Creature: A Horror Novel (Carver Book 1), page 9
What a fucking day.
“Smooth move at lunch,” Tyler said as I sat down at my desk in Art and Tech. “Guess you’re not as gay as I thought you were. But c’mon, dude, Becca Tanner?” He laughed. “Dream big.”
Ali walked in, smiling, and pointed to his freshly cleaned teeth. He pulled his chair out and lowered his voice. “What is this about Becca Tanner?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Movie’s off.”
“What? Why?”
“Just forget it.”
I eventually told Ali about the incident. He shrugged it off in his normal Ali way and encouraged me not to quit, but I was dead set on scrapping the project.
I couldn’t handle any more embarrassment. I figured I’d return my camera and buy myself an axe. You know, get started on my career as a lumberjack.
School dragged on for another few weeks. I did my best to avoid Ryan Kensington, and especially Becca Tanner. I was a master at that, although I would occasionally get tripped walking down the hallway or have my books slapped out of my hands by one of their friends.
Then came May, and the seniors graduated. For us underclassmen, school didn’t let out for the summer until early June. Still, I didn’t have to worry about running into them anymore. That was nice.
Miraculously, I managed decent grades. My mother was happy about that, but she kept asking me about the short film contest. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I had decided to give up.
My go-to answer to this question was, “I’m working on it, Mom.” Then she’d smile and tell me she couldn’t wait to see it. Like clockwork.
May gave way to June, and finally I was free from the prison of Pickwick High for three months. Ali and I walked out the door together. In the parking lot, his father’s old Mercedes idled.
Mr. Al-Kareem waved Ali over. They were going to the airport to pick up Ali’s other brother and uncle—both who managed to get jobs at the same gas company. Slowly but surely, his whole family was moving to the United States. Come August, his mother and two sisters would be here, and Ali was over the moon about that.
“Good luck,” I said.
“Thank you, friend. Would you like to play basketball tomorrow?”
Since the weather was mostly beautiful now, he and I had started going to a nearby park and shooting around when we had the chance.
“Yeah, if it’s nice out.”
We did our handshake, which had evolved from a simple high-five to a low-five, where our palms slid over one another and finished with a fist bump. Then he was off.
I would have to ring in the start of summer vacation by myself, but at least it was warm and sunny, the nicest day I could remember since the summer before.
I unlocked my bike from the rack and took off. A cool breeze brought on the smell of freshly cut grass and ruffled my hair from my brow. It was only in the seventies, but the sun beat down deliciously on my bare arms.
On Center Street near the business section, the sidewalks were crowded, so I stuck to the road. The longer I pedaled, the more it felt like all my problems, all my worries, fell away from me.
Loose coins jingled in my pocket. I didn’t have to buy lunch thanks to Mrs. White throwing us a pizza party in Art and Tech instead of handing out a final exam.
With this extra money, I decided I’d treat myself to an ice cold pop from the hardware store on the corner of Center and Elkwood. It was called Pierce’s Hardware Depot, and the only reason a kid like me would go near a place like that was because they had a Coke machine near the front entrance.
The Cokes came in glass bottles and only cost you a dime. I planned on grabbing two, and maybe a pack of Reese’s from the checkout counter. Treat myself, you know.
I turned left, hopped the curb, and leaned my bike up against the wall. No one was at the vending machine, but a steady flow of people were going in and out of the store.
I pulled out the change from my pocket and rummaged through it, looking for a dime in a sea of pennies and quarters, when I heard a young woman’s voice close behind me.
“Hey, John, right? John Carver?”
My heart didn’t bother dropping. It about shriveled up and died. Because this voice belonged to Becca Tanner. I turned around with no idea what to say or do.
Run? Scream? Both?
“You okay?” Becca’s blonde hair was tied back in a tight ponytail. A white apron with Pierce’s written across the middle pocket hung over the cargo pants and red polo shirt she wore.
