Miscreated

  Miscreated

  Dia Reeves

  Miscreated Copyright © 2018 by Dia Reeves. All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Chapter 1

  Nearly two hundred high school upperclassmen stood on the grassy shore of the Nudoso, dressed in black, as solemn and still as a murder of crows. Behind them loomed the inescapable East Texas Piney Woods; before them, the bubble and froth of the Nudoso River. Between the upperclassmen and the river, a thin, trembling line of freshmen. Unlike the upperclassmen who looked upon them in grim silence, the freshmen were naked.

  “Only thirty-three,” whispered one of the seniors, disdainfully.

  Jimi Elba, also a senior, understood the disdain. There’d been more than three times as many participants when he was a freshmen. But Jimi smacked the senior on the back of the head anyway.

  There was no whispering during the rite.

  Jimi pointed at a junior, who immediately went among the freshmen and gathered their discarded clothing. Only a small percentage of incoming freshmen ever attended the rite, and those who did were sworn to secrecy. Not one of the thirty-three naked fourteen and fifteen year olds had any idea what they were in for, and had to be imagining all sorts of atrocities and degradations.

  The junior who’d gathered the clothes, tossed them into the river. Jimi remembered that from his own freshman days, remembered wondering if he would have to walk through town naked. What he’d actually done, or rather what had been done to him, had made the nude trip through town seem like a magic carpet ride.

  Jimi left his place among the upperclassmen to stand alone before the freshmen. It was late summer and, despite the shade of the surrounding forest, unbearably warm and muggy. Yet nearly all of the freshman were covered in goose flesh.

  He opened his arms to them, like a preacher blessing his flock.

  “Death comes to everyone sooner or later,” he said, his voice sonorous and confident as always. “But in this town, it comes to some of us a lot sooner than later.”

  The freshmen shifted, uneasy.

  “We have so many things to be afraid of: cackler attacks, infestations of red clot, imps, tripping through a doorway and falling out of the world. We’re afraid of what creeps through the woods at night. We’re afraid of what we haven’t yet learned to fear. And yet…”

  Jimi took a moment to enjoy the cool breeze that tousled his dark hair and the pleasurable weight of hundreds of eyes trained on him. Even the birds had fallen silent, listening.

  “And yet, you chose to come here today. Chose to bare yourselves before us.” He went down the line and scrutinized the freshmen, meeting their eyes when he could, though most were too embarrassed to look away from their feet.

  “We see that you’re young,” he told them. “Weak. Afraid. But you’ve given yourself to the rite anyway, and we all know what that means—you’re brave.”

  Jimi turned to the upperclassmen for confirmation and got it in the form of nods and murmured assents.

  “We see that you’re brave.” Jimi turned back to the freshmen. “But can you see, that with us, you’re safe?”

  The freshmen didn’t see it at all, but they’d stopped hiding their eyes from him.

  “You look at us like we’re going to hurt you,” Jimi said, injecting just the right amount of hurt into his voice. “There are things in the woods that will hurt you, but never us. You have enough to be afraid of in Portero—you shouldn’t have to fear high school as well. That’s our vow to you, to protect you during your freshman year. To guide and advise you. To bestow upon you the benefit of our accumulated wisdom. In return...”

  The freshmen, hanging on his every word, not daring to believe their ears, waited for the devastating catch.

  “In return,” Jimi said, grinning, “you will worship us like the gods we are. Is that fair?”

  The freshmen didn’t hesitate. “Yes!”

  “We’re all here for you, but to make your transition to high school a bit easier, each of you will have one of us as your big brother or sister for the year. To find out who you’re paired with, search the river bottom for a glass bottle; your mentor’s name will be inside. On the count of three.”

  The freshmen faced the river and spontaneously grabbed one another’s hands.

  Jimi counted, “One, two, three!”

  When the freshmen hit the water, the upperclassmen applauded and cheered.

  Some of them. The ones who didn’t cheer swarmed over to Jimi by the water’s edge, Rishi Khan leading the pack.

