G.O.D. chose me to steal the Barbarians’ lipstick, but I succumbed to a pretty girl with a septum ring and a hand-poked peach tattoo.
I was chosen because I was the newest member of our student council, The Gladiators of Dagon High School (G.O.D.). I was also a competitive cheerleader with an unbroken double layout record and the biceps required to climb into second-story windows in search of magical lipstick. This put me a hair above G.O.D.’s secretary, the second newest member and the only member who broke their foot playing chicken in the shallow end of the public pool.
As G.O.D. announced over the intercom each morning, the Barbarians stole our sacred lipstick years ago, lipstick with the power to transform a Butter Body Is Ginormous into a Butter Waist Is So Small, and ever since the theft, the Gladiators’ girls were cursed with intense cravings for fried okra and the belly rolls to match.
We’d never been successful in retrieving the lipstick since.
I picked an early summer evening for my mission, the sky the bruised purple of overripe blueberries. As thunder rumbled, I wondered if God (the original) was sending me a warning.
I piled my long hair under a Braves hat. For one night, I could pretend my hair was short, the way it would look if my mom allowed me to cut it. When I slipped into an oversized sweatshirt that confusingly read, “I Climbed Stone Mountain and All I Got Was This Lousy Shoe,” I smiled as my round tummy disappeared underneath. My curves stole androgyny from me, and I hated them for it.
I tried to ignore my mom’s voice in my head, that I would grow into my too-big clothing, moving farther away from the dainty cheerleading flyer she wanted me to be, instead of the burly base I was.
I pulled the brim of my hat low as I boarded the bus to the Barbarians’ high school, but the driver’s eyes still found mine, his gaze pouring down my throat until I nearly choked. My stomach churned. I didn’t usually break rules, but I was sugar high on the lipstick’s promise of thinness.
As the bus sped past street lights dimmed by layers of moths, the lipstick’s rumors spun through my head.
I heard the original owner lost 600 pounds after she discovered the lipstick, G.O.D.’s secretary told me.
I heard that hordes of Barbarian girls ate the original owner alive, desperate for the lipstick’s magical powers, said someone ahead of me in the cafeteria line.
I heard the lipstick was found by some fugly emo chick, but after she found the lipstick, she won, like, Miss America or something, gossiped our health teacher, instead of teaching us about chlamydia.
The sliding of the bus’s door jolted me from my thoughts.
A girl got on the bus.
Though her septum ring glittered under the bus’s fluorescent lights, no one looked at her as she glided past them. There were other empty seats besides the one next to mine, but she didn’t even ask before crowding into my space, spreading her legs so her knee knocked against mine.
I loved her immediately.
“Delilah,” she said, without looking at me.
“Samson,” I replied. My chosen name, the name I’d only spoken to a few of my online friends, felt like undercooked meat on my tongue.
Delilah was so beautiful, I couldn’t see her properly. Also, I’d forgotten to wear my contacts, so that may have contributed to the issue. We passed under a street light, and with tattoos slithering down her arms and her gauzy black shirt that covered nothing and everything all at once, I swore she was the lead singer of a local punk band, “The Transvegemites.” But as soon as the bus returned to shadow, she looked more like a French girl I dreamed about after watching Ratatouille at 3 AM.
The flesh of her thick thighs spilled across our shared bench, but she made no attempt to squeeze herself against the window. I tried to loosen my own tense muscles, convince my body to take up a bit more space, but it refused.
Delilah didn’t say anything to me for the rest of the ride. Even still, I felt the rub of her elbow against mine, the heat of her breath when she exhaled, the burn of peppermint and chicken nuggets on her lips.
When the bus gurgled to a stop, she stood at the exact moment I stood. She stared at me with meatball eyes, grease dripping from their corners.
I blinked, and the meatballs were gone.
My stomach grumbled. I hoped she didn’t notice.
We got off the bus, and I thought she would dip into the gas station for a slurpee or cross the street to the dollar theater. Instead she followed a few steps behind me. I didn’t hear her footsteps. The sounds of the cars on the adjacent road were too loud, but her peppermint-nugget breath licked at the back of my neck.
When I turned suddenly to confront her, we came nose-to-nose.
“Are you following me?” I asked.
I expected her to deny the accusation or defend herself, but instead she nodded and said, “Yes.”
I didn’t know what to do with this information. Even if I followed someone, I would never admit to it when confronted. I barely admitted to my existence when confronted.
I said, “Oh.”
She nodded again.
I asked, “Why?”
And to my absolute delight and horror, she replied, “I like you.”
I didn’t know what to do with her bluntness or affection. I was used to passive aggression and mild dislike from most people in my life.
“You don’t even know me,” I eventually responded.
She shrugged, “I know enough.”
Her logic was both unfathomable and oh so very tempting. I wanted to gobble her whole. I wanted to feel the reverberations of her “I like you” whispers inside my pelvic bone.
Shame at my desires boiled through me.
