“So what time do you have to be home?” He kicked a stone with his foot, reminding me very much of a little boy who had just been told he’d have to go to bed early because he’d been bad.
“I don’t know. Before midnight, I guess.” That really wasn’t that much earlier than when I normally went home, but Jack sighed and grumbled something unintelligible. “What?”
“Nothing,” he mumbled, still looking at the ground.
“Did you have some big plans for tonight?” I asked, trying to figure out what had him so depressed. I was the one that had to get up at seven in the morning, not him.
“No. I just don’t like it when things are finite.” He sighed again, and then looked up at the sky.
“That’s kind of weird,” I said. Milo had a phobia of wet sand, and Jane hated the word kumquat (it sounded too perverse, even for her), but it was pretty strange to dislike anything that had a definite ending. “Everything ends.”
“I know. I mean, we don’t hang out forever anyway. It’s just…” He shook his head, and then stared off at the Basilica of St. Mary. It was this huge, beautiful cathedral, and we could just see the top of it, arched out into the sky above the trees. “Mae wanted to get married there.”
“What?” I asked, confused by his sudden topic change.
“My brother’s wife.” He nodded at the church. “But Ezra didn’t want to.”
“Why not?” It was a stunning piece of architecture, so I understood the urge to marry there. I personally wouldn’t want to, but most of the time, I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to get married.
“They’re not Catholic, for one thing.” There was more to the story, but Jack seemed hesitant to tell me about it. Finally, he continued, “It just didn’t seem right. It was Mae’s second marriage. So they found something else, and it worked out better anyway.”
“How long have they been married?”
“I’m not really sure,” he shrugged.
Pulling my hoodie tighter around me, I shivered. Jack glanced over at me, and he didn’t seem even slightly bothered by the cold. Nothing really seemed to bother him, except my bedtime.
“Do you want my sweatshirt?” He started pulling on his sleeve, like he was going to take it off, but I held up my hand to stop him.
“No, I’m okay.” Since he had actually bothered to put on something warmer today, I wasn’t about to take it from him because I thought my jacket was ugly.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I insisted. Flipping up the hood over my head, I smiled up at him. “See? Fine.”
“If you say so.” Jack pulled on his sleeve, adjusting it back to normal. “Let me know if you change your mind.”
“I won’t.”
“I know,” Jack said, sounding a little exasperated. “You never change your mind about anything.”
“You haven’t known me for that long,” I scoffed. “How can you be so sure?”
“I’m just very certain of things,” he replied simply.
That was true enough. He didn’t always have an answer for everything, but the things he knew, he really knew. I was about to ask him what the deal was with his sixth sense about everything, but then his head shot up sharply.
“Watch out.”
“Watch out for what?” I tried to keep my voice even, but the instant he got nervous, I was terrified.
He stepped in front of me to shield from me something, but I peered around him, looking into the dark for some lurking danger.
- 6 -
At first, I thought it was a giant grizzly bear barreling towards us. Then it ran underneath a lamp on the path, and I saw it was just a massive brown dog. There was a dog park on the other side of the park, so I wouldn’t have thought anything of it if Jack hadn’t been on such high alert.
“It’s just a dog,” I told him, hoping that would somehow relax him.
“I know what it is.” He seemed to be debating something, probably whether he should run or stay put, but the dog was approaching quickly, making his decision for him. “Ah, hell.”
The dog snarled at us, but it never even slowed down. Drool and slobber spewed from its mouth, and its eyes had a crazed, intense look I had never seen on an animal before.
Without any provocation, it suddenly lunged at Jack. He held one arm behind him, trying to protect me more from the dog, and he held his other arm in front of him, using his forearm to block the attack.
The dog latched on it with a loud crunching sound that made my blood curdle, and I screamed. With one swift movement, Jack whipped his hand around, grabbing the dog by the back of the neck.
“Go back to the car!” Jack shouted.
He had pinned the dog to the ground by kneeling on its back and wrapping his hands around its neck. There was blood streaming down his arm, and all the while, the dog was snapping and growling viciously.
But I stayed frozen, gaping at Jack and the dog.
“Alice! Go back to the car!”
“Why?” I felt nauseous, but I didn’t want to leave Jack. If I did, I knew that something bad would happen, although I didn’t even know what that meant.
“Alice! Just do it!” Jack growled.
Adrenaline surged through my body, and my feet were happy to comply when I started running back to the car.
Before I had even made it there, I heard the dog yelp, and my stomach dropped. My heart pounded erratically in my chest, and I wanted to throw up.
I made it to the car, and I fought the urge to just keep running. I collapsed on the pavement next to it, gasping for breath.
When I saw Jack walking towards me, I stood up and hurried towards him, but I stopped sharply before I met him.
Part of me really wanted to hug him, but another part of me knew what he had done, and it scared the hell out of me. Irrational tears streamed down my cheeks, but I tried to ignore them.
“Jack, what did you do?” I wiped at my eyes to erase the tears. “What’d you do with the dog?”
“Alice…” He closed his eyes, as if it would hurt him too much to watch me react. “I didn’t have any choice. You saw him. He was going to kill somebody! What if you had been here by yourself or with Milo?”
