That sets me back. Not because it’s a brilliant, insightful question, but because it is just so completely lame and manipulative. In the first place, I’m not angry. If he wants angry he should go talk to suicide bombers and road ragers and losing basketball coaches and irate vice-principals. In the second place, what’s not to be angry about? I can’t think of one good thing that’s happened to me lately. But I’m not really angry. Pissed off, maybe, but not angry. If I ever get angry, you better watch out.
“No,” I say. “I never think about it.”
“Are you angry about your diabetes?”
“I’d rather not have it, if that’s what you mean.”
He writes again in his notebook. What a jerk.
After Dr. Rick, I’m completely exhausted and more pissed off than ever. I only had about five hours of sleep last night, but it feels like I had none. I should take my crankiness home and put it to bed, but my feet decide to head over to Antoinette’s. They want me to change? I’ll show them change. I have in mind something black and red and spiky and depraved. A tattoo of a heart being shredded by a buzz saw, or maybe a pair of permanent fang marks on my throat.
By the time I get there the temperature has dropped and I’m cold. I spend a few minutes looking at the window display. I am considering a design based on an old Revolutionary War flag, a coiled snake with the words Don’t Tread on Me, when the door opens and Antoinette steps out and fires up a cigar.
“Hey girl,” she says in her ragged voice. She looks up at the gray sky. “Looks like winter’s coming on Halloween this year.”
“I guess.”
“Still shopping for your first tat?”
“It’s a big decision. They still don’t wash off.”
“That’s what’s so good about ’em.”
I look at her arms, at the dozens of tiny black crosses, the flaming skull, the red heart, and the other symbols, images, and messages.
“Don’t you ever wish you could erase any of them?”
“Every day, girl.”
“Oh.” I wait a couple seconds to see if she’ll tell me which ones she regrets, but Antoinette just stands smoking and looking up at the sky.
“I have a question,” I say. “What’s the difference between pissed off and angry?”
“Pissed off doesn’t last as long. Why do you ask?”
“Just curious.”
She gives me an Antoinette laser look. “Something going on with you, kid?”
“Well… you know a lot of different kinds of people, right?”
She laughs. Antoinette’s laugh sounds like a motorcycle starting up. “You could say that. Why?”
“You know a guy named Wayne?”
“I know lots of Waynes.”
“This one raises butterflies.”
“Oh that Wayne. I shoulda known. You been hanging out with him?”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it ‘hanging out.’”
“Whatever, girl. You know, I’ve got a special tattoo for girls who party with Butterfly Wayne. You want to see it?”
I shrug, curious. Antoinette pulls a pad of paper from the breast pocket of her vest. She writes something on it, then turns the pad to show me. The page contains one word:
The chrysalis is collapsed and wrinkled and black, hanging off my shelf like a dead cigar ash. I stare at it and feel an empty dark space forming in my gut. Did I do something wrong? Is my room too hot? Too cold? Did I kill it by carrying it in my pocket for two days?
I hear Wayne’s voice in my head. He is saying, You are more powerful than you know. The world that surrounds you is what you make it.
Did I make the butterfly die?
I sit on the edge of my bed. My face is hot and my belly aches. I’m bone-tired but my head is full of thoughts. Am I having an insulin reaction? I am fumbling for my meter when something warm spills down my cheek and I realize I am crying. How stupid. Crying for a butterfly. I drag my sleeve across my eyes. Crying for a bug. I flop back on the mattress and feel something crumple beneath me. I sit up and look back and see an envelope on my bed.
It’s a normal-size white envelope with my name and address neatly printed in block letters. No return address. I tear it open. A smaller black envelope falls out. I pick it up and turn it over. Across the front of the black envelope, in red script letters, is printed the name Sweetblood.
But nobody in the real world knows I’m Sweetblood. Nobody except Mark, that is, and he’s not a black-envelope type of guy.
I open the black envelope. Inside is a piece of black stationery. I unfold it and read the red-lettered words:
Dare to Be Square
9 p.m. until???
