The Game of Boys and Monsters (3 page)

I wanted to ask, “Is one of you two seeing her? And which one?” but I couldn't find the guts to do it. Instead I said, “How is she?”

“Evy's tired,” Jack said, “very tired.”

I watched them towel off. Jack politely folded his towel up under him before sitting on the couch. Hap dropped his in a heap beside him as he sat cross-legged on the floor.

“Do you think she's okay?” I said. “I mean, do you think she's sick or something? She's been tired so much lately.”

“I guess that's partly our fault,” Jack said.

“Lot of late nights,” said Hap.

“Are you . . . What do you guys do, late at night?”

“What
don't
we do?” Hap said, but it was bravado, a joke.

“You want to join us?” Jack said.

My heart thudded because I didn't know what he was asking. He held my eyes for the longest time, and I found it hard to look away. “I don't think so.” I tried to keep my voice light. “I never was very good at staying up late.”

“Shame,” Hap said. “We love company.”

Jack uncrossed his legs and recrossed them in the opposite direction with the grace of an old-timey dancer. He could be from
White Christmas
or something, one of those old movies where grown men dance all the time and it seems totally normal.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” Jack asked.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

I looked to Hap, but he was thumbing through one of my mom's coffee-table books, completely disinterested.

“I don't,” I said. “I mean, if I did, you would have met him. Through Evy. Right?”

“Right. Maybe,” Jack said, but it felt dismissive, like I wasn't important enough for anyone, even Evy, to track my relationship status. I couldn't tell what he was thinking.

“Are you and Evy . . . ?” I didn't know how not to ask it, even though I wasn't sure what answer I wanted to hear. If he said no, the suggestion of our mutual
availability
would loom awkwardly between us, but if he said yes, I would look like a fool for not knowing sooner. “Are you . . . seeing Evy?”

Jack seemed more Evy's type than Hap, even though she and Hap had been more physical at school.

Jack shrugged. “Depends on what you mean by ‘see.' I ‘see' you.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Evy's not the kind of girl to let a guy in, you know?”

“She's a tough nut to crack,” Hap said, like this was something they'd discussed before.

“But . . . you're hanging out with her all the time. I mean, if she were going to be with anyone, don't you think it would be one of you two?”

I felt disloyal, having this conversation with them, but I wanted to know what they thought, what agenda they had around Evy.

“Evy's not as fun as she used to be,” Hap said, looking at Jack.

“She's tired all the time,” Jack said, as if we hadn't covered this mere minutes earlier. “I wonder if she's anemic?” He smirked.

And I knew. I was right.

All the things that I feared—I was right.

“She's definitely changed,” Hap said, looking me in the eye. “Something's . . . shifted.”

My heart seemed to press into my belly like it wanted to hide.

“I'm not sure you guys should be here,” I said, trying to keep things light. I wanted to yank them to standing and shove them out the door, but I couldn't let them see my fear. “Just because . . . my mom and dad, they don't let me have guests when they're not home . . . especially guys.”

“Smart parents,” Jack said.

“You never know with guys,” Hap said.

I felt sick and wanted to throw up. I could reach the bathroom, I thought—excuse myself to go, then lock myself in. They would figure it out, try to get in maybe, tell me I was being silly, try to coax me out, but they'd give up eventually.

I mean, people knew them. They lived here, were known. They wouldn't break down the door.

“I'm . . . I should get back to reading,” I said. “I have a lot of work to do.”

Jack was in front of me in a blink, peering down.

“What are you reading, Les?” he asked. His lips parted, so I could see his teeth. His canine teeth, they weren't anything to be afraid of, perfectly normal, but the tilt of his head, his eyes on my throat . . .

I stepped back, and he didn't follow. Just watched me retreat from him. “Never mind,” I said.

Hap stood and shook himself, stretched in every direction. From the laundry room, Grizzbee's growl thickened.

“It's a full moon tonight,” he said. “Think we'll be able to see it through the clouds?”

“Evy's coming out with us,” Jack said. “She's just resting up first. What's wrong, Les? Won't you come?”

