Broken Monsters

  Besides, it turns out it’s harder to fool teenagers than old gods. Clothes maketh not the mean girl. Eventually you’re going to slip up and say something colossally dorky, like you read Shakespeare for fun.

  It took a week before she decided it was too much effort and blew her cover on purpose so she could go back to wearing her usual uniform of jeans and geeky T-shirts. Hard enough being the in-between Afro-Latina, who can fit in with the white kids or the black kids, but not both at the same time. But it sucked being back where she started, on the outside, eating lunch alone in the gymnateria or cafenasium, whatever you want to call it, because like all well-intentioned charter schools, Hines High was short on funds.

  That was before she made friends with Cassandra, or more likely the other way round, because, let’s face it, Cas is so out of her league. She’s super-hot, even though she never wears makeup, with her fine sandy-brown hair, big gray-blue eyes and freckles, and breasts that make boys do double-takes. And she doesn’t give a fuck about anything.

  It’s how they became friends, when Cas called Ms. Combrink a bitch to her face and Layla covered for her, clumsily, yelling out, yeah, she had an itch too. It landed them both in detention, but they got to talking and she persuaded Cas to come along to audition at the theater school. She aced it without trying, even though she sings like a frog with emphysema. Life lesson: looks plus don’t-give-a-fuck confidence mean you can have anything you want – any guy, any friends. But Cas chose her. Which makes Layla infinitely grateful and paranoid. She’s told Cas she’s waiting for the day she dumps a bucket of pig’s blood on her head – Carrie-style.

  ‘Gross. I would never do that.’ Cas was dismissive. ‘If I was going to humiliate you in public, I’d be much more subtle and vicious.’

  But it means she doesn’t push too hard when Cas changes the subject every time personal stuff comes up. It’s part of what she admires about her – that Cas is unknowable. Like Oz. But unlike that huckster wizard, you can’t just pull back the curtain on Cas, because all you’ll find are curtains behind curtains. It’s part of her ineffable cool. But Layla can’t tell her that because she’ll get a big head, and she already has big boobs to contend with. It would definitely throw her off balance.

  Shawnia raises her fist again for the final exercise before they launch into rehearsals proper, the cycle of gratitude. Double-clap-stamp, round the circle. ‘I’m happy today,’ she starts, ‘because … I got an acceptance letter from U of M!’ Clap-clap-stamp. Everyone whoops.

  Layla has her sights set further than that. When she graduates in three years' time, she’s getting out of Michigan. She’s not naïve enough to think she’ll make NYU or Los Angeles, but there are other cities with great theater schools. Chicago, Austin, Pittsburgh.

  ‘I’m happy today because I got a date for prom,’ Jessie says. Clap-clap-stamp.

  ‘Did she pay him?’ Cas whispers and Layla tries to keep a straight face. Maybe because Jessie’s the only other white kid in theater group, it’s easier for Cas to pick on her. ‘By the way …’ Cas flashes her screen at her, to show her a tweet from Dorian. ‘Hitting the ramp l8r. Anyone up for a skate?’

  The claps continue round the circle.

  ‘You stalker!’ Layla whispers, trying to hide her delight, already calculating who she can bum a ride with to get there.

  ‘I’m doing it for you, baby girl. For looo-ve.’

  ‘No phones, girls!’ Mrs. Westcott calls out from the stage.

  ‘I’m happy because it’s end of the weekend,’ David intones and gets answered with boos, but he just raises his voice, ‘which means I get to go to school tomorrow and see all my boys!’ Clap-clap-stamp.

  ‘I got a text from a boy who likes me,’ Chantelle says.

  ‘But do you like him?’ Mrs. Westcott teases.

  ‘Oh yeah.’ Chantelle looks smug.

  Clap-clap-stamp.

  ‘I spoke to a boy I like,’ Keith says. Clap-clap-stamp, a wolf-whistle.

  ‘My little brother made the hockey team,’ Cas says. ‘More time at practice, less time to bug me.’ Clap-clap-stamp.

  ‘I’m happy because …’ Shit, Layla has had half the circle to think of something. ‘I’m seeing my boyfriend later.’ She flushes. Clap-clap-stamp. Saying it makes it true. Or commits her to trying, anyway.

