Short Bus Hero (18 page)

30. Enosiophobia /
ē-nah-sē-ə
-
fōˈbē-ə
/
fear of having committed an unpardonable sin

A
lly sits in her room,
playing with her Barbies on the floor.

“It’s so sad,” Window Cleaner Barbie screeches as Ally holds her up and wiggles her. “I’m really going to miss Jason.”

“Yeah, me, too,” Ally says. She’s trying not to cry. She’s spent more time crying this year than she has over the past ten years. She wonders if other people who win the lottery spend a lot of time crying.

“Too bad you guys never got…got…married,” Window Cleaner Barbie says.

“We…we…we still could.” Ally imagines herself in a flowing white gown with pretty sparkling beads woven into the bodice, and a poofy white veil hanging low over her face. Then she pictures Jason, in a black tuxedo with a red bow tie, lying cold and blue in a silk-lined coffin. The image makes her want to scream.

“But then you’d have a dead husband. What do they call that? Being a window?” Ah, Barbie, you dumb blonde bimbo. Barbie is such an evil concept to push on little girls—if you’re thin and blonde, it doesn’t matter what job you have, Ken is always there for you to fall back on. Heck, do every job there is—you won’t have any job security or health insurance from all that job hopping, but, that’s okay, Ken’s got your back.

“A wi-wi-
widow
. And don’t you say that to me again!” Ally launches Window Cleaner Barbie over the bed and into the hamper on the other side. Her tiny squeegee flies out of her dainty hand and lands under the dresser.

“Don’t listen to her,” naked headless jobless Barbie says in a deep and raspy voice, not unlike the one I used to talk to Stryker that night in his Vegas hotel.

Lois cracks the door and pokes her head in. “Ally?”

“Yeah?” She peeks over the bed.

“Is someone in here with you? I thought I heard a strange voice,” Lois says, looking around Ally’s tiny bedroom. A strange and familiar voice.

“No. I was just…playing Barbies, that’s all.” She smiles at her mom, beautifully mascaraed eyelashes fluttering. She’s very well-groomed these days. Quite a turnaround from the Christmas nightmare that had scared the party guests. She and Lois visit the day spa once a week for facials and mani/pedis.

Lois steps into the room and sits down on Ally’s bed. She looks at her daughter and, for the first time, really sees the lines that time has etched into her fair skin. Ally is not a child anymore. Lois remembers the lost baby teeth, the pee-wee soccer matches, the cuddling. She wonders what the future holds. Everything feels upside-down and wrong lately. That cursed money, she thinks.

“You want to talk about anything, kiddo?” Lois ruffles Ally’s hair. Ally smoothes it down. She hates it when Lois treats her like a baby.

“Nah, I’m good,” she says. She’s really not good, but she doesn’t know how to articulate her complex state of mind. Trying will only cause her mother to worry, so she’d rather not say anything.

“Are you sure? There’s been a lot going on. I think you’re keeping a lot of stuff inside.”

Ally doesn’t speak for a moment. She looks at the beaded lampshade on her bedside lamp. She looks at her hands, thinking she needs to pick up some moisturizer one of these days. “Yeah,” she finally sighs. “I guess…I don’t know.” She does need to talk. She can’t keep it all locked in the wasteland of her head. “Mom, why did Stryker leave?”

Lois bites her lip and lets out a sigh of her own. “I don’t know, honey. You know, we can still ask the police to find him. He did steal your money.”

Ally frowns. She doesn’t want her friend to get into trouble. And I told her to let it be. It was only half a million dollars (it still felt funny to them to think of it that way). She would give so much more if only he’d come back and wrestle. “No, I don’t want to call the co-cops. I have a fee-feeling he’ll come…he’ll come back.”

Lois doesn’t know why, but she has that feeling, too. As much as she thinks she doesn’t like Stryker, there is something undeniably
good
about the man. He is worth saving, she thinks. Call it hidden potential.

“Mom?” Ally looks up at her and puts her hand on Lois’s knee.

“Yes?” She strokes Ally’s hair, tucks a lock of it behind one thick ear.

“Is Jason going to die?”

Ouch.

Lois had known this would be on Ally’s mind. She’d been wondering when Ally would ask her about it. How do you tell your child that her very best friend is definitely going to die? That one day, she’s going to wake up, and he won’t be there anymore?

“Yes, honey, I’m afraid he is.”

