Under My Skin (Wildlings) (10 page)

"Unless I pull the same thing again. Then my ass is grass."

"Are we practicing tonight?" Marina asks.

"Why don't we go to the skate park first?" Desmond says. "Everybody cool with that?"

My phone vibrates in my pocket as Marina, Desmond and I walk out the front door of Sunny Hill at the end of the day. It's a text from Elzie:
Wanna hang?

"You guys mind if Elzie tags along?" I ask.

I catch Marina's frown, but all she says is, "Has she got a board?"

"I can lend her my spare."

She rolls her eyes at that.

"Come on," I say. "Give her a chance."

When she puts her hands up in surrender and nods, I turn to Desmond.

"This isn't going to be a boyfriend-girlfriend thing, is it?" he asks. "Because that leaves Marina and me as the other couple."

Marina makes gagging sounds.

"Nice," he says.

"No, we'll just hang," I assure them.

"What the hell," Desmond says. "I'd like to check out the hot Rasta Wildling."

Marina and I both shush him at the same time.

"What?" he says. "Oh yeah." He looks around. "It's cool. Nobody's listening."

"You have to be more careful," Marina says. "If you out somebody, it won't be a joke. You could be screwing up their whole life."

"I know, I know. But why can't this be a cool thing? If it was me and I had to keep it a secret, I think I'd explode."

"I know what you mean," I say as I text Elzie back. "It shouldn't have to be a secret."

My phone vibrates almost as soon as I've sent the text. I smile when I read her reply.
Kiss kiss. c u @ your place.

I know I shouldn't read too much into it, but I can't help but get a little buzz.

"What's with the goofy grin?" Desmond asks. Then he shakes his head. "Aw, man. Did she just sext you? Tell me she didn't just send you a naked picture of herself."

"Mind out of the gutter," I tell him.

Marina just shakes her head. I hope my being a Wildling isn't what's distancing her. She's hard to read these days.

Marina

I'm glad to grab an hour at home before we meet up at the skate park. I need a distraction from the Josh-and-Elzie thing anyway.

I haven't had time in the past couple of days to work on my blog and with so many kids following me, I sort of feel like I've been abandoning them. Not that all of them are Wildlings, but even so, it's better to give some genuine perspective on what it's like to have changed than what the media's been putting out. That's been getting worse every day.

It's pretty amazing how alone being a Wildling can make you feel. Maybe I'm nuts to post on the Net about it, but I've been careful to cover my tracks, and what I'm writing is obviously helping some kids who've been having a rough time.

It became pretty clear when I started that a lot of them didn't have the benefit of someone like Jez or Chaingang to give them advice. I'm kind of trying to fill that gap.

What worries me is that I think some of the kids who've posted comments regularly have since disappeared. At least, they're not posting comments on my page anymore. Those government ads give me the creeps. And now, hearing about how this guy Danny turned out to be a traitor, I figure it won't hurt to give kids another warning about not necessarily trusting other Wildlings.

So I dash off a quick couple of paragraphs—not naming any names, of course— and take another ten minutes to respond to some of the latest comments.

Then it's time to head for the skate park.

I tilt my head from side to side trying to get the tightness out of my shoulders. I knew this was coming—that sooner or later I'd have to witness Josh and Elzie up close and personal. But I didn't think it would happen this fast. I roll down the street, my wheels skimming along on the smooth pavement. As they say, know your enemy.

That's not really fair, but it feels like it's true all the same.

Josh

I see a girl with a short buzz cut waiting out in front of my house when I turn the corner onto my street. She's wearing a Big Daddy Roth T-shirt, a jean miniskirt and short pink cowboy boots. It takes me a moment to realize it's Elzie.

"What happened to your hair?"

She shrugs. "I needed a new look. What do you think?"

"You look great. But what happened to lying low? Isn't the FBI still looking for you?"

"Hence the disguise," she says.

"But those dreads. They were so serious."

"It's just hair. I can grow them back." She hugs me and gives me a quick peck on the cheek. "Did you miss me?" Before I can answer, she adds, "Because I missed you."

I blink in surprise and she raises an eyebrow.

"I'm confused," I tell her. "I mean, yeah, of course I missed you. But I thought—where are we going with this?"

"I don't know. Let's just see where it takes us. Are you okay with that?"

The whole day I've been up and down. Buzzed because of the amazing night we had, bummed because I thought I was maybe never going to see her again. And now here she is, acting like my girlfriend. I don't know what to think. But I'm not about to walk away from her.

"Of course I'm okay with it." I clear my throat. "So do you want to use my spare board?"

She nods. "But my moves are going to be a bit rusty."

"Nobody's going to care," I tell her. "We just skate to have fun."

With the way Marina's been acting lately, I'm nervous when we get to the park. Normally, I'd never worry about how she'll be around people, but she's got such a bee in her bonnet about Elzie that I'm half-expecting fireworks when I introduce the two of them. But something funny happens. They say hello and shake hands, then they just stand there, still holding hands, looking like they're trying to read each other's mind. Finally, a little smile tugs up the corner of Elzie's mouth and they step apart.

