Voices of Dragons (2 page)

In seconds, he was gone. She'd been so anxious to run away a few moments ago, but now she was almost sorry to leave.

 

She sneaked in quietly, stowing her backpack full of gear in the garage, then ducking around to the front door, which she opened slowly, only as far as she needed to to squeeze in. She shouldn't have worried. The house was dark. No one had turned on the lights when the sun had started setting.
Dad wasn't home yet, and Kay could hear by the tapping on the computer keyboard that Mom was in her office, working. Moving quickly now, she darted to the hallway bathroom. After a hot shower, the mud, sweat, and blood would all be gone, and she wouldn't have to explain herself.

When Kay left the bathroom, wrapped in a towel and hair dripping, Mom was still in the office, in the spare bedroom in the front of the house.

“Is that you, Kay?” she called.

“Yeah.”
Who else would it be?
she thought. If it had been someone else, wouldn't it be at all worrying that a stranger had come into the house and used the shower?

“I've got stuff to make mac and cheese in the fridge. Can you get it started? Dad should be home soon.”

As promised, Dad came in through the garage door just as the casserole dish came out of the oven. Kay had even set the table. They usually managed to eat dinner as a family, however busy they got—that was one of Mom's rules. Conversation involved Mom and Dad trading a few words about work and the standard round of complaints about coworkers and annoyances. Kay mostly tried to stay quiet. Her mind was full of dragon, and she didn't want to let word of that slip.

Inevitably, though, her father turned to her. He was almost the stereotypical picture of an Old West sheriff: tall, broad across the shoulders, straight-backed, and confident. He had a square jaw and bright smile, and his brown hair
was going gray. He even went around in a cowboy hat and boots. The tourists loved him.

“What did you do today?” he asked.

Kay's gut lurched, and she was sure her father would see the lie written on her face. “I just went hiking, out by the Bluebell trailhead.” Exactly the opposite direction from where she'd been, and she could feel the depth of the lie.

“See anything interesting?”

Kay's heart skipped a beat. But she managed to keep her voice steady when she answered, “No. Nothing at all.”

Nothing happened. No one found out. That didn't stop her from flinching every time someone talked to her.

“Hey, Kay. I said hello like three times.”

Startled from her thoughts, Kay looked up to find Tam sliding into the seat across from her, lunch bag in hand. Kay's own sandwich lay uneaten before her. She'd been staring at it while her mind turned.

“Oh, sorry.” Kay forced a smile.

“So, you talk to Jon yet?”

She winced, and Tam looked disapproving. Tam looked about ten years older than Kay felt most of the time: She wore makeup and did it perfectly, her silky black hair always hung gracefully around her shoulders, and even wearing a
T-shirt and jeans, she looked like she ought to be on the cover of a magazine. She made the outfit look sexy instead of just thrown together, which was how Kay felt. Kay's skimpy brown hair never seemed to stay in its ponytail; she was always pushing strands back behind her ears. Maybe she liked being outdoors so much because it didn't seem to matter if you were sweaty, grungy, and not perfect looking.

“I'll give you a hint. Say yes,” Tam said.

“I'm just not sure I want to go to homecoming at all.”

They'd had variations of this conversation a dozen times, and Tam always got that frustrated, motherly expression when Kay seemed to be dragging her feet.

“Come on, you know you'll have fun once you get there. Besides,
I
won't have any fun if you don't go.”

Kay had to smile. Tam's enthusiasm was more than enough to pull her along, if she'd just let it. That was how it had worked since middle school—Kay made Tam go hiking, and Tam made Kay go to the mall or to the Alpine Diner to hang out, or to any of the other things that Kay wouldn't have done on her own. They lent each other confidence, and it had worked. Until Tam started dating Carson. Tam wanted Kay to have a boyfriend, too, and wouldn't listen when Kay said she wasn't sure she wanted one.

“Quiet. Here they come.”

Kay craned her head around to the cafeteria doorway to see Jon and Carson approach. Kay still didn't know what to tell Jon. She tried to act normal, tried not to blush, and
went back to staring at her sandwich when Jon took the seat next to her.

Carson—tall, lanky, with unruly blond hair and a handsome smile—sat next to Tam, and the two started making out. Carson put his arm around Tam's shoulders, she leaned in, and their lips were together. They didn't seem to need to come up for air. They'd been going out for six months now. Tam
loved
having a boyfriend. She thought everyone should have a boyfriend.

Kay and Jon squirmed and didn't look at each other.

When the couple finally broke apart, Tam was giggling. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes shining. Carson looked at her with this proud, possessive expression on his face. They both seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Maybe I should just say yes
, Kay thought.

