But on top of that, there’s the same worry from before that Claire is in danger, that the monster wasn’t sputtering nonsense. She’s hidden from us. But she’s not hidden from Julie. What was it they said hid her away—the astronaut’s maze? Julie doesn’t know of any mazes around here.
Julie pushes herself out of bed. She set her alarm so she could catch her dad before he disappears off to work. She’s in no condition to go driving around town trying to find him; she shouldn’t have driven last night. Her heart’s broken. And you can’t operate heavy machinery with a broken heart.
She goes downstairs, following the scent of breakfast, and finds her dad at the table, the newspaper scattered in front of him. His customary cup of coffee—black—steams at his side. He takes a drink without looking up from the paper.
Julie raps on the doorframe to get his attention.
“Morning, Dad,” she says. “You have a good trip?”
He keeps reading for another couple of seconds—Senate Okays Space Station, Microsoft Previews New Windows OS—before glancing up at her. “I did, although it seems my daughter was replaced while I was gone. Not used to seeing you so early.”
“I didn’t sleep well.” Julie doesn’t expand on that, shivering at the thought that she could be replaced. She definitely doesn’t mention the unsettling dream she had about an astronaut walking across the beach, hand in hand with Claire. Claire had peered over her shoulder, the wind blowing her hair into her eyes. She was beautiful, and Julie woke up, and that was the last of the sleep she was going to get.
“Mmm,” her dad says, returning to his paper.
“I’ve been needing to talk to you for the last few days,” Julie says.
Her dad peers at over the top of his glasses. He doesn’t like it when you dance around the subject; his time, he says, is valuable, even with his family. “What is it?”
“It involves the monsters.” She’s certainly not going to tell him about what happened with Claire.
“Monsters? Was there an issue? Did you follow the procedure for when I’m away? Let Brittany know?”
“It’s not like that,” Julie says, cutting him off before he starts in on one of his procedure rants. Her fear is too sharp to deal with it this morning.
Her dad frowns. He’s already got on his suit and tie, and that makes him intimidating, not comforting. “What exactly happened, Julie?”
Julie presses up against the doorframe. She takes a deep breath. “My friend Claire—Claire Whitmore, Mrs. Sudek’s granddaughter—was attacked by a monster a few days ago. Well, not quite attacked—I mean, it attacked her house, not her. Forrest went out there, couldn’t find the monster. He filed a report, but Mr. Vickery doesn’t care because no humans were hurt.”
Her father watches her. “Well, yes. He’s bound by the statutes of the treaties.” He sighs. “Really, Julie, you should know this by now. You’ll be taking over my spot on the committee someday.”
Julie bites back the urge to argue and instead tries to steady her breathing. “Look, I do know, okay? But then…last night…something else happened.”
His brow furrows. “Go on.”
“I was at Lawrence’s,” she says. “And a monster came out of the woods, and it—it dragged me to the power plant. I think it was the power plant. I’m pretty sure.”
“What?” he says sharply. “It dragged you?”
“That’s not exactly right,” Julie says. “It didn’t, like, drag me, it took me—just for a few seconds—”
Her dad holds up one hand. “No. Stop. That may be a treaty violation.” He frowns. “It didn’t hurt you, though?”
Julie shakes her head.
“And you said it didn’t do the same thing to your friend? That it just attacked her house?”
“Yeah, but Claire is pretty sure it was trying to get to her, it just couldn’t. It cracked her window.”
“Okay, I’ll look at the report when I go into the office today. Now, this monster, when it dragged you off—what the hell did it want? Did you let it know you’re an exterminator?”
“Yes! I know how to deal with the monsters when they’re acting normal!” Julie’s voice pitches forward in a panicked whine. “It wasn’t about me. I told you, it had to do with Claire. The monster kept talking about an astronaut and how Claire’s been hidden.”
“Hidden?” Her dad looks up at Julie with concern. “Has she gone missing?”
“I just saw her last night. I think she’s okay.” Julie looks down at her lap. “I don’t know. I should call her—” She moves toward the phone, but her dad stops her, one hand laid across her arm.
