by Anita Oh
Eventually he got bored. He tossed me onto the bed and I went rolling across it. As soon as he turned away, I tried to flee, using the unmade quilt to climb down. I could see the dog hiding underneath, quivering, and it made me wish I was big again so I could punch Astor really hard in the face. If I somehow managed to escape, I would definitely be back to liberate that dog and serve up some cold justice to Astor.
He was standing at the computer, typing something, so I ran as fast as I could toward the door. It seemed like a bad dream, running and running but never getting any closer to my goal. Astor laughed and plucked me up, holding me by the arms between pinched fingers. He pulled my arms out to the sides, stretching them as far as they'd go until I thought he'd rip them off.
"This is going to be more fun than I thought," he said, then dangled me in front of the computer. Under where I'd so arduously typed my message to Tennyson Wilde, Astor had sent another message. "Sorry, typo. I meant hello."
My heart sank and my arm felt as though it was going to tear away from the rest of me. Things were definitely looking grim. That was definitely believable enough for Tennyson Wilde to pass off as nothing unusual, definitely not as a cry for help. I was so mad at myself for not telling anyone where I was going or at least leaving a note or something. If I'd been watching myself in a movie or something I'd be screaming at the screen about what a dumbass I was being. Though, in my defense, I had been expecting to be captured and my main goal was to fix the whole mess with the werewolf video, which I'd accomplished nicely. Good work, me. If it saved the others, then anything Astor did to me was worth it, death or torture or whatever. Though, if I could get out of it, that would be better.
But as Astor placed me up on the highest shelf in the room and then wandered off, humming, I thought maybe getting out of it would be harder than I thought.
Chapter 18
The good thing about being stuck up on the shelf was that I could see the entire room clearly, and gather information with which to hatch a daring escape plan. The bad thing was I was up very, very high, with no apparent way to get down that didn't involve cracking open my skull.
Astor wandered off toward the bathroom, and without his attention on me, I took some time to see what was at hand that might be useful. There was a dead cactus in a pot at the end of the shelf closest to the window, at the other end was a pile of books that we'd had to read for class, which looked as if they'd never been opened. There was a bowl of moldy cornflakes and some coins but nothing else except what would've equated to a 100 foot drop over the side. I wasn't especially afraid of heights, but my head swam when I looked over the side and I edged back behind the books so that I had a bit of a barrier between myself and the fall.
All in all, there was very little for me to work with. If the windows had been open, at least, I could've somehow climbed over to it and out to freedom, but they were firmly closed. Nothing on the shelf could be fashioned into something to use as a rope to climb down. I had no choice but to bide my time and wait for an opportunity, because no way was I going to give up and submit to being Astor's plaything.
He sure was taking his time in the bathroom, which I didn't want to think too hard about. If I knew how much time I had before he got back, I could work on a more elaborate plan. I could rip up pages from the books into strips and use them as a rope. Just one strip wouldn't hold me, but if I somehow braided several strips together, they'd be stronger. As soon as the idea came to me, I knew it was my best chance to escape and I got to it right away. I'd made really good headway when someone started pounding on the door. I hastily tucked my work into the cover of the book and ducked down out of sight.
The pounding got louder and more urgent but Astor took his sweet time in coming out of the bathroom. Finally, he emerged, dragging his feet over to the door, even though it sounded as if whoever was on the other side was about to smash it open.
"Yeah, yeah," he muttered, looking through the peep hole. He sighed and opened the door a crack. "What do you want?"
"Where is she?" said Llewellyn, and it suddenly clicked why the dog had seemed familiar. "Bonkers. I know you have her. Just give her back. I'll do anything you want."
He sounded so forlorn, so lost, that my heart twisted in my chest.
Astor slammed the door in his face. Bonkers had poked her nose out from under the bed hopefully at the sound of her human's voice, and I could hear the soft thump of her tail wagging, but when the door closed, her head drooped again and she backed under the bed again.
