My Life in Black and White (19 page)

I forgot it was Saturday. None of my favorite shows was on. I was a little annoyed, but then I remembered the movie channels. I found one of the Batmans, which I wouldn’t normally be into, but this one had Christian Bale, and who doesn’t love Christian Bale? So I settled in.

I think it’s no coincidence that my lightbulb moment occurred during this particular movie. You can’t watch a kid’s parents get murdered before his eyes and feel nothing. You can’t watch him put on his armored suit and start fighting bad guys and not cheer. If you have any shred of human decency, you want Batman to win, not just to avenge his parents’ death, but also to show the miserable jerks of this world what it feels like to lose.

I didn’t even watch the whole thing. When inspiration hit, I just went with it. With no friends and no parents around to drive me, I pulled my bike out of the garage for the first time since July Fourth, when Taylor and I rode to the fireworks.

The wind on my face felt good and crisp. I pedaled like a crazy person, until my legs burned and the air in my lungs felt like needles. On the highway, cars whizzed past me. A few of them beeped. Mothers, probably. I wasn’t wearing my helmet, and my own mother would be having a conniption if she saw me, but I didn’t care. For the first time in a long time, I felt free.

The guy behind the counter at Costume City was greasy haired, pock faced, and mean looking—the last kind of person who should be working in customer service. To the woman in front of me in line, who was searching for a Strawberry Shortcake wig for her daughter, he snorted, “Strawberry
Shortcake
? Are you kidding me? She sucks.”

The woman demanded to speak to the manager.

Greaseball said, “I
am
the manager.”

After she stormed out, he rolled his eyes toward me and said, in the most bored manner possible, “Can I help you?”

I almost chickened out because I knew what was coming.
Batman? Are you kidding me? He sucks.

Instead, the guy nodded approvingly. “Batman is the shit.”

I felt a surge of relief.

“We’re all sold out, kid. Halloween’s a week away.”

Crap.

Then he grinned, showing a surprisingly nice set of teeth. “How do you feel about Catwoman?”

Meow

THE GYM DIDN’T look like a gym, that was for sure. Whoever was in charge of decorations took their job seriously, what with the endless strands of Christmas lights and the gold and silver balls hanging everywhere. Tables were set up along the perimeter, with champagne glasses for punch and vases full of what looked like tree branches sprayed with metallic paint, and millions of glass pebbles. Even the bleachers had been covered in shiny paper. Because the overhead lights were turned off, the whole room had a shimmering, otherworldly feel—as long as you ignored the basketball hoops and the lingering smell of sweat socks.

After half an hour of standing in a corner, observing the scene, it occurred to me how stupid I was to be nervous. I was Catwoman. Every square inch of my body—and most of my face—was shielded in black Spandex. If ever there were a time to be fearless, it was tonight.

Walking around the gym, I noticed that other girls’ “costumes” weren’t much different from the dresses they’d wear to a regular dance. Short or long, shiny or lacy, strapless or not. But the masks changed everything. You had to look at bodies and hair for clues.

Right away I spotted Taylor. I knew her so well—her knobby knees, the way she tipped her head to the right when she was talking, her low, gravelly laugh—it didn’t matter what she was wearing. (Which tonight happened to be a gunmetal gray sheath dress with sky-high strappy sandals, an updo, and a glittery silver mask.) I could pick Taylor out of a crowd in Grand Central Station. In the middle of rush hour. During a power outage.

Which made it all the more ironic that she walked by me three times without so much as a clue—each time carrying a champagne glass and hanging all over Heidi, making me wonder what she was drinking besides punch.

Ryan was nowhere to be seen. But then, most of the guys were impossible to identify. While a handful had skipped dressing up altogether or had thrown on the token skeleton T-shirt, others were wearing full costumes. There was a gorilla, Darth Vader, Jack Sparrow from
Pirates of the Caribbean
, four President Obamas, one Bush, vampires, mummies, Beavis and Butthead, and probably thirty grim reapers—complete with skeleton masks, black robes, and bony hands holding knives. Fake, plastic knives, but still. They were freaky.

At one point, a few of them sidled up to me and—because there was no way I could possibly know who they were—said things they otherwise wouldn’t have had the guts to say. Like, “Hey, Catwoman, looking for something to lick?” On any other night, in any other context, this would have been mortifying; which is to say, if I had been
me
, I would have been mortified.

But I was not me.

I was Catwoman.

For the first time since the accident, I liked what I looked like. A) My face was covered, and B) my newly acquired fat, disgusting in regular clothes, was compressed into submission by my cat suit. I was curvy in all the right places.

The word
meow
actually rolled off my lips, and instead of sounding dumb, it sounded hot. Which is what a disguise does. It gives you permission to act however you want—to not care what people say, to become someone else.

The girls’ room, too, was a whole new experience. I could actually look at my reflection without cringing. I could reapply my lipstick in front of the mirror and feel completely at ease.

“I
love
your costume,” a girl from my English class gushed as she added a layer of mascara to her lashes.

I couldn’t tell if she recognized me, but I thanked her.

“Why didn’t
we
wear costumes?” asked another girl in a pink tulle dress and black mask. “We should have worn costumes.”

“Seriously,” her friend said. Then, to me, “You look awesome.”

“Thanks.”

I double-checked my mask in the mirror, making sure that the graft was completely hidden and no stray blonde hairs had escaped.

