“He’s already been researching,” she says. “And Nick? Should we tell him?”
“Is he stable?” He looks up from his phone.
The word makes no sense, so I repeat it. “Stable?”
“As in mentally sound?” Astley clarifies.
“I think so. He’s back from the dead. He’s not in need of medication or anything.” Pain wells up inside my stomach, but something else does too. It’s a little knot of willpower or strength or something.
Astley nods. I let Issie text Nick because he obviously doesn’t want me to have anything to do with him anymore. We all agree to meet up at the Maine Grind, this little coffee shop on Main Street that’s all orange and purple funkiness. As soon as Astley leaves, Issie climbs into the truck and puts her hand on my arm.
“It’ll be okay, Issie. Whatever those giant things mean, it’ll be okay,” I say as I turn on the ignition.
“That’s not it. I mean, yeah, I’m freaked, but I wanted to tell you something.” She pulls her hat down a little lower over her ears, but her door is still wide open.
“About Nick?”
She shakes her head. “About Astley.”
I wait for it. People straggle to their cars. The parking lot is so empty.
“He’s in love with you.” She watches my face and says all mock angry, “Do not roll your eyes at me, young lady. He is. And it isn’t some weird I-am-a-pixie-king-and-you’re-my-queen love. It’s like Willow and Tara kind of love, like Spock and Kirk, like Jack and Kate on Lost, like Princess Leia and Han Solo or Olivia and Peter on Fringe.”
I have no clue about half of the characters she is referencing, so I close my eyes and lean my head on the steering wheel. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Because of Nick?”
I shrug. “Not even that. Because everything is insane. Because there are giants in the woods, monsters in closets, the end of the world waiting to happen. Boys do not matter now. Surviving matters.”
She shuts the door, keeping out the cold air. “Zara White, since when has love ever not mattered?”
BEDFORD FIRE DEPARTMENT
Personnel responded to a reported fire in the woods near Bedford High School. Evidence of a fire was apparent, but the state fire warden will have to investigate due to no obvious incendiary devices in area. If you have information, please contact the office.
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I have to drop off Issie at her house so her mom can verify she’s in one piece and force her to do her homework for an hour. Then we all meet at the Maine Grind on Main Street. Main Street in Bedford is two blocks of mostly two-storied brick buildings, half of which are closed down with giant FOR LEASE signs on them. Insurance companies dominate one end. The other end has retail shops, nonfactory stores, a health food store, the Grand Theater, a diner, and the Maine Grind. The coffee shop used to be the Masonic temple and the new owner has tried to liven up the steady squareness of it by painting the pillars by the door purple and orange and funkifying the bricks with gold-foil stuff.
Cassidy and I drive over together and the whole way she keeps her hand on my forearm. I know this is her way of “reading” me, which is basically her psychic energy trying to see things through my energy. This sounds hokey, but it’s actually pretty cool. Cassidy’s whisper-small voice makes me turn the music way down because I don’t want to miss anything she says. Right now it seems like she wants to say something important but can’t gather up enough courage to do so. The cue to knowing this is how she keeps opening and closing her mouth.
It’s not till I’ve made my fifth attempt at parallel parking Betty’s truck that Cass inhales so loudly it makes me look at her. Tears are peeking out the corners of her eyes.
“What is it?” I ask, putting the truck in park and double-checking that there’s enough space behind the hybrid in front of me. “Cassidy?”
She doesn’t answer, just slowly moves her hand off my forearm and clasps it in her other hand, almost like it hurts her or something. “I don’t want to tell you.”
“Cass,” I try again as her braids swing down, obscuring her face. I move them to the side and kind of hold them there so I can see her eyes. “What is it?”
Every motion she makes is tired, slow, like an elderly arthritic woman’s or someone who has the flu. Her eyes meet my gaze and I swallow hard because her eyes are so terribly, terribly sad.
“Death.”
“Mine?”
She nods.
I want to drop her braids. I want to scream in frustration or run or hide or something, but I just sit there and wait despite the fact that it feels like my stomach has transformed itself into a giant glob of mud.
