A Girl Called Dust

by V. B. Marlowe

  I wanted to believe him. His explanation sounded plausible, but I wasn’t sure. I thought about what Hollis had said about Fletcher being loyal to his kind over me. Was he keeping tabs on me for this Rose girl? Would he really give me a warning if she planned on hurting me?

  “Arden, I meant it when I said we couldn’t be together. It has nothing to do with not liking you. Givers and Takers can’t mix, so I wanted to squash those feelings right away. But I am sorry about lying to you.”

  I guess I had to accept that. “Hollis says there are creatures all around us in Everson Woods.”

  Fletcher nodded. “There are. Some kids that go to our school. I can smell most of them, but some of them I can’t. Even though we know what the others are, we don’t show it. Not at school.”

  It was hard to believe that non-Human kids were walking around Everson High every day. “Like how many?”

  “I know at least twenty.”

  “Who?”

  Fletcher shook his head. “I would be doing you a disservice if I told you. Once they teach you how to sniff them out, you need to know how to identify them yourself, not because I told you.”

  I didn’t think I would ever be able to do that. I wasn’t a bloodhound. I smelled body spray and cologne, maybe sweat after PE, but that was it. “Do the other kids know about me?”

  Fletcher sighed. “No one’s ever mentioned anything. I’m sure some of them don’t because your scent’s off from living with Humans. We don’t talk about that stuff at school anyway. Really, we don’t talk about it period. You know those meetings your parents go to every Thursday night?”

  “Yeah, my dad told me about them. Why don’t your parents go?’ I asked.

  The corners of his mouth lifted into a small smile. “Let’s just say my parents don’t play well with others.”

  “Fletcher, you know I’m not the one killing people, right?”

  He nodded but said nothing. I couldn’t tell if he believed me or not.

  “Are the Givers planning to come after me because they think I’m the one doing this?”

  He looked down at his comforter and pulled at a loose thread. “I don’t know. My parents won’t tell me stuff like that anymore because they think I’ll tell you. Really, we’re not supposed to discuss those types of things. It can get us both in a lot of trouble. What I will say is that if it’s not you, you need to find out who it is right away.”

  On the way home, I decided to stop by Bailey’s. There was a slim chance Mrs. Benson would let me see her or that Bailey wanted to see me, but I had to at least try. There were a couple of reasons for my visit. One, even after all we had been through, Bailey was my friend. I needed to see how she was doing with my own eyes. Also, that night at the Halloween party, she said I was the one who had attacked her. I needed to know why she thought that and if she had told anyone else.

  The Bensons lived three blocks from my house. Mrs. Benson answered the door after the second ring. She stood in the doorway with her lips pressed tightly together, smoothing the sides of her perfect caramel-colored bob.

  Mrs. Benson looked me up and down and then adjusted her sweater. “Arden, long time no see.” It wasn’t the warmest welcome, but it wasn’t that cold either. At least she hadn’t slammed the door in my face.

  “Hi, Mrs. Benson. I was wondering if I could see Bailey. Just for a few minutes. I haven’t seen her since—well, since what happened, and I wanted to see how she was doing.”

  Mrs. Benson looked me up and down. “Bailey doesn’t take visitors at the present moment, but let me check with her. Wait here.”

  Mrs. Benson closed the door, leaving me to wait on the porch. I wiped my sweaty palms on the sides of my dress. I hadn’t realized how nervous I was. A minute later she came back. “Go on up to her room. You know where it is.”

  “Thank you.” I stepped inside and removed my boots, because that was the rule in the Benson house. I placed my boots by the door next to a brown pair of men’s loafers. The house still had the same scent, a mixture of lavender and Pine-Sol. I’d made it halfway up the stairs when Mrs. Benson called to me. “Arden?”

  “Yes?”

  “She has a lot of scarring. It’ll be shocking to see at first, but please don’t make a big deal about it.”

