The Last Monster

by Ginger Garrett

  The first flower of spring.

  The first real, growing flower I had seen up close since last fall, when they admitted me to the hospital. The world had been feeling gray for so long. But here was a perfect tulip shooting straight up from a bulb buried in the cold dirt, its thick red petals a signal to the others to do the same. None of the flowers were blooming yet, but there’s always one that can’t wait to feel the sun.

  Mr. Reeves made me keep moving, but I turned just before getting on the bus for one last look at it.

  Candy hovered, casting a shadow over the tulip. Then she reached down and, using her fingernails, severed the blossom from the stalk. She held it in her hand, showing it off as her friends gathered. A teacher yelled at them to get moving. Candy tossed it aside as she walked onto her bus, and the first bloom of spring was trampled by the rest of the seventh grade.

  I swallowed hard, trying to keep my tears from spilling.

  Billy climbed onto the bus and was just about to sit down next to me, but with a shake of his head, Mr. Reeves shot his long arm out and pointed to the back of the bus. Billy huffed in protest but the kids in line pushed him down the aisle. He took his seat about six or seven rows behind me.

  Mr. Reeves sat in the row across from mine and turned toward me, giving me a kind smile. He almost looked like he felt guilty for making me see that exhibit. I turned to look out the window. Everyone knew I would have been chosen for extinction. Why did evil people pick on people who were different? Why were they so afraid of us? I was different because I was less than perfect. How could that be a threat to anyone?

  I was directly behind the driver, with his seat blocking most of my view. Mr. Reeves had plenty of extra space, with no rows in front of him. He was busy making notes in his notebook.

  Mr. Reeves got up to borrow the driver’s intercom mike. “Traffic may be a little heavy as we head back to the school. Please talk quietly so we don’t disturb our driver. If you brought a snack, you may eat it, but remember to pick up your trash.”

  I looked back at the museum as the windows darkened in the afternoon sun. No one was safe. Not if we were different, out of order…or just the first to sense a change coming. My eyes began to fill up again.

  Billy cleared his throat loudly. I refused to look back.

  “Sofia!”

  I jerked my head around to face him.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” The last thing I wanted was for everyone on the bus to know why I was crying.

  The bus rumbled forward and I settled farther down in my seat, resting my head against the window. The sun warmed the glass and my eyelids grew heavy.

  “Sofia!”

  I sat up and turned around again. “What!” I snapped at Billy.

  “Is it what I said in the museum?” he called back.

  In the rearview mirror, I saw the bus driver raise his eyebrows, irritated with us. Mr. Reeves turned around and warned Billy not to get out of his seat.

  Facing forward, I refused to look back again. Then I realized I could spy on Billy by looking in the driver’s mirror, and snuck a glance.

  Billy caught me. Before I could look away, he held up an orange. He had used a Sharpie to draw a smiley face in what I think was supposed to represent me.

  I turned around. “Am I supposed to be flattered?”

  “You’re supposed to laugh. I’m trying to cheer you up.”

  We were pulling into the school lot when Billy sent the orange rolling, fast, straight up the center of the aisle toward me.

  A dad on his cell phone drove his SUV too close to the bus, and our driver had to swerve to avoid him. Instead of landing in my hand, the orange shot forward and lodged itself under the brake pedal just as the bus driver slammed his foot on the brakes.

  The orange exploded.

  The bus skidded to a stop, fleshy bits of orange pulp dripping down the driver’s face. He pulled the lever to open the doors and stumbled down the steps, collapsing like someone had kicked him in the back of the knees. When he caught his breath, the driver shouted an impressive list of four-letter words at us.

  I heard Billy gulp.

  No one else made a sound.

  No one even dared to breathe.

  Carefully, quietly, Mr. Reeves bent down and retrieved the burst orange, holding it up for us all to see. If I had ever wondered what my face would look like if it was orange and completely smashed in, now I knew.