Instead of doing any of that drama-queen stuff, I say, “Do you have any details?”
“They are horrible.”
Snow trucks down out of the sky. Sometimes I forget to notice it—all the coldness, the way it’s like a shroud. I notice it now.
“Tell me anyway, Cass,” I say as the car engine makes a funny clicking noise, which is weird since I turned it off already. I don’t understand cars. “I can take it, Cass. If you saw it, you saw it for a reason, so just tell me, okay? It’ll be okay.”
My reassurance sort of works, I think, because she nods fiercely like she’s summoning up her will for real this time.
“There’s blood. You’re in Astley’s arms and he’s burning too, but just wounded, and you aren’t you anymore. Curtains fall down.” She closes her eyes. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you.”
“No,” I offer. “No. You should. We need to know anything we can about what’s happening. Any hints are good, even if it’s a bad hint, you know?”
She nods quickly and I let go of her braids, unlock the doors to the truck. The mechanism makes a popping noise. I search for another one of Astley’s iron-resistance pills and pop it in my mouth. Iron is poisonous to pixies. Just being near it—like in a car—gives us headaches. Luckily, Astley’s people have developed a pill that lets us tolerate it. Still, my head hurts a bit and it’s hard to focus for a second while the pill kicks in. Maybe it’s the fact that people are predicting my death. It’s only four o’clock, but the light is fading as a mom hurries down the street, clutching her toddler’s hand. As we get out of the truck, the mom looks from one side to another like she’s expecting to be killed right there. A white police car trolls down the road, snow flipping out from beneath its moving tires. It’s Detective Small. She waves. We wave back. I can feel the pill reach my stomach and settle there, and I turn back to Cassidy as I press the fob to lock the truck.
“Is it soon?” I ask her as I step over some snow slush on the sidewalk. “Do I die soon?”
“Yeah,” she says. “I think it’s soon.”
“Do you know where?”
She shakes her head. “It’s dark. There’s a curtain that hangs to the floor. Other than that, nothing.”
“Well,” I say trying to be lighthearted for her sake. “I’ll avoid all places with curtains.”
“Zara, this is serious.”
I clear my throat. I know it’s serious. “We aren’t telling anyone else about this.”
“But—”
I interrupt her. “Seriously, Cass, they’ll freak. It will get us all unfocused. You know how we go off on tangents. The other day Issie talked for twenty minutes about what we should call ourselves. She wanted a group name, remember? And then there was that time that Devyn started explaining chaos theory.”
She stops on the first step to the coffee shop. Her hands go to her waist and she glares at me, her voice hard to match her no-nonsense eyes. “You dying isn’t a tangent.”
“Well,” I say, stepping around her to pull open the door, trying to ignore the horrible feeling of doom that seems to be crushing my kidneys into my spine, “yeah. Am I the only one?”
“What?”
“The only one who dies?”
“No.” She sighs. “I don’t think so.”
Nick, Devyn, and
Issie are already waiting inside the Grind, sitting on two leather couches, sipping drinks. Nick gives a little wave like he never told me I was soulless. I give a little wave back because it’s more mature than giving him the finger. I’m a pixie queen now.
Is holds up two Super Juices, which she’s already bought because she knows that Cassidy and I don’t do coffee. It makes both of us wacky-hyper. While we wait for Astley and our pixies, we settle in and start talking about the giants, what Cass just saw, what steps we need to take to stop the apocalypse and deal with the crazy pixies who are tormenting our town.
It isn’t nice coffee-house chatter. Throughout our entire conversation Jay Dahlberg keeps making eyes at us. He’s sitting with Callie and Paul, Cierra, and some other people from school like Austin and Danielle, who I don’t know that well. Callie’s got her Mohawk bejeweled with some crystals and Paul’s rocking a new surfer-boy haircut. Cierra’s touched up her roots. For a second I’m almost jealous that they have time to deal with their hair, but that’s just wrong of me. I’m happy for them.
