When the caps were burned crisp around their edges, Val poked at one and asked, “Are we sure we want to do this?”
Surrounded by the crumbling buildings and all-devouring wilderness, their brashness had started to waver. Misty looked around at every sound. She knew some of them were the croaking voices of unseen people. “Maybe we should take them back to your house and eat them there.”
Val shook her head. “My parents think I’m at work. We could go to the park.”
“There’s always cops at the park.”
“I know,” Marc said. “Let’s buy a pizza, then cut the mushrooms up and put them on the pizza. Then we could walk—”
“You’re such a moron.” Misty sighed.
“What? What’s so moronic about—”
Eric snatched one of the mushrooms off the hot metal. Biting into it, he swallowed and forced a grin. “Screwed with the threads stripped now,” he said, wisps of smoke rising from his mouth.
“Always the quiet ones.” Taking a mushroom, Misty followed Eric down whatever path they were on.
The mushrooms tasted like iron and ash, as if they’d soaked up the blood of Birmingham. Misty choked two of them down, and afterward, her mouth got really dry. Then, muscles in her arms and thighs began to twitch. That scared her way more than dilapidated buildings. She started wishing she’d just gone over to Andre’s house.
“No, no, I can’t take this whining crap anymore.” Marc wobbled to his feet and grabbed the MP3 player. Switching from Pins & Needles to Kanye West, he sent lyrics swaggering across the court of rusting demon-machines.
They started bobbing their heads. Eric told Marc to turn the bass down, and Kanye’s zigzag rhymes sank below the crashing rhythm. Suddenly, they were standing, swaying, pounding their feet against the ground. The muscle twitches hadn’t been random spasms. They were a wild dance Misty’s body knew even though her mind didn’t.
The smoke stung her eyes. Misty wiped tears away, but the earth’s colors stayed watery and limpid. Nothing was real except for her, her friends, and their dance. Misty laughed, imagining her parents and grandparents, teachers at school, and even Andre reduced to shadow puppets.
Remembering the stories about werewolves, Misty began chanting, “I want to be a werewolf! Want to be a werewolf! A wolf! A wolf!” It didn’t mean anything at first. Misty was just lost in the childish joy of yelling and being loud. But the others joined in. “Want to be a wolf! A wolf! A wolf! Want to be a wolf!” Then Misty decided she would.
She started howling and threw herself down. Claws dug into the earth. A warm pelt gathered around her. It was the easiest thing in the world. Taking a few unsteady steps, Misty barked for the others to join her.
One after another, they sank the unplumbed depth to all fours. Marc raced into the brush, sending up a tattered black pennant of crows. Misty tried to speak, but the words weren’t there anymore. Finally, she managed, “H … ow?” And the instant she thought about the magic, it vanished.
Suddenly, Misty was balanced on her palms and the balls of her feet, watching wolves tear all around her. A frightened wail escaped her human throat. The monsters turned toward her, then shifted back into her brother and friends.
None of them moved for a long time. None of them spoke. After a while, Val got up and turned off the MP3 player with a shaking hand. She sat back down near the fire. Slowly, the rest of them huddled around her. They still didn’t say anything, just watched the fire burn to embers. The furnace’s homeless were silent now.
Marc flexed his fingers open and closed. “What the fuck did we do?”
Misty pressed her body against his without answering.
“We were tripping,” Val said. “All that stuff about werewolves. And Misty starts yelling….”
“No. That felt real,” Eric said.
“How do you know what changing into a werewolf feels like?” Misty shook her head. “None of us have done ’shrooms before. It was just a messed-up hallucination.”
“No,” Eric said again.
Misty was about to answer when her phone rang, making her jump. It was Andre. He’d called her twice already and wanted to know why she hadn’t answered. Struggling to think straight, Misty apologized but didn’t have a good answer, just telling him she was coming over now. As they scrambled for their stuff, Misty told Marc to get a ride home with Eric, then rushed ahead of the others.
