314 Book 2 (44 page)

Neva and her twin brother, Hayden, had very nearly been named after the most famous fraternal twins in science fiction history, Luke and Leia. Luckily for both of them, their mother had refused to allow their father to saddle them with the names, even refusing to let him give them as middle names. Chuck acquiesced, but won the right to choose different middle names. He decided on two from a favorite television show, The X-Files. Neva’s middle name was Scully, and Hayden’s was Mulder.

Neva made the most of her odd middle name. Her attraction to the aesthetic of Day of the Dead, combined with her middle name, had earned her the nickname Skulls. Hayden was never bothered by his middle name. He’d grown up loving the same things his father did, and was quickly labeled a ‘geek’. Puberty had been kind to Hayden, though, and he was quickly becoming very handsome. However, he was still bashful and lacked confidence, which led him to stay in a bad relationship with a girl that was clearly using him. That’s what made Neva so uncomfortable the night before: She’d stumbled upon Gwen and Brian kissing at the party, and was forced to tell her brother, breaking his heart.

Leo was still inspecting Neva’s drastic haircut, debating whether or not he liked it.

“Just give me the phone.” Neva held out her hand.

Leo handed over his cell phone after saying goodbye to June. He walked away and said offhandedly, “I’ve got to take a shit.”

“Thanks for the info,” said Neva with a grimace.

“Leave my phone on the kitchen counter,” said Leo before disappearing into the bathroom down the hall. “Don’t go in my room. Mike’s in there.”

Mike was Leo’s best friend, and the two of them were nearly inseparable. Mike stayed over so frequently that Neva’s father referred to him as his fourth son, and had started buying him presents on holidays.

“Hello,” said Neva.

“Hey beautiful,” said June. “What are you doing sleeping at noon? Hot date last night?”

“Hardly,” said Neva, but she didn’t feel like going into further detail. “What’s up?”

“Well, I was wondering if you had any plans this Friday.”

Neva went back in her room and lay on the bed. “Not really. Why?”

“Some of my coworkers and I were hired to dress up for a costume party at some rich lady’s house.”

“Dress up as what?” asked Neva.

“The theme is the 1920’s, pre-depression era flapper dresses and stuff like that. I guess the girls at the club have done the gig before, and said it was great. This lady has a mansion up in the foothills, and goes all out. Every now and then she hires girls from different clubs around town, and she pays damn good. Unfortunately, Natalie is sick as all hell, and had to drop out of the gig. I thought you might like to fill in for her.”

Neva was surprised by the offer. June worked at a strip club called Cherry. Leo and his friends frequented the place regularly, and he had been exuberantly vocal about how he was dating a girl that worked there. Skulls had been dismissive of June at first, expecting the relationship between June and Leo to fizzle out just as quick as the myriad of other girls that had come in and out of Neva’s brother’s life, but June was different.  June wasn’t a dancer, but a waitress, and she was nowhere near as vapid as Skulls had expected. Over the summer, June had gone from being just another temporary piece of arm candy for Leo to becoming a genuinely liked member of the Mulroney household. She was gorgeous, of course, but was also sweet and smart, belying the attributes Neva would normally expect of someone that worked at a strip club and would date someone like Leo.

“What sort of stuff does she expect you to do?” asked Neva, wary of any job whose desired applicants were strippers.

“Don’t worry,” said June, conscious of Skulls’ leery tone. “She doesn’t have any of the girls stripping. She just likes to set the mood, I guess. I’m not sure, but it pays great and you get free food. She’s just got weird tastes, I guess.”

“Like cosplay?” asked Skulls.

“Sounds like it could be fun.”

“So you’ll do it?” asked June.

“What’s it pay?”

“That’s the best part,” said June. “Two hundred, just for dressing up and going to a party. Doesn’t get much better than that. And from what I hear, there’s usually a ton of hot guys there too. You interested?”

Skulls walked to the mirror and looked at the words she’d scrawled at the bottom in red, permanent marker, a few months earlier.

‘How many faces stare back?’

It was the result of a viscerally cogent moment at the end of a long, drunken night after graduation. As her friends had celebrated their march into adulthood, Neva feared the change. She’d worked hard to forge a false identity, a façade of social normality, and had become comfortable with the facsimile. She functioned, free from the social anxiety that had plagued her early high school years, and that was all she’d ever aspired to. No one suspected the crippling depression that plagued her, because she hid those thoughts with smiles, laughs, and copious amounts of alcohol when with others.

“Sure, I’m interested,” said Skulls.

“Awesome,” said June. “They’re delivering the dresses and masks to the club tonight. I’ll come by and pick you up around seven so we can try them on and make sure they don’t need any alterations. Is that cool?”

“Works for me,” said Neva as she stared at herself in the mirror.

There was an exacto knife on the dresser, resting on a piece of folded toilet paper that was stained with dry blood from the night before. Neva opened the top drawer and slid the blade in before covering it with clothes.