Wicked Hunger (17 page)

“I won’t do it. I can’t stay away from her, Van.”

Sudden, consuming fury blossoms in my heart and rips through my veins. When I manage to speak, the words have to squeeze through my teeth and are laden with venom. “So, when you tell me to stay away, I have to do it, but when I tell you to do the same thing, you tell me no? How is that fair, Zander? Explain to me how that’s fair!”

“It’s not fair, but that’s how it is,” Zander has the gall to say to me.

“That’s how it is?” I seethe. Thinking of Noah sitting down across from me, only to be attacked by Ketchup, replays in my mind over and over again. Me running, Ketchup following, his promise and my secret reply, they all scream the injustice back at me. It’s too much.

My fist explodes right on Zander’s jaw. I can see the surprise on his face as he stumbles over the coffee table and lands on the floor. I don’t give him a chance to react. Pinning him down with my knees on his chest and my fist cocked back for another punch, I grab his shirt with my other hand and yank his face up to mine.

“How dare you,” I growl at him. “How dare you refuse to stop seeing her when you made me give up Ketchup! He was my friend since kindergarten and you never said a word about him. Not until I started developing feelings for him did you demand I stop seeing him!”

“I’d never met him before then,” Zander says, blood dribbling from the corner of his mouth. “His parents never let him come to our house. I had no idea I was going to react to him.”

“I don’t care!” In the back of my mind I know he’s right. I still don’t care. “I tried to make it work. I could have kept him away from the house.”

Anger flashes in Zander’s eyes for the first time. “He wouldn’t stay away! That idiot kept coming around, looking for you, stalking you. He was so determined to spend every freaking second with you that there was no way I’d ever be able to control myself when he was always here! I couldn’t be around you when he was there. It was a choice between me and him, your brother or some kid from down the street.”

“If you just would have let me explain to him
…”

“Explain that we’re a couple of murderous freaks who lose our minds and kill people when we get hungry? You want to know what would have happened after you told him that?” He pauses to see if I’ll answer. When I don’t, he continues in a dark, frightening voice. “He would have left you, Van. He would have run and never looked back. At least this way, you still get to keep him as a friend.”

The hand I had been holding ready to slam into my brother’s face tightens, begging me to connect. “That’s not true,” I argue. “Ketchup is the only person who has ever wanted me for me. He wouldn’t have run. We would have dealt with it.”

“No he wouldn’t have.”

“Shut up!” I lower my fist. My head shakes back and forth quickly in an effort to clear my mind and get back to the main point of this argument. “This isn’t about Ketchup. It’s about you and Ivy. I won’t stand by and let you kill her, Zander. I refuse to lose another brother.”

“I won’t stop seeing her. I
can’t
stop seeing her.”

“If I can do it, so can you.” I didn’t get a pass with Ketchup, and neither will Zander.

My brother’s head falls back against the floor. His eyes close, and I swear I can see moisture hovering on the edges of his eyelids. “You don’t get it,” he says quietly. “You were able to walk away from Ketchup because you’re so strong, Van. You can do the hard things. Even the stuff I rail on you about, like having friends instead of keeping everyone at a distance like I do, you do it because you’re strong enough to keep control. You do what I can’t. I refuse to let people in because I know I’ll hurt them. I’m not as strong as you are, little sister. I never have been, and I probably never will be.”

“That’s not true, Zander. You’re the strongest person I know. You always make the right decision. I’m the one with the history, the mistakes, the dozens of close calls. I’m hotheaded and wild. You’re smart and calm. You can do this. Please, you have to walk away from her,” I beg. “You have to stay safe…for me. Please, Zander, I’m begging you.”

“You see yourself in completely the wrong way, Van. How many lives have you saved? How many have I?” His expression breaks and crumbles with some hurt I don’t fully understand. “Yeah, you have a temper, but you’re also the most passionate person I know. I wish I had even a portion of your ferocity. I hide. That’s all I do.”

My fists bang down on his chest. “You’re not hiding now! You’re taking Ivy out to dinner and planning study dates with her!”

“I want to stay away from her, Van, but I can’t. You don’t understand what it feels like when I’m around her.”

“Then tell me!” I explode.

Zander scrunches his face, and says, “Every time I see her, I want to hurt her. My hunger craves her more than with anyone else I’ve ever met. I lied to you when I said it wasn’t any different.”

My hands cinch tighter around Zander’s shirt. He hurries on.

“What is different with Ivy is that I love her more than I want to kill her. Sometimes my hunger flares and it tries to overpower how I feel about her, but she laughs and it pulls me back. As much as I want to sometimes, I could never hurt her. I love her, Van.”

The honesty and ache in his voice finally breaks through my manic day. He means every word of it. My brother loves the girl I am positive is only he
re to destroy us. There is no chance I’m ever going to convince him to walk away from her either. I breathe out a sigh of absolute defeat.

