I don’t know what I expected Cindy to do next, but it is definitely not wrap the chain around my neck and lock it into place.
“I’m not wearing this.” I touch a finger to the lid softly enough so I’m sure I don’t jar him too much. “You’re the one who wants to carry him around, so you can be the one who wears him.”
“You probably want to be careful climbing out the window,” Cindy says, ignoring my protests. “If you fall, you’ll probably break a leg. If he falls, he’ll probably die. Just saying.”
My hand instinctively wraps around the lipstick tube and I stare at Cindy with huge, frightened eyes. Of course she put him on my neck. She doesn’t want the responsibility of his life. Not surprisingly, Cindy doesn’t check to see what kind of reaction her warning gets from me. Instead, she grabs her purse from the floor where she dropped it and stretches out the window, reaching for the closest branch.
As she grabs hold of the tree, she calls back, “Don’t forget the box. We’ll need that.”
I stare at the window for a few seconds, then at my bedroom door. A large part of me wants Mom to suddenly burst through and stop us before this goes any further.
There’s a soft thud outside as Cindy drops the last couple of feet to the ground. She doesn’t call back to me, but her impatience is there in the silence. One more glance at the door. This is really happening. I’m going to sneak out of the house. With Cindy. And a miniature man.
I can still go to Mom. Get her alone and beg her to help. But Cindy is already outside waiting for me. Despite everything I know and loathe about her, she didn’t freak out when she saw the mini man. That has to mean something.
There’s no choice, not really. I grab my purse and stuff the box inside. It fits easily since the bag is huge, though there’s enough junk in there already, I don’t know how easily I’ll be able to find it again. Then I lean out the window to find the same branch Cindy used.
Climbing down the tree is harder than I expect. The bark is rough and rips at my hands and clothes. Tiny branches keep poking me, especially around my eyes. Plus, I’m climbing one-handed since my other is wrapped securely around the necklace with my thumb covering most of the top to keep the little guy safely inside while leaving enough room for air.
I dangle from the lowest branch for a couple of seconds and then drop, landing easily on the balls of my feet and bending my knees to absorb the impact. I hope I made the landing light so he doesn’t get too banged up.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“I—um...” He seems surprised I asked. “Yes. Still miniature, and a little bruised, but it could be worse I suppose.”
“Good.” I attempt to think of something else to add, something reassuring like a promise everything will be okay, but I can’t find the words. Instead all I say is another, “Good.”
I follow Cindy’s shadow as she expertly dodges around the lights from windows of ours and the neighbors’ houses. We make it to the car and close the doors as silently as we can. Cindy does a quick check of the mirrors, then in the same moment starts the car and guns it out of the driveway. I lurch in my seat and desperately fumble with my seatbelt.
“Are you trying to kill us?”
“Can’t give Mom time to come out and stop us by being slow. She always comes running out the door the second she hears the car start. See, there she is.”
I glance first at the mirror, and then twist around in my seat. She’s right. Mom has run out the door and is staring at the car with a look she’s never given me before. Disappointment. We turn a corner with a screech and lose I sight of the house and Mom. Before we do, I see Stewart step out of the house, and could swear he smirked at us. It must be my imagination.
I turn back around and we drive in silence for a while. Well, as silent as a car can be with Cindy’s music blasting away. I can practically feel myself going deaf. And the car smells like cheap cologne.
Suddenly there’s a weird sensation from my lap and I would have jumped if I weren’t strapped in. I look down in fear. It’s the box. It has to be. And it moved.
My purse gently vibrates again and I relax. Of course it isn’t the box. It’s only my cellphone. I always keep it on vibrate so it doesn’t go off during a recital to embarrass me and annoy everyone else.
I turn down the music and answer my phone without checking to see who it is. Before I can say more than “hello” Cindy grabs it and smashes her thumb against the ‘end’ button. Does she not know how much the phone cost?
“Hey!”
