Hot Pterodactyl Boyfriend (28 page)

He's the sexiest pterodactyl high school student ever,
one girl wrote from somewhere.
We can't let him die in jail just because of some stupid football game.

The fund hit seventeen thousand dollars as the taxi was pulling into the school drive. A dark-skinned boy painted his nose white.
Just because he has wings doesn't mean he can't be real!
the boy wrote. That issue became an odd part of the debate. A whole contingent of people sent in money apparently to prove that Pyke really did exist, because another contingent insisted he was a hoax and that people were investing in a fiction.

He is not the Loch Ness monster,
Melanie Mull wrote.
He is not the yeti or the Sasquatch. His name is Pyke, and he will die soon if you do not help!

It was twenty-two thousand dollars as Shiels and Jocelyne pushed through the large front door of the school. A handful of students were sporting purple noses—no, more than that, everywhere Shiels looked she saw dark noses.

Don't just color yourself in!
Melanie Mull wrote.
Five dollars will save a unique life, so do it!

Jonathan glided by on his longboard, his nose darker than Shiels's. Even Sheldon had joined in. Shiels saw him by his locker, looking stupidly at Rachel Wyngate. They were sporting couples' purple noses. How much had they given? After Sheldon had pulled out of his agreement with Shiels?

“Can you believe this?” Shiels said to Jocelyne.

The fund hit forty-eight thousand dollars by the start of the first afternoon class.

•  •  •

What was the feeling all through Postlethwaite's distracted discussion about the decline of literature in the digital age? We don't read the same on-screen, he was trying to say; we flit about following one idea and the next, using a residue of brainpower while the rest of our minds anticipates or yearns for the next fillip of entertainment. No one knew the word “fillip” except for Shiels, who did not raise her hand. She quietly felt as if one flick of the finger from Melanie Mull, and her insides would shatter into fragments.

Why so suddenly brittle? It was
her
ten thousand dollars—her parents'—at just the right moment that had given the fund liftoff. Yet all anyone could talk about was what Melanie Mull was doing, what
she
was achieving in the fight for Pyke.

But no, it wasn't simply Melanie Mull having usurped her—effortlessly, it seemed—as the prime mover in the Vista View galaxy. Shiels would be graduating in a matter of months; it was (theoretically) good to know someone was poised to fill her shoes.

How quickly Shiels felt left behind in the pull of events. That was it. She had marshaled significant forces, but in an instant it was all beyond her. Melanie Mull's movement was going to free Pyke—what was left of Pyke to free—if not in the next few hours, then soon. Pyke would not stay with the Kranes for rehab. Despite all her donated parental money, he would go wherever Melanie Mull wanted, that much was clear.

Shiels would not be near him.

That was the thing, she realized as she sat taking in nothing of what Postlethwaite was saying. (Her pen dashed notes quite independent of her brain.) Some important part of her had been longing to be close to Pyke, day in and day out. To be at his bedside in the morning with hot tea (if that was what he wanted). To sit with him at night while he rested and healed—perhaps reading to him excerpts from the works of Lorraine Miens. How much would he care about or even understand? Somehow she felt it would be enough for him to hear the sound of her voice. It would be enough for her to sit close by, to wipe his brow, change his dressings. (Would he have dressings? Would they need changing?) To soak up his energy.

He had energy. He radiated. She had quietly been hoping to have him to herself for a time, and now she knew it wouldn't happen.

Why hadn't Shiels tried crowdsourcing herself? She knew that if she had asked kids to purple their noses for Pyke, she would have been the butt of countless jokes. But Melanie Mull was making the most of the money that came in. She was purpling noses all over the place, using Shiels and Jocelyne as examples, and people couldn't join in fast enough.

•  •  •

At dinner that night Jonathan could barely stay seated. “You should've seen it! You should've seen it! One minute she had two dollars in there. Then suddenly everybody was doing their noses. There was, like, one purple marker in the whole school, but it got passed around.”

Shiels's mother shuddered, possibly at the gross lack of hygiene.

