A smile plays on her lips and she demurs. “Maybe. I think so. Things changed after that night.”
Maybe my pep talk helped. Or maybe Leo has finally gotten a little YOLO in his diet. Either one would be awesome.
“I hope so! Well, don’t let me keep you. Leo is super sweet and you guys make a cute couple. Have fun. Okay?”
She bear hugs me. Surprised, I hug back.
“You, too!” she says. She takes off with a wave.
I watch her leave, happiness—for her, for Leo, for all of us—bubbling inside of me.
Jill appears a couple of minutes later, looking pale and worried. “Come on,” she says and we take off for the barn.
Fewer students are hanging around. I don’t see Charles, but I do see Judy and Leo heading off toward the Foreign Language building. Jill is quiet, trudging forward with a purpose. I try some small talk. “So, what’s your family doing for Thanksgiving?”
She looks confused for a moment. “Nothing special. Staying in town. I’m sure there’ll be football or something.”
I glance over at the bike racks. Aidan’s bike is still here. Maybe I misunderstood. Of course, he could be chatting with Mr. Reilly again, but Aidan is such a perfectionist about everything that I can’t imagine him losing track of time. I feel a scorch of disappointment. I hope he makes it to his first job on time.
I follow Jill from the main track of buildings into the grassy expanse that rests between the school proper and the 4-H building. Jill casts glances over her shoulder and speeds up. She’s definitely nervous about this. I understand why.
The phone buzzes in my hand. I ignore it, as it’s in the hand shielding my eyes from the searing sunlight. The crabgrass is mushy underfoot, mud oozing up around my boot soles. We’re closing in on the building, the crude odor of hay mixing with clover and wet wood.
It buzzes again.
Jill hooks my arm in hers. “Thanks so much for meeting with me.” We round the corner to the benches and tables.
“Sure,” I say and drop my backpack on a damp bench. I check my phone. Jill starts to talk, but I don’t hear her. My head’s exploding as I read Judy’s text:
Aidan arguing with Charles! LOOKS REALLY BAD
Where?
POSSUMS
I grab my bag. “Sorry, Jill, but I’ve gotta go. I’ll be back soon. I promise.” I tear away across the wet grass, stumbling as my feet slide. That area is the one place that the kiddie cops don’t patrol well, as evidenced by the undetected dead possums. The cops might not even be hanging around now that the break has officially started.
Crap! My backpack strap digs into my shoulder. My chest aches. I pass the bike rack: this time, the bike looks strange. Front wheel missing. Weird. I push forward. I race through the school to the English building. Listening. Stragglers wait for rides, joke in the halls.
The forest echoes with harsh voices. I halt, wondering if it’s wise to interrupt. Maybe they need to have this fight. To settle things. I slow down, stepping carefully. Break no branch underfoot. Can’t let them know I’m here.
Through the branches I see Aidan and Charles, facing off. Charles is so agitated that he’s dancing from foot to foot, twitching and gesticulating with thrashing hands, face flushed and sweating. Madness flares in his eyes.
“You’re a thief,” Charles accuses. “You stole my job. You stole my family. You stole my life! You’re an intruder. Nobody wants you around except my slut sister.”
I lean against a wide tree and peer around. I only see the two. The 10-speed front wheel leans against a tree next to Charles.
“Cherry sucked my dick last summer,” someone chortles. Whoever said that is hidden somewhere among the trees. I wonder if there are others I just can’t see.
How did I go from school sacrificial virgin to Mary Mother of Whores? In a week, no less! I guess I get around. Who knew?
“So you have a choice, motherfucker,” Charles continues. He wipes the sweat from his face with his coat sleeve. “You can walk away now and leave forever, or we’ll fucking kill you. What’ll it be?”
Aidan crosses his arms. Unflinching. His eyes are bright with anger but they aren’t focused on Charles. Instead, his gaze moves around from tree to tree. “It seems you are not capable of handling this dispute on your own.”
“Fuck you. You know why they’re here. You’re a sneaky freak!”
