Monsters Among Us

by Monica Rodden

  She realized how very thin he was, how young and nervous-looking. No wonder he’d liked talking to Amy. She almost…felt bad for him. But she was angry at him at the same time. She couldn’t figure him out, where to put him in her mind.

  Was he a threat? Was he like Henry? The boys in the dorms? Could he be?

  She felt like the world was made up of all these horrible possibilities now, and she fought with herself on the sidewalk, tried to make her blood slow and her mind quiet. It worked. Sort of.

  She let go of Molly’s collar so she could stand up straight, but still blocked the dog with her leg. “Just because you didn’t kill her doesn’t mean you didn’t do anything wrong. Stick to girls your own age, Matt. Or at least in your own school. And the next time you think of hitting a girl, even shoving her, think of me. Last guy who did that? I stabbed him.” She pointed to his abdomen, her fingers an inch from his ribs. “Right around here.”

  And she turned at that, pulling Molly down the street, thinking that even though she probably could have handled that better—with perhaps fewer threats of violence—she also could have done a hell of a lot worse.

  * * *

  —

  A few hours later she was sitting on the porch with Molly and a cup of coffee, her laptop just off to the side. She sipped and squinted and scrolled, a blanket wrapped around her legs, Molly’s head on her knee. She wanted to finish the edits to her essay before she left for school next week. Her heart flew into her throat at the thought but she forced it back down.

  One thing at a time. One page at a time. She scrolled down, looking at the comments in the margins.

  A movement in the corner of her eye. She looked up. A car was rounding the median, coming to a stop in front of her house. She recognized it, and her heart moved again as the boy got out of the car—no hazards this time—and walked toward her.

  Molly ran to him, but Catherine was slower as she rose from the porch steps. There was no snow on the ground at all now, and while it was raining, the rain was light, like an exhale from the sky. It dampened Molly’s fur, though, and dotted Andrew’s shoulders, his hands.

  She’d called him last night as Molly settled into bed with her and she found herself staring for so long the dog began to blur and waver like something underwater.

  “I’m sorry,” he’d told her before she’d even said hello. “I’m a total coward.”

  “You are,” she said. “But you’re also not.”

  He told her how he’d come to the hospital, how they wouldn’t let him see her. How Bob had been so busy with the fallout he was constantly at the station. How his mother had heard what had happened and freaked out and demanded he come home right away. How his brother even came home for a few days afterward.

  She didn’t blame him, she told him.

  “You should,” he said. “You really should. A million, million times over, you should blame me.”

  “Come back,” she said.

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  He sat next to her on the porch, Molly between them.

  “I bought flour,” Catherine said, twisting her ring around her finger. She couldn’t see the mark on Andrew’s face at all.

  “Flour.”

  She nodded. “To bring to Amy.”

  A pause.

  “Flour. Instead of flowers.”

  “I haven’t been to the grave yet. But when I do, I wanted to bring something.”

  Andrew drew back a little to look at her. She felt his eyes linger at her throat. She was still wearing a Band-Aid over it. The doctors wanted her to have something covering it at all times for at least another week, and then for a month whenever she was in the sun, to prevent further damage.

  She pulled the Band-Aid off. “Here. I don’t care. You can see it.”

  “I don’t—” he began, but she turned her head, baring her neck, her face in profile. After a moment, she drew back, sticking the Band-Aid back into place with some difficulty.

  “It’s not that bad,” he said.

  “I feel like it’s on my face sometimes, the way people act around me. Like I’ve been marked.”

  “I didn’t mean to—”

  “No, not you. Or at least, not just you. Anyway, I didn’t want to meet up to complain.”

  The rain was picking up. The porch was covered but she could see it now, falling in broken lines to the grass, the asphalt.

  “Do you ever wonder why they call it West Falls?” Andrew asked her.

  She raised her eyebrows.

  “Seriously,” he said.

  She shrugged. “It’s west of the Falls Creek Falls.”

  “So why not West Falls Creek Falls?”

  “Because that sounds stupid.”

  “So does Falls Creek Falls, and that doesn’t seem to have stopped them.”

  She smiled. The rain was pattering. She pictured a graveyard she’d never been to, the headstones gleaming. A place of ghosts, but not in a bad way. She’d leave the bag of flour against Amy’s resting place and she’d shake and cry and maybe kneel, but then she’d get up and go home and walk Molly and work on her essay and pack, and for what felt like the first time she saw the stretch of time and it did not make her want to die.

  She pulled the loose Band-Aid off to feel the air on her healing skin. “I’m going back to school,” she said.

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really. And actually, that’s why I wanted to talk to you. I need to ask you a favor.”

  “Okay.”

  “What were their names?”

  Andrew stared at her. She watched his shoulders tense, his eyes darken as he looked away from her. “I thought you didn’t want—”

  “I didn’t. But now I want to know. I have to know.”

  Nightmare meant one who lay down with the sleeper.

