CHAPTER

Six

JULIE

Julie kicks her feet up on the desk, narrowly dodging a stack of mimeographed forms Brittany asked her to file. Julie has no intention of doing it. Filing’s Brittany’s job, and she loves passing along work to Julie ever since Julie’s dad told Brittany she’s in charge—of Julie, anyway—whenever he or the manager, Eric, aren’t around. Which is most of the time.

Julie leans back in her chair, her hands resting behind her head. The phone hasn’t rung once since she got here, and Forrest has already laid claim to all the bug jobs. He always comes in thirty minutes early for that exact purpose. Julie swears he and Brittany are conspiring together to make this job even more miserable than it already is. Alien might be her favorite movie, but the reality of hunting monsters is a dreary experience all in all.

The AC kicks on, rustling the papers on the desk. Julie tips an ugly marble paperweight over with her foot so it’ll trap the papers in place. Then she checks her watch. Only 1:27. She’s been here for two hours and already she’s going out of her mind with boredom. She wishes she could call up Claire, although she doesn’t want to come across as pushy. They had a good time the other day, playing Mortal Kombat and excavating that old dollhouse. The dress Claire found is hanging from the mirror in the attic, set up next to the TV. Julie likes glancing over at it whenever she’s watching a movie. It’s like a little piece of Claire left behind.

Julie is aware of how creepy that would sound if she ever admitted it to anymore.

The knob on the office door rattles. Julie immediately swings her feet down to the floor and starts riffling through a stack of forms, trying to pretend she’s doing work. Brittany’s liable to tattle on her to her dad. The forms are all monster requisitions from the last few days, when Julie’s been off. Most of them were down on hurricane alley, right where they’re supposed to be. Nothing in town.

The door slams open. It’s not Brittany. It’s Julie’s dad.

“Damn thing’s still sticking,” he mutters. “I’ll have to say something to Brittany.”

Julie suppresses a grin. Brittany will hate that, getting called to repair doors like a janitor.

“Hey, Dad,” Julie calls out. Her dad glances up at her and squints through his thick glasses.

“You’re working today?” He shakes his head. “No, of course, I knew that. Don’t want you lazing around the house too much. It’s good to keep a young mind occupied over the summer.”

As if lazing around the exterminator’s office is such an improvement on Julie’s productivity.

“Not really working,” she starts. “There’s no—”

“Well, whose fault is that?” Her dad shoos her out of the seat, and Julie obeys, grudgingly, moving to perch on the edge of the windowsill instead. The hot sun warms her back.

“Forrest,” she says. “He took all the bug jobs.”

Her dad pulls open one of the drawers and extracts a thick black address book. He tosses it to the desk with a thump.

“You know you aren’t supposed to be doing bug jobs anyway.” He flips through the address book, running his finger down the letter tabs sticking out at the sides.

“Bug jobs are safer.” She’s parroting a line she heard from her mom at dinner; Julie’s mom has been a semi-ally in the fight to get Julie a job at the video store, one of the few things her mom has ever sided with her on. “I bet I’d work a lot harder at the video store.”

“Frank doesn’t need anyone.” Her dad stops on one of the address book’s pages, its lines filled with his incomprehensible dark scribble. “Aha! I knew I had Georgia’s number somewhere.”

“Who’s Georgia?” Julie asks.

Her dad doesn’t answer, only grabs the phone and begins dialing. He glances over at her. Julie can hear the faint ring of the line. “And you know where I stand on the video store. We talked about this. Working at the exterminator’s is giving you skills you’re going to need—Georgia? Oh, I’ve been trying to get a hold of you! How are those Coke shipments?”

Julie leans back against the window, not caring that she’s smashing the plastic blinds. She and her father have gone over this a hundred times already, ever since he informed her that she needed to pay her own way in the world, just like he did. A lie, of course—money has been in the Alvarez family for years, and Julie knows for a fact that her dad spent his youth zipping around the highways in a Chrysler 300 gifted to him on his sixteenth birthday. Her grandpa told her all about it.