“Is he really mad at me for buying the VNO?” Jason hasn’t spoken to her in days. He won’t come to the phone when she calls, he won’t come out of his room when she drops by his house. It hurts her.

Lois smiles a wistful little smile. “No, he was just confused and he needs a few days to get over it. Didn’t he know that vampires weren’t real? I thought he knew that. What did he talk about when you watched
Twilight
together and stuff?”

“I think he used to know they’re n-n-not real. But, now, he’s s-sc-scared. He told me that we could be li-like Edward and Bella.” Ally grins, but she feels broken inside. She starts to cry. Lois pulls her up to the bed and rocks her.

Both feel that unique human hurt.

I want to help, but I don’t know how. When I was human, I never knew anyone who died. Just me. I’ve seen it enough in my current form, but it’s not the same experience. I’ve become numb to the whole thing. Not that I don’t care when one of my charges dies, but I haven’t been this attached to a human and their mortal existence in a long time.

It’s okay, though.

Ally is going to be fine.

* * *

As her friend lies dying in his bed, Ally stands ringside and watches Raven deliver a theatrical elbow drive to Winston Halston’s chin.

“No, no, no,” one of the managers yells from the corner. “Come on, Raven, do it like you mean it. Winston, you gotta, like, jump back, you know? Make it look like you ran right into it and are, like, bouncing off. Really sell it, dude. Okay, do it again.”

As they set up to run through the move again, someone approaches Ally from behind, swiftly and soundlessly.

Rough hands cover her eyes.

“Hey!” she shouts. Stuff like that scares her. And she’s so nervous lately, everything startles her.

“Guess who,” a falsetto voice sings.

“Um, I don’t know,” she says, not even trying. It’s probably Kevin.

The hands drop from her eyes and spin her around.

Stryker.

Ally squeals and jumps into his arms.

“I heard you might have a job opening for one sorry motherfucker,” he says, squeezing her. Her arms tighten around his neck and he feels like he’s home.

Lois clears her throat from behind him.

He puts Ally down and gives the frowning Lois a sheepish look.

“Lois, hi.” He tries smiling at her, but when it doesn’t soften her features, he lets it fall. “Listen, I know I’ve, um, I’ve got some ‘splaining to do.” He chuckles, but again lets it die as Lois remains stern, her arms folded across her chest, staring daggers into Stryker’s jitter-bugging eyes.

“Where have you been?” Lois asks.

Stryker clears his throat and looks around the mostly empty Igloo. “I, uh…” He sighs, not knowing how to apologize, since he’s never done it before. There had been a time in his life, a long time ago, when he should have apologized, but he hadn’t had the balls. He had taken the easy way out and ran. It’s time to make up for that. “I made a mistake. A big mistake. I went to, um,” he swallows hard. “Huh. I went to Vegas to see if I could get into the WWC.”

She knows. It’s been all over the television and internet for the past few days. Ally was excited for him and sad when Murray wouldn’t offer him a deal. Lois hadn’t been as supportive. She shopped. She drank. She avoided Ally’s questions about whether or not Stryker would return.

“Where’s the money?” Lois knows he doesn’t have it, but she wants to hear him say it. Ally looks away, concentrating on the rehearsal in the ring. The VNO has a big event in the Mellon Arena tonight. It will be their biggest event to date. Ally spent gobs of money on advertising, and it paid off—they’re playing to a sold out house.

“Yeah, the money,” Stryker says, looking at the grey concrete floor. “I, um…most of it’s gone, Lois.” He looks into her eyes. She sees, as clearly as I can, the naked sorrow and regret he feels.

“I never meant to hurt you. Or Ally. God, that’s the last thing I ever wanted to do,” he says, huffing. “I just thought—”

“You thought?” Lois interrupts. “No, you did not think. You may have assumed, you may have hoped, but you most certainly did not think.”

Ally plugs her index fingers into her ears and sings to herself as she watches the wrestlers in the ring. She’s glad to see Stryker. She was shocked and more than a little disappointed to hear that he had gone to Vegas, but she understood. He just wants to be a big wrestler. She’d like him to be one, too. Maybe he doesn’t think she can help him. But she knows she can.

I know she can, too.

“My daughter wanted to help you. She won three hundred million dollars and all she wanted to do was help you. And you ripped her off. How could you, you bastard?” Wow, Lois never swears.

“Lois, please, I’ll make it up to you, I promise.” Stryker’s eyes fill with tears. “I’m so sorry. You have to believe me. I’ll do anything, please.”

