The Last Monster

by Ginger Garrett

  I looked down at myself, then shrugged. It was hard to ignore the stinging in my throat, the warning that I was going to cry. But Candy was probably right. What did I know about fashion?

  The dresses for me were all long and straight, like Popsicle wrappers. I had never worn a long dress, except maybe a nightgown when I was little.

  Mrs. Baker stood in front of the rack and studied my body. Then my face. When she pointed to my bandana, I shook my head.

  “That’s all right,” she said. “You can remove it when you’re ready.”

  “I won’t be ready today,” I countered, frowning to make sure she took me seriously.

  “Well,” she said, turning back to the dresses, “let’s take this one step at a time.”

  I didn’t hate her, which was a surprise since she was related to Candy. She was sweet and soft-spoken, and I liked how she wore loose black pants with a fuzzy sweater. She also wore little pearl earrings and a plain silver necklace. Mrs. Baker was like an elegant librarian. It seemed to be an achievable fashion goal, even for someone like me.

  Candy grabbed her selections and disappeared into a dressing room.

  Mrs. Baker chose the first dress for me to try. It was shapeless. Just a straight gray tube of shimmering fabric. But gray could be a good color, I tried to tell myself. Gray was the color of useful things, like knives and scissors and surgical instruments.

  No, I corrected myself. Instruments like the flute. Shrill and annoying when badly played. Good grief, why was I even here? I was a thrift-store shopper. This was not my world.

  Mrs. Baker followed me to the dressing room, making polite chitchat about how my day was and whether I wanted a soda or bottle of water. If she could tell how nervous I was, she didn’t show it.

  Outside the dressing room was a table with several trays on top. Inside two of them were different pieces of jewelry. The other three held cosmetics and hair products and accessories like ribbons and barrettes.

  My stomach bounced down to my knees. I didn’t have enough hair to use ribbons or barrettes. I would look like an idiot if she decorated my head.

  Mrs. Baker waited outside the door while I stepped into the dressing room.

  The inside was pretty. It had striped wallpaper, a chair, but no mirror. Was that good or bad? I wondered. Did she give me this room on purpose?

  “The photographer called,” she said.

  I had almost forgotten about that horror. In real life I could get away and escape from people staring at me, but in a photograph I’d be frozen. I wouldn’t be able to hide.

  I struggled to get into the dress. The zipper was in back. Sweat broke out on my upper lip as I writhed and wriggled and yanked at it. If I braced against the wall with one hand to keep my balance, I couldn’t quite get the zipper to hold still.

  “He’s stuck at the airport in Boston,” Mrs. Baker continued. “Would you mind if we took the pictures at the dance instead? The lighting won’t be as good, but I’ll make him promise to take an extra shot of you and Candy together.”

  Wonderful. Something for the fridge.

  I didn’t answer, because I knew it was a rhetorical question. After a few more embarrassing grunts, I defeated the zipper. Before I could celebrate, though, I realized I had to use the big three-way mirror at the end of the dressing-room hallway next.

  Maybe in these fancy stores, it wasn’t your own opinion that counted. Other people had to approve too. I ran my hands down the front of the dress, feeling the weak spot where the Kappa had bit me.

  Opening the door slightly, I motioned for her to come in. Instead, she reached for my hand and pulled. I felt like a turtle getting yanked from its shell. Mrs. Baker was surprisingly strong.

  Standing there in a six-hundred-dollar dress that covered me from neck to ankle, I had never felt more exposed.

  Mrs. Baker slapped her hands to her cheeks.

  “I’ll change,” I said quickly. “It probably looks bad.”

  “No,” she gasped. “It’s perfect! Just wait.” She disappeared for a minute, then reappeared with two boxes of shoes. When she opened both boxes, I saw that the two pairs were the exact same style. She grinned and pulled one shoe out of each box. “You’re not my first customer with a prosthesis,” she whispered.

  Squatting at my feet, she helped me into the shoes. “Since you probably haven’t worn heels yet, let me tell you a little secret. Sometimes you’ll need a different size for each foot when you buy high heels. A prosthesis has a different fit in heels, even if it’s the same size as your natural foot.”

