Pink Smog (9 page)

After we went swimming she was shivering and her face looked bluish so I wrapped her in a towel and we went back upstairs.

Lily took a shower and I gave her a terry cloth sweat suit to wear and then we all lay on my bed and cuddled and I made them listen to Janis Ian singing “At Seventeen.” Lily and I had tears sliding down our cheeks while Bobby made fun of the song—ugly girls bemoaning the lack of love that beauty queens owned—but he did so only halfheartedly.

Finally, he said, “‘At Seventeen'? How about at fucking thirteen? Man.”

“Not enough syllables,” I said. “But otherwise it's perfect.”

Lily nestled closer into my arms. She felt like a bony ten-year-old.

“I like being part of this club,” she said.

Bobby laughed and blew a sugary pink bubble with his gum. “The Blowhards,” he said.

When we got to school the next day it looked as if Staci Nettles had been initiated into our club, too.

On the wall where our names had been was written:

STACI N. IS A HORE

Sic. Casey or Jeff or Rick or all three of them couldn't even spell it right.

When I saw Staci in class it looked like she'd applied too much blusher and she had a startled, blank look in her eyes. The expression seemed wrong on her, unfamiliar, like if she'd suddenly dyed her hair a different color. I wanted to do something—laugh in her face or tell her I was sorry or remind her that being mean sucked but it didn't seem like any of the options were right so I just sat quietly and avoided looking at her while everyone else snickered, just as they had at me after my fifteen minutes of graffiti fame.

But when I ran into her in the hall I couldn't help asking if she was okay.

“What do you think?” she snarled.

I wasn't sure what she meant by that. Did she mean,
Of course I'm okay. I'm always okay
, or
Would you be okay if someone called you a hore (sic) in twelve-foot letters?

Even pretty, popular girls got brutalized in junior high. I thought they were immune.

Blow.

Dick.

Blow.

Chunks.

Blow.

Job.

Blow.

Hore.

Sic.

Sick.

Suck.

It sucked being us.

W
hen I got home from school that day (Lily and Bobby were home sick with colds from our swim in the rain, still innocent to the news about the new graffiti), Staci Nettles was there. For a second I thought she had come to see me. Had she realized the error of her evil ways after what she had been through?

I jumped behind a post and watched her. There were a few stray flecks of mascara on her smooth, tan cheeks but otherwise she looked as perfect as ever.

I was still standing there, staring at her shiny, watermelon lip-glossed mouth like a geek, wondering why she had come, when she passed by me and went up the stairs.

To Winter's.

Was she seeing Winter? Was she seeing his crazy sister? His mother? I wanted to barge in behind her and confront all of them, ask Purple Eyes what she was up to with my dad but instead I ducked behind the staircase and heard Staci knock on the door. The dogs barked. The door opened. Winter answered. I could hear him telling the dogs to be quiet.

“Hey,” Staci said in her lushest lip-glossy voice.

There was a pause. Then Winter said, “Yes?”

“How's it going?” Staci asked.

“Can I help you?” Winter sounded cold and I felt relief inflate my narrowed chest.

“Is your sister here?”

That was all I heard. The door closed and with the sound, my chest deflated again.

I ran around to the back stairs and found the bathroom window from which I had escaped before. It was open. I climbed up on a crate and tried to listen but I couldn't hear. So I went around to the front.

It was time to visit Winter.

I knocked. The dogs barked again and I tensed, remembering the way they had looked when they were about to attack. At this point what lay inside those walls was more dangerous than having three vicious dogs sicced on me. There was the danger of my useless crush on Winter. There was the danger of Staci Nettles, who, for some reason, was visiting him and might come between us in some way. There was the danger of the girl with the laugh. There was the danger of seeing Brandy-Lynn's rival in her purple pantsuit and being reminded of the fact that she and Charlie had been together once and the choking feeling of not being able to tell her what I thought about that. And there was the danger of realizing that my entire past up until that point was nothing like I thought it had been. There was the danger of having all the good memories of my father (all that I had left of him at the moment) destroyed.

