Zippered Flesh 2: More Tales of Body Enhancements Gone Bad (27 page)

“What’s worse,” Les continued, “is that not only will this not keep that jerk off your back, but now you’ve put yourself in a position where you have to
date
Stephanie Watts, and for a girl who’s probably desperate, God knows what she’ll expect you to do for her.”

“What do you mean?”

Les sighed. “Put yourself in her shoes. Imagine you’d never been with someone.
Ever
. And then some guy asks you out. Wouldn’t you be eager to get as much as you could from him just in case you’re never that lucky again?”

Dean grimaced, waved away a fly. “I never thought of it that way.”

“I don’t think you gave this much thought at all, hombre.”

“So what do I do?”

“What can you do?”

“I could tell her I can’t make it.”

“She’ll just pick another night.”

“I could just
not
call her. That’d give her the hint, wouldn’t it?”

“Maybe, but I get the feeling once you give a girl like that the slightest hint of interest, she’ll dog you to follow through on it.”

Dean ran a hand over his face. “Shit.”

“Yeah.” Les put a hand on his shoulder. “But who knows? Maybe all that pent-up lust’ll mean she’s a great lay.”

“Christ, Les, lay off, will ya? If I go through with this, it’s just gonna be a movie, nothing more.”

“If you say so,” Les said, and laughed.

“Who are you calling?” Dean’s mother stood in the doorway, arms folded over her apron. A knowing smile creased her face, the smell of freshly baked pies wafting around her, making Dean’s stomach growl. The clock in the hall ticked loudly, too slow to match the racing of Dean’s heart.

“Well? Who is she?”

Dean groaned. In the few days since he’d asked Stephanie out it seemed the world was bracing itself for the punch line to one big joke, with him at the ass end of it. More than once, he’d approached the phone with the intention of calling the girl and telling her the truth and to hell with whatever she thought of his cruelty. But he’d chickened out. Trembling finger poised to dial, he would remember the flare of hope he’d seen in her eyes and hang up, angry at himself for not being made of tougher stuff, for being weak. It was that weakness, both mental and physical, that bound him to his obligations, no matter how misguided, and made him a constant target for the fists of life.

“Just a girl from school,” he told his mother, to satisfy her irritating smile. He hoped that would be enough to send her back to the kitchen, but she remained in the doorway, her smile widening, a look of
there’s my little man, all grown up
on her face.

“Did you tell your father?”

He shrugged and turned away from her. Frowned at the phone. “Didn’t know I had to.”

She said nothing more, but a contented sigh carried her back to her baking and he shook his head as he picked up the phone. They were always in his business, to the point where every decision he made had to be screened by his own imagined versions of them before he did anything. It angered him, made him sometimes wish he could go live with his Uncle Rodney in Pensacola, at least until he went to college and was free of their reign. But Rodney was a drunk, albeit a cheerful one, and Dean doubted that situation would leave him any better off than he was now. Overbearing parents was one thing; waking up to a drunk uncle mistaking you for the toilet was another.

Shuddering, he jabbed out the number he’d written down on a scrap of paper after using Stephanie’s address (he knew the street, not the exact location, but that had been enough) to locate
Julie & Chris Watts
in the phone book.

Perspiration beading his brow, he cleared his throat, listened to the robotic pulse of the dial tone, and prayed she didn’t answer.

“Hello?”

Damn it
.

“H-Hi, Stephanie?”

“No, this is her mother. Who’s speaking, please?”

The woman’s voice sounded stiff, unfriendly and he almost hung up there and then while there was still a chance. After all, she didn’t know his name, so he couldn’t be ...

Caller I.D.

Damn it
, he thought again and told her who he was.

“Oh, yes. Hang on a moment, please.”

Oh, yes
. Recognition? Had Stephanie mentioned him to her mother?

A clunk, a rattle, a distant call and the muffled sounds of footsteps. Then static and a breathless voice.

“Hi. I wasn’t sure you’d call.”

Me neither
, he thought, but said, “I said I would, didn’t I?”

“So we’re still on for tomorrow night?”

There was a challenge in her voice that he didn’t like. It was almost as if she was daring him to back out, to compose some two-bit excuse and join the ranks of all the cowards her imperfection had summoned.

“Sure,” he told her and cursed silently. His intention had been to do the very thing she’d expected, to back out, to blame a family illness on his inability to take her out. He’d already come to agree with Les’s assessment of the situation, and figured it really was a case of
damned if you do, damned if you don’t
. Whatever happened with the girl, Fuckface Freddy had no intention of stopping his persecution of Dean. That would be too much fun to abandon just because he’d shown some balls in asking out the school freak. Now, not only would he suffer the regular beatings, he’d also have school rumor to contend with. Rumors about what he’d done with the scarred girl.

“You still there?”

“Yeah.” He closed his eyes. “So, when should I pick you up?”

The night was good to her.

As she emerged from the warm amber porch light, Dean almost smiled. In the gloom, with just the starlight and the faint glow from the fingernail moon, she looked flawless. And beautiful. So much so, that he was almost able to convince himself that she was not marred at all, that the scars were latex makeup she wore as protection against the advances of undesirables.

