Velveteen (5 page)

“Renata?”

“Yeah. Her. She sang ‘The Star Spattered Banner.’ ”

“ ‘Spangled’?” Velvet offered.

“Whatever.” Luisa crinkled her nose in Renata’s direction. “With that lisp, it’s hard to tell.” She brightened as though just remembering something awesome. “You also missed Kipper trying to get Quentin laid, and irritating the shit out of me in the process.”

Luisa slouched back in her chair, and Velvet noticed the apple-cheeked boy with a smug smile that curled on his face so intensely that his nose flared out like a bull’s. He was a thick kid with linebacker shoulders and a crazy mop of comb-resistant hair that he always had to blow out of his eyes. Gary Kipness—Kipper to his friends—part-time Salvage trainer, mercenary, and resident gay playboy, was also a smart-ass and a horn dog and about to be the lucky recipient of Luisa’s famous “knuckler.”

His smirk turned into a grimace as the little girl pounded her fist into his thigh. “Dayum!” Kipper sang, rubbing his leg and glaring at Luisa. “What was that for?”

A satisfied grin spread across the little girl’s face.

Kipper had been busy poking Quentin in the ribs and stabbing his thumb in the direction of someone across the room.

Quentin, eyes shielded by a sleepy worn-down expression and a mop of straight hair that seemed to always fall in his face as well, nodded in Velvet’s direction before wincing forlornly back across the room at whomever he was mooning over that week. Quentin was constantly crushing, which was odd, considering he was totally girl-phobic and would break into the most entertaining panic attacks at the mere mention that someone was looking at him.

“Glad you could join us,
Velv
.” Kipper leaned around and winked lasciviously. Despite his faults, he could be great fun, he never seemed short of a smart-alecky comment, and he was Quentin’s best friend, so Velvet decided she wouldn’t kick him until he stopped moving.

She grunted a response instead.

“I’m just sayin’. We hate to miss your bright cheery personality.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Velvet said, and turned her attention to the lanky redheaded kid, who held his face in his palms. “Is he bugging you, Ginge?”

Velvet rarely teased people directly unless they were close friends. She never saw the point of making fun of strangers—how could you possibly know enough about them to hit below the belt? Quentin she knew, and she was always up for ribbing her favorite redhead. Though out of the daylight, his was, like so many, a head full of gray hair.

“I’m not ginger; I’m strawberry blond,” Quentin mumbled, and peeked through his fingers, eyes wandering back across the room.

Kipper followed his gaze. So did Velvet.

And was surprised to see that the girl he was pining for was sitting next to the most horrible girl in Collections. And not just an ordinary lackey—no. Velvet resisted the urge to hurl. Quentin’s crush was Shandie, Isadora’s lapdog in a top hat.

Figures
, she thought.
Guys always want what they can’t have
.

Always.

Quentin was the undertaker on Velvet’s Salvaging team. It was a crappy enough way to spend one’s time—raising the dead could be quite messy—but worse than that, an undertaker didn’t have a chance with a Collector. It was a matter of principle. Sure, you could argue it shouldn’t be that
way; the Salvagers (of which an undertaker was a unique and deified member) and Collectors did some of the same stuff, after all. The Collectors Collected things—clothes, junk, lofi appliances. The Salvagers Salvaged things—souls, spirits, banshees, problems. But one team (the Salvagers) did get more attention than the other, and that left the Collectors noticeably bitter.

So, so very bitter.

Throw into the mix that the undertaker in question was super shy. Quentin couldn’t string together enough words for a sentence when he was around a girl he liked. As long as Velvet had known the guy, he’d been stricken. This one time, she’d witnessed Quentin go full-on panic attack when Mandy Murdock winked at him. Velvet had nearly had to talk him down from a ledge on that one. In the end, Kipper had simply snatched him back to reality like a rag doll.

“Dude!” Kipper prodded now. “Just go talk to her. What’s she going to do, bite?”

Quentin’s brow arched hopefully. “Maybe?”

Luisa chuckled. Velvet shook her head.

“Listen,” Kipper continued. “If you don’t get some release soon, those blue balls are gonna go nuclear. Kaboom!”

Quentin groaned, his head dropping to the table. “Shut up, man.”

When he looked up, the glare from his embarrassment broke through the ash on his cheeks like otherworldly freckles.