Still, her dad persists with the argument that Julie needs to learn how to protect herself against the monsters, that she needs to learn how they think and how they react in different situations. Julie’s pretty sure her dad expects her to come back to Indianola after college and take over his business empire, which would include sitting on the committee that signs treaties with the monsters. But Julie’s got other plans. Her eyes are on Austin. Frank’s already showed her some of the experimental films that have been coming out of there, and she wants in on it. She just has to finish high school first. And survive working at the exterminator’s office.

“Yeah, mm-hmm, that sounds great. Thanks, Georgia.” Her dad laughs, big and hearty and fake. “You too! Watch out for those scamps.”

Julie wonders when her father started saying the word scamps.

Her dad’s still chatting with Georgia when the button for the second line lights up. Julie’s heart clenches. She hopes it’s not a job, hopes it’s just someone calling to complain that Forrest is running late.

Her dad sees the light too, and he looks at her and points at it and points at the door. Go check with Brittany. She doesn’t need him to say it out loud. The lines in his forehead do the talking.

She sighs and pushes away from the window. Leaves him laughing in his chair. Out in the lobby, Brittany has the phone tucked between her shoulder and ear as she scribbles down notes. It looks like the job book. Dammit.

“We’ll send someone over right way, Mrs. Sudek,” she says.

Julie’s heart leaps. A job at Mrs. Sudek’s means a chance to see Claire again, and this time totally at random. Maybe it really is fate for the two of them to be friends.

Or more than friends.

Julie shoves the thought aside. Dwelling on it’ll just make her heartsick.

“Got a job for you,” Brittany says, hanging up the phone.

“Yeah, I heard. It’s at Mrs. Sudek’s?” Julie holds her breath. She hopes she didn’t mis-hear.

“Yep. Another talking monster. You’re going to want to note on the report that this is the second one in a week. The committee’ll need to hear about it.”

“I know how to do my job,” Julie snaps.

Brittany rolls her eyes and blows a bubble with her gum. Her glittery butterfly clips flash in her perfectly straightened hair.

“Here’s all the information,” she says, tearing the sheet out of the job book and handing it to Julie. “Nothing too unusual. She said it was tall, though, so you’ll want to make sure to take the big cage.”

Julie doesn’t say anything, just shoves the information sheet into her pocket and bounds out of the office. Her heart thrums with excitement—well, excitement and nervousness both—but at the same time she feels a cold twist of dread. Not because of Claire, but because another monster has gone to Mrs. Sudek’s.

Julie wonders if the committee will actually do anything about it. They don’t do much—no one in town does, really. Everyone just keeps their distance.

She climbs into the van and roars off down the street. It doesn’t take her long to get to Mrs. Sudek’s house, especially since she goes faster than she should and runs a couple of yellow lights. She pulls into the driveway and parks. The house is closed up tight, like a birthday present waiting to be opened. Julie takes a deep breath. She checks her reflection in the rearview mirror. Her eyeliner’s still looking good. Not that it matters, right? Claire isn’t going to notice her that way.

Besides, she’s got a monster to deal with.

She hops out of the van and opens up the back doors so she can drag out the big cage. It comes with little wheels to make transport easier, but they always get stuck if you take them off pavement, so Julie leaves the cage sitting on the driveway. She’ll come back and grab it when she can.

Julie rings the doorbell.

At first there’s only silence. But then footsteps whisper on the other side of the door. It swings open. Claire steps up to the screen, sunlight falling in tiny squares across her face.

“Oh, Julie!” she says. “I was hoping they’d send you.”

Julie’s heart swells. “Well, you know, I heard the name Sudek, and apparently we’ve got a house in common—” She shrugs. Claire laughs, a sweet twinkling sound that chimes around in Julie’s head. “It’s out back again, isn’t it? I didn’t see anything when I drove up.”

