First off, I’d like to apologize for the long delay in producing this work. One major reason for that is just sheer size. The first three books in the series were roughly 100,000 words each. The Baptism of Power is about 170,000! From a business standpoint it would be better to split the book into two. However, artistically, I believe the story is better as a single complete entity, so unabridged and unbroken it shall be. The second issue was caused by some business-related annoyances that I won’t get into but are now resolved. I feel the wait was worth it.
I am pleased to announce book four The Baptism of Power is now available for preorder at the discounted price of $2.99! The launch is scheduled for 4/7, shortly thereafter the price will revert to $5.99. This tale reflects the more intimate tone and smaller scale of Monster of the Dark than The Rogue Wolf or Cause of Death. I hope you enjoy it! First chapter included below:
Chapter 1
The Lucky Ring
Maxine, groaning and cursing under her breath, wasn’t ready for the light. Dawn always came too soon. The teenager tossed and turned before she poked a steely middle finger out from under her covers toward the crack in her window blinds that allowed the sun to bathe her face. She threw off her covers and sat up straight.
Her room, the sanctuary that was her prison, wasn’t much. Her mother didn’t have a cent to spare for her daughter and wouldn’t spend it on her even if she did. Maxine had long since abandoned frivolous nonsense like decorating the place. That would come later, though not this room, and only after some hard work and a bit of luck, of course. The only items in the room were a few bookshelves, a small table, and her nightstand.
She stepped out of bed and winced. Her left foot stung from time to time, and in this instance, the pain shot up her entire leg. She immediately fell to the floor, but not from her foot. She’d tripped over the pile of college brochures she’d been reading last night. The surprise of the fall was more annoying than the pain of falling, but neither was her chief concern. Her groggy mind came into sharp focus as she lay on the ground, completely still. The clock caught her eye; she was running late, but prudence made her hold her breath a minute more, even if it risked detention later. Eventually she concluded that no one had been stirred by her tumble, and she let her breath go and sat up on her knees.
Maxine hastily put the brochures back in the box she stored them in. It was a bit ridiculous how many she had at this point. She had a few for Harvard, and then of course there was Johns Hopkins, Cornell, and even the University of Montana. Her only real requirement was that the school was not here. The only thing that stopped her from applying to every school under the sun was the application fees.
She pushed the box under her bed and, in seconds, was off the floor with a comb zipping through her long, silky, raven-black hair. She was happy that was the only thing she shared with her mother. She’d always hoped she’d be tall like her father was, but she’d unfortunately topped out at about average. She could move like he had, though: crisp, nimble, and athletic. People still talked about how he had torn up the local basketball court.
Maxine almost danced around her cluttered room, quick and silent as a cat, as she searched for the secondhand clothes that would be her attire for the day. She didn’t own much, but everything she did own was in here, and it was better if things were hard to find. Neat stacks of clothes could be gone through quickly and often weren’t ever seen again. How her mother or her mother’s boyfriends never found the money she stashed was beyond her—the FBI could learn a thing or two from how they tossed a room—but she wasn’t one to begrudge small miracles.
She glanced at her clock again. “No time to eat,” she said softly to herself.
Her eyes found the picture of her father on her nightstand. She picked it up and kissed him goodbye as she did every day. Sometimes she could feel a tear slide down her cheek when her lips touched the glass, but today was not one of those days.
With one hand, she hefted her backpack onto her shoulder; the other trembled toward the door lock as she reluctantly got closer. She might make her bus if she ran. Running, however, was the last thing on her mind. Unlocking the door was the first step. She licked her lips as she did so. The lock always made a loud clunk when it was undone, despite her considerable efforts to smooth the action.
Today, like every day, the wretched clunk let everyone know it was morning as if it were a mechanical rooster. Maxine held her breath and then pressed an ear to the door. If she was fast, she could relock it and pretend she was asleep. That didn’t always work, but there was little else she could do. This time, though, there was nothing. They didn’t hear it, she concluded as she breathed a little easier.
She twisted the knob slowly. It and the door itself were quiet enough that no one else would ever hear them, but Maxine was on edge nevertheless. No matter how late she stayed up and no matter how exhausted she became, in these moments, a seismometer had nothing on her. If a mouse coughed on the other side of the room, she’d swear it was a stampede of elephants. Yet, the door was open before she knew it. She took a quick breath, shuddered as she let it go, and moved out.
