Pink Smog (11 page)

Winter looked around at the pictures of dead stars, at the spilled candy and the wig and the dolls. Nothing registered in his eyes.

That was when I heard the door open and the sound of the dogs scrambling in. They appeared at the bedroom door, growling, with the girl behind them.

“What is she doing in my room?” She was talking to her brother but her eyes were fiercely locked on me as if she could keep me from moving with her stare. It worked. She was wearing the puffed sleeved dress and her saddle shoes. I saw one of the dog's black lips curl so that its teeth showed.

I looked at Winter and something changed in his eyes. He commanded the dogs to go to their beds and took me by the arm.

“She was just leaving,” he said.

Annabelle watched us go. She had the same snarl on her mouth as her chow had worn. I wondered who had thought of it first.

At the door I turned to Winter and held his wrist with both my hands. “Please,” I said. “Please come talk to me.”

The look of recognition and concern was gone. He slipped out of my grip and stared down at the ground, rolling onto the outer edges of his feet. That was how he remained, standing like that in the doorway of number 13, as I left him.

Bobby wasn't good at keeping his mouth shut and I loved that about him and because of it I especially loved how he had avoided talking to me about Winter, even after the weirdness he had witnessed. Finally, though, after that last visit, I told him and Lily the whole story, except the part about my dad. I just said that Winter had happened to be protective of me in those situations with his sister and Staci.

“It sounds wicked to me,” Bobby said. We were sitting at our usual lunch spot and I wanted him to lower his voice in case someone heard. “All of it. I'd avoid them all if I were you.”

Lily was watching me intently. “It's not that easy, Bobby.” She gave him a meaningful look that was supposed to convey something along the lines of
She's got a huge crush on the guy, you dork
, but he ignored it. Well, mostly.

“Foxiness is as foxiness does,” he said, so I guess he did get what she was saying. “We need to find you someone better to crush on.”

“It's not that! I don't
like
like him. I just think something really weird is going on.”

“Obviously weird shit is happening but we don't need to get involved. Let them voodoo themselves to death. What do you care?” Bobby took a bite out of his bologna sandwich, made a face, and tossed it into the trash bin.

I stared at my checkerboard Vans. They were the same ones Winter wore.

“She cares,” Lily said, clutching her apple.

So Bobby dropped the subject. I guess the look on my face was clear enough.

I really didn't want to get involved. I wanted to walk away from the whole thing. Winter and Staci and the creepy sister and the purple-eyed betrayer. I had enough to worry about. But it was more complicated than that. Annabelle had seen me in her room. She'd already attacked me for less.

The next few days I walked around like a hunted deer, perking up my ears, startling at every loud sound, flashing my gaze in every direction. I almost wished she'd show up, just to get it over with. But she never came.

Not much happened at all. My mom continued to sit around watching TV and drinking. A couple of times I tried to ask her if she had any idea what the notes I'd gotten meant or who she thought had sent them but she told me she had no idea what I was talking about and once actually started whistling.

She went out, disguised as much as possible in huge sunglasses and a head scarf—only to cash the checks she received in the mail so I could use them to buy groceries. The checks were from my dad but there was never a return address or even a note in them.

He didn't call. I kept expecting him to call and he didn't and finally I stopped jumping every time the phone rang.

Winter and Staci hung out and he always had the same blank expression on his face.

I spent as much time as possible with Bobby and Lily. It was the only way I felt halfway okay. Luckily, we all felt like that, so none of us noticed or at least minded the desperate way we clung to each other.

I found out more about them. Bobby's mother never came home when we were over there but his sister was a skinny, brown-skinned blonde with a shag haircut who grunted at us when she got home, went into her bedroom, and shut the door. He rolled his eyes and called her Miss Mean Jeans. They had different dads and neither had bothered to stick around. I got the feeling that Bobby's mother did something illegal for a living but he never really said. I'd seen her picture—blonde hair like the sister, giant breasts, and the same green cat eyes as Bobby. He said his father was a Mexican drug lord but I had no idea if it was true. Bobby always had new clothes and albums and sometimes pot and I wondered where he got the money for that but he just shrugged, batted his cartoon eyelashes, and looked mysterious when I hinted that he must have a pretty big allowance or a secret job he wasn't telling us about.

