It was supposed to be such a clear-cut assignment. The Aiedeo are a legacy of powerful warrior queens that protect the world. Violet is an Aiedeo who has apparently gone rogue in the past three years.
Perhaps “going rogue” is an overstatement because that would require Violet to take some kind of action. In the month that he’s spent watching her, he hasn’t seen Violet do anything at all.
Nevertheless, the Aiedeo need to know if Violet can still be of use to them. If not, then she poses too great a threat to have around.
* * *
We cram into the Talberts’ tight living room. The top two floors of the funeral home are the family’s private space. I squeeze into a spot on the overstuffed sectional between Jessica Chang and a new girl whose name I can’t remember. It’s been a while since I’ve been up here but not much has changed except that everything is a little less shiny these days.
I notice new pastel-colored throw pillows strewn across the shag rug and the whitewashed coffee table. It seems that all that’s needed to separate the living and the dead is a staircase and some home décor from Pier 1. I wonder if the spirits here actually follow the rules and stay downstairs, unlike mine, who used to show up anytime and anywhere they pleased.
There’s an entire wall filled with Naomi’s trophies. Some of them are from dance and cheerleading but the majority of them are social media awards. In the past few years, Naomi’s empire has expanded from our tiny town to what sometimes feels like the entire online stratosphere. Between her fashion blog, Cornfed Cutie, Instagram, and whatever the hell else, Naomi is a major influencer. Her social media consists mostly of her kickin’ it on the farm—riding a tractor, baling hay, milking cows, and running through endless wheat fields. Usually while wearing a bikini. I’m sure Naomi, who never misses an opportunity to show off, loves every minute of the attention she gets from her fame, but the whole farm-girl thing is a stretch; I’ve never seen her do anything around livestock that doesn’t involve a wind machine and a camera. Nevertheless, Naomi’s legions of followers, which seems to include our entire town, worship her.
“Want some, Violet?” Jessica asks as she holds out a bag of almond M&M’s. “If I had known we were gonna have a meeting after our two-hour practice, I would have totally gorged at lunch.”
Jessica’s parents moved here from mainland China and own the only Asian grocery store in town. Kids at school are always telling Jess how she looks just like Mulan, the same way they compare me to Jasmine from Aladdin. For the record, neither of us looks like either of them.
Jess has a wide, sexy space between her two front teeth and messy candy-apple-red-dyed hair that falls over her eyes and always gives her the appearance of having just come from a wild hookup. Her look is borderline edgy for Meadowdale, where shellacked mall hair and glitter eyeshadow are the norm, but as long as Jess can tame her locks with a scrunchie, she’s still considered acceptable for the Squad.
I am way less indie rocker and much more generic brown girl on the cover of a college course catalog. With my big, dark eyes, jet-black hair, and round face, I have that ambiguous minority look that allows me to check multiple boxes on surveys. Even though I think I look so Indian that my picture belongs on a bag of basmati rice, I’m often mistaken for Mexican or biracial. On occasion, people want to know what casino my tribe owns. Of course, I’ve had my fair share of being mistaken for an “A-rab” by rednecks who usually follow that up with a slew of choice ethnic slurs. That’s the thing about racists—they hardly ever get their racism right.
“You know we’re always on Naomi’s clock,” I whisper as I grab a handful of candy. “Which includes making time for some torture.”
I glance over at Madison sitting at the other end of the sofa. Her eyes are still red around the rims but she’s chatting with some of the girls next to her and it seems like she’s calmed down some.
“Oh, please, that puss is gonna have to grow a pair if she wants to stick around,” Jessica says between mouthfuls of chocolate.
Before my freshman year in high school, I tried out for the cheer team and didn’t make it. I was told I could be an alternate, which was a nice way of saying “You’re not good enough,” or join the Meadowdale High School dance team. I chose the latter and actually liked it.
Then when I was a sophomore, there were districtwide budget cuts and not enough money to fund both cheer and dance. So to the horror of Naomi and all of the other cheerleaders who thought they were superior, the two teams had to consolidate into a single cheer and dance squad—the poms. Officially, since our school mascot is a pioneer (neither tough nor menacing but politically correct), we’re the Pioneer Poms.
These days all twelve of us girls are required to dance and cheer. The newly formed team pretty much sucks at both. The dance girls try to blame it on the cheerleaders and vice versa. Mrs. Fischer, our coach, has stopped coming to our practices, although I suspect that has more to do with Captain Naomi than the team’s inabilities.
The only prize the Squad has earned is third place in a cheer competition where only three schools competed. We are ranked second-to-last in our district. Yet that doesn’t stop some of the girls from acting with all the pomp and attitude that I would think would be reserved for teams that are in the national top ten.
Tomorrow is our first pep rally and football game of the new school year. It’s a chance for the Squad to redeem itself after its dismal last season. Not gonna happen.
“Girls, listen up!” Collette Davis shouts. She stands still in the middle of the room with her curly blond ponytail swooshing back and forth behind her. Collette holds up a red, white, and blue hair bow similar to the kind that the Squad wears for performances. “We’re going to be selling these again this year for the Meadowdale Pioneers Spirit Fest.”
All of us lift our cell phones to take a photo of the bow. “OMG, the organizers still use Facebook,” Collette continues. “So you can get all the details about the event there. Use your parents’ account if you don’t have one. But it’s going on next week so I need everyone to sign up for a slot at our booth.”
Collette starts to sit down, then pauses. “OMG, I almost blanked out there. Duh! We need you guys to get your moms to sew like a thousand bows per mom. They can buy all the supplies at That’s Sew Crafty or Walmart. Make sure your mom mentions Pioneer Poms to get the ten percent discount.”
The girls start to text the photos of the bows to their mothers with puzzling messages like U need to 2 make 1K 4 Pioneer Poms ASAP.
Collette beams until she makes eye contact with me. “OMG, Violet! I totally forgot that you don’t have a mom. I mean, you don’t need a mom to make the bows. Your nanny can probably make them. Or, you know, someone else’s mom. Maybe my mom could do it . . .”
Collette’s face turns a deeper shade of red every time she says mom. The right thing for me to do is put the poor girl out of her misery and change the subject. But sometimes it is just so fun to watch people trip over themselves when handling this “sensitive” issue.
My dead mother accounts for many awkward moments in my life when hypercautious acquaintances assume that just the mere mention of the word mother or any of its delightful variations will cause me irreparable damage. But Mommy, Mama, Mom, or whatever I would have called her if I’d had a chance has been dead for fourteen of my sixteen years. I am over it.