Kudos to you if you get the title reference (It's one of my favorite books).


CHAPTER 7: A NIGHT IN THE LONESOME OCTOBER

Dad didn't like my story at all, and he had no reservations about saying so.

"I don't like this."

Then there were a buncha suspicious looks. He shot them my way from under dark and glowering eyebrows, forehead pinched in a hundred different places, but there was no way to know if that suspicion was directed at me or if it was a more general bug in his soup and he was just chucking it into my lap 'cause I was the nearest available target. Dad was that kinda guy.

With his arms folded into his ribcage and his feet gouging the Oregon Trail out of the kitchen tiles, he repeated, "I don't like this."

I shrugged and fought to keep my eyes from wandering back to the half-eaten plate of meatballs sitting on the table next to me. I swear they were doing their damnedest to seduce my nostrils, and it was working (saliva output had hit ceiling production levels about three minutes back), but instead I forced my gaze to stick to Dad's huffy shoulders and said, "That's what the guy said."

Dad made a new pass along his tile trail and gave me another unnecessary eye-full of skepticism. "I don't like it." Yeah, I'd gotten that the first two times. "I want to check it out before we let this go." He pointed a thick finger at my chest like I'd been arguing. I mean, geez, had I said a word against it? Could he tone down the hostility a notch or two, maybe?

But, yeah, no. I was seventeen and so I could probably measure the trust he had in me using a micrometer. That said, no we weren't gonna be leaving just yet, and worse, Dad was gonna try to find this hunter guy I'd been talking about, who (small problem) didn't exist.

And if Dad found that out… Well… at least there are girls in the afterlife, right?

So, basically, with my dear old man acting like that menopausal sophomore English teacher I had that one time in Stockton and Sam acting not much better and Dave and Robby being just about as unsympathetic as two fucks can be, Halloween and the slutty outfits it entailed were really the only bright spots on the sorry-ass horizon of my life. That's why, even knowing the Bitch was gonna be there, I'd taken my two buddies up on their secondhand invitation to some chick's party. Halloween party. And now it was nine o'clock on haunt-town night with the air like the murky waters of the Mississippi in winter and just as cold. Candle flames shivered inside a few vagabond jack-o-lanterns on the blue-washed steps that led up to the door of the girl's, Jacky's, house, and the door itself was a timid fucker, cowering deep in its frame. The wind had turned into a hag with gastric trouble and wouldn't stop moaning... loud... and the darkness seemed to shift about like it was clotting. All in all, it was one creepy-ass night — really got me in the whole death-and-devastation holiday mood — but when we got inside, it turned out not a single one of the guests had bothered to put on a costume. Kinda killed the creepiness to have thirty or so teenagers lounging on floors and couches in jeans and t-shirts like this was every other Tuesday. Seriously, who did they think they were?

That's when I spotted Caroline, that red-headed girl that I'd seen just the one time at the AP lit screw-up, seemingly the only kid here with any type of sense. She had on a very tall, very pointy witch hat, and I shot her a sly thumbs up. Other than that, the sole indication that it was Halloween at all was the candy. Big bags of it slouched all over like beer-bellied old men. The packaging exploded with color, advertising all the five-hundred ways they'd found to rename sugar.

As the three of us made it all the way into the living room, the candy-corn hue of the light burnished a gaggle of unfamiliar heads with orangey halos. Except there was also that one head I recognized only too well. Luckily she hadn't seen me yet. Jacky did, though, and, perky hostess that she was, bounced over with a beer-and-MilkyWay-scented laugh.

"Hi, guys!" she bubbled, and she pumped my hand brightly when she realized I was a new face… fresh meat.

"Hi," she beamed for the second time, "I'm Jacky."

"Dean," I smiled back, letting her have my hand until I decided it was only the alcohol keeping her at it and not her happy-go-lucky personality, at which point I took it into my head to gently rescue my fingers before she shook all the blood loose. As expected, she didn't seem to notice or care, pink cheeks winking happily under her blonde ponytail.

"Sorry we didn't wait for you to crack the beer," she burbled on, "but we figured we had to start early or you'd down it all without us." She patted Dave's arm, no real accusation in the blue baubles of her eyeballs, and then dragged the three of us into the heart of the room.

When Sam finally noticed my stage-stopping presence, she took an extra-long swig of beer, so that I couldn't be sure whether it was me or the drink causing her cheeks to turn that color. Then we set down to ignoring each other… mostly. Every couple minutes I'd glance over, just a really quick thing to make sure she wasn't staring at me, and if she wasn't, I'd look a little bit longer to make sure she didn't start. Of course, looking made her look back, and then we'd both awkwardly jerk away to examine the room's murkier corners and sip our beers.

