Under My Skin

  "Yeah, but not for the reason you think. I caught the story earlier this morning. The first thing you need to know is this Steve guy isn't dead."

  "But there was all this blood ..."

  Cory waves it off. "Head wounds always bleed like crazy. According to the news reports, he had to get a pile of stitches, a rabies test and a tetanus shot, but he doesn't even have a concussion."

  "But he must have told them it was me?"

  "I don't know," Cory says. "Maybe he didn't. Maybe he did, but they didn't believe him. You're only on the news because you're missing. They think maybe the mountain lion that attacked him dragged you off. Or you ran off because you were scared."

  "I did run because I was scared."

  "That's good. Hold on to that when you're talking to the cops. The best way to lie is to have your story be mostly true."

  I feel a bit sick. I've never been that good a liar. Inside, I'm freaking out. But the part of me that's doing it feels like it's a long way away, deep inside me. Mostly, I'm feeling this weird über-confidence. I mean, I can turn into a mountain lion. Who's going to mess with a kid who can turn into a mountain lion?

  "I've seen that look before," Cory says. "The one that comes after the shock wears off and you start to feel cocky."

  "I'm not feeling cocky."

  Except that's exactly how I feel.

  "Fine," he says. "But just remember. A Taser's going to take you down, whether you're a mountain lion or a kid. A bullet in the head is still going to kill you. When you're in your animal shape, they don't have to rationalize whether or not to shoot you."

  I swallow hard. Shoot me?

  "Who would want to shoot me?" I ask.

  "Cops don't exactly take kindly to mountain lions roaming the streets. And the government is getting real handy with the tranquilizer guns."

  "I thought the government was trying to help the kids who've turned into Wildlings."

  "Sure," Cory says, "They're running those public service announcements about how they should all come in for orientation and training in their new abilities. But not one Wildling that's gone to the government holding facility out on the old naval base has been seen again."

  "You think they're killing them?"

  He shakes his head. "More like studying them. And keeping them locked up so that they're under control. Word is, they're even snatching kids off the streets, or right out of their homes. I've even heard that some of the movers and shakers in big industry are looking to get themselves their own Wildlings."

  "What would some big company want with ... us?"

  The longer I sit here with him, the easier it is to accept that I'm one of them, a Wildling, but I stumble over owning the word. I keep thinking about how Dillon and I have been calling them freaks. And now I'm one of them. A freak.

  "Think about it," Cory says. "People with our abilities would make excellent spies—political or industrial. If you were in charge of national security, or ran some big company, wouldn't you want us working for you?"

  "I guess."

  I pull at the ends of my dreads where they hang out from under the skullcap. This is getting weirder by the minute.

  "Why would a kid want to get involved with stuff like that?" I say.

  "Are you kidding me? For some kids, feeling important and powerful is a rush. And then there are the perks. Grow up in the projects or the barrio, you're going to turn up your nose at a nice apartment, a fancy car, all the money you can spend?"

  "That's not really happening, is it?"

  "Hard to say what's happened so far. This has gone down real fast. We don't know how many kids have changed. It's not like anybody ever got a head count. But it seems like quite a few and, like I said, everyone has an agenda. Take that bible-thumping congressman Clayton Householder. He keeps trying to push a bill through Congress that will put all of Santa Feliz under quarantine, to supposedly contain this so-called disease. Who knows what his real agenda is, but I'm betting it's way off the nut-bar chart."

  "Yeah, some of the kids at school were talking about him like he's really out in la-la land." I give him a careful look before I add, "So what about you? Do you have an agenda, too?"

  Cory laughs. "Of course I do. Mine's to make sure that virgins like you keep yourselves safe from whoever wants to use you."

  "That's it?"

  "I don't have time for anything else. The more kids I can convince to keep a low profile, the less fallout there's going to be about all of this. The cousins aren't exactly happy about having been outed the way we have."

  "You've been around longer than six months," I say.

  It's just beginning to dawn on me what he's been saying.

  Cory grins. "We've been around forever, kid. Dig up the oldest fossil you can find and the bones of a cousin will be lying deep underneath it."

  He falls silent, gazing at the TV, where they're still rehashing the whole Wildlings business. Now they're talking about the Federal holding facility out on the old naval base.

  "I wonder what's really going on in that place," he says.

  "Why should I trust you?" I ask.

  "I don't care if you do or don't. I just want you to think before you start making alliances. And to watch out that you don't get grabbed off the street."

  "This is a lot to process," I say.

  He nods. "Yeah. I get that." He pulls some money from his pocket and tosses it onto the table, then stands up. "I need to jet. Think about what I've said. The best thing you can do right now is convince everybody you never changed."

  "How am I supposed to do that?"

  He shrugs. "Like I said, lie."

  "Wait," I say as he turns to leave.

  He stops and looks at me, but I realize I've got nothing to say. Or rather, I've got a million things to say, but he's obviously got more important things to do than baby-sit me.

  "Thanks," I say. "You know, for everything."

  He smiles. "Be careful," he says. "Keep your head way down. That's all the thanks I need."

  And then he's walking away.

