Some guys are devilishly cute.
Others, just devilish...

          We’ve all had them. I’ve had a lot of them, way more than my fair share if I want to be whiny about it (which I don’t because I try really hard not to be a whiner), but none can compare to the day I accidentally opened a demon portal with my zit cream.

          Oh, yeah. I did. Would this happen to anyone else? Probably not. But for me, Kenzie Sutcliffe, it is totally typical. If there is mud to step in, ketchup to squirt on my shirt, or a volleyball to be hit on the head with, I will manage it. What can I say? It’s a gift.

          October twentieth started out normal enough: Annoying alarm went off way too early, mother made squawking sounds like a cracked out parrot— it’s late, really late, you’ll miss the bus!— and brother turned my bedroom light on for spite, searing my sleep-deprived eyeballs with fluorescent lighting at six am. Major wardrobe disaster occurred when I discovered I hadn’t turned on the dryer the night before and all my jeans were still cold and wet. Given that no one had done laundry in two weeks because Mom was working on a huge court case, I had finally taken matters into my own hands and stuffed eighty-seven pairs of jeans in the washer the night before— literally every piece of denim I owned. Then somehow had forgotten to turn on the dryer after the transfer of pants from the washer. I remembered to empty the lint trap and add the Snuggle dryer sheet, but forgot to push the pesky little on button.

          Picture me in the kitchen in frog pajama pants staring into the dryer as if my retinas could evaporate all dampness: “Brandon! You were supposed to put the clothes in the dryer and turn it on!” It made me feel better to blame someone else even though it was a total out and out lie.

          Fourteen-year old brother, milk dribbling out of his mouth: “Bite me.”

          Okay, that was fair. Not bothering to pursue a good-natured round of verbal sparring with my brother, which wouldn’t dry the jeans anyway, I ran back upstairs, mentally racing through my closet. Brown cords? Too earthy. Skirt? Too bohemian. Black pants? Too school band concert.

          The thing is, I liked jeans, and only jeans. Wearing anything else made me feel like a photo layout in a teen magazine. Toss me a football, give me some shiny gloss and a fan blowing my hair here and there, and I could be the Fall Collection. The only reason I had the brown cords and the boho skirt and the band concert pants was because my mother thought black hoodies were a crime against fashion humanity, and she held out a futile hope that by gifting me with cute coordinates, I would morph into Homecoming Queen destined for an Ivy League pre-law program. Much like herself.

          It wasn’t going to happen.

          She would have to pass the tiara torch to my little sister, because I was purely Fringe. Not those dangly weird strips on the country-western shirts you see in seventies bar movies, but I mean fringe, as in clinging to the edges of junior class social acceptance. That was me. Never totally out but never totally in either. Just as likely to be included with an enthusiastic invite, or totally forgotten when it came time to pass the word on about a major party. I never knew which one I was getting, and it was frustrating.

          But with so many of those offered friendships as fake as the glossy teen catazines, I was constantly waging a war with myself. Who wanted to hang with a bunch of hollaback girls? Or worse, be one. On the other hand, it sucked to spend Friday night at home watching Rent with my best friend Isabella for the nineteenth time. Principles vs. Popularity, the age old question.

          With this to debate while I showered, I went into my bathroom and discovered that overnight a giant crater had surfaced on my chin, a red-rimmed, oozing volcanic zit, ready to blow at any minute.

          “Aah!” I shuddered involuntarily and reached for my morning acne lotion, the stuff that’s slimy and bleaches the color out of my aqua blue hand towels. Occasionally I wonder if it’s good to put something on my face that can strip color out of cotton— hello, Michael Jackson— but I need all the ammo I can get in the war on bad skin.

          Here’s where it got weird. I cranked up my CD player so I’d be able to hear it in the shower. Then I leaned over to turn on the water, open bottle of lotion in my hand, wanting the temp to warm up while I was busy taking on pimple from hell in round one of Kenzie vs. body bacteria. I never even got as far as the faucet. In a move that is Classic Kenzie— questioning the usefulness of all the hours and thousands of dollars spent on dance lessons if I couldn’t even manage to walk without incident— I tripped on the bottom of my huge pj pants and slammed into the wall, dropping the lotion into the tub. It bounced, I winced in pain, and fifty bucks worth of prescription acne meds poured out of the bottle and down the drain.