“In a second,” he says. “Your mother’s going to kill me when she hears about all this. Were you supposed to go into work today?”
Julie shakes her head. She’d taken off because of the movie last night—because she knew she’d be spending the evening with Claire. That’s what she gets for being optimistic.
“Good. I’ll let Eric know you’re not going to be working there for the time being.” Her dad drops his hand away and slumps back in his chair. “Dammit, I didn’t need this today. We’ll file a complaint and have Forrest look into it.”
It takes Julie a moment to register what her dad just said. She won’t be working at the exterminator’s anymore. That’s all it took, a semi-kidnapping and a few moments of terror. All her dad’s talk about setting up her future in town and how monster-catching was teaching her more useful skills than college ever would didn’t amount to much when she was actually put in danger.
She wonders what this means, if he and the rest of the committee will actually do something now about keeping Claire safe.
“We’ll put you on at the hotel,” her dad says, almost distractedly.
“What?” Julie says, although she should have known she wouldn’t get the rest of the summer off. Not that she wants to, not after what happened with Claire.
“Or the video store, would you like that better?”
Julie’s heart gives a leap despite everything. “You know I would.”
Her dad snorts. “This wasn’t supposed to be dangerous. You know that. But if something is changing—” He shakes his head. “Hopefully we can get this sorted out, get you back at the exterminator’s in no time. It’s important.”
Julie doesn’t respond.
“Let me finish my coffee,” her dad says. “Then we’ll file the complaint and make sure the committee hears about this. And I’ll call Frank and have him get your paperwork started.” He looks up at her. His eyes are hard, steely, the eyes of a businessman. “Don’t think you’re getting out of learning the family business, though. You’re an Alvarez. Dealing with the monsters is what we do.”
Then he picks up the newspaper again. Nothing disrupts his morning routine. Not even monsters dragging his daughter away or trying to attack her friend.
“I’m going to get dressed,” she says.
“Good.” Her dad flips a page of the newspaper. “Don’t dawdle. We need to get this taken care of.”
Julie doesn’t mention that he’s the one reading the newspaper and sipping at his coffee. Instead, she goes up to her room and picks up the phone and dials Claire’s number from memory. She could have called from the kitchen, but she doesn’t want her dad eavesdropping on the conversation.
Her heart riots inside her chest, and every time the phone rings on the other end it’s like nails scratching down a chalkboard. Then the line clicks. Someone’s answered.
“Hello?”
It’s Mrs. Sudek, her voice raspy-rough. Julie is stunned into silence.
“Hello? Anybody there? I don’t have ti—”
“Mrs. Sudek,” Julie says, to fill the space. “It’s Julie Alvarez. I really need to speak with Claire—”
“Claire is busy right now. I’ll tell her you called.”
Julie is struck hard in the chest with a peculiar mixture of relief, that Claire is not missing, and misery, that she can’t speak to her. Can’t try to apologi
ze for her actions last night.
“Okay, then—”
Mrs. Sudek hangs up.
Julie sighs and replaces the receiver. Her head feels fuzzy. She wonders if Claire told her grandmother what happened. Her parents will kill her if the whole town finds out her secret.
The room feels like it has lost all of its oxygen, but still Julie drifts over to the closet, to get dressed to face the day.
CHAPTER
Fifteen
CLAIRE
The next morning stretches out long and empty.
Claire doesn’t tell Grammy what happened with Julie. It’s not any of Grammy’s business. It’s no one’s business but hers.
Anytime the memory starts to resurface, Claire pushes it away and thinks about Josh instead. It’s hard to think about him, though. It’s been so long since she’s seen him that his face is half-blurred in her mind, and she can’t remember what his voice sounds like. She used to get warm whenever she thought of him. Now she doesn’t. His memory is flat and pleasant and completely unremarkable.
Julie keeps trickling back into Claire’s thoughts. She thinks about Julie’s movie room, and playing SNES, and going to the beach, and eating pizza at the Pirate’s Den. She thinks about the first time she and Julie played Ms. Pac-Man together. When one memory gets in, the others follow, like a flood.
