Feral Curse (2 page)

Ben stands, and the air chills between us. “No, that’s the devil talking.”

With that, he leaves, sprinting across the park, past the picnic tables, barbecue grills, and antique Western carousel, abandoning me in the darkness, kneeling and alone.

The next morning, in a state of near panic, I text Ben:
We’re finished.

There, it’s done. What was I thinking? Why should he be different from anyone else?

What if he tells someone? What if he tells everyone?

My shattered heart be damned. The stakes are enormous. I have to protect my parents, my college plans, my entire future. I could have ruined my whole life.

Then again, what if he feels differently today? What if he panicked and doesn’t know how to apologize? What if I’m only making things worse?

I key in another message:
Call me.
Erase it without sending.

I key it in again, erase it again — a hundred times, a thousand.

I fall asleep with the phone still in my hand, wondering if he hates me now, if we were ever real or something I hallucinated, if the feral part of me he rejected is worthless anyway.

The day after that I’m convinced he never really loved me.

I still love him. I admit it. Who knows? Maybe I always will. Maybe that’s the price of true love, the forever ache that comes after it’s over. But enough. I’m done. Done, done, done. I have to shut this down before it drives me crazy.

I gather up absolutely everything Ben ever gave me, every single memento of our time together, and toss it all in a cardboard box. I glance down at the toy tricorder, the Houston Astros ball cap, the embossed napkin from Lurie’s Steakhouse, a few dried long-stemmed red roses, the still-fresh bouquet of glittery blue ones, and a photo of us at Homecoming.

I dump the contents in the round concrete fire pit in my backyard, drench it with lighter fluid, and drop in a match. The
whoosh
of flame is bigger than I expected, and my Chihuahua, Peso, freaks out, barking like it’s a hell-born fiend, rising to devour us.

I can’t avoid Ben. This town’s too small for that. And I can’t avoid the gossip that’ll start once people find out we’ve broken up. But it’s only months until I leave for college.

I can stand it. I can keep breathing. I can keep moving forward.

I’ll have to.

“Kayla, love?” It’s Mom at the back door.

I expect her to holler at me for nearly setting the yard on fire. I’m almost looking forward to the distraction. Maybe she’ll ground me and I’ll have a legitimate excuse to hide out at home. Maybe . . .

Something’s wrong. Very, very wrong.

Tears haunt her light-brown eyes.

“IT’S LIKE I KILLED HIM,”
I whisper to Jess as we take the long, concrete staircase leading downhill from the public-library parking lot toward the winding river walk. We’re on our way to the town’s official re-dedication of the antique carousel in Ben’s memory.

“Kind of risky thing to say to the sheriff’s daughter,” Jess replies. “Except I’m pretty sure you have no power to call lightning from the sky.” She sets a hand on my shoulder. “You didn’t kill Ben, and he didn’t kill himself. It was God’s will.”

I can’t believe God would do any such thing, even to protect my secret. Still, I’m grateful for the company. Jess Bigheart and I used to be best friends — sleepover, share-your-secrets kind of friends — back when my secrets were so much less dangerous. In elementary school, we were in soccer and ballet together. Her family used to bring me with them to the Austin Powwow every fall, and I still have a photo posted in my locker of the two of us together — me in a denim pencil skirt and a UT T-shirt, her in full regalia to dance Southern Buckskin. She was the one girl in town I could count on to go with me to every superhero blockbuster and to watch even the odd-numbered Star Trek movies.

Then, when I was thirteen, a hawk made a grab for Peso in my backyard, and my saber teeth came down for the first time — terrifying me, the bird, and my spastic little dog, who spent most of the next week cowering under the porch. I didn’t tell anyone but my parents.

Afterward, I gradually pushed everyone else out to arm’s length, Jess included. That first year I missed so much school that my mom told the secretary I had mono. At first it was for others’ protection — I didn’t always have the control over my shift that I do now. Later, it was mostly that I felt so . . . other. At least until Ben, and look how that turned out.

Jess never pressed me for an explanation, though I must’ve hurt her feelings. She seemed to accept that we were still friends, just not as close. Jess has a big family, though. I see her out with her sisters a lot. I hope that helped. I hope I haven’t screwed up everyone I care about.

At the foot of the stairs, Jess and I veer right toward the park and continue on our way. Her companionable silence is a relief. I’m exhausted by everyone else’s grief and awkwardness. Unlike most people I know, she doesn’t need to fill every blessed minute with nervous chatter.

As we pass the grassy spot where Ben and I last spoke, last kissed, only a stone’s throw from the cypress trees planted in memory of 9/11, it’s hard for me not to imagine him there, sprawled on the Mexican blanket. If I’d never confided in him, he’d still be alive. He’d still be mine. Maybe even mine forever.

Why did I have to tell him? I could’ve backed out. Or said I was having my period. Or saving myself for marriage. Or . . . anything, really, absolutely
anything
would’ve been better than this.

Once Jess and I reach the first of the antique-style streetlights that line the river walk, I say, “We — Ben and I — got in an argument on Valentine’s Day.”