          I grabbed at it, but two thirds were already gone. If the pipes were having problems with pimples, they’d be in luck, otherwise it was a total waste. “Shoot!”

          Saving what was left by tipping the bottle right side up, I also grabbed a big glop that was still clinging to the rim of the drain and tried to dribble it back into the opened cap. Okay, I admit, that was kind of a gross thing to do, but the tub was clean, and I was desperate. There was no way my mom would replace lotion that cost such major money just two weeks after I’d gotten it— can’t you just smell the lecture?— and life with increased break-outs was too horrific to contemplate.

          Slapping what I couldn’t force back into the bottle onto my crater-covered chin, I turned around to grope for a towel. Unfortunately they were all crumpled up damp and dirty on the floor where I had left them the night before, so I settled for swiping some toilet paper and trying to get the sticky slime off my fingers.

          They were starting to burn and itch, which struck me as a bad sign. Like an allergic reaction waiting to happen. Like swelled sausage fingers or nasty rash spreading out in ninety directions. And knowing my mother, that would not be a good enough reason to stay home from school. She’d make me go anyway, and by tomorrow my nickname would be Contagious Kenzie or Rash Girl.

          Notoriety for a dermatological emergency wasn’t what I was going for, even if I had no interest whatsoever in making a play for Homecoming Queen.

          Amber Janson already had that locked up anyway, even if we were only about a minute into our junior year. Barring a major scandal involving loss of her credit card privileges, announcement of a secret drug problem, or a sudden excessive weight gain, there were no challengers to Amber’s dominance of the pack. Do I sound jealous? Yeah, guess what, it’s because I was. Come on, you would be too. Honesty is a virtue and I truly, honestly, loathed Amber. I’m not sure I had a good reason, exactly, since she’d never done anything to me directly, it was just that her life was like Bubblicious gum— pink and bouncy and full of sugar, and mine was a gumball— hard, and totally lacking in flavor.

          Wiping the lotion off my fingers wasn’t working at all, and my skin was looking really red and annoyed, and I was beginning to picture myself starring in a future Stephen King novel (she was consumed by a giant rash!), so I reached behind me to turn the shower on so I could rinse. Only my hand hit something hard, something that shouldn’t have been there, something that was not shower wall, not faucet, not empty air like it should have been. And when I whipped my head around to check out what I’d made contact with, there was a guy sitting in my bathtub. Knees up to his chest, he blinked chocolate brown eyes at me.

          There was a guy in my tub. A guy. In the tub.

          You know what I did, right? I screamed bloody murder like any sane sixteen-year old girl would do when a guy just randomly pops into her shower with zero warning. My mother didn’t raise no fool.

          She raised a chicken.

          Or at least I tried to scream. Before I got halfway through one, “Aaahhh,” he cut me off by slapping his hand right over my mouth. I did not know he was going to do that. There was no time to react, no time to catch a breath, no time to jerk back, close my mouth or anything, before my face was suddenly covered with guy fingers from chin to nostrils. Not a good feeling. They were smothering and strong and they smelled like… guy. Like salted soft pretzel and skin. Totally disgusting.

          I managed to yank my head back and opened my mouth to let loose with another yell when he did it again, this time actually squeezing my lips together.

          “Dude, chill out with the screaming. It’s obnoxious. And just who are you?” he asked, shock crossing his face as he checked me out, brown eyes flicking up and down.

          Okay, I admit, I don’t look all that hot before my shower— who does?— but he didn’t need to look so appalled. And I could have been showered and blow-dried, dragging on sweat pants and sliding on some lip color if he hadn’t just mysteriously appeared out of nowhere.

          But of course he wasn’t real. I had hit my head on the faucet and was unconscious and he was just the manifestation of my insecurities. It was the only explanation for why a brown-eyed geek was in my tub. He wasn’t good looking at all. Too skinny, ears sticking out a little, hair that needed a serious attempt at style, and a voice that sounded like Darth Vadar with a Southern accent. Total loser, and that was why this was a dream, an unconscious vision, because he was nothing to blog about, and yet he was dismissing me as unattractive.

          How rude.

          It had to be my subconscious telling me absolutely not to make a fool out of myself and ask Adam Birmingham to Homecoming like I had been considering all week (not that I really would, but I was considering, which was me fooling myself until some other chick asked him first and I could then blame the ruination of my romantic dreams on her aggressiveness).

