Murder-a-Go-Go's, page 2
She pulled her pink-covered phone from her backpack and they all gathered around on her bed. Patricia patted the velvety pink bedspread. When they stayed in Colbie’s room, Patricia pretended they were all rich ladies having tea in an all-pink hotel ballroom or kid-witches who lived in a house made of cotton candy. Colbie’s bedroom looked like a picture from a teen magazine because her dad, who lived hundreds of miles away in another state, sent her lots of gifts. Anything she or Alexa wanted, they got. Patricia lived two doors down, but her room was small and still had the basketball decals left over from the kid who’d lived there before they moved in. Patricia was tall but that didn’t mean she liked sports. Colbie liked sports, and Colbie had pink carpeting. Patricia looked down at where Alexa sat cross-legged on the pink floor. There was nothing pink left in the world they didn’t have.
Colbie dialed the local Pizza Plaza and had two large-with-onions-and-garlic pies delivered to their math teacher, whose breath was so bad that Nori, who wasn’t good at math, wouldn’t raise her hand to ask a question, so that he wouldn’t lean over her desk to help her.
“Does he chew on his own shit every morning?” Patricia asked.
Jane laughed. “I bet he eats someone else’s shit.”
Colbie laughed uneasily, glancing in Alexa’s direction. How much could they get away with before Alexa ran to tell their mom? She couldn’t be sure. And also, did people actually—Was that a thing?
They called the local paper to place an ad to sell their principal’s car. Jane used her most adult voice to leave the message. “Low miles. Must sell. Best offer accepted.”
When she hung up, Patricia said, “You know they won’t print that unless we pay for it.”
“Whatever,” Jane said. “I should have said ‘Blow job free with purchase.’”
Nori swallowed hard and looked at the clock. At her house, her little brother was just being put to bed, and her parents would sometimes let her sit up and watch the news. The news made her mother shake her head and say, “Nori, you must grow up and make the world a better place. You and all your friends.” Nori wanted to make movies like the boy-girl ones she liked. But she thought maybe she’d be a journalist instead, someone who took a handheld video camera into war zones and documented the terrible things that could be fixed. Her mother would be so happy. Nori didn’t see how Jane was ever going to make the world a better place. Mostly, she just made it gross. Thanks to Jane, whenever Nori saw her parents touch, her stomach hurt a little, knowing now what must happen behind their bedroom door.
Nori yearned for her own bed, with the teddy bear sheets. Her real pajamas were yellow with rabbits. She’d swiped the nightgown that kept slipping down her chest from the back of her mom’s closet, but she wished for the bunnies. They were soft, broken in, and still too big for her.
Jane handed the phone to Patricia. “Your turn.”
“Call LeeAnn Becker,” Colbie said.
Patricia and Nori glanced at one another. LeeAnn had once been Colbie’s friend, but now they didn’t speak. Colbie wore the hurt of LeeAnn ditching her like a badge on her chest, a war wound. “I don’t know her number,” Patricia said.
“I do, dumbass,” Colbie said, and grabbed the phone. She still had the notebooks she and LeeAnn had passed back and forth all through elementary school. LeeAnn had always signed off as her Best Friend Forever, but that wasn’t what happened when they’d started junior high last month.
Nori didn’t like to see Colbie’s face when LeeAnn walked by in the hall and wouldn’t look at them. “She’s at that dumb cheerleading camp, isn’t she?” she offered.
They tried the number, but no one answered.
“I know,” Colbie said. “Call Caleb McCormick.” Colbie, Jane, and Nori laughed.
Alexa giggled nervously, looking from one girl to the other.
“Shut up,” Patricia said, her breath choked. She let the phone drop to the bedspread.
Alexa bounced up and down. “Caleb and Patricia, sitting in a tree—” She closed her mouth tightly and cowered, waiting for her sister to come pull her hair.
Colbie smiled. “I’m going to give you that one for free. K-I-S-S—”
“Shut the hell up, I said.” Patricia sat up on her heels, perched, ready.
