Chloe looked up and around the cafeteria, then at her watch. They only had twenty minutes for lunch today, and five of them were already gone. Amy hadn’t texted her back, but that didn’t mean anything. One of them always said “meet me here” and the other one just showed up. It had always been like that. Unless there was a problem—that was the only reason for a response, if one of them couldn’t make it.
She checked her phone. No messages.
At 12:35 she finally gave up, realizing Amy wasn’t going to show.
• • •
She had the whole evening to herself, sort of a nice change from recent events. And sort of not. Chloe did some desultory straightening of her room and read a little of The Scarlet Letter for class. She went to the computer and surfed for a while, downloading MP3s and seeing what her favorite celebrities were up to. Then on a whim she searched on AIM for Alyec Ilychovich … and there he was. Under Alyec Ilychovich. He sure does have a lot to learn about hiding your real identity and other American things. Chloe smiled and added him to her buddy list. His account was private—such a popular guy!—so she sent him an invite from oldclothesKing, one of her more common aliases. Then she went on surfing.
There was an e-mail from Brian on her Hotmail account:
Chloe,
I really enjoyed our playdate the other night. But I never gave you the pattern!
Do you like ska? Downtime hosts Kabaret Saturdays, no cover. No penguins, but it should be a cool night otherwise. If not, maybe you have an idea … ?
—Brian 415-555-0554
She smiled. He was just so … perfect. It was almost like he could sense she was lonely and sent this. She called him but got his answering machine.
“Hi, this is Whit Rezza—if you’re looking for Peter Rezza, you can reach him on his cell, 415-555-1412. Leave a message, thanks!”
“Hey, Brian, it’s Chloe. I’d love to go out on Saturday—not a huge fan of ska, but I like it enough. Just going to have to figure out what to tell my mom first; she’s not big on me and guys. So this is a possible ’yes,’ and …”
The electronic sound of a door opening came from her computer. She looked over; Alyec was online. A second later there was a beep as he accepted her invite.
“And I’ll call you or e-mail you later, okay? Bye!”
She would have to remember to call before her mom came home; on the home phone bill it would only appear as a local call, but on her cell phone the bill listed every number. And her mom went through the bill very carefully each month, demanding to know what unrecognizable phone numbers were. She said it was for budget reasons … ha!
Chloe spun back in her chair so she was facing the computer. There was already a message from Alyec.
Alyec:
Miss me yet?
She giggled.
Chloe:
Only your lips. The rest of you—well, whatever.
Alyec:
Shallow girl! I have a brain, too, you know.
Chloe:
Yeah?
Alyec:
And more …
Chloe flushed. She had felt a lot of his body—fully clothed—in the closet. She wished it was summer so they could go to the beach and she could rub oil all over his broad shoulders. Or that they could date like normal people. Too bad I’m not normal, she thought for the second time in a week.
The phone rang.
Chloe:
Hang on, brb.
“King residence,” she answered.
“Hey—uh—Chloe—was that you who called?” Brian’s voice came from the other end. “My dad has caller ID and callback on this thing.”
“Yeah, it was me.” She was still flushed, thinking about Alyec and his body and the closet, and suddenly found herself thinking about Brian. More specifically, her on top of Brian, holding him down while she kissed him. I’ll bet I could do that with my new strength, too. …
He must have heard something funny in her voice.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”
“Oh. You just sounded—never mind. So, you still want that pattern?”
No, I want you, you dillhole.
There was a beep from the computer:
Alyec:
I’m waiting. …
Or Alyec. I want Alyec, too. It was funny right this moment, the two guys on two different means of communication. But soon, if her life was anything like TV—or even real life—it would all get very complicated without a decision. But not yet. Not just yet!
“Yeah. Should we try for Saturday?”
“Uh, sure. That’s fine. I mean, it’s great!” There was a long pause. “Chloe? I, uh …”
“Yeah?” She waited to hear him say that she was too young for him, that they had to break up, that he didn’t find her attractive. She sucked in her breath. So much for me making a decision.
“Uh, nothing. I just think you’re cool, that’s all.”
“Oh.” She grinned. “Thanks.”
“Yeah, so call me about Saturday, okay?”
“Absolutely.”
There was another beep from the computer.
Alyec:
Chloe King is so full of herself that she lets Alyec llychovich, one of the most popular guys in class, hang on the telephone. Or computer. Or whatever.
“All right, then, bye.”
He hung up sounding excited, pleased, and embarrassed. Chloe ran back to the keyboard.
Alyec:
Doopy doo, doopy doopy doo …
Chloe:
All right, all right! Jeez, can’t a girl pee?
Alyec:
I’ll bet you were talking with your other boyfriend.
Chloe froze. Now would be a good time to say something.
Chloe:
If by talking you mean urinating and boyfriend you mean toilet, then yes.
