The Unseen (5 page)

“
I’ll go, too,” Tamila said, stepping out the door after them.

“
Are you sure?” Cassidy asked.

“
Yeah.” Tamila tilted her head at the boys. “I feel like she needs a girl with her.”

Reese, lying limp and half-conscious in Dex’s arms, let out a small moan.

“Okay, true.  That’s really nice of you, Tami.”
Especially considering how nasty Reese was to you
, Cassidy thought.

“
You’re going to be all right by yourself tonight?” Tamila rubbed Cassidy’s arms and glanced back toward the bedroom.

“
Barb’s still here,” Cassidy said.

“
Yeah, I’ll keep her company.” Barb stepped up and stood at Cassidy’s side.  Tamila glanced back and forth between them, then nodded once, as if she’d made some kind of decision.

“
You do that, Barb,” Tamila said. “You take good care of Cassidy for me.”

“
I will.” Barb put an arm around Cassidy’s waist.

Cassidy watched the four of them depart, and then she closed the door.

Tamila called later from the hospital.  She was distant, almost businesslike, as she reported that Reese had scattered first-degree burns on her body and had lost her eye.  Tamila, a bright girl with a future to protect, had concocted a story that would hopefully stave off any police investigation.

Tamila had claimed that Reese was high on drugs and ranting about demons, which fit very well with the fact that Reese had begun screaming about demons when she’d reached the hospital, then attacked the hospital staff when they clearly didn’t believe her.  Tamila had told the doctors that Reese’s wound was self-inflicted.  They had sedated Reese, who later claimed to remember nothing.

That was it.  Cassidy and Tamila hardly spoke at all for the rest of high school, their lives moving in very distant directions from each other.  Cassidy would spend her adolescence focused on boys, drugs, and her part-time job at the art supply store by the mall, barely squeaking through her classes (except art and literature, where she made A’s).  Tamila graduated as class valedictorian with a pile of full-ride scholarship offers from top schools around the country.

Reese wore a black eyepatch for the rest of high school, earning her a number of pirate-themed nicknames she obviously despised.  She was never seen again at any parties, and she also dropped out of the Drama Club, where she’d often played lead roles in school plays.  She turned her focus to school and began attending a church, where she spent most of her time.  She shed her trademark nose ring and skimpy slutwear, trading them for conservative dresses and full-length pants.  Reese transformed herself from one of the school’s leading juvenile delinquents, and certainly its flashiest, into a very quiet religious girl in a plain brown wrapper.

Cassidy assumed that Reese’s turn to religion was an understandable response to her apparent demonic possession.  She couldn’t know for sure, because Reese ignored her and refused to speak with her.  That was exactly how Reese treated most people at school after the night of the party, the night of Nibhaz.  Cassidy later heard she’d gone off to some obscure religious college in Kentucky or Oklahoma after graduation.

As for Barb—Barb stuck with Cassidy, and they only grew closer over the years, through an adolescence filled with drugs, boys, parties, concerts, sneaking out, and getting picked up by the police more than once.  They barely limped across the finish line of high school together, but they were young, and they felt ready to move out and face the world together.

Big Ted wanted an “evil-looking cat with a pirate patch” on his right arm, just above the elbow, between the fanged moon wearing sunglasses and the flaming clock.  If there was some overall theme or pattern to Big Ted’s tattoos, Cassidy had not yet discovered it, though she’d inked three of them herself.

The tattoo machine buzzed in her hand as she injected blue ink into his arm.  Cassidy had already drawn the outline in black, and now she was moving in for the fill.

“Is that robin’s-egg blue?” Big Ted craned his neck over his shoulder.  He was a hairy, beefy man in his fifties with a thick salt-and-pepper mustache, his chest flab lying on his bare stomach like big-nippled boobs as he sat shirtless in the chair.  “I wanted robin’s-egg blue.”

“It’s the same hue you picked out,” Cassidy said.

“I can’t see it real good from here.”

