The Game of Boys and Monsters

by Rachel M. Wilson

  “Evy?” I heard myself say because I couldn’t be sure for a second who or what she was. Stupid, but that’s what was there.

  “What are you all doing having fun without me?” she said.

  Evy flicked on the area lights. I blinked against their harshness, but everything looked more itself in the light. The sky overhead was cloudy, ready to drop, so of course it blocked out the stars. The dead streetlamp was just dead.

  “You okay?” Hap said, taking my arm. I actually leaned on him a little as we walked up the front steps. He burned hot, like a furnace, and that felt nice against the shivers that had taken over me. I let his hand at my back push me up and inside. Hap followed me through the door and held it open for Jack, who slipped through and closed it behind him.

  “Why aren’t you dressed?” I whispered to Evy as I pulled away from Hap’s sphere to stand beside her.

  She looked down at her nightgown. “I thought it might work as a dress,” she said, and when I didn’t laugh or smile, she got irritated. “Kidding.” Her voice sounded hoarse, and the flesh under her eyes looked almost bruised. She covered a yawn. “I was sleepy,” she said, “so I took a nap. Is that allowed?”

  “The house was so dark, I thought something was wrong.”

  “Mom went out with some girlfriends she met at the club. She forgot to turn the lights on, or she left before the sun went down? I don’t know.”

  “How long were you asleep?”

  “Worrywart,” she said, and leaned over to kiss me on the cheek, but she didn’t answer me.

  That night, Evy never changed out of her nightgown. She lounged, held court while the Marsh boys passed an enormous bottle of Jim Beam back and forth between them—Hap had pulled it out of his backpack like that was a normal thing to carry around. Evy and I took what she called “lady sips” from a pair of tiny juice glasses. “Drinking straight from the bottle’s a recipe for date rape,” she deadpanned, and Hap laughed so hard he choked.

  We were all such good friends, we could joke about rape?

  Jack pursed his lips as if he at least found Evy’s joke distasteful—maybe because it’d force him to think twice about trying to make something happen between them that night.

  Nothing happened, I don’t think.

  I slept over, sharing Evy’s bed, and the Marsh boys crashed on the sofa and chair in the little sitting room that made up what Evy called her “basement suite.”

  Once during the night, I woke up cold. The bed was empty, covers kicked to the floor, and the high window beside Evy’s bed was open, letting chilly air wash in.

  “Evy?” I whispered toward the dark opening that led to the sitting room, wanting to get up and check if she was there, but wanting more not to walk in on Evy and one of the Marsh boys in a private moment.

  Maybe she had taken one of them outside, but then why bother with the window? Evy’s mom probably hadn’t even come home, and she wouldn’t hear Evy walking out the front door anyway—probably wouldn’t even hear if Evy set off the alarm.

  I was about to climb out of bed, to shut the window, to search for her—I wasn’t sure—when Evy appeared in the archway that led to the sitting room.

  “What?” she said, a reproach.

  “I woke up and you weren’t here.”

  “Can’t a person use the bathroom?” Evy said, sounding irritated again. Evy never got irritated with me. She shambled over to the window, stood on the chair that I only then noticed had been pushed up below it, and used all her weight to tug the window shut.

  Then she rolled back in beside me and pulled the comforter up over both of us. “Don’t fret, Les. All is well.”

  The way she said it suggested I knew what to fret about, that I knew what might not be “all well,” but I couldn’t bring myself to ask her.

  As soon as Evy was back in the bed, I didn’t want the comforter. She brought so much body heat of her own I actually started sweating, but when her foot brushed against my leg, one of those awkward touches you’re not supposed to mention when you’re sharing a bed with a friend, her skin was ice-cold, and I shivered again. Was I getting sick?

  I wanted to look in the room past the arch, to see if the Marsh boys were still there. One, or both of them?

  Way off in the woods, far below Evy’s house, something howled.

  Another time, several weeks later, the Marsh boys showed up at my house.