“Something is going on over there,” I whisper to Issie.
Nick looks up. His gaze meets Jay’s and Jay stands.
Jay’s blond hair flops over his eyes, shading them a little bit. He grew his hair out after he was kidnapped by evil pixies. It’s hide-me hair, not teen-idol, pop-star hair, although it’s the same kind of trendy cut. He walks over and leans on the coffee table, making direct eye contact with me now instead of Nick. “I remember things.”
The air goes still. The only noise is some background hum of coffee and espresso machines, the mechanical droning of refrigerated display cases and the music. It feels like my entire body is shaking, but it isn’t. My stomach lurches and I get this image of Astley grimacing. He’s so late. I hope he’s okay. It doesn’t feel like he’s okay, and I start thinking about Loki and frosty giants, Cassidy’s prediction. That kidney-crushing feeling inside me gets worse.
Jay’s voice snaps me out of my worries. It is low and urgent as he says it again. “I remember that you were there, Zara. You saved me from those—those things. You got me out of the house.”
Issie’s hand goes to my arm, and I think she’s trying to be reassuring because we both know that now I am one of those things.
Earlier this year, Jay was kidnapped by my biological father. He was tortured and bound to a bed where pixies fed on his energy—his soul, basically. We rescued him from this hellish pixie house in the woods, Devyn and Issie, Betty, Nick, and me. He didn’t remember any of it.
“It’s not just that Jay is remembering what’s happened to him.” Callie clears her throat. She meets my gaze. I resist the urge to look away. “We saw you take that guy out the other night after the dance. That wasn’t playacting and it wasn’t because he hit on you. Those were mad fighting skills, Zara. Mad. Fighting. Skills.”
Austin does this weird male-posturing thing where he lifts up one leg and puts it on the coffee table and then he goes, “And that’s just weird, Zara. You’re all Miss Pacifism, Amnesty International, write letters for political prisoners, end all war, and there you are just whaling on somebody?”
None of us say anything. Cierra and Danielle hang back watching. Winking, Paul reaches over and takes a sip of Cassidy’s drink. “You mind?”
She shakes her head.
“Thanks.” Paul puts it back. He’s like that—always in everybody else’s stuff. Nobody thinks anything of it anymore. He crosses his arms over his chest. “If we’re in danger, we should know. If you know something, you should tell us. It’s your responsibility to tell us.”
And it is. It is our responsibility. Would I want to be in the dark while pixies were running around? Is it fair to not tell them? Honestly, though, I’m not sure of the implications of telling. I’m not sure if it will make them safer or make them panic, and we don’t even know for sure everything that’s going on.
I look up at Dahlberg. He’s so sweet looking still, but his eyes are wounded and half dead. When he couldn’t remember what had happened to him I thought that was good, keeping him safe and sane, but maybe the not knowing is haunting him anyway, killing him slowly with partial images and questions. I touch the tip of my juice bottle with my finger for reassurance and then lock eyes with him. “Are you really starting to remember?”
He closes his eyes after a second and swallows so hard that his Adam’s apple visibly moves up and down his throat. “I remember teeth, being trapped on a bed. I remember you bringing me down these ornate marble stairs through all these monsters. There was a wolf and a tiger out in the cold. I know it sounds crazy but I also know that you saved me from something, Zara. I am positive you did.”
Devyn leans forward on the couch. I nod at him. Nick clears his throat and I can tell just by looking at him that he’s okay with this. The decision is made. I wish Astley wasn’t late so he could know too.
“Maybe they can help,” I say to Nick, even as a knife seems to stab into my stomach. What is that? It’s all I can do not to crumple over. I soldier through it and say, “We can’t do it all by ourselves. Not even with Astley’s people. It’s just too big.”
“I know.” He motions for Paul and Cierra, Callie and Danielle, Dahlberg and Austin to pull up some chairs.
My stomach sort of flops around inside me. If we tell them, then their innocence is gone—just gone. Their entire perception of the world will be shattered. If we tell them, they could potentially tell other people, who could tell other people, and more and more regular human beings will know that the world isn’t anything like they thought—that there are secrets lurking right next to them, predators that look human but have needs, horrible needs.
