Here There Are Monsters

by Amelinda Bérubé

  “What are you doing out here?”

  “I just went for a walk.”

  Mom leans closer to me, her frown deepening.

  “Then why do you smell like a campfire?” she demands. “And—and beer?”

  The police officer sighs, raises his eyebrows at me.

  “I walked to Kevin’s,” I amend quickly. “I didn’t go far! I just wanted—”

  “Wasn’t he having a party tonight?” Mom folds her arms, her voice going dead level. Bad sign.

  “Mom—”

  “A party. Deirdre is missing. And you went to a party.”

  “Mom, listen—”

  “We will discuss this later.” The most ominous phrase in their parental lexicon. She sags in place, props her forehead against her hand. “Inside. Now.”

  I scurry into the house, trade my soggy-cuffed jeans for flannel pajama bottoms, crawl into bed. The front door slams again, but Mom’s footsteps creak slowly up the stairs instead of down toward me. She doesn’t want to have that conversation any more than I do.

  The porch light spills through my window, won’t let me sleep. It’s stupid, but it’s Halloween and it’s almost midnight, and it feels like something was calling me. Leading me on, leading me into the woods.

  Deirdre would have followed it.

  Seven

  September

  It wasn’t that I wanted to be popular or anything. Who would throw themselves into that shark tank on purpose? The top of the food chain was a scary place—all the stormy drama, the breakups everyone talks about, the betrayals that draw lines in the sand and leave feuds simmering for months. But I didn’t want Deirdre’s place as the class freak, and I didn’t want the place I’d left behind either. I didn’t want to be the one everyone avoided, whispered about, even if they were too chicken to cross me.

  I was an unknown quantity here, and sooner or later they’d test me, to see what I was made of. They weren’t any threat to me. That was well established by now. But I couldn’t make myself dangerous enough for them to declare me a threat either. I would not be Psycho Skye, not here. I had to be steel, inert. If I earned their respect, just enough respect, I’d drop off the radar, a piece of the landscape, and they’d leave me more or less alone.

  We got on a yellow school bus at the mailbox at the top of the hill, in the long chilly shadow of William’s stone square of a house. Kevin was the one channelling a sort of jock Kylo Ren vibe, with black curls and a long face that went intense in concentration but broke into a wide, lazy smile. And there was Sophie, glossy and put together, but never so much that she looked like she cared, deflecting the sharpest jokes from the boys with pitch-perfect amusement.

  I was wary of William at first. He seemed too nice. A potential liability. I didn’t need to end up defending somebody all over again. I’d placed him somewhere on the sidelines—a high achiever, maybe a drama geek. But at school, he ditched the glasses for contacts. He stood straighter, so I suddenly noticed he was a head taller than me. He laughed louder, wrestled in the halls and slapped shoulders and traded crass dudebro jokes without caution. He moved through the day there with genuine ease, bouncing sunnily between cliques with that same self-conscious smile. Everyone seemed to like him.

  And he liked me.

  It was William who invited me to that first party at Kevin’s back in September. Up till that point, Kevin hadn’t said much to me beyond hey, but still, that invitation was the first solid good sign—it signaled neutrality, at least. I was under consideration. A possibility.

  The woods withdrew like a cautious animal from the firelight, the thick blanketing smell of pot and woodsmoke and beer, the music blaring from speakers hooked up to somebody’s phone. I sat next to William by the fire, taking occasional swallows—not gulps, not sips—from the bottle in my hand. The beer tasted like old sour socks, but drinking steadily, I’d managed to down one and half of another. Across from us, Kevin was already staggering and gesturing expansively, inspired to deep thoughts by Sophie’s halter top.

  “Sophie’s almost got too much on top, you know? Like, all you need is a handful.” He mimed a feel with one hand while his beer tipped dangerously in the other, splashing a little on the ground. “The best is the girls with little tits and, like, these huge-ass cookie nipples. I love that. ’S fuckin’ hilarious.”

  “Jesus, Kev,” William said, though he softened it with a laugh, “do you hear yourself?”