Lily was the stable one in our group, we joked, because she still had two parents living at home and the home was an actual house. The reason it was a joke, though, of course, was that Lily was just as messed up as Bobby and me, maybe more so because she never ate. Her father was a dentist who washed his hands a hundred times a day and her mother was a professional housewife who liked to cook elaborate meals to entice her daughter into eating. The huge, fatty dishes only made Lily starve herself more. It turned out that the lasagna story was true. Someone must have heard her mother telling the school counselor about it because it got around and she'd never been able to escape. She told me that sometimes she dreamed about her mom's dinners coming to life—headless zombie chickens and chocolate cakes oozing fat—and chasing her, trying to choke her to death.

“Have you ever gotten help?” I finally asked. I knew I should have said it before but I was scared it might make things worse.

“My mom made me see this shrink once,” she told us. “And then I started group therapy with all these other girls but it just gave me more ideas about how to lose weight so they pulled me out. I'd hide in the bathroom with the door locked during my shrink sessions so they finally gave up but I have to weigh myself every morning and if I go below ninety I have to go to a hospital.”

“Sweetie,” I said, hugging her. I wanted to make her soup but I was a lousy cook and I knew she didn't want any either.

Bobby didn't say anything. He went into the kitchen and came back with a large green apple and a cup of peppermint tea with lemon and honey.

I was thinking a lot about my friends those days and not so much about my family or my neighbors.

But one night it happened.

I got home late from the store. It was dark early—we'd just put the clocks back. My arms were full of groceries and I was starving. I'd spent the afternoon at Bobby's and come home to find that we didn't have anything to eat in the house.

As I was walking through the gate I heard whispering from the shadows. I stopped.

“Don't you dare go any farther,” the voice said.

Annabelle jumped out from behind the low stucco wall. She was wearing the blonde wig, the long, pink satin dress, and loads of costume jewelry. Compared to her, Staci, Marci, and Kelli look like kittens with bells on their collars trying to chase birds.

“What the hell?” I stepped back and almost tripped.

“What the hell is right? What the hell were you doing in my room?” she spat.

“I was visiting your brother.” You know how they say it feels like your heart is in your mouth? That.

“My brother doesn't want to see you in our house either,” the girl said.

The eggs were rattling in the bag I held. I wondered if they would break. I tried to get my hands to stop shaking. She's just a girl, I told myself.

It didn't help.

“What did you buy?” she asked, her voice shrill.

She grabbed one of the grocery bags out of my hands and opened it. I just stood there. I felt like Winter when he looked at Staci, like I couldn't even move.

Annabelle took out the carton of eggs I had just bought. She opened the container carefully and examined them.

“Stop it,” I said, but weakly. I wanted to make pancakes, bacon, and scrambled eggs for dinner. Sometimes it cheered me up to eat meals at the “wrong times.” Maybe my mom would eat some, too.

“Always check for cracked ones,” she said softly. She was whistling to herself or maybe to the eggs in the carton. “You don't want any cracked ones, you know. Are any of you cracked, little chicken fetuses?”

Then she looked up at me and her eyes were glittering. I mean, her eyes were actually lit up with tiny sparks of hate like black water in the sunlight. She started hurling the eggs at me. I put my hands over my face as the eggs slammed into me, drenching me in gooey streams of phlegmy yolk.

“Stop it!” I screamed. “Stop it! Who are you? Get away from me!”

She wouldn't stop. I crouched into a little ball on the ground, covering my head with my arms as the eggs cracked, every last one. I didn't run. There was nowhere to go. I screamed but I didn't scream for help. In that moment I had decided not to. I knew no one would come.

If my guardian angel heard me he had decided not to bother. He was busy with Staci Nettles.

