Red Hood

by Elana K. Arnold

  Though you can’t find a bottle of water in the kitchen, you do find Keisha, leaning against the counter, talking to Phillip Tang. No costume, just her regular jeans and sweater. It’s clear to you that she isn’t here to hang out; you recognize her expression. Phillip may think he’s flirting, but what is actually happening is an interview.

  Phillip Tang was one of Tucker’s closest friends. He looks sort of drunk already, the way he keeps running his hands through his thick, short dark hair, the way he goes to lean against the counter but misjudges exactly how far away it is, stumbling a little. He’s dressed up as Spider-Man, largely, you suspect, because he looks so good in the costume, with his wide shoulders, small waist, and an ass the girls are always giggling about.

  “So how come I never see you at parties?” Phillip says to Keisha. You watch him lean into her; one of her twists has come loose from her bun, and he winds it around his finger, tugs on it. “You could be pretty if you tried a little,” he adds, but with a smile that softens it.

  You stare at them, unblinking. Phillip is one of those guys who is great at everything—straight As, all APs, never late, makes the female teachers giggle, first-string tight end on the football team, first-chair violin.

  But.

  There have been rumors. Like the whole thing with Cara Lee, who went out with him freshman year for a while and then abruptly dropped out of school. She transferred to a private high school on the other side of town, and it was weird the way Phillip and his friends never talked about her after that, the way she never showed up for any parties or games or dances. On a Friday she was in school, and on Monday she wasn’t. You’d texted her once or twice, because you’d been partners in science lab, but she didn’t ever respond and then someone told you that she’d changed her number.

  And then there was the time over spring break last year when Phillip went to visit his brother at Berkeley. James told you about some girl, a freshman there, who’d accused Phillip and his brother of doing something to her while she was passed out. But then the charges were dropped for some reason, maybe because it hadn’t been true, maybe because all of Phillip’s brother’s fraternity friends had sworn it wasn’t.

  You angle your way behind Phillip to look for a cup in the cabinet near Keisha’s head.

  “Maybe we should go outside where we can hear each other better,” Phillip suggests to Keisha, even though it’s not all that loud in the kitchen.

  “I can hear you fine,” Keisha says to Phillip as she scoots over so that you can open the cabinet. She shoots you a quick glance—annoyed. “Anyway,” she continues, “it’s strange that they couldn’t identify it.”

  “There’s all kinds of weird shit out there,” Phillip says, one hand on the back of his neck, the other holding his red cup. “That’s why I stay away from it. Who the fuck knows what they cut it with?”

  “Mm-hmm,” Keisha says. “Definitely safer to stick with alcohol. And I thought Tucker usually did, too?” She lifts her voice at the end of the sentence, so it becomes a question.

  Phillip shrugs, takes a sip. “I guess,” he says, “but he must have decided to try something new that night.”

  You have a glass, you’ve filled it with water from the sink, and now you have no good reason to be standing there, a point Keisha emphasizes with her piercing stare.

  Phillip sees her looking at you, and he grins. You can tell that he thinks she wants you to leave them alone for a different reason. “Hey, Bisou,” he says.

  “Hey, Phillip.”

  You leave Keisha to her interrogation.

  James isn’t in the living room. The music is loud in here, too loud, it seems to you, and it’s like the blood in your veins is vibrating with the rhythm of it. It’s super crowded, shoulder to shoulder, that weird mix of masks and tutus and glitter and gore that Halloween always brings, so it could be that James is somewhere in the crowd, somewhere in the middle, but somehow you know he’s not. You skirt the crowd, making your way toward the back door so that you can get to the porch; even if James isn’t there, at least you’ll be able to breathe.

  Another group has gathered here outside, backs forming a tight circle with a joint at its center, glowing red each time the next person takes it and inhales.

  You don’t smoke very often, and you don’t feel like it tonight, but the joint still smells good the way pot can, earthy and stinky. You smell the particular scent of James, too, even though he’s on the far side of the circle—the wind must be blowing just right to carry the smell of him, his wintergreen-and-anise deodorant, the crisp lemon of his soap, to you.

