A Girl Called Dust (2 page)

He sighed and looked at the ceiling. “Lots
of things happen every day. You’ll have to be more specific.”

“Okay, Saturday morning when you got hit
by a bus. You hopped right back up and ran off as if nothing happened.”

He lowered his basket and set it on the
ground. “I’m just picking up a few things my mom wanted me to get.”

“What the hell does that have to do with
what I just said?”

He stared at me for a moment and then
turned abruptly, heading for the door. I placed the bottles of suntan lotion on
a shelf and followed him outside and onto the sidewalk.

“Hey! You’re going to tell me the truth. I
got in a lot of trouble because of you. All I did was call 9-1-1 so you
wouldn’t die. I deserve an explanation.”

Fletcher stopped walking so suddenly that
I bumped into him. He turned and glared at me. “I don’t know what you’re
talking about. Go away.”

I put my hands on my hips, hoping I didn’t
look like my mother. I hated when people lied to me, especially while looking
me dead in the eyes. “Who gets hit by a bus anyway? Didn’t you hear it? No one
ever taught you to look both ways before you cross the street?”

 Fletcher opened his mouth to say
something then stopped. He stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out his
keys. Among the keys was something red and oval shaped. With a flick of his
hand, the oval-shaped thing produced a small blade.

I stepped back, thinking I was about to
die right there on that sidewalk. He could slice my throat. Stab me in the
heart. Gut my belly. But why? All I’d been trying to do was help him.

Moving back again, I put my hands up. Why
wasn’t I running? It’s true what they said. You never knew how you’d act in a
dangerous situation until you were in one. “Please, don’t hurt me.”

But Fletcher didn’t hurt me. He dug the
blade into the skin of his wrist and dragged it upward. I screamed, at least I
thought I did, but I wasn’t sure if any sound came out. Blood trickled down his
arm and onto the sidewalk. I prepared to haul ass to get as far away from him
as I could when Fletcher’s self-imposed wound changed. The bleeding stopped,
and the cut disappeared as flesh covered it like a Band-Aid. After a few more
seconds, the wound was totally gone. Even the drops of blood had disappeared
from the sidewalk.

I wanted to scream again, but the sound
stuck in my throat. “How? How did you do that?”

Fletcher slid his keys back into his
pocket and leaned in close to me. “I’m different . . . like you.”

Chapter Two

 Fletcher and I became inseparable
after the incident in front of Gerdy’s. I didn’t like him at first. He was
weird—weirder than me, and extremely rude—but the mystery of him kept me
intrigued. Was he some kind of alien? Fletcher made me promise to keep his
miracle a secret, and I did. I liked the fact that he was my secret no one else
knew about.

Whenever I asked him how his arm had
healed so fast, he’d tell me that I wasn’t ready and that he’d let me know when
I was. I thought he was only saying that because he wanted me to keep hanging
out with him. I had gone from thinking Fletcher was a nuisance to feeling as if
I would fall apart without him. He didn’t have any other friends, and neither
did I.

Not that I was Miss Social Butterfly of
the Year or anything, but Fletcher was the most socially awkward person I’d
ever met. I had to teach him everything almost like he was a toddler. Sometimes
while I was journaling in the park, he’d walk up behind me and just blurt
something out, scaring the hell out of me. Then sometimes I’d be talking to him
and midsentence, he’d just walk away. I thought I’d finally gotten him to
understand that you should greet a person upon meeting them, you don’t just
walk up and start talking about some random thing. And when you had to leave,
you’re supposed to say “I have to go” or “Goodbye” or something.

 I tried to be patient with Fletcher.
The only time I’d ever really yelled at him was when he’d dug all the chocolate
chips out of my trail mix without asking. I didn’t like chocolate chips and I
always threw them away, but still. It was the principle.

“Where are you from?” I asked him one day.

He glanced to the right. “Alaska.” Then he
added after a brief pause, “Kodiak, Alaska. But don’t ask me questions about
it. It was boring there, and I don’t like to think about it.”

Okay. That was strange, but there were
things I preferred not to discuss either, so I didn’t push the subject.

Three weeks before school started last
year, Fletcher knocked on my front door.

 “Come here,” he said as soon as I
opened it, and then he turned, expecting me to follow him. Annoyed yet curious,
I hurried behind him. Fletcher took wide, swift steps down the street while I
struggled to keep up with him, nagging him the whole way.