“There was a big donation,” Shiels said carefully, chewing her bean salad.

“No, it was everybody!” Jonathan said. “Kids everywhere sending in a couple of dollars.”

“What donation?” Shiels's mother asked sharply.

“I just heard it was large,” Shiels said in a neutral tone. “Maybe some thousands of dollars. I heard it made a big difference.”

“But you weren't behind this stunt,” her father said. He was leaning forward in his chair, paying too much attention.

“It was all Melanie!” Jonathan said.

Shiels chewed quietly. She wondered:
Is this what they call soft power? Achieving results without leaving fingerprints?

She was good at this at least, she thought. At starting things off.

Her mother was staring at her. This was all going to explode as soon as the credit card bill came due.

But hopefully Pyke would be free by then. And still alive.

“It
was
mostly Melanie,” Shiels said quietly. “And everybody else who chipped in. Amazing to watch, really.”

She chewed, chewed, had a drink of lemon water.

“How great that you didn't have to be involved,” her mother said finally.

•  •  •

In bed that night, in her sleep, Shiels found herself wandering a dark cobblestone alley. The water was dripping down rock walls, soaking and chilling her bare feet, which had outgrown her boots. She had to keep an eye on every footfall. The stones were rounded and slippery, and she had to grip with her toes. It was like being blind. She ran her right hand along the wet rock wall, which was just as soaked as the cobblestone but rougher. It hadn't had thousands of years of feet wearing its surface smooth.

Soon she would look up, and see what cross street she'd arrived at. She would know where to go.

Wings would be nice,
she thought.
Wings would let me straight out of this state.

It might be one of those obsidian-black nights when the stars pricked the velvet by the billions. She'd heard about those nights, had seen the photos on nature programs.

But for now she was feeling her way along.

•  •  •

In the morning: sun. More glorious than had been seen in many days. Light sparkled off the new snow like a prettied-up calendar photograph, and Pyke was at the door, unexpectedly.

Shiels had wandered into the front room, breakfast toast in hand, to look at the snow on the windowsill in the eastern light, when the doorbell rang and there he was, standing on his own, wrapped in a cloak of sorts, with galoshes on—galumphing brown curiosities keeping his toes from the ice. His eyes shone as ever, but he looked wilted beneath his cloak, and at first Shiels saw no one else, only him.

He wore a strange, fluorescent synthetic thing—it looked like a security bracelet that had been modified to fit around his neck.

Melanie Mull stood behind him, her nose still purple, her hands out as if he might fall, and some paces behind her stood Jocelyne Legault—was her nose even more beak-like?—looking concerned. And on the drive was a police cruiser, with Inspector Brady slouching by the open door. He didn't look like he was going to approach.

No photographers, no reporters. Somehow the media had been duped.

“We sprung him early this morning,” Melanie said. “He's eighteen, legally responsible. He asked for you. I hope that's all right.”

Shiels's mouth opened, but nothing came out. For a moment her teeth felt unnaturally sharp; her tongue faltered in forming words.

“He's not allowed to leave your house,” Melanie said, “except for court dates and such. That's a locator ring that can't be taken off. Your parents are doctors, right? They said they would take care of him?”

Pyke was trembling in the cold; Shiels felt like she should engulf him in an embrace, but could not make herself move.

“You're going to have to say something, Shiels,” Melanie Mull said.

“He asked for me?” Shiels blurted finally.

“Yes.”

Melanie Mull was going to make a tremendous student-body chair. Shiels could see it all clearly. The example of the younger woman helped her regain a semblance of balance. “When the bail is returned,” Shiels said, “when Pyke is freed for good, that money needs to go to the Wallin boy who hurt his arm. For rehab, for whatever he needs. Understood?”

So Shiels did
get to carry the pterodactyl-boy up the stairs in her arms. She was alone in the house. Both her parents had left for work, and Jonathan was already on his way to school. She had been thinking of perhaps just taking the morning off anyway. She worked so hard, normally. School could wait.

