Page 2 of Hilarina and the Ogre

If Varda had ever guarded anything with her life, Hilary didn’t know it, but he said nothing until they were out in the car together. “I thought we agreed not to ask.”

Cold air was coming through the open window thanks to Varda always lighting up just as soon as they were down the road. Neither set of parents knew she smoked, which seemed impossible given what a chimney she was.

She ashed the cigarette out the open window. “You agreed I wouldn’t ask.”

Hilary let it go. The question wasn’t really why they fought so much, but what Varda was doing with him in the first place. Not only didn’t she like him, she seemed to actively dislike him. Which was ideal, really, since he disliked her as well, and having it be mutual meant he didn’t need to feel guilty about it. But that only deepened the mystery. He’d thought about asking, but wasn’t ready for her to shoot the question back at him.

“Do you have your costume ready?” she asked as he walked her to her door.

“I don’t not have my costume ready.”

Hilary knew that was a problem. With the dance just a few days away, he really needed to get his act together. He had vague notions of a costume idea, but whenever he thought of the dance, a kind of nauseous anxiety would press down on him, so he’d been avoiding it as much as he could. Before she could erupt, he added quickly, “I’ll finish it by Saturday. I promise.”

Varda looked at him for a long moment. “I told you the dance was important to me.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

Hilary’s hands were growing wet with the dance talk. She sighed. “Give me a kiss, then.”

It was the only time he ever kissed her. Here, at the door of her house. She probably enjoyed it about as much as he did—which was to say, not at all, but she was insistent on it. And he didn’t mind, really. The kisses never lasted long. Closed mouth, not much more than a peck. Sometimes she threw her arms around him to show off false enthusiasm, but this time she kept her hands by her sides. “You’re picking me up tomorrow,” she called after him as he headed back to the car. “Don’t be late.”

Come Saturday, Varda needed to pick up the custom headpiece she’d ordered, as well as the corset. Hilary hadn’t realized vampire mermaids wore corsets, but she only rolled her eyes when he said so. “Are you going to be an ass the whole time?” she asked.

He’d only been planning to be an ass part of the time, probably. He didn’t enjoy being her chauffeur. “No.”

The headpiece was much more elaborate than Hilary thought it would be, encrusted with pearls and glass and something that looked like sea foam but obviously wasn’t. He couldn’t imagine how much it might have cost. The nausea was coming back.

“We’ll stop at the studio,” she said once it was safely in the car. “I want to see how it looks with the necklace.”

With a headpiece like that, no one was even going to notice a necklace, but after his corset comment, he was skating on thin ice, so he said nothing.

“How cute,” Varda said as they passed one of the young dancers in the hall who was in her leotard. Not all the students wore them, but Annette encouraged it. She swore dancers did better when they dressed the part. “What about the tutus?” Varda asked him. “Do they wear those?”

She probably meant the pancake tutu with the wire hoop and stiff tulle that people pictured when they thought tutu.

“They wear costumes sometimes during the performances,” Hilary said. “They might do The Nutcracker for Christmas.”

“Cute,” Varda said again, but she was already craning her head, looking for Annette. What she found instead couldn’t have been more different. “Is that the Whale?”

Hilary didn’t place the name immediately, but when he saw the tall and bulky frame looking even larger beside the tiny dancers in the beginner class, he knew who she meant. Trenton Wells, another victim of naming. Wells didn’t even sound all that much like Whale, but the others at school deemed it close enough. Though why Trenton was the Whale, Hilary wasn’t sure. The boy was big, yes, but not even the largest in their class. That distinction went to Freddy “Feet” Martinez, who wore size 17 sneakers.

“What is he doing here?” Varda demanded. “Is he a pedo or something?”

No, he was a dancer. Hilary knew because his mother had mentioned him. The boy had started around the beginning of the school year. He was technically a beginner, though with a much better foundation than the others, it seemed. Annette had been surprised at Trenton’s flexibility. You didn’t see that in the older beginners, never mind those near adulthood. She hadn’t mentioned the boy being one of his classmates, though.

“That’s seriously nasty,” Varda said, as if no greater offense had been committed in the history of the town. “Can’t you make him drop out? Those girls can’t be more than ten.”

Hilary just barely managed to keep from rolling his eyes. “He’s not looking at them.”

“Of course he is. Why else would he be here?”

“To dance?”

Clearly, she thought that was preposterous. “Go and talk to him!”

It was the last thing Hilary wanted to do. What would he even say? My girlfriend thinks you’re a pedophile and wants you to leave. Don’t worry, she can’t stand me either. Yeah, right. He’d never so much as exchanged glances with the guy at school. Trenton kept to himself. He was almost always reading something, and even came early to do it, always the first and last in the classroom. The boy was just there, an omnipresent mass, and that was all Hilary knew about him. Trenton didn’t speak unless spoken to, and even the teachers didn’t call on him, finding him as strange as the students did. He seemed to do well in all his classes though, despite never paying any attention to the lectures.

“You’re rounding your back,” Hilary said.