Instead of going back to Mr. Dorrington’s class, I took my books and my purse outside to the quad and sat on a bench in the sunshine. That breach of rules was so small next to what I had just done that I decided then and there to stop keeping score on how many rules I was breaking.
I’d declared war on my own mother. Holy poop. I knew kids who did that. I’d already decided, when she brought that guy home and he started on me and I knew what it would cost her to lose him, that I wasn’t going to be one of those acting-out kids.
Now look at me.
Had Delilah done something to my self-control along with the other stuff?
For sure she’d done something to my senses. A breeze from Lake Michigan wafted over me, soothing my skin. I heard sparrows cheep in the bushes. My stomach rumbled as if lunch had been yesterday. I could feel every one of my toes individually where they were crammed into the Cuban heels.
I began to realize that I was done, done, done with Mom’s blindness. If I couldn’t open her eyes, I would move out. And I wouldn’t take her manipulations anymore, either.
I should have known that the moment I signed Delilah’s contract.
But no. In some stupid way, I had sort of hoped I would never have to defy Mom. Can you believe it? I’d signed a contract with hell to become a sex demon and imagined that I would never have to fight with my mom about it. Somehow I had hoped to grow tall and beautiful and thin, and she would be thrilled with my progress and maybe take credit for it, and I would segue pleasantly off to college and become my own person...whenever I wasn’t at home.
I could almost hear Delilah being incredulous at me. That’s what I wanted out of being a succubus? To “be my own person?” How tritely teenagery. Besides, it would happen anyway, eventually. Eventually I would have escaped, with or without gracefulness, and she would have accepted it, and her jerk of a husband would have had to pick on somebody else in District 407.
Now it was going to happen with drama.
They were very scornful of drama at my house. Okay, so was I. When you live with two shrinks, you don’t have the option to indulge in raging hormonal imbalance.
I got up and started walking. Halfway to the bus stop I realized that I was going to miss Civics, which I love. Then I realized it was time for me to talk to Delilah again. Things had gotten to the next level so fast, I didn’t know what to expect.
Considering my expectations of the next few weeks, as of twenty-four hours ago, that seemed suddenly like a good thing.
As I walked into Starbucks I wondered what it would take to find Delilah, and in the same moment I saw her sitting at a table in the back. I didn’t bother to buy coffee. I just went and sat across from her. She pushed a latte toward me—venti caramel macchiato. Still hot. She really did have all the moves.
Delilah wore a fancy yellow silk pantsuit today that apparently came without matching cami, because she was naked under the jacket. I could tell when she bent over to put her newspaper on the floor. Her mid-height pumps were a deeper yellow, but they looked good. Her skin was olive-toned, as they say in books, and now I could see what that looked like. Maybe she was Mediterranean. Most women with skin like that stay out of the sun, so they stay pale. Being on the yellow side of brown myself, I am keenly aware of every tiny shift in my complexion. If I’d had that olive skin, I would have probably been panicky and patchy and got pimples and—
I had a sudden thought. When I got up and put on my navy tights and camel jumper this morning, I’d had no pimples.
My hands flew to my face. That honking big zit under my left eye? Gone. The little worried blackheads on my chin? Gone. I was smooth.
Delilah sipped her espresso. “Yes, that’s one of the perks. Are you eating enough?”
I thought back to dinner last night. I’d eaten very little, trying to avoid looking at my stepfather and dodge my mom’s family-time chatter. Breakfast? Toaster pastry on the run. Lunch? Kohlrabi salad and anxiety, while everyone I’d hit back today gossiped with everyone else I’d hit back.
She sighed. “You have to eat or you won’t keep the weight off.” She got up, went to the counter, did the locust thing, and brought me back piles of pastry. Also, a slice of almost-fresh quiche.
I dug in. I was suddenly ravenous.
“Did anyone notice?” she said, when I finally dialed the Hoover act back to two.