“I can't
wait
until you guys get written up for that,” Jon said.

“It'll be worth it,” Carson said, grinning. The couple only had eyes for each other. Kay and Jon may as well have been alone.

Tam would have argued that Carson was cuter than Jon, but Kay thought Jon was more natural—more honest. He was fit and tanned from all his time outdoors, and when he listened to Kay, she was sure he was really listening. They had conversations.

At least, they didn't used to have any trouble talking. Now they avoided making eye contact, and avoided looking
at Tam and Carson. There wasn't much else to look at.

Jon shook out of the funk first, focusing on her and donning a bright tone to his solid tenor voice. “How've you been?” he asked.

“Okay,” she said. “You?”

He shrugged. “Okay. I tried calling you yesterday.”

“I got your message. Sorry about that. I went climbing and was gone most of the day.”

“Oh? Where'd you go?”

She wasn't going to be able to keep this secret if she couldn't come up with a good answer to that question. What had she told her dad? “Out by Bluebell. Mostly bouldering. Just messing around.”

“By yourself? You should have called me. I'm always up for climbing.”

In fact, they'd learned to climb together, back when they both ended up in a climbing safety class her dad taught at the rec center. She'd known Jon from school, but climbing gave them something in common. They discovered they had the same passion for it. He was right, she was chagrined to realize. She should have called him. Except that she'd wanted to be alone.

She didn't want to tell him he was exactly the reason she'd wanted to be by herself. “Yeah, I know. Next time.”

That turned the conversation to other topics, like school and parents and next year's college applications. Tam and Carson sat hip to hip, body to body, on the bench at the
cafeteria table, on the verge of kissing again, Kay was sure.

Kay finally ate, managing to finish before the bell rang, and they all had to slink back to class.

Jon touched her arm and pulled her aside before they entered the hallway to the classrooms.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?”

Her stomach knotted, because she knew what he was going to ask. “Just a minute, I guess. I don't want to be late.” She bit her lip.

“I'll try not to make you late. Wouldn't want to get you in trouble.” He smiled a goofy smile.

This was the problem with all this relationship stuff, this boyfriend-girlfriend thing. Why couldn't they just come out and
talk
about it? They could talk about everything else. When it came to this, he got all tongue-tied. They both did.

“You thought any more about it? The dance, I mean,” he said.

She couldn't figure out what to say to one of her best friends in the world. She licked her lips and blurted out the question. “Why? I mean, why me?”

He looked at her sharply, a disbelieving expression. She flushed, her cheeks burning, because she felt like she'd missed something. Like this whole business was obvious to everyone but her.

“You're my best friend. Why would I want to go with anyone else?”

“You don't go to dances with your best friend. Do you?
You go with someone who's pretty or…or…”

“Who puts out?” he said, and she blushed again. “I don't understand why you're so down on yourself.”

She took a breath and looked at him square on, meeting his gaze at last. He had green eyes, a tight smile.

“This is just really weird. I've known you since the fifth grade, and it's not that I don't want to go, or I'd just come out and say it, really I would. But I don't know. I
really
don't know what I want. Sometimes I think you're just asking me because we're supposed to have dates for the dance, and I'm the most available girl you know—”

He held his hands up in a defensive gesture. “Hey, I didn't mean to freak you out or anything. You don't have to say anything. The dance is still a month away.”

She smiled gratefully and felt better, because he sounded like he meant it. No pressure. This probably wasn't the big deal she was making it out to be.

She sighed. “I've just seen what happens when people break up, and they hate each other. I don't think I could stand it if that happened to us.”

“I just want to go to the dance with my friend.”

That made it sound so simple. That's all it was, then. Going to the dance with her friend.

“Okay,” she said.

“Okay? Okay what?”

“Okay, I'll go to the dance with you.” She smiled.

His eyes lit up. He grinned and looked so pleased, she
was glad she'd said yes. He fidgeted, like he wanted to hug her. Boyfriend and girlfriend would have hugged. But they were just friends. So they didn't.

“Okay. Cool,” he said. “Um…I guess I'll see you later then.”

It didn't seem fair, that they'd made this momentous decision and then had to go off to something as mundane as class. “See you.”

He had math in the next hall over and turned in that direction. She had to backtrack to English class. They were both going to be late. Kay was the last one in the room when she slipped through the door.

Before Kay even sat down, Tam leaned over and hissed, “Well? What did he say? What did
you
say?”