“Fletcher, what’s going on? Where are you
taking me?”

He didn’t say a word as we walked, and I
was almost tempted to turn and walk back home, but I had to know what he was up
to. Finally, we stopped at the woods, not far from the spot Fletcher had come
from the day of the bus accident.

He paused and took a deep breath before
stepping amongst the trees. I followed, but now I was more scared than curious.
Why was I following this weirdo into the woods? Why was he bringing me there?

The sticky summer heat made my dress cling
to my body, and I longed to be back in my air-conditioned bedroom. An eerie
feeling crept down my spine, making me shiver despite the warmth.

Something was off. The calming scent of
pine had been disturbed by a sour odor I had never smelled before. The chirping
chatter of birds and insects was noticeably missing. Nature going mysteriously
quiet was never a good sign.

After a few minutes of walking, Fletcher
stopped. He stood a few feet ahead of me, staring at something.

“Fletcher, what—” My stomach lurched, and
I lost the words I was going to say. My ninth-grade algebra teacher, Mrs. Chin,
lay on the ground. Only she didn’t look like Mrs. Chin anymore. She had been
torn apart. The top part of her body leaned against a tree, and the bottom half
was a few feet away. Her eyes, vacant and open, stared at the other part of her
body as if wondering why it was so far away. Her intestines and other insides
lay spilt somewhere in between.

Ms. Chin looked like one of the equations
she used to challenge us with. Her body halves were equal parts of the gruesome
statement.

I glared at Fletcher. He stared at me as
if waiting for my reaction. Why had he brought me here? I wanted to punch him,
but instead I turned and tore out of there.

At the edge of the forest, I threw up
everything I’d eaten that morning. My mouth was dry, and my eyes burned as I
continued to gag, but nothing else would come up. Once I caught my breath
again, Fletcher stood beside me.

I shoved him. “What the hell is wrong with
you?”

He started to say something, but I didn’t
want to hear it. I patted my pockets for my phone, but I had been so quick to
follow Fletcher that I had forgotten to grab it.

I rushed toward the nearest store,
Gerdy’s, with Fletcher on my heels asking me what I was doing. I ignored him.
At that moment I wished I had never laid eyes on Fletcher.

A bell jingled noisily over my head when I
whipped the door open. The three people in the store, Gerdy included, stared at
me apprehensively.

“You all right, Arden?” Gerdy asked as I
approached the counter. Her brown curls were pulled up in a messy bun as usual,
and she was sweating as if she had been unpacking boxes.

I shook my head. I was definitely not all
right. “No. I need to use your phone. It’s an emergency.”

Gerdy nodded slowly and then handed me a
black cordless phone from under the counter. “Sure, honey.”

I grabbed the phone from her and dialed 9-1-1
for the second time in my life. The second time in a month. “Nine-one-one. What
is your emergency?”

“Yeah, this is Arden Moss. I just saw Mrs.
Chin, the algebra teacher at Everson High, in the woods. She’s dead. Very, very
dead.”

Gerdy gasped, and someone in the store
dropped something made of glass that shattered. Gerdy ignored it and stared at
me like she was waiting for me to tell her it was all a joke. I wished I could.

I told them where to find Mrs. Chin, then
I hung up and handed Gerdy back her phone. She stared at me wide eyed. “Mrs.
Chin?”

“Yeah. Uh . . . I have to go.” I split
from the store as fast as I could. I wasn’t sticking around for the police to
question me again. I wanted to get home and hide underneath my covers. I wanted
to hide from whatever had done that to Mrs. Chin.

Fletcher, who had been waiting outside,
followed me as I marched home.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said
once we reached my yard.

“Done what?” I hadn’t meant to scream, but
I couldn’t help it.

“Called the police.”

I wanted to shake Fletcher. Why had he
taken me there? He was the reason I had seen that horrible thing I would never
forget. “Why didn’t you call the police when you first saw her? Why did you
come get me? Why did you have to show me that?”

His face softened, and he looked sad all
of a sudden. “I-I just wanted to tell you it was okay. That I knew, but I would
keep your secret, like you kept mine. I won’t tell anyone what you did to Mrs.
Chin.”

