Bad Blood

by Carly Anne West

Mya is silent and still.

  Back in my room, I do my best to be silent and still, too. But Mya’s sleeping nightmare has become my waking one, and suddenly, I’m back in Germany.

  Ripples of chaos and shouts come from the flume ride at the far end of Fernweh Welt. I’m holding Mya’s hand and pulling her toward the ride, but there are so many people just standing around watching that we have to weave in and out of them. They’re all staring, but not us. We’re looking at the ground so we don’t trip. We’re looking up so we can find our way. We’re looking everywhere but at each other because that would only confirm our deepest fears.

  Then I hear Mom’s voice calling from the base of the ride, telling us to come quick, and then there’s no denying something horrible has happened because her face is so pale and her eyes are so wide.

  “The cart didn’t detach. Your father—” Mom says, her voice raspy and hoarse.

  I take off running up the ramp to the line, and I hear Mya and my mom sprinting after me.

  “Aaron, no! It’s not safe!” I can hear my mom scream.

  But I’m faster, and I have to see for myself.

  “Aaron!” she keeps screaming.

  I hear her voice screaming for the rest of the night, crying out my name until it blurs into one continuous wail in my ears. I drift in and out of sleep hearing that cry, until I’m mostly convinced that her screams are coming from somewhere in the house, in the form of a high, distant howl.

  I’m on Ms. Gresham’s list, which is evidently scandalous. She has an actual list that she keeps in her apron pocket, and she’s had it for so long, its corners are curled and the paper itself is yellowed. Some say there are kids on that list dating back as far as the 1970s.

  “Oh man, you’re never getting off that list. It’s in stone now,” Enzo says to me once we get to Civics.

  “What does that even mean?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m staying on her good side. They say the list brings misfortune,” says Enzo.

  “You sound like an old-timey villager. She’s not the town sorcerer,” I say.

  “Go ask Tony Rambino about the list,” says Enzo, like I’m supposed to know who that is.

  “All I did was fall asleep in her class!”

  “So did Tony Rambino, and he’s had nothing but bad luck ever since. I heard he got bit by a gecko once. Do you know how hard it is to get a gecko to bite you?”

  “I think the bigger mystery is why she wears an apron to teach literature,” I say.

  This quiets Enzo for a second, and I take that second to put my head back down in Civics. I’m not going to make it until the end of the day.

  The bell rings, and Mr. Donaldson calls the class to attention. Enzo scoots his chair back hard enough to thump my desk, and my head slips from my arms to the hard wood.

  “Dude, a concussion is the last thing I need right now,” I say.

  “The last thing you need is another teacher hating you,” Enzo says, and even though half of me (maybe a little more than half) wants to punch him in the face, the other half is touched that he cares.

  “Announcement time,” says Mr. Donaldson, and whatever the announcement is, he sounds less than thrilled about it.

  “This Friday, we’ll be joining the elementary students—”

  The class groans one collective, agonized protest.

  “Ahem!” Mr. Donaldson says, and the class settles. He tries again. “On Friday, we’ll be joining the elementary students on a field trip—”

  The class breaks into cheers, all hands slapping and feet stomping.

  “ENOUGH!” Mr. Donaldson roars, and the class hushes fast. “One more word before I get this sentence out, and you’ll be spending Friday sweeping out animal pens for the Future Farmers of America.”

  The threat of manure. Works every time.

  “On Friday, we’ll be joining the elementary students for a field trip to the Golden Apple factory.”

  Crickets. Every set of eyes searches the room for the one who might dare to crack the silence.

  Mr. Donaldson sighs. “Now you may display your enthusiasm.”

  The class cheers, mostly. There are those who are thrilled, like Enzo. There are those who are confused, like that kid in the corner who sucks on her eraser. And then there is me. I’m pretty sure I’m the only one not exactly looking forward to learning more about the illustrious Golden Apple Company—not now that I know they’re the reason we’re here. The reason why Dad is designing a new park.

  Then there’s Mr. Donaldson. He looks even more glum than I feel about it.

