Fairy Tale (5 page)

Eden turns back to me and whispers, "I asked him if he had a spine tumor and he told me you watch too much
ER. "

Tanner waddles back to the front of the classroom and says, "Everyone. This is Pip Merriweather."

A few chuckles. Seriously, though, what would Cam know about a dude like Pip? I look at Eden, hoping she can communicate the answer telepathically, but she's too busy examining this new specimen of male nerdiness. Most of the eyes in the class are fastened on him as he opens his red plastic box and carefully removes a finely sharpened number 2 pencil, then swipes into place a shock of oiled hair that has fallen over his forehead. I think that hairstyle was maybe in vogue when the Pink Ladies ruled the school.

Tanner turns to a sketch on the blackboard again. He barely gets out "The area of a parallelo-" when the door opens and in walks Scab. He has this very serious look on his face and is staring straight at me. What the...? Then he turns to my teacher and holds out a blue slip of paper. Hell.

Aggravated, Tanner snatches it, reads for a second, and then those demon eyes focus on me. Again.

"Didn't you just come from the principal's office?" he asks accusingly.

Double hell.

I nod, since my vocal cords have frozen up.

"Seems you're wanted there again," he grumbles. I can sort of understand his angst, since he's said "The area of a parallelo-" more than any human should have to in a three-minute period. But what can this be? Principal Edwards changed his mind and now has decided to hang me for being three minutes late? Nobody, not even the legendary Frankie Buzzaro, who didn't graduate until he was twenty-one, gets called to the principal's office twice in one measly half hour! I look at Eden, who shrugs, her eyes wide. My knees go weak as I rise, and one of the guys at the front of the class grins at me and slices his index finger across his throat.

BY THE TIME I'm in the hallway, Scab is nowhere in sight. Deserter. I walk toward the office as slowly as possible. There has to be some mistake. Maybe Principal Edwards wants to apologize for Auntie Em's attitude. Maybe they'll feel so horrible for treating me like a felon that they'll give me an award, possibly name a wing of the school after me.

Oh, who am I kidding? I am doomed.

I'm so busy imagining the execution that I don't pay attention when a door swings open. A movement, a blur of red, flashes in my peripheral vision, and I'm snapped into reality when an enormous hand roughly clasps my elbow and jerks me through the doorway of a classroom. As I'm recovering from the jolt and catching my breath, I look up and see Cam.

"What are you-"

He clamps his hand over my mouth. "Shh."

I grab hold of his enormous, sweaty paw and pull it off me. He pulls me into a hug, but his limbs feel stiff. I whisper,"Hey. What is going on?"

"I told you, I had to get some stuff taken care of."

Standing back, I realize he looks terrible. His black hair is uncombed, he's unshaven, and there are rims around his eyes the color of blood.

"Stuff with Pip?"

He exhales deeply and rakes his hands through his hair. "You met him?"

"Yeah. Is he an exchange student from Mars or something?"

He ignores me. "I need your help."

"Okay, I know, I want to talk to you, too." I put my hand on the doorknob. "But I've got to get to the principal's office."

He looks perplexed for a moment, then blocks me from the door. "No, wait. That was me. I had Scab forge a note to get you out."

"You? Thanks for the coronary." I sigh with relief and turn back into the empty room I realize that I've never been in this classroom; there are easels and stools everywhere, and shelves of paints and art supplies. "What for? You look horrible. Did you shower? Weren't you wearing that shirt yesterday?"

"No, listen. This is serious. I need your help/'

I sit down at one of the stools surrounding this enormous wood-topped table, and that's when it hits me. Yes, he was wearing that shirt yesterday.

In my vision.

"Oh, my God," I spit out, surveying the paintings. Yes, they're completely preschool: boring fruit bowls and warped, cartoonlike portraits and landscapes with trees like Popsicle sticks. I mean, yes, my visions are always right. I knew it would happen eventually. I just never thought it would happen so soon. "It's the blackouts, right?"

He nods. He won't look at me.

"The thing on your back?"

His eyes lock with mine. "How long have you known about it?"

