by Lish McBride
“You.” I stopped and licked my lips, trying to get a handle on my anger. Count to ten. Screw it. “You killed my friend, and now you want me to work with you?” My words came out in a whisper.
“I had to get your attention,” he said.
“You want my attention, hire a skywriter. Send a candy-gram. Don’t decapitate people.”
Douglas shrugged, like all of my options were the same.
“Think of her as your first lesson,” he said.
“Her name is Brooke.”
Not even a shrug this time. “I will keep this simple for you, Sam. Join me and live. Defy me, and I will take you, your friends, and your family down one by one. I will twist and mold the facts until the Council turns against you. I will slaughter you, exterminate everyone you love, and get the Council to sanction the whole thing. No recourse, just death.”
“What Council?” I asked, exasperation leaking into my voice.
“You have a week. Use it wisely.” And he left. The psycho just walked off.
A week to figure everything out. That didn’t seem like a lot of time. Especially if the week was anything like the last twenty-four hours. My system couldn’t keep taking shocks like that.
I leaned down and folded my arms on the wooden rails, resting my chin on top of them. I watched the pandas and tried to see them as I did before, like I hadn’t looked at them in my head, but it didn’t work. My eyes kept being drawn to that third panda in the corner. Ling Tsu now had two handfuls of bamboo, one in each paw. His eyes moved back and forth between them before he threw them down in what I imagined was the panda equivalent of disgust. When your whole life was eating bamboo and suddenly that was taken away from you, what did you have? Ling Tsu couldn’t eat, and his fellow pandas wouldn’t go near him. He was alone, and I couldn’t help but think that he would have preferred to go back to that great bamboo forest in the sky. I didn’t care how much money whoever had thrown at Douglas, this felt wrong. Unlike Ling Tsu, Brooke understood what had happened. I didn’t know if that made her existence better or worse.
I threw away my cotton candy and headed out before I broke down and started crying in front of the panda exhibit. I could at least wait until I got to the car.
9
The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades
I got back to my apartment in time to see Mrs. Winalski fishing around for her keys.
“Looks like I’m not the only one out on the prowl,” she said. She waggled her eyebrows at me suggestively.
“I just got back from the zoo.”
“You disappoint me, Sam.”
I did my best to look apologetic as I opened my door. I like Mrs. W, I really do, but I didn’t feel like talking. All I wanted was to go into my quiet apartment, sit down, and try to sort everything out.
Mrs. W gave me a parting wave, and I slunk into my dim living room. Brooke looked asleep. Did she still need to sleep? Frank had positioned her as best he could in the chair, wrapping a T-shirt around her neck for added balance. I tried not to imagine her stump of a neck or that clean, sharp cut that looked like it’d been made with a hot knife. Too late. Already the vision of it surfaced in my mind.
I didn’t bother to turn on any lights. Instead, I eased down onto my couch, careful of my back, and closed my eyes. Blessed silence, blessed darkness.
“How was the zoo?”
I didn’t have time to measure, but I think I jumped about twelve feet. I twisted in pain from the sudden jerking movement, my eyes rolling over to Brooke. She stared at me from her perch on my easy chair. Either she was a light sleeper or she hadn’t been napping at all.
“Sorry,” she said. “Forgot you were sliced and diced.”
I sucked in a breath and settled slowly back onto the couch. As uncomfortable as I felt, Brooke had to feel way worse. “No, my fault,” I said. “I guess I’m a little wound up.” I looked at her more closely. “Is that my Alkaline Trio T-shirt?”
“Yup.”
“Man, I just got that.”
Brooke tried to look down at the shirt, but failed. “You took me to see that show, Sam, and I listened to those CDs you let me borrow. Something tells me they’d be strangely okay with their T-shirt’s new use.”
I couldn’t really argue with that.
“It was the guy with the potato, wasn’t it?”
“I thought you didn’t remember your—you know.” I pantomimed slitting my throat, a slightly misguided attempt at levity. But I couldn’t say “death” to her. I just couldn’t.
