Feather Bound by Sarah Raughley Page B

the door: “ Deanna, please forgive me! Whatever I’ve done to offend youuu!”
    â€œHas he… has he lost his goddamn mind ?” After slamming the door, I collapsed against the frame while Ade laughed so hard, she tumbled over the arm of the couch. I could hear the band members shuffling down the front steps, muttering their complaints on the other side. This had gone too far.
    I strode to the kitchen and plucked my phone off the table.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” Ade started, but I put up a hand to silence her before dialing Hyde.
    â€œDeanna! You called! Are you OK?” Incoherent chatting and techno music bleated in the background on the other end of the receiver. And yet I could still hear the elation in his voice.
    â€œYou’re a psychopath.”
    â€œWhat? I can’t hear you,” he shouted. “What did you say?”
    â€œ You’re a freaking psychopath !”
    â€œBad at math?” OK, now he was just shitting me for the fun of it. The little laugh proved it. “Deanna, you are OK, right?”
    Yes: the “OK” that people usually are after a soul-sucking, traumatizing event. “Yeah,” I lied. “But–”
    â€œGood… in that case I’m going to have to call you back. Sorry, it’s just that this is a really bad time.”
    â€œExcuse me? You’ve been calling me for days and now suddenly ‘Oh sorry, totes busy, ttyl?’”
    â€œI’m at the cover party for Bella Magazine .”
    â€œOh, well, lah-dee-friggin-dah .”
    My hand was shaking. I didn’t think it was possible for one human being to piss me off so… so completely . As if the feathers weren’t enough to deal with.
    â€œDeanna,” Hyde said, his voice suddenly clearer. The music was harder to hear. Probably found a quieter spot. “I know I don’t have the right to say this but… I want you to be careful from now on.”
    I sat on the arm of my couch and scowled, sorry he couldn’t see it. “What the hell do you mean by that?”
    He paused. “Anton. He’s here too, with his stepmother. And he’s being unusually friendly.”
    Anton. The mere memory of the venom in his drunken snarl as he’d tried to grab me raised the hair on my arms.
    â€œFriendly? After you fired his dad and beat him up and humiliated him at his birthday party?”
    â€œExactly. And he asked about you.”
    I swallowed. “So?” I tried for nonchalant and would have gotten there too if it weren’t for the tremors in my voice. “Why wouldn’t he? The way you were all over me at his party, it’s no wonder he’s curious.”
    â€œI don’t like it. I don’t know what it means, but, please, just take care of yourself.”
    I considered his words, considered the quiet panic lacing them. I thought of him standing there in his crisp suit, hobnobbing with the very people he was apparently out to destroy. “My life has nothing to do with yours,” I said finally, more for myself, as if it were a promise. “Not anymore. Remember that, because this is the last time I’m going to say it.”
    â€œBut Dee–”
    â€œAnd the next time I find a Mariachi Band ready to belt out your apology I will castrate them all without hesitation. Then you . Got it?”
    That was pretty much a conversation-ender.
    Â 
    Live footage of Beatrice Hoffer-Rey and Hyde striding into some Manhattan “it” club told me where Hyde was. This time Beatrice’s white-blonde hair was long, draping down the back of her fur coat. Of course, if one had to ask why a human being would wear a fur coat at the end of June in New York, then one was very clearly an unenlightened plebian who had no right to look upon the transcendent radiance that stained the ground after every step Beatrice Hoffer-Rey made on the undeserving asphalt with her snip-toe pumps. Or something like