Chapter 4
“Ah, come on in, you guys hungry?” I say cursing myself for not heating up the pizzas by now. Forgetting everything. All I have to offer is warm Red Bull and frozen pizza. Party fail.
“Nah,” Adrianne says, examining the spider, the huge nemesis of black boas and blown-up creepy spider-i-ness winces at her touch. Like it knows something about her. Something bad. Like it doesn’t want to be near her.
Ally sort-of knife punches her stomach with her fingertips when Adrianne turns down the offer. Something Ally unconsciously does all the time now when she gets nervous. Which is almost like every other second. And it’s kind of creepier than the spider because she uses her fingertips as a gauge to check and see if she’s gained a gram, or whatever the smallest most miniscule amount is, since the last time she knifed herself with her fingertips. I look around at all the peacocks, well, the girls anyway. They don’t look like they eat much pizza.
“Did you bring it?” Adrianne asks Hayden.
Hayden nods and reaches into his leather jacket and slowly pulls out a long, narrow black package wrapped in a purple-and-black bow. A big purple-and-black bow. And I generally don’t think of putting purple and black together but all of a sudden they are my two favorite colors. Peacocks are the kind of people that do exactly the right thing. Even unexpected things.
“Roxie,” Adrianne says my name like she’s casting a spell or is in-character as either my mother after she finds me wearing make-up for the very first time, or the Wicked Witch of the West. “We brought you a little present, but you can’t open it until we say so.”
Ok. A group present is cool. Especially from a bunch of peacocks. But now I can’t take my eyes off the present. I want to know what’s inside. I have to know what’s inside. Bad. Until I stare into Hayden’s eyes. I shake a little when I take the present out of Hayden’s hands. He makes me think about peacock mating rituals.
You don’t know about peacock mating rituals?
They are as amazing as the creatures themselves. Peacocks have long, shiny tails that cover more than sixty percent of their body. They fan their pretty feathers to attract females in a dating dance, or peacock mating dance. Yeah, that’s what I said. They do a dating dance. Cool, huh? I love to dance. I’d love to see peacocks dance to Techno.
Experts think females, which are called peahens––blech––pick their mates based on size, color and feather quality. Feathers are big in the peacock world. Very. Big. Peacocks typically have blue and green feathers with patterns at the top that look like eyes. The peacock spreads his feathers and struts his stuff to charm his beloved peahen. I guess hair is a lot like feathers. Hayden has the best hair. So it’s no wonder I’m attracted to him because of the color and quality of his hair.
Peacocks aren't the only ones in the wild with interesting mating rituals. Male hippos fling their poop to romance their ladies. Mosquitoes sing to females with their wings. And some scientists say dinosaurs. Yeah, right? Dinosaurs had fancy dating rituals. Pterosaurs, a kind of flying lizard, attracted girlfriends with magnificent bulging chests, showing off their sail-like wings and stretched-out skin. I’m kind of doing the same thing in my belly dancing outfit.
“You guys going to give me a hint?” I ask when I realize they’re all staring at me, waiting for me to say something. Anything. Like, maybe thank you. But, I’m a little too flabbergasted to say thank you. A little to wound up in the worlds of mating rituals to notice how not-like-a-peacock I am. Especially when I’m not really sure what is inside the purple-and-black ribboned box.
It’s not like I’m shallow or anything. I know I should just say thank you, but the spider is super creepy and it makes me feel creepy and so do the flying pterosaurs in my mind and their stretch-out skin over boney, veiny wings and I just want to be sure that the thing in the box is a good-kind-of-gift, not a joke-kind-of-gift, or worse, a lame-kind-of-gift before I thank them. That it isn’t something condescending or something they re-gifted because, not being a peacock I’d never know I got dissed anyway. I blame my inability to utter a freaking word on the creep-factor of Halloween. Otherwise-sane people do lots of bizarre things because of the creep-factor of Halloween. And I blame it on not trusting peacocks, not totally. Not yet.
“No. It’s your birthday. It’s got to be a surprise,” Adrianne says smiling. Her surprisingly mousey brown eyes shift to Hayden’s green ones. I never noticed Adrianne’s mousey brown eyes before. I wonder if Hayden notices my jade eyeliner.
Romulus laughs. Yeah, I know. It’s kind of a big name for a kid who isn’t even a teenager yet. He’s sort of dark dork. Dark hair, dark eyes, he likes dark clothes, even in summer. So Romulus is sort of perfect for him.
