The Grimm Chronicles, Vol. 2 (5 page)

Chapter 4

I woke the next morning drenched in sweat. Last night’s dream hadn’t been entirely clear, but I’d seen enough to have me more than a little frightened. It had been dark and I was outside of a bar called The Triangle. The street was wet and filled with big cracks and potholes, empty except for a few rusty old cars parked along the curb.

Then I saw it: a dark, hulking shadow that seemed at first to be painted to the brick wall of the old two-story building that housed The Triangle. But then the bar’s sign, hanging from a post above the door, began to swing back and forth. The shadow moved closer to me, no longer a shadow at all but something real, something three dimensional: a creature made of black smoke. It seemed to glide over the sidewalk, moving closer to me. It had eyes, and both eyes had that familiar golden Corrupted glow.

Arms appeared from the smoky cloud, then claws that reached down and clutched the concrete, tearing it like paper. It stalked closer. It made no sound and the street was silent. All I could hear was the hiss of tires on wet roads somewhere on the next block.

Above us, the streetlight flickered out. The smoke creature seemed to grow larger, moving closer toward me.

“He can’t see me, he can’t see me,” I kept whispering.

I floated backward, crossing to the other side of the street and under the comforting glow of the next streetlight. The creature crossed slowly, clawing at the ground and pulling up chunks of concrete in the process.

When it reached the curb, it stopped. The smoke seemed to lower, hugging the ground. I heard the sound of footsteps and slowly turned. The footsteps grew louder as a young woman wearing big white headphones turned the corner, heading straight for me. She looked ahead, humming some song to herself.

She walked closer. The black smoke warped into little finger-like curls, slinking along the curb, slipping along the concrete. As it passed over the grass of the boulevard, each blade wrinkled up, its color draining.

“I got to hide from you, baby,” the girl sang, walking closer. She had her hands in the pockets of her ripped jeans, her little mini-mp3 player hanging onto the collar of her tight yellow t-shirt.

The smoke slipped closer. I tried to follow it, but I had no control. I tried again, willing myself to run. Maybe I could reach her and somehow push her out of the way.

But it was too late. The smoke slipped up the girl’s legs, wrapping itself tightly around her torso and squeezing. Her eyes widened. She gasped, her headphones falling off her head. The smoke squeezed tighter, and when the girl opened her mouth a strange blue cloud escaped, rolling down her chin like drool and disappearing inside the smoke.

It pulled away, slinking along the curb. The girl blinked a few times, looked around, then picked up her headphones. I could hear the music playing through the speakers. The girl listened for a moment, then pulled them off again and tossed her mp3 player onto the ground before walking past me.

“I’m telling you, that was it,” I told Seth on the ride to school. Trish was already out sick on the very first Friday of the school year, so it was just us in his mom’s car.

“The Triangle,” Seth said thoughtfully, turning left at the next set of traffic lights. “What does the rabbit have to say about it?”

“Oh, he’s always ‘certain doom’ this and ‘certain doom’ that. He doesn’t know what it is.”

“Well, I can tell you what the lyrics are from.”

I turned to him. “Huh?”

“The lyrics that the girl was singing. They’re from a band called The Peasants. Good band. Hardly ever play live.” He shrugged. “Haven’t heard much from them lately. The music scene in Minneapolis seems like it just died this year.”

“Died …” I thought back to the girl. She hadn’t died. But after the little puff of smoke escaped her mouth, it had seemed as if the music had made her visibly annoyed.

“Yeah, I swear it’s like, a bunch of bands just stopped playing or something. It’s really weird. I always check out the concert venues up in Minneapolis and, like, nothing is selling out. Not even the big acts.”

“Hmmmm.” I glanced out the window, thinking. There had to be a connection to the fiddler. But why was the smoke creature stealing
music
? And why couldn’t anyone remember it happening?

During fencing, I got paired up with two more boys, both of whom refused to go easy on me.

