Earbuds in, Josie found herself dancing down the sidewalk to Lizzo on her one day off from Daisy's so she could help decorate the gym for tonight's Homecoming dance.
That, and thinking about Derrick Diaz, the new junior in Geometry class.
And blushing.
Wow, was she blushing!
And, holy crap, was Derrick worth blushing about!
He sat next to her in Geometry I. He had hair so black it was blue, actual abs, and she was smitten.
He was even as short as she was!
As far as Josie could tell there was no return on Derrick's part; the only thing they had in common was that like Josie, he was really, REALLY bad at math. Impossible equations and unrequited love aside, it was nice not being hung up on a straight girl this time around, though her affection was probably just as reciprocated. Kinda like with Fugo.
Outside of playing a wrong note during a rehearsal, she probably didn't exist to Fugo.
Sigh…
"Huh?"
Josie stopped mid-move, new boy forgotten, Lizzo left singing about being fantastic no matter who you are, unheeded. Did she just see a tall man wearing a mask and navy coveralls staring out at her from behind one of the messy bushes edging the Wolf's big front yard?
Whoa! Josie squinted. Why yes, she did!
The stranger's empty eye holes stared blackly back, a thin stream of blood trickling from one.
It's me.
Josie blinked.
He was gone.
Whatever, must be somebody shy. Or maybe he just moved in. Oh well, Josie shrugged, not my problem!
And so, Lizzo got her audience back.
Busy watching his snail garden while weaving silk flowers into Homecoming crowns on the second story screen porch of Octagon House, Saturday evening, Giorno didn't notice Josie dance past.
"Hey, kiddo." The blond werewolf looked up, hands stilling.
"Hey, Dad."
Jonathan joined his son on one of the artfully mismatched wicker chairs that lived on the porch. Turning down Lana del Rey on the outside speaker system, the tall dark man dropped an envelope onto the table, "Midterm grades just came in the mail – good job!"
"Grades are easy. People? Not so much." Giorno grumbled, looking at his snails in the large Art Noveau stained glass and bronze lamp he'd repurposed into a terrarium last summer while thinking of his latest run-in with Marlene – this time something about him shedding on Marlene's new Lulu Lemons – in front of EVERYBODY.
A fat droplet trickled down the inside of the opalescent glass shade and landed on the soft green moss below. "…Dad, I'm really bad at being a werewolf."
Startled, Jonathan sat up, saying, "If it's any consolation, RADs aren't much better."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, before we adopted you, your father and I were the only openly mixed-species couple we knew. When we moved here to work for Tepes, I was the only normie who showed up to meetings under the city park's carousel. The muffins I always brought were more welcome than I was, but they got over it… after a while." Jonathan laughed uncomfortably, adding, "Lemme tell ya something, when we finally decided to adopt, we weren't expecting a werewolf cub. But Tepes told us that if we were going to adopt, it should be one of 'us'."
"Really? Dad's boss told you two to adopt me?" Snails and one of Merston High's top mean girls forgotten, Giorno stared at his archeologist father.
Looking down at the street, Jonathan added, "Tepes was right. If there was a RAD kid needing a home, the last thing that kid needed was to be adopted by outsiders. Once we got over being told what to do, Mr. Tepes had you delivered to us and the rest fostered out to other RAD families in the area. God, you were a mess!"
"I was?"
"Yeah, covered in fleas!"
"DAD!"
"They found you and the others wandering the back allies of Seattle eating garbage. Your mother was a real piece of work. Party girl type. Not knowing what you were, her boyfriend of the week tossed the whole litter into the street after she OD'ed. So, for the first year or so, we got used to squirting you with a water pistol every time you went near the kitchen trash or got caught teething on the furniture. One night you went flying out of your crib, barking and drooling." Jonathan openly laughed, "Knocked me over and sent Dio backwards down the main staircase –took both of us to pry your teeth out of Mr. Stein's leg when he dropped by to return our lawn mower. So I'd say you're a pretty good werewolf!"
"Boo-hoo." Giorno said, rolling his eyes, embarrassed by the baby stories he hadn't asked for. He also didn't like thinking about his littermates, remembering that time last year when they were approached by one on a family trip to Disneyland; a smelly crackhead, a green-toothed runaway who refused to come with them even as he tried to pick Papa Dio's pockets.
No telling what happened to the remaining two.
"Things settled down once we started bringing you with us to meetings. Mrs. Wolf, Clawdeen's mother, and Mrs. Mista were a big help – we had no idea we shouldn't feed you chocolate – close call there!" Jonathan said, "Oh, by the way, Papa Dio's coming home late tomorrow morning, he has a rough case to work on."
"Yeah." Giorno said, "Everything good?"
"Good as it gets. I'm gonna spar downstairs." Jonathan said, standing, "Have a good time at the dance tonight, 'k GiGi?"
