Anathema (4 page)

It’s strange how my life has altered so fundamentally in such a short time. I have the same classes with the same classmates, but the tiny differences blare at me like sirens.

It begins just before first period. I slip into the office of the school newspaper. I’ve taken a break with all the chaos in my life recently, but I’m eager for everything to get back to normal. I want to write again. Heidi, the Editor, tells me regretfully she has to remove me from features. Our faculty sponsor, Ms. Tierney, gave the order.

“I know I’m not a citizen anymore, but I can still write,” I object.

Heidi’s solemn brown eyebrows pinch together beneath her blond hair. She wears an apologetic smile on her broad, large-chinned face. “Ms. Tierney says it’s too much of a liability.”

“You mean if you send me to a public event and someone kills me? My parents won’t sue. They’d have no grounds to sue. I have no rights.”

Heidi shifts uncomfortably, avoiding my eyes. “Well, it’s more than that.”

I can tell I’m not going to like this.

“People might not want to talk to a… To an…” She fumbles for a tactful phrase.

A sigh heaves from my lips. “An anathema. You can say it.”

Her eyes dart up to mine. It hits me suddenly that she’s nervous around me. “That.” Her fingers twist together. “Maybe we can figure out something you can do that doesn’t involve talking to people?”

“No human interaction. Great.”

Her voice sounds high and uncertain like she is trying to avoid upsetting me. “That’s the idea.”

It seems to be the new story of my life.

Things are also different in homeroom. My English teacher, Mrs. Carney, still clears her throat excessively and looks mildly sleepy. Then she reaches my name in the roster for roll call. She straightens, her eyes jumping to mine through her spectacles perched low on her nose. Her mouth softens. I detect a trace of sympathy in her gaze.

“How are you, dear?” she asks me.

My face heats up. I’m suddenly conspicuous of every eye on me. “Great. Same as always.”

“Good. You just tell me if you need anything.” Mrs. Carney returns to teaching.

Amanda leans over and says, “Looks like she feels bad for you. You need to play on that to get an ‘A’.”

I shush her quickly, because Mrs. Carney is old, not deaf. I’m not sure whether she heard.

In math class, my latest test is a B-, but Mr. Devers offers me a makeup exam ‘in light of recent circumstances’.

Just when I’m thinking the internet warnings about a stigma are exaggerated after all, I reach computer science class. There, Ms. Dodd announces a change in our JavaScript partners after a full semester of the same people.

“Kathryn Grant, I’m afraid you’ll be the odd one out,” she tells me flatly after pairing up everyone else.

Comp Sci isn’t my strongest subject. Actually, it’s far and away my weakest. My old partner, Chelsea, wanted to be a web designer. She hated my clumsy contributions to our projects. By unspoken but mutual consent, she began doing the assignments herself and putting both our names to them. It seemed to work for both of us.

I am totally out of my depth, facing this project alone.

I linger after class, hoping to join a group of three. The last of the class flows out into the hallway. Ms. Dodd watches them leave, holding up a finger to keep me silent. When she speaks, she looks at her notebook rather than at me.

“I know what you’re going to say. You don’t want to work solo. Unfortunately, your new status changes things.”

“It does? Even here?” So far my teachers have been so considerate.

Ms. Dodd frowns. “Your old lab partner was Chelsea, wasn’t it?”

I nod.

“Her parents called me last night. They threatened to sue the school if she stayed partnered with you. In the circumstances, you can’t blame them.”

Heat flushes my cheeks. “Because I’m some dangerous anathema, is that it?”

She looks me over coldly. “You’re a talented, intelligent young woman from a good family. You’ve had every opportunity handed to you, and you dithered your life away. You won’t find any sympathy from me.” Her lips curl a bit, as though she smells something distasteful. “If you have a real issue with this change in partner status, I can see about getting you transferred to Mr. Dearborn’s class.”

Anger prickles through me. “I’ll do that.”

No teacher has ever talked to me that way before. No one has addressed me like I’m garbage. Nothing has changed about me but my citizenship status. I am fuming as I step out into the hallway.

