Six: Woman in the Room
***
“Today is Thursday,” the English teacher said, “December the first. Two thousand sixteen. Christmas is coming.” He eyed the class through a pair of gold spectacles, his middle-aged face challenging anyone to contradict this proclamation. When no one did, he went ahead and asserted himself anyway. “Yes,” he told everyone, “it is. Think about that. Let it sink in.”
A girl two desks over from Keltie raised her hand. “I need to pee.”
The teacher turned around and wrote pee on the blackboard in florid letters. “Pee,” he said, pointing his piece of chalk at the girl. “Miss Reyes, please use the word pee in a sentence that pertains in some way to Christmas.”
“On Christmas Eve night I needed to pee.”
“You can do better than that. Come on, let’s have some imagination.”
Everyone turned to look at the girl. Keltie remembered that her name was Amanda. They’d once shared a cigarette in the boiler room.
The teacher leaned forward. “Well?”
“Christmas is a time to see,” Amanda intoned, “the many things there are to see. Presents underneath the tree. The Holly and the Ivy. But on this Christmas I badly need, a place that I can have a pee. So please, Mr. Thomas, I beg of thee, let me go and make it be.”
With that, the girl stood and walked out of the room.
“Egad,” Mr. Thomas said after several moments of stunned silence. “I knew if I kept at you girls it would pay off. Let’s give her an ovation when she returns, shall we?”
When Amanda returned, everyone stood up. Then the ovation commenced. Blushing and waving, their newfound poetess stood through it all. When it was over, she gave a deep curtsey. This allowed Keltie to see past her shoulder to a house with a large lawn across the street. Standing underneath one of the trees, all but hidden in shadow, was the biggest dog she had ever laid eyes on. The dog looked hunched, as if preparing to strike. Its eyes were yellow. And they were looking straight at her.
Or maybe they weren’t. The dog was only one of the creepy things Keltie noticed—or thought she noticed—since the night of Bolt’s phone call. His talk of slow torture had put her imagination on high alert. Nothing felt safe anymore. Nowhere felt right. She had taken to eating her mashed potatoes with a fork and her carrots with a spoon. She drank coffee in a glass, cola in a mug. Her eye shadow had gone from purple to black. Books—all of them—she now read in reverse, starting with the climax and working her way back to the innocence of its characters. Cigarettes she still smoked, only now her habit was up to almost two packs a week. And at the end of November, she’d fallen off the gym’s balance beam twice. Shit was getting real.
On her birthday—December sixteenth—Cameron came to visit. He bore gifts.
“Guess what it is,” he said, smiling over a plate of ice cream in the cafeteria.
Keltie looked at the package. It was about the size of a Tupperware box, wrapped by hands which lacked experience with such tasks. Twisted gnarls of tape jutted from the sides, and there were wrinkles everywhere.
“Keltie!” one of her classmates shouted from a group of girls at the next table. “Happy birthday, biyyatch!”
“Thank you!” she sang back.
“What are you doing for Christmas?”
Giving Santa Claus a blowjob for an iPhone 7, she thought with a smirk but did not say. “I’m not sure yet.”
The girl then winked and made a circle with her thumb and index finger, which Keltie immediately understood. On Christmas Eve night, somewhere in the building, there would be a party—a secret party that hopefully involved a number of boys from the other wing. Later on, Keltie would be told where, and at what time.
“Biyyatch?” Cameron was saying. “Is that a nickname?”
Keltie laughed. “It’s just a word that girls like to use.”
“Oh. Oh!” Her dad’s eyes came alive with understanding. “You mean for bitch!”
Everyone in the cafeteria stopped and looked at them.
“Bitch!” Cameron said again, utterly oblivious. “Of course!”
“Dad! Chill!”
“Sorry, sorry.” And upon discovering he had become the room’s center of attention, Cameron gave a meek wave to the audience. “It’s cool,” he told them. “She’s not really a bitch.”
“Dad!” Keltie hissed.
“I mean she’s a cool bitch, not like…a bitch bitch.”
