Howl, page 5
My phone buzzed. Tonight’s no good, Luca wrote. Saturday maybe?
I didn’t scream.
“Sorry about Kelvin,” Jarrett said.
“Am I supposed to know who that is?”
“The Coyote?” Jarrett combed his hand through his hair. “The kid in the costume.”
“Oh.”
“We put him up to it. Me and Finn.”
The casual way Jarrett admitted his involvement left me speechless. Jarrett didn’t share my affliction.
“It was a dick thing to do, but I didn’t think it through, you know?” He laughed. He actually laughed. “My mom says it’s a recurring theme with me.”
Wanna see something cool?
Jarrett motioned at the bandage on my arm. “Can I look?”
I peeled back the bandage. Jarrett grabbed my wrist and pulled the wound closer to his face like he was going to sniff it.
He pushes his lips to mine and grabs me harder. His tongue slips into my mouth, and then he backs away, laughing.
“It hurt?”
I twisted my arm free and gently pressed the bandage back into place. “All the time.”
“What were you even doing in the sprawl in the first place?”
“Don’t know. I was inside, and then I was outside. I only had one beer. Maybe two.” The memories of that night felt like I’d run them through a blender.
“You weren’t drunk when we talked.”
Don’t tell no one about this, all right? I ain’t no homo.
“Anyway,” Jarrett said, “it’s probably my fault you were there in the first place.”
I was going to tell him it wasn’t his fault, the reply on my tongue before I’d fully processed what he’d said, but I stopped. “Wait, what? How was it your fault?”
Jarrett’s cheeks, already flushed from the heat, burned even brighter. “I was at the store with my mom, and we ran into your grandma. She was going on about how you’d just moved to town with your dad and didn’t have no friends, so I told her about the party. Said you should come.”
When Grandma had told me she’d run into Marjorie Hart and her son Jarrett and that he’d invited me to a party at Finn Duckett’s house, I hadn’t thought much of it. Merritt was a small town. Everyone knew everyone else.
“You invited me because my grandma spun you a story about how pathetic I was?”
Jarrett shrugged. “I didn’t think you were pathetic. It was, just… I know how it feels, is all.”
“Sure.”
“You ain’t the first person this town’s talked about. Folks here got nothing better to do.” He knocked his knee against mine. “They’ll move on eventually.”
Jarrett sounded like he was speaking from experience, which I doubted. Everyone in Merritt seemed to adore him, and he wasn’t even on the football team.
“Obviously you’ve never had people send you messages saying they hoped you hadn’t given the animal that attacked you food poisoning or that you deserved worse than stitches for being in the sprawl.”
Jarrett waved me off. “Don’t listen to none of that. Words are just words. They don’t mean nothing.”
One of the boys on the field called Jarrett’s name, and he stood to head back out.
“Why are you being nice to me?” I asked. “Is it so I won’t tell anyone you tried to kiss me at the party?”
Jarrett loomed over me again, and he smiled. “Nah. You just seemed like you could use a friend. Besides, you can tell anyone you want about that night. No one’d believe you anyway.”
FOURTEEN
SOMETIMES ASTRID ATE LUNCH WITH me; sometimes she didn’t. I had no idea where she sat when she wasn’t at my table. She said she had friends, but I never saw her with anyone. Friday, she decided to join me. Lunch was another peanut butter and apricot jelly sandwich that I threw in the trash unopened. My stomach growled, but I ignored it.
“What do you know about Jarrett Hart?” I asked.
Even when Astrid sat with me, we didn’t talk much. I was pretty sure it was pity that kept her coming back. That or Uncle Frank was paying her to be my friend. Either way, she seemed surprised by my question.
“He’s cute, if you like that kind of thing.”
“What kind of thing?”
“Future frat boy voted most likely to ghost the first girl he gets pregnant.”
“So you don’t like him?”
Astrid shrugged. “Only slightly more than I dislike most people.”