“Check it.” Cassidy held up a hand mirror so he could look.  Big Ted squinted at the stripe of blue she’d just added to the cat, and he rubbed his grizzled chin thoughtfully.

While Big Ted might have lacked any sense of theme or order to his tattoos, he was an enthusiastic collector of them.  His back was a madman’s mural featuring thuggish cartoon animals, a tree that grew thorny vines instead of leaves or fruit, a gravestone with his mother’s name, a bottle of Jim Beam, and a big red-white-and-blue American eagle driving a Harley-Davidson with its talons, its patriotic wings splayed wide above the motorcycle.

“Cassidy!” a man’s voice shouted from the back. “Your mom’s on the phone.  Again.”

“I’m tattooing, Jarvis!” Cassidy called back.

“I told her that.  Again.” Jarvis walked out of the back holding out a cordless phone.  He was the manager, a short guy in his mid-forties who was furiously resisting his age with lots of hair gel and stupid hipster glasses.  He wore a tank top to show off his stringy vegan jogger’s body and his full-sleeve tattoos.  Jarvis favored weird marine life, and his wrists and forearms were sheathed in suckers and spiny teeth.  He adjusted his glasses for no apparent reason and glared at Cassidy. “I’ve told you, I don’t want that crazy bitch calling here.”

“Don’t call my mom a crazy bitch!  You fuckhead!”

“You call her a crazy bitch all the time,” Jarvis said as she took the phone from him.

“Cassidy?  Hello?” her mother’s voice crackled.

“That’s not the point!  You realize she could hear you say that?” Cassidy waved the phone at him.

“Nah, I put it on mute.  Right?” He frowned and squinted at the phone.

“Go back to your video game, Jarvis.” Cassidy held the phone to her ear. “Mom?”

“There you are, Cassidy,” her mother said. “Do you know he told me you were too busy to talk to me?”

“I have a client sitting right here.” Cassidy offered Big Ted an apologetic smile. “What’s the emergency?”

“I’m making boiled beef,” she said. “You should come home for dinner tonight.  We haven’t seen you in months.”

“That’s not an emergency, Mom. You could’ve left me a voice mail.”

“So you could ignore me more easily?”

“I’ll just go,” Big Ted said in a stage whisper.

“No, wait, Ted, this will just take a second—” Cassidy began.

“Lunch break’s almost over, anyhow.  Gotta head back for the afternoon shift.” Ted stood up and reached for his shirt. “I can come back Monday to finish up.  Same time?”

“Yeah, sure...no, wait.” Cassidy grabbed her bulging black appointment notebook.  All the extra papers crammed inside it—business cards, sketches she’d drawn, and Post-Its and notes jotted on scraps of paper—spilled out and fell into a scattered snowdrift on the floor.

“Fuck!” Cassidy shouted.

“Cassidy!” her mother admonished over the phone.

“Sorry, Mom.  Sorry, Ted.  Um...” Cassidy dropped to her knees and began sweeping the scattered pieces of paper together with her hands.  She opened her notebook and flipped through it, trying to find her Monday appointments. “I can’t, sorry,” she said into the phone.

“Monday’s no good?” Big Ted asked.

“No, Monday’s fine,” Cassidy told him, still looking for the right page. “I think.”

“I didn’t ask you to come Monday, I told you to come tonight, Cassidy,” her mother said.

“Mom, I can’t!  Peyton is spinning at the Red Door tonight—that’s a five-hundred-person venue, the biggest chance he’s had in weeks.”

“Oh, goodness,” her mother replied. “For a moment I was troubled that you weren’t spending enough time getting drunk in bars and nightclubs.”

Cassidy rolled her eyes, then nodded at Ted. “Monday’s fine.”

“I didn’t
invite
you for Monday—” her mother began again, and Cassidy felt like ripping out her hair and screaming.  It had been that kind of day.  Her cheapo coffee maker at home had developed a crack and leaked coffee all over the counter, and she’d somehow ripped the little plastic tip off one of her shoelaces.

