The Grimm Chronicles, Vol. 2 (19 page)

His shout echoed down the hall. I heard Seth’s calm voice over the frightened murmuring of the children: “It’s OK. Everything’s cool, little dudes and dudettes.”

“A deal is a deal,” I said, and went down into the basement to finish the job. I have to admit, I was more than a little excited. A magic fish! One that could grant a wish in exchange for freedom. One who’d done it before. Faint music played in my head, some unfamiliar happy tune that had me descending the basement steps two at a time. I thought I had my chance, the chance I’d been hoping for since this whole “hero” business began. I thought I had a
way out.

Little did I know …

Chapter 2

Sleep, wonderful sleep! Peaceful sleep. No nightmares. No Corrupted. Just me sitting in a diner and who should walk in? None other than a young Clint Eastwood. Looking for a cup of black coffee to wet his whistle before rounding up baddies. We talked. Mostly about waffles. Then in came James Dean. He wanted a cup of coffee, too, but we had the last pot at our table. He slid into the booth, right next to me. I smiled at him. His green eyes sparkled mischievously as he complimented my violet shirt.

Hey! It was a dream.
My
dream.

One I didn’t have any control over. One lacking monsters. Gawd, how I missed that. And I
certainly
didn’t mind the addition of James Dean. Pretty soon I’d be able to have my own dreams back every night.

When I woke up for school just two hours later, I felt more rested than I had in over a week. I yawned, stretched, then wandered sleepily into my closet. The fish was there, quite angry that he wasn’t yet in Lake Michigan. I’d placed him behind a pile of dirty clothes, inside the deepest container I could find in our kitchen cupboards. It was a large ceramic soup tureen with a deep bowl and notch in its lid where, under normal circumstances, the handle of a ladle would rest. But my life was having a definite shortage of normal circumstances. Instead, a cold round eye glared out at me from the small opening.

“Freedom!” he said harshly. “I offer you freedom and in return you put me in a soup dish and nearly smother me with your laundry! You could use a lesson in hospitality, my dear.”

“Shhhh,” I said, glancing over my shoulder. Briar was fast asleep under the window, snoring softly amongst a motley collection of throw pillows that had once decorated my bed.

“Oh. Right.
The rabbit
.” The closet was dark, but I swear I caught him rolling his eyes. “Incognito. Secrecy. Silence. All that jazz. Well,
fine
. But I do hope you’ll at least give me some bread crumbs to tide me over.”

I nodded, contented. Silence was what counted. Because I hadn’t exactly informed Briar that I was harboring Corrupted in my closet.

I picked out some clothes and opted to get dressed in the bathroom, away from that hostile fishy gaze. I came back and made sure the closet door was closed tightly before giving Briar a kick in the butt.

“What now? Carrots for whom?” he asked, sitting up and licking his teeth.

“You told me to wake you up.”

“Ah, yes!” He stood up, dutifully returning the pillows to my bed. “I need to sneak into the library downtown. I swear I’ve seen that gold coin before. It will take hours, no doubt. Perhaps even days of searching the newspaper and records archives to discern the connection.” His ears perked up. “No doubt a tiresome and draining process …”

I sighed, rolling my eyes. “I’ll leave you a bag of lunch on the counter. Just grab it before my parents wake up at seven-thirty.”

I went to school feeling … well,
good
. In fencing class, I riposted. I counter-riposted, too. Chase was there on the sideline, not sitting with the boys. Instead, he sat next to Jasmine on the girls’ side. He cheered me on. He shouted tips between points. I beat Steve Strauss, one of the team’s toughest boys who wielded his foil like a maniac.

Afterward, Chase and I walked/wheeled to the lunchroom, staying close to the wall of green lockers to avoid the throngs of students. I’d chosen not to shower—I hadn’t even broken a sweat taking down my (male!) opponent. OK, I was also really happy with the healthy flush of my hard-earned victory and the way my eyeliner and mascara had held up, even after having my face inside the stuffy fencing mask.

“So I was thinking we meet up again after school,” Chase said. “I’ve got a science project coming up and I really want to nail it. I want an A.”

