A Girl Called Dust

by V. B. Marlowe

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “It can’t come past there,” Jackson said. “That thing should be mauling us right now, but for some reason, it can’t come past that line of trees.” That would have made sense if all the killings had taken place in the woods, but Ed Hurley’s death had broken that pattern.

  Jackson realized then that he was naked and it was freezing cold out. He jumped up, covering his private area with his hands. “Guys, get home now.”

  Then he took off past Gerdy’s and all the other closed shops. Due to the curfew and the time of night, a naked boy running around the neighborhood might go unnoticed.

  Fletcher and I made the slow journey toward his house. When we were just two blocks away, headlights brightened the dark street. Probably a cop. “Great. Now we’re going to be in trouble for breaking curfew,” I muttered.

  “Just keep walking,” Fletcher said between clenched teeth.

  Whoever it was slowed down to keep pace with us. Classical music blared from the speakers. It was Wiley in his pickup. Why was he out that time of night?

  He rolled his window down and smiled with that wide grin of his. Wiley lowered the volume of his music. “What are you two crazy kids doing out after curfew?”

  Fighting monsters in the woods. “We’re just taking a walk, Wiley,” I replied. “See you later.”

  Wiley eyed Fletcher, and his smile disappeared. “Hey, what happened to him?”

  “Nothing,” I said quickly. “He took a little tumble, that’s all. He’s okay.”

  Wiley’s eyes widened with concern. “He’s bleeding. Bleeding is not okay. Hop in. I’ll give you guys a ride.”

  “No!” Fletcher shouted. It would have been easier to not have to explain any of this to Wiley. I was still waiting for Fletcher’s wounds to start healing the way they always did. There would be no way to cover up how the cut on Fletcher’s cheek suddenly disappeared or why the blood was gone from his sweater.

  “We’re fine, Wiley. Thanks for the offer.”

  “Are you sure? He looks really hurt and it’s cold out. . .”

  “We’re almost there. See you around.”

  “Fine. Suit yourselves.” He rolled up his window and sped down the street.

  At Fletcher’s, I helped him into the kitchen, where he wanted me to help him lie on the island. We took off his sweater and undershirt. Since I didn’t know where anything was, I did what I thought should be done first. I wet some paper towels and started wiping his cuts.

  “Oh, Arden, I’ll do that,” Mrs. Whitelock said as she entered the kitchen. She opened a cabinet and pulled out alcohol, bandages, and a bottle of green liquid. She shook her head at her son. “I can’t believe you, Fletcher.”

  I stared at Fletcher’s wounds as Mrs. Whitelock got to work like a pro. The scratches and bruises looked exactly the same way they had at the edge of the woods. “I don’t understand. How come he’s not healing? I’ve seen him do it plenty of times before.” I thought about the bus, the time he had cut himself on the sidewalk, and all the times Ranson had beat him up. Within seconds he’d healed, so why wasn’t that happening?

  “What were you two thinking?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “We wanted to catch the Wendigo. We just can’t sit around doing nothing while people keep getting killed. Why won’t you answer my question, Mrs. Whitelock? How come Fletcher’s not healing?”

  “I don’t know, sweetheart.” She paled and wiped her forehead. “You know what, I’m sure your parents are worried, and you really shouldn’t be out after curfew. I’ll have Mr. Whitelock drive you home.”

  I had no desire to walk home alone in the dark, and it was colder then than it had been all night, so I accepted.

  The ride home was silent until we pulled into the driveway. Mrs. Whitelock had woken Fletcher’s father up from his sleep, so I figured that’s why he was so quiet. I didn’t like to talk when I first woke up either.

  Mr. Whitelock threw the car into park. “Arden, we really like you, we do, and we’ve never had a problem with you and Fletcher being friends. We actually think you’ve been good for him, but now . . .”

  Mr. Whitelock stared at the garage door, and I knew what he was going to say. I knew this had been coming for some time.