“I have something I need to do,” I said. “I could… ur… meet you afterwards?”
The words felt too big in my mouth. I couldn’t swallow. I’d never invited someone to hang out before. I hated being perceived. I hated eating around others. I had nothing interesting to say. Why would anyone want to hang out with me?
“I’ll just come with you,” Delilah said.
And so she did, partially (mostly) because I was still hypnotized by her septum ring.
Past the blinking sign for the dollar theater, burnt-out fluorescent letters leaving only “CHAP MOVE” to glitter in the night, down a path lined with sugar maples, we found ourselves at the front of a darkened rectangular building, it’s skull-white frame dripping with red brick.
I spied my entry point immediately – a large dumpster under a second-story window. Delilah seemed to always be touching me as we walked across the immaculate lawn. I felt dizzy.
Not seeing a reality where Delilah liked me enough to risk trespassing for me, I stood at the base of the dumpster and tried using the same words as before, “I’ll just meet you here afterwards?”
She shrugged, which I took to mean yes, even though the sex ed class at my church should have reminded me to always ask for verbal consent.
I began climbing. I felt Delilah watch me as I planted my hands on the dumpster’s cover and easily pulled myself up. I wondered if she saw my muscles rippling eagerly under my skin, and I allowed myself a moment of pride before my foot came crashing down on the dumpster’s metal lid.
I cringed and waited to see if anyone besides Delilah heard me, and when no beet-red security guard came screaming across the lawn, I used a stick I’d picked from the lawn and carefully pushed the window above me open, surprised to find it unlocked and even more surprised when no alarm began to blare. The only sound was the wind as it sped up.
It was so easy, I should have considered why a school trying to protect its magic lipstick wouldn’t have more forms of protection.
I should have considered that maybe protection wasn’t in the form of an alarm.
I pulled myself through the window, immediately swallowed by the darkness of the room. Clouds covered the moon, and I didn’t want to use my phone’s flashlight and alert any janitor that may be in the building. So I waited for my eyes to adjust, trying to ignore the sour stench of spoiled tuna salad floating from the dumpster below.
“It’s dark in here.”
I startled when I heard Delilah’s voice behind me, accidentally knocking my elbow against a lab table. Cursing in euphemisms as my mom had taught me to do, I turned to find her standing only a few inches away from me.
I had been a little out of breath when I pulled myself through the window, because a pull-up is a ducking pull-up, no matter how strong you are, but Delilah breathed evenly, her chest rising slowly (not like I was looking or anything).
“How did you climb up so quickly?” I asked.
She shrugged again and said nothing more.
In the dim of the classroom, Delilah suddenly looked familiar, but I couldn’t figure out where someone like her – with her shoulders rolled back and a confident smirk across her face – would meet someone like me.
“Have we met before?” I asked.
“In a way,” she responded vaguely.
I held her gaze for a beat, searching her eyes for the answers her lips refused to provide.
But when my search yielded few helpful results, I reminded myself of the student council secretary’s directions – look in the chemistry lab’s second drawer to the right of the skeleton. The skeleton was easy to locate, gangly and bright white, it seemed to glitter just as Delilah’s septum ring had.
I found the lipstick where the secretary described it would be, sitting in its gold casing atop a purple satin cloth.
I picked it up carefully, and brought the lipstick close to my face, inhaling the scent of virgin daiquiri. I imagined my tummy and my chest flattening into smooth skin and hard pecs.
The lipstick was said to make you skinny, not cut off your tits, but I was really hoping for the best.
Then I noticed lettering sharpied onto the lipstick’s front.
The cursive was easy to read, the twists and turns of the now-familiar name curving around my stomach and pulling taught.
“Delilah,” it read.
For a moment, I stood frozen.
I held my breath until oxygen clawed its way into my body.
Until I slowly, slowly raised my head.
My eyes sought her out, but when I scanned the room, I couldn’t find her.
“I think you have something of mine,” I heard in my ear, and I pressed closer to her voice involuntarily, her teeth grazing my earlobe.
“Wh-what?” I stammered. I felt my earlobe slice open under her oddly sharp teeth, the cartilage exposed, blood dripping onto my shoulder. I wondered if she was a vampire or something, and excitement raised goosebumps across my arms.
What’s hotter than a confident emo girl? A confident emo vampire girl, duh.
I turned to face her just as a cloud moved outside, moonlight thrusting into the room. It caught on her skin, and I realized she was the same pale white as the skeleton next to her.
Half of her head was bashed in.
Brains tumbled from the open wound, somersaulting like chunks of hamburger dropped by a fry cook.
I felt nauseous.
I felt starved.
She reached for the lipstick and plucked it neatly from my hands.
“I found it in a Hot Topic,” she said, turning the lipstick over and over. “It wasn’t my usual shade. I prefer black and purple, obviously,” she paused, gesturing at her perfect lips.
“But I just stuck it in my backpack anyway. I was in my klepto era,” she shrugged nonchalantly.