Alyec:
Your sexy talk is leaving me all hot.
Chloe:
Ewww! I didn’t know you were into stuff like that.
Alyec:
Hey, we foreign boys are weird.
Chloe:
At least you have nice lips.
Alyec:
Oh, and you don’t even know the half of what they can do.
Chloe:
Yeah? Want to give me a hint?
Alyec:
I can blow up balloons really fast.
Chloe:
Now who’s being the tease?
Alyec:
Why? What do you want me to do with my lips?
They typed back and forth furiously for several hours, taking breaks to go get drinks, or more bathroom breaks, or to IM other people. Alyec told her that Jean Mehala was just asking him if he had any desire to join the Junior UN. I am the junior UN! And Lotetia wanted him on the dance committee, which he might just do; most of the music at the dances sucked.
Chloe:
It must be neat being so wanted.
Alyec:
Yeah? And exactly how do you want to be wanted?
There was a noise behind Chloe, the slightest scratch of a throat. She jumped and spun around, expecting a murderer or something awful.
It was worse. It was her mom.
“Who is that you’re talking to?” Mrs. King demanded. She was wearing her driving glasses and looked stem and real mommish for once. Her gray eyes narrowed, and she gripped her attaché like an ax.
“How long were you standing there?” Chloe demanded.
“What was it you two did at school today that was so exciting?” From the set of her lips it was obvious that she had a pretty good idea already. She must have been standing there for quite a while. How had Chloe not heard her?
“Nothing,” Chloe said dully.
“Making out in a janitor’s closet? During class?”
“It was only gym. And besides—it’s not like you let me go out on actual dates.”
“This is precisely why!” Her mother hit the computer screen violently enough to make it ring.
“You are grounded, young lady! For the next week at least!”
“That’s so unfair!” Normally Chloe would have been thinking about how badly she’d screwed up right then and doing whatever she could to make up for it—lie, apologize, finish out the normal teenage fight, and act good for the next week—but real anger was growing inside her, and she found she couldn’t think. “Everyone else dates—and I have to lie and sneak around, even with nice guys like Brian. …”
“Who’s Brian?” her mother demanded. Her hands shook with rage.
“What does it matter? He’s totally great, but you won’t let me date him, either!”
“It seems like you’re doing well enough, whoring around like—“She fell silent.
Chloe just looked at her, eyes like coals. She couldn’t hear; rushes of blood and fury rose in her. For the first time since she was a child, she had the almost overwhelming urge to hit her mother.
“Take. That. Back.”
Mrs. King bit her lip.
“I’m—sorry. I didn’t mean—that was way too harsh. I apologize. I shouldn’t speak to you like that.” She played with the hammered silver earring on her left ear, tugging at it.
“You’re going to give me the whole ’how hard it is to be a single mom’ speech now, aren’t you?” Chloe spat.
“No, I—”
“Are you going to ’keep me’ from dating when I’m in college? Jesus Christ, Mom, I’m sixteen. I have a job. I get good grades. What psycho-pop book did you get this ’no dating’ bullshit out of?”
“It wasn’t a book!” Mrs. King said, her voice rising again. Then she fell back on her heels, suddenly tired, all energy and anger drained from her face. “It was the last thing your father said before he disappeared. He made me promise to never let you date.”
Chloe’s jaw dropped, but she had nothing to say. The man she had been glorifying and missing for twelve years was the one responsible for this?
“This is bullshit,” Chloe growled. She spun on her heels and pushed past her mother.
“Chloe, wait—”
She ran into the bathroom and slammed the door.
“FUCK!” she screamed. She clenched her fists, fingers aching painfully. She pulled back to punch the door.
And then she stopped.
There were claws where her nails had been. White and sharp and curved and beautiful, just like a cat’s.
Eleven
She sat on the top of a chain-link fence, staring at the moon.
It was easy now, sitting like that on the balls of her feet with her hands just touching the rail. Now that she knew she was different.
“He made me promise to never let you date. …”
Why? Did he know something? Did it have to do with the claws?
Chloe lifted one hand and looked at it, trying to will them back. She bent her knuckles. She tried to remember the rage she’d felt. What was it that she said that set me off?
“Whoring around like—“
Sslt.
With the slightest of noises, the claws came out. They seemed to spring right from the bone, strong and sturdy as an extension of her hand. They didn’t bend when she touched them, and the tips were razor sharp.
Xavier.
Maybe she’d scratched him with the tips. Maybe they were poisoned. Maybe they came out when she was all hot as well as enraged. Is that why Dad didn’t want me to date? Because I can accidentally kill people?
She thought about what Brian had said at the zoo.
“Even the friendly ones … don’t know their own strength compared to humans. They can accidentally kill a zookeeper while trying to play with him. …”
What if she had been face-to-face with her mom when she got that angry? Would she have lost control and tried to hit her? Would the claws have come out, scarring or killing her mother?
