by Hal Schrieve
“You must not be the kind of monster it’s set up for.”
Azra was asleep on the couch, dressed in purple pajama pants and a thick black sweater that was too long for her. Aysel was embarrassed when she saw her mother like that. Azra woke up when the door clicked open. She looked groggily up at her daughter and Z.
“Hello, Ayselcim. Who’s your friend?”
“This is Z, Mom,” Aysel said.
Z waved timidly. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Tahir,” they said.
Azra ran a hand through her hair, which had gotten messy while pressed into the couch pillows. She was not wearing any makeup, and looked sleepy and puffy. “It’s Ms. Tahir, actually,” she said, “but please, call me Azra. I’m sorry for my appearance, I have today off and was catching up on sleep. I had a big court date yesterday and I haven’t slept much for a while.”
“Oh! It’s um, it’s all right.” Z looked over at Aysel as if expecting her to say something or guide them. “Um, thanks for having me over, Azra,” Z said.
“You don’t need to thank her,” Aysel said. “It’s fine.”
“It’s nice that you have such a polite friend, Aysel. Don’t reprimand her for just being decent.” Azra turned to Z. “It’s a pleasure to have you, dear. Zee, you said? What is that short for?”
“It’s not short for anything,” Z said, at the same time that Aysel began to tell her mother Z was short for Susan. Aysel was glad afterward that she hadn’t finished saying that.
“How unusual,” Azra said.
“You can go back to sleep, Mom,” Aysel said. “Z and I are just going to do homework for a while.”
“No, I’m up—and look, it’s nearly five, I should start making dinner. Are you going to eat with us, Zee?”
“I—am I invited?” Z asked.
“Sure, of course!” Azra said. “Go with Aysel and dig me up some potatoes before you start your homework.” She went over to the sink and began washing her hands. “I’ll make tea.”
Z and Aysel walked back outside. The light shifted from the yellow glow of inside to the cold blue light of winter.
“My mom enchants the potatoes and kale to grow year-round,” Aysel said. “It doesn’t work on things like strawberries—too much work—but she manages the boring foods.”
“Your mom seems cool,” Z said.
Aysel felt a wisp of hair at the end of her nose and scowled. “Not really,” she said. “Help me dig up the potatoes.”
Z stared at the cold earth, at a loss.
“Here,” Aysel said, and bent down and began to part the earth with her hands. It was cold around her fingers, and soft. She reached down, moving the earth with sweeps to the side. She lifted up a grubby potato and handed it to Z. A worm crawled away from a pile of dirt that had been overturned, and Z was staring at it.
“The food just comes out of the ground,” Z said a few minutes later, their hands full of small potatoes.
“Well,” Aysel said, maybe a little crossly—which she felt was fair, seeing as Z had done nothing but stand there while she dug in the dirt—“you have to tend them and then go and dig for them.”
“Still, though, it’s a miracle,” Z said.
“Okay, it’s a miracle. The circle of life.”
Z giggled unexpectedly as Aysel pulled the door open. “I bet I’d make good compost,” they whispered.
After dinner they went into Aysel’s room and listened to music and did homework. Z showed Aysel how the quadratic formula worked after Aysel fried her calculator with frustrated magic, twice, and had to put in new batteries. As it turned out, there was no quadratic formula button on the calculator. Aysel thought there should be. Couldn’t one thing in mathematics be easy?
“You have to learn to use math if you’re going to be a scientist,” Z said. “Isn’t that what you want to do?”
“I want to work with animals, not anything that needs math,” Aysel snapped. She felt friendly, though. They were both writing papers about their weekends for Spanish class, and Z joked that they could write about accidentally pulling out their own eyeball while trying to take out a contact lens. At least Aysel thought it was a joke. It was meant to make Aysel laugh.
Azra was watching the news in the front room. She had been tuning in to the evening news regularly since the police killed Timothy Morris. The coverage of the story as it developed, and the police’s growing case against the dead werewolf, put Aysel’s teeth on edge. She had not been able to pay attention. She jumped and looked warily at Z when Azra called out from the front room.
