Dad was my favorite because he never judged me, and when Mom did, he defended me.
“What are you doing?” I asked, even though I never understood when he explained job stuff to me.
“Just finishing up some expense reports and making sure we’re within our budget. You know, fun stuff.” He flipped through some pages and then typed something on a spreadsheet on his laptop. Dad paused and looked over at me. “With the exception of what happened to poor Mr. Thompson, how’s school going so far? We haven’t really had a chance to talk since you’ve gone back. I mean, I’ve heard all about Paige’s new language she and her friends invented that only the cool kids know and Quinn’s told me all about her gifted classes, but I haven’t heard much from my Ardy.”
I grinned. Ardy was what he used to call me when I was little. “There’s not much to tell. I have different classes. But it’s the same old same old.”
“How are the kids?”
I shrugged. “The same, I guess. I stay under the radar, and they don’t bother me. Bailey won’t even look at me this year, but I have Fletcher . . .” My voice caught in my throat. I had Fletcher. I reminded myself that I had decided that our friendship was over, and judging by the way he’d looked at me earlier, he would probably have been okay with that.
Dad touched my chin. “If anyone is bothering you, you let us know.”
“I will, Dad.” But I probably wouldn’t. Besides, nobody really bothered me. They spent too much time ignoring me to do that.
“Dad, do you really think it was an animal attack or were you just trying to make things sound better for Quinn and Paige? You know I’m old enough that you don’t have to candy-coat things for me.”
He went back to his work. “That’s what I really think. What do you think?”
I wasn’t sure. “What if it’s a person?”
Dad shook his head. “No. From what I hear, the way those bodies were torn apart, there’s no way a Human did that, not even with a weapon. They found teeth and claw marks. You remember how you found Mrs. Chin.”
I’d almost managed to block Mrs. Chin’s mutilated body from my mind until Mr. Thompson was killed. The look of terror frozen on her face. Her body in pieces. Her guts lying on the ground between the top and lower halves of her body. My heart caught in my throat. “I’m going to bed now.”
“Okay, honey.”
I gave Dad a peck on his cheek and then headed to bed. When Mom came in to discuss what I’d told her about Wiley earlier, I pretended to be asleep. When I tried to fall asleep for real, I couldn’t. Taking that nap earlier had been a bad idea, because I stayed up all night thinking about Fletcher’s cryptic messages and vicious animals who tore people apart.
Chapter Six
My eyes burned the following morning from lack of sleep. I wasn’t looking forward to the school day. I didn’t want to talk about Mr. Thompson, and I knew I would be spending the day alone since the only friend I had was no longer my friend.
As I walked through the student parking lot toward the school, Bailey pulled her mother’s car into a parking space. Usually she arrived in Lacey’s Mercedes SUV with the others. She got out, carefully balancing a cup holder with four coffee cups and her purse.
I acted as if I hadn’t seen her and kept walking, but unfortunately we hit the sidewalk at the same time. She almost bumped into me, and we ended up doing some awkward shuffle to dodge each other.
“Sorry,” we both mumbled at the same time. Bailey looked as if she wanted to say something else, but I pushed on ahead. She wasn’t the only one who could pretend we didn’t know each other. Bailey stayed on my heels. When we entered the foyer of the school, Lacey stood by the trophy case with Trista and Marley. The three of them sported messy buns, while Bailey’s hair hung loose. I guessed she had missed the bun memo.
Thankfully Lacey ignored me, but she shot eye daggers at Bailey. I should have kept moving toward my locker, but I stopped to watch. What was going on with them?
Lacey snarled. “It’s about time, and our orders had better not be wrong like yesterday.”
Bailey rushed over to them breathlessly and passed out the cups. “Sorry. There was a line at the drive-thru.”
Marley scoffed, obviously enjoying Bailey’s groveling. “Excuses are for losers.” I imagined the three of them were always clamoring to be Lacey’s number one.
