Forget This Ever Happened

by Cassandra Rose Clarke

  Claire lifts the dress out of the box. The fabric fans out with a whisper, gray and gauzy. Pale ribbons drape around the neckline, and dark green embroidery creeps up from the hem, fanning out in strange, eerie patterns that remind Claire of the wildness of the sea.

  “Wow, Mom would freak if she knew this was up here.”

  Julie’s voice drags Claire back to the attic room. She blinks, shakes her head. “It is really pretty.”

  “Mom’s super into old clothes and stuff.” Julie stands up. “Here, let’s see how it’ll look on you.”

  Claire laughs. “I doubt this would even fit over my leg.”

  Julie rolls her eyes. “At least hold it up. There’s a mirror over in the corner somewhere.”

  Claire stands up, bringing the dress with her. The waist is corset-narrow, and when she presses it up against herself she can still see her body on each side.

  “Yeah, I won’t be wearing this anytime soon,” she mutters.

  “Over here!” Julie calls out. “Just to see.”

  Claire turns, the dress swirling around her feet. Julie drags a swinging full-length mirror out next to the TV, and Claire walks over to her, still holding the dress up, trying not to stumble over the hem. When she looks at her reflection she just sees herself, holding up a long drape of gray fabric.

  “Doesn’t look like much.”

  “I bet it would look great on you,” Julie says.

  “Yeah, if you could take it out about ten inches.”

  Julie just shakes her head, smiling a little, watching Claire as she poses in the mirror. The dress sweeps across the floor.

  “I wonder whose it was,” Claire says.

  “Maybe there’s something in the box.”

  Claire lets the dress drop. “Maybe.” She loops the dress over her arms a couple of times and walks back over to the box. Julie picks up the lid, flips it over. Shakes her head. Then she picks up the box proper. When she turns it upside down, her eyes go wide.

  “What is it?” Claire asks.

  “Check it out.” Julie upturns the box. A name is carved into the wood, in looping script.

  Abigail Sudek

  Julie lets out a low whistle. “Maybe your great-great-great-grandma did used to live in this house.”

  Claire considers this. “I think you might be right,” she finally says. “Isn’t that weird? That our families shared a house.”

  Julie glances at her. “Not weird,” she says. “Just cool.”

  And at that, Claire smiles.

  CHAPTER

  Six

  JULIE

  Julie kicks her feet up on the desk, narrowly dodging a stack of mimeographed forms Brittany asked her to file. Julie has no intention of doing it. Filing’s Brittany’s job, and she loves passing along work to Julie ever since Julie’s dad told Brittany she’s in charge—of Julie, anyway—whenever he or the manager, Eric, aren’t around. Which is most of the time.

  Julie leans back in her chair, her hands resting behind her head. The phone hasn’t rung once since she got here, and Forrest has already laid claim to all the bug jobs. He always comes in thirty minutes early for that exact purpose. Julie swears he and Brittany are conspiring together to make this job even more miserable than it already is. Alien might be her favorite movie, but the reality of hunting monsters is a dreary experience all in all.

  The AC kicks on, rustling the papers on the desk. Julie tips an ugly marble paperweight over with her foot so it’ll trap the papers in place. Then she checks her watch. Only 1:27. She’s been here for two hours and already she’s going out of her mind with boredom. She wishes she could call up Claire, although she doesn’t want to come across as pushy. They had a good time the other day, playing Mortal Kombat and excavating that old dollhouse. The dress Claire found is hanging from the mirror in the attic, set up next to the TV. Julie likes glancing over at it whenever she’s watching a movie. It’s like a little piece of Claire left behind.

  Julie is aware of how creepy that would sound if she ever admitted it to anymore.

  The knob on the office door rattles. Julie immediately swings her feet down to the floor and starts riffling through a stack of forms, trying to pretend she’s doing work. Brittany’s liable to tattle on her to her dad. The forms are all monster requisitions from the last few days, when Julie’s been off. Most of them were down on hurricane alley, right where they’re supposed to be. Nothing in town.

  The door slams open. It’s not Brittany. It’s Julie’s dad.