  I was standing by myself as the rest of our class gossiped, their backs turned, eyes darting back and forth between me and Billy. Alexis was listening to her friends from the track team. A few of them had been on my bus, and they were filling her in on the incident.

  Parents started to arrive. I could tell the story was traveling fast by the adults’ expression when they looked back at me. As if this were my fault.

  Alexis turned away from her friends and stormed toward Billy.

  “What is wrong with you?” Alexis snapped at him. Mr. Reeves raised his eyebrows, but he made no move to stop Alexis. I think he was hoping she would punch him.

  “What, because I’m her friend?” Billy asked, like Alexis had asked the most obvious, ridiculous question ever. “Something’s wrong with me because I care how she feels?”

  “Something’s wrong with you because you won’t leave her alone! She doesn’t want you bothering her! Anyone can see that, you moron! Look at her!” Alexis shouted as she pointed at me.

  I looked away.

  Billy took a step toward her. He got right in her face.

  “Who cares what you think?” Billy shot back.

  Alexis shoved him, both hands on his chest. “I’m her best friend!” she shouted.

  My heart felt like someone was squeezing it. Billy looked down at the ground. I could see his jaw muscles flexing as he cleared his throat.

  “I didn’t know you already had a best friend,” Billy said to me when he finally looked up. His eyes were hard and cold.

  Why did it matter if she was a best friend instead of just a friend? Was it against the rules to have more than one?

  “You should have said something,” Billy said. “I don’t want to get caught in the middle. I don’t want to be a liability.”

  My toes curled in my shoe. If I had a zipper on my back, I would have unpeeled myself from my body and run.

  Alexis held her ground, arms crossed. They both looked at me like I owed them an explanation.

  “She was my best friend,” I finally said. I wanted to look at Alexis, but I couldn’t. “It’s complicated.”

  “Why are you doing this to me?” Alexis uncrossed her arms and moved closer. She moved like an athlete, strong and confident, even in short strides. “Just give me one good reason.”

  “To save you the trouble,” I said. “You don’t want to be friends with me anymore.”

  “Yes, I do,” she said, and stomped one foot. “Why don’t you believe that?”

  “When we were friends,” I said, “and we would run together…” I had to stop. My throat burned from the sobs I kept swallowing back. Saying each word was like chewing razors. I took a breath and tried again. “We’d be racing, and your shoes would be rubbing a blister, and then I’d have to stop and vomit because I always ate the wrong thing for breakfast, but you never let us stop or give up. If there’s one thing you really hate in life, it’s pain. You said there was too much of it already. You always said you refused to let pain win.”

  “Because I’m not a quitter,” she said. “I don’t quit on races…or friends.”

  A tear burned my cheek and I wiped it away, fast. Billy frowned in concentration as he listened and watched.

  At our very first cross-country practice, Alexis and I hadn’t even known each other’s names. The coach had divided the girls into two groups to encourage teamwork, and Alexis and I weren’t in the same group. The average pace for a middle school runner is twelve minutes and fourteen seconds per mile, so our goal was to run
a 5K in under thirty-eight minutes. That would qualify us as average, our coach said, but he wanted better-than-average runners, so he would be standing on the track, clipboard in hand. We had twelve laps to impress him.

  I knew I was going to do that.

  I hadn’t trained much; I wasn’t a great runner, so I didn’t see the point of training really hard. I sprinted from the start line and ran until my sides burned in agony. Before the first lap was even done, Alexis blew past me in the lead for her group. On the third lap she saw me: my hands on my knees, breathing hard and crying. I knew I wasn’t a great runner, but I hadn’t known that I would humiliate myself in front of everyone. I couldn’t even finish all twelve laps unless I walked.

  Other girls passed by but Alexis circled back for me. “We’ll run together,” she had said. “If you run with a friend, it doesn’t hurt as bad.”

  We introduced ourselves when I stopped to stretch out a cramp in my calf.

