Читать книгу Dead Little Mean Girl - Eva Darrows - Страница 13

Chapter Five

Things settled into a routine of terrible after the Riddell incident. Quinn did Quinn, no one took her to task because she terrified them. It got twice as bad after she joined the cheerleading squad; she had a small army of popular girls to back her. Add to that her unmatched capacity to wheedle, bully and charm her way through any situation and you had a disaster in Malone Souliers.

She was the Wicked Witch of Westvale.

I was the lucky girl who got to live with her and her little dog, too.

At least Karen didn’t suck. She respected my dedication to my grades, complimenting me with, “You have your head on straight—you’re going places in life.” She talked to me about college, offering to poke her alma mater after I sent out my applications. Not once did she say that stuff to her own daughter. Quinn’s concentration had always been the social spheres of school, not academic achievement, so Karen praised me, all the while nagging Quinn about her floundering grades.

It was a sore spot begging to become an open wound. Sure enough, at the end of first term, things imploded. I’d made Dean’s List with straight A’s. Quinn barely passed anything because homework was just not something she was interested in doing. Karen regarded her daughter’s report card in much the same way Superman would regard a lump of kryptonite in his Christmas stocking.

“This isn’t going to work, Quinn. You want to cheer in college but with these grades, you won’t get into college. You’re going to have to do more. Up the grades, show involvement beyond cheerleading. Prove that you’re well-rounded. And don’t try to sell me on cheerleading scholarships. Cheerleading doesn’t have the sway of football or baseball. If you want college, you’re going to have to work for it. I can’t do this for you.”

Quinn bellowed a whole bunch and stomped off to her room, but the idea of colleges turning her away must have bothered her, because she flounced into my room less than an hour later.

“Does your goth friend still work at Bouncing Bear?”

I offered my best deadly librarian stare over the rims of my glasses.

“Her name is Laney, and yes. Why?”

“I need a job.”

I actually laughed. Like, in her face. She looked taken aback, and then she looked pissed. “Stop being a douche. I need a job. You heard my mother. I’ve got to be well-rounded.”

I dropped my chin into my palm so I could maintain uncomfortable eye contact. “The last time Laney came over, you told her it’s lucky she found the one necrophiliac in Westvale because no one else would screw a corpse. Why would she get you a job anywhere?”

Quinn rolled her eyes, but she must have agreed Laney wasn’t a good in because I heard her mutter “Josh” before returning to the foul cocoon from whence she came.

I snorted. If she was going the Josh route, things had taken a dire turn.

Josh Winters was one of those kids who was popular in spite of himself. He was okay-ish looking, was smart-ish, played sports moderately well-ish, and had a good-ish sense of humor. Except he didn’t act like he was only ish because my classmates pandered to him. Josh had money. Lots of money. His parents owned Bouncing Bear, which started as one shop but had spread like a caffeinated plague. You couldn’t walk twelve feet down the street without stumbling upon a Bouncing Bear Coffee Shop with its googly-eyed mascot holding a hot cup of deliciousness.

Josh drove a nice car. He wore the best clothes. He had the biggest house in his neighborhood and was generous with the girls who were kind enough to put out for him. He tended to cycle through the ladies and, at one point, Nikki told me he had so many notches on his belt, his pants were about to fall down. Plenty of girls were more than willing to hop on his junk for a pretty bauble or two.

Quinn eluded his grasp. She’d toy with him and then back out, always blaming her boyfriend du week or some other totally avoidable whatever for keeping them apart. The reality was she preferred the pretty boys, but she wasn’t so dumb as to permanently burn that bridge. Josh smartened up after a while and went after easier fare, but he maintained an eye on Quinn’s pert butt, hoping it’d sashay his way.

If she wanted him to help her get the job, she might have to pay for the favor. The question was with what.

* * *

Answer: nothing.

Josh, still vying to insert himself into Quinn’s orifices, nudged his father about getting Quinn hired. He would later regret this maneuver, as so many of us regret interactions with Quinn, but at the time he probably figured the hot chick would owe him one so why not.

I could have told him the why-nots at length, but he wouldn’t have listened. There were some downfalls to being invisible.

Quinn surprised the family on a Saturday morning wearing a logoed pink polo shirt, a purple visor and tan shorts cut so short, I was pretty sure anyone walking behind her would mistake them for panties. It was ridiculous, especially considering we were due for the first snowfall of the season and she’d freeze to death.

“This uniform is so ugly,” she whined, tucking the shirt into her sort-of-shorts. “This pink washes me out.”

