Dust and Roses: Book Two of the Dust Trilogy (4 page)

Somehow, I had to get Imani’s mind off
this. The last thing I wanted was her poking around and investigating. Deep
down inside, I knew that Ms. Melcher’s disappearance had something to do with
creatures. Imani could never, ever find out about us.

Imani came over to hang out that Friday
afternoon. It had been ages since I’d had a friend come over just to spend time
with me. I suggested we go to Imani’s, but her mom didn’t want company until
their house was all unpacked and put together the way she wanted. I understood
because my mother would have been the same way. Maybe our mothers would become
friends.

The two of us lay stretched across my bed.
Imani opened her hand filled with pink and red Starbursts, offering me one.

 “No thanks. I don’t like sweet.”

She chose a red one for herself. “That’s
right. I forgot. You have to be the only person I know who doesn’t eat candy,
cookies or anything. You’re a rare breed, Arden Moss.”

My heart raced at that comment. “What?” I
snapped. How could she know? Maybe she was a better detective than I’d thought.

“I said you’re a rare breed.”

I bolted upright. “What do you mean by
that?”

Imani’s eyes widened and I immediately
felt bad. She held her hands up. “That . . . you’re different? Chill. It’s just
an expression.”

“Right. Sorry.” It was stupid of me to
have gotten so defensive. Of course she hadn’t meant it that way.

She sat up and placed her lap top on her
crossed legs. Imani had this amazing habit of getting all her weekend homework
out of the way on Friday afternoons while I let it hang until the last minute
on Sunday nights. She worked while I read
Gone Girl
and fiddled around
on my own laptop. Before I knew it, a few hours had passed.

Imani stood and stretched her long limbs.
“I need a break.” She walked over to the doors that led to the balcony and
before I could stop her, she whipped the curtains back, revealing glass doors
covered haphazardly with wooden planks. “What the . . .”

 “Uh . . .” I struggled to think of
an excuse for it. What could I say? “During the last storm a branch came
through the glass. We haven’t gotten it fixed yet.”

“Hmmm,” Imani said, placing her hands on
her hips. I imagined those investigative gears cranking in her head. “The glass
isn’t broken, though.”

Dammit. Think, Arden. Think.

“Okay, my parents did that so I won’t
sneak out over the balcony.”

Imani smirked and looked me up and down.
“They’re worried about
you
sneaking out?”

“Yeah,” I replied, my voice croaking. I
wasn’t convincing at all, but Imani seemed satisfied with that.

She came back to the bed and picked up her
laptop. “Are they worried that you and Fletcher are going to have a midnight
rendezvous or something?”

“Imani!”

She smiled slyly. “Come on. I’m not stupid
or blind. I see the way you look at Fletcher. You are seriously crushing on
him.”

I shrugged. It didn’t make sense to lie to
her. Imani was good at picking up on those things. Besides, it was nice to have
someone to have girl talk with. “Maybe a little crush but the feeling isn’t
mutual so it doesn’t matter.”

She wrapped a braid around her index
finger. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

I shook my head. “Fletcher doesn’t like me
like that. He said so himself. More than once.”

“Arden, I don’t know a lot about boys, but
one thing I do know, is that nothing they say means anything. And Fletcher is
so strange, who knows what’s really going on in that head if his. He’s a cutie,
though.”

Yes, he was but I didn’t want to talk
about Fletcher and unrequited love anymore. “You’d better finish your work.”

She lifted the lid of her laptop, stared
at the screen, and then slammed it shut.

“What’s the matter?”

Imani scrunched her face. “I have to write
a short story for Mrs. Amparo’s class and I don’t even know where to start. I
suck at writing and she wants
two thousand whole
words with a beginning,
a middle,
and
an end. Isn’t that insane?” Imani stared at her laptop as
if she were angry with it.

I placed my book on my nightstand, toying
with a thought in my head. I could help Imani out, but I would also be breaking
an oath I’d made. Would it really be against the rules if nobody knew but me?
Finally, I decided that it wouldn’t hurt any. “I have a story.”

Imani’s face lit up. “Yeah, you’re good at
writing. Give me an idea.”

“You could write about a school, only it’s
not a normal school. Underneath this particular school, there’s a lair. A
monster’s lair. All sorts of creatures, things you’ve only heard about in
movies or books live there.”

Imani nodded, grabbing her laptop and
lifting the lid. “A monster’s lair underneath a school. I like that.”

“There’s this girl who thinks she’s Human.
She’s thought that all her life. Then one night she gets stolen from her bed by
this boy with wings and taken to the lair. There she finds out what she really
is—a mix between a Banshee and a Wendigo. A Banshee is a Death Fairy. She can
predict death as well as cause it just by thinking about it. A Wendigo is a
creature that craves Human flesh. It survives by devouring people. It can never
get enough of it.”

To keep my hands busy, I folded Imani’s
empty Starburst wrappers into tiny origami swans. The new biology teacher had
taught us how to do that the other day. I was still trying to figure out what
origami swans had to do with biology, but it had been better than watching Mrs.
Lang try to convince Mary-Kate how ridiculous she was to believe in the theory
of creationism. I was pretty sure teachers weren’t supposed to do that anyway.

“Good stuff. Go on,” Imani urged as she
typed.

“Weird things started happening to the
girl after that. She couldn’t stop craving meat. She ate a raw crayfish in her
biology class in front of everyone. She barks, and howls, and claws the floors
at night. She stopped getting cold, even in the winter. She thinks the
creatures, they call themselves Takers, aren’t that bad. They don’t hurt people
on purpose, only when they have to. She actually feels sorry for them because
they’re confined to living underground. The Takers taught the girl a lot of
things. She let her guard down and was ready to be one of them but then everything
changed.”

