Charm & Strange (5 page)

I turn back to the textbooks. Well, I know puberty and all that is regulated by hormones, so I flip to the index of the neuroscience one and find a diagram of the endocrine system that shows where all the different glands are located in the body. It makes sense, sort of. But how does the body know
when
to start changing? Who sets the biological alarm clock? That’s what I want to know, because I think mine is on snooze. I’m
sixteen
. I’ve done the part of growing up that means a lower voice and sticky dreams and hair down there, but those other changes, the ones that live deeper and darker, the ones I spend all night waiting for as I lie on my back gazing up at the warm belly of the moon … well,
those
changes haven’t happened yet. Or at least, I don’t think they have.

Not unless stress can affect memories, too.

Not unless—

“Winston,” a voice says, so close that I can feel a beat of hot breath against the back of my neck.

I jump.

My instinct controls me.

I see nothing. I feel
everything
.

Sssnap!

Sunlight leaps off the bridge’s metal bracings, blinding me. The sound of a train whistle blares in my ears. I pull myself halfway onto the railing and the wind snaps so hard my shirt is practically torn off. I look down. My legs shake. The water is so far away and I don’t want to do this.

I don’t want to do this.

ohgodohgodohgod

“Hey! Fucking …
stop it!
”

I blink. I’m back. The air smells of bleach and I gag-choke before being able to breathe again. My arms sway like falling Jenga towers. Lex Emil lies pinned beneath me on the lab floor. I’m bigger than him. My knee digs into his scrawny ribs. His round face is blotchy and scratched, with dyed black hair matted across his forehead. His chest heaves in time with the asthmatic rattle of his lungs. He’s holding his hands against my shirt, pushing me back. There’s fear in his eyes.

I roll off him, stunned. I gag again, an awful sound. I can’t help it. These flashes of mine, getting stuck in the past, they’re a part of who I am, but I don’t think I’ll ever get used to them.

“Fuck,” Lex says, more to himself than to me. His hands lower. “It’s okay. You’re okay, right?”

“Yeah.”

“You clicked out. You could have killed me.”

I shiver. “Yeah.”

He crawls to his feet and shakes like a dog leaving water. Then he wags a finger at me, cocky smile flourishing across his face. A gleam of silver above his chin makes me realize he’s gotten some kind of new piercing, a labret. It’s ugly.

“You could at least try and sound remorseful,” he says.

“I’m sorry.”

“I seriously doubt that. I mean, I don’t blame you, but Christ, you would’ve lit into anyone just now. You’re losing it, Win.”

No, I’m not. Something else is happening.

Lex reads my mind. His attention falls upon the books spread out on the lab table, and his eyes widen with understanding.

“What do we have here?” he says.

“I don’t know.”

He laughs softly. “The beast within, huh? You still waiting?”

I glare.

“Guess you’ll know come Friday night, right? That’s the full moon?”

“I guess so,” I say, because it’s true. I will know Friday night.

Change is imminent.

It
has
to be.

“Yeah, well, have fun with that,” Lex says. “Moon or no moon, I don’t plan on being anywhere near you.”

“Good,” I snarl, and he laughs even harder than before. My hands curl into fists. I want him to shut up.

Lex notices and skitters toward the door.

“Hey, Win,” he says as he leaves, “maybe it’s your head that’s broken, not your body. Ever think about that?”

chapter

ten

antimatter

Keith and I arrived late in the day, only to get whisked from the train station to a stately colonial in the heart of Concord just as the sun began to set. Such a cold home. It smelled like onions. We sat down for dinner right away, but I couldn’t eat.

My grandmother glared at my untouched plate. Her long face and silver hair reminded me of an Irish wolfhound. Stern. Chiseled. Focused.

“Is something wrong, Andrew?”

“No, ma’am.” I squirmed in my seat and wondered where my grandfather was. He’d vanished after bringing our bags inside.
Poof.
Like a magic trick.

“How’s your mother?”

“She’s all right. She gets, you know, real tired a lot.”

“I just bet she does,” my grandmother said smoothly. “Your father says you’re playing very well these days.”

“Yes.”

“He’s arranged for you to practice at our club this summer. Every weekday at eight
A.M.
sharp.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What’s your rating?”