While watching Bailey was pathetic, I couldn’t help but think she deserved how they were treating her. She knew Lacey was an evil witch when she became friends with her, so what was she expecting?
I decided to eat my lunch outside against a wall. Lacey had taken over the picnic area again, and I didn’t feel like seeing her or Bailey. Fletcher had tried to speak to me in third period, but I ignored him. He kept talking to me until I told him I was giving him the silent treatment.
A shadow loomed over me as I bit into my grilled cheese sandwich. “Go away.”
Fletcher sat beside me. “Are you mad?”
“Yes, I’m mad. Why do you think I don’t want to talk to you?”
“What did I do?”
“I’m tired of your riddles and you telling me things that make no sense. You treated me like crap yesterday. I’m over it and I’m over you. Why do you even want to be my friend if you think I do such horrible things?”
Fletcher was quiet for a moment. “Because the bad part of you is just a small part, and you can’t help it. I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you the truth very soon. The time has to be just right. You have to be ready.”
“What does that mean?”
Fletcher gazed off into the field, where a group of boys played Frisbee. “It’s going to make you sad, and once you know, you can’t unknow it.”
“Okay, now you’re scaring me. What’s going to make me sad?” I wanted to know then more than ever.
“Please don’t be mad at me. You’ll understand one day why I had to keep some things from you until a certain time.”
I looked into his large amber eyes, and I couldn’t be mad at him anymore. Whatever it was, he really felt like he couldn’t tell me. If it was going to depress me, maybe I didn’t want to know. Maybe he was only trying to protect me.
“I’ll make it up to you.”
I took another bite out of my sandwich. “Yeah? How?”
He bit his bottom lip and stared across the schoolyard again. “What do you want me to do?”
I thought for a moment. “I want you to come to my house. Actually come inside. Come to dinner one night. It’s about time you meet my family.”
He stared at me for a moment, and I thought he was about to turn me down. Fletcher sighed deeply as if I’d just asked him to do the most difficult thing in the world. “Okay. I can do that, I guess.”
“Thanks.”
He stood up and smoothed out his pants. “Bye. I have to pee.”
I shook my head, watching him disappear into the school building.
The tone around school had been quiet and somber. Mary-Kate said the school was planning to plant a tree in Mr. Thompson’s honor as well as implement a scholarship for performing arts students. Other than that, everything was the same.
Ways to die in Mrs. Martin’s class:
There could be an explosion from the chemistry lab next door.
The copy machine in the teachers’ workroom above us could come crashing through the ceiling..
The storm outside could send a tree crashing through the window.
Embarrassment. I could die of embarrassment.
Speech class had gone from horrible to torturous. I guessed it was mostly my fault. My first conversation with Mrs. Martin had gone like this:
“Arden, why are you taking this class?” she asked after she’d caught me doodling instead of taking notes on the differences between informative, demonstrative, and argumentative speeches. I just didn’t care enough to be bothered.
The whole class had turned around to look at me, so I just shrugged.
Mrs. Martin folded her arms acros
s her chest, which was never a good sign. She’d even taught us that on the first day of class. When a person folds their arms across their chest, it signals defensiveness, so we shouldn’t do it.
“Arden, this is Speech class, so speak.”
I sat up straight and waited for everyone to stop snickering. “I’m taking this class because my mother made me,” I mumbled.
More snickering.
Mrs. Martin’s narrowed eyes and pursed lips told me that I had given the wrong answer, but it was the truth. Maybe I should have said, “I’m taking this class to conquer my fear of public speaking,” but that would have been a lie. Mrs. Martin and her stupid class were only making my fear worse.
Ever since then, she had nothing nice to say to me.
