I pulled my hand away like I was touching a hot stove. I touched a different stone, and again, five glowing rocks. I looked up then, and the whole room was bathed in swaying, converging light beams which ricocheted from the walls and ceiling like this was some big EDM concert. And the humming was back, but deeper, richer, like walking by the stadium and hearing the rumble of the concert inside.
And it was pretty impressive, I have to admit. Convincing, I mean. ’Cause, you know, who would go to this much trouble to con me? If this was some kind of elaborate shakedown, the octona lady and whoever she was working for were barking up the wrong tree. I wasn’t anyone, my family didn’t have any money. So, yeah, the only conclusion I could come to was that me and Dad were—too weird to say it—actually somehow, some kind of fire-breathing…
“What the hell is this?” The overhead lights flipped on, and I was so startled I fell back on my ass, losing contact with the stones and killing the light show. Dad and I both turned to look at my mom, who was standing in the entrance of the living room, still in her lab coat from work, holding her briefcase in one hand and two shopping bags in the other. I felt like I’d been caught committing a crime, but that’s how everyone feels when my mom has that volcanic pissed-off look in her eye.
“Isabel!” Dad said. “I wasn’t expecting you so early. We—”
She dropped the bags to the floor with a clunk, and I hoped she didn’t have eggs in there. “No! You said this couldn’t happen until he was twenty-five!”
“What I actually said was—”
“And that even then it was probably not going to be Crispin!” Under all her anger, I could see the fear. I looked back at the woman in the chair—Consul Crabstick or whatever—but she hadn’t even turned to look at Mom. She was just calmly pulling her glove and rings back on, waiting for this minor interruption to end.
“Crispin, get over here!” Mom said, and I scrambled to my feet and crossed to her. She grabbed me in a protective hug. “He is only sixteen, Elliot. You lied to me!”
“I did not plan this, Isabel!”
“No, but when she showed up, you conveniently forgot how to use your phone.”
“And what would you have done if I told you?”
“We could have faced her together, nipped this crap in the bud before it got out of control. But, no, you let this monster into our house. You let her do a number on your only child.”
“There is no need to be rude to Consul Krasik-dahé, Isabel! She is our guest and we owe her—”
“Come with me, Crispin!” Mom said, digging her fingers into my shoulders and steering me through the dining room and out the glass door to the patio, which she slammed closed behind us.
“I’m not wearing a coat, Mom!” I said and she pulled me down on the rickety love seat and wrapped an arm over me. I dropped my head on the shoulder of her lab coat, which is kind of a baby thing to do, I know, but I was having a weird day, okay? At times like this, I didn’t think of my mother as head pharmacist at the drug store. She was just my mom, the one who made amazing pork adobo and rolled her eyes when I dyed my hair or used eyeliner. And it was tempting to just stay like that, all quiet and peaceful, but it’s kind of my life’s mission to ruin beautiful moments.
“So,” I said. “The plan is, we sit out here and hope she goes away before we freeze to death?”
“I don’t want to talk to her. I don’t want you to talk to her.”
“This dragon stuff can’t be true, right? It’s just bullshit.”
“Language, Crispin,” was all she said in reply. Anyway, there wasn’t any reason for her to answer my stupid question. I saw how I made the stones glow. And even more importantly, I knew my mom saw. I knew she believed the whole thing.
“God damn your father!” she said, and I watched anger and tears fighting for supremacy in on her face. “I should have left him when he told me. Dragons!” She exhaled loudly. “And I never should have given him a son to suck up into this madness.”
“So, you’re saying if only I hadn’t been born, I’d be safe? Thanks for that, Mom.” She slapped the top of my head and then wrapped her arms tighter around me. I asked, “Did you meet this woman—Consul Crossfit—before?”
“When you were three, yes. It was the same as today. I came home from the store with you and found them together. Your father was so nervous, I thought they were having an affair.”
“Ugh. Don’t.”