Before Astor could make it back to the bathroom, the pounding on the door started up again. He grumbled under his breath and swung the door open, but it wasn't Llewellyn this time.
"Where is she?" Tennyson Wilde said, bursting into the room and looking around.
"Here!" I yelled, jumping to my feet and waving around.
Bonkers's nose emerged again, sniffing cautiously, but Tennyson didn't even look in my direction. That made no sense, he should definitely have been able to hear me. Astor smirked up at me and I realized that he'd done something, some sort of magic or werewolf-proofing or something so that Tennyson couldn't notice me. Man, who knew that Astor of all people could be so wily. I had vastly underestimated him. But he'd obviously underestimated me too if he thought he could keep me quiet so easily.
I edged my way over to the dead cactus. It was big and heavy but I had to distract Tennyson from his argument with Astor, he was getting super worked up and I knew better than anyone that once he got going, he never let up on something. I whispered an apology to the cactus, then with all my weight, I shoved it off the shelf.
It smashed loudly, sending shards of pottery everywhere. I hoped Bonkers had managed to avoid any debris, but was pretty sure she had honed her danger-avoiding skills enough to keep safe. Tennyson Wilde looked over and I jumped up and down to get his attention. When he spotted me, a funny look passed over his face. I could've sworn it was relief.
"Why are you dilly-dallying about, you jerk," I yelled. "Hurry up and get me out of here!"
He pushed Astor out of the way and took a step forward, toward me, but then stopped abruptly.
"What are you doing? Come on, this is no time for jokes!"
He looked down at his feet with dawning horror. A sparkly line of something ran across the polished floorboards.
"That's right, bitches," said Astor. "Silver." He pushed past Tennyson to step in front of him. "Can't cross it, can you, you freaky, unnatural beast."
Tennyson glared at Astor, ignoring me. I knew that, among other things, silver obscured his cognitive function, confused him, but I wasn't sure if that was why his attention was wandering or if he was just bothered by what Astor said.
"Don't listen to him," I said, pushing the moldy cereal off the shelf. "That thing about silver is just a folktale, it's all in your head." I had no idea if that was true but it sounded legit. "Don't let Astor beat you, you ninny. Just rip his face off!"
Astor laughed, a grating, ugly laugh. "Oh but he can't. Didn't you know?"
Tennyson's eyes went huge and all the color drained from his face.
"Oh, was it supposed to be a secret? But it's not. Not to the people who matter."
I had no idea what Astor was talking about. I'd never seen Tennyson Wilde change before, that was true, but that didn't mean he couldn't. The idea of Tennyson Wilde being unable to do anything he chose to seemed preposterous. But the look on his face said otherwise.
Astor laughed again. "The big bad wolf doesn't have any teeth."
"Shut up, Astor," I said. "Tennyson Wilde doesn't need to be a wolf to lay the smackdown on you so put a sock in it. Literally nobody cares what you think anyway."
He spun around to face me. "But they should!" he yelled. "I should be number one! The king of this school! Captain of the polo team, the one everyone looks to. But they just swoop in and take everything that's rightfully mine!"
I rolled my eyes. Entitled white boys, is there anything more pathetic on this planet?
>
"And you!" Astor said, swooping down to pick me up. "You're even worse. No money, no family, nothing. You come out of nowhere and act like you're so much better than me?"
He squeezed me in his fist so tight I thought my head would explode.
"You're not better than me!" he roared in my face.
I was fairly sure the fact that I'd never cursed anyone with a potentially fatal curse, or kidnapped anyone, or kicked a dog, were all prime examples of why I was in fact better than Astor, but I couldn't tell him so while my entire body was being crushed.
Tennyson Wilde roared, his eyes glowing as he tried to break past the line of silver. I'd never seen him look so wolfy before and thought vaguely that it really suited him. The silver thing was obviously a physical barrier, not a mental one, because he looked to be trying very hard to break through it, and I knew that he was headstrong enough that he would if it was just a matter of will.
