The Nine Lives of Felicia Miller (5 page)

“I guess you’re right,” said Bill Miller. “I just hope it wasn’t too big a night.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know exactly what I mean. We’re too young to be grandparents.”

“How can you even think that, Bill? We raised Felicia right. She doesn’t even have a boyfriend. She’s not about to become some white trash ‘baby mama’.”

But Laurie sighed as she said it. Hoping that Felicia hadn’t finally cracked and given in to the kind of reckless teen behavior becoming too disturbingly prevalent, even in their small rural town. There were so many temptations these days. So many bad role models leading kids astray. It seemed like every once adorable child star just couldn’t wait to grow up and unleash her inner slut. Was there a Disney kid left who hadn’t turned up on the internet flashing her naked beaver?

“We’ll get to the bottom of it tomorrow,” she continued. “Besides, she’ll probably regret it in the morning. A hangover might be just what she needs.”

“Well, she’s always been a good daughter. I guess she deserves to blow off a little steam,” her father said, sounding like a yogurt-slurping NPR commentator.

“I just hope it doesn’t become a habit.”

Upstairs in the bathroom, Felicia checked her face in the mirror. She looked grotesque. Her eye make-up had run down her face with her tears, creating an abstract mess on the pasty remains of the greasepaint.

She climbed into the shower and opened both faucets wide. An icy spray hammered her face, but she was too numb to flinch. Slowly the water warmed. Soon it was steaming hot, gushing freely into her nose and mouth, nearly drowning her.

Streams of mascara melted down her face to her belly, joining the trickle of blood seeping from her throbbing loins. The water was as hot as she could stand it, yet it couldn’t match the stabbing heat of pain between her legs.

Soaping a loofah she scrubbed and scrubbed, chafing her tender skin until the water again turned icy and her father’s knuckles rapped nosily on the bathroom door.

“Punkin, are you alright in there?”

Rather than arousing any further suspicions she switched off the water. “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Well, be sure to take a few aspirin. Tonight. That way you won’t have a hangover when you wake.”

“I’m fine, daddy. Go to bed.”

35

Each step down the school hallway seemed more monumental than the last.

So many faces. Gawking faces. Googly-eyed boys. Grinning girls. Googly-eyed girls and grinning boys.

Why are they staring at me? Are they mocking me with their smiles? What do they know?

“Hey, Felicia! Great show last night.”

Show? Are they talking about the talent show…? or…?

She knew how quickly rumors spread throughout the school. All it would take was one of those evil boys bragging to a friend, or posting a tweet about it.

Maybe they already have, and the whole school knows my dirty secret. Maybe that’s why they’re grinning.

Oh God. What if they made a video? Is that the show they’re talking about?

She tried to sort through her sketchy memories of the attack, trying to recall if anyone had brandished a cell phone or camera to record her humiliation.

No. Not in that fog. Even if someone had a camera they couldn’t have gotten a clear picture in that fog.

She had blocked out the lurid details of the attack, thanks to the witch’s potion. But they’d started surfacing as soon as she fell asleep, returning to haunt her in her dreams. Granny’s numbing magic had worn off by then and she was forced to confront the pain and the truth, even in her sleep.

It all came flooding back in a series of fractured dreams. Dreams that forced her to relive the vile experience over and over, in random bits and pieces.

The horrible flashbacks piled up until her heart felt ready to explode, and she finally bolted awake, gasping and sweaty and feverish with emotion.

The evil details she’d suppressed were back and undeniable. Tears of the remembered terror flowed from her eyes like blood from a wound. The pain in her groin was back, and much sharper. Hideous bruises on her thighs and breasts and arms and belly testified to the cruelty of the attack. Painful reminders of the violent indignity that the Halloween-masked perpetrators had subjected her to just hours before.

Despite their attempted anonymity, Felicia was certain who their ringleader was.
The scummy bastard whose father controls the law in this county. Whose father won’t let anything come between him and his precious son.

Now, hours later, in the light of day, she was forced to mingle with the very same villains. Here, in what should have been the sanctity and security of school.

Oh God, how can I face them?

She trudged mechanically toward her first class, closing her mind to the bustling activity around her.

The school hallway seemed endless and exhausting. Although it was packed with students swapping books from lockers or trading bits of gossip, it seemed to hold a peculiar emptiness for Felicia. The chattering of students seemed a million miles away.

The students turning to smile at her as she passed looked like glassy-eyed mannequins. Their lips moved in apparently friendly greeting, but Felicia heard only indecipherable noise. A buzzing hum that seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.

Finally she reached the door of her first class. But as she was about to enter she glanced through the open doorway and saw Wally Sutter sitting smugly at the back of the room. Holding court with his usual decadent bravado. Laughing and slapping hands and bumping fists with the boys around him.

When her eyes locked on his, she had all the confirmation she needed. Not once during the attack had any of the boys removed their masks, but their leader’s eyes she would never forget. They were burned into her brain. Even at this distance, from far across the room, Wally’s eyes were undoubtedly the same cold shark eyes that had feasted on her naked body through the eyeholes of that skeleton mask.

Spinning on her heels she staggered back into the now empty hallway, heading for the nearest exit. Stumbling like a mindless jerky doll.

Without remembering how she got there Felicia found herself sitting on a swing in the lower school playground. Lolling back and forth in a detached daze. Her feet were drawn up beneath her, sweeping the air like a twisted pendulum.

A pair of legs swung out beside her, heavy-soled black motorcycle boots scraping the gravel beneath the swingset.

Felicia’s heart fluttered. She looked over to see Ruta Pulaski beside her, sitting on the next swing over.

