Miscreated Read online

  Jimi said, “Mom has a spoon like that.”

  “It is your mom’s.”

  “You stole Mom’s silverware?”

  “I like grapefruit, and I like to look classy while I’m eating it. It’s not stealing if you’re related.”

  “You’re cousins by marriage,” Lecy reminded him. “I don’t think a sneak thief step-cousin is allowed to play the family card.”

  “Whose side are you on?”

  “Not yours, dickweed. Sophomore!” A girl with a pierced septum came to a halt. “Come help me unload some drinks from my truck.”

  When Lecy and the sophomore disappeared up the slope, Jimi said, “Who’d she catch you cheating with this time?”

  Carmin looked offended. For about two seconds. “It was just a kiss. Not even a good one. I don’t know why Lecy always takes everything to heart.”

  Jimi took one of the grapefruit.

  “You wouldn’t like it.” Carmin snatched it from Jimi’s hand and replaced it with a peach. “They’re all out of season and sour.”

  Jimi threw the peach at his greedy step-cousin’s face and took back the grapefruit. “So am I. Look, I’ll be a gentleman about this and tell you right up front—I’m stealing your girl.”

  Carmin choked on his fruit.

  “After Dez is delivered, consider your ass single and ready to mingle. And gimme back my mom’s spoon, thief.” He liberated the utensil from Carmin’s evil clutches and used it on his own grapefruit.

  Carmin’s fierce scowl was at odds with the tears pouring down his face. Thick cloudy tears, like the juice from a lemon.

  “Thanks for obliterating my high,” he said, using his shirt to wipe away what was left of the happiness his body had rejected.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “You better be joking about Lecy.”

  “I’m not.” Jimi actually was, but Carmin didn’t need to know that. All Carmin needed to know was how lucky he was to have a girl like Lecy. Pretty and fearless.

  Alive.

  Lecy and the sophomore came back with two cases of Sunkist soda, and Lecy hollered, “If anybody wants food, there’s plenty over here!”

  The stampede was epic. Within five minutes, the food was pillaged, but instead of fleeing with their spoils, the pillagers, mostly seniors, took their ease on Grandy’s picnic blanket.

  “Got any busy bees left?” asked a boy named Casey, his mouth full of braces and orange rubber bands. “I’m taking college courses this year and I have a feeling I’ll need some.”

  Carmin said, “I can have more in two weeks. Pastilles or tabs?”

  “Pastilles.”

  “I don’t even want to think about college.” Rishi handed his silk-robed little brother a peach to slice. “I’m focusing on today: being with my friends”—he glared at Jimi—“such as they are, eating good food, ordering ridiculously pampered underclassmen to do my bidding. That’s my idea of heaven.”

  “I don’t believe in heaven,” Carmin said. “Unless this is heaven.”

  “It’s not,” several people answered in unison.

  “There you go,” Rishi said. “This is all we get.”

  “There has to be something else,” said the sophomore with the pierced septum, “or people wouldn’t have near death experiences. I saw it a couple times this summer. I had to resuscitate three people, and two of them told me about a light at the end of the tunnel.”

  “Come on, sophomore,” Rishi said. “White light at the end of a tunnel, your life flashing before your eyes? That’s just biological phenomena. Your brain having a death spasm or whatever. Or why doesn’t anyone ever see a red light at the end of their tunnels? I mean, doesn’t anybody go to hell?”

  The sophomore seemed stunned. “Say, maybe that’s why the third person never said anything—he took a round trip to hell and didn’t want to admit it.”

  Carmin asked her, “What’s your name?”

  “Sugar Lynn Baker.”

  “You hear that, Jimi? Some sweet to balance out the bitterness. Wanna be Jimi’s new girlfriend, sophomore?”

  Jimi said, “It’s not that easy, Carmin.” It kinda was, though. The sophomore was cute.

  And excessively thoughtful judging by the amount of time it was taking her to answer.

  It’s possible the perusal took as long as it did because Jimi was such a long drink of water. While Carmin had spent the summer growing sideburns, Jimi had spent it growing legs. He’d had to throw out his old jeans, but even the fancy new stuff his mom bought was still a tad short. All Jimi could do was roll up the cuffs and fake like he was stylish.