The place could get along just fine without her for a day.

And now this!

She cradled him, afraid to break something. His wings did seem to fold properly, but his beak drooped, his neck chafed in the security bracelet, there seemed little left of him. Where were those glowing pecs? His eyes were teary. He felt like he was made of kindling.

“Are you hurting somewhere?”

He rubbed his beak against her arm in reply, like a dolphin nudging her. His breathing sounded squeaky, shallow.

“I'm just going to put you to bed. Have they fed you? Are you famished?”

His eyes brightened. She couldn't tell if it was by accident or in reply to her mention of food. What did they have? Smoked salmon in the fridge. Her father's disgusting store of kipper snacks. Some frozen fish sticks for Jonathan.

She carried him down the hall. He was light, light in her arms, but he felt warm—feverish?—and Shiels breathed in the deep, rich, seaside smell of him. Was he used to flying all the way to the ocean to feed? He seemed happy to snuggle into her chest and to close his eyes. Maybe he was reveling in her smell too? What did she smell like?

Bed. Fitful sleep. Cellular-level exhaustion.

What did she have to feel tired about? Nothing. Pyke was here in her arms. It was like a dream, but there were her actual feet on the hardwood floor, that was her physical toe nudging open the guest room door. She carried him in and bent over as gracefully as she could to pull back the blankets and sheets before setting him down and soothing him between the covers.

His wings were fine. They were just . . . weak. He needed rest. It was a good thing she had decided to stay home today.

“Water?” she asked. A noncommittal wiggle-dip of his head. His sunken chest quivered with the shivering of his heart. His crest had faded to the barest smudge of brownish red.

If it ever got to court, she thought, no jury would convict this boy of a vicious assault. He didn't look like he could hurt a beetle, in his current condition.

She got a glass of water from the bathroom, then trooped downstairs to the kitchen to find a straw in case that might make it easier to drink. But what would his lips do with a straw?

He didn't really have lips.

He had that long, sleek, almost polished beak.

She imagined trying to pour the water down his throat, what a mess that would make. So—not a glass. Instead she found a cooking bowl—a big steel basin—and filled it with water so that he could dip his beak.

By the time she carried it up the stairs, he was fast asleep in the guest bed, sunlight slanting through the window straight onto his pillow. She set down the basin, drew the drapes, then just sat on the edge of the bed and watched the fascinating creature as his breathing slowed, his chest rose and fell, his presence filled the room like a warm, sweet, barely visible spectrum of light.

One of his wings had slipped out from under the covers. She lightly touched the three long fingers—so cold at first, then warmer, warmer—and sat as still as she could, just watching.

•  •  •

Really, she thought, as she sat on the living room floor now, on a patch of white carpet that got the most sun in the morning, she should call the PD. They were going to find out anyway, as soon as they got home. Better to lay the groundwork now. Lay it all out: the donation, her reasons, how she would pay for it, how Pyke had come to be upstairs. There would be a battle no matter what. She shouldn't appear to be hiding anything.

She was in her floppy clothes still, she hadn't even taken a shower. She was, however, wearing her yellow running shoes for when Pyke woke up and saw her again.

He liked her as a runner. As if she might be a Jocelyne Legault! Maybe he couldn't tell the difference—any girl who wore yellow shoes and ran around a track was devastatingly beautiful to him.

That would be all right,
she thought.
To be devastatingly beautiful.

Lorraine Miens spoke up in her head. (
Oh, Lorraine!
Shiels thought.
For once just let me enjoy this.
) “A woman with great beauty is like a man who has inherited too much money—crippled by the apparent gifts of birth.”

Thank you, Lorraine,
she thought. Ms. Killjoy, who had been, by the way, strikingly beautiful in her own youth. It hadn't hurt her career. How many female academics get on the cover of national magazines in their twenties? The beautiful ones. Who do bold things.

I'm doing a bold thing,
Shiels thought.
I have brought a pterodactyl into our guest room, and this is the calm before the storm.