  I watch until the door closes behind him, then I look around the diner, trying to figure out if anybody's paying attention to me. They're not. Or if they are, they're doing a really good job of hiding it.

  Thanks, Cory, I think. Now you've got me completely paranoid.

  That's probably not a bad thing. Not if what he's been telling me is true.

  Finally I leave as well and head for home to face the music.

  Marina

  The swells have been running high all week—not quite overhead, but still sweet—and I'm pumped when I get home from catching a few waves on the early tide. But my mood comes crashing down when I step into the kitchen. Mamá tells me that Josh is missing—she says it's been all over the news this morning. Yesterday evening, some wild animal dragged him right out of his mother's house. His mom's boyfriend was clawed bad and had to be stitched up at the hospital. The cops are still trying to find Josh.

  My Josh.

  I'm so scared I want to throw up.

  I jump in the shower and rinse off quick. Throwing on some clothes, I race out the door, my hair dripping. Mamá calls after me, but I just wave to her and drop my skateboard on the pavement. I head for Josh's house, going so fast I could almost be flying. If anything's happened to him, I swear I'll die. He's everything to me, even though I've never told him so. There's never been the right time and now it may be too late.

  Josh's mom gives me a big hug as soon as I show up. She's trying to hold herself together, but I can see that she's as worried as I am, probably more, if that's even possible. Her usually flawless chocolate skin has a grey cast and there are dark circles under her big brown eyes.

  "Detective Foley," she says to the man in the living room with her. "This is Marina Lopez. She's one of my son's best friends."

  He's a big guy in a good suit who went a little heavy on the aftershave this morning. He probably does it every morning to cover up the fact that he doesn't use soap wh
en he showers. If he even showers. I wrinkle my nose and turn back to Josh's mom.

  "What happened, Naomi? Mamá told me that Josh is missing and that he might even be hurt."

  "When was the last time you saw Joshua?" the cop breaks in, ignoring my question and not giving Josh's mom a chance to talk.

  "Yesterday," I tell him. "We left school together, but he said he was going home. He had to work on an essay that's due Friday."

  "And he hasn't contacted you since?"

  I look from the cop to Josh's mom and shake my head.

  "No," I say, answering him but looking at her. "Please, Naomi. Tell me what happened to him."

  "We don't know yet, honey," she tells me. "Some kind of big cat like a mountain lion broke into the house. It attacked Steve and chased Josh out the door. No one's seen him since and I'm worried sick." She shoots the cop a look. "The police think it must have been one of those Wildlings, but really. What would one of those creatures want with us?"

  It seems that people blame Wildlings for everything that goes wrong these days in Santa Feliz.

  "Ma'am," the detective says, "We've got every spare officer in town looking for your son, but let's not jump to conclusions. You know how teenagers are. Could be he decided to do a little partying after school and never even came home in the first place. Your friend Steve's story wasn't exactly consistent when we interviewed him at the hospital. It's obvious that he's hiding something, so we don't consider him a reliable witness. But we'll find your boy. We'll get to the bottom of this. I promise you that."

  "No way Josh just took off," I say. "He isn't a partier. He doesn't even like crowds. He hangs out with a few people from school and that's it."

  Detective Foley takes out a notebook. "Such as?"

  "Me, our friend Desmond and sometimes Barry or Dillon. If he had other plans, I'd know. He'd never lie to me."

  The cop gives Naomi a wry smile, then tilts his head and looks back at me, a smirk on his face.

  "I hate to break it to you, sweetheart," he says, "but all boys lie to their girlfriends."

  Patronizing bastard, I want to tell him, but I swallow the words and just shake my head.

  "It's not like that. He's not my boyfriend."

  Before the cop can come out with some other snarky comment, the door opens and in walks Josh, wearing a black skullcap over his beautiful dreads and the goofiest outfit I've ever seen him in. He looks like a Walmart special, but at least he seems perfectly okay. I want to throw my arms around him and never let go, but his mother beats me to it and I manage to keep my cool.

  I just smile and lift my eyebrows.

  "Good to see you, Saunders," I say. "Nice duds."

  Josh

  By the time I finish telling my edited version of the facts to the cop, I half believe the story myself. I'm glad that Marina headed off to school. I wouldn't be a very good liar around her. We're so tight, she'd see right through me.

  But I do turn out to be pretty good at it when it counts—or maybe that's something else being a Wildling has given me. There's a bad moment when the detective takes me down the hall to my room for some private questioning. He points to my jeans and T-shirt lying on the carpet and asks me why I wasn't wearing them. Turns out the best way to be believable is to embarrass yourself. Good thing Mom is waiting in the living room.

  "I was just, you know, looking at some pictures on my computer," I say.

  He gets a smirk. I guess he saw the photos of Joanie Jones on my screen when he was first called in to investigate the attack and thinks I was sitting there jacking off when Steve came in my room.

  I go on, feeling a flush darken my already brown skin. "Steve comes in yelling about how I broke his laptop—which I never touched—and he hits me across the back of the head and then all of a sudden this giant cat is all over him and I just took off."

  "Naked."

  "Well, I was still wearing my boxers."

  He nods and writes something in his notebook. Good thing he doesn't check because right now I'm going commando. Cory didn't provide me with underwear and I wouldn't have put on somebody else's old skivvies even if he had.

