Thirteen

HE GETS TO me in my dreams, the man with the dog. Our car, like a skidding ice boat, sailing over the curb with no sense of impact, no sense of time except for the endless stretch of my horror. His featureless, light-blasted face floats before the windshield, and there’s little sense of the others around me—Bree, Sage, all peripheral—all of us bracing for impact, a contraction that squeezes me down into a fetal position beneath my comforter, where I wake, neck and shoulders aching with tension, head pounding, not sure I’m back in reality until I hear Ma’s laughter from the kitchen.

I’m almost sick with it at breakfast on Monday morning, my generic squares taking on milk fast as they sit untouched. Dad’s already gone; Ma moves around me, a hum of one-sided conversation that I can’t seem to grasp.

I didn’t expect to feel this scared. Going back to school makes it all real again, somehow. It rained yesterday and I didn’t go out. Both parental units had the day off, a rarity, so we made a real Sunday of it, lounging around eating and watching the Pats beat the snot out of the Jets, while I did everything I could to avoid local news and social media, not wanting to know what people were saying. It hits me now. We could get caught. We really could. What if the cops gather up the scraps of water balloon and dust for prints, tweeze fibers, run them through the lab? We should’ve worn gloves, hairnets, been smarter. I wonder if any of the others are doing this, dying of dread over breakfast?

At the bus stop, Sage has her usual Pop-Tart, winking at me as I come up; she’s taken Trace’s flannel back, and the hem bags past her coat. Bree looks the same as always—knew she would—and Hazel’s busy with Toy Blast on her phone. “Did you look it up?” Bree asks softly.

I shake my head, really afraid I might barf. She hands me her phone, the video clip from Sunday morning’s local news report already cued up.

“A street in Pender was vandalized last night during the town’s annual homecoming festivities. . . .” Footage of various houses on Perfect, siding splattered with Halloween-colored paint; a broken pane of window glass; a close-up shot of one of our bombs, frozen to the pavement overnight, the shredded balloon fluttering in the wind like a tiny flag of surrender. “Police are looking for the driver of a vehicle eyewitnesses say drove through the neighborhood firing paintball guns from the windows, and nearly struck a—”

I hand the phone back, my lungs limp, wasted as that balloon. Bree doesn’t notice, an enigmatic half smile back on her lips as she puts her phone away. “God. Trace is going to be insufferable today.”

“Ha. Yeah, he is.” Sage examines the sprinkles in the pastry glaze. “Did Landon text you guys at all?”

My “No,” blends with Bree’s “Like I talk to Landon.”

Sage shakes her head at her. “Right. Your ‘everybody hates me’ delusion.”

“It’s not a delusion. It’s keen observation of other people’s words and body language. Called being perceptive. Probably means I’ll be an extremely successful artist someday.”

“Or a paranoid cat lady. Since when do you care about art?”

Somewhere, in another galaxy far, far away from the hellish guilt dimension I’m writhing in, the hoodies are coming, shoulders hunched, sleeves tugged over their raw knuckles to fend off the cold.

“Since always. I just suck at it.” Bree reaches down, straightening Hazel’s hood, which was tucked into her coat collar. Hazel makes a vague shooing motion without looking up. “So, what was Landon’s issue? Drugstore ran out of Essie Wicked and she needed an emergency mani before school?”

My gaze is locked ahead, seeing splattering paint, the stunned face of the dog man. Green Hood stares at me as he goes by, saying nothing, apparently speechless since Bree neutered him with a pair of pruning shears in front of a live audience.

At school, everybody’s talking about it, dividing the population into kids who think it’s hilarious and kids who don’t, primarily ones who live on Perfect or streets like it. I pass through it all, glazed over, telling myself that the flashing arrow pointing at my head is a by-product of no breakfast and too little sleep, that Ma will not be seized by a craving for Jell-O Jigglers, discover the boxes missing, and put it all together in a stunning mental leap. Nobody knows. Nobody is looking.

I don’t see anybody worth seeing until lunch. Bree, Sage, Trace, and—Kincaid, unbelievably. Packaging reduced by 35 percent: no board, no coat, hands in his jeans pockets. Trace goes straight to the hot-lunch line and pretends to muscle his way in front of the last guy in line, starting a laughing shoving match that ends in a teacher swooping in, cawing.

Kincaid splits off and drops onto a stool across from me at the flotsam table. His T-shirt’s black, faded, worn over a white thermal undershirt, the collar of yet another shirt visible under that. He reaches across the table, and for a split second I think he wants to hold hands; my arm moves a quarter of an inch before his fingers land and start tapping a signal on the laminate between us. The close call with total mortification coats me in panic sweat, making me force the cheese crackers I was holding into my mouth all at once. He watches with interest as I struggle to chew. Hard swallow, sip of iced tea, then I rasp out, “You actually came to school.”

