Free Mayne Attraction: In The Spotlight by Ann Mauren

some of my
stuff!”
    Did they make Goth miniskirts? Anything else
of hers would drag the floor on me.
    “I’ll do you up and then we’ll go out!”
    Sam was elated. I was too. This promised to
be hilarious and I could feel that it was going to work like a
charm! My watchers would never see this one coming.
    It seemed like everyone and her mother
(including my mother) was always trying to give me a makeover. So
it was ironic and hugely funny to me that the only person to get a
shot at it would be my very own ‘Gothy Kay’ image consultant.
    I was pleased how it all came together.
Samantha was very solicitous and understanding of my reluctance to
be seen leaving home in Goth persona. Letting her work out the
cloak and dagger aspects of the operation was a stroke of genius.
It required neither effort nor explanation on my part. Her
motivation was to surprise her Goth girlfriends, while mine was to
elude a well paid and highly sophisticated group of surveillance
experts, so that I could conduct a little stakeout of my own.
    She suggested that we meet her friends at
Tinseltown Cineplex on Friday afternoon after class. That was
perfect for me. I wanted to get a good look at the chaos I was
about to cause and that would have been harder to achieve from a
distance at night. The icing on the cake was that a Friday matinee
was standard operating procedure for me. The surveillance personnel
would be on low alert, maybe even goofing off during the ninety
plus minutes of free time.
    Hoyt was always home early on Fridays. My
mom, on the other hand, usually had to work late at the library on
Fridays. I wondered if it was truly mandatory or if it was a ruse
to facilitate stepfather and stepdaughter bonding time. It wasn’t
necessary. I was as bonded to Hoyt as I was ever going to be. I
really liked him. He was smart and soft spoken, calm and courteous.
He had no idea what to talk about with a teenage girl, though. That
was okay. I felt his pain since I didn’t either.
    I think my mom had envisioned our time
together as an exchange of communication and the pursuit of common
interests. Well, we did spend the time on our interests…just not
together. He would drop me off at the movies and then head over to
the driving range. This had become a familiar routine for us. Then
he would collect me after my movie and take me out to dinner and we
would enjoy the illicit consumption of foods we couldn’t eat in
front of Mom. For Hoyt it was red meat, and for me it was anything
cooked in the deep fryer and Cherry Coke to go with it. Then we’d
show up at approximately the same time that she arrived home from
work, and she would be happy to see us together and pleased that we
had been working on our relationship. And so our allied objectives
to foil my mother’s wishes did build a certain sense of comradery
between Hoyt and me, and though she would have objected to the
means by which it was accomplished, she did ultimately get her way.
Though it had felt like work in the beginning, it eventually became
a high point of my week, and I think it was for him as well.
    I was running slightly late when Hoyt
dropped me off at the box office. As I entered the theater it was
very dark, and I couldn’t see a thing. Someone grabbed my arm and
guided me to the center of the center row. Samantha was already
there with her other friends: Splash, Corey and Rachel, by name. I
didn’t have classes with any of them. It was good I hadn’t known
about them initially, or I might not have tried to make friends
with Sam, thinking she already had buddies. I was so grateful for
my ignorance in this instance. On account of my newfound friendship
with Sam, I decided to extend each girl a measure of credit,
despite the fact that they all appeared to be battling as perpetual
finalists in some kind of ‘World’s Most Obnoxious and Unsightly
Ensemble’ competition.
    We watched a recently released action movie
that drew a few more people than was normal for this time of