Velvet watched as Kipper opened his mouth, preparing for another volley against the poor kid, and she decided she
couldn’t take it. She reached behind Luisa and flicked him on the ear. “Knock it off, Kipper.”

The mop-topped boy leaned forward, chin resting on his steepled index fingers like some mob consigliere. “You know, you could use some, too, Velvet. A boyfriend, I mean.”

Luisa gasped but smirked wildly in Velvet’s direction.

Kipper went on, pouting sympathetically, she guessed. “You seem so lonely.” He shrugged. “And maybe you wouldn’t be such a bitch.”

“Maybe it’d make me a bigger one.” She launched over the table and slugged his arm. “Besides. You’ll have room to talk when you snare your own man.”

Kipper stiffened. His mouth dropped open and he spat out an incredulous laugh. “I get plenty,” he said defensively. “Besides, you don’t get to make those comparisons, Little Miss I-Don’t-Wanna-Be-Tied-Down.”

“Yeah,” Quentin mumbled, not at all convincingly.

Velvet huffed, shook off their ridiculousness. “Shut up already. If I need your advice, I’m sure I can find it on a bathroom wall … along with your number.”

“Are you callin’ me a slut?” Kipper glanced back and forth among the group. “Is she calling me a slut?”

Nods. All the way around.

Velvet shrugged. “Like that’s news.”

“Oh,” Kipper said, as though it had just occurred to him. “I really am a slut.”

Luisa piped up, slamming her fist on the table. “Hey! I wanna be the slut!”

Quentin nodded. “Me too.”

Velvet leaned into the table, eyes passing from each member of her team, except Logan—

Luisa’s twin brother sat on the far side of Quentin, barely in the circle at all. His eyes shaded beneath a less than menacing golf visor, Logan shuffled a dull and dog-eared deck of cards like a Vegas shark. The little boy, smaller than his sister and wiry, wore his black hair short, and it fell forward to a widow’s peak that made him look like the littlest vampire. Occasionally he would make gestures toward souls across the room, the kind that gave away his true age, his thumb crossing his throat in a slow slice like a mob enforcer.

He glanced in Velvet’s direction and nodded politely.

Velvet winked back. A rougher version of his sister, Logan would find himself in some sort of brawl by the end of the night, she was certain, but she couldn’t help liking him despite his violent tendencies, or possibly because of them.

“It’s settled then,” Velvet said, giving the group her most serious gaze. “We’re all sluts.”

They burst into the kind of laughter that friends manage when lost in a moment, the kind that draws stares and jealousy. When Velvet saw Isadora’s group scowling in their direction, she was forced to flip the girl an abrupt and forceful middle finger.

She had no choice.

Kipper drummed his palms on the table, grinning, biting his lip and nodding to the music—Bart Penney had taken up a spot at the lectern, barely singing along to some Joy Division song. It didn’t seem to matter to Kipper, who danced in his seat and pointed at the guy like he was a bona fide rock
star, instead of the house paper stacker. “Bart! You freakin’ rock!”

The boy on the stage winced, but kept mumbling into his toilet paper roll microphone.

Typical Kipper. Making everyone feel comfortable.

It’s not like Velvet was a nun, by any stretch. She was interested in boys, probably just as much as Kipper was, or maybe a little less. It’s just that they never seemed to stick around. She was dead certain she wasn’t suited for relationships. Just couldn’t keep up with them. Velvet got into too much trouble. It was a gift. If she weren’t dead, she’d be in juvie.

She didn’t need to look at Quentin again to know he was still gazing like a deer in the headlights at Shandie. And sure enough, the conversation hadn’t wavered, either.

“She’s not completely hideous,” Luisa said, squinting as she assessed the object of Quentin’s affection from their vantage.

“Yeah,” Velvet said, taking a peek at the girl, too. Shandie was regaling Isadora and her group with some highly dramatic tale that involved flipping her sideways ponytail like she was having a seizure. “Too bad she’s infected with Isadora’s personality herpes.”

“She’s gorgeous.” Quentin spoke so softly, Velvet almost thought she’d imagined it.

Normally she’d have had to continue to make fun of him for a while, just to maintain the balance of power, but the boy sounded so sincere, and he was, after all, her second in command. So Velvet let it slide.

“You want me to talk to her for you?” Velvet offered, and she would, too, despite exposing herself to the contagion of Isadora’s lackey. That’s what friends do, she guessed.

