Monster Read online

  It was in that moment of exquisite emotional agony, that moment of turmoil, that moment of slight and ineffectual resistance, that moment when the chasm of self-loathing once again opened beneath her, that it first occurred to Cruz:

  If it worked for Shade . . .

  Out came the notebook. Cruz wrote: If it works for Shade, why not me?

  Until that moment that insidious thought had never, not even once, not even briefly, occurred to her. The rock—ASO whatever—was all about Shade, about her curiosity, her arrogant belief in herself, her desire to be more than she had been four years before, more than the thirteen-year-old girl blaming herself for her mother’s death.

  So, does that make Shade the only person in the world who should have a power?

  If it made sense for Shade to roll the dice without knowing what might come up, didn’t it make equal sense for Cruz? She flopped onto her bed and grabbed the stuffed elephant she’d had since childhood and hugged it to her chest.

  I could have powers. And then let that bastard bully me. Let him try.

  But that fantasy was short-lived. Cruz had never wanted to hurt anyone, not even people who hurt her. She wanted just one thing in life: to be left alone to ask herself questions about who and what she was, to be able to carry out the experimental, delicate, personal work inside her own mind without the world demanding concrete answers and condemning whatever answer she came up with.

  It wasn’t that she hated her male body, but it had never felt entirely like it belonged to her. She was sure that she wanted to try hormone treatments, but was not at all sure about surgery, not sure if that was the final answer. She wanted to explore the idea. Why should that be hard? Why should that be a problem for other people? How was it even any of their business?

  She pushed her stuffed animal aside and blocked out the sounds of the escalating parental argument by checking out new music on Reddit, thinking she’d find some things Shade might like.

  When she tired of that, she went back to work on the story she’d been writing for months off and on, typing away on her laptop in fits and starts. The story was already too long and involved to be a short story, but she felt ridiculous thinking of herself writing a full-length novel. Anyway, the character she had created, the one who bore an almost embarrassing resemblance to herself, seemed dull compared to Shade.

  Her still-new friendship with Shade Darby had warped her worldview. Shade’s determination was more interesting than Cruz’s ambivalence. Cruz admired Shade’s self-control, her ability to step back and look at the world through coldly analytical eyes. She knew that she herself should do just that: take a big step back and think through what she was getting herself into. But it was hard, Cruz reflected, to concentrate when you could almost feel the pillars of normalcy crumbling beneath you. It was very hard to put words on paper when your imagination was busy picturing an entirely different reality.

  What powers had the kids inside the PBA acquired? She opened Wikipedia and found the list: killing light, telekinesis, teleportation, the power to heal with a touch, to move at speeds that would amaze a cheetah . . . and a body made of rock, an arm like a boa constrictor, the power to make others see your own nightmare visions. Powers for good, powers for evil.

  Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The old quote floated through her mind, trailing the counterpoint behind it: Yes, but if power corrupts evil people, then surely good people must have power, too?

  When the alarm clock on her phone went off, she grabbed her bag and set out to meet Shade, tiptoeing past her father, who was finally asleep in his chair with a football game on. Her mother asked in a weary voice where she was going and didn’t bother to pay attention to Cruz’s answering lie.

  Cruz walked around the corner onto Chicago Avenue, and down the dark, cold street past the indifferent rushing cars of commuters to the bright lights of the Jewell-Osco. Cruz waited by the parked grocery carts, ignoring the sneering looks of a couple ushering their little girl past as if Cruz was a disease carrier. The Subaru pulled in, right on time.

  “You finish your paper?” Shade asked as Cruz hopped in.

  “Um . . . I’ll take an incomplete.”

  Shade sighed like a disapproving parent, shook her head, and said, “Well, who knows? Maybe the world we’ll grow up in will be very different than we expect and all that education will be useless.”

  “Yeah. I was thinking that, too.”

  “Maybe we’ll be the ones to make the world different,” Shade said with a significant glance.

  That glance made Cruz queasy. “Look out, light’s changing.”

  Shade stepped on the gas and accelerated through the yellow light as an old bald man in a Mercedes leaned on his horn and showed them his middle finger.

  “Where are we going?” Cruz asked.