  The sophomore might also have been pondering his ancestry. Jimi was black, but because of his Dominican father, Jimi’s features had an Afro-Caribbean ambiguity: beachy skin, rum raisin hair that waved and tossed like the sea.

  “He’s cute,” the sophomore decided, “but I don’t like getting rained on.”

  “Rained on?” said Lecy and Jimi.

  “He’s got a dark cloud over his head.” The sophomore pointed her drumstick at Jimi. “Looks like it’s been there a long time.”

  “He’s getting delivered,” Carmin assured her. “It won’t be there much longer.”

  “Jimi?” Rishi said. “Delivered? But I thought your love was eternal?”

  “It is. Shut up!” Jimi really didn’t understand what all the sniggering was about. “How it works is, if you love someone, you have to set her free. Okay, people?”

  The sophomore said, “I knew it was something.” She swung her arm in his general direction, groping the air. “Is she here now?”

  Jimi sighed. “She’s touching my back as we speak. Dez is like that—touchy-feely. Sweet, you know? Gentle.”

  The sophomore removed her hand and looked mollifyingly impressed. They all did.

  “Can you see her?

  “No.”

  The sophomore’s jaw dropped. “Then how do you know it’s Dez? You could be getting felt up by somebody’s dead grandpa!”

  “I know my Dez,” Jimi said, when the laughter died down. “I don’t expect children who have never loved as I’ve loved to understand. When she’s near, I feel the change the way I felt it when she was alive. As though the world is unfurling. Opening in ways I never dreamed possible.”

  One second, Jimi was basking in the glow of everyone’s attention, in the girls’ increasingly dreamy-eyed gazes, and the next, they slid away.

  Jimi’s eyes felt like that, like they were skidding across ice, totally out of his control. He kept seeing things—a desert at dusk, mountains at midday—scenery flashing by almost faster than he could identify it.

  He clapped his hands over his eyes. Perfectly still eyes. Dared to peek at the world again. The forest was there. The river was there. The shore was beneath him. Horribly bleared, as though for the first time in his life he needed glasses, but there.

  Not his friends, though. His classmates. They had gone. The red and white blanket had gone too. As if Grandy didn’t exist in this version of Portero to have loaned it to him.

  A version of Portero. That felt right.

  He squinted, tried to bring this version into focus—

  “Jimi?”

  Lecy was touching his knee, and he almost pushed her away, he was that startled. Instead, he looked about, not daring to blink, but everyone was where they were supposed to be. They weren’t supposed to be staring at him like he was a freak, but that was okay. At least they were clear.

  And here.

  “Did something happen?” Lecy asked.

  “I think Dez”—wanted his friends to disappear?—“is upset that I’m sending her away. Upset that I’m talking about new girlfriends.”

  “We’re all upset about that,” Carmin said.

  Dez couldn’t want his friends to disappear; they were her friends too. Used to be. Dez was sweet; everyone knew that. Especially him.

  “He’s only seventeen, Dez.” Lecy poured her a small cup of orange soda and sat it next to Ji
mi. The perfect hostess. “You can’t expect him to go into girl retirement.”

  “I don’t mind retiring,” Jimi said, quickly. “I like the benefits so far.”

  “What benefits?” Sugar Lynn asked.

  “I’m alone all the time. I never feel anything.” Jimi sighed. “And when I buy popcorn at the movies, there’s no one to share it with.”

  Jimi was suddenly surrounded by girls, all struggling to cuddle with him and make him feel better. Hell, he was feeling better already.

  No, he wasn’t. No. Happyhappyhappy.

  He freed himself from the girl pile. “I have to not do anything to piss her off. Not after that. Not until everything’s—”

  “Spy!” Rishi’s little brother stood and pointed. “A spy! On the bridge!”

  Everyone on the blanket stood, as abruptly as meerkats spotting a lion. They circled Rishi’s freshman, hiding him from sight.

  Several yards away stood a man on the footbridge that spanned the river, the sun glinting off the lenses of his binoculars. He was dressed in black the way they all were. In summer at that, so clearly he was Porterene. That made his violation worse—a Porterene should have known better.

