Bad Hair Day (23 page)

Trey leapt out, going straight to all fours and loping toward me with his teeth bared. His eyes actually glowed now; he was on the verge of full metabolic overload.

I wobbled. My leg gave way suddenly, and I toppled down on my butt. The defibrillator hit the freshly waxed floor and slid a few feet away.

“Give me a break!” I yelled. “Come on!”

Trey launched himself into the air. Acting on pure instinct, I rolled out of the way. He missed me, but barely. I felt his hair brush against my cheek.

I scrambled for the machine. We’d gotten it when I was a sophomore, and right after they’d installed it, I’d left my gym shoes at home on purpose just so I could read the instructions while everyone else ran laps. So I knew how to work it. I flicked the switch to semiautomatic and pulled out the adhesive pads as Trey scrabbled to his feet, closing the distance between us. His face under all that stupid hair looked pretty surprised when I held out my arms to welcome him.

He hit me with the approximate velocity of a speeding bullet, and we slid across the floor and slammed against the brick wall.
My teeth clacked shut on my tongue so hard that I actually felt the spray of blood hit the inside of my cheek. My knee bent sideways; I shrieked. I wanted to roll around on the floor and clutch it, but I didn’t have that luxury.

I smacked an adhesive pad on his arm as his hands closed around my neck. He was breathing hard; I was glad to see him tired because otherwise I think he would have just snapped my bones with his hands like he’d done with Holly and Herbie.

Another pad went on the side of his neck. They were supposed to go on his chest, but this was the best I could do midthrottle. Once the pads were in place, all I needed was to activate the machine. That would have been a lot easier if I could reach it, but my fingers barely skimmed the surface.

His fingers tightened on my throat; his giant teeth snapped shut inches from my nose. My chest burned with the need for air. I tugged on the wires, trying to pull the machine closer, but it refused to budge. Trey growled right in my face. His breath smelled horrible. I didn’t want to know what he’d been eating.

The need for oxygen was agonizing, but I concentrated on the defibrillator. I snagged the edge with a fingertip and pulled it closer. My vision started to narrow; I finally found the override button and pushed it.

A high-voltage charge surged through Trey’s body. And through mine. By this time, I was an old pro at getting shocked. I came to seconds later. I rolled out from under Trey’s twitching body, coughing and holding a hand to my raw throat.

The hair started to shed from Trey’s face as I watched, and it was really fascinating until I realized that now he wasn’t moving. I dragged myself wearily toward him to check his respiration and pulse. What a pushover I was. I ended up doing CPR on the guy who had just tried to kill me.

Again.

A
aron dragged himself into the gym just as I was starting CPR. One eye was swollen shut and he was missing a tooth, but his butt still looked great. He called 911 and then took over on the compressions because my knee couldn’t support my weight. I sat there and admired the view, which sounds totally skanky but really wasn’t. I didn’t have the energy to get up. I was impressed that I’d managed to start the CPR at all, because it’s hard to balance on one leg and get enough leverage, even for someone as practiced as I was.

That was less my usual egotism and more a statement of fact. In Health and Human Behavior, Mrs. Ludwig had told us most people never need to resuscitate somebody. Apparently, this was true unless you were Kate Grable, in which case you made it a habit of attracting freaks who constantly dropped into
unconsciousness. I would have said it was because they were desperate to get close to me, but no one was that crazy except Aaron.

Jonah hobbled into the gym a few minutes later. I couldn’t say for sure, but it looked like he’d broken something in his foot, as well as acquired umpteen contusions and a bloody nose. He was using his sword as a crutch. Once he saw that I was okay, he sat down against the far wall and shouted encouragement from there. It was a nice gesture, but awfully distracting. Because I had one more task to complete.

I told Aaron where I was going, and he nodded without breaking count. And then I crawled across the floor and down the hallway. It took forever, but finally I got to the office and found a chair with wheels on it. Now it was much easier; I rolled down the hallway toward the auditorium, where Kiki still crouched in front of the locked doors.

