by Sarah M. Awa
“Pam told me you were getting sick.” The concern in his voice was clear. “I hope it’s nothing serious, like pneumonia.”
“Me too.”
“I heard you guys were stuck in the woods overnight.”
Mel nodded.
“That sucks. So was I. Not stuck, I mean—just out looking. Anyway. It was really cold and wet.”
“You stayed out all night looking for Timmy?”
He shrugged sheepishly. “Yep.”
Wow. That was sure nice of him. And crazy.
“You’re gonna go see the nurse when you get back, right?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Good. Hope you get well soon.” He hesitated and then gave her a pat on the arm before looking away and blushing.
Melanie’s cheeks felt hot too, but that might have been from the fever. “Thanks,” she said, feeling comforted and awkward at the same time.
A moment later she heard the trunk spring open. There were a few small thumps as someone tossed gear into it, and then the trunk slammed shut. Luis stood up, gently closed Mel’s door, and climbed into the seat behind her. Pam and Timmy also piled into the car. “Ready at last,” said Pam with a sigh.
She drove them across the park and dropped off the two guys. Timmy left without saying a word, but Luis thanked the girls and waved goodbye, flashing Mel a kind smile.
Melanie slept during most of the ride back to Wellsboro University. Before she knew it, Pam was leading her through the door to the health center and signing her in. Then they were in the exam room and the nurse was sticking a thermometer under her tongue, squeezing her arm too tightly with the blood pressure cuff, and shining a stupid light into her eyes and throat.
Mel endured the exam, but she longed for her bed and for unconsciousness. She answered the nurse’s questions without paying too much attention—until the woman grabbed her left hand to get a better look at the wound, which still burned mildly.
“Did something try to bite you?” the nurse asked. “It looks like an animal’s fang nicked you. It’s red and might be infected.”
Mel fidgeted, stared at the floor, and muttered, “Big raccoon was hiding in the trash.” To her relief, Pam didn’t call her out on the lie.
“You need to get vaccinated for rabies,” said the nurse, pulling out a disinfectant swab to clean the wound. It stung, and Mel flinched. “I assume you haven’t been already?”
Actually, Mel had—in high school, she’d volunteered at an animal shelter to round out her college application . . . although she almost hadn’t done it because of her fear of needles. She explained to the nurse, who smiled. “Excellent. Then you’ll only need the three boosters instead of ten.”
Ten?! Mel had never been so grateful in all her life for the initial shot.
“I can’t give you those here,” the nurse was saying, “so I’m going to send you to the emergency room in town. I’ll call them and let them know you’re coming.”
Groaning inwardly, Melanie thought, How much longer till I can get back to sleep? But she complied, and Pam drove her into town.
The hospital wasn’t far from the university, and an ER nurse ushered the girls back to a room right away. Melanie cringed at the sight of the needle and shed a few tears during the administration of the vaccine—straight into the wound, which made its throbbing intensify. She endured a more thorough examination than at the school health center. Pam sat near her patiently and quietly, murmuring words of support and helping answer questions (based on Mel’s raccoon story).
“Typically, we’d keep you overnight for observation,” said the ER nurse. “But since you were inoculated five years ago, you should still have plenty of those antibodies in your system. They can last up to ten years. Plus, your fever is low, it’s been more than half a day, and there’s no sign of spreading infection, so I feel justified in releasing you. But come back immediately if you experience any of these symptoms.” She handed Melanie printed instructions on post-visit care and when to come back for her other two shots. Finally, after three hours, the ordeal was over, and Mel and Pam headed back to campus.
When they reached their dorm, Hartman Cottage, Pam pulled the Honda right up to the front door. “I’ll help you inside before I go and park,” she told Melanie.
“Thanks, but I’m fine,” said Mel. “I can walk by myself.” She already felt like a big baby for crying at the hospital.
“You sure?” said Pam. “Well, at least let me unlock the house. Wait a minute till I get the door open, ’kay?”
