Feral (9 page)

But the memories of that night persisted. She was back in the lot, the boys circling all around her, beating her. The boys lifting metal cans and hitting her with garbage. An object coming down on her leg, crushing it.

Claire groaned, instantly understanding why the snapping limbs had sounded familiar.

My bones
, she thought.
They'd sounded just like the snapping branches when they'd broken.

And the screams Claire had let out had sounded exactly like the screech of the bobcat.

She grimaced and shook her head, trying desperately to push it all away.

Reaching beneath the tarp, though, her eyes focused on the slaughtered body of the rat.

It's too late for you
, Claire heard ringing in her head all over again.
You're dead.

Her hands shook as she used a smaller fallen limb to drag the body away from the woodpile and covered the poor thing with a few handfuls of snow. She straightened herself, finally grabbing a couple of logs for the fire, and rushed into the house before her father could ask if something was wrong.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

E
ven Peculiar, Missouri, had the occasional blue sky, Claire was relieved to learn three mornings later, as her father drove through the puddles of melted ice between their house and the high school. Power had returned the day before as work crews had arrived to reattach their lines, just as Rich had predicted.

It might have even been hard to believe the storm had happened at all, if the casualties—snapped branches and downed trees, some of them surely big enough to be more than a hundred years old—weren't also being cleared, hauled toward the edges of properties. Piles of ice-coated trees lined the streets as Dr. Cain steered toward the high school, the growl of chain saws following them along the way.

“You didn't tell me Edgar Allan Poe went to school here,” Claire quipped as they pulled into the lot, only partially joking. She leaned into the windshield, staring up at Peculiar High—the odd, solitary building she'd first seen at the top of a distant hill as she and her father had passed the city limits sign. Made of some sort of stone that might have once been white, the entire building was now wrapped in the gray, dirty hue of cigarette ash. Winter-scorched ivy, brown and brittle, swirled across the front, surely blocking the sun from entering classroom windows. More than just old and dingy, the place had a kind of forgotten air about it. The persistent fog, swirling about the base of the school, didn't exactly make it seem any less menacing, either.

“It's a little . . . rough,” her dad conceded, rubbing his beard as he stared at the faded name above the entrance and the rusted bike rack.

“Oh!” he exclaimed, twisting to reach into the backseat. “I got you something.”

When he pulled his gift into Claire's lap, her face fell. “A red backpack,” she said, seeing a school supply aisle in a Target on a hot August afternoon. Summer before her sophomore year. Goofing around with Rachelle as they'd tossed their backpacks like basketballs into their shopping cart. Rachelle had chosen black, but Claire had decided on a tomato red, sure it would pick up on a thread in the plaid skirt of her school uniform.

The bag had looked so bright and new and ready for the possibilities and even—almost—
happy
there under the fluorescent lights of Target. And it had looked so different lying on the ground in the cracked parking lot, the cloth black in places from being stomped, wet and shining from all the slimy garbage, glistening in a sad, wet, destroyed way under the streetlight. The police had picked it up and taken it with them. Evidence, they'd said. Claire had never seen the bag again.

“You don't like it,” Dr. Cain said.

“Of course I do,” Claire said.

She fumbled with the zipper, opening pockets as though to examine the bag in full. Really, though, Claire was stalling.

She liked the look of the parking lot right then—empty, except for the four old, banged-up economy cars in the faculty section and the puddles of melted ice that had mixed with oil stains so that they all shimmered with pink and yellow iridescent ripples. She could almost convince herself, staring at all the unused parking spaces, that she still had time to spare.

A pickup truck careened into the space next to them, its radio squawking and thumping with some indistinguishable heavy metal song, the guitars and drums muted by the truck's rolled-up windows.

It was starting—everyone was beginning to arrive. First day back to school after the storm—or, for Claire, just plain first day of school. Even though she wasn't having to face her old school back in Chicago, the words
first day
still stung.