  “Damn thing’s still sticking,” he mutters. “I’ll have to say something to Brittany.”

  Julie suppresses a grin. Brittany will hate that, getting called to repair doors like a janitor.

  “Hey, Dad,” Julie calls out. Her dad glances up at her and squints through his thick glasses.

  “You’re working today?” He shakes his head. “No, of course, I knew that. Don’t want you lazing around the house too much. It’s good to keep a young mind occupied over the summer.”

  As if lazing around the exterminator’s office is such an improvement on Julie’s productivity.

  “Not really working,” she starts. “There’s no—”

  “Well, whose fault is that?” Her dad shoos her out of the seat, and Julie obeys, grudgingly, moving to perch on the edge of the windowsill instead. The hot sun warms her back.

  “Forrest,” she says. “He took all the bug jobs.”

  Her dad pulls open one of the drawers and extracts a thick black address book. He tosses it to the desk with a thump.

  “You know you aren’t supposed to be doing bug jobs anyway.” He flips through the address book, running his finger down the letter tabs sticking out at the sides.

  “Bug jobs are safer.” She’s parroting a line she heard from her mom at dinner; Julie’s mom has been a semi-ally in the fight to get Julie a job at the video store, one of the few things her mom has ever sided with her on. “I bet I’d work a lot harder at the video store.”

  “Frank doesn’t need anyone.” Her dad stops on one of the address book’s pages, its lines filled with his incomprehensible dark scribble. “Aha! I knew I had Georgia’s number somewhere.”

  “Who’s Georgia?” Julie asks.

  Her dad doesn’t answer, only grabs the phone and begins dialing. He glances over at her. Julie can hear the faint ring of the line. “And you know where I stand on the video store. We talked about this. Working at the exterminator’s is giving you skills you’re going to need—Georgia? Oh, I’ve been trying to get a hold of you! How are those Coke shipments?”

  Julie leans back against the window, not caring that she’s smashing the plastic blinds. She and her father have gone over this a hundred times already, ever since he informed her that she needed to pay her own way in the world, just like he did. A lie, of course—money has been in the Alvarez family for years, and Julie knows for a fact that her dad spent his youth zipping around the highways in a Chrysler 300 gifted to him on his sixteenth birthday. Her grandpa told her all about it.

  Still, her dad persists with the argument that Julie needs to learn how to protect herself against the monsters, that she needs to learn how they think and how they react in different situations. Julie’s pretty sure her dad expects her to come back to Indianola after college and take over his business empire, which would include sitting on the committee that signs treaties with the monsters. But Julie’s got other plans. Her eyes are on Austin. Frank’s already showed her some of the experimental films that have been coming out of there, and she wants in on it. She just has to finish high school first. And survive working at the exterminator’s office.

  “Yeah, mm-hmm, that sounds great. Thanks, Georgia.” Her dad laughs, big and hearty and fake. “You too! Watch out for those scamps.”

  Julie wonders when her father started saying the word scamps.

  Her dad’s still chatting with Georgia when the button for the second line lights up. Julie’s heart clenches. She hopes it’s not a job, hopes it’s just someo
ne calling to complain that Forrest is running late.

  Her dad sees the light too, and he looks at her and points at it and points at the door. Go check with Brittany. She doesn’t need him to say it out loud. The lines in his forehead do the talking.

  She sighs and pushes away from the window. Leaves him laughing in his chair. Out in the lobby, Brittany has the phone tucked between her shoulder and ear as she scribbles down notes. It looks like the job book. Dammit.

  “We’ll send someone over right way, Mrs. Sudek,” she says.

  Julie’s heart leaps. A job at Mrs. Sudek’s means a chance to see Claire again, and this time totally at random. Maybe it really is fate for the two of them to be friends.

  Or more than friends.

  Julie shoves the thought aside. Dwelling on it’ll just make her heartsick.

  “Got a job for you,” Brittany says, hanging up the phone.

  “Yeah, I heard. It’s at Mrs. Sudek’s?” Julie holds her breath. She hopes she didn’t mis-hear.