“Easy, girl,” Jane said. She wanted to ask if Colbie’s brother had a cell phone. They could call him wherever he was and see which friends he had with him. Maybe they’d come back and hang out. Jane looked around at the other girls. Colbie was flexing her hand, open, close, open, close, an exercise for her pitching hand. Colbie didn’t yet shave her legs. None of the girls did but her. Their legs, sticking out from their shorts and pajama bottoms and Nori’s slutty nightgown, were covered in fine dark hair that reminded Jane of a sleek little animal she’d seen in the pet store. Patricia, who was taller than everyone else in their grade and most of the high school boys, too, wore the same pair of dingy jeans almost every day. She studied too much and read books about geeky crap like science and weather. Nori, with that ridiculous thing on her head. No, the boys would not be coming over to hang out with them. Jane studied the purple tips of her fingers. “Let’s call Paul Szirnek.”
Patricia scooted the phone toward her. “You.”
Jane took the phone and started dialing.
Patricia looked at Colbie and shifted to sit with her back against the cool pink wall. Jane knew Paul Szirnek’s phone number, for one. And, second, she had no problem dialing it. Even though Paul Szirnek was the cutest boy in their grade and had a girlfriend in the grade above them—which had never been done in the history of seventh grade, as far as Patricia knew. He might as well be dating a teacher. Michelle Landry’s father owned the company that built all their houses and half of the town. Michelle Landry, whose hair and teeth were perfect. Michelle Landry, whose boobs had already come in. “What about Michelle Landry?” Patricia said, her voice nearly a whisper.
“Wouldn’t she be at cheerleading camp, too?” Jane said.
Jane let the phone ring. She wasn’t sure what she would say if he picked up, but it was too late to put the phone down and plan it out. The others were watching her, Nori biting her pinkie nail.
Back at her old school, Jane had had only one good friend, a girl the other girls there hadn’t liked. She was okay, Jane still thought. She told good stories and had let Jane have the better deal when they used to trade stickers. Her family had a pool, and they spent every warm afternoon in the water, even though Jane knew her friend must pee in it because she never got out. Jane wondered, now that she had moved away, whether that girl had anyone at all to talk to. Here, though, she had three best friends. Well, two best friends plus Nori, who was like a pet. And Alexa, who was more like a stray. No one had a pool, but when she said something, she could tell they were listening. All four of them.
She let the phone purr three times and was about to call it off when someone picked up. “Hello?” It was a male voice, an adult’s.
Jane swallowed hard. “C-Could I speak to Paul, please?”
“You’ve got the wrong number.”
“Oh.” She glanced around at the other girls.
Colbie, leaning her elbows on her knees, mouthed, “What?”
“Who’s this, then?” Jane said.
“Wrong number,” Colbie said. She slid off the bed and grabbed a brush off her dresser. Her hair was short, but she still brushed it in long strokes. Her dad’s girlfriend had taken her to get it all cut off just before school started. She had also taken her shopping for her first bra. Her mother had gone crazy when they’d come back from Dad’s. Colbie paused in her brushing, catching herself before she started crying, and checked out her friends in the mirror.
Patricia had slumped lower against the wall, reading one of Colbie’s magazines. Nori lay stretched out on the bed behind Jane and picked at a loose thread on the bedspread.
Jane stuck her tongue out at Alexa.
In Jane’s ear, the man on the phone said, “This is who you called instead of Paul, kid. What do you want?”
“Kid, huh? Well, that’s really flattering,” Jane said.
Patricia sat up. Jane had switched on her classified-ad buying voice.
Colbie brought her brush over to the bed and sat on the edge.
“Oh, yeah? Why is that?” The guy sounded annoyed, like Jane had interrupted his dinner. It was late. She tried to picture him on the other side of the line sitting in a big recliner with his feet propped up, a plate of microwaved awfulness resting on his belly. The phone would have greasy fingerprints on it when he put it down.
“Well,” Jane said. “Because I sure don’t feel like a kid anymore. You know just how to make a woman feel good about herself.”
Nori curled up into a ball and wrapped her arms around her knees. She looked like a pill bug after you poked it with a stick, Patricia thought.