Then my anger is replaced by anxiety.

The subtle undercurrents of the day play through my mind: the furtive glances people kept sending me. The whispers I couldn’t quite hear. The way the empty desks in the classrooms were now positioned beside mine. Even the way Russell looked at me differently like I’d morphed from his best friend’s girlfriend into fresh meat.

Amanda was wrong when she said it would take a while for them to see me as an anathema.

It’s already happened.

Even now the human current flows around me in the hallway. The outcast. The exile. The criminal. I’ve always fit in. I’ve always been normal. Until now. Suddenly a single word defines me in the eyes of others more than my actions, my thoughts or the truth in my heart. I never realized before the terrible power of a single label.

Through the sea of citizens in good legal standing, I spot someone else. A boy unlike the rest. He’s simultaneously familiar and completely new to me, because I’ve never really thought of Alexander Metz as a person before. Now he stands before his locker, twisting his lock. I realize I just saw
him
as an anathema.

I’d been guilty of labeling, too. My sense of outrage fades. Maybe this is karma.

With the instinct of someone whose life has been in danger for years, Alexander Metz looks up sharply and meets my gaze. For a moment, I’m struck by the crystalline blue of his eyes, fringed with sooty lashes as coal black as his hair. He also stands in a ring of emptiness, an invisible quarantine zone of his own. His bounty flashes through my mind again. Fifty thousand
dollars.

What had he done to earn that high bounty?

His gaze shifts away from me, and he turns like some great lion in the wild, stalking off down the hallway. The crowd parts for him. Strange how things can look two ways at once. He has none of the shrinking and tentativeness of an outcast. Rather, he moves with an inborn grace like there’s overwhelming power leashed beneath his deceptively calm surface. If I didn’t know what he was, I wouldn’t think I was seeing the crowd exiling him from their midst.

I’d think they were giving him distance due to awestruck respect.

Against my will, I remember those YouTube videos I watched before losing citizenship. Especially those of Trent ‘the Wolfman’ Savage. Not the videos where he rips out hearts and howls in glee, but rather the more frightening ones where he talks to the camera like a reasonable serial killer. He answers fan mail from his admirers, and gives his views on the anathemas he hunts.

“There are different types of anathemas in this world. Some are just lowlife scumbags who get caught, maybe worth a thou. They’re pretty helpless. I don’t care about them. I’ll kill ‘em if I run into them on the street, but they’re not worth any trouble.”
He leans closer to the camera, his eyes burning with greed, his nostrils quivering.
“Others are gen-u-ine predators. They’re the anathemas that make you check your locks. The ones watching you in the night. They’d love to gut me, hunt me down, but I always get ‘em first.”

Wolfman Savage smiles at this part. It makes a scar through his left eyebrow wrinkle a bit.

“Those are the ones I live to hunt. Those are the reason we don’t let anathemas live. For those crazies, you need a savage like me and the rest of Death’s Disciples. It takes a predator to kill a predator. If me and the rest of Death’s Disciples ever go down in flames, then watch out, America.”

The words roll through my mind as I watch Alexander Metz disappear down the hallway. A predator. I could never be one, but he might be.

We’re both anathemas, but I suspect we may be a very different species of outcast.

School falls into a standard routine. To catch a ride home with Conrad, I’d have to wait three hours until he gets out of football practice. By that time, my parents would be home from Los Angeles and probably convinced I’m dead. Better to hang out while the dance squad practices for an hour and a half and then ride with Amanda, Siobhan Park, Nancy Chang and Lilah Levin.

I’m squashed in the back seat between them. They giggle the whole way as I duck down at red lights, because this is a game to them. After a while, I feel so foolish, I mentally disregard the internet advice and stay sitting tall in my seat, even at the long stop light on Beach and Acre Streets.

“Sure you have to go home?” Amanda calls from the front seat. “We’re all going to Russell’s later. We can disguise you. Like in a wig. With a fake moustache.” That sets everyone off laughing again.

