Thirteen
I was halfway out the door on the night of the Halloween party when Annalisa came barreling up the stairs, still in her pajamas, and shouted that she was coming with me.
She had gone back and forth for nearly two weeks, but had told me last night, decisively, that she didn’t want to go.
I hadn’t pushed the matter, even though I could really use another cynic around to get through this thing, not to mention a distraction from Mason and a buffer between myself and the happy couple.
The hundred minutes a day I had to spend around their batting lashes and footsie were already bad enough, and Lara would be no help tonight.
Friendly as she was, she would probably be pulled away the second we walked through the door.
But Annalisa was afraid. She had been afraid when she’d turned down the Trade, and she was still afraid.
I could only guess what she really feared—four years later, she still refused to talk about it—but I thought it was rejection.
Being rejected by the sun, rejected by people.
Often when she left the house, outings to late movies or the mall or family trips to the bowling alley, she stuck behind me or at the center of the group, curtained by her hair, and let the rest of us uphold the human charade.
She would rather call herself a monster, using that as an excuse to hole away, than try being a person and fail.
I suspected, lately, that her wants and fears had begun shifting their weight. She was craving contact. A party, with costumes and dim light, might be the perfect place for her to try on a different self—or, hopefully, to unhide her real self.
She didn’t know that part of my intentions.
She’d given me a hard no last night, and yet there she was, running toward me with a knapsack in one hand and a thermos in the other, lips bloodred.
“I don’t have a costume,” she said, “but I think I can pull off a weak Lydia Deetz. Maybe.” She raised her knapsack.
“I’m sure Lara will have something you can borrow,” I said.
***
She did.
Lara was ecstatic to have another guest even though her bedroom was a squeeze with four of us, soon to be five.
It was hard to tell whether the room was small or just crowded with things—an exercise ball, photo albums spilling from bookshelves, more blankets than could fit on her bed, a keyboard and guitar crammed into one corner.
Her vibe was hard to get a read on. The door, rugs, and bed were all various shades of clean pastel, and twinkling fairy lights hung over her desk, but every free inch of wall space was covered in riot grrrl posters.
Annalisa’s head swiveled, taking it all in, looking thrilled and also perplexed.
Lara left and returned with several tubes of paint and brushes, then flipped up her baby-blue duvet to dig around under her bed. Minutes later, she stood holding a hot-pink . . . rope?
Receiving three blank stares, Lara stretched the fabric out. It looked like a child’s onesie, long-sleeved and the size of my arm.
“Why do you have that?” Cella giggled.
“I’ve done dance and gymnastics my whole life,” said Lara. “I have everything. Pretty sure I was thirteen when I wore this, but I think that’ll actually work out perfectly for you, Annalisa.”
Lara was shorter but had a fuller figure.
She shoved the pink thing at a bewildered Annalisa, who had uttered three words since she entered (“Hey there . . . Hey”), and ordered, “Stripes. Paint them. The fabric stretches, I swear. You’ll be the Cheshire Cat.
I know I have ears around here somewhere—I’ve been a cat, like, four Halloweens . . .”
Nodding dumbly, Annalisa took the purple paint and the pink thing.
Lara peered at her, and Annalisa leaned back a little, bewildered and possibly intimidated by this girl in a tall top hat, a tailcoat, and miniature shorts.
Lara looked a little too excited to dress her up—she had a crazy stare going on.
Maybe she was just getting into character.
“You already have the eyes,” she said, nodding approvingly. Annalisa just kept nodding back like a lizard. “You can work at the desk. There’s a bunch of paper you can spread out. You have two hours. Now, you . . .”
Lara turned her crazy eyes on me. I had been told to show up in formfitting black pants and the “hottest” heels I owned (I had banged at Cedric’s room and yelled for his edgy leather boots until he’d cracked the door open and thrown them at my head). Lara and Cella had taken care of the rest.
“The rest” looked a lot like a corset. I gaped at them.
“It’s a corset vest,” corrected Cella. “It’s for boys.”
Lara grinned like a devil and steered me into the bathroom she shared with her sister. She instructed me to sit on the toilet.
“Hey,” she said as she scooted between my legs, makeup brushes in hand. “Been a while, hmm?”
Since the game, we hadn’t spoken in more than passing spurts when Cella sought her out at school.
I hadn’t made the effort to reach out, but Lara was busy with cheer, and if she minded, she didn’t say so.
