“They sure are spending a lot of time together,” she thought, the sudden twinge of insecurity taking her by surprise.
Pam, who was studying on the other side of the room, couldn’t help but throw an “ I told you so” look Charlotte’s way.
“Eavesdropper,” Charlotte said sarcastically, closing her book and staring vacantly ahead.
Later that day, Damen and Scarlet were in the middle of a “tutoring” session in the Hawthorne music room, only their books were shut on the floor as they traded licks on the guitar. They looked up long enough to notice that the same girls who noticed the football players noticing Scarlet were all now wearing the exact same Suicide tee that she was wearing, thanks to the indie T-shirt store around the corner.
“Call the exterminator. This place is infested with poseurs,” she said as she strummed on the guitar.
“You are an icon. Now everyone knows how cool you really are,” Damen said with a smirk on his face.
Scarlet appeared annoyed but was actually flattered. She let the comment go without acknowledgment, deciding to play it cool. To let on would be to give in to everything she detested, including, until just recently, the guy in front of her.
Damen reached into his guitar case, pulled out another CD, and handed it to Scarlet. She was more impressed with his selection this time.
“My Chemical Romance bootleg? Getting warmer,” she said, barely able to contain her excitement. He was getting more than warm with that pick. She encouragingly handed him a copy of My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless album in response, and they both laughed.
“Almost forgot this,” Damen said as the bell rang. He snapped up his Physics book from the ground and put it in his backpack.
“Yeah, wouldn’t want to forget that,” Scarlet said with a slight detection of guilt, and relief, in her voice.
Scarlet left the room for Gym class, wondering if she was getting herself in a little too deep. She decided to clear her head and enjoy this little unrealistic break where one drops everything and plays a mandatory team sport for forty-five minutes. The thing that sucked most about her class was that it was split in half, half sophomores and half seniors, as if it wasn’t demeaning enough to have to change in front of your own. The school actually managed to introduce a whole new level of humiliation. They thought it would close the gap between the student body, but all it really did was reinforce the feelings of terminal inadequacy when it came to every student’s body.
She entered the locker room and came across a platoon of her easily influenced poseurs, who had obviously studied and memorized her MySpace profile and were now decked out for the next Trash and Vaudeville convention, wearing her shade of lipstick and sporting sharp bobs, brothel-creepers, vintage rhinestone cuffs, and a smorgasbord of underground tees: The Birthday Party, PiL, Bauhaus, New York Dolls, Sonic Youth, The Damned, Sick of It All, The Creatures, BowWowWow, The Germs, and Killing Joke, to name a few. As each of the girls undressed, their shirts came off and dropped to the locker room floor, creating maybe the coolest pile of locker room clothes ever.
Ordinarily Scarlet would have been offended and lashed out at their sartorial brownnosing, but she found herself thinking about Charlotte instead. All she could think was how happy Charlotte would be to see that popular people were starting to emulate her, and how it was all because of Charlotte. Not that she welcomed that, but she knew how much it would mean to Charlotte, even if they weren’t on speaking terms.
Scarlet unzipped her gym bag, and as she rummaged through to find gym clothes—a ripped-up, gray goth is dead tee to slip over her magenta camisole, black faded shorts, and canvas Converse All Stars—she noticed the CD Disintegration by The Cure at the bottom of her bag.
“You’re burning up,” she said in triumph as she put the CD in her music player and blasted “Plainsong” on her way up the steps to the gym.
Petula wasn’t taking any of Scarlet’s newfound fame at Hawthorne very well, but she spitefully clung to the hope that it would just be flavor-of-the-month syndrome and everyone would return to their senses in short order. She had been the standard of All-American beauty for the past four years, and she wasn’t going relinquish her crown to anyone, especially her sister. Primping as usual in her locker mirror before the next class, Petula noticed the reflection of a jock in a new Goth-style football jacket, all black with circling red hawks as the logo. Next she caught the Wendys approaching. They were feeling Scarlet’s influence too.