“Sneaky? It’s sneakier to vandalize someone’s mode of transportation and provoke a conflict.”
Charles circles him. “Now it’s an even fight. And I got six witnesses here who will testify that you tried to kill me in an argument. The cops will believe these homeboys before they believe a runaway freak from Canada or wherever the hell you’re from.” He steps away from Aidan with a maniacal grin.
“Is that so?” Aidan says. “Well, then…Game on.”
A half-dozen guys leap from the surrounding woods. Toughs and creeps. A couple of jocks—Zander Wilson and Deacon Burr. The jocks are probably more “customers” of Charles doing him a solid. Zander carries a hammer. Deacon, a bat. Zachary, whose car was smashed, carries a tire iron. His buddy Noah, chains.
Charles steps back.
They swarm Aidan.
And then it’s the end of the world.
Aidan flings out his arms. Deacon goes flying vertically, his head hitting a nearby tree. He slumps, unconscious. Zachary and his tire iron fly in the other direction, landing on his back, winded.
Noah hesitates, scuttles back and circles around, swinging the chains.
Meanwhile, Zander drops the hammer and runs. But he’s barely taken a few steps when he rises straight up at least 20 feet as if lifted by an invisible hand, legs bicycling in the air like the coyote in the cartoons. He cries out, looking around desperately.
Noah lashes at Aidan, who catches the chain in his hand—or, at least appears to. The chain hovers a foot away from his fingers. He yanks his hand back and Noah stumbles toward him. The chain wraps itself around Noah’s neck like a boa constrictor, squeezing until he just turns blue and drops. The chain loosens. He’s breathing but unconscious.
Zachary sits up, muttering. Before he can take another breath, his body lifts and flings itself against a nearby tree, breaking the arm that holds the tire iron. He collapses, weeping and cursing, weapon released.
Zander shrieks at Aidan from the air. “I’m going to fucking kill you, freak!”
Aidan laughs in a voice I have never heard. About an octave lower, gravely and frightening. “Will you really?”
“Fuck you! I’ll get my dad’s rifle and blow your head off, asshole!” Zander yells, voice wavering.
“I’d like to see you try.”
And at that, Aidan raises a fist to the jock, palm downward, and opens his hand. The jock plummets to the ground, hitting it with a whump. He howls like an animal, clutching his leg. The broken bone has ripped through muscle, skin and jeans. Blood soaks the ground.
Click.
Charles, who has been hanging back, steps forward. He aims a handgun at Aidan.
Holy crap! Pulp Fiction Palmer…
Aidan sneers. “A gun? Really?”
“Get out of here, motherfucker. Or I’ll shoot.”
Aidan opens his arms and raises them up as he says, “Go ahead.”
Charles pulls the trigger.
Crack!
My ears ring. The bullet ricochets away from Aidan as if it hit an invisible shield. Charles spurts aggravated chirping noises, his face twisted with rage. He adjusts his aim and pulls the trigger again.
Crack!
He misses Aidan again.
But not Noah.
Charles was so fixated on Aidan that he didn’t notice Noah stagger to his feet.
Noah’s body sways. He slumps to the ground, blood blossoming at his waistline.
Aidan doesn’t take his eyes off Charles.
Charles wails like a wounded animal. Tears run down his red face as the gun in his hands turns toward him. The barrel digs into h
is belly. My head pounds with horror…
“No!” I shout, stepping away from the tree. “Stop!”
Aidan turns toward me, shocked.
His eyes glow blue. Like the creature’s.
I run.
Chapter 18
This is the end.
The end of everything.
I text Judy and tell her something unbelievably terrible has happened. She and Leo drive me to her house as I sob uncontrollably in the back seat. I’m grateful they don’t push me to tell them why. They make reassuring noises. Judy wraps me in a blanket on the couch before the fireplace and lights a fire. She also makes me tea and gives me a box of tissues that I decimate.
“My folks are gone for the week. Just relax.” She says. “We’ll be in the library. The bathroom is over there.” She points down to the left of what might be the entry. “Let us know if you need anything. Or if you need to talk. Okay?”