I tossed my head. “Four point five.”

Her nostrils flared. “And you’ve atoned for that … embarrassing incident last year, I hope.”

I knew what she meant. “I guess.”

“It made me sick to hear about that. Absolutely sick. Imagine how your father felt to see his son behaving like that.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Like an
animal
.”

I stared straight ahead at the orange-and-brown wallpaper lining the dining room and kicked my heels against the chair spindles, over and over. I wished I were an animal. Like a jungle cat. I’d hiss and spit. And maul.

Then up the stairs we went for an early bedtime. Keith and I shared a small room at the back of the house that overlooked a duck pond and a pair of willow trees. I hated it. It didn’t even have a television. We changed into our pajamas and brushed our teeth, and then my insides hurt and I wouldn’t leave the bathroom because I needed to go but couldn’t. Keith heard me whimpering and came in.

“What’s wrong, Drew?”

“My tummy hurts.”

“Oh, for God’s sakes,” he groaned.

“What?”

“Look, just don’t say ‘tummy,’ okay? That’s a baby word.” He led me back down the hall and tucked me into the single bed closest to the window. “You know, this is where Dad and Uncle Kirby grew up.”

“It still hurts,” I whispered.

“You’ll be fine,” he said, and I fell asleep.

It didn’t last. My eyes cracked open hours later in the black humid heat of the night. Keith snored, and the lack of central air meant my clothes stuck to every part of my body. My empty stomach growled, and I snuck down the back stairs into the kitchen. The stove clock blinked 2:13. I was pretty sure my grandparents were holed up in their bedroom at the front of the house, but I didn’t want to risk getting caught. I crept to the refrigerator, pulled out a handful of white bread and sliced turkey, and jammed it all down my throat while standing in the middle of the room. Then I slunk back upstairs, overfull and queasy. I still couldn’t sleep. I opened the bedroom window and stuck my head outside. Fireflies glowed around the branches of the willow trees, and a tiny sliver of moon hung high in the sky, surrounded by stars.
The moon.
My heart skipped a beat and tears slid from my eyes, hot, stinging. I didn’t want to be here.

Stop it. You’re being a baby. Just stop crying already!

Although I had my own bed, I took my shirt off and lay beside Keith. I pressed against him. My heart slowed and my stomach settled. There was something calming in the scent of him, the feel of him. He was familiar.

chapter

eleven

matter

Coach Daniels stands in the parking lot, waving his arms like a monster and yelling for wayward runners to
hurry the hell up
and get on the team bus. Apparently, we need to
get this show on the road right quick and fast
if we want to make it to the cross-country meet on time. I sit back and close my eyes. Yeah, sure, I’m captain, but I don’t care if anyone gets left behind. I just don’t. All I care about right now is winning. The weekend’s taking forever to get here, and I need the distraction. Badly. I need physical torment and the fleeting validation of victory.

“Can I sit with you?” A soft voice breaks into my reverie.

I blink. I look up. It’s
her
. The dark-haired girl, the boyish one.

“There are no empty seats,” she explains, and she looks about as exasperated as I feel.

I oblige, of course, because I can’t exactly say no, and as I slide toward the window, the doors close and the bus’s engine roars to life.

“Thanks.” The girl settles beside me. She places her gym bag between us like a wall.

I give a half shrug like her presence is no big deal, but in truth, I’m put out. I still have no clue why she was looking at me like that in the chapel the other day. And I still don’t like that she did it.

At least now I know her name.

It’s
Jordan
.

She turns to me, kind of frowning, and my insides ball up.
God.
Last time we talked she said I wasn’t interesting; I repelled her. But something’s changed. Something’s different. Maybe she can sense my instability. Maybe she can feel the heat of destruction flaring inside me, that subatomic sea of flame and fallout.

Maybe she
knows.

The bus draws forward, inching into the street.

“Win,” Jordan says, and my heart sort of stutters.

“Yeah?”

“I wanted to tell you thanks for backing me up in civics class last week. During the immigration debate.”

“No problem,” I say, but I remain edgy. What an odd thing to mention.