Suddenly her new powers didn’t feel like fun anymore. They felt lethal.
So I can’t make out with guys? But Alyec was fine. … It didn’t make any sense.
A thousand mysteries, none of which were easily solved. Chloe felt an incredible surge of loneliness envelop her. Who could she talk to? Who could help her? Who would tell her that everything would be okay?
How can I even have a boyfriend?
Either he’d have to be awfully accepting and tightlipped, or she would have to constantly hide things from him.
She stood up on the fence with ease: the trick was not to think about what she was doing and let her body just do it, she discovered. The roof of a nearby apartment complex hung just within reach. She leapt.
The sheer power in her body was phenomenal—as her legs flexed, she felt the way racehorses looked, all muscle and speed, no wasted movement or flesh. Her powerful thighs arced her easily over the gutter.
Landing was a little harder.
Chloe pitched forward, forgetting to compensate for momentum. She threw her arm out and managed to grab the base of an old antenna to keep herself from rolling off the roof. She lay against the tar tiles a moment, panting, scared to move, her feet dangling down. When she finally calmed down enough to think straight, she swung her left leg up and, bending her knee so she looked like a frog, pushed herself up onto the apex of the roof and swung her right leg over the other side so that she straddled it.
Not quite perfect.
Above her the stars glittered coldly in the dark blue sky. She looked out over the other roofs, the strange landscape with shingles and tiles for grass and chimneys and antennae for bushes and trees. Like the canopy layer in a rain forest, it was a whole area of the world she had never really noticed before. Not before Coit Tower, at least. And now it lay open to her. Some of the chimneys really were organic looking, like that kind of lumpy one—
Which was waving to her.
She stared harder. Chloe’d had better-than-perfect vision from birth, but, as on the night with the mugger, she realized she could see things far more clearly under the dim moonlight and night sky than she really should. She waited and everything lightened, like in the viewfinder of a digital camera. She could see individual bricks and the mortar separating them.
The “chimney” elongated and straightened as the person stood up—balancing perfectly on the short wall that divided the roof space of one apartment building from the next. Then it crouched down, like a frog—or a cat—and leapt over the gap to the next building, landing so his—by the silhouette it looked more like a “his”—right hand came down onto the roof at the same time as his feet, ending in the same sort of crouch.
Oh, that’s what I should have done, Chloe thought idly. Spread my weight out across my legs and my hands so that …
Then she realized.
This was him. The person from the note. A friend.
He was crouched very much like a cat on its haunches, arms and hands between his legs, watching her. He must be wearing all black, and his face was always in the shadows. He held up a hand—paw. What she was waiting for?
Chloe looked around. There was another house next to the one she was on, about ten feet away. An ugly, modern ranch like her own, with a tar roof. She started for it and then paused, scared. She looked up: he was still watching her. She took a deep breath and ran.
At the last moment she leapt, and instead of straight up like a high jumper, she stretched her body out almost like in a dive. She saw grass, sidewalk, and shadows pass far too quickly beneath her. Then her right hand touched the roof and her feet followed, landing in a perfect crouch.
Chloe had been holding her breath. She let it out and realized she was … thrilled. It was like the best free-fall ride at the park, no machinery necessary. Just her. She turned to look at the shadow figure across the street.
He gave her a thumbs-up, cocking his head. Then he leapt down off the roof on the other side, disappearing from sight.
“No!” Chloe cried, and looked around desperately for some quick way to get there, but there were no buildings that overhung the street or trees she could use to cross. She l
eapt down to the ground—without thinking this time; it was like she just decided to fall—and slipped down alongside the wall, landing with no sound. Her hands came flat against the pebbly concrete.
She ran across the street to the other side of the building. A single streetlight dimly illuminated an empty parking lot, gated shut. Someone had sprayed a colorful, huge tag on the brick wall that enclosed the far end. A plastic bottle rolled across the asphalt, pushed by an invisible breeze. Other than that and a billboard advertising Hankook Tires, nothing else was there.
What am I supposed to do now? For a few minutes it had looked like she had some strange sort of friend who could do the same things she could—and more. Who might be able to tell her who she was, why they were like this. What it all meant …
Ssst.
There was the faintest scratching noise above her. Chloe looked up and saw him crouching on top of a pole that supported a wire for the Muni electric buses. I could have gotten across the street that way without coming down—but isn’t it dangerous?
As if to answer her question, he stood up and very carefully leapt onto one of the wires so that he never straddled the pole and it at the same time. Then he crouched down and sort of scuttled across it, using hands and feet to cling. He leapt up to the top of the billboard.
“How am I supposed to get up there?”
He jumped off the billboard, letting himself fall down its face. Ten neat rips in the paper lengthened as he fell, revealing the older ads underneath.
He had used his claws, she realized.
Nine Lives of Chloe King Page 9