Monster Read online

  Shade’s whole body tingled, but it was no longer chills but something strange and new and . . .

  Gaia grinned and turned the partial carcass in her hand to face Shade, turned it slowly, slowly, an ear, a cheek . . .

  “NO!”

  Suddenly Shade slammed into something hard. A second impact a second later as she fell onto her hip.

  She was awake. Gaia no longer sat in the easy chair.

  Awake.

  Shade breathed a shaky sigh of relief. It had been a nightmare.

  Then she saw her legs and screamed.

  As had become Cruz’s habit, she headed to Shade’s house. It was a stunning day, one of those days you got in autumn in Chicagoland, when the sky was a perfect robin’s egg blue, and the air was as crisp and clean as a hotel sheet, and the leaves were a carpet of gold and red beneath trees that would soon be outlined by snow or glistening with ice.

  Cruz paused once to write that down in her Moleskine. Then she ran up the back stairs and knocked at Shade’s kitchen door, which Shade opened instantly, as if she’d been lurking.

  “What’s up?” Cruz said, and Shade held up a notebook. On the page in black block letters: House Is Bugged.

  At the same time Shade said, “Hi, Cruz, come on in, girl, we have homework to get done.”

  “Yes,” Cruz said stiffly. “Yes, we do.”

  Shade led the way to the living room. She picked up a lamp and tilted it so Cruz could see the bottom of its weighted base, and there, where Shade had peeled back the felt, was something that looked a bit like a component stripped off a circuit board.

  Shade replaced the lamp and led the way to her father’s study, a small, book-crammed space between the main stairwell and the seldom-used parlor. She held up a hand, stopping Cruz. Then she pointed at a corner of the crown molding where there was what looked like a nail hole. She pointed at her eye, then up at the nail hole, and down at the direct line of sight to Professor Darby’s computer.

  They backed out silently and tramped upstairs to the bedroom. And there was the next shock: someone or something had beaten deep indentations into the top of the wall facing Shade’s bed. And Shade’s usually neat bed was tilted at an angle, with the front legs snapped in two. And her comforter had been ripped in half, so that the inner stuffing extruded.

  Yes, something . . . odd . . . had clearly happened.

  Cruz turned concerned, baffled eyes to Shade and saw on her friend’s face a look of triumph.

  Shade jerked her head toward the bathroom, where she turned on the water and let it run loudly.

  “I doubt they’ll have put cameras or mikes in my bathroom, or even my bedroom, but I don’t want to take any chances.”

  “What happened?” Cruz asked in a terse whisper.

  “I did it!”

  “You did what?”

  “I ground up an ounce of the rock, made powder out of it, mixed it with peanut butter, and gagged it down.”

  “Oh, my God! I thought you were waiting!”

  “You may not have noticed this about me,” Shade said with unmistakable glee, “but I am not patient. I took it, and nothing, nothing for hours. I was depressed. I couldn’t believe it was all for nothing.” Her words tumbled out in an excited rush, very unlike the Shade who Cruz had never seen overly excited or emotional.

  “And . . . ,” Cruz prompted.

  “And I went to sleep. I had a nightmare, a bad one, and when I woke up I was on the floor.”

  “The floor?”

  “Clear across the room,” Shade said. She made a hand gesture representation of a person flying across the room and smashing into the wall. “And . . .” She held her fingernails up for inspection. They looked as if she’d been digging in chalk. Or a plaster wall. Chills ran up Cruz’s spine.

  “In my nightmare, I leaped,” Shade went on. “I leaped! Practically flew! And in reality, in reality, I leaped. Sixteen and a half feet, I measured it! I leaped out of bed so fast, so hard, I ripped right through my comforter. The impact woke me up, Cruz, and I . . . I was on the floor!”

  “Jesus Christ,” Cruz whispered. Half her mind was gibbering, Oh, my God, she did it! in a giddy, triumphant way, and the other half was thinking, Oh, my God, she did it, but in a very different tone.

  “Cruz. I did it. It works! I have . . . a power.”

  “What . . . but, wait, what power?”

  “That we have to discover, Cruz. I can’t believe it. I hoped, I wanted . . . It worked, Cruz, it worked!”

