Venomous (8 page)

“I could make you,” she mumbles, and lowers her lips slowly and softly onto mine, the way Casey did last night, only a lot better. She pulls the trench coat around her like wings, and with each kiss, each push together, we sink deeper into it. Finally, snuggled up together like we’re in a big black cocoon, she wraps her arms around my shoulders and nuzzles her face into my neck, stopping here and there for a little nibble. I pull my arms inside my coat and wrap them around her waist, which feels liquid, agile, but soft and warm. Whatever I did to get this lucky, I’ll never know.

“Mmm,” she says. “This is nice.”

I am inclined to agree with this.

Cuddling becomes resting, and resting becomes napping, and napping becomes most of the day’s activity. Sleep is not an easy thing for me, especially with someone else present, because it means letting my guard down (summer camp sucked). The fact that I can fall asleep with this girl nestled on my chest? Unbelievable. Unheard of. Truly a miracle.

When my eyelids drag their way upward, I notice two things: (a) the clock on the wall says I should be home by now, and (b) there’s someone knocking on the door.

I shake her back and forth. “Renée. Renée, wake up.”

“Murf,” she replies.

I hear the knocking again, louder this time. A woman’s voice on the other side calls, “Renée! Renée, you there?”

She squirms in my lap and yells, “Come in!” in an annoyed whine.

Is this girl out of her mind? Delirious with fatigue? She’s making no effort to get out of my lap, no effort to unbutton the coat containing both of us. What if her mom freaks out? What if I’m chased out of the house by an angry older brother? Or two? Or seven? I imagine using the hall fire extinguisher to smash open the skull of a burly Goth sibling, but shake the thought off quick. Venom talking. This isn’t the time.

The door opens, and in waddles a chubby old lady with curly red hair and itty-bitty spectacles sitting on her huge face. “Oh, I’m sorry to interrupt,” she says politely, with a tinge of French in her voice. “Renée, who is this?”

The monster. The pervert. The evil boy trying to defile your precious daughter.

“This is Locke,” she mumbles. “Locke, this is my aunt Marie.”

“Hiya.” I cough.

“It’s nice to meet you, Locke,” she says warmly. “Locke…that name sounds vaguely French, does it not?”

“Maybe. My last name’s Vinetti, though.”

“That,” she says with a chuckle, “sounds not in the least French. Renée, just remember your brother’s staying with a friend tonight, so you have to do the dishes.”

“Umf,” she says, and nuzzles back into my chest.

“Nice meeting you, Locke,” says Aunt Marie, and closes the door.

“Wow,” I heave. “I was scared she’d flip out.”

“Aunt Marie doesn’t care,” she murmurs, shifting in my lap. “She trusts me. Besides, she’s French. The French are a lot worse than this in public.”

“So you have a brother?”

She nods.

“What’s his name?” Maybe he and Lon could—

“Andrew. You know him.”

Wait. Oh, shit, wait. Andrew. Can’t be.

“Older or younger?”

“Older.”

“Your last name isn’t Tomas, is it?”

She shifts a bit more. She knew this topic of conversation
had
to come up at some point. “Yeah. I told you, you know him. He goes to your school.”

He does. That’s the problem. The venom writhes on its back, pointing and cackling, sending waves of worry through me. Nothing can be perfect for me. It’s just not allowed.

T
HREE DAYS
scouring the city, and no luck. The creature seemed to always be around, but it was rarely visible. A roar would sound and I’d turn left, only to hear claws clattering on the pavement to my right. The beast, while horrid, was incredibly intelligent, and it seemed to possess the hunting powers of a wolf. Even though I couldn’t find it, I could feel those glassy eyes boring into me, twitching as it observed my presence.

I glided noiselessly through Central Park, indistinguishable from the shadows. I had been following the lanky junkie in front of me for a few minutes, waiting. Woe came off him in waves; I could smell his guilt, his hatred, from a block away. He was scrambling through the park, clutching a broken bottle, eyes wide, breath ragged, clothes filthy, hair wild. He was dangerous, and I had to be here to stop him.

The junkie came onto a path and approached a hobo lying curled on a bench.

“It was beautiful fabric,” said the junkie sternly.

The bum looked back at him, half-awake. He was young, maybe twenty-five, and blond. “Whazuh?”

