The monster makes a strange crackling noise that reminds Julie of electricity. “Aldraa won’t like that.”
“Aldraa knows you’re not supposed to be here.”
“What we are and are not supposed to do—” The monster’s voice fades away for a moment. More like a radio flickering in and out rather than a lost train of thought. Julie doesn’t like it. “Things are changing. Every azojin things will change, but they should not change like this. It is unnatural.”
It’s hard for Julie to hold on to the word that he says, the a-word. She thinks Agosı´n, the last name of a girl at school. But no, that’s not right either. The word catches on her thoughts like a half-remembered song.
“And that’s why you’re coming into town?” Julie says, her voice trembling. “Because things are changing?”
The monster looks at her. “Yes.”
The yard goes silent. Not just Claire and Julie and the monster, but everything: the wind, the rustle of plants, the droning of cicadas and grasshoppers.
This isn’t good, the monsters breaking the treaties. Not good at all. A slow trickle of dread seeps into Julie’s stomach.
“I’ll return to our allotted space,” the monster says. “There’s no need to use your Taser or your cage on me. But as the azojin approaches, the treaties will disintegrate. Remember that, Alvarez and Sudek.” It sniffs the air again. “That’s an interesting scent, really. The two of you together. You could bring about much change in this world if you found access to the timelines.”
“Oh, for the love of—” Julie throws her hands up, trying to pretend that she’s not afraid the monster knows somehow. “Will you just leave? Stop babbling nonsense!”
Somehow, though, Julie doesn’t think it’s nonsense. He said the word again, the word that buzzes around her thoughts. It makes her bloodstream spark.
The monster backs away. Julie and Claire press close together. Julie has never felt this unnerved about a monster before. Not even Aldraa and the weird way he distorts reality ever made her feel so out of sorts.
“Keep going!” Julie calls out as the monster moves across the yard. “If I have to show up at another house for you, I’m getting out the Taser for sure!” She speaks with an authority she doesn’t feel, but at least the monster disappears around the side of the house.
Claire lets out a long sigh of relief and slumps against the brick. Julie feels the same way: shaky, like she’s just run the mile in her PE class at school.
“You can do that?” Claire asks, after a moment. “Just let it walk away?”
Julie sighs. “Yeah. We’re supposed to take a hands-off approach as much as possible.”
“Is it going to hurt someone?”
“I don’t think so. They don’t really hurt people.” But Julie isn’t convinced of that herself, and she can tell by Claire’s expression that she isn’t either. “It hasn’t happened since before I was born. The treaties and all.”
“But it has happened before.” Claire’s eyes shimmer. Julie’s afraid she might start crying. “Do you think they’ll hurt me? Is that why they’re coming here?”
“No,” Julie says quickly, wanting to do anything she can to make Claire feel safe. “No, it’s super rare. The guy I heard about who got hurt, they say he was hassling them, maybe even hurting them. One of the rumors said he was trying to hunt them like deer.” Julie takes a deep breath. “And besides, he got hurt at the power plant. Nowhere near town.”
Claire trembles.
“But I mean—I’ll ask my dad. I’ll make sure you’re okay.” She smiles, and Claire returns it, thin and wavering.
“I didn’t know what it was talking about,” she says. “Astronauts and everything.”
“They’re always like that.” Even though Julie’s never heard them refer to someone by their family name. “They don’t think like we do, you know?”
Julie moves toward the back door, wanting to be in the safety of inside, even if it is Mrs. Sudek’s house. But Claire says, “There was a word.”
Julie stops, her hand on the doorknob. “What?”
“The monster—it said a word. I can’t remember—”
Agosı´n, Julie thinks, but she knows that isn’t it.
“I heard it too,” Julie says, frowning. “But I don’t know—I lost it.”
“Is that dangerous?”
“I don’t know.” Julie meets Claire’s eye. The sunlight splashes against Claire’s brown hair, making it shine golden. Julie wishes this moment and this closeness didn’t have anything to do with monsters.
