The Chaos (24 page)

Sometimes I would spy something that looked like Spot, and I’d have to hide. And everywhere I went, people pointed, or
screamed, or made disgusted sounds and faces, or backed away, or tried to hurt me. People freaking hurled rocks at me! Though I didn’t feel any pain when they bounced off my new skin. If I’d been like this when the girls at LeBrun had stoned me, I probably wouldn’t even have noticed. And my hair was more gummed-up now with something worse than the sticky wads of chewed Dubble Bubble that those bitches had jammed all up in my hair. At the time, Mom had said they’d done it because they envied my natural ringlets. She’d had to cut my hair short, and I’d been devastated, but it grew back in, and it was still all curly. Plus by then I was in a new, better school. But where was I now? In Shitsville. Looking like actual shit, with people throwing rocks at me. All over again.

A lady walking in the opposite direction on the sidewalk caught my eye. Asian lady, I couldn’t tell how old. They were kinda like us that way; not so much with the wrinkles until they were really ancient. Mrs. Hoshiama who taught Writing Craft at school was nearly forty, but you wouldn’t know she was any older than twenty-five. Anyway, this lady didn’t lose her shit when she saw me. She just nodded. She was wearing one of those long suede coats with a fur-lined hoodie, and a kicking pair of pointy-toed boots. They would have looked better in black instead of beige. Or in purple; that would have been way cool. She had a little green frog thing sitting on her shoulder, only it had arms and legs like a person, and its head looked like a bowl. It seemed to be whispering into her ear; how neat was that! I almost stopped blubbering, it was so amazing. As the lady drew level with me, she goggled, then tried to look casual, as though I was something she saw every day. She’d noticed that I was crying; I could see it on her face. For a second, she slowed, looking concerned, but she kept on going. It’s not cool in Toronto to talk to strangers just ’cause. If I’d just been hit by a car, maybe. Not
for a piddly little thing like me sobbing my heart out. The frog thing turned its head to watch me as they went past. I waved at it. It waved back. The friendly gesture made me feel a little bit better, so I used the sleeve of my blouse to dab the tears from my eyes. They made a black stain. So much for feeling better.

God, I missed my mom and dad, and who would ever have believed I could do that? And I missed Richard. I missed the way he would wake me up at ungodly hours of the night, eager to try out his new rhymes on me, no matter how much I cussed him. I missed him teasing me about my eye makeup, calling it “raccoon eyes.” I missed him sniggering when he caught me with the most recent HP novel, or reading manga. I missed him saying, “What’re you doing with that shit? You don’t even know you’re black, do you?” If I could have brought him back right that minute, I would never ever cuss him out again if he woke me up at three in the morning with some lame rhyme about the suffering of the black man. I would listen with my eyes wide open like I was really awake, and I would tell him it was the best thing he’d ever done.

I was thirsty. All the public water fountains had been turned off now that summer was over. Though I did find one that spat out mini batteries when you turned the handle. I had a few bucks left in my pocket, but even if I could have found any store that would let me in long enough to buy a bottled water, the few that were open had lines out the door from panicked people stocking up on food, water, batteries, pads. And, boy, was I hungry. My last meal had been back at Auntie Mryss’s. A roll of Saran wrap would really have gone down well right about now.

Right. Then there was that; weird appetite, black tears, black blood. Obviously, I had changed on the inside as well as on the outside. Was it making me sick? Was it contagious? Would it get worse? ’Cause, see, there was something worrying me even
more about the stuff covering me. It sweated. I’d inspected it when I’d found a streetlight that was working, that hadn’t taken it into its head to turn into a tower of dead rabbits with lightbulbs jammed into their mouths, or a giant yellow highlighter. Under the light, I’d been able to see that my new covering had pores, and tiny hairs that looked a whole lot like the hairs I had on my real forearms. I’d once compared forearms with a guy I’d gone with a couple of times. Jimmy Papadopoulos. He was Greek, his skin a little darker than mine without a summer tan, which bugged me. He had the normal guy hairs covering his forearms; easy to see from a few steps away. Maybe even easier, given his heritage. He’d never really looked at a grown girl’s skin up close, though. He was surprised to learn that we had body hair, too, though it was usually much finer than on guys. Sweet guy. We never dated, only knocked boots once or twice, but he didn’t start treating me weird afterward.