She laughed. “It would have been easier to deal with. You were asleep in your stroller, and I wouldn’t let her even look at you.” Mom sighed. “I wanted to give you a little sister, you know. But I couldn’t after that. I didn’t dare.” Suddenly, her cozy hug felt like a cage, and I didn’t want to hear any more.
As if on cue, the patio door scraped open. Dad kept a steadying hand on the doorframe, wary of setting Mom off again.
“Isabel, please come inside. We can’t hide from this. Crispin has a right to hear the whole story. It’s his future we’re talking about.”
“I’m his mother. I have some say in the matter!”
“Wait a minute!” I said, extricating myself from Mom’s chokehold. I stood and stared at my parents. “Why didn’t anyone tell me about this? If you both knew all these years about my copper blood or whatever, didn’t you think the information might, I dunno, interest me? Amuse me on snow days or something?”
Dad looked away. “We thought we had time. But then Consul Krasik-dahé appeared out of nowhere, and it all just…happened!” There was a gleam of excitement in his eyes. “It’s a tremendous honour, Crispin.”
Mom shouted, “Then you go, Elliot. You have the blood. You fulfill this wonderful destiny.” She spat out the word like she was naming an STI. “Instead of sending your son into God-knows-what kind of danger!”
Desperate to get away, I pushed past Dad, back into the house. The Consul was still sitting there in the comfy seat, maddeningly calm.
My parents followed me inside, and she said, “It is your son who has been chosen. After calculations and measurements too arcane for you to comprehend, it has been determined that Crispin alone of the twenty must take on this duty. It is Crispin’s fate, and it is Crispin who will accompany me to the Realm of Fire and do what he was born to do.”
Mom’s voice was strained now. “He was born to be whoever he chooses to be! You can’t just swoop in here on your broomstick and read him some fortune-cookie future!”
Mixed metaphors aside, she had a point. On the other hand, it was kind of nice to be a chosen something. It made the needle on my vanity meter swing over a bit. And what about this copper blood? Would Altman be impressed? They were all looking my way, apparently waiting for me to say something.
“I-I’m not sure. Tell me more about this Realm of Fire. Is it dangerous? Is this a swordfighting and death spells situation?”
“I’m sure it’s very dangerous,” Mom said, glaring at the Consul. “Do you hear that, lady? He doesn’t want to go.” She tried to grab me again, but I dodged to the side.
“I didn’t say that. This is all happening too fast. I have to think about it.” I looked at the octona, and for the first time I actually believed she wasn’t completely human. “Are you staying here with us tonight?”
“No,” said the woman. “I have a room downtown at the Ambassador Hotel.”
I barked out another hysterical laugh, because it was too…what? Normal.
“Okay,” I said. Dizzy and overwhelmed, I walked to the front door.
“Crispin, don’t you go anywhere!” Dad ordered, but there was an edge of hysteria in his voice, and I knew I could disobey. This situation made him weaker than me, and I kind of hated him for that.
“I’m fine. I’ve just got to get out of here and think. I’ll go for a walk. Or maybe over to Altman’s.” I pulled on my coat and grabbed my knapsack. I checked inside for my phone and my wallet. I was attentive and methodical. As I adjusted the hem of my coat, I touched the edge of the folded-up love poem in my back pocke
t. Yes, I thought, I’ll go to Altman’s. I turned back for one more look at the strange tableau in the living room.
“One question,” I said to the woman with the glowy eyes. “What am I chosen for, exactly?”
“To mate with her most potent excellence, the Dragon Queen.”
We all blinked at each other for a millennium or two before I broke the silence. “Exit Crispin…with noodle thoroughly cooked,” and I fucking ran out of the house. I didn’t stop running for three blocks.
Chapter 3: Sick
Forty minutes later, I was sitting around the dining room table with Altman’s complicated, blended family. His thirteen-year-old twin sisters, Ida and Dorothy, kept giving me cryptic, amused looks. Ida would then text something to Dorothy, who would nod and say “Totes” as she received her sister’s no doubt mixed review.
“More kale fritters, Crispin?” Altman’s mother asked for the third time in less than five minutes, her wide grin oddly brittle.