“Does she know?”

“No. I can’t tell her, yet.”

“Don’t.”

“Why?” Zander demands.

“Because…just don’t, okay? I know you don’t believe me, but Ivy is more than you think.”

“Leave her alone, Van,” he demands.

Resentment shoves my hands against his chest, hard. “If you don’t have to leave her alone, neither do I. I won’t let her hurt you.”

Zander doesn’t argue. He glares at me fiercely, silently.

“What is going on in here?” Grandma demands.

Both of us glance over at her in surprise. I didn’t even hear her come in. She looks just as startled as I feel. Her eyes sweep over the scene of me kneeling on Zander’s chest, my hands keeping him pinned to the ground, Zander trying to push me off of him, and both of us looking like we’re ready to kill each other.

“What are you two doing?”

I can see her shock quickly turning to fear, so I push off my brother and stand up. “I was just giving Zander some dating advice.”

“Dating ad
…” My grandma’s face momentarily brightens before going completely white. “Dating? Zander, she doesn’t mean that Ivy girl, does she?”

“I most certainly do,” I say, glancing at my brother with a brutal scowl.

“Grandma, it’s okay. Don’t worry about it,” Zander says.

My grandma doesn’t take orders well. Her cherub features, still holding onto their youth, flash scarlet. “Young man, do not tell me what to worry about. I have seen more, felt more, and lived through more than you can even imagine. I know exactly what I should and should not worry about. You will meet me in the kitchen as soon as I hang up my purse and sweater.”

She doesn’t wait for him to agree. His affirmative “Yes, ma’am” is a foregone conclusion. I screamed at him, hit him, and his only response was anger or frustration. A few short sentences from Grandma and his head drops doggedly. Fear of the little old woman who used to be a pastry chef drags him slowly toward the kitchen.

For an hour, I listen to them argue. It is an eerie sort of fight, one where neither of them actually raises their voice. I can barely hear their argument, but it is fierce and heated all the same. She asks, demands, and threatens my brother. The dangers of letting him see Ivy again are clearer to her than anyone else.

Zander, Oscar, and I aren’t the first in our family to have to battle our hunger. It’s a curse our family has held for endless generations. When it will strike comes randomly, passing my dad and my grandma, but not her father. She was three years old, her mother long gone, when she lost her father. Her last memory of him was watching him gut a young girl he had picked up somewhere on his way home, and seeing the police gun him down in their living room a few minutes later.

Grandma knows the risks, horrors, and pain of what we are, but when she walks out of the kitchen shaking her head and drying tears from her eyes, I know she has failed. Zander won’t give up this one duplicitous girl for anyone or anything. He has chosen the path sure to lead to her death and most likely his as well.

Long minutes later, Zander comes out of the kitchen, stopping when our eyes meet. I stand up and walk over to him. I can’t summon up any sympathy for him, not with thoughts of Ketchup filling my mind. 

“I’ll play nice with Ivy, not because I think you’re making the right choice, but because I believe you that you love her, and because you’re my brother and I don’t want to hurt you. Don’t think this is over, though, big brother. At some point, I’m going to ask you to do something hard for me, and you’re going to do it. No matter what it is, you’ll do it, carte blanche, no questions asked. Got it?”

Zander swallows hard, the only sign he’s ever given me that he might be afraid of something. For a moment, I wonder if he’s thinking the same thing I am, and I’m afraid he’s going to deny me. Slowly, his head nods. “No questions asked,” he agrees, the dread of my unspoken request already hanging over him.

My unconditional promise to answer Ivy’s questions has weighed on me all week, even more than my promise to Van. Not because I fear what Van will ask me to do any more than I fear answering Ivy’s questions, but because I know Van won’t call hers in any time soon. She’s too fixated on Ivy right now. Shocked as Ivy was when Van apologized to her for blowing up in her face, I expected it. When Van gives her word on something, she means it. It’s not always a good quality. Like with her investigating Ivy.

Van must make a pretty good sleuth, because Ivy hasn’t mentioned anything unusual happening with her lately. My sneaky little sister has been nice as can be to her all week. It’s killing her hunger to do it, too. Maybe I should have some sympathy for her struggle, but I don’t. She could always just leave Ivy alone and give up on the ridiculous belief that she’s hiding something. We’ve met in her homeroom twice and talked on the phone several times. She even met me after practice yesterday, and not once have I seen, heard, or felt anything suspicious from her. Unless you count her love of pistachio ice cream. That’s definitely suspicious.

A hand slaps against my shoulder pads, knocking away thoughts of Ivy. “You ready for this?” Samuel asks.

“Yeah, I guess. Los Lunas doesn’t have a very strong offense.”

Samuel shakes his head at me. “How do you stay so calm before a game? I feel like my skin is about to jump off my body. I can’t remember any of the plays, and I feel like I’m going to hurl.”

