Unleashed

by Kristopher Reisz

  “Methinks I have a great desire to a bottle of hay: good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow.”

  The play went along fine without Misty. She and Daniel hid beneath a canopy of leaves and deep green shadow. Daniel leaned against the trunk, and Misty leaned against him. His arms holding her tight, they laughed at Tyree stumbling around in donkey ears.

  Daniel played with her hair, then stroked the tender spot behind her ear. He kissed her neck, let his hand travel down, and Misty’s alarm blared to life. It tossed her out of warm dreaming and onto her rumpled bed.

  Misty jerked upright. “God, I hate you,” she hissed at her alarm clock, slapping the snooze button to make it shut up. Pulling the covers over her head, she slipped back to sleep for a few more precious minutes.

  On the way to school, Marc asked Misty to drive him to their dad’s later. Marc’s relationship with their dad wasn’t as prickly as Misty’s. He stopped by once a week or so to eat dinner and play their dad’s Xbox. Their dad usually slipped him some money, too, which was how Marc got by without a job. He was still pestering her as they walked through the school’s front door.

  “I can’t drive you to Ensley, then get to the deli by four, okay?” Misty said. “Quit asking.”

  “I’m not riding the bus. That car’s as much mine as yours.”

  “Grampa told you—”

  “Grampa told you,” Marc mimicked.

  “—when I have work—”

  “Not until four!”

  “That’s not enough time!”

  “Yes, it is!”

  They bickered around in circles all the way to Misty’s locker. Dialing the combination, she stopped answering and tried to ignore Marc. She tried to ignore the damp February morning, ignore the school’s florescent light and harsh smells, and remember her dream.

  Somehow, her fairy wings had been both real and part of a costume. Misty was also pretty sure her id had shortened her skirt by several inches. But what Misty remembered vividly was how happy she’d felt watching A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Daniel. A sweet, perfect dream about a dream.

  “Hoodrat.”

  The word sliced through the hallway clamor. Misty looked up and met Angie Walton’s hard glare. Angie never broke her stride. She turned to whisper a joke to Daniel’s cousin Keith.

  Misty slammed her locker closed. “You got anything to say?”

  Angie glanced back around. “Not to you.”

  “Good. Shut your mouth then.”

  “Or what? You’ll burn my clothes? That’s okay; we give all our old clothes to Goodwill anyway. In fact, that shirt looks familiar.”

  “Keep talking, and I’ll steal your next boyfriend too.”

  Angie’s coy expression melted like wax. “Know what?” She came up a few inches from Misty face. “You can keep him. I’d never touch him again, anyway, after he touched a nasty little mutt like you,” she hissed.

  Misty was half-black in a city where nobody pretended race didn’t matter. She’d been called a mutt before, and—sinking her fingernails into her palm—refused to let Angie make her flinch. But then Marc shouldered Misty aside. “Bitch, what did you call my—”

  “Hey!” Keith jumped in, shoving Marc into a bank of lockers. A sharp clang and the crowd jumped back on all sides, snapping open around them like a startled eye. Misty screamed at Marc to calm down, but Marc was already hurling toward Keith. Then Daniel appeared from nowhere, stepping between the tussling puppies.

  “Both of you chill out.” Holding Marc off of Keith and a head taller than either of them, Daniel spoke in a calm, almost bored voice.

  “Your boy needs to watch his mouth,” Keith said.

  Marc cocked his fist back. Grabbing Marc’s wrist, Daniel glanced at Keith. “Don’t I owe you a beat down?”

  Keith’s bluster went cold. Still holding Marc’s wrist, Daniel yanked him around and shoved him down the hall, getting him away from the scene fast before a teacher showed up.

  “Man, that—”

  “Shut the hell up, Marc,” Misty snapped. “That wasn’t over anything worth a damn. Just drop it.”

  “Wasn’t over anything? That little—”

  “I don’t care.” She did. But if Daniel knew what Angie had said, he’d think he had to charge back and defend her, too. “Just. Drop. It. Okay?”

  Marc looked at her, confused and a little hurt, then grumbled, “Whatever.” He started slinking up the stairs, then stopped. “So, seriously, can I get that ride?”

  “Be in the car by three, or I’m leaving without you.”