“My stepfather. Bill Kummel, who pinches me. I think my Lit teacher may have noticed, but she was sitting down at the time and I was busy telling her off, so I couldn’t tell. Maybe someone in PE.” I remembered spiking the volleyball onto Daisy Rawson’s nose and smiled. Then I remembered I had to lose another ten pounds tonight. I stuffed the corner of a cinnamon scone in my mouth and chewed.
“Violence isn’t always the answer,” Delilah said, as if I’d described the whole scene to her aloud.
I stopped chewing and let scone fragments fall from my lips. “That’s so creepy when you read my mind,” I said. Crumbs sprayed onto my fingers.
“You’ll get used to it,” she said, all breezy. “Remember, you are a second-circle demon. Your special powers are the powers of lust. Besides, if you use violence, it sometimes tempts people to retaliate in kind. You need to hit them with something they can’t counter, with weapons they can’t use back against you. Sex is good for that, especially with men.”
I brushed crumbs off my fingertips and my face and took a drink of caramel macchiato. “I don’t know much about sex or lust,” I admitted. “Except what it makes people do.”
Delilah shook her head. “What your stepfather does has to do with power. He just uses sex as the vehicle. You are now in a position—well, soon you will be—to teach him the difference. And he will learn a whole new respect for the power of sex, as opposed to the abuse of power.”
Respect. I’d demanded that this morning. Would I ever get it?
“All this is really cerebral,” I complained. “I thought sex was all hormones and instinct and a hot body in hot clothes.”
“For consumers, yes,” Delilah said with a touch of contempt. This was the first hint of disapproval I’d experienced from her, and it stung like a hornet. “You are now—”
“A producer,” I said.
“An expert. A craftswoman. A connoisseuse.”
“What?”
“Feminine form of connoisseur. Keep up, Melitta.” Now she was smiling again, and I felt better.
In my defense I explained, “I’m not usually. I mean, I’m not willfully stupid. I just—nobody ever talks to me about sex. Except to say, ‘Don’t,’” I added darkly, thinking that my stepfather never talked about sex. He was silent. His hands told me what to do.
Delilah’s expression darkened, too. Yeah, she could read my mind. “You are going to learn to have fun with sex,” she promised, making it sound like a threat. “Someday. But first, empowerment.”
I heaved a huge sigh of relief. All this theory and stuff was making me nervous.
“So why did you come in today?” she said.
The day spilled out of me. I explained how most of these people were fairly non-toxic, just your average bully, except for Mr. Borington. I suddenly found it hard to think of him by his right name. I had never, ever called anyone names. Mom taught me that early.
“Even she’s afraid of him,” I added, angry, because it’s hard enough having the jerk in the house, without my mom having somebody else to tiptoe around. “She hinted that my stepfather is afraid of him, too.” I wondered about that. “Why on earth?”
Delilah made a hm face. “What do you think?”
“Well, he bullies all his students. And he tattles on them to my mom. And my mom is afraid of him. And whatever he does to any of those people he probably does to other people, right? I mean, people aren’t different in different places, are they?”
“This is about power, Melitta.” Delilah watched me for a minute, apparently hoping I would say something brilliant, but clearly I was at the end of my insights into the mental wor
kings of my least favorite teacher. She cleared her throat. “So what do you want to do about today?”
“I don’t know,” I said slowly. “Except grow another inch and lose another ten pounds.”
“We are getting impatient quickly, aren’t we?” She sounded amused.
“Well, I don’t know what else to do, except change. And I think I’ve changed kind of a lot already. I’d rather not have to hit anybody tomorrow. And anyway, isn’t it kind of up to them to do something now? They’ve seen the new me and it shocked them.”
I smiled, remembering Howard’s face and Daisy’s face and Bill’s face and Ms. Remirovski’s face and Mr. Borington’s face and my mom’s face. As I reviewed each shocked expression, I smiled wider. I wished now that I’d had the nerve to look at Ms. Waroo when she sort-of gave me permission to hit Daisy back.