Sirens blared from somewhere nearby. “What
I did? Are you crazy?” I stared at his pretty face, trying to read him, but I
couldn’t. “Maybe you did it. How did you find her? What were you doing in the
woods? What were you doing there that day you got hit by a bus?”

He opened his mouth to say something, then
stopped, then started again. “You shouldn’t have been the one to call the
police. Someone else would have found her eventually. Now they’ll be suspicious
of you.”

The phone rang loudly from inside my
house. “What? Why would they be suspicious of me? Anyone with eyes can see an
animal did that to her.”

Fletcher backed away from me, his eyes
wide. “Yeah, an animal.” Then he turned away from me and raced toward his house
like he was making an escape.

The front door swung open, and Mom stuck
her head out. “Arden? They want to see us down at the station. What’s going
on?”

I couldn’t answer her as Fletcher
disappeared around the corner. I wanted to know what was going on myself.

That was the summer before tenth grade.
When we went back to school, everyone was solemn, lamenting the poor teacher
who’d been mauled by some vicious animal in the woods. No one had any idea why
Mrs. Chin would have been out there to begin with or what animal had pulled her
apart. The school built a small rock garden as a memorial to her, and we went
on with our lives, writing it off as a freak, isolated incident. And it was,
until the next summer rolled around and it happened again.

Chapter Three

This Summer

The Sunday night before the first day of
school was always the most depressing day of the year. My season of freedom was
coming to an end, and the next nine months of my life would be filled with
back-breaking amounts of homework, barely edible cafeteria food, and kids who
hated me simply for existing.

I spent each summer hoping to reinvent
myself and become a better version of Arden Moss, one that would have friends,
but that never worked out. Fletcher made everything about school better, but it
would have been nice to have a couple of girls to hang out with, or someone who
was somewhat normal. Fletcher was my best friend, but there were just so many
things he didn’t get.

I stood in my bedroom mirror examining my
first-day-of-school outfit. One of the things that kept me from having friends
was the fact that I made my own clothes. It didn’t help that they weren’t
normal clothes, usually long vintage-looking dresses, always with pockets so I
didn’t have to carry a purse. My dresses looked like something Wendy from
Peter
Pan
would wear.

It was just my style—what I felt
comfortable in. I hated jeans and any kind of pants. They made me feel closed
in and confined. A few years ago, Dad had given me a top-of-the-line sewing
machine for my birthday, and I kept it down in the basement. Whenever I got the
chance, I would hole myself up down there, listening to ’80s music on Dad’s old
cassette tapes, and go to work on another creation. Creating—there was just
something inexplicable about it. Taking a roll of fabric and turning it into
something beautiful and useful was my favorite thing. It gave me a purpose,
even if everyone else thought I was useless.

I wasn’t trying to be popular. To me,
popularity seemed like a curse more than anything. I didn’t need people
worshipping me or making a news story of my every move. I just wanted to be
cool enough for Bailey to want to hang out with me again. If we were still
friends, the two of us would have been in her bedroom right then practicing
first-day hairstyles on each other. We’d been best friends from the second
through eighth grades. Bailey and I had spent the summer before freshman year
trying to give ourselves an upgrade. We had been losers in middle school. But
we were determined to leave that behind in high school.

Something happened that I still can’t
explain. It felt like the world flipped upside down and Bailey had become a
totally different person. My family and I had gone on a two-week vacation to
the Florida Coast, and when I came back, Bailey had suddenly become best
friends with Lacey Chapman, the queen bee of everything. Bailey hadn’t kept her
part of our promise—that no matter what happened, we would never leave each
other behind. Bailey had left me behind and never looked back.

Lacey Chapman had given me my name, my
school name—Dust. It happened the very first day of our freshman year in the
girls’ bathroom. I stood in front of the mirror giving myself a quick check
before the bell rang for first period. Bailey and I weren’t going to be hanging
out because she’d been accepted into Lacey’s hive, so I needed to make a new
friend. Still, my stomach dropped when Lacey and her minions, Trista Pimentel and
Marley Madden, sauntered into the bathroom with Bailey in tow. Actually seeing
Bailey with Lacey was a blow to my gut. It felt like she was cheating on me,
but then I reminded myself that Bailey wasn’t my friend anymore.

