“Kill us.”
“Right. It’s just … I don’t want to be the guy who kills off the one piece of proof we have that there’s this bizarre species no one knew about.”
“I don’t think you did.”
“Huh?”
“That guy, China, said that the Windigos were coming. That’s why we had to hide. Windigos, plural.” I shudder again, maybe because I’m so creeped out or because I’m in shock. Maybe I’m cold. The body shudders when it needs to get warmer, right?
Lyle’s face goes soft. He places my foot back on the floor, super gently. “Mana. It’ll be okay. Your mom will be okay.”
“How do you know?”
“She’s really capable, you know, as far as moms go, and we managed to get away from it.”
“She would have called me if she was okay,” I mumble.
“She doesn’t have her cell.”
“She would find a cell. It’s my mom. She’s practical. Like Seppie.”
Blue lights flash in through the window. Lyle leans away from me to peer outside. “The police are here. At my house.”
“Wait. What? Why?”
“I gave them my name when I called. I’ll have to go talk to them, explain stuff to the parents.”
“Should I come?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
He scratches at his ear, nervous. “I just have a feeling. Trust me on this, Mana, okay?”
“Okay.”
The truth is that I don’t want to have to try to explain everything to Deputy Bagley or some other cop. I’ve already lied about what happened in the locker room. The truth is that I’m not a good liar. The truth is that I’m more than happy to just hang out in Lyle’s room, hug my knees to my chest, and rock back and forth for a little while. Some would call it my impersonation of a cheerleader having a nervous breakdown. I would say, What impersonation?
* * *
He’s gone for about ten minutes when a noise scuttles alongside the roof of the house. I bury myself under the covers, hiding, clutching the edges over my head like it’s going to protect me somehow.
The scuttling pauses, then starts again, and gets closer. It sounds like it’s walking along the side of the house now. Another pause. Every single beat of my heart pounds against my ribs, making them ache. I flatten myself down, but turn my head the smallest of bits so that I can lift up the covers enough for my eye to peek out.
The window is dark.
Then the scuttling happens again, much louder. I hold my breath, will myself not to move, not to scream. A face full of teeth appears at the window. The eyes track around the room, searching, searching for me.
Locate. Exterminate.
I cannot even swallow. Any scream I would want to make is trapped somewhere down by my pancreas and is not coming out. One second passes. The Windigo peers into and around the room again and scurries on, moving to another window.
Locate. Exterminate.
I don’t move until Lyle comes back, and even then I’m not sure if I will ever be able to move again.
* * *
So, the police interview Lyle in front of his panicked parents. He tells them all that I was scared and ran off into the woods after we realized my house was broken into and that my mom’s car was still there. We thought we heard a noise inside, he lies. I freaked and ran off. They only half believe him, he thinks. He tells them I’m worried frantic about my mother. They believe that, he says.
He does not tell them that while they are interviewing him, I am upstairs cowering in his bed like a baby. When he comes back, he helps me out from under the covers and tells me all about it.
“I am so freaked out,” I say, when I finally can speak again. He opens his arms. I step into them and I feel a little better. “You are the best friend ever.”
He tenses up, holds on another second, and then lets go. I tell him about the Windigo at the window.
“It was trying to find you? You, specifically?”
“I think so.”
He lets that settle in his brain, I guess, because there’s a big pause before he says, “The parents are going to bed. They’re beyond upset.”
“Me, too.”
He pauses again, thinking, the way Lyle does. I can tell because, whenever he tries to think of what to say, his eyes gaze toward the sky or the ceiling or whatever. Up. They focus upward. “We’ll find your mom.”
I would like to believe that. I need to believe that, but—
“Come sleep on the bed with me,” he says.
I lift an eyebrow. It’s a calculated lift, the kind the actresses execute in movies and the main characters do in books.
He says, “I won’t feel like we’re safe unless you’re right next to me.”
