Luminosity (Gravity Series #3) (The Gravity Series) (25 page)

I modeled my costume for Henry beforehand. He had sneaked into my room again via the basement door, something he’d been doing with regularity now that Hugh wasn’t there to be a watchdog and Claire was MIA. Our beautiful spot on the Hill was only a rare treat now.

I had a problem with slutty costumes, but I decided to go as the Queen of Hearts from
Alice in Wonderland
. I had found a really pretty costume online, one of the few that looked modest compared with Sexy Elmo and Sexy Toothbrush, but unfortunately when it arrived it was three inches shorter than the picture showed.

“Don’t you like it?” I asked Henry, who was leaning back on my bed, giving me a funny look.

“Oh, I like it. I just don’t think I want other people seeing you in it.”

I tossed a pillow at him.

“Too bad I can’t go with,” he said, catching it.

I stopped, studying him. “It won’t be that special. I don’t think you’d like it, anyway, you know how the three of us get when we’re together. It’d be too immature for you and you’d get bored.”

Henry stared at a spot on the floor and I sensed that I’d hit a nerve. “You make it sound like I’m some stuffy old man.”

“That’s not my intention. But you know we can’t be seen together, especially not in public like that.”

I thought I heard footsteps in the hall. Frowning, I peeked out, but didn’t see anything. Still, the shot of paranoia didn’t abate.

“What’s wrong?” Henry asked, standing behind me.

`I heard the doorbell ring upstairs. “Crap, they’re earlier. I’ve got to go.” I jumped forward and kissed him gently on the cheek. “You can let yourself out, right?”

“Right,” he repeated softly.

I wanted to stay and comfort him, but there was no time. Upstairs, I greeted Alex and Theo who were hovering in the doorway. Both of them were already dressed in their costumes, too.

“What’s up?” Theo asked casually.

“What do you mean?” I asked suspiciously as I was pulling the door shut.

She shrugged. “Just making conversation.”

We got in the Creep and headed over to the other side of town. The sun hadn’t even started to set, but already gaggles of gremlins were stalking the streets.

“You look tired,” Theo told me when we were walking. I couldn’t take her seriously in her costume. ‘Fairy barf’ she’d called it when I’d asked. She had sewn together all kinds of scraps of fabric and slathered herself in glitter and puffy paint, spraying her hair up in chunks like she had poked an electrical socket.

“Just have a lot on my mind. The more candy we get, the better I’ll feel,” I said.

Alex was way too tall to be trick-or-treating. At over six feet, wearing a sheet and a football helmet, he looked like a giant compared to the groups of elementary school kids. Yet he remained unfazed, despite the funny looks we got.

We were soon hitting each house, our bags dragging on the ground. We passed by a couple of hot guys dressed up as vampires who looked me up and down lasciviously.

Theo whistled after them, making wolf calling noises. I pushed her gently. “Stop it.” I felt like I was blushing from the knees up.

“When are you going to start dating again? Or are you going to carry the torch for Henry forever?” Theo asked.

“I’m just not interested right now. I’ve got enough going on.”

“What is all this mysterious stuff that I am not privy to?” Theo teased. I’d kept her as up to date as I knew how without bringing Henry into it. I had to weave the story around the holes he left.

“Nothing that mysterious. Mostly just too much of the mundane stuff.”

I looked across the street, trying to think up a change of subject. Ambrose Slaughter was standing there in his now bloody tuxedo, staring at me with smoke tendrils curling off his shoulders. I blinked and he was gone, a group of kids in costumes running in his place.

“You ready to keep moving?” Alex asked me softly. I realized I’d just been staring, slack-jawed, at where Ambrose had been.

Theo had gone a little ways in front of us. She stopped and twirled around. “Are you coming, slow-pokes?” She gave a dazzling smile with her blue lips, looking so much more mature than the meek girl I’d met sophomore year.

Alex and I began moving again, staying a little back from Theo in her eagerness.