You know, my folks weren’t bad people, at least not all the time. They sometimes did kind of neat stuff, when they weren’t turning themselves inside out trying to keep me “in line.” Like the stories they used to tell me as a kid. I guess that was cool. For years I’d convinced myself that Brer Anansi was a girl, because Dad sometimes said, “Brer ’Nansi.” I thought he was saying the girl’s name Nancy. Turned out it was a short form of “Anansi,” like “Brer” was a short form for “brother.” But even after I found that out, I still liked to think of Brer ’Nansi as a girl, because I was a girl. Brer ’Nansi was the star of all the stories about him, even when he screwed up and the other animals were getting back at him for it. He was larger than life; he was a hero. I wanted to be like that. But as it turned out, I wasn’t the hero of this story.

I was the tar baby.

I ended up in High Park. I was thinking maybe I could find
a tree or something to sleep in. Maybe I could make a nest, like a gorilla. Could Spot climb trees? By now, I was so exhausted that I almost didn’t care. Maybe I could get a job as a gorilla. Maybe the Toronto Zoo would take me. They could put me in a cage, feed me bananas and gorilla kibble, and leave me there for people to stare at.

My phone rang. My phone shouldn’t have been able to ring.

With thick, rubber-coated fingers, I fought to get the phone out of the pocket of my jeans, which were now so tight on me that I could barely slip a couple of fingers into my pocket. “Please keep ringing,” I begged. I managed to get the phone out, then I fumbled it and it fell. “Damn it!”

It landed on the soft High Park earth. It was still ringing. I snatched it up, and an instant lasted an eternity as I tried to flip it open with my sausage fingers. I did it. Held the phone to my ear. “Hello?”

Still that eerie noise of millions of people wailing, but way in the background this time. “Scotch?”

“Richard? Are you okay? Where are you?”

“I think I’m in the phones.” His voice was weird, kind of like he was using an Auto-Tune, only scary, not goofy-sounding.

I leaned against a maple tree. “Did you say, ‘in the phones’? This connection’s really bad. I’m having a hard time understanding you.”

“Hold on. Let me try someth— There. Is that better?” His voice had changed to normal.

“Yes.”

“Sweet! I’m beginning to figure this thing out. I made myself a voice by cutting together bits and pieces of other people’s voices, you know? Just took me a while to get the samples short enough and pick the notes that matched my own voice. Sis, this stuff is so cool! What’s happening out there in the world?
The conversations going across the phone lines are incredible, not to mention the stuff on TV.”

“Where did you say you were?”

“Okay, I know it sounds wack, but I think I really am in the phones.”

The skin on my itchy Koosh ball scalp prickled. “Your voice is in the phones, you mean?”

“Well, yeah. Only it’s more than that. It’s gotta be my brain, too, right? Or else I wouldn’t be talking to you, or extending my reach like this, working out how to bypass the locks so I can activate a phone that doesn’t have any minutes on it. I can get GPS on this thing! Hell, I think I
am
the GPS!”

“And I’m the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Are you sure you’re not in a hospital room somewhere, stoned on morphine and hallucinating?”

“I don’t think so. I made your phone work, didn’t I? And while I have you on the line, lemme tell you; I’m so gonna get back at you for ratting me out to Mom and Dad.”

“I’m sorry!”

“That doesn’t cut it, Scotch.” His voice had started breaking up into lots of little voices again. “HOW COULD YOU DO THAT TO ME?”

It was the angry wail of a million trapped people. It gonged through me like Judgment Day. I fell on my knees. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

There was a long silence.

“Rich?”

“Yeah, well, three months in jail is nothing compared to what’s happening to me now.” His voice was back to sounding normal.

“I’m sorry.”

“What’re you sorry for now? It’s not your fault I ended up in here.”

“But I made you touch that bubble!”

He snorted. “As if you could make me do anything. Listen, Sis; I apologize.”

“Huh?”

“I knew you were in trouble at LeBrun High, but I didn’t know how bad it was.”

“But I told you what it was like! I told you and told you! And you just laughed at me!”

“I thought you were just being a girl. You know, all whiny and shit. Who knew girls could be that evil to other girls?”

“Well, now you know.”

“I guess I deserved you telling Mom and Dad on me.”

“I thought you did, but I was wrong. I was just a big ball of mad at everybody, and scared.”

“Yeah, welcome to being a teenager.”

I chuckled at that. He laughed with me, and for a second, we were just brother and sister again. Then he said, “The thing is, I don’t think I’m ever going to get out of here. Hey; what are you doing in High Park?”