This is true, but still. I feel sort of … um … awkward? Awkward about this, but kind of excited about it, too. I hide my awkwardness the way I always do: I tease him. “I think you’re just doing some patented guy move, which I will call Offer to Share my Bed with Traumatized Girl in the Hopes of Polishing the Porpoise.”
“Polishing the porpoise?”
“Riding the baloney pony?” I offer up.
He laughs quietly. His dimples show when he laughs. I love his dimples. “Can you blame me?”
Lyle isn’t really a total geek boy. It’s just fun to torment him. Like everyone, he’s a bunch of things all tangled up and beyond labels. His muscles are too big for a total geek boy. His hair is too nice. He runs like a jock. He works summers at the animal refuge like a hipster. He’s charming, too. He has had a million girlfriends. They never last long. He always says he gets bored. Would he get bored of me? I wonder. Not that he would ever like me that way … but if he did …
He yanks a big T-shirt off a pile on the floor and pulls open a drawer. He holds up flannel boxers. “You can sleep in these.”
“They’re kind of big.”
“You could sleep naked.” He gives a fake wink.
“Nice try.”
“Just seeing if I could convince you to do the naked horizontal dance of lust.” He tosses the clothes to me.
I catch them and change the topic. “Maybe we should call Seppie.”
“She’s partying. She won’t even hear her phone.”
“I know.”
Lyle cocks his head. He rips off his shirt. I refuse to stare at his muscles.
I stare at his muscles. What is wrong with me that I even notice his muscles? My mom is missing. My life has turned into a horror movie, and I’m staring at his abs, basically drooling. I hum under my breath to distract myself.
“I don’t think we should involve her. I think this is kind of dangerous stuff.”
I swallow. Guilt burrows into my chest, making it hard to breathe. “I involved you.”
Nothing can happen to Lyle. Nothing.
“I involved myself.” He says this quietly, just like the rest of our conversation. We don’t want his parents to wake up and figure out I’m here. Still, he says it in such a strong tone that I don’t argue with him. He’s being so brave, which is what he always is, always.
“You, Lyle Stephenson, are the best friend ever.” I go into the closet and shut the door. Lyle’s clothes flutter around my head. Metal clothes hangers bang against each other. I pull on his stuff and step out. He’s already under the covers.
His gaze goes up and down me. He starts twitching with laughter. “You look like you’re three.”
The T-shirt goes down to my knees.
“You’re bigger than me.” I state the obvious.
He lifts the covers so I can climb in. We both pull the covers back up and I turn on my side so we’re facing each other. Our bent knees touch, skin on skin. He must have taken his jeans off. His knees aren’t too hairy, but they’re not girl smooth either. They feel foreign, but nice against mine.
“You are wearing some clothes, right?” I ask.
“Want to feel and find out?”
“Nice try.”
“A bo
y can dream.”
He’s fake jolly. All show, trying to get me less scared, and it is so nice of him, but …
“My mom—”
“Will be okay.”
He takes me by the hands and pulls me in for a hug. I lean toward him, nestling into the comfort. He’s wearing boxers or shorts, too.
“How do you know?” I ask him. “How do you know she’ll be okay?”
“She just has to be. That’s all. She has to be okay. So, she is.” His hand cups the back of my head. “The police will take care of it, you know that, right? It will all end up okay. Your mom will be home soon, making cupcakes and straightening the house and nagging you about studying.”
I pull in a breath. It brings the smell of warmth, and boy deodorant, and goodness. It brings the smell of Lyle.
“You are the best friend in the world,” I say again, even though I said it earlier. I want him to believe it.
He laughs. I feel his stomach wiggle against me when he does. He kisses the top of my head. “Don’t forget it.”
“Like I ever could.”
* * *
Eventually, Lyle falls asleep. He makes tiny snore noises, which are kind of nice because it makes me know he is there, he is breathing, and I am not alone.
My eyes stay open.
