Billy Purgatory and the Curse of the Satanic Five (9 page)

Mother hadn't brought it up again, and Billy wasn't gonna be the one letting that cat made of words out of the bag again.

Breakfast was always a big to-do. There was fresh squeezed orange juice that came from an orchard on the property. Mom was into fruit and things that were good for you to eat; therefore, Billy was forgoing things that were bad for him, like Captain Claw cereal and donuts. There was always bacon though, and Billy figured that if there was enough bacon and orange juice, he'd have all the fuel he'd need to tackle any surprises that came his way.

Mom always had that faraway look in her eyes as she'd sip coffee she poured into a cup from what she'd taught Billy was called a French press. His mother was not only a classy lady, but also a smart one. Billy tried not to talk too much or ask many questions, because Mom was always thinking about something important. Billy didn't know what kinda dough it took to run this joint, but he figured it was a wad fat enough to choke a yeti. He had no idea what kind of business Mom, and he guessed, Pop, had stumbled into to make all that money, but whatever it was it had to be equally important stuff.

Billy figured he might have a lot to learn from his mother about how to be a successful lady businesswoman — well, hopefully not the lady or the woman part — but the business part sure seemed like it had its perks. Billy had never considered himself to be like one of those banker dudes. He made a promise to himself that he'd figure out how Mom did it and he'd take the money, but he wasn't wearing a tie, and he would never stop skating. Even being a zillionaire came second to his future skateboarding career.

“How are you feeling? Your bruises seem to be healing.”

Billy considered the last time he'd looked over his mug, this morning when he'd been brushing his teeth. His body was putting itself back together nicely, he guessed — he wasn't near the collection of knots and bruised snake-ruts he'd been a couple days ago.

“I feel fine, Mom.” Billy did feel fine, and he smiled just a little, on the inside. He was having a conversation with his mother. A couple
days ago, when he'd been trying to make it out of Alabama alive, he'd have never thought it possible.

“I'm going to give you a few more days, and then I've decided to get you some new tutors. I really don't think that school with all of those other little germ-cauldrons and their backwoods thinking is really the place to give you a proper education.”

Billy liked the sound of that too. Almost every other kid at that school of his was a total tool — and the principal, he was a complete tool.

“Whatever you and Pop decide. I won't miss those apple polishers.” He looked to his mother's face as he made the remark. It'd been days, not counting his adventures with lions and tigers, since he'd seen Pop. Billy really missed the old grizzly bear.

“I'm sure your father will think it best after we've talked.”

“Mom,” Billy started, “not to bug you or anything, but where exactly is Pop? I haven't seen him in forever, and I have this new trick I wanna show him where I skate down the path and then crash into the swimming pool.”

“I do not think either of us want to see you do anything of the sort.”

“Nah really, it's cool. I figured out how to jump the fence.”

Mom placed her coffee cup into its saucer. “He will be away on business for several more weeks, I'm afraid.”

“Usually he takes me with him on business.” It was true, Pop took Billy almost everywhere he went — even the shady places.

Emelia stood from the table. “Well, unfortunately, someone decided to go into a room that was off-limits to them and inadvertently zapped themselves through a temporal-mirror-array to Africa and wasn't around to be invited to go along with him.”

Billy thought about all the words his mother said, and they just didn't make sense. He hadn't ended up in Africa by going through any zap-mirror at all. The Time Zombie had snatched him up and kidnapped him. Mom must not have known that there was even such a thing as a Time Zombie, and that meant that she probably didn't know that there was such a thing as real vampires.

Billy wondered if he should come clean with his mother about what had really happened. Was he putting her in danger by not telling her that those things were real? And that if she didn't watch
out and peek around corners before going into fancy dark alleys? What if something happened to her?

“Mom, do you believe in monsters?”

Billy's mother stopped beside his chair and looked down at him. “Oh yes, darling.” She brushed her hand across his cheek. It was warm from the morning sunlight — or maybe it was just warm because it was his mother's gentle touch. “Nobody believes in monsters more than I do.”

Billy looked up at her. She had a serious look on her face, but it broke into a smile, and Billy's lips mimicked that smile.

