Dad said, “It almost sounded like Debbie.”
And then I was out of my body again and falling, jerking, twitching through black, infinite, silent space, and then the grinding. I woke up in bed at St. Joan’s. Jag jerked his tail out of my hand, jumped off the bed, and pranced away.
I was furious. I knew he’d somehow sent me the dream, and I didn’t appreciate it. All it did was make me feel bad. And tired— really, really tired. I was totally out of it for a couple of days afterward.
But then, Sunday, at mail call, I heard my name. “Deborah Dimond. Package.”
It was childish, but I hoped… I hoped against hope…
I tore the package open. In it was a plastic tube of Mom’s special lotion (which I used to steal from Saks because she wouldn’t buy it for me) and something else— the other thing I’d seen Haley and Dad packing. It was a stuffed dog that looked so much like Curly I’d have done a double-take if I hadn’t already seen it.
The Beast was on my bed when I returned to my room, all curled up and practically spitting canary feathers. I was in such a good mood I didn’t even give him his much-deserved ration of sarcasm. “Okay, A.B., so you can see into the future. Would you mind telling me when I can go home for a weekend?”
“A.B.?” The Thing inquired.
“Alpha Beast. That’s your name, right?”
“My title, actually. But The Novice may certainly give me a nickname. Quite healthy, actually. Part of the bonding process.”
“Thanks so veddy much,” I said, thinking I wouldn’t bond with him if he were smeared with Super-glue. “Spill, please— how’d you know about the dog?”
“Excuse me. You’re the one who knew about the dog. You saw it time-traveling.”
CHAPTER SIX—FIGHT CLUB
I was so blown away I couldn’t even answer the monster. But I saw what he meant— that dream about seeing my dad and Haley. There were things about it that weren’t very dream-like.
“And then,” said the Beast, “there’s the fact that they did send the dog and the lotion. But you’ve got it wrong, Novice. I can’t foretell the future. I took you back to the past.”
“Somehow, you figured out I was going to get the package—”
“Think about it. You got it three days after we saw them packing it. Mail takes at least a week to get here. They had to have mailed it already— by the time we traveled back, I mean. As it happens, we saw them packing the dog four days, thirteen hours, and three minutes after they actually did it.”
“You mean that horrible dead quiet…”
“…was time, not space.”
“But you can’t do it that way. You need a time machine.”
“According to whom? All the great fiction writers? Let me tell you something, human— they’ve never time traveled. You have. If you would care to know how it’s actually done, I suggest you read A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME. Then talk to me again.”
“My dad read that book. Stephen Hawking, right?”
The Beast flicked his tail. “Mr. Hawking more nearly understands the concept than most humans— however, your reading will still need supplementing. But that’s for another time. Meanwhile, are you quite ready for your first magic lesson?”
“I said no, remember?”
“Funny, I don’t.”
God, he could be annoying. “Go away!”
I swatted at him with my Curly dog, nothing dangerous, just a statement, but for some reason, it set Kara off. Did I mention she was in the room? Oh, yeah, and Sonya too. The great thing about telepathy is no one knows you’re doing it. But it seemed I’d unwittingly spoken aloud.
“Do you have to be so cruel to that poor cat?”
I spoke without thinking. “Oh, shut up, Loser Girl. If I’d sat here like a lump for six months without even making it to mustard, I’d be pretty careful who I criticized.”
As it happens, I’d made Level Two that day, so maybe I was feeling the teensiest bit arrogant. If ketchup was this easy, could a weekend at home be far behind? But I was sorry as soon as I said it.
Kara didn’t cry, she just seemed to fold into herself. I felt bad. I felt really awful about it. But it was clarifying. Whatever it took, I most certainly did not want to be a total lameoid like Kara. Who now unfolded and sat up on her bed.
“You hate me, don’t you?” she shrieked. “You think just because you have those stupid snakes on your arms you’re Queen of the Damned or something.”