“Ready to get registered?” her father asked, throwing open the driver door, its hinges crying out against the cold.

Claire stepped from the passenger side just as Rich slammed the door of his Ram. His eyes scanned her face, then landed on the gold necklace that dangled at the base of her throat and peeked out from in between the lapels of her coat.

Claire nervously tucked the cameo inside her sweater. She'd tried to take the necklace off as she'd dressed that morning. But as she'd leaned in toward the bathroom mirror and spun the necklace to get a good look at the back, to figure out how to pry open the last loop again, she realized she'd actually smashed the chain in on itself. And the necklace was far too short to slip back over her head. She'd attempted a halfhearted tug, but the chain burned against the scars on the back of her neck. She'd given up trying to take it off, and had decided to simply wear it to school—
What's the difference, anyway?
she'd asked herself.
Besides, it's your lucky charm, isn't it?
But there was something in the surprised way Rich stared at the necklace that quickly brought an embarrassed flush to her face.

“You coming?” Dr. Cain called from halfway across the parking lot.

Claire hurried forward, the front flaps of her coat flopping open in the harsh wind.

She'd just caught up with her father when Rich motioned for them both to stop, nodding at a guard in a black uniform.

“Think you—need—a—visitor's pass?” the guard said, his voice cracking on the last note. He cleared his throat, one hand flying self-consciously to a large pimple on his chin before he crossed his arms over his chest.

Claire felt her legs weaken beneath her.

“She's a student, not a visitor,” Rich said in a flat tone.

“Right. The girl in the old Sims place,” the guard said, nodding uncomfortably. “Sanders said you'd be coming today.” He was the kind of enormous that made Rich look average; he could have worn one of Claire's belts like a dog collar. His cheeks were without the trace of any stubble, dotted instead with a few haphazard splotches of acne. He wore his authority like shoes that had yet to be broken in. His eyes darted, and he glanced behind his shoulder as though he half expected someone else to take up the cause of turning away unapproved guests.

Claire swayed slightly. Peculiar High had a guard—just like her old school in Chicago.
A guard
, she kept thinking.
What does he need to protect us from?

“Are you gonna let us in or not?” Rich moaned, rolling his eyes.

The guard tossed his weight onto one hip. He teetered, leaning toward Rich as he asked, “So what're they like?” as if Claire and her father couldn't hear him.

Rich shrugged. “Eat a lot of Spam; sacrifice goats after midnight. Who doesn't?”

The guard chuckled, relaxing a little.

“We just need to get her registered,” Dr. Cain said.

The guard nodded, pointed toward the door with the sureness of an eight-year-old hall monitor.

Rich reached around the guard to grab hold of the tarnished handle and swing the front entrance open.

Their shoes echoed against the marble floor as they stepped inside.

“Why do you need him?” Claire demanded, pointing back at the entrance.

“Rhine?” Rich asked, tugging a stocking cap from his head to expose a mop of wavy brown hair. “Just in case, I guess.”

“But—a guard,” she said, feeling sweat break across her forehead, wetting her bangs. “Has there been—is this—in case of what?” Her heart thudded as she waited for the answer, praying that it wouldn't have anything to do with the missing girl.

Rich glanced past Claire's shoulder at Dr. Cain's equally worried face. “Look,” he said, “that's not even really a guard. That's Becca's brother. Rhine, short for Rhin-
o
, because it felt like you'd been trampled by one when you got hit with his tackle. According to last year's seniors, anyway. Construction jobs are scarce right now. He's not exactly college material. Call it a small-town favor. Let me show you to the office,” he offered, hurrying ahead of Claire and her father.

Claire straightened, slathering on a brave face and priding herself on the way it relaxed Dr. Cain's shoulders. As her father turned away, Claire slipped her hand inside her coat, clutching her queasy stomach as she tried to take in her new school for the first time.

