“An eclipse of moths!” Mary exclaimed. “Wow! Who knew?”
“That’s what you call a whole bunch of them? An eclipse?”
“Yes! Who knew they flocked? And most moths leave daytime to the butterflies. Moths are fly-by-nights. At least, usually.”
“How do you know all that?”
“I did my eighth grade science project on moths—mott, in Old English, meaning maggot. My dad talked me into doing it, because I used to be scared of them. Someone told me when I was little that if you got the dust from a moth’s wings in your eyes, you’d go blind. My dad said that was just an old wives’ tale, and if I did my science project on moths, I might be able to make friends with them. He said that butterflies are the beauty queens of the insect world, they always get to go to the ball, and the poor moths are the ones who get left behind like Cinderella. He was still drinking then, but it was a fun story just the same.”
Those gray eyes on him, daring him to disagree.
“Sure, cool,” Jared said. “Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Make friends with them.”
“Not exactly, but I found out lots of interesting stuff. Butterflies close their wings over their backs when they’re at rest. Moths use theirs to protect their bellies. Moths have frenulums—those are wing-coupling devices—but butterflies don’t. Butterflies make a chrysalis, which is hard. Moths make cocoons, which are soft and silky.”
“Yo!” It was Kent Daley, riding his bike across the softball field from the tangle of waste ground beyond. He was wearing a backpack and his tennis racket was slung over his shoulder. “Norcross! Pak! You see all those birds take off?”
“They were moths,” Jared said. “The ones with frenulums. Or maybe it’s frenula.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind. What are you doing? It’s a school day, you know.”
“Had to take out the garbage for my ma.”
“Must have been a lot of it,” Mary said. “It’s already Period Three.”
Kent smirked at her, then saw Eric and Curt on the center court and dropped his bike into the grass. “Take a seat, Curt, let a man take over. You couldn’t hit Eric’s serve if your dog’s life depended on it.”
Curt ceded his end of the court to Kent, a bon vivant who did not seem to feel any pressing need to visit the office and explain his late arrival. Eric served, and Jared was delighted when the newly arrived Kent smashed it right back at him.
“The Aztecs believed that black moths were omens of bad luck,” Mary said. She had lost interest in the tennis match going on below. “There are people out in the hollers who still believe a white moth in the house means someone’s going to die.”
“You are a regular moth-matician, Mary.”
Mary made a sad trombone noise.
“Wait, you’ve never been in a holler in your life. You just made that up to be creepy. Good job, by the way.”
“No, I didn’t make it up! I read it in a book!”
She punched him in the shoulder. It kind of hurt, but Jared pretended it didn’t.
“Those were brown ones,” Jared said. “What do brown ones mean?”
“Oh, that’s interesting,” Mary said. “According to the Blackfeet Indians, brown moths bring sleep and dreams.”
Jared sat on a bench at the far end of the locker room, dressing. The Silly Sophomores had already departed, afraid of getting whipped with wet towels, a thing for which Eric and his cohorts were famous. Or maybe the right word was infamous. You say frenulum, I say frenula, Jared thought, putting on his sneakers. Let’s call the whole thing off.
In the shower, Eric, Curt, and Kent were hooting and splashing and bellowing all the standard witticisms: fuck you, fuck ya mother, I already did, fag, bite my bag, your sister’s a scag, she’s on the rag, et cetera. It was tiresome, and there was so much high school left before he could escape.
The water went off. Eric and the other two slapped wet-footed into the area of the locker room they considered their private preserve—seniors only, please—which meant Jared only had to suffer a brief glimpse at their bare butts before they disappeared around the corner. Fine with him. He sniffed his tennis socks, winced, stuffed them into his gym bag, and zipped it up.
“I saw Old Essie on my way here,” Kent was saying.
Curt: “The homeless chick? The one with the shopping cart?”
“Yeah. Almost rode over her and fell into that shithole where she lives.”
“Someone ought to clean her out of there,” Curt said.
“She must have busted open her stash of Two Buck Chuck last night,” Kent said. “Totally out cold. And she must have rolled in something. She had cobwebby crud all over her face. Fucking nasty. I could see it moving when she breathed. So I give her a yell, right? ‘Hey Essie, what’s up, girl? What’s up, you toothless old cunt?’ Nothing, man. Fuckin flatline.”
Curt said, “I wish there was a magic potion to put girls to sleep so you could bang em without having to butter them up first.”
“There is,” Eric said. “It’s called roofies.”
As they bellowed laughter, Jared thought, That’s the guy taking Mary to see Arcade Fire. That guy right over there.
“Plus,” Kent said, “she’s got all kinds of weird shit in that little ravine she sleeps in, including the top half of a department store mannequin. I’ll fuck just about anything, man, but a drunk-ass homeless bitch covered in spiderwebs? That’s where I draw the line, and that line is thick.”
“My line is totally dotted right now.” There was a wistful note in Curt’s voice. “The situation is desperate. I’d bone a zombie on The Walking Dead.”
“You already did,” Eric said. “Harriet Davenport.”
More prehistoric laughter. Why am I listening to this? Jared asked himself, and it occurred to him again: Mary is going to a concert with one of these sickos. She has no idea what Eric is actually like, and after our conversation on the bleachers, I’m not sure she’d believe me if I told her.
“You would not bone this chick,” Kent said. “But it’s funny. We ought to go by after school. Check her out.”
“Never mind after school,” Eric said. “Let’s cut out after sixth period.”
Whacking sounds as they slapped hands, sealing the deal. Jared grabbed his gym bag and left.
It wasn’t until lunch that Frankie Johnson sat down next to Jared and said the weird female sleeping sickness that used to be only in Australia and Hawaii had shown up in DC, Richmond, and even in Martinsburg, which wasn’t that far away. Jared thought briefly of what Kent had said about Old Essie—spiderwebs on her face—then decided it couldn’t be. Not here. Nothing that interesting ever happened in Dooling.
“They’re calling it Aurora,” Frankie said. “Hey, is that chicken salad? How is it? Want to trade?”
CHAPTER 5
Unit 12 of A Wing was bare except for the single bunk, the steel toilet, and the camera bulbs in the corners of the ceiling. No painted square on the wall for posting pictures, no desk. Coates had dragged in a plastic chair to sit on while Clint examined Kitty McDavid, who lay on the bunk.
“So?” asked Coates.
“She’s alive. Her vitals are strong.” Clint stood from his crouch. He unsnapped his surgical gloves and carefully placed them in a plastic bag. From his jacket pocket he took out a small pad and a pen and began to jot notes.
“I don’t know what that stuff is. It’s tacky, like sap, and it’s also tough, and yet it’s evidently permeable because she’s breathing through it. It smells—earthy, I guess. And a little waxy. If you pressed me, I’d say it was some kind of a fungus, but it’s not behaving like any fungus I’ve ever seen or heard of.” To even attempt to discuss the situation made Clint feel as if he were climbing up a hill made of pennies. “A biologist could take a sample and put it under a microscope—”