Melanie nodded and waited. Then she stepped shakily out of the car and tottered through Hartman’s front door. She made it all the way across the living room to the foot of the stairs before plopping down on the third step from the bottom.
“Getting upstairs might be a challenge,” she admitted.
Pam smiled. “Let me park the car between some yellow lines so we don’t get a ticket, and I’ll help you up.”
It was nearly pitch black in the room when Melanie woke again, disoriented. But then her head cleared and she realized that the weird, drugged sensation from earlier had gone away. Thank goodness.
Slowly she sat up and reached for her alarm clock, its crimson glow the only source of light around. The large red digits informed her it was just after 2:00 a.m.
Grumbling quietly about losing her whole Sunday, Melanie got up. Careful experimentation showed her she could walk steadily across the floor. Pam’s deep, even breathing continued undisturbed as she tiptoed past her roommate’s bed.
Mel eased the door open and stepped out into the hallway, where emergency lights cast a soft glow. She made her way to the dingy white bathroom she and Pam shared with their suitemates.
Have I always been this pale? she wondered, gazing into the mirror. The sprinkling of freckles across her cheekbones stood out more than ever, but otherwise, she looked the same.
Then her stomach growled. Holy crap, I haven’t eaten anything in over twenty-four hours! . . . Shouldn’t I feel weaker and shakier than this? Where her strength was coming from, she didn’t know, but thoughts of food overwhelmed this curiosity. She padded downstairs to the kitchen, hoping to find something left in the fridge with her name on it.
A girl with long, curly black hair sat at the kitchen table. Books and papers covered half the table in front of her, and she was poring over a thick textbook by candlelight.
Melanie was unsurprised to find this particular housemate of hers awake so late into the night. “Trying to conserve electricity, Jos?” she asked her friend, gesturing at the assortment of votives and tapers.
Jocelyn Beaumont grinned and looked up, catlike green eyes glimmering. “I find this kind of light to be soothing and conducive to studying.”
“Well, I suppose it’s fine for eating, too,” said Melanie with a shrug. She walked over to the fridge and perused its contents. A large red-and-yellow apple was perched atop a blueberry bagel on the middle shelf, with a note in Pam’s handwriting tucked under them. “Mel—I swiped these from the cafeteria in case you woke up starving. Love, P.”
A smile stretched across Melanie’s face; the bagel was her favorite kind, and the apple looked like a honeycrisp—another favorite. She grabbed the food and a bottle of water and settled into a chair opposite Jocelyn.
Her suitemate watched her as she chowed down. “When was the last time you ate, girl?” Jos asked. Melanie mimed her mouth being full, so Jos continued, “Pam told me a little about your trip. Can’t say I regret not tagging along. Were you guys really up in a tree the whole night, or is she just being dramatic as usual?”
Melanie winced and reflexively swallowed a large hunk of bagel. Too soon. It stuck in her throat, and she coughed and struggled to get it down.
“Careful,” said Jocelyn, her eyebrows going up in alarm. She started to rise from her seat. “You okay, Mel?”
“Yeah,” Melanie said when she was able to speak again. She finished the rest of her food more slowly while Jos tried to pry deta
ils out of her about the Pine Groves excursion. Jocelyn’s shrewd gaze unsettled Melanie, and thoughts of the dark cave and the wolfish monster worsened her discomfort. She refused to divulge much information.
At last Jocelyn said, “All right, if you won’t tell me, then I’ll have to ask: Is it true that you guys got chased by some kind of wild animal?”
Melanie sucked in a sharp breath. Fortunately, no food was in her mouth this time, but it felt like something else had caught in her throat—a lump of anxiety and fear. Pam! Why would you tell anyone about that?! She squirmed in her chair and couldn’t meet Jocelyn’s eyes. Instead, she looked down at her hands in her lap and traced around the puncture mark on her left hand with her right index finger. The wound remained raw and tender.
Then her knees caught her attention. Feeling a strange flutter in her stomach, she remembered that she had scraped them badly in the narrow tunnel. How had the abrasions healed so freakishly quickly? Even Pam had noticed. And if she’d suddenly developed super healing powers, then why hadn’t the tooth mark healed also?
