But the deer who caused our accident. And the zombie deer coming out of Henna’s car. And the scary cops. It’s like when adults say world news isn’t our worry. Why the hell isn’t it?
“They don’t look like you,” Mel says, when the prints of my senior photos come in. “I mean, not even a little.”
I didn’t bother with digital files; I knew they were going to be gruesome. The prints are meant to go into my graduation announcements, the ones with that pointless extra bit of tissue paper and double envelope you send to relatives in the hope they send back money. But maybe even that’s out.
“You could be your second cousin, maybe,” Henna says, leaning against the counter at the drugstore. We’ve stopped by Mel’s work to check up on her, even though it’s broad daylight on a Saturday afternoon.
“We don’t have any cousins,” I say. “Dad’s an only child and Uncle Rick doesn’t have kids.”
Henna blinks. “I’ve got like forty.”
“Excuse me,” a skinny, scraggly man says behind us.
“For methadone you need to talk to the pharmacist,” Mel says, without even looking up from the photos.
“You’re not the pharmacist?” the man asks.
We all turn to him. He kind of freaks out at the attention, pulling his arms around the heavy-metal T-shirt that hangs from his collarbones and shuffling away to the pharmacy counter at the back.
“Poor guy,” Mel says. She goes back to my pictures. “You look like a court artist’s drawing of yourself on the stand.”
Henna gasps. “You do look like that.”
I move closer to her, pretending to get nearer to my photos. I brush my arm against her arm. It’s elementary school shit, but she doesn’t move away. It’s been over a week since the cops stopped us, but we haven’t kissed again or even really talked about it. We’ve spent a lot of time together, but all in the company of our friends. Still, the thing with the cops was so threatening and bizarre and unexplained, it made kissing seem kind of childish. For the moment, at least.
“At least you can’t see the scar,” I say.
Jared’s hands have helped the stitches already come out, but without slabs of make-up, there’s still a hoof-made gash in my face. It’ll heal more, I know, but the scar ain’t going anywhere.
“It’s going to be fine,” Mel says. “Once the redness is gone, it might even look kind of amazing.”
“Nobody really sees scars after the first time,” Henna says. “Not anyone who matters, anyway.”
“Yeah,” I say, flatly, “people who make fun of my face probably aren’t my friends.”
Henna reaches up and traces her fingers lightly over it, running down from the tip below my cheekbone, over the wider part on the flat of my cheek, to the little curlicue on the side of my chin.
“It’s still you,” she says. “Everyone will be able to see you.”
She keeps her fingers there for a second. Yeah, I really want to kiss her again.
“Um,” the scraggly man says, back at the main counter while his prescription gets filled. “Could I get a pack of Marlboro?”
Mel grabs a pack off the rows of cancer-addled faces and tumoured lungs in the racks behind her and rings it up. The man is still so obviously shy of us, he fumbles with his money, dropping a five-dollar bill on the ground. I lean to get it, but Henna’s better placed. She lifts it up to him.
“I know you,” the man whispers, not looking her in the face. He slides the five plus another ten at my sister.