“These boys are killers,” Mr. Whitmann announced, and the other boys growled ferociously. Even Chase, who sat in his wheelchair at the end of the row of folding chairs, made a bemused little growling noise.

I got closer this time, focusing on keeping myself inbounds as I danced back and forth on the mat. But once again, I found myself defeated at the end of class. Sweating. Angry. Frustrated.

“You want some free advice?”

I turned to Chase, who was wheeling himself around the soft floor mats. The space was tight, and for a moment his right wheel got caught on the corner of one of the bench press machines. He sighed, shaking his head. One of the other boys—Scott—moved to help but Chase waved him away, rolling the chair back a few inches and then pushing the wheels forward again. He still had his hair styled like Elvis from the 50’s, combed to the side as if he was a troublemaker from a black-and-white movie. And he was wearing a simple red t-shirt and dark jeans, too—no baseball jersey.

“Fine,” I said. “Let me have it. But just so you know, I’m in a bad mood. And I’m holding a sword.”

He smiled. “You’re letting your stance open up whenever you attack. It’s making you more vulnerable to counter-attacks.”

My mind reeled. Was he right? Was I screwing up my stance?

“I have another piece of advice, too.”

“Fine,” I said hurriedly. “Out with it.”

He shook his head. “How about a deal? You help me with my English paper and I’ll help you with your fencing.”

“English?” I frowned. “Is this a trick? Last English class I had with you, you spent two weeks laughing at a crude joke from
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
.”

He looked down at his legs, then up at me with a “what are you talking about” kind of expression. “My baseball career is on hold, if you haven’t noticed. Rehab could take a year or more. I need to finish senior year with good grades so I have all my options open.”

“Oh. Well, I guess I could help you … what’s your paper on?”

“I picked a book,” he said, wheeling beside me as we made our way out of the gym. “
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
by Sherman Alexie. Now I have to write about it.”

I tried to hide my surprise. “I’ve read that book. I really liked it.”

He shrugged. “I know it’s technically Young Adult, but I’m a big fan of Native American books. And the story’s just really good. And stuff.”

I laughed. “And stuff.”

“So you’ll help me?”

“Sure. We could meet tonight—crap! We can’t. Ugh. I have a date tonight.”

Chase smiled. “Oh darn. You have such a rough life.”

“Hey! You don’t know. He might turn out to be a butthead.”

“True, true. Buttheads are no good.”

We wheeled/walked over to the cafeteria on the other side of the basement. The students had already been let in and were busily snatching hot sandwiches from the steel lunch counter. Both elderly cashiers looked a bit flustered as they rang in, took money, and handed out change while the hungry teenagers began impatiently devouring their food.

“Look at them,” Chase said, laughing. “Can’t you just tell who’s a freshman?”

I stared at the students, then laughed. “Yup! They’re like little kids. Did we look like that when we were freshmen?”

Chase opened his mouth to answer, then stopped when he saw Ted making his way through the crowd of students by the lunch counter. He gave us both a wave. “We’ve got some extra seats saved for you,” he said. “Hi, Alice.”

“Hi.” I gave him a smile, then glanced over his shoulder toward the back. “Um, I think I’m going to pass. I’ll see you tonight, though.” He gave me a strange, quizzical look. “I need to talk to Tina—I mean Rachel—about something.”

“Tina the hyena?” Ted asked. Beside him, Chase snickered.

“Yeah,” I said. My hands found my hips. I fought the urge to let him have it. Maybe he was just posturing. Trish vouched for him, after all. “I’ll talk to you later.”

I grabbed a ham-and-cheese sandwich and a side salad and milk and made my way to the back of the cafeteria, where Rachel and her friend Clyde were sitting.

“Hey, it’s that chick,” Clyde said as I sat down. He was still wearing his sunglasses. His outfit reminded me of some old-fashioned Nirvana fan: flannel shirt, old faded t-shirt, even a chain wallet just like the one Rachel wore. And of course the long hair that refused to stay tucked behind his little ears.

