Page 48 of Devil in Disguise
She’d been wiping tables pretty mechanically, and didn’t realize she’d come close to Sydney and Cassandra until she heard, “Wow. Nice shoes. Going full dyke now? The trashy-girl thing’s not working out for you, I guess.”
It wasn’t either of her roommates. They wouldn’t have said anything at all to her. Their specialty was more along not-getting-out-of-the-bathroom-so-she-was-late lines. Passive-aggressive all the way. It was a guy’s voice, some other snotty friend. There was a whole group of them sitting here, all with expensive haircuts and aggressively perfect orthodonture and, in the case of the girls, extreme eyelashes. Dyma might have spent too much time gaming, but Sydney and Cassandra spentwaytoo much time grooming.
Oh. The person who’d said it was Logan. He was smirking, too. Safety in numbers, he thought. He said, “Going to have to grow some hair back, though, aren’t you?” I mean …” He pointed a finger southward and smirked some more. “I hear girls love that wall-to-wall carpet.” Like he’dsleptwith her.
She said, keeping it even, “Thanks. The shoes are vintage Doc Martens. They’re really heavy, too. That’s so when I kick you in the balls, you’ll feel it more. If I can find them, anyway.” She held up a hand of her own and made a circle of her fingers and thumb. A verysmallcircle.
Was it her best work, insult-wise? No. Sometimes, though, crude measures could be effective.
It went quiet for a second, and then two things happened at once. The guys at the table let out loud whoops, together with some wannabe-gangster hand gestures that indicated that Logan had gotten owned. There was some jumping-up, too. And next to Dyma, a tray teetered on the end of the table, then fell with a splintering crash of crockery, a flying fountain of minestrone soup, and a hail of greens and dressing. And every head in the enormous room turned.
“Oops,” Sydney said. Then she stood up, adjusted her (designer) backpack over her shoulder, and said, “The food here sucks, but the service is even worse.” She told Dyma, “Clean that up, would you? Somebody’s going to slip and fall. And, hey—sorry about your shoes.”
Dyma looked down. Her beautiful yellow-and-black Doc Martens, which she’d found in a thrift store, unbelievably in an actual size 5, which meant she’d had to buy them, even though she didn’t exactly need them and couldn’t afford them, were splashed with soup. There was a giant lettuce leaf sitting atop the laces of the right one, too. Like a hat.
The red mist was rising in front of her eyes, and she was trying to stand still. Trying not to lose her job. Trying not to lose her housing. And then Cassandra came around the table, stumbled, knocked into her, and sent her flying right into the mess on the floor, landing on a hip and an elbow. It hurt.
She scrambled to her feet. It wasn’t easy. The floor was slippery. There was soup on her arm, and her cutest jeans, the ones that were faded and ripped just right, were stained with oil and tomato. And everybody was laughing.
She’d stopped thinking anything at all. She just launched.
And didn’t make it.
An arm around her chest. A voice from somewhere over her head. “How about leaving this one to me?”
It was, somehow, Owen’s arm. Owen’s voice. At the same time, there was a scuffle and a shout from behind them. She twisted, and Owen loosened his grip to let her do it.
It was Pavani, shoving Cassandra back with two hands on her chest and shouting. And a slim, older Indian woman behind her. In jeans. With perfectly cut short hair, an elegant profile, and a horrified expression.
Oh, boy.
* * *
What washe going to do? He couldn’t even have said. All he knew was, when he’d walked across the dining hall and heard that asshole say that to her, he’d started moving fast. And when he’d watched that girl throw her into the mess they’d made?
He hadn’t hit anybody in anger since he was six. He was about to break his streak.
And then all hell broke loose. Another girl was fighting with the one who’d shoved Dyma, and shouting, too, in some foreign language he’d never heard. Something like,“Kutta! Chutiya! Randi!”Probably not asking to be best friends, because there was hair being pulled, and screaming. He let Dyma go, dropped his hat and the bag he was holding, and got over there, then grabbed each of them by the shirt collar and held them apart at the extent of his wingspan. That was a ways, but still, they struggled. The dark-haired girl was practically spitting, and the Asian one was crying.
Now, an older woman who seemed to be with the younger one—Indian, Middle Eastern, something like that—was speaking fast in the same language. Owen might not understand the words, but he knew how a mom sounded when she was telling you exactly how much trouble you were in, and how you’d better come with her right now. He let the girls go, and the mom grabbed the one she was yelling at and shook her. The other girl, the one who’d shoved Dyma, was still crying, and the girl who’d shoved the tray rushed over and hugged her like they were survivors from the Titanic.
Also, another older woman and an older guy were running across the room. The guy was yelling something like, “Break it up!” A little late.
Oh. Dyma. Owen looked around, and she was crouched down, loading broken pieces of dish onto the tray with shaking hands. He grabbed the broom she’d been using, headed over there, and said, “Stand up. Broken glass.”
She looked up at him wildly, and her mouth was trembling. He’d never seen Dyma at a loss, and he hated seeing it now. He put a hand down, took hers, and pulled her to her feet. “Hey, now,” he told her gently. “Hey. It’s OK.”
She took a breath, shook her head, and visibly settled herself. “I need to clean this up,” she told him. “And I didn’t … what he said … Owen, Ididn’tsleep with him. He saw me … he saw …” She wasn’t settled anymore. She was losing it
The older guy had reached them, and the heavyset woman puffed up behind him. She said, “What happened here?” Again, in a tone of voice with which Owen was completely familiar. The voice of a coach telling a player he’d screwed up bad and was on the bench.
Nobody else was going anywhere at all. The whole table of people just sat there like this was a TV show, and they couldn’t wait to see what was coming next.
Dyma started to talk. Owen talked right over her. “This guy—” He pointed to the asshole who’d started it all. “He made sexual suggestions to Dyma. Offensive ones. This girl—” He pointed to the good-looking brunette who was comforting the Asian girl, both of them standing frozen now. “She shoved the tray off the table. And then the other girl shoved Dyma down into the mess.”
A burst of objection from the two girls, along the lines of, “It was anaccident!”
“Yeah,” Owen said, “not how it looked to me. Let me guess. You two are the roommates. Two pretty sorry excuses for humanity, if you ask me. Bet your folks are real proud. And you.” He stared at the other kid, who didn’t know where to look. He was trying to be tough for his buddies, but it wasn’t working. Owen said, “I’ll see you later. Call it ‘out behind the barn.’”
