The Unwanted (23 page)

Eric’s eyes widened as the coach’s words sunk in. “Off the team?” he repeated. “But—but you can’t do that.”

“Can’t I?” Simms replied with an exaggerated drawl. “And what makes you say that?”

“It’s not fair,” Eric pleaded. “I’m the best pitcher in the school, and I have to play baseball.”

“Really?” the coach pressed, now openly relishing Eric’s misery. “And why is that?”

Eric’s voice fell to a whisper. “If I’m going to college, I have to have a scholarship,” he managed. “And if I can get one in baseball, I can go to—”

“Too bad you didn’t think of that yesterday,” the coach interrupted. “But it’s too late now, isn’t it?” He turned his back on Eric and faced the rest of the team. “All right, let’s get it going, guys,” he called. “Let’s have a lot of chatter out there, okay?”

The boys glanced at each other, uncertain what to do. Kevin Smythe, his eyes smoldering angrily, was about to say something, when Cassie, whose own fury had been growing as she’d listened to Simms talk to Eric, scrambled off the bleachers and hurried out onto the field.

“Mr. Simms?” she called.

The coach swung around and looked at her. “Well, look who’s here,” he said, glancing at the boys then facing Cassie again. “I would have thought you’d be long gone.” Two of the boys snickered quietly but fell silent when the others didn’t join in. “What is it?” Simms asked. “If it’s a question about your assignments, save it for class.”

“It isn’t,” Cassie said. “I just wanted to turn the work in now.”

Simms hesitated, and his sarcastic smile gave way to an uncertain frown. “You’re done?”

Cassie shrugged. “I’m going to talk to Mrs. Ambler about changing classes,” she said, her voice perfectly level.

Simms’s smile returned. “If the work’s too hard—”

“It’s not,” Cassie replied. “It’s too easy. But I guess if the school needs a baseball coach that badly, they have to give you something else to do, don’t they?” She let her voice
drift off, and shrugged again. Then, as the baseball team stared at her in stunned silence, she turned and walked away from the baseball diamond. She could feel Simms’s fury bore into her as she left, and knew she’d gone too far. What if there was no other class for her to transfer into? What if she had to stay in Simms’s class for the rest of the year? It didn’t matter, she decided: what he’d done to Eric wasn’t fair, and she’d had to do something. She’d
had
to.

She was three blocks from the school when Eric, panting, caught up with her. “I thought you were going to wait for me.”

“I—I wasn’t sure you’d want me to,” Cassie stammered. “I mean, after what happened.”

Eric rolled his eyes. “What happened is nothing next to what’s going to happen. You should have seen Simms after you left. All the guys started laughing at him, and I thought he was going to go crazy. Now he’s going to be out to get you.”

Cassie nodded. “I know. But I was so mad, I didn’t even think about it.” She hesitated, then met Eric’s eyes. “Is it true? That you have to get a baseball scholarship if you want to go to college?”

Eric nodded, his jaw setting angrily, and he fell into step beside Cassie. “I don’t see how I can make it any other way. God knows, my dad doesn’t make enough money to help me out. And he probably wouldn’t, even if he could.” He shook his head bitterly. “Now I’m going to have to talk to Mrs. Ambler tomorrow and try to get her to fix it with Simms. He thinks he’s a big deal, but he’s scared to death of her. At least she still likes me.” He shifted his book bag to his other hand and glanced at Cassie. “So what are you going to do? He’s the only math teacher, and you’ve gotta take math.”

Cassie shook her head. “What
can
I do? I’ll just make sure I do all the work and pass all the tests. And next year I’ll get someone else.”

Eric shook his head. “I told you, there isn’t anyone else. Simms has senior math, too. The only way you’re going to get away from him is if he quits, and he’ll never do that.” He grinned. “Unless we could figure out some way to make him quit.”

Cassie stopped walking and turned to face Eric. “You’re kidding, aren’t you?”

Eric’s jaw clenched. “Maybe I am. I mean, he didn’t have to kick me off the team just because I skipped practice, did he? It isn’t
fair
. Besides, there isn’t any harm in thinking about it, is there? I mean, as long as we don’t actually do anything to him.”

Cassie thought about it for a few seconds, and once more Miranda’s words echoed in her mind.

