by Jill Wolfson
I have to fight hard to clear my head and come back into ordinary consciousness, and when I do I’m blinking into the terrified face of Raymond, who’s shaking me by the shoulders. “Meg! Stop!” Simon is sobbing, his neckerchief is wet, and his arms are wrapped around his sister’s waist, begging her, “Come back!”
Alix, glassy-eyed, rigid, empty. Stephanie, pale and shivering.
Across the street there’s chaos. I see a cluster of police cars and people being questioned. There’s an ambulance, and two paramedics lift someone—I look closer; it’s Dwayne—onto a stretcher. His girlfriend glances at us, bewildered and scared, and quickly turns away.
Alix is slowing coming back to life, this life, the ordinary life. She gives Simon a sisterly rub on the top of his head. “All’s okay, big guy. I’m not going anywhere.”
“But you left! You were gone,” Simon insists. “And Daddy! The car hit him.”
I pull Raymond close and whisper: “Did anybody see us? Does anybody…”
“Drunk.” Raymond takes a step back from me, like I smell bad. “He started wobbling. Talking crazy. They assume he was so drunk that he accidentally walked in front of that car.”
I have a sick, panicked feeling and an awful thought. “He’s … Is he…? He’s not…” I try to ask.
Raymond gives me a push, a real shove, nothing friendly about it. I’ve never seen him so upset. “No, Meg, he’s not dead. Not this time. But I don’t know what would have happened if I couldn’t reach you.”
“I’m sorry,” I stammer. “I—”
“Why are you sorry?” Alix interrupts. “Dwayne’s the one who lied.”
She has Simon by the hand, and he’s pulling at it, perplexed about the situation and where his loyalties should be. With his dad, being put into an ambulance? With his new best dude friend or his beloved sister, who are yelling at each other? I motion for Stephanie to distract Simon, and she takes him aside.
Raymond waits until Simon is out of earshot before unleashing his anger. “Just because your dad happens to be one of the biggest nitwidiots who ever walked the planet doesn’t mean he should be roadkill two blocks from the boardwalk.”
Alex remains certain, unmoved. “He needed a lesson.”
“A lesson? That was attempted murder with a moving vehicle.”
“We didn’t touch the dickwad! Let someone try and prove we did.”
“Nice rationalization, Alix. You made him so crazed with guilt that he jumped in front of a car.”
Then Raymond whirls on me, even madder: “That wasn’t justice. That was revenge. You did what you promised you wouldn’t do. You went out of control.”
17
The next day after school, Raymond invites himself over. I don’t want him to come, but I can’t figure a way out of it. His excuse is that we need to catch up on the huge amount of homework that we let slide the past week. But I know what he’s up to. The visit is a ruse, another opportunity to lecture me on a subject that, in my opinion, we’ve already talked to death. He just can’t let go of it, the whole Alix’s dad fiasco. That’s what he calls it: a fiasco.
What more can he say? I know that he’s not pleased that we went a little overboard. I know that he’s not pleased that I keep putting the adjective little in front of overboard. I know that he doesn’t think I admitted my part in it enough and that Alix and Stephanie aren’t treating what happened seriously.
The only good part of the afternoon so far is that we’re not cramped together in my old, depressing former bedroom. I let the Leech know that I would be much, much happier if she swapped her big, sunny bedroom for my small dungeon, and she assured me that given her previous disrespectful behavior toward me, she was only too glad to trade. It would make her feel better, less guilty. She cowered when she said it, and even gave me a ton of money so I could buy a brand-new mattress, ditch the old sheets and curtains, and redecorate the room to my own taste.
I’m propped against the headboard with Raymond sitting next to me on the big, cushy queen-sized bed. He takes one of my pillows and fluffs it behind his head. When he once again launches into his latest lecture on the dreaded subject, I try to wear a contrite expression. I do! I don’t want him to be mad at me. But the truth is, I’m tuning him out and instead admiring the lace curtains that I paid full price for. I like the way the light filters in and makes patterns on the wall. I like the way they set off Francine, my ceramic frog planter. The curtains are white, the sheets are white, everything new is white, Ambrosia style.
