A Taste for Red

by Lewis Harris

  Foote handed over a pair of tickets and hefted a pistol from the table. It looked like something a gunslinger would carry in a Wild West movie. The pistol was connected to the table by a thin hose snaking from the pearly handle; it was an air gun. Foote carefully took aim at the rotating buffalo targets and squeezed the trigger. The gun made a Phhooot! sound, but the buffalo ratcheted along, unfazed.

  Phhooot!

  Phhooot!

  Phhooot!

  Still nothing. "Hey, this thing isn't working right," Foote complained, holding the gun out to the booth attendant.

  "Yeah, it's probably the pistol," the guy said, his sarcasm pushing through a mouthful of pretzel. He let Foote take his remaining six shots using a different air gun, but the buffalo remained unscathed.

  "Dang," Foote said, frustrated.

  "Do two more tickets," Fumio told him.

  "Nah, I only got four left. This thing's rigged. I need both hands anyway." He wiggled the fingers poking from the cast on his left arm.

  "But you're right-handed," Fumio noted.

  "I need both hands to shoot steady."

  Whatever. I tore off two tickets and picked up a pistol. The gun was heavier than I thought it would be.

  "Ten shots for the little princess," Pretzel Guy said, tossing my tickets into a bucket.

  Princess? What I wanted to do was shoot that pretzel out of his hand. Instead, I stiffened my arm and stared down the black barrel, lining the sights up along the top of the air pistol and bringing the blurry buffalo into focus.

  Phhooot! The tin cutout fell over with a metal clacking sound.

  Phhooot! Clack!

  Phhooot! Clack!

  Phhooot! Clack!

  "Oh, no!" Fumio laughed, swatting Foote on his left shoulder, making him wince. "You're being totally smoked, dude!"

  I paid no mind. My arm had turned to rigid steel. I listened for the barely discernible tick-tick-ticking of gears as the tiny buffalo cutouts circled and sprang into view. I felt the weight of displaced air as the pistol puffed. The pistol and the air were almost an extension of myself, as if I were reaching an invisible hand across the distance and knocking over the tin targets with a flick of my finger.

  Phhooot! Clack!

  Phhooot! Clack!

  I reeled off nine shots and dropped nine buffalo.

  "Whoa!" Pretzel Guy pronounced, his half-eaten twist of dough forgotten. "I've never seen anyone knock over nine in a row—impressive."

  "One more and you win the grand prize!" Foote shouted, clapping my back. He pointed to a skateboard hanging from a bar above the revolving buffalo. It was a deluxe board, done up in midnight black with twin lightning bolts and premium trucks and wheels.

  "C'mon, just one more, Svet," Fumio whispered.

  I leveled the pistol and stared down the gun sights, bringing the buffalo into line. I released my breath and closed one eye, settling on the next target. In my mind, it was a done deal. I tickled the trigger with the end of my finger, squeezing. A shiver rippled across my scalp and down my spine. Tiny hairs along the top of my neck tingled as a ripe rotting odor filled the air. I let up on the trigger, dropping my eyes to the alabaster hand with red nails reaching across the tabletop, taking hold of the air pistol alongside my own. I looked up into the smiling face of Sylvia Larch.

  "Let's see what you've got, Svetlana," she purred, her grin breaking open like a snowy chasm.

  "You shoulda seen it, Ms. Larch," Fumio raved. "Svetlana just mowed through nine targets. Bam! Bam! Bam! One more and she's got the skateboard!"

  Our teacher's eyes brimmed with amusement. Green flames danced behind her stare. I turned back to the tin targets, but they appeared farther away now. The pistol seemed heavier. I matched up the sights, but the gun barrel trembled in my grip.

  "Do your best, Stephanie Grimm," Larch challenged.

  I tugged the trigger and the gun spit.

  Phhooot!

  Nothing.

  "Aarghhh," Fumio groaned.

  "Oh, man!" Foote shouted.

  "That's too bad," Ms. Larch breathed, her sick cherry breath rolling out rotten sweet. She lifted the air pistol in her hand and fired off nine quick shots, nine rapid pulls of the trigger. The targets fell in tumbling succession, toppling like dominoes, clacking one right after the next.

  Foote whistled in awe.