“I don’t hate you,” I said. “You’re the one that hates me, remember? I just think it’s stupid to waste your time and your parents’ money.”
“What do you know about me?” she shouted, and she jumped me. Sprang off the bed, grabbed me by the collar, and started shaking me, like I’d gone unconscious and she had to wake me up.
“Get off me, lameoid!” I hollered, and slammed her as hard as I could.
“Abueeeeeela!” Sonya hollered.
Apparently, Abuela had some kind of alarm button she pressed. Security came running. Next thing I knew, one guy had my arms pinned behind me and another one had Kara.
“Welcome to my world,” said Kara, with a smile so malicious I was sure it must mean something. And boy, did it. Oh, yeah. Oh, joy.
Here’s what it meant: At my dear alma mater, St. Psycho’s, fighting is what they call a Category Four offense. The only thing worse is running away, which is Cat Five, and which causes the whole school to get punished. Know what you get for Cat Four? All your points removed! That’s right, all of them. So I was now literally in Kara’s world; I didn’t have a point to call my own. I’d lost my ketchup before I even got a hot dog.
Not only that, they have this other thing they do to you, the high school version of a “time out”. They send you to a language lab cubicle and make you sit up straight, staring straight ahead while listening to educational tapes. If you slump, someone taps you on the shoulder. The tape I drew that day was one about the Spaniards coming to Mexico— majorly boring.
But no problem, I wasn’t alone. It was a perfect set-up for a private session with a little Yoda wannabe. “Nice regressing, Novice.”
“Shut up, flea-farm. I don’t need your sarcasm. I blew it, okay? I shouldn’t have picked a fight. Are you happy?”
“That was no fight. You don’t fight. ”
“Are you kidding? I fight with my mom night and day. I’m famous for fighting.”
“Repeat. You do not fight. You quarrel, like a kid, as you Americans say. Lord, how I hate that word!”
“I am a kid, fuzzfest.”
“I rest my case, child. You pout. You flounce. You lose.”
“I do not!” I said, pouting.
And knowing I was totally busted.
“I could teach you to win,” he said.
That word “win” glittered before me like a Christmas snowflake— something beautiful that you just couldn’t catch. He’d baited the hook and I was about to gulp it down like a guppy. I knew what he was doing, but I couldn’t stop myself. “Okay,” I said. “Forget about magic. Give me fighting lessons.”
The cat actually reached out his paw and swiped at my hand. Inadvertently, I pulled back. “Don’t be afraid. That’s the way I nod. If I did it like you people do, think how much attention I’d attract. You’re on to something, human. Magic starts at the mundane level. ‘As above, so below’ is one of the first magical principles.
“Magic is nothing more than working with energy. Learning to fight properly is a very good use of energy— although they probably call it something else in this school, like standing up for yourself. You don’t need me to teach you that. That’s what your parents are paying these people for.”
He rubbed up against my leg like a normal pussycat.
“Stop it, A.B.,” I said, “Someone might get the idea you like me.”
“Heaven forfend.” He jumped up on the little table that held the tape recorder and, if you were actually there for language lab, your Spanish book. “You baited Kara. You practic
ally invited her to jump you.”
I sniffed. “She’s a little mouse. I didn’t think she was the jumping kind.”
“Okay, Novice, here’s your first fighting lesson: Never underestimate your enemy.”
“I never thought of her as an enemy.”
“You treated her as one.”
I felt ashamed. “Okay, I shouldn’t have said that stuff to her. Although she did have it coming. She probably had no idea how lame she is. I probably helped her.”
“Oh, really? Like your mother helps you by getting in your face? As you young people say.”
“What?” I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right. Nobody had ever understood about my mother before.
“Chew on it,” he said. “At the risk of uttering a dreadful cliché, live and let live.”
I winced. “I really expected better of you.” But the demon-cat was gone.
I got it.
All right, I got it. I’d done something stupid and kind of cruel and not even realized it. But I wasn’t about to concede anything to the Beast of Beasts. I found him fuzzing-up my pillow as usual. “So what was the lesson, A.B.?” I said. “I think I see what you’re getting at, but I don’t exactly call that a fighting lesson.”
