Screaming Divas Read online

  Billie’s voice drowned out the sound of the doorbell. Cassie stayed in her room till she heard Johnette shouting up the stairs for her. Better get down there before she starts flirting with him. Cassie turned off the stereo, grabbed her pocketbook, and left the room.

  She found them in the living room—Todd sunk into one of the plush arm chairs, a Coke in hand, and Johnette on the edge of the sofa, leaning toward him.

  “Okay, I’m ready,” Cassie said loudly. “Tell Dad I won’t be out late.”

  Johnette jumped, surprised, then recovered. “You kids have a good time,” she said. “No drinking and driving, Todd.”

  Cassie slit her eyes at Johnette before shooting out the door. Why did she always have to make allusions? And why did she have to fawn all over Cassie’s dates? Was she sorry she’d married a much older man?

  “That’s your mother?” Todd asked once they were in the car.

  “My stepmother.”

  “She doesn’t look like anybody’s mother.” Todd’s eyes were a little too bright. “She’s … she’s gorgeous.”

  They all said that—all the zit-faced boys who climbed the steps to her front door. They were floored by Johnette’s teased honey tresses, her firm Nautilus-trained figure, her huge green eyes. She was your basic thirty-two-year-old trophy wife.

  Cassie sighed. “She’s married, so get over it.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that. C’mon. Don’t get mad. You’re gorgeous, too. I don’t care about your scar. I think you’re the prettiest girl at school.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  Cassie remembered the first time her father had brought Johnette home. He’d met her at the health club where he’d started working out, on his doctor’s advice. Johnette had probably been impressed by her father’s air of wealth and sophistication. And then there was the sob story about the tragic car accident, the dead wife, the motherless waif. Women always fell for that.

  Cassie’s father Dex, short for Dexter, threw open the door one evening and called out, “Honey, I’ve got a surprise for you!”

  Cassie had rushed down the stairs, expecting a new car or maybe a puppy. Whatever. She’d stood in the living room, curious, while her father started up a drum roll on the doorframe. His eyes were on something in the driveway, out of Cassie’s field of vision. Then he did his Tonight Show introduction: “Heeeerrrrre’s Johnette!”

  A giggling blonde stepped into the room. It was summer and she was wearing a skinny-strapped sundress splashed with bright pink flowers.

  Cassie couldn’t fit everything together at first. Was this some secret love child? A singing telegram? Her father’s last girlfriend had been a divorced junior high teacher with kids Cassie’s age.

  “Um, hi,” she said, as Johnette pulled her into a hug. The woman reeked of Chanel No. 5. “Dad?”

  “This is my fiancée.” He was wearing a goofy grin. Cassie was sure that he was drunk or maybe even stoned, but later, when the three of them sat down to dinner, he proudly assured her that his bride-to-be never drank alcohol.

  “I’m strictly vegetarian,” she said. “Macrobiotics have changed my life.”

  “Great.”

  They’d gotten married in Hawaii, sparing the family the embarrassment of a church wedding. Ever since then, there’d been plenty of tofu and carrot juice in the refrigerator. Stacks of yoga videos flanked the TV. Brightly colored jogging bras and skimpy lingerie spilled out of the laundry basket.

  And now, sitting here with Todd drooling over Johnette’s image, she suddenly didn’t want to be on this date. She didn’t want to sit in a dark movie theater for an hour and a half while his hand inched slowly toward her thigh.

  “I’ve got an idea,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Why don’t we forget about the movie and go to The Cave. You know, that new club downtown? I heard they don’t card at the door.”

  “The Cave?” He frowned. “It’s full of freaks. Drug addicts.”

  Todd roamed the halls in his perfect world, but he didn’t know about much besides football and prom and teenage keg parties. She wanted to shock him. “You ever heard of slumming? Sometimes it’s really fun.”

  Cassie had been to The Cave a few times before. The first was with a group of friends after a football game. Rhonda and Lisa had remained stuck to the wall, giggling in the shadows, amazed at their own bravado. Cassie, however, felt right at home. In the dark, no one could see her scar. They were all wounded in some way, she thought, looking at the figures in black around her. She saw the way that their bodies banged and thrashed to the music. They were dancing through their fears. She could do the same.

