“I’ll see you two in the kitchen,” Carolina says from the door.
No, I say in my mind. Stay here, help me control myself.
But Carolina walks away.
My fingers curl, the itching fades, and then Meredith kisses me.
I feel warm all over, like I’m going to explode. I reach my arms up and hold Meredith tight to me. She pushes me away, then lets go and kisses me on the mouth. “Come on, let’s go get the sandwiches.”
We stand up. Meredith is unsteady on her feet and leans against me. “I like you, Stanley, you’re a solid guy. I trust you.”
I can’t help smiling. “Let’s go get the sandwiches.”
We walk out of Carolina’s room and there’s a beautiful woman with long black hair standing in the hallway. When I say long, I mean it’s down to her waist, and straight. She has these enormous green eyes that I try to avoid, because I’m afraid if I just look into them, I’ll get lost. “Hi,” she says. “I’m Carolina’s mom. But you can call me Morgan.”
A balding white guy with spectacles holds out his hand. “I’m her dad. Blaine.” His shake is strong, and does he smell musky? That is some serious aftershave.
“Carolina is making us some sandwiches,” Meredith says.
Blaine looks stern. “Well, she better hurry up. We are closing this party down.” He smiles again. “You all need a ride home? Everyone else has left or called for a ride.”
I shrug. “I can walk. It’s just down the street.”
Morgan shakes her head. “No, Stanley. Your mother will be worried.”
Wait a minute, I ask myself, how does she know my name? And how does she know my mom?
“There’s been a lot of scary talk at the coven,” Morgan says, “and as you know, this is the witching hour.”
I don’t know what to say. Morgan is a witch, and she’s in my mom’s coven? When did Lansfeld get so full of witches?
“You think we’re in danger?” Meredith asks.
Morgan shakes her head. “No, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.”
“But Snowball,” Meredith says.
“Snowball?” Morgan asks.
“My rabbit,” Meredith says. “I took him outside. And he ran off.”
Morgan looks at me a second, then shrugs. “I’m sure he’ll turn up.” But she doesn’t look very sure. “You haven’t seen him, have you, Stanley?”
“No,” I say. “I don’t think so.”
Unless I ate him...
I’m saved by Blaine bringing me the phone. My mom picks up. I think I woke her up. Then Morgan has me give her the phone. Carolina hands us sandwiches. “We can eat in the car,” she says. I realize suddenly that Meredith is holding my hand. She’s leaning her head against my shoulder. How did she get there? I’m afraid that Carolina will be angry, but she’s just smiling at me.
“I’m really glad you came, Stanley.”
I nod. I try to say, “So am I, Carolina,” but it comes out kind of muffled with my mouth full of food. She seems to get the picture, though, and keeps smiling.
I hear someone honk briefly outside. The door opens and shuts and then Blaine comes into the kitchen. He scratches absently at his beard. “That’s the last of them, except you, Stanley. Meredith is staying the night. Come on, we’ll drive you home.”
I turn to Carolina, my mouth dry and full of sandwich. “Can I have a glass of water?”
She smiles at me. “Sorry.”
A moment later we are all in the car: Carolina, Meredith and me in the back; Blaine and Morgan in the front seat. It’s a pretty uneventful trip, since we live just a ten-minute walk away. Carolina’s mother drives real slow, and we ooh and ahh at the Halloween decorations.
Meredith and Carolina amuse themselves making a Stanley sandwich, squeezing me between them.
Which is fine, except for having to control the urge to give them both some playful nips on the neck and shoulders.
Everything is going almost too well, and then I feel something. An itching on my arm. On my hand. Burning. I look out the window and catch sight of a red blur out in the dark. Karen, running in the dark. I blink my eyes, and she’s gone. I must have imagined it, right?
Then why do my hands still burn and tingle as we roll up into my parents’ driveway?
The car stops. Meredith opens the door and I have to squeeze past her as Carolina giggles. Then I’m out in the cold air again. I look around, but Karen is nowhere to be seen. I must have imagined it.