  Marc went to homeroom, leaving Misty and Daniel alone together.

  “Thanks. They’ll probably expel him if he gets into another fight.”

  “No problem. What was that about, anyway?”

  “Keith bumped into him and wouldn’t apologize. Dumb boy stuff.” And before he could ask anything else, Misty said, “So you ready to prowl tonight?”

  “Yeah. I’m still grounded, though. I won’t be able to slip out until after my dad goes to bed.”

  “We’ll wait. Scared?”

  “Uh …”

  Misty nudged him. “You can say it. I won’t think any less of you if you say it.”

  “As long as you’re there, I won’t be scared.” Daniel smiled the same gentle smile Misty remembered from her dream.

  “We’ll look out for each other, okay?” she said.

  “Okay.”

  “So you’ll pick me up later, right?”

  “Yeah. I get off at eight, so, like, eight thirty.” Misty pulled to the curb. Her dad’s car sat in the driveway. “He’s home already?”

  “I told you he’s off today.” Marc grabbed his backpack and climbed out. “See you later.”

  “Wait.” Beating her fist against the armrest, Misty stared at the house she’d grown up in. “Let me go say hi, at least.”

  In the living room, Rebecca was tying her youngest daughter’s shoe while talking to somebody over the phone. She barely glanced up as Misty and Marc walked in. Their dad was cutting up vegetables in the kitchen. A pot of chili simmered on the stove. “That my boy?” He turned and gave Marc a hug, careful not to smear his shirt with tomato gore.

  Misty stopped at the kitchen archway. “Hey, Dad.”

  “Hey. Haven’t seen—what the hell is that?”

  “What’s what?” Misty asked. Then she clapped a hand over her mouth. Misty hadn’t visited since Thanksgiving. She’d taken her lip ring out then to avoid a fight. “Oh, yeah.”

  “Your mom actually let you do that?”

  “Well, she wasn’t exactly thrilled. Just don’t worry about it, all right?”

  “I’m still your father, you know.”

  After an already bad day at school, Misty couldn’t keep the wolf from lunging. “You want to play daddy now? How come you didn’t want to play daddy a few months back when Mom had to go to the food bank?”

  This time, instead of being ready to pound somebody for Misty, Marc grabbed a Hostess cupcake and retreated into the living room to play video games. Their dad turned around, chucked a dirty spoon into the sink, and didn’t say anything.

  Staring at his back, Misty twisted the knife. It felt good. “Write Mom a check; I’ll take this stupid lip ring out, right now. No? Guess you don’t want to play daddy so bad, after all.”

  Misty left the kitchen to find Rebecca and asked, “Is any of my stuff still here?”

  “I think there’s a couple boxes in Leigh Ann’s closet,” Rebecca said. “Honey, I wish you wouldn’t hurt Aaron like—”

  Ignoring her, Misty walked down the hall and into the room that had been hers before it had been Leigh Ann’s. She rifled through boxes of old clothes and other junk, pulling out a pair of fairy wings.

  They were relics from the one moment her life had seemed truly magical. The rest of her Puck costume had belonged to the school, but Misty had made the wings herself out of coat hangers, blue pantyhose, and lots of glitter. She put them on and checked herself out in
Leigh Ann’s vanity. The wings fluttered when she hopped up and down, making Misty laugh until she snorted.

  “I mean, she’s biracial,” Keith said. He and Angie sat on his couch. They had books, notes, and sheets of scratch paper spread out on the coffee table.

  “Aw, ’she’s biracial.’ We all have to handle her like glass because she’s biracial. Everybody has to watch what they say because she’s biracial. Make sure we don’t oppress her. Damn, I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “I know. I’m just saying that’s how she took it.”

  “I don’t care how she took it. You think I’m a racist?”

  “No.”

  Flipping her notebook closed, Angie stood up. “If you do, tell me. I’ll leave right now.”

  “No, wait. Of course I don’t think you’re a racist,” Keith said, trying not to make it sound too forced.

  “Good.” Sitting back down, she jabbed an equation into her calculator. “Besides, how can anything anybody says to her be racist? Misty doesn’t even have a damn race.”

