Hot Pterodactyl Boyfriend (9 page)

The old guy was moving shoe boxes from one temporary pile to another. She needed to warn him. “I have to leave in, like, two minutes,” she said. “But I am going to find this missing shoe. I'm asking for your pre-forgiveness.”

He scratched his neck, as if he did not understand.

“Just nod, and know that I will pay for the shoes and I will clean up. Thank you,” she said. “If this shoe's box had a name on the label, what would it be called?”

“Meteor,” he said.

She scanned through the boxes with labels, the ones she could see, letting her brain reside in her eyes—was it fair to think of it that way? Meteor, Meteor, Meteor. It was a faster way of thinking. She trusted her eyes to find the printed word before her brain could process all the images, the towers of identical or nearly identical boxes. When she was through with one tower, she moved on to the next. When the labels were scanned—no Meteor shoes anywhere—she turned to the unlabeled boxes, this time not methodically at all. No time for that anymore. She just went where her muscles thought to go. Her brain was in her hands, her fingers. Eyes still scanning but now for yellow, for the lone shoe.

She wasn't trying to make a mess. Empty boxes flew behind her, tissue, laces, random shoes this way and that.

She had asked for pre-forgiveness.

The yellow shoe was somewhere in the room, somewhere near.

And then . . . there it was. On its own, in a box, not tucked in a corner or anything. In her hand. She'd barely torn through half the storeroom.

“I will be here tomorrow morning to clean up this room,” she declared. “I always keep my word. What time do you open?”

The man looked stunned, as if a bear had shambled into his shop and he was alone, without weapons.

Shiels whipped out her parents' credit card. She had already used it anyway, to pay for the last-minute supplies. “I think I will wear them now,” she said.

•  •  •

It felt like nothing was on her feet, or that her feet were nothing—weightless, just like in her dreams, her body lifting subtly off the ground as she was easing her way forward. The first few steps were just like that, full of a burst of pleasure from somewhere lost inside her, a lovely breath.

The first few steps.

Out the door and down the block, and she thought,
I don't need to take the bus. I can run there.

She pumped her arms. Like she'd been running long distances all her life. She'd be a bit flushed when she arrived. . . .

Like Pyke after heaving himself into the air with his beautiful wings. Those glowing chest muscles.

She would glisten.

Like Jocelyne Legault rounding the corner of the track. Those first few steps—a half block to the corner—Shiels was at least as fast, as efficient, as effortless as Jocelyne Legault.

But she didn't get the light, and a truck rumbled through, so she stopped and noticed that her heart clanked, and her breath was ragged, and if she thought about it (how could she not?), her feet actually were starting to weigh something.

Her beautiful yellow feet were turning into . . . blocks of wood.

The light changed, she sped off . . . lurched off, and was most annoyed when the curb at the other end of the crossing seemed unusually high, so that she had to physically lift herself. She was not flying. The pavement grabbed at her, slowed her knees, her thighs. Her breasts jiggled.
And they aren't even big,
she thought. But she wasn't boobless.

She wasn't Jocelyne Legault.

She pushed to the next light, praying for a red, for a break, but it turned green just as she got to it, so she had to keep running.

People were watching. People in cars going by her thinking,
Who is that clumsy girl with the flapping, thumping feet and bouncing chest carrying all those crêpe streamers and wearing those championship yellow sneakers pretending she's a runner?

She wasn't a runner.

She was breathing like she had a bird's nest in her lungs.

She was dizzy after two and half blocks.

One and a half blocks!

She looked back and could not tell how many blocks she had run.

Her soles felt like they'd been beaten with a hammer.

She was not a runner.

Was not.

Could barely breathe.

Cramp, cramping in her gut.

She started again. It was an elemental human thing—running. We all started out . . . on the savanna . . . running after our food.

That's how we started.

Slowly.

Huff . . . huffing . . .

And if we didn't . . . If we . . . couldn't . . .