That gave me a warm feeling. It meant that somebody, just one person, knew what justice was, and knew that it was time I got some.
Delilah sipped her latte and wiggled her fingers.
“And you. So that’s two,” I said, answering her response to my thought. God, it was going to be complicated if she kept reading my mind.
“So you want your body to keep looking different. How about wardrobe? Are you ready for a makeover?”
I felt my eyes rolling. “Muh?”
She said patiently, “Melitta, you dress like prey.”
I swallowed. “That’s harsh.”
“It’ll take you a while to learn how to feel like a predator. One of the ways you can learn that is to dress like one.”
I thought about my stepfather, who might be preying on girls like me all over School District 407. I wondered what Mr. Borington did besides pick on people in class and tattle and intimidate his fellow school employees. “I don’t know if I want to be a predator.”
Delilah nodded. “So what do you think a succubus does?”
Boy, I should have thought about all this yesterday before I signed that contract, shouldn’t I?
She smiled. Heard me thinking again.
I waited, but apparently she was really asking what I thought. “I don’t know,” I said eventually. “A succubus is tall and thin and sexy. She makes guys want her. She controls them.”
“How does she control them?”
“I don’t know,” I said again. Irritably this time. “All I know is, I don’t control anybody with my body. I get controlled.” Anger stirred in me. “See, I don’t have plans. I’m not allowed to, because I don’t know enough, and my mom is sooo much wiser and better prepared to make those decisions for me. Other people are going to college and getting jobs, but I never feel like I’m really going to get away, you know? My mother never stops talking to me. She tries to change how I think by brute force.”
“How can she do that?”
“How do I know?” I exploded. “She’s the shrink, not me! She controls me, I get controlled. And then that jackass comes into my room. And she looks the other way.”
“So right there sounds like a good place for you to begin to change and take power.”
Silence fell on our little corner of Starbucks. Angrily, I wolfed the rest of my scone and a brownie. I felt a tingle rush over my skin, the way it had in Mom’s office when I declared war. What had I got myself into?
Could I go back to being Mom’s doormat?
My eyes flew up to meet Delilah’s. She must have heard me think that.
She just looked back at me.
“No,” I said deliberately. “I’m done with that.”
I was full of ferocious certainty right up until I got home. It was when I saw my stepfather’s car in the driveway next to my mom’s that I realized I hadn’t got what I’d wanted from my meeting with Delilah. I stood outside in the bushes, my backpack over my shoulder, wondering what exactly I had hoped she would give me that would guarantee me victory in the coming face-off. But what had I wanted? Some kind of secret weapon? A mind-control ray or something?
I did have her promise that I’d lose another ten pounds and gain another inch overnight. That was some comfort. But it wouldn’t show until tomorrow morning.
And what exactly would it win me? So far my mother hadn’t noticed the first ten pounds and the first inch.
What this told me was that she wasn’t paying attention.
Well, she hadn’t been, up to now. Now that I’d declared war, she would be watching. Right?
So it would be clever of me to, like, have a plan before going into the house.
What had Delilah suggested? That I should seek respect from my family. Glumly, I realized that mouthing off to the most feared teacher in school was not a great start on earning my mom’s respect.
On the up side, I had a good start on intimidating my stepfather. And if he tried that “we need to talk” thing, I had a plan for that.
I began to realize Delilah had been trying to tell me that you can’t really plan what’s going to happen when you start to change. I had shown people that I was changing. Now I just had to walk in there and see how they were going to react. The ball was in their court.
Delilah had promised me a place to live when I was ready to move out. That was something. A bargaining chip.
Then I realized why I hadn’t mentioned it to Mom before.
Something I learned when training Sigmund the fat basset hound is, you don’t make threats if you are too afraid to follow through.
I wasn’t really ready to move out.
With a sinking feeling in my stomach, I realized that I really, really wanted my mother’s respect. She couldn’t stop me from growing tall and losing weight and becoming beautiful and having a new wonderful life. But she could make me really unhappy right up until the moment I completed my transformation.