I need a shower. It’s time for a pill. But my mother is standing on the porch wearing some kind of strange purple coat. She waves at Carolina’s mom and Carolina’s mom waves back. I turn around to wave goodbye. Meredith blows me a kiss, she winks and waves, and then they drive away into the night.
My first party in high school. My first party since the accident.
My mother smiles at me cautiously.
“Is everything okay, Stanley?”
“I had a great time,” I say.
“You really had a good time?”
“No,” I say. “I really had a great time.”
My mother beams like we just picked winning lottery numbers. Doesn’t the woman understand she’s supposed to be angry with me for staying out late? “I’m so happy to hear that,” she says.
I nod. “But right now I just want to shower and go to sleep.”
She nods, still smiling way too much.
I stagger up to my room and take a pill, and then I’m in the bathroom, throwing my clothes in a pile. The hot water feels amazing on my skin, and I almost forget how tired I am.
I think about my new place on the track team, about running through the woods, about Meredith and Carolina. About Karen holding my hand. About Karen running after us as we drove. Which of those were real? Were they all just some weird fantasy I made up? Meredith is real; my mother saw the car drive up when she was waiting, and she even waved at Carolina’s mom. But Karen?
Who was it that told me everything has a price? Could I have made the track team again if I hadn’t taken those pills? Could I have gone back in and had fun at Carolina’s party if I hadn’t run through the forest and bitten through the neck of an innocent rabbit?
If I hadn’t tasted my first kill?
Chapter 19: JONATHAN TURNS JAPANESE
Hoping to find Enrique, I head for my locker, but he’s nowhere to be found. I try to calm myself by inhaling two Slim Jims. But ever since I ate the rabbit, they don’t have the same effect on me. Where is Enrique? I can’t see him anywhere, but my nose wrinkles, because there’s this musky smell there by the locker. I feel this weird urge to snarl, but I really need to get to English.
I sit down at a table, and Jonathan walks in.
“What’s up, Stan my man?” he asks me, plunking down next to me. He’s got a hair pick stuck in his afro and a manga book out and he’s reading as he talks to me. He wears a lot of black. Some kids think he’s goth, or a skater, but really he’s just into anything Japanese: manga, anime, electronics. People, too, although we don’t have many Asians here in our suburb.
Is something going on? Because everyone seems strange to me today, and when I look at Jonathan, there’s something there, too.
“You look different,” I tell him.
“I think I’m turning Japanese,” he says, smiling.
“No,” I say, “This is something new.”
Jonathan shrugs, giving me his full attention. “I did have this weird dream last night. It was sick. I was in the forest and I had these powers, and I was running around close to the ground.”
“In the forest?”
He smiles. “Crazy, huh?”
It is crazy, but he smells musky. And when I look in his eyes, he looks away.
“Jonathan,” I say quietly. “Have you been taking vitamins?”
He nods. “Me and Enrique got ours the same day; they were left on our doorsteps. They’ve completely cleared up my carpal tunnel syndrome. I can draw like I used to, and still play with my DS for li
ke three hours a day. But hey, I hear you got some action.”
“Shut up,” I say, and I glare at him just as Meredith and Carolina come into the classroom. They glance at me, but Ms. Mayer seats them on the other side of the room.
“How was the party?” Jonathan asks.
“Good,” I say.
“And Carolina’s parents? Did you meet them?” Jonathan asks.
I nod. “Why?”
“Her dad’s the owner of the new health store–Natural Magic on North Main. They’re even going to have a second shop in the mall when it opens. Another Natural Magic, if you can believe that.”
“Are you serious?”
He nods. “They sell a lot of vitamin supplements and herbs, but I hear they have stranger things, too.”
“Like what?” I ask, intrigued.
“Herbs. Tarot cards. Ceremonial daggers. All kinds of stuff. The guy’s wife is some kind of Wicca priestess or something. Dude, I think she’s in your mom’s church. A Unitarian. She’s even supposed to sell love potions.”