  “Now that you two are getting older and closer to full transformation, it’s probably best that you guys go your separate ways. Fletcher doesn’t have any friends besides you, and he needs to start making friends with his own kind. You’ll make friends with your kind, but mingling shouldn’t really happen. It leads to bad things happening.”

  Like my real parents had mingled and the bad thing that happened was me.

  I pushed the passenger door open. “Thanks for the ride.” As for his request, I didn’t know how I could ever comply. Fletcher was my only true friend, and I was his. So what if we were on separate teams. It wasn’t as if we were fighting against each other. But then maybe the Whitelocks wanted us to stay apart for another reason. Maybe they were afraid I would hurt Fletcher. Maybe I should have been afraid of that too.

  The night had been a disaster, but it needed to happen. I hated that my friend was hurt, but at least we knew there was another Wendigo on the loose. Now we only had to catch and kill it before it ruined my life.

  The next day I had planned to check on Fletcher when Bailey called. “Arden, I remember now. I remember what happened that night,” was all she said before hanging up.

  I raced to her house. She wasn’t curled up comfortably on her bed like she had been before but pacing back and forth as if the world were coming to an end. When I came in and shut the door, she paused and backed away from me.

  “What?”

  Her face crinkled and tears welled in her eyes. “Arden, how could you do this to me? You were my friend. Why?”

  “Bailey, what are you talking about? What do you think I did?”

  She had backed away from me until she hit the wall, which seemed to be the only thing keeping her in the room. It was then that I noticed the meat cleaver she held at her side.

  My knees weakened, and my inner voice told me to run. “Bailey, what are you doing with that?”

  “I remember now. Trent and I were hanging out in the woods, and you called for me. You said you had fallen and hurt yourself. When I went to look for you, I saw you sitting against a tree holding your ankle. Trent and I went over to help you. He actually picked you up and started carrying you back toward the house when you opened your mouth. Your teeth were long and sharp like fangs. You took a huge chunk out of his neck. He dropped you on the ground and then you changed.”

  I swallowed hard, keeping my eyes on the meat cleaver. What was she talking about? None of that had happened, and it was totally different from the story she had told me before.

  Bailey slid down the wall until she was sitting on the floor cradling her knees to her body, the cleaver resting beside her. “He dropped you, and your face became long and distorted. Your teeth got longer and sharper and were sticking out of your mouth. Your hands turned into claws and you just went crazy and attacked us.

  “After you killed Trent, I remember you crouching over me, and I begged you for my life. You said this is what I deserved for ditching you and being friends with Lacey. Really? You did all that because of what happened to our friendship? You killed Trent because you were mad at me? Because you were jealous I was spending time with him?”

  I held my hands up. “Bailey, think about this. You’re talking crazy. Do you really think I could have changed into some kind of creature?”

  She nodded. “The way you act in your sleep. The way you attacked me the last time I slept over at your house. Yeah, I totally believe it.”

  “Bailey, I—”

  She shook her head. “Arden, something is wrong with you. I don’t think you know what it is. I don’t think you can control it, but something is wrong. You’re the reason Trent is dead. You’re the reason I’m going to be scarred for the rest of my life. I want you to l
eave. Stay away from me. I don’t ever want to see you again.”

  I turned toward the door. She wasn’t going to listen to anything I had to say. “What are you going to do now? Tell your mom? The police?”

  She plopped down on her bed, allowing her long hair to cover her face like a veil. She slid her finger along the edge of the cleaver. “Who’s going to believe me?”

  The last thing I needed was for everyone in town to look at me the way my family did. “You’re right. No one’s going to believe you. You go around telling stories like that, they’ll make you go to a shrink, and trust me, therapy sessions are no fun. Hell, they might even lock you up in a mental institution. You were clearly hallucinating, Bailey. You should see someone about that, but you better not go spreading those crazy lies about me.”

  “I should kill you for what you did to Trent.”

  I was sick of being blamed for things I had nothing to do with. “You still think I did it, then kill me. I’m standing right here.”

  She flung the meat cleaver across the room, where it hit the closet door, leaving a huge crack. “Get out of here before I do. I mean it, Arden.”