  It was a Saturday, stormy and leaden, the occasional shudder of thunder and lightning the only thing bringing life to the gray day. Evy had said we could hang out later but she had to run errands with her mom in the afternoon. I wasn’t expecting company.

  I was reading, a paranormal romance, the kind Evy and I both loved but had issues with too. Why were the girls always so eager to give up all their power to the guys? Why were the sexiest parts the ones where the guys didn’t listen to what the girls said they wanted, where they took control?

  I’d been having dreams, dreams that Evy said were about sex. “If you do it,” she said, “you won’t be so scared of it. Everything will calm down.”

  But the dreams didn’t seem to be about sex to me. They seemed to be about death.

  “Same thing,” Evy said. “Haven’t you ever heard of le petit mort? It’s an orgasm, in French: ‘little death.’”

  But there wasn’t anything orgasmic in my dreams about snakes and wolves.

  In one, I found my lawn covered in writhing snakes—too many to step around, as if the blades of grass themselves had turned into serpents, each one eager to wrap around my ankle and poison me.

  In another, a pack of wolves chased me to a clearing in a thick wood. They were starving, saliva dripping from their mouths. In waking life, I loved wolves—but these saw me as food.

  I’d wake up kicking at my sheets when they lunged.

  On that gray afternoon, I’d reached a scary part in my book, a part where the heroine was about to enter the lair of the vampire who might have a secret reason to want her dead, or in bed—in these books the two did seem to go together—when the hand slammed against the window behind my head.

  I dropped the book and shrieked, actually shrieked, but what followed was laughter: Hap’s crowing and musical, Jack’s sharp and gasping.

  My little Norwich terrier, Grizzbee, came running and barking, his hair raised.

  I hid my book under a pillow, hoping they hadn’t been reading over my shoulder at the window, and tried to calm Grizzbee down.

  They were waving and walking over to the door of the den like they took it for granted that I would move to let them in, like it was the most normal thing for them to be visiting. Could it be possible we’d made plans and I’d forgotten? No, of course not. Making plans with the Marsh boys—I’d remember that.

  When I opened the door, Grizzbee growled and skittered from side to side. “I’m sorry, I— He’s usually friendly.”

  Hap reached for Grizzbee, who snapped at his hand.

  “Grizzbee! No!” I said, and told them to hang on. I collected his spasmodic little body, dumped him in the laundry room, and shut the door, but he didn’t stop barking.

  “Sorry,” I said, feeling self-conscious and irritated.

  They were both drenched, dripping on the mat on the back porch.

  Hap said, “What a cutie,” pointing toward Grizzbee’s quieter but no less insistent grumbles, and stepped inside. I had to back up to make way.

  “Hap,” Jack said, “mind your manners,” but he said it like it was a joke between them, Jack being the civilized side of their comic duo. “May we come in?” he said to me apologetically.

  “Of course. Come on in.”

  Jack bowed his head toward me as he crossed the threshold, and I said, “Let me get you a couple of towels. What did you do, walk here?”

  “We did actually,” Hap said. “We were just over at Evy’s.”

  I’d gone back into the laundry room to grab a couple of clean towels and felt lucky they couldn’t see my face when I said, “I thought
she was out with her mom,” as casually as I could manage. Hap laughed.

  As I handed him his towel, Jack, kinder but no more apologetic, shrugged. “You know Evy, always changing her plans.”

  I wanted to ask, “Is one of you two seeing her? And which one?” but I couldn’t find the guts to do it. Instead I said, “How is she?”

  “Evy’s tired,” Jack said, “very tired.”

  I watched them towel off. Jack politely folded his towel up under him before sitting on the couch. Hap dropped his in a heap beside him as he sat cross-legged on the floor.

  “Do you think she’s okay?” I said. “I mean, do you think she’s sick or something? She’s been tired so much lately.”

  “I guess that’s partly our fault,” Jack said.

  “Lot of late nights,” said Hap.

  “Are you . . . What do you guys do, late at night?”

  “What don’t we do?” Hap said, but it was bravado, a joke.