“Aysel! This news story is about the Pagan murder.”
Aysel stuck her head around the corner and gestured behind her to where Z sat studying Spanish adverbs. “Mom,” she said, “I can’t right now.” But she looked toward the television and stood halfway in and out of her room as blurry ticker tape announcing the story scrolled across the twenty-inch screen.
“New evidence has come to light that Archie Pagan did not stop working with werewolves when he moved to Oregon,” the reporter onscreen said. “The murdered man had previously cooperated with a nonprofit on the East Coast that helped provide electroshock to wolves. He claimed that his new practice in central Salem was devoted to traditional psychoanalysis and family therapy, but an anonymous source claiming to be a relative of a local patient says that Pagan continued to secretly provide electroshock therapy to werewolves inside the state of Oregon. The source described an underground operation that had continued for over a decade, through which potentially thousands of unregistered werewolves were rendered nonmagical. Pagan’s wife was not reachable for comment, but police have obtained an initial warrant to search his old office for evidence of illegal werewolf treatment.”
Z stood and came to stand behind Aysel. “What’s this?” they asked her.
“It’s about that guy that was murdered,” Aysel said. “By Timothy Morris, the werewolf. The news says he was treating unregistered werewolves, giving them electroshock so they didn’t transform.”
“Fuck.”
Azra looked over at Z. “Hey, watch your language,” she said. Aysel knew the tone of her mother’s voice meant that she was distracted.
“What will they do if they find out that he was really doing this?” Z asked. “They can’t try him if he’s dead.”
“They could track down the werewolves that he helped,” Azra said. “Unless they were smart and used assumed names. But that’s only if Pagan was stupid, and didn’t hide his files.”
They finished their Spanish homework and sat around listening to Aysel’s Şebnem Ferah casettes, because Z wanted to know what a Turkish girl rock band was like. It was dark outside, but Aysel didn’t turn on any more lights. She lay on the floor with the desk lamp’s pale glow against the window, the only source of illumination, looking at Z.
“You should see the video we have for this song,” Aysel said. “She’s got these platform boots and is wearing this amazing halter top and she leans back really far when she hits the high notes. My mom likes her too.”
“We could watch it now,” Z said.
“No, my mom’s out there still and she would try to give us a history of the whole rock scene and be really goofy. But sometime we should.”
When Z had to go home, Aysel offered to walk them to the bus. Azra smiled and said goodbye to Z and tried to help Aysel put on a coat. They both went off into the dark, hurrying from streetlight to streetlight. The last bus was due to run soon. Aysel was wrapped in her mother’s coat and was still cold; Z wasn’t even wearing a jacket.
“Can you feel anything? It’s freezing out here,” Aysel said.
“I can’t really tell it’s cold out at all,” Z said. “It’s just numb. I can’t feel a lot of temperatures very well. I only feel really hot things, like fire.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’ve experimented a little. Just to see what happens.”
“What if your toes freeze off?”
“I don’t know,” Z said
.
“Sorry. That was awful of me. Thanks for coming for dinner.”
“Thank you for having me,” Z said. Suddenly they were stiff and formal again, a cardboard cut-out. “You don’t have to wait for the bus with me. It comes in ten minutes.”
“Okay,” Aysel said. She didn’t want to risk saying anything else wrong. She turned around and walked away. Halfway down the block she realized that she should turn and wave or something, so she spun around—but Z was gone. Maybe they had realized they wanted to walk home, Aysel thought.
Azra was up watching reruns of a show about ghost hunters in the Canadian wilderness. Aysel sat and watched it with her. They didn’t speak; eventually both of them fell asleep curled in different positions on the same couch.