“Hi, Clyde.”

He smiled, dipping a French fry in what could only be mayonnaise. “Far out. What’s happening?”

“Oh, you know. Dreading the first weekend of homework.”

“Tell me about it,” Rachel muttered. “At least you don’t have gym class. We’re learning Cricket. I don’t even know what Cricket is! I don’t think our gym teacher even knows what it is!”

I smiled at the perfect opening. “You should join the fencing team,” I said as casually as I could.

“Oh yeah,” said Clyde. He grinned. “Swords, Rach. Swords!”

“Foils,” Rachel corrected. She shrugged. “Ugh. I dunno. Last year, it wasn’t very fun.”

“But you were getting better,” I told her. “You really were.”

She shook her head, stealing a few French fries from Clyde. “I’ll think about it.”

“Radical!” Clyde said, snapping his fingers. “We should celebrate with a game of
Robot Attack
.”

“I don’t know how to play,” I said.

Rachel reached into her black backpack, pulling out a pad of paper with some goofy pictures on it and lots of little circles. “We’ll just play the lite version. This is a picture of a giant robot with guns. You have to use those guns to shoot at my giant robot.”

“And mine!” Clyde added.

“OK,” I said, looking at the picture. It was a diagram of a giant Automaton with—yup—guns attached to its shoulders. One looked like a machine gun and the other looked like a rocket launcher. “So how do I use my guns?”

Rachel reached into her pocket and pulled out two white dice. “With these. You roll them first. Then I roll them to defend the attack. If I roll a higher number, I defend your attack.”

“Your robot’s got a rocket launcher,” Clyde said. “You can totally use that and you can roll an extra die. But then you can’t attack next turn. Because, like, you gotta reload the rockets. I guess it’s pretty realistic.”

I chuckled.

“So when you score a hit, I’ll fill in these circles,” Rachel said, pointing with her chewed pencil to the circles inside my robot. There were fifty total. “Once all the circles are filled up, your robot is destroyed.”

“OK!” I was getting excited. Like, really, really excited. It was so simple. So old-fashioned! And yet it seemed incredibly fun.

Or, rather, it would have been had a half-eaten chicken sandwich not come flying in our direction.

It hit Rachel right in the shoulder, sending mayonnaise and hot grease spraying across her face. Raucous laughter erupted from three rows down. I turned, seeing a bunch of the track and football kids laughing. Even Chase was smiling, and that made me even angrier.

Then, of course, there was Joey Harrington. Sitting with his arms crossed and a smug look on his face. Ignoring the high-fives from his big gorilla football buddies and then, begrudgingly, holding out a hand so they could slap it.

“Man,” said Clyde, handing over his spare napkins. He shook his head as Rachel wiped the mayo off her face. Her black t-shirt was a mess, too; when she picked off a piece of wayward fried chicken skin, it left a half-moon grease stain.

“Give that to me,” I ordered, pointing to the piece of chicken sitting on the empty table beside Clyde.

“Oooh I wouldn’t eat it now,” Clyde said. “It’s probably pretty dirty, man.”

I grabbed it and stood up, walking around the row of tables. Joey and his friends had already gone back to their conversation. The joke was over. It had been hilarious and now they’d already forgotten it. But Rachel? Rachel would remember it. She’d remember the humiliation. She’d remember the laughs directed at her.

Chase saw me first, looking up from his cup of soda. He raised his eyebrows but said nothing. By the time I was just one row of tables away, two of his buddies finally noticed me and turned in their chairs, curious. Oh, did I finally get your attention? Well, here’s how Alice Goodenough does things!

Joey Harrington turned to look at me just as I wound up and threw that piece of chicken with all my might. Joey reached out with his hands, partially deflecting it. But not before it grazed his ear, leaving a splotch of white mayo on the side of his head.

He stood up, chest puffing out. The entire cafeteria went silent.

“How do you like it!” I shouted at him.