  Rishi, his arch nemesis. Rishi, who wanted everything Jimi had: his position as student body president; a name that ended in an “i”. Jimi was sure Rishi’s real name was Joe or Schmoe or something equally lame.

  “Is this a joke?” Rishi said, right in his face, a complete lack of boundaries.

  Jimi stared at him until Rishi and his crew backed away, all the while trying to look like they weren’t.

  “There’s no joking during the rite.”

  “So it’s not over? The freshmen are down there diving for bottles full of poisonous gas or explosives? Is a monster down there, waiting to attack them?”

  “Rishi, your bloodthirst is real as hell.” Jimi snapped his fingers at one of the upperclassmen. “Junior! Do you have the robes ready?”

  “Right here.” The junior opened a large cardboard box, revealing a stack of neatly folded black robes.

  Jimi hadn’t had to walk home nude. Instead, he and his classmates had been driven home in the back of a pickup, the hot metal of the truck bed burning their asses the whole way. His dad still liked to tease him about it.

  “You’re dressing the freshmen in silks?” Rishi kicked the box. “Did you at least dust the robes with itching powder, you son of a bitch? This isn’t about bloodthirstiness; it’s about fair play. Why should they get off so easy? We sure as hell didn’t.”

  Jimi ignored the murmurs of agreement and took Rishi by the shoulders. Stared way down at him, paternally. And smugly because the one thing Rishi couldn’t steal was Jimi’s extra eight inches.

  Of height.

  “Just because terror was visited upon us, doesn’t mean we should continue the cycle and visit it upon others.”

  Every student body president dealt with the freshmen differently, but Jimi was the first to go Martin Luther King and not inflict any pain at all. Not even psychological.

  Julia Marchand had been student body president when Jimi was a freshman, and her amiable sociopathy had embodied the senior class at that time. Julia ordered her freshmen to hold their breath underwater for as long as it took the upperclassmen to sing the school song. That had only taken about a minute, but as the sophomores and juniors sang, the seniors filled the river with water moccasins.

  Immediately upon seeing the long, darkly mottled serpents, Jimi and several of his classmates submerged as quickly as possible to the bottom of the river, away from the water moccasins that preferred to stay close to the surface. But having a preference didn’t mean they couldn’t dive down and bite his ass full of holes if they wanted. Jimi watched the endless slithers of darkness flee overhead between him and the sunny air he was starting to crave, and every second had stretched for days.

  The water moccasins had been bad, but the seniors had made sure to get everyone blitzed on Julia�
��s coveted watermelon moonshine and, in the end, they’d had a blast.

  Except the freshmen who hadn’t ducked out of the water moccasins’ way quickly enough.

  “This is bullshit!” Rishi said. “I waited all summer for this, and all I get is an extended house party mix of ‘Kumbaya’? This is not what I signed on for.”

  “If the President says this is the way we do it this year, then we have to listen.”

  “Nobody’s talking to you, junior!”

  Jimi quickly inserted himself between the junior and Rishi’s wrath. “Go and tend the freshmen,” he told the junior, who grabbed the box of robes and fled, happy to have somewhere to go. When he was safely on his way, Jimi said to Rishi, “The junior was obviously out of line, speaking out that way, but that doesn’t mean he’s not right.”

  “But—”

  “I’ve spoken.”

  Rishi and his crew skulked off, melting into the shade beneath the trees, leaving behind a bright redheaded center.

  “You were there the whole time?” Jimi said. “Why didn’t you stick up for me?”

  “I didn’t know I had to,” Carmin said. “The Jimi I know would have nipped all that whining in the bud ten minutes ago. With authority.”

  “The Jimi you know is dead. At least for the next twenty-four hours.”

  “What happens in twenty-four hours?”

  Jimi lifted his arms to the heavens. “I shall be resurrected.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  They sat on Grandy’s red and white picnic blanket. Many of their classmates had done the same, settling on colorful blankets and quilts along the shore, the better to congratulate the freshmen who’d found the bottles with the names of their new big brothers and sisters, and encourage the ones still in the river who kept coming up empty-handed.