“Yeah, in the same place as before.” Claire pushes open the screen and Julie steps into the foyer. She’s never liked Mrs. Sudek’s house. It’s too stuffy, too closed-in, and breathing the air feels like choking on the past. But it’s a lot more tolerable with Claire standing at her side, her bare arms crossed over her chest, her pale skin almost glowing in the dusty gloom.

“What did it say?” Julie asks. “Brittany said it was a talking one.”

“Yeah.” Claire rubs her arms and looks down. “I didn’t really—it was talking about astronauts.”

“Astronauts?” Julie frowns and looks down the hallway. Blue TV light flickers in the living room. “Really?”

“Yeah. It kept asking me if I’d seen the astronaut, and—”

“It asked you questions?”

Claire nods. For the first time Julie is really aware of the glint of fear in her eyes. It’s faint, but she should have seen it earlier.

“It didn’t make sense,” Claire says.

Julie takes a deep breath. “I’m going to go talk to it. Do you—” She hesitates. “Do you mind coming out there with me? Since it was talking to you, it might be here—” She doesn’t want to finish her thought. Might be here for you. Claire looks away. Strands of hair stick to her neck and the side of her face, and her skin gleams with sweat.

“Are you going to keep yammering in there or are you going to get this creature out of my yard?”

Claire jumps at the sound of Mrs. Sudek’s voice. Then she looks up at Julie and mouths an apology.

“Don’t worry about it,” Julie whispers. Then, louder, she calls out, “I’m here, Mrs. Sudek! We’ll get you cleared out in no time.”

Julie remembers the way to the back door. Claire walks alongside her. They pass through the living room, where Mrs. Sudek stares at her TV, her face ghostly and thin in the light.

At the back door, Julie puts her hand on the knob and turns to Claire. TV noises trickle in from the living room, and Julie pitches her voice low, and says something she’s always wanted to say to a girl:

“Don’t worry. I’ll keep us safe.”

Claire smiles, a crooked, gorgeous smile, and Julie pushes the door open.

Sunlight pours in, bright against the darkness of the Sudek house. Julie and Claire step out into the heat.

The monster stands in the yard.

It’s tall, long and thin like it’s been stretched out. Julie’s definitely going to need the large cage. But its height isn’t the only alarming thing about it: Its arms are too long for the rest of its body, and its fingers are too long for its arms. It looks like an aloe vera plant, fleshy spikes jutting out of the ground. Its face is narrow and pointed, and its eyes glint greenish in the sunlight.

Julie feels a wash of nausea, looking at it.

“What are you doing in town?” she asks.

The monster doesn’t answer.

Julie walks right up to the edge of the patio. “My friend here said you can talk,” she says. “But if you don’t prove it to me, you know the treaties give me the right to exterminate you.”

The monster’s mouth splits open, revealing rows of teeth, like a shark. Julie starts backward, her pulse pounding. A hand touches the top of her back. Claire, steadying her. Julie draws up all her bravery.

Maybe that was supposed to be a smile.

“You’re correct,” the monster says, and its voice is like steam and cold dark machinery. “I can speak. Truly speak, not like the xenade who wandered too far into town five days ago.”

Xenade. Julie’s heard that word before. It’s the monsters’ name for themselves.

“So why are you here?” Julie asks.

The monster moves, sliding forward on one of its clawed feet. Claire shrieks and grabs Julie’s arm, her nails digging into Julie’s skin. The monster stops and looks past Julie at Claire. Julie tenses. The monster looks back to Julie. Back to Claire.

Even in the patio shade, Julie feels like she’s drowning in the sun’s heat.

And then the monster sniffs. It lifts up its nose—its snout?—and sniffs the air, once, twice. Claire’s grip tightens on Julie’s arm.

“Are you going to get the hell out of here or not?” Julie asks. It’s all she wants, for the monster to leave so she doesn’t have to ride with it back to the power plant. “I’ve got a cage. You know you’ll have to get in if you don’t go.”

“Interesting,” the monster says. “Very interesting.” It lurches forward over the dead grass, moving closer to the house. The monster’s movements are strange and jerky, like it’s not used to walking, and it takes a long time to get across the yard.

