Broken Monsters (3 page)

Ramón looks confused.

“They're bloodshot,” TK explains.

“Right.” He snorts out a laugh, but the envy leaks through anyway.

“You know I'd give you the shirt off my back, Ramón,” TK tries again, “but the shoes on my feet…”

“Probably wouldn't fit me anyhow.” He shuffles on the step. Which only emphasizes his soles flapping as they pull away from the bottoms of his black lace-ups.

TK sighs. Sucker. “I never did like red shoes.” Which is not true, but hell, Ramón's face brightens like a lightbulb turned on inside it. “Now get your ass inside already. You're letting all the cold in,” he says, helping his friend wrangle the shopping cart up the porch stairs.

Layla is
late for her Sunday rehearsal. Blame her mother, shaking her awake at four in the morning because she has to go out to a scene and “don't forget the code to the gun safe, beanie, just-in-case.” When she had two parents working different shifts, there was always someone home, and she didn't need a
just-in-case,
and there was always someone to drive her to where she needed to be, like rehearsals on a Sunday, because she has
a scene
of her own to get to, thanks Mom. Instead she has to wait for an hour at the bus stop, bundled up against the cold and doodling in her notebook, resisting the temptation to scribble on the bench like so many others before her. She plans to leave her mark on the world in other ways.

Doing extracurriculars is supposed to help bring Layla out of her shell. Like she doesn't know it's cheap babysitting so her mom doesn't have to feel guilty all the time. But she
should
feel guilty. It's her fault they moved downtown after the divorce, her fault all Layla's real friends live in Pleasant Ridge, which is only on the other side of Eight Mile, but might as well be a world away when you don't have a car.

She shoves through the double doors of the Masque Theater School and gallops up two flights of stairs to the main stage area. She's relieved to hear from the chanting—all echoey and strange in the stairwell—that they're still doing warm-up exercises. She dumps her bag by the door and looks for Cas—not hard in a room full of black kids. She slips in beside her, and falls in with the chorus of tongue-twisting vowel sounds that rise and fall. Mrs. Westcott raises her eyebrows, half-hello, half-friendly warning.

Shawnia leads the circle, raising her fist in the air to indicate that they're switching up the exercise. Black power, the speaking stick, all the rituals that count. They all stop dead and watch for their cue.

Shawnia starts flopping her body around, like she's having a seizure, and they all follow suit, trying to let go of their bones, making their limbs limp as tentacles. Layla flops her body forward so that her unruly curls brush the ground. (Which are not a weave, thank you for asking. She got them the old-fashioned way, from her mom, and yeah, that means she's mixed race and no, you can't fucking touch my hair, what do you think this is, a human petting zoo?)

“Couldn't get a ride?” Cassandra whispers. “Bet Dorian could have given you one.”

Layla accidentally on purpose tries to smack her. But Cas ducks, making it look like part of her movement.

“Oh no, too slow!” she whisper-mocks, both of them grinning.

“Focus, please!” Mrs. Westcott yells. She says drama came straight out of human sacrifice rituals. Some ancient prehistoric tribes used to kill their chieftain every winter solstice as an offering to the gods to ensure that the spring would return, until they figured out that killing off their smartest and brightest maybe wasn't the best way to run a society. They started reenacting the sacrifices, wearing masks to fool the gods, to allow the chieftain to return as a new man, or close to.

You can inhabit a role, Layla thinks, you can reinvent yourself. She thought she could get away with it. Whole new school year, whole new school on the other side of the city, whole new Layla.

She played the divorce card on her dad to get him to buy her new clothes to fit in with the cool kids. But it was tough to keep up the act. Like dyeing your hair blond, according to Cas. “Trust me. The maintenance is a nightmare.”

Besides, it turns out it's harder to fool teenagers than old gods. Clothes maketh not the mean girl. Eventually you're going to slip up and say something colossally dorky, like you read Shakespeare for fun.

It took a week before she decided it was too much effort and blew her cover on purpose so she could go back to wearing her usual uniform of jeans and geeky T-shirts. Hard enough being the in-between Afro-Latina, who can fit in with the white kids or the black kids, but not both at the same time. But it sucked being back where she started, on the outside, eating lunch alone in the gymnateria or cafenasium, whatever you want to call it, because like all well-intentioned charter schools, Hines High was short on funds.