I didn’t know what to make of Jarrett admitting he and Finn had put Kelvin up to scaring me while wearing the mascot costume. Kelvin hadn’t gotten in trouble for it, so there’d been nothing for Jarrett to gain by apologizing.
“You don’t want to be friends with him, though,” Astrid said. “Or the people he hangs out with.”
She’d caught me looking in the direction of Jarrett’s table, where he was sitting with Finn Duckett and some people I recognized from the party. Finn was wearing a football jersey and had his arm around a girl with short black hair. They were all laughing and smiling. They looked happy.
“Why not?”
Whatever Astrid was going to say was lost in the noise of the bell ringing, releasing us to our next classes. I didn’t know where her sixth period was, but she quickly disappeared into the mass of students funneling toward the doors.
Mr. Hilliker’s room wasn’t far from the cafeteria, but I had to stop at my locker first. People were gathered around the wall where my locker was, making it difficult to reach without being jostled. It wasn’t until I cleared the crowd that I understood the cause of the commotion.
The door of my locker was papered with pictures of werewolves and Swamp Thing and some pretty graphic yiff that would’ve given Grandma a heart attack. When people realized who I was, they faded away. It was easier to mock me from behind the shield of anonymity. Folks in Merritt were happy talking about others, so long as they didn’t have to actually talk to them.
“Where the hell would you even go about finding a drawing of a wolf-man packing that kind of meat?” Tripp Swafford had sidled up beside me and threw his arm around my shoulders. “Talk about unrealistic beauty standards.”
I shoved Tripp’s arm off and started tearing down the pictures, ignoring the snickers of students passing in the hallway. Tripp helped, picking up the papers I dropped.
“If I find out who’s decorating my locker, you can ask them yourself.”
“Any guesses?” Tripp asked. “About who’s doing it, not about the wolf-man porn.”
I grabbed my Spanish book out of my locker and headed to Mr. Hilliker’s room. Tripp walked with me but didn’t ask any more questions. He dumped the pictures he’d collected in Hilliker’s recycling bin.
Mr. Hilliker caught a glimpse of one of the drawings and raised an eyebrow.
“New hobby,” Tripp said.
“I suppose it’s better than your last hobby.”
“Shyriiwook’s a tough language.”
Mr. Hilliker’s belly shook when he laughed. “I age five years for every year you’re in my class, Mr. Swafford.”
Hilliker was a strange teacher by Merritt standards. He didn’t care if we cussed in class, but he had a no-tolerance policy regarding words that denigrated people or groups. He didn’t mind if we argued with him; he practically encouraged it. On the third day of class, we’d gotten into a discussion about words like “crazy” and “stupid.”
“Context is key,” Hilliker had said. “If you call a person in this class one of those words, you’re out. But an idea? An object? They don’t have feelings. They can’t be offended. However, you should get into the habit of being specific. Rather than calling an idea crazy, describe what about it you find challenging.”
A couple students had argued that calling an idea crazy was, by extension, calling the person who’d come up with the idea crazy. Hilliker had listened to their arguments and told them he’d give them serious consideration. Most of my other teachers would’ve hung Confederate flags on the walls if they could’ve gotten away with it, so Mr. Hilliker’s open-mindedness made me feel more at home in his class than anywhere else in Merritt. He would’ve been my favorite teacher if it wasn’t for his bad habit of calling on me so frequently.
Acting required becoming someone else, and I enjoyed that aspect of it. However, to succeed, the people watching also needed to believe I could make that transformation. But if I couldn’t convince them of the truth—that I’d been attacked by a monster—I didn’t stand a chance of persuading them I could become anything other than an attention-seeking boy who cried wolf.
“I’ve got a dog named Titus,” Mr. Hilliker said, after the final bell rang and we’d all settled into our seats and beanbags. “A boxer. Goofiest dog I’ve ever had. Smart, too, though. He steals food and hides the evidence where he thinks I won’t find it. When I do catch him, Titus moves very, very slowly, thinking I won’t be able to see him.”
