Coach pauses, takes a quick look around to make sure no one else is in earshot. She squints and a flush mounts in her cheeks. “Anybody giving you grief? About your face, or the mask, either one?”
“No’m,” the Mutant lies, without any effort at making it sound as if she believes it herself.
“How are things otherwise? You okay, staying with Sam and his folks?”
It’s as good a time as any. The Mutant explains to the coach about being emancipated in order to stay at Greenspark. Coach suffers a visible flutter of alarm at the thought of Gauthier being transferred.
“Take care of yourself, now,” she instructs gruffly, and lets the Mutant go.
A ghostly scorch of cigarette smoke tinges the air in the girls’ room. The Mutant wrinkles her nose appreciatively but the smoker is long gone—no chance to bum a butt. She unwraps her headscarf, threads it through the belt loops of her jeans and studies herself bareheaded, fascinated as always at how quick and relentless hair is. Already the stubble emphasizes the shape of her head. To wear her nose ring again makes her feel less naked but she is disappointed that it does not restore her strength. She still looks like the victim of something, and feels diminished and disarmed. Her full hardware, her bad armor, would give the scar a forbidding setting and make her feel fierce again.
Other girls come chattering into the lavatory as she leans into the mirror to thicken her eyeliner. Cady Flemming parks her bony ass at the next basin and starts whipping up her hair in the front. She plies a hairbrush with one hand and a can of hairspray with the other.
“I hear a mirror exploded when you looked at it,” Cady says around a wad of gum. “Or did you get your face caught in Samson’s zipper?”
One girl moans, “Oh shit,” and several others snicker.
A sideways glance shows the Mutant three of her own teammates watching and listening avidly. More than Cady’s provocation, she resents their gawking.
She purses her lips in a kiss-off. “Stick your face in the toilet bowl all day, Flem, you’re bound to hear all the shit.”
The other girls gasp horrified laughter.
Eyes narrowed in rage, Cady turns her head slowly to stare at the Mutant. Her hair looks like the glossy artificial helmet of floss on a Barbie whose little girl owner has worked it so hard that it clumps into the separate root plugs in the vinyl scalp. She looks sick, like someone being slowly poisoned by low-level radiation.
“I didn’t think you could get any uglier,” Cady snarls. “Samson should finish the job and put your face in a bandsaw.”
“Oh shut up, Cady,” Nat Linscott breaks in suddenly.
“Yeah,” Sarah Kendall agrees. “You’re looking like homemade shit yourself.”
Deanie’s lungs feel full of sharp edges. In the mirror’s seamless surface, the scar stitches from her nose ring to her earlobe. Her fists clench.
Nat shoulders by Cady to put her arm around the Mutant’s waist. “Nevermind her,” Nat murmurs.
Sarah steps closer as if to help protect her from Cady.
The Mutant sticks out her chin and swipes at her eyes. She laughs.
Nat smiles encouragingly and Sarah fumbles a wad of tissue at the Mutant.
The other girls begin to go about their business, murmuring and giggling. Cady Flemming sniffs scornfully and slings her handbag over her shoulder to head for the door.
Shaking off Nat, the Mutant steps into Cady’s path. “Flem,” she says, “Bigger wears buttonflies. My mother’s boyfriend pounded my chains into my face. So now you tell me—what’s your excuse for the way you look? Why are you eating yourself up?”
Cornered, the cheerleader looks frantically from girl to girl, looking for a way out. She opens her mouth, gasping and choking. Clutching her stomach, she bends over the nearest basin and vomits violently.
“Get the nurse,” the Mutant orders.
“Right,” Sarah responds and goes flying out the door.
The Mutant hesitates, then steps up and puts a supporting arm around Cady’s waist. On the other side, Nat takes the same position. Over the sick girl’s heaving back, Nat Linscott and Deanie Gauthier meet each other’s eyes.
36
Huge flimsy flakes tumble silently from the darkness as the boys spill from their practice. From the cover on the ground it’s been snowing awhile. The truck chokes and shivers as Sam coaxes it to ignition. Deanie’s attention is on tape selection; she holds up a cassette so he can read the label and when he nods, inserts it into the player. Wendy O., trying to pass as Joan Jett.
“Belt up,” Sam tells Deanie, tugging at his own.
The truck’s wipers sweep over the windshield to the heavy beat from the speakers. In the arc of cleared vision, Pete Fosse reaches his Blazer across the parking lot and shoves a key into the door lock. A sudden movement catches Sam’s eye: a man erupting from a listing Buick station wagon parked behind the Blazer, striding toward Pete. Deanie strains forward against her seatbelt. As the wipers throw loose snow across the glass, the man raises an object in his right hand. The wiper clears the glass again and Sam sees it is a baseball bat. And he recognizes the man, a familiar face at games, one of the more rabid local fans. Dale Michaud. Lexie’s father.
“Jesus Christ,” Sam whispers.
In the few seconds he fumbles with the catch of his seatbelt, between the sweeps of the wiper, Pete turns and lifts his arms in defense as he tries to back away. Michaud takes a vicious cross-cut at the level of Pete’s head just as Pete loses his footing and goes sliding into the man’s spread legs. The man goes down with him, rolls away and comes up again as Pete scrambles to his feet and Michaud swings the bat, aiming squarely between Pete’s legs. Tucking and swiveling to protect himself, Pete takes the blow on his left knee.
Sam flings open his door and hurls himself out to race
