A Girl Called Dust (5 page)

Wiley nodded as if he understood. “You
should think about making some new friends. That Fletcher dude’s a nut.
Something’s wrong with him.”

I gripped the straps of my backpack. I
hated when people talked like that about Fletcher even though I understood.
Fletcher made it easy for people to think those things, but they didn’t know
him like I did.

“There’s nothing wrong with him. He’s just
different, and there’s nothing wrong with different.”

Wiley sighed and turned onto the street
that led to my house. “If you say so. If you want to, we can hang out. What
happened to Mr. Thompson was pretty scary. I’m sure you’d like some company.”

I would have liked some company,
Fletcher’s if he hadn’t been acting so weird.

“Hang out?” Just getting into the car with
him had been a huge step for me. I didn’t think I could handle hanging out.

“Yeah, my parents are at work. We can
watch some Netflix and . . .”

I knew where this was going, and
thankfully he pulled into my driveway. I only realized then that Wiley had
known the way to my house without me giving him directions. He’d never been to
my house before.

 “That’s okay. I think I’m going to
use this time to catch up on some schoolwork.”

He reached over and rested his hand on my
knee. Something about his touch made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on
end and not in a good way. “You know what Mr. Thompson’s favorite saying was?
Carpe
diem
. Seize the day. If he were still alive, he’d want you to use this time
to do something you’d enjoy.”

Yeah. That wouldn’t include spending
another second with Wiley. I shoved his hand away. Was Wiley really using a
dead man to make a move on me? I mean, what did I look like to him?

“Dust . . .”

And he was still calling me Dust.

“You’re stressed out. You know what the
number-one stress reliever is?”

I popped the passenger-side door open.
“Thanks for the ride, but I’m sure you can find another girl to watch Netflix
and chill with.” I didn’t bother to hide the bitterness in my voice. It felt
like he had seen me walking down the sidewalk and thought,
Hey, she looks
easy. Let me give it a go.

“Okay,” he called out of the window as I
headed for my front door. “We can hang out some other time when you’re more up
to it.” I waved absently over my head and let myself into the house.

My mother was a stay-at-home mom. I found
her in the kitchen wiping down the counters with Lysol wearing her DOMESTIC
DIVA apron, gabbing away on the phone. “Oh, hold on, Sharon,” she said when she
saw me. “Hey, honey. I heard. I’m so sorry about—”

I didn’t want to talk about Mr. Thompson.
“I was normal, Mom. I let Bruce Wiley give me a ride home, and he tried to get
in my pants, well, under my dress, I guess. Is that normal enough for you?”

She frowned. “Arden, what—”

But I didn’t stay to hear what she had to
say. I took the stairs two at a time and slammed my bedroom door. Once my
parents jumped to the conclusion that I was suicidal, they had replaced my old
doorknob with one with no lock so I couldn’t keep them out. Fortunately, I’d
learned how to wedge a chair underneath the knob to stop the door from being
opened. When Mom knocked a minute later, I ignored her until she went away.

Holing up in my room until dinner time, I
got a ton of work done and even managed to slip in a nap. The smell of Mom’s
famous macaroni and cheese woke me up and drew me toward the kitchen. The best
part of her macaroni was the bits of bacon she put into it. That dish had
always been me and Dad’s favorite.

When I sat at the table, Mom kissed my
forehead. “We’ll talk later. Made your favorite. Hope it makes you feel
better.” I felt guilty about being mad at her earlier.

“Thanks, Mom.”

“Girls, let’s go,” Dad called from
upstairs. When I’d passed Quinn’s room, she and Paige had been in there
giggling about something. Dad and my sisters came downstairs and took their
places around the table.

Dad patted my hand. “How’re you doing,
kiddo?”

I shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”

Paige picked bits of bacon out of her
macaroni. She was a vegetarian when she wanted to be, which was only half the
time. “It sucks what happened to that teacher. His daughter goes to my school.”