“You’ll be fine,” I say.

“Seriously, how do you do it?”

I shrug. He scowls at me as he bounces nervously on his toes.

“The pressure just doesn’t bother me,” I say. It’s true, but not in the way Samuel thinks. Pressure definitely bothers me when I sit down for a test. When I get out on the field, though, what do I have to worry about? No one is going to hurt me. No one is going to get past me. I have complete control over my portion of the field. Even knowing the college scouts are going to be watching tonight, I know I’ll impress them.

“I wish it didn’t bother me,” Samuel says. “You may not care what girls think about you, but I do. If I suck out there tonight, my chances of getting Kaleigh Adams to go out with me shrink to nil.”

The sudden desire to tell Samuel that I do care about what at least one girl thinks of me burns under my skin. Maybe I let what Van said get to me more than I thought. Instead, all I say is, “Kaleigh will go out with you either way, Samuel. Just ask her.”

“You think?”

I nod, but anything else I might have said is cut off by the coach calling us to the huddle. He isn’t one for speeches or sappy motivational encouragement, so he keeps it short with a promise that if we don’t play our best he’ll make us run laps until we’re all puking next practice. It doesn’t sound like it would get a bunch of teenage football players excited, but everyone piles out of the locker room on a serious adrenaline high. I jog along behind them, wondering whether or not I’ll be able to see Ivy from the field.

I don’t see her anywhere in the throng of hyped up spectators, but I know she’s out there somewhere with Van. What I do see are two men dressed in slacks and polos carrying clipboards in one hand and cell phones in the other. Their eyes scan the line of players exiting the locker room hungrily. Finally, my pace picks up and excitement starts to creep into my veins when they see me. My mouth splits into a grin. It’s going to be a race to see who can reach me after the game first, Van and Ivy, or the scouts.

When I reach the huddle, all thoughts of girls and scouts are forgotten. It’s time to find the pain. My hunger leaps up to the forefront of my mind, nearly taking control. With the way I’ve been teasing my hunger around Ivy this week, it’s desperate for some nourishment. Not even my nightly forays into the desert to hunt have been enough. It sounds crazy even to me, but I swear my reaction to her gets worse every time I’m near here. That’s not the way it’s supposed to work.

Usually my hunger for someone lessens each time I am around them and don’t succumb, like I’m desensitizing myself. It’s hardly a fast process, given how in the almost three years since meeting Ketchup, my hunger has only gone from an all-consuming need to an intense desire to see him suffer. I don’t know how long it will take before I can be around him for more than five minutes, but for Van’s sake, I’m trying.

As Coach finishes up his last minute instructions, we break away from the huddle and flow onto the field. I’m all focus until I see the runningback across the line. His hands are already shaking, but when he catches sight of me, he flinches. I don’t do it to intimidate him. I simply can’t help grinning, my smile widening when all the blood drains from his face.

Somewhere to my left I hear the center hike the ball. Chaos ensues around me, but not within me. Inside, I am the perfect calm, taking in everything going on around me, and watching the ball get shoved into the trembling runningback’s arms. He blows past the first few defenders, but hesitates before darting to the side. I can almost hear his heart thudding against his chest as he puts everything he has into attempting to get around me. I almost give him some ground, make him feel like he has a chance, but then I remember the scouts.

His eyes widen to the size of golf balls as I barrel toward him. He shoots forward one more time, one saved burst of speed held back for just this moment. It isn’t enough. It never is. One arm clamps around his body, while my free hand swipes across his middle and dislodges the ball. I don’t know where the ball goes. I don’t care. My hunger wants to hurt him, begs me to crush the life out of him. We slam into the ground and skid to a stop. My hunger scrabbles around inside of me, soaking up the pain of the impact, the forming bruises, the struggle to breathe.

My chest is heaving as my hunger continues to rage. I roll away from the runningback and will my body to move farther from him. Not going back to finish what I started is torture. I breathe in, slowly. My eyes close as I focus on not giving in. Remembering my little sister in the stands, remembering what will happen to her if I am taken away, forces a precarious calm over me.

The crowd is screaming and jumping up and down on the bleachers when I stand back up. Someone from Los Lunas must have picked up the fumble. Secretly, I’m glad for their recovery. I’m not that interested in scoring, just in staying on the field. The kid I just knocked the breath out of looks at me in disbelief when I extend my hand to help him up, but he accepts. I haul him back to his feet, holding onto him for a few extra seconds to make sure he won’t topple over again, but also to soak up the remaining bits of pain clinging to him. The ache in his shoulder is the last to fade.

“You alright?” I ask.

“Yeah, I guess,” he says, rolling his shoulder.

“Good. Don’t hesitate next time, okay?”

