Need

  “They’re afraid to admit there are wolves here, but everyone knows it’s true. Anyway, it’s nothing to worry about. Wolves don’t bother people.”

  That’s what I tell myself, Wolves don’t bother people. Wolves don’t bother people.

  It doesn’t help.

  Wolves don’t bother people. Pixies bother people.

  That spider-crawly feeling comes back along the palms of my hands.

  Then I hear it.

  My name.

  “Zara.”

  I stumble a little, trip over a rock or something that’s in the breakdown lane of the road. Why are there no cars out here? Oh, that’s right. Maine isn’t the most populated state in the country, especially Betty’s part of Maine.

  I keep running, picking up the pace, listening. Then I hear it again. It seems to echo off every tree in the forest. It seems to come from both sides of the road, behind me, all around. Still, it is soft. A soft whisper, commanding.

  “Zara. Come to me, Zara.”

  It sounds so cheesy, so much like a bad musical line, that it’s not really that scary. Oh, that’s a huge lie. I’m totally scared. Crap. Crapcrapcrap.

  I wanted this. I wanted to draw him out. But now? Fear pushes my feet faster, makes my heart speed up too fast. It pounds against my chest, trying to escape. But from what? A voice? A shadow? I came out here to find him. He’s found me.

  The truth slams into me:

  I didn’t imagine that man at the airport.

  I didn’t imagine the way my skin felt each time I saw him.

  I didn’t imagine that dust or make up the words in that book.

  The sound of large wings slashing through the air makes me look up. An eagle flies over my head and then ducks into the trees. Its white head gleams.

  “Stupid,” I say. “I’m so stupid. I probably just heard the eagle.”

  If my dad were here he’d laugh at what a wimp I’m being. I laugh at what a wimp I’m being and I keep running. My breath comes out in ragged puffs. I push it in and out, focus on my feet.

  “Zara!”

  I stop. Anger fills me. To hell with wimp. To hell with Booker T. quotes.

  “What?”

  I plant my feet and wait.

  The cold air chills me. I shiver. My hands turn into fists.

  “What do you want?” I yell. “Why are you following me?”

  I force my eyes wide open and look for something, flashing my light around. What am I looking for? Maybe a man? Maybe a man in a dark European suit? Maybe the kind of man who points at planes and makes your skin feel like it has become a spider parade route?

  The forest seems to look with me. Each tree branch reaches out as if trying to sense what is there in the road with me. Then something in the woods moves. I grab a stick from the side of the road, hold it in front of me, and turn to face the noise. The light swings with me and I keep searching. It isn’t a real noise, more like a sense, a feeling of movement.

  “I’m not scared,” I say, staring into the side of the road. “Just come out and talk to me. I’ve been reading about you. I found a book.”

  My voice shakes when I speak. The hand holding the stick is not too steady either.

  “Zara,” the voice says. “Come to me.”

  “Right.”

  “Please.”

  “No,” I say. “You want to talk, you come out here.”

  The eagle screams out a warning.

  Something snaps in the woods behind me, the opposite direction of the voice and the first noise. I twist around, ready for anything—crazy men, wolves, bears, dinosaurs.

  “I know you’re a freaking pixie, and if you think that scares me, you’re stupid!” I yell. “And I know that you’re following me.”

  The woods are silent. The spider feeling goes away.

  “What? You just leave? You’re toying with me? That is so lame.”

  Nothing.

  “If you want me to be your stupid queen you should stop hiding. But I’ve got to tell you something, Mr. Pixie Guy, there will be no more torturing boys while I’m here! Got it?” Anger hits me in the gut and I roar, really, I just roar like some sort of crazy actor in a wrestling match. I scream out my rage in some steroidal guttural way. I came out here because I want to find him, because I want to know what’s real, because I want to stop it.

  Blinding light flashes into my eyes and a MINI Cooper engine roars as it rounds the curve in the road. A horn blares and I jump sideways out of the way and into the ditch. A rock scrapes my cheek. It takes me a second to figure out what happened. I stand up. I’ve dropped the stick. The world waves in front of me, hazy and unfocused. The light falls off my head and I can’t find it.

