by Hal Schrieve
Mrs. Dunnigan was late coming back from the bookshop; she returned with arms laden with groceries she could barely carry.
“I’ll make a stroganoff tomorrow,” she announced. “I don’t have the energy tonight, I hope you understand. All I can do is take my brittle self to bed and read. I found a really vital book on the great beast beneath the ocean and the end of the world.”
Mrs. Dunnigan and Z had toast and pickles for dinner. Mrs. Dunnigan dripped dill-garlic brine on the pages of her book as she ate. After they were done, Z went back to their room.
The clock in the pink room was broken, so they kept time by the buses passing each half hour. At 10:30 p.m., the last bus drove by. Through the water-streaked windows Z could see that only a few people were on board.
They went over to the bed and sat down and turned on the reading light. They picked up the book they had checked out for themselves at the school library. Everything You Need to Know About Monsters, it was called. The author was called Dean Goldsmith, and he grinned unflappably from the back of the dust jacket, his hair coiffed into a style nobody had worn since before Z was born. Z had found the book in the section of the library dedicated to expository nonfiction intended for teenage readers writing reports. Its cover showed a colorful, airbrushed photo of a young woman with a torn shirt brandishing a head of garlic at a recoiling vampire. The summary on the back was extremely peppy. You may think it’s boring to learn about monsters, the back cover read, but it’s actually pretty sweet to know facts that may save your life!
The inside jacket, too, was a collection of upbeat phrases with a lot of exclamatory punctuation. Z laughed when they had first looked it over in the library.
Did you know that one in thirteen high school students will encounter a monster before they turn eighteen? That’s pretty “wack”! Here’s the source for the real truth about monsters. No rumors or myths—we play it straight.
Z had checked out the book as a kind of last resort. After all, they needed something to fall back on in case they didn’t get any help from Mr. Weber. However, as Z began to read, it became clear that despite the book’s promises to be helpful, it was not. The page on “Zombies and Enchanted Undead” had very little in the way of useful facts.
Most monsters are like people, but with a huge personal supply of magic they can’t control, which drives them crazy or makes them violent. Zombies are different: most have no magical power of their own, since they are the product of other people’s spells and their own magic is gone with their life force. They can, however, leach magic from other people around them and direct it back at their attacker, making them difficult to bring down without nonmagical weapons like fire and guns.
Goldsmith spent most of the time recounting anecdotes about famous zombie massacres. Toward the end he mentioned, briefly, the fact that some zombies seemed to be capable of “some limited cognition, maybe equivalent to that of a mentally ill living person.” Z supposed that Goldsmith must not think very much of “mentally ill” living people, because he still recommended either cutting off the head of a zombie and burning it or putting a tire around the zombie’s neck and then covering them with gasoline.
Z thought about what they would do if someone tried to cut off their head. Probably bite them, Z thought. And then stab them, maybe, and run or stumble away and then—what? Set everything on fire. Z looked at the picture of Dean Goldsmith again. This man wants people to cut my head off and throw it in a river, they thought.
They got up and grabbed a red pen and colored the picture on the dust jacket so it looked like Dean Goldsmith’s eyes were bleeding. The ink glistened in the dim light of Z’s bedroom and got on their hands. It didn’t look like blood, really—it was too close to pink, especially because of all the pink and rose and fuchsia and magenta already in the room. Everything seemed too warm so Z tried to walk across the room to the window, where rain was still coming down. Z looked out into the night at the silent street. The rain made noise on the pavement.
“I’m going to eat Dean Goldsmith’s eyeballs for breakfast!” Z yelled out the window. Their voice was cold and hollow and dead-sounding, like a rasp that comes from something at the bottom of a cave. A dog in the backyard of the house across the street barked.
4
Choir was always the worst hour of the day. She only had it once a week. Aysel could have elected to have a period of silent reading on Thursdays instead, or chosen to play piano for the band, as she had last year, but at the beginning of the school year she had been very attached to the idea of getting out of school when she was eighteen and starting a band.