The first floorboard was loose. The super didn’t care to fix it, and she was uncomfortable with fully explaining why it was needed. She gripped the strap of her backpack and stepped over the loose board. The living room was strewn with its usual landmines of paper bags, bottles, glass pipes, and dishware. It was hard to see the actual floor. Maxine shuffled her feet when required, stepped carefully over what was in front of her, and walked cautiously around everything else.
An ugly green couch dominated the center of the room. The TV across from it was off. Her mother’s latest off-again, on-again boyfriend, Jodie, was passed out on it. Unfortunately, their relationship was more on than off. She couldn’t stand him. Just thinking about the times he spoke to her—always face to face and separated by only inches with his rotten, alcohol-soaked breath gassing her while he ran a finger through her hair—made her shudder.
Maxine rounded the couch as silently as possible, even going so far as to hold her breath as she went. Her eyes flashed between Jodie and down the hall, where Juanita slept. The fact that he was out here might mean they’d had a fight. It was just as probable, however, that he had simply been unable to muster the energy to amble to her mother’s room. Whatever the reason, Juanita’s bedroom door was open. It was hard to tell from where Maxine was standing, but it looked like her mother was passed out as well. Snores rumbled through the apartment like the low growls of a dragon guarding a horde of junk.
The front door was just a few steps away now. The entire place stunk of rotten food and unwashed feet. She yearned for the relative respite of the outside hall but did not rush. She bit her lip as she dealt with one more lock.
Clunk!
Something stirred behind her. It could have been a rat, a cockroach the size of a rat, or a person who put both creatures to shame. Maxine didn’t turn to see what it was. Instead, the door was open in a flash, and she bolted into the hallway before closing it just as quickly. She sprinted down the hall and down a flight of stairs before she stopped to catch her breath. She’d heard a few curses from her apartment—she had slammed the door. If she were lucky, they’d pass off the noise as a morning hangover aberration. If not, it didn’t really matter. Juanita didn’t need an actual reason to yell at her or hit her.
Maxine continued down the stairs at a rush. The bus that she might be able to catch was in the forefront of her mind now that she was out of the apartment. Hardly anyone was in the halls. Most were already at work by now, and everyone else was still sleeping off the previous night. She was out of the building in a couple minutes, and then was the next daily gauntlet. The morning’s quiet peace lasted for a few seconds before the air filled with the sound of whistles and calls from a group of three men across the street.
There was no avoiding them. It had been the same routine day after day since she was about fourteen. They seemed to do nothing other than sit on their stoop and talk about whatever caught their eye. She’d never seen them anywhere else or doing anything else. Fungus was more productive. In any case, they said the word “baby” more often than it was said in a maternity ward. There were other, less savory things said about her or to her, but she pretended to hear none of it. She had given them the finger once, and it was like dropping an overfed cow in front of a pack of starving hyenas. They just wanted attention—any kind of attention. In this instance, though, ignoring them wasn’t too hard. She could see the bus coming.
The teenager sprinted. Unfortunately there were only two people waiting at the stop. She hoped several would be getting off to give her more time, but she doubted she’d be that lucky. She and luck weren’t friends. Luck had a Maxine voodoo doll that it tortured daily. By this point, the doll had to look like a hedgehog. The bus stopped, the people waiting got on, and no one got off. Then it seemed to plug in the afterburners to get away.
“Hey!” she screamed while waving her arms. “Hey, wait! Please!” But it was no use. The bus turned the corner and was gone.
She slid to a stop and panted, even bending over to catch her breath. She thought she heard the group of men laughing at her, but it was hard to hear anything over her throbbing pulse. Just then, a blueish-white light caught her eye. She could think of nothing that could cause it. A bolt of lightning maybe, but the sky was clear, and the light had come from below her. She wasn’t completely sure she’d seen something anyway. Yet, right as she was going to begin her long walk to school, the light came again and then disappeared after a few seconds. It seemed to be coming from a storm drain. Maxine tipped her head, curiosity driving her young mind, as she got closer. No one else on the sidewalk had noticed. The light didn’t reappear, but there was no questioning that she had seen it.
