Being out at night was a different kind of experience. Even though she was taking the same route to school that she always had, she was no longer seeing it through the grimy windows of the bus. She could feel the wind in her face as she rode along, hugging the curb since her bike didn't have reflectors. Animals were chattering away in the bushes that were still damp from the rain. She could hear the creek, the sound of the rushing water much louder than usual. It faded away again as Catherine got closer to the main roads.
Barton Academy was quiet and foreboding. The slate gray bricks glowed with an odd luminescence in the blue-white light of the moon. Cypress trees sheathed the school, swaying back and forth like dancers undulating in the mist and wind.
Catherine locked up her bike at one of the racks and approached the fence cautiously. All of the gates were shut. Heavy padlocks dangled from the latch. She didn't want to Change out here, in the open, so she decided to scale the fence. There were two of them, back to back. One was made out of iron. The other was a steel cage topped with small curls of barbed wire.
The barbed wire of the second fence scratched up her wrists a little, but the wounds weren't severe and they would heal. Already, the cuts scored were starting to look less inflamed. By tomorrow, they'd have faded completely.
Catherine rubbed at her wrists—the closing skin was beginning to itch—and headed towards the dome-shaped science building. She kept her senses peeled, scanning for any signs of intruders.
Something's in the bushes, said Prey.
The janitors were always complaining about the rodent problem.
It sounded too big to be a rat or squirrel, though.
The noise had come from the direction of a secluded alcove sectioned off by a small, red-brick planter box in an L-shape filled with boxwood and shaded by mulberry trees. The shadows of the trees stretched out grotesquely in the unflattering orange light of the single streetlamp across the road. Her eyes narrowed as she counted the shadows. Six trees…seven shadows.
The black shadowy figure leaped out as soon as she registered its presence and grabbed her. Fast. Very fast. Slayers? The red-eyed men? The witch? Her first impulse was to scream, which she did. Loudly. The second was to Change into a more formidable opponent. She wasn't going down without a fight and her enemy had made the fatal mistake of taking her on alone.
The shadow let go of her waist the moment she started to Change into one of her beasts, holding up its hands in the universal gesture for surrender. “Catherine, it's me. Don't attack.”
“David?” The word was almost unrecognizable coming from her only partially human lips.
It was David.
He was wearing dark jeans and a black sweatshirt, and his sneakers had made no sound on the pavement as he closed the distance between them. Catherine watched in mute disbelief as he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. He pressed a few buttons and then she heard her voice coming out of the speakers, tinny and oddly girlish.
“Hi, David. This is Catherine. I'm just calling to let you know—”
“I couldn't believe it the first time,” was his explanation. “I had to play it twice.”
He snapped the phone shut, cutting off Catherine's voice mid-syllable.
“You have a lot of nerve.”
David didn't sound angry, though, even if the words were. He sounded tired, worn-out.
Catherine felt her heart pounding as she folded her arms. “I thought you'd want to know.”
“Yeah, I gathered that from the message. Didn't you stop to think that I'd look less guilty if you hadn't warned me? Surprise is the most difficult emotion to fake.”
“Maybe I don't give a shit about you.”
David sighed. “Let's get this stupid plan of yours over with so we can both go home.”
Catherine wondered how David had gotten here so fast. She hadn't seen him while riding her bike and he didn't have any scratches from the barbed wire, like she did.
“I drove,” he said, when she asked, “And then I Changed to climb over the fence.”
He had stolen his parents' car. And then he had Changed—in public. He was worse than she was! She wasn't sure whether this knowledge was comforting or disturbing. What kind of closet psychopath was she dealing with here?
Absently, she said, “I'm surprised you came.”
“Well, I didn't think you were this serious about it. I thought you were showing off. But then I heard about how your workplace got trashed and that someone actually tried to run you down in the school parking lot yesterday…” Perhaps he could smell her unwillingness to talk about it, because he trailed off. “It would have been irresponsible of me to let you do this alone.”
“You thought I was showing off? How could you think that?”
“Please. You mean you weren't trying to bust my balls with that speech about how you're a suave rule-breaker and I'm just some hopeless geek?”
Fuming, Catherine turned around and walked faster, grateful for an excuse to turn her back on him so he wouldn't see the blush of anger discoloring her cheeks.
Did David seriously just utter the words 'bust my balls'?
“Catherine!” David said, in an exasperated voice. “I wouldn't be here if I still thought that.”
“I'm going to shift something small,” she announced, interrupting him. “Then I'm going to crawl under the door, unlock it, and let you in.”
“All right, whatever. You're the boss.”