“IT WAS BEAUTIFUL FABRIC!” yelled the junkie. “YOU DIDN’T TAKE CARE OF IT RIGHT. NOW IT’S RUINED.”

“Look, man, I don’t know what you’re on tonight, but—”

“Don’t tell ME what to do,” the junkie shrieked. “I MADE that. It was such a good situation before you came, and now we have NOTHING BUT TELEVISION!”

The junkie raised the jagged glass bottle high, an urban Norman Bates.

I raised a hand, and a lash of black lightning hit the glass, which exploded out of the doper’s hand. He turned, enraged, but upon seeing me, fear took over, and he scrambled away with a scream.

The young bum sat up on the bench, eyes bright, face gnarled into a grimace.

“You have no need to worry,” I said. “I mean you no harm.”

The bum opened his mouth to scream, and all that came out was a hideous, blood-soaked roar.

Out of his mouth squirmed the tentacles—huge, meaty, writhing with a sound like wriggling scorpions; clicking mixed with squishing. All over his body, his skin seemed to stretch, bloat, and then split open, revealing the black many-tendriled body of the creature. Finally his eyes seemed to melt, dribbling down his face. Behind them sat two red, segmented orbs, twitching at me curiously, studying my every move.

A
NDREW TOMAS IS
in my grade, but he’s a year older than the rest of us because he got held back a year for being a smartass and an asshole. He wears Polo and North Face and Armani Exchange and refers to certain kids as “faggot motherfuckers.” He’s not a jock, although everything about him would suggest it. He listens to hardcore rap and tries to freestyle in the student lounge over the ghetto kids beatboxing. He has the Tasmanian Devil in bling-bling jewelry tattooed on his calf. He’s a sadist, the worst kind of bitter, arrogant bully imaginable, who just wants to take his anger out on anyone who looks weaker than he does.
My
violence is something uncontrollable, a gut response to being treated a certain way;
his
is calculated and plain old mean. And while he makes my academic nightmare a living hell, his beautiful Goth sister holds my heart at her all-girls academy thirty blocks away.

I’m privileged enough to have moved from being a “faggot motherfucker” to being a “freak-ass bitch” in the vast, complicated mind of Andrew Tomas. The only reason I’ve had this wonderful privilege bestowed on me is because a kid who hangs out with Andrew named Omar once took my glasses off my head and started playing Monkey in the Middle with Andrew. What happened? Well, the venom went off and I tore Omar’s eyebrow ring out, and when he tried to fistfight me afterward, I knocked one of his teeth loose. I got my glasses back and was immediately transferred from being a “faggot” to being a “freak” or “schizoid” or whatever the word of the day was, it doesn’t fucking matter. It’s one of the venom’s most prominent traits: If you’re someone I like, I’m a violent, twisted bastard. If you’re someone I don’t, I am the Marquis de fucking Sade. The only reason that Omar didn’t report me to the administration was because telling the full story would’ve involved explaining why two strapping young lads were tormenting such a “sensitive” and “troubled” young boy as Locke Vinetti. Andrew, however, put my name down in his head.

If my life were an Archie comic, Andrew would be Reggie. On crack.

When I get to school Monday morning, I decide to speak privately to Randall about it.

“Did you know Renée is Andrew Tomas’s younger sister?” I yell right into his face.

He holds up a finger—he needs to finish the paragraph in his book.
WHAM!
Down come my books on his desk, illustrating the urgency of the matter.

Randall looks up from his copy of
Kerosene
with a frustrated groan. “Jesus, Locke. You didn’t know that?”

“No, I didn’t fucking know that! She’s YOUR friend, not mine! This girl’s older brother is the jock asshole in an eighties movie! I’m fucked!”

Randall stares a bit, his face devoid of thought. “I don’t see why this is so much of an issue.”

The venom roars in anger. I blink hard. “Randall, what the hell are you talking about? There’s no way I can be with this girl when her brother tortures me every day at school! I can just see a family dinner—‘Hey, Andrew, pass the pork chops!’ ‘Here you go, you freak-ass bitch!’”

“Since when are you going to Renée’s for family dinners?”

“Well, not
yet
,” I say, turning crimson, “but perhaps someday I will! Perhaps I meet her mom and dad and all they’ve heard about is how much of a ‘whack spazzoid’ I am!”

