by Kavich, AC
“I think she’s right,” Hiroki said with a reluctant smile.
“She usually is,” Billy added. “Notice how we learned something about dragons without reading a book? Give it up for the non-readers!”
“Awesome, Billy. You’re illiterate. That’s something to be proud of.”
Billy was still grinning, but the grin now looked a bit forced. He dropped back down in his chair and reached for the mythology book. “I told you, Hiro. I’ve got a library card.”
Hiroki pretended not to notice the wounded edge in Billy’s voice and returned to the photo of the shield. The details of the dragon icon weren’t quite right. The legs were too long, and the dragon had a mane like a lion. The tail was more feline than reptilian, as well. If the medieval understanding of dragons was passed down from real experience, the dragons in Europe must be a different species. The mane could help dragons in colder climates to stay warm. And the tail? He couldn’t think of a good reason for different types of tail. Still, the thought of different species made a lot of sense. He filed it away for further consideration.
How many species are there? What species will I be when I change?
“You’re jumping on the Hudson bandwagon, Hiro?”
A sudden shadow dimmed Hiroki’s view of his book. He looked up to find Aidan Humphries looking down at him. Gabe and Dudley flanked Aidan, and all three were staring at Billy.
Billy leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head, staring right back with a grin. He was content to remain quiet for the moment, but how long could that possibly last?
Aidan pulled up a seat across from Hiroki. “I saw your piece of crap car in the parking lot and thought Eva might be with you. Is she here?”
Hiroki shook his head. “She’s home, I think. You could drive over there and—”
“Thanks, douchebag. I know what I could do.” He turned to face Billy. “You two should be more interested in what I’m going to do.”
Gabe and Dudley were both smiling maliciously. Gabe kept his hands in the pockets of his jacket, but Dudley was massaging his knuckles so hard they cracked.
“Oh I get it,” said Billy. “You’re going to beat us up.”
Aidan leaned forward. “Only the one of you who’s trying to steal my girlfriend.”
“I think he means me,” Billy smiled.
Hiroki was hardly listening to the threatening exchange. His eyes kept darting back to the two stacks of books on the table. Aidan wasn’t stupid. If he noticed what they were reading, he would remember. And if Billy wasn’t careful the next time he took off for a flight and people spotted him… Aidan would put it all together.
We’re dead.
Billy pushed back his chair with a flourish. “I’m so glad to see you guys again. Why don’t we go outside?”
***
In early afternoon, Eva woke up alone. The twins had managed to dump her covers on the floor on their way out, leaving Eva shivering on the mattress. She rubbed the goose bumps from her bare legs and slipped off the dress, wrapped a sheet around her body and headed for the shower.
When she returned to her room, she caught her father depositing a tray of food on her dresser. He jumped and yelped when he turned and saw his daughter standing behind him with tears in his eyes.
“I’m sorry, papa,” she whimpered.
Salvadore drew Eva into his arms and brushed her damp hair off her forehead. “I will always give you the benefit of the doubt. I will always forgive you before you ask. And I will always sneak food into your room when your mother isn’t looking.”
Eva laughed and wiped her eyes dry. “I didn’t scratch your car, but it’s pretty dirty.”
“I’ll give the twins five bucks to wash it,” Salvadore said with a smile.
“They’ll never do it for five bucks, but I’ll chip in another twenty and a couple of my t-shirts.”
“Good call,” said Salvadore. He gave Eva a kiss on the forehead. “You’re still my pride and joy, mi hijita. You always will be. But you are grounded.”
Eva nodded and hugged him again. “How long?”
“Your mother says two years, but I’ll see if I can talk her down to one week. She’s not as tough as she thinks. I have my ways.”
Eva spent the next several hours cleaning her room. Her mother had been urging her to tidy up for weeks and Eva had valiantly procrastinated. But now that her cell phone and laptop had been confiscated and she had nothing else to do, she found the work tolerable.
Despite months of neglect, she was still done with the cleaning by mid-afternoon.
