The Awesome (6 page)

“I don’t want to be off the hook. This sucks.”

He watched me shrug into my shirt, a frown pasted across his mouth. I paid no attention to the buttons and thus misaligned the sides, but by the time I noticed I’d ventured into wardrobe malfunction territory, I couldn’t bring myself to care. It felt weird in here now, awkward and tense, and I wanted to rouse Julie so I could go home. The sooner I could put this mini-disaster behind me, the better.

“You know, we should hang some time. Like, go out for reals, you know? You can give me your number and... “

“I don’t have a phone,” I said. He made another gurgling groany noise, and again I felt like a jerk. I sighed and approached his mirror, licking my thumb to dab at the mascara smudges under my eyes. I wanted to play it cool, distant and chill like I was a frost queen, but I couldn’t stop myself from stealing a glance at him in our shared reflection. He stared at my back, looking lost and sad, and though I liked to play at being a hard-hearted bitch from Hell, the truth was...

The truth was nothing. I
am
a hard-hearted bitch from Hell, damn it. Ian... well, he sparked something different in me. For seven whole seconds he exposed my creamy, nougat center.

“Look, why don’t you give me your number? We just moved, so I can call you when I get set up.”

Another one of Janice’s spectacular life lessons: lying is fine as long as A) you don’t get caught and B) when you do get caught you’re a big enough person to admit it. I’d worry about the consequences of my lies if and only if I ventured into B territory. Until then, all bets were off.

“Cool. Okay cool. We can hang or whatevs.”

He scribbled a number onto the back of a receipt and held it out. I snatched it without looking at him, stuffing my feet into my shoes and double-timing it for the door.

“Fun party,” I said before disappearing down the hall.

“Yeah, thanks for... “

I didn’t hear the end of that sentence. I was too busy running away.

D
OWNSTAIRS WAS A
post-apocalyptic war zone, complete with bodies littering the ground and a weird funk on the air. I picked my way around the carnage to find Julie, who slept on top of some guy I’d never seen before. At least she’d gotten couch space; squishy furniture was prime real estate when there were thirty-something kids clamoring for a place to crash.

I poked her in the shoulder to wake her. She lifted her head and smiled, sweeping her hair out of her eyes. I hated her for how good she already looked, no effort required, like being gorgeous was something she did for fun on Saturdays. I wasn’t hung up on my appearance for the most part, but there was something about Julie that made me feel ‘less’, like she was the embodiment of feminine charm while all I had to show for my girl-hood was a pair of boobs and a year’s supply of Tampax in my linen closet. Of course, my answer to feeling sub-par was to hit something, which wasn’t exactly girly either, so I couldn’t win for losing.

Julie extricated herself from the man-mattress beneath her to wander to the bathroom, taking her sweet time re-emerging. At least the wait was worth it; she had her purse in hand and looked ready to leave. I’d been ready for that for about ten hours.

“How’d things go with Ian?”

“He’s uhh. He’s nice.”

She peered at me like I was supposed to elaborate, but that was all I could muster. “Yeah, thanks for letting me near-boff your cousin” didn’t sound right, and I wasn’t one to spew my private life stuff all over the place. Not unless I had to.

When she figured out I had zero intention of spilling, she headed for the stairs. “He is. A nice guy I mean. I knew you’d like him. I dunno, it seems a good fit. I’m gonna go say bye then we can hit the road, ’kay?”

I watched her take the steps two at a time, idly hoping Ian had thought to put on some pants after I left. If not, she’d jump to a whole slew of conclusions right off the bat. None of them would be wrong conclusions, but it was the principle of the thing. I didn’t want to kiss and tell.

Or quasi-hump and tell. Whatever.

A chorus of dry heaves echoed around me as teenagers tore themselves from their drunken reveries. One girl combatant crawled across the floor towards the bathroom, positively green. I put my back against the wall to keep myself out of frontal-cone spew range. A kid in the kitchen moved some dishes aside so he could puke in the sink. I hadn’t had more than a sip to drink, but I felt sick by association. I slunk outside and sat on the front step, glad Julie’d been smart enough to park on the street instead of in the driveway. This way we wouldn’t have to do the call out of WHOEVER DRIVES THE BLACK TRUCK AND THE WHITE CONVERTIBLE, CAN YOU MOVE? Those people were barely capable of amoeba-scale function. The driveway shuffle was way beyond them.