  Alexis never left my side after that. She was strong enough for both of us. Even when it meant she had to run extra portions of a race just to keep me company. I didn’t know why she wanted to be friends with me. She kind of dazzled me, but after I found her crying in the bathroom, I knew she had issues at home so she needed a good friend. I decided to keep my mouth shut and hope that a little of her strength would rub off on me. She really only had one rule: it didn’t matter if we lost, as long as the pain didn’t win.

  Remembering it all, I took a deep breath that made me shudder. “You tried to visit me in the hospital, right?”

  Alexis glared at me, but I saw tears in her eyes. “You know I did.”

  “But you didn’t come back after that. Maybe you knew I wasn’t strong enough. The pain won, Alexis. Look at me!” I gestured with one hand to my body. “How could I be your friend like this? You’d feel guilty that you can run and I can’t, and then you might even stop. I would ruin the one thing you love most.”

  “Are you crazy?” she yelled. She looked like she was trying not to explode. Billy stepped toward her, raising his arms in case he needed to grab her. I shook my head at him angrily. This was my fight.

  Alexis chewed her lip, rolling the bottom one under her front teeth, mentally working something through before she said it. She started three separate times before she finally spoke.

  “When we raced, there were rules,” she said, holding her hands out, palms up, for emphasis. “If we followed the rules, we might win. But if we broke the rules, we got disqualified. No matter how hard we ran. Your cancer? That was a race that you had to run without me.” Tears slipped down her cheeks. “Yeah, I love running. But I love you too.”

  My own tears were building. Big swallows of air kept me from completely disintegrating when she continued.

  “And I didn’t want to hurt your chances,” she went on. “I left you alone in the hospital, because that’s what your mom wanted me to do! She said I might give you another infection. And then suddenly you didn’t want to be my friend anymore. I didn’t know why and you wouldn’t even talk to me to explain it, but I would never, ever quit on you. So I waited for you to circle back for me this time. And you never did!”

  “Because I can’t!” I screamed. “You have to go on without me. You get to go on! And I can’t be happy for you, not yet. I’m angry! It’s not fair, not to either one of us. Every time I look at you, I feel sad and angry, and every time you look at me, you feel guilty.”

  She briefly looked away, then shook her head, but we both knew I was right. I knew how she felt when her sister looked at her and how much Alexis hated having the one thing her sister wanted more than anything else. I knew the truth, and it cost us our friendship.

  So what hurts worse, truth or love?

  Both, because they end up being the same thing.

  I buried my face in my hands and bawled.

  Alexis held out her arms to wrap me up in a hug, but instinctively I took a step back. I knew that the cracks around me weren’t the good kind. If she touched me, I would break into a thousand sharp pieces.

  Billy stepped between us, holding his hands out to keep Alexis back, like he knew what it meant to be shattered.

  “Leave us alone,” Alexis said to Billy. “Go find someone else to stalk.”

  Billy’s face turned red and I watched Mom’s car turn in to the lot.

  “You abandoned her,” Billy said. “I would never do that, no matter who told me to. A real friend stays.”

  Alexis pulled one arm back to shove him, just as I tried to twist around and push Billy out of her path.

  Mom got out of the car and waved just as my hand hit Billy’s face. He fell, hands covering his face, blood seeping out between his fingers. I had accidentally smashed his nose with the flat of my palm.

  “Wow,” Alexis whispered. “Just…wow.” She slowly walked off and glanced over her shoulder at me, once.

  I stood there, my head swimming. Everything about the moment had gone wrong. I had finally spoken my truth, and it wasn’t a beautiful thing, not at all. My truth was not something to write poetry about or frame on a poster. It was ugly and small and screaming in pain, but it was mine.

  So what was I going to do about it?

  I watched from the passenger seat of our car as Mom and Mr. Reeves talked. Billy was holding an ice pack to his face, and a girl was laughing at something he had just said. She flung her hair and must have said something witty, because he laughed next. It hurt to watch them. Why had he completely shut down when he learned that Alexis and I were best friends? And were we best friends, even now that she knew how I felt? She’d have to be either strong or crazy to be my best friend after today.

