears a car coming or she sees the headlights in the distance. So Lucia strikes. Drinks. Leaves Quentin in the middle of the road.
And the next day she’s all better. Just needed a little suck-action.
“Well, Mindy?” Mr. Pletsky took her silence for keen interest. “Don’t tell me there isn’t one extracurricular that interests you.”
Mindy looked him in the eye. “I was thinking about cheerleading.”
“You’re in luck, there’s an opening. I hear Lucia West just quit the team.”
* * *
The next morning, they went to their homerooms, and the teachers immediately took attendance. As soon as everyone was accounted for, Mindy and her classmates were lined up and marched to the school auditorium. Principal Haywood had a speech to give, and this time it wasn’t about another study on how half a blunt and a sip of vodka could cause eye cancer.
Another animal attack. Joel Shapiro. Haywood didn’t linger on the details, but the hushed gossip going through the rows of the assembly covered it. He’d heard his trash cans rustling; raccoons. Went to scare them off with a baseball bat, didn’t come back. When his wife went to look for him, she found that someone had bitten a chunk out of his neck and left him for dead. Some said coyote, others said bear. All the while, Haywood kept telling them to use the buddy system, not linger after school, extracurriculars were canceled. That got a few groans, since the football team and cheer squad would still be allowed to practice under supervision.
With Haywood going on and on about staying calm, the assembly stopped paying attention to her. The gory details she wasn’t going to supply were more interesting. Pammy said that Dillion Marshall had said that the cops had found the baseball bat broken in half.
Haywood wrapped up and gave them all a chance to use the bathroom or the water fountain. In ten minutes, the police chief was going to say a few words about wild animal safety. Mindy guessed it boiled down to “run.”
“Hullo, Mindy,” a voice came from beside Mindy, a body dropping into the seat her neighbor had abandoned. Though it was a male voice, she turned, like maybe Lucia’s balls had dropped. She caught Seb trying to find a nonchalant lean on the armrest. “Very good to see you. Hope I am not intrude.”
He was surprisingly ordinary looking for maybe the only person in Carfax who’d been outside the country. Pale skin on a stick-figure frame, a brush of dark hair, an eclectic collection of T-shirts with Romanian text on them in eye-searing combinations, and seven sets of identical jeans that he bragged were genuine American denim.
“No, Seb, you’re fine.” Mindy saw a goth, but she was just too emo to be Lucia. She went back to scanning. “What’s up?”
“I have heard you were looking forward to newing David Fincher movie, comes out this week, I am think we could see it together?” He laughed nervously. When his teeth came out, they were lined with orthodontics. “You have purse; could get in much more candy than my jeans!”
He pulled out his pockets, like a cartoon character illustrating his poverty.
“Least you have pockets,” Mindy replied. “Hey, where’d you hear this?”
“Online? This Tumblr—we follow one another? I am Sebchan7?”
Mindy remembered his tag after a moment. They didn’t talk much but he reblogged her often and she returned the favor. “Yeah, yeah, you make those mash-ups… I have ‘Black Skinhead’ and ‘Glory And Gore’ on my iPod.”
“Yes! Always good meeting fan.” He smiled again; it was easy for him. “So, yes-no on movie?”
Mindy smiled back automatically, thinking of the old canard that you never got any interest until you were actually in a relationship. “Are you asking me out on a date?”
He nodded big, like a machine designed for nodding. “Not big date, though. Little date.” He held his forefinger and thumb apart a short distance, then moved them around. Making the distance greater, smaller. “Leetle date, little date…” He shrugged.
“Thanks for the offer, but I can’t. I have this person…” Mindy chanced a look at the empty doorway, just to see if Lucia was a straggler. She wasn’t. “It’s complicated.”
“Alright. Hoping I have not offended. Take it as simple compliment; you seem like you would be very good girlfriend.”
She smiled at him again. It wasn’t so easy now. “I try to be.”
Someone tapped on a hot microphone, sending reverberations through the sound system. Seb’s eyes flitted around, seeing the student whose seat he’d taken returning. “I must go! I hope you work things out with your person. And my offer stands if you just want person to help pay for movie ticket. Movie tickets very expensive in America.”
The police chief took the stage, announcing a big fat curfew. As groans of dismay filled the auditorium, Mindy got out her phone, looked up Seb’s Tumblr, and opened an instant message to him. She left it blank as she locked her phone again. She didn’t know what to say to Lucia either, and it felt like nothing could get through that barricade. Without Lucia, she couldn’t feel anything.
* * *
“You’re a dead man!” Mark Strong yelled, stabbing his knife into Frankenstein’s heart.
“Yeah,” Frankenstein said, before swatting him away and pulling the knife out. “I am.”
Watching Frankenstein for the second time with Seb, Mindy came to a realization: it really was a bad movie.
In the last four weeks, she’d seen three movies with Seb. The David Fincher one, a showing of Blade 2 at the Alamo Drafthouse, and now a redux of Frankenstein: Origins at the dollar theater.