"Nice boots," Marina says. "Where'd you get them?"

"The thrift shop."

"No way. Those are Fluevogs. They're worth a fortune."

"You can get all kinds of deals there," Elzie says. "You just have to go in on a regular basis. Let me know if there's anything you're looking for and I'll keep an eye out for it."

I sigh with relief. If they're talking shoes, it's going to be okay.

Desmond wheels up and pops his board.

"This is Desmond," I say. "And this is Elzie."

Desmond gets a puzzled look. "What happened to the dreads? I thought you were a Rasta girl."

 Elzie shoots me an amused look. "I was never a Rasta girl."

"Don't mind him," Marina says. "He always has to reduce everything to its most basic element. Since your dreads are gone and you've got a board, he's probably going to start calling you skater chick."

Desmond sticks his nose in the air in an exaggerated pose. "Would not."

Marina looks at him. "So you don't call me drummer girl when you're hanging with your skater buddies at school?"

"Are we going to talk," Desmond says, "or are we going to skateboard?"

We skateboard.

There's always someone with an iPod dock blasting out music here. Right now it's cranked to an old Jay-Z song. We couldn't be farther from New York City than we are at this moment, but everybody sings along with Alicia Keys on the chorus.

I ask Elzie at one point what happened there when she and Marina were first saying hello.

"Girl stuff," she says and that's all I can get out of her.

But later on I see the two of them, heads together, having what looks like a serious conversation. This time I don't ask.

Marina

As much as I don't want to like Elzie, I can't help but feel her charisma as soon as she grasps my hand. Worse, as soon as she looks at me, I just know that she can see the otter sitting under my skin. My pulse goes into double time, like my big bass drum is pounding right inside my chest. I'm so sure she's going to out me to Josh and Desmond, but she's cool enough to not blow my cover and never says a word. Her eyes just flicker with recognition, but the expression's gone so quickly that I doubt Josh has noticed anything unusual. Unless, that is, two girls holding hands for this long makes him wonder if we've got the hots for each other.

I smile to myself. Now wouldn't
that
be ironic?

But of course, it's not that at all.

Later on, we take a breather on one of the benches while the boys are showing off.

"How did you know about ... you know?" I ask.

"That you're a Wildling?"

I nod.

"I just did. It's like I get a little
ping
in my head whenever I meet someone who's got an animal skin under their human one."

"It just happens?"

She shrugs. "You have to learn to pay attention and work at it a bit, but it'll come quick. Any Wildling can do it."

"I don't know …"

"Trust me," she says. When I still look dubious, she adds, "Have you never gotten a little twinge at the back of your neck when you first met someone, or even just saw someone?"

"I guess that happened earlier, when we met. I didn't realize it was because you're a Wildling."

"Well, that's your animal self sending you a message. And now you know what it means."

"Can Josh do it?"

"Sure. To some degree."

"Then how come he doesn't know about me?"

"He's too close to you. Your smell is familiar to him. If he concentrated, he might figure it out, but he doesn't try because he knows you so well. Maybe if you'd changed after him, he'd notice, but you've been a Wildling for a while. He'll pick up on it a lot quicker with strangers than with anyone he knows."

Okay, I think. So I'm safe for now.

"But now I've got a question," Elzie says. "I got the impression from Josh that you guys are all really tight. So why haven't you told him?"

"It's complicated," I say. "I don't know. All the negative crap on the news and stuff about Wildlings had me scared, I guess. Especially about Desmond. You can see that he's a doll, but he's not exactly the most inhibited person on the planet. He's hot-wired for excitement. Fun as hell to hang out with, but a bit unpredictable when it comes to keeping secrets."

"Okay, but why not tell Josh? He's so cool. You must know that he'd be totally down with it."

Elzie's persistence forces me to think fast. I don't want to reveal my true feelings toward Josh, so I do my best to brush her off.

"Yeah, but we're like The Gang of Three, you know? It wouldn't be fair to tell Josh and not Des. I was going to get around to it sooner or later, but the time just never seemed right and now that Josh has changed … well, I'm kind of screwed. He told Des and me right away, so I know he'll be pissed as hell that I didn't do the same."

"You've probably got that right, girlfriend," she says, giving me a quick one-armed hug. "Hey, don't worry. Your secret's safe with me. I wouldn't want to get in the middle of this one anyway. Way too messy for me."

Then she tosses her head back as if she's still got a mass of dreads and gives a little laugh. "Let's not give the boys any more suspicions about our girlish love than they already have."

She flips the board back on the ground and zooms back over to Josh, giving him a swaggery little hip action on her dismount followed by a playful smooch. Her tongue darts into his mouth and I see him almost shudder with pleasure.

This is going to be hard.

Josh

It just seems natural that we all grab a bite together after and that Elzie comes along to our band practice.

I take Marina aside before we go in the garage.

"She's not going to Yoko Ono the band," I say.