Cat's eye полностью

“I wonder if they’re wearing foundation garments,” says Cordelia, inhaling. We’re trying for a return to our hilarity, but it isn’t working, I think of the Eatons, both of them or maybe more, tucked away for storage as if they’re fur coats or gold watches, in their private tomb, which is all the stranger for being shaped like a Greek temple. Where exactly are they, inside there? On biers? In cobwebby stone-lidded coffins, as in the horror comics? I think of their jewels, glinting in the dark—of course they would have jewels—and of their long dry hair. Your hair grows after you’re dead, also your fingernails. I don’t know how I know this.

“Mrs. Eaton is really a vampire, you know,” I say slowly. “She comes out at night. She’s dressed in a long white ballgown. That door creaks open and she comes out.”

“To drink the blood of Lump-lumps out too late,” says Cordelia hopefully, stubbing out her cigarette. I refuse to laugh. “No, seriously,” I say. “She does. I happen to know.”

Cordelia looks at me nervously. The snow is falling, it’s twilight, there’s nobody here but us. “Yeah?” she says, waiting for the joke.

“Yes,” I say. “We sometimes go together. Because I’m a vampire too.”

“You’re not,” says Cordelia, standing up, brushing off the snow. She’s smiling uncertainly.

“How do you know?” I say. “How do you know?”

“You walk around in the daytime,” Cordelia says.

“That’s not me,” I say. “That’s my twin. You’ve never known, but I’m one of a twins. Identical ones, you can’t tell us apart by looking. Anyway it’s just the sun I have to avoid. On days like this it’s perfectly safe. I have a coffin full of earth where I sleep; it’s down in, down in”—I search for a likely place—“the cellar.”

“You’re being silly,” Cordelia says.

I stand up too. “Silly?” I say. I lower my voice. “I’m just telling you the truth. You’re my friend, I thought it was time you knew. I’m really dead. I’ve been dead for years.”

“You can stop playing that,” says Cordelia sharply. I’m surprised at how much pleasure this gives me, to know she’s so uneasy, to know I have this much power over her.

“Playing what?” I say. “I’m not playing. But you don’t have to worry. I won’t suck any of your blood. You’re my friend.”

“Don’t be a brat,” says Cordelia.

“In a minute,” I say, “we’re going to be locked in.” It strikes both of us that this may be the truth. We run along the roadway, gasping and laughing, and find a large gateway, which is luckily still open. Beyond it is Yonge Street, lined with rush-hour traffic.

Cordelia wants to point out Lump-lump Family cars, but I’m tired of this. I have a denser, more malevolent little triumph to finger: energy has passed between us, and I am stronger.

Chapter 43

N ow I’m in Grade Eleven, and as tall as many other girls, which is not very tall. I have a charcoal-gray pencil skirt that’s hard to walk in despite the kick pleat, and a bat wing sweater, a red one with modulated gray horizontal stripes across it. I have a wide black elastic cinch belt with an imitation gold clasp buckle, and flat ballerina shoes of velveteen that scuff as I walk and bulge out at the sides. I have a shortie coat to go with the pencil skirt. This is the look: boxy and flared at the top, with a long skinny stem of thighs and legs coming out the bottom. I have a mean mouth.

I have such a mean mouth that I become known for it. I don’t use it unless provoked, but then I open my mean mouth and short, devastating comments come out of it. I hardly have to think them up, they’re just there suddenly, like thought balloons with light bulbs in them. “Don’t be a pain” and “Takes one to know one” are standard repartee among girls, but I go much farther than that. I’m willing to say pain in the ass, which skirts good taste, and to go in for crushing inventions, such as The Walking Pimple and The Before Part of an Arrid Armpit Ad. If any girl calls me a brain, I say, “Better a brain than a pin-headed moron like you.” “Use much hair grease?” I will say, or “Suck much?” I know where the weak spots are.

“Suck” is an especially satisfying word, especially annihilating. Boys say it mostly, to one another; it suggests thumbs and babies. I haven’t yet considered what else might be sucked, or under what circumstances.

Girls at school learn to look out for my mean mouth and avoid it. I walk the halls surrounded by an aura of potential verbal danger, and am treated with caution, which suits me fine. Strangely enough, my mean behavior doesn’t result in fewer friends, but, on the surface, more. The girls are afraid of me but they know where it’s safest: beside me, half a step behind. “Elaine is a riot,” they say, without conviction. Some of them are already collecting china and housewares, and have Hope Chests. For this kind of thing I feel amused disdain. And yet it disturbs me to learn I have hurt someone unintentionally. I want all my hurts to be intentional.