“I just think it’s funny that I can’t remember it. Not in a ha-ha way, but—” Claire hesitates. “That happens a lot with the monsters. If I think about them too much, then it’s harder to concentrate on them—I guess it’s not that funny.”
Julie nods. The word keeps slipping further and further away, like a dream. She’s pretty sure it started with A—
“I should go ask Mrs. Sudek for her payment,” Julie says. “Maybe you can come over in a couple of days, and we can get something from the video store. I’ll be off on Saturday.”
Claire nods. “I’d like that.”
Julie pulls the door open.
Her head buzzes. She can’t stop thinking about herself and Claire, intertwined together, like their scents.
Julie’s hands are shaking as she drives through town. She doesn’t want to go back to the office yet, doesn’t want to learn there’s another monster waiting to be collected down in hurricane alley somewhere. The last thing she wants right now is to deal with monsters.
The word is gone completely. She can feel its absence, like a black hole, but even that is starting to fade. When she tries to remember the word, memories of Claire come in instead. Claire smiling in the sunlight. Claire’s hand brushing against hers. Claire kissing her on the beach, the waves rolling in around their feet. Sure, Julie would rather think about Claire, but the monsters and this missing word leave her with a queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach.
Something’s wrong.
After seventeen years Julie’s grown used to the ways the monsters slip into the edge of things. Claire is right: You can’t think on them too much. If you try, they just pull further away, like a particularly tricky math problem. But Julie has never lost an entire memory like this, not without leaving town. She just—doesn’t like it.
The exterminator office appears up ahead, the neon cockroach waving its antennae back and forth. Julie slows down. Her heart thuds in her chest. The lost word is a whisper in the dark crevices of her memory.
She drives past.
Julie takes a deep breath and loosens her grip on the steering wheel. Lawrence. She just needs to talk to Lawrence. Maybe this has happened to him before—maybe she’s overreacting. Lawrence is good for telling you that you’re being illogical.
She pulls the van into the Texaco station—not the one owned by her father, thank God—and parks next to the pair of pay phones on the side of the building. She digs around in the cup holder for a quarter and then climbs out into the heat. The sun bounces off the gas pumps, throwing squares of light into her eyes. She shakes her head and scurries over to the phone. Drops in the quarter. Punches in Lawrence’s number.
The phone rings twice before Aunt Rosa answers, her voice whispery and dry, the way it always is these days.
“Aunt Rosa?” Julie says. “It’s me. Julie. Is Lawrence at work?” Lawrence always answers the phone when he’s at home, since Aunt Rosa has trouble moving around. And Julie expected him to be home today—she thought she remembered him mentioning that he had today off, that he needed to study for a test or something.
“Oh, Julie, dear. Hello. No, he’s not at work.”
“School? I thought his classes were at night.”
Aunt Rosa laughs. “He’s out.” She lowers her voice a little. “With a girl. I think he’s on a date, although of course he denies it.” She laughs again, and a jolt of confusion shoots through Julie’s chest. Lawrence?
On a date?
“Oh,” she says. “Okay. Well—let him know I called, okay? I’m working today.”
“Of course.”
Julie hangs up the phone and sags against the phone booth. This can’t be right. It has to be some kind of study date or something. Lawrence is too busy trying to become a detective to mess with girls right now. Most of the girls in Indianola aren’t into him anyway.
Julie trudges over to the van. She still doesn’t want to go back to the exterminator’s. She thinks about Brittany’s shrill voice, the phone jangling in its receiver, calling her out to capture some other monster—no thank you.
She starts the engine and sits there for a moment, listening to it idle. If Lawrence is on a date, there are only a few places in town he could be. The K&L Root Beer Drive-in is the only restaurant worth talking about. Or the Pirate’s Den. Which is more date-y, anyway.
Julie throws the van into reverse and pulls out of the parking lot. She’ll swing by the arcade. Just to see. If he’s there, she can ask him about the monsters, the missing scrap of her memory. If he’s not, she’ll go back to the exterminator’s and deal with it.