He looks at me like I’m crazy, blanching at the thought of there being a next time. But there will be. I run back to my position and get right back into the game. The receiver who burned our corner and caught the ball doesn’t get past me. He makes the mistake of trying to break his fall and dislocates his shoulder. Who cares about the points scored, that was the highlight for me. The part of my mind I can actually control felt bad for him, helped get him over to his bench, but the hunger-controlled side ran amuck in celebration of the agony pouring off of him. Stepping away from him nearly broke my will. I was grateful when he was removed from the field.

Every Los Lunas player that touches the ball anywhere near me gets a taste of my power, and my hunger gets a taste of them. I try to take it easy on the quarterback when he attempts to sneak past the line. He probably isn’t used to getting hit. It takes him a few minutes to get back up, but he is fine in the end. The only person I feel any guilt about hitting is the runningback from the beginning of the game. He looks terrified every time he knows the ball is coming to him, but he doesn’t hesitate. Not once out of the eleven times I face him. That almost puts a dent in my hunger. Almost.

I honestly don’t even look at the score board until the game is over. I stare at it as I attempt to rein in my hunger and come down off the high so much pain has given me. I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that we won, but even I am shocked to see 42-10 displayed. I had no idea we scored that many times. Even though I’m pretty sure I scored most of the touchdowns, it just isn’t what I focus on during a game. What surprises me even more is when the Los Lunas runningback jogs over to me at the end and shakes my hand.

“Good game, Zander. I’m gonna be feeling it for a week, but that’s the game, right?”

“Sure is,” I agree. “You played pretty well yourself. Not many players are willing to come at me like you did. You’ve got guts.”

He laughs. “Well, at least next week’s game won’t seem so bad after this.”

I’m sure. I don’t flaunt it, but I know I’m the best player in the state. If he can face me down over and over again and not balk once, he’ll be perfectly fine against anybody else. “What’s your name?” I ask.

“Grady Johnson.”

“Are you a senior this year?” I ask. Out of everyone I tackled today, this kid impressed me the most.

“Yeah, why?”

“Come with me,” I say as I jog to the side of the field. I don’t give him any explanation, but he still follows. He catches up with me a few seconds before the scouts burst through the crowd, headed straight for me. Grady slows. He looks over at me with a questioning look, but I motion for him to keep coming. The scouts look ravenous as they race each other to reach me first. Neither of them even notices Grady at first. They blurt out congratulations and praise as soon as they reach me. I let their eagerness calm down a little before really paying attention to what they’re saying.

“Zander, Alabama has had their eye on you for quite some time now. We could use someone with your ability on our team,” one scout says.

“LSU is very eager to sit down with you, Zander. Coach Feldstein already has a jersey with your name on it ready to present to you as soon as you sign a letter of intent with us.”

The first scout scowls at the second. “Alabama has a full ride football scholarship available,” he throws out haughtily, “and you are our top choice, Zander. We’d love to have you come down and tour the campus, see the dorms where you’ll be living, meet the coaching staff. We can arrange a visit any time.”

Before the second guy can try to one up the first one, I interject. “Sorry, I don’t think I caught either of your names.” They stumble over each other to give me names and cards. “I haven’t committed to any school yet, but I’d definitely be interested in seeing both the LSU and Alabama campuses before I make a decision.”

Their eyes gleam eagerly.

“I’ve still got another year of high school, though,” I remind them. “But if you need someone for next year, I think I can help you out. If you happen to need a runningback, that is.”

Grady, who had been standing there soaking up the fanfare, looking a little unsure of himself, suddenly perks up. His head snaps over to me, clearly shocked.

“Gentlemen,” I say, “this is Grady Johnson, and if you were watching me on defense at all, you should have seen that he was the closest one to getting past me all night. He very nearly got around me a couple of times. Against anybody else, he’s going to get you major yards every time.”

Both scouts stare at me for a split second in surprise before turning their attention to Grady. Stumbling through their first few questions, Grady gets a hold of himself after several minutes and starts talking about his stats, grades, and plans for the future. I stick around long enough to make sure he’s not going to panic if I leave, but after that I turn away with a promise to set up visits with both schools within the next couple weeks. I get detoured a couple more times by my coaches or one of the fans milling around before ducking into the locker room. I think I’ve found a moment of peace despite the celebration raging inside until Samuel plops down on the bench next to me.

“What was the deal with handing the scouts off to that Los Lunas player?”

“He’s a good player. I thought he deserved a little notice,” I say. When Samuel looks at me skeptically, I follow my answer up with another good reason for dumping the scouts. “Plus, I hate talking to those guys. I know they want me to play for them, but I don’t like feeling like a cow they’re haggling over.”

Samuel shakes his head. “You’re nuts, man, but if you were going to shove someone else in their face, I’m shocked it wasn’t me.”

“Hey,” I say, “if you really want to get tackled by college guys twice your size, I’d be more than happy to give you a boost.”