Driving to Andre’s house, Misty watched traffic float around her and almost blew a red light. “Shit.” She stomped the brake. Her body jerked forward against the seat belt, but the Lincoln shuddered to a stop before sideswiping anybody. “Shit.” Misty should have pulled over, taken a few minutes to focus, but she needed to see Andre. She needed his arms around her, far away from the furnace’s delirium.
Eric was wrong. Eric had to be wrong, because no matter how real it had felt, werewolves didn’t exist. Misty was certain of that all the way to Andre’s house.
Andre was mad in that chilly way he got mad, lots of sighs and heavy-lidded stares. Misty said what she was supposed to say, that she was sorry for being late, for going at all. Yes, she had sense. The whole time she talked, she felt something in the deepest chambers of her mind snarl and try to thrash free.
“If you want to waste your life with those jokers, maybe you should just go on.”
Hairs on the back of her neck bristled at his threat, at every time she’d let Andre make her feel embarrassed and dumb. But Misty said, “No, I want to be with you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
She hugged him, kissed his unsmiling mouth, and that Misty-Underneath grew more furious. It hated Andre. It hated her, begging this boy for a few scraps of comfort. Finally, Misty couldn’t control it anymore. It teased Andre with her fingertips. It whispered with her voice, “Hey. Let’s do it outside.”
Fifteen minutes later, Misty was mostly dressed on Andre’s front lawn, holding her lighter to the tail of his shirt and laughing. “You want your clothes? Well, come get them.”
Andre cowered behind one of the porch posts. “This isn’t funny! Damnit, Misty, give me my Jockeys!”
“Misty, give me my Jockeys. Misty, dress cute. Come when I call you. Heel. Roll over.” She whipped his flaming underwear at him.
“You’re a crazy bitch, you know that?”
“Yes! Yes, I’m a bitch! And I’m a little slow sometimes, and I’m a little ghetto. But I am nobody’s pet!”
She got in her car, drove past gawking neighbors, and disappeared into the evening. After several quiet minutes, she called Val.
“Hey, how’d it go?”
“I’m a wolf,” Misty told her.
She met back up with the others. They took a walk and tried to figure things out. Wandering for hours, they talked one another through fear and disbelief.
“Just tell me how anything magical is happening in Magic City,” Val demanded.
They all snickered at the city council’s optimistic nickname for their home.
“Well? Does this look like Middle Earth to you?” Val waved her arms around empty lots and some men rolling bones in the light of a convenience store.
“No, it looks like the whole city is rotting,” Eric said.
“Exact—”
“But mushrooms eat rot, remember? They thrive in the dank places filled with decay. And the only difference between Amanita muscaria and other mushrooms is that Amanita is a god.”
After the steel industry collapsed, a slow bleed of jobs and families had left Birmingham echoing with derelict space. Besides the furnace, the city was filled with abandoned houses and factories, more every year. Entire malls stood as dark and empty as caves. Within McCammon High’s castle-like exterior, holes in the ceiling plaster exposed wiring and duct work. Water damage steadily obliterated decades-old murals. As Misty and her friends wandered the husk of a once-teeming metropolis, the idea that a rot-eater god had come to Birmingham didn’t sound as crazy as it should have.
Val shook her head. “But it can’t be a g
od. It’s just a mushroom. Scientists have studied it, dissected it, and never found anything but, whatever, mushroom stuff. Chemicals and proteins and stuff. Nothing they couldn’t explain.”
“Scientists weren’t dancing around their microscopes when they studied it, though,” Misty said.
“So what? The dance was what made us into werewolves? The Kanye West song we’ve listened to a hundred times before?”
“I don’t know. Just that the dancing and chanting, the furnace, it all felt magical. Not just the mushrooms. The whole thing felt like Sunday services.”