Leo quietly places a huge bag of peanut M&Ms on the coffee table. I manage a faint smile. “Thanks.”
They leave me to the flames.
Judy’s house has high ceilings and stylishly painted walls covered with abstract paintings. Bookcases are crammed with mystery novels, DVDs, and incredibly cool steampunk knickknacks. Someone artistic decorated this home. Maybe her mom. Or dad. There’s no TV in this room. Just big worn leather couches, upon which sleeps a fat marmalade cat, and the fireplace. People must come here and talk into the wee hours. I don’t know that much about Judy the artist. Now I want to know everything.
But it will have to wait.
An emotional voice mail from Mom and Dad says they are with Charles, who has been put into juvy with his friends for attempted murder. Noah is in the hospital, unconscious.
“Call me immediately. We need to have a family meeting. We’ll talk to Aidan when he gets home from work,” she says.
The tears return with a vengeance.
Michael texts me to say that he heard there was an epic fight between the jocks and crack heads, and that nobody won.
No kidding.
Everything is smashed up inside of me. Bleeding and screaming. I want to die.
Oh, Aidan. I love you. I can’t live without you. But I’m terrified of you. I have to get the hell away from you. But what do I tell my parents? I would have to lie about why I’m afraid, to make up something believable. I can’t bring myself to do such a thing, even if the ends justify the means.
Between sobs, I try to console myself with the knowledge that the carnage was in self-defense. That my brother and his friends would have killed Aidan. But.
But.
What the hell did I see?
I pull the blanket tighter around myself.
I’m an engineer. A free thinker. A skeptic. A rational person. The details turn over in my mind. Can I even trust my own mind? My chest feels like it’s full of razor blades every time I breathe. Every time I think of Aidan.
And those eyes.
The horror of finding Darren’s body. The haunting of the photograph. The terror of encountering that creature.
Is Aidan the creature? No. He can’t be. He was with Mr. Reilly when Darren was killed and with Dad when Judy, Leo, Michael and I encountered the creature. But clearly they’re connected somehow.
They’re both deadly. Although the creature couldn’t throw people around like rag dolls. Couldn’t? Or didn’t? For now, I’ll say couldn’t. It seemed so feral, it would’ve lashed out any way possible, especially since it was injured.
My mind is racing as I grieve. If I don’t accept what I saw at face value, I will go crazy. Maybe I am crazy. Mom and Dad didn’t say anything about Aidan being at the police station. Maybe I imagined he was there and it was just a big fight between Charles’ friends and the jocks? It wouldn’t have been the first in history.
No, he was there.
From my phone, I write an email to Aidan that feels like a pick driving into my chest.
Leave me alone. Do not speak or write to me. I don’t know who or what you are, or how you did what you did, but I don’t feel safe around you.
I don’t sign it. I just send it. And when my finger touches the send icon, my heart rips into a thousand bloody pieces. When will this nightmare end?
Aidan warned me. He told me about his father. But how on earth did he commit such violence without so much as a bruise on his body? There must be a plausible explanation.
If there isn’t, the rest of my life is over. I’ll have to admit to the BFJs that miracles do happen. That maybe even God exists.
How he did it doesn’t matter as much as the fact that he hurt—even crippled—four guys, and might have killed my brother. Although, I’m not even sure about that. How could he make Charles point the gun at himself? How could he lift a two-hundred-pound jock into the air twenty feet? How could he throw a person against a tree without touching him? Wrap a chain around someone’s neck with a simple gesture? It’s impossible.
I think back to that morning on the bus when he startled those two students by knowing something about them.
That day when Mr. Spotty was in the driveway and Aidan raised his hand to a “stop” gesture just before Zachary’s car stopped abruptly.
Yesterday with the butterflies.
My butterflies.
A knock on the front door. Judy and Leo emerge from the library, whispering. They open it and let in Michael.
“Where’s the patient?” Michael asks.