I glanced down at him. He was wearing a plain white t-shirt and dark jeans. This seemed to have become his uniform of choice, now that he’d had to abandon baseball.  “Oh? And what’s in it for me?”

He looked up, his green eyes wide in feigned innocence. “Why my company, of course. Isn’t that enough?” Then he flashed me a dazzling grin. I could only chuckle in response, as my heart seemed to be ricocheting madly around my chest cavity. Was he flirting with me? Impossible. Then he added, “But … I suppose I could throw in a few more moves to sweeten the deal. I still notice a couple opportunities where you could tighten up and really balance your attack.”

Yeah, impossible. “Fine. That sounds like a fair trade-off.”

He stopped at the doors leading to the cafeteria. I stopped with him, curious. He looked down at the ground, then laughed nervously.

“So, hey. Um … what do you think of me sitting with you and Tina—I mean Rachel—today?”

“Sure.” I shrugged, but was more than a little surprised by his request. “I have to warn you though,” I said in mock seriousness, “We’re going to be talking
nerd stuff
.”

He smiled, clearly relieved. “That’s all right! I don’t mind it.”

Oh, he
definitely
didn’t mind it. And I understood
why
the moment we brought our lunches to the back of the room. Chase’s girlfriend—that tart little blonde that every boy fought to sit next to in every class—locked eyes with him for just a second, then turned away. The other guys on the baseball team were all wearing their jerseys because there was a game after school, and as Chase passed they gave him the obligatory high-five but said nothing when he chose not to sit with them.

“Oh maaaaan,” Clyde said, pulling aside the chair beside him to Chase could wheel up to the table. “Something went down.”

“Hmmm,” Rachel murmured, stealing one of my apple slices from my plate before I could slap away her hand. “Lovers’ quarrel. I can see it in your eyes, dear boy.”

“Yeah,” Chase murmured. He grabbed his burger from the tray and opened it up, picking off the pickles. The lunchroom seemed ridiculously quiet. Tense.

“What happened?” I asked, changing the subject. “The cafeteria feels weird.”

Clyde smiled and snorted, pulling his hair back behind his ears. “Maaaan! Nothing gets by you, Goodenough. You’re some kind of bloodhound or something.”

“A fight,” Rachel said. She swiped another apple slice; this time, I let her do it. She’d clearly forgotten her lunch; I still had a plate of pasta and chicken that I wouldn’t even finish.

“Let me guess: Joey Harrington,” Chase said. He stuffed a quarter of the hamburger into his mouth, wiping mustard from the corner of his lips.

His lips. They’d be soft, yet firm …

I shook my head to clear the dirty thoughts. “Wait, what happened?”

“Oh, it was epic,” Clyde said. “Total meltdown. We’re talking a battle, man, right here in the lunchroom. Joey threw something at one of the skater kids, right? And then the skater kids started yelling at him, you know, just like you did to him the other day. Only there were, like a hundred skater kids …”

“Six,” Rachel corrected.

“OK, six.” Clyde pulled back his red flannel sleeves and pushed his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose. “But it
seemed
like a hundred. And so they stood up to him, just like you did! But guess what? Joey Harrington is a total psycho, man, because he just went over to their table and picked a fight anyway. And so there were six skaters attacking him and he was fighting them off and it took two of the gym teachers to break it up.”

Chase shook his head.

“Let me guess: everyone got sent home,” I said.

Clyde nodded. “Correct-a-mundo.”

Chase shrugged. “Why not? Everyone was fighting.”

“It never would have happened if Joey hadn’t bullied them,” I snapped. “And the skaters never would have gone up to him and attacked
him
. He went over to their table and attacked them because they stood up to him. He’s a bully.”

Chase raised his hands. “OK, OK. Harrington’s a jerk, that’s kind of old news. Didn’t know it was such a big deal.”

“It is,” Rachel said with a sigh. “Sometimes, it really is.”

Later, in the library, I went back to cleaning the old periodical shelves, hoping to not run into Briar. I didn’t want to think about being the hero all day. In fact, I even kept my fountain pen in my purse and put my purse in the librarians’ office just to avoid being reminded of it. I wanted to lose myself between the bookshelves for just a while. I wanted to remember what it was like before I found that cursed pen.