  “To a very quiet place,” Shade muttered.

  I borrow your confidence, Cruz thought. Do you know that, Shade Darby? Do you know that you’re the shark and I’m just the remora fish attached to you?

  Do you secretly despise me?

  They passed a gloomy, Gothic stone arch that marked the gate of the cemetery that divided Evanston and Chicago. They drove slowly down a side street into a quiet neighborhood of stone and brick Victorians that had mostly been converted to apartments or condos. The street ended in a cul-de-sac, where Shade parked.

  “Seriously?” Cruz asked.

  “More than serious: grave,” Shade joked.

  They climbed out and pushed through an unlocked iron side gate. They walked silently down a path that brought them to the cemetery’s perimeter, marked by a low brick wall topped by a three-foot-high chain-link fence. There was a hole in the wire and they squeezed through.

  “How come you know about this hole in the fence?” Cruz asked suspiciously.

  “My mother is here,” Shade said in a flat tone that discouraged further questions. But still, Cruz saw her look away toward the east end of the cemetery, and saw, too, the look of sadness that crossed her face like a shadow and then was duly suppressed.

  My father, her mother, Cruz thought. Do we ever escape our parents?

  There was no denying that the cemetery was a strange and spine-tingling place, quiet but for traffic sounds and the whine of a plane passing overhead on its approach to O’Hare. There were tombstones, mismatched, some humble, some quite grand with impressive plinths supporting plaster angels and blank-eyed saints, crosses, and the occasional Star of David or Muslim crescent.

  The cemetery formed a rectangle with rounded edges, one side facing Lake Shore Drive and Lake Michigan beyond. A main pathway bisected the cemetery lengthwise like a spine, with smaller paths extending like ribs. Trees that offered welcome shade on hot days were now sinister, looming creatures, bare branches silhouetted against the orange glow of the city lights to the south. The pitying faces of chipped and pitted stone Madonnas seemed to disapprove of both of them.

  Cruz crossed herself and intercepted an eye roll from Shade.

  “Hey,” Cruz said, “a graveyard at night is no place to go all atheist.”

  “There’s a quiet little area up here,” Shade said.

  It was a spot where trees blocked most of the artificial light, a space with very old-looking tombstones, and when Cruz bent down to peer closely she saw that at least one dated from the nineteenth century.

  “Okay,” Shade announced, apparently unfazed by the gloom, and perhaps, unlike her friend, not tortured by memories of a dozen horror movies set in graveyards. “If a groundskeeper comes, I’ll tell him we got lost looking for my mom’s grave.”

  “Yeah, and if the ground opens up and you see zombies, run! Now, how do we do this?”

  “I reread the Ellison book, the part about Sam Temple when he first exhibited signs of developing a power. Her theory is that it was strong emotion—anger, whatever—that put him in touch with his power.”

  “Okay, strong emotion,” Cruz said. Then, with deliberate drollery, “Strong emotion.
In you.”

  “I have emotions,” Shade protested weakly. “I just . . . I don’t . . . I guess I don’t like them.”

  “Is it because they make you feel vulnerable?”

  “Of course,” Shade agreed readily. “You know why men have all the power in this world, Cruz? I’ll tell you. Because Homo sapiens is about 200,000 years old, as a species. All of human civilization from, like, Ur of the Chaldees—”

  “—there’s a blast from history lectures past,” Cruz interrupted, vaguely hoping to head off another round of WikiShade. But it was too late.

  “—to the present day is not even ten thousand years, just five percent of that 200,000 years. Ninety-five percent of human history was small bands, tribes living hand to mouth, hunting, picking berries, eating bugs. Longer, really, since earlier hominids . . . But, anyway, little-known fact: in primitive societies women actually provided most of the food. But they also got pregnant, and it’s hard to chase wildebeest when you’re pregnant, or nursing. It’s hard to fight off the hyenas when you’ve got a baby in your arms. So that’s what the men did: they had the larger muscles and they kept the predators at bay and killed the occasional wildebeest for protein.”

  “That’s why I was probably never going to be a very good boy,” Cruz said, teeth chattering from a combination of cold and nerves. “I never wanted to kill wildebeest.”