That was before she made friends with Cassandra, or more likely the other way around, because, let's face it, Cas is so out of her league. She's super-hot, even though she never wears makeup, with her fine sandy-brown hair, big gray-blue eyes and freckles, and breasts that make boys do double takes. And she doesn't give a fuck about anything.

It's how they became friends, when Cas called Ms. Combrink a bitch to her face and Layla covered for her, clumsily, yelling out, yeah, she had an
itch
too. It landed them both in detention, but they got to talking and she persuaded Cas to come along to audition at the theater school. She aced it without trying, even though she sings like a frog with emphysema. Life lesson: looks plus don't-give-a-fuck confidence mean you can have anything you want—any guy, any friends. But Cas chose
her
. Which makes Layla infinitely grateful and paranoid. She's told Cas she's waiting for the day she dumps a bucket of pig's blood on her head—
Carrie
-style.

“Gross. I would never do that.” Cas was dismissive. “If I was going to humiliate you in public, I'd be much more subtle and vicious.”

But it means she doesn't push too hard when Cas changes the subject every time personal stuff comes up. It's part of what she admires about her—that Cas is unknowable. Like Oz. But unlike with that huckster wizard, you can't just pull back the curtain on Cas, because all you'll find are curtains behind curtains. It's part of her ineffable cool. But Layla can't tell her that because she'll get a big head, and she already has big boobs to contend with. It would definitely throw her off-balance.

Shawnia raises her fist again for the final exercise before they launch into rehearsals proper, the cycle of gratitude. Double-clap-stamp, around the circle. “I'm happy today,” she starts, “because…I got an acceptance letter from U of M!” Clap-clap-stamp. Everyone whoops.

Layla has her sights set further than that. When she graduates in three years' time, she's getting out of Michigan. She's not naïve enough to think she'll make NYU or Los Angeles, but there are other cities with great theater schools. Chicago, Austin, Pittsburgh.

“I'm happy today because I got a date for prom,” Jessie says. Clap-clap-stamp.

“Did she pay him?” Cas whispers and Layla tries to keep a straight face. Maybe because Jessie's the only other white kid in theater group, it's easier for Cas to pick on her. “By the way…” Cas flashes her screen at her, to show her a tweet from Dorian. “Hitting the ramp l8r. Anyone up for a skate?”

The claps continue around the circle.

“You stalker!” Layla whispers, trying to hide her delight, already calculating who she can bum a ride with to get there.

“I'm doing it for you, baby girl. For looo-ve.”

“No phones, girls!” Mrs. Westcott calls out from the stage.

“I'm happy because it's the end of the weekend,” David intones and gets answered with boos, but he just raises his voice, “which means I get to go to school tomorrow and see all my boys!” Clap-clap-stamp.

“I got a text from a boy who likes me,” Chantelle says.

“But do you like him?” Mrs. Westcott teases.

“Oh
yeah.
” Chantelle looks smug.

Clap-clap-stamp.

“I spoke to a boy I
like,
” Keith says. Clap-clap-stamp, a wolf whistle.

“My little brother made the hockey team,” Cas says. “More time at practice, less time to bug me.” Clap-clap-stamp.

“I'm happy because…” Shit, Layla has had half the circle to think of something. “I'm seeing my boyfriend later.” She flushes. Clap-clap-stamp. Saying it makes it true. Or commits her to trying, anyway.

She didn't intend to get high. But after rehearsals, hanging around watching the boys in the skate park, the weed blunted the boredom of waiting for her mother, who kept texting to say she was held up, until everyone else had bailed to go home, including Cas, and it was only her and Dorian, who kept sliding away from her, and she had to get used to it.

He's aiming for kid sister. She wants unsisterly things. It's not
that
big an age difference. She'll be sixteen in December. But he's graduated already and taking a year off, crashing on the couches of some artist-musician friends down by Hubbard Farms while he decides if he wants to go to college. “In the right light, Detroit's kinda like the new Bohemia,” he told her, passing her the joint, taking care not to brush her fingers with his. She wanted to reply that in the right light, he could be the Florizel to her Perdita, except he probably hasn't read
The Winter's Tale,
and he'd think she was even more of a dork.

