“Let me check you out. Or I’m telling Dad you whacked me over the head with a pseudosword. I bet you edited that part out, didn’t you?”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
He submitted to a rapid-fire physical, although he made it clear how unhappy he was about it, whining and moaning like a little girl the entire time. I ran through every exam I could think of, but I didn’t find a thing wrong with him.
After Jonah went to shower, I checked myself over. Pulse, blood pressure, respiration, temperature: a full and accurate list. Everything was fine, except for my headache.
I needed to see if Mike’s symptoms were progressing. I needed to be at school in case he tried to bite somebody else. And I’d promised Kiki I’d help her out later at the pancake supper she’d helped organize for homecoming. I couldn’t stay home. So I dragged myself out of bed and went downstairs. Dad was sitting in the breakfast nook digging into a bowl of high-fiber cereal. He put down his magazine and waved me over.
“Hey,” he said. “You gave us quite a scare. What happened?”
I decided not to tell him I might be infected with a latent virus of unknown origins and effects. “I ran all over the place, and I think it was too much for my system to handle.”
Dad stirred a huge spoonful of sugar into his cereal. “And what about the medical emergency Jonah was telling me about? Something about a guy getting sick at a party?”
I shrugged. “Someone collapsed at this party at Kiki’s house. I took care of him until the EMTs came.”
“Is he okay?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer that. Mike was probably infected with the mystery disease, which was bad. And diseased or not, he was the king of the Neanderthals.
“He’s as good as can be expected,” I finally said.
“Good.” My dad smiled at me. “He’s lucky you were there.” Then he picked up his magazine again. “I took your car keys, by the way. And your license.”
“I figured.” I couldn’t keep the sigh out of my voice.
“I’m sorry, Kate, but it’s for your own safety. You’ve got an appointment with Dr. Kallas next week. We may need to adjust the meds again. And if you want the surgery … it’s your choice.”
There was a surgery that almost guaranteed to get rid of seizures like mine, but they had to open up your head and torch some neurons. Being seizure-free would have almost been worth having some surgeon grope my cerebrum. The operative word being almost.
“Yeah, I know.” I rested my head in my hands and tried ineffectively not to look glum.
We sat for a few minutes in silence. I debated getting a slice of raisin bread, but it looked like it was all gone except for the heel. Things just weren’t going my way. So I moped until Dad spoke up from behind Physics Quarterly. “Kate, I’m really proud of you. That guy could have died.”
“Thanks, Dad.” I stood up, kissed his forehead, and poured myself a cup of coffee. I didn’t bother to tell him that I thought the guy actually had.
“I can’t do this, Kate,” Kiki said later that morning in bio.
I was still dragging despite three cups of coffee, but Kiki looked even worse. Her face was a nasty shade of green that clashed with her sweater. That worried me; I hoped she didn’t have the mystery disease. I twisted in my seat to look at Mike for comparative purposes. He hadn’t stopped kicking the back of my desk since he’d sat down behind me, but I’d successfully ignored him so far.
I expected one of his usual pervy comments, but he just stared until I turned away. On the good side, I was pretty sure Kiki didn’t have whatever he had. His skin wasn’t green; it was gray. On the bad side, I expected him to start gnawing on my braid any second now. He had that freaky intense stare thing going again. And if he didn’t stop kicking my chair, I wasn’t responsible for what happened.
“It’s just a pig, Kiki.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. It did nothing to alleviate the throbbing of my temples, but it was a nice thought anyway. “I’ll do the actual cutting. Just hand me the instruments.”
“You don’t understand. I just can’t cut up a pig!”
“Look. I’m not asking you to cut him up. I’m asking you to hand me the instruments while I cut him up. Our grades depend on this.”
“The smell—” she started to wail, but Mrs. Mihalovic clapped for attention and cut her off.
“Okay, class. We’ll be starting on the head today. Can anyone describe to me the structures you’ll encounter as you penetrate the skullcap? Anyone?” She looked around, but no one was desperate enough for brownie points to volunteer. “Mr. Luzier?”
