Free The Society of S by Susan Hubbard Page B

looked at each other with relief.
    His hair had grown past his shoulders, and he was thinner than I remembered. His dark eyes seemed larger and his face smaller. We stayed in the doorway examining each other, not saying a word.
    Some movement behind me made me turn around. My father stood by the wall, watching us; on his face was an expression of utter revulsion. I’d never seen that face before. His eyes and mouth turned downward at their corners; his shoulders pulled back, rigid, and his chin jutted forward. I said something inane (“Hello?”), and he twitched — an odd spasm that briefly convulsed his face and chest. I must have blinked, I thought then, because he suddenly wasn’t there.
    When I turned back to Michael, his eyes were still fixed on me. “You look,” he said, “different.”

    Michael drove us to the school.
    In the backseat, Kathleen and her friend Ryan, a short, blond-haired boy I’d met the previous summer, talked incessantly, often at the same time. Ryan wore a devil’s mask.
    “Bridget whined all through dinner. She really wanted to come tonight,” Kathleen said from the backseat. “She felt she deserved it. This afternoon, when the school held the Halloween parade, she won a prize for best ghoul.”
    Kathleen said that some parents had wanted to cancel the school’s Halloween events, claiming that they celebrated Satan. She and Ryan laughed loudly at that.
    “It’s all my work,” Ryan said in a raspy voice, stroking the horns of his mask.
    Michael and I didn’t say much. Sitting next to him excited me. I stole glances at his hands on the steering wheel, at his long legs.
    I noticed that Kathleen had put on plenty of makeup; her face was white, her eyes were ringed with black, but somehow tonight the makeup made her look younger. I felt I looked much older. The black sequins outlined my body, showing the world a self I’d barely glimpsed before. The previous night, I’d had fantasies of sweeping across a dance floor, enthralling everyone in the room with my presence. The fantasies seemed possible, now.
    The dance was held in the school gymnasium, and an enormous statue of Jesus, arms outstretched, welcomed us. As we walked in, everyone did seem to watch us. Michael and I didn’t look at each other.
    The room was hot, and the smells of the people in it were overwhelming. It was as if every scent Kathleen and I had ever sampled at the drugstore — the shampoos, the deodorants, the colognes, the soaps — simmered in the dimly lit room. I took shallow breaths, afraid that I might faint if I inhaled more deeply.
    Michael steered me toward a row of folding chairs against one wall. “Sit here,” he said. “I’ll get us some food.”
    The music boomed from enormous black speakers set in the corners of the gym. The sound was too distorted for me to discern a tune or lyrics. Kathleen and Ryan were already gyrating on the dance floor. Kathleen’s dress picked up the ever-changing glow from a color wheel on the ceiling. The fabric looked as if it were on fire, then doused by blue water, then engulfed again by yellow and red flames.
    Michael came back with two paper plates and handed them both to me. “I’ll get us drinks,” he said, shouting slightly to be heard over the music. He went away again.
    I set the plates on the chair next to me. Then I began to look around. Everyone in the room — even the teachers and chaperones — was disguised. Their costumes ranged from the hideous (Cyclops, demons, mummies, zombies, and other assorted freaks, sporting gashes and gouges and severed limbs) to the ethereal (fairies, princesses, goddesses of all sorts draped in shimmering fabric). Two boys with scars and blood etched on their faces stared at me.
    They all looked terribly eager and naïve. Again, I was glad that Michael and I hadn’t worn masks.
    By the time he returned, I felt well enough to take a bite of the pizza he’d brought. A mistake, as it turned out.
    The food in my mouth