  The freshmen had ceased diving for bottles and most were in their robes sitting on the shore, but a few were still in the water, splashing each other like little kids playing in a bathtub. Trusting the upperclassmen to watch out for them. Trusting Jimi.

  He made a disgusted sound. “Every year there’s gotta be a pervert.” He allowed the stranger a few more seconds of looking at things—he wouldn’t have such pleasures for much longer—and then snapped his fingers at Rishi. “Senior! Fetch me a sharp stick.”

  Rishi did as he was told but, despite all his earlier talk about acid and explosives, hesitated to hand the stick over. “Didn’t the principal say not to blind anyone this year?”

  “It’s not up to the principal! This is tradition.” Any passing resemblance between Jimi and Martin Luther King died in that moment. “You don’t break tradition without consequences. Now handle it.”

  “Me?”

  “Let me do it,” Carmin said, glaring at Jimi, “I’m the one with hostilities to work through.”

  “I told Rishi to do it. He’s the bloodthirsty one.”

  “But you’re the president,” Rishi said, still trying to hand Jimi the stick. “You should do it.”

  “I can’t do it. Not on the eve of Dez’s deliverance. I asked her to be my girlfriend on that bridge. I don’t want to overwrite that memory with one of violence. Memories are all I have left.”

  “Awwwwww.”

  “Gimme a break,” Carmin said, over the girlish cooing.

  A bird swooped out of the cypress trees on the left and dove at the spy, who screamed when it landed on his face, talons first. Not a bluebird, but blue and beautiful the way a peacock is beautiful. Its vibrant feathers had an iridescent sheen and it was as large as a hawk. So large that, though the spy kept beating at the bird with his binoculars, it stayed put.

  Jimi would have thought the bird had migrated from South America or the South Seas, except he knew for a fact that its fairy blue coloring didn’t exist anywhere in the natural world.

  The spy’s screams silenced all of the high schoolers, who watched him stumble blindly off the bridge and into the woods on the far side of the Nudoso.

  Once the spy was out of sight, if not out of sound, the blue bird flew at Jimi, who didn’t duck the way his friends yelled for him to do. He had no need to duck. The blue bird—fairy blue—flew past his head and vanished into the woods, but not before dropping a gift at his feet.

  Eyeballs.

  Sugar Lynn said, “That was Dez, wasn’t it? Helping you. I thought you said she was sweet.”

  “She used to be.” As with any confession, Jimi felt woeful and ashamed, but with none of the relief that made confessing worthwhile. He scooped the eyeballs from the grass, so bloody and slippery, and made himself look his friends in the eye.

  “I don’t know what she is now.”

  Chapter 2

  The night before his deliverance, Jimi’s sleep had been continually interrupted by nightmares. He only remembered two of them. In one, something had dug a fork into his back and lifted Jimi to its mouth, and in the other, Dez sat with him in a tree in her sparkling Blue Fairy costume. The tree was dead and twisted, the ground cracked and oozing fire.

  Dez said, “I don’t care what you want. You’re supposed to be here with me.”

  “In hell?”

  “Don’t speak that way about our home. Come here!” She’d yanked on him and he’d awoken sweaty and sore in his back and shoulders, like he’d done ten thousand pushups.

  He was achy now as he sat in St. Teresa Cathedral. Achy and worried.

  “Jimi!”

  An altar girl, in red and white vestments, was in the aisle on the right, waiting for him. Mass had ended and everyone was leaving the building while Jimi sat motionless in the pew.

  “You ready?”

  Nora. That was the altar girl’s name. She had an older brother named Charlie who’d been in his chem class last year.

  “How’s Charlie doing? Still a know-it-all?”

  “Sure is. Are you stalling?”

  “Sure am. Father Dylan’s barely older than me. What if he can’t get Dez to leave?”

  Nora laughed. “She’s just a ghost, Jimi. I could get her to leave.”

  “But…she’s been acting so weird.”

  “That’s no longer your problem,” Nora said. “Not after today. Now let’s go. Father Dylan is waiting.”

  Jimi lifted the bag that had been at his feet and joined Nora, and after he’d paused to genuflect, she said:

  “Plus, that’s how you know your problem’s not so serious, if they let a young priest handle it. Don’t worry.”