“I wanted to hear what people were saying.”

“Do your teachers remember your name?”

“Did you like your fortune?”

I give him a long look, showing him that I’m onto him, his whole shtick; that maybe Bree isn’t the only one who spends their whole day defending personal barricades. I know he was hiding from us in the darkness last night, just out of reach. Which, if you ask me, is way weirder than the stalking ever was. “I think it was meant for you.”

“You’re still not seeing it.” He leans forward, and I’m close enough to make out sunbursts around his pupils, some cracks of gold in those murky irises—and we’re right back in the marsh, him holding me, me reaching out with my eyes shut. “No mistakes in this world. Not for us. You opened that fortune; it was meant for you.”

Us—as in me and him? “You don’t even know what it said.”

He scratches his elbow, pushing up his sleeve to examine a scab there. Road rash; I guess even he wipes out on his board sometimes. “Destiny. Responsibility. Pretty soon, the universe is gonna test you, and you better be ready.”

I drop my hands to the table, staring. That cookie was vacuum-sealed; I remember the puff of vanilla-scented air escaping when I ripped it open. It takes me a second to say, “Oh my God. You know what you are? I just figured it out.”

His whole face lights up—genuine, intense interest blasting away the perma-stoned soothsayer act—and for the first time I see how deeply bored he usually is, with school, maybe with all of us.

Of course, everybody chooses that moment to reach the table, trays and soda cans touching down. “Fellow vandals,” Trace greets us.

“Told you.” Bree looks at Sage. “Insufferable.”

“I can’t believe we’re sitting at this table again.” Trace bites the head off a flaccid burrito, his tone low. “Anybody ask you guys about it?” We all say no. “Nobody acting suspicious?”

“Everybody’s suspicious,” Bree says. “Not necessarily of us.”

“Nice. Should’ve heard Spicer in shop this morning.” Trace screws his face up, sobs out, “‘They broke my mom’s birdfeeder, man!’” We laugh. Trace nods at me. “Anybody ask Clarabelle about the other thing?”

And this is it. I can feel it. The dark and massive thing I’ve sensed riding my back since morning; stretching, blocking out all light, some huge black bat at full wingspan, jaws lowering down on my head—not just our stupid Saturday night prank, but something hungry and idiotic and cruel, and it’s starting. It’s starting right now.

My voice is separate from my body: “What?”

“You didn’t hear, huh.” Trace’s coyote eyes widen. “Toxic Twins.” Nods toward the cool table. “Ivy ran away Thursday night. Guidance and the cops are asking around to see if anybody knows anything.”

“What?” again, but softer, an echo. Ivy, knitting up a storm at the park; being cool enough to give me a heads-up about the unspoken rules, helping me avoid the girlfriends’ claws.

I turn, looking at where we sat last week to hear the story of Dabney Kirk’s head. Landon sits separate from the rest of the skaters, picking at her food with a pinched, abstracted look on her face. Her hair is down—free of its usual slick twists, it’s a pedestrian shade of light brown, unexpectedly curly—and she isn’t wearing any makeup, rendering her strangely vulnerable. She senses us looking, returns the stare for a moment, then goes back to sporking her burrito to death. “Ran away where?”

“They’re not sure yet. There was a big fight at her house Thursday night—her stepmom again—and I guess she bolted,” Sage says, shaking up her strawberry milk, and I can’t tell if she senses it, too, the sudden wrongness of everything, if that’s why her expression is so closed. “That’s the reason Landon texted me yesterday. She didn’t say anything about Ivy running away, just asked if I’d seen her. I figured Ivy’s dad took her phone away again.”

I remember the assembly Friday, spotting Landon sitting by herself on one of the top risers, combat boot bobbing, keeping time. Waiting for Ivy. “Thursday was forever ago.” Glance at Kincaid, who’s listening closely, rubbing his knuckles over his road rash.

Trace shrugs. “Cops and her family kept things quiet over the weekend. Figured she was just hiding out and she’d come back on her own. Now they’re thinking maybe she caught a ride down to her mom’s place in West Virginia.” Trace nods over at Landon. “You know her stepmonster was always weird about them. Finally drove Ivy out the door.”

“Without her other half?” Bree shakes her head. “Can’t see it.”

“Maybe they got in a fight, too,” I say, half listening, and the words drift and evaporate under lunchroom white noise, as they should, because I don’t know them, Landon or Ivy, and the new kid is the last person who should be floating theories.

On my shoulders, the dark thing flexes its scaly feet, folds its wings, and continues to wait.