If dinner got away . . . If we looked like dinner ourselves . . .

Why was this so fucking difficult?

Jocelyne Legault made it look like . . .

Shiels glanced behind her. Tried to focus. No bus. No bus was coming to save her.

She was going to have to make it back on foot whether she wanted to or not.

•  •  •

Was it ten blocks to the school . . . or two hundred? Shiels willed herself forward, prodded and slapped her feet against the hard concrete . . . up every evil curb. How could she feel so feeble, so clumsy, so joltingly out of step in her beautiful new yellow shoes? The breath gurgled out of her. She felt her head rolling. She had a vague sense she ought to pump her arms.

She dropped the bag of crêpe paper and did not stop to pick it up.

She dropped her old shoes, her leather, sensible ones.

The world became a tiny moving spot of focus on the pavement a few steps ahead of her feet.

It started to rain again. When? Hours later? When she was still running . . . heaving herself forward.

Her lungs knotted.

She breathed with her mouth.

The tiny spot ahead of her shrank.

Her fists were tired. Was she even running anymore? She was shuddering forward.

She lost track of where she was going.

The rust in her knees seemed to be grinding against other rust. But how could it be there? She used to run places. Didn't she? She remembered playing soccer with her father and all his side of the family at that reunion. When was that? She was almost in high school then.

She could run after a ball then.

She remembered.

She ran a bit back then.

And then . . . at Vista View . . . well who ran, anyway? Jocelyne Legault. She was practically the only one. She ran for the whole school because she was good enough, and whoever could keep up with her anyway?

Shiels realized she was no longer moving forward. The world was moving forward, but she was teetering over someone's flower bed.

So she was not downtown anymore. She must've been close to home. Where was she going?

Nowhere. The flower bed . . . the dirt of it. Cleared of flowers. Ready for . . .

. . . the student-body chair of Vista View High School to lean over, gasping, waiting to see if the contents of her stomach were going to return to the world.

•  •  •

Silliness, to arrive in the auditorium so long after the sound check should have been completed. To show up soaked from rain and sweat, crying practically from the pain, the stupid pain of running such a modest distance. Throat burning from breathing so hard. The whole world listing, spinning, broken.

“You're green,” Sheldon said to her. “Where's the hand stamp?”

Shiels had to lean against the stage before words would form. Why had she ever thought she could run more than a block to save her life?

Because she'd run after Pyke, when Pyke had been a monster, and it had been effortless. Her feet hadn't even touched the ground. She'd run after him when everyone else had stayed back.

The volunteer team was setting up the tables. Where was the dance floor supposed to be?

Where was Pyke now? Where was the band?

“What hand stamp?” Shiels said.

Instead of enveloping her in his arms, Sheldon stood back at least two paces. He seemed to be accusing her of something.

“It was in the bag with the extra crêpe paper,” Sheldon said. “We have to stamp hands when people show their tickets. What took you so long anyway? I texted you, like, half an hour ago.”

Half an hour? So, she'd been running for, what, twenty minutes?

Ten?

“Did Pyke show up for the sound check?” she asked finally.

Sheldon's look said no. The stage was littered with instruments, but no musicians were apparent.

“Nobody's seen him since yesterday,” Sheldon said.

Stay away part of an afternoon,
Shiels thought,
and what happens? Chaos.

For a moment she felt herself leaving her body, she was so wrung-out from her little run. There she was, a few feet above herself, vibrating vaguely while Sheldon, in a shimmering fog, keeping his distance, explained about the band. What was he saying?

They never did sound checks anyway, it turned out. Sound checks were redundant.

How could Jocelyne Legault run so fast for so long and never look tired?

•  •  •

Shiels retreated to a corner of the gym where tumbling mats had not yet been put away in the equipment closet. She rested her head for just a moment. Autumn Whirl was going to require every ounce of her attention soon enough, if she was going to save it from unraveling. No Pyke!

She was going to have to rouse herself.