Meanwhile.
Raymond’s voice is at its most irritating. “Do you remember the promise you made? Do you want me to take your firstborn? Didn’t you listen to that description of the Furies that Ms. Pallas read?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Monsters. Lapping blood.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I think she knows.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Meg! Uh-huh what?”
“Uh-huh whatever you just said.”
“What did I just say? Tell me.”
There’s an open bag of spicy-sweet pretzel mix on my lap. I take a piece and crunch into it. These days I am starved all the time and notice that I’m finally putting on some weight. I feel a little bad about not listening totally to him, but I also don’t feel bad at all. Why should I have to explain myself to him again? “Okay, you caught me. Shoot me because I was a little spaced out after getting the same lecture ten times!”
He pivots on his bottom so that he’s sitting in front of me cross-legged. His back is poker straight and his nose is about a foot from my face. No way to ignore him now. This is his favorite body position for giving serious advice.
“For one minute, stop admiring all your possessions and listen to me. This is important. You called it earlier. Ms. Pallas is part of all this.”
“Duh.”
“Don’t duh me, young lady. When did you start saying duh?”
I shrug. “Of course Ms. Pallas knows something.”
“Good then, you agree. That passage she read in class—monsters who lap the blood, loathsome goddesses—totally creepy, right? It obviously has deeper meaning. I think it was a warning.”
At least we’re off the topic of Alix’s dad. For that I am grateful. Plus I am curious about Ms. Pallas and what she knows and who she really is. I wonder what Raymond knows. “A warning about what? Why would she warn us? Who is she?”
I see him weighing the decision whether or not to tell me. “Raymond, spill!”
“I’m not sure exactly, not yet. I have an idea, though. But at this point it’s only one step above pure conjecture. She’s not exactly forthcoming with the juicy personal details of her life. I mean, what do we know about her? Nothing!”
“You’ve been prying!”
His eyes tease me back. “Yep, I admit it. Guilty as charged.” He slaps the top of his own hand. “Shame, shame on nosy me.”
I smile and relax. The way we’re talking now, the banter and the teasing, sends a rush of nostalgia through me, a longing for the good old days of only a week ago when it was just him and me laughing, plotting, telling each other everything. Him and me, nothing more complicated than that. “Yes, you are terrible,” I scold playfully.
“You’ll know everything as soon as I’m certain. Until then we should proceed with certain assumptions.”
“Those assumptions being?”
“That you don’t want to piss off Ms. Pallas. And she would be very, very unhappy with what you did to Alix’s dad.”
Oh no. Nostalgic moment over. How many times do I need to hear this? How many times do I have to agree that we made a little mistake and that it won’t happen again? We’re just human. Well, not really just human. But Dwayne is the bad guy; we’re the good guys, and I’m tired of having to justify that to Raymond. And now I’m also supposed to care about what a teacher—or whoever she is—thinks.
“Ms. Pallas should mind her own business,” I say.
He-Cat jumps onto the bed,
sniffs at the pretzels, does a bread-making motion on my thigh. Raymond has gotten me all worked up. I’m not in the mood to be pawed and purred at. I hiss at the cat—ssssssss—and he moves away. Raymond takes pity and settles He-Cat on his lap. I try to explain myself again. I want Raymond to get it. For a smart person, he can be very thick and stubborn.
“You’re going to feel differently about Alix’s dad when you hear this next part. Alix says that Dwayne’s so-called terrible injuries have turned into one more excuse to bail out on poor Simon. We didn’t begin to touch his mental attitude.”
The bedroom door swings open then with a hard thrust that sends the doorknob slamming into the wall.
“Knock!” I yell at the Leech, who is taking up three-quarters of the doorway.
“Sorry,” she says.
“Didn’t I tell you before? You knock if you want something. I decide if and when you get to come in. Get out!”
The door shuts quietly behind her.
