Sophie groaned. “Don’t encourage him.”
“It’s this place they built underground in the sixties in case they had to evacuate the government. It’s a museum now. You should go sometime; it’s creepy.”
“Only to geeks like you.” Kevin slumped over the rail, kicking at one of the posts. “Try boring.”
“Well, if anyone ever dropped a nuke on the city—”
“Because they would totally bother,” Sophie put in.
“—we’d be pretty safe. Relatively. Because of the ridge over that way, see?”
“The apocalypse is cooler with zombies, anyway,” Kevin declared. “The nuclear version’s just depressing. We’d be hunting two-headed deer.”
“So you’re the hunter, huh?” I stole a glance at William, who looked away.
“Sure,” Kevin said. “Me and William. You should see him with a bow and arrow. This one time a few years ago, he and his dad brought back this huge buck—”
“I told her about it, Kev,” William said shortly.
“Oh,” Kevin said. And then, “Seriously?” He leaned back from the rail to shoot me a look of deep skepticism. I smiled thinly back.
“Anyway,” William said. “It wouldn’t be that big a deal. There aren’t any two-headed deer around Chernobyl. The animals there are all fine. More of them die of cancer, is all.”
Kevin made a face. “Right. Depressing.”
“What is it with you guys and the end of the world?” I asked.
“It’s just interesting,” William said. “Like, everyone has to show their true colors. Everyone knows who they really are at the end of the world. No more bullshit.”
“No law and order,” Kevin added. “No rules.”
Typical Kevin. Did they have a machine somewhere, knocking off copies of the same guy over and over? I’d never had to stay on speaking terms with one of them before. My attempt at it was sort of working. It was enough for William and Sophie, anyway, and that was what mattered; he wouldn’t challenge them. He needed their approval as much as I did.
“I bet you’d totally survive the zombie apocalypse,” I told him.
“What,” Sophie said, “so a firearm is a free pass?”
“You have to admit it’s kind of an advantage,” William pointed out.
“Not just that. He’s adaptable,” I said. “Throw him into deep water and he figures out how to float.” By pushing other people under, if necessary. “He does what it takes. He’s a survivor.”
Sophie smacked Kevin’s arm.
“Pay attention, dumbass, you’re getting a compliment. From Skye.”
“That’s not a compliment,” Kevin said.
“Come on,” William protested, laughing, “she just said you’d survive the zombie apocalypse.”
“It’s true, isn’t it?” I said, a little bolder. “You know how to look out for number one. That’s what counts. Right?”
“Sure I do,” he shot back, unsmiling. “And I look out for my people. That’s why we’d make it. All of us.”
The pause that followed wasn’t quite long enough to be awkward.
“I wish you guys would shut up about this,” Sophie said. Always the expert at defusing tension. “I don’t have any zombie apocalypse skills.”
“That’s okay,” William said gallantly. “We’d protect you.”
That was Sophie’s zombie apocalypse skill right there. Sophie would survive anything.
“Besides,” Kevin added, his habitual smirk reestablished, “girls automatically have a zombie apocalypse skill. Everyone would have to start having babies, right?”
Sophie rolled her eyes. “Like any girl would pollute the gene pool with you.”
I matched her tone—snarky, but unmoved. “Why the hell would you want to have babies in the zombie apocalypse, anyway?”
“Repopulation,” William said, with a shrug that said it was obvious, at the same time as Kevin said, “Bait.” He cackled when William punched him.
“There, see?” I swung away from the fence, back to the road, and they followed behind me. “He’s a survivor.”
* * *
“What’s so funny?” Deirdre asked that night, frowning.
I pressed send on my text, didn’t look up at her. “Nothing.”
The frown became a glower. “You’re always on your stupid phone. Who are you even talking to?”
“Why should you care?”
“Girls,” Dad said wearily.
“I bet I know,” Deirdre muttered.
“I bet you do,” I shot back.
“Girls. Skye, put the phone away at the table, all right?”
