Bleed (17 page)

I turned to look. At the same moment, a couple of sunflower seeds beaned me in the face—one landed at the corner of my eye; the other hit me in the nose. Kelly was staring right at me, a stupid smirk across her stupid face, a sandwich bag full of sunflower seeds clutched in her hand. “Can I buy you a burger, honey?” she asked. “You’re looking a little rexic.”

“Excuse me?”

“As in
anorexic,”
she explained, raising her eyebrows like
I’m
the stupid one. “What
are
you … a size negative seven?”

Holy. Effing. Shit.
My face turned flame red—I could feel it—and there were hot bubbly tears filling the rims of my eyes. Laughter erupted all around me, probably just from Kelly’s table, but at that moment, it was like everyone was making fun—even Matt.

I opened my mouth to say something clever but nothing came out. And so I just turned back around, hoping that Kelly would just go away.

She didn’t.

More sunflower seeds pelted against my back. I looked up at Matt, and he looked away, back to his a-b-c notes, like he didn’t want to talk to me anymore. I grabbed my books and spent the remainder of the study hall period in the bathroom, locked in one of the stalls, crouched atop the toilet so no one would see me.

A week later, when I saw Kelly Pickerel again, it was like she didn’t even know who I was, like she didn’t even remember what she’d done. Her eyes passed over me as if I were nothing more than another faceless freshman in her path.

I wonder if she’ll be even more of a bitch now that she’s a senior.

I toss the scrapbook onto her bed for a later look and glance through her closet a bit more, checking out the rest of her clothes. I can’t believe Kelly’s a size seven/eight. I had her pegged for
way
bigger than that. I pluck a dress off the rack—this pepper-green velvet number, with long matching gloves. It’s her winter ball dress. I recognize it from the photo by her bed—she and Sean O’Connell posing smack-dab in the middle of two giant balloon bouquets. I consider trying it on, but the phone rings, interrupting me.

I’m thinking it’s my mother, telling me she’s finally located Sadie after the little head case decided to run away
again
(like I care!). But it isn’t. It’s some girl who’s looking for Kelly. “She isn’t home,” I say, kicking my sandals off and pressing my toes into the thick melon-colored carpet. I hold the dress up and glance in the mirror. There’s a giant red mark on my chest. I look closer. It’s colored in with a bunch of tiny blood dots. I can thank Sadie for this. If she wasn’t so hard up for attention that she has to run away every five minutes, Mom would have driven me here instead of making me walk, and I wouldn’t have gotten mauled by a car full of losers carrying water balloons. I
hate
adolescent boys!

“Well, do you know where I can reach her?” the girl asks. “She left her cell phone in my diner.”

“Kelly’s in California,” I say, peeking at the red sunburn stripe down the part in my hair—
so
attractive. I’ve been thinking about doing one of those six-week color washes, one with a raspberry tint, but I know my mother would kill me. She loves my hair butt-long, blond, and straight.

“Yeah, so am I,” the girl says. “She was in my diner earlier today, with her boyfriend, and left her cell phone. She has this number labeled as ‘home.'”

“Yeah, well this is her house in
Massachusetts”
I say, making a smile face in the mirror, wondering if the green color of the dress coupled with my metal braces makes me look like a tinsel-topped Christmas tree.

“Do you know how to reach her
here?”
she asks.

“Nope.” I slip my water balloon—dampened shorts down my legs and pull the dress up over my bathing suit, managing to zip up the back by balancing the phone between my neck and shoulder. It goes down to a little below my knee.

“Well, do you know how to reach Robby?”

“Who?”
I turn sideways and wonder if my butt looks big.

“Robby. Her boyfriend.”

Robby?
I take a second glance at the winter ball picture. “You mean Sean?”

“No, I mean Robby, Kelly’s boyfriend. Wait, who am I speaking to?”

“I don’t know where you could reach him,” I say, and hang up quickly.