  It couldn’t have been any worse than the way she’d looked that night, but that would have been a stupid thing to say out loud. “Of course, Mrs. Benson.”

  Standing at Bailey’s door, I thought back to Halloween night. Her slashed face was an image I would never get out of my head. No one from school had seen Bailey since. I told myself that no matter how taken aback I may have been by her appearance, I couldn’t show it.

  I tapped lightly on the door.

  “Come in.”

  Opening the door and stepping inside, I tried to look everywhere but at Bailey. The last time I had been in her bedroom, it was painted bubblegum pink. Now it was a sky blue, and her white kid’s furniture had been upgraded to silver grown-up furniture. I shut her door and stood awkwardly in front of it. “Hi.”

  “Hey. You can sit.”

  I moved her backpack from her desk chair to the floor and took a seat, studying her plush purple carpet. “How are you?”

  “Arden, you could have just called if you weren’t going to even look at me.”

  “I couldn’t have called because you blocked my number,” I said. I had been avoiding her because I was afraid of what I would see. Finally, I looked up. Bailey was propped up on her pillows with a textbook opened on her lap. The top part of her face was perfectly normal. Her nose didn’t look much like a nose anymore, only a small mound of flesh with two holes. Deep red gashes ran across her cheeks and down her neck. I wondered how many stitches had been needed to close them.

  Despite any effort on my part to keep it from happening, my eyes welled with tears. The shock of seeing my friend disfigured again was too much. Bailey hadn’t deserved that. “Bailey, I’m so sorry.”

  She smiled, but her eyes glistened with moisture. “It’s a lot better than it was. I try to stay away from mirrors. Next week I’m having the biggest surgery yet. They’re going to fix my nose and most of the scars.”

  “Does it hurt?” It looked extremely painful.

  She shook her head. “Not anymore. Well, once in a while it might, but I have meds for that. The good stuff. How’s school?”

  “Same old same old. You’re not missing anything.” I had the urge to tell her about all that had been going on with me, but I didn’t even know where to start. She wouldn’t have believed me anyway.

  Bailey sank deeper into her pillows. “Marley calls me from time to time, but I haven’t heard from Lacey or Trista.” She swiped a tear that rolled down her cheek.

  I wanted to tell her that was a good thing, but I didn’t because she was obviously hurt by it. My gaze landed on a pink poster covered with colorful bubble letters that read

  “Get better, Bailey.

  We miss you daily.”

  Bailey rolled her eyes at the poster. “Compliments of Mary-Kate and her band of do-gooders.”

  I laughed. “Well, it rhymes.” Awkward silence hung in the air. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “Do you remember that night?” I hated to bring it up, to make her think about the worst night of her life, but I needed some sort of clue as to what was causing these attacks.

  “Some things. Not much.”

  “What do you remember?”

  She breathed deeply and closed her eyes. “I remember making out with Trent.” Her voice cracked at his name. “We heard something, like a low growl, but we didn’t pay attention to it. Kids were out there acting like idiots. We thought it was someone spying on us and playing around, so we ignored it.” Bailey laid her textbook beside her and pulled her knees to her chest. “Lacey showed up and ruined the whole moment. She started yelling at me about being a traitor and at Trent for being a cheater. After she left, Trent said he was over the party and ready to go. We were making our way back w
hen something just came charging at us.”

  Bailey stopped talking to take a tissue from the nightstand beside her bed. She dabbed her eyes. “I didn’t even get a good look at it. I just remember seeing teeth and claws, but whatever it was, Trent jumped in front of it to shield me from it. That’s why he’s dead. Because he was trying to protect me. That thing was coming for me.”

  My heart ached for her. She had really liked Trent, and I couldn’t imagine what it felt like to watch a person you cared about die in such a gruesome way. Still, I had an important question to ask. “Is that all you remember?”

  She nodded.

  “Bailey, I found you in the woods. When I asked you what happened, what had attacked you like that, you said it was me.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “I don’t know why I would say that. Of course it wasn’t you. I was probably so out of it. Really, they pumped me with medication after that, so I don’t remember.”