I shrugged and pocketed it, turned my attention to my plate. But a hot little glow in my chest wouldn’t let me stay silent.
“Mom,” I said sweetly, “I’m going to Bayshore with Sophie after school next Wednesday, okay? Her mom said she’d pick us up.”
Deirdre shoved her chair back and stormed from the room, leaving her dinner half-eaten. Mom and Dad exchanged a look, their own private version of chicken: Whose turn was it this time? Dad won. Mom sighed, pushed herself up from the table. Just as well. Mom would have given me a lecture about being kind and considerate when Deirdre was having a tough time. Dad was too wrung out to bother.
The phone in my pocket buzzed again. I stopped myself from reaching for it, but the heat in my chest flared higher. It wasn’t my problem if I finally had a life and she didn’t. She had the same chance to start over that I did. If she refused to take it, that wasn’t my fault.
“Who are you talking to all the time, anyway?” Dad asked eventually, wagging his eyebrows in a tired attempt at teasing. “Boys?”
“Just William,” I said. “And Sophie and Kevin, sometimes, I guess.”
“William,” Dad said. “Oh.”
“He’s nice,” I told him, warding off parental concern, and Dad smiled.
“I know,” he said.
* * *
“Your father,” Mom said, “thinks I should have a talk with you.”
She spoke with a sort of exasperated amusement as she set the sink to filling and handed me a vegetable peeler.
“Oh?”
“He says you’ve been seeing a lot of that boy from up the hill lately. William.” She raised her eyebrows at me, inviting me to laugh. “He thinks this is a good time to make sure you don’t have any questions.”
I snorted, picking up a potato.
“That’s what I said.” She slapped the water off. “Personally, I think it’s safe to say you’ve got this. You know you can come and talk to me if you need to, right?”
“Sure.” Provided she wasn’t on deadline at the time, or absorbed in a project, or handling a Deirdre crisis. Whatever. She was right—everything was fine, everything was going exactly as it should. Even if I wasn’t sure what to do with it, I’d manage. I’d dealt with scarier problems on my own.
“The only thing—” She hesitated, and I tensed. There was a certain voice she always used when she was trying to play diplomat between me and Deirdre to get me to include her, to apologize, to extend the olive branch. Of course that was where this was going. God forbid we talk about my life for five minutes at a stretch. “I love that you’re making friends, Skye. But maybe spend some time with Deirdre soon. I think she’s feeling pretty lonely.”
I focused on the potato I was peeling and didn’t answer.
“She told me the other day that it’s as if you don’t even like her anymore.”
She was bringing out the big guns. And it worked. My conscience prickled. I dunked the potato in the water filling the sink and let it fall into Mom’s bowl. She picked it up and started slicing, but I could feel her watching me. I wasn’t going to get away without responding to that one.
“She just always wants to play the same game,” I m
uttered.
“And you’re bored of it.”
Cue the active listening. I sighed.
“I’m just…done with the kingdoms, you know? I’m too old for that stuff. So is she. Why can’t she just grow up, like a, a—” Like a normal human being, I wanted to say, but I closed my teeth on the words and fell silent, wielding the peeler in savage little strokes. Bits of potato skin flew into the sink.
“Maybe there’s something else you could do together?” Mom suggested after a long moment. “Something inside?”
“We’re always together,” I shot back. “I don’t even have a different room anymore. How am I supposed to get away from her?”
There was a telltale sniffle from behind us. I hunched my shoulders and refused to turn around as footsteps thumped away from the kitchen, accelerating toward the end of the hall. A door slammed. Mom closed her eyes and sighed, sagging a little against the counter.
“We’ll talk about this later,” she said, sounding pained, and hurried after Deirdre, wiping her hands on her jeans.