Jocelyn’s soft, smooth voice cut through her thoughts. “Sorry for asking about that, Mel. I can see it bothers you. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
Melanie looked up at her friend once more and nodded, then stood up from the table. Throwing her empty bottle into the recycle bin, she said, “I’m dying for a shower, and I should get back to sleep since I have an early class.” She also longed to brush her teeth and change into pajamas—she still wore Saturday’s jean shorts and t-shirt. Ugh, I’m a mess. “G’night, Jos.”
“G’night.”
The following day after lunch, Melanie arrived at her European history class early. The lecture hall was already half filled; about eighty students sat or stood, heads buried in books, pizza slices flopping in their hands, or feet up as they swapped lies about finishing the reading assignment. Pam sat near the center of the room, chatting with a girl behind her, and Melanie headed their way.
The air hummed and vibrated with a cacophonous tangle of conversation. Mel focused, and individual voices separated from the mass. She picked out a girl’s voice and listened harder—
“—and I was like, seriously? I’m a Capricorn. You don’t expect—”
The girl’s breath stank of onion rings. Mel looked around, but the crowd blocked her view. People bumped and jostled her, but she might have been standing alone. Unreality blinked with her eyelids.
Another scent caught her attention: a weird, sickly sweet aroma she’d never smelled before. It resembled rotting fruit, and it came from off to her right. Ten desks away in that direction sat Timmy Simmons, surrounded by half a dozen other students. A smug look was plastered on his face, and theatrical hand gestures underscored whatever story he was telling. Concentrating, Mel picked up:
“. . . biggest one I’d ever seen! Now, I’ve gone hunting plenty of times with my dad, and I’ve taken down lots of large animals, including a full-grown grizzly bear last summer. But this thing—well, I admit, I was a touch nervous. But I knew and he knew that he was the one lower on the food chain. I stood my ground and stared him down while the girls screamed and ran away. . . .”
That numbskull! Mel fumed. If she listened any longer, she might throw up. She finished weaving her way to Pam and plopped down next to her.
“And here she is now,” crooned a delighted-sounding voice. “I’m dying to hear your side of the story, Melanie.”
Mel had been so preoccupied with not bumping into people, and with Timmy and all the smells, that she’d failed to notice whom Pam was talking with—her friend Alexis, who had a reputation as the school’s gossip queen.
Crap, Mel thought, twisting around to face the grinning redhead. Alexis also reeked of something resembling rotten fruit. What is that?
Eyes gleaming like those of a snake stalking mice, Alexis leaned forward and said, “So. Melanie. Were you and Pam really out in the woods all night with Timmy?”
“Not by choice.” Mel wrinkled her nose. “He was lost, ran into us, and then we ended up all being lost. The rain washed away the arrows we drew on the trail.”
“Sure, sure.” But Alexis’s grin broadened, and Mel’s heart sped up.
What is she thinking now?
“So it wasn’t a ménage à trois then?” Alexis trilled, before erupting into giggles along with the girl sitting next to her.
“That’s disgusting!” Pam cried, loudly enough to turn several heads in her direction. But soon enough, she joined in the giggling.
Mel winced at the attention and at how lightly Pam was taking the teasing. After drawing in a deep, calming breath, Mel said, “I can’t believe your major isn’t journalism, Alexis. It seems like you’re aiming to become a gossip columnist. Better yet—you’d do great work for a tabloid.”
“Aw, c’mon, Mel—” started Pam, sobering.
“Or maybe it was a foursome,” Alexis continued, undeterred. “I heard Luis was out all night in the woods too. You guys drove him and Timmy back to their site, didn’t you?”
“Because we’re decent human beings, yes,” said Mel.
The gossip queen persisted: “You and Luis tutor Spanish together, don’t you?”
“That’s not a secret or anything.” Mel shifted in her seat, more than ready for this conversation to end. She glanced around, but there was no sign of the professor. Mel prayed that he would hurry up and arrive and start class.