“Oh my gosh …” Issie looks at me. “Is this kosher?”
I nod. Cassie swallows hard. She grabs Issie’s hand. “It’s the right thing to do. It’s better for them to know what they face.”
“But it could go viral.” Issie makes big eyes. “The whole world could know.”
“That’s the risk,” I say. “It’s a big risk.”
They quickly pull the chairs up to the table and once they are settled it is Devyn’s turn to clear his throat.
“Okay,” he begins, “we don’t know everything and it’s going to sound unbelievable but this is what’s happening. There are these things called pixies …”
They listen. They gasp. But I know as I watch them that they believe.
There’s a time when you’re super-little when you don’t really know yet that bad things exist. It’s before that first bully pushes you down on the nursery-school floor and says something like “I’m a lion and I’m going to eat you up.” It’s before that first-grade teacher puts you in timeout for talking, even though you weren’t talking and it was actually Stephen Sills. It’s before you see your best friend’s dad punch her mom. That’s when you realize people aren’t always good.
It is not a good realization. It is gaunt and tangled, a sucker punch to the stomach, the last breaths on Heartbreak Hill while running the Boston Marathon kind of realization, and it hurts and resonates all of your life and here we are—Nick, Devyn, Cassidy, Issie, and me—giving Jay and Paul and Austin, Cierra, Danielle, and Callie that same horrible sucker punch, watching them realize that the entire world is not what it seems, that there are secrets, dangerous secrets, out there lurking.
Sweat beads on Paul’s forehead, Austin’s face turns beet red, and poor Cierra is slowly rocking back and forth in her chair while Danielle pats her back. Callie looks like she wants to kill people. And Jay? His entire face is closed and hard.
Finally Devyn finishes our story, and we wait for their verbal reactions. Across the shop, some lawyer-type person orders a triple-shot espresso to go over at the counter.
“Well,” Callie says as she leans back in her chair and fiddles with an earring but keeps her gaze strong and steady on us. “Wow.”
Is blurts, “You’re going to accept it, just like that?”
I open my eyes again.
Paul lifts up his hands and sort of shrugs like he’s already getting used to the idea. I wonder for a second what he’d think if Cassidy just told him he would die soon. Would he shrug then too?
Danielle speaks first. “All my life I’ve felt like there was something else going on. Something lurking. Something—oh, I don’t know—something that was here that I just didn’t know about. Now, I know.”
“That’s how I used to feel,” Cassidy agrees. “I even told you that one time at the bowling alley. Remember, Zare?”
I nod and give her a smile. It seems like forever ago, and it was probably less than a month.
“It makes sense,” Callie adds. “Seriously, this town is a freak zone of weird.”
“Jay?” I ask him.
He’s paler than normal. He looks up and meets my eyes. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me before.”
Jay repeats what he said while his feet twitch on the floor. The left foot. The right. It’s like they want to run away from the truths of his kidnapping, our deception.
“We thought you’d been through enough,” Issie starts, trying to explain as another pain stabs into my stomach. Where is Astley?
Jay’s hands are shaking he’s so upset, and I would be upset too. I rub my hand across my eyes. Every cell inside of me is tired and sad. And that’s when I realize that this is really it. We are making an army. I have to be willing to lead them, willing to let them risk their lives fighting this. If we ever want life to return back to normal we have to fight for it, all of us.
“I deserve to know what happened to me.” He shakes his head hard, brushing the hair out of his eyes.
“You do,” I agree. “I’m sorry.”
He nods sharply. “I want to know everything. All of it. We have to make plans. We can’t let what happened to me happen to other people.”
“No, we can’t,” I say, determination hitting me full scale. There is no turning back now. “Let me tell you about this thing Devyn and I have been writing. We call it the How to Survive a Pixie Attack manual. It’s everything we know so far about fighting pixies. We’ll make you all copies and then we’ll start training—”