  My attention snapped back to the adults deciding my fate. Their discussion involved a lot of finger-pointing. Mom straightened her back and went toe-to-toe with Mr. Reeves to stare him down.

  But then she said something and his whole face changed. He softened and reached out to touch her arm. He pulled out his wallet and showed her a picture. She smiled and nodded, and touched his arm in the same spot. I had never seen my mom flirt. I rubbed my eyes, trying to stop the damage, but it was no use. The image was seared on my retinas forever.

  She walked slowly back to the car. The expression etched on her face was a work of art, a delicately balanced composition of shock and fury.

  My life was a constant loop of misunderstanding.

  “Well, you had a memorable field trip,” Mom chirped after a few minutes of silence. She merged the car onto the highway. Apparently there had also been some confusion as to whether I had tried to stage a mock explosion of the driver’s head, and whether I had meant to punch Billy. The car was cold and she reached for the heater, but accidentally turned it to AC.

  Her knuckles were white but she didn’t notice the drop to subzero temperature and I didn’t dare move. Or speak.

  “I should probably blame myself,” she said. “I pushed you to be a normal kid again. Perhaps I should have been more specific. A normal law-abiding kid with good grades and nice friends!”

  She hit the wheel with the palm of her fist. “Mr. Reeves felt sorry for me,” she sputtered, like the words left a bad taste in her mouth. “Like I need pity, since I’m a single mom.”

  Pity rubbed us both the wrong way. We didn’t speak again until she pulled into the driveway and turned off the engine.

  “What is going on with you?” she demanded.

  I shook my head and looked at my lap. If I said what I was thinking—that she was only getting a little taste of my everyday existence—we’d end up in a huge fight. Should I tell her that the boy I had just injured might be my first boyfriend? That I had recently been a beacon of hope for terrifying monsters from all over the world? That what I wanted more than anything right now was to be able to talk to a dead man? Or that I had accidentally helped create a new predator?

  “Where is the Sofia I know?” Her voice got quiet. “I want that girl back. I miss her.”

  “If I told you the truth, you would
n’t believe me.”

  “Try me,” she said.

  I folded my arms. “I didn’t like the old me. No one liked her, Mom.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “I’m not saying I was bullied, not exactly. But no one paid attention to me, except to make sure I wasn’t in their clique,” I said. “No one wanted me around, and just because people feel sorry for me now doesn’t mean they suddenly like me. I still don’t belong anywhere.”

  “But you can’t live like this. I can’t live like this! Not one more day,” she said. “Something has got to change. I just want you to be happy.”

  I turned my face to the window. “I’m trying,” I whispered.

  My mind went back to everything in the museum exhibit. If all the animals in a species were exactly like each other, eventually they all died. But if one was born different? It died first.

  And that wasn’t the worst part. I had learned the worst part in the last exhibit.

  Change was useless unless it was the right adaption for what was about to happen—and no one ever knew what that would be.

  Evolution was so unfair.

  We pulled into the driveway a few minutes later, and I glanced up at my window. It was open, the curtains fluttering in the early evening breeze. I was sure I hadn’t left my window open. Mom got out, lugging her briefcase from the car, and I followed.

  She turned the doorknob and nudged the door open with her shoulder. A small brown package sat on our doorstep with a return label that read “Germs-B-Gone.” Mom bent down and tried to hide it behind her briefcase, knowing I would probably say something snarky.

  That was why I saw the inside of our house first.

  The couch was standing on its end against the living room wall, where huge chunks of drywall had been ripped out. Our pictures were facedown on the floor. Papers and books had been thrown everywhere and torn to shreds.

  Mom saw my face and turned slowly. She dropped her package and briefcase as she slumped against the door. I stepped over her, picking my way through the debris until I was in the kitchen. The phone base was empty but still plugged in, which seemed like a miracle. Instinctively, I hit the page button and listened for the beeping. I found the phone inside a soup pan resting by the TV. The TV was lying on its side by the back door.