Now what?
Her eyes drifted to her neatly made bed. She chewed on her lower lip for a moment before peeling back the covers and reaching under her pillow. There it was, right where she left it that morning
The fruit.
She sat on the edge of the bed, cradling the fruit in her lap. It didn’t appear as exotic to her now as it did the first time she held the black object. The coarse fiber on its exterior wasn’t as off-putting, and the prospect of peeling it off to taste the fruit wasn’t as frightening.
You can’t be serious, Eva. You can’t be considering this?!
But why not consider it? Considering wasn’t the same as deciding. And besides, now that they knew the leaves were an effective antidote to the juice from the fruit, she could always change her mind… After experiencing the change – and the flight that came with it – just once.
Just once.
She could climb out her bedroom window, perch on the roof and let the change happen. If she stayed on the backside of the roof and the change didn’t happen until the sun went down, she doubted her neighbors would see anything. And as soon as her wings were fully formed…
I can fly away.
After hours spent pent up in her room, the thought of flying away was especially appealing. But she came to her senses and shook the thought out of her mind. The change would be terribly painful, and if she started screeching on the roof or scraping against it with her claws, her family was sure to hear her.
She felt a tickle on her palm and looked down. The coarse fiber from the black fruit was falling off! It came off in patches and drifted down to the carpet at her feet. She brushed the fruit where the hair remained and it came off easily until the fruit was bare.
It’s like the fruit wants me to eat it. It’s daring me… It’s tempting me.
But no, that was ridiculous. How could an inanimate object read her mind? She raised the fruit to her face. Just to smell, that’s all. Just to smell. But the fruit somehow took a detour and ended up pressed against her lips. Her lips somehow parted and her teeth pressed into the soft black flesh.
No, no, no! What are you doing?!
The potential consequences for what she was doing flooded into her mind just as the juice flooded onto her tongue, and she threw the fruit across the room. It landed in her closet with a wet smack.
Eva bolted out of her bedroom and raced down the hall. She slammed the bathroom door behind her and locked it. The twins appeared outside the door immediately – as they usually did – and started working on the handle.
“Go away!” Eva yelled.
She spun the faucet and cold water rushed out. She bent at the waist to place her mouth under the stream, allowing the water to run over her tongue and wash the dark red fluid into the basin. When the water finally came out of her mouth clear rather than pink, she reached for her toothbrush and started rubbing it on her tongue. The bristles turned pink immediately. She kept rinsing and scrubbing and rinsing and scrubbing, hot tears streaming down her cheeks.
After five minutes, she gave up. If her mouth and tongue weren’t free of the dragon blood by now, they never would be. She snapped her toothbrush in half and buried it at the bottom of the trashcan, mopped her tears with her hair and swung open the bathroom door.
“You’re acting weird,” said Myra.
“Yeah, totally weird,” echoed Anita.
Safely locked in her bedr
oom, Eva collapsed on the carpet and cried some more. Her eyes fell on her open closet door and she remembered the fruit inside. She crawled into the closet, found the offending object and used a sweater splattered with juice to pick it up. She gathered up the coarse black fiber by her bed, wrapped it and the fruit inside the sweater’s folds and deposited the entire disgusting package on the top shelf of her closet.
Gotta get rid of it. Gotta burn it so the twins don’t find it.
Had she acted quickly enough? Had she avoided ingesting the dragon blood? She thought so, but an errant drop of the metallic-tasting juice may have trickled down her throat. Even now, it could be making its way into her bloodstream, preparing to activate the moment the sun dipped below the horizon.
She looked out her bedroom window and saw that the sky was prematurely dark. Heavy clouds had moved in over the coast of Northern Washington, dark with the promise of a spring storm.
It was 4:45. She would find out soon if she had ingested the blood.
***
Billy was in the lead as the five teens walked out of the library very casually to avoid attention. To anyone watching, they would have looked like the best of friends.