  I wanted to feel relieved that she no longer thought I had hurt her, but something was off.

  Bailey picked her book up again, and I took that as a hint to change the subject. Bailey hadn’t been on medication when I first found her. Something had to have happened for her to think I had something to do with her attack.

  We talked a little about the upcoming holidays, and Bailey cracked a joke about coming out of her surgeries looking like the actress Jamie Chin. I could tell she was worried about what she would really look like and whether or not the doctors would be able to get rid of all the scars. Who wouldn’t be?

  “I’m sure you’re going to look as beautiful as you always have,” I told her before I left, but I was lying. I didn’t think Bailey would ever look like Bailey again.

  It was Friday, and I had missed another counseling session. Mom hadn’t said anything about it, and I wasn’t about to remind her. Maybe now that I knew my secret, I wouldn’t have to go anymore. There was nothing going on in my life that I could tell Scarlett about. If I went in there talking about Banshees and Wendigos, she would have me committed.

  I went into Dad’s office, where he had been holed up since he’d come home from work, which was unusual for him to do on a Friday night. I opened the door and immediately remembered that I had forgotten to knock. Dad had been resting his face in his hands. He looked up suddenly.

  “Sorry. I should have knocked.”

  Dad looked as if he had aged ten years just that week. “It’s okay. Come on in.”

  I sat in the chair in front of his desk. As soon as I sat down, I thought about Rose. How would my parents feel if they knew I had seen her? Did they know she was my Gemini? Would they try to trade me for her if they were given the chance?

  “Dad, I know the truce is in danger of being called off. I also know that you guys think I’m the one who killed those people and hurt Bailey.”

  Dad shook his head. “I know you have nothing to do with that, Arden. You haven’t even changed yet, and the damage that has been done has been the work of a full-grown beast. When you wake up at night, you don’t even leave the house.”

  “Hollis says they might come after me because of it. If the murders don’t stop, they’ll kill me.”

  “Givers and Takers can be very vengeful. They want someone to blame, and you seem like the obvious culprit. We’ll always want compensation when one of our own is taken.”

  I shivered. I would be that compensation. Dad must have noticed the fear on my face because he said, “Don’t worry, honey. No one is going to hurt you. We’re Givers. That means we don’t take life unless our lives are being threatened, and no matter what happens, no one is going to hurt you.”

  I wanted to believe him. My father had always made me feel secure, but I was afraid his protection of me would have its limits.

  Saturday morning, I went back to the lair. Mom had wanted me to stay home and catch up on some work, but what good would grades be if I were dead?

  “She has to do what she has to do, Claire,” Dad said when Mom looked to him for help. He was right. I needed to learn how to sniff out a creature.

  I was surprised to find that Hollis was nowhere to be found. Cadence said he was off with his father having some sort of lesson and that Wes would be teaching me.

  She led me to the control room where I had been the other times. On the table was a blindfold and several plastic containers with closed lids.

  “Have a seat,” Wes said as he entered the room. He wasn’t especially friendly, but at least he hadn’t given me the look of disgust he had given me the other time.

  He tied the blindfold around my head a little too tight, but I didn’t complain, remembering the time he had called me weak. “Okay. I’m going to hold a container under your nose and then I’m going to ask you what it is.”

  “Okay.”

  The first aroma tickled my nose. “Coffee beans.” That smell filled the house every morning.

  “Good. This one?”

  The next scent was sweet and citrusy. “An orange. No, tangerine.”

  “Correct.” He let me smell the last three remaining items, which turned out to be banana, chocolate, and lemon.

  “Good job. Being able to identify those scents will be completely useless to you.”

  “What? Then why—”

  “Shhhh! Just listen. I’m going to have you smell something, and I want you to describe it. Tell me what comes to you.”

  I took a long whiff of what Wes had put under my nose, and then I immediately wished I hadn’t. “Ugh.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It smells putrid. Like something rotten.”