  “Congratulations?” There was enough doubt in her voice to earn a sharp look from Shade, but Shade was not going to be put off.

  “Do you know what this means?” Shade asked, practically jumping in place.

  “Not really,” Cruz admitted.

  “It means the ASO works even without the dome. And that fact means that I was right: if bits of the ASOs are out in the world—and they almost certainly are—I won’t be the only one. There will be other people with powers, Cruz, some good, some not, but I will not be one of the random bystanders getting burned, I will—” Shade stopped, and for a moment looked guilty, as though she’d said something she did not intend. “I’ll be able to do something,” she finished lamely.

  “About what?” Cruz asked.

  “I won’t be one of the helpless bystanders, that’s all,” Shade said. She sat on the closed toilet as if exhausted. For a while she said nothing. Then, with eyes cast down as if she were inspecting the floor tile, she began to speak in a rushed, low voice, as if every word was distasteful. She was performing a duty, not unburdening herself. She shook her head slightly as if denying what she was saying. “You’ve seen the videos, Cruz, but I was there. People, kids, just this far away . . .” Shade stretched her arm out and seemed to touch something in the air. “And I heard her call me. Call my name . . .”

  Cruz knew then. She knew as certainly as if Shade had told her.

  Cruz crossed herself slowly, not warding off evil, but invoking God’s attention to her damaged friend.

  “Your mother,” Cruz said.

  The muscles of Shade’s jaw twitched. Her scar stood out white against reddening skin. “A lot of people died there that day. Helpless. Just innocent bystanders.” She repeated the word, and raised a finger as if she was a teacher making an important point. “Helpless,” Shade repeated, and the word was not self-pitying, it was not a plea, it was an angry accusation. And the accused was Shade herself.

  Cruz watched as Shade raised her hand to her scar, as she had done in the cornfield. Shade seemed self-conscious, knowing Cruz was watching, but was unable to stop herself from touching the tactile proof of her own weakness.

  Cruz wanted to ask, Who was helpless? but the answer was obvious. Shade was helpless. Little thirteen-year-old Shade Darby had been helpless.

  “It was madness,” Shade said. “The dome came down and the kids from inside were just running in panic, climbing over dead bodies, just . . . I told you that’s how I got this.” She pointed at the scar. “Machete. I came close to dying.” She sighed heavily, then tried to soften the tragic tone with a wry smile. “I nearly died. And my mom did.”

  Cruz wanted to take Shade’s hand. Wanted to hug her. But now the shark was back, and the human girl who had been helpless four years ago to stop the slaughter, to save her mother, had been pushed down and away. There was a distance to Shade now, a disconnect from her own emotions, and Cruz withdrew her tentative hand.

  It’s not just powers she wants, Cruz realized. It’s revenge. Revenge against a creature long dead.

  “There’s a strange mental side effect, though, probably some reaction to the change—”

  “Wait, what change?”

  Shade winced. “It’s weird, Cruz, but it did something to me physically. It was dark, so . . . but my legs . . . Fortunately, changing back is easy enough. Just form the picture of your real body in your mind and . . .”

  “So, what was the side effect?” Cruz asked.

  “There was . . .
well, it was weird, like a delayed nightmare after the main nightmare. It’s hard to explain.” Shade concentrated, eyes drifting up and away as people’s eyes do when they’re trying to recall something intangible. “It was like . . . remember that scene in Lord of the Rings when Gollum looked into the swamp and saw dead faces under the water staring up at him?”

  “You saw dead people?”

  “No, they weren’t dead, and I don’t think they were people.” Shade avoided eye contact, glancing sideways suspiciously, over her shoulder, as if she was anticipating someone sneaking up behind her. “Just an extra nightmare, Cruz, like I said, a holdover, I mean I was asleep when the change started. But the important thing is, Cruz: it worked,” Shade said. The normal Shade, Cruz’s friend, reemerged, as if from a dark vision, and in a more enthusiastic voice said, “I need to test it, work with it. Somewhere private where I won’t be exposed or accidentally hurt anyone.”

  “How could you hurt anyone?”