“I don’t, not really. But I’ve been seeing pieces, mostly from when I was in the box. Voices talking—one sounded familiar.”
“His name is Douglas.”
We sat for a minute in an uncomfortable silence.
“He’s scary, isn’t he?” Brooke’s voice was quiet, serious. I had never heard her sound like that.
“Yeah. Yeah, he is.” It was scary when someone threatened everyone that you loved. If I didn’t do what he wanted, what would happen? An accident for my neighbors? My sister’s head in my freezer? My stomach dropped thinking about it. There was no way to know where he’d strike, and no way to guess what I could do to keep everyone safe. And no point dwelling on what might be—I’d go crazy if I kept that up. I shifted a little in my seat. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Shoot.”
“What’s it like? You know…” I trailed off, waving vaguely at her head.
“Being a head? What do you think it’s like?” Her voice took on an edge.
I imagined it would be horrible, but I waited for Brooke to continue. I needed to hear it from her, and I thought she needed to vent.
“I’ve been stuck in your apartment all day watching the news to see if they’ve discovered my body yet. It’s weird, Sam, really freaking weird. I’m dead, but I’m not. When I see a commercial for restless legs syndrome, I start to cry, and I can’t tell if it’s because the commercials are so annoying or if it’s because I’m jealous of their legs, restless or otherwise.” She paused to blow a hair out of her face. “And I just blew a hair out of my face. Something totally normal, but now I have to wonder, How did I do that? All of the simple things are suddenly complicated.” She frowned, but it quickly morphed into Brooke’s beatific smile. “On the upside, I no longer have to work at Plumpy’s.”
I looked away, staring at the blank TV. Even in her position, Brooke was trying to stay positive. I wanted to be positive for her too, but I felt sick inside. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Brooke—Brooke’s head—staring at me. I wanted to reassure her, but I didn’t think I could be very convincing. I wanted to crumple in on myself.
“Sam, this isn’t your fault.”
I lay back against the couch, not really seeing anything. I closed my eyes. “In what way is this not my fault?” I asked.
“He killed you as a message to me. Without me, you would still be alive. If I’d had a better slap shot, I wouldn’t have broken that taillight and none of this would have happened.”
“A lot of things in life would improve if you’d work on your aim. But you didn’t kill me,” she said, eyes intent. “He did. You can’t take the blame for every psycho in Seattle.”
“But I can try.”
Brooke laughed, and I felt a little better.
I heard the rattle of keys and the lock tumbling over. Ramon entered, keys in one hand, a pile of books in the other, and a paper bag in his mouth. The keys went into his pocket, and he tossed the bag at me. It felt hot, and I could hear the crackle of foil inside. A familiar, and delicious, smell floated up from it.
“For you,” he said. “My mom’s afraid you might starve. Something about vegetarians—she always thinks you guys never get enough to eat.”
Despite all the turmoil, I dug into the bag. Ramon’s mom was an awesome cook, and my stomach practically cheered at the sight of one of her meals. Rice, beans, oh, dear God, she’d sent some of her homemade tortillas. My day was looking up.
Ramon to
ssed his books onto the coffee table and flopped down next to me. “I checked out a few books that I thought might help you.”
I nodded at him, focused on my food. A fork, I needed a fork. I got up and grabbed one from the kitchen, then returned to my rice and beans. I scanned titles as I ate. He’d picked up some books on voodoo, death, and the spirit world. If he’d waited until after my meeting, I might have been able to narrow down his choices. He just had to borrow books on necromancers. I swallowed thickly. We weren’t only researching Douglas anymore. We were researching me. I could now be lumped into the same category as him. The scoop of rice that had been on my fork fell off. I swore and scooped it up again, though my enthusiasm had waned some.
Ramon sat forward. “I wasn’t sure if you’d want any, Brooke.”
“Thanks, Ramon, but I’m on a diet,” she said, her face completely serious.
“Yeah, you could stand to lose a few more ounces, chica.” He nodded toward the TV. “They find you yet? I was in class, so I couldn’t hear anything.”
