Ghostgirl: Lovesick Page 6

  “I’m just trying to be helpful,” Petula said. “You don’t want to turn your pretty pale face red before Damen gets back.”

  “He’s not coming home,” Scarlet said, trying to play it off.

  “Ouch,” Petula consoled, barely masking her glee. “Absence makes the heart grow fungus, I guess.”

  Petula picked up Scarlet’s baby and began talking to it in her trademark passive-aggressive way.

  “I know she appears to be heartless,” she said to the baby. “But don’t worry: I’m sure she has four or five backup hearts in the freezer.”

  Classic Petula, Scarlet thought, going right for the jugular like that. For every flicker of compassion she occasionally showed these days, she could still flame-broil you with cruelty. The frosty relationship between them had thawed somewhat since “the coma,” but lately Petula just seemed more distant than ever. Scarlet figured they were like strangers who clutched each other tightly during a rough flight but returned to business as usual once the pilot regained control and the plane landed safely.

  “Hate you,” Scarlet called out sweetly as Petula made her way out the front door.

  “Hate you too,” came the sugary reply.

  Much like Scarlet’s wardrobe, her decor was evolving too. Long gone, courtesy of a wet sponge and sharp straightedge razor blade, were the band bumper stickers that had transformed her bathroom into a museum-quality reproduction of a stall at a punk club. They had been replaced by strings of exposed lightbulbs hanging from the vanity in bunched bouquets. It was her modern interpretation of a 1920s chandelier.

  Her bedroom looked like an old Hollywood boudoir, kind of art nouveau with an eccentric twist. She even had a real vanity with all kinds of jewelry, compacts, perfume bottles, and powders. She still had all the rare indie movie posters hanging in her room, but now they were displayed in ornate gold frames. It was that way with her too. She was the same, just kind of framed differently.

  Scarlet started picking up stuff off the floor and straightening up her bed. She wanted her room to look perfect for her V-Day cyber chat with Damen, and she hadn’t gotten around to bagging her things up and dropping them off yet. Petula had helped de-bulk the pile some, but for whatever reason, Scarlet just could not bring herself to part with the rest.

  She soon found herself rummaging through the remainder of the heap. She could have opened a vintage shop with all the stuff she had, but those outfits were so personal to her, so much a part of her past, her identity. She would rather toss them than sell them.

  She could still smell the memories in them, put them on and be there, back in the moment. She wasn’t the sentimental type, by any means, but she found herself missing the old Scarlet, even envying the self that existed before she fell in love. Love did change you, that much was true, she conceded, but not as much as you change yourself.

  The whole idea of transforming into someone or something else was all starting to get to her, so she decided to go for a little walk to clear her head. She wandered around town, stopping at IdentiTea for a free drink—courtesy of her employee discount—then to some little vintage stores and record shops she and Damen used to hit on Saturday afternoons.

  Around the corner, she poked her head into Split, the all-ages club where she’d see new bands. It had changed ownership and decor a few times in the past few years, but the kids were still coming to hear acts they couldn’t see anywhere else. In fact, there was one band loading in for sound check, so she stuck around to watch them set up.

  After a couple of minutes, she noticed someone standing up against the wall checking out the stage and occasionally looking in her direction, as well. He seemed to hide in the shadows thrown by the light rig installed above the stage. He didn’t appear to be with the crew or the band, but he sure looked like he could have been. From what she could see, which wasn’t much, he definitely had the indie-boy look down cold.

  Up close, things became much clearer. She was surprised to see that he was wearing a Dead Boys tee, just like one she had given away. In fact, everything he had on was totally authentic—no cheaply made reproductions that she could spot—and would definitely have cost a fortune at the local vintage boutiques, if you were lucky enough to even find this stuff. The most striking thing about it all was that he didn’t sport his kit pretentiously, like a rock-and-roll costume. He wore it naturally, comfortably, like, well, clothing.