Chapter 20: GARY FRUMBERG AND HIS NEW PET PITBULL
The rest of the day passes in a blur; even the hunger and thirst are forgotten, as it seems impossible to focus on anything except talking to Jonathan and Enrique. Finally I’m saved by the bell and make it outside. It’s dark and cloudy like it’s going to rain. I walk toward my bus, then stop. Meredith and Carolina are waiting to get on. Maybe they feel my eyes on them, because as I stand there, frozen, they turn toward me. They’re about to say something when suddenly my arm is seized by a cold hand and I’m pulled away into some bushes, moving so fast my vision blurs.
When I can refocus, she’s standing there, still holding my arm. A tall girl dressed all in black with fiery red hair. It’s Karen. And she isn’t smiling either. More like snarling, showing some canines.
“What’s going on?” I ask her. Her hand is cold on my arm.
“I’m burning myself out here just to find that out. I hear you’re running track. What about your knee?”
“I don’t know. It’s better.”
“Don’t you even wonder what’s going on?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I wanted to talk to Enrique and Jonathan about it.”
“You must have noticed something. Who’s giving Zach the vitamins?”
“I have no clue.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know why I’m even talking to you. You kissed her, Stanley. How could you kiss her?”
The buses start up their engines.
“I didn’t think—you had been avoiding me, and...”
She grabs me then with two gloved hands. She pulls me close, and I want her to touch me, skin to skin. But she doesn’t take off her gloves.
She does something far more glorious.
She kisses me. On the neck.
Her lips suck gently at me. My body is wracked with sensation, with burning ice, tingling, burning thorns spreading out in waves from her cold lips. She nibbles at me, and then, with a groan, she pushes me away.
“Wait,” I say, but she shakes her head. I grab her, pull her toward me, try to kiss her on the lips, but she twists away.
“You need to go,” she says. “But be careful. I’m worried about you.”
She flashes her canines in what might be a smile or a snarl—or both. I’m lost in her eyes.
“Go,” she says.
I shake my head.
She shoves me then, knocking me back, stumbling, into the open.
The bus driver beeps his horn when he catches sight of me. Needless to say, I’m the last one on the bus.
Meredith sits next to Carolina in the back. Carolina smiles at me. I ask myself if I should go sit with them, but then I feel a hand on my shoulder.
Enrique.
“What are you doing on the bus?”
“My brother went home early,” he says. “So no ride today. Sit down, Stanley. The bus driver’s waiting.”
He’s right, of course. I sit down. We ride.
Enrique leans into me, and he smells musky, too. “Hombre, what happened to your neck?”
I bring my hand up. My neck is throbbing, right underneath my ear. Oh my God, did she leave a mark? Did Meredith see it?
Good thing I’m wearing a hoodie. I bring the hood up.
“It’s a long story,” I say, glancing behind me.
“A lot of weird stuff going on,” he says. “But if you don’t feel ready to talk about it, that’s fine.”
“What’s going on, Enrique?”
Enrique shrugs. “It’s time to talk to my great grandmother. She will know.”
“Where is she?” I ask.
“She is buried, in México,” he says.
“Oh,” I say.
“We need to talk to her espiritu.”
“How do we do that?”
“It’s easy. We just need ... how do you call it? Un tablero de Ouija. A Ouija board?”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a board used to communicate with the espiritus.”
A board to talk with the spirits. I have no idea where we’re going to find one of those.
For the rest of the ride we sit in silence. A couple of times my neck heats up and I’m wracked with waves of burning icy cold.
Then it’s our stop, and we get off together.
Enrique walks up to his house and I follow him. “So, you don’t have one of these Ouija boards?” he asks.
I shake my head.
“Me, neither,” he says. “We need to go buy one, maybe.”
“Where?” I ask. “At Shaw’s? At Stop and Shop?”
“No,” he says, looking at me like I’m an imbecile. “At Natural Magic. On Main Street. They sell herbs and natural vitamins. And lots of tarot cards, that kind of thing. It’s like a twenty-minute walk. You have any money?”