“Spread the dread!” Wendy Anderson said dismissively as they passed Petula.
The most irksome thing, however, was not the newly acquired shiteous fashion sense of her friends and classmates; it was the reports she’d been getting back about Damen and Scarlet and their little jam sessions. Petula had been biding her time at her locker, waiting for an opportunity to confront Damen. An opportunity that was about to arrive as she saw him stop at his locker.
“I heard you’ve been slumming it,” Petula said, sidling over to him.
“What?” Damen asked.
“Do you know how this looks?” Petula asked.
“How what looks?” Damen replied, not really wanting to have this discussion in public.
Petula spied Scarlet’s CD in his locker and snatched it out with her hot pink talons.
“Oh my God, she has infected you!” Petula said, confirming her worst fear.
“Look, she’s been tutoring me in Physics, okay?” Damen said, wanting to come clean so that Petula wouldn’t spontaneously combust in the hall.
“Is that what they’re calling it in freak circles?” Petula asked.
“It’s just so I can pass my test and go to the dance,” Damen explained.
“Well, then, get another tutor,” Petula said, slamming her pump into the newly waxed floor.
“You’re paranoid,” he laughed unconvincingly.
“And you’re getting another tutor,” she said as she held up the CD.
“It’s either this,” she said, presenting herself like a second-rate Price Is Right spokesmodel in front of a new living room set, “or…,” Petula held the CD away from her body in a pinched grasp, “… this.”
Just then, Scarlet emerged out of the gymnasium and saw them arguing. She snuck around the corner so she could watch undetected. Petula continued with her ultimatum, ripping off Damen’s old varsity jacket, and threw it at him. Damen, for the first time ever, found Petula’s little tantrum more funny than threatening. Scarlet, who knew better, did not.
“You’ll be sorry,” Petula said vindictively as she walked away.
“I already am,” he quipped.
17
While You Were Out
My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.
—Woody Allen
Regret. The saddest word in the English language.
There are consequences to every action; it is just not always so obvious at the time. You never really know how things are going to work out or how you’re going to feel until afterward. Thus, regret. You may not be able to change anything, but at least you can feel bad about it. Never mind that it might haunt you for the rest of your life or, in Charlotte’s case, beyond.
Word was getting around Hawthorne Manor that Charlotte was becoming increasingly unreliable. It was now obvious that her single-mindedness and total inability to let go of her “life” had placed the Dead kids’ mission in jeopardy. The house was on the chopping block, and as far as Prue was concerned, so were their heads.
Charlotte watched from the parlor doorway as the Dead kids killed time to ease the tension they were all feeling.
DJ was spinning platters in the air, aiming the old vinyl LPs like buzz saws at Simon’s and Simone’s heads. Silent Violet sat at a desk ramming a finger down her throat like a determined bulimic, searching for her voice. Call Me Kim was picking the scabs from her head wound mindlessly as she chatted away. Suzy Scratcher absentmindedly carved “wash me” into Rotting Rita’s back as Rita grabbed at maggots crawling from her
nostrils, rolled them in her fingers, and flicked them at Mike and Jerry, who held their thumbs and pinkies up like goalposts.
“Score!” Mike hollered each time Rita split the uprights.
CoCo, meanwhile, was digging through shards of broken mirror glass, tearing her fingers to shreds while trying to piece enough together to see her own reflection.
Everyone stopped what they were doing when Charlotte walked in the room. Dead Ed was always kind of chilly, but the cold shoulders Charlotte was getting from the other kids in the parlor left her absolutely frosted.
“Hey, Kim,” Charlotte said. “Who ya talking to?”
“I’m busy,” Kim mouthed dismissively as she continued her phone “conversation” and walked away.
Charlotte turned to music mavens Mike, Jerry, and DJ next.
“Hey, what are you guys jammin’ to?” Charlotte eagerly asked. “Mind if I listen in?”