  “Might be very tasty,” Shade suggested. “Anyway, hunting and fighting are what the men did, and they learned that they had to suppress their emotions, especially fear, in order to do it.”

  “So . . . you’re trying to be male?” This was said with a tone of irony, though Shade must have missed it.

  “No. I’m just trying to . . . to . . .”

  “Win?”

  “Slap me. Hard.”

  “What? No! What are you talking about?”

  “Pain,” Shade said. “It creates emotion.”

  “You can’t come up with a better way?”

  “Slap me. Do it!”

  “I do not want to—”

  “Oh, stop being such a wimp!” Shade snarled. “Pretend I’m one of those football players.”

  Cruz realized Shade was provoking her, but even knowing that, her blood started to boil, just a little. The rage at her father that she had suppressed, but that did not wish to stay suppressed, was too raw, too recent, too near the surface.

  “Come on, you wimpy, weak—”

  Whap!

  Shade’s head snapped sideways. She gasped in pain and surprise; Cruz gasped in horror at what she’d done.

  Part of me meant that slap, Cruz thought.

  “Ow-uh!” Shade said, holding a palm to her face.

  “You made me!”

  Shade held up her hand, calling for silence. She was trying to channel the pain of the slap into . . . well, into doing whatever it was her sleeping mind had done the night before.

  For the next ten minutes they tried everything. Cruz twisted Shade’s ear painfully. There was more slapping. There were hurled insults, which had the frustrating effect of giving them both the giggles. Cruz even launched into a sort of improvised ghost story. Anything to push Shade’s emotional buttons, to cause a purely emotional reaction and hopefully get her to act without thinking, to access the power the way—according to Astrid Ellison’s book—Sam Temple, the original PBA power, had done.

  But Shade was simply not a person out of control. Shade was the living avatar of self-control.

  “It’s me,” Shade said after endless attempts that had left her a bit bruised and very frustrated. “I don’t . . .” She formed her hands into claws that seemed to scratch at the air, as if she was reaching for something, like she was trying to grab hold of something: human feelings? “I don’t get emotional easily,” she concluded lamely.

  “You think?” But Cruz was thinking that she knew how to evoke a reaction from Shade. But would it be too cruel? “You blame yourself for your mother’s death,” Cruz blurted.

  Shade’s eyes glittered in the dark.

  “That’s it, right?” Cruz demanded. “That’s what this is all about?”

  Shade had gone very still.

  The shark has doll’s eyes.

  “That won’t work,” Shade said at last, and her voice surprised Cruz. It was low and not at all angry. It was, to Cruz’s amazement, a sad, defeated voice. “She was looking for me, calling me. I didn’t answer because I wanted to watch. It was exciting. I’d never imagined anything like it, so I didn’t answer and she was looking for me.”

  Cruz immediately switched directions. “Sweetie, you were a kid acting like a kid. You can’t blame yourself for her death.”

  “Sure I can,” Shade said flatly. She turned toward her mother’s grave. “Not a hundred percent, maybe not even fifty percent, but some percent. Some percent greater than zero. I never lie to myself, Cruz. I don’t mind lying to other people, but I don’t lie to myself. I know why I’m doing this. I know it’s guilt and revenge. But it’s also curiosity, same as it was then. I want to know, Cruz. I want to know what it’s like to have power. Real power. So you can stop trying to psychoanalyze me.”

  “I’m not psychoanalyzing you,” Cruz said. “I’m . . . I’m kind of writing about you, I guess, at least in my head. So I’m trying to understand.”

  Shade turned to her, head tilted skeptically, almost mocking. “I’m not hard to figure out. You’re hard to figure out. You haven’t figured yourself out yet, Cruz.”

  Cruz took Shade’s hand, and to her surprise, Shade squeezed her hand back.

  “Hello, ladies.”

  The voice sent adrenaline flooding into Cruz’s veins. Shade and Cruz turned and saw two guys. Two guys who were clearly not there for innocent reasons. Cruz’s hand drifted to her phone. Could she call 911 before the guys started in? Or would an attempt at a phone call just be the signal to start the beating Cruz knew must be coming?