But when she opened the door of his father’s Ford Capri, the dome light cast ragged shadows across her cheek, highlighting the peaks and ridges, dips and hollows, and his smile faded, a brief shudder of revulsion rippling through him. He felt shame that he could be so narrow-minded and unfair. After all, she hadn’t asked for the scars and he should be mature enough to look past them to what was most likely a nice girl.

Christ, I sound like my mother
, he thought and watched as Stephanie lowered herself into the seat, her denim skirt riding up just a little, enough to expose a portion of her thigh. To Dean’s horror, he felt a rush of excitement and hastily quelled it.

You’re being an asshole
, he told himself, but it was not a revelation. He knew what he was being, and how he was feeling. He’d become a display case, his shelves filled with all the traits he would have frowned upon had someone else been displaying them. But it was different, and he realized it always was, when you were an outsider looking in. Here, in the car with Stephanie, he was helpless to stop how angry and disgusted he felt. It was just another event in his life engineered by someone other than himself, and that impotence made him want to scream, to shove this ugly, ruined girl from the car and just drive until the gas ran out or he hit a wall, whichever happened first.

“Hi,” she said and he offered her a weak smile. Her hair was shiny and clean, her eyes sparkling, dark red lipstick making her lips scream for a long, wet kiss.

Dean wanted to be sick, but figured instead to drive, to seek distractions and end this goddamn night as soon as possible. He could live with the whispers, the speculation, and the gossip forever, but he needed to end the subject of them sooner rather than later.

“So where are we going?” she asked when he gunned the engine to life and set the car rolling.

He kept his eyes on the street. Dogs were fleeting shadows beneath streetlights; a plastic bag fluttered like a trapped dove on a rusted railing. A basketball smacked the pavement beyond a fenced-in court. Voices rose, their echoes fleeing. The breeze rustled the dark leaves, whispering to the moon.

Dean’s palms were oily on the wheel.

“The movies, I guess. That okay?”

In the corner of his eye, he saw her shrug. “I guess.”

“We don’t have to, if you have something else in mind.”

The smell of her filled the car, a scent of lavender and something else, something that filled his nostrils and sent a shiver through him that was, alarmingly, not unpleasant.

“Maybe we could go down to the pier.”

“What’s down there?”

“Nothing much, but I like it. It’s peaceful.”

And secluded
, Dean added, and remembered Len’s theory on what she might be expecting from him.

“Sounds kind of boring to me,” he said then, aware that it was hardly the polite thing to say but wary of letting the night slip out of his control.

To his surprise, she smiled. “I used to think that, too.”

“What changed your mind?”

“I don’t know. The fire, maybe.”

Oh shit. It was a question he knew everyone in school wanted to know, that he himself wanted to know: How did you get those scars? And now it seemed, she would tell him.

“The fire that ...” he ventured and saw her nod.

“My brother started it. Funny.”

“What was?”

“That he set it trying to kill me and our parents, but he was the only one who died. Hid himself in the basement thinking the fire wouldn’t get him down there, and he was right. But the smoke did. He suffocated. I burned.”

“My God.”

She turned to look at him then and, in the gloom, her eyes looked like cold stones, the light sailing over the windshield drawing the scars into her hair.

“Why did you ask me out?”

He fumbled for an answer she would believe but all responses tasted false.

“Someone dare you?”

“No.”

“Threaten you?”

“Haven’t we already been through this?”

“That’s not an answer.”

“I told you: No.”

“Then why?”

“Because I wanted to.”

“I don’t believe you.”

He rolled his eyes. “Then why are you here?”

Another shrug and she looked out her window. “I’m hoping some day someone will ask me out for real. Until then, I’ll settle for trial runs. When you look like I do, being choosy isn’t an option, even if you’re almost certain you’re going to end up getting hurt.”

“Hell of an attitude,” he said, but understood completely, and both hated himself for being exactly what she suspected and pitied her for having to endure the callousness of people.

People like him.

“Maybe. I figure it’ll change when I meet someone who doesn’t think of me as a freak.”

He knew that was his cue to say something comforting, to tell her
I’m not one of those people
, but he was afraid to. It would mean fully committing himself to her expectations and they would undoubtedly extend far beyond this night. It would mean selling himself to her and that was unthinkable because, in reality, he was everything she feared—just another guy setting her up for heartbreak, and as guilty as that made him feel, it was still preferable to making her think he was really interested in her. Neither were palatable options, but at least there was escape from the former.

“I don’t think you’re being fair on yourself,” he said instead, and silently applauded his tact. “I think you look good.”

She snorted a laugh, startling him, and he looked at her.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she replied, but kept looking at him, even when he turned to watch the road; even when he found himself angling the car toward the pier; even as he felt his own skin redden under her scrutiny. The smell of her was intoxicating, the remembered glimpse of thigh agitating him, a persistent itch somewhere deep beneath the skin.

This is a dare
, he reminded himself when he felt a faint stirring in his groin.
I’m only doing it because I don’t want to get my ass kicked through the rest of high school. And never in a million years would I have asked her otherwise, and why the fuck is she still staring at me?