Hilliker’s eyes roamed the classroom until they finally came to a stop. “But I see him, and I see you, too, Mr. Knox. Get on up here.”
I didn’t scream.
There was no excuse I could use to avoid the inevitable—I’d already tried them all. I dragged my bones to the front of the room to stand beside Mr. Hilliker.
“I call this game The Liar’s Academy,” Hilliker said. “What I want you to do is make up the most elaborate lie you possibly can, and then sell it to us.”
I’d played something similar in Kris’s class, only she’d called it Imaginarium.
“The lie can’t just be in the story, it has to live in your voice and your body language and your choice of words.” Mr. Hilliker wasn’t talking solely to me; he was instructing the rest of the class. “It’s not enough to say you’re a pirate.” He leaned more heavily on one leg, and his shoulders stooped. “Ye got ta be a pirate from yer beak to yer rudder.”
My mind raced. Deja was quicker on her feet than I was, but I could usually come up with a good lie fast. Like the time me, Deja, and Luca skipped school and got caught coming home and I said there’d been an outbreak of lice so they’d released us early. I’d had to endure Dad picking through my hair with a metal comb, but it’d been better than getting grounded.
Standing at the front of the room, with everyone watching me, however, I froze.
I clench my eyes shut as tightly as I can and try to pretend I’m sleeping.
“This is only a forty-seven minute class, Mr. Knox,” Hilliker said.
Tripp caught my eye from where he was sitting in the legless rocking chair he’d claimed, and smiled. I think he probably meant it to be encouraging, but it distracted me more.
I wonder if anyone at the party noticed I left. I wonder if Jarrett found someone else to pin against a wall in an empty room.
Mr. Hilliker was sitting on the edge of his desk. “The lie doesn’t have to be elaborate or showy. Sometimes the best lies are the ones that are closest to the truth.”
Jarrett’s free hand brushes across my crotch and stops.
“Hasn’t Knox already told a big-enough lie for one week?”
I couldn’t see who’d said it, but the students laughed. Even Tripp.
“Enough of that,” Hilliker snapped.
I thought you said you weren’t into it.
“You can sit down, Virgil.” There was a note of pity in Hilliker’s voice. “I’ll torture someone else today. How about—”
“I was born and raised in Merritt.” Slowly, my back bowed forward. I let my jaw go a bit slack, doing an exaggerated imitation of Merritt’s Southern drawl. “Folks figure I ain’t real bright on account of how my family tree’s practically a wreath, but that ain’t it at all. It’s because my ma dropped me on my noggin when I was a little baby.
“My favorite foods are mayonnaise and white bread, and my whole life revolves around a high school football team who ain’t won a game in years ’cause I got nothing else worth a damn to give my pitiful life meaning.
“I’m probably gonna die here, unaccomplished, unknown, and unloved, because Merritt ain’t nothing but a hungry beast that devours your soul a little at a time ’til there ain’t nothing left but an empty husk.”
The room was quiet after I finished. No one laughed. No one snickered.
Mr. Hilliker coughed, breaking the silence. “Right. You can sit down, Virgil. I think that’s enough for today.”
FIFTEEN
THE TREES ARE SCREAMING. THEIR thick, Gnarled limbs grasp at me, try to ensnare me with nets of moss.
“… watch me go, go, go, go…”
My phone vibrates as I run. I answer it.
“Hey, Virgil,” Luca says. “Got time to talk?”
“Now? You want to talk now?!” A root bursts through the moist earth and catches my toe. I stumble and fall forward. My phone sails through the air and lands in a puddle.
“Virgil?”
The monster is heaving somewhere behind me. The shadows distort the echoes. It could be anywhere.
It could be everywhere.
“Virgil? Answer me right this second.”
I stand. It knocks me down. Its teeth penetrate me—
I don’t scream.
—and its poison is in my blood now.
“I’m coming in, Virgil.”
The dream tried to claw me back in as I jerked awake and accidentally smacked myself in the face.