“Here’s the lesson, Novice: Don’t get blind-sided.”
Like it was that easy.
“Not underestimating your enemy is a strategy, Novice. And strategy’s what we’re going to be learning in our informal little classes. Take boxing if you want to know how to hit. What I teach is the Twelve Tactics of Magical Combat. You’ll find the same things work both for physical and psychological battles. You just learned Tactic Three.”
“And Tactics One and Two would be…?”
“Tactic Two is obvious: Know your enemy.”
“Right.”
“Tactic One is this: Fight smart, not strong. Chew on it.”
***
I had plenty of time to chew. Nothing much happened the rest of the week, unless you count my mad scramble to win back the points I’d lost and a letter from my dad.
“Dear Deb,” he wrote. “Your mom and Haley and I miss you so much. Sometimes it seems as if you haven’t really gone at all. A week or two ago, when Haley and I were mailing your lotion and your dog— did you get them, by the way?— I had the feeling you were actually in the house. It was eerie, but I shook it off, and then I thought I heard you say, ‘Dad?’ as if you were trying to call me. I wonder if you were thinking about us then.”
There was a lot of other stuff, too (mostly of an inspirational nature), but that was the part that really freaked me out. I didn’t tell junior fiend about it. Just filed it and did what the clowns wanted— did it so well, I’m happy to say I went into my third week with exactly 100 points— once again a Level Two.
When I got back after dinner that night, I was surprised to see that Abuela wasn’t there. Rachel, aka Good Citizen Barbie, was in her place.
Abuela had never not been there, and I missed her, missed knowing someone nice would be there if I had another horrible dream. But I was tired that day, and once again a little full of myself— like the first time I made Level Two.
So I let it go. I figured A. B. would come slinking around, and I could ask him where she was.
But that didn’t happen. The Fur Grenade was missing too.
CHAPTER SEVEN—VIOLATION CAT UNKNOWN
I got through the first part of the next day okay and actually enjoyed my language lab tape, which was about the Mayans, in whom I was suddenly deeply interested now that A.B.’d told me they did the kind of stuff that happened in my dreams. They also bound their babies’ heads so they’d be flat. They hung little beads over their kids’ noses so they’d be cross-eyed (which was considered attractive). They filed their teeth into points. They pierced their penises and pulled thorns through them, in order to get closer to God, thus reinforcing the theory that God was to be avoided at all costs.
They were majorly weird.
The only thing that seemed normal about them was that they loved tattoos and chocolate. To them, chocolate was like gold— or like spices were to the other ancients I knew about.
Precious.
Valuable.
Possibly addictive.
I could follow their reasoning.
So the tape was okay and the classes were perfectly normal. But after that, Evelina called a meeting of the girls in my dorm. Sonya and Kara were already there, and they were kind of agitated and quiet, like something was wrong. Evelina looked like she hadn’t slept in a month.
“Girls,” she said, “I’m sorry to say I’ve got some bad news.”
My heart started pounding. Bad news. What was bad here, where nothing was good?
“Abuela was attacked by someone on her way home early Sunday. I’m afraid she’s in the hospital—”
Julia, the mall-rat girl with the ironed-blonde hair, was the only one who could speak. “Attacked? What kind of ‘attacked’? What happened?”
Evelina looked like she might cry. “She was beaten. We don’t think she’s coming back to work.”
“You mean she’s going to die?” I said, thinking that the end of the world was probably on its way. Also thinking I was going to have to hurt whoever did it. Very very badly.
“No.” Evelina was trying to be soothing. “No. She’s not going to die. She’s tough, but she’s old. It’s just not safe for her to be out on the streets at her age. She’s going to be all right, but another man was killed in the attack. And Jag.” She looked straight at me.
Had I heard right?
“Jag?” Julia wailed. “Who’d kill an innocent pussycat?”