“Sure,” the guy said. “You’re welcome, lady. Sorry there’s no Paul here.”
“Wait,” Jane said. “What’s your name?”
She hadn’t used the right voice. Patricia was smirking at her, dragging a finger across her throat. In the quiet on the other side of the line, Jane heard the guy’s hesitation, pictured him considering his dinner getting cold. Come on, mister, she thought. You won’t be sorry.
“Jim.”
“That’s a nice name. Mine is Jane.”
Colbie hit Jane on the leg with the back of her hairbrush. “Don’t use your real name, you idiot.”
“What was that?” Jim asked.
Jane flicked Colbie on the leg. “My daughter. She’s being a pain in the ass.” She glared at Colbie, then resettled herself, cross-legged, on the bed. “She has some friends over tonight, so I’m just chilling out.”
“Yeah?” Jim said.
“I’m glad I dialed the wrong number, Jim. I don’t even like that Paul I was trying to get.”
“Oh, yeah?” Jim cleared his throat. “He a douchebag or something?”
“Jim, you nailed it. He is a douchebag.”
Patricia slid to the bed as though she’d been shot and covered her face with her hands.
“You banging that cat Paul?” Jim said.
Jane’s breath caught in her throat. Her mother talked to her girlfriends this way, and sometimes forgot who she was talking to and said to Jane, “I was so interesting until I finally screwed him—and then, poof, gone. You know?” And Jane kind of did know, because she’d been watching her mother date scummy guys for so long, listening to her mother on the phone with her sister in California. Listening to her when she went into her standard line. “This time,” she always said, “I swear, this time is the last time.”
Jane glanced up, saw all the girls waiting for her to say something.
“Yeah, Jim. That’s exactly what the problem is. I was so interesting until I screwed him—and then, poof, gone.”
Nori yipped into the pink bedspread.
“Maybe you’re just too much woman for a shit like Paul,” Jim said.
“That’s the sad truth. I need a little more—man to my man, if you know what I mean.”
Nori leapt from the bed and padded to the bathroom. She closed the door and sat on the toilet in the dark. They were going to get into trouble. If Jane would ever hang up Colbie’s phone, she’d swipe it and call for her dad to pick her up. He would, too. It didn’t matter how late it was. She could say that her stomach hurt, and he would come rescue her. Or she could say that the other girls were making fun of her headgear and he’d drive even faster. If she said the other girls were talking to men on the phone about sex, she could count on her mother showing up and knocking down the door to Colbie’s mother’s room with her small slippered feet.
Back on the bed, Jane rolled her eyes at the closed bathroom door. To the man on the phone, she said, “Just not enough dick. You know what I mean?”
Jim laughed. “Uh, well, no. But yeah. I do. You need someone with a lot more balls.”
“You got ’em?”
Jim cleared his throat again. “Oh, baby girl,” he said, lowering his voice. “I got ’em.”
Jane thought about that for a second. Did “baby girl” mean that he knew how young she was? Or was it a kind of sexy baby language code? “Are you alone, Jim?”
“Uh. My roommate is in the other room.”
He meant wife. Jane was certain. “Sleeping?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s good.” Jane lay back on the spot Nori had left and stared at the ceiling. She heard a rustle through the phone. “Are you getting comfortable, Jim?”
Patricia uncovered her eyes and glanced nervously at Colbie, who shrugged.
Colbie picked up the pillow from her bed and sat her back against the headboard. She wanted Jane to get off her phone before her mother woke up and figured out what was going on, or before Alexa turned on them. The feeling that either of these things might happen any minute made her stomach feel tight. But Colbie also wanted to see what would happen next. Jane was joking, wasn’t she?
She reached out to snag the phone away.
Patricia grabbed her arm. “Not yet,” she said, leaning into Colbie’s ear. “Don’t you want to see her crash and burn?”