She shot him a quick look, wondering if he was being sarcastic. His face was so resigned that she dismissed the notion. She closed her eyes, drew in a deep breath, and concentrated on an ant. That was easy. Ants were one of those creatures that seemed to be everywhere. And they had a knack for getting into places where they weren't wanted. Places like science laboratories.
David watched with interest as she Changed. He grew taller and taller, before fracturing into several giant Davids as her eyes split to accommodate the multiple lenses of the ant. His mildly interested expression flickered, betraying a brief look of disgust.
“Help me, help me,” she squeaked, just before her larynx disappeared. But she wasn't sure whether or not he heard her.
Catherine started for the door and paused. Her antennae twitched.
Was that…food?
Yes. She could smell the food. A sweet. She could take the sweet and bring it to the queen. The queen would be happy. And she really, really wanted the queen to be happy.
With a sense of duty firmly instilled in her, Catherine headed towards the sweet. Then stopped, confused. No. There was something else. Something else she had to do.
Bring the sweet to the queen!
No. Something else. Something that didn't involve the queen.
But everything involved the queen—didn't it?
No.
Gods. She would rather take a thousand screaming Preys than the overbearing hive mentality of one stupid ant. Catherine crawled towards the door, bobbing her head. She had to open the door for David so the two of them could get to work. That's what she needed to do.
The ant was perplexed and wondered if perhaps David was the queen.
In spite of the horribleness of the situation, Catherine nearly laughed. Yes, David is the queen.
But if David was the queen, wouldn't he want the sweet?
Catherine wavered, nearly doubling back. Luckily, she caught herself just in time.
Stupid ant.
She Changed back so quickly that she got a headache. She was in the science room. She was also naked. David had her clothes. For several seconds, she deliberated about what to do (“He'll look!” “No he won't. He's David.” “He's still a boy – he'll LOOK!”) and came to the conclusion that if she was going to be all girly and squeamish about this, she might as well call it quits right now. So what if he fucking looked? She had the right number of everythings in the right number of places. If he made a snide comment, she'd deck him in the face.
She hid behind one arm as well as she could while opening
the door for David. He was standing stiffly, staring down at the ground fixatedly, though he looked up when he heard the knob turn. His face was saturated in relief. Then he colored and looked away, shoving her clothes at her.
“You took a while,” he mumbled. “I was afraid I'd stepped on you.”
“Turn around and shut the door. If you look, I'll kill you.” She was glad it was dark and he couldn't see her face. “How long is awhile?”
“Five minutes.”
Fucking ant.
“I lost myself to the ant. It really wanted to bring you a piece of candy it found on the ground.”
“On the ground?” He made a face at his sneakers. “Why?”
“I guess it thought you were the queen of the hive or something. I don't know.” She tugged the sweatshirt on over her head. “You can look at me now, by the way. I'm done changing.”
Obediently, he lifted his head. “I forgot ants had hive mentalities.” His voice held awe. “I've never been an ant.”
“You don't want to.”
And there was a brief silence as they both took in the fact that he never could.
“So,” David began tentatively, still a bit red in the face, “What now?”
Catherine looked around. They were inside Mr. Hauberk's biology lab—a place that was merely tolerable during the daytime—and now it was dark. She was highly aware of the shadowy specimen cabinet behind his desk, the chemical smells, the lingering odor of disinfectant.
“Um, find the crickets, I guess,” she said. “Where would he keep them? In here?”
“No, there's a storage area in the adjoining room.” David pointed to a door, also behind Mr. Hauberk's desk, that she'd never really noticed before because he'd always kept it closed. “They keep supplies in there for all the science classes; prepared slides, extra microscopes, scantrons…”
She stared at him. “And you know this how?”
“It's also a study area. Off-limits, unless a teacher is present. I come in here to study sometimes during Mr. Hauberk's office hours. What?” he demanded suddenly, looking at her.
She schooled her expression. “Nothing.”
To get to the door, they had to squeeze between Mr. Hauberk's desk and a scale-model replica of the human body. Over the past few weeks he had also become an impromptu lost and found. Bedecked as he was in a Christmas cardigan—damn, she should have used that to cover herself with from David— with a purse hung over his shoulder, and a Giants cap perched jauntily on his head, the model had become a source of amusement for her biology class.
In the dark, though, he looked sinister.
David bumped into him. The model wobbled precariously but stayed upright, to her relief. Then the cheap plastic purse fell to the ground. The muffled crash sounded as loud as a cannon shot in the darkness, and to their sensitive ears, and they both jumped accordingly.
