Monsters Among Us

by Monica Rodden

  Catherine watched it fall slowly, a small glass canister of what looked like Christmas sprinkles. It shattered when it hit the floor, the green and red pieces bursting like an explosion across the aisle.

  Molly barked. The girl fled, her blond hair whipping around the corner. One larger piece of glass spun slowly in Catherine’s direction, coming to rest a foot from her. It winked in the overhead lights, jagged and lethal.

  She stepped back. Henry did too, pulling Molly away just as a clerk came up behind them. He didn’t seem much older than they were, but his face was lined with exhaustion. When he saw the mess of glass shards and sprinkles, he swore, then glanced down at Molly.

  “Service animal,” Catherine said promptly.

  “She didn’t spill them,” Henry added.

  The clerk muttered something about a broom and stalked off. Henry and Catherine exchanged a look.

  “Who was that?” Catherine asked.

  “No clue. What do you still need?”

  “Henry, you can’t, the glass—”

  But he was handing her Molly’s leash. “Here, hold her.” He took the basket from Catherine’s arm and began walking carefully down the aisle. “You got the sugar, right? What else?”

  Catherine took hold of Molly with a sigh, calling out the items. By the time the clerk was back with an entire wheeled assortment of cleaning materials, Henry had gotten everything on her list except the actual jars. They hurried away from the clerk, grabbed the few things on Henry’s list from the next aisle over, then found the jars in a fancier section opposite the self-service tills of specialty nuts and candy. The shelves here were filled with things like mini-cheesecake tins for twenty dollars and gleaming Le Creuset pots for ten times that amount. There weren’t that many jars, though, and the ones large enough to hold all the necessary ingredients were seven dollars each.

  “Shit,” she muttered, glancing at the price tags.

  “What?”

  “I only brought a twenty,” she said. “This’ll put me over.”

  “Don’t you have a card?”

  She shook her head. “I…lost it. At college.” He raised his eyebrows, and she amended, “Sort of. My license, too. Don’t tell my parents.”

  “How’d you drive back home without a license?”

  “Slowly.”

  She’d tried driving the morning after it happened, but her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Fine. Students had to be out of the dorms by ten a.m. tomorrow, the twenty-first. And she needed that extra day. She FaceTimed her mom to say that she was staying to help with an after-finals campus cleanup, and after a long conversation, her mother finally acquiesced. Amber gave Catherine a bleary-eyed look of surprise at this news, but she, like most of the dorm, was gone by that afternoon. Catherine spent that day entirely inside, staring at nothing, flinching every time her phone chirped with another one of her mother’s text messages. She did not sleep, and as soon as the sun rose, she left.

  Her hands weren’t shaking anymore. Instead they were braced and rigid around the wheel as her eyes darted across the roads, her whole body alert and anxious. Just over ninety minutes of tension, cursing herself for leaving the dorms without her coat. It was probably still in that guy’s room, her driver’s license and debit card in the pocket along with her school ID. All she’d needed for a night out. No sense bringing a purse. But she’d needed the ID to get into the over-eighteen bars that didn’t card once you were inside. And she’d always brought her debit card since that one time in October when everyone wanted to split a pizza at three in the morning and she’d used up all her cash on beer.

  I have to cancel it, she thought now. God. He could have bought, like, an Xbox or something by now. My parents will kill me. And I need a new license. How do you even get another one? The DMV. Perfect. Just perfect.

  “Catherine?”

  Henry was motioning to the self-checkout. The other lines were still closed this early. “Chill out. I’ve got the difference.”

  She started to say thank you, but he just shook his head. “Forget it. It’s Christmas. We’ll just add your stuff to mine.”

  She nodded and watched him scan each item. Molly was doing the same, her eyes bright with interest at the beeping machine. “Who puts sprinkles in glass?” Catherine mused as he put the sugar in a separate bag; it already had a small hole in one corner, a fine stream that arced to the floor. Molly licked at the grains eagerly.

  Henry grimaced. “Same people who sell those Le Creuset things for two hundred bucks each. Here, where’s your cash?”

  She handed him her twenty.

  “Thanks.”

  “So the girl,” she said, watching Henry feed her bill through the machine, then pull the difference from his own wallet. “Back there.”

  A sigh. “She’s my ex.” The change jangled and the machine spat out the short receipt.

  “I thought you said you didn’t know her.”

  “I wish I didn’t know her. Does that count?”

  “No.”

  He had the grace to look abashed for a second. “Okay, fair. It didn’t end well. Which was weird, considering it wasn’t that serious to begin with.”

  “Looked pretty serious.”

  “More to her, I think.”

  Catherine, looking at Henry, could picture that quite clearly.

  “Heartbreaker,” she said.

  They walked outside, the cold stinging. The light snow had shifted into rain, a cold pattering she could feel on her scalp. People thought it rained constantly in Washington but that wasn’t exactly true; the bulk of the rainfall came in the coldest months, between October and March, which had always struck Catherine as kind of unfair: cold and wet at the same time. And irritating—the rain never quite heavy enough to be a storm, just a constant drizzle, like a dripping faucet no one had managed to fix.