  Except there is no wind.

  “Bisou,” James says, and his voice is honey. “Baby.”

  You smell them all—James, his wintergreen and anise, his lemon; Big Mac next to him, sour, like he hasn’t bathed, but dripped over with Drakkar Noir; Darcy, thick in baby powder; Graham, the orange Tic Tacs he’s always sucking on; Lorraine, lots of hair spray, the chemicals in it make your nose itch, and something else . . . you close your eyes, focus deliberately, breathe in deep through your nose. Blood. She has her period.

  Layered over all of it—the menstrual blood, the breath mints, the hair spray, the body spray, the soap, the sweat, all the things that reveal these people as human bodies even as they fight to mask that humanity—is the smoky drift of marijuana.

  You open your eyes. James is taking the joint being passed to him, saying, “I’m good, I’m driving.” He holds it out in your direction.

  You shake your head. “It’s okay, you can if you want, I can drive.”

  “You sure?”

  You nod. And then you look up, into the wide white eye of the full moon.

  The party happens all around you. The joint is ashed, and another replaces it. Drinks are downed, cups refilled. James takes your hand and leads you back inside, and he pulls his mask back on as you go to the living room, where people have pushed the furniture to the walls, where in dark corners bodies shadow into each other, where in the center the crowd pulses with a shared rhythm.

  You see that Keisha has moved her interrogation to another subject; she’s cornered Caleb—literally cornered him, he’s wedged between the room’s massive fireplace and a chair, with Keisha blocking his path out of the room. You can’t hear their words, but you feel their energy—Keisha, leaning forward, insistent, and Caleb, clearly wanting to get back to the party but too polite to push past her.

  And, a little way away, Phillip, red cup still in hand, watching them both, his jaw tense.

  James is a good dancer. He takes you to the middle of the room and spins you around, then pulls you close until the long, lean plane of him fits right up against you, his leg parting your thighs, and you wind your arms up and around his neck, the polyester fur of his mask brushing against your hands. He nuzzles the cold rubber nose into your throat, and you grab the mask, pull it off.

  “I like your face,” you tell him.

  “The better to kiss you with,” he says, stoned, grinning, and then his warm, wet mouth is on yours, and you are reminded yet again that James is an even better kisser than he is a dancer.

  You kiss and you dance and you wonder, untroubled, at the fact that you can smell everything, all around you, even things you shouldn’t be able to smell, like what brand of beer Graham, dancing nearby, has on his breath (Keystone Light, layered over those orange Tic Tacs), or that Marcella and her ex-boyfriend Marco, across the room, have definitely reunited tonight, the twinned scent of their sex thick on both of them.

  You press yourself more firmly into James, you pull his sweater away from his back and run your fingers up and down his warm skin, you tangle your tongue with his and take his lower lip between your teeth. He makes a sound only you can hear, a soft moan, and you feel all the ways his body responds to you.

  The song ends, but you’re not done kissing him yet, and you don’t want to open your eyes, you don’t want to see what’s around you, you want it to be Wednesday afternoon again.

&nb
sp; “Damn, Keisha, what do I have to do to get you to dance like that?” It’s Phillip’s voice, but you ignore it, squeeze James’s hips, and, on your own time, step back, just one step.

  “You don’t have enough roofies and your dad doesn’t have enough lawyers to make that happen,” Keisha answers, so quick, so smart, so cuttingly mean.

  The room goes dead quiet for half a beat, and then Big Mac roars, “Holy shit, man! Burned!”

  Laughter blisters the room. You turn and find Keisha and Phillip; Caleb has disappeared, probably relieved to be away from the weight of Keisha’s intensity, and Phillip has slid next to her, too close. Now Keisha is the one who is cornered, by him. But Keisha isn’t as polite as Caleb, and you watch Phillip’s face turn an ugly reddish-purple, you watch as he backs away from Keisha, and his hands are fists.