  If I wanted to wear anything but tennis shoes, that meant I’d have to buy two pairs. We could never afford two pairs of new shoes at one time. I’d have to cry later; Mrs. Baker had already started on my face. Soft brushes tickled my chin and nose. Then a cold metal necklace circled my neck. Next, she reached for my bandana.

  My hand caught hers in midair.

  “Time to take a leap of faith,” she whispered.

  I didn’t know if that was a joke but I let go of her hand and closed my eyes.

  The bandana slid off. A light comb pulled through my short stubble up top. A cold spray followed, then more combing. The combing felt good, like my mom’s fingernails on my back.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  I took a deep breath and opened my eyes.

  “I want to see!” Candy squealed from her dressing room. I heard her door handle turning.

  Mrs. Baker stepped to my side. Candy stood in between me and the mirror.

  Candy stared at me. She didn’t move. I had never seen that expression on anyone’s face when they looked at me. I didn’t know what it meant.

  I walked around her to the mirror, holding my breath. There in front of me stood someone I had never met.

  She was beautiful.

  I was beautiful.

  The long dress hid everything I hated about my body. My toilet-scrubber hair was slicked back and stylish. Mrs. Baker had draped me with blue and silver jewelry, and my eyes reflected the glittery shine.

  “I look like a model in a magazine,” I said softly. “Exquisite, even.”

  “I know,” Candy said. “You look amazing. You don’t even look real.”

  I turned side to side, admiring myself. This was what I had wished for, wasn’t it? I wouldn’t blend in and be forgotten, ever again.

  I used to hate that no one noticed me. Then I came back after I got sick, and it was like I was doubly invisible, because people still didn’t see me. They just saw a new label: cancer. That was the loneliest feeling in the world, to realize that despite everything I was going through, and all the ways I was changing, people just saw a different label. But now I realized that on my birthday, I had wished for the wrong thing. I had wanted to look in the mirror and like what I saw. I should have wished to look in the mirror and see someone else.

  That was what Candy was trying to help me understand. I didn’t have to show anyone the real me, ever.

  I could show them something better.

  I thought of Billy suddenly and blushed. What would he see? Would he think I was beautiful too?

  “All you had to do was trust me,” Candy said. She moved to stand side by side in the mirror. The air around us turned cold. “I knew you’d like what you saw.”

  I suddenly thought of Entropion. If I wasn’t ashamed of myself, his lies held no power. Maybe this was the way to defeat him, by beating him at his own game. I didn’t have to like the real me. I only had to be someone different, and I had just learned that it wasn’t really that hard.

  Mrs. Baker walked up behind me on the other side and put her arm around my shoulders. She shivered and glanced at the thermostat on the wall.

  “Well, thank you, Mrs. Baker,” I finally said. “And…thanks, Candy.”

  “This is going to change everything,” Candy replied.

  A rumbling noise echoed in the air-conditioning vent above the dressing rooms.

  “We should get going,” I said, glancing up. “I
have a ton of homework.” I didn’t know what that noise was, but I didn’t want to find out. Had something followed me from school, maybe the thing that had been hiding in the ceiling?

  After I changed, Mrs. Baker took the dress and put it in a bag with the hanger at the top, and she put the shoes in a velvet bag too. I had never owned anything this expensive. At the store where I shopped, all the clothes got thrown together into one plastic bag. Walking out, I passed by the faceless mannequins again. One head swiveled slowly as I passed, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw it watching me with light gray eyes, just like Olympias.

  I walked so fast Candy was breathing hard when we got to the car. I took a moment to tie a bandana back on my head, even though Candy rolled her eyes when I did. I wasn’t ready for anyone else to see my hair.

  Candy talked the whole way home about everything she still had to do before the dance. I tried to listen, since she had just scored me a dress and shoes, and her aunt had thrown in a bunch of makeup samples. Thankfully, we had a short drive to my mom’s office.