“That’s right, champ, you need some meat on your bones,” said Altman’s greasy stepdad, king of the table in his purple sweats. “You should be working out with Altman. He’s going for that athletic scholarship. And he better get it!” He laughed, though he was the only one at the table who seemed amused.
“You’re so quiet tonight, Altman dear,” his mom said with concern before her attention moved elsewhere.
Altman had somehow arranged not to sit beside me. He didn’t say one word through the whole dinner, just kept shovelling chicken and rice into his mouth without looking up. To my right, his eight-year-old half brother, Jonah, gave a barking cough, sending bits of fritter batter sailing through the air like confetti.
The youngest child, a seemingly nameless six-year-old who drifted around the edges of the family like a ghost, put a crayon drawing in front of his dad and looked up from under long sweaty bangs for the man’s opinion.
“What’s this, buddy? Are they playing hockey? Is that supposed to be your big brother?” The boy stood frozen for a minute, brow creased, before pulling the picture back against his chest and retreating into the shadows.
“Everything’s delicious,” I said winningly, perched on the edge of my chair, unable to relax. Dorothy snorted in amusement and texted more commentary to Ida.
“Thank you, Crispin,” Altman’s mom said. “I had to throw it together in a hurry. I was volunteering with unfortunates again today. Such sad, sad stories.” She sighed and Jonah coughed, spattering my hand with damp debris.
Suddenly, the six-year-old squeezed in between me and Ida, handing me his drawing for inspection. This weighty responsibility made me panic for a second, but then the swirls of colour on the page began to make sense.
“It’s a horse, right? With crimson and gold wings. Oh, he’s flying over the mountain to that…that princess.” The little face nodded gravely. “She’s very pretty,” I said. The sudden absence of background noise made me look up. The whole family was staring at me except Altman, whose head had notched down another ten degrees.
I finally got up the nerve to call home after dinner and all I said was, “I’m fine. I’m staying the night at Altman’s.” Then I hung up quickly and turned off my phone.
I watched some boring action movie with Altman, and he didn’t once look me in the eye. Even though I was staying in his bedroom, we never got off that night, which was too damn bad because it would have taken my mind off everything. Mate with the dragon queen was a phrase that had lodged itself front and centre in my brain. “Would you like some hot milk before bed, Crispin?” “No thanks, I have to matewiththedragonqueen!”
Something did happen in the middle of the night, but it was so weird, and I was so groggy, that by the next morning, I wasn’t sure it hadn’t been a dream. I was fast asleep on a camping mattress beside Altman’s bed when he shook me awake. I opened my eyes and found his shadowed face hanging down close to mine; Norman the hair pouf, absent hair product, was dangling free from his forehead like a fat tentacle.
“Sylvia doesn’t know me, man. No one knows me. You…” He hesitated, and I held my breath, willing him to continue. “I just can’t, okay? I have to go to Florida.” He made a weird little choking gasp. “Even if I’d rather…”
Time stretched out. The moon glinted off my wolf’s head necklace. Somewhere in the house, Jonah coughed. Then Altman’s face retreated into the darkness again, like it had been some incursion into our universe by a hell beast, writhing in eternal agony, begging for release.
Nothing was said about this incident the next morning, but Altman wasn’t ignoring me so hard either. He loaned me one of his T-shirts, which made me feel like the cheerleader in some teen drama who got to wear the quarterback’s letter jacket.
As we walked to school, he finally thought to ask, “Hey, man, is something bothering you? Why’d you come over, anyway?” Even though I obviously couldn’t tell him, it meant a lot to me that he noticed.
Things started snowboarding into a tree as soon as we entered the parking lot and met two of Altman’s teammates.
“Your girlfriend’s going nuclear in there, man, watch out,” said one.
The other snorted. “You two-timing her again, Shendorf? What chick you banging now?” which made me want to take a swing at him. Or at Altman. Or at Sylvia. I looked up at Altman, asking the obvious question with my eyes, and he just shrugged. As we headed for our lockers, we were both on the lookout for Sylvia, Altman with mere curiosity, me like an antelope, drinking twitchily from the watering hole where crocodiles are known to hide.