“Paige, let’s find a better word for
sucks,” Mom snapped. “But yes, it is terrible.”

“Everybody is saying a werewolf did it.
There was a full moon last night,” Quinn contributed to the conversation. “My
friend Brittney has this theory that it’s a person who hates school that
transforms into a werewolf, and it will sacrifice a teacher at the beginning of
every year. Last year it was Mrs. Chin. This year it was Mr. Thompson. If I
were a teacher, I would quit.”

“Quinn, that’s ridiculous,” Dad said.
“There’s some kind of animal lurking in those woods, and I want you all to stay
away from there.”

“Why?” Paige whined, as if she ever hung
out in the woods. “Whatever it is, it only attacks at night.”

“It seems to be a random animal attack,”
Mom said, giving Dad another serving of macaroni. “I agree. Stay away from the
woods at night and there should be nothing to worry about. Everyone is getting
all worried and paranoid over nothing.”

I put my fork down. Mom’s macaroni didn’t
taste as good as it usually did. It tasted kind of like paste, and the bacon
bits were too hard. “Is it over nothing, Mom? What would Mrs. Chin and Mr.
Thompson have been doing in the woods at night, huh?”

Mom rolled her eyes. “How do you think
they got to the woods if they hadn’t gone there themselves? I don’t know why
anyone would go there at night, or for any reason, but they obviously did.
Maybe they were going for a night run. People do strange things, Arden.”

Something wasn’t right. Things weren’t
making sense. It would have been nice to have Fletcher to talk to, but I had
decided that I was never going to speak to him again after the way he’d treated
me. What kind of friend kept secrets and accused people of doing horrible
things they would never even dream of?

“May I be excused?” I asked, hoping to get
away without doing the dishes even though it was my turn.

Mom gave me a small smile. “Sure, honey.
Your sisters will clean up the kitchen.”

“What! No!” my sisters wailed at the same
time.

“You will,” Dad told them. “Your sister’s
had a bad day.”

Quinn poked at her macaroni. “Stupid
werewolf.”

Upstairs in my room, I pulled Anastasia
from my closet to wear the following day. Anastasia was pastel purple, and I’d
added small jewels to the ribbon that tied at my waist. I’d really wanted to
wear Eleanor, but she needed to be ironed, and I didn’t have the energy to do
that.

Lying on my bed with all my homework done
and nothing to do, scary thoughts filled my head. Was there some kind of
monster on the loose in our town, or were these just normal animal attacks? I
had the urge to talk to someone, but Fletcher was out of the question. I
thought about calling Bailey, but that would have been awkward since she’d
decided that I didn’t exist.

Scarlett had given me her personal cell
phone number and said I could call her any time I wanted, but if I did that,
she might actually think I needed her. When I heard Dad go into his office, I
knocked on the door and poked my head in. “Hey, Dad.”

He looked up from a stack of papers on his
desk. Dad was a marketing executive for an advertising firm. He seemed to love
his job, but it sounded pretty boring to me. So boring I felt sorry for him.

 “Hey, kiddo. Come on in.”

I pulled up a chair and sat beside him at
his cluttered desk. Dad was my favorite parent. It might have seemed wrong to
say that, but it was only fair. Parents had favorite children even if they
denied it. I wasn’t sure who my parents’ favorite was, but it sure as hell
wasn’t me. Maybe Paige was Mom’s favorite since Paige was constantly telling
her how she was the hottest mom out of all her friends. Dad always got a kick
out of Quinn’s projects and inventions, so she was probably his favorite.

Dad was my favorite because he never
judged me, and when Mom did, he defended me.

“What are you doing?” I asked, even though
I never understood when he explained job stuff to me.

“Just finishing up some expense reports
and making sure we’re within our budget. You know, fun stuff.” He flipped through
some pages and then typed something on a spreadsheet on his laptop. Dad paused
and looked over at me. “With the exception of what happened to poor Mr.
Thompson, how’s school going so far? We haven’t really had a chance to talk
since you’ve gone back. I mean, I’ve heard all about Paige’s new language she
and her friends invented that only the cool kids know and Quinn’s told me all
about her gifted classes, but I haven’t heard much from my Ardy.”