  Carmin took a tiny brown vial from his pocket and administered two drops of liquid into each eye with an eyedropper. Happiness, probably; Carmin had been long-faced all day.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Carmin squeezed his eyes, either against the sting of happiness or because Jimi’s question had given him a headache. “Wyatt got invited to the Revelry.”

  Jimi didn’t know Wyatt that well. Carmin had only been his step-cousin for a few months, not enough time to commandeer all of Carmin’s friends. But even though Jimi didn’t know Wyatt, it didn’t stop him from hating Wyatt’s guts.

  The Revelry?

  Porterenes fantasized about going to the Revelry the way other people fantasized about going to a New Orleans Mardi Gras. But for Porterenes, it wasn’t as easy as a bus ticket and a string of beads.

  “The Mayor sent out the invitations already? In August?”

  “Because of the masks,” Carmin explained. “People need time to get them specially made.”

  “Ask Wyatt to take you.”

  “Hanna’ll be home for Christmas break by then. She’s his permanent plus one.” Carmin gritted his teeth and added two more drops of happiness. “The two of them, Jimi. Wyatt and Hanna, so fearless and perfect, graduating all early and making the rest of us look like losers. So of course they get invited. They get to taste the Mayor’s milk.”

  Carmin blinked a few times, sniffed a few times. Despite all the happiness, he looked like he’d had a crying jag. “I told Wyatt I’d trade anything for one drop. I told him I’d trade an hourglass beetle for it.”

  Jimi laughed. “Like Jack and the Beanstalk. Trading cows for magic beans.”

  “I could sell ten of you and it still wouldn’t buy one hourglass beetle.”

  “So go play the hero and win an invitation. Find a damsel in distress and save her.”

  “I wish. Every weak girl I know is dead. No offense.”

  Jimi waved it off.

  “What about you?” Carmin said. “If you were heroic, you’d get invited, and I could be your plus one.”

  “Heroism and pacifism aren’t mutually exclusive. Gandhi was a hero.”

  Carmin’s look, though teary, was no less withering. “Gandhi wouldn’t last two days in my house, let alone in this town. Hippy superpowers won’t keep a cackler from eating your face.”

  “I don’t need to stop cacklers. Just this one ghost. Violence begets violence, so if I’m peaceful, she won’t get violent.”

  Carmin frowned. “Who won’t get violent?”

  “Dez.”

  Carmin’s confusion cleared, but only somewhat. “She’s violent? To you?”

  Jimi stared longingly at the bottle of happiness, but it had never worked for him. Despair had made a home in his gut long ago and liked to eat happiness for breakfast. “I’m being delivered of her tomorrow. So I’ve been holding my rage and pain in check so that I don’t burden her with bad karma and, you know, feelings.”

  “Delivered? You? The Black Widow of Portero High?”

  The happiness had finally kicked in, judging by how long Carmin laughed at him.

  “Kiss my ass, Carmin. My suffering was legendary. It really was. But I’m ready to move on. It’s been almost two years. Dez should be haunting me less, since I’m suffering less.” Jimi flexed his back, gingerly. “But she’s not.”

  Carmin, no longer laughing, looked Jimi over, concerned. “What’s she doing?”

  Before Jimi could answer, a senior sidled up to Carmin, twirling her hair and eyeing the bottle abandoned on the blanket.

  Carmin’s hair was as red as his name, and he’d grown a set of lustrous sideburns over the summer that Jimi—who only had to shave once a week whether he needed to or not—envied to the point of nausea. Carmin also had a large, and much ridiculed, collection of disco but zero ability to dance to any of it. Nothing about him suggested he was the go-to guy for drugs in all of Portero.

  The senior said, “Carmin, gimme a hit of that happiness.”

  Carmin would have; pretty girls always brought out his charitable side. His girlfriend, on the other hand, wasn’t so generous.

