The Slice

by Greg Taylor

  Calanthe shook her head. “No, I do not know what that word means.”

  The trio was stunned at Calanthe’s response.

  “Oooookay,” Strobe said. “Definitely something to add to the Calanthe talking-point list.” Strobe exchanged a look with Annabel and Toby, then followed them into the house and up the long stairway to the second floor. On the way up, Strobe hoisted Calanthe’s suitcase with a shake of his head. It was so light!

  Calanthe’s one sad little suitcase was a perfect metaphor for her entry into her new life, Strobe realized. She had practically nothing to start out with. No knowledge of the customs and details of her strange new world, such as welcoming hugs and airplanes and … parents? Did the dekayi have no parents? What could that possibly mean?

  When Annabel reached the top of the stairs, she continued along the mezzanine that overlooked the foyer below and entered a skylit hallway. She stopped at a doorway near the end of the hall and turned to Calanthe. “This is your bedroom,” she said with an encouraging smile.

  With that, Calanthe entered her bedroom … and her new world.

  4

  The rukh was motionless.

  The creature was not dead, but rather in a state not unlike the one Calanthe had recently experienced. After its fall from the New York rooftop, the thing had searched out an isolated place—not to die, as Calanthe had surmised—but to recover from its serious injuries. It had not gone back to the dekayi community to heal. That was a distance too far to travel. Instead, the beast had found the perfect spot, not far from the alley it had slammed into with such ferocious force.

  The rats in the subterranean tunnel where the rukh currently resided gave the creature wide berth. The hulking, invisible form resting in a recess near the ceiling of the tunnel set off an ancient reaction in the underground rodent population, a violently explosive nervous-system response that cried … stay away!

  So the rukh rested comfortably and undisturbed in its hideaway beneath the bustling New York metropolis. It would not move until it had healed. It would not eat until it had healed. What it would do, once its strength had returned, was go back on the hunt. The primitive creature knew there was unfinished business to tend to. It had been given a scent, and it would not stop until it had followed the distinctive, one-of-a-kind odor to its source. No matter how many twists, turns, or detours might be thrown at the beast, it would go on and on and on …

  Until the girl was found.

  5

  The day after Calanthe’s arrival in Hidden Hills, Toby and Strobe returned to Annabel’s house. When Toby rang the doorbell, it was Mr. Oshiro who opened the door. Dressed in an expensive sport shirt and khaki slacks, he looked like he might have just come back from the golf course. “Annabel’s upstairs with Calanthe,” Mr. Oshiro said after giving Toby and Strobe a cool once-over.

  Stepping into the large foyer, Toby gave Annabel’s father a respectful nod and a smile. Mr. Oshiro looked past Toby at Strobe, who had followed Toby into the house. Judging from the older man’s expression, the scruffy-looking Strobe wasn’t the type of person who normally visited Annabel.

  “How’s Calanthe settling in here at the Oshiro household, Mr. O?” Strobe asked.

  Toby winced at his friend’s casual greeting.

  “I haven’t spent much time with our new houseguest,” Mr. Oshiro replied. “She only just arrived yesterday.”

  After seeing Calanthe to her room the day before, the trio had held a quick meeting without Calanthe in Annabel’s bedroom, where it had been decided that Toby and Strobe would come back the next day after their workout session at KP. It was obvious the traumatized teen needed some time to adjust to her new surroundings before the trio began their “official” sessions with the girl.

  “Annabel did tell you that Toby and I have volunteered to help Calanthe adjust to her new school, did she not?”

  Mr. Oshiro was staring at Strobe’s muddy, frayed combat boots in a way that suggested he’d never seen anything quite like the teen’s footwear in his entire life. “Annabel’s mother mentioned something about that to me. I’m not sure what kind of help Calanthe needs. The girl is from Port Said, Egypt, after all. It’s not as though she’s coming in from the wilds of the Sahara or someplace of that nature and needs a total … makeover, I believe you kids call it.”