Deirdre didn’t leave the room for the rest of the evening, not even to eat dinner. When I finally gave up and went to bed, she was curled up defensively, facing the wall, and didn’t look at me. I changed into pajamas, brushed my teeth, turned out the light. Her silence was as pointed as a stick. I sank back against my pillow and sighed. What was I supposed to say? If she didn’t understand why I was leaving my crown behind, how could I possibly explain?
In my dream that night, I was trying to catch up with Mog, following her through Mom’s old garden, pushing through the tiger lilies bobbing in her wake, scrambling under the drooping silver limbs of the willow that stood in the corner. Her sleek, gray shape wove through the arches of fern fronds like a dolphin through ocean waves, over knotted roots snaking down past where the road should be. The sidewalk cracked and crumbled as strings of Virginia creeper twined across it, a slowly building tsunami of red-tipped green tendrils climbing the mossy trunks of the trees that pushed their way up through the remains of the concrete. I stumbled to a halt among them, my panic climbing with the vines as Mog ran on ahead through the looming woods toward the bike path, down into the mouth of the ravine. I couldn’t follow her. Not there.
“Some champion you are,” said a voice. Above and behind me, Deirdre was perched on the garden’s stone retaining wall, her legs dangling down into the air.
“You’re the Queen of Swords,” she told me. “You have to do something.”
Panic flashed through me, a lightning strike, with anger boiling up close behind. We’d had this conversation before. I wouldn’t listen. Not this time. Not again.
“No,” I snapped. Like I should have then. “That’s not my job.”
I ran past her back up the steps, between the trees that shouldn’t have been there. But the creepers snaked over the concrete, and around me leaves and flower stalks whispered and twitched and lengthened, growing, growing. Long coiling vines sprang up around my legs, holding me down. They lashed around my torso, bound my arms, reached for my face. Curling tendrils pried at my lips, whip-thin little fingers. I wanted to scream, to beg Deirdre to help me, but I had to clamp my mouth shut against them. Flowers opened all around me in luminous little moons. Ipomoea. Morning glories.
And behind me, Deirdre laughed and laughed.
I woke to the sound of something screaming.
Not a human sound, but the terror in it needed no translation. The jagged shadow of the woods was perfectly still across the star-spattered sky. I sat up, clutching my blanket, as the insect-singing silence washed back into place.
Across the room, Deirdre’s eyes were open. Staring at me.
“Deirdre?” I whispered. “Did you hear that?”
She didn’t acknowledge I had spoken. Didn’t blink.
“Stop it,” I said, a little louder. “You’re freaking me out.”
She sighed and rolled over, away from me, her breath deep and slow. She didn’t stir when I whispered her name again. Not actually awake, apparently. But I watched her for a while, anyway, as my dream plucked at me with sharp little fingers, replaying the path of a gray tail through the ferns.
Oh God, was Mog still outside?
I stumbled into the living room, taking in all her favorite spots with a glance. All empty. But there was a scratch-scratch-squeak at the balcony door, making me jump all over again. It was just her paws on the glass, scrabbling to be let in.
I hauled the door open, scooped her up, and hugged her close against my chest, letting my heart thud against her warm fur. She permitted it for a moment, then wriggled out of my grasp to thump down onto the kitchen floor, unconcerned.
Stupid cat. I drew a trembling breath and sagged against the patio door. Beyond the faintest outlines of my reflection, the night was moonless, the woods perfectly still. I stood there breathing in the smell of water. Watching for movement that never came.
When I crawled back into bed, Mog was curled up on the pale shadow of Deirdre’s hair, licking her paws. It was a long time before I could sleep again.
Ten
The helicopter blades echo across the whole valley, the thin, blue November sky, dogging my steps all the way up the hill. William answers the door still in glasses, squinting a little in the light.
“Hey,” he says, closing the door behind me, finally shutting out the sound. “How are you doing?”
“I’ve been better.”
He winces. “Yeah. I imagine. Come sit down. Breakfast is almost ready.”
