A Girl Called Dust

by V. B. Marlowe

  “Excuse me?”

  “Wes and Cadence came in earlier to clean up after you before Father saw. If he thinks you can’t be controlled, he might put you in the hole. He has to look out for everyone’s safety. Anyway, you were crawling around the room, knocking things over, sending stuff every which way. Barking and howling and kicking up all sorts of ruckus.”

  I wasn’t surprised to hear this, but I was embarrassed that they had witnessed it. “I’ll have to thank Wes and Cadence when I see them.”

  “Anyway,” Hollis said as I joined him at the metal table with the monitors. “The most important thing you need to know about is the Gemini Curse.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a curse that hasn’t been implemented for the past fifty years, but it’s come back because of the murders. It only effects those of us who aren’t fully transformed, you know, under eighteen. Everyone has a Gemini. Your Gemini is a Giver born the same exact time as you. They’re your complete opposite. Your mortal enemy. As you get stronger, they get weaker and vice versa. There’s no telling which way it will go. It’s like a tug-of-war with fate. It picks one of you to win and that’s it. If your Gemini grows stronger and starts to drain your strength, there’s only one thing you can do about it. If you want freedom from this, freedom from changing and the possibility of living in the sixth tunnel, you have to find your Gemini and kill them.”

  “What?”

  “You have to kill your Gemini. You’ll know them when you see them. Your hair will stand on end. Your skin will crawl. You will get the taste of blood in your mouth. It’s an indescribable feeling. You’ll just know.”

  Hollis studied a monitor showing footage of the woods. He jotted something down on a notepad. “The curse was first implemented to help keep balance. To keep our population down. When you think about it, with the curse, half of all creatures die, whether Giver or Taker. But a long time before we were even born, a truce was called and the Curse was broken. No one had to die, and no one was fighting to kill their Gemini. However, that truce has been put in danger because of the Wendigo.”

  I didn’t want to believe Hollis because I could never kill anyone. “I can’t kill someone. Not even if I had too. It’s just not in me.”

  Hollis sighed, looking me dead in the eyes. “You better get it in you. Keeping the Wendigo part of you controlled is going to require strength. You’ll get that strength from your Gemini. Or you can sit around and wait for your Gemini to kill you first. That’s always an option.”

  “Okay, this is a huge deal. Fletcher would have mentioned something like that to me. He didn’t.”

  Hollis snickered. “Fletcher Whitelock? In case you haven’t noticed, Whitelock is an idiot. He doesn’t know if he’s coming or going.”

  “Don’t talk about my friend like that.”

  Hollis narrowed his eyes at me. “You think he’s your friend?” Then he stared harder.

  “What?” I demanded.

  “You love him. Don’t bother lying to me. I know. You two are always together. I see how you look at him.”

  I swallowed hard, hating the fact that they watched us. “I don’t love him.”

  “Liar.” Hollis grabbed the keyboard and pulled it close to him. “Anyway, let’s see what lover boy’s been up to.”

  He typed some numbers out, and the scene on the monitor changed. Fletcher appeared on the screen, and my stomach felt queasy. “What’s this?”

  “A recording we took a few days ago.”

  Fletcher was at a park, not the park in our neighborhood—not our park, but one I didn’t recognize. He sat on a bench looking around as if he were waiting for someone. “So, you guys just watch and record all creatures?”

  Hollis shook his head. “Not everyone. Just the ones who exhibit suspicious behavior.”

  “What’s suspicious about Fletcher’s behavior?” Sure, Fletcher was weird, but I didn’t think the way he acted was anything for them to be worried about.

  “Well, for one thing, being friends with you. Givers and Takers aren’t supposed to run around together the way you guys do. You may not have known anything about this up until a few days ago, but Fletcher did. There’s a reason he became friends with you. He’s keeping tabs on you. Keeping you on his radar for some reason.”

  The room began to spin. Fletcher was my best friend. My only friend. I couldn’t bear to think that he had only been pretending all this time. That he had an ulterior motive. That would shatter what was left of the world I knew.