Mike stared at her vacantly. I wondered if he had bitten anyone else yet. No one in class was sporting an attractive bite mark, so I assumed not.
“Any day now, Mr. Luzier,” Mrs. Mihalovic said.
“Braaaaains,” Mike said. The word came out long and exaggerated, and some people laughed. Not me, of course.
She pursed her lips disapprovingly. “Very funny, Mr. Luzier. Miss Carlyle? Would you please improve upon Mr. Luzier’s answer?”
Kiki made a sound like “Urk!” and ran from the lab with both hands clasped over her mouth. Mrs. Mihalovic and I exchanged long-suffering looks; I shrugged helplessly.
“I give up,” she grumbled. “Just get started.”
I thought about checking on Kiki, but I had no desire to hold her hair while she puked. So I went to my lab bench, strapped on my protective gear, and got to work. The whole dissection process was fascinating, and I was so into it that Kiki surprised me when she sat back down.
She leaned in confidentially. Her breath smelled like mint. “So, about last night? Thanks again for helping with … you know. Things could have gotten really bad if you hadn’t been there.”
I looked across the lab at Aaron and Mike’s table. Aaron hunched over their pig while Mike stared at Mindi Skibinski’s butt like he wanted to take a big bite out of it. I’d have been freaked out except it was what he usually did during lab.
“No problem.” I figured it was safe to continue dissecting; Kiki wasn’t really paying attention anyway. I opened the tissue surrounding the cranium with a swift stroke of my scalpel. “Pins, please.”
She handed them over, taking great pains not to look. “So you remember those EMTs from the party? One of them asked me out.”
“Wow. And your parents are okay with you going out with an older guy?”
“Oh, he’s not my type. He’s ancient.” She grinned. “But it was still pretty flattering.” Then she lowered her voice to a whisper. “He told me something interesting, though.”
“What? And can you pass me the bone saw, please?”
“He said their Breathalyzer was broken. It’s a good thing too, because otherwise Mike would have been in big trouble. He got cited for underage drinking once before.”
“Broken?” I asked. “That’s lucky.”
“I know; isn’t it? They said it was like he wasn’t breathing at all. They tried to retest him, but he refused. Smart guy.”
I removed the top of the skull, but all I could think about was Breathalyzers. They operate on airflow. Maybe Mike could hold his breath for a ridiculous amount of time, or maybe the Breathalyzer really was broken. Or maybe he hadn’t been breathing. I knew that wasn’t possible, but after everything I’d seen, I could almost believe it.
I didn’t like this one bit. My list of possible symptoms now included black vomit, rigor mortis, semicannibalistic tendencies, and severely depressed respiration. I couldn’t think of a single freaking disease that had this kind of presentation. I would have been panicking, but the military hadn’t issued a health alert. Yet.
Mrs. Mihalovic walked past, shaking a finger in our direction. “Less talking, ladies. More work.”
Kiki looked at me. “Strange, huh?”
“Yeah.” I located the corpus callosum and sliced decisively through it. “Very.”
he lunch line inched along at a funereal pace. I didn’t really hav
e the patience to deal with it, but I needed caffeine and sugar if I was going to remain conscious. When I got to the front, the lunch lady glared at me. She took poor nutrition as a personal affront, and my tray contained a cookie and three cans of soda.
She frowned and pointed at the Coke. “That stuff will rot your liver.”
On any other day, I would have corrected her, but today I was in a hurry. I paid for the cookie and a cup of ice since the cans were still warm from their hibernation at the bottom of my locker. I’d been lobbying for pop machines in the cafeteria but hadn’t won yet.
I took my change and made my way toward our usual table by the windows, but Rocky intercepted me before I sat down.
“Kate! I didn’t expect to see you at lunch today. Don’t you have Quiz Bowl?”
“Oh, no!” I smacked my forehead. “You’re right.”
My stomach sank. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten; I’d been on the team for three years. I was the president, for god’s sake. I dashed for the basement, because that was how our school rolled: the perennially losing football team got an athletic wing, and the state-champion Quiz Bowl team got a four-square-foot closet in freaking Siberia.