She approached the storm drain as she wondered why she was being so crazily stupid. Who cared about wayward light? Hunger was beginning to gnaw her stomach, and a fast food restaurant was just down the street. She would be better off spending her time by getting a quick bite to eat than looking for whatever in a proverbial toilet. But this was one of the more benignly peculiar happenstances in her life, and she just couldn’t help herself.
She couldn’t see much of anything while standing, so she fell to her hands and knees. The light wasn’t from a misplaced LED, as she’d first assumed. Whatever it was, it was hard to see, but it seemed small and maybe circular in shape. Annoyingly, it was also just out of reach. She looked around and picked up one of the many soda straws littered all over the street, which would do if the thing wasn’t too heavy. Maxine’s hand crept between the grates as she worked hard not to touch anything. Though, when she considered it more completely, if she touched some of the gunk in there and had to cut off her arm, perhaps she’d be able to apply to disability scholarships.
Her straw teased the trinket several times. She was close, but it was hard to get the right angle. The final inch required her to turn her head to get the necessary reach, causing her to rely on feel alone while also trying to prevent her hair from slipping to the ground. Passersby were beginning to stare and comment, but Maxine ignored it all as she patiently worked. After some deft maneuvering, the end of the straw felt unduly heavy. She slowly withdrew her hand and was too shocked by her prize to even smile.
It was a ring, and quite a gorgeous one, in fact. She had never much cared for jewelry—might as well wish for wings to fly to the moon—but the ring had to be worth more than most of the cars driving by combined. It had a gold band with a large, blueish-colored diamond. She figured that was the source of the light she had seen, but she could have sworn it wasn’t a reflection but a glow. The ring wasn’t very dirty, and she examined it closer and noted that it didn’t have scratches or any other signs of damage. It couldn’t have been in there very long. She wondered most of all why it was even in there in the first place. No one who lived here, not even the drug kingpins, could afford something like this. Perhaps some downtown bigshot had gotten very, very lost and, in a panic, threw their ring down a storm drain before they jetted to someplace more civilized. Yeah, that made perfect sense.
Could it? she mused.
Why it was in the drain ultimately didn’t matter; she already knew which pawn shop she’d take it to. As she tested the ring between several candidate fingers, her mind danced with the possibilities of being able to fully fund a beater car, an apartment, and even multiple semesters with her little find. Yet, she would probably never in her life be in possession of anything like this again. She had to try it on, if only for fun, and the ring finger on her left hand seemed the best choice. She smiled broadly when she slipped it on and it fit perfectly. In fact, after a second, it seemed to have been made for her hand. Any elation left her quickly, though, as she was overcome with a dizzy spell.
“I’m hungrier than I thought,” she said softly, bringing a hand to her head.
Maxine staggered back and forth. The world seemed to be spinning, and closing her eyes barely helped. Then the feeling stopped. She felt completely normal…except for one thing. A nagging urge told her to take a step to her right. She gave in to the feeling and, a second later, a bus just missed her.
She snapped her eyes shut and turn her head sharply out of reflex. A woman on the sidewalk yelped. Maxine opened her eyes slowly. Her hands trembled from the aftershocks of her racing pulse, but she was otherwise fine. Maxine looked at the woman then tipped her head. She’d thought the woman screamed because she was about to witness a teenage girl do her best impression of a bug on a windscreen, but that was not the reason at all. The bus drove through a large puddle. The woman was completely soaked.
Maxine sighed as she patted her body to check her own damage. She’d rather trudge to school in wet clothes than risk going back to the apartment to change. To her surprise, however, she was completely dry, and now that she thought about it, she couldn’t recall feeling any water splash her.
“I don’t know how you didn’t get wet,” the woman said while she wrung out the bottom of her blouse.
“I don’t know how I’m not dead,” she replied with a shrug, which was more important.
The woman groaned something, but Maxine could only smile. Perhaps she and luck were finally on speaking terms. Hell, this was quickly turning into one of the better days of her life.
She began her long trek to school as she wondered how long the streak would last. But something bothered her from the very first step. It was difficult to describe the feeling. She wasn’t feeling dizzy again or suffering from any physical malady. It felt like a voice was whispering in her ear. She had no idea what it was saying, though. She wasn’t actually hearing anything; the communication was like a soft pinprick that played along the edge of what she could perceive, and it seemed like it was prompting her to do something.