Darkness fills the room. He unplugged the night-light. Clouds have covered the moon and the sky and all the limitless possibilities that poets and scientists always blab on about. I keep imagining that Windigo thing, creeping up the stairs, slashing through the door, finding us.
“It’s dead,” I tell myself.
But there are others. Obviously. One was creeping along the side of the house just a little while ago.
I ease myself out of Lyle’s bed and check his cell to see if my dad has called back. He has not. This figures. He’s the kind of dad who’s never there when you need him, always busy, always working, always in another place, another city. I shuffle over to the laptop and flip it open. The blue screen casts light on the room, and I use it to check everything out. No monsters. Lyle’s mouth is open a little bit.
The wireless is connected already, so I Google “Windigo.” The first link that shows up is from a pseudo-cryptozoology site. It says, “Deep in the world of woods and forest, in the dark abyss of no-man’s-land, there are accounts of malevolence and horror that cause even the pluckiest of men to crumble in fear. These are the stories of things inhuman, things usually unseen, and when they are seen, it is too late.”
Oh, that is beautiful. That’s going to help with the whole falling asleep issue. I check the windows. The shades are down. I still get that wiggly, awful feeling, like someone is watching. I am totally psyching myself out.
The website goes on to say that Windigos are humans who have turned cannibal, that they are large and hairy. It sounds nothing like what we saw.
I check out other sites. It’s just more of the same, only with less over-the-top language. I even Google “exterminate monster,” but I just get a lot of hits for role-playing games and Daleks.
Totally frustrated, I pick up Lyle’s phone and try my dad again. Nothing. No answer. How can he not answer? I try Seppie. The whole time it rings, I pray, “Please pick up. Please, please, please pick up.”
She doesn’t pick up. And I scroll through Lyle’s contacts because I am honestly that bored and that desperate, thinking that there must be someone to call for help. I get to my number and there’s a picture of me sarcastically pointing a finger at him. He has my name as Mana Banana. I change it to Mana the Awesome.
When we were little, Lyle used to obsess about my name, because Mana is what a lot of gamers call the amount of magic spell energy you have. Mana. He called me Magic Girl after that, until he actually researched my name for real and found out that a lot of people think that it means “thunder,” or “wind of a storm,” or some sort of natural force created by a supernatural entity.
I can still remember us sitting together under a tree, jamming out to tunes on my phone, slamming down the snickerdoodle brownies my mom had made, and him announcing, “You have the coolest name ever.”
“Your name is cool,” I told him. We were, like, twelve then.
“Lyle the Crocodile is not a cool name,” he said, citing my favorite picture book when I was little. I think I pounced on him then, screaming “Crocodile!” and doing a tickle torture until he started chanting “Mana Banana.” Good times.
I close the laptop, shut the cell phone, and tiptoe over to the window, staring out at the darkness and nothingness. I feel so alone, even though Lyle snores on the bed. I hope that obnoxious China guy is okay out there. I hope the Windigos didn’t get him.
China is the name of a country. It shouldn’t be the name of a guy who isn’t even Asian.
I go over to my bag and haul out the pretzel container, twist off the cap, and eat one. It’s crunchy and sweet. I touch the new penguin sticker with my fingertips.
Lyle makes a little snorting groan noise on the bed. I put things away and slip back over there, slide in, and sigh. Eventually, sleep will come, right? And maybe I’ll be able to think of some intelligent course of action for the morning. And maybe I don’t think my shirtless best friend is ridiculously hot.
I am so good at telling myself lies.
CHAPTER 7
It’s morning, and I’m kind of in the half-slumber zone. During the small part of the night when I was actually asleep, Lyle somehow spooned up against my back, with his arms wrapped around the bottom part of my rib cage. It feels good, and safe, and warm, like we’re some old couple who sleeps together every night and still manages to love each other even though we both snore and emit stuff like the occasional sleep fart. I snuggle in a little bit closer and breathe deeply.