The three file into the living room. Judy sits beside me. “I hope it’s okay that I called Michael. We’re really worried about you and we figured you’d have called your mom and dad if you’d wanted them.”
I nod, wiping my nose.
“Hey, math queen,” Michael says, sitting on the other side of me, putting his arm around me. It’s the most physically intimate we’ve ever been. Two months ago I would have died of happiness. Now, I’m just dying. “You didn’t answer my text. I figured something must be really wrong because I never have the last word with you.”
My hand hurts. I’ve been throttling the phone. I don’t know what to say to him. Or anyone. He hugs me and I hug him back. Long heaving sobs rack my body. I feel spikes in my lungs. I cough.
“You don’t have to talk,” Michael whispers in my ear. He just holds me. I have never let anyone do that except for Aidan and my parents. We sit like this for several silent minutes.
Judy brings out glasses of water. “Stay hydrated,” she urges.
I take a long drink that turns to gulps. Leo sits on one of the couches looking miserable, but for me rather than himself. Leo, who saved my life.
You got to trust someone, kid.
Can I trust these guys? Probably.
But do I trust myself?
My perceptions? My judgments? My ability to reason? I can’t possibly be objective.
Michael snuggles up to me. Leo and Judy curl up next to us. A group geek couch cuddle. Judy takes my hand. I must be really messed up or they would not be this sweet.
Also? I’m sweating. Blanket plus friends plus fire equals too hot.
After several moments, I struggle to sit up and shrug off the blanket. I still feel like crap. I accept that it’s going to be that way for a while. In fact, it will probably get worse.
Michael looks at me expectantly. I realize this hugging stuff has been a tactic to get me to open up. Not a heartless manipulation. Just him hoping that, if he pumped enough love into me, I’d talk. Not so with Leo and Judy. They look surprised when I speak.
“I’ve got to come clean with you guys and tell you the whole story. I’ve been holding back some stuff, not to deceive you, but I had to have my own secret garden. Also, I don’t really want to tell you what I saw today because I can’t explain it. There are a lot of things, actually, that I can’t explain. I just hope you’ll believe that I’m telling the truth.”
“CJ, I haven’t known you forever, but you’re one of the most credible people I’ve ever met,” Michael says. “So clearly somethin
g’s happened and those nunchuks need to fly.”
“Yeah, but my nightmare right now is that you won’t believe me because what I have to say is so outrageous and I don’t have any evidence.”
Leo shakes his head. “I bet there’s more evidence than you think.”
“Maybe,” I say, looking at Judy. She squeezes my hand and watches me with watery eyes. It might be her allergies. But it also might be she actually cares.
“It’s about Aidan.”
And I tell them everything.
Chapter 19
When I finish, Michael stops pacing and stands with his hands on the couch back. Leo stares into the fire. Judy bites her lower lip, watching my face. She throws her arms around me.
“It’s gonna be okay,” she says. “The purpose of the Skeptics Club was to bring people together who don’t believe things blindly. People who question and investigate. Am I right?”
I nod. So do Leo and Michael.
“Yeah, but it’s become some kind of monster hunting club,” I say.
Judy continues. “But you’ve had an experience that ties into something we’ve experienced together. We were eyewitnesses to the creature. We even have photographic evidence. I totally believe that something weird happened with Aidan because I can tell how much you love him and that it’s killing you to be away from him. Why would you be afraid of him if he hadn’t done something pretty monstrous?” She picks up the nearly empty box of tissues and shakes it. “Hello! And everyone at school can tell how much Aidan and you are into each other. It’s so obvious.”
“But he’s dangerous,” I reply.
“So is everyone when they’re cornered,” Judy says.
Michael laughs. “Oh, yeah. I bet you’ve got a mean right hook, Judes.”
Judy rolls her eyes. “You know what I mean. But I understand how you feel. That thing about the glowing blue eyes. Oh, my god! That’s creepy. Because, like, is Aidan connected to that creature thing? I can’t even.”
“Do you want us to talk to him?” Leo asks. “Do you think he would attack unprovoked?”
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