“I’m coming in, Virgil.” I wasn’t sure what scared me more: Grandma’s voice on the other side of my bedroom door or the rattle of the handle as she turned it.
“Don’t come in! I’m naked!”
Either she didn’t hear me or she didn’t care. I was crawling out of the closet as Grandma opened the door. “Were you sleeping in the closet again?”
“Didn’t you hear me say I was naked?”
Grandma’s lips thinned. “You don’t look naked.”
“Why was that a chance you were willing to take?” I stood and brushed my hand through my hair. “What do you want?”
Grandma gave me that narrow-eyed look that said I was close to crossing the line. “You’ve got chores to do today. Hurry up and shower. We’ll get started after breakfast.”
“Chores? Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
“But it’s Saturday. Can’t I do them later?”
“No.” Grandma turned and left.
There was no point arguing, so I showered, brushed my teeth, and threw on some clothes I didn’t mind getting dirty. Doing chores for Grandma inevitably involved getting dirty. I checked my phone to see if Luca had tried to reach me, but my only notifications were linked to comments about what a liar or loser I was and how I should go home to Seattle or back to the sprawl so the monster that attacked me could finish the job. I told myself they didn’t matter, but I was a liar, right?
Waiting for me at the table was a plate of scrambled eggs, two sausage links, two strips of bacon, and toast. Beside it was a bowl of grits drowning in butter, and a glass of orange juice. The sight of that gluttonous array of food made bile rise in my throat.
“Where’s Grandpa?”
Grandma was sitting in front of an empty plate, reading a battered paperback. She read more than any person I knew, easily breezing through a book a day. Romance, science fiction, history, biographies. When it came to books, Grandma wasn’t choosy.
“Went to the Schumachers’ to take a look at Seymour.” Grandma must’ve seen my confusion because she added, “Their horse.”
“Oh.” Grandpa had retired from being a vet over a decade ago, but he still made house calls for some of the folks in town.
“Eat up before it gets cold.”
I eyed the eggs, trying to imagine putting the runny yellow or squishy white in my mouth. “I’m not hungry.”
Grandma lowered her book and arched an eyebrow. “In all my life, I have never known a fifteen-year-old boy who wasn’t perpetually hungry. Roy and I nearly went broke trying to keep Tommy and Frankie fed.”
Once Grandma got an idea in her head, there was no fighting her. I ate a couple bites while she was watching, and then shoved the food around the plate when she went back to reading. I could feel every morsel I’d swallowed swimming through me until it reached my stomach, where it formed a soft, gelatinous ring around my belly.
“How was your first week of school, Virgil?”
Well, before I even set foot on campus, everyone had seen a video of me sprawled on the asphalt in front of Tasty Cones claiming I was attacked by a monster. The ones who don’t think I’m a pathological liar think I’m a few players short of a team. Someone plasters monster porn on my locker every day during lunch, people harass me online, and students think it’s funny to howl in my direction in the hallways between classes. “It was fine.”
“Make any friends?”
Hey, wanna see something cool?
“Not really. There’s a kid in my theater class who follows me around, but I’m not sure if he’s friendly or bored.”
“Who?”
“Tripp Swafford?”
Grandma turned up her nose. “You can find better friends than that one. Even the Duckett boy would be an improvement, though only marginally.”
Clearly, she knew something about Tripp or his family that I didn’t, but I also knew that Grandma had opinions about everyone in Merritt. Most of them unkind.
“Enough dawdling,” Grandma said. “I want you to wash up the dishes. After that, there’s some weeding in the backyard I haven’t been able to get to in a while. Once you’re finished out there, I’ll have more for you to do.”
There was a curtness to Grandma’s voice that confused me. It wasn’t that she was giving me chores—Grandma could always find work to keep idle hands busy—but the way she was speaking to me made me feel like I was being punished.
“Did I do something wrong?”
Grandma folded the page of her book, shut it, and set it down. “Do you know how much the bill was for your little trip to the emergency room?”