“I think your ass hanging out is the bigger problem,” I said, loud enough for my mother to hear. Mom biffed me on the back of the head, almost causing me to choke on my Cheerios.

“That’s God getting back at you.” Quinn grabbed her pocketbook. “I’m off. Wish me luck!”

Karen smiled after her. It was rare for Quinn to actually listen to anything her mother said, so it probably felt like a huge victory that this one time, Quinn had taken her advice. Once I stopped hacking on cereal, Mom and I eyed one another warily. And then Mom tittered. It was quiet, but it was enough to get me going, too. The next thing you knew, we were both giggling like idiots. Karen looked confused, but neither one of us wanted to rain on her parade so we kept further commentary to ourselves. Though Mom did whisper to me, “It’s good she’s not a boy or they’d be able to tell if she’s circumcised.”

We howled.

I expected Quinn’s Bouncing Bear stint not to last, but she stuck with it. For that matter, she practically glowed whenever she came home. She wouldn’t lift a finger to help around the house, touch her homework, or do anything that required actual effort beyond cheerleading and doing her nails, but for the first month of her employment, Quinn traipsed off to work with nary a complaint, taking early shifts on Saturdays and Sundays and coming home late—sometimes after dark. It didn’t cross me as weird until she missed a cheerleading practice. Melody called the house looking for her, saying that Quinn’s phone was turned off, and had we seen her today? The squad needed her.

I was watching a movie with Nikki at the time so I blew Melody off with a quick, “Nope, I’ll have her call you,” and hung up.

Nikki eyeballed me from behind her copy of Rolling Stone.

“Quinn missing a practice is like the Pope missing Sunday Mass, you realize. That chick is all about her spread eagles. I actually mean the sport ones this time.”

I cocked my head to the side, thoughtful. Quinn’s disposition was less hell beast than usual, and lately she was even wearing long pants to work in lieu of short shorts because “someone asked her to.” Most days, she’d tell that someone to crap in their hat.

“Something’s up,” I announced. “Her cell is never off.”

Nikki ducked behind her magazine. “Ayep. If she missed cheerleading practice, it’s a doozy.”

I didn’t relish the notion of involving myself in Quinn’s screwed-up life, but it was too strange to ignore. On the off chance she was on her way to becoming the next Walter White, I felt compelled to ask. Quinn was a creature of annoying habits. This habit was off the charts.

Nikki took off early that night on account of a date, so I was home alone by the time Quinn rambled in from work. I sat on the couch with a book in one hand and a can of soda in the other. She immediately pulled some of her hair from over her shoulder around front, patting it into place until it covered her neck.

“Hickey, huh?” I asked.

She tsked. “None of your business, Emilia.”

“Not my business, but if I noticed, your mother will.” I put down the book and leaned over the couch arm, sweeping the bangs from my eyes when they fell in front of my glasses. “Okay, so either you’re working twelve-hour shifts or you’re seeing someone. What’s up?”

Quinn rarely engaged in deep thought, so when her face scrunched up and her head tilted to the side, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing. Constipation, maybe. Or the beginnings of a stroke. But then she flopped onto the chair beside me, moving in so close I couldn’t miss her Eau du Donut: a combination of grease, sugar and hazelnut.

“I’m seeing an older man. Like, way older,” she said.

That she had a boyfriend didn’t surprise me. That she was seeing an “older man” did but only because she was so very particular with her arm candy. She was also particular about how she presented herself when she went out with people—she always looked great, smelled great. Right then, she had jelly on her shoulder and coffee stains on her pants. Her Romeo must have really liked donuts.

Maybe Quinn was doing Homer Simpson.

“How much older?”

“His forties. He says he loves me. Like, I think I might love him. He makes me feel so... Look what he bought me.” She reached into her pocket and produced gold hoop earrings with leafy charms dangling from the bottoms. Emeralds, maybe. Or peridots.

“Are those real?” I admired the pretty before my brain kicked in and told me this is really wrong. “Wait. It doesn’t matter if they’re real. Holy crap. You’re seventeen! He’s fortysomething? That’s statutory in this state. Like, he could go to jail.”

“That’s why you can’t say anything. I’m trusting you with this. Don’t screw me over. Please. I’m happy and I don’t want to ruin it.”

My tongue twisted. This guy was as old as her dad, which maybe was the point. Was this some Electra complex manifesting? A result of neglect? Her dad rarely called, and when he did, it was for five or ten minutes before he was making his excuses. Heck, my dad flew planes back and forth to Dubai for rich businessmen but I still heard from him once a week.

