Dead Spell (4 page)

Her mother forbade her to see Harmony and prom was one of the only easy end-arounds.

“So, prom?” he asked. “Leaning one way or the other?

She shrugged. “I’m still thinking about it.”

7
.

The morning air was cold enough for Harmony to see her breath. She suppressed her claustrophobia to join the crowd of walkers huddled in the Reston High vestibule. She was elbow to elbow with far too many people, borderline hyperventilating, and sick of getting knocked around by unknowing persons’ backpacks.

She took a few deep breaths and looked at the clock. The bell should have already rung.

Something was wrong.

A police cruiser parked out front and an officer pushed his way inside. She tried to make sense of the growing student buzz, but her ears were ringing like at the onset of a panic attack.

“Excuse me.” She struggled to gain ground on the others. “Come on, move it! I’m going to be sick.”

As she got to the front of the pack, the bell rang and she booked it.

All eyes were on her, or at least it felt that way. She opened her cell and dialed.

“Come on, Brea, answer”

The phone just kept ringing.

She turned into the senior hall and hit a student wall.

Two disciplinarians, the principal, the assistant principal, three cops and a narcotics dog were waiting for the Head Janitor to open her locker.

She slipped inside the unlocked cleaning supply cabinet and watched through a small crack as the bustle heightened.

Brea walked past with “Abercrombie” and that bitch Rachael Warren at their heels. She was yelling something Harmony couldn’t hear and Jaxon seemed to be holding her off.

Harmony dialed again. “Come on, Brea, answer.”

Pete Mackey grabbed Rachael by the arm and pulled her away from Jaxon. Their conversation slowly became clear.

Brea was a bit ahead of them and turned her back to the crowd. Harmony saw the top of her ponytail.

 “What did you do now?” Brea said.

“Oh, thank god. What do you see?”

“See? I can barely see anything. Why are you whispering? Where are you?”

It was hard to concentrate with Pete and Jaxon arguing right outside the door and Rachael wailing, “How could you?” over and over.

“I’m around. Look, there’s nothing in there. I swear it.”

Jaxon was in her sightline, blocking her view of Brea. “Listen,” he said to Pete. Rachael had already walked away. “It’s for my old man. Brea’s mother wants her away from that freak show Harmony and I told my dad I’d handle it. In return, he gets the all clear on his rezoning. Her mother’s the head of the town planning committee. He gets a project green lit, I get a new Audi. Everybody wins. Just stay off my back about it and be nice. Can you manage that?”

Harmony did all she could to keep from gouging his eyes out with her nails. She stifled a growl.

“Harmony, are you there?”

“Yeah, I’m here. I have to get lost for a while. I’ll see you tonight.”

The first period bell rang and the few that moved cleared a path enough for Harmony to see the sizeable Principal Reilly holding up his infamous pink slips.

“Everyone, get to class.
Now.
”

There were grumblings and a few anonymous profanities, but the crowd broke up. Through the thinning herd came the pop of the combination lock finally pulling loose.

The cop went straight for her backpack and the dog’s reaction was unmistakable.

Whatever they were looking for, they’d found it.

8
.

It was 2:00 a.m. and the Pinewood Estates trailer park was quiet except for the low hum of The Cure still playing in the living room where Harmony and Lance’s escapade started. She lay next to him on the floor-bound mattress trying not to feel like a cheater.

She shook her cutting-scarred leg loose from the tangle of sheets and twirled her dyed hair between her fingers.

You’re supposed to be different. Better than this place,
she thought and yet here she was, 17 years-old, seducing a drug-dealing tattooist into free art and about to steal his car.
Just like her mother.

 
It was a truth that was hard to swallow.

She covered her breasts and reached across Lance’s naked tattooed chest for the half-smoked joint in the ash tray next to him. His long, brown hair spilled out on the pillow behind him and his mouth hung open. He was knocked out cold, drugged on the sleeping pills she crushed in his drink.

She pinched the joint between her lips and inhaled, tracing her black lacquered fingernail over the ladder of wounds from her elbow to the new tattoo he inked on her wrist: “Summerland”—
the Wiccan equivalent of heaven.

 
It took him almost two hours to get the lettering perfect and more than twice that long to convince him to do it. Her skin was swollen and red beneath the clear plastic covering and it burned, but pain she was used to.