I force a chuckle, too. It sounds strained. Adrenaline races through me every time a car slows next to ours.

“You know my mom,” I tell Amanda. “She’ll decide I’m dead if I’m not home when she returns. I don’t want her having a stroke or something.”

Amanda groans. “This is so lame. First you quit the dance squad…”

“I didn’t have a choice.” I didn’t ask Siobhan to drop me. My eyes find the back of her sleek brunette head.

“Now this,” Amanda finishes. “My point is we’re never going to see you anymore.”

I don’t know what to say. I have nothing to say to that. Just a lame, “It sucks.”

“Yeah, it does.”

There’s a note of genuine dismay in Amanda’s voice. I kind of love her for that.

“We’ll be thinking about you at the party tonight,” Siobhan tells me, even though there’s a sly smile on her face that tells me she’s already envisioning the world as Amanda’s best friend.

I fight the urge to roll my eyes. Amanda and I exchange a subtle look in the mirror, because this is so like Siobhan. She tries to trash talk me to Amanda, and Amanda to me. If she weren’t on the dance squad, we’d never hang around her if we could help it.

Then again, some people in school don’t seem to realize Amanda and I genuinely like each other. We’re not fake friends vying for the top slots of a pecking order. There’s no elbowing me aside to get to Amanda, or vice-versa. Siobhan has definitely never grasped that concept.

The car halts in front of my house, and I realize with a start that no one is planning to walk me to the door. Everyone is expecting me to go solo, totally exposed, and then stand there fumbling with keys until I let myself in.

Another big internet no-no. That’s what normal Kathryn Grant would do without thinking twice. That’s what any normal near-adult would do. It’s an indulgence I can’t afford anymore.

All I need to do is ask them to walk with me. They’d do it.

But the words stick in my throat. I feel so stupid even considering it. We’re one of the only cars here, and there are certainly no hunters hanging around…

At least, I don’t think.

“See you guys later. Bye,” I say all in a jumble.

Maybe that ironclad internet wisdom about walking in public with friends is better suited for high value targets. People who have enemies. People who live in large cities, who don’t know most of the community around them. I tell myself this, even though every step towards my door feels like I’m walking through a bog. My heart pounds and my legs shake.

I reach my front door. Nothing stops me.

My hands shake as I fish my keys out of my pocket. Amanda’s car rolls away. I open the door. Nobody bursts out of the bushes with a machete.

I almost relax.

Then movement darts out of the corner of my eye from somewhere down the street. I whirl around to stare intently at the cars. The vehicles are still and unmoving, sunlight slicing across their windshields. My heart is jammed in my throat. The keys are clenched so tightly in my hand they pinch my flesh. I stare so intently my eyes begin to ache.

Then I make it out.

A bird.

A stupid bird. It spreads its wings and flutters up into the air again.

Slowly I begin to breathe. Inhale, exhale. I turn back to the door, open it, and step inside. In the cool embrace of my house, I feel so ridiculous, laughter bubbles up inside me.

All that panic… over nothing.

Here I am. Alive and well. I can actually walk twenty feet without dying. Of course I can.

For the first time since the courthouse, something within me relaxes. Maybe I’ve been worrying too much.

My mother doesn’t feel the same way.

 
When Mom and Dad return from work an hour later, she freaks out when she realizes I’ve been in the house alone.

“None of your friends stayed with you?” she rails.

“Amanda had stuff to do.”

“What about Conrad? I thought he was more responsible than that!”

“He has football practice. It’s not like I need a babysitter inside the house.”

But she doesn’t agree. That night, I find her perched at the dining room table, still wearing her tailored suit, a half-eaten bagel at her elbow as she types away on her laptop.

I glance at the discarded paperback on the table, a piece of literature she will no doubt thrust upon me soon. It’s called,
‘Not a Citizen? Not a Problem! A Practical Survival Guide to Life as an Anathema’

She greets me with, “Honey, how do you feel about getting your own panic room?”

My steps stutter to a halt “Panic… room?”