The alto section was composed of Aysel, Tommy Wodewose, a girl named April Kua who never spoke and who seemed to whisper instead of sing, and Abigail White, an overly tall tenth-grade girl who tried several times to convince the choir teacher, Ms. Coulter, that she was really a soprano, with no success.
Today, they were singing a chorus number from The Music Man, an obnoxious musical about a con man and a noble woman librarian. Tommy was singing enthusiastically and the people around him kept elbowing one another and giggling at him. He seemed unaware, but Aysel had learned that his hand twitched when he knew people were making fun of him, and his fingers were dancing against the side of his leg. Tommy had braided two twigs of rosemary and a length of black ribbon into a plait on the top of his head.
“Tommy is the only one of the altos who is singing,” Ms. Coulter said loudly, over the music. “Come on, you three, listen to him sing the part once and then sing it with him. Take out your music, Aysel.”
Last year, just before they had taken him up to the roof and thrown him off, the rumor had been going around that Tommy had been seen talking to birds there. Talking to birds was supposed to prove that you had fairy blood. It was all made up, naturally.
Aysel squinted through her hair and her glasses as Tommy’s skinny shoulder bumped past her out the door and down the pale white hall as the bell rang loudly.
Aysel spent lunch poking at a pimple on her neck while sitting in the science room. Mr. Weber always kept his classroom open during first lunch, but he wasn’t always in the room. Today he was somewhere else. Aysel thought about Z, and wondered how they were doing, and where they were. Azra had stopped packing Aysel’s lunches in the eighth grade. Nowadays Aysel ate mostly toaster pastries and bananas. Since she had gotten her braces off it was okay for her to eat hard foods, but she’d fallen out of the habit.
Crumbs fell down over her black cotton T-shirt and onto her lap as she ate and stared at the purple toad in its tank and did her math and Magic Application homework. This week they were learning Detailed Summons and the quadratic formula, and there were at least four problems in each subject that had symbols Aysel was mostly but not entirely sure she understood. She hadn’t caught up on the homework for either class and was falling behind. The pentacles and parabolas started to get mixed up in her head. The toad stared at her uncomfortably. Aysel decided she would try again later. She got up and went looking for Z, her shoes flapping on the linoleum floors.
Aysel was not sure what it was about Z that made her feel so dedicated to becoming friends. Before the accident, Aysel hadn’t noticed Z very much, because their name had been Susan then and they had been friends with Bethany, who had once asked Aysel rudely how many Pop-Tarts she ate every day.
Z was nowhere to be found. Aysel stomped upstairs and looked into the library, but there were only a few boys in the back by the photocopy machine, working on something for a class. Z wasn’t in the lunchroom, either. So Aysel sat down next to the door to Mr. Holmes’ room and hummed to herself until class started.
Mr. Holmes scratched under his nails, which made awful clicking noises as he pushed his hands together. Aysel thought about what she had heard, about him trying to give Z away. Mr. Holmes had never been one of Aysel’s favorite teachers because of the way he talked about monsters—once he had spent the whole lesson talking about how immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe had
worsened the United States’ werewolf problem in the early decades of the twentieth century, and made it clear to everyone that he was one of those people who believed that werewolves were better dealt with during the fourteenth through eighteenth centuries, when they were burned. Most people seemed to like him.
“The Eastern Warlock Union made inroads toward workers’ rights in the 1880s in the wake of the Great Fire of Baltimore. Who knows what started that fire? Anyone?” He looked around. Nobody had been paying attention enough to answer, but Mr. Holmes wasn’t really looking for audience participation. “It was, of course, caused by poorly supervised dragon slaughterhouses.” Mr. Holmes snuffled loudly.
Ginger was in the very middle of the middle row, discreetly coloring a detailed pattern of stained glass on the cover of her notebook, her long straight red hair falling elegantly to one side. Mr. Holmes either did not notice her or chose not to reprimand her. Aysel was certain that if she tried to draw in class she would be called on it immediately.