And crocodile-like, she struck suddenly and fatally from behind, just as I was hanging up my jacket. “You!” Sylvia growled, with nerve-shredding menace. And, yeah, she meant me.
“Hey?” I asked, with a little appeasing smile as I closed my locker.
“In there.” She was holding open the door of one of the little music practice booths on the other side of the hall. I watched her face flow from fury to wounded misery, and she turned to Altman. “You, too, baby.”
Down the hall, Karen Parkenter caught my eye and shook her head sadly. I knew something horrible had happened, like maybe I had gone through the last three months of school with my fly down. No, whatever this was, it was definitely worse.
With a full drum kit inside, the practice room was a bit of a squeeze for three. But I guess you don’t need much room when your act is detonating a grenade. Tears in her eyes, Sylvia pulled a note from the side pocket of her schoolbag. A core of ice shot through me. It was my love poem.
Eyes wide, unable to speak, I slid my hand behind me and pulled the paper out of my back pocket that I had spent the last twenty-four hours thinking was the poem. It was a receipt for batteries from Hector’s Electro-Mart. My legs went weak. As I stumbled backward into a crash cymbal, it occurred to me Sylvia could have made use of some percussion for her big reveal.
“Where…where did you…?” I asked, as if understanding all the facts would undo this horror.
“What’s happening?” Altman asked, annoyed by all the drama.
“I found it on the floor in the back seat of my car, Crispin. I guess you lost it when I drove you home Monday.” She paused, her shining eyes drilling into me. I was searching for some perfect excuse, but she didn’t give me the chance. “You’re sick. What an idiot I was not to realize this before.” Sylvia started crying. Hard. I had never seen her lose her shit like this, and I felt awful for her. But at the same time, I was thinking, She doesn’t know! She doesn’t know I’ve actually been sucking off her boyfriend for two months. Of course, that only got Altman off the hook, not me.
“I just can’t believe this,” she hissed. “You were literally no one at this school before I found you, and this is how you show your gratitude? Did your deluded little fag mind think that you could steal Altman from me?”
For once, that epithet shook me, because now it was synonymous with the worst things in the world, universal revulsion and isolation, loss of status. Loss of Altman.
With a humiliating little quaver in my voice, I whimpered, “No one was supposed to see that.”
She was angry now. Ignoring my lame excuse, she pushed the poem into Altman’s hand. “Here! Crispin’s only pretending to be your friend. This is what he really thinks about when he’s tutoring you!”
I could see Altman’s lips silently forming the words. I’ll make you cum/I’ll make you love me right. It was awful how cute he looked, grappling with my words like they were advanced math. When full comprehension finally settled on his face, I could see he was in as much shock as I was, and that’s when I turned fully pathetic.
“It’s just a joke, dude,” I whimpered. “Just…a literary experiment I was trying…” I didn’t care about Sylvia anymore, I didn’t care about her friendship or my position in her social circle. All I wanted was Altman to wink and say, “Don’t worry about it, man.” Or “buddy,” or even “champ.”
But instead he turned red as a tomato and stormed out of the practice booth, pushing through the crowd that had gathered outside. I ran after him and tripped on someone’s foot. I stumbled forward, ending up on my hands and knees. Above me, some guy was making kissy noises, and a girl said, “They’re all like that. No self-control.” They weren’t individuals anymore. They were a mob, speaking in the voice of a mob, promising hatred and cruelty, every day, all day, forever.
I looked back and saw Sylvia in the arms of her girlfriends, who held her as she sobbed. I spun around and stared up into Altman’s face. He stood at the edge of the crowd, surrounded by boys who were darkly, maniacally amused. Altman was staring back at me, full of disgust. And I didn’t know if he was just putting on an act to assert his hetero bona fides, or if his disgust was real. Either way, it was unbearable.
The Dubious Gift of Dragon Blood Page 3
