Fiction River: Unnatural Worlds (11 page)

Why they’d done that was a mystery to Ashley
who’d heard the basics of the story many, many times; Acadians were
fiercely proud of their history. But it was a story without an
ending. Each time Ashley thought she might get a chance to ask her
unanswered questions, Maw Maw would start into a slow tirade using
words that Ashley knew her grandmother would not want her to know.
Sometimes Ashley even saw tears, as Maw Maw lamented the distant
strip of interstate highway that had stolen both her daughter and
her way of life. The only time Ashley ever saw the
Joie De
Vivre
leave her grandmother, Ashley always longed to know more,
and was always afraid to bring it up.

Until the day after cheerleading try-outs
when Ashley apologized to Maw Maw for blurting who wanted to be the
fat girl in the fur.

Laughter filled Maw Maw’s voice. “In the fur
I am fat! And you!
A bon couer
and practice! And not shave
so much,
es bon
!”

And she was right—not about the need to stop
shaving; Ashley thought she had enough social problems without
being all hairy, too. But about doing something whole-heartedly,
which is why Ashley took the mascot job and walked to school every
day in sweltering heat to make sure she was at practice on time.
Maw Maw having given up her driver’s license long ago—you could
walk most everywhere in Nexus, anyway—it was Ashley’s only way to
school with her father working the offshore oil rigs for the next
week.

Almost within sight of Nexus High School,
Ashley lamented having to walk for reasons beside the heat. Mainly
that moving at such a slow speed allowed her to observe what a
crap-fest this part of Nexus actually was. Boarded up buildings,
vacant houses, overgrown lawns: Each a reminder of the glory days
of Recontere, all they served to do now was punctuate that more
than just the interstate had left the town behind, whatever its
name might have been.

Wishing one last time for a lamppost to
scratch her back on, Ashley couldn’t help but notice at her feet a
rusted-out hole where one used to stand. Mindlessly kicking it,
Ashley went to Plan B for scratching her itch: flogging her back
with the tiger head in a random attempt to hit the sweat ball. It
worked—sort of.

“Hey, ya fat fur ball!” screamed a voice from
a passing car. “That’s costume abuse! You owe me laps!”

Snapped from her contemplation of sweat
balls, swinging animal heads and the dismal state of Nexus, Ashley
looked up just in time to see Niki Bordelon’s brunette head duck
back inside Portia Comeau’s BMW Mini as the two headed for
cheerleading practice. The captain and assistant captain of the
squad, respectively, they had the power to make good on their
threats. Heck, Niki and Portia were the reason Ashley was already
in costume in the first place: Everyone was expected to arrive at
practice ready to go.

Normally, this rule didn’t apply to the
mascot; it was one thing to expect girls to arrive in tiny skirts
and T-shirts, it was another to expect someone to do so in a
full-body fursuit. But then there was nothing normal about the
Nexus High School Cheerleading Squad these days; that much had been
clear since the coach’s car blew up in the parking lot the last day
of school—while she was in it.

***

Miss Lynette Dugas, cheerleading coach,
demonically frightening math teacher, and anal-retentive car owner,
was known throughout Nexus High School for all of these things. A
first-year teacher, she was insanely bitter that she’d had to “come
crawling back to Nexus,” as she put it, to find a teaching job. Her
career plans putting her in New Orleans but her grades and teaching
acumen making her employable nowhere but her backwater hometown,
she was unfortunate proof of just how few people wanted to call the
place home these days. Taking her frustrations out on her students
almost daily, she was reviled by nearly everyone, who took to
calling her “The Dragon Lady,” a term she actually seemed to
embrace.

So when the students of Nexus High School
felt the thump of a distant explosion inside even in the far
corners of the school building, a few dared actually hope it might
be her in the flames. Her car nearly vaporizing as she closed the
door, the fireball had literally melted some of the letters off the
signs in front of NHS hundreds of feet away. (The school was now
officially a “RUG REE ZO”) The car, a brand new black Camaro, was
left a metal hulk of melted tires, leather, and engine parts. The
car’s personalized license plate, Louisiana tag “DRGNLDY” was found
on the roof of the gazebo in Brasseaux Park, more than a block
away—with the bumper still attached.