5
Zleft the bus stop and went into the woods across the street. Something about being in Aysel’s house had felt like an escape—homey and with a mother ready to care for her daughter, who grew food in the yard like witches long ago had. When Z had gotten up from doing homework to go sharpen a pencil in the office, they had glanced into the kitchen and seen Aysel’s mother stirring a rice dish with one hand and holding a cigarette between two fingers of the other. There had been something so profoundly amazing and entrancing about Ms. Tahir in that moment. Z figured it had something to do with grief. They touched the place on their chest where the spell was burned into their skin and wondered how and when Suzanna Chilworth had cast the spell, and what she was thinking when she did it. And why she had never told Z about it—or even that she knew how to do necromancy. Z couldn’t remember the last time they had talked to their mother about anything serious, and now they never would again.
Z didn’t want to take the bus back to Mrs. Dunnigan’s apartment, so as Aysel turned to walk back home, they spun around and walked through a hedge into the nearest backyard. They distantly felt the branches scratch at their face. Z’s feet slid on the wet grass. A few dogs barked at them as they ambled along in the shadows. They walked through people’s backyards until the yards started having fences, and then they moved to the streets. Z looked through the bright windows onto the scenes inside— everything seemed so small from outside the houses. There was a dog sleeping on a couch, a woman at a sink, a man playing video games. They stood staring in one yard for a few minutes, watching two children run around each other in a living room. Above them, the sky was completely black; no stars were visible. They reached the end of Aysel’s suburban neighborhood and tried to figure out where they were. They vaguely recognized the strip mall they were facing from when they had seen it out of the window of a bus. They walked across the street without looking for the crosswalk. Behind them, a car rushed by.
As Z crossed the parking lot next to the grocery store, they saw two people walking toward them. Z squinted at them. Both of the strangers looked messy and were wearing large backpacks. They both had patched jeans stiff with mud and heavy sweatshirts.
“Hey,” one of them called out. Z stopped and turned around. Both of the approaching strangers looked ragged and clumpy and strong. As they got closer, Z realized that they were just teenagers. One of them was a girl, which made Z less nervous. Z wondered what they could want. Not money, hopefully. Z did not have any money.
“What do you want?” Z asked.
“Chill out,” the girl said. She was missing a front tooth. “Do you have a cigarette, kid?”
“I don’t smoke,” Z said.
The boy laughed. “What did you think, Elaine? He’s like eleven.”
Z’s ears pricked up. People usually didn’t think they were a boy.
“What, I mean, could be a small adult.”
“I told you.”
Z grimaced.
“Okay,” the girl said. Her face looked greasy and she had a zit on one side of her chin. She looked tired. “I shouldn’t really be smoking either. It’s so bad for you. Hey, kid, do you know how to get to the Union Gospel Mission from here?”
“I have no idea,” Z said. The wind blew and Z felt it very slightly. The boy shivered and hugged himself. Z felt sorry for him. Living people felt so much.
“It’s this meal thing we heard about. We’re hitchhiking and we haven’t got any money, you know?” He paused. “You know? We’re staying at a friend’s place but they haven’t gone grocery shopping and we need dinner.”
“Yeah,” Z said, realizing that they were actually expected to answer. The boy grinned, encouraged.
“I’m not asking for money,” he said. “You’re a kid, I don’t ask for money from kids. Anyway, we just need to get to this thing. Apparently it’s kind of close to Riverfront Park, on Commercial Street near the bridge.”
“Oh,” Z said. They had to think for a minute. “Well, that’s . . . that way.” They pointed north. The boy and girl both turned and looked in the direction Z had pointed. “I don’t know how far it is or anything,” Z added hastily. “I think it’s like two miles to the bridge. But if you walk north on Liberty Road you should get onto Commercial Street.”
“Oh, okay,” the girl said. “We couldn’t get a bus there or anything, could we?”
“I . . . I am not sure,” Z said. “Maybe the 08? I don’t know how late the bus runs. But it wouldn’t save you much time. It has like a million stops.” Z felt very grown up, giving this advice.
“Thanks,” the boy said. “Means a lot, man.”
“Yeah, thanks,” the girl agreed. The two walked off. Z watched them. They looked smaller the farther away they got. They couldn’t be that old, Z thought. Maybe eighteen or nineteen. The boy had one of those mustaches that meant he couldn’t grow a beard yet.
Something felt odd in their heart.