I grinned. Ardy was what he used to call
me when I was little. “There’s not much to tell. I have different classes. But
it’s the same old same old.”

“How are the kids?”

I shrugged. “The same, I guess. I stay
under the radar, and they don’t bother me. Bailey won’t even look at me this
year, but I have Fletcher . . .” My voice caught in my throat. I
had
Fletcher.
I reminded myself that I had decided that our friendship was over, and judging
by the way he’d looked at me earlier, he would probably have been okay with
that.

Dad touched my chin. “If anyone is
bothering you, you let us know.”

“I will, Dad.” But I probably wouldn’t.
Besides, nobody really bothered me. They spent too much time ignoring me to do
that.

“Dad, do you really think it was an animal
attack or were you just trying to make things sound better for Quinn and Paige?
You know I’m old enough that you don’t have to candy-coat things for me.”

He went back to his work. “That’s what I
really think. What do you think?”

I wasn’t sure. “What if it’s a person?”

Dad shook his head. “No. From what I hear,
the way those bodies were torn apart, there’s no way a Human did that, not even
with a weapon. They found teeth and claw marks. You remember how you found Mrs.
Chin.”

I’d almost managed to block Mrs. Chin’s
mutilated body from my mind until Mr. Thompson was killed. The look of terror
frozen on her face. Her body in pieces. Her guts lying on the ground between
the top and lower halves of her body. My heart caught in my throat. “I’m going
to bed now.”

“Okay, honey.”

I gave Dad a peck on his cheek and then
headed to bed. When Mom came in to discuss what I’d told her about Wiley
earlier, I pretended to be asleep. When I tried to fall asleep for real, I
couldn’t. Taking that nap earlier had been a bad idea, because I stayed up all
night thinking about Fletcher’s cryptic messages and vicious animals who tore
people apart.

Chapter Six

My eyes burned the following morning from
lack of sleep. I wasn’t looking forward to the school day. I didn’t want to
talk about Mr. Thompson, and I knew I would be spending the day alone since the
only friend I had was no longer my friend.

As I walked through the student parking
lot toward the school, Bailey pulled her mother’s car into a parking space.
Usually she arrived in Lacey’s Mercedes SUV with the others. She got out,
carefully balancing a cup holder with four coffee cups and her purse.

I acted as if I hadn’t seen her and kept
walking, but unfortunately we hit the sidewalk at the same time. She almost
bumped into me, and we ended up doing some awkward shuffle to dodge each other.

“Sorry,” we both mumbled at the same time.
Bailey looked as if she wanted to say something else, but I pushed on ahead.
She wasn’t the only one who could pretend we didn’t know each other. Bailey
stayed on my heels. When we entered the foyer of the school, Lacey stood by the
trophy case with Trista and Marley. The three of them sported messy buns, while
Bailey’s hair hung loose. I guessed she had missed the bun memo.

Thankfully Lacey ignored me, but she shot
eye daggers at Bailey. I should have kept moving toward my locker, but I
stopped to watch. What was going on with them?

Lacey snarled. “It’s about time, and our
orders had better not be wrong like yesterday.”

Bailey rushed over to them breathlessly
and passed out the cups. “Sorry. There was a line at the drive-thru.”

Marley scoffed, obviously enjoying
Bailey’s groveling. “Excuses are for losers.” I imagined the three of them were
always clamoring to be Lacey’s number one.

While watching Bailey was pathetic, I
couldn’t help but think she deserved how they were treating her. She knew Lacey
was an evil witch when she became friends with her, so what was she expecting?

I decided to eat my lunch outside against
a wall. Lacey had taken over the picnic area again, and I didn’t feel like
seeing her or Bailey. Fletcher had tried to speak to me in third period, but I
ignored him. He kept talking to me until I told him I was giving him the silent
treatment.