  “You want to join us?” Jack said.

  My heart thudded because I didn’t know what he was asking. He held my eyes for the longest time, and I found it hard to look away. “I don’t think so.” I tried to keep my voice light. “I never was very good at staying up late.”

  “Shame,” Hap said. “We love company.”

  Jack uncrossed his legs and recrossed them in the opposite direction with the grace of an old-timey dancer. He could be from White Christmas or something, one of those old movies where grown men dance all the time and it seems totally normal.

  “Do you have a boyfriend?” Jack asked.

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  I looked to Hap, but he was thumbing through one of my mom’s coffee-table books, completely disinterested.

  “I don’t,” I said. “I mean, if I did, you would have met him. Through Evy. Right?”

  “Right. Maybe,” Jack said, but it felt dismissive, like I wasn’t important enough for anyone, even Evy, to track my relationship status. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

  “Are you and Evy . . . ?” I didn’t know how not to ask it, even though I wasn’t sure what answer I wanted to hear. If he said no, the suggestion of our mutual availability would loom awkwardly between us, but if he said yes, I would look like a fool for not knowing sooner. “Are you . . . seeing Evy?”

  Jack seemed more Evy’s type than Hap, even though she and Hap had been more physical at school.

  Jack shrugged. “Depends on what you mean by ‘see.’ I ‘see’ you.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Evy’s not the kind of girl to let a guy in, you know?”

  “She’s a tough nut to crack,” Hap said, like this was something they’d discussed before.

  “But . . . you’re hanging out with her all the time. I mean, if she were going to be with anyone, don’t you think it would be one of you two?”

  I felt disloyal, having this conversation with them, but I wanted to know what they thought, what agenda they had around Evy.

  “Evy’s not as fun as she used to be,” Hap said, looking at Jack.

  “She’s tired all the time,” Jack said, as if we hadn’t covered this mere minutes earlier. “I wonder if she’s anemic?” He smirked.

  And I knew. I was right.

  All the things that I feared—I was right.

  “She’s definitely changed,” Hap said, looking me in the eye. “Something’s . . . shifted.”

  My heart seemed to press into my belly like it wanted to hide.

  “I’m not sure you guys should be here,” I said, trying to keep things light. I wanted to yank them to standing and shove them out the door, but I couldn’t let them see my fear. “Just because . . . my mom and dad, they don’t let me have guests when they’re not home . . . especially guys.”

  “Smart parents,” Jack said.

  “You never know with guys,” Hap said.

  I felt sick and wanted to throw up. I could reach the bathroom, I thought—excuse myself to go, then lock myself in. They would figure it out, try to get in maybe, tell me I was being silly, try to coax me out, but they’d give up eventually.

  I mean, people knew them. They lived here, were known. They wouldn’t break down the door.

  “I’m . . . I should get back to reading,” I said. “I have a lot of work to do.”

  Jack was in front of me in a blink, peering down.

  “What are you reading, Les?” he asked. His lips parted, so I could see his teeth. His canine teeth, they weren’t anything to be afraid of, perfectly normal, but the tilt of his head, his eyes on my throat . . .

  I stepped back, and he didn’t follow. Just watched me retreat from him. “Never mind,” I said.

  Hap stood and shook himself, stretched in every direction. From the laundry room, Grizzbee’s growl thickened.

  “It’s a full moon tonight,” he said. “Think we’ll be able to see it through the clouds?”

  “Evy’s coming out with us,” Jack said. “She’s just resting up first. What’s wrong, Les? Won’t you come?”

  He was moving toward the door, and the weird charge that had hung in the air fizzled. This was Jack, a guy from school, a kind-of friend. I’d been reading too many scary novels.

  I didn’t see Evy that night. She didn’t call.

  I tried to let it go.

  I’d been invited. I knew where she was. Who she was with.

  I called her at two p.m. on Sunday. She answered but sounded dead tired.