It only takes five minutes for Julie to get to the arcade. No one’s out. She doesn’t see Lawrence’s car in the parking lot, and she almost turns and drives off. But maybe he didn’t drive. Maybe his date drove. Lawrence is down with that sort of thing. A modern man.
Julie parks and climbs out and walks across the simmering parking lot. Sweat beads up on her forehead. The signs blink in the arcade windows. A flyer for the Stargazer’s Masquerade is plastered to the front door, the ink not yet faded from the sunlight. They use the same stupid design every year, cheesy little figures looking up at the stars. It was probably drawn back in the seventies.
Julie pushes the door open, the air-conditioning cooling her sweat. At first she thinks the arcade’s empty. There’s nobody even standing behind the counter. But then, over the chirps and beeps of the video games, she hears Lawrence’s voice.
“Thank God,” she mutters to herself. She plunges into the arcade and follows the sound of it. “Hey, Larr—”
She freezes. Lawrence is here all right. And he’s with Audrey Duchesne.
They’re sitting together in one of the far corner booths, the date booths, the ones with the red-tinted lamps hanging above the tables. Both of them are turned away from her—Lawrence is squeezed into the booth beside Audrey, his arm thrown around her shoulder, his nose pressed into her hair.
Julie stares at them. Blood rushes in her ears. Lawrence says something to Audrey that makes her laugh, and her laughter floats out into the arcade, trilling like the machines.
Julie slinks away. Her heart pounds. She can’t even remember why she wanted to talk to him in the first place. Only that it seemed so important, and now the only important thing is getting out of here. Her face is hot. She can’t believe she drove to find him. Can’t believe she didn’t trust that Lawrence actually was on a date, an honest-to-God date. And with Audrey Duchesne, the cheerleader. The sort of girl who wouldn’t have given him the time of day in high school.
Julie dives out of the arcade. The cicadas buzz up in the trees, and the sun pours bright and hot over the asphalt. Julie’s dizziness clears. She glances back at the arcade. Lawrence on a date. No big deal. Good for him.
She just wishes it wasn’t with Audrey Duchesne.
CHAPTER
Seven
CLAIRE
The day after the monster came to Grammy’s yard, Claire is still thinking about it. She can’t stop thinking about it. Not just the monster—the memory of which is, in the way of monsters, pulling apart at the seams—but about Julie.
She lies on her bed with her Tori Amos tape blasting through her earphones and keeps replaying the encounter with the monster. An Alvarez and a Sudek. Claire isn’t technically a Sudek—her last name’s Whitmore—but she doesn’t think the monster cares about that.
She wonders what her and Julie’s intertwined scents smell like to the monster. A friend back in Houston had a perfume-making kit, and they used to tap the essential oils onto strips of paper and mix the scents together that way. Maybe it’s something like that. Individually, she and Julie are one way, but together, they become something new.
Claire kind of likes the idea. Even if the thought of it coming from a monster leaves her unsettled.
After lunch, Julie calls. Grammy answers the phone and shouts for Claire to come take it, and when Claire comes slinking into the kitchen, Grammy gives her a dark look.
“You know I don’t like you seeing that girl,” she says in a low voice, the phone pressed against her chest.
Claire feels a swell of irritation. “We’re friends,” she says.
“You better not be making plans with her for today,” Grammy says. “You’re going to visit with Audrey.”
Claire hasn’t heard anything about this. “What?” she says. “Audrey?”
“You made plans last week.” Grammy shoves the phone at Claire. “Remember?”
Claire shakes her head. Why would she make plans to hang out with Audrey so far in advance? She presses the phone to her ear, still confused.
“Julie?” she says.
“Hey, I was just seeing if we’re still on for going to the video store tomorrow.”
“Sure.”
“Excellent. By the way, I saw something crazy yesterday. After the—you know. The monster.”
“Oh?”
Grammy hasn’t left the kitchen. She stands next to the stove with her thin arms crossed over her chest. She wobbles in place, as if yelling at Claire to answer the phone was enough to exhaust her. She looks pale, her skin thin and almost transparent. Sometimes Claire hears her coughing in the middle of the night.