Peacocks never have regular names. Peacocks are never regular. They don’t wear regular clothes. They don’t say things in regular ways. And, they always have new ways to torment the unregular. The non-regular. Well, you know what I mean. They are all Adrianne and Hayden and Marissa and Romulus and Yad and Evie and Ferdinand and Sebastian and Arianna and Kelsey. Ann and Sue and Tim are for anti-peacocks. If your mom picks those names when you’re born, forget it. You’re doomed. At least mom was a little bit cool along with being a little bit wild–which I had no clue about until the belly dancing costume. I have an X in my name. So you can’t rule me out of Peacockdom. I have a sort-of peacock name. And the best part is that I have dirt on Mitch. And peacocks always have dirt on people, especially their brothers. That’s probably the first two rules of peacocks. One, they never have regular names. And two, they always have dirt on people.
“Where’s your dock?” Hayden asks, most definitely the polar opposite of Romulus. Hayden’s gorgeous even when he’s all sweaty on the soccer field. I mean there are people like that. They call them peacocks. And, unlike Romulus, even in the winter it looks like the sun shines on Hayden. I think I noticed that in fifth grade. Before middle school.
“Huh?” I say because I’m too blown away by Hayden actually talking to me to process what he says.
Adrianne holds out her iPhone and shakes it. “Your dock?”
Ally elbows me. “Oh, yeah, I’ll get it,” I say like I actually own one and won’t have to break into Fort Knox to get my brother’s. I mean at least Mitch isn’t home, but still. Adrianne rolls her eyes. She’s thinking I should have thought of that before––that being music, what is the single most important thing to kids who go to Oakdale Middle School, at least what I always thought was the single most important thing to kids who go to Oakdale Middle School. Especially by the look in Adrianne and Marissa’s eyes when she said dock. Marissa is Adrianne’s twin in pretty much every way down to the perfect skin and size 0 jeans.
So, I creep upstairs knowing how hard it’ll be to get my hands on the dock. Mitch has all things electronic and computer for that matter and if he knew I’m about to walk into his lair to try to retrieve his precious dock he’d definitely kill me.
But I don’t care. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll shudder at the smells I’ll be smelling, that is if I’m able to break the code. Mitch is preparing to be Homeland Security Czar and has everything in his room on lock-down. At least that’s what Brian tells me and I have to take his word for it since I haven’t been in Mitch’s room since I was two. And even then it grossed me out. Clothes freaking everywhere. I’m no Queen of Clean, and neither is Ally, but Mom and Dad are and Mitch had old food and dirty plates and there was always this smell. Blech. This horrible smell. It worked. Mitch is a freaking genius. I never wanted to go in his room ever, ever again.
But this is different. This is about me and my new peacock status and nothing is going to get in the way of that. Nothing. I don’t even bother with Mitch’s room because he has the same lock on it that our garage door does and there is no way I’ll guess the combo. No. Way. So I pray Brian has the dock in his room. No luck.
Brian is oddly neat. I have no idea why. Because of the two of my brothers, if you look at Brian you’ll just think his room
is messy. And when you look at Mitch you think his is clean. I can’t explain it. That’s just the way it is. And it is easy to spot all the stuff in Brian’s room because most of it sits on the shelf that rings it––baseball mitts and baseballs, piles of magazines, science notebooks, Star Wars and Star Trek characters, miniature antique cars, airplane models, books, books, and more books, and fishing stuff.
I let out a sigh. Of course I can’t find a simple piece of technology that will make my party. Of course I didn’t think to swipe the dock before the party started just like I am having a party and didn’t think about my costume. Costume. Did the peacocks even wear any? I swear I didn’t even notice. Note to self––try and not be completely lame the next time you have a party. It took me thirteen years to have this one, who knows how long it will be before I have another. Especially if my brothers get home. Especially if I get caught with Mitch’s dock in my red-hot hands. Especially if my parents find out what’s happening here tonight.
“Get a freaking grip, would you?” I say to myself. I have to try to punch in numbers to get into Mitch’s fortress. And if I’m lucky, and if it’s my turn to be a peacock, then I’ll break his code. I try to be totally Zen about it. Not that I know a lot about Zen. Zen isn’t as big in the suburbs of Chicago as it is in, oh say, the Redwood forests of California. But I like the idea of Zen. It seems natural. A wild thing. Not suburban at all.