  I opened the car window to allow cold air to blow onto my face. A bunch of plain brown sparrows sat on a telephone wire. We had studied the life cycle of sparrows in science last year. The birds looked at us when we were stopped at a light. Not one of them was beautiful. No one went to the zoo to see sparrows; they weren’t special. My science teacher said most sparrows don’t even survive after they hatch. If they do, they only live a few years.

  “So if you’re one of them, what’s the point of living?” the teacher had asked, obviously hoping that a student would have some profound insight about the circle of life. No one did. And the teacher didn’t even answer her own question, so it hung in the air all period like a dark cloud. We didn’t want to try and explain the meaning of death. Most of us were still trying to figure out if we needed to start wearing deodorant.

  I was still staring out the window at the sparrows when a shiny black SUV drove past. A woman with long blond hair and sunglasses was driving. She didn’t look at me or turn her head, but somehow I knew she was smiling. And I knew exactly who she was.

  Friday, March 7

  I slept fitfully and awakened early to the sound of weeping. I pushed myself to sit up, groaning with the effort. I hopped to the window and looked down to where the noise was coming from. Caitlyn, my next-door kindergartner neighbor, stood at the edge of the street, in tears. Her father said something to comfort her that I couldn’t hear.

  “But I told you!” she wailed. “I told you that we shouldn’t let Newman go outside last night. There was a monster in the bushes!” When he shook his head, she stomped her foot. “I saw it!”

  He wrapped his arm around her shoulders, trying to nudge her home. Behind his back, he held a collar with a dangling tag. It looked like it had been ripped from the cat’s neck.

  Caitlyn refused to move, and stood with her head bent down to her chest. Her father finally had to pick her up and carry her home. That’s when I saw it.

  A huge red bloodstain was smeared across the road. It must have been Newman…or what was left of him.

  I glanced up and down the street but saw nothing. If a car had hit Newman, there would have been a body. But Caitlyn wasn’t crying over a body. Newman was dead, and it wasn’t a car that got him.

  The little hairs on my neck rose. If Entropion was out there, why had he attacked Newman? Cats weren’t monsters. I mean, most cats weren’t.

  “Sofia! Breakfast!” Mom called from downstairs.

  I grabbed an outfit and got dressed. “I need to see if I left something in the car,” I called when I got downstairs. The street was quiet and empty. I walked to the stain in the road and bent down to inspect it. It didn’t look like blood—at least, not animal blood, not if you really stared at it. It had a greenish-blue tint. It looked like…

  Newman meowed at me from the bushes.

  Turning, I made my way to him, relief flooding through me. He pranced out, looking offended that he had been forced to hide. Poor Newman; he had been eaten and vomited up by the Beast of Gevaudan, and now this. I reached to scoop him up and carry him home to Caitlyn. I couldn’t wait to ring the doorbell and see her face.

  As I reached for him, I heard a little squish. I lifted my right foot and looked down. Part of a tentacle clung to the sole of my shoe.

  Entropion hadn’t killed a cat. Entropion had killed a Kappa.

  He wasn’t going to let any of the monsters get to me. Even if they needed help, he’d stop them. I would be useless as the Guardian.

  Newman hissed when he saw the bloodstain, and leaped from my arms. There weren’t going to be any happy endings today.

  Hijacking Darwin: The Science of Evil

  The banner in front of the Natural History Museum hung lifeless in the morning light. I’d forgotten all about the science field trip, just like I’d forgotten my paper on evolution was due in less than a week. I needed this. My assigned topic was on how evolution impacted the balance of power in any ecosystem. I wasn’t even sure what that meant. The bus ride here had been fairly miserable, with Mr. Reeves having us sing the school song twice to fire up the track team for their meet on Saturday.

  I avoided looking anyone in the eyes.

  When the bus doors opened, Billy called out my name and told me to wait. Mr. Reeves had assigned Billy a seat with a chaperone in the back. I pretended I didn’t hear him and hustled down the steps, scanning the area for Entropion. I didn’t know what he looked like yet, but there was nothing else I could think of to do.