Astor moved around the room. I wasn't sure what he was doing, although I was right there in his hand. The whole room was starting to get hazy as I struggled to breathe, fought against the pressure squeezing the life out of me.
"You want your stupid little girlfriend?" he yelled at Tennyson. "Come and get her."
He dropped me inside a glass box — a mason jar, I realized as he flipped the lid closed. For a moment, my entire body cried out in relief that he'd let me go, but not for long. The jar was sealed tight. Airtight. I couldn't breathe.
I watched Tennyson Wilde continue to struggle as I fell to my knees, banging on the side of the jar in the hopes of making a crack, just the smallest crack to let some air in. The glass fogged up quickly and I lost sight of the outside world. The last thing I saw was Tennyson Wilde's face, contorted in anger.
Chapter 19
I woke up back on my shelf, feeling crappy but pleased to not be dead. Someone had removed me from the glass jar — I assumed Astor because if Tennyson Wilde had been able to reach me, I wouldn't still be there in Astor's room. Tennyson was gone and so was Astor, so I set back to work on my braided paper rope. One thing had become clear to me as my life had been draining away in that mason jar, and that was that there were some people in this world who had nothing to redeem them at all, no tiny spark of goodness. Astor was one of those people. He would play with me until he got bored of it and then he would kill me, and it wouldn’t even mean anything to him. He didn’t see me as human, not as the same species as himself. For him to kill me would be the same as me throwing an empty candy wrapper in the trash. I had to get away from him, no matter what.
I wasn’t sure how much time had passed while I was unconscious, but it was day, which meant that Astor was probably in class. I’d have a bit of time before he returned. Folding the long bits of paper together was time-consuming and physically awkward as I'd gotten even smaller, but at the same time kind of soothing. It put me into some kind of meditative state where I could see things objectively. From everything I’d read and been told, magic was really just a way for power to be channeled that had not been explored by science, but that didn’t mean it didn’t follow the same rules of physics that everything else had to. In the olden days, people had thought all sorts of things were magic, but it was only that they didn’t have the scientific knowledge to explain them. More than anything else, people hated not being able to explain stuff, I supposed, so if they didn’t have the answer, they’d just make one up. I didn’t see why this should be any different. Wow, if I could understand the principles of magic in a scientific way and explain them and prove them, I wonder if I’d be heralded as some sort of genius. If you won the Nobel, you got a cash prize, didn’t you? Definitely worth the effort then.
So, all I really needed to do was find the power that was making me small and divert it to a different outlet. I assumed that the spell was an ongoing thing, that my body was constantly trying to revert to its natural state, so it would be a constant drain on the power source. It was a massive assumption on my part, but I felt it to be true in my bones, that I was constantly trying to grow, and that was why I had less energy than usual. The smaller I got, the more tired I felt.
It also made sense to me that the power source would be close by. If the spell was ongoing, it would have to be close enough to me to not be interrupted. I tied my paper rope to the brackets of the shelf, then tied the other half around my waist. I don’t know why — if I fell, I was basically screwed — but people always seemed to do that when climbing so I figured I should. I was a bit dubious that the rope would hold as I climbed down over the shelf, gradually letting the rope go, running through my hands as I lowered myself down. If it did break and I splattered all over the floor, at least I’d be rid of Astor.
I kept on with my train of thought as I climbed. The power source had to be close. Astor wasn't an animal person and yet he'd stolen someone's beloved pet. Sure, maybe he did it just for kicks, because he loved being mean, but I'd bet that there was more to it. Bonkers was the key, I was sure of it.
Finally, I hit the floor. I crept over to where Bonkers was curled up in the corner under the bed, licking her paws. Poor little thing looked miserable and I couldn’t leave it there, even if it wasn't involved.
“Hey buddy,” I said. “You wanna get out of here? We could go get a burger and maybe some fries. What do you think?”