  Shade, too, felt the rush of adrenaline, but her mind was crystal clear. She saw two white men in their late teens or early twenties. Neither was in a uniform, therefore they were not cops. They were also not random street people: no overloaded shopping carts or dirty overcoats.

  The one on the right had a club of some sort stuck in the back of his pants, but the one on the left was dominant—their stances revealed this—so if the one on the right had a club, the dominant one likely had something worse. Maybe a gun.

  The balance of power was impossible: two strong, young, likely armed men versus Cruz and Shade.

  Not a winning formula. At least not to Cruz, whose heart sank into her stomach. But a quick glance at Shade revealed a small, tight smile.

  “Good evening,” Shade said.

  “Good evening to you, milady,” the one on the left said. He had sunglasses perched atop his head, despite it being night, so they were not a mere possession, they were either a fashion statement or perhaps booty from some earlier robbery. “Kind of late for a lovely lady and a big old homo to be hanging around a graveyard.”

  “We came to visit a grave,” Shade said calmly.

  “Yeah? This grave?” Sunglasses pointed to the nearest headstone with his toe.

  The headstone read, “Joseph Crouch, beloved husband.” And below that, the date: “July 18, 1902.”

  “Yes,” Shade said. Her chin was thrust forward, defiant. Cruz, however, was measuring distances, wondering how fast she could run and whether Shade could—or would—keep up.

  Sunglasses raised one booted foot, rested it against the headstone, and pushed. It did not fall over. “Jenks, give me that crowbar.”

  So the club they could not see earlier was a crowbar. To Cruz, this meant that they were indeed thieves, maybe even grave robbers. Her fear deepened: she had been beaten before, and she knew the damage cold steel could do. Her fear was visceral, very real, and it chilled her to the marrow.

  “I got it!” Jenks said, digging the sharper end of the steel bar into the grass at the base of the headstone.

  “Yo
u boys must be new to the whole vandalism thing,” Shade said.

  Cruz gasped, mouth open in astonishment. Cool and calm was great, but now Shade was provoking them.

  Sunglasses dropped the phony smile and his face became a mask of malevolence. “Now give me the damn crowbar, Jenks.” With the steel in his hand he said, “I’ll tell you what I can vandalize pretty well.”

  “Man with weapon versus unarmed girl,” Shade taunted. “That’s about what a guy like you is capable of. Let me guess—no job, no girlfriend, no clue, no plan, so you’re down to: beat on people.”

  “Well, I’ll start with a beating and we’ll see where it goes.” He stepped in and swung the crowbar sideways into Shade’s arm. It should have broken the bone. It should have evoked a cry of pain. Instead, the steel bar bounced back, as if it had been struck against a spring.

  Cruz frowned at Shade’s arm. Then her gaze was drawn to Shade’s face. Shade Darby’s head was changing shape, narrowing, like her features were being squeezed into an invisible mold. Her eyes grew within a narrower visage, large, glittering, slanted, focused. Her lips thinned and her mouth was smaller. Her hair—the hair Cruz had so admired—was wrong, all wrong, not hair at all, really. It was drawn back into something like a series of spikes, drawn back sharply, as if lacquered, like some fantastic punk style, forming points and edges so sharp they might cut flesh.

  Shade blinked and Cruz practically screamed, because for a moment a translucent membrane had come down over Shade’s eyes. Snake’s eyes.

  There came a low grinding sound, a wet fleshy squishing, and Cruz stared in mounting horror as Shade’s legs extended, grew, lengthened, until what stuck out from the cuff of her jeans was nothing even remotely human. The legs were long and brown and seemed to be made of rusted steel, and they ended in feet like no foot Cruz had ever seen.

  Shade’s legs suddenly bent backward, the knees reversing direction. Her thighs swelled with muscle clad in dull armor the color of dried blood.

  In seconds Shade was a terrifying hybrid creature, human mostly from the waist up, though a sleek, streamlined version of herself. From the waist down she might have been some terrifying insect or great bird. Shade stood balanced easily on narrow, spiky claws. Altogether she was several inches taller than normal, with her weight forward like a speed skater in motion, her face and hair looking as if they had been smeared back by a hurricane wind, her hair backswept into reddish spikes.