But Colbie had pictured the man with his hand down his pants and the feel of Patricia’s hand on her arm reminded her of the movie she’d watched on cable the other night. Her mother on a date. Her brother at a basketball game. Colbie had fixed the clocks to an hour later and put Alexa to bed. The movie was rated way above what she was allowed to watch—much worse than what they had watched tonight. In the other movie: all the skin, and some of the skin belonged to two women. Words she’d known, even used without thinking what they really meant, started to have a tacky, sticky feel to them. She’d gone to bed before her mother came home. She’d had hard dreams all night and woke up with her sheets twisted twice around her legs, like a vine.
She shook Patricia’s hand off her arm and sat back.
Jane turned her head toward them and winked. In her ear, Jim said, “I’m pretty comfortable. You going to talk to me for a while, sugar?”
“As long as you want.”
“Won’t need long, you keep talking like that. You said your daughter was there?”
“She’s in with her friends.”
“How many girls you got over there, then?”
“My daughter and three of her friends.” Jane glanced at the closed bathroom door. That freak Nori was in there with the lights off. “Just mama and the girls tonight.” She blew a silent kiss at Colbie and Patricia.
“That’s nice. Tell me about them.”
Jane turned away from her friends. “The girls?”
“Yeah. How old are they?”
“They’re twelve.” Jane swallowed, and her mouth felt mucky and her spit thick, as though she’d had a big piece of candy in there all day, the same piece, melting too slowly.
Colbie and Patricia looked at each other. Patricia stretched her long legs out and nudged Jane with her foot. Jane brushed her away.
“That’s just about perfect,” Jim said.
“It is?”
“Oh, yeah. Talk to me about that…twelve. Thirteen would be better.”
Colbie leaned toward Jane. “Tell him we’re over here making out,” she whispered. For a moment, she didn’t care if her mother walked in. “Naked. Tell him we’re all naked.”
Patricia glanced between them. Colbie had a look on her face she’d never seen before. Like she was hungry, and Jane was ordering more pizzas, only good ones and for them instead of Mr. Sellers. She pushed past Colbie, slid off the bed, and went to the bathroom door. She pressed her face to the slim opening. “Nori? Are you okay?”
Back on the bed, Jane sat up and hunched over the phone. “What’s better about thirteen?”
“A little more in the right places, usually,” Jim said. “What were you like at thirteen, Jane?”
Jane wasn’t sure if she’d been using her grown-up voice or not. She tried to think of what her mother would say. What was Jane like at thirteen? Too mouthy. Too opinionated. Too much for her own good. That’s what her mother had told Jane’s aunt. Too much.
“Too much for my own good,” Jane said, her voice thin as a guitar string.
“Thirteen is something else. Your daughter turns thirteen soon, the three of us should meet up. I’d have enough for the both—”
“Hey,” Jane said.
Patricia glanced over her shoulder. Jane had given up the honey voice. This was the voice that had got her sent to the office for talking back to Ms. Devereux in Phys Ed the week before.
Colbie lay down on the bed and tapped Jane’s knee. “Hey, tell him we’re Frenching each other.”
Down on the floor, Alexa put her thumb in her mouth.
Jane pulled at the neck of her T-shirt, hot. She felt like she did when she listened to her mom talk about a jerk-face date from the night before, like she might let her mom go to bed and then look the guy up, get to his front door, and start swinging.
“Actually,” Jim said. Jane startled that he was still there. “Twelve is pretty nice.” He lowered his voice. “Maybe I could come over and help you babysit tonight—”
“That’s disgusting.”
Patricia opened the bathroom door and went in. It was dark. “I can’t see you.”
Nori sniffed. “I want to go home.”
Patricia thought of the pink phone, the pink room, the pink bed like a tongue. She had a weird feeling, like she’d been shot through with an arrow. An arrow set on fire. She wanted to run, just run from the room, the house, down the block, past her house. The world wasn’t big enough for how far she wanted to go, how fast she wanted to move. It was a crime. It had to be. But it wasn’t the man on the phone who’d broken the rules. Jane had done this. Jane was the criminal. No. They all were.
“I’m never speaking to them again,” Nori said. Her face felt stuffed. She held a long piece of toilet paper crumpled in her hand. The band on her headgear made her scalp itch. “Did you hear what Colbie said?”
