I spin the combination on my locker, not looking up. I’m about to pull it open when a hand slams it shut, large and wide, with hairy knuckles. The janitor nods at me, apologetic. “Sorry, kid, I’ve got to fumigate it.”
“You what?” I ask, trying hard to focus on him and not my classmates, who are staring.
“Fumigate,” he repeats, holding up a canister that shows a bug lying on its back, a green cloud over its head, legs folded, eyes the comic book x’s of death. I’m still staring at it, confused when he adds, “For lice.”
A few more giggles roll through the crowd, gathering steam until they reach the back where people are standing on tiptoe, asking what’s going on. I turn, shouldering my way through everyone. A girl yelps when I step on her foot by accident, but when she yells, “Yuck! Cooties!” I decide to grind down, twisting hard. Her cry of annoyance turns into true pain as I break out into the open, right into our principal, Mrs. Prellis.
“Tress,” she says. “Why don’t you come with me?”
She’s smiling, but it’s an order, her hand pinched tight on my elbow as we make our way down the hall, the last late arrivals hurrying to get to class before the bell. Mrs. Prellis escorts me into her office, closing the door behind her.
“Have a seat,” she says, and her voice is warm, but she’s taking note of which chair I sit in, marking it to be wiped down after I leave. “So,” she says as she leans forward on her desk, elbows creating a temple that leads up to her bright smile. One that’s trying really hard to make me comfortable.
“I don’t have lice,” I say. And it’s true. I don’t. Not anymore, thanks to Rue.
“I’m aware that there was a sleepover this weekend and that the invited girls likely were all exposed to head lice.” She pauses, but I let the silence continue, not giving her anything. “I was glad to hear you were at the party, Tress.”
Nobody else was glad about it, including me. But I don’t say that. I just stare her down, waiting. Like the cat. She clears her throat. “I talked to the mothers, and we’ve established that all the girls—”
“Have mothers,” I finish for her.
She stops, stunned. “Excuse me?”
“They all have mothers,” I say. “And they made sure their daughters are clean.”
“Yes.” Mrs. Prellis nods, but her voice is wary. “So if you would allow the school nurse to—”
“No.”
“I . . .” Mrs. Prellis shakes her head. “I don’t understand. Tress, if you don’t have lice—”
“I don’t.”
“Then you’ll let us determine that, and we can all go about our day—”
“Like normal,” I interrupt again, and this time Mrs. Prellis bites down on her bottom lip, a little blood rising in her cheeks.
“Like normal kids that go home and their normal moms feed them a normal dinner and they sleep in a normal bed,” I go on. “They don’t have lice and TV dinners and a mattress on the floor and wild animals outside.”
“Tress, do you feel safe at home?”
Mrs. Prellis is recentered again, back in the place she knows, where she takes care of kids and looks out for everybody. Especially the ones with the right last names.
“Safe?” I repeat the principal’s question, remembering the streams of still-warm steer blood running down my back, the weight of its massive head balanced on my shoulder, the cat’s screams through the thin sheets of metal. Metal like my locker, the janitor’s hairy hand swinging it shut, the crowd, pushing in, also scenting blood.
“It’s the only place I feel safe,” I tell her.
Chapter 39
Felicity
“I tried,” I say. “I told Mom it wasn’t you who had—”
“Maybe,” Tress interrupts me, deadly cold. “But you didn’t tell Gretchen or Maddie. You didn’t tell them not to stick pads to my locker or let Principal Prellis know it didn’t need to be fumigated. My only good coat was in there. It smelled like bug spray all winter. I smelled like it.”
Her voice cuts off, checked by emotion. “You have no idea what that’s like.”
No, I don’t. And the truth is I probably never will. A tear slips out, and Tress flicks it away, angrily. Her phone has been going off nonstop, vibrating ever closer to the edge of the chair, like a lemming ready to take the leap. She snags it at the last second, and as she glances at it her whole body goes rigid, the trowel dropping from her hand, splattering mortar on the hem of her jeans. Her eyes rise to mine, and if we’re not friends anymore, we’re not exactly enemies in this moment, either.
Faces don’t change, and I can still read her like a book. Tress Montor is scared . . . and that terrifies me.
“Tress,” I say, my heart beating pathetically against my rib cage, anxious for release from the rising panic. “What is it?”
She doesn’t speak, only turns the phone to me. I can see the party above us, Hugh facing Ribbit, the clock between them, a sea of faces below, phones held aloft. Above them on the second-floor landing, black padded feet circle, tail flicking.
Chapter 40
Cat
A strange girl
smells of salt as she walks
darkness eating her sounds
—one sound—over and over,
Deep gasps between.
The cousin bolts, her escape draws attention
and the girl’s sound goes light and high
With hope.
A light she makes follows the path
where a tail should be
stubbed out, by human hands.
I yawn-stretch, hackles rising.
Make myself bigger
follow sounds and smells
more promising than her as she
searches for something lost.
Chapter 41
Tress
“Shit.”
Felicity’s voice is light and breathless when she spots the cat on the livestream. “What do we do?” she asks.
I flick the video away, thinking. The jolt of panic I felt at the sight of the velvety paws has settled into a line of reasoning, each fact easing out the high peaks of adrenaline in my bloodstream.
“The cat isn’t hungry,” I say, “or he already would’ve grabbed someone.”
I pull the video back up, analyzing the few frames where he can be spotted.
“He’s not hunting, either,” I say, thinking aloud. “He’s too loose, just strolling. He’s . . .”
Felicity leans forward, chains jangling as she watches the video with me. “He’s prowling,” she says. It’s a good word for it. He’s moving cautious and slow, investigating while avoiding attention.
“Right,” I tell her. “But he’s curious, and cats don’t just hunt when they’re hungry. They’ll kill for sport.”
I make a decision, grab my backpack from the corner, and slip it over my shoulders.
“What are you doing?” Felicity asks, her voice high and tight again, no longer low and commiserating with mine.
“I’ve got to . . .” What? What have I got to do? Catch a wild animal with my bare hands?