  He raps his knuckles hard on his desk. “Some of you may be wondering how it is that the school board has approved a return trip to the Golden Apple factory after … the incident …” he says, and if he was hoping to mask the intrigue by referring to it that way, it’s not working. Every kid in the class is now leaning forward, ears pricked for scandal.

  I have zero idea what’s going on.

  “However, in their infinite wisdom, the school board has elected to give this year’s students a second chance.”

  Okay, so Mr. Donaldson is not a fan of the school board. Got it.

  “Books open to page ninety-seven,” he says, changing direction fast enough to give me whiplash. But the rest of the class—even the eraser sucker—shifts just as fast, slapping books on desks and flipping pages.

  “Well,” I mumble to myself. “At least I’m not tired anymore.”

  * * *

  As soon as the bell rings, Enzo has me by the sleeve, and we’re joined in the middle of the courtyard by Maritza and Mya.

  “Friday!” Maritza says excitedly to Enzo. “Think of all the free samples! Wait … do you think they’ll have the Granny Smith Fizzies? They’re not supposed to be out before Halloween, but—”

  Enzo waves her off. “Yeah yeah.” He turns to me, earning a death stare from Maritza.

  “Do you know what this means?”

  “I can honestly say I have absolutely no idea what this means,” I say.

  That’s not exactly true. It means that I get to spend all of Friday being reminded that we traveled 4,700 miles fleeing one nightmare only to fall headlong into another. I’m starting to wonder if we’re ever going to wake up.

  One glance at Mya tells me she’s wondering the same thing. She’s chewed her nails down to the quick.

  “It means Enzo has to spend an entire day with her, Aaron. An entire day.”

  Her … her …

  “Trinity,” Maritza says, helping me out.

  “Right. Trinity,” I say.

  Enzo looks hurt that I didn’t remember. “Sorry, I’m just tired.”

  “Well, wake up, because you gotta help me make an unforgettable impression.”

  I stare at this skinny guy, skinnier than me, which is saying a lot: his bushy eyebrows and metal-bracketed teeth, his massive Converse sneakers that he trips over at least three times a day—because nobody could walk with feet that big, let’s face it.

  “I think you’d be pretty hard to forget,” I tell him, and he smiles.

  “Okay then, irresistible.”

  “Gross,” says Maritza.

  “Gross?” Enzo says, remembering his sister again. “I’m not the one who ate an entire block of Velveeta last night.”

  “I’m not embarrassed,” Maritza says defiantly. “Badge of honor. I have an iron stomach.”

  “We’ll see how proud you are when your farts smell like grilled cheese,” he said, and Maritza turned a shade of crimson I’ve never actually seen.

  Then Enzo turns that same shade of red, and I can’t understand why until I turn to see what he can’t stop staring at.

  Trinity is walking beside another girl who looks a little younger than us, maybe even younger than Mya. Maritza’s face lights up as her blush fades.

  “Hey!” she squeezes past Enzo and me to sling her arm around the younger girl. “We have a new friend. She’s super cool. She plays Creeper Dawn.”

  The girl s
miles kindly at my sister, so I like her immediately.

  “I’m Lucy,” she says, giving Mya a little wave.

  Trinity looks at Enzo.

  “So, the Golden Apple factory this Friday,” she says, and I can’t tell if she’s excited. I almost get the impression she just wants to see what Enzo will say. Or maybe she’s just trying to see if she can get him to speak again.

  It’s not looking good.

  Suddenly, the girl named Lucy reaches for my sister’s arm and pulls her from our circle.

  “Okay, so I’m your After-School Buddy,” she tells Mya.

  “My After-School—?”

  “Basically, the person who takes you to see all the clubs and sports and stuff,” Lucy says.

  “Oh,” says Mya, and I can tell she’s nervous about going off with this girl she’s never met, even if she seems nice.

  “Lucy’s the extracurricular queen. If there’s a scoreboard or a membership roster, you’re going to see ‘Yi’ on it. The girl’s unstoppable,” Trinity says.