But then one of its feet steps onto the porch. And then the other.

Claire sputters out a gurgled, frightened sound, and Julie turns to her and puts a hand on her arm and Claire looks at her, their faces so close they could kiss.

“It’s going to be okay,” Julie whispers. “They really aren’t dangerous.”

The monster sniffs again. Julie whips her head back around to face it. “What are you doing?” she says. “You can’t come this close to the house.”

The monster turns its green eyes on Claire.

“Leave her alone!” Julie steps in front of Claire, trying to block the monster’s line of sight. “What in God’s name is wrong with you things? You know the treaties. You aren’t supposed to be here.”

“I came to warn the Sudek about the astronaut,” the monster says.

“What the hell does that mean?” Julie shouts. Claire presses close to her, her breath hot against Julie’s shoulder. “An astronaut?”

The monster retreats back into the yard. Those fleshy tendrils roil around, and Julie stands trembling, thinking how out of place it looks, like something that shouldn’t even exist in this world. Maybe that’s why it wants to talk about astronauts.

“I merely find it interesting,” the monster says, “to see an Alvarez and a Sudek, standing side by side.”

Silence floods the yard.

Julie fumbles around for her voice. “Now why would you say a thing like that? How do you even know our names?”

“I can smell it on you. The Alvarez line.” It directs one tendril at Julie. “And the Sudek line.” Another at Claire. “It’s an interesting combination, cosmically speaking.”

Julie glances at Claire, afraid that Claire will somehow interpret the monster’s nonsense for the truth. But Claire isn’t even looking at her, just staring out at the monster with wide, frightened eyes.

“I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” Julie says. “Now, are you going to leave or not? I can get my cage.” She pauses. “Or the Taser. You know I’m authorized to use it if I deem it necessary.” Which she doesn’t want to do.

The monster makes a strange crackling noise that reminds Julie of electricity. “Aldraa won’t like that.”

“Aldraa knows you’re not supposed to be here.”

“What we are and are not supposed to do—” The monster’s voice fades away for a moment. More like a radio flickering in and out rather than a lost train of thought. Julie doesn’t like it. “Things are changing. Every azojin things will change, but they should not change like this. It is unnatural.”

It’s hard for Julie to hold on to the word that he says, the a-word. She thinks Agosı´n, the last name of a girl at school. But no, that’s not right either. The word catches on her thoughts like a half-remembered song.

“And that’s why you’re coming into town?” Julie says, her voice trembling. “Because things are changing?”

The monster looks at her. “Yes.”

The yard goes silent. Not just Claire and Julie and the monster, but everything: the wind, the rustle of plants, the droning of cicadas and grasshoppers.

This isn’t good, the monsters breaking the treaties. Not good at all. A slow trickle of dread seeps into Julie’s stomach.

“I’ll return to our allotted space,” the monster says. “There’s no need to use your Taser or your cage on me. But as the azojin approaches, the treaties will disintegrate. Remember that, Alvarez and Sudek.” It sniffs the air again. “That’s an interesting scent, really. The two of you together. You could bring about much change in this world if you found access to the timelines.”

“Oh, for the love of—” Julie throws her hands up, trying to pretend that she’s not afraid the monster knows somehow. “Will you just leave? Stop babbling nonsense!”

Somehow, though, Julie doesn’t think it’s nonsense. He said the word again, the word that buzzes around her thoughts. It makes her bloodstream spark.

The monster backs away. Julie and Claire press close together. Julie has never felt this unnerved about a monster before. Not even Aldraa and the weird way he distorts reality ever made her feel so out of sorts.

“Keep going!” Julie calls out as the monster moves across the yard. “If I have to show up at another house for you, I’m getting out the Taser for sure!” She speaks with an authority she doesn’t feel, but at least the monster disappears around the side of the house.

Claire lets out a long sigh of relief and slumps against the brick. Julie feels the same way: shaky, like she’s just run the mile in her PE class at school.