He's not the only guy in her life who fundamentally doesn't get it. Yesterday's weekly scheduled phone call with her dad (like she's in prison or something) went badly, and it's been gnawing at her. She was telling him about her part in the play, the portable phone cradled to her ear, NyanCat a purring lump against her leg, and he was all hers for a moment, like they used to be. He even promised to fly out to see it if his schedule allowed, because the last live performance he saw was a bad remake of
The Little Mermaid
on ice, for God's sake.

“Yeah, how do you even skate on fins?” she said, blocking out the sound of her stepsibs squealing in the background.

“They managed,” William said, and she could picture his brow crinkling in amused horror. “It was godawful, Lay, you have no idea.”

She laughed. “Maybe that'll be me one day. The sea witch on skates.” He was supposed to retort,
Are
you kidding, you'd be the lead, honey
. And then she would feign outrage and maybe she'd go on to mention
this guy
she met. It's a comedy routine the two of them have, with established rules. But then his new life butted in, like elderly neighbors cutting the music at a house party.

“Hang on a sec, Layla. No! Julie! Do not throw food on the floor! C'mon, you know you're not supposed to do that, baby.”

“Remind me again why I have to stay in Detroit?” She meant for it to sound lighthearted, just to hook his attention back to her, but he started reeling off all the same old reasons, on autopilot.
Just till you finish high school. Your mother needs you. I need to try to make this work. It's not easy with little stepkids.

“Yeah, the last thing you want is your teenage daughter from your previous marriage hanging around to remind you of how you screwed up the last one,” she snapped. Which led to a long silence down the phone line.

“Hello? You still there?” She suddenly missed their DIY craft projects she threw out when they moved: the scientifically accurate mobile of glow-in-the-dark planets she and her dad hung together, the dreamcatcher he helped her weave when she was seven—inspired by the Ojibwa who hunted here, he told her—with dangling crystals that caught the light. She wondered what shiny bits of wisdom he was passing on to his new kids.

“Earth to Dad?” She tried for jokey.

He came back from very far away. “That was a terrible thing to say Layla. I'm really hurt.” That pleading note entered his voice, the one she thinks of as PD: Post Divorce.
Be reasonable
. “Besides, you know your mother needs you.”

“
Bzzzzz!
And that's the incorrect answer! Thank you for playing!” She hung up before he could say anything else. She waited for him to ring back. He didn't. She's not going to apologize, she thinks fiercely. Not this time.

She doesn't notice the white Crown Vic pulling up very slowly alongside the skate ramp, cruising for trouble like only cops and gangs and bored teenagers do. She's lost inside her weed-fuzzed head, intent on Dorian poised on the concrete lip in that perfect moment of potential, the street light flared behind his head in the dusk. He shades his eyes against the headlights. His beanie is pulled low over his sideburns. “Hey, Lay,” he calls out to her. “I think it's your mom.” But it's like overhearing the Iranian women gossiping at the corner store—sounds fraught with meaning that don't have anything to do with her.

He tilts his board over the edge and lets gravity have its way with him. He glides down the curve and up the other side, tracing lazy parabolas through the gray slush of melted ice. If she slits her eyes, she can almost see contrails in his wake. It's beautiful. Like art. Or music, she thinks, the zipper scrape of the wheels across the cement.

“Lay,” he arcs around, catching the trunk of the tree. His breath fogs out in a cartoon speech bubble in the cold. “Ley” means “law” in Spanish. This is her mom's idea of an inside joke.

“What?” She's annoyed with him for breaking the magic. And then the Crown Vic gives a single
whoop-whoop
of the siren, a flash of red and blue from the lights mounted in the grille. More subtle than the bubble they stick on top, but not by much.

“Crap!” She drops the joint from her fingers. God, she wishes her mom wouldn't
do
that. She slides down from the tree, super-aware of her body, her limbs like foreign objects that aren't quite ready to do what they're told. She tucks her hands under her armpits, not only to hide the smell of the weed on her fingertips, but to prevent her arms from floating off, because right now it feels like they might drift right out of her sleeves into the sky.

“Wake up.” Dorian pokes her in the ribs, totally busting her spacing out. He's laughing at her. But not in a shitty way.

“Okay, okay,” she mumbles, her face going hot. She concentrates on the ridiculous choreography of putting one foot in front of the other. Who
invented
walking? Seriously.