This is almost too juicy-good to be true. I pinch at the folds of extra fabric gathered at the waist and pirouette around and around with excitement, until I lose my spotting and smack down on my butt. This needs clear thought. I need to be smart. I need to plan well. I grab the scrapbook and finger at the binding. Should I look around for her dad’s number and call her, make her shit with what I know? Could I maybe use this info as blackmail?

But what if she and Sean broke up? I guess it’s possible. Maybe it happened right before she went away. Maybe I should call him to be sure.

I tiptoe down the hallway, so Emily doesn’t hear me, and make my way into the kitchen. Sean’s number is on a list tacked up by the phone. I ink it onto the back of my hand, pluck a Scooter Pie from the free-for-all cupboard, and peek into the family room on my way back to Kelly Land. Emily’s got her back to me, her eyes practically glued to the TV, watching Bob the Builder fix some birdhouse. Ode to cable TV—the ultimate babysitter.

Back in Kelly’s room, I flop onto the bed. First things first. I peel the paper back from the Scooter Pie, take a giant bite, and think up what I’m going to say to Sean. Maybe while I’m talking to him I could mention that his girlfriend has a twisted idea of what goes in a scrapbook. I flip it open and glance over the pictures. A closeup of a boy handcuffed and being led into a police car. A class picture of the girl he killed. She’s got this giant crooked-teeth smile wedged up her face, like being killed by her boyfriend is the last thing she expects. Sucks for her. Then there’s a picture of a rock, the murder weapon, with blood spatters on the point.

Perfect breakup ammo!

I swallow down the last bite of the Scooter Pie, press
STAR-SIX-SEVEN
to block the caller ID, and dial Sean’s number. “Hello, is this Sean?” I ask when a boy picks up.

“Yeah. Who’s this?”

“A friend.”

“Tell me who this is or I’m gonna hang up.”

“No you won’t.”

“Why won’t I?”

“Because I know stuff that you’ll want to know.”

It’s church-quiet on the other end, like maybe he’s deciding. “Like what?” he finally says.

“Not so fast. Before we go any further, I want you to know that we may have seen each other before, but we’ve never actually spoken. In other words, there’s no point in your trying to guess who I am.”

“Why don’t
you
just tell me who you are?”

“First answer my questions. You’re Kelly Pickerel’s boyfriend, right?”

“Yeah.”

Yes!

“So, have you been a good boy while she’s been away in California?”

“Who
is
this?”

“Is that a yes or a no?

“Who the hell is this?”

“Not quite the response a faithful boyfriend would give.” The phone falls quiet again, but I’m feeling good about the way the conversation’s going. I know I hold the winning hand, and I think he’s starting to know it, too.

“Tell me what you’re talking about or I’m going to hang up.”

“I told you already, I know stuff. About you. About her. Do you want to know if Kelly’s been a good girl?”

“I already know the answer to that.”

I smile, hearing him fold. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

“So you know about Robby, then.”

“Who?”

And as soon as the name shoots out my mouth, I peek back at a scrapbook page, at the boy’s name glaring from an article heading, and make the connection.
Robby Mardonia. So freaking good!

“What do you think of murderers?” I ask.

“Murderers?”

“Yeah, you know, guys who off their girlfriends.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We need to talk in person.” I lean back against Kelly’s puffy watermelon comforter and flip my legs in the air so that the skirt of the dress jumps up around my hips. Perfect dancing attire. “There’s stuff I need to show you,” I say. “Stuff you’ll want to see.”

“Either tell me over the phone or I’m hanging up now.”

“I told you, Sean. There’s stuff I know about
you
too, so don’t even pretend you have a choice here.” I flip over onto my belly and feel a shift beneath the comforter. It’s another one of Kelly’s feel-good books,
License to Cry.
I flip a couple pages, the corners folded over to bookmark her place—a chapter on isolation; stuff about dark days and even darker nights.

I mumble to Sean to meet me in an hour at the Dunkin’ Donuts on Derby Street, hang up, and continue reading. But then my cell phone starts ringing. It’s Cheryl. She wants to know how it’s going, and so I tell her. She couldn’t be more impressed; she just keeps screaming “Ohmygod! Ohmygod! Ohmygod!” into the phone.