“You can do that?” Claire asks, after a moment. “Just let it walk away?”

Julie sighs. “Yeah. We’re supposed to take a hands-off approach as much as possible.”

“Is it going to hurt someone?”

“I don’t think so. They don’t really hurt people.” But Julie isn’t convinced of that herself, and she can tell by Claire’s expression that she isn’t either. “It hasn’t happened since before I was born. The treaties and all.”

“But it has happened before.” Claire’s eyes shimmer. Julie’s afraid she might start crying. “Do you think they’ll hurt me? Is that why they’re coming here?”

“No,” Julie says quickly, wanting to do anything she can to make Claire feel safe. “No, it’s super rare. The guy I heard about who got hurt, they say he was hassling them, maybe even hurting them. One of the rumors said he was trying to hunt them like deer.” Julie takes a deep breath. “And besides, he got hurt at the power plant. Nowhere near town.”

Claire trembles.

“But I mean—I’ll ask my dad. I’ll make sure you’re okay.” She smiles, and Claire returns it, thin and wavering.

“I didn’t know what it was talking about,” she says. “Astronauts and everything.”

“They’re always like that.” Even though Julie’s never heard them refer to someone by their family name. “They don’t think like we do, you know?”

Julie moves toward the back door, wanting to be in the safety of inside, even if it is Mrs. Sudek’s house. But Claire says, “There was a word.”

Julie stops, her hand on the doorknob. “What?”

“The monster—it said a word. I can’t remember—”

Agosı´n, Julie thinks, but she knows that isn’t it.

“I heard it too,” Julie says, frowning. “But I don’t know—I lost it.”

“Is that dangerous?”

“I don’t know.” Julie meets Claire’s eye. The sunlight splashes against Claire’s brown hair, making it shine golden. Julie wishes this moment and this closeness didn’t have anything to do with monsters.

“I just think it’s funny that I can’t remember it. Not in a ha-ha way, but—” Claire hesitates. “That happens a lot with the monsters. If I think about them too much, then it’s harder to concentrate on them—I guess it’s not that funny.”

Julie nods. The word keeps slipping further and further away, like a dream. She’s pretty sure it started with A—

“I should go ask Mrs. Sudek for her payment,” Julie says. “Maybe you can come over in a couple of days, and we can get something from the video store. I’ll be off on Saturday.”

Claire nods. “I’d like that.”

Julie pulls the door open.

Her head buzzes. She can’t stop thinking about herself and Claire, intertwined together, like their scents.

Julie’s hands are shaking as she drives through town. She doesn’t want to go back to the office yet, doesn’t want to learn there’s another monster waiting to be collected down in hurricane alley somewhere. The last thing she wants right now is to deal with monsters.

The word is gone completely. She can feel its absence, like a black hole, but even that is starting to fade. When she tries to remember the word, memories of Claire come in instead. Claire smiling in the sunlight. Claire’s hand brushing against hers. Claire kissing her on the beach, the waves rolling in around their feet. Sure, Julie would rather think about Claire, but the monsters and this missing word leave her with a queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Something’s wrong.

After seventeen years Julie’s grown used to the ways the monsters slip into the edge of things. Claire is right: You can’t think on them too much. If you try, they just pull further away, like a particularly tricky math problem. But Julie has never lost an entire memory like this, not without leaving town. She just—doesn’t like it.

The exterminator office appears up ahead, the neon cockroach waving its antennae back and forth. Julie slows down. Her heart thuds in her chest. The lost word is a whisper in the dark crevices of her memory.

She drives past.

Julie takes a deep breath and loosens her grip on the steering wheel. Lawrence. She just needs to talk to Lawrence. Maybe this has happened to him before—maybe she’s overreacting. Lawrence is good for telling you that you’re being illogical.

She pulls the van into the Texaco station—not the one owned by her father, thank God—and parks next to the pair of pay phones on the side of the building. She digs around in the cup holder for a quarter and then climbs out into the heat. The sun bounces off the gas pumps, throwing squares of light into her eyes. She shakes her head and scurries over to the phone. Drops in the quarter. Punches in Lawrence’s number.