Val laughed, but Misty had nothing to compare their transformation to except church. She didn’t go every week like she should, and when she did she was usually bored and hot. There’d been a few times, though, when Misty had lost herself in the songs and shouts of praise. A trembling ecstasy had welled up inside her until it seemed like her skin would split open, shedding all her fear and loneliness with it. But those moments were few and fleeting, and the transformation had never been as total as what their ritual at the furnace had led to. For a few seconds, Misty had been reborn in body as well as mind and spirit.
Val worried some more, but they returned to the furnace the next week and the week after that. Misty and Val started outlining their eyes in black, mimicking the dark rings around a wolf’s eyes that blocked the sun’s glare. Misty dug her tanker boots out of her closet. Eventually, she let Val pierce her bottom lip with a carpet needle.
Misty felt deeper changes too. Even with Andre gone, the nights didn’t feel lonely anymore. Even with another story about her buzzing through McCammon, it didn’t hurt when boys whispered as she walked by or when girls gave her wary glances. After all, they’d been right for years.
They’d been right that Misty wasn’t a pampered, hand-licking pet like them, performing little tricks whenever a teacher snapped his fingers. They’d been right that she was something vicious and wild. They’d been right to avoid her.
Their only mistake was thinking she was a stray, half-starved and on her own. Through the winter, Misty’s loose knot of friends tightened into a pack. Together, they were more at home in this hard city than any of their classmates. As Birmingham crumbled, it became the dominion of the rot-eater god and a hunting ground for wolves.
CHAPTER 4
“But the decorations have to be the school colors,” Angie said.
“They’re always the school colors” Claire groaned. “Let’s do something different this year. Like reds and purples.”
“God, no. Gross.”
Her lunch tray pushed to the side, Angie leaned over a notebook already half full with phone numbers, prices, and other information about the basketball awards banquet. Keith watched her nibble the tip of her pen while she and Claire talked. Angie had the perfect bow-shaped lips and rose-pink tongue. Keith had dated whole girls he didn’t love as much as Angie’s mouth.
“Well, something different. Just not green and navy again,” Claire said.
Angie turned toward Daniel. “What do you think?”
“School colors are fine.” Daniel dipped a chicken finger in mustard.
“That’s two votes for school colors.”
“He’s your boyfriend! He has to say that. And he’s not on the planning committee, anyway.”
Keith saw Daniel roll his eyes, but nobody else noticed. Daniel had been in a dark mood the last few days, his usual swagger replaced by brooding and a minimum of words.
“Let’s put that off until later, okay?” Angie bit her lip with angelically white teeth. “Okay, Mr. Nguyen is taking care of the caterers, so we don’t have to worry about that. He said to go to Gilbert Florists, but I’m going to call some other places today, see if we can get better centerpieces for the same money.”
Even with a month left to prepare, Angie, Claire, and the rest of the planning committee had a major project on their hands. Held in the Tutwiler Hotel ballroom, with boosters footing most of the bill, the annual awards banquet was more elaborate than McCammon’s prom. And the afterparty was legend. Keith had been listening to stories about it since ninth grade.
The ceremony was only for the basketball team and the players’ dates. A few people managed to sneak in every year, but Keith had never had the balls to try. He’d never had the balls to try a lot of things.
Angie and Claire were arguing about the color scheme again when the bell rang. Following his friends out of the cafeteria, Keith reminded himself it was senior year; this would be his last chance. He interrupted the girls’ squabbling with, “So you’re going to get me into the banquet, right?”
Angie gave a single shake of her head. “C’mon, Keith. It’s for the basketball teams.”
“And the student reps.”
“We’re hosting it, and that doesn’t really matter since you’re not a student rep.”
“Yeah, but you’re in charge of the whole—”
“C’mon, Keith. I can’t just let in anybody who wants to come.”
“Yeah, but—”
Daniel sighed. “Angie, just get him into the stupid banquet.”
“Why have you been so pissy lately?” she snapped.
“I’m not being pissy. Just get him in, okay? He’s my cousin.” Daniel tickled her, making her scowl crack. He bent down and kissed her neck. “Please?”
Angie laughed, then glanced at Keith. “We’ll need help getting things set up beforehand.”