Carfax
A shudder runs up my spine. I imagine a dark figure materializing beside my bed, placing the envelope there for me to find. I look around, but I am alone. I look up.
Rubber Bat hovers a few feet above my head. On his left wing sits another creature exercising its bright orange and black wings.
“Hello, Mr. Monarch,” I say. I stand on the bed and reach out, offering it my finger as a perch. The butterfly launches itself, avoiding my finger. It circles Bat, then heads for the window, landing lightly on the sill.
Outside it is raining and cold. Not good butterfly weather.
“What am I going to do with you?” I ask.
Mr. Monarch refuses to speak.
“I suppose you’ll be getting hungry.”
Wings flap slowly.
23
Trick or Treat
“I thought you weren’t talking to me.”
“I’m not. But I need a ride to Wayne’s.” I am on the phone in my father’s den, far from motherly ears.
“What am I, your ride boy?”
“It’s an emergency.”
“Yeah, right. Since when is going to a costume party an emergency?”
“It’s life or death.” Life or death for Mr. Monarch, that is. Wayne’s greenhouse is his only hope to make it through the winter.
“Yeah, right. Are you gonna be mean to me all night?”
“Maybe. What are you wearing?”
“White Hush Puppies and stone-washed blue jeans.”
“That’s intense.”
“Wait till you see my shirt.”
“What time are you going? I’m still kind of grounded. I’ll have to sneak out.”
“I still haven’t said you could come.”
“Oh. Can I? S’il vous plaît?”
Dylan makes me wait about two seconds before he says, “Oui.”
“Mom? Remember that sweater you got me last Christmas? The one with the heart? You know where that is?”
She looks up from her potato peeling, startled. “I put it in the box of clothes for the Goodwill. I thought you didn’t like it.” My mother should know better than to buy me clothes.
“Where’s that?”
“In the basement, Honey.”
I start for the basement stairs.
“Honey? Did you see the letter I left on your bed?”
I stop. “You put that there?”
“Well, yes. How else would it have gotten there?”
“I don’t know.”
“What was it? There was no return address.”
“It was personal.”
“Oh.” Her face pinches together and she turns back to her potatoes. I head down the stairs.
I find the sweater beneath a pile of my father’s old suits. Back in my room, I assemble my outfit. I check out my reflection. The sweater is black, which shows that she was trying to buy me something in my color, but it has an enormous appliqué on the chest: a huge red heart with a white lace border. Gee, thanks Mom. It goes nauseatingly well with my tan corduroy slacks and two-tone cowboy boots. Actually, the chocolate-and-cream boots are pretty cool. They were one of the last things I bought before I became seduced by the dark side. I should go to school like this. No makeup, hair in pigtails, dorky outfit—they’d love me. I’d probably get automatic straight As. I go d
ownstairs to put my costume to the ultimate test. My mother is poking a fork at something in a fry pan.
“Hi Mom,” I say.
She looks at me and almost drops her fork. “Lucy! You look… nice!”
Perfect. “Thanks!” I peer at the two sizzling things in the pan. “What’s cooking?”
“Braised pork chops.” Pig muscle, my father’s favorite. “You don’t want one, do you? I have more in the freezer….”
“No thanks. I’ve had my pig quota for this lifetime.” The thought of eating flesh makes my stomach do a flip-flop.
“I’m making scalloped potatoes and lima beans, too.” Going the extra mile for her scary diabetic daughter. If I wasn’t there they’d probably eat nothing but pig.
“That’ll be great, Mom.” I look at the clock: 6:13. Five hours and two minutes till the Great Escape.
Dinner comes off without a hitch. The pig muscle is consumed. I manage to get down a few bites of salad and potatoes, even though I feel kind of nauseous. I don’t know if it’s nerves or what. Maybe it’s my outfit that’s making me sick. My father keeps looking at me like he can’t quite believe that this is his daughter, but he never says a word about my new look. Maybe he thinks I am making fun of him, or maybe he actually likes it. For all its simplicity, the parental mind is beyond my understanding. We are just about done eating when the phone rings. I jump up and answer it before they remember to invoke the phone ban. It’s Dylan.