Hiroki was the only one of the five who wasn’t grinning with anticipation at whatever waited once they reached the parking lot. He had seen Billy take a beating from this trio already – had captured the aftermath on film, in fact – and as much as he disliked Billy he didn’t want to drive him back to the Alpine medical clinic to face his mother. “This is your new friend, Hiro?” she would ask with her disapproving eyes. “This boy who gets in fights every other day?”
Outside the library, the other boys followed Billy to the back of the building where only the staff parked. They were unlikely to be disturbed if they stayed out of sight. Hiroki found himself pinned between Gabe and Dudley against a brick wall while Aidan slipped off his jacket and Billy cracked his knuckles.
Aidan landed the first punch. It was a looping right hand that hit Billy in his ear. Billy hopped away clutching the affected ear and yelping. Aidan followed him, ready to hit him again as soon as Billy looked up, but stopped in his tracks when he realized Billy was laughing.
“Oh, you think it’s funny?” Aidan asked.
“Pretty funny, yeah,” Billy answered as he rubbed his ear and stood upright. “I’m really ticklish.”
“Kick his ass, Aid!” yelled Gabe.
“Wipe that smile off his face!” yelled Dudley.
“Or stop fighting and talk about your differences!” yelled Hiroki. Gabe and Dudley frowned and jammed elbows in his ribs from both sides.
Aidan charged forward and threw a few more wild punches. Billy’s hands were dangling by his waist, offering no protection. But Billy was light on his feet and managed to spin out of the way of every punch. He even stuck out his chin so Aidan would have a better target, but dipped and ducked and leaned out of the way the instant before Aidan’s fists would have made contact.
“Are you gonna fight or not?!” Aidan hollered.
“Ever since I stole you’re girlfriend, I’m more of a lover than a fighter,” quipped Billy. “But if you insist.”
Billy ducked another punch from Aidan, but this time he balled his own hand into a fist and drove it into Aidan’s stomach. It landed flush and doubled Aidan over. His knees wobbled underneath him as he struggled to stay on his feet. Gabe and Dudley stepped forward as if to intervene, but Aidan waved them off.
“Let me tell you something about your girlfriend that you probably don’t know, Aid,” said Billy as he stood over him. “She already knows how ticklish I am. Loves to tickle me behind my big blue ears.”
Aidan forced himself to stand upright and took a few more swings at Billy. Billy stood still and let Aidan hit him, but Aidan’s fists only bounced off of Billy’s head. Aidan looked down at his ineffective fists, both throbbing from the painful impact.
Billy turned to Gabe and Dudley. “Your boy has a lot of pride and wants to fight his own battles. That’s brave, but not very smart. If you’re really his friends, now is the time to jump in.”
Billy leaned back with one heavy fist, and Hiroki caught a glimpse of the skin on the back of his hand. He could just barely make out the pattern of scales as they appeared, slightly discolored – a familiar gray-blue.
“Don’t do it Billy!” Hiroki yelled at the top of his lungs.
But Billy’s fist was already rushing toward Aidan’s head. His knuckles blasted Aidan in the cheek and knocked him forward onto his knees. Aidan howled and rolled onto his side, clutching his left eye. Gabe and Dudley left Hiroki’s side and raced into the fray, both swinging at Billy with full force.
Once again, Billy easily evaded the flurry of punches. Then he dropped Dudley and Gabe with a single punch each. He stood over his three victims, chest heaving and mouth pinned in a wide smile. He turned to look at Hiroki, and Hiroki saw with great horror that Billy’s eyes had gone solid black.
Dragon eyes.
“Let’s go, Billy!”
“I’m not done here,” Billy growled.
Hiroki heard the employee door at the back of the library swing open. A middle-aged man in an ill-fitting sweater stepped out and saw the three boys lying on the asphalt, clutching their injuries. The librarian gasped and ducked back inside the building.
“Right now!” Hiroki yelled, latching onto Billy’s arm. He tried to pull Billy away, but Billy was much heavier than he should have been. “Right now, or we’re in trouble.”
