The Unseen (12 page)

“
You’re an evil girl.  I knew that when I walked in, though.” They traded phone numbers.

“
Your name’s Ibis?” she asked, looking at the piece of paper where he’d written his name and number.

“
That’s what I said when I walked in.”

“
I wasn’t paying attention.  So the ibis on your back...”

“
...refers to my first name.  Look at you, putting things together all by yourself.  Did you read a lot of Nancy Drew growing up?”

“
Aren’t you supposed to be working?”

“
I get a two-minute break every sixteen hours.” He waved as he left.

“
Good-bye, Ibis,” she said, watching him stride away, then watching him collide with Barb as she entered the room.  Barb gaped up at him.

“
Excuse me.” Ibis walked around her, then quickly swerved the other way to avoid Cassidy’s other housemate, Allie, and Allie’s two boyfriends, who stumbled into the room behind Barb.  The sight of Barb cheered Cassidy right away, but Cassidy wished she hadn’t dragged  Allie and her boyfriends along.

Cassidy raised an eyebrow with a glance toward Allie, who was drooling after the tall dark man exiting the room.  Barb gave Cassidy an apologetic look and half a shrug, which told her that they’d insisted on coming, and she wasn’t able to stop them.

“Sorry,” Barb said. “I only just found out.  I thought you’d stayed over at Peyton’s last night.  Are you okay?”

“
I’m fucking awesome,” Cassidy said. “They screwed a steel rod thing into my leg.  It’s now unbreakable, I think.”

“
What’s up with Dr. Hottie?” Allie chirped, appearing at the other side of Cassidy’s bed.  She wore a high-cut tank top with purple hand shapes around her boobs. “Tell me he’s your doctor.”

“
He’s a physical therapist.”

“
Is he single?” Allie asked, which brought little scowls from both of her current boyfriends.

“
He’s pretty giant,” said Allie’s boyfriend, Whitley, a short, thin guy with a goatee and a porkpie hat.  He was a saxophone player who claimed he couldn’t find a band “good enough” for his supposedly amazing musical talent.

“
Freakish,” said Allie’s other boyfriend, Chet, a local stage actor/waiter with sideburns, wearing sunglasses.  He shook his head, as though feeling sorry for Ibis and his abnormally tall and handsome appearance.

“
So Cassidy, we were all totally bummed when we heard about you!  What happened?” Allie asked.

“
The car crashed,” Cassidy said. “We didn’t die.”

“
Where’s Peyton?” Barb asked.

“
His parents already moved him to some rich-person hospital in Alpharetta,” Cassidy said. “They have an aquatic center.”

“
Oh, let’s go visit him!” Allie said. “I love swimming.  You should see this bikini I made out of this vintage raincoat, Cassidy!”

“
Sorry I’ll miss it,” Cassidy told her.

“
How are you feeling, though, really?” Barb asked.

“
One big problem is that I broke my leg.” Cassidy hiked up her hospital gown to show her the stitched gash in her thigh, through the middle of a garden of Venus flytraps that curled around to her hip.

“
Gross!” Allie said. “That looks like it hurts.  Can I touch it?”

“
Seriously, Allie?” Barb asked.

Allie’s two boyfriends had been mostly staring into space—pills, Cassidy guessed—but they came to life at the sight of her long, freckled, Frankenstein leg bared to the upper hip.  They drifted closer to the bed for a better view of Cassidy’s intimate areas, and she quickly covered herself up again.

“I hope they’re giving you some great painkillers,” Barb said.

“
Could be better,” Cassidy told her.

“
We brought you some stuff.” Barb set a large grocery bag on the bed beside Cassidy. “First, healthy organic food...grape Twizzlers, Jelly Bellies...”

“
Very healthy.” Cassidy nodded in approval.

“
Hershey’s, because chocolate is like heroin, it makes everything better for a couple of minutes.” Barb tossed the candy onto the bed, followed by a copy of the latest
Inked
magazine and a couple of battered paperbacks from Barb’s horror collection.

“
Thanks!” Cassidy said, genuinely touched.

“
Show her my thing from the gift shop!” Allie said.

“
Allie picked this out.” Barb held out a Mr. Potato Head.

“
You could play with it, you know, to kill time.  Isn’t it cute?” Allie asked.

“
Thanks, Allie.”

“
Hey, speaking of me,” Allie said. “Can we talk about that tattoo?  Because I totally think I know what I want.  I was looking up things that would express my female sexuality—you know, as a woman—and I was thinking maybe this mermaid, okay?”

“
She probably doesn’t want to talk about work,” Barb told her.

“
I’ll talk about anything right now,” Cassidy said. “Especially if it’s not my leg or how insanely stingy they’re being with my painkillers.”

“
So, a blueish-greenish look, and she has to be sexy,” Allie rambled on. “But not slutty-sexy, or trashy-sexy, but kind of classy-sexy.  And topless.”

“
Um...” Cassidy thought it over. “I could do a kind of Botticelli
Venus
thing.”

“
Oh, yeah!  I love Botticelli.  He’s totally Italian, right?”

“
Totally.” Cassidy nodded, finding it both amusing and sad that Allie, a student at the Art Institute of Atlanta, didn’t immediately get the reference to Botticelli’s most famous painting.

“
Italian artists are so hot,” Allie said. “Like the really dead ones, you know?”

“
Is there anything I should bring you tomorrow?” Barb asked.

“
They’re actually kicking me out in a couple of hours,” Cassidy replied.