  She always thought she would end up with a guy who looked like he did: tall and built, but skinny; coal-black dyed hair and pale skin; and the attitude to go with it. He looked like the kind of guy who had groupies, but didn’t care because all that mattered to him was being onstage, performing. He was intimidating, even at first glance.

  “Cool band,” Scarlet blurted, pointing to his T-shirt.

  There was no response. He just kept staring at the stage, nodding along to the beat the drummer was laying down. The low-tech P.A. system, which was buzzing like crazy, wasn’t very chat-friendly, she thought. She waited until it quieted down and tried again.

  “Love their live album,” she called out again, hoping to strike up a conversation. “Liver Than You’ll Ever Be?” She paused for a response that didn’t come. “Night of the Living Dead Boys is probably my favorite, though.”

  Still nothing.

  “Hey,” Scarlet moved in closer and yelled snidely above the din. Like Petula, she was not accustomed to being ignored.

  “You talking to me?” the guy asked with a confused look on his face, like she was begging for money or something.

  Scarlet didn’t mind a little attitude, but rudeness was a different thing altogether.

  “You see anybody else here?” Scarlet said, spinning her head around.

  “Sorry. I’m Eric,” he responded, his expression softening.

  “Scarlet,” she said. “You from around here?”

  “Yeah, I used to, ah…,” Eric stammered briefly, unsure of how to respond, “live here.”

  “Cool tee. I have, or should I say had, one myself,” she continued. “You find yours at Clothes Minded?”

  “Nah,” he said, completely oblivious to the whole idea of a vintage store.

  Scarlet didn’t press, figuring he didn’t want to give away any fashion secrets to a nosy stranger.

  “Are you with these guys?” she asked, changing the subject.

  “No,” Eric said again. “I got my own thing.”

  “Do you play?”

  “Guitar,” Eric said. “And I write a little.”

  Suddenly a surly voice blasted out of the speakers and filled the club.

  “This is a closed sound check,” the roadie barked. “Out!”

  “Well, I guess I’ll see you around,” Scarlet said. “Eric, right?”

  “Looks like you will,” he added vaguely, handing her a cassette. “Here’s a demo tape of my stuff. Let me know what you think.”

  She was flattered that he would share his music with her, but the audiotape thing threw her. She hadn’t even seen one of those since her easy-to-use Playskool tape deck broke. She figured he was into a retro vibe though, considering his look, which, being a vintage fan herself, was just fine with her.

  Scarlet was multitasking manically, cleaning and streaming, as she fired up the laptop for her iDate with Damen. He liked to joke that he was just a double click away, but cyberspace was no substitute for personal space, as far as she was concerned. Still, it was all Valentine’s Day was going to be this year, and she was determined to make the best of it. As the muted ring turned to a shrill drone, she knew connection was at hand. When they were both logged on, Scarlet kissed the screen to start the session. Damen was watching her every move, even though he was supposed to be cramming.

  “I’m so sorry I couldn’t be there tonight,” Damen offered. “Good thing you hate Valentine’s Day.”

  “Yeah,” Scarlet said halfheartedly. “Good thing for you.”

  “You’re okay with it, right?” Damen asked rhetorically, since the choice w
as moot anyhow.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be studying?” she reminded him, changing the subject as she bent over to pick up a pile of clothes.

  “Oh, I am,” Damen replied, eyeing her backside.

  Just then an announcement came over the radio about a songwriting contest.

  “You should enter.”

  “Can’t… it’s Shark Week,” Scarlet said, trying to blow it off.

  “You really should,” Damen prodded. “You could win.”

  “I could also sell my kidney for cash,” Scarlet snarked, “but you don’t see me doing that, do you?”

  And to Scarlet they would have felt about the same since both possibilities involved turning her insides out for the world to see. Invasive and painful. Besides, she didn’t really feel competent enough as a writer or a musician to submit a song in a real competition. Drawing adoring crowds at IdentiTea was one thing, but assaulting the public airwaves, even the local ones, was quite another. She logged off the station and pressed Play on her cassette deck, putting Eric’s music center stage.

  Scarlet plucked out a tee from her big pile, getting back to her cleanup.