  "Dang, Ms. Larch," Fumio breathed, staring up at her in amazement, as if she were a goddess.

  "Holy cow, lady," Pretzel Guy drooled.

  Cow, I thought.

  Ms. Larch cocked her elbow and swiveled to face me. She held the air pistol up, her grin flashing supermodel white. She looked spectacular in her skintight black jumpsuit with a wide bone-colored belt cinched tight around her hourglass-shaped center. She could have been an assassin from a cool spy flick.

  I felt like cold oatmeal: no milk, no sugar, no cinnamon. Plain with a capital P.

  Ms. Larch bit down hard on the cherry lozenge clicking between her perfect teeth. It cracked like bone. She laid down the pistol.

  "Whoa! You got one more shot, Ms. Larch!" Foote said.

  "You can win the game!" Fumio shouted.

  She threw the boys a bored glance, dismissing them with a bat of her green eyes. Her focus fell on me. I felt like a worm popped out of the ground with a robin peeking over it.

  "I don't play games," she said softly.

  "Hey, that's two tickets you owe me, lady," the gallery keeper reminded her, suddenly rediscovering his pretzel and guiding it to his mouth.

  Ms. Larch paid him no mind. She reached a hand to my burning cheek, and I jerked away.

  Don't touch me, I thought.

  I'm surprised to see you out and about, sweet Svetlana. Her oily voice seeped into my mind. I dreamed you had a tummy ache.

  I shuddered but tried not to show it. Dream on, I thought.

  She threw back her head and laughed aloud. Fumio and Foote exchanged confused looks.

  "Hey, lady," Pretzel Guy started again, but Larch was already moving away, giving us her backside as she sashayed off into the carnival crowd. The din of music, laughter, ringing, dinging, and voices came over me in a flood, as if a pair of earmuffs had been suddenly snatched from my head.

  "Dang, she can sure shoot," Fumio said. He stared after Larch's disappearing figure, his face all dreamy and pathetic.

  I fought the urge to reach out and thump him one.

  "Hey, you can shoot, too," Foote said, giving me a friendly punch on the shoulder.

  I felt out of it, rattled by Ms. Larch and her sudden coming and going. I wrinkled my nose over her lingering stench. Her words echoed: I dreamed you had a tummy ache. The image of the stricken cardinal filled my head, its once bright feathers turned dull in death. Larch had tried to poison me, I had no doubt now. The Bone Lady was right. Could she be right about our teacher's connection to the missing girls, too?

  "It's your pick this time," Fumio told me.

  But I was far from a carnival mood now.

  "C'mon, we've still got tickets left," Foote insisted. "You said you wanted to ride the Ferris wheel, didn't you?" He grabbed my elbow to tug me along.

  "Hey," Pretzel Guy called, and I turned around. "You knocked over more than five targets, princess—you won" He grinned, reaching out my prize. I sighed and took the plastic bag with the stupid goldfish in it.

  Fourteen

  Fumio went off to play the coin toss, and Foote practically dragged me over to the Ferris wheel. "Snap out of it, Svet."

  He'd see me snap if he called me "Svet" one more time.

  The bag of water in my hand slopped from side to side, the poor goldfish wiggling to make sense of the world. At the Ferris wheel, we queued up in a short line. The giant ring of steel spokes and buckets rotated lazily to the piping of canned music.

  Foote pushed his sliding-down eyeglasses back up his long nose. "You don't like Ms. Larch much, do you?"

  "Why do you say that?"

  "I can tell."

  His ma
gnified eyes blinked blue. His teeth were straight, except for an errant one at the bottom that leaned away from the rest like a lazy fence picket. He had a goofy look on his face—maybe a guilty look.

  "What?"

  "Nothing," he said, glancing away.

  What was he acting all weird about?

  The Ferris wheel began pausing in brief jerks as riders were let off and new ones let on. The line moved, and we handed over our tickets and dropped into a rocking bucket seat. The earth fell away as we were lifted into the air. I was taken by an uneasy sense of vertigo and gripped the safety bar. The sickly sweet odor of rot and corruption followed me, even as we moved higher into the clear sky. I had Larch on the brain.

  "Well, how was your first week of school, Svet? Did you like it? You never went to a real school before, huh?"