Z walked on, thinking about how scared they would have been of two strangers in the dark before the crash. They wondered if they had forgotten how to be scared of things.
A few blocks away from the street where Mrs. Dunnigan lived, Z stopped. They looked up at the street sign and across the road—they were close to the cemetery. The bus didn’t come this way. Z stopped for a few minutes and wondered whether to go find their parents’ graves. They decided not to. It would take too long in the dark.
Mrs. Dunnigan did seem glad that Z had gone to Aysel’s house.
“What are her parents like?” she asked. “What did you do?”
“We didn’t do much, just homework. And her mother and father are separated, or maybe she doesn’t have a father. Her mom’s nice.” Z thought of Ms. Tahir’s cigarette and her smile again and of the warm, protected feeling she gave Z. Z felt a little guilty about it.
“It’s good that you’re making new friends,” Mrs. Dunnigan said.
“How was the bookstore event?”
“It went all right for a little while,” Mrs. Dunnigan said. “The man who came to read is a friend of an old friend of mine. Not a werewolf, but he was married to one. But then two or three angry people came in and tried to start an argument about this business with the Archie Pagan murder. I don’t know if you heard, but apparently Pagan gave electroshock to unregistered werewolves. It’s a very controversial thing. There are people who think that’s fine, since it makes werewolves safer to be around, and there are people who want all werewolves to be registered with the state and get treatment through those avenues, and there are people like that Morris fellow who think electro-shock hurts werewolves more than it helps. It does cause things like memory loss and different allergic conditions.”
“Who were the angry people?”
“These people were the people who want all the wolves to get registered and get shock therapy. They said I was a monster activist. Sometimes with those people you can talk them down, but they were looking for a fight, so I had to ask them to leave, and right after that it looked like time to close up shop for the night.”
After her dinner, Mrs. Dunnigan and the cats watched the news and Z sat behind her, looking at the television and sort of absorbing what was happening. A new farmers’ market was opening, and a street do
wntown that was currently inhabited by homeless people was going to get cleaned up and made safe for businesses. There had been no new werewolf attacks; an initial search of Archie Pagan’s office had not turned up any evidence to show that he had treated werewolves there. All the reporters seemed tense.
Mrs. Dunnigan fed the cats and turned off the television.
Outside, it was dark and cold, though not cold enough to freeze. Mrs. Dunnigan tried to talk to Z about the book she was reading, but it was about something Z found very hard to pay attention to. Some of it had to do with sea monsters.
In the shower that night, Z was washing their hair, humming, when a large clump came out in their hand. They stared at it. Bits of wet skin clung to it, gray and disgusting. They felt their scalp, where the hair had come from. It was bald. There was no blood, but then that might just be because Z was dry of blood.
“I’m losing my hair!” Z shouted, as if there was anything anyone could do about it. The shower was loud and the TV was on and Z couldn’t hear if Mrs. Dunnigan responded.
Z released the clump of hair and watched it float toward the drain. They sat down, clutching at themselves as if their whole body might disappear, just dissolve and diffuse down the drain, so many particles of carbon. Their legs felt thin and bony. The skeleton inside them moved visibly. Z didn’t turn off the water; they were wishing in some part of themselves that if they didn’t act the water might destroy them right there at that moment. That would have at least been an effortless and probably painless end. The water was hot enough that for once they could feel something— the sensation of burning. Their fingernails were torn and scratchy. They sat down in the shower, the hot water sloughing over them in waves, steaming up the mirror and the frosted glass window high up on the wall. Nothing was okay. Nothing was okay. Everything was going to fall apart, Z included. Worms were going to shred their body and make it into mulch and Z was going to remain conscious for all of it. I wish I could just get it over with, Z thought.
Eventually the water went cold. Z wasn’t sure they wanted to self-preserve, but they still turned off the tap and wrapped a towel around their shoulders. Then they curled up and lay with their heart not beating and their lungs not working and their skin the temperature of a cool windowpane on the floor of the shower, as the night grew thicker and colder outside. They weren’t sure where Mrs. Dunnigan was.