“Yeah. Definitely. It’s about Lawrence. I’ll tell you tomorrow, though—I want to see what else I can find out about it.”
Claire can’t concentrate on Julie’s gossip about Lawrence. Grammy’s still staring at her. When Claire catches her eye, she mouths, Audrey, and Claire blinks. Julie has moved on to chattering about the general awesomeness of Frank, the video store manager, and Claire catches a fragment of a memory, Audrey calling, asking if she wants to go to the beach.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” Claire says to Julie, and then she hangs up the phone.
Grammy stares at her.
“See?” she says. “I didn’t make plans for today.”
“Audrey will be here soon,” Grammy says. “If I recall correctly.”
Claire rubs her forehead. She feels like she just stepped off of a roller coaster. Yes, Audrey did call. It was a lot like Julie calling right now. Claire had been listening to music in her room; Grammy called her into the kitchen.
“I’m going to go get ready,” she mutters. She leaves the kitchen and heads into her bedroom. Sunlight streams in through the blinds, illuminating flecks of dust. It’s already so hot in here Claire can hardly think straight. She switches on the fan.
“I want you to know I’m not happy about you making plans with the Alvarez girl.”
Claire jumps and whirls around. “It’s for tomorrow,” she says, startled. She didn’t hear Grammy coming. “I’m still going to see Audrey. And I’ll make sure I get all my chores done too.”
“This isn’t about the chores.” Grammy steps into Claire’s room and Claire goes still, like a wild animal has just crossed her path. Or a monster.
Grammy glances at her bed—made this morning, as always—and at the basket of dirty clothes in the corner, at the stack of cassettes sitting on top of the vanity. “I just don’t want you seeing that girl so much.”
“Why not?” Tension coils up inside Claire. She sits down at her vanity and pretends to rummage around in the makeup drawer. “She’s nice.”
Grammy stops a few paces away. Claire watches her in the vanity’s mirror.
“She’s a bad influence,” Grammy says.
Claire shoves the drawer shut and turns aroun
d. “Is that really the problem with her?” Claire suspects it’s not. She suspects the problem lies more with Julie’s brown skin.
Grammy’s eyes narrow. “Of course it is. She got caught drinking at a party last summer. Do you think your mother would want you hanging around that kind of girl?”
Claire doubts her mother would care. She also can’t imagine Julie at a high school drinking party.
“In fact, I better not hear that’s what you’re doing with her tomorrow,” Grammy says. “Getting drunk out behind Griff’s. Don’t think I don’t know what you kids do.”
Claire has no idea what Grammy is talking about. “I’m just going over to her house,” she says. “Her mom will be there. They have a nice house, you know.” She jabs her finger at the photograph hanging on the wall. “I mean, you certainly like it well enough.”
Grammy’s face darkens, and she pulls the photograph down so quickly that she starts coughing. Claire tenses. But then Grammy looks up and wipes her mouth and says, “I’m quite aware, thank you. And this is not the Alvarez house. This photograph was taken before they owned it.”
“It’s their house now,” Claire says. “This is the nineties. Deal with it.”
Grammy glares at her, but she doesn’t say anything more, only stalks out of Claire’s bedroom. Claire sighs and turns back to her mirror. Her reflection seems slanted at an angle.
The doorbell rings, startling Claire. She doesn’t move from her vanity. A picture of her and Josh from a show at Numbers last winter is tucked into the frame. She’s so used to looking at it that she hardly sees it anymore, but now she reaches over and plucks it off the mirror. Josh scowls at the camera. She’s been saving her weekly allowance from Grammy—she should call him. He’s always willing to talk to her, even if it’s just about random stuff, arcade games and music and the weird philosophy books he’s always reading. Maybe, since he’s never been to Indianola, she can even tell him about the monsters.
God, she misses when conversations with Josh were the strangest part of her life.
“Claire!” Audrey storms into the room, bringing with her the scent of hairspray and Calvin Klein perfume. She plops down on the bed like she owns it. “What are you looking at?”
Forget This Ever Happened Page 8