The half-sleep happiness where I don’t really remember the situation that got me here doesn’t last, though, because the door to his room flies open and there is his mom, Mrs. Stephenson.
There’s no time to hide.
She starts to say, “Lylie, you’ve been sleep—”
I jump away. It does no good.
She shrieks.
Lyle’s mom is tall and has church-woman hips, wide and strong. She gives the impression that she could battle monsters on a prairie and win, that kind of woman. And that’s how she appears now. Her face turns white, then red. If humans were capable of having steam come out of their ears, she would have steam coming out of her ears. She quivers with emotion and I try to figure out what to do. Right now, I’m sort of huddled backwards against the wall, my legs tangled in sheets and draped over Lyle’s midsection. I try to pull the comforter over my head, but it’s tucked under us somehow.
“What is going on? What are you doing? Oh!” she yells.
“Mom, it’s not how it seems,” Lyle mumbles, starting to sit up. He’s all groggy.
“It is indeed how it seems. There is a girl in your bed … a half-naked girl in your bed.”
“It’s just Mana,” he says.
Just Mana? Do I not count as a girl? Nice. He puts his hand on my shoulder and then takes it away, like my ungirlness is burning him.
“I know who it is,” Mrs. Stephenson says, and focuses all her mother force on me. She starts pointing. “The police are trying to find you, young lady!”
“I … Um … I—”
“And you, mister, having a young … young … female … human being … in your bed. In your bed! Under my roof.” She backs up against the Doctor Who poster. Her hand covers her mouth. “Oh my word. Oh my word. Oh my word! And of all people? Mana? How could you do this to me, Lyle?”
“Mom … I didn’t do anything. We didn’t do anything.”
Right. Who would do anything with “just Mana”?
“Ha!” His mother spits out the laugh.
I wonder for a second what my mom would do. She would be mad, but she would probably be a cold, calm kind of angry, which is much worse. My mom … My stomach folds into itself again. I press my hand against it.
r /> Lyle’s boxers are a wee bit revealing. I make bug eyes at him so that he can fix himself. The tops of his ears turn bright red. He pulls the covers back up and over him.
While he does, I try to give him some backup. “We really didn’t do anything, Mrs. Stephenson.”
She whirls on me. “Don’t you pretend to be all polite with me, young lady. Get out.”
I stammer, think, cannot get my brain around what she just said. “What? I have no place to go.”
“Mom…” Lyle protests, sitting up and putting a pillow over his lap.
She points at me with a finger full of leave.
Hopping off the bed, I rush to the door and stumble down the hall, past Lyle’s dad, who is standing there with shaving cream covering half his face and a razor in his hand. I throw open the door and run into the cold, wearing nothing except Lyle’s T-shirt and boxers. The frozen ground stings my feet and pricks my lungs as I inhale. I think I make some sort of screaming noise from the pain of it. Lyle’s voice echoes out from the open door.
“Mana! Jesus, Mom, she doesn’t even have any shoes,” he yells. “Mana! Wait!”
She yells over him. “Don’t you take the Lord’s name in vain, young man. You’re in enough trouble as it is.”
I keep on running because I can’t think of what else to do. I run on my toes because it’s all that my skin can stand, and in less than three minutes I’m at my house, staring at yellow tape. There’s no sign of the Windigo except for a wet-looking smudge on the driveway. I quell the urge to vomit, and bolt onto the porch to try the front door. It’s locked. The police locked it? Why?
Okay. Okay. That’s probably standard police procedure and not a random fact I should be stressing about at the moment. The sky above me is gray and dull and seems like it’s going to leak snow any second.
I need to get inside.
Hopping up and down, shivering, I try to figure out what to do. I rip the sock from around my ankle and shove it on one foot, even though it’s bloody and stiff.
The broken window is boarded up. Then I remember the spare key. It’s under a rock that I painted a daisy on, back when I was at YMCA day camp. I find it and go in, closing the door behind me.