Imani stopped typing and looked up,
totally engrossed in the story. If only she knew it wasn’t a story at all. It
was my nightmare of a life. “What changed?” she asked.

I paused, pretending to think so it would
seem as if I were making the story up as I went along. “The Takers wanted her
to do something horrible. They wanted her to use her growing Banshee powers to
kill someone.”

“Why would they want her to do that?”

I focused on the swans again. Anything to
keep from looking Imani in the eyes. “They don’t really care about the girl.
They only want to use her as a weapon. If there’s ever a war or an attack, she
would be there greatest asset. At the height of her powers she’ll be able to
think someone’s death and it would happen. She’s just a tool to them.”

Imani unwrapped her last Starburst. “Wow.
That sucks. Who wants to be used like that?”

“Exactly. So anyway, when she refused to
kill the girl, the Takers got mad at her and said they wanted nothing more to
do with her. Even called her a traitor. She left the lair and never looked back
but a little later she realized she needed the Takers’ help. In order to squash
the Wendigo side of her, the side that’s the most dangerous and uncontrollable,
a Giver has to die, an Angel to be specific. See, this specific Angel is the
girl’s Gemini, which is a whole other story, but basically it means as the
Angel dies, the girl will get stronger. She has no idea how long that will take
or what she should do in the meantime. Something horrible happened that can never
happen again.”

Imani stopped typing and frowned. “What
happened?”

I looked everywhere but at Imani,
wondering if I should continue. “The animal part of her, the Wendigo, almost
made her kill someone very, very important to her. She can’t take that risk.”

I looked at her again and she stared at me
for a moment as if waiting for more. “You just thought that up right now?”

Nope. I nodded.

She smiled, impressed. “That mind of yours
is brilliant.”

I wondered what she would do if I told her
the truth. Would she keep my secret? Would she call me a lunatic, run away, and
never speak to me again? I could never risk finding out.

When Mom called from downstairs, I hopped
off the bed, disturbing my bevy of tiny origami swans. She and Dad lay snuggled
together on the living room couch under a blanket getting ready to put on a
movie. I liked when they did things like that and I hoped they would never fall
out of love.

The rest of the house was quiet. Paige was
spending the night with a friend and I wasn’t sure where Quinn was. Probably in
her room working on a project or something.

I stopped at the bottom of the stairs.
“Yeah, Mom?”

“I’m glad you’re having fun with your
friend, honey, but it’s getting late. It’s time for her to go now. It’s dark so
your father will drive her home.”

Mom wasn’t worried about the time at all.
She was worried about what I became at night and that I might hurt Imani. I was
too. I should have thought of that earlier.

Dad kept his eyes on the TV where the
movie was starting. They were watching a chick-flick. Definitely Mom’s pick.
“We do have to shut down soon,” he said.

By “shut down” he meant seal me in my
room.

“Okay.” I moped back upstairs since there
was no argument to be had. I wasn’t ready for Imani to go, but she had to for
her own good.

Imani was busy typing away on my bed. She
bit her lower lip in deep concentration.

I fiddled with the doorknob, hating to
disturb her. “It’s getting kind of late so one of my parents will drive you
home.”

Imani kept typing. “Why don’t I just sleep
over? My parents won’t care. I can borrow some PJs.”

“No!” I hadn’t meant to shout. “I mean,
you can’t.”

She looked up from her laptop, frowning.
“Why not?”

Because I might eat you.

“Um . . . because I have a dentist appointment
very, very early in the morning.” I was so bad at lying and Imani was sometimes
a walking lie detector.

She rolled her eyes as she stuffed her
books into her backpack. “If you don’t want me to spend the night, just say so.
You don’t have to insult me by lying.”

Flashes of the night I’d crept into
Quinn’s room raced through my mind. “Imani, it’s not that I don’t want you to
sleep over, it’s just that . . .”

“It’s just what?” She stared at me
expectantly, but I had no reason I could give her. She looked from me to the
boarded-up balcony doors and for a moment I thought she was figuring it out.
Putting two and two together. I shouldn’t have told her that story.

Imani shrugged and slid her backpack onto
her shoulders. “Whatever. See you Monday, I guess.”

She was angry. I hated for her to leave
thinking that I didn’t want to hang out with her, but what could I possibly
say? I followed her as she rushed down the stairs and through the living room.
Both Mom and Dad stood up from their comfy positions.

“Wait, Imani,” Mom said. “Mr. Moss will
drive you home.”

Even though the attacks had stopped, not
many people walked around after dark. There was no telling if or when the
creature would go on the prowl again.

“That’s okay. Thanks Mr. and Mrs. Moss.”
And before they could say anything else she was out the door.

Mom turned to Dad. “She shouldn’t be
walking at night.”

Dad ran his fingers through his hair,
staring at the front door. “Well, we can’t force her to take a ride from us. She’s
only a couple of blocks away. She’ll be fine.”

Mom still looked worried as they settled
back on the couch. “Arden,” Mom said, “at least call her in a few minutes to
make sure she got home okay.”

“I will,” I said as I made my way back
upstairs.

“We have Chinese coming in a little bit.”

“Okay,” I answered. But I had no appetite
for that. There was really no point in eating. I could eat everything in the
house and I would still be hungry.

Ten minutes later I sent Imani a text:

Arden: R U home?

Imani: yeah

Arden: I’m sorry, Plz don’t b mad

She never responded to that.

I had to get rid of these urges before I
lost my chances of having another friend.