David immediately bent to pick up the purse but Catherine shook her head. “Leave it.”
He gave her a look that suggested she was insane. “Why?”
“I told you, we don't want this to look like an inside job. Kids are clumsy—they make mistakes.”
Her hand closed around the doorknob and she twisted, satisfied with her explanation.
“Spoken like a true criminal,” was his dry response. “I will say this, though. You really do have this all planned out.” There was grudging admiration in his voice. She refused to read too much into it.
“It's locked.” She looked at the door. “Looks like I'll have to Change into an ant again.”
“Let me do it.”
She coughed. “Um. Excuse me. I am perfectly capable of opening a door for myself. Or are you afraid the strain might make me swoon?”
“No,” he said, giving her a very un-David look. “I'm afraid I might not be so good about giving you your clothes back this time and ravish you in the event of this hypothetical swooning.”
“Dick.” She wasn't sure whether to laugh or hit him. In that heartbeat of hesitation, David did something to the door that she couldn't see, which caused it to swing wide open. “How did you do that?”
“I'm not going to tell you. You're dangerous enough already.”
Impressed in spite of herself, and secretly pleased, Catherine stepped into the room.
David hadn't been kidding. The table to her left was covered with computers. One was hooked up to a microscope that looked very high-tech and expensive—she'd take care to avoid that, then—and to her right were bins full of prepared slides. She recognized the onion root-tip as well as several other slides her class had used in previous labs. The tank was on the back counter, sandwiched between a broken light microscope and a stack of spare biology textbooks.
“Over here,” she called out in a loud whisper, waving David over. “I found them!”
There were about a dozen crickets in there, along with enough food and water to keep them happy until tomorrow. David came up behind her to look, close enough that she could feel his body heat through the soft material of his sweatshirt.
His eyes still on the crickets, he bent low, closer to her ear. “How do we get them out?”
“The window,” she said immediately.
They both turned to look at the window. It was big—about three feet wide and four feet tall—with a hatch at the top. The kind that needed to be opened with a long metal rod.
David exhaled slowly. “Remind me, what am I supposed to do again?”
“Get the rod.”
It struck her suddenly that David Tran was actually a pretty cool guy. They weren't even friends—not anymore, anyway—and here he was, breaking about a thousand school rules that could easily compromise his acceptance into Berkeley. And he was doing it because she had asked him to. She was touched. She even offered to open the window.
“Are you sure you'll be able to reach it?” he asked, handing over the rod. She could tell he wasn't sorry to pass the baton, so to speak, but he looked and sounded doubtful.
“I'll be fine.”
“You're not even wearing gloves. What about fingerprints?”
David had already slipped on some Latex gloves from the supply cabinet.
She felt a momentary pang of remorse for her stupidity, and a surge of annoyance at David for being such a know-it-all—this was her mission. Who was he to take control like this?
“There's a thousand fingerprints on this thing,” she said, turning it around in her hands rebelliously. “It's like a doorknob.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I'll smear it with a wet paper towel when I'm done,” she said hotly. “Happy?”
Instead of answering, he said, “I really don't think you're tall enough to reach that window.”
“I know that.”
She pushed a chair against the wall to stand on. The latch was tricky; she had to try several times to get the rod through the small, metal loop. When she managed at last, she pulled too quickly in her eagerness to get it over with and nearly lost her balance.
The window fell open with a loud bang. A breeze gusted in, blowing some worksheets off the back counter. David rushed to retrieve them. Catherine froze as Prey took hold of her. She grasped the rod in both hands, holding it in front of her like a shield as she waited for the alarm that was beginning to seem inevitable. Maybe, she thought, maybe this was a stupid idea.
Fear had her paralyzed; it forced to her to see her plan without its veneer of optimism.
Suppose she got caught?
Suppose the schools she'd applied to—Fresno State, Humboldt State, UC Merced—got wind of the expulsion that would inevitably follow, and unanimously decided that they didn't need her sort enrolled? They'd shred her applications for sure. Was she destroying her future for a bunch of invertebrates?
Then Catherine remembered the dream—that awful dream—and shivered.
“Catherine.” David's hand fell on her shoulder. She went rigid and her vision sharpened. “It's me, just me. Are you all right?”
“I'll be bette
r if you stopped sneaking up on me like that,” she snapped.
“Sorry.” He didn't sound sorry enough.
Catherine set the rod on the counter. “There's no security cameras in here, right?”
David shook his head. “They say there are, but they don't work. Only the ones at the front gates do.” He gave her a look. “Wait, you didn't know that? And you were going to do this anyway?”
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