“Kate!” she exclaimed, jumping to her feet. “Are you okay?”

“Have you seen Rocky?” I demanded.

“No. Is your leg broken?” She looked me over with concern on her face.

“Forget my leg. Trey kidnapped Rocky. He must have her stashed around here somewhere.”

After a moment of thought, she said, “The box seats. Maybe he locked her in there.”

Kiki unlocked the doors and rolled my chair down the aisle. We looked in every one. Rocky wasn’t there.

My eyes teared up and immediately covered with a red film. I had blood on my eyelashes. And now my eyeballs. It stung.

“Ow!” I yelled. “Owie ow!” Because I could handle torn ligaments and getting my face bashed in and things like that, but I couldn’t handle getting something in my eye.

Kiki crouched at my side. “What’s wrong?”

“My eye!” I tried to rub it with my sleeve. “Crap, that hurts!”

Kiki rolled me up the handicap ramp and behind the stage. “There’s a sink in the greenroom.”

When she shoved me through the door, there was Rocky. She was squirming against the duct tape that secured her to a makeup chair, whipping her head back and forth. The need to get to her was instinctive; I stood up and toppled to the floor with an ungraceful
oof
.

“Stay there, Kate.” Kiki pushed me down by the shoulder. Then she dashed over to Rocky. “I’m so sorry, but this is going to hurt.”

Then she ripped the tape off Rocky’s mouth. I expected her to scream, but the first words out of her mouth were: “Oh my god, Kate. You look like crap. Are you okay?”

Once the feeling returned to Rocky’s hands and legs, she and Kiki lifted me back into my chair and pushed it out to the gym, where Jonah and Aaron were performing CPR. When the EMTs arrived, I had a tough time explaining the drifts of hair scattered around Trey’s prone body. Finally, I told them it was like the zombie thing and they left me alone. Despain arrived a couple of minutes later. I sent Aaron out—with a police escort, of course—to get the Nanotech Industries binder.

“I wish you had given me this a couple hours ago,” Despain said, tucking it under her arm. “It would have saved me some time. That receptionist is like a pit bull; she kept putting me off.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I tried.”

“That place messed with my cell phone signal,” she grumbled. “And you left your house without telling me where you were going. Do I have to leash you the next time we have an emergency?”

“There will be no next time!” I exclaimed, and we nodded simultaneously.

“Sounds good to me.”

At first I thought I was going to manage to get away with an order to get my knee X-rayed. All I wanted to do was go home, but I couldn’t do that until my parents got back from that B and B. They’d hit the road as soon as Despain called them, but it would still take an hour or so to make the drive. I tried to hide in a corner, but then Aaron told the EMT about the head bashing and everything else, and I ended up strapped to a stretcher wearing a neck brace.

I would have kicked his butt for that, but it was too cute to risk damaging it, and I didn’t think my knee could take it anyway. Besides, he leaned over the stretcher and gave me a kiss to make up for it. It felt a little weird with his missing tooth, but it still made my toes tingle.

“The only way I’m going to forgive you for this is if you come along and keep me company,” I said.

He grinned. Between the tooth and the black eye, he looked
like a fourth grader. A very cute fourth grader I wanted to share my stretcher with.

“That can be arranged,” he said.

“Cool. And Aaron? No more humoring your stalkers. For any reason.”

He put his hand over his heart. “Deal.”

“Good. Because if I see anyone try to jump in your pants again, I’m going to kill them.” He nodded. “And really, death by science geek is a humiliating way to go. I wouldn’t want to have to explain that at the pearly gates.”

“I wonder how they’d note that on the death certificate.”

I laughed, and once I started, I couldn’t stop. I was still giggling uncontrollably as they wheeled me into the ambulance and shut the door behind me.

Something told me there was a psych evaluation in my future, but I didn’t freaking care. Nothing could be worse than being pounded by a werewolf.