It was a miracle that no one in the school
was hurt or even injured, largely because the parking lot was still
empty of people during sixth period when Miss Dugas went home early
because of illness. More importantly, however, was that she always
parked on the far edge of the parking lot with instructions (and
well-known threats) that no one was to get anywhere near her car. A
parking lot designed for a much larger staff and school population,
Miss Dugas’s Camaro was nearly a hundred feet from any other car
when it exploded.

And that wasn’t the strange part.

The strange part was that she walked away
from it. Literally standing up amidst the flaming wreckage of her
car approximately five minutes after the explosion, she simply
walked out of the flames and over to the paramedics. Ashley,
hundreds of her fellow Nexus Tigers, and the fire department now
gathered in gaped-mouth silence, it was fellow incoming freshman
Drew Broussard who spoke first: “Damn, she’s hot.”

“That is so wrong,” Ashley said.

“Why?” Drew asked. “Because I’m gay? I can
appreciate the feminine form.”

“No, you jackass,” Ashley said, “because
what’s left of her clothes are still on fire.”

“If you call a sports bra and panties
clothes,” Drew said, now cocking his head slightly sideways. “At
least I think it’s a sports bra. With the flames it’s kind of hard
to tell—”

“Drew!” Ashley said, as members of the fire
department began to run towards Miss Dugas. “The woman is on
fire!”

“No, just what’s left of her clothes. She’s
just fine, and I do mean fiiiiinnnnnne, although how the hell
that’s possible, I have no idea,” Drew said. “I knew she wasn’t
human.”

“DREW!”

“Hey, you’re the one who called her a dragon
lady,” Drew said, sounding not the least bit unhappy. “It’s not my
fault you were right.”

“She’s still a human being,” Ashley said.
“I’m sure there are better things that could be said.”

“Yeah: She’s hotter than I thought,” Drew
said, now starting to laugh. “That firefighter just knocked off her
bra…”

***

Recalling the incident, Ashley was somewhat
ashamed to find herself laughing. Partially because she had to
admit Drew was right; Ashley herself had gotten a “C” from the
mercurial math teacher for nothing more than using a wooden pencil
instead of a mechanical one.

More, though, it was because Miss Dugas had
been completely uninjured by the accident. No burns, no scars,
nothing. Well, not the physical kind of scars, anyway. Rumor was
that even though she was officially returning to teach and coach
come fall, she desperately wanted to leave since virtually the
entire town had seen her naked. But so what? She’d wanted to leave
town since the minute she got here; the town and school would be
better off without her, Ashley decided. And besides, if looking for
a new town where no one would have seen her naked was the goal, she
was screwed. It had gone viral on YouTube about three weeks
ago.

Be that as it may, even absent for the summer
Miss Dugas’s presence was still felt throughout the cheerleading
squad. Her captains, Niki and Portia, ran it just as cruelly as she
would have. Certainly, cheerleading squads had always been a
cauldron of rank, title, and mean-girl behavior. But where most
cheer coaches tried to minimize these behaviors, Miss Dugas at best
looked the other way, and at worst encouraged them. Now, with her
gone, Niki and Portia had free reign to treat everyone like
crap.

In the beginning, Ashley hoped the school
administration would put a stop to it. But given the chaos
following the explosion and the administration’s desire not to
bother the only math teacher it could find, it pretty much refused
to do anything. Coupled with the fact that Niki and Portia weren’t
doing anything illegal, just mean, the principal figured it was
“girls being girls,” and let it go at that.

It was more than that, of course; making
people run laps in sweaty suits in Louisiana’s summer heat was
likely dangerous. But Ashley refused to give Niki the satisfaction
of hearing her complain or seeing her quit—another thing she’d
learned from her Maw Maw. That’s why, even though Ashley once again
found herself on the cheerleading craplist, she trundled on to
practice, knowing exactly what awaited her. Not because it was bad,
but because it was normal.

Finally reaching the edge of the school
parking lot, Ashley walked through the middle of the dirt that used
to be Miss Dugas’s parking space. The corner of the lot yet to be
repaved, Ashley figured it wouldn’t be. In all her years in Nexus
she’d noticed that things that fell apart tended to stay that way,
whether through a lack of money or enthusiasm she didn’t know, that
was just how it was.

