11

“Breakfast!” shouted her mom.

Fiona rubbed her eyes and groaned. There was no more terrifying word in existence for her right now. Somewhere in Hamm, she knew, Horace was shivering off a final sweat, and Caroline was probably retching out the bottom of her stomach while her mom held her hair, but as far as Fiona was concerned, they had it easy. They had not sat in the back of that car after dropping off Horace, hadn’t endured the hunched silence of her father’s I told you so disappointment as they rolled through the streets of Hamm. Now, the trouble she was in waited for her downstairs, and there wasn’t even time to get in a few minutes with Betty before she had to face it.

She put on her pajamas and left the fortress of her room, hoping she was ready. Every step down the stairs was exponentially more nerve-racking than the last, but felt inevitable, like a walk to the gallows.

Robert Jones sat in their well-lit kitchen with his coffee mug to his mouth, his wrinkled brow aimed directly at her. Her mom, looking displeased but far less vengeful, heated up butter for eggs.

Fiona fixed herself some cereal and poured her coffee, doing her best to act natural. But she was sitting at the table for less than five seconds before her father went on the offensive:

“I hope you’re not planning to go anywhere today.”

She shrugged. “Nope. Was just going to take today easy. If that’s okay with you.”

Her mother gave her an over-the-shoulder glance—Don’t push it—while her cavalier response only made her father’s nostrils flare.

“And I hope you won’t be seeing that boy anymore,” he said.

She sighed dejectedly. “Well, I have school with him tomorrow,” she said. “But I’m happy not to go if that’s what you’d prefer.”

“Is this funny to you?” snapped her dad. “That boy is a bad influence. I don’t want you spending time with him.”

“He has a name. Horace. Remember? At dinner the other night you were talking about all the good things his family does for the town—”

“That was before he made my car smell like a sick ward,” said her father, setting down his mug and linking his hands together.

She made a mental note to kick Horace in the shin for putting her in this position. “He had a bad night,” she said calmly. “I’m sorry, I know, it wasn’t a good look, but come on, Dad, it happens to everyone. You never got wasted in high school and threw up?”

“Don’t talk to me like I was born yesterday,” he said, his voice suddenly so loud that even he felt surprised. Fiona’s mom froze mid-whisk. “That boy didn’t have one beer too many or smoke a doobie when he shouldn’t have—”

“Doobie? Really?”

“He was all fucked-up on something dangerous,” said her dad, slapping a hand down on the table. The salt and pepper shakers rattled together.

Fiona was dumbfounded. Robert Jones did not drop f-bombs at breakfast. She was in serious trouble.

“Robert,” said her mother, “don’t be ridiculous about this.”

“You’re making a big deal out of nothing,” said Fiona, trying to sound like she was bored by the conversation already. “He’s probably super embarrassed and is going to give me flowers or something at school tomorrow. Calm down.”

“You think you have any idea what boys like him are up to?” said her dad, his expression aggressively pitying. “Well, you don’t. I may be an old man to you, kiddo, but I’ve seen things that would make your hair turn white. And I’ve seen what happens to kids like that.”

If only she’d had some time with Betty before breakfast, she thought, she might have taken this castigation a little better. Today, though, she was still carrying a lot of her own anger at Horace’s behavior last night, and it smoldered the edges of her composure.

“Oh, do tell, all-knowing Council Fuhrer,” she shouted. “What happens to boys like my boyfriend?”

“They end up like your cousin Jake,” spat her father.

She gasped involuntarily; her mother did, too. Robert Jones snorted, as though he felt angry that he had been forced to touch on such a dark subject.

“Oh my God,” was all Fiona could come up with.

“Yeah,” said Robert. “Suddenly it’s not so fine, is it? So, the next time you want to hang out with junkies and hoods, picture them huddled in a corner dying while you and your friends dance around them—”

Fiona was out of the kitchen and up the stairs in seconds, tears welling up in her eyes. She slammed the door viciously, but her rage was all angst, and fell apart the minute she was alone. She collapsed on her bed and sobbed until her throat burned and her back hurt, too overwhelmed to even play guitar.

…

“Jesus Christ,” said Caroline through a bite of sandwich at lunch the next day.

“Seriously,” said Rita, putting a hand on Fiona’s shoulder.

Fiona shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “He’s scared, I guess. And I know he’s just looking out for me, but still…”

“But still, that’s maybe the creepiest thing you could say to someone?” countered Caroline. “Fiona, girl, don’t feel the need to justify your dad’s bullshit.”

“Easy there,” said Rita, but then she turned to Fiona. “Caroline has a point, though. Your dad’s upset, yeah, but that doesn’t mean you were wrong. And it was unfair of him to say something that cruel. Unfair to you, and to your cousin’s memory.”

“And if your dad had been there and had seen what we saw, maybe he would have a better perspective on it.”

Fiona glanced up at Caroline; suddenly, she felt unsure they were talking about the same thing. “What do you mean?”