“Uh…um…I—” I raised a hand and smiled. At least I thought I smiled. I can’t imagine I looked very flattering. “I’m not stalking you, I swear. I had no idea you worked here—”
She laughed. “Relax, John.”
“Holy shit, she actually knows my name,” I whispered, and then I realized I had said that out loud and my cheeks turned a scorching red. “Shit…” I slapped my forehead and rubbed my temples. “I mean, not shit.”
“‘Not shit?’” Becca repeated.
“Yeah, uh, I know it’s not polite to swear in front of ladies. My mother always says that, at least. But then she goes around and curses all the time when she thinks no one’s around—” I slapped my forehead again. “Okay, I’m just gonna shut up now.”
“Yeah…cool. So, I’m glad I caught you here,” she said. I opened my mouth to say something—I don’t know what, but it was probably something stupid. Thankfully, Becca kept talking. “I wanted to apologize for that time at lunch. Ryan, he’s protective. I mean, he’s a jerk sometimes, but he was just trying to, like, defend my honor or some bullshit.”
“Oh, it’s cool,” I said. “No hard feelings.”
“But you’re not, like, really obsessed with me or anything, are you?”
“Define obsessed.” I chuckled.
“Um…”
“Sorry. That was a joke. No, I’m not obsessed with you. I swear.”
“Okay, good,” she said.
I stepped aside as an elderly couple walked past us through the automatic double doors.
“Yeah, no,” I went on, looking back at Becca. “I was going to enter in the Harvest Festival’s short film contest and you were my first choice to play the lead character. That’s all that was. Out of context, yeah, I can see how it was weird. I’m sorry.”
“Interesting,” Becca said.
“With your drama background and charisma, I thought you’d be perfect. You killed it in the school play, by the way.”
She smiled. “Thank you.”
I nodded.
“So who’d you get to play the part?”
I tilted my head. “What?”
“For the short film?”
“Oh. No, I decided not to do it.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I was way out of my comfort zone, I guess. That, and no budget.” I looked over her head at the stream of traffic going down Center Street. “Would’ve been nice to win that thousand bucks, though.”
Becca’s eyes lit up. “That’s the prize?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you crazy?” She pushed me playfully on the shoulder. I wasn’t prepared for that, and I stumbled back like she was the strongest person in the world.
“What?”
“You’re making that movie, John.”
“I am?”
“Yes, and I’m gonna be your lead.”
“You are?”
“Yep, if you share the prize money.”
It suddenly felt like the earth had stopped spinning. Was I dreaming?
“Fifty-fifty?” she asked.
“You can have it all,” I said.
“No. I couldn’t do that. But five hundred would definitely help. I’m trying to get out of this crappy town.” She held out her hand. “We have a deal?”
“Don’t you wanna know what it’s about, the short film?”
“Doesn’t matter. I’ll knock it out of the park regardless,” Becca said. She nodded at her hand. “Deal?”
I shook her hand. “Deal.”
I could’ve jumped with joy and screamed at the top of my lungs, but I was trying to stay cool. Not to mention a million thoughts were storming through my mind.
“Okay, deadline is the end of August. That gives us close to three months. It’s only going to run about twenty minutes, but—”
“Deep breath, John. We’ll make it happen.”
“Holy shit, I gotta tell Ali.”
“The foreign kid?”
“Yeah, he’s helping. Doing technical stuff and playing the monster, and maybe your boyfriend…if you’re okay with that?”
“Wait, the monster?”
“Yeah. It’s a horror movie.”
Now she was going to back out, and my hopes would be crushed. I knew it was too good to be true.
“Sick,” she said. “I love horror movies.”
“Really?”
“Hell yeah. When do we start?”
I blinked, at a loss for words.
“Hello? Earth to John.”
“Uh, tomorrow night? If you’re not busy.”
“I’ll make sure I’m not,” she said. “That’ll be easy. I was supposed to hang with Ryan, but he’s been a real dickhead ever since I told him I planned on going to California. Like, whatever. He’s going to Ohio State anyway. He doesn’t need me.” She waved her words away. “Sorry. Yeah, tomorrow. Where at? Your place?”