  “What? I’m just saying.”

  William glared at him, then gave me a look that might have been apologetic. Kevin grinned. Something about the glance, the edge in William’s voice, suggested that Sophie wasn’t the only one whose assets they’d discussed. Interesting. I downed another mouthful of beer.

  “Aww, don’t worry about Skye,” Kevin said, stretching. “Skye’s cool. She knows I’m harmless. Right?”

  “Seriously,” William protested. “You can’t just say shit like—”

  “Relax, William,” I interrupted. “It doesn’t matter. He’s not going to talk about my boobs, because I’d kick his ass.”

  “Ooooooh,” Kevin crowed.

  “I’m serious.” I put on a smile. “I have a blue belt.”

  “What, like that’s impressive? I thought you were going to say you had a black belt—”

  “I might have had a black belt if I’d gone to some crappy McDojo that just handed out belts to get people to shell out more cash. It wouldn’t mean I was any good.” I paused. That was more than I’d meant to say. But fuck it. I was feeling expansive myself. A little reckless, even. Warmth tingled in my cheeks despite the chilly night. “I’m not bad. I could take either of you.”

  “Oh, come on.” With the subject safely changed, William was smiling again. “We both outweigh you by, like, fifty pounds. At least.”

  “So? I’ve got training. Come on, get up. I’ll show you some stuff.”

  Kevin cackled as William reluctantly obeyed, handing off his own drink.

  “Make a fist,” I told him, and shook my head when he did. “No, no. You’ve got to keep your thumb out of the way.” His hands were bigger than mine. I pressed his fingers into formation; they were warm against my own. “Make your knuckles flat. Otherwise you just hurt your hand. See? Your feet need to be shoulder-width apart. Move that one up a little. Like that.”

  We started to draw onlookers, firelit shadows heckling and shouting encouragement, as I showed him how to hunch his shoulders to protect his chin, how to jab without chicken-winging his elbow out to the side, how to step forward to put his weight into it.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Kevin drawled as William clumsily copied me. “But you wouldn’t actually hit him.”

  I turned to look at him, hands on hips, considering.

  “I will punch you,” I said into a sudden hush, “hard enough to make your eyes water. But not hard enough to make your nose bleed.”

  “You would not,” he scoffed. “You can’t even do that. No way.”

  “Sure I can. I will.” I beckoned. “Bring it on.”

  He pushed himself up from the ground, almost fell down again. For a moment, a different face bloomed in my memory. A different smirk, a spiky haircut. The warmth curdled in my stomach, but I stood my ground.

  That was before. Kevin was just a garden-variety douchebag. I knew that. And I knew what I was doing. I would not go overboard.

  Kevin came shuffling forward, bobbing and weaving exaggeratedly. I watched. I watched. And then when he came close enough, I snapped my hand out.

  I didn’t even punch him, really. It was more like I shoved his nose with my fist. But he was drunk, and the stone surface was uneven, and he stumbled backward and fell on his ass. He sat there as everyone laughed and cheered, blinking rapidly, and put a hand to his face. He wasn’t bleeding.

  “I cannot believe you did that,” he said slowly.

 
“I told you.” I picked up my bottle and drained it. William helped Kevin to his feet, laughing at his slurred protests. When William met my eyes, his face was full of undisguised admiration. And I grinned back.

  Because that was it. I’d done it. I was in.

  * * *

  After the party, everyone knew who I was. I was on edgy high alert at first when people started looking at me and talking as I passed in the halls. But no, history wasn’t repeating itself. They were smiling at me, sometimes even stopping me to bestow a high five. Sophie was the one who tracked me down at my locker to show me why—someone had recorded the whole thing on their phone. The comments piled up.

  OMG NINJA SKILLZ.

  Boom!

  #pwned.

  “What’s your handle?” she demanded. “I have to tag you!”

  I didn’t have one. I’d carefully erased any trace of myself on social media. But at her urging, I reluctantly created one account, first name only, the profile picture an anonymous quarter of my face.