Swannie, our faculty advisor, looked up when I hurried through the door. Her name was Ms. Swan, but she wouldn’t answer to it. I thought she looked like the love child of a mad scientist and a leprechaun, with her short stature and crazy red Afro. But she was the most brilliant scientist I’d ever met, and she let me help in her lab after school sometimes. She had some big government research grants, which was unheard of for a high school chemistry teacher and pretty much elevated her to sainthood in my eyes.
“Sorry I’m late,” I said. “I couldn’t function any longer without a caffeine run.”
She grinned and tilted her coffee cup in my direction.
“I’ll let it slide this time,” she said. “But don’t do it again or else.”
I grinned. We both knew the threat was a big joke. But I stopped smiling when I realized the rest of the team was already paired up and going over their question packets. Everyone except Mike Luzier.
I had no idea why he’d joined Quiz Bowl in the first place, but I had the sneaking suspicion that it had something to do with panting after Mindi Skibinski, who sat one table over. They spent most of our practice sessions making googly eyes at each other. As if he wasn’t annoying enough already.
“We drew partners already. You’re with Mike,” Swannie told me. “We’re reviewing the questions from State last year.”
“Uh … okay.”
The last thing I wanted was to sit down next to the lip chomper, but I couldn’t come up with a good excuse not to.
He didn’t move when I took the unopened question packet off the table next to him and opened it. He was too busy staring at the ceiling fan. It was his typical rude behavior and strangely reassuring.
“All right,” I said. “Here’s your first question: ‘This disease can be transmitted from cattle to human or from human to human. Common symptoms include memory loss, gait problems, and tremors. It’s one of the few infectious diseases not caused by a virus or bacteria. What is the name of the disease caused by the prion protein?’ ”
The answer was obvious: mad cow disease, otherwise known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob, but Mike didn’t bite. No pun intended.
“Mike?” I prompted.
Still no response. The fan was much more interesting than I was, or maybe he was sleeping with his eyes open. I’d have said he was dead, but I wasn’t going to make that mistake again. He was just being a tool, and it was ticking me off.
I stood up. “Swannie? Can I go get a drink?”
“You have three cans of Coke on your desk,” she said. “If that’s not enough, you have a serious problem.”
“I dropped them on the floor,” I lied. “Can’t open them now.”
“Ah.” She shrugged. “Make it quick. We trade packets in ten.”
“Okay.”
I went up the stairs and down the hallway into the music wing, because they didn’t have water fountains in Siberia. I didn’t usually drink water because it interfered with my caffeine habit, but I decided I’d make an exception today. I wasn’t lying about being thirsty. Besides, I figured the more time I spent avoiding Mike, the better.
As I was bending over to get a drink at the fountain, someone grabbed my braid and yanked. Hard. But I was used to this kind of thing. I was the class brain, after all, and I knew from experience that the worst thing to do was overreact. So I turned around slowly and said, “Is that the best you can do?”
Mike loomed over me. He held his hands over my head in what was probably meant to be a menacing fashion and said, “Gaaaaaaah!” It wasn’t scary; it was ridiculous. I started giggling and couldn’t stop.
Then he grabbed me. Suddenly, not laughing became a lot easier. He started dragging me across the floor toward a darkened classroom, until I realized I ought to be resisting. My shoes squeaked on the linoleum. At least his breath wasn’t as bad as last time. He probably hadn’t puked on any cars lately.
I fully planned on screaming once my voice decided to cooperate. Not like anyone would have heard me anyway; the music wing was deserted at this time of day. I clawed at his hands, trying to pull his fingers open so I could make a run for it.
His middle finger broke off in my palm like a dry twig.
My voice abruptly started working again. I shrieked at the top of my lungs and dropped the finger on the floor. It made a little piffing sound and bounced onto my shoe; I jumped up and down like it was attacking me. Finally, my wild flailing sent it skittling across the linoleum, and it rolled to a stop next to a row of dusty lockers.