  “Maybe he just enjoys my company.”

  Hollis scoffed. “Sure.”

  “He doesn’t have any other friends. He doesn’t hang with anyone else.”

  “That’s because we don’t need friends. We have each other, family, and that’s it. Outside people are a waste of time and energy.” Hollis pointed at the screen. “Look.”

  A girl came into view. A perfect-looking girl with thick blond hair that fell in soft waves halfway down her back. She wore a fitted trench coat and tall boots. Fletcher hopped up from the bench when he saw her. They embraced. After a moment, they pulled away and stared at each other. Then the unimaginable happened. Fletcher pulled her in for a long, passionate kiss. My heart stopped.

  “Who’s that girl?” My voice came out like a croak that embarrassed me immediately. I didn’t need Hollis to know how hurt I was. I felt the way Fletcher must have felt the day I’d seen him get hit by a bus.

  “Some Giver. She doesn’t live here. She’s from California. They take the train on weekends to see each other.”

  I thought about all the weekends Fletcher was nowhere to be found. “How long has this been going on?”

  Hollis shrugged. “They were already seeing each other when I started recording Whitelock five months ago, so who knows?”

  I watched the two as the fairy-like girl clasped her hands around Fletcher’s neck. She looked so comfortable, as if she had done it a hundred times before. Like she belonged there. For all I knew, Fletcher had been seeing her since before he’d even met me, and that’s why he said he could never love me. Not because he was incapable but because he already had a perfect girl who I would never be able to compare to. If this girl was his type, I clearly wasn’t.

  Fletcher had been lying to me since the beginning. I’d always given him credit for not doing that. Whenever he didn’t want to give me an answer, he would simply say he didn’t want to answer. He wouldn’t lie.

  Straightening my shoulders, I tried my best to hide my devastation. It was the best acting I had ever done in my life. “Why are you showing me this?”

  Thankfully Hollis clicked the monitor off, because I couldn’t stand to watch anymore. “Because I need you to understand this guy is not your friend. He’s a Giver. They can never truly be your friend. We share a world, but we were born to be enemies.”

  I tugged at my hair. I did that when I was nervous. “What about my father—”

  “He’s your enemy too. He may love you because he raised you, but when push comes to shove, he’ll choose his side over you. He has too. We all have to. Anyway, you need to stay here and away from Fletcher.”

  “Why?”

  “You are the only known Wendigo in the area. They think you’re the one killing their people. He’s a Walker. They protect. His job is to kill you.”

  I stood and paced the room. I just couldn’t be still anymore. “What do you mean killing their people?”

  “Those teachers that were killed, they were Givers.”

  “What?” I had a hard time believing that Mr. Thompson and Mrs. Chin weren’t Human, but that would answer the question of why they were in the woods.

  “Arden, Givers and Takers had a truce for a number of years. After the massacre, we made a deal that we needed to work together and that we wouldn’t bother each other. Now that Givers are being attacked and killed, and also innocent people like your friend and her boyfriend, they’re going to come after us. Most importantly, they’re going to come after y
ou because they think you’re doing it.”

  My breathing quickened. “But I’m not. I’ve never hurt anyone.”

  “We know that, but they don’t. We’re all the same to them. You’re a Taker. That means you’re guilty just for being born.”

  I sat back down. “If I’m not doing it and all the other Wendigos are trapped down in the tunnel, who is killing people?”

  Hollis shrugged. “Don’t know. There’s another Wendigo out there that’s unaccounted for, and we need to find it.”

  My mind swirled with thoughts, but the one thing I wanted to do was talk to Fletcher. I needed to know why he had lied to me and if he had only gotten close to me so he could kill me.

  “I want to leave.”

  “You can’t. Besides, that would be a very bad idea.”

  I didn’t care. “I have things I need to do.”

