The Nine Lives of Chloe King (10 page)

“Could you ask Paul to come a little later?” Chloe finally asked. “Give us some girl time to catch up?”

Amy’s face softened.

“Yeah, of course! Totally. Come by at seven.”

“Will do.”

They were silent for a moment, awkward in their emotions.

“So … like my coat?” Amy finally asked.

“How many Muppets died to make that thing?” Chloe shot back, grinning.

Chloe was in a state of mental panic when Alyec called out to her in the hallway. She didn’t hear him, overwhelmed by what she had just promised. Ame’s poetry readings were something not to be believed.

Chloe thought madly about tiny FM radios that she could hide in her ear and pull her hair over to hide, about getting very badly drunk or stoned, about getting one of the loopier Wiccans at school to put her into a trance before the reading.
Anything
that could get her through it with her sanity intact and a straight face.

She and Paul used to sometimes have to hold hands during them, squeezing for strength and distraction during the bad parts, keeping the other restrained if she or Paul couldn’t fight the urge to giggle or get up and run screaming from the café. Somehow she didn’t think that would be happening with Paul
this
time, however.

Maybe I can puncture my eardrums. …

“Hey! Chloe!”

She finally looked up and realized that Alyec had been waving to her and calling her name for a few minutes. He ran down the hall to catch up with her.

“Sorry.” She shook her head. “Lost in thought.”

“No problem.” He looked her up and down. Suddenly Chloe was self-conscious about her secondday jeans and her Strokes T-shirt with the bleach hole. Even her undies were the last ones before the wash: nasty, unsexy thongs. “I tried IM-ing you last night, but you weren’t on.”

Me? You were IM-ing
me,
you hunka hunka icebergy love?
He smiled at her, a little puzzled, a little expectantly. Chloe immediately began to come up with some non-ego-shattering lie she could tell him about why she wasn’t around that would keep him calm and interested, that would cut the conversation short and move them on to pleasanter topics.

Then she noticed how close he was standing, very much in her space, looming over and looking down at her. Kind of obnoxious. Like she was the kind of girl who
enjoyed
being loomed over by the sexiest guy in her class in the middle of the hall.

“I had a date,” she answered, shrugging.

“Like, a study date?”

She almost laughed at his quick assumption. “No, a
date
date.” She turned and began walking to her next class.

“Wait, what?” He ran to catch up with her again. “Who?”

“Brian. You don’t know him.”

“Does he go to Mary Prep?”

A wicked gleam came into her eye. “No,” she answered casually. “He’s not in high school.”

“King, you are one hell of a tease.” He sighed.

“Tease?” She turned and faced him finally. “Uh, I don’t see anyone else making demands on my time.”

“That
is definitely teasing,” Alyec called after her when she walked away again. “If I understand English properly.”

She waved
buh-bye
at him over her shoulder.

Reflecting on the encounter later, Chloe had to admit she was thrilled with the way Alyec had no inclination to keep their little tête-á-tête silent. He was obviously after her, loudly, in the middle of the hall and didn’t seem to care if anyone—even Keira and her gang—heard him. The whole school now knew that Alyec Ilychovich wanted Chloe King.

It was a nice feeling and made her feel even cozier with the cold day outside and her inside the thick-wood-and-velvet café, hands wrapped around a hot cider. She snuggled back into her seat, pretending to not see the microphone and spotlight being set up in a corner.

“He-e-e-y!” Amy came in, looked around, waved to the people setting up, kiss-kissed them on their cheeks, and told them she would be with them in just a few minutes. Even though it was a little thing, Chloe was pleased that her friend cared enough to put off what was a fairly adoring crowd to spend time with her. Which did not stop Chloe from putting her hand up just in time to prevent Amy from air kissing her, too. There
were
limits.
The pretension ends here.

“So … what?
What?
What are all these things happening in the life of Chloe King?” Amy turned and screamed, “I’ll get a tea, over here, Earl Grey, with lemon!”

“Well, first things first.” Chloe shifted back and forth uncomfortably. “What kind of tampons do you use?”

Amy’s jaw dropped. “Oh my
God.
You finally got your
period?”