I rubbed the heel of my palm against my temple. It was a lot to take in, and nothing I could say would make any of it better. Quinn did the strangest thing then—she reached for me, her pointy fingernails digging into the back of my hand.

“Promise me,” she demanded. “Please? I love him.”

It was the please that got me. For all Quinn’s faults, she rarely asked me for anything. True, that was because she either didn’t like to acknowledge I was alive or was too busy torturing me to want or need stuff, but she hadn’t come to me so much as I’d gone to her. I’d inserted myself and it’d be a bad showing to screw her over with it.

She gave my hand another squeeze.

I groaned in defeat.

“Fine. I promise I won’t say anything. But I’m going on the record here. It’s creepy and you should be careful.”

“I will,” she promised. And for the first and last time in my life, Quinn pulled me into a hug. Despite all expectations otherwise, lightning did not strike me dead.

* * *

Quinn’s spring/winter romance continued for another three weeks. She didn’t miss any more practices, but she did spend her weekend days exchanging bodily fluids with her mysterious dude and, in turn, collecting valuable prizes. A necklace. New lingerie. An iPad. She tried to give me the sordid details once, showing me the rug burn she got from Old Boyfriend’s car upholstery, but I declined story time, telling her there weren’t enough therapists to fix my tender brain meats if she continued talking.

She laughed and called me childish. I was okay with that.

Sadly for Quinn, the Bella and Edward of donuts were not to be. Quinn came home on a Thursday night slinging curses that would have made a sailor blush. I was playing video games at the time with my noise-canceling headphones on, but somehow, Quinn’s banshee wails trumped soundproofing technology.

I went downstairs to check on her only to see her chuck the Bouncing Bear hat across the kitchen.

“I hate him! I hate him! I am... I hate him so much!”

“Are you okay?”

“Leave me alone!”

“Good talk! Leaving you alone.” I returned to my virtual playground where, unlike my kitchen, demolitions were an acceptable form of problem solving. Ten minutes later, a wet, bathrobe-clad Quinn haunted my threshold.

“I hate him so much.” She threw herself at my bed, muffling her shriek of rage in my Domo-kun pillow. I paused the game and waited. She’d stop leaking her psycho all over my stuff eventually, and I was guessing she’d want to talk at that point.

It took her a few minutes to collect herself. She lifted her head, looked at the fuzzy brown monster with fangs who’d been her tissue, and flung it across the room. Poor Domo-kun. Reduced to a snot rag and discarded.

“S-so he says he can’t leave his wife. That they’ve been together too long. I thought he loved me,” she warbled. It was clear by the jut of her chin she was on the verge of sobbing.

Raw emotion from a goodness vacuum such as Quinn Littleton was not an eventuality I was prepared for.

“Aren’t you going to say something?” she demanded.

“I... Yeah. I’m sorry you’re hurt.” I didn’t know how to navigate these waters. I could handle Quinn when she was in typical mean girl mode because that’s what I knew. That was her modus operandi. This vulnerable, softer-side-of-Sears Quinn threw me off guard. She looked so fragile and human.

I sucked in a breath. “He didn’t deserve you. Plus, when he’s sixty you’ll be thirty. There’s not enough Viagra in the world to cover that.”

I didn’t expect her to appreciate what I’d said, but she smiled, rolling onto her back to look at my ceiling. “He said he loved me.”

“Of course he did. He wanted to do you. It’s the oldest cliché in the book.” Her expression turned far less friendly. I hadn’t meant to criticize her, only I guess I had by suggesting she’d let herself be taken advantage of. I winced. “You know what else is an old cliché? A woman scorned. You’ll do better now. Better than him.”

“A woman scorned,” she repeated.

She lifted her butt off my bed to pull her phone from the pocket of her robe. Her thumbs flew. I glanced over to her screen only to see a picture of Quinn with a silver-tipped head jammed between her ample boobies while she grinned at the camera. Then there was another picture that...okay, that was a nipple. I didn’t need to see that, so I looked away. I hadn’t signed on for sisterly areolas.

Quinn kept typing.

“He wants to dump me? Whatever. You’re right. I will do better. But while I’m doing better, I’m going to make sure he has the worst day of his life.”

“What are you doing?” I asked.

Quinn paused to smirk at me, one brow lifted, her eyes full of flint. “Texting his wife. She really ought to know what he’s doing behind her back. A woman scorned, right?”

“Oh,” I said. Because what else could I say? I’d fed fire to the fire god. The inferno was a foregone conclusion.