Giorno nodded, ignoring the nickname that got him laughed at yesterday by Marlene, Becca, and Mindy when Dio carpooled Giorno and the younger Wolf boys home before heading to work for the night.
And you know what? The hair on Marlene's Lulu Lemons was clearly cat.
Persian.
White.
Not his.
And Giorno, raised by two fathers who insisted on manners, spat, "Bitch!" under his breath, and went back to weaving Marlene's crown.
Because a customer was a customer and a deadline was a deadline.
"I'm the dancing demon, watch me twirl and hop and spin. I'm quick to give a smile, but I won't forget your sins."
Puck bitterly scratched down the cartoon classic's intro in her sketchbook while watching a black and white Bendy and Boris running around with Alice Angel in a dance hall.
Maggie used to love the dumb duo, would watch episodes with Puck for hours.
Not any more.
Just like Tina.
Sprawled out under a sunlamp on a futon in her shared bedroom, the cat girl fumed about how Tina had betrayed her by fucking ghosting her so she'd sat in the dark under the rhododendron bushes for an hour like a stupid loser while Tina and Stink, or Pink or whatever that thing called itself, had themselves a good ol' time working on the school play.
Stupid bug. It wasn't even anything good, just Hamlet! That's what you get for befriending a Taylor Swift fangirl!
Maybe Puck would watch Betty Boop later. Better yet, a Silly Symphony— she'd found an entire cache of ones she'd never seen on YouTube. Maybe Maggie would watch them with her.
Maggie used to love vintage cartoons, the older the better. Only after coming to Salem and discovering clothes and taking a photography class, not so much.
Photography was lame. Especially the ones Maggie took using Josie's lame friends and a stretch of graffiti under a bridge. Lame or not, Puck stole a print of Mista posing like a tough guy with a water pistol out of the school darkroom's drying cabinet and hid it under her mattress to look at when no one was watching.
Hell, if fatass Josie could have a print of Fugo on her corkboard upstairs with him dressed like some asshole e-boy, complete with stripped arms, ripped jeans and wanna-be-punk chain jewelry, then Puck could have her Mista.
Fuck.
TikTok should've stayed in China for that fashion trend alone
"Yo. Bitch." Maggie abruptly turned off the world's smallest television.
She was dressed for tonight's dance. Not that Puck cared.
Annoyed, Puck looked up from where she'd scribbled Bendy's head before pointedly turning her back on Maggie out of general sisterly hostility and a desire not to get into it.
Again.
Undeterred, Foxy attempted to burn holes in the back of Hopscotch's newly sculpted head with her golden eyes.
Ears flat, Puck doodled Bendies in the margins of her beat-up notebook, Tortie tail twitching.
Shedding glitter, Maggie yanked the notebook out of her sister's hands. She flipped through it, a scowl on her foxy face.
"Hey!" Puck tried to snatch it back, but Maggie hurled the shabby notebook out into the hallway and made a grab for Puck's hair.
Puck fell back onto the futon. Thwarted, Maggie crossed her arms over the open front of the strawberry dress she'd bought purely because of TikTok, fox tail stiffly erect with anger.
"What the actual HELL Puck?" She snarled.
"Huh?" Puck was genuinely confused by this new confrontation.
This morning it had been all about how unfair it was that Puck had a motor-scooter to ride to work and school while Maggie didn't. Even pointing out that like Maggie, Puck had a job, had paid for the little black scooter with her own money and could pay for the gas and didn't just use it to cruise around town wasting fuel, didn't end the argument.
Nor did Puck's jab at Maggie, that if Maggie didn't buy so many goddam shoes and dresses, she'd have plenty of money to buy her own goddam scooter – which just made the fight worse. Money aside, all Maggie cared about was that Puck had a cool new scooter and SHE DIDN'T.
NO FAIR!
"My boos can't stop talking about you now that you have your own central nervous system. Melody won't shut up about what a poor, sad friendless thing you are and that we should try to include you in tonight's Homecoming dance even if you can't come. Frankie keeps talking about how well she designed your ears and tail even if she wasn't allowed to do the whole thing!" Maggie flushed. "And you're not even NICE to them! You called Melody a fake bitch yesterday at lunch because of her nose job! She couldn't breathe Puck, she couldn't breathe!"
Ears skewed, Puck glared up into her fraternal twin's face, hissing, "So, you're pissed 'cause you're no longer in the spotlight 'cause you ain't cool anymore and your self-important rich bitch friends are noticing li'l ol' ugly me? Keep 'em! Anyway, Melody's a pretentious idiot, all Frankie cares about is shoes, and Draculaura is a brainless little dingbat!"
Puck would have added what she thought about Clawdeen, but Clawdeen was actually kinda cool. Only Clawdeen was dating Mista, which was wrong. As far as Puck was concerned, Mista should've been hers.