          Apparently my subconscious didn’t know me all that well if my subconscious actually thought I would ever have the guts to approach Adam, and my subconscious was also sadly mistaken if it thought that by flashing a guy like this in front of me I would actually embrace realism, as in, this was the kind of guy I should be interested it, not Adam, it had another thing coming. I preferred delusions to dorks. Sorry subconscious.

          Trying not to make any sudden moves before I could decipher any further hidden meanings in this hallucination, I said, “Who am I? I’m Kenzie. Who are you? A manifestation of my fears? No, that would mean a serial killer with fuzzy hair would be in my tub, because tortured death and a bad hair day are truly my greatest fears. So maybe you’re more like my impulse control?”

          Either way I found it completely weird that anything generated from my brain matter would use the word “dude.” I have a personal vendetta against the over-usage of it, but then again maybe that meant something. It was symbolism for… something. Could be. I had no clue. Hey, we’d just started the psychology unit in social science. I hadn’t gotten to visions and their relevance yet.

          “Uh, actually, I’m a demon.” He sat back against the shower wall and stretched his arms out, like he was testing them. When he unwound like that, he was a broader than I expected, but he still looked like a high school Yu-Gi-Oh champion. Not demonic at all, just dorky.

          A demon. Wow, who knew my mind was so deep and dark? Maybe it was all the black hoodies and burgundy hair dye. But I wasn’t following my subconscious on this one. I sat back on my heels. “I think I must have inhaled chemicals from the lotion. And what’s the point of hallucinating if I can’t figure out what it means?”

          “Whoa, get a grip,” he said. “No one here is hallucinating. I’m really a demon.”

          “No, you’re not.”

          “Yes, I am.”

          “No, you’re not. You’re not even real.”

          He reached out and pinched my forearm. Hard.

          “Ow! That hurt, loser.” My arm had a nice red spot on it, above the mottled rash-y fingers and wrist. Great. Add bruise to my other deformities.

          “That’s because I’m real.”

          I was starting to wonder if he could actually be real.

          “You’re real? Not my subconscious trying to tell me something?” I was having a little trouble with this one even as the evidence moved around in front of me. I was totally lacking in luck or athletic ability, but not usually prone to encounters with otherworldly creatures.

          “What would a guy in your shower be trying to tell you? That you missed a spot?”

          “Okay, you’re disgusting.” It occurred to me that if I had been a little faster getting out of bed, I would have actually been in the shower when he appeared. That was a fate too horrible to contemplate.

          “Look, I’m really a demon, okay? I’ve been locked in a prison portal for the last six months. You just freed me, so I owe you a thank you.” He stuck his hand out. “I’m Levi.”

          His name was definitely less dorky than he was. And I was getting used to his voice. It was slow and drawn out, nothing like the guys in suburban Ohio, where I’m stuck— I mean— live.

          Not sure what else to do, I shook his hand. Yep. He felt pretty darn real. “I’m Kenzie. Why is there a demon portal in my shower?” And God, had he been hanging around in my drain for who knows how long? Listening to me sing in the shower? Had he been able to see anything? This could test the quality of my parent’s mental health insurance, because I would need counseling if he’d been watching me shower. “You need to leave. Now. You can go back the way you came, right?” I could shove him if I needed to. Pave the way for him with scrubbing bubbles.

          “Didn’t you hear me? I just escaped from a prison portal.” He shook his head. “No chance I’m going back that way.”

          “Well, you have to go some way, obviously. And I’d love to hang around and chat about it, but I have to catch the bus.” Mom wasn’t going to take a demon appearing in my shower as a good excuse for having to drive me to school. The supernatural held no sway when she was due in court for a trial. And we won’t mention the fact that I had to still take the bus in the first place because I had failed my driver’s test. Twice.

          A loud knock pounded on my bathroom door.

          I jumped and Levi was suddenly standing in front of me, bouncing on the balls of his feet, fists up in a defensive, ready posture. “Stay behind me,” he said.

          Okay, now that was kind of hot. I’d like to think I could kick butt on my own, but it was nice to have a guy willing to do it for me. And he had moved fast. Freaky fast. He’d be a star on the soccer team, that’s for sure.

          “Kenzie!”

          “It’s just my sister,” I whispered. Levi relaxed his fists while I called, “What, Zoe?”

          “Ka-en-za-ie! Mom says you’re late.”

          Zoe had a way of drawing my name out into four syllables.

