Howl, page 4
But Merritt High wasn’t just a different school. It was a totally unfamiliar planet. I was surrounded by cowboy boots and sun-kissed skin and so much swagger. They looked like aliens to me, except I was the alien. I was the weird new kid who wore hoodies even though it was eighty degrees at seven in the morning. I was the freak who’d been attacked by a monster. Someone had doxxed me, leaking my phone number and email address. I’d woken up that morning to texts on my phone and messages across different social media accounts calling me a liar, saying the monster should’ve finished the job, commenting on my ugly clothes and hideous face. People who didn’t know me, people who had only seen me in church or passed me in the grocery store, had already made up their minds that I was worthless and unworthy and worse things I can’t bear to repeat.
I wanted to turn around and run, but I couldn’t. Instead, I adjusted my backpack on my shoulder, careful to keep it from hitting my back, and headed for the entrance. As I walked inside, I felt like I was being swallowed.
* * *
I had geometry first period with Mr. Gardner, which seemed a terrible way to start my day. Not that anyone had asked my opinion. Second period was world history with Mrs. Sanchez, followed by world lit, biology, and gym.
The classes were boring. My teachers took roll, introduced themselves, and laid out what they expected of us—show up on time, turn in homework, study hard… the usual. I tuned most of it out. Coach Munford gave me a reprieve in gym, telling me I didn’t have to dress out until my doctor said it was okay to participate.
Astrid had gotten it right when she’d said everyone had seen the video and would know who I was. I hadn’t made any friends—most of the other students gaped at me in the hallway or whispered comments under their breath as I passed—but nothing truly disastrous had happened, either.
Then the bell for lunch rang.
At my old school in Seattle, we’d been allowed to leave for lunch. We’d swarm through the neighborhood like locusts. Sometimes we’d walk down the hill to Dick’s for a burger; when the weather was good, we’d grab tacos from a truck and sit outside; if no one had money, we’d gather at my apartment, raid the fridge, and hang out on the roof. We had the option of eating in the cafeteria, and sometimes we did, but no one forced us to stay.
At Merritt High, students weren’t allowed to leave. Everyone was expected to eat in the cafeteria, even seniors, though they were allowed to use the patio on spirit days. It was too bright and too loud and there were too many people fighting for one another’s attention. I waited in line to buy a drink and wished I could expand like a puffer fish to warn others to keep their distance. Each time someone jostled my arm or pushed my backpack against my stitches, it sent a hot surge of nausea through me.
Finally, I grabbed a bottled water and a cookie, paid for them, and stood near the wall, scanning the room for an empty table. I couldn’t discern a pattern to the way the students organized themselves. There were no signs that said COOL KIDS SIT HERE! or THIS TABLE RESERVED FOR OUTSIDERS WHO WIND UP IN DEEPLY EMBARRASSING VIRAL VIDEOS. I spotted a table where Finn Duckett and Jarrett Hart were sitting with a few people I recognized from my classes. I took a step toward their table, rethought my decision, and found a table by the restroom with a couple empty seats instead.
The acoustics in the cafeteria amplified the conversations so that it sounded like everyone was simultaneously shouting at me. The noise was unbearable. So were the seats. They were little more than backless, plastic pucks attached to a table by a metal rod.
I pulled out the lunch Grandma had packed me. The peanut butter and jelly sandwich had gotten warm and moist sitting in my locker. And Grandma hadn’t spread peanut butter on both sides of the bread, so the jelly had turned that piece to mush. Adding insult to injury, she’d used apricot jelly. The only place I expected to find apricot jelly was in the cupboard in hell.
I didn’t scream.
I don’t know where I am. Everyone I love is on the other side of the world.
My wounds pulsed with every heartbeat. They felt infected and hot. Grandma had changed the bandages that morning and said they looked fine, but I felt like they must’ve been bloated with foul, putrid pus.
“Not gonna eat your cookie?” Astrid sat down across from me, ignoring the ninth-grade boys nearby who were leering at her. She was dressed like she was on her way to audition for the role of a comic-book villain. Striped leggings covered her arms, her black skirt was decorated with safety pins, and she’d pulled her hair into two ponytails on the sides of her head. She looked as out of place as I felt.