Chloe winced, trying to draw her hair down over her face. She felt the tips of her cheeks, right under her eyes, go hot and pink.

“Tell the entire world,” she mumbled.

“Oh. Uh, sorry. I’m just … amazed. And glad you’re, like, normal and stuff. No weird tumors or something.” Amy’s eyes went glassy. “You’re a woman! You’ve finally joined us in the cycle of life and—”

“Save the goddess shit for later. I’m uncomfortable and cramping.”

“Try ’slenders.’You have to change them more often, but that’s what I used until I started having sex. …” Her friend’s face suddenly furrowed. “Jeez, you’re going to have to start taking all that stuff seriously now. Maybe go on the pill. Condoms break, you know, and you could get pregnant—”

“Thanks for the sex-ed speech. I only needed the relevant part. ’Slenders.’ I get it. Thanks.” She looked at her cider and admitted, “Besides, it’s not like I’ve even had actual intercourse yet … and it doesn’t look like it’s a possibility anytime in the near future.”

“Yeah, Paul and I haven’t had sex yet. Even if we were at that point, he’s, you know, old-fashioned and stuff.”

Chloe shuddered. Thinking of Paul having sex made her think of Paul having a penis, and Paul’s penis was definitely something she never wanted to think about. Much less Amy
and
Paul having sex. Together.

“I know you two are serious, and I’m happy for you,” Chloe said slowly, “but it would be nice if you kept some parts of it … to yourself, you know?”

Amy blinked. Her blue eyes made her look extra innocent. “Who else am I going to talk to about it?”

“You can
talk
to me about it,” Chloe said, “but just censor the dirty parts, you know? This is
Paul.
And besides”—she came up with a brilliant excuse—“do you really think he would want
me
knowing these things about him? He gets all blushy about a trip to the
doctor.”

“I hadn’t thought about that,” Amy said after a long moment. She fiddled with the hand charm on her necklace that had lost its silver tarnish long ago from other nervous musings. Chloe smiled; she remembered when her friend first got it, years ago, from her grandmother. … “Well, what about
you?
What happened to Alyec?”

“Nothing. He’s still on my ’watch’ list.” Chloe grinned like a very self-satisfied cat over the rim of her cup. “It’s just that I met this other guy, Brian. He comes to Pateena now and then. Totally cute. He’s working a couple of years before applying to college. I think you’d like him; he knits his own hats. He took me out for coffee last night.” She didn’t feel like telling her the part about the zoo; there was something strangely private about it. In a nice sort of way. Not meant for sharing, not even with Amy.

Hey, he never gave me the hat pattern,
she realized.

A size-zero girl in all black brought over a mug of tea with slices of lemon on a saucer. Amy busied herself preparing the tea exactly as she liked it, and Chloe watched more people come in, filling the dark corners of the café like large, quiet rats.

“I think that fall affected you more than we thought,” Amy finally said.

“What are you talking about?” Chloe said, a little offended by the cavalier way her friend spoke.

“Come on—
two
guys? One is the most popular in our class, the other not even in high school? You?
Chloe King?”
Amy shook her head. “That’s not like you at all.”

Good thing I didn’t tell her about Xavier,
Chloe decided.

But it gave her pause: Amy was right. It used to be that Chloe never would have gone after anyone in the popular crowd, no matter how cute or nice. And a guy not at their high school?
Any
high school? Two years older than her? Old enough to vote and look at porn?
Fuggedaboutit!
And what exactly about going to a club by herself and picking up a stranger and making out with him in back?

Chloe looked at Amy’s necklace again, suddenly brought back to the girl she was at Amy’s party when they were both thirteen. A very different girl.

“I’m blooming,” she answered with a hint of irony in her voice.

“Exploding, more like.” She winced at Chloe’s look. “In a
good
way,” she quickly added. “What’s Brian look like?”

“Tall, dark and brooding, handsome, brown eyes, mysterious smile … He didn’t kiss me good night, though.”

“Gay,” Amy decided.

“I wasn’t exactly getting a ’gay’ vibe,” Chloe said defensively.

“All right, maybe he’s just shy.”