  Keith plastered on a grin, and they moved on. It wasn’t like Angie actually believed in white supremacy or anything. She’d just called Misty that to make her mad.

  The story had changed by lunch, though. Rolling her eyes, Angie told their table how Misty had gotten into her face, warning her to stay away from Daniel. When Lexi asked what she’d done to set Misty off, Angie turned to Keith. “Did I say one word to her?”

  Keith hadn’t wanted any part of it, but he knew enough to mumble, “Uh-uh.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Lexi said. “She’s just scared because she knows Daniel will get bored with her soon and come crawling back.”

  Angie made sure to tell everybody how Keith had stood up for her.

  “Shit, yeah,” Scotty laughed. “A man needs to take care of business sometimes.”

  Keith still didn’t say answer, but he liked the sound of that. Over the past week, the school had watched him walking through the halls, holding Angie’s hand and making her laugh. The same envy he used to feel himself shadowed faces all around him. Since the awards ceremony, Keith had become limitless.

  Inside, there was a pinprick of shame. Angie had acted like trash. He’d watched and done nothing. But people had finally stopped thinking of Keith as Daniel Morning’s cousin. They knew he was a man in his own right, now. It wasn’t worth throwing that away for a little hoodrat.

  Besides, it was Misty’s own fault, really. People wouldn’t be so quick to believe Angie’s story if Misty wasn’t always walking around with a chip on her shoulder.

  CHAPTER 9

  Daniel was still grounded, but he got permission to go to the library Saturday by telling his parents about a scholarship he wanted to look into and promising to be home by noon. Long ago, he’d learned to work their fear for his future to his advantage.

  After supper, his mom left for the night shift at the hospital. Daniel studied and waited for his dad to herd Mack and Fischer to bed, then go to sleep himself.

  Daniel had gone to the library after school and checked out a couple scholarship guides. When the house was quiet and still, he stuffed them into his book bag along with his dirty Core 205s. Strapping on the tanker boots, he crept through the familiar dark to the kitchen.

  He dropped three Cheerios and a splash of milk in a bowl and left it on the table. Daniel hadn’t lied about being back by noon; he was just leaving earlier than his parents thought. With luck, though, his mom would clean up after him in the morning and assume she’d just missed him.

  Misty and the pack had told Daniel about the Amanita covering the furnace complex. They thought the mushrooms were a voiceless, thousand-bodied god, a rot-eater god. Daniel wished it sounded ridiculous. Instead, the name reverberated so deeply, it had made him sick.

  His parents didn’t know what it was, but they discussed the god all the time. They called it blight and economic depression. They told stories over supper about somebody else’s brother or husband losing his job or getting into trouble with the police. They searched for its face in newspaper bar graphs.

  Now, with the shooting star folded up in his bag, Daniel slipped out, returning to the foot of the thing his parents had prayed and sacrificed their own ethics to let him escape.

  The pack waited for him in the casting shed. When Daniel pulled in, Misty jumped onto the hood of his car.

  “Hooray, you made it! We were ready to give up on you.” She wore a pair of sheer blue wings.

  “Sorry. Dad didn’t go to bed until late.” Taking Misty around the waist, Daniel helped her down. “Um … what’s up with the wings?”

  “How come everybody keeps asking me that?”

  “She’s been wearing them all day.” Val shook a can of spray paint. “I kept hoping she’d stand too close to the grill and set one on fire.”

  “You wore them at the deli? Wasn’t Ilie pissed?”

  “I had my vest. I had my hair tied back. There’s nothing in the employee handbook about fairy wings.”

  “Can we get going,” Eric cut in. He crouched by the low fire with Marc and didn’t look up as he spoke. “It’s past midnight already.”

  Misty squeezed Daniel’s hand and whispered, “Ready?”

  Daniel didn’t know if he was or not, but he kissed her forehead. “We’re going to look out for each other, right?”

  She nodded, and Daniel almost felt as brave as he was pretending to be.

  Val was supposedly spending the night with Misty. Her parents didn’t know Misty and Marc’s mom worked third shift. Since Andrew’s death, Eric’s parents had lived in a dense fog, and Eric could simply slip out of the house without bothering with an excuse. The pack could escape their daylight lives easily; hardly anybody even noticed they were missing.