I looked Zen up one time on the Internet and found out––As a matter of tradition, the establishment of Zen is credited to the Persian or South Indian prince-turned-monk Bodhidharma, who came to China to teach a "special transmission outside scriptures, not founded in words or letters.” Which is crazy, like talking with your mind or something. It creeps me out. If Zen isn’t with me, then I’ll be destined to live a life of obscurity from now through the end of high school since my party will totally blow. I tap random buttons on the keyboard lock on the wall beside Mitch’s bedroom door. I begin with the numbers you might think I’d enter, his birth date, but as I press a few random numbers the door gives way when I lean into it. Mitch hadn’t even closed it. He hadn’t even locked it. Mitch has lost his mind.
What would Mitch have to do on Halloween night that would make him one––take Brian, and two––leave his bedroom door unlocked so I could steal whatever I wanted? I take two steps into Mitch’s bedroom and gasp. He’d entered his black-slash-stainless-steel period. Everything all James-Bond-cool and clean, amazingly clean. Just-wiped-down clean. Doesn’t-want-to-leave-any-evidence-behind clean. Only a few t-shirts and a pair of sweat pants lay on the floor by his unmade bed, but that’s beyond-clean in Mitchland. And there, on his huge computer screen, what he uses as a TV, is a picture of––Adrianne’s sister? Yes. Lola’s picture sits on the TV screen. She’s splashing in a pool in the smallest red bikini I’ve ever seen. Mitch and Lola. No way.
I grab the dock and thank the Peacock God of Popularity and Mitch for leaving the door unlocked and giving me my shot at having a decent birthday party. I stop at the door and take another look at Lola––her long blonde hair, her I-don’t-need-to-buy-any-makeup beauty, her straight white teeth and perfect body. Just like Adrianne. They could be twins. And, speaking of twins, that’s when I notice. Judging from Lola, Adrianne will probably be the most popular girl in our class, because girls with big boobs usually are for at least a while. If what happened to last year’s eighth graders is any indicator.
I look down at my chest. Beyond flat. And that’s when I notice the room doesn’t smell like I remembered it used to, a combination of last week’s meatloaf and farts. It smells like perfume, but not perfume. It smells like Dad, but not like Dad. A bluish cologne bottle sits on Mitch’s desk. Right by a crumpled paper bag which is right by the dock. I read the label. Cool Water. Really? I grab the paper bag wanting and not-wanting to know what’s inside. I un-crinkle the bag which is totally, disappointingly empty, except for a small receipt. I pull it out and see in black-and-white what I know from the smell. He has a date. I know he has a date. But, why would Mitch take Brian?
I get the heck out of there clutching the dock. I pull my ipod out of my back pocket and search for my technodancefantasyparty playlist and press play. My playlist is equal parts techno and 80s. Weeks before I made all the invitations, I made a mix of my favorite party music, lots of dance music. I made my invitations to the mix. I knew, I just knew that all the peacocks would love my music.
I jump down the staircase like Mitch did on his way out of the house to go on his date with Lola and Brian. I totally lose it because that whole idea is so funny, Lola and Mitch and Brian all on a date together. I hyena my way back to the kitchen where the peacocks and Ally are. They’re already dancing to Ferdinand’s rapping. I flip the oven to 425 degrees and pray. I pray that the pizza will be ready right away. I had no idea that peacocks rap, but I didn’t really know any personally. I knew from listening to Mitch and Brian and Mom and Dad that assumptions can be wrong. I am the Queen of Assumptions. It’s hard not to have them, especially when you’re twelve.
Ally sighs at the sight of Mitch’s dock and swarms to my side. When I slam it down she whispers, “I can’t believe it. You know? We’re here with Adrianne. Yeah, that Adrianne, and they all gave you a present.” She smiles.
I look around the room at each and every peacock to examine their costumes. Only none of them are in costume and all look darker than normal. Gothier, not that they are ever goth at school. Not that I even know anyone who’s a goth. I mostly just read about it in magazines. And see them in movies, Edward Scissorhands is my favorite movie goth. All the peacocks have the white pasty skin and the red, red lips and the heavy-duty black eye makeup. It makes my little belly dancing outfit look so met you at the church choir-ish. So unpeacock-ish.
I smile at Ally, not wanting to say anything because I know that Adrianne will overhear because peacocks have powers of hearing that flabbergast most people. I know the longer I talk the more Adrianne will know how blown away I am that she is in my house. I cue up my technodancefantasyparty playlist and press play and my heart skips a beat. I know that this one thing––pressing play on my iPod––could make me a peacock or not. The Cure’s Lullaby is the first song in the mix. I love hearing the song. I’m getting a peacock-vibe because Ferdinand loves it. He and I dance out into the dining room then into the foyer by the spider. A bunch of the other gothic peacocks dance out there too. They all ask what the name of the song is, super into it. I have this big smile on my face.
