“Do you think that has something to do with all this secrecy he’s involved with?”
“Logan is smart. He’s also a problem solver. I’m sure he’s put two and two together and wants to figure a way out of this.” He shakes his head. “He wants you as bad as I do, Skyla. He’s desperate. He’ll do anything.”
“We thought we took down the Counts.” I pull my heavy gaze over to Holden who’s whooping it up with Chloe while Nat looks on, sick to her stomach. “We almost killed ourselves trying, and now we’re back to square one.”
“Hey”—he pulls me in, rubbing my back with his warm hand—“if being with Logan is what you want, I’ll do whatever I can to make sure you both stay safe. I’m not going to stand in your way. I promise. I’ll respect your decision.”
My heart settles into my stomach. Gage and all of the indescribable ways he loves me. It doesn’t surprise me at all that he’d do anything to help Logan and me, if that’s what I wanted. And, ironically it makes me want Gage even more.
“Gage.” I tighten my grip around his waist and don’t let go. I never want to let go.
A loud guttural moan emits from the center of the room, and we turn in haste.
Mom runs while plucking poor baby Beau’s clothes off as if he were on fire.
“The bathroom doesn’t work,” Ethan barks. “I had the toilet removed last week.”
Mom holds the clothing-deficient baby right over the trash just in time for a trail of excrement to drop from the smiling, cooing bundle.
Mom wretches a few good times before leaning in and hurling into the open mouth of the waste receptacle, the baby still high in the air above her. The entire room gasps at the sight.
Then, in a blink, baby Beau lets out a good grunt and disposes of his bowels right into the back of Mom’s hair.
Shit—literally.
If ever there were an analogy of how Ethan’s money pit was going to go down, it was this—vomit and crap.
I swoop in to help Mom. I have a feeling I’ll be cleaning up the mess around here in more ways than one.
By midweek the storm finally settles down, leaving Paragon basting in its ethereal haze, comfy and solid like a familiar pair of shoes.
I head downstairs for breakfast to find the table, and every available countertop, filled with coupons and enough chopped up newspapers to make it look as if Mom is carefully crafting a threat to send to the police. I wish she would. I wish she would pin it right to Demetri’s cold, black heart.
“Great news!” Mom beams.
“What’s that?” I ask, making a beeline into the kitchen and smacking right into Tad and Isis. He’s got her bent over the sink while he molests her back with his bare hands, and, swear to God, it looks like he’s doing her from behind. Isis moans and groans as if she’s about to get some major satisfaction right here in the Landon kitchen just ten feet away from my mother.
“There’s a .98 cent store just a hop and a skip away.” Mom speeds over to me with a pair of opened scissors in her hand. “It’s on our neighboring island, Host.”
I return my glare to Isis and Tad getting it on in the kitchen and shake my head into Mom. As if the whole running with scissors infraction wasn’t enough to start the day off with potential for disaster, having her poor choice for a spouse reducing another woman to moans in the very room where she designs her non-palatable cuisine is an inexcusable lapse in judgment.
“Oh, she’s got a backache.” Mom brushes the two of them off with a wave of her hand. “And, speaking of the .98 cent store, I hear they have
milk
. I’m planning a trip. I thought since you and Gage were thinking about attending the university there, it would be nice if we could all go together.”
“Um…” I’d feel kind of bad, taking a trip with Gage and leaving Logan behind on the island all by his lonesome. “How about just you and me? We could talk.” About a lot of things, like why in the hell she’s letting Tad provoke Isis-not-so-niceis into a sexual nirvana while she, herself, fantasizes about dairy products.
“Great.” She taps me over the arm. “I’ll invite your sisters. We’ll make a girls afternoon out of it.”
“Perfect.”
Isis pants to completion just as my sisters appear, and the three of us gawk at our parent’s gross oversight.
“So what are you girls going to be for Halloween?” I ask, making myself a cup of coffee now that Isis and Tad have collapsed over the couch.
“Raggedy Ann.” Mia opens the fridge and plucks out the milk.
Melissa scoffs at the idea. “That’s so juvenile.”
Mom pulls a virginal newspaper from a trash bag and snips into it like a woman possessed. “Raggedy Ann is adorable! I think it’s refreshing you chose an age-appropriate costume.”