Perfect.

As I walked out into the hall, something stopped me. A few yards away, bent over the water fountain, was one of the grim reapers. He was holding his mask in one hand, and when he stood up and tossed his bangs out of his eyes, I saw who it was.

Jarrod’s friend Rob, Taylor’s greatest crush of all time.

That’s when this idea started taking shape in my mind.
Right here, right now is my chance to get back at her.

I could picture it exactly. I could see myself walking over to Rob and taking his hand, leading him into the nearest classroom, shutting the door behind us.

“What are we doing?” he would say.

But I would say nothing.

Instead, I would push him into a chair.

I would lift up his robe.

I would unzip his jeans.

I would do
exactly
what Taylor did to me.

Rob was a senior, and he was probably as much of a perv as Jarrod. I’d seen him in his bathing suit at the LeFevres’ pool. He had a line of thick, black hair leading from his belly button downward. His “treasure trail,” Taylor called it. He’d probably had sex a hundred times.

But so what? Tonight, I was Catwoman. If he tried to touch me, my cat suit would be like a force field between us. I, however, would be touching the real thing.

The real thing.

I suddenly remembered this Halloween party Taylor had once, where her mom dressed as a witch and we all wandered around the LeFevres’ pitch-black basement, sticking our hands in different bowls, shrieking as we touched the lizard eyeballs (which were really cherry tomatoes) and rat intestines (cold spaghetti).

I wondered what a penis would feel like. I’d never touched one, so I could only guess. Cucumber? … Hot dog? … Twinkie?

I tried to stifle a laugh, but it didn’t work. I was picturing X-rated things, but my mind was still stuck in third grade.

“What’s so funny?”

Rob was looking at me curiously.

I only sniggered harder.

“Come on. Share.”

I shook my head.

“Lexi, right? Taylor’s friend?” He took a step toward me. “I’d know you anywhere.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised. Why look at a girl’s face when you could look at her body? Every guy at the dance probably knew who I was. Still, the realization hit me like a wrecking ball. How could I have been so stupid? How could I have thought that a little spandex would make me invisible?

Rob took another step toward me, smiling. “Hey,” he said, cocking his head toward the gym. “You going back? I’ll walk with you.”

But I didn’t answer.

Slick as the jungle cat I was, I turned and ran in the opposite direction. I darted around a corner and down the darkened corridor. The weight room, I remembered, was somewhere in senior hall. I could get back to the gym through there.

The first thing I noticed was her feet.

Two sky-high, strappy sandals propped on a weight bench, pointing in opposite directions. I couldn’t see the rest of her. The lights were on, but black robes, like the one Rob had been wearing, obscured my view. There were four of them, standing in a semicircle, all holding—not plastic knives this time—cell phones.

It took me a minute to work my way around the bodies, but when I did, there she was. Taylor, flopped on a wrestling mat, head lolling to one side. Her dress was pulled up to her chin and so was her bra. Her rainbow underpants—a pair I recognized because we’d gone shopping together and bought the same ones—were halfway down her hips.

At first, I didn’t realize what was happening. What the cell phones were for. Then, it hit me. “Are you taking
pictures
?”

All four skeleton heads turned.

“Easy, kitty cat,” one of them muttered.

And another said, “She’s wasted.”

I felt a mean, hard spark of triumph in my gut.
Serves her right,
is what I thought.
Karma.

But then one of the grim reapers bent down to take a close-up picture of Taylor’s bare boob. “My new screen saver!” he announced.

The rest of them cracked up.

Taylor didn’t make a sound.

And I don’t know why, but something in me snapped. I started hissing, “Stop that! Get away from her!” With all the strength I had, I shoved my way in. “Taylor?” I knelt beside her and started yanking her clothes back into place, too rough, but I couldn’t help it. I needed to cover her up. “Tay?”

“Oh, shit,” I heard someone mutter. “Is that LeFevre’s sister?”

“Tay!” I said again.

She didn’t respond. Not even when I shook her. Not even when I screamed her name. Panic rose like bile in my throat, but when I turned around for help, the black robes were gone.

Not knowing what else to do, I heaved Taylor up from the wrestling mat and onto her feet, where she collapsed like a Slinky. I tried again, this time planting myself beside her, wedging my right shoulder under her left armpit and wrapping my arm around her waist. Somehow, I managed to drag her out the door.

We didn’t make it two feet before a teacher materialized in the hallway. At first, I thought it was a student because she looked so young, but then I saw her chaperone badge.

“I’m Ms. McCann?” she said, like she was asking a question instead of stating a fact. “The library media specialist?” She hesitated, glancing at Taylor, then back at me. “Someone said they heard screaming?”

I knew that this was the luckiest break ever, Ms. McCann being the one to find us, and I knew that she couldn’t identify me, but I was still tongue-tied. I felt the same way I did at Girl Scout camp when I was ten. My counselor, Lacey, was only six years older, and all the girls in my cabin acted like she was our annoying big sister, but to me, Lacey was an adult whose rules I needed to obey. Ms. McCann may have been wearing a ponytail and jean skirt, but she was still in charge.

“My friend’s sick,” I blurted—the first lie that popped into my head. “I think it’s that flu bug. You know … the one that’s been going around? I just got over it myself…. Anyway, she’s so tired she can’t even keep her eyes open. We’re heading outside for some fresh air.”