  Inside the museum, the exhibit was cold and dark. There were black-and-white pictures on the walls, and war relics from all over the world in square glass boxes. A lot of the exhibit had to do with Nazi Germany. I saw pictures of children with Down syndrome sitting on an examination bench without any clothes on, so skinny their ribs were visible under the skin. They were smiling, as if the bright camera flash were a sparkling promise that these men in uniform were humans too, and weren’t all people basically good?

  The Golem came to mind, his back riddled with buckshot. I dropped my head, my heart suddenly hurting. Had he been shot out of fear or for fun? Would either answer make it right? Not all humans were good. And even good people could do bad things. The monsters were gone from our lives, but we had never felt less safe.

  An old guy in a crisp museum-guide uniform clapped his hands to signal the beginning of our tour. He had white hair trimmed into sharp clean lines at the temples, and a deep sadness that haunted his eyes. When he turned his head to one side, I saw a red scar, old and flat, that ran from ear to mouth.

  Our first stop was an exhibit called “Survival of the Fittest?” As we filed in, Candy caught my eye and smiled. “What did your mom think of the dress?” she asked. “I told everyone you’re going to look amazing in it.”

  The museum guide was talking, so I turned to listen.

  “As you see, the natural world is extraordinary in its diversity. Whether we are looking at a lowly insect or an apex predator, every creature is wonderful in its own way. Some would have you believe that these creatures”—here he waved to all the pictures—“must destroy each other to survive. Survival of the fittest, they call it. I call it utter nonsense.”

  We all glanced at each other, confused. Wasn’t that what evolution was all about? The strong gobbling up the weak?

  The museum guide continued. “Competition does not determine survival, not in the way you may think. Species survive by being different, not stronger. The dinosaurs? So strong the earth trembled beneath them.” He lowered his voice as he spoke and made fists, imitating a strong beast. Then he shrugged. “And today, of course, quite dead.”

  A gloomy feeling settled among us. He pointed a finger, sweeping it past all our faces, then jabbing it at the pictures of the strange creatures from nature.

  “To survive, one must adapt, change, do the unexpected.”

  Candy nudged Natalie and whispered something to her. Natalie just shrugged.

/>   He cleared his throat. “The mistake that Hitler’s men made was in not understanding the true power of evolution. Survival does not go to the strong or the beautiful, not to the fast or smart. Only the unique live on, those with the rarest of strengths: the ability to stand alone for the sake of the greater good.” He pulled out a linen handkerchief and dabbed at his mouth. The corner of his mouth drooped when he talked.

  “He’s saying it’s better to be a freak,” Candy whispered, but loud enough for us all to hear. A bunch of people giggled. “Good luck with that.”

  The guide stared at Candy. Something in his eyes told me that he was too tired to argue with her, like maybe he had already fought that fight a thousand times and knew how it ended.

  The guide waved his hands, motioning for us to line up to walk to another exhibit. He made a wide path around Candy.

  Without warning, Billy was right next to me, his shoulder grazing mine. I pretended not to notice. I worried he might sense the way I had been thinking about him when I looked at myself in the dress.

  “Good grief, I can’t leave you alone for a minute,” he said. “I just heard you went shopping with Candy for a dress.”

  “I had to,” I said. “Long story.”

  “We have the whole bus ride back.”

  Thankfully, the guide continued the lecture. “The Nazis tried to create a superior human race. Those inferior were identified by what made them different: religion, disabilities, artistic gifts, sexual orientation, being left-handed or just noticeably strange.”

  Several people snuck glances at me. Instinctively, I reached up and touched my bandana to make sure it hadn’t slipped.

  “Hitler wanted to control evolution to gain power,” the guide said. He pointed to a picture of a soldier shooting a mother cradling an infant in her arms. Some of the girls in our class started crying. Hitler was a real monster, I thought, the kind even Xeno would be afraid of.

  I looked down to where my leg should have been.

  How could anyone believe they could control nature?

  The exhibit had more photographs, but my brain shut down. It was an eternity before we got the signal to head back to the tour buses. I was the first one out the door, and that was when I saw it.