A cry rang out from the room at the end of the hall.
“Where’s Mr. Riggles?!?!” Daniel screamed. Wendy frowned and bit the inside of her lip. She took the cat, tossed it into her 26 year old autistic brother’s room and slammed the door. The cat and her brother made distressed noises, but the commotion subsisted after a few seconds.
Wendy decided to slip out of the house before anyone could bother her about making her brother scream. They would say that she should be more considerate, and she would scream uncontrollably because she was the only one who tried in the slightest to treat Daniel like a human. She played Connect 4 with him, and one time, she managed to lure him out of his room to play on the old swing set in their back yard.
She decided to take the bus to the mall. Before entering the motion activated sliding doors, she took off her heels and did three cartwheels. She hadn’t eaten all day, so she felt that it was okay to buy a large blended Oreo coffee drink from Gloria Jean’s. She didn’t really notice how the drink tasted because the cold made her tongue numb, but she liked how the big cup made her hands look very tiny, and the whipped cream looked cute with the chocolate sprinkles. She wouldn’t eat anything else until after 3pm the next day.
She went to Borders and tried to read Fangoria magazine. There was an article about a young man with a lot of tattoos, a beard and long hair under a trucker cap who made props for horror movies, and she imagined him stalking her. She started to feel depressed because no one could see how metal she looked draped over the black leather chair like a bored shed skin. On top of that, Cold Play’s “Yellow” was playing. After she went into the bathroom to cry for a while, she went to Hot Topic.
In Hot Topic, she saw a neon pink unicorn cameo necklace. It wasn’t just a picture of a unicorn, it was a toy unicorn’s head glued onto the round cameo background. She had enough money on her debit card to buy it, but she had a more amusing idea. There was a Mexican looking boy with Justin Bieber shaped hair and a snap back Raptors cap. She told him, “I’ll touch your dick if you steal this for me.” He blinked at her and did not say any words. She pulled him behind the Sale rack, removed the cardboard part with the security sticker from the necklace and shoved it into the boy’s pants. While her hand was down in his pants, she looked into his eyes, smiled and clutched his dick for about 5 seconds. His chest collapsed under his blue hoodie and he shuddered while biting his lip. They exited the Hot Topic holding hands and walked to the bathroom. He took the necklace out of his pants and handed it to her. Fetal words bubbled up from his gums, but before he could say them, Wendy kissed him on the cheek and ran away until she was in Macy’s. In Macy’s she sprayed herself with Marc Jacobs perfume.
On the bus ride home, she thought about outfits that would go with the necklace, and she felt like she could manage to be alive until all those outfits were worn. She also thought about dying Daniel’s hair pale blue while her parent’s were asleep that night. Daniel usually stayed up until 3am watching Adult Swim on Cartoon Network, and he liked having his head touched.