  That’s @NightSkye you guys, Sophie tapped out. SHE IS THE BESSSSST!!!!

  I smiled when she showed me the screen. “Aw.” It was the Sophie thing to say, the right thing to say. She swung her hair over her shoulder, looking pleased with herself.

  “I don’t see what the big deal is,” Kevin grumbled at her elbow. He was going along with it—he didn’t really have a choice; if people thought he actually cared, the laughter at his expense would turn scornful—but he was still sulking. Sophie gave him a shove.

  “Oh, get over yourself. It’s funny.”

  You could learn a lot, watching Sophie. She was one of those people everyone knows, a hub of information carefully stockpiled, casually traded. She said aw, thank you with sincere eyes, swapped self-deprecating compliments like it was an Olympic sport or a secret handshake. A few words from her—guys, this is hard—were enough to bring all the boys tripping over themselves to contradict and encourage her. William and Kevin included. I watched it happen in biology, torn between being appalled and admiring her technique.

  I couldn’t decide whether she knew she was doing it or not. That wasn’t the sort of thing you asked.

  * * *

  Deirdre was not doing well at school. Surprise. Three weeks in, the fighting at home was going full tilt: Mom attempting to figure out what the problem was, Deirdre resisting with every ounce of breath and volume she could summon.

  The only place to escape was outside. With the windows open, Deirdre’s shrill voice followed me even there, so I’d walk around the long loop of the block, through the bright golden heat of afternoons whirring with crickets.

  One of those afternoons, as I stepped out of the shadow of the house, a sound drew my gaze to the empty lot. Thok…thok…thok. William strode through the tall grass, bending to collect something from the foot of the dirt pile. His hair made him easy to recognize, even at a distance. As I waded across the yard, he paused to pull it from its ponytail, shake it out, yank it impatiently back together into a loose knot.

  “Hey,” I called, and he looked up with a smile of pleased surprise and returned the greeting. Maybe that was how he was on everyone’s good side, that unstudied way he had of making you feel instantly welcome.

  “Everything okay?” he asked, as Deirdre’s voice drifted into hearing, hitting an earsplitting pitch. I rolled my eyes.

  “Just my sister. You know.”

  “Ha. Yeah. Been there.”

  Like shiny Christina had ever in her life pitched a Deirdre-level fit. I made a face, changed the subject. “What are you doing?”

  “Target practice.” He lifted a contraption from the grass at his feet, a webbed double arc of black plastic with wheels at either end. A bow.

  “Oh, cool.” I forgot to be casual, to check my enthusiasm.

  His smile broadened at my instant interest, and he passed it to me to look at.

  “Just don’t dry fire it,” he said. “You don’t ever fire without an arrow. It damages the bow. If you draw, don’t let go of the string.”

  It was light in my hand, the grip worn shiny-smooth, and it felt like a weapon. Taut, no-nonsense, elegantly deadly, like a hawk in the sky.

  “Show me.” It might have come out as a command, but I didn’t care, and anyway, he took it in stride.

  “See over there?” He pointed across the lot to two white oblongs propped up in front of the dirt pile, both sprayed with vivid red circles, then pulled an orange-feathered arrow from where he’d stuck it point first in the dirt. He drew in one smooth motion, pulling the feathers back to rest at the corner of his jaw. He stood for a heartbeat with the sun falling over his shoulders, still and cold-eyed in a way I would never have expected, and then let the arrow fly—thok—into the target. He returned my stare with a grin before reaching for the next arrow, sending it after the first.

  “I’ll go get them,” I said when all three were gone.

  “Just don’t judge,” he called after me. “It always psychs me out when people are watching.”

  But he needn’t have worried, because all three arrows were buried in the red. The target, a woven fabric bag that might have once held rice, crinkled under my touch as I yanked them out.

  “Holy shit, William, you’re Robin Hood,” I called back to him, and he laughed.

  “Everyone needs a zombie apocalypse skill, right? Like your martial arts.”

  I jogged back across the lot, arrows in hand.