Especially after Alexis said, “Well, I bet you do more than tutor together.” That hungry, reptilian smile was back on her face.
“Mind your own business!” Melanie snapped, flushing beet red. “We’re just friends.”
“Really? So it wasn’t a lovers’ quarrel? It wasn’t Luis who caused your injuries? Someone said you had some pretty bad cuts and scrapes.” Alexis craned her neck, scanning Melanie for wounds. Mel was glad she’d worn long pants. She crossed her arms defensively over her chest, careful to tuck her left hand under her right arm.
Pam came to her aid. “You know Luis is a great guy. Not a violent bone in his body.”
Oh, no . . . Mel wanted to face-palm. She did not just use the word “bone”! That was throwing Alexis one for sure.
But before the gossip queen could make any sexual innuendoes, the door near the front of the lecture hall clicked open, and the professor walked in. Mel breathed a sigh of relief as she and Pam swiveled around to face the stage. “Let’s not sit by her again,” Mel muttered under her breath.
Pam frowned. “Chill out, Mel. You know she was just hasslin’ ya. No one actually thinks you and I had a threesome with Timmy.”
“Timmy might!”
“Geez, well, Timmy also thinks professional wrestling is real.”
“Good afternoon, everyone,” Dr. Ayers greeted them from the podium. He reminded the students of the chapter they were on, gave them a moment to open their books, and began his lecture on the Romanov dynasty.
It took several minutes for Melanie’s mind to calm down and focus on the lesson.
I’m glad Alexis didn’t bring up the cave and the . . . thing in it, she thought, suppressing a shudder. Absently, she stroked the wound on her left hand. The fang mark showed no signs of healing: It hadn’t scabbed over, and every once in a while it would leak a few drops of blood, unprovoked. She’d covered it with a Band-Aid close to her skin color and had been trying to keep that hand out of sight of everyone, including Pam. That was tricky, since Melanie normally held silverware and writing utensils with her left hand.
What in the world is going on with my body?
5
The Game
October 13–14, Waxing Gibbous Moon
After a couple of weeks, the gossip concerning Pine Groves—and regarding Melanie’s love life—guttered and flickered like a dying fire. Mel avoided Timmy as much as possible, giving him only brief, icy glances at Sentinel meetings and refusing to speak a word to him. As for Luis, she’d never hung out with him outside of tutoring
hours, so she kept up that pattern, although she felt bad about it. He was a nice guy. If the circumstances had been different . . .
Neither she nor he brought up the rumors about their alleged tryst, and Mel figured Luis was also lying low and waiting for the forked tongues to stop wagging. It worked: Deprived of fuel, the rumormongers soon slithered along to the next hot piece of hearsay.
Melanie wished she could move on as easily and forget about the terrifying beast in the cave. But the small puncture wound it had given her healed at a languid pace, its fiery red resisting extinguishment and continually leaking blood. How much longer am I going to have to keep wearing Band-Aids and writing with my right hand? she wondered. How long until Pam, Jocelyn, or someone else notices and asks, “Aren’t you a leftie? Why’d you switch?”
Worse, the pair of golden eyes kept intruding into her thoughts and dreams. This morning she had jerked awake, hyperventilating and drenched in sweat, from a particularly disturbing nightmare:
She walked through the woods bordering Wellsboro. Rustling nearby made her freeze and listen. A bone-chilling howl split the air.
She ran.
The trail stretched on, endless. Branches slapped at her face and arms. One sliced her neck.
Hartman loomed ahead. She threw open the front door, leaped over the threshold, and slammed the door shut.
The dorm was dark and quiet, but she was not alone. Other lungs respired and other hearts pumped blood. Slowly, she turned to face the living room.
All seven of her housemates waited for her, hands on hips or arms crossed. They were staring at her—staring with seven pairs of golden eyes.
A shriek tore from her throat. She bolted past the group and up the stairs, then locked herself inside her bedroom. What am I going to do?
A flash of golden light glinted from one of the walls, from the mirror hanging above her dresser.
