Venomous (23 page)

“A little,” I say, remembering the way my hand tightened over Renée’s as the first flush of pressure turned into fiery pain. It wasn’t as bad as getting the crap kicked out of me by Casey, but it was pretty fuckin’ bad. Renée’s artist was gentle, though, and had a huge Spider-Man obsession. “Not as bad as everyone makes it out to be, though. It was totally worth it too. Happy birthday.”

“This is my present?” he squeaks, his eyes growing massive. “You got this for
me
?”

“What…of course I got it for you! That’s your name there! It doesn’t say ‘George’ or—or ‘Bub’ on there, it says ‘
Lon
’!”

“Wow. I don’t…I mean…I…” Suddenly Lon’s crying like an old lady at a wedding, his hands clapped to his mouth and tears pouring down his face. I turn around and grip him in a big hug, squeezing him tight enough to wring the juices out of him.

“Thank you,” he blubbers, his face sticky and wet against my bare chest. “Thank you so much, Locke. I can’t believe you did this. I can’t believe it.”

“You doofus,” I say. “You know why I got the Venom symbol around your name, right?” I feel him shake his head against my chest. “When we were at Chapter and Verse, and I flipped out? You remember that?” I feel a nod. “Right, well, at the end of that day, after I flipped out at the woman behind the counter, I told myself that I was going to get rid of all of that stupid anger and hatred for you. There were very few things that made me really want to get rid of the venom, but you were always at the top of the list. It hurt you, man, and I was always scared….” I take a deep breath, preparing myself to say something that I wouldn’t ever dare admit. “I was always scared that one day you’d accidentally do the wrong thing, and I’d really hurt you. And that idea was too much, y’know?” I pull him away and look into his puffy red eyes. “I haven’t had an angry in over a month, kid. Thank you for making that possible.”

Lon bursts into tears again, so I clutch him for a while longer until he stops. We clean ourselves up, him wiping tears and snot from his face while I wipe the same from my sternum. I get my shirt on, Locke yanks his mask on, and we emerge from my room with a knowing nod. Lon, my friend, my brother. You will always be my inspiration.

“Guys,” I hear my mom call out, “there’s someone here to see you.”

I turn around, expecting one of Lon’s school friends—

But no. It’s just my father.

Lon runs over to the man in the suit, the man holding a big box wrapped in orange, the man who abandoned him, and gives him a grappling hug. My dad growls playfully as he swings Lon in his arms, giving him a hard pat on the back. Knowing Lon, it probably hurts, but he doesn’t seem to care. He looks good, Rick does; he has a bit of the distinguished-older-man thing going on right now, sort of like Jeff Goldblum, only a little grayer. A pointed wizard’s hat sits on his head. This is his idea of a costume.

After handing Lon his present and asking the usual introductory questions, he marches up to me with a crooked smile on his face. “Locke. How’re you doing, son?” His hand jabs out.

There’s the stirring, the flexing, the twitching of something solid and alive inside me. A murky cloud stirs up, and a clawed hand reaches up through it.

I put my hand into his. We have a few hard shakes before breaking it off. “I’m doing okay. How’s life on your end?”

“Ah, y’know, life is life,” he says, glancing casually around the apartment. “Work, family, sleep, eat, whatever. Nice makeup, by the way; shout it, shout it out
loud
!”

How dare you speak to me about family, you absentee shit?
“Thanks, but I just do it for the chicks. You want your tux back?”

He looks me up and down. “You’re not wearing it today?”

“It was for a party a couple of weeks ago. Besides, I don’t think Ace and Paul would be cool with it.”

“Huh. How well did it fit you?”

“Perfectly.”

“Then keep it,” he says, as if he’s giving me the key to the city. “I haven’t had much use for it any time recently.” His Used Car Salesman smile pops up. “And I bet you looked good in it.”

“Thanks. I did. How’s the baby?”

He hisses between his teeth, and I gain no decent amount of pleasure imagining five-in-the-morning vomit runs on Rick’s part. “Brian’s a bit of a hellraiser, but it’s all good. Bethany wants to get to know you better, by the way. I think she’s a little intimidated by you.”

“Understandable. I’m a little intimidating.”

My dad chuckles, taken aback, wondering what to say to that, when I see Renée standing behind him wearing a baffled expression (her costume: Eleanor Rigby. A dead Victorian mistress. How cool is that?). I motion her over, and she struts up to me and gives me a kiss on the cheek, leaving a smear of glitter-laced black. “Dad, this is Renée, my girlfriend. Renée, this is my father.”

“Oh, really?” she says, her eyebrows jumping a foot. She shakes hands with him and says, in a voice that drips with both sugary sweetness and Bambi’s blood, “I’ve heard
so
much about you, Mr. Vinetti. It’s nice to
finally
meet you.”

The red in his face betrays his loss of composure, but he smiles and shakes her hand with a little bow toward her. “Call me Rick. Locke didn’t tell me he had a girlfriend, much less one as beautiful as yourself.”

“Oh, bah,” she says, tugging at her bondage straps. “He just keeps me secret so other guys don’t come gunning for me.”

“Well, we’d better be off,” I say, throwing a little salute to the man who was never there for me. “I’ll see you later, Dad.”

“All right, talk to you later, son. Nice meeting you, Renée.”

“Oh, likewise, Rick!”

As I’m about to leave, I stop and trot back over to my dad. “Hey, Dad, quickly—I’m sorry about being kind of rude, the day I came to get the tux. I was in a weird mood, and my head was…Anyway, just wanted to apologize. I was out of line.”