  “How about we go after the movie?” Todd suggested.

  Maybe he’d heard things and was scared to go. Needed time to buck up his courage.

  “Okay.” Cassie resigned herself to being a hostage. “Whatever.”

  They went into the theater and Todd paid for the tickets. He bought a large popcorn for them to share—oh, how romantic. Cassie carried the Cokes. When they were settled into the burgundy velvet seats and the lights had gone down, Todd pulled something out of his jacket pocket. The silver flask caught light from the screen and flashed briefly. “I’ve got a surprise,” he whispered.

  Cassie watched him unscrew the top and caught a whiff of whiskey. Ugh. Anything but that. She turned away and covered her mouth.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Didn’t he know about her mother? Didn’t he know what whiskey had done to her face?

  “Maybe you should take me home,” she said, not bothering to lower her voice. She’d thought, when he’d first asked her out, that she might sleep with him. She’d been attracted by his hooded eyes and dimpled chin. Plus, there was that muscle-packed body. But now she knew that she wouldn’t.

  Cassie didn’t know why she bothered with high school boys at all. Todd was just like all the rest, incapable of understanding her. Now he was twisting the cap back onto the flask, tucking it back into his jacket. He reached for her hand. She pretended not to notice.

  “Sorry, Cassie. You said you wanted to go to The Cave, so I thought you’d be into it.”

  Someone behind them made a shushing noise and they settled in to watch the movie.

  On a scale of one to ten, the movie was a zero. There were a bunch of men racing around in cars, talking about tits and ass. Todd laughed. Once in a while he looked over at Cassie, hoping to catch her eye, but she kept her eyes on the screen.

  They didn’t go to The Cave after all. Todd knew about some party out on Lake Murray.

  “Fine. Whatever.” Maybe she’d meet some cool people. Maybe she could ditch Todd and find her own way home. He was turning out to be a brainless bore.

  As he drove through the night, ten miles over the speed limit all the way, he did a recap of his favorite scenes from the movie. “Wasn’t it awesome the way the Mustang flew off that ramp and landed nose first in the cow pasture?”

  “Yeah,” Cassie said, “and then they just drove off into the sunset. In real life they’d all have been crushed.”

  Todd shook his head. “You’re so morbid.”

  The party house was out in the middle of nowhere. Todd drove through dense forest along a dirt two-track road till they reached the end of a row of cars parked haphazardly along the driveway. Ferns and saplings had been mowed over to make room for sports cars and primer-stained jalopies. There were a couple of sedans that screamed “Daddy’s” and Cassie wondered how the parents would react in the morning to the scratches and dents and puke on the upholstery.

  “Whose party is this?” Cassie asked, before jumping out of the car.

  “I don’t know. A guy on the team heard about it. He told me it’d be rockin’.”

  “We’ll see,” Cassie murmured. She followed Todd down the last stretch of dirt road to the house.

  The place was lit up like a Christmas tree and music was leaking out into the night. Cassie could hear a guttural voice and the energetic
strumming of a bass guitar.

  She recognized some of the kids that she saw from school. A couple of cheerleaders, too drunk to walk alone, were staggering toward the row of cars. Cassie imagined one of them sticking a key in the ignition and shuddered.

  One of Todd’s football buddies was making out with some girl on the hood of a car. Todd slapped him on the butt and he came up for air for a second. “Yo, Todd! Way to go,” he said leering at Cassie. Then he turned back to the girl, probably someone he wouldn’t even talk to on a regular day at school.

  Cassie pushed through the door. The living room was jam-packed with hot bodies. They pogoed and slammed, making the house shake on its foundation. All furniture had been removed. The carpet was wet in spots from spilled beer.