As for Cleo? Skank!
"Far as I care, you and your ratchet friends can FUCK off!" Puck rose and shoved Maggie, who teetered on her platform sandals. Catching herself on the doorframe, the fox girl squealed, "I'm telling Uncle Mike!" before stomping down the hall, knowing that Puck had won the war once more.
The big Homecoming dance was only half an hour away, and Puck was considering her options.
School dances were lame. But Mista might be there.
No, he got ISS like Puck, along with that smelly retard Narancia when Officer Abbaccio caught them smoking in the boy's room, well, on the deck of the school swimming pool watching pit-stain and his ugly tie and uglier haircut toss her into the merfolk pee. So, no after-school activities for me and you, tall, dark, and hairy.
Not that Puck cared: afterschool shit was a waste of time, not when you can stay home and get some shopping done.
Just to spite Tina.
(And Maggie.)
Fuck yeah!
Open war was declared when Marlene loudly dropped the delicious bombshell last Friday that Cleo deNile picked her nose.
Homework done and hair styled, Cleo sat in her room, surrounded by six or seven of her favorite cats, eyeing her perfect complexion in the ancient obsidian mirror with the gold frame her father brought back from one of his digs in Egypt.
Marlene was going to regret having let the world know that Cleo deNile was a blatant booger digger.
It was the final straw in a long series of events, starting in first grade when Marlene, known back then as "Marcus" saw to it that Cleo got bullied for her thick Egyptian accent, box braids, and smallpox scars by getting the other kids to call Cleo "Sand Nigger" and worse before denying the whole thing when Rameses deNile showed up at the school front office all but breathing fire and ready to sue.
Marlene's father, running for State Senate at the time, had to scramble to keep the entire mess under wraps.
Racism… not a good look, sis!
Tee hee!
At the time, seven year old Cleo hadn't exactly understood what was going on, but when she was supposed to be in bed, she watched from behind the curtains a lot of money change hands in Daddy's home office, and suddenly Daddy had a new pet.
One that had thick silver hair, wore expensive suits, and regularly commuted to Washington.
Not the state, the D.C.
That, and little Cleo deNile spent a lot of time over Summer break in a Swiss dermatology clinic overlooking Lake Geneva.
Not that Cleo's new perfect complexion and the fact that Marlene's father's posh new seat in the Oregon Senate was paid for by Cleo's Daddy, stopped Marlene – it just made Marcus, and later Marlene sneakier; nothing that could exactly be traced to the source, but embarrassing – until the final shot fired was Marlene catching Cleo picking her nose in one of Merston High's bathroom mirrors.
And made a TikTok of it.
Last week.
Oh hell no bitch, you didn't!
Oh yes, bitch, I DID!
Blondie with her giraffe neck and prominent Adam's apple was gonna get hers – you don't spend your formative years in a Pharoh's harem with its perfumed high-class scandals behind translucent linen door curtains without learning a thing or twelve.
Cleo, a skilled practitioner of the art of the sweet backstab, started by cranking up the heat between the forever prospecting Chet, a star quarterback with bricks for brains and a permanent hard-on and Abbie Bominable, the masculine looking all-star women's rugby prop yeti who broke ribs… a match made in the Fields of Aaru!
But the sweetest alabaster dish of yogurt and honey? Marlene got her flat honkie ass dumped via text!
"Ha-Ha!" I MEAN, "Oh what a shame!"
And Homecoming? Deciding that it was better to be fellahin than Queen, Cleo deliberately rigged the votes in favor of Marlene, asking every student to do the right thing and vote progressive.
As in, "We STAN a progressive couple!"
Cleo even paid for the posters, handbills, and custom printed candy bars, herself.
Marlene's landslide victory was announced in the local news and then nationwide, leading Senator Daddy's greedy blue eyes to look into an upgrade to D.C., what with his son, no, no, DAUGHTER… a father must support his little…girl….and he always depended on a liberal platform— Marlene as the first openly trans Homecoming Queen in the region was pure political gold!
White House, here I come!
Not to mention Cleo so very considerately saw to it that, what with Chet out of the picture, the as yet unrevealed King might be the unsuspecting Narancia Ghirga, Beetlejooz, or any other filthy creature that slept under a bridge, because oh dear, Chet was gettin' busy with someone with bigger abs and more body hair than him!
Royal duties fulfilled, Cleo carefully slid the ancient mirror into its padded velvet case and locked it in the bottom drawer of her elaborate antique dressing table and rose in a cascade of sacred cats on her way to her walk-in closet.
Time to dress for tonight's victory.
Let's see, Yves St. Laurent, Chanel, or Sohee Park?
Why stir things up while wearing the old when you can stir even harder with the new?
Sohee Park won.
T'is good to be Queen.