“Are you an idiot?” Cindy says. “We’re running away from home, and obviously Mom is calling to tell you to come back. What were you planning on saying? ‘Oh, yes, of course. I’ll be home in a minute. So sorry I left without asking. Please ground me for three months for my disobedience.’”
“First, I do not sound like that. And second, you don’t know it was Mom.”
“Yeah I do.” Cindy says as though it’s so obvious even a child would know.
“How can you possibly? I didn’t have time to look at the caller display, so how could you have seen it while driving.” I stroke my phone and attempt to rub away the thumb smudge on its otherwise shiny case.
“Oh please. Who else would it be? It’s not like you have any actual friends.”
She nods toward my hands as though cleaning my phone is proof she’s right.
I sit there with my mouth gaping open for a few seconds before turning away to stare out the window. I have friends. I have lots of friends. I mean, they might not call all of the time, but only because we see each other almost every day at recital. I might not have a reputation like Cindy, but I’ve even had a couple of boyfriends.
Grade seven there was Casey. We held hands every day at break for a week. And last year Pete—or Pirouette Pete as the girls in my advanced ballet class call him—and I went on at least half a dozen dates. Kissed a bunch of times and everything. Of course now he’s going out with Sean, but not because of me. He was always gay; he just didn’t realize it until after we went out.
But because I don’t need to spend every waking moment with my friends, Cindy has the nerve to say I don’t have any. Yeah, we’re always competing with each other for the lead in the next show or for the first place trophy in the latest competition, but we get friends.
Friends who don’t talk much. Or hang out. Or like each other.
“Hey Al, how old are you?” Cindy asks over the music, which thankfully she left down.
“Nineteen.”
“Hot. College student?”
“Cindy!”
I pull a face. Really? She’s going to hit on a guy the size of her thumb. That’s messed up.
“College.” He repeats the word carefully, as though there’s some hidden meaning behind it. “I don’t think it’s the same thing here as in my world.”
“Your... world.” Cindy mulls over the idea for a minute while I very carefully try not to. Miniature men are hard enough to deal with. Add in magic and now other worlds, I’m surprised my brain hasn’t exploded. “Of course!” She slams her palm against her forehead. “It explains the clothes. And the accent.”
I turn back to my window and pretend the conversation between my sister and the man in my necklace isn’t happening.
“Gran would sometimes tell stories about another world, remember Lou?”
I do, but I don’t acknowledge the fact. I tried to block those stories from my mind a long time ago.
“Another world,” Cindy says more to herself than either of us. “Where all the things from myths and legends are real and life is dangerous and exciting and amazing. Gran told us she was from another world, remember? I wonder if it’s the same one.”
“Gran wasn’t exactly in her full mind,” I say. “Mom said Gran has always been a little strange. She should have been on medication.”
“Of course you’d believe Mom over Gran,” Cindy says. “But I remember when you were a kid you used to love her stories. You’d act like an idiot
, running around her house with a cardboard sword saying you were a knight on a quest to save the princess. Until Mom convinced you to be the princess instead.”
I watch the buildings flow past, and don’t argue. It wasn’t only Mom who wanted me to be the princess. I did too. Mostly.
“Please tell me you’re a knight,” Cindy says. “Or a pirate. I love pirates. Especially the Johnny Depp kind.”
“I’m not sure what you mean, but I’m not a pirate.”
“So you’re a knight?”
He hesitates. “No.”
“Okay, so you don’t go to school, you’re not a knight, and you’re not a pirate. What do you do?”
He doesn’t say anything for a long time, until Cindy makes an irritated sound and honks her horn at some poor pedestrian who has the right-of-away.
“Sorry,” he says, though he sounds more worried than sorry. “I work in the field with my father. It’s kind of embarrassing.”
“Ooh,” Cindy smiles and gives him a sidelong glance. Or actually, she gives my necklace a sidelong glance since she can’t actually see him inside the container. “A farmer. Sexy. Bet you have awesome abs.”
So wrong.