  “They have clubs in elementary school here?” I ask, more than a little surprised.

  Lucy flashes a smile. “It’s like my mom always says, You’re never too young to start building your résumé.”

  Trinity then turns to me, catching me off guard. “You’re on Friday, Peterson,” she says. “I’m your After-School Buddy.”

  My face is scorching, but it’s nothing compared to Enzo’s. He’s looking at me like he’s going to write a country song about how I betrayed him.

  All I can do is shrug, or I’ll blow his cover.

  “You’ll need to know which clubs to avoid,” Maritza says quietly to Mya while Lucy is distracted. “I’ll come with you.”

  I immediately see Mya relax, and I send up a silent thanks to Maritza.

  The girls pull my sister away, who looks back at me with a smile, and I give her a half wave so nobody thinks I’m a dork.

  I mean, they’ll have plenty of time to figure that out later.

  “Your sister will be fine with Lucy,” Trinity reassures me. “The girl may only be seven, but she practically runs the school. Her mom’s head of the PTA.”

  “Okay,” I say, turning on my heel away from the school. “So who’s gonna fill me in on the ‘incident’?”

  Enzo and Trinity blink at me, and I wonder for a second if last period was just a fever dream. I’m still pretty groggy from last night.

  “The reason Mr. Donaldson’s all bent out of shape about our field trip Friday?” I try again.

  “Ah, right,” says Trinity, catching on.

  “So, maybe five or so years ago—”

  “Six,” Enzo says, finally remembering how to talk at the weirdest possible moment.

  Trinity furrows her brow. “Okay … six years ago, the middle school kids were doing their Golden Apple factory field trip. It was an annual thing,” she says, rolling her eyes, but I can tell she’s proud of her town. Enzo told me her parents are really big into community involvement, so I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that the enthusiasm trickled down to Trinity.

  “Anyway,” she continues, “these three kids thought it’d be a good idea to sneak away from the tour and go hang out in the woods.”

  I look to Enzo for clarification. “The factory is pretty deep in the woods.”

  “Ah. Thanks.”

  “When it was time to get on the buses, the chaperones noticed they were missing, and there was this huge search of the factory and the woods. People started saying things like they’d fallen into one of the factory grinders or gotten squished by the train or something,” Trinity says, and I can’t help but notice her eyes getting wider as she talks.

  “So, what happened to them?” I say.

  Enzo shakes his head slowly. “Nobody knows.”

  I can actually hear myself swallow. “You mean, they never found them?”

  “Oh, they found them,” says Enzo.

  I look back at Trinity.

  “It wasn’t until much later that night. They were so deep in the woods, even the police couldn’t believe they’d gotten that far. But that wasn’t the weirdest part.”

  “They were so freaked, they couldn’t even talk,” Enzo says, his eyes as wide as Trinity’s now.

  “What do you mean, ‘they couldn’t talk’?”

  “I mean they didn’t say a word,” Enzo says. “Not where they’d been. Not what they’d seen. Nothing.”

  We’re all quiet for a minute, and even though it’s warm outside, I have to smooth the hairs down on my arms.

  “I have to see the woods,” I say, and both Trinity and Enzo look at me like I’ve suddenly sprouted antennae.

  “Nope,” Enzo says, understanding before Trinity this time. “Not happening.”

  “Oh, come on!” I say. “You can’t tell me a story like that and expect me to just let it lie.”

  “It really is a bad idea,” Trinity says, technically disagreeing with me, even though it somehow sounds more like she’s agreeing with me. There’s a smile hiding somewhere behind her eyes.

  “It’s a terrible idea!” Enzo says, seeming to sense that he’s losing his ally. “Setting aside the fact that there’s poison ivy in there,” he says, pausing for dramatic effect. But when neither of us takes the bait, he keeps going, “no one maintains the forest on that side of the factory; there’s only the road leading into it on the other side, and the train tracks.”

  “It’s a forest,” I say, and I’m not trying to embarrass Enzo, but come on. How scary can a bunch of trees and squirrels be?