“No, not yet. But my parents aren’t due back until this afternoon.”
Brooke tried to be brave, but I could see her eyes well up. I put down my food and grabbed a paper towel. I couldn’t just sit there and let her cry.
“Hey,” Ramon said, “don’t cry, okay? We’ll get him, won’t we, Sam?” He looked at me, face grim, and even if I hadn’t meant to already, I knew we were going to do something about Douglas. I hoped Ramon had a plan, because I could certainly use one.
Brooke stopped crying and hiccuped a little. “The cops won’t be able to do anything about it, will they?”
They both looked at me. I guess I was the expert. I thought for a minute before answering. “No, I don’t think they will.”
“But they’re probably going to question us, huh?” Ramon asked.
“Yeah, we were the last to see Brooke, um, intact. But I don’t think we should tell them anything beyond what they can discover from the surveillance videos.”
“Why not?” Ramon asked. “We know the bastard who did this. Why shouldn’t we sic the cops on him?” He sat hunched forward, his ears getting red.
I crumpled the paper towel in my hand. I thought about the things Douglas had said at the zoo. Powerful friends. “I doubt the cops could touch him. We’d just be putting more people in danger. If we were lucky, he might be slightly annoyed by it.”
“Sam’s right,” Brooke said. “All you’d be doing is pissing off psycho man. And then he’d kill one of you. I want him stopped, but not at the expense of you guys.”
I pushed back the errant strand of her hair so she wouldn’t have to blow at it anymore. “We’ll get him, Brooke. Promise.”
“I know you will,” she said.
I rocked back on my heels and sat on the floor. “I just wish I knew how to get some more information.”
“Yeah, I had an idea about that,” Ramon said. He pulled a slip of paper out of his back pocket and handed it to me. I opened the paper, which turned out to be a long list of fortune tellers, palm readers, occult shops—whatever Seattle had to offer in the area of the supernatural. The world I was now a part of. Ramon nodded at the paper. “I figure, if one phenomenon—you know, Brooke—is real, then maybe some of this other stuff is, too. And maybe if we go and talk to some people, we can find someone who can actually help us.” He reached over and stole one of my tortillas. “I mean, there have to be others, right?”
“Ramon,” I said, “if it wouldn’t confirm Mrs. W’s suspicions, I would kiss you right now.”
“Lay off. My mug is only for the ladies.”
Frank knocked and walked in, already in his Plumpy’s uniform and carrying a large paper bag.
“Hey, guys, Brooke,” he said, shutting the door and coming over. He set down the sack and opened it. “I was getting ready for work and remembered my dad had this!” He pulled out what appeared to be a—
“Is that a bowling bag?” Ramon asked.
Frank nodded enthusiastically. From his excitement and our lack thereof, I figured we were missing something. “You want us to forget our troubles with a rousing bowling tournament?”
“What? No,” Frank said, shaking his head. “It’s for Brooke.”
“Frank,” Brooke said, “I lack a few of the basic components. Like bowling shoes. And arms.”
“And the desire to waste a perfectly good evening rolling a borrowed ball and drinking overpriced soda,” Ramon added.
“You’re just mad because you have to use the bumpers,” I told him.
“Lies.”
Frank shook his head again and opened the bag. “No, look, see this?” He pointed at a metal doohickey in the bottom of the carrier. “This is meant to hold the ball in place, and your shoes of course, on your way to the bowling alley. But I figured it would be good for holding Brooke’s head, too. See how the part for the ball is circular? We could put her neck there—with padding of course—and then we could take her out with us and no one would know.”
“Because walking around with a bowling bag is perfectly normal,” Ramon said.
Like Ramon and I had ever been normal. I’d always been relegated to the misfit fringe, as if the other kids could sense something innately off about me. Turns out they were right. I was different. I didn’t really mind being on the outskirts of popularity, but I’d never quite figured out why Ramon had ended up there. The only thing strange about him was his association with me. I shrugged. “A lot more normal than walking around with a severed head.”
“Yeah, but we’ll be doing both.”