  Shade held up her palms for inspection. Then she pulled up her sweatpants, pulling them up to over her knees. “I hit that wall hard enough to knock divots into it, Cruz, then fell eight feet onto hardwood, and do you see a bruise or a scrape?”

  Cruz did not.

  “It’s not just the ability to leap out of bed,” Shade said. “I must also be very strong, and very, um, I don’t know . . .”

  “Invulnerable?”

  “Yes! Maybe,” Shade said, and bit at her thumbnail, dislodging some of the packed gypsum from the impact with wallboard. And then, as if drawn by magnetism, her finger touched her scar again.

  “This is incredible, Shade. And scary as hell. But what’s all this about bugs and cameras?”

  Cruz whispered the words “bugs” and “cameras.”

  “Ah, that.” Shade dropped her hand to her side. “After Iowa, the government team, you know, HSTF-Sixty-Six, must have started to suspect my father. I’m not surprised—in fact, I expected it. When I came home from school I searched. There are probably other bugs I haven’t found, but unless the task force wants to risk taking video of a minor girl in her bedroom or bathroom, I doubt there’s a problem in either room.”

  “But how long have they been there? They could have heard everything!”

  Shade shook her head. “No. If they’d had surveillance on us earlier, they’d have stopped us before we went to Iowa. No, this is recent, this came after Iowa.”

  What kind of person actually expects their house to be bugged? Cruz wondered, but said nothing. The answer was obvious: a person like the obsessed person in front of me.

  “What do we do?” Cruz asked. She was buying in, accepting the knowledge that Shade was not merely exploring possibilities or having a little adventure but that Shade wanted power. And she wanted it for a revenge she could never hope to get.

  And yet, I’m going along.

  “We do homework, Cruz. Down in the living room in plain view of any cameras. Then you go home. Tonight, I hop in the car and drive to Jewell-Osco, where I pick you up and we go test this out.”

  It was a bizarre day, to say the very least. The two girls hunched over books and laptops, scribbled and typed, doing work that no longer mattered to either of them if it ever had, making stilted conversation for the benefit of listeners.

  “Where’s your dad?” Cruz asked at one point.

  “Kazakhstan, believe it or not.”

  Cruz believed it: according to Shade, the next chunk of rock, ASO-4, was scheduled to land in a very inconvenient part of the world. Professor Darby was presumably there.

  Shade slid her a note, facedown. Cruz palmed it and read it under the table they were using as a desk. I’ve got workmen coming to fix the wall before my dad gets back.

  Cruz made a wry expression that meant, Of course you do, because: you.

  Cruz left with a promise to be at Jewell-Osco at ten o’clock, after Shade had done the obligatory Skype with her grandmother—one of Martin Darby’s attempts to provide adult supervision when he was away.

  Rain had come and gone while Cruz was in Shade’s house, and as she set out for home the trees dripped so energetically it might as well have been raining. A left turn onto Dempster brought Cruz to the Starbucks above which her family lived in a two-bedroom apartment.

  As Cruz neared home she began to alter her appearance, taking off a silver chain, sliding rings into pockets, turning her collar down, scuffing at the legs of her jeans until the cuffs lay flat.

  She was not denying who she was, not really, she told herself, just reducing the visible triggers that might cause a paternal eruption. It was an everyday decision for Cruz: how much to be herself, how much to risk, when to be bold, when to run scared. It was both automatic and exhausting.

  How am I “presenting”? How are people seeing me?

  She would say it didn’t matter, but it was not so easy to take that whole don’t give a damn attitude when there were people out there who would tease, bully, beat, even kill her for the crime of being . . . interesting.

  “And now I’m interesting but with a friend who has superpowers,” she muttered. She asked the sidewalk, “What have I gotten myself into?” She knew in her heart that no good would come from this. She knew deep down that she should flee, put miles between herself and Shade Darby.

  I should call the FBI . . .

  The thought percolated through her mind, enticing, oddly empowering. She could end this, end it now before worse things happened. But not before tonight, for sure, not before she’d actually seen it with her own eyes.

  And then? Then was then. She would decide then.