  “You belong here. You’re not going anywhere.” Hollis flipped the monitors back on and flipped through random tunnels as strange creatures walked up and down the screen. “This is your home now.”

  That wasn’t happening. I couldn’t fathom the lair being it for me and never being with my family or going to school or hanging out with Fletcher ever again. “No. I’m not in prison.”

  Hollis frowned at me. “No one here is in prison—well, aside from the beasts. We’re allowed out in the woods at night . . . sometimes.”

  “My father will come looking for me. He’s an Angel, a Guardian Angel. If he needed to get into this lair, he could.” I hated to play that card, but I needed out of there.

  Hollis looked at me for a long time before pulling his phone from the pocket of his jeans. “Let me see what Father says.”

  He stood up and moved away from me, whispering into the phone. After he hung up, he returned to his seat.

  “So?” I asked.

  “Father says we won’t keep you here by force, but you need to understand that you’ll be in severe danger out there. You can’t depend on Fletcher or your father to protect you because they play for the other team. These creatures are strong and trained. You haven’t even transformed yet, and they’ve been doing that for a few years. You wouldn’t stand a chance against them.”

  “I’ll take that chance. I need to go.”

  Hollis looked as if I were making the dumbest decision in the world. “Promise me you’ll come back tomorrow. You haven’t been trained in smell. We need to teach you how to smell a creature, how to tell whether they’re a Giver or Taker, and most importantly, how to smell your Gemini. You can’t survive without that.”

  I figured he was right about that. “I’ll be back tomorrow after school.”

  Just then a bell rang from somewhere above us. “Seriously? Are we in the school?”

  Hollis nodded. “Technically under it.” The other times I had been at headquarters had been after school hours, so I hadn’t heard a bell. I found it to be a huge coincidence that we were located under the school and two of the four Wendigo victims had been teachers. Was there a Wendigo loose in the lair?

  Hollis showed me the way out. Down a long hallway and through a door that opened up to the janitor’s closet. We waded through buckets, mops, and industrial-sized bottles of cleaning products. “You can’t tell anyone our location. Not your father and especially not your so-called friend, Fletcher.”

  “I won’t tell anyone. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  Hollis opened the door for me. “Arden, don’t do anything stupid.”

  “Okay,” I replied, but I couldn’t make any promises.

  I waited for Fletcher at the corner after school. I had missed another day, and I didn’t want to think about the work I still hadn’t caught up on, but with all that was happening, schoolwork was the least of my problems. I had to worry about turning into a beast and being killed for murders I hadn’t committed. Above all that, a best friend who had broken my trust and my heart.

  Fletcher was so busy looking down at his phone as he approached that he didn’t even notice me. I wondered if he was texting his girlfriend.

  I stepped into his path. “Fletch, let’s talk.”

  He looked up, surprised, and put his phone away. “Arden, what are you doing here? You’re supposed to be with them.”

  I noticed the venom in his voice when he’d said the word them. “I needed to talk to you.” I glanced around at all the kids walking home from school. Were some of them creatures? I had no way of knowing because no one had ever thought to teach me. “Somewhere private.”

  Fletcher nodded. “Okay. Let’s go to my house.” I had only been to Fletcher’s that one brief time, and I couldn’t honestly say I was looking forward to going back.

  Fletcher’s parents were out. He grabbed a package of baloney and a soda for himself from the fridge and led me upstairs to his room.

  His room was painted a beautiful deep green with brown wooden furniture. It was simple. A bed. A desk. A dresser and a nightstand with a lamp. He handed me the pack of baloney. “Make yourself comfortable.”

  I took a couple of slices of meat from the pack and inhaled them. I wanted more. More of anything that tasted like meat, but I refrained. That was too beastlike, and the thought of becoming more like one of those things was terrifying.

  Fletcher and I sat on his bed cross-legged, facing each other. I had no intentions on leaving his house that day without all the answers I needed. “I have a lot of questions for you.”

  Fletcher rolled up a baloney slice and held it to his eye like a telescope. “Okay.”