“You sure you know where you’re going?” I’m pretty positive she’s headed in the right direction, but I want her to stop flirting, so a subject change is necessary. “I could set the GPS guide on my phone, you know. If you didn’t break it.”
“I remember the way to Gran’s house. It’s only been a week since she died after all.”
She adds something else under her breath and turns up the music. Ten minutes in and I already have a headache. This is going to be fun.
* * *
Chapter Four
My eyes flutter open as my brain tries to remember where I am. I’m in a car. The car is stopping. Okay, I can deal with that. Wait, why am I in a car again? And then I remember. Every. Tiny. Detail. I glance down at my chest and instantly have to look away to keep myself from squirming. He still kind of reminds me of a spider.
It’s then I notice we’re in the middle of nowhere. It’s also completely dark. There’s hardly any other traffic on the road and the only thing in sight are trees.
“Why are we stopping?” I ask, unable to completely hold back the panic in my voice. It’s not like I’m afraid of the dark, but I do usually leave my ballerina nightlight on, just in case.
“Pit stop.”
“Why here?” I look out the window, trying to see through the shadows to find the bears and coyotes and whatever else is out there waiting to eat us. “Can’t you wait for a proper rest stop? There’s got to be a gas station coming up.”
“You want to go inside a public place carrying him?” She pulls off her seatbelt before I have a chance to answer, and climbs out the door. “You’d better squat now. I’m not stopping again, and there’s still a couple more hours left at least.”
It’s not only the darkness keeping me in the car as Cindy clambers down into the ditch. We’re on a main road. Anyone could drive by and see. However, now she’s mentioned it, I can’t help but cross my legs. I groan and climb out of the car to follow Cindy.
The grass down to the ditch is wet and the slope is steeper than I originally thought. I end up sliding part of the way down on my butt, completely ruining my good jeans. I dust off my backside as much as I can while picking my way past Cindy and into the tree line.
“What are you doing?” she says. “Just go here.”
“No way. If I have to go in the woods, at least let me be in the woods and away from perverts driving by.”
“Fine. But don’t say I didn’t warn you when an axe murderer comes out of the shadows and kills you while I easily run away.”
I stare at her with wide eyes as she completely ignores me and climbs back up to the car. “I hate you,” I shout.
Nothing to it. I can do this. A little bit farther and no one will be able to see a thing. If someone or something tries to attack me, I can fight them off. I’ve been taking Taekwondo for over a year after all. No problem.
There’s a problem. I can’t go here. Not with someone attached to me.
“You can set me down, if you like,” Al says as though reading my mind. “I could use some relief myself.”
I gently unlatch the chain and while using my cell for light, I set the whole thing on a mossy bit of ground. I hope he’s safe in this spot.
“You’re going to have to talk to me,” I say. “So I won’t lose you.”
“Of course.” He’s silent for a minute. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Anything,” I tell him as I step behind a tree. “Tell me about your family. Have any sisters? Are they as awful as mine?”
“One sister,” he admits, but doesn’t say any more.
“Oh.”
I can’t think of anything else to ask and he doesn’t volunteer any information, so I finish up in silence.
“You done?” I ask.
“Yes.”
I sweep the light of my cell over the moss a couple of times before I find him. After a few seconds of struggling with the latch of my necklace while holding my phone in my mouth, I start toward the car.
“Is magic common where you come from?” I ask both out of curiosity and also to fill the awkward silence.
“Yes,” he answers simply. “Did you hear something?”
I start to tell him I hadn’t, when a grinding sound startles me. No, it’s not grinding exactly. It’s more like a whine or growl with a bit of a clucking undertone. And it’s coming from the direction of the car. When I look up, I notice two things at once. There’s an old, beat up red truck parked behind Cindy’s car, and there’s something like a cross between a lion, a snake and a goat pacing and sniffing around the passenger side.
I think I make a squeaking sound, though it might be a full out scream. Either way, the thing hears me and turns its heads—because one head isn’t bad enough—and looks directly at me. All of those lessons kick in and I react without thinking, pirouetting on my right foot and bolting as fast as I can into the darkness of the trees.