 Judging by her drastically upgraded
appearance, she’d made some changes in her life, and they hadn’t included me. I
imagined the girls spending hours in Lacey’s room making Bailey over. She’d
always worn her raven hair the same way since I’d met her, in a shoulder-length
bob with bangs. That day her bangs were gone, and her teased hair reached the
middle of her back. I couldn’t believe her ultra-conservative mother had let
her get extensions.

Taking a deep breath, I decided to play it
cool. Twisting the cap closed on my lip gloss, I dropped it into my pocket.
“Oh, hey, Bailey.”

 “Hey,” Bailey muttered in a voice
that was barely audible. The girls stopped in front of the mirror, two on
either side of me. Lacey had been very strategic in choosing her worker bees.
Each girl looked completely different. Bailey’s slick black hair, Marley’s
thick red curls, and Trista’s dark-chocolate waves contrasted nicely with
Lacey’s golden locks. Aside from that, all four girls were stick figures with
boobs. I guessed I couldn’t talk much, since I was a stick figure without
boobs.

Lacey dropped her designer bag on the
metal shelf that ran over the sinks. “Oh, you can say hello to Bailey, but not
anyone else? So rude.”

What would be the point in speaking to
them? They would have ignored me anyway.

Paying no attention to Lacey, I gave
myself one last glance over and headed for the door. Lacey stepped in front of
me, looking me up and down. “Get a load of you. Someone’s got a little makeover
since last school year. I don’t know what for.” She tugged one of my curls.
“You think dabbing on a little makeup and throwing some curls in your hair is
going to make you somebody? You are a nobody, and no matter what you do to
yourself, you will always be a nobody.”

“Lacey, leave her alone,” Bailey said in
an almost whisper.

“Shut up!” Lacey snapped. Bailey shut her
mouth and turned back to the mirror, where Marley and Trista applied mascara
and smirked.

Lacey glared at me. I had an idea of why
she was so angry. It was my hair and makeup, or she wouldn’t have mentioned
them. Lacey was low-key jealous of me. I fell in that weird space. Maybe not
the prettiest girl in school, but pretty enough to make Lacey feel insecure,
which was the real reason she hated me. If she hated me, that was reason enough
for everybody else to.

I tried to step around Lacey, but she
moved in front of me again. “You know what you are? Dust. Insignificant. No one
sees you or pays attention to you. All you do is clog my sinuses and annoy the
hell out of me. As a matter of fact, that’ll be your new name, Dust.” She went
back to the sink to grab her purse. “Let’s go,” she barked.

Obediently the other three girls zipped up
their bags and followed her toward the door. Lacey made sure to hip check me
extra hard. I lost my balance and landed on the floor. My lip gloss and lunch
money tumbled from my pocket.

“Bye, Dust,” Marley and Trista said in
perfect unison.

Bailey offered me her hand as the others
left. I allowed her to pull me up. “I’m sorry,” she said, smiling as if I were
the most pathetic thing she’d ever seen. I didn’t need her feeling sorry for
me. “Just stay out of her way, okay?”

Stay out of her way? I had been in the
bathroom minding my own business when Lacey decided to harass me. Bailey gave
me a small hug and quickly ran after the others. By lunchtime everyone was
calling me Dust.

Since then, the only contact I had with
Bailey consisted of half smiles she managed to sneak in when Lacey wasn’t
looking. I missed Bailey. Ninth grade had been a very lonely year for me, but
then Fletcher and I became friends, and he made my sophomore year bearable. Now
that we were beginning our junior year, I expected it would be just the two of
us again, and I was actually okay with that.

I’d made my final decision to wear the
dress I’d named Penelope. I gave names to all my dresses because everything
important should have its own name. A sudden knock on my door made me jump.
“Dinner, loser. Mom said now.”

My sister, Paige.

I quickly changed out of my dress and
dashed downstairs. When my mother said
now
, she meant now. On the way
down, Paige’s stupid cat, a black Siamese named Sheba, hissed at me, and I
hissed back. That was routine for us every time we crossed paths.

Everyone was already at the table. My
ten-year-old sister Quinn filled our glasses with water while Paige carelessly
threw the silverware on the table. Paige was thirteen and starting the eighth
grade. All summer she’d been bragging about finally being the big fish in the
little pond.

Paige was popular and, from the sounds of
things, the Lacey Chapman of Everson Middle. My sister sometimes knew things
about kids at my school that I didn’t even know. There was nothing like hearing
gossip from your little sister who didn’t even go to your school to let you
know how far out of the loop you really were.