A horde of ticket holders was soon going to descend upon her. Momentarily, after she raised her head and opened her eyes, she would check her phone and so know the hour. How late it was.

Everyone counting on her.

Blaming her.

She was the student-body chair.

She had a sense of them, already, gathering. A boy from another school—how had he gotten in?—began pulling the banners and posters from the wall. “Pyke is shit! Pyke is shit!” he was screaming, leading others—they were all screaming, even the members of the organizing committee.

“Shiels is shit! Shiels is shit! Shiels Krane can't explain!” The boy, the leader, was tearing her name off an iron sign she hadn't noticed hanging near the stage. Using a crowbar. The nails creaking loudly, because there was no music.

There was no music.

Autumn Whirl, organized by Shiels Krane, student-body chair, had no music.

“He's coming. He's coming!” Shiels said, looking around for Sheldon—who filled in the gaps, whenever she did something stupid, like run to the school and exhaust herself instead of taking the bus. He could be counted on.

Sheldon had her back.

But even Sheldon now was gone.

“There she is!” the boy yelled. He had a ferret face, and a strangely ridged back, as if he had just stepped out from the bush and into decent clothes last week. “In the yellow shoes. There she is!”

•  •  •

Shiels started awake—what a brutal dream that had been!—and saw two lights, red and white, chasing each other all over the gym. It was hard to see anything else because of all the bodies bouncing, writhing, spinning in the darkness. And because of the noise.

The screaming.

They were all out of their minds.

Shiels pushed herself into the mass of them. How had she slept through all of this? The exhaustion of the preparations and of the run must have come to a head. She squiggled between sweaty girls, jiggling boys. “Sorry. Sorry!” she said, hopelessly. No one heard anyway, and no one cared. They were all one big pressing, gesturing, screeching beast.

Shiels plunged her fingers into her ears. Everyone had gone insane. Howling like . . . like they were giant birds of prey blaring the pain and victory of the world.

Closer, closer. “Sorry! I'm sorry!” she yelled, and then she stopped apologizing. She didn't recognize anyone. Were they all strangers? In the dark, who could tell? Everyone was dressed in black, and they all had umbrellas dangling from their bodies. Purple lines painted down the ridges of their noses.

Closer, closer to the seething middle of the mass. What was pulling her? Something as strong as the primeval tug of those yellow shoes she was still wearing.

She hadn't changed for the event. She was in her soaked organizing clothes. But it didn't matter. No one saw her. No one recognized her.

They were all different.

A lone dancer flashed onstage, a sharp-shouldered tiny girl in raven black, head to toe, and not only the ridge of her nose had been purpled but the entire appendage, which looked substantial now, a whirling, slashing beak, almost, as she hopped and dipped, angled high again, stabbed out with her elbows, her knees, the sharp proboscis. A dancing, screeching, swirling blur.

Shiels couldn't help but follow the movements. Everybody followed them. They were all whirling, hopping, stabbing in time . . .

To Jocelyne Legault.

What had happened to her?

And there was Pyke at last, tiny and giant at the same time. Shiels was so close, she could feel the heat of him. When he lanced his beak forward, it looked like he could draw blood. When he hopped and stabbed, he did it as one who'd been living off the move since before the last Ice Age. When he screeched . . .

When he screeched, Shiels felt the worm in her gut coil itself, squeeze as if time had sped to the jolt of the universe and molten rock would spurt in an intake of breath.

She howled out the pain of it, the shatter kick, the boom.
Do you like the world as it is?
a voice scratched deep inside her.
Do you like the world as it is?

Do you like the world?

Already, already, already . . .

Already that world has gone.

•  •  •

Omigod, omigod, omigod, omigod!

She was not a girl who said such a thing, who thought in such . . . teenage terms.

But—oh my God.

Nothing was the same. In the space of one afternoon—and one long, unexplainable night—the axis of everything began to do its own dance. Its own dance with everyone.