After that, things remain tense between Raymond and me. Yeah, I suppose I didn’t have to yell at the Leech like I did, but what does he expect? I’m all agitated, and it’s his fault for making me lose my temper. He’s so annoying. He never knows when to stop pushing. For the next half hour I pretend to do homework while he practices violin. Usually I don’t mind listening to him play. Usually I like it. But he’s been going over and over the same few measures, stopping and starting, speeding it up and slowing it down. It’s driving me nuts.
“Enough!” I toss aside my physics book. “Are you trying to torture me?”
“Not so good, huh?”
“What is it?”
“Opus number something by yours truly.”
He plays it again, and I offer an honest critique: “It’s awful. Chuck it and compose something else.”
He looks at the bow like there’s something wrong with it, like that’s the problem. “I tried, but the tune is a mind worm. I can’t stop thinking about it. I’ll move past these few measures eventually.”
Before I go back to my problem, I say, “You better.”
* * *
Western Civ class. We’re in our project group, circled in the back of the room. Ambrosia passes around pictures of the Furies that she copied from books and the Internet. I try looking through them, but Alix, who’s sitting on my left, distracts me with her low, irritated muttering. We follow the jut of her chin. “Him. Gnat. Makes me sick. I can’t stand that he’s walking around untouched. I hate his face. His arms. Ears. Brain.”
“What brain?” Stephanie asks.
“Put him on the to-do,” Ambrosia suggests with a toss of her hair. She has another new style, this one a mass of long sausage curls that tumbles down her back.
Alix squeezes her fist. “We should take him down, give him a message he won’t forget.”
Raymond looks up from the pictures he’s been studying. “Excuse me, but what’s your name?”
“What do you mean, what’s my name? What are you talking about?” Alix responds.
“I was thinking that your name is Dirty Harry. Listen to yourself: Take him down? A message he won’t forget? I thought you girls were Team Justice, not a vigilante squad.”
Ambrosia, patting the air: “Simmer down, Raymond. You’re losing your calm. You sound positively furious.”
Raymond takes a slow inhale and exhale, hands in prayer, overdoing a monk imitation. “Attention please. I’m going to quote Benjamin Franklin.”
Ambrosia shoots a hard look in his direction. “Of course you are.”
“‘Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.’”
Ambrosia explodes into tinkling laughter, like that’s the silliest thing she ever heard, the ramblings of a child. “Raymond, chill. It’s just the girls toying with semantics. Look around at the better world they’ve already created. You have to admit that life is a little more peaceful here at our Hunter High. A lot less mean-girl antics by the twins formerly known by their breast size. Pox and Bubonic aren’t totally groveling anymore, but they aren’t bullying anyone either.”
We survey the room, admiring our work. I swell with pride. No one can deny that things are better. Pox, for example, has abandoned the Plagues to work on his project with the Danish foreign exchange student and the dorky president of the Future Leaders of America. Boy, he must feel really guilty about something he did to them.
Ambrosia addresses Alix. “It makes you stop and think, doesn’t it?”
She is chewing on a pen, takes it out of her mouth to respond. “Think about what?”
“With the track record you’ve racked up, why limit yourself? Gnat? Natch. But why stop there? Why not all of them, all that smug surf royalty? Give them a taste.”
I am definitely with her on Gnat. He’s a nasty little bug who needs a complete personality makeover. The world would be better for it. But the all part? All as in all? Every single one of that crowd? That includes Brendon. What if we change him when he doesn’t really need to change? What if we turn him into someone completely different and that person isn’t Brendon anymore, at least not the Brendon who makes my heart thump every time I think about him?
I squirm uneasily and realize too late that I just blurted, “Not all.”
Ambrosia frowns. “Excuse me?”
“Maybe not all of them.”
Her frown deepens. “Who among that lot doesn’t deserve it? Who would you leave just the way he is?”
I pretend to be thinking hard. Then I try to sound casual, completely random. “Gee, maybe … maybe Brendon?”
“Brendon?”
“I’m just saying,” I fumble. “I just happen to notice that he’s not so bad. So why waste our energy on him?”