He looks at me, half-puzzled, and says, “Well, thank you, Locke. I totally forgot about that, but…thanks.”

We say our good-byes all around and make our way out into the street.

“You bastard,” Renée snarls. “Nice meeting you, you schmuck. You fucking
waste
of a parent.”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“Do you still hate him?”

I shrug. “Sure. I’ll always hate him. But, y’know…that’s it. He’s an asshole, but he’s still my father. I owe him that much. Besides, Lon adores him.”

“On that note—Lon like his present?” she asks.

I grin from ear to ear. “He loved it. He started crying like a
baby
about it.”

She giggles and bounces up and down. “Perfect! You, come here right now!” She grabs my face between her palms, and we share a prolonged, deep kiss in the middle of the street, smearing my demon face paint every which way. Then we’re off down the street, arm in arm, taking in the autumn air and the smell of pumpkin. Parents and children covered in cheap lace and greasepaint are everywhere to be seen, fixing hats and holding out pillowcases. Everything is orange, black, red, and green. This might be the best day of the year to be a teenager—looking ridiculous and getting up to no good are part of the game plan.

When we get to the park, the tarot kids are all sitting on or around the rock where I met them, talking among themselves and having a good time. They’ve brought blankets and pillows and beanbags, as well as more pots of soup and Thermoses of hot chocolate and coffee than I can count. One of them, a towering raver with pink hair and platform boots, is serving what appears to be eggnog with Count Chocula floating in it from a big glass bowl. And all around it’s costumes and candy, mummies and werewolves and Power Rangers hitting joints and swinging bottles.

We sidle up to Randall, Casey, and Tollevin (Freddy Krueger, Austin Powers, and Rick James, respectively), who’re sitting in the middle of the crowd, laughing loudly over glasses of apple cider. Randall and Casey are still more reserved around each other than they’ve ever been, occasionally stealing glances out of the corner of their eyes. Randall has especially taken his time letting Casey and me back into his good graces, but it seems to be wearing on him, and he’s almost back to his old self. We realized, after everything exploded into insanity, that we couldn’t help but be friends at this point. It was a dirty job, yeah, but who else would we want to spend time with? Without one another, what was there?

They hail us over when we’re seen and start firing questions at me about Lon’s birthday party. But there’s one thing that everyone’s curious about.

“For fuck’s sake, Stockenbarrel,” whines Randall, “can we
see it
?”

I turn around and lift my shirt, feeling the weather run its biting fingers down my spine. Everyone
ooh
s and
aah
s at the tattoo, one or two of them reaching out and touching it. When I turn around, they all sound their approval.

“Cute,” says Casey, smiling crookedly. “If only there was a superhero named the Black. There’d probably be some sort of racial protest, though, I’m sure.”

“Nice job, Stockenbarrel. If there was ever a dude who needed a tramp stamp, it’s you.”

“Well, now that we’re done jerking each other off,” says Tollevin, laying his hands on the bongos in his lap. He starts tapping out an almost tribal beat, and then from somewhere in the crowd of misfits and crazies, another set of drums joins him, and then another, and then another.

Randall pulls his guitar out of its case and begins plucking. His eyes shoot to Casey, and he says, “You’re gonna sing this one for me, right?”

Casey sighs dramatically. “If you insist.” Looking upward, he yells out, “IT BEGINS!”

A sound starts going, but not the normally jovial one that I remember from the first night here. This one is darker, with a little more of a bite to it. Casey closes his eyes and starts singing in a deep, slippery voice.

“‘Here come the man…look in his eye…’”

The crowd starts hooting and hollering, and more and more people join in. I don’t know the song, but Renée does, and she squeezes my arm as the first chorus comes up. The words hit me, and I can’t help laughing.

“‘The devil inside, the devil inside, every single one of us the devil inside…’” Casey’s eyes pop open onto me, and he winks once, conspiratorially. I wink back and start singing with the rest of the group.

The whole thing seems dark and ritualistic, but it feels like home. I can’t bring myself to feel awkward or strange or upset around these people, and even though a little part of me almost wants to complain about something—the cold, the song, anything—I can’t. Every person before me is a person, but they’re a world before that. We are all time bombs and angels, poisons and antidotes, question marks and commas, and it suits me just fine.

As the chorus finally swells, I look up into the sky, which is a perfect, miserable gray. I can’t help it, and I start crying softly, tears crawling down my cheek while my voice never wavers. I look over at Casey and see that he’s crying too. Renée lights two cigarettes and hands one to me, which I smoke happily.

And when the song finishes, I’m still here. And for once, I don’t think that makes anything worse.

I
SAW
it before it saw me. That made me incredibly happy.

There was no mistaking it. To everyone else in the park, it probably resembled a grandmother, a hobo, a stoner kid playing Frisbee, but I could see it. The shadowy body. The eyes, blinking in random patterns. The mouth, a burbling gash in its pitch-black face. It had been skulking around town, trying to find a new host, to recreate what we had. Stupid. I could see it. It was mine.

Just as my eyes hit it, it got its first look at me. It stayed frozen in place, hoping I wouldn’t be able to tell what it was, who it was. That was bullshit, of course. When you had a relationship like ours, there’s no chance of staying hidden. I’d followed it to the park, and there it was, slithering its way across a warm Sheep Meadow in broad daylight.

“Get back here!” I screamed, and then I was barreling across the grass, putting my shoulder down. As I got close, it reared up to its full height and stretched its arms out. Maybe it was trying to scare me off. Maybe it was trying to grow wings and flap away like the batty monster it was. I couldn’t tell. All I knew was that it looked weaker, more vulnerable, than it had ever appeared before.