I knocked again.

Winter answered, commanding the dogs to be quiet.

“Weetzie?”

I wondered why it was a question.

“Can I come in?” I asked softly.

“Sure. What's up?”

I walked into the room with the purple couch and tried not to stare at the photographs, looking for another one of my father. The dogs whined at me from their fancy beds. I wondered if they really could smell all the fear on me like perfume or sweat.

“We can go into my room,” he said. “It's a mess, though.”

He pushed some clothes aside off the bed and gestured for me to sit. Then collapsed into a pile of limbs on the floor and looked up at me. I was having trouble breathing. It was weird to be here for the reason I was, trying to figure out why Staci had come, but it was also weird to think that I'd been here before, without his knowing. The smell of him on the sheets felt too intimate and I almost got up and left.

“You okay?”

I wanted to say, “What do you think?” but I didn't.

“Um, can I have some water or something?”

“Sure.” He left the room. I leaned my head against the wall and heard voices through the thin plaster.

Staci was saying, “Will it work?”

The other voice replied, “Did it work before?”

“But that was a love thing.”

“It'll work.”

“Because I want him to suffer.”

There was a long silence, some rustling. Then the other voice said in a low growl that seethed and buckled with hatred, even through the walls: “I know.”

I shivered with a sudden blast of cold as if someone had put on the air-conditioning, thinking of the Barbie dolls in their ropes and blindfolds, their necklaces of bones. Fee Fi Fo Fum.

Winter came back into the room with a glass of water and a bag of Cheetos.

I stood up. “I got to go,” I said. “You guys have company.”

“No. Annabelle has company.”

“Oh?” I tried to sound as innocent as possible. “I thought I recognized the voice?”

“You know her. Staci something. That girl from your school. They do some kind of weird girly shit in there. Don't ask me.”

“The one who put gum in my hair you mean. The pretty one.”

He shrugged. “I guess so.”

It felt as if he'd slapped me. But at the same time I knew that reaction was wrong. What did I want from him? To deny she was pretty. To say he was sorry he let her in because she'd been mean to me. I was still acting like he owed me something, even though he'd been the one helping me. But I couldn't stop the feelings taunting me like Staci herself whispering in my ear.

“I don't think Staci Nettles would appreciate it if she knew I was here,” I said.

“You can't worry too much about what people like that think.”

I knew he was trying to be nice but I got up anyway.

“Weetzie?” His eyes were soft as the velvet of his mother's couch and his tone had a hint of something I wanted to believe was melancholy—or should I say, melancholy that had something to do with me. I wanted to stay with him but I knew I couldn't. I was just a charity case. Maybe he wasn't falling for Staci Nettles but that didn't mean he was interested in me, or that he'd ever think of me as more than a sad little girl. I should never have knocked on his door. Now not only was I reminded that Winter would never like me the way I wanted him to, would never
like
like me, but I also knew that Staci and Annabelle were trying to make another person suffer, not to mention the fact that I was in the home of my mother's rival, who I still didn't have the guts to confront. Great.

“See ya, Winter,” I said as casually as I could, as if I were tossing off a cap that I really wanted to smash down on my head and never remove.

Casey Cassidy wasn't at school the next day or the next. I wouldn't have thought twice about it except that when he did show up, his previously perfect, tan skin was covered with oozing red welts. He was wearing a cotton hat pulled down low over his eyes and he had some kind of beigey-pink lotion dabbed on the spots. Clearasil, I thought. I'd used it but I'd never seen anyone who needed it so badly, or so suddenly. He even had a couple of small round Band-Aids stuck on.

“Gross” was the word humming through the hallways.

“Gross” and “What happened?”

I remembered him barking at Lily and me but when he passed us that day he kept his eyes lowered.

What the hell was going on?

I was bothered by it all day and I asked Lily and Bobby what they thought.

“Bad skin day,” Bobby said. “Poor baby.”