I pushed the cookie across the table. “I don’t trust the food here.”
Astrid grabbed the cookie, and broke half off before eating it. “Smart. The food here is awful.”
“Then why does anyone stay? It’s not like there’s a gate around the parking lot.”
“School doesn’t have to be a prison when the whole town is one.”
“Oh.”
“Exactly. You could leave and go grab a sandwich at the Dill Hole, but Katy would call Vice Principal Kline, and he’d have a detention slip waiting for you by the time you got back.”
“This place is the worst,” I muttered.
“Yup.”
If Astrid hadn’t shown up, I probably would’ve tried to call Luca so I could hear the reassuring voice of someone who loved me, but it felt rude to pull out my phone with Astrid sitting right there watching me like she was waiting for me to perform a magic trick. “Did your mom tell you to sit with me?”
“Nope.”
“I’m sure you have friends of your own.”
“Yup.”
“Then why—”
“I really wanted a cookie,” she said. “And you looked like you had a cookie you weren’t planning on eating.”
“Oh.”
Astrid ate the other half of the cookie. “How’re you feeling, by the way?” She motioned at my arm.
I’m terrified every second of every day. I hear it breathing when I close my eyes. I feel the poison it left inside me. I was sitting in world literature listening to Mrs. Kepple extol the virtues of exploring the literature of other cultures, working hard to keep students from falling asleep, and I couldn’t breathe. The monster was still standing on my back, pressing my chest into the mud, and I couldn’t catch my breath. I needed to get out of class, I wanted desperately to ask for a bathroom pass, but I couldn’t even draw enough breath to speak.
“I’m fine,” I said. “It was my fault for wandering around the sprawl in the first place.”
Astrid frowned; her eyebrows dipped to form a V. “Sure, but—”
“Rawr!” Something fur-covered and huge rushed at me with its arms raised. It roared. I fell out of my chair and hit the floor.
I didn’t scream.
I scramble backward as it looms over me, framed by the night and the stars and moss-choked oak trees. The smell hits me first. Like a decomposing corpse. Sweet in a way that fools my brain for a fraction of a second before I realize it’s rotting flesh.
Teeth dig into my shoulder. It worries me like a dog with a chew toy and laughter erupted.
Astrid shoved the thing back. “What the hell are you doing?” She ripped off its head and threw it on the floor.
I blinked and breathed.
I didn’t scream.
It was only the mascot. The Merritt High Coyote. The kid inside the suit had a shaved head, a mouthful of braces, and he looked terrified of Astrid.
But everyone was laughing.
“Don’t hurt me!” the Coyote was saying. “It was only a joke!”
Astrid probably would’ve ripped the kid’s actual head off if a teacher hadn’t thrown herself between them.
I scrambled to my feet, grabbed my backpack, and walked toward the doors, keeping my eyes forward and my back straight.
TWELVE
I DIDN’T RUN OUT OF the cafeteria. I refused to run.
I refused to let them make me run.
I did, however, spend the last ten minutes of the lunch period in a bathroom stall. The porcelain was shiny and white; the walls were freshly painted. Of course, it was only a matter of time before they’d get dirty. Nothing stayed clean for long.
My arm itched under the gauze. I peeled back the tape. The skin around the wound was red and tight. The stitches looked like a zipper. If only I could pull it down and slide out of this soiled meat suit. Emerge as someone different. Something better.
The bell rang.
My sixth-period class was theater. It was one of the few classes I was genuinely excited about. My theater instructor in Seattle had been a teacher who’d insisted we call her Kris. She was a semi-manic cat lady who’d seen one too many inspirational movies about teachers who motivated apathetic students with the power of the creative arts, she wore lots of pastel cardigans, thought she was hip because she knew a few Eminem songs, and had a tattoo of a butterfly on the underside of her wrist.
Despite those things, I liked her, and I enjoyed acting. I loved stepping into a role and inhabiting someone else’s life for a while.