Surely Tam could guess what had happened, as hard as Kay was blushing. Kay wasn't sure how to say it. “I—”

Mrs. Ryan stood at the front of the class. “All right, people, we're starting Act Three of
Romeo and Juliet
today, so please open your books.”

Saved by classwork. Tam managed to glare even as she retrieved her book from her pile of belongings. Mrs. Ryan was writing vocabulary words on the chalkboard. Kay hunched over her book to avoid looking at Tam.

Everyone jumped when a howling siren rang out. Dragon-raid drill. Or maybe it wasn't a drill. Someone had found out what happened, one of the dragons, and now they were coming to get back for the one little incursion over the border. One little mistake, and the decades' long peace was over.

Don't stop to look. That was the drill. Go inside if you were outside. Leave your classroom single file, go to the hallways in the center of the building—fireproofed with steel, lined with cinder blocks. Crouch on the floor, arms over your head. If you stopped to look for them, even glancing out the window for a moment, it would be too late.

They did the drill several times a year—every year since preschool—until it was routine. A few kids goofed off, elbowing each other and giggling, and the teachers yelled at them. All of it just like it always was. The only person who was nervous was Kay. She looked down the hall, trying to see where Jon was, but couldn't find him.

Dozens of kids lined the hallway, crouched on the floor, arms over their heads, waiting.

“Like this would even do any good if a dragon really wanted to set fire to the place,” Tam said, leaning over to whisper at Kay. “It's not like anyone even sees them anymore.”

“I saw one,” said a guy named Brad, from her other side.

“Where?”

“In the air, kind of way off.”

“That doesn't count.”

Across the hall, Pete said, “We should just go in and bomb them all. They're just animals, it's not like they can do anything about it.”

But they're not
, Kay almost continued the argument.
They talk. They're intelligent. One of them saved my life
. And
they could be coming right now because she'd crossed the border and broken the treaty. She gritted her teeth to keep from saying anything.

“Then why do we even do the drills, if they're not dangerous?” Tam said.

Pete answered, “I don't know—it's stupid. We've got the air force base—they could just bomb the hell out of the dragons, then we'd never have to worry again.” In fact, jets from the base patrolled the border, flying over the town of Silver River a couple of times a week. It wouldn't take much for them to continue on to the mountains where the dragons lived.

“Quiet!” one of the teachers called to them.

The alarm kept going, and they huddled in rows on the floor. Kay waited for the fires, the conflagration, to sweep over the building.

Nothing happened. It was just a drill. No one had found out about what Kay had done yesterday. She tried to calm down. The alarm stopped after another minute, and everyone filed back to their classes.

The Federal Bureau of Border Enforcement organized and encouraged the dragon alarms. At home that evening, Kay tried to think of a way to ask about what was worrying her, without really asking. Dad was on duty that night, so it was just her and her mother.

“We had a drill at school today,” Kay said, over a dinner of chicken casserole out of a box.

“Oh, was that today?” her mom said, still chewing. “I knew there was one scheduled, but I wasn't keeping track.”

“So it was scheduled. There wasn't a particular reason for it or anything.” No increased dragon activity because of a certain stupid girl getting caught on the other side of the border…

“Yup. It was on the schedule.” Her mother was distracted by food and by the stack of reports on the table next her and didn't seem to wonder that the question was maybe a little strange.

Kay tried to make the conversation sound innocent. “So…why do we even have drills? There hasn't been an attack in, like, sixty years. Does the bureau really think they'd attack now?”

“It's just in case, Kay. We don't know anything about them. They did it before, they may do it again. If someone crossed the border, if they decided we were a threat—we don't even know what they'd consider to be a threat.” Her mother sounded frustrated. “We just have to be ready for anything.”

“Would we ever attack them instead?” Kay asked, thinking of Pete, who wanted to bomb them.

Her mother set aside the packet of papers she'd been reading and regarded Kay. “My job is to uphold the integrity of the border established by the Silver River Treaty. That's the official line, and I'm sticking to it.” She quirked a lopsided smile.

“But unofficially? Do you think we'd ever attack them?”

“What brought this up?”

Kay shrugged. “Some guy at school talking.”

“Repeating what his parents say at home, I'm sure,” her mom said with a sigh. “Some fanatics think we gave up too much territory to the dragons and that we should take it back.”

“But that wouldn't ever happen, right?” Kay asked, suddenly uneasy. They treated the drills like a joke—she didn't ever want to have to do one for real. She tried to think of what a war with the dragons would look like, but couldn't. If that ever happened, Silver River would be in the middle of it.

Her mother went back to looking at the report and said flatly, “No, I don't think so.”