“I have a serious problem,” he says.
“Is it terminal?” I ask.
“Worse. I might not be able to go to the party tonight.”
“Oh.” I take the phone into the hall. “I wasn’t really planning on going anyway,” I say. “Got to do the parentals proud. I’m kind of on a roll.” I’d been good little SweetieHoneySugar all week. Mr. Butterfly can wait one more day. I think.
“My problem is that all my jackets are black,” Dylan says.
“Ah, I understand.” Maybe I will go to the party after all. “You are too cool.”
“They don’t go with my outfit. I’d skip the jacket, but it’s supposed to be cold tonight.”
“It’s freezing out already.” The rain had turned to sleet. Not a good night for the trick-or-treaters.
“I suppose I could just wear one of my dad’s overcoats.”
“Maybe… hey! I got an idea.”
“What?”
“It’s a surprise.”
As soon as I get Dylan off the phone I call Mark.
“Is this Monkey Schwarzenegger?”
“Is this Skeeter McBee?”
“Speaking.”
“Speaking.”
“Thank God we got that over with.”
“What’s up? You trick-or-treating tonight?”
“Oh yeah, I got my little magic princess costume on. Actually, I’m calling to ask a favor.”
“Sure.”
“Only you can’t ask me why.”
“Why?”
“Because if you do I’ll lie.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
He hesitates, but I know he’ll say yes.
The parentals are nothing if not predictable. At 11:00 the television set goes off, then ten minutes of bathroom noises and they are in dreamland. I catch the sleepy, hungry monarch and put it in a shoebox. An old red down ski jacket completes my dork ensemble. I grab my purse and take a last look at myself in the mirror.
“Lucy?” I ask.
The figure in the mirror nods. I take a quick look around. I have a feeling I’m forgetting something. Oh yeah. My glucose meter is staring at me from my desk. Got to check the old blood sugar. Got to be diabetes girl. I think of all the numbers the meter might shout, and none of them appeal to me. Besides, I’m tired of all the finger pricks and blood drops and digital numbers.
I turn my back on the meter and head out. I don’t think I can climb down the antenna post holding onto the shoe-box, so I tip-toe down the stairs and slide out through the back door quiet as a bat. It’s sleeting out, more ice than rain. I run up the street, ice pellets chattering on nylon and stinging my face. Dylan is waiting at the corner all toasty warm and dry in his daddy’s car. He is wearing the stone-washed jeans, as promised, and a black T-shirt with a screen-printed front.
“Is that my dork jacket?” he asks, looking at my puffy red cocoon.
“As a matter of fact, no, this is my dork jacket. What’s your shirt say?”
He turns so that I can see the words: Neil Diamond 1987 World Tour.
“That is so uncool,” I say with sincere admiration and disgust.
“What’s in the box?”
“The reason I have to go to Wayne’s.”
He looks puzzled.
“You should know. It’s all your fault.”
“What did I do?”
“You gave me a butterfly.”
“Oh. It hatched?”
“You could say that.”
“Well, it wasn’t from me, really. It was from Wayne.”
“It was?” This gives me a peculiar and not altogether comfortable feeling.
“What about my jacket?” Dylan asks.
“Turn around and drive back down Oak Street.”
A few seconds later I say, “Pull over here.” I jump out and run across the lawn, the heels of my cowboy boots going squish squish squish in the soggy grass. I run around the house, down into the backyard where I knock on the door to the walk-out basement.
“Trick or treat,” I say when the door opens.
Wordlessly, Mark Murphy hands me his letter jacket.
24
Bizarro
Dylan loves it. “This is so beyond uncool it’s cool.” He admires his reflection in the glass door of the lobby. The jacket is so big on him the sleeves hang past the tips of his fingers. “Look at me, I’m a football star.”
“Be nice,” I tell him. “It belongs to a good friend of mine.”