She considered her explanation to Adam, how she got the tattoo without money or her mother’s consent, and quickly decided she owed him nothing. She had never agreed to be exclusive and him saying, “I love you” didn’t obligate her.

She snuffed the joint on the ash-stained crate Lance used as a nightstand and sat up, the threadbare carpet scratching her bare feet.

“F.M.L.,” she said turning on the top light of the tree lamp.

She pulled on a pair of thigh-high argyle socks and tall leather boots that just about covered them. The zipper caught at the inside of her right calf and she sucked in a hissing breath through her teeth. “Shhh…”

Lance twitched and rolled over. His back was scratched from shoulder to hip and there were tiny specks of dried blood on the sheet beneath him. She checked in the mirror for marks of her own—wrists, neck, back: all clear.

“Sleep tight,” she whispered and put on his Iron Maiden tee-shirt, a micro mini, and his coat that reeked of stale smoke and patchouli.

She wanted a hot shower now more than ever. It had been days of cold ones, and unless her mother reinstated the electricity, tomorrow would be no different. She picked up his car keys and her cell phone off the dresser and went outside to dial.

“Brea, it’s me.”

“Harmony? It’s two-thirty in the morning.” Her voice was distant and groggy.

“Your phone on vibrate?”

“Yeah, don’t worry. You didn’t wake her.”

Joan, Brea’s mother, was a notoriously light sleeper.

“Good. Grab your case and meet me out front in fifteen.”

“Wh…”

She hung up before Brea had the chance to say “no” and climbed into the driver’s seat of Lance’s old Grand Prix. The cool leather seat felt good against the post-coital soreness and she let out a relieved sigh.

The shellacked wood of the old Ouija board on the passenger’s seat next to her gleamed in the streetlight
.

She took an unopened pack of menthols from the glove compartment and lit one, pulling up to the first stop sign before turning on the headlights and blasting the death metal as loud as she could stand it. The right rear speaker was blown and hummed like angry bees. A fat man, one of her mother’s regulars, looked up at the sound, his knuckles raised to bang on the trailer door.

“Maybe now she’ll pay the bill,” Harmony said and pulled on to Route 32, keeping an eye on the rearview for cops.

9
.

Brea groaned, rolled out of bed, and stuffed two pillows under the comforter as a decoy. Her reflection in the full-length mirror looked too tired to be familiar. Bruise-like half circles underlined her slate blue eyes and her hair stood on end.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this again.”

This was the second time in a week that Harmony had her sneaking out of the house and she wasn’t up to another hike; five miles in darkness, her feet so cold they felt frostbitten.
No, thank you.
Words she hadn’t said to Harmony in ten years of friendship no matter how much her mother wanted her to.

She put on a pair of Capri-length sweatpants and a hoodie and felt between her box spring and mattress for the art portfolio and charcoal tin she used to do the gravestone rubbings they called “rubs”. She leaned the stiff leather bag against her bed frame and tucked in the loose pages spilling from the strained zipper.

They had been going to Oakwood Cemetery for the past two years and she’d collected almost every headstone, some of the older ones twice. The old keystone style was her favorite.

Her cell phone vibrated in her sweatshirt pocket and she jumped. It was a text message from Harmony that said she was outside. Brea pressed her face to the window and saw the unfamiliar car parked curbside.

“Oh, no.”

Harmony clicked on the dim dome light and waved from the driver’s seat. The look on her face said trouble.

“What did you do now, Harmony?”

Brea rolled her eyes and adjusted the long portfolio strap so it rested diagonal across her chest. She lifted her bedroom window so as not to wake her mother and stepped out barefoot on the roof. Shoes would be slippery. She pushed the screen back in place and shook the loose shingle gravel from her numbing feet. The strap of her bag cut into her shoulder as she swung over the guttered ledge to a knotty Oak branch overhanging the roof, and down to the grass where she put on her flip-flops.

Harmony waved frantically as if to say, “hurry up” which only made Brea more nervous.

“God, I’m coming.” Cigarette smoke rolled out of the passenger’s side door like fog. Brea coughed and put on her seatbelt. She didn’t even ask whose car it was. Wherever it came from, she didn’t want to know.

Harmony lit the cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth off the butt of the previous one. “Dragon Lady sleeping?” She reached across the seat for a hug.

Brea turned her head away and tried not to breathe as she hugged her, cracking the window an inch afterwards and sucking in the cold, clean air. She looked up at her mother’s darkened bedroom window and shrugged. “Looks like it.”