  "No."

  "No to the second or the third?"

  "No to three. Number one and two are okay. And don't call me Svet."

  "You'll like it more—you'll see." Foote smiled sheepishly, rocking his big head.

  From the top of the wheel, I could see over the roof of the school and the tops of tents and the cars parked up and down the parking lot and streets. I saw beyond the trees and roofs of nearby houses. Some of the taller downtown buildings poked up in the distance. Forested hills spread away to the east. The Ferris wheel peaked, and then we seemed to gather speed as we rotated back toward earth.

  "What do you think happened to Sandy Cross and the others?" The question popped out of my mouth on its own, even though I didn't want to ask it.

  Foote said he didn't know, the smile dropping away from his face. "They must be lost on the other side of City Park. It borders the national forest. They could have gotten turned around in there. I've been camping back in those woods, and anyone could lose their way, easy."

  "For days?" It didn't make any sense. "They're all marked trails. And what about the girls' bikes? Searchers would have at least found their bikes if the girls had walked off into the woods."

  "Maybe the bikes have been found," he said. "Mobs of searchers showed up at City Park. There was even a television news crew there. Those girls'll get found and probably end up being famous—go on The Oprah Winfrey Show and all that junk. Talk about how they had to eat bugs and sleep inside a rotted tree trunk to stay warm."

  I liked the idea of Sandy Cross and her lame posse having to eat bugs, but I didn't think the girls had it that good. In fact, I was sure they had it much worse. I was certain the girls had fallen into the clutches of Sylvia Larch, a.k.a. Diana Frost—the Kensington Vampire. The Bone Lady was right. I didn't want to believe it, but I did. In my blood and bones, I knew it. Our creepy science teacher had freaked me out from day one. I was different—that was a fact—and Ms. Larch was different, too, but in a bad way. The nose knows, and mine knew better than most.

  "Do you believe in monsters?" I asked Foote.

  The wheel was launching us back into the sky. Foote studied me with his wide face, seeing that I was serious. I appreciated that he at least considered the question.

  "Do you mean like Bigfoot?"

  "Maybe," I said. "Like things people don't know about—or don't talk about. I believe the missing girls have run into bad trouble, and not the kind where you get turned around in the woods. And I think Ms. Larch has something to do with it." I wanted to see his face when I said the last part, but he was looking down at the view falling away beneath us.

  He eventually looked up, shaking his head. "You really don't like her at all."

  "There's something wrong about Ms. Larch. I can't explain it, but I know it. I knew it the moment I stepped into her classroom." I didn't want to go overboard, but the words came spilling out. "She's just strange. The way she looks and acts. The way she dresses. It's like she's some kind of alien fashion model."

  "Hey, you don't have to lose a beauty contest to be a science teacher. I like looking at Ms. Larch a lot more than I ever liked looking at Mr. Boyd—although he was definitely funnier."

  Boys are so limited.

  "Have you noticed how every one of her classes is about some kind of animal getting eaten by another animal, or about rats or worms or something gross?"

  "You've only had her for a week—"

  "And didn't you think it was weird the way she knocked over all those targets at the shooting gallery? Without hardly looking?"

  "You did just as well as she did," he said.

  But I hadn't. And I wasn't exactly normal myself.

  "Just 'cause she's good looking doesn't make her a monster," he went on. "And I don't think you're a monster, either."

  What was he talking about? He glanced away shyly, then quickly turned back. What was that dumb look on his face? Suddenly, he was reaching in with puckered lips to kiss me. I pulled away, but not before he bumped his big head into mine. What the heck! Without thinking, I drew back and punched him hard on his right shoulder. He yelped and reached with his bandaged left arm, yelping again as he moved his cast too quickly.

  "You do that again and I'll break your good arm," I huffed, feeling the hot flush of blood on my cheeks. Jerk. I lifted the goldfish bag and apologized to the little fish for sloshing its water. The poor creature didn't have a clue. It popped into my head then to name the fish "Dwight."

  "Hey, I think you're cool, that's all," he stammered, his face as red as mine felt.

  What was going on in that bonehead's thick skull? I said, "Don't read too much into this Ferris wheel ride, Foote. This isn't a date."