She leans in, fingering the gold cross that hangs from a chain around her neck and lowering her voice. “It’s just, a lot of my family, they’re from Mexico, you know? So some of the things that were being said, well, they bothered me.”

I give a quick nod. “They bothered me, too.”

“Yeah?” She stares. “I guess I thought … I just figured you’d think differently, that’s all.”

I don’t know how to respond.

Jordan points. “You’ve got those wrist thingies on again.”

This is true. “What about them?”

“Well, you’re not going to get sick, are you?”

I tense. I mean, what kind of question is that? Like my body is mine to master.

“If I do, you’ll be the first to know,” I say stiffly.

Her head tilts. “Is that supposed to be a joke?”

Confused, I stare a little shamelessly at her. Jordan doesn’t seem to mind. She pulls something out of her gym bag. A wrinkled study sheet of what appears to be Latin conjugations.

“Classes are hard here,” she tells me as she tries flattening the paper against her knee. It looks like a lost cause.

“Are they?”

“Compared to my public school, absolutely. I have to actually, like, study. It sucks.”

“Ad astra per aspera,”
I say.

Jordan looks up. “That’s Latin, huh? What does it mean?”

“‘To the stars through difficulty.’ It’s the school motto.”

She snorts. “Well, the most difficult thing around here is meeting people. Is there a motto for that?”

“Probably.”

Jordan leans closer. Close enough for me to smell her. “I mean, finding a seat on the bus shouldn’t be such a struggle, right? It’s got to be me, though. My own roommate ditches me to go home every weekend, back to New York.” She sighs. “You’re like the only person around here who’ll talk to me, Win. Even if you do your best not to.”

Is she being serious? I don’t know and I don’t ask. Withdrawal’s a reflex for me, a protective one, like quill raising or those spiders that throw hairs. I scoot away from Jordan. As far away as possible. Our uniforms are sleeveless and my bare shoulder presses hard against the bus’s cool metal siding while I suck in autumn air rushing through the open window.

I fix my gaze on the horizon and keep it there. Cider stands, corn mazes, pumpkin patches, all whip by at Mach speed. Even the moon is visible, very faint, a chalky smudge in the clear blue sky. It teases as always, with its shape and its secrets, but I feel closer than I ever have.

Soon,
my mind whispers.

Very soon.

chapter

twelve

antimatter

We met up with our cousins on the third day. These were the daughters of my father’s younger brother and they lived in neighboring Lexington. Our grandparents kept their photographs plastered all over the house, and Keith schooled me on their names and ages: Anna was sixteen, Charlotte, fourteen, and Phoebe was eleven. I didn’t know them. Apparently, they’d visited us before, in Charlottesville, when I was younger, but I didn’t remember any of that. I didn’t remember a lot of things. Sometimes I wondered if my mind had been scrubbed clean of certain memories like in that weird movie with Jim Carrey. But if that was the case, why didn’t I just get a whole new life where I wouldn’t be reminded of the fact I’d forgotten things in the first place?

Keith, on the other hand, had a flawless memory. Photographic, his teachers sometimes boasted, but Keith said it wasn’t anything good to have so much stuff stuck inside his brain. “It’s too crowded in there,” he told me. “I don’t have room to think.”

We left the house early that afternoon and weaved through the summer crowds. Every day Concord crawled with hordes of travelers and tour buses that double-parked and shimmered in the New England heat. I didn’t like it, which was weird. The visitors bothered me even though I was a tourist, too.

Once we were out of the downtown maze of streets, my eyes stayed glued to the ground. Something in the stone slabs beneath my feet glittered and sparkled like diamonds. It felt like walking on the surface of a distant planet. Foreign. Unknowable. We entered the wrought-iron gates of the old town cemetery. Keith cleared his throat. I looked up and there they were. The girls. All three of them.

They lounged on beach towels in the prickly grass, amid chipped slate headstones and faded American flags. Keith smoothed out his shirt and walked straight up to Charlotte (she went by Charlie) and declared: “You’ve changed.”

She didn’t squeal the way girls at home did when they sat in groups and Keith talked to them. Instead, Charlie crossed her legs and arched her back. Long red hair pooled over one shoulder. I thought she looked mean, vixen sly, but Keith wouldn’t take his eyes off her.