Randall’s face darkens. “I wouldn’t worry about that, Locke.”

“Why not? What part of this shit SHOULDN’T I worry about?”

He doesn’t even look up from his book when he verbally punches me in the heart.

“Renée’s parents are dead.”

I reach for words and find a big empty space. I speak, and all I get is a thin, reedy noise, like a deflating balloon.

“Yeah,” continues Randall. “
That
I didn’t expect you to know. But it’s something you should.”

I suppose so.

“Wow. Randall, that’s…”

“Explains a lot, doesn’t it?”

I manage a slow nod and a gulp. “The Goth thing’s not just for show, is it?”

“She’s a dark one, man. You okay?”

“Yeah, it’s just new, I…you know, I’ve never met an…orphan before.”

“That’s not a very PC word, man. Besides, Oliver Twist was an orphan. Annie was a fucking orphan. Renée’s just a girl with no parents. Call her an orphan and she’ll probably slug you.” A smile crosses his lips, just a little; the idea amuses him.

“How’d they—”

“This line of questioning needs to end right now, Locke,” says Randall, looking at his book. I’m about to ask why when I hear my last name shouted from behind me. I turn around and surprise, there’s Andrew Tomas standing right in front of me, back hunched slightly so that his six-foot-five frame can lean down to my five-foot-ten size. Scenes from
Jurassic Park
flash before my eyes.

“How was your stay at my place last night, Locke?” he asks, mock sincerity bright in his voice. “Did you have an okay time? Was everything to your liking?”

“Hi, Andrew,” I say softly. I need to keep it together. The venom shakes and shouts, tensing my muscles, but I plaster my hands at my sides. This is Renée’s older brother, and I have to start dealing with that right goddamn now.

“Answer the question, Locke.”

“It was fine.”

“Good!”
he barks accusingly. “Because that visit to my house was your last. My sister may be a bit of a freak, Vinetti, but not your kind of freak. Not a psycho.”

The venom swells in me to the point where I want to cry or scream, I’m not sure which. It’s no longer flying off the handle; it’s building, storing itself until it takes over.
You’re nothing, Tomas
, it cries, preparing to strike.
Give me one more minute of buildup, and then say the wrong thing. I’ll rip your face off. I’ll make you eat your fucking teeth.

“What about her house, Andrew?”

He looks at me like I’m an idiot, which just makes
him
look like an idiot. “What does that mean?”

“Well, apparently I’m not allowed in
your
house. What about
her
house? Can I visit there?”

Andrew slaps a big hand on my shoulder. It weighs, eh, seven pounds. “Is that supposed to be funny, Vinetti?”

I could break every single one of your goddamn fingers right now. I could bite a hole in your neck the size of a grapefruit.

“You’re making me angry, Andrew,” I say. I squint my eyes, squeeze my fists till my fingernails dig into my hands.
You like this girl
, I repeat to myself,
and that means you can’t do this.

“Listen, Lou Ferrigno, I don’t give a shit how angry you get. Just keep your grubby hands off my sister, y’dig?”

“Leave me alone, Andrew,” I snarl, pulling his hand off my shoulder.

“Or
what
?”

The venom grins and starts going haywire. Oh, fuck, it’s too late. I blew it. This is happening. It’s—

“Okay, guys, back off,” snaps Randall, pushing roughly between us. “Both of you, just chill out. None of us need this bullshit right now. Andrew, go away. Locke, sit the fuck down.”

Andrew shakes his head and snorts. He likes Randall—the two of them have partied together in the past, though, as Randall puts it, “we’re nowhere
near
friends”—and so he doesn’t try and get past him. Instead, he just points at me and says, “You better keep that dog on a leash, Randall, or else I’m gonna have to put it to sleep.”

“Whatever, Andrew. Walk away.”

You’re lucky, Tomas. You owe Randall your nose. Let’s do this again sometime, huh?

He backs off slowly, grumbling under his breath. I do the same, sitting back down and letting my aching fists turn back into hands. Sweat begins swelling on my brow as the blood begins its routine of rushing into and draining out of my face. Rage roars through my ears to the point where the classroom is seemingly nonexistent.

“Well, I guess you were right,” says Randall, taking his seat. “Who knew Andrew would react like that?”

“I did,” I say a little too quickly.

Randall eyes me. “You okay? Bad moment?”