  She didn’t intend to get high. But after rehearsals, hanging around watching the boys in the skate park, the weed blunted the boredom of waiting for her mother, who kept texting to say she was held up, until everyone else had bailed to go home, including Cas, and it was only her and Dorian, who kept sliding away from her, and she had to get used to it.

  He’s aiming for kid sister. She wants unsisterly things. It’s not that big an age difference. She’ll be sixteen in December. But he’s graduated already and taking a year out, crashing on the couches of some artist-musician friends down by Hubbard Farms while he decides if he wants to go to college. ‘In the right light, Detroit’s kinda like the new Bohemia,’ he told her, passing her the joint, taking care not to brush her fingers with his. She wanted to reply that in the right light, he could be the Florizel to her Perdita, except he probably hasn’t read The Winter’s Tale, and he’d think she was even more of a dork.

  He’s not the only guy in her life who fundamentally doesn’t get it. Yesterday’s weekly scheduled phone call with her dad (like she’s in prison or something) went badly, and it’s been gnawing at her. She was telling him about her part in the play, the portable phone cradled to her ear, NyanCat a purring lump against her leg, and he was all hers for a moment, like they used to be. He even promised to fly out to see it if his schedule allowed, because the last live performance he saw was a bad remake of The Little Mermaid on ice, for God’s sake.

  ‘Yeah, how do you even skate on fins?’ she said, blocking out the sound of her step-sibs squealing in the background.

  ‘They managed,’ William said, and she could picture his brow crinkling in amused horror. ‘It was godawful, Lay, you have no idea.’

  She laughed. ‘Maybe that’ll be me one day. The sea witch on skates.’ He was supposed to retort, Are you kidding, you’d be the lead, honey. And then she would feign outrage and maybe she’d go on to mention this guy she met. It’s a comedy routine the two of them have, with established rules. But then his new life butted in, like elderly neighbors cutting the music at a house party.

  ‘Hang on a sec, Layla. No! Julie! Do not throw food on the floor! C’mon, you know you’re not supposed to do that, baby.’

  ‘Remind me again why I have to stay in Detroit?’ She meant for it to sound light-hearted, just to hook his attention back to her, but he started reeling off all the same old reasons, on auto-pilot. Just till you finish high school. Your mother needs you. I need to try to make this work. It’s not easy with little step-kids.

  ‘Yeah, the last thing you want is your teenage daughter from your previous marriage hanging around to remind you of how you screwed up the last one,’ she snapped. Which led to a long silence down the phone line.

  ‘Hello? You still there?’ She suddenly missed their DIY craft projects she threw out when they moved: the scientifically accurate mobile of glow-in-the-dark planets she and her dad hung together, the dreamcatcher he helped her weave when she was seven – inspired by the Ojibwe who hunted here, he told her – with dangling crystals that caught the light. She wondered what shiny bits of wisdom he was passing on to his new kids.

  ‘Earth to Dad?’ She tried for jokey.

  He came back from very far away. ‘That was a terrible thing to say Layla. I’m really hurt.’ That pleading note entered his voice, the one she thinks of as PD: Post Divorce. Be reasonable. ‘Besides, you know your mother needs you.’

  ‘Bzzzzz! And that’s the incorrect answer! Thank you for playing!’ She hung up before he could say anything else. She waited for him to ring back. He didn’t. She’s not going to apologize, she thinks fiercely. Not this time.

  She doesn’t notice the white Crown
Vic pulling up very slowly alongside the skate ramp, cruising for trouble like only cops and gangs and bored teenagers do. She’s lost inside her weed-fuzzed head, intent on Dorian poised on the concrete lip in that perfect moment of potential, the streetlight flared behind his head in the dusk. He shades his eyes against the headlights. His beanie is pulled low over his sideburns. ‘Hey, Lay,’ he calls out to her. ‘I think it’s your mom.’ But it’s like overhearing the Iranian women gossiping at the corner store – sounds fraught with meaning that don’t have anything to do with her.

  He tilts his board over the edge and lets gravity have its way with him. He glides down the curve and up the other side, tracing lazy parabolas through the gray slush of melted ice. If she slits her eyes, she can almost see contrails in his wake. It’s beautiful. Like art. Or music, she thinks, the zipper scrape of the wheels across the cement.