  The band was in the corner of the room. A skinhead boy from her physics class was wailing on the drums. His timing was off, but nobody cared. The lead singer stomped around in a small square of space, shouting obscenities and cryptic phrases. His hair was shoe-polish black and slicked down against his skull. He wore a ripped white T-shirt, and his skinny tattooed arms flailed around as he screamed. Once in a while he picked up a guitar and thrashed its strings. Scary guy, Cassie thought. Todd would probably think he was a freak.

  Off to the side, a girl with long black hair falling over her face was bent over a bass guitar. She seemed oblivious to everyone else in the room, her attention centered on her fingers and strings. She was the only one of them, Cassie realized, who knew what she was doing. The girl, dressed in a baggy housedress like Cassie’s grandmother sometimes wore, didn’t look up until the song—or whatever—was finished. When she raised her head, Cassie saw her delicately boned face, her angry Asian eyes. Harumi Yokoyama. No way. Harumi in a punk band?

  Cassie didn’t know Harumi personally, but she knew about her. Everyone did. She was some kind of child prodigy and she was always winning awards. Like Cassie, she’d spent a lot of her early years performing in front of audiences. Harumi had kept going, though, while Cassie’s singing career had been cut short. There had been rumors about Harumi going to Juilliard and on concert tours. In her newspaper photos, she always looked completely proper in crewneck sweaters and plaid skirts, but Cassie had always seen something fierce in her eyes. The fire of ambition, she’d thought. But now, looking at her in that lake house living room, she thought that maybe the look was about something else.

  “We’re going to take a break,” the leader screamed. “Let’s refuel!” He grabbed a bottle of beer and poured it over his head, then into his mouth.

  Cassie had almost forgotten about Todd, but now she saw him across the room, talking to some girl with big blonde hair. She had her hand on his bicep as she laughed at something that he said. Cassie saw Todd look through the haze of cigarette and marijuana smoke at her. She realized that he was trying to make her jealous. Ha.

  She wove her way through the crowd, pushed open the sliding glass doors and slipped into the night. She found herself on the deck and stepped to the railing. The wind was moving through the trees. Down a slight incline, waves lapped at the beach.

  There was a couple groping each other in a shadowy corner. They weren’t making much noise. It was almost like being alone, standing there looking into the dark. Then the sliding glass door opened again, and music blared out to her.

  Cassie turned to see Harumi stretching her arms toward the moon.

  “Hey,” Cassie said. “You were great in there.” It was probably a stupid thing to say to a concert musician. Harumi was famous for being good at music. Still, she wanted to say something and she didn’t know what else to say.

  “Thanks.” Harumi moved to the railing, so close that Cassie could feel her body heat. “Sometimes those guys can be morons, though.” She nodded toward the living room where her bandmates were chugging beer.

  “Yeah, I know what you mean,” Cassie said. “High school boys.”

  “I saw you come in with Todd. Are you dating him?”

  Cassie glanced at Harumi’s face. There was no derision there, only curiosity. It was amazing that Harumi had even noticed, amazing that she knew who Cassie and Todd were. She’d always thought that Harumi was beyond high school cliques and gossip, off in a world of her own.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever go out with him again.”

  Harumi laughed.

  They both turned and looked through the window. Todd was kissing the girl with the big blonde hair.

  “Do you want me to give you a ride home?” Harumi asked.

  “What about the band? Aren’t you going to play another set?”

  Harumi shrugged. “They’ll probably be too drunk for that. Or at least too drunk to care whether I’m here or not.”

  Cassie waited on the deck while Harumi went inside to get her bass. No one seemed to be paying attention to her. No one realized that she was leaving. No one, that is, except for Todd. Cassie saw Harumi tap him on the back. He turned around, the blonde’s hands on his chest, and leaned his ear toward Harumi.

  Almost as soon as Harumi veered away from him, he shook off the other girl’s hands and forced his way through the crowd.

  Oh, great. He’s going to try to be manly and claim his woman now. Cassie ducked under the railing and jumped to the ground, then snuck around to the front of the house where the cars were parked. She hunkered down behind a Jeep until she saw Harumi appear.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Harumi said.