  James laughs, too, almost everyone is laughing, maybe for different reasons, some because they’ve been on the butt end of a Phillip barb and it feels good to watch him take it for a change, some because they’ve heard the rumors about Berkeley and always wondered what went down; a couple because they were friends with Cara Lee and maybe they know more than you do.

  The sound of laughter at his back, Phillip turns and leaves.

  “I fucking hate these parties,” Keisha says, and you shouldn’t be able to hear her across the sound of laughter, across the ramping-up bass beat of the next song.

  But you do.

  The party shifts not long after that, like the night has turned a corner. It’s winding down, and kids start to head home, peeling off in groups of twos and threes. Keisha leaves, too; maybe she figures that whoever is still here is too drunk to be worth interrogating at this point. You watch her say goodbye to Big Mac; “Thank you for the hospitality, Mackenzie,” she says, and he bows in acknowledgment with a drunk and delighted smile. Then she heads to the front door, her back stiff and straight in that formal way she carries herself, like she holds herself to a different standard or something. She’s annoying as hell and dangerous, too, with all her questions, but you can’t help but admire her. Like her, even.

  You are ready to go home, too, but James says, “My mom will lose her shit if she sees me like this. Do you mind if just I crash here? You can take my car.” There are just a few people left, all guys from James’s team, and they’re settling in to watch some kung fu movie on Big Mac’s enormous TV. “You can come get me tomorrow,” James says, “or one of the guys can drive me over to pick it up in the morning.”

  “Are you sure? I could take you home.”

  “Totally sure,” James says, kissing your head. “I’m just going to crash.”

  “Okay,” you say, and you lean in to kiss his neck. Before you leave, you want to use the bathroom; James waits outside the door to make sure no one bothers you. You pee and change your tampon, and then go to the sink to wash your hands. You catch sight of yourself in the mirror—your face is still smeared with the eyeliner beard, which makes you laugh. You wash it off, dry your face and hands, and rebraid your hair.

  There is James, patiently leaning against the wall in the hallway. “Nice shave,” he says, and he laces his fingers through yours, walking with you out into the driveway and down to the street. A thick, wet fog has crept in, and you breathe in heavy, damp air. It’s the kind of air that cuts right through, to the core of you, and when James lets go of your hand to loop his arm up over your shoulders, you lean into him.

  James watches as you slide behind the wheel of his long blue wagon, as you turn the key. He leans over and cranks the heat all the way to high, flips on the defrost button. “Be careful,” he says, and he kisses you, then slams shut the door and watches as you pull away from the curb.

  The streets are quiet as the fog. You drive carefully, headlights caught as if in spider’s webs.

  Perhaps it is because you are driving so carefully, so slowly, that you notice, pulled to the side of the road in the shadows of the arboretum’s entrance, Keisha’s purple Bug.

  iv

  people break things, my girl

  that is the truth

  promises

  hearts

  families

  bones

  not everything is broken

  the velvet black sky

  your steady, sleeping breaths

  the path, thick with snow

  my promise to you

  but the dawn will break

  your sleep will break

  the path

  the path

  the path will break

  i cannot stop the breaking

  Lone Wolf

  You pull James’s wagon behind Keisha’s Bug.

  It is empty; you can see this from here, and that it is listing slightly to the right.

  You leave James’s headlights on and step out of his car. Every hair on your body feels erect, as if each hair is a tiny antenna, gathering information.

  The right rear tire has a bad flat. Maybe Keisha ran over something sharp, you try to tell yourself, but the hairs on your body say otherwise.

  Hers is one of the really old Bugs, the kind with the engine in the back, and when you rest your hand on the car’s tail end, you can tell that it’s been parked for a little while, but not too long, from the warmth that still radiates from it.

  Even though you know Keisha isn’t in her car, you look carefully into each window. The car is neat, just the way Keisha would keep her car: a stack of books on the floor behind the passenger seat; a little reusable trash bin tucked between the two front bucket seats; a few hair ties looped over the stick shift, all black; an I Support Planned Parenthood sticker in the lower right corner of the windshield.