I waved him off. “It’s Seattle. We got a whole lot of weird going on. No one will notice.”
Frank crumpled a little. “It’s a bad idea, isn’t it?”
“No, Frank, it’s actually a very good idea,” Brooke said.
He perked back up. “Really?”
“She’s just saying that because she won’t have to carry it,” Ramon mumbled to me.
“It won’t be so bad,” Frank said. “See?” He closed the bag again and showed us the outside. The bag was designed like the old-school ones, but it was black and it had a large white skull with crossed bowling pins underneath it.
“What does it say on the back?” Brooke asked. Frank flipped it around. It said knock ’em dead. Frank clutched the bag and waited for us to decide if we wanted to use it or not. Honestly, even if it didn’t work, I couldn’t have told Frank no right then. It seemed to mean so much to him that he’d helped in some way.
“Good thinking, Frank,” I said.
“Really? You’ll use it?” He looked hastily to Brooke. “I mean, if you want, Brooke.”
Brooke beamed at him, tears back in her eyes. “That would be fantastic.”
Frank blushed.
“So, how did your meeting go?” Ramon asked, changing the subject.
While Frank went about setting Brooke up in her new handy-dandy carrying case, I filled them all in about Douglas, tie-dyed kids, and a panda named Ling Tsu. They didn’t scream, and no one ran from me shouting “pariah.” All in all, they took my newfound freakishness quite well. Better than I was taking it. I felt like screaming and running, but as the school counselor had always told us, you can’t run from yourself. That didn’t stop me from getting the heebie-jeebies every time I thought about it.
Still, I had some pretty good friends. I couldn’t be too terrible if they were sticking around.
A few hours later, Ramon, Brooke, and I were back at my apartment. After Frank had gone to work, we’d spent some time going through the people on Ramon’s list, but the whole thing had been a bust. I think most of the people we’d visited were fakes. A few denied that they knew what we were talking about but had shooed us out of their shops pretty quick. One palm reader even pretended she didn’t know English anymore. I’d left my number with a few of them but didn’t expect calls anytime soon. So now we all sat, quiet and dejected, in my apartment. Though I’m not really sure what Brooke did could be called sit
ting.
Brooke cleared her throat, which I don’t even want to get into because it was still freaking me out a little. “Hey, guys, it was a good idea. Really. It just didn’t work, that’s all.” She smiled at both of us. “But we’ll figure it out.”
The phone rang, and Ramon answered when I made no movement to get it. Self-pity and guilt had shut me down, and I was too busy thinking about how nice it would be to crawl into my closet for a week and hide until Douglas came to kill me. Sadly, that thought was almost comforting compared with the idea of him tracking down everyone I cared about one by one. I heard Ramon hang up. “Telemarketer?” I asked. “Someone else threatening my life?”
“Nope. An appointment with Maya LaRouche. She got our number from somebody, thinks she might be able to help.” He smiled and picked up Brooke’s case. “So get your coat. We’re going to Ballard.”
Ballard is one of those little areas in Seattle that I don’t go to unless I have a reason, and once I’m there I always wish I went more oft en. There are a lot of good restaurants, bars, and clubs that I don’t visit simply because Ballard’s a pain in the ass to get to, no matter where you’re coming from.
Ramon directed me to a small residential street and a little yellow two-story with a garden. We parked and walked up, looking around for any sign that this was the right house. I wasn’t really sure what we were looking for. Did we think there would be a giant crystal ball in the front yard with a flashing arrow? I checked to make sure my medicine bag was hidden under my shirt. I needed all the comfort I could get. Pouch in place, I caught up to Ramon, who was already at the door.
The door opened on the second knock, and any greeting I had mustered died unsaid. My mouth stalled at the sight of the girl holding the door, and my brain lumbered to get it running again. Gorgeous with a capital G. She looked like an Egyptian queen—all high cheekbones and golden brown skin. But the intelligence in the brown eyes that stared back at me told me she didn’t skate on her looks. She held her hand out. “Dessa LaRouche.”