Ex Marks the Spot (sample)
The weekend before Halloween brought its trademark rush of undecided shoppers to the Route 9 Party City, and Darian’s mother, who didn’t like crowds, decided she’d wait in the car. “Thanks for the ride, Mrs. Rogers!” called Victoria, who was Darian’s confirmed BFF, as she and the aforementioned Darian traversed the parking lot. Darian said nothing, but felt bad about it, and felt worse twenty minutes later when a courteous text inquired after their progress and/or if they were even still alive. In truth, things had gotten out of hand. “I thought we’d go quicker,” Victoria said, holding cheap fishnets up to the light as if to do so told her something. “I thought at least we’d be on line by now.” “She thinks I’m still a kid,” Darian explained, “when it’s, all, ‘Oh, I want to be a princess,’ and then I just pick a dress. No. There are many… subtle… X-factors.” “What do you want to be?” asked Victoria, who was torn between Harley Quinn, zombie cheerleader and the cute-quirky-cat-girl thing quirky girls did. “I don’t want a costume like that Sexy Wolf, Sexy Movie Protagonist crap,” pronounced Darian, circling her midriff with a frown. “That’s not cool.” “What, you don’t got the abs for it?” “I have abs for lots of things! That is neither here nor there. I want…” Darian sighed and flicked a plastic axe with a skull on the part of the axe that held the axe part to the handle. “I wanna be, like, female, but not girly. I want something classic, just not boring. I don’t want dudes to ogle me, but I still demand to be fierce. I just want to kick ass, y’know?” Victoria knew.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry,” Darian said, as she and Victoria piled into the back seat of her mom’s car. “The line.” Her mom absolved her. “I did some hack-and-slash through my inbox. This Boston thing is a nightmare.” Darian had never been clear on what the Boston thing was. “Well, anyway, sorry, for real.” “Yeah, me too,” said Victoria, tossing her stringy wavy dirty blonde mess. Linda smirked. (Linda Rogers was not quite a ‘cool mom’, but still had her moments.) “All right, you’re forgiven.” She started the car. “Victoria, it’s about that time, so we’re gonna stop and pick Noah up at karate, and then I’ll drop you home, okay?” “Sure thing, Mrs. Rogers,” said Victoria, whose friends’ parents always spoke highly of her. “How’s Noah doing?” “Fine, thank you. He does love karate.” “Is he at that place in the strip mall one down from the Stop ‘n’ Shop? I went there for a year before I broke my metacarpal or something.” Darian cocked her head. “I never knew that.” “How are we sophomores and you didn’t know that?” Darian shrugged. “We’re all full of surprises.” They hung a left onto Route 9, heading south. Darian dug through her shopping bag and felt a startling grin grip her cheeks. It surprised her how badly she wanted to try it all on. “So,” said her mom. “What’d you get?” “Well, Victoria’s doing the cat thing, as you might have surmised.” (Victoria’d worn the ears out of the store; she fashioned her hands into claws and went ‘mrer’.) “And I intend to be a kick-ass pirate.” “A pirate! Didn’t Noah do that two years ago? He might still have some of his stuff if you ask.” “That’s a good point,” murmured Darian, who’d totally forgotten. “They were out of good swords. I’d like a sword.”
Most of Noah’s pirate crap was either lost or somewhere at their father’s, but he still had an excellent selection of swords for historic and fictional play. Darian took her time to browse and wondered if they called it a cutlass because it cut lasses. She donned her outfit, took a selfie in the mirror, sent it to Victoria for critique, changed into PJ pants and a ratty old maroon t-shirt at four, half-assed her bio homework, quarter-assed her French, made a note to review it all tomorrow with more of her ass, obligingly played some Xbox with Noah and read her third-favorite Jane Austen till dinner was served. “Thanks for driving me today, Mom,” she said, at this time—a few hours late, but keenly felt all the same. On Sunday she did other things. Chief among them was digging up some silver spray paint in the garage to make her plastic sword look more convincing. The one thing she didn’t do was text Shane Bradley back. She hadn’t texted him since Independence Day Eve and was not restarting now.
— you look hooooot — I’m glad you approve (Darian was happy to text with non-Shane-Bradley people.) — srsly d, typed Victoria, it’s like you became this whole other person — Yes, I believe that’s the intention of costumes. (It took Victoria time to answer this, and while she waited, Darian examined the original selfie and mused that a red bandana underneath her hat might lend her blue eyes extra flint.) — you can play dumb with me (Victoria replied) and use your smart words while you do it but it doesn’t change a thing (“Oh, you whore,” said Darian, aloud, a sentiment not relayed in text form.) — What thing doesn’t it change? — that we’ve got our pick of parties on Halloween night and u wanna make as aplsh (Darian assumed that Victoria meant to type “a splash”.) — I don’t *not* want to make one, if that’s what you’re implying (Time passed here.) — do you just want me to get things moving along a little quicker and send shane your hot pic right now (At this time the entire known universe came screeching to a halt. Darian balefully stared at the screen, a frenzy burning in her aforementioned flinty blue eyes in need of red cloth accompaniment, and not a single subatomic particle in all existence quivered till her shaking fingers moved to reply.) — That’s not what this is about and you know it. — revenge girl - you lie like a rug ☺ (The text exchange paused again for brief contemplation of murder.) — Victoria Delmonico, you harbor delusions — just tell me whose party were hittin up Thurs ☮ — Oh, Halloween is Thursday? I haven’t been paying much attention. (She made, of course, a better pirate than a liar.)
Shane was a good guy, which did precisely dick for him. Their courtship had commenced at the start of the prior year’s second semester, when Darian joined fencing club (strictly intramural) and excelled at parry, riposte and salacious puns on thrust. By March, the libidinous stories of that cute freshman chick hookin’ up with the debonair junior vice-president were truly the talk of the fencing club (total membership: fourteen). By her birthday (April 20—she’d heard all the jokes), he was giving her Serious Boyfriend gifts. By May, they were Facebook-official, a step Darian had long resisted for it feeling like a label. When senior prom came, they did nothing, since neither was a senior. But the next day they took the train into the city, a big deal for Westchester kids, and they hung out in neighborhoods that used to be hip when their parents were young. In June she tried to let him down easy: it’s all too fast, I’m not ready for this, too soon, too young, two different people, blah blah, now you can get with some counselor over the summer. (It’d somehow escaped her attention that Shane would be working at his old Boy Scout camp.) She made every excuse. The truth was simply that she did not love him, and because she did not love him, it really didn’t matter that he was good and nice and other things. She wanted out, and she got it. But guys always needed a reason, and then another reason, and then an explanation for those reasons, and so on, which Darian knew. But what she really knew was that she did not love Shane Bradley, and that, she knew above all else, was reason enough.
En route to lunch that Monday, Victoria presented their party possibilities. “I vote the Sarah Lennox affair,” she said. “I know it’s, like, the default. But her house is huuuuge and her mom is one of those at-least-this-way-I-know-where-you-are types.” Darian gave her black hair a good swish in the negative. “Nah. Let’s do Kirby Bolingbrand’s. There’s a diamond in the rough.” “How d’ya figure.” “Because everyone and their brother’s gonna try to squeeze in at the Lennox…’ses,” Darian proclaimed, kicking her overstuffed bag into her locker till it fit. “There’ll be twenty cool people and a million skeevy freshman boys and stuff. No thanks. Been there, bought the t-shirt.”
This concludes the free sample, but you can buy the full story at this link! . . . |