  “Did I wake you up?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” I heard a smile in her voice. “But I was up late. Les, you should have come.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “Well, we started off down by the Thorn Bridge.” That was an old covered bridge that stood on spindly legs over Thorn Creek, in the middle of the woods, in the middle of nowhere. “But we went everywhere,” Evy said.

  “I miss you,” I said, before I could catch myself.

  “Oh, Les, honey, I miss you too, but you don’t have to miss me. Just come with me.”

  “You’re changing, Evy.”

  With a low, musing hum, she laughed.

  “I told the Marsh boys about our game,” she said. “Vampires and werewolves, I mean, not my plan to make them fight over me. That was a no-go. Nothing’s coming between those two. Anyway, they thought it was funny. They said there were two types of girls.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Mm-hmm. And that you and I were each a type, but they wouldn’t say who was which.”

  I almost didn’t want to know. Almost. “What were the types?”

  “Well, some girls, they said, are witches, and some girls are ghosts.”

  Witches, I got. That was a female archetype, but . . . “Ghosts?”

  “The woman in white, haunting your dreams, the banshee, the wraith.”

  “Okay, but what about fairies, or mermaids, or . . .”

  “Or warlocks or Frankensteins . . . it’s no fun to muddle it up. Don’t overthink. It’s just a game.”

  “Okay,” I said, “so which one am I?”

  I was the ghost, of course, the invisible one who doesn’t belong in their world. Insubstantial and innocent, too innocent to keep up with Evy.

  Of course, ghosts have one more special trait, and thinking about that gave me chills. Ghosts are dead.

  “They won’t tell me who’s who,” Evy repeated, “but Les, it’s so cute and dumb. They think this game’s hilarious.”

  So did we, I wanted to say, only weeks ago. We loved our game.

  “Do you want to hang out later?” I asked, the sickness in my gut already telling me the answer.

  “Oh, Les, we’re going out again tonight. The moon’s past full, but last night was so cloudy. Tonight should be bright, bright.”

  “What about school?” I said. “Won’t you be exhausted on Monday?”

  “I’ll be tired in the daytime, but at night, once the sun goes down, I can’t sleep even if I want to. It’s the strangest t
hing.”

  Yes.

  “I want to be outside. I want to drink up the night. I want to run.”

  I felt like I’d swallowed a fist, like I needed to vomit, but if I tried I would choke.

  “All right, Evy, I . . . I’m sorry, I think I should go.”

  “Les, don’t be mad with me. I want to include you. I still love you best.”

  “I believe you. I just . . . don’t feel well.”

  “Les, listen,” she said. “Come with us once. You’ll feel so free. You’ll—”

  “I’m sorry, Evy. I can’t talk right now.”

  I hung up on my friend, let her go.

  I made it halfway down the hall before my breakfast came up.

  Evy kept coming to school, mostly.

  She came late a lot, and she traded the chunky eyeglasses she didn’t need for oversized sixties sunglasses that covered half her face.

  She looked pale and vibrant at the same time. As she grew thinner, her skin took on a sheen, especially at her cheeks and her brow, where it stretched tight and close to the bone.

  She still sought me out, stuck close to me, but she wasn’t with me. Normally, Evy took the lead between the two of us, but now she deferred to me.

  “Do you want to take lunch outside?” I asked one day.

  “Whatever you want,” Evy said. “Is it cold out?”

  We were standing outside, on the lawn between the main building and specials.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Is it warm enough for eating outside? I can’t tell.”

  “Do you feel warm enough?”

  She was wearing a bulky wool sweater over one of her long, flowing dresses.

  “This morning, I felt shivery, but when I checked the thermostat, it was set to seventy-three. And in Ms. Michaelson’s class, I got so hot, I had to excuse myself and splash water on my face from the fountain.”

  “Are you sick?” I asked, knowing the answer was yes. My best friend was sick, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

  Evy shrugged.

  “Well, how do you feel now?”

  “I think I feel normal. I keep going back and forth.”

  “Then let’s eat outside, and if you need to go inside we can.”