This is the first time I’ve been inside William’s house—weirdly enough, considering all the time we’ve spent together. It’s bright and spacious, a little chilly, with high ceilings, windows ripply with age, floors made of wide golden planks overlaid with plush flowery rugs. It smells like an old house—old books and woodsmoke, overlaid with the warm vanilla scent of cooking.
“How late were you up?”
He shrugs. “Not that late. The police came by and broke up the party not long after you left.”
“Oh, shit.”
“It wasn’t that big a deal. They gave Kevin a warning, you know, for the alcohol. He was pretty pissed, but he’ll get over it.”
I fold my arms as he pulls plates from the cupboard. I’m not going to say anything about my own encounter with the police. If they were up there because of me, nobody needs to know that.
“They were up here yesterday too,” he tells me. “They talked to Christina for a while. Because Deirdre’s in her class, I guess.”
I nod, slide onto one of the stools standing at the fancy granite peninsula. William flips two thick pancakes onto plates, pushes one at me. I pour syrup over the top of it, avoiding his eyes.
“And she said that Deirdre’s a freak, I imagine,” I mutter.
“Well,” he says, after a telling silence, “she said she doesn’t really fit in that well. You know.”
“Yeah.” Feeling guilty helps nothing, and it doesn’t make any sense anyway. It’s not like I could have made friends for her, not like I ever managed it before. I take a bite of pancake, but its fluffy golden sweetness might as well be glue in my mouth. “I was supposed to be in charge the other night. When she went missing. My parents were out. And I fell asleep. Mom was in the middle of telling me it’s all my fault when I left the house. Maybe I should have stayed, but I…I couldn’t stand it anymore. You know?”
“Oh, man.”
“I don’t understand how it happened. I wasn’t even tired. Like, one second I was bumming around on the group chat, and next thing I know it’s almost midnight. I’ve never just…passed out like that. Why did I have to pick that day to fall asleep?” I am not going to cry in front of William. He made pancakes for me. I force myself to take another bite, chew, swallow.
“That’s just bad luck, is all,” he says. “She’s in eighth grade, right? She’s old enough
to look after herself. There’s no way you could have known something was going to happen.”
Tempting. But I know better. I put the fork down, grasping for any other direction to take the conversation. “Well. Anyway. Thanks. For breakfast. I was kind of surprised you got my text. I thought you’d be asleep till noon.”
“Nah. This is late for me. When Dad’s around, I have to get up at oh God o’clock to work out with him.”
“Have to?” I echo.
He shrugs. “Well. It’s easier to just do it, you know? This is the last day I get the time to myself for a while. He gets home today. Mom and Christina went to pick him up at the airport. They were going to get brunch, I think, so they’ll be home in a couple hours.”
“That’s nice,” I say. “That he’s coming home, I mean.”
“I guess.” He pokes at his pancake. “Like, it’s nice when he comes home, sure. But it’s…kind of a relief when he goes away again too.” When I stay silent, watching him, he continues, a few words at a time. “He’s gone a lot. So he overcompensates. You know? He’s always right here.” He puts a hand in front of his nose. “In my face. There’s always something. It’s like I’m supposed to be this—this clone of him. I’m supposed to fit in exactly the same little box. The name’s supposed to be some sort of cookie cutter. William Wright plays hockey. William Wright kills things. I don’t want to be like him.” He pushes the plate away, leans on the counter. “I think my worst fear is that I’ll wake up someday and discover that I’ve become William Wright the fifth. Having to be right all the time. Turning conversations into competitions. I mean, you should get to decide who you’re going to be. But did he decide, once upon a time, or did he just—what if I don’t have a choice? You know?”
“Yeah. I know exactly what you mean.”
I say it with enough feeling that he looks up at me, but when I don’t elaborate, he waves a hand with a sheepish smile.
“Anyway. Sorry. I don’t mean to go on and on about this. You’ve got worse problems.”
“Except there’s nothing I can do about any of them. Trust me, I’d rather talk about basically anything else.”
Here There Are Monsters Page 9