Lois looks at Ally, who is giving her puppy-dog eyes. She wonders how they can ever trust this man again.

I whisper to her that he is worth saving.

I don’t know if she hears me.

Testing, testing, one, two, three.

31. Hemophobia /
hē-mō-fōˈbē-ə
/
fear of blood

F
ifteen thousand fanged
black-clad fans pack the Igloo for the Vampires Night Out Steel City Slaughter. White banners streaked in red declare “Suck Me, Amadeus!” and “Bite Me First!” Bauhaus’s “Bela Legosi’s Dead” roars from the house sound system. The entire scene is an unholy mixture of goth and redneck, and it is destined to become the hottest show in America.

Borne down the aisle by a horse-drawn funeral carriage, Amadeus Belarus leads a sizeable cortege to the glass-walled ring. Cheers erupt as he emerges from his casket and climbs on the carriage’s roof, fanning the flames of reverie with his silk cape. A hail of white roses rains down on him, launched by his screaming fans.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” Belarus shouts. “Tonight, I drink from the champion himself. Tonight, the hunter becomes the prey.” He throws back his head and lifts his arms to the rafters, soaking in the shrieks of adoration that pierce his ears.

The music comes to an abrupt halt, the lights dim, and the crowd falls silent. A white spotlight holds the entrance to the locker room tunnel. There appears, as if by magic, VNO champion Lestat Graves. He wears mirrored aviator sunglasses and a tight outfit made of black leather. He strides silently to his corner of the ring, never taking his eyes off of his opponent. He climbs into the ring. The Plexiglas is shut tight behind him, sealing off the crowd from any stray blood-borne biohazards.

“My good people,” Graves addresses the crowd, pulling off his sunglasses, revealing eyes made blackened swirls by designer contacts. “It is with great pleasure that I introduce to you the VNO’s new owner and CEO, Miss Ally Forman.” Graves points to Ally as she stands at a table next to the ring. Her wet eyes and protruding tongue glitter in the spotlight as she climbs up on her metal folding chair, giving the crowd the old rock and roll horns. Graves blows her a kiss and she receives a standing ovation from the audience. “Because of her, we are here with you. Get your garlic necklaces ready, Pittsburgh—we’ll be coming here more often than is safe for you mortals.” The audience shrieks and howls and stomps and claps.

Ally is helped into the ring. It is her turn to address the crowd for the first time. She is so nervous that she worries she might wet her pants, but she tries not to think about all the people watching her. Ally is the best thing that has ever happened to the VNO. It shot from regional freak show to national phenomenon after the news of her buyout broke and she wowed the national talk show circuit. This match is being televised by a big cable network, the one that normally carries the WWC fights.

“Hello, Pi-Pittsburgh,” she shouts, smiling down at the mat before scanning the ocean of painted faces. “Thank…you for c-coming. T-t-tonight is gonna be…great!” She is deafened by the cheers. She sticks her fingers in her ears until the din dies down. “I want to…to…to dedicate tonight’s fight to my…my fee…fiancé, Jason. He has leukemia and is sick tonight, but I…want him…to know that…,” she takes a deep breath, “Ilovehim.” She blushes and looks at the canvas. The crowd chuckles and whistles. She waves to them all before being shown back to her ringside seat. She’d personally wave to every single person in the place if they hadn’t shut her down.

Jason watches from his hospital bed at UPMC. He asks his mother to turn it off after Ally has spoken. He wishes she wouldn’t call him her fiancé anymore. He’s still upset about her buying those useless fake vampires. He does miss her, but he isn’t in the mood for her or her theatrical shenanigans.

More and more often, he isn’t in the mood for much besides sitting still and staring off into space.

He knows what’s coming.

I told him.

So he won’t be afraid.

I don’t think he believes me, though. Or, rather, I don’t think he believes
in
me. Since there are no vampires, he thinks, there can’t be any such thing as angels. He thinks I am a voice from inside his own head, one that his subconscious has invented in an attempt to make himself feel better about dying.

That gets me wondering about priests and nuns and other people who are “called” by God. Do they ever think they’re just hearing voices, like a crazy person?

Huh.

* * *

The VNO debut is a fight is like no other the world has ever seen. Wires, invisible to the crowd and the cameras, give the wrestlers the gift of flight. They battle each other in a graceful ballet, set to ancient music and chants. It’s like that French circus thing gone horribly wrong.

And the people love it.

Especially the blood.

I still don’t care for the whole vampire thing, but that’s just me.