My place? I stopped myself from pinching my arm. If this was a dream, I didn’t want to wake up.
“Yes? No?” Becca said.
I remembered Owen telling me the key with girls—the key to life—was confidence. If you looked and acted like a bumbling idiot, no one would take you seriously.
I blinked and gave a slight shake of my head. “Uh, yeah. Yes. Tomorrow night, say around nine? It has to be dark.”
“Where do you live?”
“Pickwick. 6856 Pickwick Lane. It’s not far from Sunny Park.”
“I know the street.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Really.”
“No big deal. You should’ve just asked me, though,” she said. “I don’t bite.”
I chuckled.
“I gotta go clock in now.” She rolled her eyes. “Lord help me.”
I raised a hand and waved. “Have fun.”
I picked up my bike and headed for the sidewalk. As I rolled across the small parking lot, Becca called after me.
“Hey! John!”
I stopped, turned around. “Yeah?”
“What’s the movie gonna be called?”
A tornado of working titles spun through my brain—One Night Death, The Kill, Last Breath—and I rejected them all.
Inspired, my hope renewed, the Goddess of Creativity suddenly whispered in my ear. All I did was repeat it.
“Creature,” I said. “It’s gonna be called Creature.”
I called Ali when I saw his father’s car back in the driveway later that evening.
“Code Red,” I told him. “We got a major Code Red.”
“I am not familiar with this code,” he said. There was excited talking in the background. Someone yelled at Ali in Arabic.
“It’s a big deal,” I said. “The movie’s back on.”
“Really?”
“Yes. And Becca Tanner’s on board.”
“You are lying.”
“I’m not.”
Ali shouted, “Yes!” which was promptly followed by more harsh-sounding Arabic thrown his way and him replying too fast for me to even begin to understand.
“I know you’re busy, so I’ll explain later,” I said. But she’s coming over tomorrow night, and I’ll need your help.”
“I will be there.”
“Ali,” I said. “We got our Jamie Cameron.”
“We got our Jamie Cameron!” he repeated a little too loudly.
Becca showed up at about 9:30 the next night. Ali and I had cleaned up real nice, both ourselves and the house.
I burned one of my mother’s candles, a lemony scented one, and the whole place smelled like summer.
The only problem was I had nicked myself shaving. I had never shaved before, and to be honest, I didn’t have much to shave, but I figured better safe than sorry.
Ali shaved often. He was especially hairy for how old he was. He tried to show me how to do it, and of course, I messed up. So I had this big glob of drying blood on my neck.
“You can hide it with a bandage,” Ali said. “Perhaps Becca will think you are tough when she sees it.”
We were in the tiny bathroom upstairs. I was soaking sheet after sheet of toilet paper red. “Go ahead and open that drawer right there, Ali. Pull out the Band-Aids and tell me with a straight face that a girl would ever think wearing one of those was tough.”
Ali grabbed the box and held it up. He started laughing. “Mickey Mouse? Okay, yes, you have a fair point there.”
“My mother thinks they’re cute.”
“Perhaps Becca will too.”
“No. It’ll stop bleeding soon. I hope.” I wet a washcloth and cleaned up the smeared blood on my neck. “And it’s not like she’s coming over for a date. She’s coming over to work on the movie.”
“Given the way you have spruced up, you could have fooled me.”
I frowned. “Is it the cologne? Too much?”
“Well, it is a bit…strong.”
“Shit.” I rushed into my room and switched my polo for a clean t-shirt right as the doorbell rang. “Shit! Shit! She’s here!”
“Deep breath, John,” Ali said. “Remember, she is a human like us.” He patted me on the back and headed downstairs.
I followed him. I was nervous as hell.
Ali opened the door. There stood Becca Tanner on my porch, still in her work uniform, looking like the most beautiful girl in the world. She was chewing bubblegum and staring at us.