  “Arrows are way better for that than martial arts. You’d get bit for sure if you tried to grapple with a zombie. And anyway, you could hunt food like this.”

  William’s smile tilted.

  “You wouldn’t want me to be the hunter in a zombie apocalypse. We’d starve for sure.”

  “Can’t hit a moving target?”

  “No, I’m pretty good at that, actually.” He ran a hand over his hair. “I’m just…not so good with the whole blood-and-guts part of hunting. You know?”

  “Really?”

  He shrugged. “My dad’s always after me to go with him. That was the whole point of teaching me how to use a bow, right? He says it’s something you get used to. That it’s only ‘intense’ the first couple of times.” He put air quotes around the word, his face clouding over. “Personally, puking over it the once was enough for me. I just like to shoot.”

  He turned away abruptly, maybe thinking he’d said too much, and fired the three arrows off again in quick succession. I went out again to retrieve them.

  “I get that,” I said as I made my way back to him, not wanting the confession to be awkward. “It’s hard to get used to the idea of yourself as a predator.”

  “Nah,” he said. “I’m kind of a shitty predator is all. I couldn’t eat the meat from the deer we killed. Dad just about lost it, he wouldn’t let me leave the table—we were sitting there past midnight. And I mean, he’s right, it’s more humane than factory farming, really. I should probably be a vegetarian. Like, what kind of hypocrite does that make me, if I’ll eat meat but can’t kill it?” He dropped his gaze to the bow, fidgeting with the string. “But that would really put him over the edge, probably.”

  “Isn’t that kind of the point of civilization?” I handed him the arrows. “Not having to be predators anymore?”

  “More like not having to be prey.”

  “It’s kind of the same thing. Some people would never be predators except in self-defense.” Careful. I had to be careful, or I’d be the one saying too much. “I bet you could be a predator in the zombie apocalypse. If you had to.”

  “I doubt it.” He drew and fired. Thok. “I’d be a zombie, more likely.” Thok. “You, on the other hand, would be a badass zombie-slaying warrior chick.” Thok. “Dammit. See?”

  “Oh, what, because you were a whole three inches off?”

  He handed the bow to me and retrieved the arr
ows himself this time.

  “Here,” he said, sticking the arrows in the dirt between us. “You try.”

  He passed me a little leather tab for my fingers, showed me where to stand, how to hold the bow upright without clutching it so hard I’d throw off my aim, how to sight the target through the circle along the little pins.

  “You want to make sure you draw to your armpit—like this—and not across your chest. This is, um, not so much a problem for guys, but, well, the last thing you want to do is hit yourself there with the bowstring.”

  “One more reason why all you need is a handful, I guess.”

  William made a derisive noise, but didn’t meet my eye, looking away at the targets instead. He might have been blushing.

  “Kevin’s an idiot,” he said, and handed me an arrow. “Anyway. Here. See, there’s a notch at the end for the string, and the shaft rests on this little tab here. Draw. Give it a try.”

  The bow resisted at first, then swung willingly back.

  “You want your fingers back here,” he said, touching my jaw with one finger. It left a lingering point of warmth. “Yeah. See, then you know you’re doing it the same way every time. Like that. And let go.”

  When I did, I was rewarded with a sudden sting against my forearm, blunt and fiery, a long red welt marking its trail, and the arrow went sailing past the target into the dirt.

  “Shit! Ow!”

  “Yeah. You have to sort of curve your arm away from the string a bit.” He handed me another arrow. “Same thing, fingers to your jaw. Go ahead.”

  The string smacked into my arm again, but the arrow thumped into the target. Nowhere near the red, but I let out a whoop of triumph. The next one bit the dirt too. Still, I turned to William with a girly squeal that should have embarrassed me.

  “This is amazing!”

  “There’s a proper range in town.” He grinned. “You should take lessons.”

  “Or I could just practice here,” I said, “with you.”

  It came out way too blunt. I scrambled for a way to let him off the hook, in case it was trespassing on his time, his territory, but he beamed approval at me.