  If you only knew, Toby thought. Catching Strobe’s eye, he indicated they should head upstairs. But Strobe showed no inclination of terminating his conversation with Mr. Oshiro just yet.

  “Hosting a foreign exchange student can be very time consuming, Mr. O. We just wanted to take some of the pressure off Annabel. And FYI, Calanthe will be attending classes with Toby. We were all concerned she wouldn’t be able to keep up with the honors classes your brilliant daughter is taking. That’s why Toby’s involved.”

  Thank’s for that, Strobe. Let’s shine a spotlight on how much of an underachiever I am! Grabbing Strobe by the sleeve, Toby pulled him toward the staircase before he could do any more damage. “Nice to see you, Mr. Oshiro.”

  After the two had gone up the stairs and were out of earshot of Mr. Oshiro, Toby shot Strobe an annoyed look. “What was all that back there?”

  “What…” Strobe asked innocently.

  “You know what. You were baiting the guy. Calling him ‘Mr. O.’ Talking about why we’re coming over here. That’s called too much information, okay?”

  “I disagree. Better to have it right out in the open, talk about it, instead of skulking around. That’d only make this whole setup even more suspect than it might already be.”

  “Okay, I’ll give you that. But please stop calling him Mr. O, will you?”

  “That was just to bait him,” Strobe said with a smile.

  “Why would you do something like that?”

  “Maybe I didn’t dig the guy’s vibes.”

  “What was wrong with his vibes?”

  “From what Annabel told us, her dad’s happy she quit Killer Pizza, right? I get the impression the dude thinks we’re excess baggage his daughter should toss aside, as well.”

  Toby frowned. This was a sensitive subject. He didn’t want to believe that Strobe was right. But maybe he was. It could be that Annabel’s dad didn’t want her associating with the two of them anymore. They were from the “other side of the burb,” after all.

  “Besides, I just like to annoy grown-ups from time to time.”

  “From time to time, Strobe?”

  Just then Annabel appeared from Calanthe’s room at the end of the hall. Toby was surprised at how happy she looked. “How’s she doing?” Toby asked in a low voice as he and Strobe met Annabel in the hallway.

  Annabel smiled and crossed her fingers. “Really good, actually.”

  “Get out. Seriously?” Definitely not what Toby was expecting to hear.

  “Yeah, she totally surprised me this morning. She slept for over twelve hours last night, which I think she really needed. Harvey said she wasn’t sleeping very well in New York, and it’s like she was this completely different person when she woke up.” Annabel had turned and was leading Toby and Strobe back down the hall. “I think Harvey might be right about this whole imprinting thing. Now that Calanthe’s here … settled down a bit … it’s like she’s come home or something. It’s a pretty impressive transformation.”

  “That’s great news, Annabel.”

  “Isn’t it, though?” Annabel stopped outside Calanthe’s door. “By the way, you don’t have to whisper. She can’t hear you.”

  “Why, is she taking a nap?”

  “No. She’s in iPod land.”

  “Hey, no fair,” Strobe said sternly. “We should have all had input into what Calanthe listens to first.”

  “It’s my house. I get to pick what Calanthe listens to.” Annabel gave Strobe a “take that” look as she entered Calanthe’s room. Following Annabel, Toby and Strobe were greeted by the sight of Calanthe sitting cross-legged on the floor, staring out the window, and moving her head slowly, somewh
at cautiously, to whatever song was currently pumping into her brain. She was facing away from the trio and hadn’t noticed them enter.

  “She doesn’t seem to like chairs, by the way,” Annabel said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Toby asked.

  “Maybe they don’t have them where she comes from. A lot of cultures don’t. But she hasn’t sat on her chair since she arrived.”

  “Didn’t she have dinner with you and your parents last night?”

  “No, she ate here in her room. She was asleep before my parents came home. But she did sit at the kitchen table for breakfast with everyone this morning.”

  “How’d that go?”

  “Not too bad.”

  “She didn’t grab any food off your parents’ plates, did she?” Strobe asked.