  “Hey! I remember that,” Damen said, pointing to the tee that Scarlet had on for their first tutoring session. “What are you doing with it?”

  “Giving it away,” Scarlet sighed sentimentally, as she tossed it onto an enormous pile outside her door. “Just doesn’t feel like me anymore.”

  “Yeah, it’s not really you anymore.”

  It was okay for Scarlet to admit to that, but she secretly resented that fact that Damen was so quick to agree. Their Valentine’s date had definitely not gotten off to the kind of start either of them was hoping for.

  “Hey, what’s that?” Damen asked as she pulled back.

  Scarlet freaked for a second and thought the videocam might have magnified the tiny blemish on her chin. Another very un-Scarlet moment, she thought to herself.

  “What’s what?”

  “The music,” Damen clarified.

  “Oh, that. It’s just from a sampler someone gave me,” Scarlet said, having forgotten the tunes she’d left blaring in the background.

  “Who gave it to you?” he asked pointedly.

  He sounded a little jealous, even though he was not the jealous type. Music was a very personal thing between them, and she always shared everything new she had with him. From his tone, she thought he was a little perturbed that she’d forgotten to mention it but had obviously thought enough of it to leave it playing during their chat. She liked that he cared.

  “Some guy,” Scarlet said casually. “It was a tape, if you can believe it.”

  “Is it any good?” Damen probed, already thinking it was, based on what he could hear through the tiny speakers on his computer.

  “I haven’t really listened yet,” Scarlet said casually. “I have to digitize it. Right now, I’m playing it on an old Hello Kitty tape deck I found in the attic.”

  “The attic?” Damen chided. “You went to a lot of trouble.”

  If she were being honest, she kind of did. She was dying to hear it, even though she wasn’t sure why.

  “I knew where it was,” Scarlet said a little defensively.

  “Well, what else have you been listening to lately?” Damen asked.

  “Nothing special,” Scarlet said. “I’ve just been streaming stuff online, mostly.”

  “What about your iPod?” Damen pressed.

  “Honestly, I can’t even find it,” Scarlet said, beginning to get a little impatient with all this music talk. “My earbuds are broken anyway.”

  “They’re probably under your pillow or something,” Damen responded. “Why don’t you check?”

  Scarlet thought it was a pointless suggestion, but her room was so topsy-turvy it could be anywhere. She decided to humor him. As she searched around under the supersized crushed velvet bolster, she felt what seemed to be a small box. She took it out from underneath the pillow and saw it was wrapped simply in brown paper but adorned with a tiny bunch of micro-mini Peter Pans. It was beautiful.

  “What is this?” she asked, completely stunned.

  She opened the box and pulled out her old iPod.

  “Turn it on,” he demanded.

  “That’s your job,” Scarlet said sarcastically.

  She booted up the player and reached for the earbuds underneath and pulled out brand-new ones. They were earbuds in the shape of hearts. A note at the bottom of the box said, “Y.T.N.F.”

  He had to have someone on the inside, and she knew pretty much who that person was. In fact, Scarlet was almost touched by it. Petula had never done anything kind for her or for anyone else before. This was a first. It also explained, Scarlet thought, all that poking around her room her sister had been doing lately.

  “Go on, listen,” he said.

  As she selected the playlist, tears started streaming down her face, and her hazel eyes got brighter and glassier and even more piercing. Damen had loaded the player with all their favorite songs—songs that told their story, songs that meant something. Scarlet stared at the tiny roses and began to wonder if Damen’s message was not just in the music, but in the Peter Pans as well. Then again, maybe she was reading too much into it. He definitely meant for the gift to show her how he felt, though.

  “I love it,” Scarlet said as Damen sat there anxiously waiting for her reaction. “I love you,” she added softly.

  “You do?” Damen asked proudly.

  “Damen, don’t you know?” Scarlet asked. “Can’t you see the writing on the wall?”

  Damen wasn’t following.