It was after fifth-period Magic Application, as Aysel was walking down the corridor, that she heard Mr. Holmes talking to one of the janitors.
“A window broken in Town Hall, and you know it’s werewolves, Morris wasn’t the only one—they’ve been having this happen in Portland too—”
“They’re saying it’s werewolves,” the janitor was saying, “but you can’t know that. It could be anything. It could be bears. Don’t worry so much.” Aysel looked back over her shoulder. Mr. Holmes was rubbing his amulet between two fingers.
“Of course it’s werewolves, Mike,” he said nervously. “It’s the breakdown of law and order, I swear. We’ll be overrun. Anarchists burning things down and opening the way for the monsters. A werewolf attack once a month—just think of it. We’ll all be overrun. And that bookstore downtown with a themed display about accepting werewolves as part of society, without electroshock. What the hell are they playing at?”
Mike the janitor shrugged. “Well, don’t let it get to you,” he said. He began to walk away with his cart of mops. Mr. Holmes was left standing alone, staring at the other side of the hall like it was about to attack him. Aysel felt, momentarily, sorry for him.
She stepped into the bathroom and pulled her hair into a ponytail and poked again at the pimple on her neck. Behind her, one of the stall doors opened. It was Z. Aysel started and looked around, hoping that Z hadn’t noticed her touching the pimple. They hadn’t seemed to have noticed Aysel at all. Z looked worse than the previous day. Their eyes were watery and yellowish and tired, and there was a dark spot under the skin on their cheek. They smelled slightly acrid as they approached the sinks. It wasn’t enough to notice unless you were close, but Aysel had a very good sense of smell. Z wore a black shirt and black pants and had a black wool hat pulled low over their eyes.
“Hello,” Aysel said, drying her hands on a paper towel.
Z did not answer at first. They looked apathetically at the mirror, and for an instant Aysel had a horrifying impression of a hollow, unmoving body, a corpse propped up. It only lasted a moment. Z turned toward Aysel and seemed to recognize her. “Oh,” they said. “Hello.”
Aysel had a strong impulse to hug Z, or to rip them apart. She stepped backward instead. “What’s your next class?”
Z stared into the mirror again. They touched their face gingerly. “Do you see that spot?” they asked.
Aysel tried to decide whether to be truthful. “Yes,” she said. “A little.”
“The book I got on forensic analysis,” Z said, “says that those are formed by blood clotting under the skin. Or sometimes by gases that are given off in decomposition.”
Aysel looked with polite interest at Z’s spot. “Oh,” she said.
“After a while, they burst.”
“Well, I have spots,” Aysel said. “Zits and things. They all look worse than that, too.”
Z stared at Aysel. “I guess,” they said.
“Look, you just have to not think about it for now and you can sort it out later,” Aysel said helplessly. She felt this was the opposite of good advice, so she amended it by saying, “Maybe. Sorry.”
“My next class is Spanish,” Z said.
“Me too,” Aysel said, flustered. She and Z left the bathroom and walked down the hall together. Most people were already in their next classes, so the halls were empty.
“I like your outfit,” Aysel said, a little timidly.
“Thanks. I’m in mourning.” Z smiled a little. “Also, my uncle threw away my favorite sweatshirt.”
“It’s a good look,” Aysel said. “I want to dress like that—I don’t know what you’d call that style. It’s not goth, just minimalist maybe. Goth is overdone.”
“Yeah,” Z said.
“Except I might end up being a goth. I also want to dye my hair a bunch of colors.”
After the last class ended, Z and Aysel walked out of the school and crossed the lawns. The clouds still hung thick in the sky. They passed a few groups of people; Aysel imagined she felt people staring at them. It was almost four in the afternoon and the sun would set soon—midwinter was all short gray days and long nights. Aysel’s feet made slipping noises on the pavement.
“Oh hell,” Z said suddenly, and stopped walking. Aysel looked over.
“What’s wrong?”
Z stood there, looking ahead with wide eyes. They made no noise. Aysel saw again how much Z resembled a corpse but tried not to let it faze her.