Stopping for just a moment to make sure Niki
and Portia were out of their car and onto the football field,
Ashley was relieved to see her friends, Kayla and Autumn, were
still in the parking lot. As always, Kayla had her jittery hands
wrapped around an iced mocha. While Autumn’s hands were
rock-steady, perfect for applying yet another layer of mascara.

Having all tried out together, Ashley was
relieved her friends had made the squad, even if during practice
they weren’t actually allowed to talk to each other. Calling to
them, she was surprised to see them completely ignore her as they
continued huddled in conversation. Hoping she hadn’t become a
social pariah to even two of her best friends, she approached
quietly trying to hear what they were talking about.

“…I’ve heard she can only go out at night…”
Kayla said.

“And that she has to wear one of those Arab
sheets during the day…” Autumn said, completely unaware that Ashley
was opening her mouth right behind her: “It’s called a burqa,
guys,” Ashley said knowingly. “And who in the world in Nexus is
wearing a—”

“SSSHHHHH!!!” Both girls said to Ashley.
“There’s a reason we’re trying not to get noticed!”

“You’re trying not to get noticed,” Ashley
said to them both. “It’s the only way not to do laps around
here.”

“This is different,” Kayla said. “Madison is
a vampire and no one is supposed to know.”

“Madison Gaudet is a vampire?” Ashley asked,
her eyebrows now fully raised. “That’s horrible!”

“I know,” Kayla said. “No one’s supposed to
talk about it.”

“Well, I can see why,” Ashley said, the
sarcasm beginning to drip. “She’s the best garlic-oyster cook
Schucker’s restaurant has. If she’s a vampire she’ll have to stop
doing that, although I do suppose this means they always have
someone for bussing tables on the night shift, doesn’t it?”

“I’m serious,” Kayla said. “I heard my
grandmother talking about it on the phone this morning.”

“Your mom watches reality TV and thinks
they’re documentaries,” Ashley said. “That doesn’t say a whole
lot.”

“Not all of them!” Kayla said, defensively.
“She knows
Swamp People
is stupid.”

“That’s because she knows half the people in
it,” Ashley said, acknowledging that on at least that Kayla was
right-on. Everyone in Acadiana hated that show. “But seriously, a
vampire? Did she switch demographics and start reading
Twilight
?”

Here, Autumn decided to chime in: “You know,
Madison’s not the only one I’ve been hearing strange things about.
Marc and Destiny, too: I’ve heard rumors about those two, weird
rumors…”

“Let me guess,” Ashley said.
“Werewolves.”

“Yes!”

“Well, werewolves had to be in there
somewhere,” Ashley said dismissively. “Anything else? Witches? I
mean, what’s a good story without a little Harry Potter these
days?”

“No,” Autumn said, “no witches. But I did
hear Destiny Doucet’s a mermaid…”

“You have lost your damn mind,” Ashley said,
not willing to engage their silliness any longer. “Or your
grandmother has. Autumn, I know your and Kayla’s grandmothers talk
all the time. Every senior citizen in this town does.”

“You got that right,” Autumn said as she and
Kayla turned to walk away. “But before you get all high and mighty,
you should know it was your ‘Maw Maw’ our grandmothers were talking
to.”

***

Running the last of her four quarter-mile
laps around the Nexus High School track, Ashley still couldn’t
believe what her friends had been talking about. Not because she
thought they were crazy, but because there was some little part of
her that knew they weren’t. For one thing, she had heard her
grandmother talking on the phone this morning in hushed and
whispered tones—and now she apparently knew who with.

Certainly there had been no talk of
werewolves, vampires and mermaids; Ashley would have remembered
that. But she did hear her mention the Roux-Ga-Roux, a mythical
werewolf-like being that supposedly lived in the swamps. Dismissing
it at the time—and largely still doing the same now—she was more
intrigued by what else her Maw Maw had talked about: The Raconteur.
French for storyteller, Ashley had heard the word on and off for
years in town. In a town known historically for storytelling, that
made sense.

But this morning was different, odd. And now
that she thought about it, it was a term she’d heard more often of
late, each time in circumstances she thought strange at the time.
Forming a pattern, they distracted her, which was good. It kept her
from noticing the sweat balls forming once again on her spine.