Dad looked at his phone as Mom placed the
plates on the table. As soon as Dad’s plate hit his placemat, he put his phone
away. Mom had a strict policy against phones or any type of technology during
dinner.

Pot roast, potatoes, and carrots were our
typical Sunday meal.

Paige and Quinn chirped happily about how
excited they were about their first days of school. Quinn bragged about how
she’d gotten the best fifth-grade teacher in the school and that all her
friends would be in her class. I wished I could be as excited as they were. For
me, it was just going to be another year of crap.

I stayed quiet, as I usually did during
dinner, and dug into my roast beef while Mom and Dad discussed Dad’s upcoming
business trip.

Looking around the table, I considered
myself the Wednesday Addams in a family of Barbies. Mom, Dad, Quinn, and Paige
were all blond with blue eyes, except Dad’s eyes were green. Their skin held a
perfect golden tan except for in the winter. I, on the other hand, had hair
black as coal with eyes to match. My skin was pale, and lately I didn’t tan so
much as burn. Without me, my family looked like they belonged on a brochure
advertising some magical family vacation.

Being the family oddball was one of the
reasons Bailey and I connected back in the second grade. Bailey’s parents were
White, and they had adopted her from China when she was seven. Obviously she
looked nothing like her overprotective parents and often felt as out of place
as I did.

Mom must have sensed what was on my mind.
“Have you spoken to Bailey lately?” I immediately wished she would go back to
talking to Dad. She always asked about Bailey, hoping we would become friends
again. Although I was hoping the same thing, I told Mom not to hold her breath.

I stuffed my mouth with roast beef so I’d
have to talk with my mouth full because Mom hated that. If she was going to
annoy me with questions about Bailey, I should be able to annoy her back. “Of
course I haven’t spoken to Bailey. We haven’t spoken in almost two years. Why
would that change all of a sudden?”

Mom pointed her fork at me. “Arden, do you
think anyone wants to see your chewed food? Anyway, the phone works two ways.
You don’t have to wait for her to call. Pick up the phone and call her. Maybe
she’s waiting for that.”

“Mom, the Bailey-ship has sailed. She
wants nothing to do with me, and I’m not going to chase anyone to beg them to
be my friend.”

Quinn was making mush of her carrots,
smashing them with her fork like she always did before eating them. “How come
she doesn’t want to be friends with you anymore? What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything,” I replied, trying
not to sound defensive. I really hadn’t done anything unless you count going on
vacation as an unfriendable offense.

“That’s right,” Dad said. “Sometimes when
people grow up, they grow apart, that’s all. It’s a part of life.”

Thank you, Dad.

Mom rolled her eyes. “I disagree. When
you’re truly friends with someone for years, you don’t just stop being friends
for no reason.”

“Why is it so important for Bailey and I
to be friends?” I demanded.

Mom shrugged. “I ran into her mother at
the nail salon the other day and we got to talking.” I’d love to hear how that
conversation went. “I just think she was good for you, that’s all.”

I knew good and well the only reason she
wanted me to be friends with Bailey was because Bailey was popular and had a
butt-load of friends. Mom hated the fact that I was a loner and spent all my
time with Fletcher, who they had yet to meet because he refused to set foot in
our house for some reason.

I continued to shovel food into my mouth
just so I could excuse myself. I didn’t want this to become another
what’s-wrong-with-Arden family meeting.

Too late. Mom set the meeting in motion.
“You’re sixteen, almost seventeen. You never go out. You never do anything
except hang out with that
boy
. We’ve never even met him, and his parents
act a bit strange if you ask me. We just want you to be normal. We want you to
be happy.”

I supposed Mom had good reason to be
worried about me. She thought I was suicidal. I’d kept a journal with the words
A Million Ways to Die
scribbled across the front, so her fears were
understandable. I thought about death all the time. I had over a thousand ways
to die in that journal and when she found it, she freaked. No, I hadn’t been
stupid enough to show it to her. I’d kept the journal hidden under a loose
floor board in my bedroom where neither she nor the cleaning lady would find
it, but somehow she did. The next day I had an appointment to see Dr. Scarlett
Barclay, and she was prescribing me Prozac. I never took the pills. I hid them in
a teddy bear whose back opened up with a zipper. Once the bear was full, I
would pour the pills down the garbage disposal.