“BAD” IS A RELATIVE TERM, SIR.
“You look like him, you sick of hearing that? Something around the eyes, there.”
AND YOU WONDER WHY I WEAR SO MUCH EYELINER.
“Yeah, yeah, I caught that. Guess the newspaper didn’t nail down just every detail, did they? Her dad’s name was Trigo, and of course hers was too, and that’s what everybody called her, I guess because that’s how Miss Spellman read her name from the roll that first day. But her front name, her first name… it was Melanie. Her name was Melanie.”
WHICH IS A PRETTY NAME, SIR.
A VERY PRETTY NAME.
DON’T GO IN THE WOODS
In A Nightmare on Elm Street, Nancy’s dad is a homicide detective, so she has pretty much unfettered access to the whole station, can waltz in and treat all the uniformed cops like Tatum treats Dewey, and they just have to fumble their papers and let her pass by.
Jade is no Nancy.
Meg stops Jade at her big L-shaped desk, which is pretty much the reception desk, won’t let her back into the hall that leads to Hardy’s office, to Records, to the Evidence closet, to the two holding cells, and to the only room Jade has access to, once every two weeks: Janitorial Supplies.
“Community service,” Jade explains, trying hard to sound as unenthused as possible, like there’s twenty other places she’d rather be right now.
“Community what, dear?” Meg asks, followed up by two quick bats of her fake eyelashes.
“For… you know,” Jade says, and rolls the left arm of her coveralls up to show her angry scar that, earlier—oops—she’d drawn centipede legs coming off of, like suicide is a bug she can pass with a handshake.
Meg sucks air in through her teeth, has to look away fast.
Jade can still hear her daughter Tiff throwing up in the tall grass. Like mother like daughter.
“He said you might have some filing for me,” Jade explains, using her pleasant voice.
“During working hours maybe,” Meg explains right back with just as much false cheer.
“You’re here.”
“Special circumstances.”
“I can’t go home right now,” Jade says, covering the rest of that particular story with a “don’t want to talk about it” shrug, a purposeful breaking of eye contact that can only mean it’ll crack her tough-girl fa?ade if she has to go any further into this.
Meg bites her top lip in then rotates halfway around in her chair, tapping the plastic button of her pen on the front of her top teeth, which Jade takes as a strong reminder not to chew on any pens in this office.
“Why is everyone here?” Jade’s not physically able to keep from asking after a few slower and slower tooth taps.
“Somebody die, what?”
Meg doesn’t twitch a single muscle on her face, just keeps looking around for a menial enough chore. One someone with zero clearance can do, someone with negative clearance, which is to say: this one’s got sticky fingers, hungry eyes, and a bone to pick with authority. Only trust her as far as you can throw her, and keep in mind that you don’t have any arms.
“You wore your other work clothes,” Meg says, holding the back of her index finger under her nose so Jade gets the drift.
“Laundry day,” Jade tells her. Or, challenges her with.
“Are you presentable under them?”
“What do you—？”
“Do you have other clothes on?”
“What’s wrong with being a janitor?”
“Too many pockets,” Meg says, staring right into Jade’s soul, “too roomy. An enterprising seventeen-year-old could smuggle a coatrack out in that.”
Jade stands and slowly unzips, holding Meg’s eyes the whole while. She steps out of the coveralls, rolls them into a ball, sets that ball on Meg’s desk, careful not to disturb all the inboxes and trays and pencil holders.
What she’s wearing now—what Meg can see now—is a shirt with a Raymond Pettibon gig poster silkscreen of a bare-breasted dead woman named Janie, and Janie’s friend asking Jesus, also pictured, about why, if he’s Christ, why oh why won’t he raise Janie?
Meg’s lips tighten with disapproval.
“I can put them back on,” Jade says, taking a seat, slouching down in it like the criminal she is, “but who knows, I might steal all the staplers. Get a pretty good price for them on the street. Kids these days can’t get enough office supplies, I’m sure Tiff’s told you.”
“You can stuff envelopes is what you can do,” Meg says, standing with purpose, her posture prim and schoolmarmish.