Without thinking about it, she strapped her backpack over both shoulders. She hadn’t carried it this way since she was a little girl, but it suddenly felt painfully annoying to proceed with the bag on one shoulder as she usually did. Even when worn evenly, though, it still bothered her. The weight seemed to throw her off her natural step. Natural step? What was her natural step? She felt quite apart from her own body, as if she was an alien piloting a crude meat suit. At the same time, however, she felt lightweight, like she could waltz on the tops of clouds.
The dueling sensations and niggling urges made her stop in place. It was all she could think to do. Even that felt wrong, though. It was like she didn’t know how to walk or even how to stand still. What the hell is going on with me?
She dropped her backpack to her feet and felt relief greater than any time in her life since her father had caught her eating cookie dough and, instead of punishing her, handed her a spoon. She stood there, completely still. Slowly, the niggling urges and sensations ebbed away. Her body felt like any other time in her life—normal. Then she moved an arm, and nothing felt normal at all. Maxine could feel her body minutely change to adjust her balance. Everything flowed like energy through a definite point below her belly button—her center of gravity, she eventually realized. The sensation was pleasant, like a soft tickle. She moved her other arm and felt the same sensation. The more she allowed herself to just react, and the less she consciously thought about what she was doing, the softer and more pleasant the tickle became.
To her left was a long, raised curb corralling a row of trees. The teen walked onto the curb and took a few steps along it, as if it were a balance beam. At first, she held out her arms to keep herself steady, but then she relaxed and didn’t bother. Like before, the less she thought about what she was doing, the easier it became. It was like her body was more responding to her will than it being…well, her body. She was already spinning through a pirouette before she realized how nuts it would be to do so. She couldn’t help a curious frown. Not a single muscle had wobbled or wavered. She always had to think just to do a cartwheel.
She spun again, but this time with her eyes closed, and again her performance was utterly steady and even elegant in execution. The soft tickle radiated through her the entire time, and she loved it. She skipped and hopped through another pirouette, this time completely in the air. When she landed, she broke into a full run. The end of the curb fast approached, and without even thinking about what she was doing, she jumped off the edge in a forward flip. Her feet hit the ground firmly but softly, as if she were a piece of steel delicately placed. Maxine stood still as she breathed hard, not from the physical exertion but from sheer amazement. I should have broken my neck.
Then she heard clapping.
“Hey, you going to the Olympics?” a security guard asked. The excitement in his voice made him sound like a schoolboy.
Maxine stared at the ground in front of her with eyes wide. “I’ve never done that before,” she said breathlessly, unable to believe what had just happened. If someone told her she could do that, she’d gladly ask for whatever they were smoking.
“You should go! That was great!”
Her skin was too dark for anyone to notice her blush, but she did. She had never meant to make a spectacle out of this. Maxine covered up her embarrassment by giving him a quick curtsy before she returned to her backpack. She didn’t notice how she flowed down the sidewalk, each step seeming almost preordained in its deftness as well as its softness and grace.
The security guard was completely captivated. “Wow,” he muttered to himself.
Maxine heard him and assumed he was still amazed by what she did on the curb. She picked up her backpack and sighed when that annoying feeling of being thrown off balance returned. The first thing she’d buy after she sold the ring was a new backpack. This one was becoming too bothersome. Strange how she’d never noticed before.
* * *
Maxine arrived at Fillmore High in due time. She didn’t have any great love or dislike for her school, but even so, she couldn’t help groaning softly and rolling her eyes when she looked at the bastion of education. The school seemed like more of a fortress than an establishment dedicated to learning.
There was only one entry point at the front, which was guarded at all times. Remote-controlled security doors handled all the other entrances. The security was principally to keep out drugs, active shooters, and anyone who wasn’t supposed to be inside. But to her, in this instance, it meant she couldn’t sneak in and pretend she wasn’t late. A call from her mother saying she was sick this morning would suffice to get her off the hook, but it would probably be easier to push a boulder uphill than get her mother to make a phone call before noon. The house phone was probably disconnected anyway.
Maxine began the final leg of her trip with pursed lips. Might as well get this over with, she thought.
She was a crowd of one, which was hardly the case when she arrived on time. The queue then could easily stretch down the street. There were three guards, and she wasn’t one of the students who were on a first-name basis with any of them. Frankly, she hardly ever interacted with them. She placed her backpack on the conveyor belt for the X-ray machine and walked through the metal detector when she was prompted. It immediately went off.