“How has everything been going?” I asked Alex when we were just out of earshot. “Did you have a talk with her?”

Alex nodded. “It seems to be going better. She still thinks I should look for a job out there, though.”

We’d already hit the clustered suburban houses and now we were entering a ritzy, fancy neighborhood where the sprawling houses were placed apart. A familiar silver Mercedes rolled slowly beside us. The driver’s side window went down and Harlow glared at us with Lainey next to her.

“Aren’t you three a little old for trick-or-treating?” Lainey snarked. She and Harlow were dressed up as, by my best guess, sexy zombies. Fake blood spilled out of their mouths and over their low-cut costumes.

“What, jealous Lainey?” Alex teased. He was popular enough not to take her ribbing. “Did you dress up like a hooker again this year?”

Lainey glared at him, flipping up her black polished middle finger. Harlow hit the gas hard, burning rubber, causing a puddle of mud to shoot up on us. We backed away fast enough to miss most of the impact, the smell of the burnt rubber in the air.

“What do you think they were doing out?” Theo asked.

“Probably going to Steff Barton’s big Halloween party. It’s in Lainey’s neighborhood, Harlow lives on the other side of town. That means we’re getting close to the good stuff,” Alex said, rubbing his hands. “King Size bars and gift bags.”

At the next house, a girl in a witch costume and a little boy of about five in a devil costume were ahead of us. I saw the girl was Charlotte Gary.

Charlotte rang the doorbell. The gray-haired woman who answered scowled at her. “I’m all out of candy,” she said. Then she slammed the door in Charlotte’s face.

She peered down at the little boy with her. “Don’t worry, David. People aren’t always such assholes.” She shouted the last word at the top of her lungs, then grabbed a strand of pumpkin lights, ripping them off of the window and stomped on them.

Alex stepped up and dug a handful of candy bars out of his pillowcase. He dropped them into the boy’s orange plastic pumpkin.

“There you go, little devil,” Alex said. “Don’t eat them all at once.” He was greeted with the boy’s small, freckled face grinning.

Charlotte grabbed the little boy’s hand. “We don’t need your charity,” she growled and sped off of the porch.

“That girl has massive issues,” Theo said.

“No kidding,” I said, watching Charlotte and the boy jog down the street. I wondered just exactly where her issues came from.

CHAPTER 22

I QUIZZED THE
few people at school I knew of who were friends, of a sort, with Charlotte. Although reluctant to talk to me, they all told me variations of the same story—she was trouble, her mom was a drunk who let her variety of boyfriends come and stay the night, that she wasn’t just doing drugs she was dealing them, too. No one had a kind word to say about her.

“You’d be hard pressed to find anyone that misses her,” Kristy Hertz said. “Not after she lied about running away.”

“Running away?”

“To see her real dad. But that’s a joke; her mom probably doesn’t even know who he is.”

Brett Halliday, who had half of his head shaved and the remaining flap of hair dyed fuchsia, told me where she lived. “Sunny Estates. One of the crappy trailers in the front. I mean, relatively more crappy; they’re all crappy. I bought from her a few times, but she sold garbage, mostly stems. As long as she don’t come back with a gun, I don’t give a sh—”

“Thanks,” I said, silencing him and going on my way.

I scouted Charlotte out at her trailer at Sunny Estates, the most run down park in town. Brett hadn’t been exaggerating about the crap factor. It was a weather-beaten little single wide, with a sad porch next to a bunch of plastic daisies with the petals kicked off.

I knocked and Charlotte came to the door. Her eyes were heavily ringed with black liner and shadow, the contrast with her pale face making her look like a raccoon.

“What are you doing here?” she croaked at me. She had a can of beer in her hand and she tipped it back, tossing it among the plastic daisies.

“Um, I wanted to talk to you,” I said, feeling awkward and thinking I’d made a mistake coming there. “About why you were expelled. Are you busy?”