“Yeah, if she were eight,” Melissa smirks. “I’m going to be a wench. You know, a female pirate.”
I have a feeling Melissa is destined to be a wench in life at least when it comes to interacting with Mia. It’s like these girls never get along anymore.
“How about you, Skyla?” Melissa crops up in my face, her eyes squinting into me as if it were a challenge. “Let me guess. You’re going to be the savior of the world.” She breaks out in a wicked cackle that sounds as if it came straight from Chloe Bishop’s throat, and my hair stands on end. “I’m teasing.” She wipes a tear from her eye. Melissa leans in. Her widow’s peak hangs over her forehead like the dark side of the moon. “We both know you could never do it.” She leans in and whispers, “Rumor has it the only thing you’re good at saving is your virginity. I don’t think you’re brave enough, or smart enough, to save anyone from anything.” She pulls back, and her lips curve into a maniacal smile. “One might even say you’re a few clowns short of a circus.”
I gasp at the pasty-faced euphemism. Great. Now I have Chloe broadcasting my fears to any Count that will listen. But I guess at the end of the day, I’m Chloe’s biggest fear because I hold Gage’s heart. I just pray to God I don’t crush it.
Both Melissa and Mia take up residency at the bar with their yogurts and bananas. There’s no doubt in my mind Chloe has polluted their minds in other ways as well. Melissa is entering into the final phase of becoming Chloe’s mini-me.
“A wench, huh?” Mom whispers. “That’s so strange.”
“I know,” I say under my breath still shaken from the verbal assault. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.” That is if Mom is OK with fishnets and corsets on her eighth-grade stepdaughter. Anyway it’s not my problem. Mia and Melissa are growing girls, and Mom and Tad are just going to have to deal with that. I plan on being long gone during their hormone-laden high school years.
“No, it’s not that.” She shakes her head as the girls converge into giggles over who knows what.
“It’s just that the night Stella passed away, she was wearing that same costume.”
“Who’s Stella? And how did she die while dressed like a wench?”
“Tad’s ex-wife. Well,” she considers it—“I guess she’s not really an “ex” since technically they didn’t divorce. She was killed in a car accident on her way to some big larping event. You know, live action role playing”
“Larping?” I’m not sure what’s alarming me more at the moment.
“Oh, yes, she was a
huge
larper.” She twists her lips as if she were holding something back.
“What?”
“Nothing, it’s just that she and your dad passed away on the very same day.”
“
What
?” I gasp just a little bit louder this time. “Why haven’t you ever mentioned this before?”
“It’s not that big a deal.” She pats her hands in the air trying to calm me down. “Coincidences happen all the time. It just so happened to be one of the things that pulled Tad and me together.”
“There are no coincidences in our world,
Mother
.” I can smell Candace Messenger a mile away.
“Anyway, it’s just strange that Melissa wants to dress like that. You would think the idea would make her sick.”
I glance over at Melissa just as she and Mia head upstairs.
“Maybe she’s moved past it, and this is her way of proving it?”
Just like I’m going to prove Stella’s death was no coincidence.
***
West Paragon High buzzes in the afternoon haze as the grey veil that cloaks us from above brightens intermittently. These perennial clouds have a way of emasculating the sun. They refuse to let it bloom. They hold its beams hostage and cut off its beauty depriving us of the strength and vigor it longs to afford.
Logan and Gage sit by my side, out on the senior lawn. They radiate their beams over me, but my resistance to choose one over the other clouds the air, leaves us in an uncomfortable, smothering haze.
“I can’t get the girls to change their minds,” I say. I’ve just filled them in on Chloe’s macabre plan to snatch Kate from her grave next week in time for homecoming.
“I’ll let my dad know.” Gage shakes his head while glaring over at Chloe and her team of dutiful followers, which eerily includes Giselle at the moment. “It’s not happening. We’ll beef up security.”
Logan ticks his head toward their demonic circle. “Are you getting anywhere with Giselle?”
Logan has been riding me hard to get that pendant back in any way possible. Maybe that’s how he sees us being together? But in actuality it would only keep one of us safe. God knows I don’t want Logan to die or to be permanently taken by the Counts because of me. Or maybe if I gain the overseer status, I’ll get some kind of a protection shield as a bonus? I can be a no-fly zone for the Counts and Fems the world over. Yet another question to ask my oh-so-accessible mother.