“You have anything in your pockets?” the guard asked.
“No,” she said.
He then produced a wand and scanned her body. “ID,” he said.
Of the many reasons she looked forward to going to college, chief among them was the ability to get on the school grounds without it being like she was entering Fort Knox. She pulled the ID off her backpack, which had finished its trip through the X-ray, and handed it over.
“Ms. Russet, you are late. Report to the main office before you go to class.”
“I know,” she said softly after taking a deep breath.
“And congratulations,” he continued.
Congratulations? she thought with a raised eyebrow. She was tempted to ask what he meant but thought better of it.
The walk to the office was thankfully short, but now that she thought about it, she wasn’t tired in the slightest from her trek to school. She had, regrettably, done the trip before and should have felt at least a little sore by now, but there was nothing. It was weirder that her foot didn’t bother her whatsoever. Any other time, she’d be limping by this point. It was strange, but so was worrying about why she wasn’t feeling pain. She went through the glass door of the office and stopped at the main desk.
“And you?” the secretary asked.
Maxine glanced at two boys sitting near the entrance. One had a swollen eye, and the other had an obviously broken nose. Both were in cuffs, and two police officers minded them. She guessed it had been a fight. They eyed her as well, and she ignored them.
“Late,” she answered, turning her attention from them.
“Take a seat. Mrs. Bullock will be with you shortly,” the secretary responded.
Maxine nodded and glanced at the clock as she went to a seat. She’d already missed most of first period, which was chemistry. It wasn’t her best subject, but it wasn’t her worst either, as she was running a solid B+. Second period, European history, was a different story, but she knew she should be out of here before then.
After only a couple minutes, Mrs. Bullock appeared from her office. She gave a few words to the police, but all the while she looked at Maxine. “Officers, if you’ll excuse me. This will only take a moment.” Then she called, “Maxine,” as if she wasn’t the only other student waiting. “Come with me.”
The teenager followed dutifully. Mrs. Bullock was a tiny woman. Even Maxine towered over her. Her hair was tied into a bun, and she took small, measured steps as she walked. The girl often wondered why or how people tended to look like the stereotype of their profession. Drab, prim, and proper, Mrs. Bullock screamed school administrator. It was hard to imagine Fillmore without her, like she had been constructed the same day as the school and would be stuck here haunting its corridors after she died.
“Sit,” she said when they entered her office. Maxine did so immediately. Mrs. Bullock took a seat at the other end of her desk. She stared at the teen with her fingers stitched together and her mouth tight. “Explain yourself,” she said sharply.
This was all a formality. Maxine knew there was nothing she could say that could get her out of this, and there was nothing she could say that any administrator really cared to hear. Mrs. Bullock looked like she wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible so she could deal with the boys. Maxine hated the song and dance.
The truth of it was that she had missed her alarm because she was exhausted. Each and every day she was exhausted. She did anything and everything she could to avoid going or being home. Last night, she had been up until three in the morning before she snuck back into her room. There had been nothing glamorous or seedy about last night; all she had done was sit alone on a park bench and read. She knew several such spots that were well lit and seemed relatively safe for passing the time, and she rotated through them like a lost alley cat. Her mother would give her hell when she wasn’t able to get to her room undetected, but it was worth the risk. Her apartment was little better than a toxic den of radioactive waste. Her only defense was to limit her exposure.
She had tried to explain all of that one time when she was in middle school to Mrs. Bullock’s counterpart. In that particular instance, she had been tired because her mother had gotten drunkenly angry about something and ripped her tattered mattress to shreds, causing her to sleep on the floor. The administrator had simply looked at her, paused, and then said that was no excuse. Maxine hadn’t bothered to mention anything like it again.
She looked at Mrs. Bullock and sighed. Only one musical number would do. “I slept in,” she said with a shrug and a hint of lament.
“Young lady, that’s not good enough,” Mrs. Bullock said seriously. “Yes, you are a senior, but you’re flushing your education down the drain with this lackadaisical attitude of yours.”
Maxine was able to keep from rolling her eyes, but only by biting down hard on her tongue. “I’m sorry. I was up all night playing video games,” she lied. She might have played Mario Bros. once an eon ago.