  "And these clothes you came home in?"

  "They're from a donation box out near the mall."

  Cory said to tell the truth as much as possible and it seems to work. I didn't take the clothes from the box, but that's where they came from.

  The detective nods again.

  "And why did you wait until the morning to come home?"

  "I was scared. I knew Steve was already mad at me. I thought he'd find a way to blame me for everything."

  "But you finally came back because ...?"

  I shrug. "Where else am I going to go? I'm just a kid. And then when I was in this diner, I saw my picture on the news and I thought I'd better come home ..."

  "Tell me about this giant cat. What do you mean? Was it a house cat or something bigger?"

  Somehow I wasn't expecting this question and I'm sure I probably have guilt written all over my face. What do I tell this cop? Again, I think about Cory's advice.

  "It was bigger," I say. "A … mountain lion, I think."

  "And did you see it come in the house?" the detective asks.

  "No. It just showed up all of a sudden. There was no warning."

  The cop looks at me thoughtfully. He makes some more notes, then closes his notebook.

  "I think we're done here," he says.

  I walk with him back out to the living room. Mom jumps up from the couch and I let her give me a hug. She turns to the cop, her arm still around my shoulders.

  "You okay with your boyfriend disciplining your son?" he asks her.

  He says it like she shouldn't be and goes up a point or two in my estimation.

  "What do you mean?" Mom asks, eyes open wide.

  "Well, if you want to press charges for him hitting your boy ..."

  Mom presses her lips together and her gaze hardens. She moves back in front of me, grabs both shoulders and holds me at arm's length. She's obviously waiting for me to tell her what happened. I shake my head.

  "I just want this all to be over," I say.

  "Steve's not going to be a problem," she tells the detective. "Not anymore."

  The detective shrugs. "If your son had any obvious injuries, we would be pressing charges, Mrs. Saunders. It's the law."

  "So would I, officer, but he seems to be all right. For the moment, anyway."

  Mom walks the detective to the door. When she comes back, she gives me another hug.

  "Tell me everything," she says. "God, the things I was imagining ..."

  I feel guilty about lying to my mom, but I've had some practice with the detective, so the story rolls off my tongue pretty easily, even though I'm squirming inside. Mom's always trusted me and I've tried to live up to that trust. But I'm just not ready to tell her I'm a Wildling. Up until yesterday, I thought they were freaks. But now I'm one of them. What does that say about me?

  "Josh, I'm so sorry about Steve. I can't understand what would have gotten into him that he would actually hit you."

  Like I said, she's got this blind spot. I can tell she's feeling kind of mad and depressed at the same time.

  "I swear, Mom. I really didn't touch Steve's computer."

  "I know you wouldn't do anything like that. He's been under a lot of pressure at work, but what he did was completely unacceptable. That's the end of it. He doesn't get a do-over."

  "Thanks. I'm going to go take a shower if that's okay."

  "That would probably be a very good idea," she says, smiling sadly and wrinkling her nose. That's what I get for sleeping behind a Dumpster in an alleyway.

  I grab some fresh clothes from my room.

  When I'm inside the bathroom, I strip down and look at myself in the mirror. I don't look any different. I guess I thought maybe I'd be a little more buff or something, but I'm still the skinny kid I've always been. Or, as I like to say when Desmond rags me, I'm wiry.

  I lean on t
he sink and give my reflection a closer look. Okay. Cory said that you just have to think about it to change. I've been wanting to do this ever since he started filling my head with all this stuff. Is it really true, or just some weird-ass delusion?

  I figure it's safe in here. The window's too small for me to squeeze through, never mind a mountain lion, and the door's locked. Nobody can get hurt.

  So ...

  As I will the change, I keep studying my reflection, looking for whatever telltale sign is going to show it starting to happen. I never get the chance to see it. As soon as I make the decision to change, the mountain lion's face is glaring at me from the reflection.

  I panic, pushing on the sink to get away because, for one long second, I don't realize that's me in the mirror. Me, in my Wildling shape.

  The mountain lion's powerful muscles shove down hard on the sink and the plumbing breaks away from the wall. Water spews out of the broken pipes, drenching me.

  I think the water spraying me in the face is all that saves me from completely losing it. It kicks me out of the mountain lion's point of view and, just like that, I shift back to myself. I scrabble in the debris of the sink, which is half hanging from the wall. Water's gushing everywhere until I finally find the shut-off valves and twist them closed.

  I sit back on the floor, water pooling all around me, my heart drumming in my chest. Then comes the banging on the door that almost shifts me back into the mountain lion.

  "Josh! Joshua! Are you all right in there?"

  It's Mom.

  I look at the mess I've created.

  "Joshua!"

  "I'm okay," I call back. "I was just leaning a little too hard on the sink and it kind of broke away."

  I get up and wrap a towel around myself before I unlock the door.

  "Oh, God," Mom says, taking in the mess. "What were you doing in here?"

  "Nothing. I was just leaning in close and it came away under me. Honest. I'll clean this all up."

  "But the sink ..."

  "I can fix it."

  "When did you become a plumber?" she asks.