“Problem is, it covers up Neil Diamond.”
“So wear it awhile, then take it off.” We start up the stairs.
“I could just sort of hang it off my shoulder.”
“Yes, très élégant.” We hear voices as we approach the landing. The door to Wayne’s apartment is cocked open; the reek of clove cigarettes carves into my nostrils. We enter and find ourselves in a ghost world of abnormal ordinaries. One of the first people I see is a smiling, fresh-faced young man with carefully combed blond hair, a heather gray sweatshirt with GOD LOVES YOU! printed across the front, cargo shorts, and hiking boots.
“Greetings!” he says, and gives us both a vigorous handshake. “What a great day! Praise the Lord!”
There is a moment when I almost believe I have wandered into a Lutheran day camp—then I recognize him.
“Weevil?”
“No ma’am, my name is Andy Anderson. And may I say you look smashing in your puffy red coat? And you, sir—an accomplished athlete, no doubt?”
“Jeez, Weev, that’s really scary,” Dylan says. “Love the shorts.”
“Enjoy! Enjoy!”
Andy/Weevil greets the next pair of guests, a couple dressed in Banana Republic khakis. Dylan and I weave through the maze of rooms to the kitchen, where two girls wearing matching pleated skirts and fluffy sweaters are serving hot apple cider in Styrofoam cups. We each take one. Maybe it will settle my stomach.
Most of the people there are very strange-looking. Nobody is wearing anything that would excite comment in the mundane universe. The outfits are mostly what you might see on a Saturday afternoon at the mall. But none of it looks quite right. If alien invaders land and try to blend in using the Sears catalog as a reference manual, they might look something like this. For one thing, almost everybody has black hair. A lot of them are showing tattoos, and a close look reveals various punctures and indentations—evidence of piercings not currently in use. Then there is the way they move. Everybody is kind of stiff and tentative, and I know how they feel. I, in my corduroys and cowboy boots
, am as uncomfortable as the rest of them. I feel naked without my makeup.
The strangest thing of all is the way everybody keeps smiling. And laughing. But their smiles and laughs do not have a happy, relaxed sound. They are more like the coughs and twitches and grimaces of discomfort, embarrassment, confusion, awkwardness.
Someone puts a Celine Dion CD on the stereo. It’s the perfect choice—she’s an alien in disguise too—but I’m not sure I’ll be able to stand it. I take a sip of my cider. It’s very odd-tasting.
“What is this?” I ask Dylan.
“I think it’s hard cider,” he says. “It’s got alcohol in it.”
“I don’t want to get drunk.”
“Then don’t drink it.”
“I’m really thirsty.”
“Maybe there’s some soda or something—hey, is that Marquissa?”
It is. Marquissa wearing a baseball cap. Her hair, gathered into a ponytail, is strung through the back of the cap. It gives her an uncharacteristically perky, long-necked look. Standing beside her, smoking a cigarette, is Fiona Cassaday, wearing a Seward Stingers cheerleader’s sweater. The funny thing is that last year Fiona actually was a cheerleader.
“Hi guys,” I say.
Marquissa gives me her usual heavy-lidded look. Some things never change. But I get a double take from Fiona.
“Oh my god!” she says, eyes wide. “Is that you, Lucy?”
“Tonight you can call me Lucille,” I say. I take another sip of my cider. It tastes pretty good.
Fiona grabs my arm and pulls me aside. “Do you know these people? Have you been here before?”
“Sure,” I say as if I’ve been there a thousand times.
“This is so peculiar,” Fiona says, eyes darting. “Marquissa’s been trying to get me to come here forever. Look at how weird everybody’s dressed.”
“It’s a costume party, Fiona.”
“I know that. I even dug out my cheerleader sweater. Hey, what’s in the box?”
I’d forgotten I was carrying it. “A present for our host.”
“Was I supposed to bring one?”
“No. Just me.”
“I hear he’s really weird.”
“Actually, the weirdest thing is how normal he is.”
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