Her dance partner appeared taken aback by the statement. Perhaps she had taken it a step too far. “You have a real chance to better yourself within these walls,” Mrs. Bullock said. “I’m giving you a half-hour detention after school. I hope you use it to consider your future. You don’t have much time left here.”
Thankfully, Maxine thought.
“You should make the most of it. You’re dismissed.”
Maxine stood and, saying nothing, walked out of the room and then out of the main office. The bell signaling the end of the period sounded right as she entered the hall.
“Shit,” she muttered under her breath.
She’d figure out what happened in first period later. Her history class was at the other end of the school, so she moved out at a fast walk. By her best guess, a horrible sadist had timed just how long the average student needed to get from place to place and then cut that time in half. She’d taken it upon herself more than once to help a lost freshman figure out where they needed to go.
As she made her way through the great mass of her peers, she was offered a few greetings that she barely had time to acknowledge. She didn’t notice, though, that before each one, she had looked at the person a second before they said anything. She was the last to arrive at her history class, as she figured she’d be. The bell sounded as soon as she walked through the door.
Almost everyone glanced at her then, and it made her pause. Maxine wasn’t shy by any definition of the term. She couldn’t say she ever felt energized while in crowds, and she was always less than forthcoming about what she actually thought or felt, but she was not shy. Yet, in this moment, it felt like twenty spotlights were pointed toward her simultaneously and she was a wax statue. The suddenness of it made her halt more than the sensation itself. Thankfully, most everyone looked away, and the feeling dissipated. This is such a weird day, she thought as she went to sit next to her best friend, Stacy.
Their teacher, Mr. Roberson, went through attendance quickly and then stood up with a stack of papers in his hand. “I hope everyone did the reading I assigned last night. Pop quiz.”
There were several muttered curses and scoffs.
“Mr. R., it’s March Madness. Nobody got time for that,” someone complained. “It was Duke versus Butler in the championship. Game was crazy, man.”
“No doubt,” someone else agreed.
Mr. Roberson responded with the usual sermon that they all needed to care about their futures and so on and so forth. Maxine didn’t pay much attention to it. She’d read the assigned passage, but in her tired stupor, she couldn’t remember much of anything about it. Besides the fact that streetlights didn’t make the best reading lights, she also had to keep her head on a swivel whenever she sat out in the open as she had on that park bench, constantly on guard for the monsters of the dark.
“Will you let me copy?” Stacy whispered.
“You’re probably better off guessing than copying off of me,” Maxine said from the side of her mouth.
“Girl, stop joking.”
She smiled, but she was telling the straight truth. When Mr. Roberson passed out the quizzes, Maxine could only stare at hers. Several possible answers for the first question came to mind, but all seemed wrong. She could think of nothing, and leaned back in her chair.
It was then, and quite unexpectedly, that the solution came to her as if by magic. She didn’t know how it came so clearly; it just did. She read the next question, and once her mind went blank, the same miracle happened again. The teenager smiled as she flew through the quiz. She was bouncing between a B- and a C+ in this class, and while the quiz probably wouldn’t count for much, it certainly wouldn’t hurt if she got a good grade. She was returning her completed quiz to Mr. Roberson before she even realized it.
Her smile, however, turned crooked with guilt on her trip back to her chair. Stacy was gawking at her with quivering, pursed lips. The required silence of her rage forced Maxine to hide her laugh behind a demure hand.
She shrugged and mouthed, “Forgot.”
“Bitch,” Stacy whispered under her breath as she sat down. “Why didn’t you let me copy?”
Maxine laughed lightly again. Probably the greatest distractions ever invented were her idiot friends and her friends’ friends.
“You can’t read anyway.”
“Fuck you, cunt.”
Such was Maxine’s amusement that she had to wipe a tear away right when Mr. Roberson called time. She and her best friend could go back and forth like that for hours. It was strange that when her mother called her the same things, her first reaction was an overwhelming urge to jump out the window.
There were more scoffs and curses as their teacher collected the quizzes. A soap factory could become the world’s first trillion dollar company washing out the mouths of her classmates, and admittedly her own as well. Mr. Roberson started going over the answers. She was right; she had to have aced the quiz.
“Damn girl, you look good,” Stacy said.