Ally stands next to Adrianne and they mirror each other all on the edges of everything. Standing just inside the dining room glaring, all cocked heads and zombie stares. Ally doesn’t dig the world of peacocks like I do. And from the look on Adrianne’s face, I guess some peacocks don’t like when dodos evolve into peacocks. But then Hayden walks over and starts dancing with Ally. I sort of know Ally’s OK with it by the way she moves even when Hayden gets closer to Ally than she’s ever been with a boy before.
Adrianne is a much jerkier dancer. I thought peacocks didn’t make those kind of geeky moves. I thought all peacocks knew how to dance. But she’s a spaz. I hyena again knowing I’m actually better at something than a peacock. Than the peacock. Marissa and Romulus get their hands on our trick-or-treat candy and when the doorbell rings. They both run to open the door.
Christian and Evan stand just outside the door. They’re my age and live on my street and I’ve known them forever, but because they aren’t peacocks, I didn’t invite them. And when I see their ambushed eyes I feel mean. So incredibly mean.
“What’s your name?” Marissa asks them. One thing about peacocks, you are pretty much invisible unless you’re a peacock. It’s like they are blind to all other species. Note to self––is there another animal in the wild that does the same thing? Blind to the inferior?
Evan doesn’t say anything when Marissa asks his name again. Romulus reaches into the plastic pumpkin she holds and he grabs like ten Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup
s and says, “Go for it bro. Did you know we’re eating chocolate so fast we won’t have any in twenty years? Better enjoy.”
And that’s funny because my aunt who’s like thirty-something got all bummed out about the same thing last week because she said there won’t be any chocolate when she goes through meno-something. My mom laughed her butt off. Apparently women go through this phase when they’re all grown up. This time where they can’t sleep and they drink lots of wine. I googled it but couldn’t find anything like it in wild animals.
Christian just stares at me behind his Freddy Krueger mask and then his eyes shift to my present. I know it’s Christian even though I can’t see his face because that’s how Evan and Christian are. They never go anywhere without each other, kind of like me and Ally. “Happy Birthday, Roxanne,” Christian says. And when he says my real name, not Roxie, like everyone calls me at school, it’s like it breaks some sort of spell. I hear feedback on my iPod. It rattles me.
“You know him?” Adrianne asks like peacocks should never even talk to trick-or-treaters our age. And then I get this little, awful feeling inside. When The Cure’s Why can’t I be you plays, I feel sick to my stomach. I walk to the still-open door and before I close it all the way, I watch Christian and Evan walk down my driveway and over to my neighbors. I don’t really want to be a teenager all of a sudden. I sort of want to trick-or-treat forever.
“It’s time,” Adrianne says. Hayden presses stop on my iPod and the whole house goes quiet.
And that little, awful feeling inside gets worse. The one that doesn’t want to be a teenager. I want to ask Adrianne what it’s time for but I don’t want to sound stupid, especially as I’m more and more unpeacock-like––knowing trick-or-treaters our age, with a name like Roxanne. Not wanting to be a teenager anymore.
Hayden says, “So, where can we go that’s dark. Very dark.”
“The attic,” I say unable to stop myself. I mean why would I say the attic? It’s creepy up there and I hate dark places. I really hate dark places. I still sleep with a night light on. I’ll be the only girl on the planet to lose her virginity with her night light on. For real. Not like that will happen anytime soon. But still.
“Perfect,” Hayden says. It might be the spider or the black light. It might be the fact that the black light shines this creepy whiteness on Hayden’s smile and makes him look a lot less like a peacock and more and more evil, like The Peacock from Hell. It’s the first time his hair doesn’t have that sunny-glow to it. The glow I first noticed in fifth grade. And all of a sudden I start coming down with a bad case of Pavophobia, fear of peacocks. Or, at least fear of their presents. What else could they have gotten me but something that might mess with me.
“Which way?” Adrianne says picking up the purple-and-black present. She walks one way and then another, searching the room, glancing over her shoulder. Jittery, as if she expects to find something or someone in the shadows, in the corners. Freaked out. With a million things to do and she’s only just remembered. Very star-nosed mole.