It’d been a lazy month. The curfew was safe, but it was boring, everyone Mindy knew staying indoors, tweeting about the same dumb shows, the same dumb people. Megan Fox had said something stupid, apologized. Shia LeBeouf said something stupid, didn’t apologize. Up in LA, Benson Mears had been admitted to the hospital for anemia.
And in Carfax, Texas, Ontorio Jackson suffered the latest animal attack. He should’ve been safe. He worked at an auto shop, had waited with his coworkers to all leave together, they’d all gotten into their cars at the same time, and all had driven to their various homes. But for some reason, he’d stopped in the middle of the road, put his car in park, opened the door and… From the blood, they said it was like he’d been shaken around by the neck. Like a dog with a rat.
Mindy had told Seb from the word go that she wasn’t looking for a relationship or a boyfriend, and he hadn’t tried to sneak his tongue down her throat while she wasn’t looking. Seb was actually kinda coo
l, really. Back in Romania, he’d used to do knife dancing. It was like folk dancing, but people threw knives at your feet. Tonight, though, she wasn’t just helping Seb with his English and enjoying his bewilderment at movies that really wanted to be part of the Underworld series but couldn’t afford Kate Beckinsale in a leather catsuit. She was trying to remember the spot of white she’d seen in the backrow as she’d looked for a seat. Because the longer she sat, the more she was convinced it was Lucia’s face. Mindy felt attuned to her. Like a Geiger counter picked up radiation, she felt—what? The pangs of Lucia’s heart?
As if Lucia had a heart.
Mindy got up to get a popcorn refill and visit the bathroom. She’d seen the movie already, after all, and didn’t feel like revisiting the bit where Frankenstein killed Tom Sizemore with a flamethrower. “Fire bad—for you!”
When she came out of the stall, Lucia was standing at the counter, looking like the Ghost of Christmas Post-Apocalyptic.
“Don’t mindfreak me,” Mindy said.
Lucia was invincible for such long stretches of time—eons—that when she let herself be small, Mindy never knew if it was a choice or not. “You don’t like the way I look?” she asked quietly.
“It’s a lot to take in.”
Lucia pulled up the belly of her plain white tee, jangling her sunglasses where they dangled on her neckline. Her stomach was a little pale, but mostly as burnished as ever. “It’s just makeup.” She let the shirt drop back down. “You know, you’ve got crazy taste in movies.”
“How’s that?”
Lucia walked to Mindy. Her hand lashed out—it hit the wall over Mindy’s shoulder. She was leaning over her now—bearing down on Mindy like a ghost ship ready to run aground. “Well, sometimes you’re into really good movies, small movies, not the shit that sells Happy Meal toys. Like you really care what you watch. And then sometimes, you seem to watch movies just to kill an hour and a half. They could be about anything. Just so long as you don’t have to think.” Her hand came away. She was standing before Mindy once more, almost a supplicant in her backing away. “Maybe it’s the company.”
Lucia’s metaphors were no Robert Frost poem. “Seb is just a friend.”
“Friend? Sniffing around your panties like a hungry dog—” Lucia gritted her teeth. “You should keep him on a leash.”
Something about the way she said it poured gasoline on the embers of Mindy’s feelings. They burst into hot anger. She stepped up to Lucia. “What do you even care? Maybe I fuck him every night. Is that what you want to hear? That I suck his cock? That I let him jam it in my ass? Is that what you think?”
Lucia’s teeth ground down like glaciers crashing together. “I don’t care.”
“Bullshit. I know what I felt. I know what you felt. Why can’t you just say it? Why can’t you just say that you’ve missed me?” And like that, like a candle being blown out, Mindy’s anger was gone. “I’ve missed you.”
Lucia stared at her “Don’t put this on me.”
“I am putting it on you. Because you talk and you talk and you talk—” Someone pushed through the door. Mindy swiveled on her. “Use the boys’ room!” The girl disappeared. Mindy faced Lucia with tears in her eyes. “You act like such a big slut, like such a badass, but you can’t even kiss me. You can’t even fucking kiss me.”
Lucia just stood there. Taking it. “It wouldn’t change anything if I did. So why bother?”
“Because I don’t want Seb. I don’t want some girl—I don’t even want Angelina Jolie. I want you. But you’re a coward. You’re not brave enough to be with me—”
“Don’t say that.”
“You just have to open your mouth. That’s all you have to do. That’s how fucking pathetic I am—that if you’d just open your mouth, I’d be yours.” Lucia’s black lips worked over each other, showing Mindy the startling ivory of her white teeth inside her luscious mouth. “Just open your mouth.”
And she was kissing Lucia suddenly, her lips tingling, her body singing like an addict that’d finally gotten her fix, but Lucia’s mouth was stubbornly closed. Mindy nearly pulled away, embarrassed, but almost immediately, Lucia began to give. Her lips parted and Mindy seized on it, taking it as a gentle invitation to her tongue, and slowly Lucia was receiving, then was giving, and the hands knotted at her sides were rising, opening, ready to draw Mindy to her, to lock their two halves together, to complete them.
Then Mindy felt the sharp pain in her mouth. She threw herself back, her lower lip hurting worse than when she’d let Casey Jaye pierce her ears. She was bleeding. She tasted it, wiping out the memory of Lucia’s honeyed taste—everything was the bitter offensiveness of blood.