Caroline, it turned out, was a total lightweight, and she was giggling at her own fingernails by halfway through bottle number two. By number four she was colored like some fuckin' tomato and the only reason she wasn't tipping off the couch was because she was being propped up by Jacky and some other guy who I didn't know like she was a bean stalk — an unusually loopy and redheaded beanstalk.

I was noting the changes religiously to avoid looking at Sam, but it was getting harder as the alcohol level in my blood hiked its way towards tipsy, and when my eyes began to itch, they just kinda dug her out of the crowd. She was sitting on the floor with her back to the couch, resting against some girl's legs and letting her bangs shade out her face like super-villains do in movies when they want to be extra mysterious for some reason. I started thinking of her legs as the trails of dripping caramel that oozed from broken chocolates, just getting longer and longer the longer you waited... and, under all that damn denim, probably caramelly in color, too... and maybe taste. Except that's totally not where this was going.

But anyway, by beer six, Caroline was insisting, with sloppy, half-yelled gesticulations, that we play Ten Fingers or else suffer her nerd-filled wrath. Everybody who was more sober than her (which was, yeah, everybody) groaned, 'cause you gotta know that's not a game you play once you've escaped the hell-pit of eighth grade. I mean… beer pong, anybody? But Caroline had her freckle-bloodied cheeks and her spike-like witch hat, which tipped wildly along with her head to stab neighbors in the face every time she moved, and she was just crazy enough that the threat of her wrath seemed plausible… so eventually she won.

Even though we were the only ones in the whole damn house, for some reason people felt the need to huddle up like we had to keep it all secret, and we ended up in a sloppy, very tight-pressed, and pretty overheated ring. Between the squished-up bodies, I was surprised that everyone managed to wiggle their hands into the middle without losing thumbs and pinkies, but they did, and then we looked more cult-like than ever 'cause nothing screams "séance" like a heap of angst-ridden seniors with open palms in a dim-lit room on Halloween night. Nothing satanic about that at all.

I'd have carpet burns and muscle cramps in the morning (on top of sweat-stained clothes 'cause, seriously, Dave was way too close), but, much as I hate to say it, there was actually something kinda thrilling about it all. One, big, sugar-high circle of people my age about to play some dumb game that would potentially leave us with emotional scars and heart-stopping regrets for the rest of forever. I mean, I was down; wouldn't you be?

Especially when I caught Sam's eyes across the circle, spread and unpolished nails glowing a vaguely tangerine-ish color, and my mind took a crazy dip. Just what had Sam done in her geek girl little life? If I wanted to know, I was never gonna get a better chance to find out.

Caroline started, of course, and, despite the alcohol steadily rolling her towards the doors of the loony bin, she had the sense to kick it off slow. Her curls jumped down her arms like electrocuted red snakes, and she announced, "Never have I ever gotten a tattoo," and then whipped her head around at everybody else's hands to see who'd been knocked down a finger.

Three people, it turned out: a guy and girl I didn't know… and Sam.

I swallowed. Suctioned between two other dudes, the heat waves that'd been grumbling between us suddenly seemed to boil to a volcanic temperature, which was a helluva lot too hot. But I mean, I was a guy… it was totally normal to wonder where… especially since it wasn't visible with all her clothes on.

Apparently my surprise was shared because, when the initial rush of blood cleared from my ears, a girl named Donna was saying, "Wait, Sam, you have a tattoo? Whe—" She cut herself off with an apologetic twitch of her lips. "—What is it?"

Dave jarred me in the ribs and grinned at Sam as he said, "Where is it?"

"Why don't you show us?" a different dude suggested.

And, without thinking, just an automatic type of call-and-response thing, I said, "Come on. Nothing to hide, right?"

Sam's eyebrows strayed to the line of her bangs. The hazel irises below were dark in the candy-corn light, and I thought I saw the tiniest flicker of a smile etch across her school-girl lips. Was she looking at me? It was hard to tell in the orange haze of the room. But she was, wasn't she. My mouth went dry because, as it turned out, she was just drunk enough to go along with it, and, wobbling to her feet, supporting herself using an unappreciative neighbor's head, her other hand reached for the hem of her long-sleeved shirt and she turned her back into the circle. Then the fabric began to hitch up.

For a hot second I got the crazy idea that she was about to strip, which sent my mind spinning ten kinds of high and a little shiver tumbling down my abdomen. All I could do was stare with widening eyes as the expanse of tan skin and the swooping sides of her hips grew and grew… and then I could see it. Way lower on her back than could possibly be within legal codes for a chick who was already so smoking there was a pentagram encompassed by flames. Black and burning and situated among all that satin skin, an inch or two above a mole that was going to be imprinted on my retinas for the rest of forever.

Had I said my mouth was dry before? Screw that. Now it was the fucking Sahara.

Next to me, Dave applauded and some other guy whistled. Sam dropped her shirt and plopped back down with a deeper blush and a grin as her eyes suckered to the floor.