  Annabel smiled. “No, I had a little talk with her before breakfast about table etiquette. She did fine. Didn’t say much, just nodded a lot when my parents talked to her. She looked a bit uncomfortable, but that’s okay. She’s a shy foreign exchange student, after all.”

  “Doesn’t like chairs,” Strobe mused. “Just shows how much we need to discover about this girl’s culture. I’d say it’s time we got started.” Circling around Calanthe to get in her field of view, Strobe gave her a big smile. Calanthe stared at Strobe for a moment, then slowly took out her earbuds.

  “Hi, Calanthe. What are you listening to?”

  Calanthe looked spacey from her first-time iPod experience. “Music.”

  “Yes, I know. Music. But what song are you listening to?”

  Calanthe frowned. “I don’t know.”

  “Strobe. Enough of this,” Annabel insisted.

  “You’re right. We’ll deal with this music situation later. First things first. You know what time it is, Calanthe?”

  Calanthe shook her head no.

  “High school boot-camp time!”

  Calanthe’s expression signaled she had no clue what that meant. “Boot camp…” she repeated.

  “It’s an expression we have. You’re going to school tomorrow, right? You have a lot to learn. Boot camp means learning a lot in a little amount of time.”

  “Don’t put too much pressure on her, Strobe,” Toby said drily.

  “Do we have to go somewhere for this boot camp?”

  “No, Calanthe,” Annabel said as she stepped between her and Strobe. “We’re going to have boot camp right here. In this room. Your room.”

  Toby swiveled the computer chair around, sat down, and gave Calanthe an encouraging smile. “Don’t worry, you’ll catch on really fast. Before you know it, Calanthe, you’ll be hummin’ along, acting just like a typical Triple H student.”

  “‘Catch on.’ ‘Humming along.’ These are additional expressions of yours, yes?”

  The trio exchanged looks. They had never thought about how many taken-for-granted expressions a person uses every single day. Tons of them, really.

  “On the other hand, maybe she won’t catch on really fast,” Strobe whispered behind his hand to Toby.

  Hearing that, Annabel gave Strobe a withering look. “Once class is underway, misbehaving students will definitely be dismissed. Could you get the door, please, Toby?”

  Toby crossed the room and closed the bedroom door. Then he, Annabel, and Strobe settled in for their first official high school boot-camp session with Calanthe.

  6

  “Awesome, Calanthe! High five!”

  Calanthe regarded Strobe’s open hand, held up high. “Slap my hand with your hand. Like this.” Strobe slapped his right hand with his left to illustrate what he meant. Calanthe responded with a sharp slap to Strobe’s palm.

  “Okay, that hurt. You don’t have to hit so hard. A high five means good job. Well done.”

  “‘Good job,’” Calanthe repeated.

  “Yeah, you did absolutely great, Calanthe,” Toby said. He meant it, too. Calanthe had soaked in everything the group had thrown at her over the past few hours and given it right back to them. Clearly on the upper end of the smarty scale, Calanthe had combined intense concentration with a seriousness of purpose that had impressed her three teachers.

  “Okay, I say we move on from current teen vernacular and slang,” Annabel said as she went to Calanthe’s closet and pulled out a backpack.

  “Aw, c’mon. This is the fun part,” Strobe complained.

  “And this … is an iconic part of every high school student’s attire. Here, let me fit you, Calanthe.”

  Calanthe had been sitting on her bed during her slang quiz. When she stood, Annabel slid her arms through the two backpack straps and adjusted them to fit Calanthe’s height.

  “What is this for?”

  “Books.”

  “Lots of books,” Strobe said.

  “A backbreaking amount of books,” Toby added for punctuation. “Although I doubt you’ll have any trouble with the weight.”

  “What are all the books for?”

  “There’s one, sometimes more, for every subject.” Satisfied with how the pack fit Calanthe, Annabel stood back and nodded. “You’ll have a locker to store your books in. Do you have lockers where you come from?”

  “No. What is that?”

  “Toby will show you when we go to school tomorrow. He’ll help you with your combination and any other questions you might have.”

  “What do you mean by combination?”

  “I’ll explain on Monday,” Toby said.