I realized as soon as I stepped into Mr. Hilliker’s classroom that he was nothing like Kris. He looked like one of the dwarves from The Hobbit—short and round, with a frazzled gray perm, a frizzled gray beard, and glasses perched on the end of his nose. He was standing behind his desk with his hairy arms folded across his chest. I was the first to arrive.
In my other classes, the desks had been arranged in neat rows—except for world history, where the desks had been arranged in an orderly circle—and we’d been assigned seats alphabetically. There were no desks in Mr. Hilliker’s classroom. Instead, there were a couple beanbags, a few yoga mats, one weird legless rocking chair, and a lot of pillows.
Where the hell am I supposed to sit? I glanced at Mr. Hilliker, the question unspoken but not unstated. He smiled, and his smile seemed to shrug in reply.
Three more students arrived, and they each stopped at the doorway, peeking around me to see why I was loitering there. The crowd behind me grew as we waited for someone else to go in first.
“What’s up, Hilly?” A tall, lanky boy strolled past us and threw Mr. Hilliker an unironic high five. His long auburn hair was nearly shoulder length and curled at the ends, and he walked like he’d grown up on a sailing ship.
“Tripp,” Mr. Hilliker said. “Nice to see you. Again.”
“Second time’s the charm.”
“Third.”
“No way, sir,” the boy Hilliker had called Tripp said. “I’d know if I’d failed this class more than once.”
Mr. Hilliker sighed and rubbed his forehead, but his rosy-cheeked smile never slipped.
Tripp hiked his thumb at me and the others gathered behind me. “Which one do you think it’ll be?”
“I have a guess, but I’ve been wrong before.” Hilliker leaned closer to Tripp and whispered in his ear. Tripp glanced at us, shook his head, and whispered back.
“We shall see, Mr. Swafford.”
The warning bell rang. There were at least ten students standing behind me, and more huddled at the door at the back of the classroom.
Whatever. I finally walked in, dropped my backpack near a green beanbag, and eased myself onto it. The seams bulged but thankfully didn’t split, and it smelled vaguely of antiseptic. As soon as I sat, the other students followed, claiming pillows or blankets as their own.
“You lose, Hilly,” Tripp said.
“It’s good for the soul.” Mr. Hilliker winked. “Keeps me humble.”
When the final bell rang, Mr. Hilliker moved out from behind his desk and stood in the center of the room. “In this class, we will be studying the glorious craft of—” Hilliker coughed into his fist. “As I was saying. We will be studying…” Hilliker gripped his chest. His face was red. He fell to one knee and toppled over.
“Dude,” a guy two pillows over said, “is he dead?”
I reached for my phone, but I caught Tripp out of the corner of my eye grinning, and it stayed my hand.
A moment passed, and then Mr. Hilliker sprang to his feet, his arms held wide. “And that, ladies, gentlemen, and nonbinary friends, is acting.” He paused as if expecting applause. No one clapped.
The first time I’d met Kris, she’d introduced herself to the class by performing a scene from her favorite classic movie, Edward Scissorhands. She’d taped actual scissors to her hands. Theater teachers are a rare species.
“You’re going to be spending a lot of time working together in my class.” Hilliker spoke rapidly, moving his hands as he did so, and it took me a while to realize he was signing as he spoke. “So I think it’s best that we begin today by introducing ourselves.”
Most of the people around me groaned.
“Without using words,” Hilliker added.
The groaning intensified, but our lack of enthusiasm didn’t discourage Mr. Hilliker.
“Since Tripp’s done this dance before, he can go first to demonstrate what I expect from the rest of you.”
Tripp hopped up from the rocking chair, his arms and legs flailing like an understuffed scarecrow. “Sorry to disappoint, but I won’t be dancing this time.”
Hilliker pressed a stubby finger to his lips. “No talking.”