"Only since last night." I stand up, position myself behind him, and put my hand on his shoulder. "Does it hurt? Show it to me."

"You don't want to..."

" I do."

I expect a joke, something to lighten the mood. Instead, he turns to me, completely serious. Frighteningly so. "No.
I
don't want to."

"Just show it to me," I tell him, with conviction this time.

Don't show
him you're worried. Don't
let him know how horrible you think it is,
I tell myself. Reluctantly, he wraps his big fingers around the bottom edge of his T-shirt and pulls it up, past the ripple of his ribs, over one of his shoulders.

Don't cry, don't
scream,
I tell myself.

But my visions are always right.

"WHAT IS THAT?" I finally say. Dozens of questions are swirling around in my head, but that's the only one I can manage to choke out. "It's bad, isn't it?" he asks.

"Bad" is an understatement. Just above his shoulder blades, right at his spine, the skin is raised and bumpy, in the shape of an inverted V. His once-tanned, clear back is coated in something waxy, and it all seems to twitch and dance, like it has its own heartbeat. And at the very tip of that V, there's an opening, a small one, a bloody smile. And there's something, a sharp, white sliver, just like a fingernail...
poking out...

I screw my eyes shut and do my best to keep my voice even. "It's not that it's bad, per se... It's just..." What is the word for bad to the nineteenth power? Hideous times a million? Even "the most atrocious thing I've ever seen" seems to miss the mark. I mean, last summer, I was addicted to
Untold Stories of the ER
on Discovery Health. I expected, possibly, to see a golf-ball-sized bump under the skin. Maybe a tennis ball. Not
this.
"What the hell is it?"

He-thank God!-pulls his T-shirt down, carefully lowering it over the disgusting, alien growth, and turns to me. He balls his hands into fists and presses firmly down on his thighs, but not before I see his arms quiver. The rock of Stevens, the Cam Browne who can do anything, is trying to steady himself, and that's enough to turn my own knees to Jell-O. When he speaks, his voice is mouse-like. "How much did you see in your vision?"

"Just this. What happened right now. That's it." I move around him and put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "Did you go to the doctor? I can go with you, if you want."

"Doctor?" He shakes his head. "So you didn't see anything else?"

"Um, no. You
are
going to the doctor, aren't you? I mean, I don't think Ben-Gay has the answer to this one."

"So you don't know about her?"

"The doctor?"

"No.
Her"
he says forcefully, then looks around, inspecting the comers of the room, until I'm sure that the hit he endured during last night's Came must have shaken more than a screw or two loose.

"Her who?" My voice rises to match his. "Is it a tumor or what?"

"No, it's not." He rakes his fingers through his hair again. "Forget it."

"No way. I've never seen you this freaked. Who are you talking about?"

The bell rings. In the hall, doors burst open and stampeding students fill every space. Despite the tongue-lashing I received from Tanner and the knowledge that I'll probably get the same reception from my bio teacher if I don't haul tail to the science wing ASAP, I can't move. But Mr. Freaky Tumor isn't talking. He just looks away, out the window, into the empty quad.

The door swings open. The two of us are still, as if we're posing for a great work of art. Nobody walks into the room at first, but I can sense someone fidgeting in the doorway. Then a soft voice says, "Is everything, like, okay?"

I turn and see a familiar, timid creature, clutching her books against her chest. I think it's the freshman that got me my fries at the Came yesterday. Casey. No, Katie. I want to say, "Sure, everything's fine," and flash a big smile, but I can't will my mouth to do either of the above. It just hangs there, so stroke victimesque.

"Geez, Morgan, you're red! I can get you some water!" she peeps, dropping her books on the table and scurrying out the door.

I walk so that I'm standing above Cam, so close I can rest my chin on the top of his head. I put my hands on his shoulders and force him to look up at me.

"Her who?" I repeat, louder and slower this time.

"Shh, she can hear."

"Cam, we're alone."

"You saw Pip, right? Did he have something with him?"