  “You do know that you have to sit in a chair for your classes, right?” Strobe asked.

  “No, I did not.”

  Strobe wheeled the computer chair over to her. “Here, try it out.”

  When Calanthe sat, she looked uncomfortable in her chair.

  “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it,” Strobe said dismissively.

  “What I’d like to do now is go through what you can expect during a typical school day,” Annabel said. “From getting up first thing in the morning until the final bell of the day.”

  “Ten to one you don’t have bells at your school, right?” Strobe guessed.

  “No, I don’t know what you mean by ‘final bell.’”

  “Bells ring all the time at our school,” Toby explained. “An annoying amount of bell ringing, if you ask me. So many bells…”

  “Okay, all right, Toby. I’ll get to the bells. But first … getting up in the morning. I don’t know how early you normally get up, Calanthe, but I’m going to have to set your alarm for six o’clock.”

  “How ridiculously early is that?” Strobe interjected.

  “Tell me about it,” Toby replied. “I was thinking about that just the other day. When was that decided? Who pinpointed seven thirty as the perfect time to start a school day?”

  “I don’t know, but I wouldn’t mind having a word with the genius who did.”

  “Guys, I think we should—”

  “I forget where I read this,” Toby said, ignoring Annabel’s attempt to get the group back to the business at hand. “But did you know that some schools are experimenting with a starting time of around nine, nine thirty? Turns out the students aren’t as tired, surprise, and do better overall than—”

  “Okay, enough of this.” Annabel was obviously irritated at Toby’s and Strobe’s continuing conversation about the proper time to begin a school day.

  “Right. Sorry,” Toby said.

  “Where was I?”

  “Alarm,” Strobe said.

  “Right. I’m going to set your alarm for six o’clock, Calanthe.”

  “Six o’clock. That is a measurement of time, yes?”

  Strobe laughed. “Do you believe the depth of knowledge this girl knows absolutely nothing about?”

  “Okay, out! Both of you.”

  Toby looked genuinely surprised by Annabel’s command.

  “You two obviously need a break. I’ll continue one on one with Calanthe.”

  Toby looked over at Strobe, hands held out in a “What’d I do?” gesture, then he and
Strobe got up and headed for the bedroom door.

  “Just so I don’t have to go downstairs and hang out with your dad,” Strobe said.

  “You know where my room is. Go amuse yourself on the computer or something.”

  “The computer! We haven’t even started in on Calanthe with that one. I can’t wait to see what fun that’s gonna be.” Strobe just managed to duck out of the way of Calanthe’s new backpack, which Annabel had chucked at him. With dead-on accuracy.

  7

  “It is in the middle of a vast forest. The nearest town is very far away. The village has been there many, many years. It is inhabited by perhaps a hundred, hundred and fifty people. We live very simply. We have our own livestock. Grow all our own food. We do not have what you call fast food.”

  Calanthe was surprised when everyone smiled at her last comment. She didn’t think she had said anything amusing. After the group had completed their long and tiring day of HS boot camp, they had taken a dinner break, then Calanthe was asked to talk a bit about her village. Whatever she wanted to tell the trio was fine. No pressure. This wasn’t a grilling session.

  “We do not have … this.” Calanthe turned a bedside lamp on and off and back on.

  “Electricity,” Toby said.

  Calanthe nodded. “We have no automobiles. No … tall buildings like in New York.”

  “New York must have been really weird for you.”

  “Yes, the tall buildings freaked me out.”

  “Excellent, girl,” Strobe said. “Okay, so we get what your village is kinda like. But what are you, anyway? What makes you different from us humans? That guy who followed you to New York? He turned into something that night.”

  “I don’t want to get into that right now, Strobe.” Annabel’s tone was firm. She absolutely would not allow this conversation to go there.

  “Why not?” Strobe replied.

  “I have a question, Calanthe,” Toby said, wanting to help Annabel steer things in another direction. “When you arrived here yesterday, you didn’t know what Annabel meant when she said parents. You don’t have parents where you come from? A mother? Father?”