Desdemona by Tag Cavello (love books to read txt) 📕

“Not at first. My friend has an older sister, and we thought she was playing games. Trying to freak us out. We went to the screen, telling her to knock it off, we weren’t scared.”

“And when you looked behind the screen?” Donati said in a beckoning voice.

“Nobody was there. Nobody.”

“What do you think it was, son?”

A few moments passed before Dante could answer. “It could have been a rat,” he finally allowed. “Or maybe a stray cat jumped down from the roof. But we never saw anything else move in that corner. Just the screen.”

Though it’d been years since he’d set foot in his friend’s house, he remembered every room clearly. They had been immaculate—the wood polished, the floors waxed, the windows clear. An antithesis of the mansion he sat in today. Yet of the two homes, the prosperous one scared him more, while the picturesque ruin of number 114 felt like wisdom and peace.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” Donati asked.

And Dante had to admit he wasn’t certain. “Even when I saw the witch,” he continued, noticing how Donati’s eyes widened. “Saw her. I still wasn’t—am not—certain.”

“Good Heavens, boy. How did you see her?”

“One day we were shooting baskets in his driveway. And for just a moment I looked up at the servants’ stair window. The curtain twitched…and there she was. A woman in black. Her nose was long, just like a witch’s. She had green skin. But her eyes were gigantic—big and yellow as the moon. She had a bald head with little strands of dark hair sticking out. When she saw me looking at her she punched the window. It shook the glass hard enough for my friend to hear. He turned around, but by then she’d disappeared. He never saw her.”

“That is a very clear memory,” Donati said. “Does your uncertainty sprout from fear that it might have been real?”

This time Dante’s answer was instant. “Yes.”

“And did she frighten you the way Sunny Desdemona frightens you?”

“Not quite. I think I might be in love with Sunny. The witch disgusted me.”

“But they are both female. And both, quite possibly” Donati paused to allow himself a small smile “witches. Tell me…what did you do after you saw that witch in your friend’s window?”

“I went right back into the house. Again and again until my friend moved away.”

Donati leaned back in his chair. His posture resembled that of a very satisfied man. “Of course you did, boy,” he said. “Of course you did.”

CHAPTER FIVE: Locker Sixteen

It isn’t a romance just yet, Dante had told his new friend. But the rest of that week gave cause to let.

Monday morning he arrived at school to find Sunny seated pertly on his desk, green eyes dancing, bare legs swinging. Sunny’s own desk was occupied by another girl. She sat in the chair, so while speaking to Sunny she had to look up. She seemed to be in the middle of some piece of gossip or other. Her mouth moved a hundred miles a minute; her hands waved. Yet whatever story she was telling interested Sunny only just. So it appeared to Dante. As before when he’d caught her with her friends, she was smiling, nodding, but not talking. That changed when she noticed Dante. As he approached the desk she whirled on him with a shark grin, cutting her friend off mid-sentence, and sang:

“What a perfectly beautiful morning!”

Dante smiled. He couldn’t think of a better way to describe it.

She introduced him to the friend the way a buyer might talk about being interested in a new car. “Dante this is Stacey. Stacey, Dante. He’s tall and might be strong enough. I’ll keep you posted.”

A girl with hair black as Sunny’s was red told Dante hello. She looked highly amused. Charmed even. “He does look much tougher than last year’s catch.”

“I can’t imagine him being weaker. Go sit down now. I’ll see you at lunch.”

And as a stray cat gets chased from capricious doors, Stacey scurried off. Dante had time to notice that her smile had fallen, and lay shattered under the desk.

“What about you?” Sunny asked Dante, slipping to her feet. “Am I going to see you at lunch?”

Mr. Wolfe had come into the room. His arms were crossed in a severe way that meant it was almost time to get quiet.

“Yes,” Dante replied.

Sunny frowned. It didn’t seem to be enough for her. “Uh-huh. And where am I sitting?” Her posture was that of a sassy brat: one knee bent slightly, hands on hips, face tilted.

“Well…you can sit with me if you like.”

Silence. Dante noticed her freckles beginning to flare.

“Class?” Mister Wolfe called. “Please be seated.”

It was as if Sunny hadn’t heard. Her green eyes never left Dante. “If I like?” her lips writhed. “Am I sitting with you or not?”

“Yes,” Dante coughed, “please.”

“Don’t ask me, Dante. Tell me.”

“Sit down everyone,” came Mister Wolfe’s voice again.

And again Sunny ignored him. Dante glanced over her to see that most of the other kids hadn’t. Chairs squeaked with the myriad placement of butts. Loud talking softened to low muttering. The day was about to begin.

“Look at me, Mister,” Sunny commanded.

Dante did.

“Good boy. Now. Tell me. Where am I eating lunch today?”

∞

“And did you tell her?” Donati asked, days later after Dante recounted this scene.

“Not in a forceful enough way, I don’t think,” Dante answered.

“So she didn’t eat lunch with you?”

“No. Not on that day.”

“I see. But she provided another opportunity.”

“She did. I messed that up, too.”

∞

The week passed slowly. It was a most miserable time for Dante. On Tuesday morning he smiled and greeted Sunny hello. She would not smile back, or even acknowledge his presence. Bare legs crossed beneath her desk, she flipped through a history book, pretending to care about homework. Yesterday she blew off lunch with him, though he’d told her to be there. Well…almost. His command (for want of a better word) had been something more forceful than a question, at least. Yet she decided to eat with her friends anyway. From his table across the cafeteria he’d recognized Stacey, who also wouldn’t look at him. Dante imagined Sunny had commanded (properly) her friends not to pay the slightest bit of attention him.

