Molly, pt. 4
“Earlobes flapping against her neck and making a faint sound, a minor tapping…”
First, Molly, pt. 1: “Just paint, guys, this is a Fun Day. Just paint.” Previously, Molly, pt. 3: “She was snoring in spurts from the bridge of her nose, choking on a dream or something.”
Maw transferred from the white people school to Tyson High second semester, which made no sense since it was senior year. Then Eddie Taylor set Tyler correct: Maw had to repeat seventh grade due to poor academic showing plus some legendary cheating conspiracy. Honor codes were broken, administrators humiliated, and now Maw was a junior.
What’s more, now Maw was a goth.
Not a sad boo-hoo goth. A rager goth. Now her hair looked like a sheet of fried black wax. Maw’s face was all dark streaks of green and purple. Chin, lips, tongue, nose, eyebrows all pierced with silver loops and rods like a Christmas tree. Now Maw’s big brown buttons were ginormous studs in her radically new big-ass earlobes.
Also now she went by Mal.
Caprice, Corey, Tyler—they said hi to Maw / Mal a few times in the hallways between classes, but after a while they all sort of understood that none of them much give a shit about whatever Maw / Mal was into these days, with her weird friends who hung outside the bathrooms by the back parking lot during study hall.
But words spread, and Tyler caught a few. Mal loved her some pills. Mal was a lush. A budding sociopath in black leather. Mal brought little bottles of vodka to school all the time, which she hid in the many pockets of her baggy cargo fatigues.
Mal was pretty buzzed during lunch one afternoon and bumped into Tyler in the wide fluorescent hallway outside the gym.
A stumble of two dissimilarly tipsy souls, bound for one another by the massive gravity of vice.
Mal and Tyler fucked in the nearest bathroom stall.
Riding the rickety-hinged porcelain seat for all of two minutes before Tyler thoughtlessly came all over the bottom drape of Mal’s t-shirt, which she’d just have to tuck into her pants for the rest of the day.
Mal was woozy on Tyler’s lap. Hypnotizing herself. Barely there. Like a boxer fazed, tilting up toward perdition. Earlobes flapping against her neck and making a faint sound, a minor tapping, that struck Tyler dumb for a sec wondering whether Mal was maybe made of plastic.
Before Tyler and Mal could dip discretely into the hallway, Mal flung herself back to the sink and vomited fierce. Every time Tyler thought she was finished and ready to trail him into the clear, Mal spun back to the basin, hacking even louder, until she was collapsed to her knees on the floor and arching her neck up to cough another fleck of sick against the mirror.
It was the Girls’ restroom anyway.
So Tyler left without her.