“I mean the Pit Viper!” she said, grinning. “I know I was flying on that Orbitin stuff and all, but wasn’t that amazing? I keep going back to that set in my head and just feeling…freer!” She grinned at Rita. “Back me up here.”

“To be fair, I was just a little drunk,” said Rita with a guilty smirk, “but yeah, that show was beyond incredible. I’ve never danced that hard in my life.”

“It was like midway through the set, the music and the drugs and the dancing all sort of came together in this perfect moment, you know?” Before Fiona’s eyes, Caroline became engrossed in her own little world. “It kind of changed everything. Like, I’m looking at school, and track, and my dad, and all the town council bullshit, and realizing, it’s just so repressed, you know? Like, I’m sitting in class, listening to Traubert babble on, and I’m like, wait, compared to how I felt Saturday night, how do I feel now? And the answer’s shitty! Why do things need to be so shitty…”

Fiona frowned. What was going on? This wasn’t Caroline. Yes, she was always a smart-ass, but she was driven and intelligent about it. She didn’t buy into some talk about ecstasy and life being a drag. Fiona looked to Rita for vindication, but Rita was caught up in Caroline’s rant. Her eyes had glazed over as she absently stirred her rice bowl, her mind lost in memories of Saturday night.

Fiona winced. One minute, her dad was making her and her friends out to be monsters; the next, her friends were acting like the type of blind hedonists that Robert Jones was scared of. Why was everything going so crazy all of a sudden?

“Anyway,” said Caroline, snapping back to the present, “you should tell your dad to go fuck himself. What Horace does on a Saturday is none of his business.”

“I’m not going to tell my dad to go fuck himself,” said Fiona with a laugh.

Caroline shrugged. “That’s what I’d do. Just saying.”

…

Horace was a ghost all afternoon. At one point, Vince tried to stop her in the hall—he wanted to talk about the Pit Viper, again with the damn Pit Viper—and she asked him about Horace. When the boy shrugged, she stormed off. She didn’t have the time for gossip. Her boyfriend owed her an apology.

Finally, at the end of the day, there was AP Chemistry, the class they had together (she noted the irony, given her last interaction with Horace). She showed up early and watched the door, ZZ Top chugging away on her headphones, until Mr. Chanesh arrived and started class.

Five minutes after the lesson began, Horace tiptoed in, a smile on his face. He plopped down in the seat next to Fiona, leaned over, whispered, “Hey, babe,” and pecked her on the cheek.

“Ms. Jones, Mr. Palmada,” said Mr. Chanesh, folding his arms across his chest. “Are we disturbing your canoodling?”

Fiona felt her face blaze and opened her mouth to say sorry, but before she could, Horace said, “Actually, if you could give us a few minutes, that’d be great.”

The room rippled with laughter. Mr. Chanesh shook his head. “Strike two,” he said and turned back to the whiteboard. The rest of the period, Fiona sat silently, trying to focus on her work and doing her best to avoid eye contact with her classmates. Twice, Horace reached for her hand under the table; both times she pulled it away.

When class was over, she hurried outside and waited for Horace a little ways down the hall. He sauntered toward her a few minutes later, his brow furrowed.

“So,” said Horace, “that seemed a little weird back there.”

“What the fuck are you doing?” Fiona hissed.

“Whoa, easy, babe,” he said. “Are you all right?”

“Horace, the last time I saw you, you were shirtless and drooling all over me in the back of my dad’s car,” she said. “And today, you roll into class acting like a jerk-off for no reason. No phone call, no email, just showing up like nothing happened.”

“Wow, you are not all right,” he said, blinking in surprise. “Fiona, I spent yesterday having the worst hangover of my life, plus I was super embarrassed about how things went down in front of your dad. I wanted to see you today. I’m sorry I didn’t call.”

“No, instead, you waited to get to class late and try to hold hands with me under the table like all is forgiven.”

“What is this?” He laughed, throwing his arms up. “I roll into class late all the time! I’ve rolled into this class late so many times, and we always held hands and shit!”

“Well, maybe Saturday night changed things,” she said, riding her anger. The more he spoke, the more she realized he was right, she was being emotional, paranoid, pissy, but… where were her flowers? Where was her big apology? “That was not a good look for you. It was not fun dragging you to the train and having my dad see you rolling your face off.”

“First of all, I was definitely tripping, not rolling.”

“Don’t be an asshole.”

A snarky grin spread across his face. “And second, you got chewed out by your dad, didn’t you? I can practically smell it on you.”

She froze, mouth open, caught off guard by how silly she felt hearing the truth out loud. “Back off. This isn’t about my dad, it’s about you behaving like a supreme dickhead.”

“Which I said I wanted to apologize for!” he yelled, letting his arms flop down to show how exhausted he was by this conversation. “Would you prefer I came to class on my knees, hanging my head? Yeesh, your pops really put the screws to you, huh?”

“Why, because he doesn’t want to see me with someone blacking out on pills?” she said, feeling suddenly defensive of her father, the man who only yesterday had sent her storming up to her room in tears.