He was moving toward the door, and the weird charge that had hung in the air fizzled. This was Jack, a guy from school, a kind-of friend. I'd been reading too many scary novels.

I didn't see Evy that night. She didn't call.

I tried to let it go.

I'd been invited. I knew where she was. Who she was with.

I called her at two p.m. on Sunday. She answered but sounded dead tired.

“Did I wake you up?” I asked.

“Yeah.” I heard a smile in her voice. “But I was up late. Les, you should have come.”

“Where did you go?”

“Well, we started off down by the Thorn Bridge.” That was an old covered bridge that stood on spindly legs over Thorn Creek, in the middle of the woods, in the middle of nowhere. “But we went everywhere,” Evy said.

“I miss you,” I said, before I could catch myself.

“Oh, Les, honey, I miss you too, but you don't have to miss me. Just come with me.”

“You're changing, Evy.”

With a low, musing hum, she laughed.

“I told the Marsh boys about our game,” she said. “Vampires and werewolves, I mean, not my plan to make them fight over me.
That
was a no-go. Nothing's coming between those two. Anyway, they thought it was funny. They said there were two types of girls.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Mm-hmm. And that you and I were each a type, but they wouldn't say who was which.”

I almost didn't want to know. Almost. “What were the types?”

“Well, some girls, they said, are witches, and some girls are ghosts.”

Witches, I got. That was a female archetype, but . . . “Ghosts?”

“The woman in white, haunting your dreams, the banshee, the wraith.”

“Okay, but what about fairies, or mermaids, or . . .”

“Or warlocks or Frankensteins . . . it's no fun to muddle it up. Don't overthink. It's just a game.”

“Okay,” I said, “so which one am I?”

I was the ghost, of course, the invisible one who doesn't belong in their world. Insubstantial and innocent, too innocent to keep up with Evy.

Of course, ghosts have one more special trait, and thinking about that gave me chills. Ghosts are dead.

“They won't tell me who's who,” Evy repeated, “but Les, it's so cute and dumb. They think this game's hilarious.”

So did we, I wanted to say, only weeks ago. We loved our game.

“Do you want to hang out later?” I asked, the sickness in my gut already telling me the answer.

“Oh, Les, we're going out again tonight. The moon's past full, but last night was so cloudy. Tonight should be bright, bright.”

“What about school?” I said. “Won't you be exhausted on Monday?”

“I'll be tired in the daytime, but at night, once the sun goes down, I can't sleep even if I want to. It's the strangest thing.”

Yes.

“I want to be outside. I want to drink up the night. I want to run.”

I felt like I'd swallowed a fist, like I needed to vomit, but if I tried I would choke.

“All right, Evy, I . . . I'm sorry, I think I should go.”

“Les, don't be mad with me. I want to include you. I still love you best.”

“I believe you. I just . . . don't feel well.”

“Les, listen,” she said. “Come with us once. You'll feel so free. You'll—”

“I'm sorry, Evy. I can't talk right now.”

I hung up on my friend, let her go.

I made it halfway down the hall before my breakfast came up.

Evy kept coming to school, mostly.

She came late a lot, and she traded the chunky eyeglasses she didn't need for oversized sixties sunglasses that covered half her face.

She looked pale and vibrant at the same time. As she grew thinner, her skin took on a sheen, especially at her cheeks and her brow, where it stretched tight and close to the bone.

She still sought me out, stuck close to me, but she wasn't
with
me. Normally, Evy took the lead between the two of us, but now she deferred to me.

“Do you want to take lunch outside?” I asked one day.

“Whatever you want,” Evy said. “Is it cold out?”

We were standing outside, on the lawn between the main building and specials.

“What do you mean?”

“Is it warm enough for eating outside? I can't tell.”

“Do you
feel
warm enough?”

She was wearing a bulky wool sweater over one of her long, flowing dresses.

“This morning, I felt shivery, but when I checked the thermostat, it was set to seventy-three. And in Ms. Michaelson's class, I got so hot, I had to excuse myself and splash water on my face from the fountain.”

