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There was no loser boyfriend. There had never been a loser boyfriend. Antimony had fabricated him from whole cloth, a rough, slightly disreputable character who went to a different high school and had been portrayed—on the few occasions when he needed to be seen by her classmates, from a safe distance—by her nerdy cousin Artie in what he insisted on calling “jock cosplay,” driving her Uncle Ted’s 1969 Camaro and sneering. Thus far, she’d managed to keep any member of the squad from meeting him face-to-face, which was for the best, since Artie’s pheromones tended to scramble the hormones of
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“Did you not receive this quarter’s memo on giving back to the community by working with people who lack work history but possess applicable skills?” “That was meant to help us hire more seasonal college workers, not homeless people,” said Clarice.
Not that Megan’s parents are modern. Megan’s parents are Pliny’s gorgons, which makes Megan a Pliny’s gorgon, which means I couldn’t room with her unless I wanted to be in constant danger of being temporarily paralyzed. Not my idea of a party.
Most of them don’t even like Fern, and she’s the walking, talking incarnation of a happy meadow filled with butterflies and flowers. Amusement park politics are like academic politics, only more so. The infighting’s so vicious because the stakes are so low.)
“Okay, you have glitter in your everything. You are a testament to the power of glitter.”
Even the palest gorgons can sit in the sun for hours without anything to show for it beyond happy snakes. I don’t know where they stand on vomiting, having never hated myself enough to ask, but since Megan regularly fed mice to the snakes on her head, and anything that goes down can come up, I sort of assumed she was capable of vomiting from a dozen mouths at a time. The extrusions of human children probably seemed like amateur hour to her.
When Fern and I skated through the Park, we were never silent. We laughed, we shrieked, we traded insults when we were close enough to do it without calling down the wrath of Security, but we never held our tongues. It was a safety precaution. By making noise, we made sure anyone else in the area knew where we were, and we avoided collisions. For me to come skating silently out of the dark was a bad sign. For me to grab her arm and whisper, “Run,” was a disastrous one.
“So I heard from Eddie in Security that the little blonde one got arrested last night.” A gasp. “What did she do?” “Murdered a man. A guest.” It was difficult to understand why murdering a guest would be worse than killing a cast member, but it was written plainly in the speaker’s tone: by supposedly killing a guest, Fern had committed a mortal sin in the eyes of not just the law, but the entire Lowry entertainment complex.
“I don’t know if you’ve looked at me recently, but you may have noticed that I am not, in fact, a white person. I am, rather, quite brown.”
“—sometimes knowing I’ll get to have some fun in the Park before I go home is what makes it possible for me to keep smiling for our guests. I know work is work and play is play, but they have fun all day long, and I just want my turn. Is that weird?” Mr. Knighton looked like he was grinding his teeth as he said, “It’s perfectly normal.”
“Doing the right thing often does,” said Mary. She looked at Fern. “Your roommate’s a sorceress and I’m her dead aunt. Is that okay? Have we covered the situation? Because I’d like to move on before the other roommate gets home.”
Megan made a clucking noise with her tongue. “Whoever he is, marry him and keep us in the style to which we’d like to become accustomed.” “He works in Public Relations.” “Whoever he is, murder him and make it look like an accident, but make sure you get away with his wallet,” Megan amended. “Thanks for the vote of murder-confidence,” I said. She flashed me a bright, toothy smile. “I always have faith in you when it comes to murder.”
“We don’t get much new blood around here.” “Bad reputation?” She rolled her eyes. “Please. We offer a health plan. We have the best reputation of any cabal this side of the Mississippi River—and did you see that bullshit the LA folks pulled on live television last year? Right now, I think we’re the best regarded cabal in the country.” “Then why?” “Because there isn’t much new blood to get.” For the first time, the muscles around Emily’s eyes relaxed, her gaze softening, becoming less predatory and more wistful. “You don’t know how much you’ve missed.”
I took a few hesitant steps forward, wishing I had a knife, or better yet, twenty knives, or better yet, twenty knives and a brick of C-4. Plastic explosives are a strange and dangerous security blanket, but they tend to make whatever’s scaring me go away quickly, so I’m in favor.
I, on the other hand, skate to kill and set things on fire with the power of my mind.
I may not have the best aim in my family, but I can hang upside down like a bat for hours. It’s actually pretty soothing. Even blood needs a vacation every now and then, and I enjoy sending mine to visit my brain.
“Infants scream without concern for the damage they may do to themselves in the process. Their little throats are forever raw from the strain of howling their indignation to an uncaring world. As they grow older, they learn to use their voices for other things. They learn to speak, in some cases to sing, to modulate themselves. Would you say that speech is a better use for the voice than primal howls?”
“No,” I said firmly. “No one is getting murdered.” I hesitated before amending, “Right now. Murder is always on the table for later.”
Almost everything there is crafted from plastic, steel, and glowing bulbs, creating an atmosphere that would have been called Wonka-esque, if that wouldn’t have been stepping on someone else’s copyright.
“Can you modify the, ah, ‘oomph’ on the fly, or is this one of those things where you have to call your attacks before the GM rolls?” I asked. Megan blinked at me slowly before she snorted. “Sometimes I forget how much of a nerd you are,” she said.