“Bad bad bad,” I say as I run.
“What?” Al’s voice is tight with fright. “What is it? What’s happening?”
“Creature.” I gasp. “Bad.”
It’s gaining on me. I can practically feel the heat of its breath. A glance over my shoulder and I see it’s not breath I feel. The bloody thing is shooting fire. From one of its mouths. I am so dead.
As I’m turning to face forward again so I can pick up speed, I notice at the last second the creature’s muscles are tensing. It’s preparing to leap. I stop and spin around to the side, my arms guiding the huge beast past me as I’ve done a hundred times during normal human attacks in practice. The difference is, most people don’t have teeth and claws to rip at your skin as they pass. With the creature facing the wrong way, I run back in the direction of the car. The size of the thing, I should have a decent head start before it can turn all the way around. Plus, I should be helping Cindy. I guess.
I’m wrong. It’s fast. Faster than anything its size has the right to be. This time when I turn to meet the attack, I do a spinning kick my master would be proud of. My foot lands hard on one of the heads, knocking it back for a second. The problem is the kick only seems to surprise the creature rather than hurt it. When I kick again, it easily dodges out of the way and sweeps its snake tail around to whip the back of my legs.
I fall to the ground and attempt to scramble away, but it’s no good. Holding the lipstick container hard against my chest, I wait for the inevitable pain and death.
“Sorry Al,” is the last thing I say.
It doesn’t bite.
No scratching either. It freezes. With my eyes closed, I wouldn’t have known it was still there if it weren’t for its hot, stinking breath and deep growls.
I force myself to inhale. And out. Then another. Why isn’t it killing me?
“Why isn’t it killing me?” I ask Al. Good t
hing he’s inside the container or else he’d be long since crushed in my sweaty palm.
“It was sent to find you, not kill you,” he tells me. “Not many can control a chimera. Those who can aren’t people you want to meet alone in the woods.”
“Great. Thanks.”
Ok, maybe I should have been more grateful for the information, but what I really wish he would tell me is a way out.
“You should run,” he says as though once again reading my thoughts.
Not as helpful as I was hoping.
“Tried. Didn’t work.”
“You have to understand,” Al persists. “This thing can only kill you. The people who sent it will do far worse.”
“Far worse how?”
I feel my heart rise in my throat. Al sounds scared. He didn’t sound nearly as afraid when he first fell onto my shirt. Somehow this creature has him shaking like a leaf. His fear makes me terrified.
“Trust me. Run.”
Before I can move, crunching footsteps warn me of the arrival of someone else.
“Good girl, Farah,” a man says to the monster like a normal person would say to their pet dog. “And she’s still alive. Very good work.”
I swear, if he starts scratching it behind the ear...
“Lou?” Cindy asks.
She sounds fine, though maybe a bit grumpy. I manage to peek around the two-headed creature—Had Al called it a chimera?—and find Cindy with her arm gripped tight by a man wearing a long dark leather trench coat and brown cowboy hat. His face is scruffy like he hasn’t shaved in a few days, and there doesn’t look to be a piece of him not covered in filth.
I answer her question with a whimpering sound. I think she gets the message.
“Try running again and Farah here’ll rip you apart,” the man warns. “I don’t get paid if you’re dead, so I’d prefer if you don’t run.”
“Yeah, she gets it,” Cindy says in her most unimpressed voice. “Who’s this boss of yours anyway? What does he want with us?”
“Shut it.”
He pushes the creature off me and lifts me to my feet with his empty hand. His grip digs into my skin, leaving bruises. Still, the pain he inflicts is nothing compared to the feeling of revulsion left where he touches my skin. He drags us back to the car. With a warning look, he lets go of my arm in order to open the passenger door and flick the seat switch causing it to flip forward, allowing people into the back. He moves aside and whistles. The chimera bounds into the car, happy as can be to go for a drive.
The Man in the Box Page 3