  And, on the passenger seat, her cell phone.

  You try the driver’s side door; it’s unlocked. No keys.

  No Keisha.

  You scan the fog, the murky air lit up by James’s headlights and the dark, damp nothingness beyond, the brace of trees.

  “Keisha,” you say loudly, not a question but a command.

  She does not answer. You walk beyond the halo thrown by headlights, stare into the yawning maw of the arboretum. Your hand goes to your throat, finds the chain of the necklace Mémé gave to you.

  “Keisha!” you say again, this time even louder, and into the trees.

  There is still no answer.

  You feel the tight squeeze of your uterus as it cramps, you feel the swell of your tampon as it fills with your blood, and you sniff the air. Beyond the smells of your own body, of the car’s warm engine, of the fog, you smell something else.

  Rusted metal, singed hair, the stink of animal breath, all mingled together into a specific braid of scent you have smelled twice before, but until this moment, had not connected. You smelled this last month, alone in the forest with the pewter wolf. And you smelled it long before that, when you hid in the skirts of ghosts waiting for your mother to come for you.

  “Keisha,” you say again, but this time it’s just a whisper. She cannot come to you; you will have to go to her. You pull the necklace from beneath your shirt; you unloop it from your neck, pull the metal claw from its sheath, and wrap the chain around your fist.

  Leaving the light of the car behind you, leaving the road, you step into the trees.

  It’s impossible to know which direction she went. Eyes narrowed, adjusting to the dark, you scan the ground. At first, you see nothing but pine needles and fallen leaves, but then—there. Up ahead, and to the path that branches left. Something red.

  You crouch to pick it up. It’s a piece of fabric. Red, with black lines, like . . . spiderwebs.

  You run.

  The trees are tall, dark shadows that whoosh into shape as you pass; your face is wet from fog; you run.

  Your hand grips the long, mean claw; your boots are sure and steady beneath you; you run.

  There is the rest of Phillip’s costume, shed like a snakeskin; you run.

  And then you are deep in the forest, encircled by trees and fog, and you taste in the bac
k of your throat your own fear mixed with adrenaline, the burn of acid.

  You hear her scream—Keisha, high-pitched, scared, not a word but a sound, a desperate, last-chance alarm.

  You roar in response as you run, so that if he kills her before you get to them, Keisha will not die thinking that no one tried to save her, and so that he will know that there will be a price paid for her spilled blood.

  And then the fog pulls back like a curtain, and you see them: Keisha, forced up against a tall fir tree, a slash in the thigh of her jeans revealing a deep red wound, her empty hands thrusting out in front of her, and, back on his haunches, ready to leap, lips curled, eyes narrowed, ears forward—a wolf.

  “Hey!” you yell, and the wolf turns his heavy, dark head. His eyes glow gold, and he snarls.

  You spread your arms wide, taking up space, offering your chest, daring the wolf to come at you.

  And he turns in your direction, but he doesn’t attack; he watches you, measuring you, reading you.

  The wolf takes two slow steps forward, and you hold your ground. You like it just where you are; the earth is even, and there is space to maneuver. The animal is ten slow steps away from you, maybe just two quick bounds, if he decides to leap.

  Your weight is even over your heels, and you’ve got your claw, sharper than his, longer than his, in your dominant hand.

  There are things you know now, in this moment, among these trees: the moon is full. It has been one full cycle since last you faced a wolf. You are stronger than you were, and faster than you were, and you, in this moment, are made for this moment.

  The animal confronting you is both a wolf and not a wolf. And you—you are both a girl and not a girl. You are a hunter, and this wolf, though he thinks he is the predator, is your prey.

  You scan the wolf for weaknesses and strengths. He’s big, much larger than a wolf should be, and thick with muscle under his dull black pelt. His black lips are snarled back, his teeth are shiny with spit. His eyes are narrowed and cunning. He is young and strong and ready to kill.