  “Yep. Another talking monster. You’re going to want to note on the report that this is the second one in a week. The committee’ll need to hear about it.”

  “I know how to do my job,” Julie snaps.

  Brittany rolls her eyes and blows a bubble with her gum. Her glittery butterfly clips flash in her perfectly straightened hair.

  “Here’s all the information,” she says, tearing the sheet out of the job book and handing it to Julie. “Nothing too unusual. She said it was tall, though, so you’ll want to make sure to take the big cage.”

  Julie doesn’t say anything, just shoves the information sheet into her pocket and bounds out of the office. Her heart thrums with excitement—well, excitement and nervousness both—but at the same time she feels a cold twist of dread. Not because of Claire, but because another monster has gone to Mrs. Sudek’s.

  Julie wonders if the committee will actually do anything about it. They don’t do much—no one in town does, really. Everyone just keeps their distance.

  She climbs into the van and roars off down the street. It doesn’t take her long to get to Mrs. Sudek’s house, especially since she goes faster than she should and runs a couple of yellow lights. She pulls into the driveway and parks. The house is closed up tight, like a birthday present waiting to be opened. Julie takes a deep breath. She checks her reflection in the rearview mirror. Her eyeliner’s still looking good. Not that it matters, right? Claire isn’t going to notice her that way.

  Besides, she’s got a monster to deal with.

  She hops out of the van and opens up the back doors so she can drag out the big cage. It comes with little wheels to make transport easier, but they always get stuck if you take them off pavement, so Julie leaves the cage sitting on the driveway. She’ll come back and grab it when she can.

  Julie rings the doorbell.

  At first there’s only silence. But then footsteps whisper on the other side of the door. It swings open. Claire steps up to the screen, sunlight falling in tiny squares across her face.

  “Oh, Julie!” she says. “I was hoping they’d send you.”

  Julie’s heart swells. “Well, you know, I heard the name Sudek, and apparently we’ve got a house in common—” She shrugs. Claire laughs, a sweet twinkling sound that chimes around in Julie’s head. “It’s out back again, isn’t it? I didn’t see anything when I drove up.”

  “Yeah, in the same place as before.” Claire pushes open the screen and Julie steps into the foyer. She’s never liked Mrs. Sudek’s house. It’s too stuffy, too closed-in, and breathing the air feels like choking on the past. But it’s a lot more tolerable with Claire standing at her side, her bare arms crossed over her chest, her pale skin almost glowing in the dusty gloom.

  “What did it say?” Julie asks. “Brittany said it was a talking one.”

  “Yeah.” Claire rubs her arms and looks down. “I didn’t really—it was talking about astronauts.”

  “Astronauts?” Julie frowns and looks down the hallway. Blue TV light flickers in the living room. “Really?”

  “Yeah. It kept asking me if I’d seen the astronaut, and—”

  “It asked you questions?”

  Claire nods. For the first time Julie is really aware of the glint of fear in her eyes. It’s faint, but she should have seen it earlier.

  “It didn’t make sense,” Claire says.

  Julie takes a deep breath. “I’m going to go talk to it. Do you—” She hesitates. “Do you mind coming out there with me? Since it was talking to you, it might be here—” She doesn’t want to finish her thought. Might be here for you. Claire looks away. Strands of hair stick to her neck and the side of her face, and her skin gleams with sweat.

  “Are you going to keep yammering in there or are you going to get this creature out of my yard?”

  Claire jumps at the sound of Mrs. Sudek’s voice. Then she looks up at Julie and mouths an apology.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Julie whispers. Then, louder, she calls out, “I’m here, Mrs. Sudek! We’ll get you cleared out in no time.”

  Julie remembers the way to the back door. Claire walks alongside her. They pass through the living room, where Mrs. Sudek stares at her TV, her face ghostly and thin in the light.

  At the back door, Julie puts her hand on the knob and turns to Claire. TV noises trickle in from the living room, and Julie pitches her voice low, and says something she’s always wanted to say to a girl:

  “Don’t worry. I’ll keep us safe.”