“Hang on; can you see me?” God, I hoped he couldn’t see me like this.

“Working on it. Surveillance cameras use a different bandwidth.”

“Rich, where’s your body?”

“I think it’s gone. When that weird white gel sucked me in, I felt it kinda . . . dissolve.”

“Oh, shit.” I didn’t think I had any more tears. “Are you dead?”

“I thought I was at first. God, I’ve never been so scared in my life. Felt like someone had stretched me out so thin I could cover the whole planet. And then there were all these voices. It sounded like one big wail.”

“Yeah, I heard it.”

“Anyway, that’s not why I called. I called to yell at you. And to apologize. And to tell you this; you need to get home, Scotch. Mom and Dad are going nuts looking for you.”

“But I—”

“Don’t tell about me, okay? Not yet. I’m putting you through to them now.”

“Rich! Wait!”

But there was the sound of a phone ringing on the other end, and a click.

“Hello? Sojourner, is that you?”

“Hey, Dad.” It was so good to hear his voice. I hadn’t expected to feel that way.

“Where are you, child? You frightened me and your mother half to death when the phone cut off like that.”

“Sorry. I ran out of minutes.”

“You all right? You hurt? Tell us where you are, and we’ll come and get you. Your mother drove through hell and back to get us home to you children. And where’s Rich? He called us, but he wouldn’t stay on the line.”

“He’s . . . he’s all right.”

“Oh, thank God. Thank God.”

My father was weeping. For Rich. I said, “He’s got, uh, somewhere to stay, but he can’t make it home right now.”

How was he going to react when I told him what had actually happened to Rich? “Dad, I’m in High Park.”

“What you doing all the way down there, right in the middle of the Chaos? Hold on. Tell your mother how to find you.”

Mom came on the line. “Sojourner?”

“Mom, please come get me quickly, okay? I’m so scared and lonely out here. Only, Mom? I look kinda different.”

“Baby girl, I don’t care whether you’ve grown three more arms or you’re suddenly eight feet tall. Tell me where you are,
and your daddy and I will move heaven and earth to be there.”

Through my sobs, I managed to tell her how to find me. “I’ll come out to the street, okay?”

“Okay. Hold tight, sweetheart. We’re coming. The car has cheetah legs instead of wheels now, but it runs like the wind.”

I sighed in relief and slipped my phone back into my pocket. I started heading for the edge of the park. It was going to be okay. My folks were coming for me, and they’d take me home and feed me and I could sleep in my own bed. They’d figure out some way to help Rich. The rest of the world might be going to hell in a handcart, but I would have my life back.

With a wet, chewy growl, Spot leapt at me and bowled me over. We rolled end over end until I was dizzy. We finally crashed to a halt against tree. Spot snapped at me. I held her back with my hands. I tried to pull away, but my hands stuck to her. I planted my feet against her and pushed. My hands came free with a sucking pop. Spot didn’t stick to my shoes. But she lunged and sank her teeth into my forearm. I screamed. The pain of the bite was bad. So was the sting of Spot’s venom oozing into my veins, replacing the blood . . .

I yanked my arm away from her as hard as I could. The flesh tore. The red blood stood out starkly against my black rind. But there was already a ribbon of black curling through the red. I slapped my other hand around the cut and ran. I could see the highway. I was so close! If I could just reach the edge of the park . . . If my folks could just be there to rescue me . . . But my feet had swollen a lot with the new skin and all the walking. Every step stubbed my toes against the toe box of my boots so hard, I thought a few of them had broken. Pretty soon I slowed to a hobble. Spot leapt onto my back and pushed me to the ground. She sank her fangs into my shoulder. I rolled over, trying to shake her off, but it was no use. I ended up on
my front with Spot still stuck to me. There was that creeping sensation in my veins again, of Spot’s venom spreading from where she’d bitten my back. I was too weak to fight anymore. My head thumped down onto the ground. The lights from the highway swam in front of my eyes.

There was a whooshing sound. From above me, a voice said something like, “Oo blue duck!” I heard a thwack and a yipping yelp, the kind a dog makes when you step on its foot. The dead weight of Spot was gone. A pair of feet thumped down close to my head. I saw black boots, and the hem of a black skirt that came down to the wearer’s ankles. “Look at that,” she said. “You should have come to be my new Vassilisa. It would have been weeks before I would have tried to harm you.” She cackled. “Now you’re just easy pickings for any old villain that comes along.”