Everything he was saying was true. The dog had looked insane and probably rabid, and even before I left him, I knew that Jack would kill the dog. But it didn’t change anything.
Hurting any animal for any reason would always reduce me to tears, especially when I had been some part of it. He had killed that dog to protect me.
“I don’t care!” I cried harder, and I wished I would just stop.
It seemed unfair to me that I would be angry with Jack for saving my life, but I couldn’t help it. He moved awkwardly, as if he wanted to hug me, but he knew that I would push him away if he tried.
“Alice,” Jack breathed deeply, looking away from me. He had this agonized expression on his face, and he took a small step back from me. “Everything just got so much more complicated.”
“What are you talking about?”
I felt something shift, and a whole new fear ran through me. As upset as I had been over the dog, I hadn’t hated Jack, or even really been mad at him.
“This!” Jack shook his head and walked past me. “Everything! This is so stupid. I am so stupid.”
“What are you talking about?” I ran after him, wondering what I had done that had been so terrible. I reached out for him, but he pulled his arm away before I even got close to it.
“I’m taking you home.” We had reached the car, but he stood outside of it, waiting for me to get in. I had stopped in front of it and refused to go any further.
“No!” I insisted. “Why?”
“Why?” He laughed, but it was humorless and sent nervous shivers all over me. Then he reeled on me, his face stone cold, and his voice harsher than I had ever imagined it could be. “I killed a dog – to save your life – and you look at me like I’m a monster!”
He rubbed his temple, and I saw blood cove
ring his hand. Somehow, I’d managed to forget that the dog had bitten him.
“Jack, I don’t think that you’re a monster,” I explained softly. “I just don’t like it when things die.”
“Nobody does, Alice,” Jack replied icily. He bit his lip and shook his head, then mumbled, “The damn thing was probably rabid. It was gonna die anyway.”
“I know that,” I swallowed hard. “I don’t know what I did that upset you so much, but I’m sorry. I never wanted to offend you. And I don’t think it’s fair that you’re going to cut me out of your life because I cried over a dog.”
“It’s not because you cried.” He softened a little, but he still wouldn’t look at me. “It was the way you looked at me.”
“I’m sorry!” I insisted. “I was in shock! The dog just charged at us and attacked you and then… I don’t know. I’m sorry. It was just because it was a dog. Remember when you beat up those people in the parking garage? I didn’t cry then.”
“No, you didn’t,” Jack agreed, and he finally seemed to be relenting. I took a step closer to him, eyeing up the ragged holes in his sweatshirt and the blood on his hand.
“We should go the hospital,” I said.
“Why?” Jack looked up at me, his eyes terrified. “Did he get you? I thought I blocked him-”
“No, I’m fine,” I cut him off, and he relaxed again. “I was talking about you. The dog bit you.”
“No, that’s fine.” He waved his arm absently and moved closer to the car, like he would escape into the car and away from my prying eyes. “It’s not a big deal.”
“Yeah, it is,” I continued towards him. “You shirts all torn up and I can see the blood. Plus, like you said, the dog’s probably rabid. You’re going to need a rabies shot.”
“I’ll go tomorrow. It’s not that bad.” Jack had stepped so far back that he pressed up against the door. I reached for his arm, and he pulled it back from me, but I wouldn’t have any of it.
“Jack!” I said firmly, and he let out an exasperated sigh.
“It’s really not that bad,” he repeated, but he let me take his arm.
The hoodie was soaked with blood that covered his hand, so I doubted his claims. Very carefully, I pulled up the sleeve of his shirt and gasped.
There were three little teeth holes in arms. That was all. They were slightly red and raised, but they were smaller than a pencil. On top of that, they weren’t even bleeding.
Blood covered his arm, but the trails seemed to connect just outside of where the teeth marks were. He probably didn’t even need a Band-Aid.
“Oh my god,” I whispered, gaping at his lack of injury.
“I told you it wasn’t bad.” Jack yanked his arm back from me and pulled down his sleeve.
“How?” I stared up at him. “There’s all that blood…”
“I bleed easy. I’m a hemophiliac,” Jack replied, and for some reason, that answer made him smirk.
“No, it’s not possible,” I shook my head. “I heard the dog crunching into your bone. There’s no way that wounds that shallow would hit bone.”
“It all happened so fast. You can’t be sure of what you heard,” he attempted to explain it all away.
“I know what I heard!” I said it with more conviction than I actually had. “You should have massive bite marks and maybe even a broken arm. And how did you even get that dog down?”
“You saw me do that.” He looked at me skeptically, but there was something brewing in his eyes that I couldn’t read.
“That dog was huge and crazy!” I remembered the way that Jack had stopped it with one hand before he threw it the ground. It easily weighed over a hundred pounds, and it had clamped onto his arm. “It’s not even humanly possible for you to be able to stop a dog like that, not without a massive fight, and you have one barely-there bite mark! If he could be taken down that easily, then…”
“What exactly are you saying?” Jack narrowed his eyes at me, but there was a brightness to them. He was hoping I would figure it out.
“You were bit, but there’s hardly a wound, and-and you have like super human strength and… everything in the whole world wants to have sex with you and… you don’t have a temperature!” I spouted.