I didn’t tell anyone that we’d broken up, but he might’ve. Come to think of it, he might’ve told someone about my Cat heritage, too. I never should’ve sent that text.

I have to think about damage control. Even by association, the stigma could cost my parents their careers, our home, the respect of everyone they care about.

In . . . I think it’s Montana . . . there’s a law making it illegal for humans not to report knowledge of a shifter to authorities — a law spawned by rancher paranoia that Wolves would go after their herds. Like it’s not the twenty-first century and werewolves don’t shop at butcher counters like everybody else. “I said some things I regret.”

Jess winds her thick, curly hair into a messy knot. “Kayla, sweetie, please stop torturing yourself. It’s not like you two never got in a fight before. You spent most of your lives bickering, remember? You had no way of knowing what would happen. It’s not like anyone else thinks . . .” Her brow creases as if remembering something. “Oh.”

“What?” I counter. Jess’s older sister manages the new-and-used bookstore on Main, her younger sister waits tables at Davis Family Home Cookin’, her brother played football with Ben, her mother owns the beauty parlor, and Jess herself does work for her dad at the sheriff’s office. By the transitive property of family dinner conversations, Jess knows everything that goes on in this town. She’s not gossipy about it — she just knows.

The fact that she’s on the verge of dishing means she thinks I either have a right to the information or it’ll be hurtful if I hear it in an unkind way from someone else. “Jess, tell me.”

We slow so as not to catch up to the gathering crowd of mourners too quickly, and she says, “When the Stubblefield sisters found . . .”

She doesn’t want to say “the body.” That’s okay. I don’t want to hear her say it, either.

Lowering her voice, Jess starts again. “When they found Ben, he’d laid out a pack of matches, a white votive candle, your junior class photo, a dried-up wrist corsage, and an excerpt from a”— she uses her fingers to make air quotes —“‘lost companion book to Revelations.’ At least that’s what it’s labeled — it doesn’t read like the King James or any other version of the Bible to me. If you want . . .” She hesitates. “I can e-mail you a copy of it.”

“You would do that?” I exclaim, too loudly.

At her solemn nod, a few of our classmates turn in unison from the park’s picnic area. Spotting me, they clasp one another as if I’m a ghost. I’ve been getting that reaction a lot since Ben died, as though I’m his widow instead of his girlfriend. Or ex-girlfriend, to be precise.

God, I don’t need this right now, but it would’ve stirred more talk if I hadn’t shown.

Five pretty, misty-eyed girls in crisp black dresses rush toward us, all open arms and consoling words. Did I resent them only moments ago? I take it back.

We are each other’s touchstones. Together, we’ve laid to rest beloved grandparents and pets ranging from goldfish to llamas, but, for a member of our own generation, for one of us, this is the first death. Ben is the first death. It still doesn’t seem possible.

I can smell their sorrow and exhaustion. Samantha was his first kiss. Lauren was the first girl he got to second base with (I heard it from her, not him, in the church ladies’ restroom — two years before he and I ever dated). Shelby was his lab partner in biology, chemistry, and physics — his best friend who was a girl (as opposed to his girlfriend). She was the one who deciphered me for him (and vice versa), who made sure he didn’t do anything stupid.

Ben was theirs in a myriad of ways. We all loved him.

“What’s that?” I ask, gesturing at Brittney’s clipboard.

As we approach the carousel, she explains, “We’re here representing Bloom Forever.

“This is a petition demanding that the carousel be removed from the park as an attractive nuisance.”

Brittney’s smart. She’s been accepted at Rice University. But that language came from her mother, one of our town’s four lawyers. Brittney adds, “We believe it would be disrespectful to Ben’s memory for it to continue being used for amusement purposes.”

Amusement purposes? I accept the offered ball-point pen and scribble my name, but, however disloyal to Ben it might sound, I hate the thought of losing the antique carousel. I love the whimsy of it, the fact that it has a history of its own.

People are determined to do something concrete in response to Ben’s death. I get that; I do. But why blame an inanimate object? It’s utterly irrational.

Especially since I’m the one at fault.

Then again, I’ve always felt a certain kinship to the antique ride, a personal link, and there’s no rational explanation for that, either.

Beyond the picnic tables and barbecue grills, the carousel itself is turned off, no lights, no robotic organ music, no rotation, though the mirrored panels at the base reflect the same sort of lavender-peach Texas sunset as on Valentine’s Day. There are no brightly ornamented, prissy fiberglass horses, either. Instead, it’s Western themed, trimmed in a mustard yellow and adorned with wooden figures in the shapes of cougars, deer, snakes, black bears, hares, coyotes, buffaloes, elk, wolves, bighorn sheep, hogs, raccoons, armadillos, otters, and robust brown-and-white paint ponies, positioned as if pulling a rustic wagon — two of each animal, like refugees from Noah’s ark, each figure big enough for a grown man to ride, including the two cat figures, carved as if they’re running. Running in endless circles.