“If I were you I wouldn’t go up there,” I say sounding spooky and a lot less peacocky than ever, thinking about how cold it is up there this time of a rainy night, knowing there’s all kinds of things up there that aren’t things peacocks should see. I’ve never been in the attic at night.
“If I were you I would,” Adrianne says. She clutches my present tight and parades out of the foyer through the dining room. I follow. She puts her hand on the doorknob of the kitchen door. The door that leads to the garage. The garage that leads to the stairs that lead to the attic. She opens the kitchen door like she’s Ally and knows exactly how to get to the attic. The other peacocks follow right behind Adrianne. Ally and I are the last ones in the peacock parade.
Ally tugs on my arm, she doesn’t want to be last one up. I don’t either. We tell each other that with our eyes. Neither of us likes the creepy all-eyes-are-on-you feeling we get in the garage on our way up the green-carpeted staircase. The garage is creepy enough. There’s all this space and just a small window for light and everything echoes. Super creepy. I mean in the summer when we come home from the swimming pool and we hang our swimsuits to dry on hooks that Dad hammered in even with our height, the garage is warm and fuzzy, well as warm and fuzzy as it can be in a stainless-steel-soft-boiled-egg kind of way. But at night, before the rise of the moon, it’s creepy. I feel along the wall and turn on the one light we have above the staircase to the attic.
I have to make sure they don’t go into the garage-side of the attic. Because that’s where all of Mom’s old wild clothes are, hanging above all Mom and Dad’s wild things. But Adrianne beat me, and she’s already inside.
“Wait, you have to be careful,” I say choking on my words, sounding like my mom. Very un-peacocky.
“This isn’t about being careful,” Adrianne says and then I think I know why they came. They want to kill me and use me as a peacock sacrifice. Wait until the full moon rises and then kill me and sacrifice me. Kill me and sacrifice me. That’s all I can think about. And I don’t know where Ally is. I can’t see or hear her. And I shiver from the cold.
“Come on. It’s your birthday. And since your birthday’s on Halloween, we thought we’d do something special. Something creepy.”
Hayden closes the door to the attic behind us and reaches into one of the side rafters beside me. “What have we here?” He holds up a bottle of something.
“No idea,” I say knowing and not-knowing who would have put a bottle like that up here. Maybe Hayden brought it with him. He twists the cap off and takes a swig from the bottle. He spits it out. One itty-bitty part of his spit hits my cheek. I want to hurl.
“It’s time to sit in the circle,” he says. I shuffle-walk over to Ally and it’s the fourteen of us. Twelve official peacocks, Ally, and me.
Adrianne lights a big, round white candle and puts it in the center of the circle. She sits right across from me. The glow from the candle haunts all of our faces. She spreads out her fingers on her right hand and holds it in front of her like we’re about to learn about the number five, so that I can see her palm, then she places her hand, her fingers still all spread out, over her heart on the left side of her body and says, “You all must swear the Oath Of Secrecy. What we do here never leaves this attic. Never.” She puts her hand in the middle of the circle and every one of us puts our fanned-out right hands on top of hers.
“Never,” we all say together.
Hayden hands the present to me. “Open it,” he says, super-serious.
Now that it’s time I rock the present in my hands, not sure how I feel about secrets. Like I’m scared of them or of the present or my own attic. I’m not scared, that’s what I tell myself. I’m not scared. It becomes my new freaking mantra and fights to replace the kill-me-and-sacrifice-me one that just went through my head before we all sat down. I keep telling myself I’m not scared, even though it’s a lie.
I rip the purple-and-black bow off the box and toss it into the circle. Ferdinand picks it up and places it over my head like my grandma used to do at Christmastime. I miss my grandma and I kind of wish my brothers were home for the first time in my life.
I tear open the black box and pry off its lid. And there, cushioned in white fluff, is a blue glass bottle, shaped kind of like a genie bottle. The glass glows in the box, in the candlelight and the more I stare at it, the more it looks like there’s some sort of light dancing inside the glass, making it brighter and bluer. The harder I focus on the tiny light inside, I can see there is something stuck there, inside the bottle. Long and white.
“Place the bottle in the middle of the circle,” Adrianne says, her skin paler and her eyes wider than before, her boobs rise and lower faster with her every breath. She said to put the bottle in the middle of the circle in that creepy-trance voice witches do in Halloween movies. I can hear the voice of the guy doing the voice over for the trailer of my life, [read: like the roach motel commercial guy meets Jason] TH
E PEACOCK HALLOWEEN