On the fourth week of school I delivered my third speech. The other two had been disastrous, and I hadn’t expected the third to be any different. I was already in a bad mood. I had woken up that morning with red, swollen fingers. That had been happening a lot lately. When I went to sleep, my hands were fine, but when I woke up, my fingers were sore and throbbing. I was afraid to tell my parents because they would send me to a doctor, and who knew what they would find. Hopefully it would just go away on its own. According to WebMD, I had either arthritis or lupus, but I didn’t think that was right.
I took my time making my way to the podium. My throat had constricted so tightly I couldn’t swallow. Holding my index cards with shaky hands, I took a quick glance around the room, which was a huge mistake. Mary-Kate gave me a quick reassuring nod, but even her encouragement was no match for the twenty other kids smirking at me, waiting for me to fail . . . again.
At the rate I was going, I was undoubtedly going to fail the class. Who failed an elective class they didn’t even have to take in the first place? There were no tests to study for, nothing to memorize. Basically the class was just talking without making an idiot of yourself. Leave it to me to fail at talking.
I peeked over my cards to where Mrs. Martin sat at the back of the room. Another mistake. Unlike other teachers, her desk was placed in the back so she could accurately judge us on our posture and eye contact. I sucked at both.
Mrs. Martin raised her eyebrows and tapped her pen on her desk. I understood her impatience. I had been standing in front of the class for thirty seconds clearing my throat, yet to utter one word.
“Sometime today, Ms. Moss. We need to get through ten other students before the bell rings.”
Nodding, I checked my body language. I was already doing everything wrong—moving from one foot to the other, leaning against the lectern, and holding my cards in front of my face. I planted my feet, stepped back from the lectern (treat it like a hot stove, Mrs. Martin said), and lowered my index cards to chest level.
Taking a deep breath, I looked down at my cards. My speech suddenly seemed like the stupidest thing in the world. We weren’t allowed to write the entire speech out, only the bullet points we wanted to hit. Mrs. Martin usually gave us a topic to discuss, but this time she had given us free choice. I chose to write about my favorite animal as if I were in second grade. Other kids had talked about the ozone layer, the unfair treatment of minorities by law enforcement, and the war on immigration, but I had chosen to speak about my favorite animal. It seemed like a good idea the night before.
I cleared my throat for the thirtieth time. “If I could be any animal, I would be a bird. To me, birds are the eighth wonder of the world. I’d be a blue jay specifically—”
“Arden, a little louder,” Mrs. Martin croaked.
I tried to force myself to look up from my cards, but the stares from my classmates would make everything worse. Maybe if I focused on a point on the back wall, that would help.
I glanced up briefly at the wall, straightened my shoulders, and looked back down at my cards. “If I could be any animal I would be a blue jay. The main reason I’d like to be a blue jay would be their ability to fly. Sometimes I wish I could fly. When things get bad or people make me angry, I could just fly away and leave it all behind.”
Time to look up again, Arden. I forced my eyes up. Mrs. Martin stared at me intently. Margo Reese laughed behind one of her hands. Charlie Tate leaned over and whispered to the boy next to him, then they both looked at me grinning.
Anger rose in my chest. I couldn’t win. No matter what I did or said, they would find a reason to laugh. I never laughed at them no matter how lame or boring their speeches were. No matter what, I watched them respectfully and at least pretended to be interested. Setting my cards down on the lectern, I forgot about my bullet points. “I wish I could fly away right now. I’d fly away from this stupid school and all you idiots who treat people like crap for no reason!”
Mrs. Martin sat up straighter.
“I’d fly to another country and start all over. Maybe Europe. I’m sure I’d meet better people there, because you guys suck!” By that time, I was yelling, but I didn’t care. I’d made my point. I needed them to know how awful they were. Half the class stared at me wide eyed while the other half looked as if they couldn’t decide whether to laugh or be offended. Mary-Kate shook her head. She was probably the only person in the room my speech didn’t apply to, but I was sure she felt just as insulted.
Mrs. Martin marched to the front of the room. “That’s enough, Arden. Thank you.”