But instead of being thankful, Quentin’s eyes went wide with horror. His hands shot out as though Velvet were coming at him with a knife. “No! No! Promise me you won’t. Promise!”

“Fine,” she said, shrugging. “I promise.”

Kipper shook his head, kicked back in his chair, and made with a smoldering expression for the benefit of a cute boy standing against the far wall. The boy caught his glare and furrowed his brow, apparently confused. That was probably Kipper’s hope anyway. Confused suited him, he’d once told Velvet. Kipper broke into a laugh that sounded a lot like a seal barking. When Quentin looked at him, Kipper snapped back to the action, pantomiming a nuclear explosion coming from his own crotch.

“I’m tellin’ ya,” he said. “Kaboom!”

Quentin’s head hit the table.

Velvet had every intention of shaming Kipper in the harshest possible way, but just then a bell rang from the direction of the stage.

Bart Penney wrapped up his rendition of “Transmission,” and the room quieted. Miss Antonia, the Salvage mother, shut down a conversation with her cohort from the Collectors, the pinch-faced and always eager to humiliate Mrs. Connie Lawrence. Looking at the woman’s snide expression, Velvet couldn’t help but see exactly where Isadora inherited her venom. What was the expression? Like mother, like daughter.

Miss Antonia strode across to the lectern, looking every bit the prison warden in a gray skirted suit, her hair in a tight bun revealing a neck so long that it reminded Velvet of one of those modern mannequins, the ones that sometimes don’t have a head.

Miss Antonia had a head, of course.

And huge nearly white eyes that blazed like headlights into the dimly lit courtyard. She curled her long fingers around the top of the lectern and set her glowy gaze on Velvet.

Too
intently.

She was staring, even.

Velvet nodded politely in return. It didn’t bode well to get on the bad side of one of the dormitory mothers, especially the one that was supposed to be on the side of the Salvage team.

“Thank you! Your voices are improving.…” Miss Antonia’s eyes narrowed as, from across the room, Bethany let out a squeal of delight, Renata beamed, and Bart roared and pumped his fists into the air. Then she added, “Marginally.”

Renata’s lips curled into a sneer while Bethany, as dumb as ever, continued to clap her petite hands together as though she’d been bestowed top marks. It’s possible Bart hadn’t heard the slur against his vocal prowess. He was busy choking his girlfriend, Courtney, with his tongue. He seriously looked like he was going to eat her.

So. Gross.

The Salvage mother cleared her throat. “It’s time to choose your storyteller. Bring in”—she paused and then, with a sinister hiss, said—“the Box.”

A cold dread fell over Velvet.

Sure she’d had to sing. Her favorite was “Candyman.” It had that right blend of creepy and aggressive that Velvet didn’t mind promoting. She even did her hair like Siouxsie Sioux when she had to perform, and she already had a black enough wardrobe to do any Goth proud. But since arriving in purgatory, through luck or some miracle, she’d somehow managed to avoid telling the tale of her death. Even she thought it was too weird that she hadn’t yet had to tell anyone. What were the odds?

But she was happy to sing rather than tell her story.

Ecstatic, in fact.

Quentin had stuttered through a short version of his own tale once, a pathetic account of falling on a metal rake at a track meet. Logan seemed to enjoy telling all about the Halloween car accident that had taken out his sister and him in a squealing melee of metal and gore. And despite being the most outgoing person Velvet had ever met, Kipper had been mortified when he’d been forced to admit in front of everyone at salon that he’d died by choking to death at the Nathan’s Famous hot-dog-eating championship.

The kicker: He hadn’t even been a contestant.

But Velvet’s tale was far more horrendous than any she’d ever heard, and she’d often wondered if, once called, she’d end up making up something completely false and possibly humorous just to avoid revealing her wounds. She’d much rather, especially since she’d spent so much time pretending she didn’t remember.

It was just better that way.

Grant Cheever, an awkward Collector kid, shuffled across
the stage carrying the simple pine box with the lottery of names inside it. It reminded Velvet of the Shirley Jackson story about the town that picked a human sacrifice in much the same way. Not that she could compare her fear to being stoned to death. There was no comparison.

Velvet’s was totally worse.

Anyone could die. That was natural.

There was nothing natural about recounting the specifics of your own brutal, ritualistic murder for entertainment purposes.