That afternoon, during the hottest part of the day, Claire goes outside and turns the sprinkler on and stretches out underneath its spray of water in her bathing suit. It’s the only thing she can think to do in the heat. She stares up at the bleached sky and listens to the cicadas as the water falls in rhythmic bursts across her skin. The grass prickles against the back of her body. She thinks about the kiss.
It wasn’t Claire’s first kiss—that honor belongs to Ethan Cosgrove, a boy who asked her to homecoming two years ago. Their lips brushed across each other in the front seat of the station wagon his parents let him borrow for the evening. The kiss had made Claire’s whole body light up, but at the same time she felt like she was taking part in some complicated rite of passage, and everything about the evening—the awkward swaying beneath Christmas lights, the itchy fabric of her dress, the unfamiliar shellac of hairspray in her hair—had all been elements of that rite, a lead-up to the kiss.
The kiss with Julie was different.
The kiss with Julie was like the beach last night, dark and laced with shimmers of danger and moonlight. The kiss with Julie was something pure, something Claire isn’t sure she understands.
Because she’s straight. She can’t love a girl.
Can she?
The sprinkler tch-tch-tchs its way across Claire. The drops of water catch in the sunlight and form rainbows that flicker in and out of existence like images on a breaking-down projector. Those rainbows feel like Julie’s kiss. They’re beautiful and strange and Claire can’t quite grasp on to them.
It doesn’t matter anyway. Claire shoved Julie away in her confusion, and now she hasn’t heard from her. Every time she passes the phone she wills it to ring, even though she hasn’t decided what she’s going to say to Julie.
Another cascade of water from the sprinkler. It’s warm as bathwater from the sun, but when the sea breeze kicks in Claire almost feels cool. She settles deeper into the grass, lets the haze of heat overtake her. There’s no point in thinking about Julie. There’s no point in thinking about anything.
“Oh my God, what are you doing?”
It takes Claire a moment to place the voice.
“Audrey?” She pushes herself up on her elbows and cranes her head back. Audrey stands on the patio and waves.
“Haven’t seen you in a while!” she calls out. “Thought I’d say hi.”
“Yeah.” Claire slumps back down on the lawn. The sprinkler makes another pass in her direction. The thought of dealing with Audrey Duchesne right now exhausts her.
“Anyway, what is this? A sprinkler?” Audrey walks across the yard. Claire drops her head and watches her approach sideways.
“Yeah,” she says. “I was hot.”
“Right, no AC.” Audrey laughs. Her hair glints in the sun. It hurts Claire’s eyes. “I came over to talk about the Stargazer’s Masquerade. When I called, Mrs. Sudek said you were available to chat.”
The cicadas’ rattle swells when Audrey says Stargazer’s Masquerade. Claire forces herself to sit up. “Yeah,” she says. “I’m not sure I want to go.”
Audrey’s face darkens like a storm cloud. “What? Why not?”
“I don’t know, I just—” Claire watches the water from the sprinkler. I just don’t want to go without Julie. Why is she thinking that way? “Aren’t you going to go with Lawrence Reyes anyway?”
Audrey laughs. “Well, of course, but I still want you to come with us! A double date.”
“I don’t have a date.”
“I’ll get you one.”
Claire closes her eyes. “I’m just not sure I want to go, okay?”
“Did you not get Abigail Sudek’s dress?”
Audrey’s voice is close, right in Claire’s ear. But Audrey herself is still several feet away, out of range of the sprinkler.
“The dress,” Claire says, feeling dazed.
“Your costume,” Audrey says brightly.
“It won’t fit.”
“Have you tried it on?”
Claire shakes her head. The dress is hanging on the back of her closet door. Every morning it swishes past her as she pulls out her day’s clothes.
“We should do that right now.”
Claire doesn’t say anything. She really doesn’t want to go through the humiliation of not even being able to pull the dress over her hips.