The phone rings twice before Aunt Rosa answers, her voice whispery and dry, the way it always is these days.

“Aunt Rosa?” Julie says. “It’s me. Julie. Is Lawrence at work?” Lawrence always answers the phone when he’s at home, since Aunt Rosa has trouble moving around. And Julie expected him to be home today—she thought she remembered him mentioning that he had today off, that he needed to study for a test or something.

“Oh, Julie, dear. Hello. No, he’s not at work.”

“School? I thought his classes were at night.”

Aunt Rosa laughs. “He’s out.” She lowers her voice a little. “With a girl. I think he’s on a date, although of course he denies it.” She laughs again, and a jolt of confusion shoots through Julie’s chest. Lawrence?

On a date?

“Oh,” she says. “Okay. Well—let him know I called, okay? I’m working today.”

“Of course.”

Julie hangs up the phone and sags against the phone booth. This can’t be right. It has to be some kind of study date or something. Lawrence is too busy trying to become a detective to mess with girls right now. Most of the girls in Indianola aren’t into him anyway.

Julie trudges over to the van. She still doesn’t want to go back to the exterminator’s. She thinks about Brittany’s shrill voice, the phone jangling in its receiver, calling her out to capture some other monster—no thank you.

She starts the engine and sits there for a moment, listening to it idle. If Lawrence is on a date, there are only a few places in town he could be. The K&L Root Beer Drive-in is the only restaurant worth talking about. Or the Pirate’s Den. Which is more date-y, anyway.

Julie throws the van into reverse and pulls out of the parking lot. She’ll swing by the arcade. Just to see. If he’s there, she can ask him about the monsters, the missing scrap of her memory. If he’s not, she’ll go back to the exterminator’s and deal with it.

It only takes five minutes for Julie to get to the arcade. No one’s out. She doesn’t see Lawrence’s car in the parking lot, and she almost turns and drives off. But maybe he didn’t drive. Maybe his date drove. Lawrence is down with that sort of thing. A modern man.

Julie parks and climbs out and walks across the simmering parking lot. Sweat beads up on her forehead. The signs blink in the arcade windows. A flyer for the Stargazer’s Masquerade is plastered to the front door, the ink not yet faded from the sunlight. They use the same stupid design every year, cheesy little figures looking up at the stars. It was probably drawn back in the seventies.

Julie pushes the door open, the air-conditioning cooling her sweat. At first she thinks the arcade’s empty. There’s nobody even standing behind the counter. But then, over the chirps and beeps of the video games, she hears Lawrence’s voice.

“Thank God,” she mutters to herself. She plunges into the arcade and follows the sound of it. “Hey, Larr—”

She freezes. Lawrence is here all right. And he’s with Audrey Duchesne.

They’re sitting together in one of the far corner booths, the date booths, the ones with the red-tinted lamps hanging above the tables. Both of them are turned away from her—Lawrence is squeezed into the booth beside Audrey, his arm thrown around her shoulder, his nose pressed into her hair.

Julie stares at them. Blood rushes in her ears. Lawrence says something to Audrey that makes her laugh, and her laughter floats out into the arcade, trilling like the machines.

Julie slinks away. Her heart pounds. She can’t even remember why she wanted to talk to him in the first place. Only that it seemed so important, and now the only important thing is getting out of here. Her face is hot. She can’t believe she drove to find him. Can’t believe she didn’t trust that Lawrence actually was on a date, an honest-to-God date. And with Audrey Duchesne, the cheerleader. The sort of girl who wouldn’t have given him the time of day in high school.

Julie dives out of the arcade. The cicadas buzz up in the trees, and the sun pours bright and hot over the asphalt. Julie’s dizziness clears. She glances back at the arcade. Lawrence on a date. No big deal. Good for him.

She just wishes it wasn’t with Audrey Duchesne.