Billy seemed to hear Hiroki.
His black eyes returned to their human appearance, and the unnatural heaviness of his body was gone. He nodded and allowed Hiroki to pull him away from his conquests. They raced around the side of the library, jumped in Hiroki’s Buick, and took off.
Once he reached the last stop light at the outskirts of Alpine, Hiroki pushed the Buick’s gas pedal to the floor and kept it there. Rain ran off the windshield. The Buick’s tires smoked on asphalt roads, then kicked up stones on gravel roads, then splattered mud on dirt roads as they reached the heavily wooded countryside to the east.
“Slow down, man,” said Billy in a low, calm voice. “No one’s following us.”
“They might be! They might be following us right now! Police cars and helicopters and, and—”
Billy chuckled. “Hiro. Slow down.”
Hiroki finally eased off the gas. “You were so fast, Billy. So strong.”
“I know. I felt amazing… That was awesome.”
“No it wasn’t! You were changing! The middle of the afternoon, sun still up, but you were changing!”
Billy nodded. “I felt myself changing as soon as I saw Aidan trying to be a tough guy, trying to threaten me. I think it can happen during the day if you get angry.”
Hiroki was hardly listening. “Your skin and your eyes… if anyone saw your eyes—”
“Relax, will you. Nobody saw my eyes.”
“That librarian saw you. He saw what you did to Aidan and the other two. What do you think, he didn’t call the cops?” Hiroki ran his sweaty hands across the steering wheel. “I’m going to jail and you’re going to a zoo.”
Billy placed his hand on Hiroki’s shoulder. “If anything happens, I promise you I will take all the blame. You were just there. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I only helped you escape the scene of the crime!” Hiroki yelled as he slid his foot from the gas to the brake. The Buick skidded to a halt on the shoulder of the road. Hiroki threw open his door and jumped out.
As soon as he was out of the Buick, he looked at his tires and his jaw dropped. He leapt back in behind the wheel and gunned the engine again, but now the tires only spun. “We’re stuck in the mud.”
“Hiroki, listen to me—”
“We’re stuck in the mud!” Hiroki screamed as he jumped out of the Buick again.
Billy slipped out of the passenger seat and joined Hiroki on the muddy road. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder, both staring at the Buick�
��s tires. Sure enough, they were buried to the hubcaps in thick brown muck.
“It’s not life or death,” Billy muttered.
“Shut up, Billy! You’re the reason my car is stuck. You’re the reason the cops are after us—”
“They’re not after us.”
“—and you’re the reason I have to eat the stupid leaves before I ever get to transform and experience flying for myself!”
Billy turned to take a good look at Hiroki. “You weren’t kidding last night? You really did you eat the fruit?”
“Yes I did!”
“When did you eat it?” Billy asked.
“Does it matter?! I have to eat the leaves now because of you! They saw your eyes and they saw how strong you were. When the cops go into the library and find that table still covered with the mythology books and the pictures of the dragons, they’ll put it all together! They’ll know we found the tree and ate the fruit and they’ll send out helicopters and fighter jets to hunt us down! It’s all over, Billy! You ruined everything you selfish asshole!”
“Where are the leaves?” Billy asked calmly.
“In my backpack. In the car.” Hiroki was breathless after his rant. “Why?”
Billy backed away from Hiroki, a wry smile creeping onto his face. “The sun’s not quite down yet, but you’re angry. Anger, Hiro…. You’re already changing.”
Hiroki was astonished to look down at himself and see… it was true! He was so pumped up with adrenaline that he hadn’t noticed his clothes stretching. His skin had darkened and a scaly pattern was appearing across its surface.
Billy gulped hard. “If you’re going to eat the leaves, better eat them right now.”
There was no pain yet, but Hiroki felt a terrible itch all over his body. His heart was beating so rapidly he could hardly feel a space between the beats.
“Want me to get the backpack?” asked Billy as he climbed back into the Buick.
Hiroki shook his head. “I have to know.”