The boys were tempted to answer her, seeing as they would take any opportunity to talk about music—especially Mike, who literally had to bite his tongue—but their disappointment in Charlotte was too much to overcome. Mike removed one of his ear buds and declined.
“We’ll pass,” he said, answering for Jerry and DJ too.
“Too late, you already have!” Charlotte quipped, trying to joke her way back into their good graces. Jerry just shook his head.
“We’re Outtie,” DJ said in his best retro hip-hop lingo, motioning the guys away from Charlotte as if she had the plague.
Feeling rejected, Charlotte turned to Silent Violet and just began talking aloud to herself, using Violet as a sounding board. Violet just stared impassively.
“What did I do that was so wrong?” Charlotte whined. “I wasn’t even at the house. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”
Pam, who was on the other side of the room, couldn’t bear any more of her rationalizing.
“Take some responsibility, Charlotte!” Pam scolded, the whistle in her throat sounding loudly. “You knew enough not to get involved with the Living and not to bring your little living protégé into our world. What were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t, I guess,” Charlotte answered humbly.
“From the first second we met you’ve been obsessed with being important to people who couldn’t give a flying crap about you,” Pam said, throwing up her hands.
“If I could take it back, I would,” Charlotte confessed.
“I’m not so sure,” Pam said skeptically. “You sound like a broken record.”
DJ was right on it, providing a perfect sound effect for Pam by scratching his vinyl with a long, sharp fingernail.
By now, all the other kids had fallen in behind Pam, listening to the conversation with crossed arms and raised eyebrows.
“What do you want me to say, Pam?” Charlotte asked, her emotions, and her gag reflex, intensifying. “That I’m happy to be here while life goes on without me?”
“That was your Fate, Charlotte,” Simon said.
“Stop fighting it,” Simone added.
“No, I don’t believe that!” Charlotte responded.
“Then what?” Pam asked.
“I failed,” Charlotte said quietly. “I’m a failure. We all are.”
“Speak for yourself,” CoCo warned.
“We failed to live, and I, personally, am having a little trouble dealing with it,” Charlotte went on. “She failed to pay attention. He failed to obey the speed limit. She failed to listen. He failed to eat right!” she said, going around the room.
The hurt in her classmates’ eyes was evident, but Charlotte was determined to make her case, no matter how harsh, as much for herself as for the others.
“Living isn’t winning and dying isn’t failing,” Pam retorted.
“It is the ultimate rejection,” Charlotte said. “And I’ve had enough of that to last forever.”
“So you’ll jeopardize all our futures for your own selfish desires?” Kim asked. “What about resolution? Self-acceptance?”
“I accept… that I’d rather be alive,” Charlotte affirmed.
“Do you know why Prue is so powerful?” Pam asked, seeming to change the subject.
“Because she’s been here the longest?” Charlotte guessed, thinking that Prue might even have had decades of Dead Ed under her belt for all she knew.
“No. It’s because she understands her purpose,” Pam informed her. “She doesn’t ask why.”
The truth rang loudly in Charlotte’s ears. Prue was really good at being dead and was in full control of her abilities. She had none of the internal conflicts that held Charlotte back. In fact, from the first moment she met her, Charlotte believed that Prue actually liked being dead, if that was really possible.
“Prue may be a bully at times, but at least we know whose side she’s on,” CoCo said sharply.
With that painful cut, Pam and the rest turned and left Charlotte alone in the room to think it over.
The nighttime street was peppered with puddles after an early evening shower had left its mark outside the Buzzard’s Bay Theater. The shiny black pavement was as close to patent leather as pavement could get, and the muddied reflection of headliners “Death Cab” on the turn-of-the-century marquee could even be read in it. Scarlet waited beneath the canopy, wearing a vintage mauve minidress with a black sequined sweater hanging loosely over it and her biker boots. Her raccoon eyes were lined heavily, as black as her hair. Her lips were painted pale.