“Dad, you are not making the situation any better.”
“Well I don’t know how to talk to kids these days,” Cameron tried to explain. He looked around the cafeteria, waiting for it to get back to business. When it did, he told Keltie: “At my old school we said things like tope, bip, face.”
“We’re not complicated,” Keltie said, “you just need to get out of that church basement—wait a minute.” She stopped. “Tope, bip, face? What the hell do those words even mean?”
“Never mind. Open your present. I can see you’re dying with anticipation.”
She ripped open the package. It wasn’t a Tupperware container, but a shoebox. Inside was a pair of pink sneakers with red laces, ready for running.
“Wow,” she gasped. “Double wow. These are Nikes.”
“You don’t need to walk from here to my house or the church in boots,” Cameron said. “On days that I can’t come and pick you up, at least.” A demure shrug twitched his shoulders. “You know.”
“These are great, Dad. I love them. Do you mind if I give you a hug?”
“Of course not.”
Keltie leaned over the table. Some of the ice cream got on her blouse. That was all right. Better than all right, because Keltie let the stain set, so she could look at it for the rest of the day and have a reason to smile.
***
Christmas came on a Sunday that year. On Saturday night the detention center held its annual DC Christmas Dance in the gymnasium, an event Keltie usually skipped on the grounds of too few good looking boys to dance with and cheap quality DJs who overindulged in bubblegum pop. This year her snobbery begged to be put on hold. She was already spending myriad nights alone in her room, staring out at shadows in the streets. And as it so happened, the first snow of the year fell on that Saturday, accompanied by an icy wind that rattled the old building’s windows like fierce hands in search of a broken lock.
So at seven p.m. she put on a pink tank –top, red skirt, and some suitable makeup, then went downstairs to the dance. The hallways in the girls’ wing had a tendency to look pretty at Christmastime, and this year was no exception. Wreaths hung on doorways powdered with fake snow. Lights twinkled on staircase railings, along which Keltie could already hear music from the gymnasium. She arrived to find a ten foot Christmas tree holding court over a noisy room decorated heavily with silver tinsel and plastic spruce. Her shoes—the Nikes—skittered over a number of broken green needles. On the floor she could see a handful of girls she knew dancing with boys she didn’t.
“Keltie my love! Have some punch!”
A glass was shoved into her hand by none other than Amanda Reyes. Keltie sipped it and grimaced. “Needs more sugar! What is this music?”
“I think it’s Johnny Orlando!” Amanda shouted.
Speakers half the size of the tree had been set up in the corners. Keltie traced one of their cords back to a DJ with cheap sunglasses and hair almost as spiky as her own. Ah well, she thought. What more could you expect at a party where no one was allowed to get drunk?
“Found a date yet?” Amanda wanted to know.
“I just got here, actually! What’s with all the pine needles?”
“They’re going for a pagan look this year! And fuck it, why not? If God won’t answer the phone we should stop dialing His number!”
“I guess so,” Keltie agreed.
“Hey,” Amanda said, leaning in towards Keltie’s ear, “tonight. Midnight. Boiler room.” She leaned back and winked. “Understood?”
“Loud and clear.”
“Great! Now go find a dance partner!”
And before Keltie could inform her there was no way in hell she was going to dance, Amanda disappeared into the throng. By this time a few of the boys near the punch bowl had noticed the arrival of another girl. They stared over at Keltie with hopeful eyes. One smiled. Another waved. A third took a slow, cool drink of his punch, wretched, and spewed it out all over the other two.
“Marty!” the waver yelled. “Jesus Christ!”
“Sorry, man, but god, this stuff is awful!”
“Well spit it on yourself next time!”
Smiling, Keltie sauntered off to a row of wallflowers growing near the Christmas tree. A couple of other girls she vaguely knew said hello. Out on the dance floor, Amanda had found a tall, dark stranger to buff the polish with. It seemed that not only could she recite poetry on the fly, but knew some pretty good ways to shake her butt as well. A bittersweet memory came to Keltie just then. Penelope had known how to dance.