  Catherine ducked her head as they walked to Henry’s car. “So this was recent,” she said. “The breakup.”

  “Recent enough to make me feel bad about it,” he admitted, letting Molly into the backseat and climbing into the driver’s seat. “I know it wasn’t my fault, but still…” His voice trailed. She gave him an expectant look as she fastened her seat belt but said nothing.

  “It was…”

  “You don’t have to tell me,” she said at once.

  “No—it’s—”

  But then there was a dog bark, slightly muffled, coming from a nearby car, and Molly threw herself against one of the back windows, barking madly in response.

  “Ah, Christ,” Henry groaned. “Molly, no. Bad! Here.” He reached into his jacket pocket and took out what looked like a very small Tupperware, but after a moment Catherine realized it was a single-serving peanut butter snack, like one a kid might have in a packed lunch. She watched as Henry peeled off the top and half threw it into the backseat. Molly dived for it, completely diverted.

  “Sorry,” Henry said, turning back to her. “Only thing that really gets her going these days. Other dogs. Sometimes squirrels.”

  “So…peanut butter.”

  “Works as good as anything.” His smile faded. “We didn’t work. Her and me, I mean. She wasn’t—wasn’t the most stable girl I’d ever met, let’s just say. I don’t think I’ve ever met a stranger person.” A pause. “Save you, obviously.”

  “Says the boy with random things of peanut butter in his coat.”

  So unexpected, how easy this felt, talking to him. Like a language she’d forgotten her fluency in. It reminded her of the years when it had been almost exclusively them, when conversations with Henry had been as natural as any other sound in her world: the slapping hands of schoolyard rhymes or the chiming bells of the ice cream truck.

  “What made her so strange?”

  He shrugged. “Things,” he said, and when she continued to look at him, added, “What
made college so shitty?”

  “Things.” She stared out the window. They were older now, and some words were harder to say. “I saw this Christmas post the other day. It was about the Grinch. It said, Let’s remember that the Grinch didn’t hate Christmas. He hated people, which is fair.”

  Henry gave a snort of laughter.

  She turned to him. “Do you ever do that?”

  “What?”

  “Hate people.”

  It was his turn to look surprised; then he seemed to consider the question. “Sometimes,” he said. “Maybe.”

  She looked back at the windshield. “So do I.”

  He drummed his fingers on the wheel. “I met her at Falls when I was working at the library. Thought she was cool, normal. Fun. But she wasn’t any of those things, and by the time I realized that, it was too late. She lied to people. About something…something really personal. She, like, got off on it. Embarrassing me—” He broke off, shook his head. “Forget it.”

  She looked at him—his flushed cheeks, his fingers tense on the wheel—and felt a surge of sympathy. “Thank you,” she said. “For helping. With the jars, and everything.”

  He smiled briefly at her before starting the car. “Well, all credit should really go to Molly. She’s a service dog, you know.”

  Catherine laughed and reached back to scratch Molly’s ears, so careful to brush gently around her stitches she didn’t notice a single tree on the trip back to her house.

  Her mother padded downstairs no less than ten minutes after she got home, but Catherine shooed her back upstairs with a muttered, “Christmas presents. Give me ten.” It took a little longer than that, but she finished the jars and called up the stairs that it was fine to come into the kitchen.

  “Well, isn’t that a relief,” her mother said wryly, walking right to the coffee. “Your father will be down in a minute. Did you want breakfast—?”

  But Catherine was already halfway up the stairs, and a moment later she was back in bed, her door shut. She shut her eyes too. It was amazing, she thought distantly, how quickly she could go back to that night. Like it was always there and always would be, just waiting for her to step back into it.

  After the encounter in the dorm bathroom, Cordelia’s hands wet from Catherine’s soaking dress, the RA had stared at Catherine and refused to look away. Catherine had stared blankly back, taking in Cordelia’s tall, wide form. It made her think of Buffy. In that show, the character of Cordelia had been gorgeous and mean.

  “Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” Cordelia asked her.

  Actually, now that she thought about it, there had been an episode about a snake demon thing that was supposed to be a metaphor for assault. There had even been a date-rape drug in it. Not that she had been drugged. At least, she probably hadn’t been. She remembered throwing back drinks, her chin up, throat exposed as though for a vampire. Pathetically vulnerable. A girl gone before the opening credits.

  “Did something happen to you?” Cordelia’s large hands came off the dress. Catherine, following the pointing fingers, put her own hand to the bruise at her throat.

  “It’s nothing.”

  But Cordelia called campus police all the same.

  They had looked at Catherine dubiously when they’d arrived, as though she’d brought a dog into the deli section of a grocery store. Disbelief and pity and a vague impatience. Two of them: one man with a mustache and snapping gum, and a woman with her hair tied back so hard Catherine could see the taut skin of her scalp. She seemed like the kind of woman who never drank, or wore dresses, or went to parties. The four of them sat in the large study room down the hall from the bathroom, Catherine now dressed in sweats like Cordelia, her hair running a damp line down her back. She found herself staring at the window over their heads, the darkness pressed like a palm against the glass.

