Charmed

Charmed

Carrie Mac

orca soundings

Copyright © 2004 Carrie Mac

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

Mac, Carrie, 1975-
Charmed / Carrie Mac.

(Orca soundings)
ISBN 1-55143-321-4

I. Title. II. Series.

PS8625.A198C43 2004  jC813’.6  C2004-904721-3

Summary: Izzy finds she is one in a long line of girls ensnared in prostitution, with no way to escape.

First published in the United States, 2004
Library of Congress Control Number: 2004110934

Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Department of Canadian Heritage’s Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), the Canada Council for the Arts, and the British Columbia Arts Council.

Cover design: Lynn O’Rourke
Cover photography: Eyewire

Orca Book Publishers
PO Box 5626, Stn B.
Victoria,
BC
Canada
V8R 6S4

Orca Book Publishers
PO Box 468
Custer,
WA USA
98240-0468

07 06 05 04 • 5 4 3 2 1

Printed and bound in Canada.
Printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper,
100% old growth forest free, processed chlorine free using vegetable, low VOC inks.

For Renée—
brave, strong and smart
.

Chapter One

We’re at a Chinese restaurant, the Golden City, or the Cold and Gritty, as Rob calls it. He pulls back the corners of his eyes and orders in a bad Chinese accent. My mother laughs nervously, tossing me a please-don’t-start-anything look when Rob isn’t watching. I’d like to tip his tea into his lap and apologize to the crowded room for him being such a racist prick, but it’s the night before Mom goes up north to cook in the logging camp, and I don’t want to ruin it for her.

Margaret cringes and stares at her plate, even though there’s nothing on it yet. The last time she came out with us for supper was for Mom’s birthday. We went to a really expensive French restaurant. The food was amazing. Just as Rob was finishing his chocolate mousse, he bellowed, “Waiter! Waiter! There’s a cockroach on my plate!” He’d actually brought one with him! From home! He argued with the manager for almost half an hour before the manager finally agreed to give us the entire meal for free.

Margaret slept over that night. She told me she was very sorry, and yes, she was and would always be my best friend, but she just couldn’t bear going out to dinner with us ever again, not so long as Mom was dating Rob the Slob.

“He lied! It was so embarrassing. He is so gross, Izzy,” she said in the middle of the night as she stuffed a wad of marshmallows into her mouth. Talk about gross.

“He’s not so bad.” Honestly, I hate the ground he walks on, I hate the air he breathes, I wish him dead on a regular basis, but all the same, I was pissed off that Margaret was acting all high-and-mighty about it.

She only agreed to come this time because Mom begged her, and as much as Margaret can’t stand Rob, she adores my mother.

Rob is so bad with chopsticks you have to watch, like how you just can’t look away from a car crash. I don’t know why the idiot doesn’t use a fork. Margaret isn’t saying much; she never does around Rob because he calls her Margarine. I told him not to. I told him she’s sensitive about being fat. He says it has nothing to do with how fat she is; it just rhymes with her name. I was going to tell the genius that margarine doesn’t actually rhyme with Margaret, but my mother gave me another one of those looks, so I kept my trap shut.

Just when I’m thinking the night cannot get worse, it does. Cody Dillon, man of my dreams, walks into the restaurant with two gorgeous girls I think I recognize from school. I slide down in my seat and hiss at Margaret to do the same. They walk by.

“Lose something, Margarine?” Rob says as we sit back up. Margaret pushes her plate away, her cheeks flushed.

“Shut up, Rob!” I throw a fortune cookie at him. He catches it, cracks it open and pretends to read the fortune.

“Ancient Chinese proverb say bad rittle girls get in big trouble.” Rob sits back, folds his arms and nods at my mother. “You gonna let her talk to me like that?”

“Margaret doesn’t like it when you call her that, Rob. He’s sorry, Margaret, okay?”

Margaret barely nods her head. Mom winks at her.

“And as for you, Izzy, you and Rob are going to have to figure out a way of being nice to each other while I’m gone. Six months is a long time. You’d both be doing yourselves a favor if you started off on the right foot.”

Six months stuck with Rob the Slob. I’d rethink my alternatives, but there are none.

“How about you two walk home?” Mom says. “It’s a nice night out.”

“Yeah, Margarine could use the walk,” Rob adds, and laughs when I fake a lunge at him.

Margaret can’t get out of there fast enough. I take my time. Maybe Cody Dillon will look up and notice me, but why would he when he’s got two supermodels glued to him?

“Did you see Cody Dillon come in?” I ask Margaret once we’re outside.

“Who?”

Margaret is a little slow sometimes.

“Cody Dillon! He dropped out last year?”

“And that makes him cool?”

No, his wolf blue eyes, his Jeep cruising past with the bass thumping, his worn jeans and tight T-shirts, his muscled arms and the way he can just glance in your direction and make you feel as if you’re all of a sudden the center of the universe. All that makes him cool, but that sort of thing is lost on Margaret. Mom says she’s a late bloomer. I love Margaret, I really do, but sometimes I wonder if she’ll ever bloom at all.

Chapter Two

I finally have my Very Own Cody Dillon Moment today. I’m just coming out of the corner store on the way to school, and he’s just going in, but the door kind of jams, and he kind of bumps me, and I drop my math text and my lunch bag and the pack of gum I just bought. He picks it all up and hands it back to me all slow, eyes on mine.