  “Zara!” Nick slams the door of his now parked car. He rushes to me and stands in front of me. I can’t see his features because of the headlights shining behind him. He is just a massive silhouette, but I’d know that silhouette anywhere.

  “What are you doing out here?” His voice comes out angry.

  My voice is whisper weak. “I wanted to find him.”

  “What?” His hands ball into fists and his whole body quakes. “What the hell is the matter with you?”

  I shrink back. Nobody has ever yelled at me like that. Never.

  He’s so mad, I almost expect him to hit me. I must have swayed because he grabs me, puts an arm around my waist, and leads me toward the MINI.

  “I just wanted to stop it. I wanted to save someone like I couldn’t save my . . .”

  “I’ll take you home,” he says, a lot more quietly.

  The inside of his car smells like him, like pine wood and the sea. I touch my face. Blood covers my fingers.

  Nick grabs a wad of tissues and presses them against my cheek.

  “It’s okay,” I say.

  His eyes tell a different story.

  “Don’t be mad at me.” I move my fingers up to the tissue against my cheek. My fingers graze his fingers. Something electric—good and shocky—surges through me. Maybe he feels it too, because he pulls away. He stares at the blood on his fingers and his jaw hardens.

  “Lock your door,” he orders.

  I do.

  He puts the car in drive and takes me to Betty’s. It doesn’t take long, but he doesn’t say anything the entire way and the silence presses against me.

  Everything inside of me tingles and waits and dreads.

  Next to me, Nick drums his fingers on the top of the steering wheel.

  “You want to tell me what happened out there?” Nick asks.

  I stare out at the road. The moon hangs above us, waiting maybe. The trees are dark. I touch my head where the headlamp should be.

  Finally I say, “I don’t know. I think the pixie guy was out there calling my name, like in some horror movie, and then I yelled back at him, and there was an eagle, and then I yelled some more, and he was gone.”

  “You scared the pixie away? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why did you go out there?”

  “I wanted him to take me. I don’t want you to get hurt or Devyn or anybody. So I figured . . . It sounds so stupid.”

  “You were going to sacrifice yourself to save everyone else?”

  I cringe. “Then I wimped out.”

  Nick pulls up to Betty’s and hops out of the MINI. I unlock my door and he lifts me out, placing both of his big hands on either side of my waist like I’m a little kid or something.

  “I’m fine,” I say, trying to pull away. “I can walk.”

  He arches an eyebrow but lets me go and watches me sway on the driveway. “I think you’ve had a shock.”

  “Well, you almost ran me over.”

  “You were standing in the middle of the road,” he argues, hustling me inside.

  “You were speeding,” I tease.

  I open the door to Betty’s house and turn.

  “I was not speeding,” he says, fixing his hat. It has a big B on it for Bedford.


  “I’m sorry,” I say. And I am. I lean against the door that is quiet and doesn’t complain about things or your behavior or anything like that. Doors are very good that way. Blood has seeped through the tissue. I hold it against my cheek.

  He watches me and doesn’t move. So I add, “I went out in Charleston all the time.”

  “This is not Charleston.”

  I laugh. “That’s for sure.”

  “Zara, this is serious.” He pushes me lightly into the house.

  “Why, because it’s about pixies? ‘Zara, this is serious,’ ” I turn and walk toward the sofa, feeling ridiculous because I’ve totally lost my cool and acted like some diabolical dictator or something, and I’ve got to hold on to some dignity. I plunk myself onto the corner of the couch. I grab onto the armrest. He stays standing. Of course. Not like he’d want to hang out and stay awhile, maybe have some hot cocoa, talk about why everyone in this annoying town is so deranged and paranoid and can run so darn fast.

  “What?” I manage to say. “Aren’t you leaving?”