When every last egg was gone the girl walked away. I got up, gathered the remaining groceries, and went inside. My mom was asleep in front of the TV. I took a shower and put away the food. I couldn't eat anything. I went and lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling until I fell asleep. I didn't even have the fantasy of Winter to comfort me anymore.

It was late for anyone to call us. I woke right away but stared at the phone in shock for the first three rings before I pounced. It was him.

I started sobbing as soon as I heard his voice. “Where are you? You didn't even give me a phone number. It's been two months! Two months. How could you do that to us?”

“I had to straighten some things out,” he said when I stopped. “I'm sorry. I didn't know when to call, if she'd answer.”

“What are you afraid of? Of Mom? You left me here with this insane neighbor. She threw eggs and sicced her dogs on me! Who is she? Her mother has your picture!” I was shrieking now, my voice getting louder and louder and suddenly I stopped, afraid he'd hang up, but he was still there.

“Weetzie. Stop. Stop. What are you talking about? You're not making sense.”

I gulped for air. “The daughter of your
friend
. Winter's sister. She's a psycho. And someone keeps giving me these notes.”

“Slow down, honey. I don't understand.”

“I think she put a curse on him or something.” I started crying again and he mumbled softly to me until I quieted down.

“Weetzie,” he said. “Baby.” I loved the tobacco corduroy sound of his voice. “I really don't know what you're telling me. Who are these people?”

“Stop denying it!”

“Honey,” he said patiently, “I'm not denying anything.”

I gulped down tears. Was he telling the truth? Was it possible he didn't know? That Winter had made it all up? That
I
had made it all up—even Winter?

“I'll be back around Thanksgiving, okay? That's not that far away. I'll take you to dinner. The Tick Tock. We'll have pressed turkey and cranberry jelly and pumpkin pie under the cuckoo clocks, okay? It'll be okay. I'll give you my phone number. I have a place now. It's kind of small but you can come visit me sometime and we'll walk the whole length of the city from downtown up and back. I love you, baby.”

I didn't say anything. I didn't want him to talk to Winter. I wanted him to talk to me—I wanted him to come back.

“Did you hear me, baby?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“Can I sing to you?” he asked.

I was lying in bed now with my damp head and my tears making a huge wet spot on the pillow, the phone pressed to my cheek. It was almost as if he were there with me. His rough voice sang the lullaby from my childhood, just like he used to sing when I was tucked into my bed in the cottage.

“Under Baby's cradle in the night/Stands a goat so soft and snowy white/The Goat will go to the market/To bring you wonderful treats/He'll bring you raisins and almonds/Sleep, my little one, sleep.”

The exhaustion of the whole day hit me like one of the hurled eggs and I cowered into the blankets and closed my eyes.

When I woke up the receiver was still pressed against my hot ear. I realized I hadn't gotten his phone number after all.

A few days later I was leaving school with my friends when I saw Winter's VW Bug pull up and park in the loading zone.

He got out of the car. I watched as Staci went to him with a confident smirk and hair toss.

She stepped in front of him and put her hand on his arm. He spoke quietly to her and then moved his arm away. It was a cool day and he had on gray Levi's cords and a white, long-sleeved thermal shirt under a hooded sweatshirt. He looked up and even from that far away I could see how blue his eyes were. He was looking at me.

Staci watched him as he came over to me. Suddenly, I noticed how short she was, even in her superhigh platforms. She didn't even bother to toss her hair. She just walked away.

“Weetzie,” Winter said.

I looked at Lily and then at Bobby, trying to figure out what I was supposed to do.

“I have to go to the 7-Eleven,” Bobby said. “Slur-pee withdrawal. We'll meet you at your house in like an hour?”

“Yeah,” Lily said.

They walked away. Shit.

I started to follow them—“Guys!”—but Winter stopped me.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Why do you care? You've been acting like you don't even know who I am.”

“Will you let me give you a ride home? I want to explain it. Please.”