A Girl Called Dust (24 page)

Jackson realized then that he was naked
and it was freezing cold out. He jumped up, covering his private area with his
hands. “Guys, get home now.”

Then he took off past Gerdy’s and all the
other closed shops. Due to the curfew and the time of night, a naked boy
running around the neighborhood might go unnoticed.

Fletcher and I made the slow journey
toward his house. When we were just two blocks away, headlights brightened the
dark street. Probably a cop. “Great. Now we’re going to be in trouble for
breaking curfew,” I muttered.

“Just keep walking,” Fletcher said between
clenched teeth.

Whoever it was slowed down to keep pace
with us. Classical music blared from the speakers. It was Wiley in his pickup.
Why was he out that time of night?

He rolled his window down and smiled with
that wide grin of his. Wiley lowered the volume of his music. “What are you two
crazy kids doing out after curfew?”

Fighting monsters in the woods. “We’re
just taking a walk, Wiley,” I replied. “See you later.”

Wiley eyed Fletcher, and his smile
disappeared. “Hey, what happened to him?”

“Nothing,” I said quickly. “He took a
little tumble, that’s all. He’s okay.”

Wiley’s eyes widened with concern. “He’s
bleeding. Bleeding is not okay. Hop in. I’ll give you guys a ride.”

“No!” Fletcher shouted. It would have been
easier to not have to explain any of this to Wiley. I was still waiting for
Fletcher’s wounds to start healing the way they always did. There would be no
way to cover up how the cut on Fletcher’s cheek suddenly disappeared or why the
blood was gone from his sweater.

“We’re fine, Wiley. Thanks for the offer.”

“Are you sure? He looks really hurt and
it’s cold out. . .”

“We’re almost there. See you around.”

“Fine. Suit yourselves.” He rolled up his
window and sped down the street.

At Fletcher’s, I helped him into the
kitchen, where he wanted me to help him lie on the island. We took off his
sweater and undershirt. Since I didn’t know where anything was, I did what I
thought should be done first. I wet some paper towels and started wiping his
cuts.

 “Oh, Arden, I’ll do that,” Mrs.
Whitelock said as she entered the kitchen. She opened a cabinet and pulled out
alcohol, bandages, and a bottle of green liquid. She shook her head at her son.
“I can’t believe you, Fletcher.”

I stared at Fletcher’s wounds as Mrs.
Whitelock got to work like a pro. The scratches and bruises looked exactly the
same way they had at the edge of the woods. “I don’t understand. How come he’s
not healing? I’ve seen him do it plenty of times before.” I thought about the
bus, the time he had cut himself on the sidewalk, and all the times Ranson had
beat him up. Within seconds he’d healed, so why wasn’t that happening?

“What were you two thinking?” she asked.

I shrugged. “We wanted to catch the
Wendigo. We just can’t sit around doing nothing while people keep getting
killed. Why won’t you answer my question, Mrs. Whitelock? How come Fletcher’s
not healing?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart.” She paled and
wiped her forehead. “You know what, I’m sure your parents are worried, and you
really shouldn’t be out after curfew. I’ll have Mr. Whitelock drive you home.”

 I had no desire to walk home alone
in the dark, and it was colder then than it had been all night, so I accepted.

The ride home was silent until we pulled
into the driveway. Mrs. Whitelock had woken Fletcher’s father up from his
sleep, so I figured that’s why he was so quiet. I didn’t like to talk when I
first woke up either.

Mr. Whitelock threw the car into park. “Arden,
we really like you, we do, and we’ve never had a problem with you and Fletcher
being friends. We actually think you’ve been good for him, but now . . .”

Mr. Whitelock stared at the garage door,
and I knew what he was going to say. I knew this had been coming for some time.

“Now that you two are getting older and
closer to full transformation, it’s probably best that you guys go your
separate ways. Fletcher doesn’t have any friends besides you, and he needs to
start making friends with his own kind. You’ll make friends with your kind, but
mingling shouldn’t really happen. It leads to bad things happening.”

Like my real parents had mingled and the
bad thing that happened was me.

I pushed the passenger door open. “Thanks
for the ride.” As for his request, I didn’t know how I could ever comply.
Fletcher was my only true friend, and I was his. So what if we were on separate
teams. It wasn’t as if we were fighting against each other. But then maybe the
Whitelocks wanted us to stay apart for another reason. Maybe they were afraid I
would hurt Fletcher. Maybe I should have been afraid of that too.

The night had been a disaster, but it
needed to happen. I hated that my friend was hurt, but at least we knew there
was another Wendigo on the loose. Now we only had to catch and kill it before
it ruined my life.

The next day I had planned to check on
Fletcher when Bailey called. “Arden, I remember now. I remember what happened
that night,” was all she said before hanging up.

I raced to her house. She wasn’t curled up
comfortably on her bed like she had been before but pacing back and forth as if
the world were coming to an end. When I came in and shut the door, she paused
and backed away from me.

“What?”

Her face crinkled and tears welled in her
eyes. “Arden, how could you do this to me? You were my friend. Why?”

“Bailey, what are you talking about? What
do you think I did?”

She had backed away from me until she hit
the wall, which seemed to be the only thing keeping her in the room. It was
then that I noticed the meat cleaver she held at her side.

My knees weakened, and my inner voice told
me to run. “Bailey, what are you doing with that?”

“I remember now. Trent and I were hanging
out in the woods, and you called for me. You said you had fallen and hurt
yourself. When I went to look for you, I saw you sitting against a tree holding
your ankle. Trent and I went over to help you. He actually picked you up and
started carrying you back toward the house when you opened your mouth. Your
teeth were long and sharp like fangs. You took a huge chunk out of his neck. He
dropped you on the ground and then you changed.”