“No,” I sigh. “And I can’t believe my only option is Isis and her hot stone hocus pocus.”
“Do it,” Gage encourages. “Giselle is open to anything. She told me so herself.”
I glance over at her standing in a defiant manner with her Goth-inspired outfit, her dark chocolate lipstick. The sooner we can get to Chloe’s secret, the sooner Giselle can drop the Emerson act.
“OK, I’ll set something up with Isis as soon as possible. I swear that woman practically lives at my house. I would never want another woman pawing all over my husband like that.”
Logan and Gage tilt into me because that’s sort of what’s been happening with the three of us in a roundabout way this entire last year.
“OK, I get it,” I let out a breath. “As soon as I talk to my mother I should have answers for the two of you.” I look over at them with their barely-there smiles. There’s an inherent contentedness about them as if each were confident I were going to choose them.
“Host opened up online registration.” Gage touches my foot with his. “Come over one night, and we’ll do it together.”
“Are you going?” I ask Logan.
“If that’s where you’ll be.” He looks past me as if he didn’t really mean it, as if the idea in general were weighing him down.
“What’s with the long face?” I can’t help but feel like there’s some big secret here, vibrating under the surface, demanding to burst into our lives in the worst way possible.
“Ellis wanted to go to Host.” He shrugs. “I think I need to get into the Transfer, and figure out what’s going on.”
Marshall said he’d let me in on Halloween, but I don’t dare tell them. Neither of them cares very much for “Dudley” these days.
“I’m sure we’ll know something soon.” Like in just a few nights.
“Skyla.” Logan dips his chin because he so knows I’ve got something up my sleeve. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of this.”
“Got it.” I shoot a look to Gage. Logan seems to be taking care of lots of things lately.
“Anyway”—Logan clears his throat—“things are going to change for us soon. All of us.” He washes a glance from me to Gage. “Just know that whatever happens, I’m always going to care about you guys. I want both of you to be happy.”
Gage mock socks him in the arm. “I want you to be happy, too, man.”
“I will be.” Logan pushes it out through his grief.
The bell rings, and the entire student body moves in swarms.
“Hey, Logan.” Chloe towers above us with her bloated book bag by her side. “Ready for lit?”
“Yup.” He jumps to his feet. “I’ll catch you guys later.” He takes off with Chloe, and my blood starts to boil.
“You think that’s some game he’s playing?” Gage asks as he helps me up. “Hang out with Chloe to drive you insane?”
“I don’t know.”
But if it is, it’s
so
working.
***
The wind whips relentlessly during cheer. It feels as though a hurricane is coming, as if the wind were trying to warn us of the impending tempest already in our midst.
Chloe works us with heartless rigor. You would think we were prepping for the Super Bowl, not some game against North Washington High.
Ms. Richards blows the whistle, and I fall onto the lawn just shy of Giselle.
“Go along with whatever she tells you,” she whispers before rising and heading toward the bitch squad.
“OK, guys.” Chloe waves us over.
“I’ve got a game plan all worked out.” She darts a quick glance to Giselle and nods.
This is going to be good. Giselle said she was determined to find out what Bree meant by
Skyla will never see it coming
. I have a feeling she’s been let in on Chloe’s deep, dark, sure-to-land-us-all-in-a-government-detention-center secret.
“Homecoming is two weeks away,” Chloe bleats it out as if we were innocently going to dish on our choice of couture. “I want to discuss our plan of action, so we can mull it over. I don’t want us to fuck anything up because we didn’t have enough time to sit on the details.” She blinks a dissatisfied smile because she most assuredly knows we are going to somehow fuck this up. “We’ll meet at the cemetery the Thursday before the game at ten.” Chloe gives it as a command. “Emily, you bring your dad’s van. We’ll send Kate home with you for the night.”
“Got it.” Em nods into the insanity.
“Brielle, you and Emerson are going to keep watch. Nat” —she turns into her—“you can stay home because I know how hard this is for you.”
“No, I want to be a part of this,” Nat is quick to protest. “Kate would want me to.”