  “The writing on the wall, can’t you see it?” Scarlet asked again, pointing her finger at the computer screen and directing him to look over his shoulder. Damen turned around, but all he could see was the “This Is Not a Love Song” promo PiL poster that she’d given him hanging on the wall over his bed.

  “Take the poster down,” she said.

  He gently removed the tape from the top of the panoramic poster that practically filled up his whole wall, careful not to tear it, and peeled it off, revealing line after line of song lyrics written largely in Scarlet’s handwriting across the room. He was stunned.

  “I wrote it for you,” Scarlet said sweetly, smiling.

  “How did you do this?” Damen wondered aloud.

  “I sent your roommate a scan from my song diary,” Scarlet explained. “He printed it off on clear vellum sheet and put it in an art projector and enlarged it. He traced it to look like my handwriting.”

  It was breathtaking, magical, and unbelievably romantic.

  “I can’t believe you did this,” Damen said.

  “I thought it would ward off any female stragglers that happened to find their way into your dorm room.”

  “You are amazing,” he said.

  He put his hand to the screen, and she to hers, as they logged off for the night.

  Damen lay with his head at the foot of the bed for a long while, strumming his guitar, reading and rereading the words of Scarlet’s song, and deciphering the layers of meaning as only he could.

  Scarlet transferred the audiotape to her computer and loaded the converted MP3 files into her refurbished player. She listened to Eric’s demo playing through her new earbuds from Damen as she drifted off to sleep.

  The Wendys staked out the Kensington house from the backseat of Wendy Anderson’s car and waited for Petula to make a move. They were sporting Double Agent chic, donning cream-colored silk kerchiefs and sunglasses to make themselves look not only deep, but fashionably undercover. They justified their spying by pretending that an intervention was in Petula’s best interest, not just theirs.

  As hoped, Petula strolled out into the cold night air dragging a full-to-bursting black heavy-duty contractor’s bag she’d “borrowed” from the landscapers. She lifted it into the passenger seat of her Beemer and took off. The Wendys tailed Petula all the way downtown in the freezing cold. It was rare for them to be dow
n there to begin with, but totally unheard of after dark. Petula had slowed down and pulled around the corner just ahead. They could see the glare from her brake lights around the bend and figured she must have stopped.

  “Where are we?” Wendy Anderson asked her copilot.

  Hawthorne was a small place with an even smaller downtown, but their inexperience with the seedy neighborhood required research. Wendy Thomas studied the dashboard GPS and pinpointed their location.

  “Um,” Wendy Thomas replied not-so-confidently, “downtown?”

  “What is she doing down here?” Wendy Anderson asked.

  Before Wendy Thomas could respond, the taillights on Petula’s car dimmed and then went black. They heard her car door pop open and quickly slid down as low in their seats as possible, leaving only their head wraps visible above the dashboard. Petula walked around the corner, head down, her shadow cast by the streetlights, growing ever longer the farther away from them she walked.

  “Do you think she saw us?” Wendy Anderson queried nervously.

  “Shut up, Wendy,” Wendy Thomas commanded. “You’re fogging the windows and I can’t see a thing.”

  It wasn’t Wendy Anderson’s big mouth that was causing the windows to cloud over, however, but rather the cool presence of Pam and Prue, who’d just crashed The Wendys’ Emma Peel party. They settled in the backseat and immediately began tracing rude messages onto the glass.

  Each time Wendy Anderson wiped away the condensation, Wendy Thomas’s breath would reveal a new insult on the windshield: “Hoe-tards,” “fugly,” “shallowficial.” The looks on their faces were priceless, and Pam and Prue could barely contain themselves.

  “This is going to be great,” Prue laughed. “Who needs heaven?”

  Pam smiled and nodded but quickly straightened up when she caught a glimpse of Petula stopping and standing on a barren corner, as if she was keeping an appointment. She pointed Prue in her direction, as The Wendys, oblivious to their guests, followed.

  “You don’t think…,” Wendy Anderson let the thought that Petula might be involved in some kind of secret affair, or worse, hang in the air.