  A vision of him kissing that girl flashed in my mind along with the thought of him taking trips to see her when he told me he would be watching TV. “I could punch you right now.”

  “Go ahead.”

  I was tempted but decided to refrain. Punching him wouldn’t solve anything. “Nah.”

  He sat up straight and squared his shoulders. “Do it. I won’t hit you back.”

  “I’m not going to hit you, but I want you to tell me the truth. Why are you my friend? Are you just pretending? Why do that? Why not just stay away from me?” I wanted to ask him why he was playing games with my heart, but I didn’t. Truthfully, he hadn’t been. Fletcher had told me straight up from the beginning that he could never love me. I was the stupid one who thought I might change his mind.

  He swallowed his baloney. “I didn’t mean to. I tried to ignore you, but you came after me that day in Gerdy’s. I tried to walk away, but you followed me and kept on asking about the bus thing. I figured that once I told you the truth, you would think I was weird or crazy and back off, but you didn’t. You kept coming around, following me and asking questions, and then . . .”

  “Then what?” I demanded.

  “Then I started to like you. I knew we shouldn’t have been hanging out, but I liked you, Arden. You’re my friend. My real and only friend. None of that is pretend.”

  My shoulders relaxed. I believed him, and knowing that our friendship hadn’t been pretend was a massive relief.

  “But I’m not your only friend. I saw you with her. The blond girl.”

  Fletcher paled, more so than usual. “That’s . . . she’s . . . her name’s Rose.”

  My throat felt dry. Even her name was perfect. Beautiful and delicate like the flower she was named after. Before I could stop them, my eyes welled with tears. I wanted to run from the room, but I couldn’t. Fletcher and I finally had this time together, and he was being honest with me. There was so much I needed to know.

  “I saw you kissing her. Hugging her. You told me that you could never love anyone like that. Why did you lie? If you didn’t like me in that way, all you had to do was say so.”

  Fletcher reached forward and wiped one of my tears away with his thumb. I wanted to push him away, but I didn’t.

  “It’s not like that at all, Arden. You don’t understand.”

  “Then help me understand.”

  “Did they tell you about Geminis?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “
Have you ever met Rose before?”

  I shook my head. That girl, I would have remembered.

  “Well, she’s met you. She’s seen you, smelled you, she says you’re her Gemini.”

  “What?” That would mean this girl was my exact opposite, and if she were to die, I would have the power to save myself, to control the Wendigo inside of me.

  “Yeah, she told me. And Arden, there’s something else.”

  “What?”

  Fletcher pressed his lips together until they were white. “That girl, she smells just like your father.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “What are you saying?” I needed to hear him say it plain and simple.

  “She smells just like your father.”

  Of course. The girl looked like Paige and Quinn. She would slide perfectly into my spot. “She’s their daughter,” I squeaked. I had never held so much jealousy for someone I had never even met in person. Not only did she have Fletcher, but my parents were truly hers, not mine. No matter what they said, I knew Mom and Dad thought about her every day, wishing she was there with them instead of me, the beast.

  “Anyway,” Fletcher said. “She told me she passed you one day at the mall. She got one whiff of you and she knew you were her Gemini.”

  I had to learn how to do that. Not having the sense of smell they had was truly going to put me at a disadvantage.

  Fletcher’s explanations didn’t help my confusion. “Okay, so she knows that I’m her Gemini, and that made her attractive to you? That made you say ‘I need to make this girl my girlfriend’?”

  “She’s not my girlfriend, and anything you saw me do with her, I did for you.”

  “Huh?”

  “Creatures haven’t practiced Gemini duels for some time now. We’ve called a truce, and everyone just keeps to their own. But now that two Givers have been murdered, the Givers are about to call off the truce. You’re my friend, and you knew nothing about our world or what was going on, so I couldn’t just let her come after you when you didn’t even know what you were. I figured the closer I stayed to Rose, the more I could convince her to leave you alone or warn you when she was going to make a move.”