“Wanna dance?” a voice next to her asked.
She looked up to find a dark-skinned boy with a punch stain on his shirt. A pair of friendly black eyes looked back with only about half the confidence needed in order to ask a girl to dance. Clearly the boy was betting all of his tokens on the way Keltie had smiled after the spitting incident. So she was dealing with a gambler who didn’t like flat punch. How dangerous could that possibly be?
“Marty, right?” Keltie asked, standing up.
His face, now that she hadn’t bitten it off, relaxed a little. “Marty Calinga.”
“Keltie Burke.”
They took the floor. Slowly at first, feeling out the music—or what passed for it—with little knee bends and hip swings. Then Marty began to execute a number of modern street moves, which Keltie copied with relative ease. He was a full head taller than she, broad shouldered, with a complexion that alluded to the presence of Mexican or perhaps Spanish blood.
“Where did you say you were from?” she asked at one point.
“Right here in Norwalk,” he answered, with a half dip that forced a tiny gasp into her lungs. “But my grandparents come from the Philippines.” He lifted her back up. “We went to grade school together.”
“Really?” she let out, dizzied. “You and your grandparents?”
He laughed. “Me and you.”
“Oh. I don’t remember.”
“No worries. I doubt our friends mingled much on the playground.”
“Do you speak any Filipino?”
Marty paused for a moment, then nodded. “Ng musikang ito ay kahila-hilakbot.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means come to the boiler room tonight at midnight. There’s a secret shindig going down.”
“Oh I’ll be there,” Keltie promised. “The girls already flashed me a few signals.”
“Give me your room number and I’ll pick you up.”
Keltie went back upstairs at a little after eight. The weather by that time had gotten worse. Through a window at the end of the hall the world looked almost white, and a draft teased the curtains. She lingered at the glass nevertheless, watching the flakes fly. A lot of bad things had been said (and printed) about Norwalk’s juvenile reform center over the years, but tonight, it and the surrounding neighborhood looked pretty. Let the reporters come now, she thought, eyeing a child’s snowman across the street, let them write anything they want, because it will all be good.
Turning her back on the winter wonderland, Ketie went to her room. Most of the girls were still at the dance, so she would have the bathroom to herself for awhile, a fact which verged on the sublime. All the hot water she wanted would be hers for hours to come.
She finished her shower at nine and went back through the hall dressed in nothing but a towel. Even this she discarded after locking her door, content to stand naked in front of the closet until a proper blend of midnight attire came forth. Five minutes went by. Ten. Her choices seemed limited to two colors: red or black. Or red and black, as the case might be.
“Bah,” she grunted. “Humbug.”
Drowsy from the hot shower, she sat down on the bed, only to find the softness of the quilt too tempting to resist. In under five minutes it had her in its clutches, and by nine-thirty, Keltie was completely asleep.
“Merry Christmas!” someone sang from down the hall. “Ho-ho-ho to all you little angels out there! We love you!”
***
She awoke with a start two hours later, thinking she’d missed the party. But no. The Ben and Holly clock on the wall—a gift from Penelope last year—read eleven-thirty. Half an hour left, then. Half an hour to get dressed and put on some makeup.
“No way in hell am I going to make it on time,” Keltie said to the empty room.
A titter from Penelope’s old bed made her jump. Biting back a scream, she looked across to see a young woman with chalk white skin sitting on the mattress. Two deviously clever eyes gleamed behind a thin curtain of inky black hair. Bloody red lips formed a thoughtful smile. It was all Keltie needed to see.
“You’re one of them,” she said.
“But of course,” the woman replied.
She remained seated as she spoke, prim and somehow pretty with her legs crossed and her palms on the sheets. Despite certain similarities, Keltie knew straight away that this wasn’t the same woman who had attacked her last month. Last month’s woman was dead, for one thing. For another, the one sitting with her now did not look evil, though doubtless she intended Keltie harm. Rather, her face appeared highly amused, as if she pitied Keltie for some ridiculous skeleton she’d found living in her closet. Or maybe she thought it funny that the quilt had slipped to expose Keltie’s breasts.
