Letha Mondragon must have a whole crew of those green humanoids following her around, always underfoot, lifting her hair up, around, everywhere.
And, the thing is? Jade can tell by the polite way Letha’s just waiting for Jade’s response, lips pursed, eyes big, hands sudsing up, that she doesn’t see the little green people. She isn’t even aware of them.
“And you are?” she says to Jade, her face hopeful for some interaction but not being pushy about it. “I don’t think I’ve seen you here before, have I?”
Jade makes herself lean back into the mirror with her face, her numb fingers grubbing the eyeliner pencil up, fully aware now of the SKANK STATION carved above her. And, as if her own grudging awareness of that heading has made it blink, Letha Mondragon’s eyes flick up to it and then down just as fast, almost demurely, and now it’s not just Jade’s face glowing with heat, with awareness, with knowledge, with possibility, it’s—and she could never say this out loud, not in a thousand-million years—it’s her heart.
Letha Mondragon is embarrassed, not of the profanity, but that it even has to exist. Because that’s the kind of pure she is.
That’s the only answer here. She probably, Jade knows—no, she surely already has a job volunteering somewhere in town.
Not a church, but that’s just because churches, in spite of their own good intentions, have their own bad history. And that’s not for one such as Letha Mondragon. She would never sully herself that way, even by association. No, she’s probably volunteering… not at the high school library, Mrs. Jennings is a famous drunk and smokes menthols besides, and no candy-striping at Doc Wilson’s either, as handsy as he gets late in the afternoon, and there’s no thrift store where Letha could fold third-hand clothes after school, no animal shelter she can bottle-feed kittens at. Wherever it is she’s doing her good and necessary work, she walks there with purpose, Jade can tell, her books pressed tight to her chest, but Jade can see under that as well: Letha Mondragon is volunteering to help, yes, that’s most important, of course of course, but she’s also volunteering because, if she weren’t busy, then she wouldn’t have any acceptable excuse for not showing up when Randi Randall’s parents are gone for the weekend. If she wasn’t already busy, she’d have zero reason not to step down into Bethany Manx’s famously-smoky basement whenever Principal Manx is at a conference.
And, stacked like she most definitely is, she probably can’t press too many books to her chest, Jade guesses. Nobody’s arms could be that long. But even covering up like that, there’s still her legs, which, even in jeans, are obviously the human version of “gazelle,” probably from volleyball or water polo or the four-hundred, and the rest of her is perfectly proportioned just the same, almost sculpted, all… five feet eleven of her?
Shit, man. Is she even real? Jade tries to focus on the business end of the eyeliner, halfway wondering if somebody dosed it. Because—can there actually be specimens like Letha Mondragon in the actual world, not just in the airbrushed jack-off fantasies of every wishful-thinking penis-haver out there?
But, as if designed by those dreams, she’s not too tall either, is she? That would be intimidating to the insecure male set.
And, though pigtails and poodle skirts aren’t the order of the day even in high-valley Idaho, “pigtails and poodle skirt” is still the impression Jade’s getting from Letha Mondragon.
Maybe that’s just because there’s no visible piercings, Jade tells herself. Maybe it’s just because there are no tattoos peeking up from a collar or flicking a sharp forked tongue down from a shirtsleeve.
No, Letha Mondragon would never even consider such self-mutilation, such external expression of “inner turmoil,” such obvious pleas for help. She doesn’t even wear her jeans too tight, or have big rhinestone crosses on the rear pockets like every second ass out in the hall, because placing shiny crosshairs on yourself, well, that’s for other girls.
Jade wants to hate her for that, for all of it at once, she wants to lash out from instant jealousy or the basic unfairness of random biology, but she can’t seem to muster it, is anesthetized just from being this close, is still saying that name over and over in her head: Mondragon, Mondragon, Mondragon.
If “Greyson Brust” is as killer as Harry Warden, then “Letha Mondragon” is easily as inviolable as Laurie Strode, as Sidney Prescott, both of whom dress conservatively, neither of whom would ever bleach her hair with stolen peroxide in a hospital sink, then dye it electric blue.