Peculiar High looked as if it hadn't been renovated once in the more than hundred years it had been in existence. Tarnished brass sconces lined the ugly beige walls, giving the place the appearance more of an old hotel than a school. It reeked of heavily waxed floors and old sets of encyclopedias and polished antique moldings. It made Claire think of the insides of a trunk that had been locked up for decades; when it was opened, the summer air of 1922 reached up to smack her nose.

Rounding the corner, they found a metal bucket in the middle of the tile floor, catching each drip that worked its way down as the ice continued to melt in the sun. The leak had created the appearance of a brown Rorschach test on the ceiling. Nearing the front office, Claire couldn't shake the feeling that one of those brown splotches looked exactly like the mottled face of the calico she'd seen out in her woodpile.

Rich paused, allowing Claire time to take in the contents of a nearby trophy case. A picture of a familiar face—messy dark hair, thick frame emphasized by football shoulder pads—had been propped on the top shelf. Chas Winters—This Year's MVP, the letters above his picture proclaimed. Claire stared at the face she had first seen Monday afternoon at 'Bout Out, at the start of the ice storm, while Rich tapped on the front office window, his knuckles echoing through the stillness.

“New student,” Rich said, as the small office window slid open. The woman inside blinked to attention, slammed the front window shut, and raced to open the door that led to the suite of faculty offices.

“Of course! Dr. Sanders will see you,” she said. “
Be
with you,” she corrected herself.

“Catch you later, Claire,” Rich said, touching her sleeve lightly before heading to his first-period class.

“Sure, thanks,” Claire muttered, just before she and her father entered Sanders's office shyly, the soles of their shoes making
shh
noises as they dragged.

“Come in,” Sanders urged, waving at them without turning his eyes away from the bulletin board cluttered with school announcements. The walls of his office were covered in athletic photos and award certificates and a Peculiar High banner. His ancient wooden desk drooped in the middle, sagging from the weight of office equipment and towers of files. A picture of an overweight, friendly-looking woman and two young boys was the only personal item in sight.

“Two of you?” Sanders asked, without pulling his eyes away from the bulletin board.

“I'm Dr. Cain and this is my daughter, Claire. A junior. We just moved into town for the semester,” her father said, as Claire began to wonder if Sanders wasn't having a staring contest with a thumbtack. Not that she could really tell for sure where his eyes were pointed, behind the sickly brown tinted lenses of his glasses.

“Ah, yes, Claire Cain,” Sanders said, turning his head stiffly toward the two chairs in front of his desk. As he shifted in his own seat, Claire noticed that his suit was about thirteen sizes too big—the brown jacket stood out from his shoulders like the pads in a football uniform, and his shirt was so roomy, the heaviness of his necktie tugged the striped collar down, so that a bouquet of white curly chest hairs poked out. Dressed the way he was, under the pea-green glow of fluorescent lights, Sanders looked like he'd been taken captive six months ago, chained to his desk, and fed only a couple of saltines every other week or so.

“Is the guard out front really necessary?” Claire persisted. “I could imagine it in Kansas City, maybe. St. Louis. But here?”

“We take the safety of our students very seriously,” Sanders snapped, then repeated, softer this time, “
very
seriously. Especially during times such as these.”

Claire flinched.
Times such as these?

“I suppose—with the storm—and all—” her father said, in a tone of complete over-politeness. He shot Claire an uneasy look—the same kind of uneasy look that had preceded his announcement, nine months ago, that he'd made arrangements for a counselor to come see her at the house. Not just any counselor, though—a friend of his from the psychology department. Dr. Agee, with the balding head and the unending supply of blue plaid shirts. Healing was internal as much as external, Dr. Cain swore.

But Claire had been protective of her thoughts—especially with one of her father's friends. She was sure her father thought the opposite would be true, that it would be easier. But talking to the professor who had so often come to the Cains' summer barbecues just felt strange—like telling her own father all the details of a first date.

She'd shot that shrink all the right answers. In turn, he'd spoken to her father in another room, using satisfied tones. And her father had reappeared, smiling at her, his brave little girl.