Talking feels clumsy. “I almost…your timing was good. Something was about to happen. Venom was getting…difficult. Fuck, Randall,
fuck.”

He puts a hand on my shoulder. “Glad I got here in time, then,” he says. “It’ll be okay. I mean, come on, if you start dating his sister, he can’t keep threatening to beat your ass, can he?”

I hope not. I need to get a carton of chocolate milk and calm down.

The rest of the day is problematic. The venom isn’t happy. Which raises questions.

Forget the drama-queen-fictional-reality bullshit. I don’t believe that the venom has opinions of its own or that it’s some sort of alien entity, using me as a host or some such nonsense. That’s an attractive thought, sure, but it’s the stuff of comic books, and reality’s my place of residence. The venom is part of me; it was born out of my own twisted, ridiculous mind, and as such, all of its preferences and thoughts come from my own. If I like something, the venom is quicker to like it, and vice versa. Thank God for that—it’s the only thing keeping my family and friends safe. I have never had a serious attack of the venom aimed toward my mom or my brother. Maybe in front of them, but never
at
them. Randall’s come into contact with it, but he has a good sense of when to cut shit out. Randall’s fatal flaw is that, because he’s so well-liked, he’s prone to cockiness. Every so often, I become the weird kid in the black coat who tags along with him, and the venom responds accordingly. Overall, though, it acts more like a barometer for Randall: When I begin to get abrasive, he takes it as a sign that he’s gone a little too far, and tones himself down his self-righteousness. Point is, I’ve never taken a swing at him or anything.

But things are changing. The venom has its own voice, its own plan. There’s more to it than a break in the dam or a short fuse on a big bomb. The venom’s taking sides and making sure I know what they are. I feel less in control of it than ever before, because it’s not one poisoned personality. It’s two minds about everything, two competing viewpoints—or at least, one vying for access to the other.

The venom is not a fan of the Andrew Tomas situation. In fact, it’s so displeased by it that it’s decided to make this issue the be-all and end-all of its wretched little existence. Maybe if Andrew were just a tiny bit less of a stereotypical asshole, or maybe if I wasn’t so utterly enamored of this odd girl who wears too much makeup and plays board games with her cat, or maybe if she and Randall had warned me what I was getting into before I started falling for her, or maybe if she wasn’t so incredible and he wasn’t so fucking
big
—maybe then the venom could sit back and let me take care of this one. That is not the case. Renée’s face passes through my mind and I get goose bumps, but then it’s replaced by those squinted eyes and that asshole sneer. The smell of her skin crosses my nostrils, and for a moment I’m lost in romantic bliss, until the rank smell of his blunts-and-forties breath pops right into my brain. The idea of dating her is permanently linked to the idea of getting the shit kicked out of me by the school bully, all thanks to the venom. It won’t let me think about the one without reminding me of the other, just to make sure I understand its feelings.

Meanwhile, the dead parents are making the venom anxious. The venom is almost intimidated by the dead parents, which is an understandable reaction—I can’t begin to fathom something that horrible happening to me. Having my father leave was bad, but the idea of being truly left alone is a concept beyond anything I can grasp. And for a living, thinking entity based solely on sorrow and rage to be confronted with an idea so bad that it can’t truly process it, that’s humbling. “Humble” doesn’t exist in the venom’s dictionary. It’s used to holding dominion over all things miserable in my mind, but suddenly it’s looking at a trauma so horrid that it has no idea how to confront it.

So, between fighting for its place in the sun and feeling obsolete, the venom broods and stews in my head, fueled by nagging worry and depression. Every minute walking around school, I feel it work its way deeper into my mind, finding any way to make me unhappy. It’s taking this to the max. Being all it can be.

You can see where this is going.

I get home from school and Lon’s sitting on the couch, reading about sea turtles. He has two piles on the coffee table in front of him, and I’m assuming that one pile is what he’s already read and the other one is stuff that he has yet to read. They’re huge, the kind of books with little text but lots of glossy pictures with informational captions next to them. The kid never ceases to amaze me. There’s nothing more charming than coming home to find a small person who is earnestly eager to spend four hours scribbling notes about sea turtles. When I see Lon, I temporarily feel okay for the future of our species. He represents the people we all hope to one day know and elect into office. He looks up at me and gives me a know-it-all smile that suggests an impending trivia question.