“Sorry,” he says, and then the two girls he’s with, the ones from the Chinese restaurant, are all, “Um, Cody? Hello?” He puts up his hand. They shut up and roll their eyes, hands on their hips, belly buttons exposed even though that’s against school rules. One of them has a pierced belly button. It’s not like I’m some kind of prude or anything; I actually like the way it looks, but it’s just that belly button piercings are even more against the rules, so, um, hello? How To Get Kicked Out Of School In One Easy Lesson—get your belly button pierced and show it off. Duh.

He takes my hand (TAKES MY HAND!) and kisses the back of it (KISSES THE BACK OF IT!) and says, “My apologies” in an English accent, even though he’s from Vancouver.

When I tell Margaret, she’s all, “So what, Izzy? So your planets crashed for a second. Let me remind you, Cody Dillon is not from our planet. He’s a dropout.”

I don’t talk to her for the rest of the class. By the time the bell rings, she’s apologizing to me.

“Sorry. He’s not that bad,” she says. “I guess.”

“You guess he’s not that bad?” This is an apology?

“Well, he is kind of a badass.”

“With a nice ass.” I decide to let it go at that. Margaret has no idea what she’s talking about when it comes to boys. Men. The bad-asses are the best ones. The boring ones are just that: BORING.

But then there are the Robs of the world. Mom picks those. They seem like cool bad-asses at first, but then they turn out to be lazy slobs. Rob the Slob is the king of that particular population.

Chapter Three

Reliving my Cody Dillon Moment takes up most of my time. I don’t have much time left over to care that Rob the Slob hasn’t said one word to me since Mom left. I did a test. I made him macaroni and cheese seven nights in a row and he still didn’t say a word, even though there was meat in the fridge going bad. When Mom gets back, he’ll rat on me and she’ll do all the freaking out he’s too lazy to do. On the eighth night I add hot dogs (not moldy or stinky, probably still good) and some real cheese (slices), and make toast too, just so he can’t say I didn’t try. I just know it: she’ll come back and he’ll sit her on the couch, and then he’ll bring out the list of all the things I did wrong while she was gone and pace in front of her, reading right from the list.

My crimes? Let the laundry pile up, didn’t do the dishes, forgot to let his dumb dog out so it pissed on the floor, and of course that’s my fault too, nicked his cigarettes, skipped school and got caught. There’s more, I bet. I bet he’s waiting for Mom to come home so he can lay out how I ruin his life and it would be much better if I went and lived with my dad. Yeah, right. I’d rather fall off a cliff and break my neck. Like living with a manic-depressive freak who never leaves his spider-infested basement suite would be anything other than unbearable. That man collects dead spiders. He fills up entire jars with them. Mom says he wasn’t always like that, but how would I know? When I was two, just before he went to the loony bin the first time, he burnt down our house. There are no photos or anything else from the so-called good times to prove that he wasn’t always a psycho freak. Live with my dad? I think not. Not in a million years.

Hey, maybe my dad and Rob could be roommates. Rob will need someplace else to live soon enough because I’m keeping my own list. We’ll see who Mom picks. How about this? Rob NEVER does anything around the house, even though he swore he’d fix the bathroom taps, paint the hallway and replace the rotting floorboards in the kitchen while she was in camp. He doesn’t even take his crusty laundry out of the bathroom. And he has poker nights here, even though Mom said she didn’t want any gambling in this house. Plus he knocked over her expensive perfume and spilled it all, and now the house stinks of it and she’s going to flip. And I never get to watch TV because he hogs it all the time. All he ever watches is the sports channel, which is funny because he never gets off his ass to do anything, let alone play sports. Want to know what tops the list? My ace in the hole? When he does actually get his slobby self out of the house, sometimes he doesn’t come home at night at all. What am I supposed to think about that, huh?

We’ll see who Mom picks: some greasy unemployed mill worker she’d only been dating for seven months before she went up north, or her very own flesh and blood, me, her daughter, her Best Thing. That’s what she used to call me. Best Thing. No contest. Poor Rob. I’ll be sure he has my dad’s number before Mom kicks him out.

Chapter Four

Margaret says I’m starting to smell like macaroni and cheese. She says it’s leaking out my pores. She says my skin has an orange tinge. Uh-huh. Right. She’s just jealous because of my Very Own Cody Dillon Moment #2. Picture this: I’m alone in the art room, stuck washing out the brushes because I have a spare, and he comes in, all quiet and sneaky. He comes up behind me and puts his hands over my eyes. My heart’s thumping because I’m thinking someone’s playing a mean joke. But then I smell his cologne, but I’m not sure it’s him because lots of the other guys copy him. He’s not even supposed to be in the building, although he’s not someone who’d be stopped by a stupid rule.

“Guess who?”

I shake my head because I really, really don’t want to be wrong about this.

“C’mon. Guess.”

I want to touch his hands, but my hands are wet, so that’d be nasty. I can feel his breath on my neck.

“Come on, Isabelle McAfferty,” he says in that fake English accent. “You know exactly who this is.”

It’s him, and he knows my name. My whole name. “Cody Dillon?”

He keeps his hands over my eyes and puts his lips on my neck (LIPS ON MY NECK!) and whispers in his regular voice, “That’s right.” He turns me around. His face is all serious. “Got anything to drop? I could pick it up for you.”

I don’t understand, so I shake my head, just as I realize he’s referring to that time at the corner store. I consider dropping one of the brushes, but that part of the moment is over, so if I dropped something right now it would actually be lame.

“You’re kind of cute, you know.” (Margaret doesn’t believe that part, but he said it. He really did. In his regular voice.)

My face goes hot and I say nothing because I am a complete mental gimp. He backs away. He stops at the door and points at me. “I got my eye on you,” he says (HIS EYE ON ME!).