“Come on,” Audrey says, and she actually stamps her foot in the grass. “You can’t just lie outside all day.”
“Pretty sure I can,” Claire says.
The sprinkler tosses water over her again.
“But it’s the Stargazer’s Masquerade,” Audrey says, and her voice has a strange, reverberating timbre to it. “You need to try on that dress.”
Claire’s thoughts blur. The water on her skin feels too cold, despite the sun blazing overhead.
“Fine,” she says. “But it’s not going to fit.”
“We’ll see,” Audrey says in a singsong.
Claire sighs and pushes herself up. She shakes out her hair and brushes the flecks of grass off her skin. The cicadas buzz, and for a wild, stupid moment Claire wishes a monster would come ambling through the yard, so she could have the excuse of calling up the exterminator. Of calling up Julie.
But the yard remains empty.
“I’m so excited to see how it’s going to look on you,” Audrey says.
“You’re going to be disappointed.” Claire hops up onto the patio, drops of water trailing after her. “Nothing made for a hundred-pound woman in a corset is going to fit me.”
Audrey just smiles at that, and something in her smile gives Claire a chill.
When they go inside, Grammy’s awake from her afternoon nap and has the TV on—Claire recognizes As the World Turns. Grammy glances up as Claire and Audrey traipse through the living room.
“Hello, Audrey,” she says, her voice flat and measured.
“Hey, Mrs. Sudek!” Audrey throws her arm around Claire’s shoulder and Claire has to resist the urge to shrug it off. “We’re trying on Claire’s costume for the Stargazer’s Masquerade.”
“Ah yes. Well, have fun.” Grammy turns back to the TV. She doesn’t ask about the costume itself. Maybe she saw the dress hanging in the closet.
Claire grabs a towel out of the bathroom before going into her bedroom. Audrey plops down on her bed, making herself at home. The sight of it rubs Claire raw.
“So where is it?” Audrey asks.
“In my closet.” Claire rubs the water out of her hair and then pulls the closet door open. The dress flutters.
Audrey breaks into a huge grin. “It’s just beautiful, isn’t it! Oh, that color will go perfectly w
ith your skin tone.”
“Right.” Claire pulls the dress off the hanger and holds it up to her body. The dress is tiny. She smooths it down against her stomach.
“Put it on!” Audrey cries.
“Over my swimsuit?” Claire stiffens with irritation. She feels like Audrey’s trying to embarrass her. She has to see that there’s no way the dress is going to fit.
“Yeah, just to see how it’ll look. Then we can start talking about hair and makeup.”
It bothers Claire that Audrey’s talking about the dance as if Claire has agreed to go—which she hasn’t—but she sighs and tosses the dress onto the bed.
“Help me undo the buttons,” she says. Attempting to try it on is probably the only way to get Audrey to shut up.
“Awesome!” Audrey hunches over the dress. Together they undo the dozens of tiny buttons running in a line down the back of the dress. Then Claire picks it up and pulls it over her head. She expects it to catch on her boobs so that she’s left standing with a mass of century-old silk draped over her head. But to her surprise the dress slides down over her waist and hips, settling into place with a sigh.
“What the—” Claire turns in place, trying to make sense of this miraculous fit.
“Told you!” Audrey jumps up from the bed and grabs Claire by the shoulders and sets her into place. “Let’s do up the buttons. Just to get a sense.”
“There is no way—”
“It’s totally fitting.”
And it is. Audrey’s fingers brush against Claire’s back as she slips each one into place.
“This is impossible,” Claire says. “You saw when I held it up to me. It was half my size!”
“It must have just looked small,” Audrey says.
Claire doesn’t answer, only stares over at her vanity as Audrey finishes up the buttons. She knows it didn’t just look too small. It was too small.
“There!” Audrey steps back. “I didn’t button up all of them, but this should be enough to give you a general idea.”
Claire lifts up her skirts and walks over to the vanity mirror. She can only see part of herself, her waist and hips. The dress skims over her silhouette, not too tight and not too big.
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