Time went slowly. I relished it, getting to know a couple dozen new paperback friends in the History section. When it was finally time to go home, I reluctantly grabbed my purse, wondering briefly what it might be like if I just left it—and the magic pen—at the library for a few days.

Chase was coming over. I’d gotten permission from my mom for a temporary reprieve from the grounding, only because she hadn’t woken up in the middle of the night last night and noticed my empty bed or the rope ladder outside my window. Her text that afternoon had been pretty clear:
Two hours. Studying only. No leaving the house.

So my parents were sticking to their guns with this week-long confinement. No early release for the hero who so far had managed to save the world from a devious mind-controlling dwarf, a smoke monster that wanted to steal everyone’s music, and a mistress who was working kids to death to feed a giant lizard who was digging underground for a mysterious seed belonging to a tree from one of the Grimms’ fairy tales.

Whew. Just the thought of it all made my head spin. The sooner I could sneak out of my room and drop the fish off in Lake Michigan, the better. I just needed to get down there without bumping into Briar. That was my greatest fear now. Not my parents. Heck, if I had a driver’s license, I probably would have borrowed one of the cars and released the fish the first chance I got.

Or maybe not. I know it sounds strange, but even though I wanted out of this horrible
hero
business, a part of me deep down was making me hesitate. Hold off. Wait. I can’t explain it now. I couldn’t explain it then. But some kernel of doubt or uncertainty was holding me back, forcing me to wait.

When Chase pulled up that afternoon, I went out to help. His parents—a young-looking couple both with dark hair like their son’s—unbuckled Chase’s chair from the restraints that had been built into the back of the van and then helped him down the little foldable metal ramp.

“Do you need help getting into the house?” his mom asked with wide eyes. She was attractive, in a “Mom” sort of way—except for the “Mom” jeans, of course. Ditto for his dad, who seemed intent on one-upping his wife’s awkward clothing choice via a brightly colored and considerably oversized bowling shirt. They seemed well-meaning, if a bit anxious.

“I don’t need help,” Chase answered gloomily.

“Does she have a bathroom on the first floor?”

“Mom,” he said, slapping the armrest of his chair. “It’s all right. I’ll be all right.”

She sighed. Chase’s dad patted him on the shoulder and then they were off, pulling slowly out of the driveway and giving one quick honk of the horn.

“Well, that was thoroughly embarrassing,” I said with a wry smile.

Chase shook his head, then smiled a little in spite of himself as he looked up at me. He was wearing an old red t-shirt, a pair of faded jeans rolled slightly at the cuffs and a pair of well-maintained leather oxfords that looked like they might have lived through the period when his hairstyle had first been in fashion. “Just give me some time and I’ll be out of this thing for good. I can make it.”

At the door, I spun Chase around and pulled his chair up the little step.

“You’re pretty strong,” he said. “What kind of steroids are you using?”

“Hah!” I wheeled him backwards into the living room. It was empty, the TV off. Both my parents were still at work. “You sound like my mom.”

“Is she home? I might be able to charm her into making us cookies.”

“She’s gone for the afternoon. Her ad agency is putting in overtime on some political campaign.”

“Cool.”

“So what are you working on now?” I asked, sitting down on the couch. I was wearing a pair of cropped slim pants and cute flats. I also had on an ivory camisole under my favorite blouse: a sheer indigo-violet number hemmed in intricate scallops of lacy embroidery that buttoned up the back. For months it had languished at the back of my closet, being the sort of thing that’s too nice for school and wildly impractical for slaying mutated storybook creatures. I had even put on earrings and managed to coax my hair into a loose-but-pretty updo. All of which he appeared oblivious to.

Ugh, I thought, why would a boy compliment a girl’s fancy shirt? Pull back those expectations, Alice,
this isn’t a date
.

He grabbed his science book from his backpack, then squeezed the backpack between himself and the armrest.

“Geez, isn’t that uncomfortable?”

He shrugged. “This
entire chair
is uncomfortable. At least with the backpack with me, I still feel like a student.” He opened the book. “OK. So … we’re on the topic of fishing.”