I couldn’t ignore the intense looks of hatred as I made my way back to my seat. Charlie Tate, who sat directly in front of me, swiveled in his chair to face me. “Damn, Dust. Angry much?”
“Shut up!” I shouted. He flinched and turned right back around.
Everyone stared at me including Mrs. Martin. “Ms. Moss, I’m going to ask you to control yourself, or do you need to be excused?”
I shook my head. Settle down, Arden.
Mrs. Martin called for the next student to go up and probably had written a big fat F next to my name. Mom was going to be so proud.
Home was better than school. Thursday nights we always ordered pizza because Mom and Dad went to a couples’ book club meeting at a friend’s house. That left me in charge of Paige and Quinn.
Mom rattled off a few last-minute instructions as my sisters and I filled our paper plates with pizza slices. No one wanted to do dishes on Thursday nights, so we used paper and plastic everything. “Set the alarm. Do not open the door for anyone. Don’t post on social media that you’re home alone. No friends over.”
She said the same things every time they left us alone. “Got it, girls?”
“Yes, Mom,” we moaned simultaneously.
“Let’s go. We’re going to be late,” Dad called from the front door.
Mom took one last look at the three of us. “Spend some time together. Maybe play a game or something.”
Mom was always trying to get the three of us to get closer, but we weren’t those types of sisters. My younger sisters didn’t look to me for advice or to teach them about boys and makeup. They knew more about those things than I did. My sisters were everything Mom thought girls were supposed to be—sugar, spice, everything nice. I, on the other hand was trail mix, meds, death, and dread.
Paige and Quinn grabbed juice pouches from the fridge. “Later, loser,” Paige said as the two of them pounded up the stairs. They weren’t supposed to be eating up there, but I didn’t bother telling them to come back down. It wasn’t worth the fight.
A door slammed upstairs. My sisters wanted to spend as little time with me as possible, and I didn’t object. We had nothing in common. They were what Mom wanted me to be—normal.
Mom had been the homecoming queen, voted class beauty, most popular girl, and she claimed she would have been prom queen too if she hadn’t come down with that case of mono. I could see Paige becoming all those things. She was the next Lacey Chapman.
I took my dinner into the living room and flipped on the news to hear what they were saying about Mr. Thompson. At school, no one really gave us any other details, but they must have known something else by then.
&
nbsp; Brooke Mayfield, the local reporter, stood in front of the woods, and from what I could see, the area had been roped off with bright-yellow police tape. The tape was useless in my opinion. It might warn people to stay away, but it wouldn’t keep what was killing people from coming out.
“The death of Theodore Thompson is being ruled an accidental death. The coroner has yet to determine what type of animal killed the forty-two-year-old husband and father of two, but it was likely a coyote or wolf. Residents are being warned to stay away from wooded areas, especially at night.”
Nothing new.
I changed the channel to some silly-looking cartoon once they started showing pictures of Mr. Thompson. I felt for his family. How would I feel if it were my father they had been talking about? What would it be like to know someone you loved had literally been torn apart? I prayed I would never find out.
In my room, I noticed fresh scratches in my hardwood floor. The scratches on my floor were a normal occurrence. Mom freaked when she first saw them, but since then she didn’t seem to care. The scratches were always in the same area, there were just more of them each time.
Music blared from Paige’s room so I had to pound on the door for her to hear me. At first I got no response, so I knocked harder. The music cut off abruptly and the door flew open. “What?” Paige demanded.
“Keep your stupid cat out of my room. She’s still clawing my floor.” I closed my bedroom door every day before I left for school, but somehow Sheba was still getting in.
Paige rolled her eyes. “Sheba doesn’t go in your room. She hates you.”
Yes, she did hate me, and the feeling was very mutual, but Sheba had no business being in my bedroom. “Just take responsibility for your deranged cat.” The door opened wider, and Quinn held out two plates stacked on top of each other with pizza crusts.
A Girl Called Dust Page 5