          I was about to answer when she opened the bathroom door and strolled in. Zoe is adorable, with true blond hair (mine is that disgusting pseudo dirty-blond that just likes to pretend it’s blond, so I dyed it dark brown with red highlights) and big blue eyes. She has the vocabulary of an eight year old, reads chapter books, and can rock a pair of black knee high boots better than I can. When I look at Zoe, I think that my parent’s experimented with Brandon and I, then finally got the DNA mix right with the third try. Her future was filled with a tiara.

          “Who are you?” she asked Levi with a curious stare.

          “You’re supposed to knock before you come in,” I said, going on the defensive as I stood up and moved around Levi to block him from view.

          “I did. I knocked. Then I came in,” she said with really annoying logic. Zoe is adorable, but she also has her fair share of brattiness. She’s kind of like a puppy. Sweet to look at, fun to play with sometimes, but I don’t think my parents really understood what they were getting into when they brought her into the house. She has the potential to be seriously destructive.

          Perfect example— she looked us both over and said, “I don’t think you’re supposed to have a boy in your bathroom when you’re wearing pajamas.”

          Yikes.

          I pushed the button on the doorknob to lock the door and turned the shower water on so no one hanging around in the hall— like my brother, who was always seeking a way to blackmail me for cash— would hear the conversation.

          “Okay, listen, I’ll give you five bucks if you don’t say anything to mom.”

          She tightened her ponytail as she mulled it over. “Who is he?”

          “This is Levi,” I said.

          “I’m Kenzie’s boyfriend.”

          “Shut up!” I turned in horror. “That is not true, Zoe.” As if. Please.

          But she just nodded. “Okay, I won’t say anything.”

          “Thanks.” I gave a sigh of relief. “And he’s leaving anyway. We just have to wait until mom goes to work.” Which was after when the bus came, a serious complication.

          “Kenzie!” my mom yelled up the stairs. “What is taking you so long? The bus will be here in three minutes.” I could hear her starting up the steps.

          I panicked. “Ah!” I flipped up the toilet seat lid. “Zoe, you’re sick, got it?”

          My mom knocked on the door. “Kenzie, let’s go! And where did Zoe disappear to?”

          “She’s in here, Mom. She’s sick. She’s barfing.”

          “Sick?” Annoyance changed to concern. “Zoe?”

          Zoe leaned over and made first class throw up sounds, with lots of retching and choking.

          Mom rattled the knob. “Unlock the door so I can come in.”

          “I can’t, I’m in the shower.” I leaned backwards into the shower and stuck my head under the spray so my hair would be wet. It was cold and I shivered, but I stuck it out until I was adequately soaked. I turned off the water, threw a towel around myself, hoping my mom wouldn’t notice I was still in my pajamas, and motioned for Levi to get in the shower. He did, pulling the curtain all the way across and giving Zoe a wink before he disappeared.

          She giggled, than covered the laugh with a puke sound that would have shot her eyeballs out of her head if it were real.

          “Oh, Zoe, honey.”

          My mom sounded really worried, so I took a washcloth, slapped water all over Zoe’s face and hairline so she’d look sweaty, shoved the cloth in her hands, and flushed the toilet. I opened the door, heart pounding. Somehow I didn’t think Mom was going to believe any “demon just popped into my tub without warning” explanation.

          “I don’t know what happened,” I said. “She just came in here and starting spewing.”

          Mom brushed past me and squatted down in her heels and chocolate suit. “Baby, are you feeling better?” She pushed back Zoe’s hair and stuck her lips to my sister’s forehead. “You’re clammy.”

          Zoe gave a little moan and blinked pitiful eyes. The kid was so good, it was a little scary.

          “I’m due at the courthouse in twenty minutes for opening remarks. Geez.” Mom patted her hip pocket, looking for her cell phone. “This always happens when your father is traveling. He steps on a plane and someone throws up.” She kissed the top of Zoe’s head. “It’s okay, baby. Let’s get you into bed and I’ll call Grandma. She should be able to get here in forty-five minutes and I’ll just be a little late.”

          “I can stay home with her,” I volunteered, seeing an opportunity and running with it. “Today is the end of the quarter movie day. We’re not doing anything important.”

          Okay, that was a total lie. I had an American history quiz and a book report I was supposed to present to my Lit class. But I also had a demon in my bathroom and that outweighed Harper’s Ferry facts and my summary of Moby Dick. April Tyrell had gotten assigned the same book anyway and once she said “lunatic goes after big whale” what else was left to say?