Who was I kidding? I could spend the rest of eternity as a succubus being miserable, if I failed to get what I wanted from my mom.
That made me feel helpless and angry at my mom, and even more angry at myself. Why couldn’t I grow up? Why couldn’t I accept people the way they were?
With a big sigh, I faced the fact that I didn’t want to move out. And as mad as I was at her for marrying the melonhead and hanging me out to dry at home and at school, I wanted her love and respect.
I wondered if I was a total idiot.
No telling, really. Not until I went into that house and let them take their next shots.
I stood there on the driveway, smelling the freshly-sprinkled lawn, and imagined I could hear the grass unfolding and stretching, saying, Thanks for the rain. Must be nice to just be able to lie there in the sun and grow. Apart from getting mowed.
Sigmund finally spotted me through the big picture window and bayed at me.
I took a big long breath, hoisted my backpack over my shoulder, and marched to the front door.
They looked up at me when I walked in. My mom’s eyes were red and puffy. Right away I felt the ground cut out from under me. She’d been crying and it was my fault.
I ignored my stepfather, as usual. I gave my mom a quick look that I hope didn’t show my feelings, but my stomach felt terrible, so probably I failed. I went upstairs to my room, dumped my backpack, tightened my gut, and strolled back down to the kitchen, where I put a square of storebought lasagna and two spinach leaves on my plate and went and sat down at the table.
The jerk had his hand over my mom’s hand on the table. I thought to myself, Poop, he’s taking care of her. Or a good imitation. Of course he’s probably throwing me under a bus to do it, but what else is new? I felt even more ashamed of making her cry.
They just watched me eat my dinner. When I had a few bites down and realized I couldn’t eat any more, I took my plate to the sink, dumped the rest of the lasagna, rinsed it, put it in the dishwasher, and went back to the table, heart pounding hard enough to jump out of my chest, to sit in my chair again. I gave my stepfather one hard, dismissive look and then looked at my mom.
“I want,” my mom said, and cleared her throat. “I want to hear
about this job.”
I thought about this. There was no way I could tell her what the job was. On the other hand, I could still try to reach her.
I realized that I’d made another decision. I said, very quietly and respectfully, “I’d like to talk to you. Alone.”
My stepfather stiffened. I turned my head and looked straight at him. That’s right. Sweat it out, you jerk.
He had to be wondering if I was finally going to try to make Mom face up to what he’d been doing.
He got up and sent me a secretive, better-be-careful look. I glanced at Mom and back at him, hoping she would notice his look—and she did! She looked puzzled. A second later, he was out the door, where she couldn’t see his face. Her puzzled look cleared, as if out of sight meant out of mind.
Oh, well. The Mall of America wasn’t built in a day.
I figured Mom would feel better if she got first shot. I folded my hands together on the table and looked at her. I wouldn’t volunteer anything about the job. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t reveal one word, actually.
“Melitta,” she said, sounding tight, and immediately I knew I’d won. “You know this behavior isn’t good for you. And it isn’t good for your father and me either.”
Then I knew she was talking about Mr. Borington. “What’s he got on you, Mom?” She flinched, and I felt icky. There was something. All of a sudden it looked more complicated. “Or does the big bore have something on him?” I jerked a thumb at the kitchen doorway. “I would believe that.”
Mom’s “tough” face collapsed. “Why can’t you get along with Howard, honey?” she whined. “Is it so hard? He’s always reaching out to you.”
You don’t know the half, Mom. Looking in her face, I couldn’t say it.
Normally I’d let her suck me into a futile discussion of why I hate my stepfather, an argument I couldn’t win without telling the truth, but an argument I wouldn’t give up because, well, I just wouldn’t. Now I realized the game had changed. I’d changed. I was about to change a heck of a lot more.
Coed Demon Sluts: Omnibus: Coed Demon Sluts: books 1-5 Page 40