Invisible Monsters

CHAPTER TWENTY -FOUR

Jump way back to a fashion shoot at this slaughterhouse where whole pigs without their insides hang as thick as fringe from a moving chain. Evie and me wear Bibo Kelley stainless steel party dresses while the chain zips by behind us at about a hundred pigs an hour, and Evie says, "After your brother was mutilated, then what?"

The photographer looks at his light meter and says, "Nope. No way."

The art director says, "Girls, we're getting too much glare off the carcasses."

Each pig goes by big as a hollow tree, all red and shining inside and covered in this really nice pigskin on the outside just after someone's singed the hair off with a blowtorch. This makes me feel all stubbly by comparison, and I have to count back to my last waxing.

And Evie goes, "Your brother?"

And I'm, like, counting Friday, Thursday, Wednesday, Tuesday ...

"How did he go from being mutilated to being dead?" Evie says.

These pigs keep going by too fast for the art director to powder down their shine. You have to wonder how pigs keep their skin so nice. If now farmers use sunblock or what. Probably, I figure it's been a month since I was as smooth as they are. The way some salons use their new lasers, even with the cooling gel, they might as well use a blowtorch.

"Space girl," Evie says to me. "Phone home."

The whole pig place is refrigerated too much to wear a stainless steel dress around. Guys in white A-line coats and boots with low heels get to spray super-heated steam in where the pigs insides were, and I'm ready to trade them jobs. I'm ready to trade jobs with the pigs, even. To Evie, I say, "The police wouldn't buy the hairspray story. They were sure my father had raged on Shane's face. Or my mom had put the hairspray can in the trash. They called it 'neglect.'"

The photographer says, "What if we regroup and backlight the carcasses?"

"Too much strobe effect as they go past," the art director says.

Evie says, "Why'd the police think that?"

"Beats me," I say. "Somebody just kept making anonymous calls to them."

The photographer says, "Can we stop the chain?"

The art director says, "Not unless we can stop people from eating meat."

We're still hours away from taking a real break, and Evie says, "Somebody lied to the police?"

The pig guys are checking us out, and some are pretty cute. They laugh and slide their hands up and down fast on their shiny black steamhoses. Curling their tongues at us. Flirting.

"Then Shane ran away," I tell Evie. "Simple as that. A couple years ago, my folks got a call he was dead."

We step back as close as we can to the pigs going by, still warm. The floor seems to be really greasy, and Evie starts telling me about an idea she has for a remake of Cinderella, only instead of the little birds and animals making her a dress, they do cosmetic surgery. Bluebirds give her a facelift. Squirrels give her implants. Snakes, liposuction. Plus, Cinderella starts out as a lonely little boy.

"As much attention as he got," I tell Evie, "I'd bet my brother put that hairspray can in the fire himself.”