  ‘Lay,’ he arcs around, catching the trunk of the tree. His breath fogs out in a cartoon speech bubble in the cold. ‘Ley’ means ‘law’ in Spanish. This is her mom’s idea of an inside joke.

  ‘What?’ She’s annoyed with him for breaking the magic. And then the Crown Vic gives a single whoop-whoop of the siren, a flash of red and blue from the lights mounted in the grille. More subtle than the bubble they stick on top, but not by much.

  ‘Crap!’ She drops the joint from her fingers. God, she wishes her mom wouldn’t do that. She slides down from the tree, super-aware of her body, her limbs like foreign objects that aren’t quite ready to do what they’re told. She tucks her hands under her armpits, not only to hide the smell of the weed on her fingertips, but to prevent her arms floating off, because right now it feels like they might drift right out of her sleeves into the sky.

  ‘Wake up,’ Dorian pokes her in the ribs, totally busting her spacing out. He’s laughing at her. But not in a shitty way.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ she mumbles, her face going hot. She concentrates on the ridiculous choreography of putting one foot in front of the other. Who invented walking? Seriously.

  He shakes his head and guides his board over to the car. He grabs on the side mirror to bring himself to a bumping stop and leans down to greet through the window. ‘Hola, Mrs. V.’

  ‘It’s Ms.’ her mother says. ‘And I prefer Detective Versado. Or ma’am. As in, “No, ma’am, that’s not marijuana you can smell coming off me like I’ve taken up residence inside a bong.”’

  ‘Legal in several states now,’ he grins.

  ‘So move to Colorado.’

  ‘Mom!’ Layla winces. ‘Leave off. Please.’ She opens the door to climb in the back.

  ‘Don’t you want to sit up front?’

  ‘Nah. This way I can pretend I’m one of your perps. You treat me like a criminal anyway.’

  ‘Well, if I catch you smoking that stuff …’

  ‘You won’t,’ Layla retorts. Catch her that is. Especially if she can lurk in the back seat and shut down the conversation. Then she can lie down in the back and watch the streamers of lights out the window, like she used to when she was a little kid when they went out for dinner and she fell asleep in the back and her dad would lift her out and carry her into the house to install her in her bed, smelling like cigarettes and sweat and the sharp aftershave he always wore for special occasions. She feels a burn of nostalgia for that little kid and that happy family.

  ‘Later,’ Dor says now, kicking away.

  ‘Bye,’ she says, going for casual disdain, which seems to work on boys like him, along with lots of eye-liner. And tits. And being three years older, and not such a colossal dork. God, she’s so screwed.

  Her mother is watching her in the rear-view mirror, with that little crease tugging downwards at the corner of her mouth, the one that didn’t used to be there. It’s a PD thing. ‘You know, there are studies that show—’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I know, Mom. Weed corrodes the brain, I’m gonna be sorry when the only job I can get is flipping burgers. Or worse. End up po-lice.’

  ‘Sure wouldn’t want that,’ her mother says mildly, but Layla knows she got to her by the way she pulls away, jerking the steering wheel into a hard U-turn toward the freeway.

  ‘I had a weird case today,’ she says. Opening gambit. Layla’s not falling for it. She engages super-surly mode from the drop-down menu of emotional options in her head.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t talk to my friends.’

  ‘Don’t worry. The feeling’s mutual. Dorian, anyway. I like Cas, though.’

  ‘And don’t rate them either. This isn’t the friend Olympics. They don’t get a score out of ten.’

  ‘Do you want to walk home?’

  ‘Dorian could have given me a ride.’

  ‘I suppose he is cute, in that deadbeat stoner way.’

  ‘Mom!’ Layla dies inside. If it’s that transparent to her mother, then the whole world knows. Which means it’s obvious to Dorian as well, and that’s too hideous to contemplate.

  ‘All right, all right. Truce. I bought you some lipgloss.’

  ‘Swell.’ Layla says. She sits up, pulls out her phone and starts typing a text to Cas.

  >Lay: Finally! 3 HOURS late!

  >Cas: More time for loooo-oooobe with Dorian

  >Lay: Excuse me?!?

  >Cas: Aaargh! Loooooove. Love! Not lube! Autocorrect.