I swallowed hard, keeping my eyes on the
meat cleaver. What was she talking about? None of that had happened, and it was
totally different from the story she had told me before.

Bailey slid down the wall until she was
sitting on the floor cradling her knees to her body, the cleaver resting beside
her. “He dropped you, and your face became long and distorted. Your teeth got
longer and sharper and were sticking out of your mouth. Your hands turned into
claws and you just went crazy and attacked us.

“After you killed Trent, I remember you
crouching over me, and I begged you for my life. You said this is what I
deserved for ditching you and being friends with Lacey. Really? You did all
that because of what happened to our friendship? You killed Trent because you
were mad at me? Because you were jealous I was spending time with him?”

I held my hands up. “Bailey, think about
this. You’re talking crazy. Do you really think I could have changed into some
kind of creature?”

She nodded. “The way you act in your
sleep. The way you attacked me the last time I slept over at your house. Yeah,
I totally believe it.”

“Bailey, I—”

She shook her head. “Arden, something is
wrong with you. I don’t think you know what it is. I don’t think you can
control it, but something is wrong. You’re the reason Trent is dead. You’re the
reason I’m going to be scarred for the rest of my life. I want you to leave.
Stay away from me. I don’t ever want to see you again.”

I turned toward the door. She wasn’t going
to listen to anything I had to say. “What are you going to do now? Tell your
mom? The police?”

She plopped down on her bed, allowing her
long hair to cover her face like a veil. She slid her finger along the edge of
the cleaver. “Who’s going to believe me?”

The last thing I needed was for everyone
in town to look at me the way my family did. “You’re right. No one’s going to
believe you. You go around telling stories like that, they’ll make you go to a
shrink, and trust me, therapy sessions are no fun. Hell, they might even lock
you up in a mental institution. You were clearly hallucinating, Bailey. You
should see someone about that, but you better not go spreading those crazy lies
about me.”

“I should kill you for what you did to
Trent.”

I was sick of being blamed for things I
had nothing to do with. “You still think I did it, then kill me. I’m standing
right here.”

She flung the meat cleaver across the
room, where it hit the closet door, leaving a huge crack. “Get out of here
before I do. I mean it, Arden.”

There was nothing more to say to that.
Fletcher had been my only friend in the world for a while, but lately I had
been thinking that Bailey and I would be friends again. Unfortunately, that
would never happen. When someone threatens you with a meat cleaver, it’s time
to end that relationship.

Her story made no sense. Had she been
dreaming? I hadn’t been asleep at the party, and I remembered everything that
went on that night. I had never pretended to have a broken ankle, and I had
never attacked her or Trent. I had to know what really happened.

I remembered something. Before I had gone
into the woods to look for Bailey, Lacey and I had been talking. Lacey had
actually gone off into the woods ahead of me. Maybe she had seen or heard
something. As much as I didn’t want to, I was going to have to have a
face-to-face conversation with Lacey, or at least try.

I wanted to swing by Fletcher’s to tell
him about what had happened at Bailey’s and maybe get him to come to Lacey’s
with me, but he was still recovering from his injuries from the night before,
and according to Mr. Whitelock, I was no longer welcome in his house.

I didn’t want to face Lacey alone, but I
had to. I rang the doorbell, and it took a minute for someone to answer. At
last the door swung open to a tall boy with dark hair, Lacey’s brother Aaron.
Aaron had graduated from Everson High the year before. I didn’t know much about
him, but I couldn’t imagine that he would be worse than his younger sister.

“Hey.” He looked me up and down.

“Hi. Is Lacey here?”

“Sure. She’s in the kitchen.” He pulled
the door open all the way, and I stepped inside. “Lace, someone’s here for
you?”

“Who?”

By then I stood in the doorway of the
Chapmans’ kitchen, and Aaron had disappeared somewhere in the house. The house
reeked of something sweet cooking, maybe brownies. My stomach churned. Lacey
sat at the kitchen table with books spread out, and, unfortunately for me,
Trista sat across from her sipping a glass of orange juice.

They both glared at me like I was old gum
someone had dragged into the house on the bottom of their shoe.

Lacey slammed her biology book shut. “What
the hell are you doing in my house, Dust?”

“I—I needed to talk to you about
something. Something important.”

Lacey rolled her eyes and shouted to her
brother. “Aaron, what did Mom tell you about letting in strays?”

I ignored her dig. I hadn’t expected
anything less from her. “Can we talk . . . alone?”

Trista frowned. “Anything you have to say
to my bestie, you can say to me.”

I kept my focus on Lacey. “It’s about
Bailey and what happened to her that night.”

Trista snorted. “We don’t want to talk
about her. Do you know that her parents are suing mine? Like what happened to
her was our fault. Now I can never have another party.”

I rolled my eyes because nothing Trista
said was important in the grand scheme of things.

Lacey looked me up and down for a moment.
“Trista, let us talk. I’ll call you later.”

Trista’s jaw dropped. “Are you serious?
What does she have to say about Bailey that I can’t hear?”

She’d practically spit out Bailey’s name
as if it were a curse. The cynical part of me couldn’t help but wonder if
Trista was actually happy that Bailey was out of the way.

“Bye, Trista,” Lacey said forcefully.

Trista, looking deeply hurt, gathered her
things quickly and pushed past me, mumbling all sorts of things under her
breath. It didn’t bother me. I had much bigger issues to worry about than
jealous girls and their normal people problems.

“Sit,” Lacey ordered as if she were
talking to a dog. What we needed to discuss was important, so I sat anyway.
“What about my dear friend Bailey?”

I swallowed hard, not knowing how this
conversation was going to go. “I need you to think back to the night of the
Halloween party. Right before Bailey and Trent were attacked. You had gone off
into the woods to find them. Did you see or hear anything out of the ordinary?”