Catherine’s eyelashes go from blond to brunette, but her hair is red. She wears L’Oreal Volumizer Darkest Black.
“I tried going without it,” she says into the mirror. “In college. Everyone said I looked sleepy, except the ones who said I looked scary.”
“Moon Baby flashbacks?” laughs Jake.
“Yes! Enough people recoiled from my giant head when I was little!”
And she doesn’t see how bold her eyes are, without it: how cold and brave. She should be on an album cover with a bloody lip. She should be standing on a parapet, rock in hand, fighting to the last child.
Friday, September 16, 2005
She gets off the train at the forest. The forest is dead people, which is okay: they weren’t ever alive and they don’t really want her to join them.
Cosette walks through dry leaves. Some of the dead people stir to watch her. When the people condense enough so that she’s walking a path, she sets Millicent down. The kitten yawns, stretches and pads off confidently: she doesn’t seem to need her eyes.
Cosette stops when Millicent does, before a man in shredded sackcloth. The starlight turns his blood black.
“Have you seen stars before?” he rasps. Cosette understands about speech.
Thursday, September 15, 2005
“I’m younger than you!” gloats Lyndsey.
“I was born a minute later,” snaps Lynnette.
“Took myself a little trip to Europa,” Lyndsey’s laugh crackles over the spacephone. “Near lightspeed. Time dilation, baby. Lost a month!”
“Beat you by six,” says Lynnette, much later, from Pluto.
“Two years!” retorts Lyndsey, from Rupert.
They leave for Alpha Centauri within days of each other, but when they meet again Lyndsey’s losing.
“We’ve still got the same DNA.” Lynnette’s smirk is too old for her face. “It’s perfectly legal.”
“Your brain in a clone body is not a twin!” fumes Lyndsey.
“You’re right. We’re dectuplets.”
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
“I’d like you to meet your new stepmother,” says her father, “and two stepsisters!”
“Fuck that,” says Cinder, and takes a Greyhound into the city. She gets a minimum-wage job and a small but decent apartment; she saves everything she can and studies hard for her GED. Her essay dazzles the admissions at Pitt, and with a scholarship plus some smart loans, she’s on her way to an MBA cum laude. Soon she’s the CFO of a Fortune 500 company! She drives a vintage Boxster and smokes only experimental CIA weed.
How’s that for a fairy tale, you little bastard?
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
“You’re wondering,” says Bailey, “why the door’s closed, the cast is here, the writers are here, I’m here, but the directors aren’t. The guy you don’t know is Jeff.”
Jeff nods. His t-shirt reads abacabb–True Fatality!
“Usually, Jeff’s a mole,” says Bailey. “Studios hire him to leak what they want leaked: rumors, red herrings, building buzz. He works for us now. What you need to know, and keep to yourselves, is that as soon as we leave this room our set is on his filthy little camera. All day. Every day.”
Pause.
“Hey,” says South, “I remember that game!”
Monday, September 12, 2005
“They’re gone!” comes the cry from the parapet, as rosy Dawn fingers the sky. “They left in the night!”
Priam’s there instantly, frowning at the beach. It’s littered with the scraps and trash of ten years’ encampment, but the army has evaporated.
“What’s that?” he snaps, pointing.
“A tiny vehicle of some sort,” says one of his captains. “Perhaps it’s a peace offering?”
“Open the gates!” thunders Priam. “Its minisculity will please my lady Hecuba.”
In the dark, Bongo grins. He dabs sweat from his greasepaint and loosens his paddle in its scabbard. At last, he thinks, they’re sending us in.
Friday, September 9, 2005
Someone’s replaced her hospital bandage with a new one, softer, handmade. Eventually the same person tries to remove it; Holly always pulls away. She realizes slowly that she’s not in the hospital, but she’s not curious. She eats and sleeps and bathes one-handed.
“I’m afraid it changed the lines on my palm,” she says after a week of silence. “I broke some glass. I’m afraid there will be scars, and…” She clears her throat.
“You should have someone read it for you,” says Maya. “I know a g–lady. She’s really good.”
Holly hears rain on the window. She nods.
Wednesday, September 7, 2005
Maud tanks at the box office. She uses the old Sherman that sat in front of County Water for who knows how long, getting grass stuck to it while bored kids picked at the padlocks.
Turns out it was still loaded.
“Glad nobody got hurt,” says Trey as they watch from the parking lot. He’s still holding the bucket of soda fountain nozzles.
“She didn’t start shooting until everybody was out,” says Bernadette. The tank groans over the central concession island. “Unless somebody was in the bathroom.”
“Jurassic Park,” says Trey.
“Wayne Knight.”
“Seinfeld.”
“Can’t use TV.”
“Seinfeld the Motion Picture.“
Tuesday, September 6, 2005