  “Well …” Trinity says, this time looking a little doubtful. “It’s … uh … more than that. Or at least some people think so.”

  And by some people, Trinity obviously means herself. And Enzo. They trade a look I can’t read, but there’s something they haven’t shared with me yet.

  “Okay,” I say, playing along. “I’m listening.”

  “Don’t laugh,” Enzo says.

  “I never laugh,” I say, and they both look a little perplexed, like they’re trying to remember a time when I have. Good luck. Some people just aren’t laughers.

  “Forest Protectors,” says Trinity, and nothing else. Like I’m supposed to get everything I need from “Forest Protectors.”

  “Yeah, I think I need you to elaborate a little.”

  Enzo takes a deep breath. “They protect the forest from strangers. Some say they look like a cross between a person and a crow.”

  “So Crow People. Is this some sort of new-kid hazing thing?”

  They look at each other like they’re trying to decide if it is. It surprises me that it’s Trinity who says the next part.

  “It used to be that they only protected the forest, mostly from kids messing around where they weren’t supposed to. But over time, they developed a taste for the blood of children.”

  I look from Trinity to Enzo, Enzo to Trinity. I wait for one of them to bust up laughing, having lured the new kid right into their stupid story about Crow People who eat kids for kicks. But neither of them so much as cracks a smile, and I’m left with this one conclusion: They totally believe this story.

  “I just have to say it; you both know you sound completely verrückt, right?”

  They’re back to giving me the antennae look again.

  “Completely what now?” says Enzo.

  “Is that German?” says Trinity. “My mom did a study abroad there in college! It means loony, right?”

  “Something like that,” I say, and I hate myself so much right now. The last—I mean very dead last—thing I want to do is talk about Germany.

  “Anyway, the Crow People,” I say.

  “Forest Protectors,” Trinity corrects.

  “Right. So let me see if I have this right. The school board hasn’t let anyone tour the Golden Apple factory for five—”

  “Six,” says Enzo.

  “—six years because a few kids went missing for an afternoon, and everyone just assumes that the most natural
explanation is that they were carried off by half-human-half-bird hybrids?”

  Well, it worked. We aren’t talking about Germany anymore.

  “When you put it like that …” says Enzo, not liking me very much at the moment, not that I can blame him.

  “Okay, let me put it a different way,” I say, trying a more diplomatic approach. “What else have we got to do this afternoon besides exploring a creepy forest?”

  Enzo is hating me more by the second, judging by the way his eyes keep growing bigger. But Trinity hasn’t said no yet, and if I could figure out a way to tell them that I’m desperate for any distraction from my messed-up family situation, I’d try that. But as bad as I am at lying, I’m even worse at telling the truth, so instead I suggest exploring.

  “Look,” says Trinity to Enzo, “we can leave a trail just in case. Then there’s no way we’ll get lost.”

  “I’m not scared,” says Enzo, though literally no one said he was.

  And this time I do try lying because it seems like the least I can do for Enzo after putting him in a completely unwinnable situation.

  “Well, I am,” I say. “So at least you’re braver than me.”

  “C’mon, I’ll protect you both,” says Trinity, forging a path forward, presumably toward the woods.

  Enzo gives me a look before falling in line behind her. It’s somewhere between I could kill you and thanks, and I think he’s leaning a little more toward thanks. I’m going to tell myself that anyway.

  * * *

  I’m surprised to find that the path that leads into the forest isn’t that far from my house. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, though. It’s not like I’ve done all that much exploring outside of Friendly Court. I know that we live on an old street—in a house that was built before the newer development went up several blocks away, where Enzo lives. It’s just a feeling, but I get the impression that people have opinions about people who live in the old part of town versus the newer neighborhoods. People get weird when they think they have more money than other people.

  “It’s just through there,” says Enzo, pointing down a narrow alleyway behind a row of houses.

  I swallow. I was lying about being afraid before, but not so much anymore. Narrow alleys aren’t my first choice for hangouts.