  There was nothing more to say to that. Fletcher had been my only friend in the world for a while, but lately I had been thinking that Bailey and I would be friends again. Unfortunately, that would never happen. When someone threatens you with a meat cleaver, it’s time to end that relationship.

  Her story made no sense. Had she been dreaming? I hadn’t been asleep at the party, and I remembered everything that went on that night. I had never pretended to have a broken ankle, and I had never attacked her or Trent. I had to know what really happened.

  I remembered something. Before I had gone into the woods to look for Bailey, Lacey and I had been talking. Lacey had actually gone off into the woods ahead of me. Maybe she had seen or heard something. As much as I didn’t want to, I was going to have to have a face-to-face conversation with Lacey, or at least try.

  I wanted to swing by Fletcher’s to tell him about what had happened at Bailey’s and maybe get him to come to Lacey’s with me, but he was still recovering from his injuries from the night before, and according to Mr. Whitelock, I was no longer welcome in his house.

  I didn’t want to face Lacey alone, but I had to. I rang the doorbell, and it took a minute for someone to answer. At last the door swung open to a tall boy with dark hair, Lacey’s brother Aaron. Aaron had graduated from Everson High the year before. I didn’t know much about him, but I couldn’t imagine that he would be worse than his younger sister.

  “Hey.” He looked me up and down.

  “Hi. Is Lacey here?”

  “Sure. She’s in the kitchen.” He pulled the door open all the way, and I stepped inside. “Lace, someone’s here for you?”

  “Who?”

  By then I stood in the doorway of the Chapmans’ kitchen, and Aaron had disappeared somewhere in the house. The house reeked of something sweet cooking, maybe brownies. My stomach churned. Lacey sat at the kitchen table with books spread out, and, unfortunately for me, Trista sat across from her sipping a glass of orange juice.

  They both glared at me like I was old gum someone had dragged into the house on the bottom of their shoe.

  Lacey slammed her biology book shut. “What the hell are you doing in my house, Dust?”

  “I—I needed to talk to you about something. Something important.”

  Lacey rolled her eyes and shouted to her brother. “Aaron, what did Mom tell you about letting in strays?”

  I ignored her dig. I hadn’t expected anything less from her. “Can we talk . . . alone?”

  Trista frowned. “Anything you have to say to my bestie, you can say to me.”

  I kept my focus on Lacey. “It’s about Bailey and what happened to her that night.”

  Trista snorted. “We don’t want to talk about her. Do you know that her parents are suing mine? Like what happened to her was our fault. Now I can never have another party.”

  I rolled my eyes because nothing Trista said was important in the grand scheme of things.

  Lacey looked me up and down for a moment. “Trista, let us talk. I’ll call you later.”

  Trista’s jaw dropped. “Are you serious? What does she have to say about Bailey that I can’t hear?”

  She’d practically spit out Bailey’s name as if it were a curse. The cynical part of me couldn’t help but wonder if Trista was actually happy that Bailey was out of the way.

  “Bye, Trista,” Lacey said forcefully.

  Trista, looking deeply hurt, gathered her things quickly and pushed past me, mumbling all sorts of things under her breath. It didn’t bother me. I had much bigger issues to worry about than jealous girls and their normal people problems.

  “Sit,” Lacey ordered as if she were talking to a dog. What we needed to discuss was important, so I sat anyway. “What about my dear friend Bailey?”

  I swallowed hard, not knowing how this conversation was going to go. “I need you to think back to the night of the Halloween party. Right before Bailey and Trent were attacked. You had gone off into the woods to find them. Did you see or hear anything out of the ordinary?”

  Lacey scowled. “Who do you think you are? Veronica Mars or something? If I had seen or heard anything, don’t you think I would have told the police already?”

  “Maybe you forgot something or you didn’t think it was important.”

  Lacey slid down in her seat and smiled slyly. “Dust, I went into the woods looking for them, but I never saw them. What I did see was you running back toward the party with blood all over you.”