  Just then the wheel began a jerking descent as riders below were expelled. Our bucket seat rocked back and forth in the fading sunlight.

  "I think I need to go home now," I said. "My mom's gonna blame me for every gray hair on her head if I don't get back before dark."

  "I'll go find Fumio," he said, looking away.

  When we reached the bottom, we jumped from the bucket and rejoined the carnival mob on the ground. I went toward where we'd chained our bikes, kicking myself for having said anything at all to Foote about Ms. Larch. There was nothing gained in that. I needed to talk to Lenora Bones and find out what she had in mind. The old lady was right—I didn't have a choice in any of this. I could see that now.

  I unchained my bike from the railing and pushed it to the sidewalk, holding the swinging goldfish bag against the handlebar. Mom would probably think the fish was a bad idea, but what could I do? Calliope music piped over the coming evening. Floodlights began snapping on around the carnival and school grounds. The parking lot was still jam-packed with vehicles.

  I waited curbside for Fumio and Foote, wondering at how crazy the world had become this week. But really, everything had been cartwheeling toward crazy for some time now. For months I'd felt different, acted different. Lenora Bones said I was special. Even Ms. Larch said I was special—but she said so in the most menacing way. One thing was for sure: I needed to get a grip. The world had become a very dangerous place. Sandy, Marsha, and Madison were history, and if I didn't watch out, I was next.

  "Watch out!"

  Foote's warning cry turned my head just as the squeal of tires filled my ears. A white van swerved, crashing over the curb onto the sidewalk. The unseen driver steered directly toward where I stood holding my bicycle. There was no doubt of the driver's deadly intention.

  The van blotted my vision, barreling down on me like an unstoppable locomotive. The world froze into halting frames, became a movie reel slowed to a jerking crawl. I saw clouds and sky reflected in the widening windshield. The approaching headlights became cold eyes; the front grill, a silver rack of menacing teeth. The engine growled hungrily, the sound expanding into a deafening roar as the van rocketed toward me.

  I buckled my legs and then launched, my knees uncoiling like springs as I hurtled myself backward over my bicycle. I was airborne. There was a loud smack as the van caught the edge of the handlebar, jerking the bike away and sending it clattering down the sidewalk. The van's side mirror swished by, a hair's breadth f
rom my face. I fell back and tumbled onto my butt and elbows, rolling away in the grass. The van thumped over the curb and dropped back onto the street, tires squealing as it sped away.

  Foote and Fumio were instantly on either side of me, dragging me to my feet.

  "Holy guacamole!" Fumio shouted.

  What was he yelling about? I was the one who'd almost been flattened into a tortilla.

  I rubbed at my elbow where the skin was scraped and bleeding.

  "Are you okay?" Foote asked, looking me up and down.

  "You were so dead!" Fumio continued in a loud voice, shouting into my ear.

  "Geez..." I pushed him away. I scratched at the back of my head where I'd banged it, luckily on the grass and not the sidewalk. "I think I'm okay." I dabbed at the blood on my elbow.

  "That was amazing! That was ... completely amazing! You should be total roadkill, man." Fumio's excitement bordered on happiness.

  "That was close," Foote said, staring down the street where the van had disappeared.

  "It was her," I breathed.

  "Don't be nuts."

  "Her?" Fumio said.

  "Larch—Ms. Larch. She wants me dead."

  "Do you know how crazy that sounds?" Foote said, real concern in his voice.

  Fumio's face was a mask of confusion. "Our science teacher?"

  My body began to tremble now that the danger had passed, at least for the moment. But Fumio was right; I had almost been roadkill. "It was Ms. Larch," I said, and I was sure of it. The two boys stared. "She tried to poison me before. And now this. She's got Sandy Cross and her friends, and she knows that I know it."

  "You must've really whacked your head," Fumio said.

  "Let's go find the nurse and tell somebody," Foote suggested, putting his hand gently on my shoulder.

  I shrugged it off. "Forget it—you're not listening to me."

  "Are you listening to yourself?" Fumio said. "You sound like a nut job. That was some drunk driver—or someone on a cell phone driving like an idiot. Nobody's trying to kill you, Svetlana. Get over yourself."

  "Did you see that it was her driving?" Foote asked.