She looked at me suspiciously, then stepped back, sweeping her arm out. “No. You can come in.”

Inside it smelled overwhelmingly of spilled beer and cloves. Yellow, sticky flypaper tapes hung from the ceiling, at maximum occupancy. There wasn’t much actual furniture; the couch looked like it had been ripped up by a dog, two card tables tucked off to the sides.

“Have a seat wherever you can find one,” she said, gesturing to the battered living area. “My mom’s at work at the gas station; she won’t be back for a while.” There were a few milk crates instead of chairs. I sat down on one, feeling it bite into my butt.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, returning a few moments later with another beer. She tilted the can in my direction. “You want one?”

I shook my head, biting my bottom lip and feeling nerves turn my stomach into directionless butterflies.

“I didn’t think so,” she said, commandeering another crate and leaning against the wall next to some Sharpie doodles that bore her distinctive style. She kicked the crate back with her boot and dropped down, smirking to herself.

“I don’t know what you’ve been watching, but drinking beer doesn’t make you cool. You’re still just a punk and even that’s only a costume.”

I don’t know what made me say it. But now that we were alone together, I could sense a fragility inside of her that I hadn’t before and it made me more brave.

Instead of reprimanding me, her nostrils flared, septum piercing shaking. “What do you want to know?” she asked gruffly.

“It seemed to take a lot of marks for the school to expel you,” I said, trying to keep eye contact with her. “Weapons in school, fighting. I know that wasn’t your first time being caught with drugs considering you ran a dispensary from your locker. So, why now? Was it a three-strikes situation?”

Charlotte sipped at her beer, finally tearing her bleary eyes away. “I have privileges.”

“Why?”

She stood up to take a puff from a cigarette and stub it out on the kitchen counter. “If you tell anyone, you know I’ll kill you. And that isn’t a threat; it’s a promise.”

“Understood,” I said.

“McPherson never tells anyone. But he’s my dad.” She immediately scanned my face for my response. I couldn’t help that my eyes went wide, but I tried to keep any other visible reaction at bay. “He slept with my mom, she had me and then he left us when I was like two. I don’t remember him being around at home at all. He pays child support regularly, which just keeps my mom in booze and fake nails.”

“And no one knows about this?” I asked incredulously. My cheeks were growing hot as I realized the depth of his deception.

“You look like you’re going to barf,” Charlotte said, raising one eyebrow. “Are you sure you don’t want a sip?”

Hesitating briefly, I snagged the beer and drank a little of the gross liquid, then held the cold can to my forehead.

“Yeah, nobody knows about it,” Charlotte continued. “Like he’s ashamed of me. He’s been really creepy about it lately, though; calling me every week and telling me to make sure no one knew I was his daughter.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“I don’t know. But I think it has something to do with that creepy Thornhill Society. He’s gotten way too devoted to them and they treat him like a doormat. At least he knows how it feels.”

I stared down at the stained floor, making a circle with my shoe. “Yeah. My dad just left my mom. She’s trying to get in with the Thornhill Society, too,” I told her. “The minute that happened, everything else fell apart.”

I kind of expected her to sneer, to pull away or call me a wimp or something. But her voice remained soft. “How did that happen?”

I explained what I could of their argument, about Callie, about the change in Claire.

“I’m sorry,” Charlotte said. “It sucks when your parents give up on you. That’s why I just stopped caring. I started dressing the way I do because I wanted them to notice, but that didn’t even work. My mom was actually talking about having something pierced. She doesn’t even see me.”

“I see you,” I said. “You’re not invisible.”

The corners of her mouth tilted upwards. “Good to know you have eyes.” But she was still smiling.

We sat in companionable silence, the weight of our revelations heavy in the stagnant air, as a lonely dog barked outside.

###

I was beginning to keep a collection. As I sifted through the newest day’s mail, I took out two more skinny, flat envelopes addressed to me. They went into the pile on my desk. Rejection letters, from different aspiring colleges I’d applied to.