“
Monday lunch break.” Big Ted nodded, then pulled on his thin T-shirt with sweat-stained yellow armpits. Then he added a dress shirt, tie, and a brown coat that matched his trousers, and suddenly he was no longer Big Ted the tattoo collector but Teddy Rutkowski, certified public accountant, without a hint of ink on his face, neck, or hands.

“
Thanks, sorry, bye.” Cassidy patted Ted on the back as he shuffled away to the tattoo parlor’s front door.

“
Don’t you hang up on me, Cassidy!” her mother snapped.

“
I wasn’t.  Look, I can’t make it tonight, Mom, but maybe sometime—”

“
We haven’t seen you in months,” Cassidy’s mother interrupted. “You do not live on the other side of the country, Cassidy.  It’s a twenty-minute drive.  You have no excuse.  Kieran and I never see you anymore.”

“I doubt Kieran really cares,” Cassidy said.

“Of course he does.”

“He’s a sixteen-year-old boy.  All he cares about is chasing girls.  Trust me.”

“You’re a wise woman of the world now, are you?  At age twenty-two?”

The glass front door, covered in cave-painting-style depictions of rams and deer, opened and brought in the harsh July sunlight from outside.  The interior of the parlor was always dark, because it was painted black and because of the thick paint on the front windows—the place was called Neolithic Tattoo, and the mostly-absent owner had gone with a cheesy cave theme, including clusters of papier-mâché stalactites in the upper corners.  Whenever the door opened, the afternoon light was a blinding blast, especially in the summer.

A young woman entered, and Cassidy recognized her.  She worked at the fitness center three blocks away, and Cassidy had sketched a hummingbird for her approval.  The girl wanted it etched on her hip.  Cassidy waved and approached the front counter to greet her.

“I have another customer here,” Cassidy said. “I have to go.”

“You’re coming over tonight, then?” her mother asked.

“I told you I can’t.  Peyton—”

“That boy is no good. Why can’t you meet anybody nice?”

“I don’t have time for this whole conversation again, Mom.  I’ll call you back, okay?”

“Kieran’s not sixteen, he’s seventeen.  You missed his birthday last month.” Cassidy’s mom hung up.

Cassidy felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach. 
She had forgotten Kieran’s birthday, though she suddenly had a vague memory of her mother’s voice mail about it several weeks ago.  Cassidy had gotten drunk and forgotten about the message, and she must have deleted it, too. 
Now
she felt guilty, a victory for her mom.

“
Hi-eee!” chirped the fitness-center girl. “Do you have my birdie yet?”

“
Hang on.” Cassidy went back to her station and scooped up her notebook and its spill of papers.  She riffled through them and found the folded, crumpled slice of bristol on which Cassidy had done the sketch.  She’d been a little coked up at the time, thanks to Peyton, and now couldn’t really remember what the thing looked like.

“
Uh, here.” Cassidy offered an apologetic smile as she unfolded the sketch, hoping it looked decent, or that it was, at least, actually a hummingbird.

“
Ooh, that’s awe...some!” the fitness girl cheered.

“
Thanks.” Cassidy smiled.  It was a hummingbird in flight, nosing toward a blooming orchid, and she’d gotten very intense on the tiny details.  It looked like a photograph.  Cassidy sighed a little and let her shoulders slump in relief.

“
It looks so real!  I can like see its little wingies flapping, almost!  It’s so pretty!”

“
So this’ll work?” Cassidy asked.

“
Yeah, TO-tally!  When can we do it?  I so want this on me!  Remy will be so jealous, it’s way better than her bird.”

Cassidy opened her notebook and looked for an open time.

When she left work, the sun had already sunk out of sight, but there was enough of a smoldering red glow that the streetlights hadn’t popped on yet.  She lit a Parliament cigarette and coughed.

A clump of kids sat on the sidewalk outside, wearing Doc Martins and spiky collars, their hair shaved and colored at random, faces pierced with oversized rings and the occasional safety pin.  They hassled her for change, though their shoes and clothing appeared brand new.  She ignored them.  Sometimes she asked them for change first, just to throw them off.