  Well, she was awake now.

  Not a sleeper in the dark or a girl who bled into a boy when he kissed her in a summer back garden. Past black sleep and innocence. Outside of every single tree. Her soul uprooted, not preyed on by harpies or Henry or anyone else. It was her own, soil-stained and bloody, half savage and free.

  But she had to know their names. It was the first step out of hell. The key to the gate guarded by something shadowed and crouching. And you had to know the name to get out—because monsters lost their power when you knew what they were called.

  So he told her. Told her how he’d learned one name—the guy who actually lived in that room, on his hall—then found the second on an online forum for an honors course; Andrew had recognized that boy from the class, which had only twenty students in it. The third he’d tracked down on the first one’s Instagram, searching through a hundred pictures until he found that last face and name.

  He told her what they were called: six words. Syllables like heartbeats, like rain.

  A long silence. She put a hand to her cut, felt the roughness of the scar. Remembered.

  “I’m going to report them to the police,” she said.

  Slowly, Andrew nodded. “Okay.”

  “I don’t think anything will happen. I’m kind of expecting it not to. But I’m going to go to the police and tell them the names you just told me and I want you to come with me.”

  He blinked at her. “You do?”

  “Yes.”

  “As, like, evidence?”

  “Yes.”

  A pause, then—“Okay.”

  It was her turn to look surprised. “Okay?”

  “Yeah. Why not?”

  “Well, because—they’ll be pissed. Other people too, probably.”

  “Yeah,” Andrew said mildly. “I think I’m okay with people like that being mad at me.”

  In a different story it would be bright and warm, her mind a landscape of flowers instead of g
raves. But this was her story, and it was gray rain and headstones and the sharp edge of a cliff.

  But that was fine.

  Because she could feel the texture of her broken skin, knew blood beat just beneath it. So alive she felt like screaming, each breath a kind of bitter triumph. She had been inside something stiff and unyielding, and it had told her she belonged there, would in fact never leave. But she was gone, out, had pried herself from the ground like a long-buried thing, shaking leaves from her feet, roots from her hair. Running. And there was a fierce and defiant freedom in it, as she trailed blood and branches, leaving wide-spaced footprints in the earth that had once held her.

  This book is not mine alone. My gratitude goes to many but to Greg first, because he is the only part of my life I have never been able to put into words.

  A good book needs a good team behind it: a million thanks to Random House and my editor, Emily Easton, for taking me on, showing me the ropes, and believing this story could be great. I am also tremendously indebted to my agent, Victoria Sanders, and all at Victoria Sanders & Associates for sticking with me for four years while I tried to write a book (or three). Thank you for giving me the time to learn how to do it right.

  Thanks also to Justin Rizen, who helped me get across the finish line. You are a true friend, Justin, and your feedback was invaluable. Here’s to Panera lunches and brutal honesty.

  Rosie and Kelly shared their knowledge and personal experience with me during the editing process, ensuring this book was true to life, and to trauma, while Kevin allowed me to shamelessly take advantage of his law-enforcement connections. As my understanding of police work comes solely from Law & Order, this input was especially important.

  A special shout-out to the staff at the Christiansburg Library, who likely created the most positive work environment in the world. I miss you all, not least because there are only so many people who will tolerate my continuous talk of Harry Potter and serial killers.

  Endless gratitude to my family: Dad, I can talk to you for hours about anything and come away better for it. Mom, you have a good heart and read all my drafts no matter how gruesome. You and Dad being proud of me means more than you can know. Chris, I love you and Robert and your little Hufflepuff; I’m glad we’re all Texans together now. To Greg’s family: Thank you for welcoming me into your life so many years ago and making all those horror stories about in-laws seem completely implausible. I also must thank Grandma and Grandpa for being arguably two of my biggest cheerleaders, and Papa (and Nana) for their prayers and love. “Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels,” Dumbledore tells us, but I have been incredibly fortunate to hear and see the wisdom of age through my grandparents.

  Credit also must go to Alice Sebold for her memoir Lucky, which has haunted me for ten years, and to Emily Brontë for writing in a time when women were told they should not. You and your sisters used male pseudonyms to ensure your words would be read at all. It’s better, a little, these days. I wish you could see it.

  To all victims of sexual assault, regardless of age, race, gender, orientation, drinking/drug habits, sexual history, or clothing choice: None of it matters. Any actions on your part before or after the attack do not negate the crime done to you. It was not your fault. You encountered a monster along the path of your life and survived. This book is for you, and also for those who did not make it. I believe all of you, even the ghosts.

  Kristi Lea Photography

  MONICA RODDEN is a Virginia Tech graduate who lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband and a dog that enjoys terrorizing the local squirrel population. Monsters Among Us, which was inspired by Wuthering Heights, is her first book. She plans to continue writing young adult adaptations of classic novels, but only the really dark, depressing ones—which is pretty much all of them.

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