Perfume by Caroline B. Cooney

waiting to be made into pyramids must have throbbed thousands of years ago.
    “This heat!” shrieked Connie. “I cannot bear it!”
    (Connie had spent all winter saying she could not bear the cold.)
    “Let’s go to the lake,” said Luce.
    This meant a long drive, and a parking fee, and not quite enough time to do homework. Nobody was interested in going to the lake.
    “The mall!” shrieked Connie. “The mall is air-conditioned. We have got to go to the mall.”
    (Connie had spent the entire winter saying she was sick of the mall.)
    “What do you think, Dove?” said Luce.
    Dove was not paying much attention to Connie and Luce. She was very much aware of two other people close by and listening. Two boy people. Timmy and Laurence hadn’t quite joined the girls, weren’t entering the conversation, weren’t making suggestions … but they were there.
    Now that she was back in control of her eyes again, owner of the hands, dictator of the body, Dove was also nervous again. Anxious. Wanting to do and say just the right thing at just the right moment to just the right boy.
    It occurred to Dove that although she had been terrified, lying down in the back of the brain while Wing assaulted the world, she had also been slightly more comfortable. She had had no social choices to make—no recourse but to let somebody else function in the real world.
    Dove tried to think of a casual meaningless way to invite Timmy and Laurence to go to the mall with them in Luce’s car, but nothing came to mind.
    Because I hate Timmy and Laurence, said the other person in her mind.
    Dove held her jaws together to keep Wing from saying this out loud.
    “You shouldn’t do that,” said Laurence seriously. (At least one of them had found an opening for talk.) “My sister grinds her teeth together like that and she’s ruined her jaw joints and has to take medication and maybe even have surgery.”
    Dove dared not lose her hold on her jaw muscles, so she said with her teeth crunched hard together, “How awful.”
    Laurence told Dove in boring detail about his sister’s medical problems. Everybody listened as if they cared.
    Timmy said, “I wouldn’t mind going to the mall, actually. I want to look at that new kind of sneaker. I haven’t tried them on yet.”
    “The double airlift kind?” said Luce.
    “With the memory laces,” Timmy said, nodding.
    “What’s a memory lace?” said Connie.
    “The shoelace remembers how tight you like it,” he said, “and it retracts by itself and ties itself.”
    “Wow!” said Connie, who would believe anything. “Wow, I want to try those on, too. Where did you see those advertised, Timmy? Who makes those? They sound really really really neat.”
    Dove giggled. “They sound really really really made up,” she said. She felt at ease again. She could keep Wing out of her mouth; Timmy’s kiss had done it. She was safe. So Wing rattled around in her head; somehow Dove had not noticed this for the first fifteen years, and she would learn how not to notice it for the next fifteen, as well.
    So there.
    Luce said, “You guys want to meet us at the mall? We could all have a pizza at the Food Court and then go look at sneakers.”
    Connie ruined it. “And Dry Ice,” she said, “I want to go into Dry Ice. You just never know what they will stock!”
    The teenagers headed slowly for their cars, giggling, changing partners, making jokes, deciding which highway to take.
    “Are you going to get more Venom ?” said Timmy to Dove.
    “No. I’m not even going into Dry Ice.”
    “What is that? I never heard of it,” said Timmy.
    “It’s a store Connie and Luce like,” said Dove. The usual shiver did not come. How surprising! Under the circumstances, Dove would have expected to pass out just thinking about Dry Ice. It’s because I left the perfume sitting on Mr. Phinney’s desk, thought Dove, and the janitors will toss it, and I’m safe with a nice boy named Timmy O’Hay. Such a nice solid