She blinked at me. Her eyes were dull and sad. I got close enough to it to pat her on the nose. Her teeth were awfully big but at least if she munched on me, she would get something nutritious to eat, the poor thing looked as if she had never had a square meal in its life and I bet she hadn't since Astor had stolen her.
I’d failed miserably at riding the rat, but maybe this would be different. I felt around in my pockets for a bit of cheese I’d been saving for emergencies and lured her out from under the bed. At first I thought she wouldn’t come, she just stared at me blankly, but then she started to crawl toward me.
“Good dog,” I told her. “You are super smart. Now, lets skedaddle before that bozo gets back.”
I gave her the cheese and climbed up onto her back, careful not to pull her fur. I rubbed her on the top of the head and then directed her forward, clinging hold of her collar. We got to the door and I held on tight as it jumped up, scratching at the door. The next time it jumped, I reached out as far as I could to press the button to open the door. The door swung open and we ambled out, finally free.
Nobody was around except for one or two people skiving off in the common room, but they didn’t pay us any attention. We opened the front door in the same way and finally we were free! I gave Bonkers directions to the Golden House, but I don’t think she had been allowed to run around outside while with Astor, so she wasn’t listening to me at all. I nearly lost my balance as she squatted to do her business, then went tearing off toward the forest in searching of smells.
“Sam!” I yelled, banking on the super senses to come in handy at least one time. “Tennyson Wilde! Nikolai! Come and find me, I’m in the forest with a rampaging beagle!”
But even if they didn’t find me, I thought there were much worse things than a life in the forest with a happy puppy. We could live together out there, eating berries and frolicking about, that would be grand. Something under a log really caught Bonkers's attention. She snuffled around under it, burying her nose in the dirt, and then she began to dig furiously. I hoped it wasn't something dangerous. I'd had enough danger to last me forever.
Within minutes, though, they came. My rescue party.
Bonkers was startled when three people came crashing through the forest toward us, three people who surely smelled a bit irregular on account of not being human. Bonkers backed away with her tail between its legs, almost knocking me off its back as it tried to hide under a fallen branch. To my surprise, Tennyson Wilde knelt down in front of it, holding out his hand. He murmured something too quietly for me to hear and flashed his eyes and the dog leapt forward, licking Tennyson on the face and wagging its tail like it was the happiest dog on the p
lanet.
Sam lifted me up and held me in his hand, smiling, and I kind of understood how the dog felt.
Chapter 20
"Hey, you guys," said Nikolai, interrupting our happy reunion. Even Bonkers looked at him with disdain, but then we saw what he was pointing at.
From under the log, where Bonkers had been digging, came a faint blue glow.
"You have got to be kidding me," I said. "Bonkers, you stole the orb off Astor?"
Bonkers wagged her tail and licked Tennyson Wilde on the face.
Sam put me back on the ground and then dug out the orb and held it up in front of us. The blue energy swirled around inside it. "What do we do with it?" he asked.
"Smash it?" said Nikolai.
"No," said Tennyson Wilde. "Sit it down on the ground."
Sam placed down the orb next to where I was standing. It was about the same height as me, and up close I could see all the intricacies of it. I felt as though if I looked at it for long enough, it would reveal all the mysteries of the world to me.
"Swallow it," said Tennyson Wilde.
I looked up at him but didn't really see him. What he said made no sense and yet I understood, somehow.
I opened my mouth and inhaled, sucking the blue glow down into my lungs, drawing it out of the orb and into myself. The rest of the world ceased to exist, there was only that power and the need to consume it. It seemed an eternity.
When the power was gone from the orb, I blinked, feeling as though I'd just woken from a nightmare. I stumbled and Sam grabbed me by the elbow. Because he could. Because I was human-sized again. I exhaled a sigh of relief and it came out as a sparkly blue cloud. I watched as the cloud circled up into the air, high above our heads, above the forest, and then darted away.