“Hey.” Chloe suddenly really
saw
her friend’s necklace. It looked suspiciously like a cat, lying down, a smug little smile on her face. She furrowed her brow and reached for it.

“Don’t you remember? Nana gave it to me when she came back from Egypt. For my bat mitzvah.”

“Yeah, yeah. But what is it supposed to
be,
exactly?”

“Um … a cat goddess of some sort, I think.” Amy pulled it out and tried to look at it. “Bastet or something? It was back when I was totally obsessed with cats, when I got Pharaoh.” That was the original name of the all-black kitten she’d rescued from an alley. Now he was huge and fat and just called Kitty.

“Ma chérie
!” a draggle-haired
Moulin Rouge
extra in a long white silk scarf called to Amy. “We await your presence.”

“Yeah—give this to Paul when he comes, will you?” Amy fished a brown, letter-sized bag out of her giant denim one. “He left it at my place Wednesday night.”

After her friend joined the other poetry weirdos, Chloe pulled the package closer to her so no one would take it or sit on it.
Left it at her place Wednesday night.
The three of them used to watch cheap DVD rentals at Amy’s midweek when everything was getting too stressful, usually Bollywood musicals. She was the only one with a TV in her room. They would pop popcorn and watch gold and pink dancers twirl and sing and elephants march by and feel like they were at the edge of another world, somewhere far more interesting, beyond Inner Sunset. Chloe wondered what they watched last night, or if they just made out.

She opened Paul’s package: comics. Wednesday was comic day, something he had drilled into her since they were nine.

She flipped through them—some starred recognizable characters like Batman and Green Lantern, others were just as brightly colored but with superheroes she had never heard of. Some were called things like
Hellblazer
and filled with amazingly disgusting scenes of people and demons doing extreme violence to each other. Chloe had learned a long time ago to avoid looking at those.

She pulled a couple out; there was at least another fifteen minutes before the readings began.
Batman
was familiar but way too short, and the ads were more intriguing than the plotline. She opened another one about a woman called Selina Kyle and followed the four-color panes through her adventures leaping and running across the Gotham City skyline. Chloe grinned, thinking of herself.

Then she frowned.

Is that it? Is that what I have? Superpowers?

She had never thought of it that way before. It sort of added up, though, if you looked at it from a comic book point of view: She’d survived a fall that should have killed her, she’d fought a guy—with no previous training—who was twice as big as her and used to living on the street, she could run for miles without getting winded and jump hurdles like a track star—when she used to have all the physicality of a slug. And here she’d been assuming that part of it was just some sort of growing spurt ….

“Hey, since when did
you
become a comic mooch?” Paul asked, sliding into the booth across from her.

“Since I was bored out of my mind.” She showed him the comic book she was reading. “Do any of these guys have, like, more subtle powers? Besides flying?”

“Selina Kyle doesn’t
have
powers,” he said with a little bit of smugness. “Neither do Batman or Robin. John Constantine is … questionable. Aquaman can breathe underwater, which I guess is subtle, but he can also talk to fish. Why?”

“Just wondering.” She watched as he carefully put the comics back in their Mylar bags and slid them gently into the brown bag. “So, how long is this horror scheduled to last?”

“An hour and a half.”

Chloe groaned. The lights dimmed and people clapped politely. The man with the scarf gave a little introduction. Chloe almost wished she still had a comic to look at. The poets were theoretically in order of who signed up first, but they tended to let the least worst go last.

Which meant that Amy was usually second or third.

If I’m a superhero,
Chloe idly thought,
I should definitely get some better clothes. Clingier. Spandex. Tank tops and bike shorts.
Where did superwomen keep their extra tampons, anyway? Her foot tapped; she tried to keep it quiet through the first few readings. She would have given almost anything to be able to run outside. She hoped one of the poets’ clove cigarettes would fall and catch the place on fire.

“And now, Amy Scotkin, reading three of her works.”

“Whoo-hoo!” Chloe shouted, cupping her hands to her mouth like she was at a sporting event.

“Go, Amy!” Paul shouted.

Amy blushed. “My first one, ’Night Swan.’”