“
Seriously?  Crap, I didn’t know that...hey, you boys are taking MARTA home,” Barb told the two guys.

“
No way,” said Whitley, he of the goatee and porkpie hat. “We can all cram into the car.  Cassidy can put her leg on my lap.”

“
Yeah, we didn’t even want to come anyway,” whined Chet, scratching one of his sideburns. “Allie was all pushy about it.”

Thanks so much for coming, douchebags
, Cassidy thought.

“
My mom’s picking me up,” Cassidy said. “I’m staying with her a few days.  So you don’t have to give me a ride, Barb, but thanks.  And I appreciate all this stuff.  Especially the candy.  It’s really sweet.”

“
Of course the candy’s sweet!” Allie cackled.

“
So it’s back to the old apartment?” Barb asked.

“
Just for a couple days.”

“
I’ll come visit,” Barb said. “It’ll be nice to hang out on the old balcony again.”

“
Looking out over the scenic sinkhole full of trash,” Cassidy added.

“
I’m nostalgic already.” Barb smiled, but it looked forced, and a touch of fear shone in her eyes.  Cassidy knew she was thinking about the night they’d made the Ouija board.

“
It’ll be great.  We can sneak drinks from my mom’s liquor cabinet and refill the bottles with water,” Cassidy said.

“
We’re good at that! One last thing—I wouldn’t be your best friend if I didn’t bring you...” Barb reached into the bag and handed her a small bristol-board drawing pad and a few mechanical pencils.

“
Thanks!” Cassidy said. “I’ve been dying to draw.”

“
You can work on my mermaid!” Allie said.

“
I might actually do that.”

“
Oh, I want to watch!  I can give you advice while you draw!” Allie volunteered.

“
You really
don’t
need to do that, but thanks anyway.” Already her hand was in motion, tapping an eraser to get the lead out, tracing curves on the pad. “Where did you want it, Allie?”

“
My calf.  Or my thigh.  What’s sexier?”

“
Thigh,” Whitley volunteered.

“
Ass,” Chet said.

“
Chet!” Allie chided him.

“
You don’t have to decide right now.” Cassidy continued drawing.  She drew faster after they left, creating her best attempt at a tasteful topless nude mermaid based on
The Birth of Venus.

She felt inspired, and the dull red ache in her leg seemed to fade as she worked.

“You should end it with him.  You can do better,” Cassidy’s mother said, which was apparently her idea of light conversation on the drive home from the hospital.  Her rattling but usually reliable ancient Hyundai Accent nosed its way up the interstate, each exit densely packed with identical collections of signs every quarter-mile—the McDonald’s, the Cracker Barrel, the Waffle House, the Chevron, the Applebee’s.  Billboards were everywhere, many of them advertising the questionable computer training schools that proliferated in the city’s strip malls, alongside nail salons and dry cleaners.

“
I know you don’t like him,” Cassidy said.

“
He could have killed you.  Have you thought of that?”

“
We both lived.”

“
He broke your leg!”

“
It wasn’t on purpose.”

“
Does it matter?  Oh, lovely, here’s some road construction for us.” Her mother touched the brakes. Traffic slowed down to a narrow crawl around several lanes closed for the city’s perpetual reconstruction.  The evening had turned overcast, with a drizzling rain.

“
I couldn’t break up with him now if I wanted to.  His ribs are broken.  He’s in pain.”

“
It’s his own fault!” Her mother sounded exasperated.

“
And I don’t want to break up with him, anyway.  You can’t blame this on Peyton.  There was a crazy guy driving the wrong way on the road, and we had nowhere to go.”

“
No drinking involved, then?” She raised an eyebrow at Cassidy. “No drugs?”

“
A little drinking, maybe, but that’s not the point—”

“
It is the point, Cassidy.  You’re irresponsible.”

“
You drink, I drink, Dad drank.  We’re just Irish.”

Her mother shook her head, sighing.

“Thanks for the jammies, by the way.” Cassidy touched the loose flannel pajama pants her mother had brought her.  They were hot, but they’d slid easily over her swollen leg.

“
You’re welcome.”

They passed into the two lanes that were still open, orange and blue lights flashing around them in the rain, cars squeezing all around them.  Cassidy felt her heart thumping, and her palms grew clammy as they passed an enormous steamroller moving the opposite way behind the orange cones.  The road was freaking her out, she realized, the sense of being surrounded by heavy machinery operated by total strangers, any one of whom could make a fatal mistake.

The feeling grew worse when they passed the construction, the road opened up, and her mother accelerated to seventy miles an hour.  That was a slow speed for the interstate, but Cassidy tensed at every car that passed close in either lane, imagining all the crashes that could happen at any moment.  The rain grew heavier.  Cassidy gripped the armrest and finally shut her eyes against the sight of all the unpredictable automobiles swerving this way and that, all around their car as it sped along the slick road.

“
Are you getting sick?” her mother asked. “Do you need to throw up?”

“
No,” Cassidy whispered.

“
You look pale.”

“
Let’s just get home.  I’ll feel better when we’re off the road.  Car crash flashbacks, I think.”

“
Are you going to throw up?”

“
Only if you keep asking me if I’m going to throw up.” Cassidy clenched her eyes tighter, wishing she could get out of the car and never get back in a car again.

She was able to open her eyes when they left the interstate, because the stoplights and traffic forced them to move slowly and stop frequently.  Neon Asian ideograms lit both sides of the street, offering food and groceries from China, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, and a dozen other countries.  The sight of them calmed her a little more, making her feel at home.