“Okay, just checking to make sure you're safe.”

She broke her hand from his face and continued her walk towards the interior of the house. “Enjoy your freedom for a few more days. Then you're going to impress me with what a little genius you can become with the proper motivation.”

Billy watched her flowing white vanish from sight like a ghost. Mom believed in monsters, she'd said so. Billy didn't need to worry her anymore with talk of Time Zombies or vampires. Those things couldn't get his mom; she was far too classy and way too smart for any of their wild screams and wilder fangs.

VII.

Billy sat on the stone picnic table bench, under the big tree outside the stables. Across from him, Mira had been organizing one of her stacks of papers while eating a sandwich she'd rescued from a paper lunch bag. It was turkey on rye.

“You are such a sweet kid to have brought me lunch.”

Billy smiled wide.

“I swear, sometimes I get so wrapped up in all these physics equations that I forget to eat.”

“Well, we're not having any of that here at Purgatory-ville. ‘Specially not when I got a whole army of sammich cooks up the hill
there.” Billy pointed to his beating heart for emphasis. “Although, I made that one myself.”

“Well, it's very thoughtful of you. I think the bacon was a nice touch.”

“Nothing makes sweet love to one another like a pig and a turkey.” Billy stared up into those soft eyes on Mira's face. He'd broken out the good mustard for her, the stuff with the seeds in it that they made with wine.

Billy had his own sandwich, so it was kind of like he and Mira were just a lonely girl and a crazy guy, sitting at a picnic table, surrounded by nature and all that jazz, sharing some wine with mustard mixed in it.

“Don't forget, there's a whole bag of barbecue potato chips in that bag too. The ones they fry in the fancy grease.”

Mira chuckled. “Isn't it funny how they turn your fingertips orange?”

Oh yeah, this girl understood fine cuisine.

“Just like your hair, my lady.”

She smiled at him. “My lady, huh?”

“Yeah, that's French.” Billy was glad he'd worked that little bit of culture-dazzlement in. This way he didn't have to try and explain how the name of the mustard had French words in it too.

“You are such a little charmer.” Listening to her teeth crunch into those barbecue chips was heaven. She laughed after she had polished off two of them, making a show to Billy with her hands that her delicate fingertips, true to form, were beginning to be stained a lovely shade of orange.

“Just like your hair.” Billy held his face in his hands and stared across the picnic table at the short hair on her head, partially glistening in a rogue shaft of sunbeam.

“It's not real.”

Billy contemplated what the words she had just said meant as he gazed lovingly at her. “Of course the chips are real.”

“No.” Mira giggled. “My hair, I dye it. It's not really red.”

“Well, the lady definitely has her secrets.” Billy had heard that on a dopey soap opera one time — or maybe it had been a laundry detergent commercial.

“Me? I don't have any secrets at all. All I've ever done is study science. Well, and dye my hair.”

“I'm sure all that science book-learning helped you figure out how to do that.”

“Not really. There are directions on the side of the box, you know.”

Billy had not known that. But if hair dyeing turned out to be really important to her, then he'd have to do some research. “So tell me, Mira, how has such a lovely flower-petal lovebug like yourself gotten though all these years and not been snatched up by some eligible badass?”

“Well, I don't know. I feel like I'm just lately kind of blossoming. I was kind of an ugly duckling growing up.”

“I could never believe that.” Billy decided to leave his own sandwich for later and just continue to stare longingly into the eyes of this girl — and probably lie to her.

“No, literally. I just got the operation a year ago to fix my webbed toes.”

“I'm sure you wore that problem with grace and stuff, like a river platypus.”

“Yeah, well… I'd have never been able to fit my foot into these cute shoes before that.”

Billy stood up straighter to make himself look taller — and older. “I guess that's one of the reasons why science is so important, fixing up people who have busted feet.”

“Well, there are doctors for that kind of thing. I'm going to be another kind of doctor, like Dr. Luna.” Billy watched her eyes staring at her orange fingers and he felt it coming before her lips made the actual noise.

That sigh.