“Did Bolt send you?” was the next thing she wanted to know.
The woman offered a tiny tilt of her head. Indeed, the tilt seemed to say, how very astute of you.
“And now you’re going to eat me.” This last wasn’t even a question. Throughout her life, Keltie had developed a habit of pouncing on worst case scenarios, but even the most optimistic of fools would have a hard go at the sunny side of the street from here.
“I’m sorry,” the woman said, with genuine pity. “When my master tells me to do something…” she trailed off with a shrug. “You know.”
Keltie pressed her back tighter against the wall, wishing like hell there were some way to break through it. Her breasts, still fully exposed, began to rise and fall with what were probably the final breaths of her life. “Why?” she asked, close to tears. “Why me?”
“You’ve been under Bolt’s skin since last spring. And then as I understand it you mouthed off to him on the telephone. Something about being happy for killing two of our clan.”
“What about my friend?”
“What about her?”
“She died, too.”
“We don’t care about that,” the woman explained. “When someone takes from us, we take back.” She blinked at Keltie for a few moments, showing no signs of being in any particular hurry. A gust of wind hit the window. “You don’t remember me, do you?” she said at last. “We met once before.”
“I can’t imagine forgetting any of your kind.”
The smile from Penelope’s bed grew wider, showing a pair of sharp fangs. “You were playing truant. You bad girl.”
“That doesn’t narrow things down very much,” Keltie said. Her eyes glanced left, then right, searching for something—anything—to use as a weapon of self defense. Not much looked helpful, aside from a small, Seven Habits of Successful People totem. Unfortunately, she’d flunked out of that course before they’d gotten around to beating monsters to death over the head.
“You bad girl,” the woman said again…and stood up.
Keltie grabbed the totem and threw it. Her skills on the balance beam did not translate well to a good pitching arm, however; the shot went well wide, knocking over a silver candlestick.
“Please! Please no!”
Closer and closer the woman glided. Her arms had grown down to the floor; long, ragged nails dragged through the piled carpet. Then a hand almost too quick to see rose up and grabbed Keltie around the neck. She gasped. Cold, bony fingers pressed her skin, twitched, pressed some more. At any moment they would squeeze to cut off Keltie’s air for good.
“I’m sorry,” the woman repeated. But the shine in her toothy smile did not apologize for a single thing. “Think of something happy, dear. A pleasant scene for retreating. And if that doesn’t work, just scream as loud as you can. Drown the pain.”
“D-Does it really hurt?” Keltie gibbered.
“Lots, I’m afraid.”
A knock at the door stopped everything cold. Keltie’s breath let out in a whoosh. Then a voice from the hall called her name. “Can I come in?” it asked.
Without even thinking, Keltie screamed the word YES! The door came open to reveal Marty, whose eyes all but popped from his head at the sight they found. “Oh fuck,” he breathed out, frozen on the threshold. “Oh fuck…oh fuck.”
“Well hello,” the woman told him cheerfully. “Are you here to rescue our fair damsel yet again?”
“Let her go, Vera,” Marty said. “You’re not going to hurt her. Keltie?” His shocked gaze moved from tormentor to victim. “Relax. It’s all right.”
“Now that,” Keltie replied, “has got to be the most singularly stupid statement I’ve ever heard in my whole life.”
“Trust me.”
“Sure. No problem.”
Her tone dripped with sarcasm, yet what happened next was nothing short of astounding. The woman released her grip, allowing Keltie to leap from the bed and cower in a cold corner near the window.
“Thank you,” Marty said.
And despite being denied her prey (through whatever snake charming abilities Marty seemed to possess), the woman kept right on smiling. “You know, one of these days your big sister is going to stop pretending to be nice.”
“You never could tell me no. Keltie, are you all right?”
“Oh absolutely. Couldn’t be better.”
A sudden, sly expression almost identical to that of the woman’s took hold of Marty’s face.