She didn’t seem to be holding it against me; she had plenty of opportunities to maim me as she worked an eyeliner pencil over my eye, but she held my face softly and worked with slow care.
When she was finished, she held up a mirror to show me the smoky lining, the tiny heart she’d drawn over the mole beneath my eye, and the blushy red she had pressed to the middle of my lips with her fingertip.
“Stay right there,” she said, returning shortly with a crown. She laid it on top of my head, pushing her fingers through my hair to fix it, and said, “There you go. King of Hearts.”
She was faultless, probably, and I felt nothing for her.
Lara kicked me out, with strict instructions on how to complete my vest, so she could do her own makeup.
In the bedroom, Annalisa was painting her stripes while Cella sat on the bed facing the mirror, curling her hair and giving Annalisa a rundown of the strangest people she might encounter at the party.
Annalisa’s eyes were cast downward as she worked diligently, but she was nodding along, repeating key points under her breath like she might be tested later.
I smiled, smug and a little sentimental, thinking no one would see. Cella caught my eye in the mirror and mouthed, “Sap.”
The vest was mostly maroon brocade, save for a wide black stripe down the front where the busk was. My job was to paint the four suits onto the black part. I listened to their conversation as I worked, bracing for the moment Mason would arrive.
He had said he was coming late since his costume needed little preparation, but I knew it was because of me.
It didn’t change the fact that he was coming, and we would have to spend some amount of time crammed in Lara’s bedroom. Once we got to the party, I could lose him in the crowd. Things were seriously messed up if Flake’s clammy rager was starting to look like a sanctuary.
This thing with Mason—attraction, lust, whatever you’d call it—was a wasp trapped inside my skin.
Every time I thought it was gone, every hour I went without thinking of him, the sting always came back.
Almost two weeks had gone by without a word spoken between us.
Poor Cella was tiring of her juggling act, I could tell, but she didn’t try to force us together.
I would never admit it out loud, but I was scared of him.
Seeing him, hearing him. Dreaming him. The power he had to ruin me, my friendship, my family. I was scared of Mason and scared of myself, of these feelings in my hands that I didn’t know how to hold. I was terrified, down to my marrowless bones, of how much I liked the way he made me feel.
I wasn’t used to this, to always hunching my shoulders, cowering like prey. All my life, I had stood at the untouchable apex. Mason made me feel so, so human.
“Hey. Hey, Earth to Kieran,” mumbled Annalisa beside me. We had switched the desk chair for the keyboard bench to share the desk space. “I thought I would be the tense one. I can feel your shoulder bones. You okay?”
“Fine,” I said.
“Did you drink before you left?” At my silence, she sighed. “You need to take better care of yourself.”
“That’s really the least of my worries.” My eyes slid to Lara’s cracked bedroom door. Nobody came through, like nobody had come through the last nineteen times I’d looked.
“Think of it this way,” she whispered. “Didn’t you say they’re having him dress as the White Rabbit?
Can you imagine any world where he doesn’t look ridiculous?
Like, bad? One look will probably nerf your pining.
Might even kill some of your sex drive, maybe forever.
” She pursed her lips. “That sounded more comforting in my head.”
“. . . It actually does help.”
Lara came out of the bathroom with red-and-blue makeup around her eyes. She had brushed her curls to make them frizzy under her hat. She was still a knockout.
“Creepy,” said Annalisa. Lara tipped her hat and bowed waist-deep.
“Why, thank you.”
When the paint was dry, I shed my hoodie and stood like a mannequin as Cella and Lara worked together to get the vest on. I tried not to squirm away from their fingers. It was comfier than I’d expected, but . . .
“Shouldn’t I be wearing something under this?”
They both laughed.
The vest granted me a frankly outrageous silhouette.
The busk started halfway down my chest, and the V-shape at the hem left a slice of bare skin at each hip.
I glanced warily at Cella in her blue dress with its tiny, frilly skirt and equally tiny apron; then at Lara’s microscopic shorts; then at Annalisa in the little striped romper, all long, pale leg. Then down at myself.
“Since when is Alice in Wonderland so . . . slutty?”
There was a knock at the apartment’s front door. Lara skipped out of the room. Annalisa wrinkled her nose like she’d smelled something bad seconds before Mason walked in.
“Happy Halloween!” he said, even though it was the twenty-fifth.