“Energy, huh?” Ambrosia asks. “This is about energy?”
I go with that explanation. “Yes, energy conservation. A very good thing. Ask Stephanie.”
I’m hoping that Ambrosia will leave it alone and move on to another topic, but no such luck. “I notice that you notice Brendon a lot.”
I avert my eyes to my lap, like there’s something very interesting in it, a fascinating piece of lint perhaps. But nobody gets away with ignoring Ambrosia. “I said”—tap, tap, tap on the desk with her one black fingernail—“that you notice Brendon a lot.”
I aim for a super-casual lilt in my voice, pretending that my heart isn’t pounding like I’ve been chased and cornered. “Notice him? What? No way! No more than I notice anyone else.”
A big, gross snort from Alix. “Yeah, right. We’re not blind. You have a crush on the creep.”
“I don’t have a crush on the creep!” I protest.
“Remember mini-golf,” Ambrosia points out, as if I could forget.
I turn to Raymond for backup, but I don’t think he’s heard a word of this. He is genuinely lost in the pictures of the Furies that Ambrosia brought in. He’s going through them one by one. He doesn’t have his usual duh expression of deep thought, but the space between his eyebrows is wrinkled like an accordion.
What should I say about Brendon? Keep denying the crush? They’re waiting for me. I try to smooth out the quiver that I know sits right beneath the surface of my voice. “Brendon didn’t … I don’t think he hurt my feelings on purpose. Brendon’s not … Brendon’s not a creep like the others.”
There. I did it!
“He … I get a sense … There’s something good hidden in him. I just know it.”
Ambrosia toys with her pearl earrings, gives them a spin. “And your evidence for this glowing character reference?”
I hesitate, then take another chance. They’re my friends and they’ll support me on this, help me understand it better myself. “He gets this expression, something about the crinkles around his eyes.”
It’s a good thing that Alix isn’t drinking milk, because it would have come flying out through her nostrils. “Bite me! You trust someone because of that. He gets a pass for wrinkles?”
“Crinkles,” I insist.
“Sucker.”<
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“Looks lie, Meg,” Stephanie says, as if I’m an idiot and haven’t lived my whole life getting screwed by people who look one way and aren’t that way at all. I want to say something in my defense—about how I don’t usually trust people. So then how do I explain about Brendon? I can’t. I keep all the adjectives attached to his expression—deep, private, sexy, secret—to myself. It’s an effort. Ambrosia notices the color rushing to my cheeks.
“Ah, I see what’s going on. You have hormones now, Meg. This is a little new to you. Hormones can’t think straight.” She runs her hand over my hair, and the sensation of that, the way it sends a shiver straight to my stomach, my legs, my everything, makes me think about Brendon again. “Your hormones have given you a crush. A crush blinds you. You feel compassion when compassion isn’t deserved.”
She leans in even closer, and I get a strong whiff of her perfume, the soil and mint. I think she’s angry, but the edge suddenly leaves her voice, turning it unusually soft and understanding. She pats my hand. “You don’t have to take my word for that, Megaera. Come to think of it, it’s actually better if you learn about these things firsthand. That will be a more powerful, lasting lesson that will serve us well.”
A lesson about what? Serve us well how? I don’t get a chance to ask because she changes the subject.
“A party,” she says abruptly. “I’ll throw a little gathering. Halloween is coming up, the perfect occasion to bring everyone together. We should all be there for this fling.”
Ms. Pallas has been making the rounds of the project groups, and she’s gotten to us. Stephanie fake coughs and bounces her finger on her lips in warning. I figure we’re done talking about parties and crushes. To my embarrassment, though, with Ms. Pallas towering over us, Ambrosia returns to the subject of me. “Meg, a crush puts your best instincts to sleep. It keeps you from seeing how manipulative humans can be.”
Only then does Ambrosia look up at our teacher. Her smile is a big, fake flash, quickly gone. “The Furies. I was explaining to Meg how people try to elude them. She needs to understand why a little taste of guilt doesn’t make a dent in most people. Human nature doesn’t change that easily.”