  “Ten bucks a drop,” Lecy said, coming up behind the hair twirler and dropping two picnic baskets onto the red and white blanket. “Or fifty for a bottle. Lady’s choice.”

  The hair twirler—Amy, liked math and drama (both onstage and off), had a sick step-mom—told Jimi, “Can’t you find something for her to do? A freshman to babysit, or vice versa?”

  “I don’t know where you think you are,” Jimi said, “but you might wanna watch your tone, senior.”

  “Sorry, President.” She seemed properly chastised, but she still tossed her hair in Lecy’s face as she handed a twenty to Carmin.

  “How’s your step-mom?” Jimi asked. “Is she better?”

  Amy didn’t answer, but her expression told the whole sad tale. No wonder she was in the market for happiness.

  “Go ahead and give her two extra drops,” Jimi said. “On me.”

  “Will do, Prez.” Carmin motioned Amy to kneel before him. “Are you on meds?”

  “No.” She had tilted her head back in anticipation of the droplets, but suddenly snapped her head forward. “Wait! I took an Alka-Seltzer before I came here.”

  “I mean real meds: Xanax, Ritalin?”

  After the senior assured him she wasn’t on any prescription drugs, Carmin administered the drops of happiness.

  Under Lecy’s close supervision.

  “How’d you hurt your finger?” Jimi asked. Lecy’s left middle finger was wrapped in a silver ring splint.

  “Running,” she answered after Amy had gone on her artificially merry way. “For my life.”

  Despite her injury, Lecy unpacked the baskets like a champ, artfully arranging the fruit pie, the large platters of fried chicken and turkey sandwiches and deviled eggs, the peaches and grapefruit halves, and shooing Jimi away when he tried to help.

  Lecy was really something: smart and pretty He’d never seen her without a flower in her glossy black hair—a purple one today—and a twinkle in her eye. She had these great arms; the kind Jimi had loved to pinch when he was a little kid, terrorizing girls on th
e playground. He could pinch Lecy’s arms right now, if he wanted. If only Carmin wasn’t family.

  Although a step-cousin wasn’t technically family.

  No. No bad thoughts like that. Only happy thoughts. Happyhappyhappy all the time.

  At least until tomorrow.

  “We caught this critter,” Lecy was saying, “in the dark park.”

  “The dark park!”

  “I know, I know,” said Carmin. “But lots of mindblowing green grows in there. I gotta go where the green is.” He put his hand on Lecy’s thigh, and she promptly removed it.

  “Just the two of you?” Jimi said, equally impressed and horrified. “With no air support or anything?”

  “It’s not as bad as people think it is,” Lecy said, setting out the paper plates and cups. “I mean it is, but it’s doable. It was a quick trip regardless, in and out. Just long enough for us to trap a blue sloth, so Carmin could harvest the flowers that grow on its back.”

  “A sloth?” Jimi rolled his eyes.

  “Blue sloths ain’t like regular sloths,” Carmin said, defensively. “Blue ones are quick. Vicious.”

  “We caught one and Carmin snipped the flowers off it, but also snipped through the trap like a complete moron. So it chased us, and we fell down a hill—”

  “It was practically a cliff.”

  “It was a hill.”

  When Carmin didn’t attempt any more hyperbolic interjections, Lecy continued. “I didn’t even notice my finger was broken until I got home. You know how it is when you’re running for your life; you fail to notice the little things.”

  Smart and pretty and definitely not in distress.

  “Blue sloths. What shade of blue?”

  Lecy thought about it. “Powder blue, like the flowers that grow in their fur.”

  Jimi sat back, disappointed, and asked Carmin, “What kind of drug are you gonna make from the flowers?”

  “Don’t know yet.” Carmin grabbed a grapefruit half and a silver spoon from one of the picnic baskets. “How can I know until I test them?”

  The front edge of the bowl of Carmin’s spoon was serrated and tapered to a sharp point.