  >Lay: Freud much?

  >Cas: :) :) :)

  ‘I had to use some of it,’ her mother says. ‘Hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘Mom, this stuff’s a con. It dehydrates your skin so you have to keep applying it.’

  But the thought of the soft, sweet slick of the gloss is suddenly very appealing. She presses her lips together to see how dry they are. Pretty dry. She runs her tongue along the edge of her incisors which makes her super-aware of how her teeth are part of her skull. She feels a little queasy at the thought of the exposed bone, right there in the open. The inside-out. She drags her mind back to the last thing her mom said through the warm blur of the weed. Lipgloss. Right. ‘What flavor is it?’

  ‘Cherry. Don’t you want to know what I used it for?’

  ‘Putting on your lips?’ Layla says. Drop-down menu: maximum sarcasm.

  ‘To cover the smell of a body.’

  ‘That doesn’t work. I saw it on the crime channel. Anyway, gross. I don’t want to hear about some dead person.’

  >Lay: Disgusting cop stories #Yay #notyay

  >Cas: U like it

  >Lay: Little bit

  ‘You sure? Not even the part where I punked the rookie? Who, unlike you, does not watch the crime channel.’

  ‘If you’re so desperate to talk about it, go ahead.’

  ‘I shouldn’t tell you. It was messed-up.’

  ‘Or don’t. Whatever. I’m not your therapist.’

  ‘I’ll give him this. He turned green, but he didn’t spew.’

  ‘That’s pretty cold, Mom.’

  >Lay: OMG. She’s SO immature

  ‘Poor guy. Guess he should watch more TV.’ She turns thoughtful. Enough for Layla to lower the phone. ‘Poor kid, too.’

  ‘It was a kid?’

  ‘Like I said, it was messed-up.’ Her mother glides away from the conversation like Dorian on his skateboard.

  >Lay: Shit. Dead kid

  >Cas: What! What!?!?!?!? All the deets. I wantz them

  >Lay: Later

  ‘Someone I know?’

  ‘I don’t think so, baby. And you know we don’t talk shop.’

  ‘I thought we just were.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. That was indiscreet of me.’

  ‘So be indiscreet. Who am I gonna tell?’

  ‘Layla, we haven’t even notified the family yet.’

  ‘Fine. Whatever. You started it.’

  ‘It’s been a rough day. Sorry.’

  ‘Me too.’ She throws herself back in the seat and picks up her phone again. A force-shield against parental stupidity.

  BEFORE

  Traverse City

  He heard Louanne was back i
n Michigan, but it took Clayton the better part of two weeks and a lot of driving to find her. You got to concentrate driving at night, but it keeps your mind occupied.

  He downs those Monster energy drinks to keep him awake and to counteract the effect of the OxyContin and some kind of super-strength Tylenol in red gel caps he buys from a dealer in Hamtramck, who gets them from Mexico, because he’s wrecked his back and doctors are all full of shit.

  And even though he doesn’t sleep, he has dreams. Crazy dreams. Sometimes while he’s driving, his brain summons shapes up out of the darkness. Like tonight. He drove through a pile of wet leaves, and it was like a mush of crows, all rotten feathers and pointy beaks.

  He wonders if his old man ever saw things on the road when he was trucking long-distance across the country. He never asked him. Sometimes he would take Clayton with him on the shorter hops, to Chicago or Buffalo. They didn’t talk on those trips. Clayton was too scared to say the wrong thing, in awe of the man who chewed gum non-stop because tobacco would give you the cancer, and they’d drive for hours like that, both of them silent, watching the miles peel past. Eventually his old man stopped taking him, because he couldn’t miss school. But when he graduated and said he wanted to make art, his father shrugged and said, so do it then, long as you can feed you and yours.

  When the cancer got him anyway, forty-eight years old, younger than Clayton is now, hiding in the recesses of his pancreas, he left his son the house and enough money to do some courses and live for a while just working on his art. For years he made the visions in his head, dragged them out with paint or an acetylene torch, and even sold some of them. He used to work in the early hours, carried by inspiration and the dwindling supply of bank notes from whatever scrounge job he’d done last. Better than any clock, those bank notes, ticking off the days until he’d have to put down his brush or his chisel or his torch.