I looked up at Mike, fully expecting to see a lot of gushing blood and yuck, but there was nothing. Just a cloud of dust particles hanging in the air over his four-fingered hand and a look of complete confusion on his face.
It didn’t last long. He bared his teeth, revealing blue gums. I was still gaping when he grabbed me again.
“Hey!” yelled a deep voice from down the hall.
I turned, half expecting to see Aaron. But it wasn’t him. It was my brother.
“Leave my sister alone!” He stalked down the hallway toward us, clenching his scrawny fists.
Mike froze, his nine fingers digging into my shoulders. He looked as surprised as I felt. Jonah was the kind of guy who strained to open a jar of pickles. He wasn’t someone you expected random heroics from.
“Huh?” Mike said, his forehead wrinkling.
“Leave her alone!” Jonah was red-faced with anger. “Or I’ll beat the crap out of you!”
Mike laughed, low and rumbly. He released my shoulders, which was nice, and took a step toward Jonah, which wasn’t. I couldn’t let my brother get clobbered. He had no idea what he was dealing with. I didn’t either, but standing there in the hallway with a severed finger at my feet, I couldn’t help but think that the virus was creating … zombies. There. I’d thought it. And going into zombie territory was stupid.
I stepped between them. Mike’s eyes snapped to my face, and I barely managed not to shrink away from him. But he didn’t try to drag me off again. He smelled me instead. His nostrils flared as he sniffed the air between us and licked his lips.
At that point I was more than willing to turn tail and run, but not Jonah. He might have been half Mike’s size, but he was ready for a fight.
I grabbed him by the arm. “We’re leaving.”
“I’m not letting him get away with this,” Jonah said. “I’m sick of bullies like him.”
I couldn’t tell him about the finger. If I said it out loud, that would make it real. I’d fall apart, right here in the hallway, and Mike would probably eat me midhysteria. I had to do something to stop Jonah, though.
“What’s that? Over there?” I pointed vaguely. And it worked. Mike turned slowly around to look.
“Jonah,” I whispered, tearing up. I wasn’t the crying type, but right now I wasn’t sure
whether I was more afraid of Mike or afraid for him. “Let’s go.”
Jonah clenched his jaw and nodded. I didn’t resist when he took my arm and led me away, but I couldn’t keep from glancing over my shoulder. Mike hadn’t even noticed us leave. He was too busy looking around on the floor. I saw his finger, half underneath a locker in a sea of dust bunnies, but I decided not to point it out to him.
Once we turned the corner into the main hallway, I felt a little better. I pulled away from Jonah, because let’s face it, neither of us needed to be seen skipping through the halls arm in arm with our sibling.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, thanks.” Now that we were safe, I sounded remarkably calm. I began to think I should take up acting.
“I sure showed him.” He nodded. “He won’t be bothering you anymore.”
As his older sister, I should have laughed at that. But he had just saved me from being groped by the nine-fingered wonder, so I didn’t. Instead, I said, “Yeah. Um … I should get back to Quiz Bowl.”
“I’ll walk you back.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked as we headed for the stairs.
He shrugged. “Some guys kinda duct-taped me to the toilet. I just got loose.”
I sighed. “Oh, Jonah. Are you okay?”
He nodded. “Fine. They didn’t tape any skin, which I thought was nice. Of course, I’m still hacking into their computers tonight.”
I held out my palm. He smacked it.
Jonah dropped me off and headed for the cafeteria before they stopped serving lunch. I looked through the window into the Quiz Bowl practice room. Thankfully, Mike’s seat was empty. For the moment, I was safe.
I leaned against the door to the supply closet across the hall until I stopped shaking. It took a long time, probably because I couldn’t stop scanning the hallway for Mike.
Finally, I squared my shoulders and stood up. Time to go back to Quiz Bowl, even though my mind wasn’t on those questions. I clearly needed to get to the bottom of this mystery illness—preferably before anyone else lost any more fingers.
had a late lunch period, so I only needed to endure AP History and Calculus II before I was free to put my plan into action. The wait was still torturous; I practically sprinted for my locker after the final bell.
Bad Taste in Boys Page 5