She smiled. Her friend had more money in her hair than had gone into Maxine’s entire wardrobe. Maxine was wearing her usual, which wasn’t much: a light jacket, jeans, and a solid-colored T-shirt, which for today was dark purple. Stacy, by contrast, was a mess of hoop earrings, lashes, multicolored nails, and more brand labels than a Formula One race car. She didn’t look good, per se, nor did she look bad. It was just that, as Maxine had to politely remind her on many occasions, not all clothes were meant for all bodies. That was especially true for the clothes Maxine could wear without even thinking about but on Stacy would cause a split seam. It was a wonder of the ages why Stacy insisted on splitting seams.
“You should look good, though. I think I remember donating those to Goodwill,” Stacy joked while she preened her hair by using her cell phone as a mirror.
Maxine rolled her eyes. “Ha, ha, ha,” she said flatly. “I did see one of your shirts there, though. It was being sold as a tent canopy.”
Stacy stopped preening herself abruptly and shot her friend a cold glare. “Bitch,” she said pointedly but with a few chuckles.
Maxine laughed lightly. “Harlot.”
“Damn, Max. You’re up here calling me a harlot—”
“It means whore, Stacy.”
“Girl, I know what it means!” Stacy blurted out. Mr. Roberson groaned loudly and turned to face her with his hands on his hips. “Sorry, Mr. R.,” she said, her tone sweeter than even the purest schoolgirl could muster. She then glared at her friend with enough malice to make the devil cower. Maxine slapped both hands to her mouth to stop a wayward laugh from bursting out. “Max, I’ve said it before… You read too much books.”
That instantly focused the raven-haired teen. “I read too much books?”
“Yeah, you read too much books,” Stacy said again with iron confidence.
Maxine paused. There were many things she thought of saying, but all of them were too mean. In the end, she sighed and gave a quick roll of her eyes. “I hope you stay beautiful forever, Stacy.”
“You know it,” the girl replied as she returned to examining herself with her phone, not understanding the intent of the comment. Maxine figured she wouldn’t. “Anyway, who you marrying?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You think I wouldn’t notice the ring? Come on, fess up. Who is it?”
Now Maxine knew what the guard had been referring to when he’d told her congratulations. She had forgotten she was still wearing it. She quickly moved to cover her left hand with her right. Her first thought had been to take off the ring and put it in her jacket pocket for safekeeping until she sold it this afternoon. That was what she’d originally planned anyway. But considering the matter now, she worried that the ring might fall out of her pocket. On her hand might be the safest place for it. There was no need to keep it out in the open, though.
“No one,” she said defensively.
“And you’re up here calling me a harlot. No man is dropping ice like that on a female for no reason.”
“Not everyone thinks like you, Stacy.”
Now it was her friend’s turn to roll her eyes. “Girl, please.”
“No one gave it to me. I found it.”
“Uh huh, in the hotel room the next morning,” Stacy said. “It’s okay, though. You know I’ll find out the truth.”
Maxine’s eyes found the ceiling as she gave an exaggerated two-fingered military salute and stuck her tongue out the side of her mouth.
Stacy laughed lightly. “You going to the party at Bear Mountain this Saturday?”
“Are you going?”
“Can’t. My father got me on lockdown.”
“Then I don’t think—”
“Girl, you need to go! Besides, I know someone who will be there,” Stacy said with a leading tone.
Maxine went still and then turned around slowly. Her eyes found Rodney almost immediately. The jock gave her a quick wink, but he paused suddenly when he saw the ring. She, however, was too focused on the first action to notice the second and abruptly turned forward.
“I don’t know,” she responded.
She didn’t dislike Rodney, but she didn’t exactly like him like him either. The wink, even as small of a gesture as it was, would probably have half the girls in school jealous in an hour. If it hadn’t been given to her, she might have even been counted amongst them. However, she was the lucky lady in the hot seat, and while she definitely felt heat, the only problem was that her heart told her she was more likely to get burned than lucky.
“Come on, Max. What else are you going to do all day? Read dictionaries?”
Maxine, no longer thinking about Rodney, smiled. “Mooncalf,” she said harshly.
“Girl, I don’t know what that means, but I’ll smack you.” Stacy slowly raised a hand, threatening her friend, who just laughed. “Come on. Go, at least so you can tell me about it.”
Maxine paused for a second and then shrugged. “All right.”