“We can convert your closet into a secure little room of your own that locks from the inside.” She waves a manicured finger as she talks, never taking her eyes off her laptop. “Of course, we can’t afford a self-contained ventilation system, but the odds of being attacked by a hunter with gas canisters is negligible. We can put in a few weapons and maybe a few days worth of food and water.”

“A panic room?” I repeat, incredulous.

“Your father and I will buy you a nice machete.”

“Am I committing genocide sometime soon?”

“Kat, we’d prefer you had a gun, but we just can’t risk it. You know the gun laws. Everyone in this house would become an anathema if one was found under this roof. I don’t even want to know how much the state would bump up your bounty.”

“I don’t even want a gun!”

“…But just in case your father and I aren’t here and the house is attacked, you need something to defend yourself. I read several court cases where hunters escaped being charged with breaking and entering because they claimed to be
protecting
the house from the anathema inside it. They get away with that argument even when the citizens who own the house testified that the anathema lived there! It’s absurd, but my book says hunters can only get away with breaking and entering if there’s an anathema but no citizen at home.”

“Come on, Mom!” I slump into the seat across from her. “It’s not like I’m worth a hundred thousand dollars. I’m worth, like, nothing if you really think about it.”

Her eyes swing towards me. “Even a thousand dollars is a thousand too much. I hope you aren’t becoming blasé about this.”

“I’m not, it’s just… Please, please can we go one day without talking about it?”

“It won’t do you any good to deny the reality of the situation. We’re going to have to be realistic about your safety prospects. Take a look at this.”

With a few brisk taps of her keyboard, she actually calls up an Excel spreadsheet, with her name, dad’s name, our next door neighbor, Mrs. Balustrade, and a few family friends and obscure relatives we rarely see.

“Every day after school, you’ll come home. I’m drawing up schedule for the month. We can rotate trusted individuals to stay here with you until your father and I return from work…”

As she speaks, her voice becomes a blur of white noise in my head. I stare at those names until my eyes cloud. My anathema status takes on a terrible new context.

Many anathemas have no friends or family and are cast out alone in the world, virtual exiles surrounded by enemies.

I’m an anathema with loving parents who are overprotective in the best of times. I’m not exiled, alone. Instead, I’m getting forced back into the terrible position of dependence you’re supposed to leave behind after childhood.

It flashes through my mind now, every last aspect of it: I have to be driven everywhere. I can’t drive myself. I can’t be left alone in my own house. I have to come home directly after school. I can’t even go to friends houses unless I’m absolutely sure I can trust everyone there.

Conrad’s birthday is this month - my boyfriend’s birthday - and everyone is going to go to his house. I’ll probably be here, at home, watching a movie with Mom and Dad. That’s how it’s going to be.

“I am not doing this,” I announce.

Mom blinks. “Excuse me?”

I bolt to my feet. “Mom, I am not going to have babysitters. I am not going to regulate every last second of my life. I still have to find a way to live with being an anathema. Keyword: live. I can’t just imprison myself forever in hopes of being safe.”

“It’s not forever. It’s for the rest of the school year—”

“Until I get an Asylum Scholarship? But what if I don’t get it? What do I do then, live in a cocoon for the rest of my life?”

Her voice rises. “You’ll just have to get that scholarship so this won’t be an issue.”

“But Mom, what if I don’t?” I persist. “I’m not a child. I don’t need people to baby-sit me. If someone wants to besiege the house just to get at me for a thousand dollars, then… Then I don’t know what to say. They’d be really desperate, and if they’re so desperate, Mrs. Balustrade can’t possibly stop them. I am not doing this, and I don’t care what you say!”

With that, I whirl around and dash up the stairs.

“Kathryn!” she calls after me, but I’m not in the mood for a lecture.

I lock my bedroom door behind me and sag down to the carpet. The walls seem to be closing in on me like a trap. Suddenly I find myself thinking of another girl, the one who’d also tried to escape her circumstances. I hadn’t understood her at the time.

But now I get her. I finally get Noelle.