“You bit me.” Mindy didn’t accuse, just stated. She wondered if this was what shock felt like? She wiped her mouth. “You bit me, Lucia.”
Lucia left before anything else could happen, before Mindy knew how she felt. Five seconds later, when Mindy thought to follow her, she was gone like the sun behind a cloud.
* * *
That night, she dreamt of Lucia again. Lucia holding Seb by the throat, saying that if he broke Mindy’s heart, she would rip his out.
She woke up. Damp sheets. Warm sweat. Mindy remembered that when she had gone back into the theater, Seb had been rubbing his throat.
Fanning her pajamas out from her body, Mindy went to the window. Lucia’s blinds were still drawn, but they were moving. Mindy blinked and saw a white leg, sinewy as an insect’s, sliding out from under them. She looked down—and barely saw but did see—Lucia crawling down the side of the house like a fucking lizard, headfirst, slithering, until she reached the AC unit and dismounted like a cheerleader would, uncoupling her feet from where they stuck to the wall, bending them down over her head to hit the ground, then letting go with her hands and coming upright.
It’d happened so fast that the white football jersey she wore hadn’t even had time to be pulled down by gravity; now she smoothed it over her body, down to bare mid-thigh. Her feet crinkled on the night-damp grass as she walked to the sidewalk.
Mindy didn’t think at all. She couldn’t. She slid her feet into her nearest flip-flops and started down the stairs.
CHAPTER 11
What the fuck was that? What the fuck had she seen? Something—something with shadows, her half-asleep, Lucia just climbing down with a rope or—or something. Mindy had no idea, no idea why she was following Lucia, no idea what she would do if Lucia noticed her, no idea what she was planning or hoping or doing or anything.
Lucia walked down the sidewalk, firm, unafraid, unyielding, her pert body moving beneath her loose jersey—one of Quentin’s?—like muscles beneath the skin. Mindy could see the curve of her inner thigh gathering the moonlight with every long, supple step. She felt herself stir with attraction for Lucia. But for the first time, she found herself thinking of it not as beauty but as a kind of camouflage. The red on a black widow was pretty too.
Why the hell am I following her, then?
Mindy guessed some people just liked spiders.
She slid from house to house, always around the corner, behind bushes or cars, trying to never ever be in Lucia’s line of sight in case she stopped, turned around. But Lucia never even slowed down. She kept walking, walking, like a robot, almost, if there weren’t something terribly alive about the way she moved—almost a caricature of life, those swinging hips, that sinuous motion.
She didn’t seem to be following a path, but Mindy eventually noticed that every few meters, dogging her footsteps like a friendly corgi was a mushroom so white it almost glowed in the dark. Had Lucia left them behind on some prior Paranormal Activity sleep-walk, or were they guiding her now?
Or are they just fucking mushrooms, Mindy, damn!?
Despite the late hour, the streets weren’t completely deserted. As much as Carfax might want to pretend otherwise, it was the twenty-first century, and the sidewalks didn’t roll up at nine p.m. There were those who stumbled from bar to bar, alley to alley—bleary
-eyed from spending the daylight in bed, still not awake now, but having a nightmare on their feet.
The street ended in a wishbone intersection, and parked on the curb was a red pickup scarred with rust, hubcaps grimy, bumper dented. It wasn’t parked for the night. The dome light was on, its stale glow capturing the man inside like a spotlight. Daryl Koontz.
Mindy had read about intrusive thoughts. Everyone had them. You held a baby, you thought about dropping it; you drove a car, you thought about running someone over; you saw someone pretty, you thought about… It happened to everyone.
Most people, Mindy thought, backed away from those thoughts that scuttled over their brain like a cockroach on a bathroom floor. And the thought left them be. The immune system of their mind racked it up and overcame it, and whoever it was cooed at the baby instead, listened to the car radio, struck up a polite conversation and went on a date.
Some people leaned into it, though. They picked up those little cockroach-thoughts and fed them. And the thoughts lingered. And the thoughts rotted, until you could tell they were at home. Smell ’em. Some people you couldn’t tell; they hid it well. But a lot of people—they didn’t bother hiding. They let it fester like it was something to be proud of.
Daryl Koontz—you could hear the music pumping inside his skull, catch snippets of it through his leering eyes and his grinning mouth. “Hey baby,” the grizzled old man called, leaning out the open window of his truck, “how about a nice smile to go with that nice ass?”
Mindy ducked behind a transformer box. Lucia stood in the middle of the road. The nearest streetlight was flickering, but Mindy could see her smile.
Daryl wasn’t running. Couldn’t he see it?
Lucia’s bare feet on the asphalt, tiny, white, their whiteness somehow making the black road even darker. Making her walk on shadow as she went up to the truck. The streetlight finally gave up the ghost. No light but the moon; so quiet they could’ve been on the other side of it.
Lucia stopped a foot away from the door. The football jersey was molded to her. “You’re right, it is a nice ass. Want to go somewhere and talk about it?”
Ex-Wives of Dracula Page 14