“No problem.”
“And if I need anything else, like somebody to drive decorations over or whatever, you’re my little bitch.”
“No problem. Thanks.” But Angie was curling her fingers through Daniel’s hair, and Daniel pressed his lips against her perfect mouth.
He’d gotten into the banquet. He’d gotten into the after-party. Striding to biology, Keith felt eight feet tall. He was thinking about asking Jessica Orr to go with him when Daniel jogged up behind him.
“Hey, Cousin.” Daniel wrapped an arm around Keith’s shoulders. They walked along, their heads bent close together and their voices low. “I need you to do some black ops for me.”
“Like what?”
“Like getting me Misty Sandlin’s contact information.”
Keith snickered. “What? Sniffing around for a little gutterfuck?”
“No. I just need to talk to her about some stuff. You can get it, right?”
“I guess.” Keith usually spent his student aide period inputting absences and discipline flags while everybody ignored him. No one would think twice if he printed something out.
“Cool. And just keep it quiet, okay?”
They bumped fists, and Daniel bounded up the stairs. Watching his cousin disappear, Keith thought about Angie’s beautiful smile. Maybe he wouldn’t ask Jessica after all.
A gutterfuck was a girl you could screw without even pretending to love. She could be fat, stupid, or pimply; she just couldn’t be clingy. Her natural habitat was darkened back bedrooms during parties. Daniel had slipped off with gutterfucks a couple of times before, but that’s not what he wanted now. He wanted to understand why Misty had saved that dog while he and everybody else had sat frozen.
He couldn’t talk to Misty at school. His friends would assume he was chasing tail, just like Keith had. And Daniel didn’t even want to think about this getting back to Angie. He’d considered getting Misty’s number out of the phone book, but in four years of high school, he probably hadn’t spoken a dozen words to her. If he called her out of the blue and started asking deep ethical questions, she’d think the whole thing was weird.
But Wednesday, Misty had mentioned working at a deli. If Daniel just happened to stop by, maybe he could charm her a little, get to know her a little, and see if there was something Misty knew that nobody had ever told him.
After school, Daniel met Keith outside the main office. He pocketed a folded sheet of paper, said a few words of thanks, then hurried to the debate team meeting.
They had a congressional debate in March and the d
istrict tournament at the state capital in April. Two sophomores needed to score a lot of points at the congressional to qualify for the district. While Mr. E., the debate coach, strategized, Daniel opened the printout Keith had given him, reading it behind his National Forensic League manual.
A student couldn’t be held after class if she had a job, but the school needed a supervisor’s name and phone number to make sure she actually worked there. At the bottom of the form, Misty’s place of employment was listed as Florence Deli.
When he got home, Daniel did homework, called Angie, and spent an hour listening to more plans for the awards banquet. He and Angie had first hooked up during the party after last year’s banquet, and Angie was stressing over every detail of this year’s.
“It has to be perfect. This is so special for us.”
“It’s going to be perfect because it’s so special,” Daniel said, copying down key phrases on the Treaty of Versailles from his history book. “It’s going to be perfect no matter how many yards of bunting there are.”
“I know it’s going to be perfect, but it has to be perfect, perfect, too.”
After telling her he had to go, Daniel went outside to shoot hoops with his brother Fischer. They stripped down to their T-shirts despite the cold and coming dark. When their mom came out and asked if Daniel wanted supper, Daniel shook his head, glanced at his watch, and said it was time to get ready.
Before every semester, Daniel and his parents had a meeting with Mrs. Estes, his college consultant. Last summer, when he’d talked about maybe getting moved to first string on the basketball team this year, a tight-lipped smile had spread across Mrs. Estes’s face.
“You know, Daniel. I was thinking it might be best if you focused on academics senior year.”
Daniel nodded. “Sure, but I can be first string and still do that.”
“But you can’t do both well, you see? Your résumé of sports and extracurriculars is already very impressive. Now we need to show Cornell that you’re just as serious about academics.”
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