Tripp Swafford stood in the center of the room, just staring at us for a moment. His jean shorts exposed long legs covered in mosquito bites, and his flip-flops showed off narrow toes that were nearly as long as fingers. He turned around, bent forward, and rested his palms on the carpet. He held that position, teetering a bit, and then, in one swift motion, swung his legs up so that he was standing on his hands. His hair brushed the floor as he walked the length of the room. When he was done, he ambled behind Mr. Hilliker’s desk, sat in the man’s chair, and put his feet up.
Any other teacher probably would’ve given him detention or kicked him out of class, but Hilliker filled the room with a belly laugh. “That’s accurate, Mr. Swafford. Now, pick who goes next.” He began to turn, stopped, and added, “And get your nasty paws off my desk.”
Tripp scratched his chin and peered around the room like he was putting serious thought into his decision. “Who looks like they’re absolutely going to crap their pants if I pick them?”
Everyone. The answer you’re looking for is: Everyone.
“You. Monster Boy.” Tripp Swafford didn’t need to point for everyone to know he meant me, but he did it anyway.
“My name is—”
Hilliker arched his eyebrow and shushed me.
Behind me, someone let out a quiet howl, which earned them a sharp look from Hilliker.
I didn’t scream.
“Do something,” Tripp said. “It ain’t gotta be like what I did. Just something that makes you you.”
I lie on my stomach, my arms askew, and try not to breathe. I can hear it panting. Feel it moving. Maybe if I stay perfectly still, it’ll think I’m dead and will lose interest and leave.
Tripp huffed. “Come on, do something. Anything.”
Mr. Hilliker smiled. “The actions a person takes, Mr. Swafford, can tell us as much about who they are as the actions they don’t.” He motioned at me. “Very interesting, Mr. Knox. However, going forward, be aware that while not participating is a choice, it’s a choice that’ll earn you an F in my class. Understood?”
I hung my head. “Yes, sir.”
“Excellent. Who’s next?”
THIRTEEN
FOLKS IN MERRITT LOVED TWO things: high school football and gossip. Their appetite for the first was whetted at the end of the first week of school when the football players showed up wearing their jerseys—students and teachers both treated them like royalty. Their thirst for the second was slaked by swapping stories about and harassing the boy who claimed he’d been attacked by a monster in the sprawl.
That first Friday, I sat on the sidelines of the PE field while the rest of the boys played flag football. I was supposed to be doing homework, but none of my teachers had given me any yet. Instead, I was texting Luca. The phone Uncle Frank had given me was barely functional. The battery only lasted an hour on a full charge, it got so hot when I used it that I was afraid it was going to explode, and I had to restart it at least ten times a day. But it was my only link to the world outside Merritt, which made it the most precious thing I owned.
This was my first real-time conversation with Luca in a week. We never seemed to be on the same schedule anymore, and it felt like we were separated by three thousand light-years instead of three thousand miles.
PE sucks. I sent the message along with a picture of the guys on the field.
Looks okay to me, Luca wrote back. Which is the one who hit on you?
I’d told Luca about Jarrett trying to kiss me at the party. Luca wasn’t the jealous type, and he’d laughed it off. Besides, I’d been in PE with Jarrett all week and he hadn’t so much as acknowledged I existed.
I hadn’t told Luca about the monster, though; it never felt like the right time.
How’s your first week? I sent.
Literally the worst.
Yeah.
What’s wrong??? Luca sent. You never let me get away with misusing “literally.”
Before leaving Seattle, Luca and I had been able to get lost talking to each other, but now I was just lost.
You around tonight? There’s something I need to tell you.
Dad hadn’t believed me, Astrid hadn’t believed me, Grandma and Grandpa hadn’t believed me. I guess I’d been afraid of telling Luca about being attacked because I couldn’t bear it if he didn’t believe me either. But I had to tell him.
…
Those dots were torture. They’d appear and then disappear. I pictured Luca typing a reply, staring at it, deleting it, trying again.
…
A shadow fell over me, and I looked up as Jarrett Hart stood dripping sweat perilously close. His legs were smeared with grass stains, and his PE uniform—green polyester shorts and a gold shirt with a coyote silkscreened on the front—was dirty and damp. He dropped down on the grass beside me, near enough that I had to breathe through my mouth.