A few minutes later, Julie joined me, a pair of oversized, diva sunglasses perched on her nose.

“What are you doing tomorrow night?”

“Not sure. I’d have to check with Mom. Why?”

“How is Janice?”

It should have weirded me out that Julie called my mom by her first name, but Mom insisted that Miss or Mrs. made her feel old, and anyone caught calling her that would get a Wet Willy. It had been like Pavlov’s dog after that; as no one liked having a wet finger wedged up their ear, they fell in line quickly. “Good. She had a hunt last night.”

“Cool! I’m surprised you came out. You love that stuff, you freak.”

“Well, yeah, but I can’t do werewolf jobs yet. They’re too high up the chain for a newb like me.” An opportunity for me to confess I tried to molest her cousin for a job promotion, and yet, I refrained. It’s like I wanted to maintain my singular friendship.

“Cool. So, tomorrow night, if you’re not doing anything, you should come hang. I’m going out with Ian’s friend John, and the four of us could hit food. Ian sounded down.”

An orthodontist appointment sounded more fun than going out with Ian, but I put on my best game face and nodded. Telling Julie her cousin was a limp-weenied failure wouldn’t go over big. “Maybe. I’ll call you. It depends on the workload.”

“You should. You guys would work. His ex-girlfriend was a massive bitch, so I think you’d be good for him.”

“Because I’m a massive bitch, too, or...”

“No! Because I like you, and he needs to date someone I can stand for once. His girlfriends are terribad. And I’d get to see you more, too, which’d be cool.”

“Yeah.”

She maintained her chatter all the way to my house, though I can’t tell you a single thing that was said. I was way too preoccupied wrestling with my guilt. Maybe I didn’t screw up a lot in general and thus didn’t have to deal with guilt, or maybe I’d become an expert at justifying whatever terrible thing I’d done at any given time, but the Ian situation bugged me. If he’d been a dismissive dick about it, everything would have been fine, but no. He’d been nice and apologetic the morning after, and that meant my rampant snark was...

Wrong. It was wrong. It was like kicking a kitten. Who did that? Who kicked a kitten for fun?

Maggie Cunningham, that’s who.

Man, I suck.

B
Y THE TIME
my mother came home from her overnight venture, I’d been wallowing in self-loathing for well over three hours. I was pantsless, there was a half-eaten bag of Ranch Doritos on the couch seat beside me, and the Oprah Network was on TV. There was no sadder sight than a seventeen-year-old girl watching a bunch of fifty-something women talk about hot-flashes, randomly leaking nipples, and the emotional challenges of menopause.

Mom dropped her gear in the foyer, the weapons, armor, and other hunting sundries making a racket as they struck the tile. “Whoa. You look rough. Don’t tell me you stayed in last night?”

“Nope.”

“What’d you end up doing?”

“Went to a party and got laid. Well, tried to get laid. Funny story, that.”

“Oh, yeah? Use a condom?”

I gritted my teeth and shut off the television, fixing my eyes on the dead, black screen in front of me. “You realize it’s totally screwed up that you’re fine with me finding a piece of random ass, right? You
should
be going on some spiel about self-respect right now.”

“Why’s that?”

“I dunno. Most mothers would.”

“Well, then most mothers think sex is shameful for a woman and I think that’s a heaping pile of shit. As long as you’re okay and your boy treated you right, no spiel. If he treated you bad, I’ll cram his dick down his throat and watch him choke.” She threw herself onto the couch next to me, and I got my first good look at the claw marks raking her face. Four gouges marred her cheek, crusts of dried blood and dirt mucking up the edges, the thickest one in the middle split so wide I wondered if she needed stitches.

“Oh my God. What happened?” I stared at the injury, feeling faint that the top part of the longest cut was less than an inch from her eye.

“Werewolf. Help me clean it in a few? Not yet, though. Kinda want to sit around and eat Doritos with my daughter for a minute. Unless she’s going to be a bitch and pick a fight because she’s in a bad mood, in which case I’ll go eat Doritos in the kitchen and have a beer.”

I twitched. She was right. This was the second person I’d taken my bad mood out on today, and she was the second person who didn’t deserve it. Well, Ian kind of did, but not totally. “Sorry. Point taken.”

“Good. So what do you mean ‘tried’ to get laid. That sounds ominous.” She crunched on a Dorito and offered me the bag, like I wasn’t responsible for half of it being empty already.