“Look, Fiona, I was having a great time, and I made a dumb choice,” he groaned. “Teenagers get trashed and vomit and learn very painful lessons about it in the morning. If your dad is gonna hate me because of that, then he’s overreacting as much as you are, and that’s his problem.”

She hated him then. She’d tried defending him to her father, and now here she was forced to defend her dad to Horace. How dare he make this about her life, when he had behaved like such an inconsiderate putz on Saturday night?

Maybe she was freaking out. Maybe she should just admit that her dad had chewed her out and fall into his arms. They could go over to the bleachers and make out and talk about his newest vinyl, and it would be…

“Bullshit,” she blurted.

Horace blinked. “What? What’s bullshit?”

“What about the pills, Horace?” she said. “You knew I didn’t want you to take those things, and you popped them anyway. Why was getting high more important than us having a night together?”

Horace shook his head and laughed. “Listen to this Hugs Not Drugs nonsense! Man, all the black concert shirts and loud rock music might fool you for a second, ladies and gentlemen, but she’s still just Fiona Jones, small-town daddy’s girl…”

“Don’t even try that,” said Fiona. She felt empowered. Her heart pounded a death march in her chest. “I’m just right, and you know it. And guess what, I’m done tolerating this kind of behavior.” She couldn’t believe what she was saying, but it felt delicious. Her gut told her to go for it. “Saturday night was disgusting, and instead of apologizing to me, you insulted me. I’m not interested in a relationship with someone like that.”

His smile collapsed as the confidence drained from his face. “Sorry, what?”

“You heard me,” she said. “Right now, it feels like you’re not ready to be in a serious relationship. And if I’m going to be with someone, he needs to be serious about me.”

“Wait, wait,” he said, eyes filling with panic. “Okay. So that escalated pretty fast. Let’s rewind. What I meant was—”

“Too little, too late,” she snapped back. In her head, she screamed, Are you crazy? This is Horace Palmada! You’ve never felt this way about a boy before! But it was drowned out by the grinding noise of her anger. “For six months, you were so good to me, but now it’s like I’m the love of your life until it’s inconvenient. Until you get upset that your DJ set got cut short and you start drinking like a fish. Until having the party at the old mill is too cool to pass up because, what, because I have some stupid hang-up with my cousin dying there, right?”

“It’s an awesome venue!” he cried.

“You selfish dick!” she shouted. “Go fuck yourself, Horace Palmada.” And then, even though she knew it was too much, she went over the edge: “Never mind, go have the party at the mill. Maybe you can die there, see if it’s cool.”

Horace stepped back as though he’d been slapped, and Fiona herself was surprised that she had said such a thing. She was choking on the emotions she normally exorcised with Betty, and they were spilling out of her uncontrollably, like she was Carrie wrecking prom night. Part of her wanted to try that, to lift Horace off the ground with her mind like Darth Vader and watch him gag as she closed an invisible hand around his throat—

She shook her head, casting off the murderous thoughts, and left. He didn’t even call out after her.

…

She made it halfway through her bike ride home before the tears began fluttering out of the corners of her eyes, the wind blowing them back into her ears. Storming through the house, she was only flustered and shaking, but seconds after entering her room she crumbled outright. It had been a long day, and she was overdue for a serious cry.

Once the initial wave of sobs gave way to quieter, sniffling sadness, she dragged Betty out from under her bed. She closed the blinds, locked the door, went to turn off her phone—

A notification glowed on her screen.

One new email.

Sender: PV.

Her crying stopped in a gasp of disbelief. She tentatively opened the message and read it.

Tess gave me this address. I hope it’s yours.

If it is you, I want to see you, soon. We have a lot to talk about. I’ve thought about you every day.

-Pit Viper

She blinked, absorbing the message.

Carefully, Fiona pulled Betty from her case. Her fingers found their way to Betty’s strings, and together they spoke.

But the message from the Pit Viper had pivoted her mood. This wasn’t the minor-chord heartache and eighth- note angst that she’d planned to unleash, but a twanging sense of possibility and apprehension and heat. As it built, it slowed to a humid, stomping Southern-rock riff that spoke of something primal, old, and wise.

She closed her eyes. The slouching, laughing image of Horace hung in her mind for a second, and then it vanished and was replaced by a a lithe figure humming with power, his skin marked with sigil and star, body hard and burning with a distant, cold light like the sun off snow. As the notes from her guitar outlined him in her mind, they all came together in the roar of his eyes, two distant lights in space, hungry as the gaze of a snake. He reached out to her, and without hesitation she put her hand in his, and they pulled each other close…

She swayed with the music. The room grew dim in her vision, the air cool against her skin. A bead of sweat formed at her brow, ran down her face, dropped off her chin.

I’ve thought about you every day.

She pulled Betty off her and flopped back onto her bed, her temples pounding as he raced through her mind. The halo of power and confidence around him made her head spin, until it was as though she was drunk on the very thought of him.