“It happened overnight.” I felt something stirring in my mind but I hadn't quite gotten there yet. “Staci was at my neighbor's house,” I told them.

They didn't know about Winter and his sister yet. It had all seemed too weird and would involve me getting into my dad leaving, which I didn't want to do.

“Your neighbor?” Lily asked. “You have some popularity princess living in your building?”

“No, just this disturbed girl. She's really creepy. Staci was over there and I sort of overheard them talking.”

Bobby and Lily just stared at me. I fidgeted.

“Well?” Bobby finally said. “The suspense is killing me, Miss Blow.”

“Something about wanting someone to suffer. Some guy.”

“No shit!” Bobby's eyes looked more catlike than ever. I expected him to start purring with delight in a minute.

“So you think this weird neighbor girl and Staci made Casey's skin break out?” Lily didn't look as amused.

“I have no idea,” I said. “I just know that it's weird. Plus, this girl, she has Barbies in her room with blindfolds and pins in them and stuff.”

“Who do voodoo? Do you do voodoo?” Bobby was doubled over laughing but Lily still wasn't buying it.

“You give that girl way too much power, Weetz,” she said.

“Not Staci. The girl. Anna. Or Annabelle. Whatever. She's really psycho. One time she sicced her dogs on me.”

Bobby stopped laughing and they both stared at me again.

“Why didn't you tell us?” he asked.

“It happened before we started hanging out. She's been leaving me alone now.”

“But why would she want to hurt you in the first place?” Lily hugged her knees to her chest and shivered.

“I told you. She's crazy.” I didn't want to get into the whole thing with Winter and my dad's photo. I still didn't understand it all anyway. I was pretty sure Charlie and Winter's mom had been having an affair and that she decided to move too close and he had taken off. He and my mom were having problems anyway. He just couldn't deal with any of it. He wasn't the person I thought he was. But I didn't really know why he had left. I just knew that he was gone and the whole world looked different now.

“Well, she may be crazy but I sure wouldn't want her pissed at me,” Bobby said.

“I'm scared,” said Lily. Bobby leaned over and kissed her cheek. She turned pink as a sunset made from smog. I went around to the other side of her and we huddled together as if we could keep away the forces of evil if we stayed close enough, at least until the bell rang.

There was more that came out of Staci's mysterious visit to Winter's psycho sister than just Casey Cassidy's dermatological problems, let me tell you.

The next day after school, when I walked outside, I recognized the VW Bug before I saw him. He parked in a loading zone and got out slowly, not with the usual bounding step. He closed the door and stood in the street for a second.

A car honked at him and he startled, then shuffled up the curb and toward me.

I almost said his name out loud. I almost ran to him and asked him what was wrong.

But he hadn't come for me.

“Hey, Wiggins.”

I turned around. Staci was shiny in the sunlight, wearing tight jeans that zipped around her crotch from the front to the back, the highest platform Kork-Ease, and a shirt she had unbuttoned and tied up just below her boobs as soon as the bell rang. Her abs were tan and toned and her waist was so small Winter could have cinched it with his hands like the stretchy rainbow cinch belts that she sometimes wore.

Marci and Kelli were standing back a little ways. I'd noticed they seemed to be less attentive to her since the graffiti incident. I grabbed Lily's arm.

“What's wrong?” she asked me.

Bobby was narrowing his eyes at everybody, trying to sleuth out what was happening.

“Hi, Staci.” Even Winter's voice sounded different—heavy and thick.

She flounced over to him and stood, shifting her hips and tossing her hair. “Got a ride for me?”

She grabbed his hand, waved at her friends, and dragged him to the Bug. Then Winter and Staci got in and drove away. She stuck her hand out of the window and waved. I realized that the armpits of my nice T-shirt were damp with sweat. Had I forgotten my Secret or was I just more upset than usual? I tried to remember my morning routine. Had I reached for the roll-on or not? It suddenly seemed terribly urgent.

“Weetzie?” Bobby said, somewhere from another planet.

“You okay?” I heard Lily but she was far away, too.