  “If you make this claim, we have to follow through. Take you to the hospital. File a report. You okay with that?”

  Her answer came without thought. An instinct like breath. A girl facing a wide yawning pit of unknown blackness and they were asking her if she wanted to dive into it and drown.

  “No. I mean, yes. I’m okay. Fine. Nothing…I don’t have a claim.”

  “You sure?”

  She’d never been so sure. She’d nodded her head like a bobble doll, wanting to sleep more than she ever had in her life, adrenaline rushing from her like poison from a wound, crashing so hard that if she didn’t lie down she’d fall right off the chair. The two officers had stood up. She did too, trying not to sway. She said something else, maybe a thank-you, maybe an apology, she wasn’t sure. Cordelia had been out in the hall, waiting. She told Catherine to take care of herself or she’d have to write something. A report.

  But I don’t have a claim.

  * * *

  —

  Catherine finally went downstairs just before noon, unable to stand the silence of her room any longer. Her parents were in the kitchen, sitting at the table where she’d wrapped their presents earlier and talking in low voices. When her mother saw her, she jumped up from her chair, hurrying to the coffeepot, asking Catherine if she wanted any. Catherine nodded and watched her pour the dark, steaming liquid into a mug left for her on the counter. A picture of a to-go coffee waving a wand and wearing round black glasses. ESPRESSO PATRONUM. She’d gotten the mug last summer when they went to Harry Potter World in California.

  She took the mug from her mom with a smile. “Thanks.” She grabbed the hazelnut creamer from the fridge. “Dum da da dum da da dum.”

  Her mom stared at her.

  “Harry Potter.” Catherine set down the creamer, her cheeks hot. “Remember?”

  “Oh, yes.” Her mother nodded too fast, and Catherine felt a pang of fear at the look in her eyes. Don’t say anything, she silently begged. Please don’t. And don’t ask me how I am or if I want to talk about it.

  It was her fault, of course, that her mother knew anything at all. Everything that night had been her fault.

  After the campus police and Cordelia had left, she’d gone back to her room. Amber had been twisted asleep under the covers, and Catherine watched her breathe, counting every exhale, until she reached one hundred.

  When she was sure the hallway was empty of RAs and officers, she closed the door to her room behind her. She slid down it. Cold and shivery and faintly feverish. Her body disjointed, pieces that didn’t fit together anymore. The fear less now, a wave of despair in its place, coming toward her. She needed something to hold on to. It was like a premonition, the sight of her being swept away and under and gone.

  “Mom?” She’d pressed the phone to her ear, tears burning in her eyes, down her face so fast they fell past the bruise on her neck. “Mom?”

  Telling her. Stupidly, telling her, with breathy sobs and words that broke in the middle, sentences that trailed off only to start again in a different place. She never said the word, though, just that she had passed out and woken up somewhere different. Nothing more than that could make it past her teeth. But panic did, and tears. Too loud. She was worried someone would open a door, ask her what was wrong.

  Her mom wanted to come get her right away. And somehow her mother’s anxiety had soothed Catherine’s own. She spent nearly a half hour convincing her mother she’d be safe making the drive herself—a precursor to the phone call the next day about the after-finals campus cleanup. Talking calmly until her mother was calm. Until Catherine, too, felt somewhat better, as she edited her words to I drank too much, passed out, it was stupid and I panicked. Sorry to worry you.

  I don’t think anything even happened.

  Forget it.

  But her mother hadn’t forgotten it.

  She knew that now, that she could not undo the damage she had caused in calling her mother that night. It was in every line of her mother’s face. She could almost hear the
words her mother wanted to say, and felt she was keeping them at bay by sheer force of will.

  “You know,” her mother said, and Catherine’s heart dropped into her stomach. “Maybe we could go back. To the Potter…Place.”

  Catherine let out a breath of relief. “Harry Potter World.”

  “Would you like that?”

  “Sure.” She tried to feel some level of excitement, like a doctor waiting for a monitor to stop flatlining. “That’d be great.”

  “What do you think, Richard?” her mother asked her father. “Another vacation?”

  “Of course. Food was excellent there, I remember. The, uh, fish and chips.” He looked up from his iPad briefly and smiled at Catherine, then went back to the screen.

  “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” her mother said.

  “Do what?”

  “That.” She waved a hand at him. “That thing.”

  “I’m working.”

  “It’s your holiday break.”

  “And of course, teachers only work nine to three on weekdays and not one second during the holidays.”

  “Richard, could you not do that?”

  “Grade my students’ papers? Susan—”

  The doorbell rang.

  “I’ll get it,” Catherine said at once. Maybe it would be Henry and Molly again, which wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.

  But it wasn’t them.

  A young girl stood on the stoop, her dark hair under a white hat, her skin clear, eyes large and brown. She was holding a basket, and with her red coat against a backdrop of trees, she looked like she’d stepped out of a fairy tale.

  “Amy?” Catherine said.

  “Cathyyyyy!” The girl beamed up at her, stretching out her name like she always did. She’d left a blue bike lying on the walk. “I didn’t know you’d be here!”