I waved her off. “Well, he got kinda in and then passed out so I dunno if it counts. I mean, it was flesh in flesh but... ya know. That was it.”

“... how’d he...”

“Drunk.”

“Ouch. Sorry to hear it. That’s not on you, okay? Nothing to do with you.”

I listened to her crunch on chips, thinking about Julie’s offer to go out tomorrow night and whether or not I wanted to take her up on it. The idea of a date with a guy who’d only be going out with me because of some sense of duty bugged me. He was still into his ex if he called me by her name, and that didn’t lend itself to happily-ever-after. I supposed I could go on the off chance that we’d get more alone time, and maybe he’d take care of the questionable state of my virginity, but did I want to put either of us through that again? He was Julie’s cousin and I liked Julie. I wanted her to like me the next time I talked to her.

I must have looked miserable because Mom slung her arm over my shoulder and gave me a squeeze. “It happens. I’m sorry it happened to you. Look, I’ll cut you a deal. Let’s get my face cleaned up, and later when it gets dark, we’ll park up the street from Plasma. If someone comes sniffing around, we’ll know whether or not we can do a vamp job, okay?”

Plasma was the local vamp bar, and vamp bars were loaded with fledgling bloodsuckers looking to show off their powers. For newbie fangers, it was a great place to get a snack and a lay. The old ones had too much dignity to be seen in such poorly-lit clichés. Their progeny, though, not so much. They flocked to them, dressed in their tight patent leather and fishnet shirts, calling their style ‘goth chic’ which translated to ‘poser douches.’ But, hey, truth in advertising for once. At least we knew where to go if we wanted a spaz-out for virgin blood.

“That sounds awesome. Thanks, Mom.”

A
N HOUR LATER,
I had my mother handcuffed to a kitchen chair, her ankles strapped to the legs with a pair of bungee cords. Her good cheek lay flat on the dining table, and she gripped a belt between her teeth in case. I’d positioned my body in such a way that, when necessary, I could lunge on top of her and hold her down.

This was gonna blow.

Injuries sustained while hunting were always bad news, but nothing was worse than monster claws or fangs because on top of the normal damage, they tainted the wound. It was better to be slammed upside the head by a monster holding a crowbar than it was to be directly attacked by them, or in the case of my mother, cut by them. It was like being hit with a hypodermic needle; whatever the monster had, you had now too, except instead of disease you got their curse. No, that didn’t mean Mom would grow furry—she’d have to be bitten on a full moon for that—but it did mean if we left the scrapes unattended, they’d fester and never close. It was worse with vampire wounds. If they DNA’d all over you, they could find you later, like their curse magically tagged you. That was a fast track way to having your insides become your outsides.

“Okay, you ready?” I asked, dunking a facecloth into a bowl of holy water. I got it good and wet, saturating the cloth without bothering to wring it out. Mom jerked her head in a nod and closed her eyes, her shoulders stiff. I took that as my invitation to finish. “Okay. I’m going to count to three. One... “

I didn’t get to two. I slapped the facecloth against her cheek and jumped on top of her, pinning her to the table. Mom thrashed beneath me, screaming and bucking so much the chair came up off of the floor and slammed back down again in a series of squealing rattles. Her head nailed me in the gut, forcing the air out of my middle, but I held tight, thinking this was how a rodeo cowboy felt on top of a bucking bronco.

Mom once described getting cleansed like holding your hand in a pot of boiling water—that it burned and throbbed so badly you’d do anything to get away from the pain. I believed it; the last time I helped her with a tainted wound, she acted like I’d tried to kill her. We’d wrestled around like a pair of cats until I sat on her butt and pinned her arms, giving up on the facecloth and pouring the bowl of holy water all over her head. We tried avoiding similar hysterics this time around with the handcuffs and bungees. It worked. I couldn’t breathe, and I was fairly sure if I stayed on top of her for too much longer she’d suffocate beneath me, but at least she’d stayed in one place.

Progress. Ish.

She went slack, her struggles petering out in a series of pained mewls. I took that as my cue to climb off her, and I wriggled back ’til my feet touched the ground. The moment I looked at her, I felt like the worst daughter in the universe. Her face was so red it was almost purple, and her eyes leaked rivers of tears. The cuts were stark white, the holy water burning the taint from them and bleaching them in the process.