“Don’t let them hurt you. Never let them hurt you.”

But what if they
did
hurt you?

“Why not?” she thought out loud. “You can’t hurt someone just by thinking about it, can you?”

Eric glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, but said nothing.

They were still a hundred yards from the house in the marsh when the pale form of the white hawk rose up into the afternoon sky, screeching loudly. Eric froze, his eyes tracking the bird until it suddenly disappeared into the sun and the brilliant glare made him turn away.

“It’s all right,” Cassie told him. “His name’s Kiska and he’s my friend. As long as you’re with me, he won’t do anything at all.” She started forward, but Eric didn’t move. He was staring up into the sky once more, watching the hawk circling above them. “Watch,” Cassie said quietly.

She gazed up into the sky and her eyes locked onto the soaring bird. Then, slowly, she raised her right arm, with her index finger pointed directly at the cabin.

As if she’d issued a command, the bird instantly banked and began beating its wings against the breeze. A moment later it settled onto the peak of the house and began preening its feathers.

Eric’s heart pounded. He turned to face Cassie. “How did you do that?” he asked. “Did—did Miranda teach you that?”

Cassie smiled at him, nodding happily. “I told you he’s my friend. He was Miranda’s friend, but now he’s mine.” Her smile widened into a grin. “He’ll do anything I want him to.”

Eric looked at her sharply. “What do you mean?”

But instead of answering him, Cassie merely smiled.

With Eric following behind her and keeping a watchful eye on the restless hawk on the roof, she led him toward the little cabin on the hill.

On the porch, his tail curled around his feet, they found Sumi waiting. He jumped into Cassie’s arms, and she cuddled him for a moment. Then they stepped through the cabin’s door.

Though on the outside the cabin seemed dilapidated and about to collapse, the walls inside were paneled with pine, all of it waxed to a soft golden sheen which appeared to glow from within. There was a large walnut armoire against one wall, and against another, tucked into one of the corners, was a small bed. A table sat in the very center of the cabin’s single room, and the back wall was half occupied by a stone fireplace, to which a cast-iron wood-burning cooking stove had been added at some time in the distant past. Along the other half of the wall was a wooden counter with a sink mounted in it, and above the counter, on either side of the window, pine cabinets.

Aside from the two chairs at the center table, there was an old wooden rocker next to a small table by one of the front windows. There was no other furniture.

Though everything in the cabin was very old, and obviously made by hand, each object had been perfectly cared for. There was not even so much as a speck of dust in the room, nor was there any sign of the clutter with which everyone in False Harbor had always assumed Miranda surrounded herself.

Eric grinned to himself. It was nothing like anyone thought it was. And that, he decided, was the strangest thing about the cabin. You couldn’t tell from the outside what was happening on the inside. In some ways, the cabin was just like himself.

He looked up.

The four triangular panels of the peaked ceiling were each painted a different color, and all of them were covered with strange designs that time had faded until they were nearly invisible.

“What is it?” he asked. “Did she ever tell you what they mean?”

“It’s astrology,” Cassie explained. “She told me this house
is special because it’s in tune with everything around it.” She hesitated a moment, but when Eric said nothing, she went on. “She told me it’s a magical place.”

Eric’s eyes avoided hers, but when he spoke, she heard no trace of mockery in his voice. “Did you believe her?” he asked.

“I—I don’t know,” Cassie replied. “I’m not even sure what she meant. But I know she believed it.”

“But didn’t she tell you?” Eric asked, his tone more insistent now. “She must have said something else.”

“She did,” Cassie said, sinking down onto one of the chairs at the table. Eric was looking at her, and she searched his eyes but was sure she saw nothing in them except curiosity. He wasn’t looking at her the way the rest of the kids had.

She decided she could trust him.

“She said I was special,” she told him. “She said she was giving me a gift and that I could … well, that I could do things. And she said I shouldn’t let people hurt me.”

Eric’s heart beat faster. “You mean, like Mr. Simms hurt us,” he said.

Cassie thought a moment. “I—I guess so,” she said finally.

Eric dropped onto the chair opposite her and picked up Sumi, who was anxiously pacing the floor beneath the table. “But what can you do?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Cassie breathed. “But I’m going to try to find out.” She closed her eyes and her lips began to move, though no sound emerged from her throat.