  Claire smiles, a crooked, gorgeous smile, and Julie pushes the door open.

  Sunlight pours in, bright against the darkness of the Sudek house. Julie and Claire step out into the heat.

  The monster stands in the yard.

  It’s tall, long and thin like it’s been stretched out. Julie’s definitely going to need the large cage. But its height isn’t the only alarming thing about it: Its arms are too long for the rest of its body, and its fingers are too long for its arms. It looks like an aloe vera plant, fleshy spikes jutting out of the ground. Its face is narrow and pointed, and its eyes glint greenish in the sunlight.

  Julie feels a wash of nausea, looking at it.

  “What are you doing in town?” she asks.

  The monster doesn’t answer.

  Julie walks right up to the edge of the patio. “My friend here said you can talk,” she says. “But if you don’t prove it to me, you know the treaties give me the right to exterminate you.”

  The monster’s mouth splits open, revealing rows of teeth, like a shark. Julie starts backward, her pulse pounding. A hand touches the top of her back. Claire, steadying her. Julie draws up all her bravery.

  Maybe that was supposed to be a smile.

  “You’re correct,” the monster says, and its voice is like steam and cold dark machinery. “I can speak. Truly speak, not like the xenade who wandered too far into town five days ago.”

  Xenade. Julie’s heard that word before. It’s the monsters’ name for themselves.

  “So why are you here?” Julie asks.

  The monster moves, sliding forward on one of its clawed feet. Claire shrieks and grabs Julie’s arm, her nails digging into Julie’s skin. The monster stops and looks past Julie at Claire. Julie tenses. The monster looks back to Julie. Back to Claire.

  Even in the patio shade, Julie feels like she’s drowning in the sun’s heat.

  And then the monster sniffs. It lifts up its nose—its snout?—and sniffs the air, once, twice. Claire’s grip tightens on Julie’s arm.

  “Are you going to get the hell out of here or not?” Julie asks. It’s all she wants, for the monster to leave so she doesn’t have to ride with it back to the power plant. “I’ve got a cage. You know you’ll have to get in if you don’t go.”

  “Interesting,” the monster says. “Very interesting.” It lurches forward over the dead grass, moving closer to the house. The monster’s movements are strange and jerky, like it’s not used to walking, and it takes a long time
to get across the yard.

  But then one of its feet steps onto the porch. And then the other.

  Claire sputters out a gurgled, frightened sound, and Julie turns to her and puts a hand on her arm and Claire looks at her, their faces so close they could kiss.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Julie whispers. “They really aren’t dangerous.”

  The monster sniffs again. Julie whips her head back around to face it. “What are you doing?” she says. “You can’t come this close to the house.”

  The monster turns its green eyes on Claire.

  “Leave her alone!” Julie steps in front of Claire, trying to block the monster’s line of sight. “What in God’s name is wrong with you things? You know the treaties. You aren’t supposed to be here.”

  “I came to warn the Sudek about the astronaut,” the monster says.

  “What the hell does that mean?” Julie shouts. Claire presses close to her, her breath hot against Julie’s shoulder. “An astronaut?”

  The monster retreats back into the yard. Those fleshy tendrils roil around, and Julie stands trembling, thinking how out of place it looks, like something that shouldn’t even exist in this world. Maybe that’s why it wants to talk about astronauts.

  “I merely find it interesting,” the monster says, “to see an Alvarez and a Sudek, standing side by side.”

  Silence floods the yard.

  Julie fumbles around for her voice. “Now why would you say a thing like that? How do you even know our names?”

  “I can smell it on you. The Alvarez line.” It directs one tendril at Julie. “And the Sudek line.” Another at Claire. “It’s an interesting combination, cosmically speaking.”

  Julie glances at Claire, afraid that Claire will somehow interpret the monster’s nonsense for the truth. But Claire isn’t even looking at her, just staring out at the monster with wide, frightened eyes.

  “I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” Julie says. “Now, are you going to leave or not? I can get my cage.” She pauses. “Or the Taser. You know I’m authorized to use it if I deem it necessary.” Which she doesn’t want to do.