  The pack stole through the streets. At first, Daniel lagged behind, pumping his arms and panting, struggling to forget his humanity. But the harder he ran, the faster his heart pounded, speeding up Amanitas effect. He outraced his family and future. The memories slipped away, until Daniel, under wolf skin, didn’t know they’d ever been there.

  They followed the expressway up Red Mountain. As traffic and city smells thinned, the pack grew anxious. Daniel felt it too; they were edging onto the fringe of familiar ground.

  The peak of Red Mountain had been sliced through. The expressway snaked between a pair of artificial cliff faces as it traveled south out of Birmingham. Beyond lay Homewood, Vestavia Hills, and the other over-the-mountain suburbs.

  Val and Eric crept under the barbed-wire fence. Shifting to human shape, Val climbed the eastern rock cut. Fingers and boot toes found chinks in the petrified reefs and beaches and the artery of rust-red ore that had been the city’s lifeblood. Val started to paint, claiming it for the pack. Their sign looked at home among the dark millennia of Birmingham-before-man.

  Eric stayed below in case Val fell. Marc vanished, loping to the top of the western rock cut. Misty lay down in the dead grass of the expressway median, resting and watching the cars coming up from the city. Daniel padded back and forth for a while, then settled beside her. Her warmth and scent calmed him some.

  Val scuttled across the rock cut, creating a string of wolf heads. The moon slipped down the sky. Halfway between midnight and dawn, the sun’s approaching light began swallowing the weakest stars.

  Getting bored, Daniel nipped and pawed at Misty, wanting her to play. She ignored him, keeping her head lifted, ears erect, eyes never moving from the expressway. Daniel had his muzzle buried in the thick fur of her breast when Misty jerked to her feet. She began making low whuf, whuf calls, loud enough to warn the pack but too soft to draw attention from humans.

  The cruiser moved hawk-silent. More panicked than Misty, Daniel sent up sharper, snarling barks, turning tight circles and snapping at the air. Unseen, Marc echoed their alert, and Val began climbing to the top of the rock cut with Eric close behind.

  A siren screeched. Lights flashed across the pack’s sign and turned
Val and Eric into silhouettes. A policeman jumped out of the cruiser. He was young and well-muscled under a bulky black coat. He shouted, fixed a flashlight beam on Eric, but wouldn’t climb after them.

  Val and Eric vanished into the scraggly pines topping the rock cut. The policeman was talking into his radio when a spray-paint can arced through the darkness. The cop scrambled back as it hit the cruiser’s hood and burst.

  In the cold, crisp air, Daniel heard Eric’s laugh sink into a long howl. Val joined him. Then Marc on the far side of the rock cut. Then Misty and Daniel as they bounded out of the meridian and stood on the empty street.

  The policeman jumped back into his cruiser. Through the glass, he stared at Daniel and Misty with wide, white eyes.

  Daniel realized the hand-licker knew. He would never say it out loud, but he saw their sign, heard their howls, and he knew this city belonged to the wolves.

  Leaving the others in the casting shed, Misty and Daniel climbed to the second story of the blast furnace’s control house. It was too cold to pull out of their clothes completely. The frosty air made Daniel’s skin smolder when Misty kissed him. He tasted dry and slightly sweet, a little like sawdust.

  Time raced away before they were pulled apart again. Ignoring hunger and exhaustion, they had wordless sex. Daniel was more sure, more skillful, than Andre. His muscles gorged with blood, but he never let his strength overwhelm her. Misty stiffened, and he slowed. A soft moan made him push forward.

  After, with flies still unzipped and belts flapping loose, Misty nestled against Daniel’s shoulder. His fingers ran lazily down her arm. In drowsy silence, they watched sunrise pour through the windows.

  Daniel’s fingers stopped moving. Lifting her head, Misty nudged him until his eyelids fluttered back open. “Can’t sleep,” she croaked. Neither of them had spoken a word since the ritual. “Need to be home soon. You’re grounded.”

  She hadn’t meant it as a joke, but they both grinned.

  Daniel yawned and stretched. “Forgot somehow.”

  “I love you,” Misty said.

  He looked at her, just long enough to make Misty afraid he would stay silent. Then Daniel whispered, “I love you too.”