  “I promised Betty.” His jaw firms up and then he says in a calm but forceful tone, kind of like an actor trying to play a cop, “You can’t go out after dark.”

  “I’m not a boy.”

  “No? Really?” His mouth loosens up. “But you are what the pixie guy wants.”

  “You think so? Then why doesn’t he just grab me? Why does he just call my name?” I pull the tissue away from my face. Blood drips.

  “Maybe that’s the rule. I don’t know. I feel like I don’t know anything.” Nick yanks me up by the arms and brings me into the kitchen. It still smells like spaghetti.

  He grabs a dish towel and shoves it under the faucet, then presses it against my head. The water drips down my face.

  “Sorry. Forgot to wring it out,” he says and blushes, actually blushes, as he wrings it out over the sink. His fingers twist and squeeze the cloth. Then he brings it back up to my skin. His touch is actually almost tender and his eyes seem to soften a little . I stare up at him, leaning against the counter. He is so very close. With his free hand, he cups my uninjured cheek and tilts his head, staring at me, staring into me.

  “I can’t figure you out,” he says.

  I swallow. His eyes watch my neck move and then they harden as they look at the dish towel over my cut.

  “Are you trying to drive me crazy?” he says.

  “No.”

  If I keep my eyes open and take a little time maybe I could figure him out, but do I really want to try?

  Probably.

  “Betty is going to kill you.” His thumb moves slightly against my cheek but it’s enough to make me tremble, and not in a bad way. Something is so going on but I don’t know what.

  I reach out a hand. “I was scared. I was scared before you came. I thought I heard . . . I think I’m going crazy. Does Maine make people crazy? Does the cold or something get into people’s brains and not allow them to think rationally or I don’t know, maybe freeze their neurons or something?”

  I stop talking because even I can hear this sort of hysterical edge taking over my voice. My hands grab onto air, nothing but air, looking for words or something to hold on to.

  He shakes his head and his hair moves in the air the way a dog’s does. “You’re not crazy.”

  “I feel crazy.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s just . . . I don’t know what’s going on. Ask me about the situation in Darfur, I can tell you all about it. You want to know how many people are waiting on death row in the United States? I know that too. But no, I can’t understand why there are pixies in some hick Maine town.”

  “I don’t really understand it either.”

  I sigh and touch my hand to my cheek, then rub it across my eyes. I’m so tired. The floor sways a little and I manage to shuffle into the living room and flop down on the couch. He moves beside me instantly, putting his hand on my shoulder, peering at me. He moved so fast I hardly noticed it.

  “I’m a little woozy,” I say. “Which is probably why I’m acting like . . . like . . .”

  “Woozy?”

  “I know, it’s a dumb word. My mom says it all the time. My mom sent me here, you know. She said that word, woozy.”

  He pulls a wool blanket from the back of the couch. “You miss her?”

  “Yeah. She was spunky before my dad died. I’d like to be spunky. Do you like spunky girls or unspunky girls? I always wondered that. Not about you, but about guys in general. Am I spunky?”

  “You’re spunky.”

  “Yeah, right. I feel the opposite of spunky.”

  “Which would be, what? Spunkless?” He wraps the blanket around me and sits down next to me, right next to me. I move closer to him without thinking about it.

  “I hate this,” he says, “not being able to figure out what’s going on.”

  “Because it makes you feel helpless?” I ask.

  He touches the thread on my finger. “Yeah.”

  “We’ll figure it out.” I inhale the pine smell of him, like Christmas trees.

  “We better.”

  “I was scared,” I say, remembering the voice.

  “You said that.” He puts his arm around me. Right over the top of my shoulders the way Blake Willey did on our first date in seventh grade when we went to see one of the Shrek movies.

  I let him keep his arm there and bite my tongue so I don’t start babbling again. And I don’t think about what Ian would think. Ian, who wants to go out with me. Ian, who, despite his weird friendship with Megan, is always nice, totally unlike Nick.

  Nick.

  Nick has thick dark hair.

  Nick has big chestnut eyes.