“What’s wrong, Z?”
Z made a long, low rasping noise. It did not sound like human speech—it resembled the noise wind made at night. Their eyes rolled back into their head for a second, yellow watery orbs. Then they bent over and began to cough loudly.
Aysel began to panic. “What’s happening? What can I do?” She moved a little frantically and held Z’s shoulder. Z was stiff and cold and shook with each cough, as if whatever they were coughing up was from a very deep part of their body.
Z spat out something soft and black onto the pavement and stood up again, clearing their throat. Aysel looked at the thing on the pavement and wondered if it was an organ. Z didn’t seem very concerned. They rubbed their eyes and smiled. “Sorry,” they said. “That was probably really weird.”
“It was scary. What was that?”
“It’s been happening lately. I’m not sure what it is.”
“Does it hurt?”
“When it starts it hurts, but then I go all numb. I think my pain cells must be dead. Neurons.” Z began to walk again, stepping carefully over the thing on the sidewalk.
“When are you going to go to the university for the books about necromancy?” Aysel asked.
“This weekend, I guess,” Z said. “Saturday or something.”
“You’re going alone?”
“Mr. Weber is going with me.”
“He’s a great teacher. He helped me start the science club last year. He’s not like other teachers.”
“I know he isn’t,” Z said, “but I don’t know if he’ll do anything for me. He does have to stay safe.” They turned to Aysel, who blinked at the unexpected eye contact. “You know what it’s like. Adults always say they’ll do something nice or protect you, but they don’t know what you actually need.”
“I know what you mean,” Aysel said. “I’m sure Mr. Weber’s not like that, though.”
“Okay,” Z said doubtfully. They reached the bus stop.
“What are you doing this afternoon?” Aysel asked.
Z shrugged. “I’ll probably go home and sit in the house alone and try not to get eaten by cats and do homework.” They smiled. Aysel was still getting used to their weird, supernaturally low voice.
“Who do you live with?” Aysel was suddenly curious. She realized that Z must have had to deal with a lot lately on their own—there didn’t seem to be an adult in the background helping them through anything. Who was there for you when your parents died?
“This old lesbian witch from my mother’s church. She of
fered to take me in because my uncle is a terrible person.” Z said it matter-of-factly. “She owns that bookstore, The Reading Circle, in town. It hasn’t been doing too well lately. Some people threw something through the window and broke the glass because she has a section on werewolf rights.”
“Oh,” Aysel said. She had been inside the bookstore, but she hadn’t known it was run by a lesbian.
“It’s pretty okay. I mean, if I have to choose someone to live with, Mrs. Dunnigan’s all right. We don’t have a lot of money for groceries and she’s kind of messy, but she’s really cool.”
“She sounds that way.”
“For a while she was into acting like a mom,” Z added, “but it finally stopped this week. She’s too old to juggle everything. She’s got an event at her bookstore. Some author coming in to read about his time working with at-risk werewolves. So she’s out tonight.”
“Do you want to come to my house?” Aysel asked suddenly. She heard her voice shake.
“Why?”
Aysel floundered. “Well, just because. I don’t live too far from here. My mom isn’t working today, either, so she could make dinner.”
“Okay,” Z said.
They walked the rest of the way to Aysel’s house. When they got there Aysel realized for the first time in months how messy their yard looked. It was a garden in the summer, but in the winter it was just kale and squash plants and dirt mounds which hid potatoes. The earth was still damp from the rain, and their shoes were both muddy.
“Could you take off your shoes? Sorry,” Aysel said, as Z walked into the hall.
“Oh, right,” Z said. They slid off their shoes, and Aysel got a glimpse of a grey, dry ankle between the edge of Z’s pants and their sock. Z looked up at the nazar bead, hanging on the wall. “What’s that? It’s the same as your necklace.”
“A charm to protect us against evil. Demons and monsters and shapeshifters and djinn and stuff. It’s a Turkish thing.”
“Didn’t do anything to me,” Z said.