          My mom had that tormented parental guilt look. Did she sacrifice my education and the possibility of an Ivy League college acceptance letter or did she make her very important murder trial on time? She chose not to tick off the judge and give herself the best chance to convict the creep. Which was the right choice, because I had no intention whatsoever of applying to any school that had a political leader— any political leader— as an alumnus. I was going to attend drama school, but that was something of a secret at the moment.

          “Okay. But keep her in the same room as you and don’t let her watch too much TV. And call me if she doesn’t stop throwing up.”

          “Got it.”

          Mom lifted Zoe up and carried her down the stairs to set her up in the family room, which was sick kid central when someone stayed home. Zoe would get blankets, a pillow, a bucket, the remote control, and some Ginger Ale. With that kind of day of leisure ahead of her, she should paying me five bucks, not the other way around. Then again, she was in kindergarten. Her most strenuous school activities were finger-painting with shaving cream and accepting gifts of cookies from her many five-year old male admirers. Zoe got more action with guys than I did, any day of the week.

          “Let me get dressed. I’ll be down in a second,” I said and shut the door, locking it.

          “Are you gone?” I whispered to the black shower curtain, hoping the whole thing had been a weird wrinkle in time and now my normal boring life had been restored. I would never wish for excitement again— Satan might pop up on my PC screen next.

          The shower curtain yanked back. My demon looked annoyed. “Yes, I’m still here. And I have wet feet.” Levi lifted up his gym shoe to prove his point. It did look a little shiny.

          “Do demons melt in water?” I tried not to sound too hopeful.

          “No. Water is my element.”

          “Then quit complaining! We almost got busted.”

          “I think that would be more of a problem for you than it would be for me.”

          Exactly. I was worried about me, not him. Guy in my tub had Grounded For Life written all over it. “As soon as my mom leaves, you can go out the back door.”

          He stepped out of the tub and carelessly pulled his jeans up a little. He was taller than I had realized and I was suddenly aware that I was still in my pjs with zit cream on my chin. I was starting to feel a little irritated. I had enough reasons to stress— bad skin, play try-outs on Monday, homecoming inching closer and closer with no date, that really irritating issue of no driver’s license— I didn’t have time for this. And if he thought for one minute, I was going anywhere in public with him, he was so wrong. No way. I couldn’t risk anyone getting the wrong idea. If word got around I was dating a less than hot demon, my life would be ruined, absolutely over. I’d have to dye my hair (back to dirty blonde, no thanks) and change schools.

          “Why did you tell Zoe you’re my boyfriend? What if she says something to my mom?”

          “What was I supposed to do, tell the kid I’m a demon? She’d have run out of here screaming and had nightmares for the rest of her life. I don’t scare little kids, man.” He looked offended by the very thought.

          “You didn’t have any problems telling me you were a demon.”

          “And you didn’t get scared, did you? You looked like you could handle the truth, except for a minute there where you went on that stupid psycho-babble trip and thought I was like your conscience or something. But aside from that, you handled it alright. Besides, you saw me pop out of the portal. You saw for yourself I wasn’t human.”

          “You’re not human?” That, more than anything else, was the freakiest thing I had ever heard.

          “Try to keep up with me,” he said in a very slow voice, like I was a candidate for the short bus. “De-mon. Demon. Me demon, you teenage girl.”

          Irritated, I rolled my eyes. He might not have been human, but he also had enough testosterone to make him a complete and total jerk.

          “Way to be annoying.”

          He smiled. “But I’m cute.”

          “Not.” I put my hand on the doorknob. “Do not leave this bathroom until I say it’s okay.”

          “Do I get five bucks if I listen to you?”

          “No. You don’t get your demon butt kicked by me.”

          He had picked up my t-shirt and was studying it, not looking the least bit intimidated. “Wow, okay, since I’m now terrified.”

          “Give me that!” I pulled the shirt out of his hands. “Don’t touch anything.”

          I slipped out the door, careful to only open it a crack, and closed it behind me. Maybe with a little luck by the time I got back he would have vaporized.

          But we all know the indisputable truth— I never have any luck.

Excerpt from DEMON ENVY
by Erin Lynn
©2007 by Erin McCarthy
Berkley Trade/ISBN 042521737X

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