  They went up and to the right where the fellowship rooms were.

  “I’m only worried that it’ll take too long,” Jimi said, as the altar girl opened the doors of the “small” parish hall. “If Father Dylan hurries and gets it over with, Dez won’t have time to morph into bird form and sabotage—”

  “Happy Deliverance, Jimi!”

  The hall was full of people. Family, sort of. Food. Balloons. Streamers. A big sign with Jimi’s name on it. All they needed was Bongo the Dancing Clown to make his nightmare complete.

  “I should have known you’d run your mouth all over town,” Jimi said when Carmin ran up to him, as much of a clown as anyone could hope for.

  “Hey, I only told my family.”

  “Who make up practically the whole town! This was supposed to be quiet and low-key. My own parents aren’t even here.” He scanned the crowd. “Are they?”

  “No, but—”

  “Quiet and low-key my foot, boy.” Grandy gave Jimi a big hug and kiss. She was Carmin’s great grandmother. Jimi’s too, to hear her tell it. When Giselle, one of Carmin’s army of cousins, married Jimi’s dad, Jimi had become an honorary Belrose, whether he liked it or not. “You need family around you at a time like this. So does Dez.”

  “You invited her folks?”

  “This’ll be their last chance to see her. It’s only decent to let them say goodbye.”

  Mr. and Mrs. de la Vega were speaking to Nora who apparently was friends with Dez’s little sister, Laurie. He thought about saying hello, but Mr. de la Vega was scary and hateful. Jimi was sure the hate wasn’t personal, was just the hate most men had for boys who chased after their daughters. An additional, special sort of hate for boys who outlived their daughters. It was that additional hate that kept Jimi at a distance.

  He said, “I really appreciate everyone coming, but it might not be safe. All these little kids—”

  “It’s a deliverance,” said Grandy, “not an exorcism. Dez wouldn’t hurt a flea; she was an absolute sweetheart.”

  “Was,” Jimi said darkly.

  Grandy tsked at him. “Such drama.” When she went over to greet Father Dylan, Jimi smac
ked Carmin’s shoulder.

  “You blabbed about everything except the part where Dez ripped out a man’s eyes? Why am I the only one freaked out about that?”

  “Dez was being helpful,” Carmin said. “If she hadn’t done it, one of us would’ve.”

  “But Dez wouldn’t have. She hated violence. Don’t you remember what she was like? Alive Dez and Dead Dez are not the same person.”

  “Damn, Jimi. Relax. She’s been dead two years. She probably just came to the mature realization that sometimes violence solves everything.”

  “You’re not supposed to swear on Sunday.”

  Carmin pushed his kid brother away by the face and pulled Jimi to the buffet table. “What’s in the bag?”

  “Dez’s stuff.”

  “Dez’s stuff?” Mr. de la Vega boomed behind them. “You put my daughter’s things in a garbage bag?”

  Jimi tried to hide the black plastic behind his back, but only managed to half crush a cheese tart. “It was the only one big enough. Mom doesn’t buy bags unless they’re tiny and Paris Made in France is stamped on them.”

  “A. Garbage. Bag.”

  “It’s metaphorical. It’s…” But Jimi’s glib tongue had deserted him. “I’ve put all my feelings about Dez into this bag that represents my desire to…” He shot Carmin a desperate look.

  “Put her out with the trash?”

  If Mr. de la Vega’s hate had been impersonal, it was no longer.

  “Let it go, baby,” Mrs. de la Vega said, drawing her husband gently away from Jimi and Carmin and the beat down he had been about to deliver. “We’re here to let all that go.” She dragged Mr. de la Vega closer to Father Dylan, clearly hoping to siphon some of his priestly aura of calm and benevolence and force feed it to her husband.

  “Don’t look at me,” Carmin told Jimi. “You know I can’t access my best material until after sundown.”

  Jimi licked the cheese tart off his knuckles and unexpectedly found himself missing his own parents. He wouldn’t have invited them—he hadn’t invited anyone!—but if he had, they wouldn’t have come anyway. His mom, Alexis, was out of the country on a buying trip, and his dad, César, was in the hospital with Giselle, who’d had a bad reaction to some medication, probably because she was pregnant, and so had to stay overnight for observation.