She was twitchy and anxious, waiting impatiently for Damen to arrive. He was running late. Scarlet, her palms sweaty and her foot tapping rapidly, wasn’t sure if she was more nervous that he would show, or that he wouldn’t.
“Need tickets? Tickets. I got tickets,” a shady scalper said as he surreptitiously brushed up beside her.
“No thanks, I got one,” she said as he faced the other direction.
“What location? I got some good seats here,” the huckster persisted.
“Oh, I don’t know, my friend has the tickets,” Scarlet responded, trying to shoo him away.
“Well, where’s she at?” the scalper asked.
“He’s on his way,” Scarlet responded as she moved to the other side of the entrance.
“Well, when your date gets here, maybe you’ll want to pay a little extra for some better seats,” he called after her.
“It’s not a date!” Scarlet yelled, not wanting him, a complete stranger, to walk away with the notion that she was on a date, because if it appeared to be a date to a scalper, then maybe it was a date, and she wasn’t going to stand by and let a scalper of all people determine if she was on a date or not.
“Not a date!” she yelled again as he slipped away into the shadows and Damen appeared in his place.
“Not a date?” Damen asked.
“Oh yeah, ah, the scalper was trying to sell me a ticket on a night that wasn’t today’s date,” she said, playing it cool.
“Gotta be completely gullible to buy a ticket for a date that wasn’t even real,” Damen added.
“Yeah, gullible,” Scarlet said.
“This sure beats studying,” Damen said as he dropped his backpack on the outside table to be searched.
“Yeah, about that… I was thinking, maybe we should stop…,” Scarlet said with hesitation. “… You know, the tutoring.”
“Why?” Damen asked.
“Well, I was just thinking that it might be better… for you… if you studied with someone more… on your level?” Scarlet replied.
“On my level? If I did that, I definitely wouldn’t pass,” Damen said with a laugh as he snatched up his backpack from the table and slung it around his shoulder.
“No, I don’t mean on your Physics level, I mean, you know, on your level…,” Scarlet said as she dropped her purse on the table to be searched.
“Oh, I get it…. If you don’t want to tutor me anymore, just say it,” Damen said, feeling the impending blow of rejection.
“No, that’s not it. I just do
n’t know if this is working out… for you,” Scarlet said, trying to give him a way out.
“Thanks, but… for me… it’s working just fine, and I’m completely cool with the level we’re on,” he said.
Guilt was starting to get the best of her, but she wasn’t about to go crawling back to Charlotte. She took her purse up off the table and, at the same time, noticed that the band inside was playing “I Will Follow You into the Dark,” the same song Damen played on the guitar. “Hey, listen, they’re playing our… I mean, your song.”
“Yeah… maybe we should head inside,” Damen said as he dug in his pocket for the tickets.
“So how much do I owe you?” Scarlet asked.
“Oh, nothing, it’s my pleasure…,” he said as he fished out the tattered tickets. “I told you it was a thank-you for the tutoring,” Damen said firmly, stepping to the side and holding the door open for her to enter the orchestra section. He took her hand and ushered her in, the other hand gently placed against the small of her back.
“Oh, right… of course,” Scarlet said, pleasantly surprised by Damen’s thoughtful gesture.
The concert passed much more quickly than the two hours the band was onstage—at least that’s how it felt to Scarlet. Song after song took on greater meaning for her than ever before as she experienced them with him. There were thousands of people in the arena, but for her, there were only two.
They didn’t hold hands, but as they swayed to the music, their eyes would meet accidentally, or their shoulders, elbows, or knees would touch lightly, flustering Scarlet and Damen too.
The crowd exited to the mournful strains of “Title and Registration.” Scarlet and Damen sat quietly waiting for the room to empty, satisfied with the hit-packed show and in no rush to leave.
They didn’t talk much on the way home. Damen drove slowly to Scarlet’s house and walked her to her door. They spent an uncomfortable few seconds saying goodnight, not sure if they should kiss on the cheek, hug, or shake hands, turning what should have been a tender moment into an awkward rock-paper-scissors parting.