And hopefully, I wasn’t tempting fate by thinking that.

The mayor gave me the key to the city. This was rather ironic, because somewhere in the midst of all the chaos, I’d lost Jonah’s car keys. We’d had to call a locksmith. Jonah had been giving me crap about it for the past week.

Between that and my appointment with Dr. Dickensheets, I’d had a lot of excitement. Aaron got to help with my MRI; he kept surreptitiously snuggling with me every time the doctor’s back was turned. And Dr. Dickensheets wasn’t as bad as I’d imagined.
He gave me this cool titanium leg brace and let me help diagnose my knee injury. Torn ACL and meniscus. I had a copy of the MRI and fully intended to hang it on my wall when I got home.

But first I had to get through yet another public appearance without making a total fool of myself. It didn’t start out well: I couldn’t get out of Jonah’s car without assistance. It was not meant for skirts, crutches, or leg braces, let alone all three at once. But he’d insisted on driving me. I think this had less to do with helping me than it did with stopping by to see Elle at her dad’s office on the way. They’d gone out on a date on Saturday. The thought of being potentially related to her was enough for me to find religion. I’d gone to church with Mom the next day.

“Would you quit staring and help me?” I huffed, and Jonah finally stopped smirking long enough to help me extract my crutch from the folds of my skirt.

“Here.” He offered a hand and launched me to my feet. I nearly went flying into the minivan parked in the spot next to us.

“What the heck?” I demanded.

Jonah curled his arm and made a fist. His bicep actually bulged a little. The shock of it nearly killed me. No way I’d believe that my brother was actually maturing. I’d sooner think he’d been replaced by a pod person.

“Miss Grable! Miss Grable!”

My fraternal reverie was cut short by the herd of reporters that descended upon us. Within moments, I was drowning in a sea of flashing lights and about ready to fake a seizure just to
make them stop. The only reason I didn’t was because I knew it would end up on the eleven o’clock news.

“Miss Grable, any comment on the murder charges brought against Trey Black?” a woman with helmet head shouted, despite the fact that her mouth was only inches from my ear.

Another reporter chimed in before I could answer. “Do you agree with the decision to shut down Nanotech Industries pending further investigation?”

“Do you intend to go to the memorial service for Hollis and Herbert Langenderfer?”

“Any comments on the rumors that the president intends to award you the Medal of Valor?”

“Do you carry silver bullets with you at all times to protect yourself from further werewolf attacks?”

“You’re kidding, right?” I asked. The reporter shrugged sheepishly.

“Do you plan to open a paranormal investigation service?” asked Thornton Cavalier. I remembered him from the last time CNN had interviewed me. He looked more plasticky than ever.

“My plan,” I said deliberately, “is to go inside this building and accept the key to the city, and then do some interviews, after which all of you will go away and let me finish my senior year in peace.”

“But clearly something is up with Bayview,” Cavalier persisted, thrusting his microphone under my chin. “It seems to attract strange phenomena. What do you intend to do if your town
is overrun by a genetically engineered Bigfoot? Or visitors from outer space?”

“I’ll end it.” My words came out a little sharper than I intended. “Bayview is a nice place. And anything that tries to invade it is going to have to come through me first.”

“Me too,” said Jonah, his voice cracking. He grabbed his pseudosword from the backseat and flanked me as I hobbled through the crowd toward the doors. My parents and Aaron waited at the top. Dr. Burr took my crutches and helped me up the stairs. And Jonah watched my back with his sword in hand.

Somehow, I was less embarrassed by all the attention than I’d expected.

Carrie Harris is a geek-of-all-trades and proud of it. She’s always been a bit of a brain, so she wrote a zombie book—
Bad Taste in Boys
. And she has hair, so she wrote a werewolf book next—
Bad Hair Day
. Luckily, she won’t be running out of body parts anytime soon. Carrie lives in Michigan with her ninja-doctor husband and three monster-obsessed children. Learn more about her at
carrieharrisbooks.com
.