The heat from outside drifted in with the sounds of chirping crickets and the smell of summer.
“You gonna invite me in or what?” Becca said. She blew a large bubble and popped it with her tongue. The sound it made snapped me back to reality.
In hindsight, we must’ve seemed like the biggest dweebs of all time. Two scrawny teenagers, one with gel in our hair, his face sloppily shaved, smelling like an explosion at an Axe Body Spray factory.
“Oh, yeah, come in, come in,” I said, stepping aside.
Becca looked around, taking it all in. “Nice place,” she said. “It’s like I’ve walked inside of a lemon.”
I chuckled nervously and made a mental note to blow out the candle burning on the mantle when she turned her back.
“Becca, this is Ali—”
“Ali Bu Ali Al-Kareem,” he finished. He stuck out his hand, and Becca took it, but instead of a common shake, he bowed and brought her hand to his lips, kissing it gently. “I am enchanted to officially make your acquaintance, Becca Tanner.”
Becca stared at him for a solid minute, her eyes wide. I was pretty sure she was going to smack him, or maybe call Ryan over to come kick his ass. Miraculously, she did neither.
She just said, “Okay, that was…weird. I’m okay with pretending that never happened.”
“Me too,” I said.
Ali was unbothered, and to be fair, I envied him for his confidence.
“Well, everything’s set up on the dining room table. You ready to see what you signed up for?”
“You know it,” Becca said as she and Ali followed me through the living room down the short hallway and into the dining room.
I had laid out a few copies of the script, a storyboard of note cards, wardrobe ideas, and a shooting schedule Ali and I cooked up a few hours earlier.
We went over the story for about half an hour. That’s all it took, really. I guess I had vastly overestimated the amount of prep we’d need.
Now all three of us were sitting at the table in silence. I twiddled my thumbs, avoiding eye contact with Becca. I found her beauty almost painful.
Ali had no problem, though. He was beaming at her. I kicked him under the table. He jumped and said, “Ow! Why did you strike me?”
“What?”
“You kicked me, and I find that quite rude, John.”
“Nope. I didn’t kick you.” I looked at him with wide eyes.
He wasn’t getting the message.
He bent down and rubbed his shin, wincing. “You most certainly did. I am going to bruise from that. Why would you assault someone you call a friend?”
I looked uncomfortably at Becca.
She smiled and turned to Ali. “Dude, he kicked you because you’re over here staring at me like I’m a piece of meat and you’re a starving dog. It was John’s not-so-subtle way of trying to keep your hormones in check.”
“Was I staring?”
“Yeah, man, you were.”
“I apologize, Becca,” Ali said. “Your beauty is nothing short of breathtaking.”
“Well, thanks. I appreciate that. But”—she shook her head—“not a chance. Neither of you.”
I began fidgeting and stammering, “Of course not—no. Yeah, we’re just—”
“Professional,” Ali said. “We will keep this professional, yes. I am sorry.”
Becca waved her hand. “It’s fine. I’m used to it. I get way worse at work. The old dudes that come into the hardware store never leave me alone.”
“Gross,” I said.
“I tell them I’m still in high school and it’s like they turn into sharks that just got a whiff of fresh blood. I can’t wait until I’m outta there, and here. This damn town.” She got up from the table. “Which is why we gotta win this thing.” Her bracelets clanging together on her wrist, she brought a hand down on the script. The sudden bang made both Ali and me start. “So let’s do it.”
“Now?” I asked, swallowing the lump in my throat.
That was the hard thing about anything you did, wasn’t it? The starting. I knew it, but still I hesitated. You know why? Because you couldn’t fail if you never started. But Owen once told me if you never start, you’ll look back in a few years and you’ll realize how much not starting was the failure.
“Yeah, now,” Becca said. “I’m assuming the filming part is gonna be easy. The hard part will be putting the finished product together. Editing, adding effects, and all that nerdy tech stuff. And seeing as how it’s already June, the clock is ticking. Summer’ll be over before we know it.”