Eric watched her as the seconds slowly stretched into minutes. Silently, fixing his gaze on her in fascination, he watched until he saw Sumi slide out from under his caressing fingers and off his lap.

A moment later the cat slipped out the door.

Harold Simms lounged against the wall of the locker room until the last of the boys had dressed and left, then went into the little office he shared with the other coaches and closed the door.

Still seething with anger at what Cassie Winslow had said to him earlier that afternoon, he finally picked up the sheaf of paper on which she’d neatly laid out the two days of
homework that should have taken her at least two hours to complete.

All of it was done perfectly.

Obviously, he decided, she must have cheated. Even if she’d spent the hour of her study hall working on it, she shouldn’t have been able to finish the assignments so quickly. He concluded that she’d just done today’s assignment, and Eric Cavanaugh had given her the answers to yesterday’s. Smiling to himself, he marked both papers with an F, and added an admonition that cheating would not be tolerated in his class. And just let her try to argue, he thought to himself. She’s in big enough trouble already, and if she starts backtalking, I’ll have her suspended. In fact he hoped she
would
talk back to him, and give him an acceptable excuse to punish her for the humiliation she’d caused him. He could still hear the laughter from the baseball team, still see them looking at him with mocking eyes.

It wasn’t that they cared about Cassie Winslow—they were just mad at him for what he’d done to Eric Cavanaugh. But he’d been right in throwing Eric off the team—the kid had always been everybody’s favorite, and he’d been waiting a long time to knock him off his pedestal. Simms’s only regret was that he wouldn’t be there to see what happened to Eric when Ed Cavanaugh found out his son had been dropped from the baseball team. Eric would be lucky to come out of that one with all his teeth intact.

Simms snapped out of his reverie. He had an uncanny feeling that he was no longer alone in the building. He glanced around, half expecting to see someone else at the other desk, but there was no one. Frowning, he left his chair and went to the door. Opening it, he gazed out into the empty locker room and the showers at the far end.

“Hello?” he called. “Anybody in here?”

His voice echoed hollowly off the concrete walls of the gym. Frowning, he reclosed the door and returned to the desk, intending to pack his briefcase before leaving for the day.

His back was still to the door when he heard it slowly creak open.

He froze, his heart pounding, then turned.

Crouched in the doorway, its tail twitching spasmodically, was a gray cat.

Simms frowned. He hated cats—had hated them as long as he could remember. Tentatively he took a step forward.

But instead of backing away, the cat rose to its feet, its back arching as its fur stood up. It bared its teeth, and a hiss emerged from its throat.

“What the hell?” Simms muttered. He took another step forward, and drew his right foot back to kick the cat. But before he could swing his leg forward, the cat leaped at him, all four of its legs outstretched, its claws extended.

Simms screamed as the animal hit his chest and its claws slashed through his T-shirt and into his skin. He lurched backward, grabbing at the cat, but it seemed to slip through his grip. A moment later he felt a burning pain as its claws slashed across his face. He raised his right arm to try to knock the animal away, but before the blow struck, he lost his balance, falling backward over his desk and rolling off onto the floor on the other side.

Sprawled on his back, he looked up to see the cat poised over him, hissing furiously. Before it could launch its next attack, Simms struggled to his feet and hurled himself away, crashing into the bare concrete wall of the office. Swearing, he turned to see the cat leaping toward him.

The door.

He had to get to the door, had to get out.

He whirled, but the door slammed shut as the cat struck his back. Simms screamed with pain as he smashed into the door then sank to his knees. He felt the cat’s teeth sink into the flesh on the back of his neck, felt blood begin to ooze out of the open wound.

Terrified now, he threw himself to the floor and rolled, trying to crush the animal beneath his own weight. But no matter where he turned, the cat seemed to be there, its fury growing constantly. Its claws slashed at his face, and its teeth tore pieces of flesh from his arms and torso.

His screams grew louder, and he staggered to his feet once more, but there was no escaping the torture. Everywhere he turned the beast was there first, and over and over he felt its claws and fangs slashing into his flesh. Finally, whimpering, he wedged himself into the kneehole under his
desk and wrapped his arms around his bleeding head. And then, at last, the attack ended and a silence fell over the room.