  Wes sighed. “More specific.”

  “Like meat that’s been left out for days. There’s a vinegary bitterness. I smell . . . mildew.”

  Whatever was under my nose, Wes took it away. “Good. That’s what they smell like. Givers.”

  He put the coffee beans under my nose, which was meant to clear my senses. I remembered the lady doing that at the perfume counter at the mall. “Now, how does this smell?”

  A rush of delicious scents rushed through my nostrils. “Hmmm. Cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, some kind of flower.”

  “Gardenias. That’s how we smell.”

  I sniffed myself. “I smell like that?”

  “Yep. To a Taker who knows the sense of smell. Now, we have to break things down. You need to be able to tell the birds from the sea creatures from the forest creatures. You need to be able to smell your Gemini. If your Gemini gets too close to you and you don’t recognize them, you may very well be dead, especially with our truce in danger of ending.”

  I didn’t tell Wes, but I didn’t need to learn how to smell my Gemini. I already knew who she was. When I came across a girl who looked like that, I’d definitely know it.

  Wes took me through each creature classification. The creatures of the air smelled like chalk. Creatures of the sea smelled like salt and dirty water. Creatures of the forest smelled like earth and pine. The beasts of the sixth tunnel smelled like a sewer. These smells were hard to decipher because they were mixed in with the sweet aromas I had smelled before.

  “Now that you know what to look for, you should be more aware of when a creature is around you.”

  After that, Wes hid the containers around the lair, and I had to sniff them out. I found them all except for the two Wes had to help me find. We were just finishing up when Hollis and a larger version of him, whom I assumed to be his father, stormed into the main corridor, the door slamming closed behind them.

  Mr. Mason, who was walking ahead, turned off into one of the rooms as Hollis continued to stalk in our direction. “Hollis? What’s wrong?” I asked as he stormed past me on the way to his room.

  He stopped and stared at me as if he were going to say something, but then thought better of it. He marched to his room at the end of the hall and slammed the door.

  “What was that all about?” I asked Wes.

  He shrugged. “Mr. Mason gave him some bad news, it seems like. Hollis is always
the first to know stuff, but he can’t really keep a secret. He’ll let us know soon enough.”

  “I should probably go,” I told Wes. I’d had enough of being underground. I didn’t know how they did it all the time. The lair was starting to suffocate me, and I hadn’t been there that long.

  “You should stay. We can practice again a little later. Scent training is very important.”

  “Yeah, I know, but we can do it again tomorrow. My family’s going out to dinner tonight.”

  Wes lowered his head. I didn’t think he had anything else to look forward to that night besides working with me, and I felt awful. “Must be nice.”

  “Sorry,” I muttered, not really knowing what I was apologizing for. For having a family? For not being confined to some underground tunnel? “But thanks for the lesson. I’ll let myself out.”

  Wes said something I couldn’t quite hear and turned back toward the control room. I wondered, considering his appearance, if Wes had ever been allowed to go above ground.

  That night my family went to one of the two Italian restaurants in town. A Little Taste of Italy was Mom’s favorite place. While my sisters were usually gabbing away, they remained quiet. It had been that way since the first time Hollis had taken me. When I entered a room, they would find a reason to leave. Every night at dinner, they gobbled down their food so they could be excused as soon as possible.

  After we placed our orders, the silence at the table grew awkward. How much did Paige and Quinn know? Did they know we weren’t blood sisters?

  “So, Quinn, how’s school going?” I asked.

  She tried to smile, but she looked like she was in pain. “Pretty good. We’re taking a trip to Washington, D.C., in the spring. All the kids on the academic teams.”

  I was proud of how smart my sister was. She was always winning spelling bees and trivia tournaments.

  “That’ll be awesome. Paige, what’s up with you?”

  She took a sudden interest in the ceiling, probably to keep from looking at me. “Nothing much. Just the usual.” Normally when I asked her that question, it would be like opening a floodgate of gossip.