  Nick has nice white teeth.

  Nick has a big chest with runner’s lungs so he could huff and puff and blow my house in. And I do not care. I lean in. He’s so cozy warm but I shiver anyway, remembering the woods. My eyelids just don’t want to be open and I really want them open, because Nick is so cute when he isn’t bossing me around.

  “Thank you for getting me,” I try to say. My lips are so tired they don’t want to move.

  “Anytime, Zara. Really. I mean it.” He seems to be smelling my hair.

  “I know you hate me and everything but we should be friends,” I tell him, closing my eyes.

  “I don’t hate you,” he says. “That’s not it at all.”

  “What is it then? Are you a victim of parthenophobia?”

  “Parthenophobia?”

  “Fear of girls.”

  “You are so strange.” He moves back even closer to me, this wicked glint in his eye like he’s trying hard not to snort-laugh at me. His hand presses against the side of my head. Nobody has ever touched me like this before, all gentle and romantic, but strong at the same time. “I’m not afraid of girls.”

  “Then why haven’t you kissed any?”

  For a second his eyes flash. “Maybe the right one hasn’t come around yet.”

  “That is such a line,” I say. I watch his lips. For some bizarre reason I say it again. “We should be friends.”

  “Yeah, we should,” he agrees and something warm seeps over me, making me nestle even closer.

  “I mean, I’m not going to be like one of those annoying women in movies who falls in love with the guy who rescues her, because I don’t think you even rescued me, okay?”

  “Rescued you?”

  My stomach cramps. “Whatever.”

  He starts laughing. I tap him on the thigh. “Stop it.”

  “I can’t.”

  His whole body just bounces up and down and he looks little and younger and cute. Once when my dad and I were watching this silly NASCAR movie my dad transformed like that. It was like he was a little boy all of a sudden and everything he was worried about—like bills, and me, and human rights relief—was all gone, lost in a fart joke.

  Nick takes in a deep breath, so deep I move with it too, since I’m leaning on him. When he exhales he says, softly,
almost so low that I can’t hear it, “I don’t want to hurt you, Zara. I don’t want anything to hurt you.”

  I smile.

  “Good. But I’m not a damsel and there is no distress.”

  Then I fall asleep, which was ridiculously bad timing of course, because the conversation is just getting interesting.

  Philophobia

  fear of falling in love or being in love

  I wake up the next morning in my own bed. Not the couch, but my bed. Which means?

  I’ve dreamt everything!

  Right?

  Wrong.

  My hand reaches up to touch the wound on my cheek. It’s bandaged with gauze and tape. There are marks on my hand from when I broke my fall. They aren’t too deep but they’re funny looking. Sitting up is not easy. All my bones creak and pop like I’ve run a marathon. My abs hurt. I pull myself out of bed and pad over to the mirror. The white bandage almost blends in with my pale face, but not quite. Betty must have bandaged it last night, but I can’t really remember that. I can’t remember Nick leaving. Color spreads across my face as I think about him. Oh God, I asked him to be my friend. You don’t ask people to be your friend.

  Catagelophobia is the fear of being ridiculed. I think this is a very normal phobia. It is a phobia I should actively cultivate.

  “Needy. Needy and pathetic,” I say to my ugly mirror reflection.

  My ugly mirror reflection mouths the same words.

  I yank my fingers through my hair and give up.

  Catagelophobia.

  Why do I care? There is absolutely no reason to care about Nick. He is just a cute boy who almost ran me over in his beautiful MINI. Sure, he smells good—like comfort and warmth and safety, but he isn’t safe. I know that. I know that absolutely. Plus, why would he like me anyway? The girl in my mirror is too pale, too plain, and has a big bandage on her head. I am not exactly supermodel material, or even Megan material.

  I start yanking at my hair, trying not to look at myself, trying not to care.

  Grandma Betty’s hand on my shoulder makes me jump. “Zara?”

  Turning around, I lean against the dresser. I’m afraid to meet her eyes.