“I have like twenty dollars in my room.”
“Go get it,” says Enrique. “And then I want to show you something in my room.”
Inside, I drop my backpack and pick up the cash. My house is empty; my mother must be out with Josh. In my room, though, there’s a strange smell. It’s coming from my open window, from the roof outside it. I look out, but there’s nothing there. I shake my head. It’s the same musky odor from before, on the bus, and from the locker, too—and from Enrique.
Enrique meets me at the front door.
“Notice anything?”
“What?” I say.
“Smell anything?” he asks, holding his nose.
“Yeah, to be honest, it smells funky. Like a cat.”
Enrique smiles. “Cat smells better than wolf.” He invites me in. The smell is stronger inside, and this weird feeling comes over me. We walk upstairs. In his room the smell is strongest, and the hair stands up on the back of my neck.
“Is there a cat in here? A big cat?”
Enrique smiles. “There was a cat here. He went by your window too. A jaguar. But he’s gone now.”
It takes me a moment to realize what he’s saying.
“You can change?” I ask. “Just like that?”
Enrique nods.
“Does it hurt?”
He shrugs. “A little pain, but feels good, too. Makes me hungry.”
“Is it the pills?”
He shrugs. “Maybe las vitaminas, they help. But you know what? Jaguar has always been in my family. It is in my blood. Like the wolf in you. The hunger. Remember when you started eating meat? How you got so hungry?”
“Yeah,” I say. “And now that I think about it, I used to always get hungrier, like once a month.”
“Not ‘like once a month,’” Enrique says. “Exactly once on month...on the nights of the full moon.”
“Yeah,” I say. “You’re right.”
“There is no greater hunger than the hunger of the wolf.”
“What did you want to show me?” I ask.
“Something my great grandmother gave me, when I was very little,” he says, pointing to his closet. I follow him the
re. The smell is really strong in the room and I want to pump up my chest and tighten my fists and howl.
“You don’t like the cat smell. Wolf not like jaguar, maybe.”
“You’re my friend, Enrique.” But yeah, I don’t like the smell. “What’s in the closet?” I ask.
He pulls out a black ebony statue of a panther. No, it’s a jaguar. I think.
“My abuelita gave this to me. She says the jaguar will protect me. She says if my family is in danger the jaguar will glow at night. Now, at night, the jaguar glows. It even glows during the day.”
“I don’t see it glowing,” I say.
Enrique pulls the curtains and turns off the light. A faint glow fills the room. Who would have thought something so black could glow so brightly? And its eyes aren’t black, but golden; they twinkle in the dim light.
“What does all this mean?”
Enrique shrugs. “Something is happening. This is just a warning. I need to ask my great grandmother, like I said.”
“Is it a weapon?” I ask. “The jaguar?”
“I’m not sure. I think it helps keep me safe, keep the house safe.”
“Safe from what?” I ask.
He shrugs. “From wolves like you? I don’t know, but I think there’s more out there.”
“Like Karen?”
“I don’t know about Karen. You know her better than me.”
That’s certainly true. But that doesn’t mean I understand her, does it?
“Now,” Enrique says, “we go to this Natural Magic. I have directions from the computer.”
“From the computer? I thought we were walking.”
“Yes, but it’s like a mile away. We can run, or walk, does not matter to me.”
Outside the air is cold. We walk together, side by side. Enrique has taken the figurine along. The wind blows around us; it’s getting colder, and, if possible, even cloudier. I pull my windbreaker tighter around my shoulders. Something about this wind doesn’t seem right. To be honest, nothing feels right. Maybe Enrique feels the same, because his fingers touch my shoulder, warning me just as someone walks around the corner.
It’s a big guy with his hair spiked up and dyed black, a spiky dog collar around his neck, and a bunch of piercings—his nose, his lip, his ear. In one hand he holds a paper bag. In the other is a leash, a big metal chain that ends at one full-sized pit bull held by a choke chain. He jerks the chain and stops.
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