Though I have no idea what that greasy fellow would have to do with anything, I feel the need to just play along with my nut-job boyfriend, if only to keep him from running down Main Street naked with a colander on his head later in life. "Urn, yeah. He had a pencil box. And his lunch. Well, I think it was his lunch, but he seemed a little whacked about it."

He's silent.

"But what about that guy
isn't
whacked?" I add, tittering nervously, and immediately want to kick myself! I never titter! Why can't he just crack one of his stupid jokes and put me at ease? As I quietly curse this new, more intense version of Cam that is reducing me to behaving like a four-year-old girl, I notice something. There's a brand-new expression dawning on his face. It's... fear. "Urn, it isn't his lunch, is it?"

"Not even close. Does he have it with him?"

Oh, God, it
is
a severed head. "Um, no. We put it in his locker."

"You
what? "
He looks at the clock, grabs my hand, and pulls me up. "Go to your class. All hell is about to break loose, and I don't want you to be in the middle of it."

"What? No. What's going on?" He's pushing me toward the door, but I resist, trying to dig the heels of my Sam & Libbys into the linoleum.

Just then, Katie rounds the comer, out of breath, a Dixie cup in each hand. She stops short, and before I can react, my chest is covered in something wet. Katie stands there, mouth open like a goldfish. It takes me a moment to realize that (a) it's ice-cold and (b) it's not water; it's some hot-pink stuff that looks sort of like watered-down Pepto. It's like Barbie threw up all over my white cashmere sweater. Blast. "What is that...?" I ask amid the endless apology that's flowing, like a volcanic eruption, from her mouth.

"Hi-C. You looked like you could use something, um, stronger," she squeaks, and then straight back to the regularly scheduled "I'msorryl'msorryI'msorry."

She produces a balled-up Kleenex from her backpack, and as I'm dabbing away at my sweater, I say, "Cam, just let me help-"

But that's when I realize that Cam is gone. Standing where he once was is a painting on an easel-an arrangement of daisies, or a bunch of eggs sunny-side up. Or maybe a portrait? If only that were the most confusing thing on my mind.

So rather than get my second tardy of my school career on the same day as my first, I report to bio as scheduled. Then, I quickly fake a case of massively full bladder and ask Ms. Simpson if I can use the lav pass.

I pace back and forth at Pip's locker, not because I have any clue what is going on, but because I figure that, based on our completely cryptic conversation, if Cam was going to be anywhere, it would be here.

But he's not.

Blast.

All hell's going to break loose.
What did he mean by that? He obviously seemed concerned about the thing in Pip's locker. So what can it be? A weapon? Drugs? I haven't yet ruled out the human head, either.

Gah. I don't care if it is a human head. I need to know.

I close my eyes and mouth the word "Fluffernutter" a couple of times, but the beating of my heart drowns out the sound. "Show me Pip," I say.

But nothing comes. A minute passes.

I open my eyes and realize I'm clutching the wooden lav pass so tightly in my hands that splinters are stalling to prick my palms,

This isn't working,

Fine. I take a quick look down the hall and, seeing no one, fix my hand on the dial. The first number was twenty-eight, I think, And
...
twelve? I need to start taking ginkgo biloba.

But that's when I hear it.

It starts like a scratching, like the sound of a cat sharpening its claws. At first I think it must be coming from the room behind the row of lockers. Then, the rub-rub-rubbing noise intensifies, to a tinny banging.

Something is inside. Something alive.

That's impossible,
I tell myself. Still, my hand is frozen on the lock. Something tells me that Cam is right, that all hell might be breaking loose... out of this locker?

And, if so, I'm going to be in the middle of it.

I drop my hand to my side and back away, and as I'm turning to run, I hear it.

A voice, a whisper. But not a sweet-nothings whisper; more of a subhuman hiss.

"Let.
...
me
...
out..."

AS I'M RACING down the hall, thinking how nice it would be to be safely ensconced in Ms. Simpson's class, learning about the mollusk phylum, I turn a comer and careen headfirst into Pip and Cam, who, judging from the fact that Pip's breathing like a woman in labor, must have been running toward me.