Biting my lip, I didn’t look at him. I tried to figure it all out, but none of it made sense. I could feel him looking at me, but I just couldn’t put the puzzle together.
“So?” Jack asked encouragingly.
“So…” I threw my arms up in the air, feeling completely exasperated. “I don’t know! You’re a werewolf!” Jack scoffed and looked disappointed.
“There’s no such thing as werewolves,” he rolled his eyes and opened the car door.
“Well, what else is there?” I whined, but he shut the door instead of answering me. I ran around to the other side of the car and jumped in. “What’s going on, Jack?”
“I bleed a lot, you’re confused cause you got caught up in the emotion, my adrenaline gave me the power to take down the dog, and I am just stunningly attractive,” he explained, but his tone was teasing, especially on the part about him being attractive. “Oh, and I do to have a temperature. Everything has a temperature.”
“Okay, yeah, but you don’t have a normal human temperature.”
“Are you like a walking thermometer?” Jack started the car and looked over at me.
“Where are we going?” I asked, ignoring his question.
“I’m taking you home,” he said, then added, “Just for the night. I’ll see you tomorrow. But you’ve had a long enough night, and you have school in the morning.”
“You still need to go to the hospital,” I pointed out. “The bite broke the skin. You need a rabies shot.”
“I do not.” He started to pull out of the parking lot and turned on the stereo, but kept it low so we could talk.
“Look, I know the wounds aren’t very big, but if any of his saliva mixes with your blood, you can get rabies,” I said. “I read this book by Chuck Palahniuk all about rabies, so I’m almost nearly an expert. It’s even sexually transmitted.”
“Well, luckily for you-” (at that point he stopped to wink at me, but I just rolled my eyes) “-I do not have rabies.”
“You don’t know that,” I said. “It wouldn’t hurt you just to get a stupid shot.”
“No, Alice, I don’t need a shot.” He looked at me, completely serious, and then it finally dawned on me.
“You can’t get rabies.” I sighed and leaned my head back against the seat. “That really blows my whole werewolf theory.”
“I already told you they aren’t real.”
“So is it just rabies or is it any communicable disease?” I asked it even though I wasn’t sure he would answer. “Oh my god. It’s any disease, isn’t it? Any form of illness?”
“You’ve had a very long night,” he said quietly. “Maybe we should drop it for tonight.”
“But-” I started to protest but I couldn’t think of a single argument for it. All of this was getting maddening, but for whatever reason, he couldn’t tell me what was going on. So all I could do was get more and more frustrated and perplexed. “You’re okay, aren’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like… you got injured tonight for me, and I just want to know that you’re okay.” That might be the only information I’d get, and it had to be enough for me to settle with that.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Jack smiled at me. We had stopped in front of my building, but I was reluctant to get out.
“Ugh, this is so unfair,” I groaned, opening the car door to get out.
“You know what you’re problem might be?” Jack asked, giving me an odd look. “You worry too much.”
“Yeah. That’s my problem,” I grumbled getting out of the car.
Jack was still laughing when he pulled away, and I stood on the curb for a minute, trying to put everything into perspective. Sure, he had killed a rabid dog and then magically healed from the attack, but at least he saved my
life. Again.
There isn’t a single sound in the world that’s worse than an alarm going off. After Jack had dropped me off last night, it had been all but impossible to fall asleep. Between lingering adrenaline from the near-death experience, and Jack’s increasingly cryptic responses and bizarre behavior, I had too much on my mind.
Once the warm water of the morning shower splashed my face, it all seemed even more ridiculous. I lived in Minneapolis, not Gotham City, or whatever other bogus city where supernatural forces at work.
Here, in the real world, there were no super powers or werewolves or unicorns. Everything in life had an explanation, and Jack’s probably had more to do with cocaine or mescaline than it did magic.
People addicted to speed were known to exhibit superhuman strength, and combine that with some kind of chemical imbalance that made him smell irresistible to women, and there it was.
Problem solved. And he was just kind of a jackass and didn’t want to let on that he had a drug problem.
I spent too much time in the shower, and I almost missed the bus to school. Milo sat next to me, but he didn’t seem to be in a talking mood, so I put in my ear buds and decided to pass the time listening to Rogue Wave on my iPod. Resting my forehead against the glass of the window, I watched my breath fog it up.
Milo kept giving me the cold shoulder even though I hadn’t done anything wrong, and this guy that I barely knew but really liked had fought off a rabid dog last night. What exactly had happened to my life over Spring Break?
School passed more slowly than it ever had before. I slept all through my second hour, but I managed to sneak my iPod into my other classes. I just stared out the window, at the chilly rain falling down, and tried not to think about Jack. By the end of fifth hour, I had completely exhausted myself not thinking about him.
When I stopped at my locker between classes, I managed to drop my History book on the ground. I bent down to pick it up, and when I stood back up, Milo was standing right next to me, scaring the crap out of me. He admired the clutter that occupied my locker, including the obligatory collage mess of magazine cut outs lining the inside of the door.
“God, you scared me,” I grumbled, shoving my History book into my book bag.
My Blood Approves Page 6
