“Dru.” She grabs my arm, and it hurts for a second before her grip gentles. “It’s important, baby. This is a special game. Hide in the closet, and when Daddy comes home he’ll find you. Lie down now. Be a good girl.”
I protest, I whine a little. “I don’t wanna.” But I am a good girl. I snuggle down into the hole, because it’s dark and warm and I’m tired, and the shadow on Mommy’s face gets deeper. Only her eyes glitter, glowing summer blue instead of their usual soft laughing brown. She covers me up with a blanket and smiles at me until I close my eyes. Sleep isn’t far behind, but as I go down I hear something and I understand she’s fitted the cover over the hole, and I am in the dark. But it smells like her, and I am so tired.
I hear, very faint and far away, the closet door close, and a scratching. And just before the dream ends, I hear a long, low, chilling laugh, like someone trying to speak with a mouthful of razor blades, and I know my mother is somewhere close, and she is desperate, and something very bad is about to happen.
CHAPTER 19
School started right up again the day after, and the day after that Graves talked me into going. I think he didn’t know what else to do, and I gave in after only a token shouting match.
What the hell, right? I was already dead. All I had to do was wait for the blue-eyed boy to find me again. I mean, Jesus, I was just sixteen, right? Dad’s truck was back in the driveway, but if I blew town I’d just die on some highway, probably at night, seeing something loom in the rearview mirror, or I’d get run off the road and ripped up in a ditch somewhere.
It was only a matter of time.
So, why not? Why not just do what he said?
At least it got me out of the house, where I was only prowling the rooms, getting more and more jumpy, looking at the stain on the living-room carpet, snarling at Graves when he tried to get me to eat. I’d managed to get the engine-block heater on the truck plugged in so it wouldn’t freeze, even though the garage door was still broken and useless. That was about all I could do other than roam through the house like a madwoman, staring at everyday objects as if I’d never see them again.
I spent the nights crouched in the living room with the blinds up, my back against the wall, looking out at the wasteland of snow that was the front yard and jerking myself into wakefulness every time I dozed off. After the first night I figured I’d better put the gun down, and when Graves nagged me about going to school—probably because he thought I was getting a little weird—I told him I would to shut him up.
I didn’t have the heart to tell him he was sharing a house with someone marked by a sucker. I mean, why rain on his parade? I tried to get him to go back to the mall, somewhere, anywhere away from me. It wasn’t safe around me, but he stubbornly refused, and what could I do? Beat him up? I could, but why expend the effort?
I was so tired. So, so deathly tired. At least during the safe hours of sunlight at school I was surrounded by other people, and I was fairly sure I could sleep.
Bletchley, however, had other ideas. “Are you with us, Miss Anderson?”
I stared at the whiteboard at the front of the classroom. It was a valid question. Was I with them? I didn’t think I’d ever been with them. Not the normal people, at least. Maybe there were one or two of them who had what Gran called “the touch.” Maybe there were even a few of them who’d seen something weird or inexplicable, but they’d probably forgotten it as soon as they—
“Miss Anderson?” Bletchley was delighted. Her egglike eyes swam behind her spectacles, and she picked at the bottom of her sweater—the blue one with knitted roses, this time.
I just kept seeing Dad’s face, half-chewed, the bony twitching of his fingertips. Blood on snow, and feet in heavy boots resting lightly on the unmarred top crust. The streak-headed werwulf snarling, its top lip lifting. And the hiss of the burning dog as it landed in the fountain, sulfur and stink and—
“No,” I said finally. “I don’t think I’m with you, Bletch.”
In front of me, Graves slid down in his seat as if making himself smaller. I almost thought I heard him whisper, shit.
I heartily agreed. But I was too tired to deal with Bletch’s crap. My eyes were full of sand and my entire body hurt.
A ripple went through the classroom. Bletchley stiffened and opened her mouth, but I was awake now. A nice nap ruined, not like first and second period, where I’d just put my head down on the desk and tuned the entire world out.
“As a matter of fact,” I continued flatly, “I was just wondering why I was sitting here listening to you, when you obviously don’t like anyone under twenty-one very much. It’s like you only think real life starts when you can legally buy a beer or something. But then I realized another thing. You’re scared of us.”
“Miss Anderson—” Bletch began, but the words just kept spilling out. Despite the thin little voice in my head telling me that I shouldn’t be saying the things I was thinking. Even if they were true.
Adults probably listen to that voice a lot. Did Dad ever stop telling me what he was thinking? What hadn’t he told me?
I opened my mouth and had no idea what would come out next. “You probably thought teaching would be easy. A whole classful of helpless little snots for you to bully.” I grabbed for my bag, made it to my feet, and almost knocked the whole desk over. Barked my hip a good one, and it added to the garden of bruises and scrapes all over my body. Pretty soon the sucker-boy would find me and I wouldn’t feel anything ever again. “More every year, and they’re always so easy to push around. Because you’ve got the power, right?”
“Sit down!” she hissed. Bright spots stood out on her withered cheeks, just as if someone had stamped her with one of those ink things they pop on your hand at clubs to prove you’ve paid the door fee.
I wasn’t going to sit down. She probably didn’t think I would, either, but maybe she figured it was worth a try.
“You’ve got all the power, and nobody would listen to us anyway. Because we’re just kids. Who cares about us?” I ducked through my bag strap. It was too heavy, but that was because of what was in it. Graves made a restless movement, his hair and coat rustling.
Bletch inhaled and opened her mouth again to tell me to sit down or shut up. If I gave a damn, it might have even stopped me—that’s what they count on, the hard teachers. They count on the weight of authority to get to you before a protest can even get halfway out of your mouth.
Fury ignited behind my breastbone, a hot glow like coals blooming into something sharp and dangerous. It was the same old crap—someone thinking they can push you around because you’re young, because you’re helpless. You had to just sit there and take it because you were under a certain number, because you weren’t a real person yet; you could be picked up and dropped like a toy, left behind or thrown away—
“I don’t think so,” I continued, right over the top of her. “I think every goddamn kid you ever bullied is going to haunt you one day. And I hope you choke on it!” I didn’t realize I was yelling until I had to fill my lungs with a gasping sound that would have been funny if not for what happened next.
Bletch’s eyes bugged out of her head. She buckled, grabbing at her desk with one claw, the other clutching vainly at her throat, and made a hoarse, inhuman cawing noise.
The first one to start screaming was a pretty little brunette in the front row. I thought her name was Heather; she was wearing, of all things, a cheerleader’s uniform. Why she bothered with umpteen feet of snow on the ground was beyond me. But right now her face was distorted with shock, and she let out a shriek that might have done a train justice. The sound made a few kids jump, and another one—a brunet boy with a thick neck and a jock’s varsity jacket—let out a high-pitched squeal that harmonized oddly.