  4

  “Dear Cassandra,” Esther Shealy wrote. “Have I ever told you how beautiful I think you are?

  “The Japanese believe that something that is perfect cannot be beautiful. Sometimes a potter will deliberately make a vase lopsided because it’s more interesting that way. Or the guy (or woman) will put a scratch in it or chip it after it’s finished. My Japanese-American friend told me all this and I know it’s true.

  “I think that your heart is probably beautiful, too, in a damaged kind of way. I hope you don’t mind me saying all this. I only write these things because I care about you and think about you all the time.

  “As always, I love you.”

  Esther put down her pen and folded the paper. She closed her eyes and tried to block out the sounds of her brother Mark’s stereo coming from the other side of the wall. She was alone in her room, the desk lamp her only source of light. Her clothes were piled on the floor, twisted and wrinkled. Although she had a pile of homework, she had yet to take her textbooks out of her bookbag. It was so much better to sit in her room, close her eyes, and think about Cassie.

  Cassie didn’t seem to have many friends. Sure, she hung out with the cheerleaders and student council members and the other popular kids—they lived in the same neighborhood of Tudors and palatial brick colonials; Esther had driven by a few times—but there was always something aloof about her. Esther doubted that she had a best friend. Some girls said that she was loose. Slutty. Esther figured those girls were just jealous. In spite of the scar, she was gorgeous. Maybe good looks were isolating. She wanted to be Cassie’s friend, her confidante, her shoulder to cry on. And if anyone said anything bad about Cassie’s scar or her alcoholic mother or her Daddy’s skirt-chasing, well, Esther would punch them in the face. Just like she beat up that snot-nosed kid who picked on Harumi.

  Esther remembered that day, remembered how the summer sun was frying the grass. She and Harumi were sitting on Esther’s front porch, their feet on the hot concrete steps, waiting for the ice cream truck.

  Cicadas buzzed in the bushes and Esther’s little brother Mark wailed inside the house. Then, another sound—the tinkle of the big white van as it rounded the corner. Esther and Harumi had their quarters ready. Esther’s was all slimy from sweat.

  “What are you going to have today?” she asked.

  Harumi looked into the sky and squinted at the sun. “I don’t know. Maybe a grape Popsicle. But then I’ve got to go practice my violin.”

  Harumi was always practicing. Esther thought that her mother was cruel
for making her practice all the time. Plus, Harumi was Esther’s only friend and when she was busy studying Japanese or music or the abacus, there was no one else to play with.

  “Here it comes.” Harumi stood up and brushed off the back of her skirt. She waited till Esther had stood, and then led the way down the sidewalk.

  The music tinkled like a wind-up toy, louder and louder, till the van was in full view. The vehicle came to a halt and a man in a white uniform and matching cap climbed out. All over the neighborhood, doors opened and kids spilled into the street. There were five or six of them pulling on the man’s jacket and waving their money in the air.

  Harumi and Esther approached slowly and solemnly. When they got to the van, they waited at the fringe until they were noticed.

  “What’ll it be, ladies?” The man was about the same age as Esther’s father and his face was sprinkled with freckles.

  The other kids, three boys and two girls, stood off to one side licking their fudge bars. They whispered among themselves and kicked at the pebbles in the road.

  When the nice man in the white suit had taken their money, he doffed his cap at them and climbed back into the driver’s seat. Soon the van was tinkling its way into another neighborhood.

  Esther and Harumi turned and started to go back to the Shealy’s yard.

  “China girl,” a falsetto voice chimed behind them. “Ain’t no chop suey ice cream here. Why don’t y’all go on home?”

  Esther turned to see a boy slightly shorter than herself in a striped T-shirt and yellow shorts. He bit down on his lower lip, making buckteeth.

  Harumi didn’t look back. She kept her eyes on the ground and her feet in forward motion.

  Although her friend didn’t respond, Esther knew that she had heard the barbs and that they had lodged deep within her. But Harumi wasn’t the type to scream and shout. She needed someone like Esther to defend her.

  “She’s not from China, you idiot,” Esther shouted. “She’s American.”