“Aaauuughhh!” A strangled noise erupted from Stanley, who had just glanced up at his wife after re-reading the note for a fifth time.
“What on God’s green earth is the matter with you?” Marie snapped. Her voice sounded hoarse and gravelly. She tried to clear her throat as she stood to find another blanket for the baby. The poor thing had begun to tremble violently.
“Your… your… y-your f-f—” Stanley started, but try as he might, he couldn’t get the words out. A thick sheen of sweat appeared across his forehead, despite the chill in the room.
“What is it? Is it a spider? Say something, Stanley! You’re scaring me!” A feeling of exhaustion suddenly gripped Marie; she lowered herself back down to the couch, surprised by the wave of vertigo that accompanied such a simple movement.
Paralyzed to his spot, Stanley’s jaw continued to flutter wordlessly. As Marie gawked at him in alarm, all he could manage to do was point at the framed mirror hanging above their couch, his finger shaking violently.
Very slowly, lest she frighten the baby further, Marie turned around to inspect her reflection. It took every ounce of composure that she possessed to keep herself from screaming. Though the mirrored glass was spotless, her smooth, milky cheeks appeared hollow and sunken, ashen with obvious sickness. Her full lips were thin and cracked; her eyes, usually twinkling and bright, were clouded and yellow. But worst and most jarring of all, her thick black hair, which normally fell in straight curtains past her shoulders… was gone. Gone! Even her eyebrows were missing. As Marie’s bulging, jaundiced eyes grew wider, a thin, ragged woman gaped back at her in the mirror, a woman who had obviously been sick for some time.
Marie’s hand flew to her mouth, where she felt the cracked, dry skin of her lips.
“Stanley,” she tried to say, but the words came out in an inaudible rasp.
Letting out a guttural yelp, Stanley flew across the room to grab the telephone. But as he went to punch the number 9, his finger froze over the button.
Marie was still staring at herself in the mirror, but her lips once more appeared plump and red, and her glossy black hair appeared as it always had. Blinking wildly, she half-expected the haggard, alien version of herself to return, but after several breathless moments, her usual – albeit frightened – features remained. She closed her eyes to rid herself of the awful image she had just seen, feeling her body swaying; somewhere in the back of her mind, she was grateful that she hadn’t been standing. If she had fainted, her poor baby could have been hurt!
Silence filled the room for a long moment before Stanley eventually broke it. Though his intention was to speak to his beautiful, once-again healthy wife with calm, soothing tones, his actual speaking voice sounded like a strangled croak, splintering on the last syllable.
“We need to get to the hospital… right now.”
For once, his wife didn’t argue.
Chapter 3
White Lies and Black Dresses
“So, did he buy it?” Seth asked, lighting a clove cigarette the moment they turned out of the neighborhood.
“Yeah, he bought it.”
Lilah grimaced at the tall, frost-covered oaks passing by, their thick branches bending beneath a heavy layer of residual snow after last week’s blizzard. She didn’t like lying to her father, who literally risked his life to put food on the table for the two of them. Lilah’s mother had passed away when she was just eleven months old. Stanley never talked about his late wife and would clam up whenever Lilah pressed. Within a year of her death, all of her mementos had been carefully locked away in boxes that were exiled to the attic. Only a handful of photos of her were even allowed in the house, one of which was set in a small, oval frame that collected dust on the far corner of Stanley’s nightstand. Sometimes, when he was at the station, Lilah would sneak into his room and sit on his checkered comforter, gazing at the mother she couldn’t remember. There were times when she’d stare at the photo for the better part of an hour, looking for a similarity that they might have shared. But where Lilah’s long hair was auburn-red – the color of changing oak leaves in the fall – with waves that turned to curls in humidity, her mother’s shoulder-length hair was jet-black and bone straight. Lilah’s round hazel eyes met chestnut-colored almond-shaped eyes, and her small plump mouth frowned at her mother’s wide, lovely lips. But she found comfort in the woman’s smile, and sometimes, when she smiled at herself in the mirror, she saw glimpses of her mother there.
Lilah leaned back in the passenger seat and sighed, wondering if she should have just told her father the truth. Who knows? Maybe he would have said yes.
… And maybe pigs would have flown out of my butt, she grimaced.
“So-o? Is that what you’re wearing tonight?” Seth asked, jarring Lilah from her thoughts.
She looked down at her green sweater self-consciously. “Yes?”
Seth shook his head in exasperation, coughing on the drag of cigarette he had just taken as they turned onto Main Street. Lilah bit her lip; ever since Benny had broken up with him – very publicly, in the middle of the cafeteria, just days after Seth had used the “L” word – Seth had been acting… differently. Goofy, light-hearted jokes had been replaced by snarky comments. His denim jacket, which he and Lilah had spent hours ironing nerdy patches onto, was ditched in place of a studded leather jacket. And, much to Lilah’s dismay, the packs of sour gummy worms that he used to always carry in his pockets had been swapped out for clove cigarettes, the second-hand smoke of which made both of their clothes smell awful by the time they got to school each morning.
“Well, lucky for you, I figured you’d wear something lame, so I got you a little something at the mall last night.” He tilted his head toward the black shopping bag in the backseat.
Lilah gave him a puzzled look as she reached behind his seat to grab the bag. Inside was a very short black denim dress, with holes intentionally worn into the sides and safety pins haphazardly holding the fraying fabric together. Besides the fact that it was nothing like anything she would ever even consider wearing in public, she stared at the dress in awe, fingering the outrageous price tag.
“Seth, how on earth did you afford this?”
“It’s easy to break off the security tag when the fabric is already bla-a-ack,” he answered in a sing-songy voice. “I bet you can’t even tell where the ink exploded! Just don’t wash it with the rest of your laundry or you might find yourself sitting at the goth table for the rest of the year.”
“Wait… you stole this?” she asked incredulously, fingering the holes in the fabric. “What were you thinking? What if you’d been caught?”
“Um, okay? I think you mean, ‘Gee, thank you so much, Seth, for getting me this amazing dress and helping me look like a hottie for my first ever rock concert’? You’re welcome, by the way. Or have you forgotten that Jace will be there tonight?”
Lilah felt her face flush. “I didn’t forget,” she muttered, just as the alarm on her watch started beeping. She took the container of pills from her pocket, started to unscrew the lid, then groaned. “Crap, I forgot my water bottle at home. Do you have anything to drink? Where’s that grape slushie I left in here yesterday?” She twisted around to check the cup holder in the backseat.