"Demonic," Donna slurred appreciatively, "What's it mean?"

Sam shrugged. "Fuck if I know."

Damn. Alcohol did that girl good; drunk, she sure as hell wasn't blabbing a crap-load of SAT junk, and I could kinda pretend that I wasn't standing four, unscalable floors below.

Except then it got to be Sam's turn, and, with a smirk at a few particular friends, she announced, "Never have I ever taken a regular level math class."

The others groaned good-naturedly and chucked candy at her for being a total lame-o, which she couldn't completely dodge and some of it got lodged in the thick tangles of her hair, but I felt the heat clawed out of my stomach by a pair of icy talons. Could she really not stick to the typical smutty stuff? I mean, we were a quarter of the way through the circle and I was already six fingers down ('cause, seriously, what hadn't I done?), but oh no, Samantha Tucker was above all that crap, of course. No doubt it rubbed her delicate sensibilities the wrong way 'cause, tattoo or not, we all knew that underneath the act dear Miss Perfect was a prude.

By the time it got around to me, I was out of fingers, but I still didn't hesitate to stare straight into that bitch's eyes and say, "Never have I ever slept with a tattooed chick."

And, of course, her eyes flashed from neutral to plasma-hot in half a second and there was only the slightest trace of drunk left in her movements when she shoved to her feet and slammed out of the room. I followed, God-only-knows why, but it was like I was tied to her by some fucking puppet string, and I knew she was expecting me to. As soon as we were out of the living room, far enough that the twenty plus pairs of eyes that had studiously not watched us leave wouldn't hear, she spun around in a whirlwind of razor-blade, brunette hair, arms snapping across her chest into a crisscross so tight she must've been cutting off circulation, and she hissed, "Is everything about sex to you?"

I cocked my head at her, the smirk knotting across my lips as cold as her eyes were hot, but I didn't say anything and that was okay because she obviously didn't want me to; she just carried on, "'Cause I'm not gonna be just one more notch in your fuck game."

"Who said I wanted to fuck you, honey?" I said. No way in the nine rings of hell was I apologizing. It was her fucking fault. "Just 'cause you've got a fucking four point O," I rasped on, "and you're good at soccer or some shit doesn't mean you're at the top of everybody's list. It's not like you're the goddamn queen of the world; you're just one more girl from a piece-o'-crap town that nobody's gonna remember."

"That's exactly what I'm talking about," she snapped back, and I imagined that this was probably what she looked like when she was about to chop off some vampire's head, deadly and bordering on uncontrolled, "You don't give a shit about other people's feelings. Gina and Rhonda and God knows who else, just more girls to fuck and forget. You won't remember them in a month, but you think it makes you oh so magnificent to be able to get in their pants for a night!"

"And this is what I'm talking about! You think because you're smart you get to lecture me on morality. Like you're better somehow. You just hide it better 'cause you're caught up on what other people think. I may not be in advanced classes, but that doesn't make me some sort of fucking idiot."

"I never said you were! I just… you're such a fucking coward; that's what you are!"

"Oh, I'm the coward? Are we forgetting who saved who from the big, scary monster in the woods?"

"Not that type of coward," she groaned. "Fuck, you're worse. You're too afraid of getting hurt to go for it."

"Go for what," I sneered.

She glared at me and opened her mouth to snap something fiery back, but then she just kept staring, and the heat drained from her cheeks, and, still staring directly at me, the hazel in her eyes opening the deepest of tunnels through the electric air between us, she said, "Dean, I don't know why, and I don't…" She trailed off and let her mouth hover open, lips fluttering as the words huddled back into the recesses of her throat, but she forced them out, and then her lips were moving in distinct patterns again and she said, "I like you, and I thought—" Again she had to fight with her tongue, but, like the first time, she eventually won. "—thought you liked me, too."

Sam's eyes were huge and afraid and bordered with beads of defensiveness waiting to close back in... but she didn't take it back. She stood there and stared and waited for me to say something. But I couldn't. What, a week? Two? I was gonna have my ass hauled off to who-knew-where and she would be left here, and if I said... if... then I knew some piece of me would be staying, too. Alcohol and endorphins and anger were wiring through my brain like thick cords of copper energy, but she was right and I was a coward and I couldn't do it.

So I turned around and fled the house before I could catch the end of the palm-dulled choking sound she was making.

I found a backdoor out of Jacky's house and tumbled into the thickening blood of the darkness. I didn't run, but I walked fast, really fast, and within twenty minutes I was standing alone in the tiny park in the center of town. With the trees staring down, and the sky low and wailing, everything around me was cold and empty and black. But I couldn't see any of it because there was still that tattoo soldered through my optic nerves, and, even if I was leaving, I had a feeling that the damage she'd done to my sensory system wouldn't be scabbing over any time soon.

…or the damage she'd done to that dumb muscle under my sternum.