“So cool,” I mumbled, discovering that a confident emo vampire girl in her klepto era is perhaps the coolest combo possible.
She continued, as if I never spoke, “I could have forgotten about the lipstick, but I felt its presence constantly. It whispered my name at night. Like, DUDE. A lipstick whispered my name at night. Lipsticks shouldn’t whisper.”
She went silent. I wondered if she expected me to offer anything meaningful to the conversation, but when I opened my mouth, all I managed was: “Yeah, lipsticks shouldn’t whisper.”
Very meaningful. Very cool.
“Finally, I got curious. I tried it on.” Shards of her skull poked skyward as she spoke. Her face coated in dried blood, I thought her even more beautiful than before. I tried to focus on her words, but I felt dazed.
“Before the lipstick, I hated myself for being a chunky, ugly kid. Too fat for the emo kids. Too emo for the fat kids, I ate lunch alone in the library and spent my weekends watching Jennifer’s Body alone,” she continued.
“I love Jennifer’s Body,” I managed to whisper.
“But the first time I put the lipstick on…” she trailed off. Her lips turned downward. She paused for a minute, maybe two, before finally saying. “The lipstick made me perfect, or what I thought would be perfect.”
I didn’t know how she could be more perfect than she already was, but I could imagine what perfection would look like for me. My curves straightened into something that might get a “Sir” out of the Wendy’s cashier.
“I want that,” I begged.
She wrapped her hand around my neck and brought our faces together. Her sticky lips nearly pressed into mine.
I melted.
She whispered, “I know.”
I felt my heartbeat slow to a steady rhythm. I could have been laying by the lake on a sunny day, watermelon juice dripping down my chin.
“Perfection has a cost,” she said.
“I don’t care,” I blurted out. “I’ll give anything. I’ll do anything.”
“Anything,” she repeated. “What about soccer moms following you into the grocery store? Smelling your hair when they are behind you at the movie theaters? Begging for your secrets. What diet did you use? Was it Jenny Craig? Weight Watchers? The Biggest Loser?!”
“My mom loves that show,” I offered, wishing I would just shut the fudge up.
“Next will be the pageant queen wannabes then the theater girls who know a tiny waist can earn them an Oscar. You’ll never expect the nerds. The student government lackeys. But they’re the hungriest of all.”
An image of G.O.D.’s secretary flashed through my head. Her and her daisy-chain overalls and her Hello Kitty lunchbox. Could her, or someone like her, really have murdered Delilah? Or was I entirely misunderstanding Delilah’s swoon-worthy, albeit vague, monologue?
“If they can’t be you, they’ll end you,” she warned.
For the first time that night, I felt frustration bubble in my chest. I didn’t know how to make her understand. So I did what my mom did to me when she really wanted to impart the importance of monitoring my caloric intake.
“I. Don.’t Care,” I punctuated each word with a smack of my lips.
Delilah looked at me for a long moment. The classroom clock ticked through the silence.
“You don’t like yourself, “ she stated bluntly. “But what if there’s another way? Besides using the lipstick?”
“Another way to what?” I asked.
“Freedom,” she promised.
Freedom. She didn’t define it, but I saw it unfurl before me. An existence not defined by my body. My frustratingly disobedient body. Relief from perpetual hunger. Hunger for hot dogs and boyishness and a gender that couldn’t exist in the reality I knew.
“Yes,” I consented.
“Please,” I begged.
She nodded.
Then she kissed me.
She kissed me.
She kissed me.
She kissed me and she bit me and she pushed us across the room, through the open window, up and up and up, until we were hovering in a blood-soaked embrace far above the ground below. I felt so light in her arms. She yanked on my braids and used the leverage to pull me even closer. I pushed my fingers into the soft tissue of her brain.
Through the haze of it all, I somehow managed to ask, “Wait, are you like a vampire or something?”
She smiled with her long, pointy teeth and responded, “Or something.”
She shoved the now-open lipstick into my mouth, and fed me its peachy wax until I gagged.
I wanted more.
She pulled on my hair, and I moaned. I felt the skin at the base of my scalp stretch. One tendon snapped and then another and another. When she freed me of my hair, I shook and melted in her arms, letting her hold me through my twitching and groaning.
My braids gone, I finally felt like Samson.
She pulled away only after I stilled, and then I saw she was rotting. A maggot stretched between our lips like a spaghetti noodle.
I could still taste the loose flesh on the inside of her cheek.
She nipped at my collarbone one last time.
And then she dropped me.
I fell slowly, the humidity holding my heft aloft, and I watched her as I crashed towards the ground below. In her hands, my braids still attached to my scalp, dripping, raw.
I turned in the air and executed a backflip as I’d done perfectly so many times before. I felt the air rush around me. I felt relief like I had never known. This time, for the first time, the ground met me before I’d finished the turn.
Splattered across the ground, I smiled. The clouds above me opened wide, and rain filled my breathless throat.