“Are you sick?” I asked, knowing the answer was yes. My best friend was sick, but there wasn't anything I could do about it.

Evy shrugged.

“Well, how do you feel now?”

“I think I feel normal. I keep going back and forth.”

“Then let's eat outside, and if you need to go inside we can.”

She nodded, her eyes hidden behind the big frames, and waited for me to lead the way to the lunchroom. It was a bit like being friends with a wagon.

We started eating with the Marsh boys, just the four of us, because Evy had gotten too strange to deal with other people, and because I had to accept that if I wanted Evy's friendship, the Marsh boys came with it.

“She's different with you,” I said as the four of us sat at lunch. We were inside because October had taken a turn for the frigid.

Evy sat nursing a cup of hot tea, a plate of fresh fruit in front of her, untouched. I'd gotten used to talking about her in her presence. If she noticed, she didn't seem to mind.

Hap smiled across the table at Evy. “She's going through a strange time,” he said, “but yes, she's different at night. She wakes up.”

“You're a good friend,” Jack said, “to stand by her.”

I wasn't sure about that. I knew as far as Jack was concerned, I'd be a better friend if I joined her, but we'd all agreed that wasn't going to happen.

The strangest thing was that as Evy faded, something in me began to shift as well. For the longest time, I didn't trust myself with myself. I needed Evy beside me, pushing me, holding me up. But with Evy waning, I thrived.

A new energy filled me from the tips of my toes to the ends of my hair. It pulsed out through my fingertips: life. I wouldn't always have it, but today, this minute, I had it in spades, enough to share. It radiated out of me. Anybody I deigned to touch would expand with it, just as I had.

I
needed
to share it, to float with it, to let it sail out of me and into another soul.

“You're so transparent,” Jack said, and I jolted back to the table.

My eyes, and my thoughts, had flown across the lunchroom . . . to Ben. He was sitting among a group of kids I liked—at a table where Evy and I might have sat before.

If I went up to him now, feeling the way I felt, he'd be mine.

“Go for it,” Hap said. “You want to.”

I looked to Evy. “Do you mind?” I asked.

She picked up a piece of melon, sniffed at it, set it back down.

“Do you mind”—I waited for her to look at me—“if I leave the table?”
Leave you here with them?
But I knew the answer. She was with them all the time now.

Evy looked toward Ben, and her lips tipped up in a little smile. “I always thought you should go for him,” she said, and looked back at me, “but I was wrong about him being a werewolf.”

Hap snorted into his hand.

“You think he's a vampire?”

Jack looked to the ceiling.

“No,” Evy said, “he's just Ben.”

I pushed my seat back, leaving my tray—let Jack clear it—and crossed the space between tables in a few long strides.

The others at the table looked up at me in surprise, but Ben smiled. “Had enough of the Marsh boys?” he asked.

“You could say that,” I said, and I pulled out a chair and sat down.

Ben offered me a ride home that day, and I took it. Normally I would ride with Evy, but Evy couldn't drive anymore, not in the daytime anyway. I'd been biking because carpooling with the Marsh boys and Evy felt too weird.

They were hers. She was theirs. I didn't even think about whether she was seeing one of them anymore. It was more like they were family.

And I was the embarrassing in-law Evy couldn't quite shed.

And yet, with Evy so . . . changed . . . I was the one they talked to, joked with. I was their daytime friend.

It felt like a betrayal of Evy, in a way, that I wasn't doing more, trying harder, to help her.

Ben had an ancient car called Gracie—“She was my granddad's,” he said. “He left her to me so my parents wouldn't junk her.” She whinnied a little on hills, so Ben would pat her on the dashboard and say, “Come on, Gracie, you can do it. Don't give up on me now.” But she got the job done.

“I like her,” I said.

“You just passed the first test.” Ben turned to flash me a smile. He had a dimple in his chin, as if a sculptor had pressed a thumb there for a finishing touch. I wanted to see how my thumb fit.