There isn’t anyone who wouldn’t just
love
to see Kelly Pickerel go down.

But then, as soon as I tell Cheryl about our little field trip to Double D’s, she gets all nerdy on me, “I can’t go out,” she says. “My mom wants me to stay in tonight. She thinks I need to catch up on my summer reading.”

“That’s such bullshit,” I say, tossing the book toward my bag.

“I’ll try to sneak out and meet you there,” she promises.

“Try hard,” I say, and hang up. Sometimes Cheryl can be so lame.

I take a last peek at myself in the mirror, finally decide the dress is butt-ugly, and grab another—a short black spandex one that dips low in the front. Mega-slut material. I can just picture Kelly in it at some cheesy-ass club, dancing that stupid side-to-side-and-clap shuffle that people who have no rhythm resort to, having to yank the skirt part down every other second ‘cause her fat ass rides it up.

I bet it would fit me just fine. I stuff it into my bag along with the
License to Cry
book and change back into my wet shorts and T-shirt.

Now what?

Mrs. Pickerel will probably be home in less than half an hour. I need to take advantage of every moment. I grab a couple Suzy Q’s from the cupboard and stash them in my bag for later, along with two snack-size cans of potato stix. Then I scavenge my way through Kelly’s closet a bit more.

She’s got a bunch of cool shoes. Prada and Kenneth Cole. I recognize a pair of black platform pumps in the corner. She wore them last Valentine’s Day with a pair of navy blue kneesocks, a short plaid schoolgirl skirt, and a chest-hugging baby tee that showed off her gut. She thought she was
so
great. I pause a moment, wondering how that outfit would look on me, if I would look like just as much of a ho as her, or if it actually might be kind of cute. But then decide it would be way too warm for a day like today. There’s a pair of creamy leather slingbacks that have my name all over them. They have a thick wedge heel and gold-lined strapping that winds around the ankle. They’re a full size too big, but I fasten them on anyway and walk around the room. Not too bad, especially if I’m outside in this heat and my feet are swollen. I toss them in my bag and decide to browse around for a matching purse.

She’s got about a hundred of them. They’re on a shelf above the clothes. I go to pull a couple down, when I notice an old jewelry box sitting toward the back. I grab it, noticing how Kelly’s name is imprinted on the top in sparkly gold cursive. I flip the latch, open the box up, and music starts playing—that “When You Wish Upon a Star” song from
Pinocchio …
the one Jiminy Cricket sings. There’s a headless ballerina dancing in circles to the tune. I pick the head up from the bracelet compartment, noticing how she looks like a plastic version of Kelly—except the face and hair have been scribbled over with black Magic Marker.

There’s a sticker pasted up over the faux diamond-encrusted mirror at the back of the box. It’s one of those pro-vegetarian don’t-harm-the-animals ones—a frowning chicken holding a big fat drumstick. It says COWS HAVE FEELINGS, TOO. Below it, there’s a poem written on the floor of the box in black marker:

I close the box back up and return it to the shelf, wondering how old Kelly was when she did all this. The whole idea of it weirds me out, like maybe I should clean up and go check on Emily.

Before tucking the scrapbook back in the closet, I flip it open, extract a short article from a page that looks pretty full without it, and jam it into the side pocket of my backpack. Then I head out into the family room. Emily’s still got her nose pressed practically up against the TV screen.

“Hey, Emily,” I say, sprawling out on the sofa, “wanna play Candy Land?” But she ignores me, completely mesmerized by Spanish-speaking Dora and her lame-ass, boot-wearing monkey.

About ten minutes later, Mrs. Pickerel arrives on cue. She hands me my thirty bucks, and I call my mother to come pick me up and drive me to Double D’s. But my mother is frantic. She can’t find Sadie anywhere; no, I cannot go to Dunkin’ Donuts tonight; and can I please ask Mrs. Pickerel to drive me home.
Great.