  She ran the mental checklist, wondering just what would set her father off this time. Her father was not a violent man, she had no fear of his fists; his aggression took the form of sarcasm, slights, sneering looks he didn’t bother to hide. It wasn’t that his teasing or bullying was terribly clever or original—that would have at least showed some effort on his part. No, it was not that he was particularly good at being cruel, it was simply the fact that he was her father being cruel.

  My father.

  She could pretend that she didn’t care what her father thought of her, but she could never really mean it. She would never stop caring. It would never not hurt.

  From that thought, of course, it was down and down in the spiral of shame, blaming herself, hating herself, hating the world for having done this to her. What kind of God would play this game? What kind of sick divinity would sit up in heaven and say, This one shalt be all of the above . . . LOL!

  Cruz pictured God throwing back his great, bearded, cis-male God head and guffawing, haw, haw, haw, and the angels snickering behind their hands.

  Cruz paused, pulled out her Moleskine, and wrote, God as bro. Bro-god. Angels try to expand his consciousness? It was maybe not a great premise for a short story or novel, but Cruz had learned to write down even the ideas that seemed dumb. Dumb now might trigger smart later.

  As she climbed the interior stairs that always smelled of coffee from the Starbucks, she heard an insistent, aggressive, whining voice and instantly knew her father had started drinking early. Five twenty in the evening, when he usually didn’t get home until six—or eight if he stopped at a bar on his way. She took a deep breath, hesitating with her hand on the doorknob. She heard the first sound of an argument breaking out: a dish clattering in the sink, and then her mother’s voice, pleading, weak, and self-pitying.

  Every night.

  Cruz hoped she could get past them to her room, her sanctuary, while they were distracted, so she pushed in, welcomed by the rich, earthy smell of mole warming on the stove. Her father was still in his work clothes, black work pants with muddy knees, a denim shirt with his name, Manny, in red on a white oval patch. He was not a big man, maybe four inches shorter than Cruz, with curling black hair and a brush mustache.

  “. . . no overtime means you cut back, Maria, not tomorrow, not some other day, right the hell now! How stupid are you not to get that?” Manuel “Manny�
� Rojas said.

  Maria Rojas was first-generation Mexican, having crossed the Rio Grande on her father’s back when she was eight. Manny Rojas was US-born, second generation, with parents from Chile. Cruz did not think her father ever spoke Spanish, and her mother rarely did, answering instead in heavily accented English.

  “I can no take the steaks back,” Maria muttered under her breath.

  “I can no take the steaks back, I can’t, I can’t, because I’m helpless!” Manny mocked her. Then he spotted Cruz. “Oh, good, now this.”

  Cruz nodded at them both, tried to plaster on a bland smile, and kept moving, longing for the relative peace of her room. But her father followed, mincing behind her.

  Cruz felt her heart beating hard, a beat heavy with dread and sadness. She knew the next move, and sure enough as she reached the door to her room, her father leaped ahead and ostentatiously opened her door, saying, “I’ll get that door for you, miss.”

  Cruz stepped back and waited as he pushed the door open. She said not a word. Sometimes that worked; sometimes not. This was a “not” day.

  “You know, Hugo, if you really want to cut your dick off, I’ve got a pair of wire cutters that should do the trick.”

  He often said cruel things to her, laughing as if to say, It’s just a joke, lighten up, but this was a new low. Cruz knew she shouldn’t let it get to her, but it did. Of course it did. Her father, her father, despised her.

  “Why not just use a knife?” Cruz asked, wishing she sounded nonchalant and defiant, but knowing she sounded pathetic and weak and everything the man before her despised. “I could kill myself with a knife, which is what you want.”

  Shock registered on Manny’s face at that, though whether it was shock that she had spoken back, or shock at the realization that she was talking about suicide, she could not guess.

  “Excuse me,” Cruz said, and closed the door on him.

  She waited there, her room dark, hearing his breathing on the other side, half expecting him to push his way in and heap more abuse on her. Hoping that he would knock and say he was sorry. Fat chance. After a while he stomped off and she sagged in relief, tears filling her eyes, feeling the wave of shame that came from knowing that he would now be just that much harder on her mother.