Something funny was going on here. Something very strange indeed. “Wait a minute; hold it,” I said. “Jag doesn’t leave the school, does he? He sleeps with me every night.” Too late, I realized how pathetic I must sound. Jag hadn’t slept with me since Saturday.
“We don’t really know what happened.” Evelina sounded like a mom explaining that Daddy wasn’t coming back from the war. “All we know is that Abuela was found unconscious, and a man a few feet away was dead. Jag’s body was there too.”
Mine might as well have been too, for all I could feel it— I was having an out-of-body experience, unable to feel or process anything. I didn’t feel sad, I felt panicked; I was absolutely sure none of this could be true. I kept asking questions, like a wind-up toy that couldn’t stop. “How did he die?”
“He was shot to death.”
“Abuela shot the man who attacked her?”
Sonya hollered, “Way to go, Abuela!”
Evelina’s face lost a little of its tension. None of us were falling apart; she might get through this. “Oh,” she said, forcing an almost-smile. “Sorry, Reeno. I thought you meant Jag. I know you were very fond of him.”
Were. She’d used the past tense.
Jag was dead. This wasn’t some crazy misunderstanding. There was no such thing as the Alpha Beast. The whole story was just a nutty acrobatic routine my pathetic little mind had performed to get me through Bad Girl School; I’d been a kid with an imaginary friend.
Evelina kept talking. “Jag was the one who was shot to death. We don’t really know how the man died.”
“Did he have a gun?”
“There was no gun at the scene. Only a tire iron.”
We winced collectively, realizing that must be what the man hit Abuela with.
Evelina was quiet. No one said anything for awhile, which gave me time to think. Or would have, except that thinking was out of the question. The panic was getting worse, and there was something mixed with it, something I didn’t want to think about. I dug my fingers into the seat of my chair, willing myself to stay in it, stay calm, try to understand what had happened. But my brain just wouldn’t take in information— couldn’t grasp the fact that Abuela had really been beat up, and the cat was dead, and there was really no Alpha Beast and A.B. and I weren’t going off to have an adventure and save the world and, except for Car
los, I was really, really, truly all alone at St. Psycho’s, where I’d probably rot, because I sure wasn’t going to play their stupid games any more.
“What did they do with him?” I finally said.
“The cat? I don’t know— buried him, I guess. He’s gone, Reeno. I’m sorry.”
I lost it. I got up and ran out of there before she could even call security; ran straight for the principal’s office, my sandals flapping on the stone floors. “Hal! Hal! Hal, I’ve got to talk to you!”
Hal let me in, looking curiously sympathetic. “Reeno, come in. I know you’re upset—”
“I have to say good-bye to him.”
“To the cat? We know you loved him. Listen—”
I wanted to say, I did not love that stupid furball— I believed in him!
“I was the one who found Abuela— I was coming to school as she was leaving, I guess, or shortly after. She regained consciousness while we were waiting for the ambulance, and she asked me to bring Jag back for you and have him buried on campus. It was weird— she didn’t say what happened, wouldn’t even talk about it, wouldn’t identify the man. The important thing is this— she was thinking about you, Reeno. I didn’t even know you knew her that well.”
“You mean he’s here? I want to see him.”
“Well, ah—”
“What?” I demanded. “What?”
“We had to go ahead and bury him. In this heat, he would have—”
“Noooooo!” I screamed, sounding like some chick in a movie whose boy friend has just been killed before her eyes. This wasn’t my boy friend. It was only a stupid cat.
Hal took hold of both my hands. “Reeno? Reeno, are you all right?”
“Of course I’m all right.” Crying a little, that was all. “I just want to say good-bye. I want to— uh, put a flower on his grave.”
“Well, I can understand that. Come on. We’ll go pick some bougainvillea.”
So we went and got the flowers from a vine that grew by the side of the classroom building, and, sadly, miserably, I went with Hal to the little mound behind the kitchen door that was Jag’s grave. I wanted to be alone with him, but fat chance of that.
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