Billy deflated from across the picnic table. First off, he was so busy being all gooey-poop over this girl that he'd forgotten all about his new friend, Dr. Luna. Second, she had made the same noise that Luna had over root beers. That sigh.

Billy could see the glitter piñatas spinning around behind Mira's eyes. She was imagining saying her wedding vows to Luna while a volcano in the distance erupted melted love confetti. Rivers of candy
cane lava spilled forth surfing Komodo dragon air guitarists with Elven poets riding on their backs reciting lyrics from Love Grooves of the 70's. A disco ball sunset shone down on it all, and they stood in the gentle surf of a vast ocean — because even though she'd had the operation to have her feet fixed, she still dug the water.

As cute as this girl was, and as much as she liked having orange fingertips, Billy had to do right by her — and most importantly, he had to do right by his new friend.

“You know, you're a cool chick, Mira.”

Mira looked across to Billy and she smiled big. “Thanks, Billy. You're a cool kid.”

“Listen, sweetums. It's just not gonna work out between you and me.”

Mira was crunching her potato chips and ruffled her forehead at him. “What's not gonna…?”

“Science siren, I get the attraction. You're a good lookin' older lady with a hot little crankcase, legs that take the service elevator all the way up, and an impressive dye job.”

“Thanks…I mean, I guess.” She was still crunching potato chips, but she was kind of slowing down. Billy felt bad for her, because the only thing that would have made him stop eating barbecue chips with reckless abandon would have been the realization of what was about to come.

“I'm just not right for a scientist-girl. I'm a daredevil skateboarder who's been around the world, dazzling endangered species with my death-perspiring tricks.” Billy banged his fist against his heart to add a little emphasis to his words.

“This. I keep this locked down pretty tight. I'm bad news for women, doesn't matter which country-that-starts-with-“A” place I happen to be roaming. Cause I can't give you that life that a serious chick like you is lookin' for.”

Mira folded up her lunch bag then began wiping the orange off her fingers with a napkin. “Billy, are you breaking up with me?”

“I'm glad it was you who said the words. That's how it should go down. You'll thank me for this later.”

Mira sat quietly for a moment. “I really don't know how to react.”

“You can spin as many big words up and down the Ferris wheel as you want, sister. It's not gonna change who I am. It's gonna be tough on you at first.”

Billy saw a single tear forming in the corner of her left eye. Mira wore too much mascara, a look that Billy was into, but he had to stay strong for his friend.

“Don't cry, little lost honey-bee-bear.”

“I'm not really, I think it's pollen. I might have gotten barbecue dust in my eye.”

Billy nodded and then stood, taking his lunch for later and kicking his board into his other hand. “I hope when you think of me, and you will, that you'll remember we always had sammiches under this big dumb lookin' tree.”

Mira folded her arms and watched him turn to go. “Not that we were dating or anything, because we just really met formally fifteen minutes ago and all we did was share a sandwich and some chips, but…”

Billy looked back at her.

“What did I do wrong?” She sniffled, and her nose made the cutest little crinkle. She'd blame that on pollen too, and Billy would let her if that made her feel better.

“You didn't do anything wrong, doll. Now, get in that lab and don't think about me out alone wandering the grounds looking for a trampoline. Go be a science girl. And when you find love staring you in the face — and you will, I know — promise me that you'll attack that love and never look back. That you'll lip smack it so hard, it'll think that them lips just got ripped right off its face.”

“I… promise?”

“I'm a lone wolf, baby.” Billy said the words clear and true. “Emotionally unavailable.”

Billy Purgatory blew Mira a kiss, then swore he'd never look back at the girl with the long legs and the cosmetic-surgery-enhanced toes. He'd make Mira and their forbidden love his sunset, and finding a hidden trampoline his great reward.

VIII.

Billy Purgatory spent most of the afternoon walking the grounds. When he was lucky enough to find a path he could drop his board onto and skate, he would take that as a sign that he should do so. But there was a lot of disappointing walking involved in his travels. It was late in the afternoon, and the old fat gas-ball in the sky didn't have much beam left in him when he came upon the object of his quest.