  “Yeah. That was after I had found Bailey and was calling for help.”

  Lacey puckered her lips. “See, Dust, I would believe that if I hadn’t seen you myself. You didn’t look bothered or afraid. You didn’t look devastated about what had happened to your friend. You looked happy. You looked satisfied, like an animal that had just eaten.”

  Part Four

  Why I Am Dust

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Fletcher came back to school a few days later. I hadn’t called or told him about the conversations I’d had with Bailey or Lacey. I still didn’t know what to make of them myself.

  That morning I had passed Jackson in the hallway. It was my first time seeing him since that night. My cheeks warmed when our eyes met. After seeing him butt naked, I would never look at him the same way.

  I grabbed his sleeve and pulled him to the side. “Hey, are you okay?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. I was holding my own for a while,” he whispered, “but then suddenly I changed back into me. That happens sometimes at first. When I shift, it only lasts a little while, but it’ll last longer as I get stronger. Oh, and sorry you had to see me naked.”

  I tried not to smile, but I couldn’t help it. “It’s okay under the circumstances. Listen, thanks a lot for helping, and I’m glad you’re okay.”

  Jackson patted my shoulder and moved toward his next class. “Of course. We’re going to catch that thing.”

  Fletcher and I sat underneath our tree during lunch, and I gave him all the details. I was eating a hamburger, which wasn’t very good, but it was meat, or some kind of meat-like substance, and I’d been craving meat nonstop.

  “So Bailey says she heard and saw you in the woods that night?”

  “Yeah, but we both know that there are some creatures that can replicate people, like Jackson Stuart, but they’re very, very rare.”

  Fletcher lay on the picnic table with his eyes closed. “Yeah, there’s less than fifty Shifters left in the entire country. The real question is, why you? Why is this creature trying to make everyone believe you’re responsible for this?”

  I wanted to know too. It seemed that someone was out to get me for whatever reason. What had I ever done to anyone?

  When I finished my lunch, I pulled my notebook from my backpack and tore out a sheet of paper. I wanted to make a list of all the kids who might be one of us. It was v
ery likely that one of them was the culprit.

  The first name I wrote on the paper was Leslie McNeil. “When I passed by her desk today, she smelled like something meaty and rotten.”

  Fletcher nodded. “Yeah, she’s a Giver.”

  “Why do Givers smell so horrible?”

  “We don’t. You guys smell bad.”

  I scowled at him. “No we don’t. We smell like cinnamon and yummy things.”

  Fletcher scoffed. “To each other, but not to us.”

  “So that means I smell bad to you.” The thought of that made me flush.

  “At first, but not anymore. Once you’re around someone enough, you get used to the smell. Anyway, Leslie’s an Angel.”

  I couldn’t hold in my laugh. “Seriously? An Angel? The girl’s been to juvie.”

  “Angels aren’t perfect, and just like us, she’s learning. Once she has her full powers, she’ll be a great protector.”

  I nodded and scribbled Leslie McNeil—Angel on the list. “Okay. Now tell me who else.”

  Fletcher frowned thoughtfully. “I can’t smell everybody, and the most powerful creatures learn how to mask their scents. Anyway, these are the ones I’m sure of . . .”

  I scribbled furiously as he talked. Michael McPhee was a Black-Eyed Being. I had read about those. They take Human form but have soulless black eyes and emanate pure evil. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but it didn’t sound good. Ashley Wyatt was an elf. Her pointy ears that were slightly too big for her head made that easy to believe.

  Wild-haired Tracy Farris was a Gorgon, like Medusa. Claudio Reyes was an Imp, which made perfect sense because he was always playing stupid practical jokes on people. From reading The Book of Us, I gathered that an Imp really served no other purpose than being a pain in the ass.

  The bell had rung, but what we were doing was so much more important than fifth period. When Fletcher was done giving me the rundown, there were twenty-two names on the list, but who knew how many there were whose scent he couldn’t pick up? It was hard to believe that I had gone to school with some of these kids since elementary school and never really knew what they were.