The rest of that Tuesday went the same way—no lunch date, no words. Nothing. Not even a moment of eye contact. This too on Wednesday. In fact on Wednesday morning she raised her hand and asked Mr. Wolfe for a change of seats.

“This weird boy keeps bothering me,” she said, nodding toward Dante.

“Is that a fact?” the homeroom teacher asked, after everyone had stopped laughing.

Beet red, Dante began to bluster silly denials, which were cut off by Sunny.

“Yes he does, Mr. Wolfe. He keeps whispering that he wants to kiss me.”

At this the whole class went up like a Roman candle. Anyone not laughing hard enough to fall out of their chair was forced to help those who had. Even Mr. Wolfe thought it funny. Grinning, he chose to let the Bedlam die down its own, which took several minutes, all of which felt like sheer torture to Dante. Never in his life had he been the object of such spectacle, of such humiliating fixation. News of the incident soon spread throughout the entire school, so by Friday he was a minor celebrity, perhaps even a major one. On Thursday kids began addressing him as “Kiss Me” instead of Dante, and the name stuck.

Hi, Kiss Me! they sang as he fought with his locker door, which had begun to jam again worse than ever. Kiss Me! they called at lunch, while Dante stared miserably at his egg salad sandwich. Seeya tomorrow, Kiss Me! they shouted at the end of the day.

It was horrible, quite horrible. Or it might have been, except that on Friday afternoon, Sunny decided to talk to him again, this time in a decidedly more amiable fashion.

Classes were over. The weekend beckoned with open arms. Amidst a clamorous fury of eager seventh graders, Dante trudged to his locker. He talked to no one, saw no one. His eyes were on his shoes, so all he saw were those and what seemed like a million pairs of others, swarming to get outside.

“Kiss Me!” he heard someone cry.

“Hey, Kiss Me! Seeya Monday!” another yelled.

Dante did his best to tune them out. His mind went to the homework pile on tap for the weekend. Thirty long division problems for math. A reading assignment for English (Contents Of A Dead Man’s Pocket). There was even a health task for the boys, doled out by their gym coach: fifty push-ups. Twenty for the girls.

“Kiss Me! Look everybody, there’s Kiss Me!”

Go away, Dante thought.

At last he came to his locker. His hand dialed the combination. And of course, it would not open. Groaning inwardly at the thought of yet another fracas with faulty property, Dante tried it again. It did no good. The locker was jammed. Again.

“Hello, Kiss Me,” someone behind him sang.

Dante froze. His heart skipped a beat. The voice was familiar—high-pitched, pretty, yet cool and fiendish all the same. A pink knife with painted flower on the handle.

He turned around and there stood Sunny, her brow arched, her grin predatory. She was dressed in her usual style: black boots, pink knee-length skirt, blue classic blouse with short sleeves.

“H-Hello, Sunny,” Dante forced himself to say.

“Having fun with that locker?” the girl asked.

Dante glanced at the black dial. “Well, it’s…it’s stuck.”

“Sure it is.” Sunny tilted her head. “Hey, aren’t you mad at me?”

“No.”

“Stop lying.”

“I’m not mad at you.”

Dante watched the girl’s eyes suddenly narrow into slits. “Well I’m mad at you. Not telling me to sit with you for lunch. Do you like me or not?” And before Dante’s astonished gaze she twirled around on one leg, fanning the pink skirt out like a ballerina’s.

“I do,” he said.

“Then you’re going to need to be stronger, Dante. A lot stronger. I have standards.”

Just then one of the other students noticed them talking. A short, stocky boy with blond hair. “Woo-hoo!” the boy chimed from across the hall. “Hey everyone, it looks like Kiss Me still wants to be with Sunny!”

Sunny turned to look at him. But before she did, Dante noticed her face flood to near poisonous levels of hatred. The boy must have seen it too, for the grin melted from his face almost instantly.

“What?” he said, trying to sound tough.

“We’re having a conversation here,” Sunny told him. “Do you mind?”

By this time some of the other students had stopped to watch the confrontation—boys and girls of different shapes and sizes. Dante felt himself flush with embarrassment…until it became apparent none of the onlookers looked amused. No one looked ready to laugh. Instead, Dante noticed, they were rather like the boy who now stood in Sunny’s crosshairs: afraid.

“Well, well, well,” the boy managed to say, sounding weaker by the moment. “Sunny likes Kiss Me, too. How nice.”

“Yeah,” Sunny said. “Maybe she does.”

A large black spider crawled out of the boy’s bag. It bit him on the hand, making him scream. All of the girls who saw it screamed too, while the boys yelped and gaped.

Sunny watched the antics for only a moment before losing her temper completely. “Break it up!” she shrieked. “Go home, all of you!”

No one needed to be told twice. Dante watched the kids scatter as if the spider—which disappeared suddenly as it had appeared—might soon crawl onto one of them. The stocky blond boy was clutching his hand. Tears drenched his puffy cheeks. “What did you do!” he yelled at Sunny. “What did you do!”

“I didn’t do anything, idiot, it was a spider. You might want to have nurse Renson look at that hand.”

Leaving his bag on the floor, the stocky boy ran off. Now it was literally just Dante and Sunny in the hall. They had the entire wing to themselves.

“Where were we?” Sunny asked, not sounding as if she had the patience for any more games.

Dante didn’t