Ruta.

The school weirdo. The town’s punk princess.

There was something not quite right about Ruta’s sudden appearance.
How did she manage to sneak up on me across the loose gravel in those clunky boots? And what is she doing here anyway? Is she somehow in cahoots with those scummy bastards?

Felicia strained her memory but didn’t remember ever seeing Ruta hanging out with or even being close to Wally or any of his crew. But then again she’d never really paid much attention to the reclusive punker.

The same age as Felicia, Ruta stood a half-foot taller. Lithe and pretty enough to be a fashion model, she was a natural beauty who dressed herself up in most unnatural ways. Half of her once flowing blonde hair was shaved close to the scalp. The remaining half was streaked with alternate strands of black dye and twisted into witchy braids. A sleeve of flower tattoos covered one arm. No sunny daisies or cheerful marigolds. All gloomy blue bellflowers and purple violets and coils of dark thorny stems.

Her funereal look was topped off with somber eyeshadow, black lace spiderweb stockings and a moth-eaten shawl that was the mainstay of her wardrobe. The image she projected was of a punk witch. Some people claimed to have seen her heading out to the woods near Granny Dola’s place.

“Are you okay?” Ruta’s voice was somehow soft and hard at once. It fit her delicate features, pierced with a single chrome spike below her lower lip. “Felicia, right?”

Felicia stared at her silently. Unsure of what exactly she was asking.
Does she know what happened to me? Or is she just making small talk?

“I heard you got tricked into the woods last night,” Ruta said, as if in response to the unspoken question.

A surge of embarrassed anxiety flooded Felicia’s gut.

Oh my God. Who else knows?

Ruta again seemed to read her thoughts. “It’s okay, kid. Nobody else in the school other than you and me and the perps knows what happened out there. And I’m not about to tell anyone, trust me. It’s not like I talk to a lot of people here anyway.”

Felicia looked at her wide-eyed, as if to ask how she knew.

“Granny asked me to keep an eye on you,” Ruta hinted.

Felicia slumped forward on her swing, dangling at an odd angle, held up by the cold chains pressing into her shoulders. She stared at the gravel beneath her feet, which remained drawn up, as if she’d be sucked down to Hell if she dared let her heels touch the ground.

“You don’t want to press charges, do you? You’re too embarrassed, right?”

Felicia stared at her numbly. Remembering how Ruta looked just a year ago, when her family moved into town. A quiet, bashful blonde angel. An all-American girl.

“You need to visit Granny again. Soon.” Ruta twirled on the seat of her swing, twisting the chains above her. “She’s the only one who can turn it around for you. In fact, she already has. You just don’t know it… yet.”

She smiled cryptically, and for one fleeting moment Felicia could have sworn that Ruta’s eyes were more reptilian than human. Then Ruta lifted her feet and her swing started spinning.

Felicia hopped to her feet, about to run away. But Ruta grabbed her by the wrist. As quick as a striking cobra.  Her grip was surprisingly strong, but not hard enough to cause Felicia any pain. For such a slender girl, she had plenty of power and grace.

“You don’t think you’re the only one, do you?” Ruta asked sharply.

Felicia stared blankly at her eyes, which again for the briefest moment took on a reptilian cast, with shiny black slits like marquise cut onyx.

Felicia closed her eyes for a second, and when she opened them again Ruta looked normal, running a slender finger over a snakeskin choker on her neck.

Felicia looked at the intricately woven choker. It seemed to tell a story of mystery and magic.

Ruta smiled cryptically.

Felicia pulled her wrist free and ran off toward the woods.

81

Felicia wandered aimlessly through the forest, unable to go home and too overwhelmed by everything that had happened in the past twelve hours to return to school.

The evergreens hissed overhead, rustling in the crisp autumn wind. The cool air should have chilled her to the bone, but Felicia felt nothing. Nothing but emptiness. Bleak bitter emptiness.

As if drawn by some diabolic magnet, Felicia found herself at the edge of Devils Point Hollow, staring at the circle of mystic boulders in the middle of the clearing. She didn’t dare step closer, for beyond those stones lay that unholy patch of soil where her happy world had ended the night before. But she couldn’t pull herself away either. Stuck like a fly in a glue-trap.

She stood there for countless minutes, trembling and shivering as waves of anger and sadness and hopelessness washed over her, and an avalanche of flashbacks recounted her shameful ordeal.

The boys’ savage fingers clawing her girlish flesh. Their tongues lashing her ears and throat and more intimate parts of her body. Coating her with their poisonous slimy spittle. Their heartless invasions of her virginal sanctity.

She felt like breaking down and crying. Longing to release all the pent-up emotional pain. But something in her told her it would be pointless. Nothing in her would ever be restored, no matter how many tears she shed. Ever. She was a ruined girl. A walking shell. Condemned to endure the remaining years of her empty, broken life.

Finally she could bear these thoughts no longer and ran off deeper into the woods. She wanted to disappear from the face of the Earth. To dissolve into nothingness. To become as small and meaningless as she felt.

Some time later she reached the edge of another clearing. The sun had shifted so she knew it was past noon, but had no idea of the time.

Peering from the safety of the woods she recognized Granny’s little log house. It looked quaint and organic, like something from a fairy tale.

Cords of firewood were neatly stacked along one side. A garden patch brimming with lacy green herbs and colorful poppies filled a lattice pen. Ducks and chickens wandered freely, squabbling and clucking. A dog slept in a patch of sunlight, a cat nestled against his ribs.

Funny I should end up here... I’m sure I couldn’t find my way back if I tried.