Broken (6 page)

It was a vicious threat, but one almost
guaranteed to have an effect. Britney most definitely didn't want
to be stuck riding the bus with all of the junior high kids and
other assorted 'losers'. Her mouth opened and closed several times
and then she nodded and fled the classroom.

When I finally caught up with her she'd
recovered enough to complain, but there was a breathless nature to
her voice that told me she wouldn't be skipping the math lab for a
little while. I made non-committal noises as we waited in line, all
the while scanning the cafeteria for two faces.

Actually, scanning wasn't the right word for
it. I just kind of looked that way and instantly found my eyes
drawn to Brandon. He was surrounded by people, mostly female, all
attractive. Taking in all of those lithe, tan bodies, I suddenly
felt incredibly inferior. All of the impending skin cancer deaths
suddenly didn't seem quite so important.

I looked away before anyone could see me
staring. Britney was still looking longingly at a pile of fries.
When I looked up again Brandon was looking back at me with a smile
that seemed to communicate all kinds of things I'd always thought
you needed words for.

His expression seemed to say he was glad to
see me, embarrassed to be the center of attention, and sorry he
couldn't get away from his friends to come over and say hi. I felt
my face go hot with embarrassment. I tried to step behind a pillar
before he saw me go bright red, but knew I hadn't succeeded.

I bit my lip as I realized how spastic I was
being. I'd spent the last sixteen plus years suppressing my natural
tendency to form crushes on one cute boy after another. I'd nearly
perfected the art of exhibiting zero interest in the opposite sex.
The whole point of my existence had been avoiding the kinds of
things that'd result in everyone laughing at me. Why was I setting
my sights on a boy who was so far out of my league? Even if there'd
been a chance he might like me, I had absolutely no idea how to
proceed.

Given the option, I would've just hid behind
the pillar until everyone left for class, but Britney had made her
decision, and was paying for her food. Essentially out of time, I
took a deep breath and followed her to a table. I couldn't help
glancing towards Brandon's table one last time. I was hoping he was
still smiling. Maybe he'd seen how awkward I was, but somehow
didn't mind. Maybe he even thought it was endearing. Failing that,
I at least hoped he wasn't chuckling with his friends over the new
girl's stupid infatuation.

He wasn't doing either, in fact, he seemed to
be very much involved in a conversation with the stocky boy on his
right. The rest of the kids at the table were listening just as
intensely, all except for the brunette on Brandon's left who was
looking in our direction.

My face pulled back in a smile, I even
brought my hand partway up in a wave before I realized I recognized
her. It was the trendy girl from the office, and she apparently
still didn't like me.

I felt my face get even hotter, only now I
was both angry and embarrassed. It was a relief to sink down into a
chair with my back to Brandon and his friends. Strangely enough,
Britney also being so obviously uncomfortable helped calm me
down.

"Ok, out with it, why is this such a big
deal?"

Britney shifted back and forth in her seat
for a couple of seconds before leaning in to whisper. "It really
shouldn't be a big deal, but everyone around here acts like it's
taboo. Two hikers were killed by some kind of wild animal a few
months ago."

I felt my heart skip a beat as a chill ran
from the base of my spine all the way to my scalp. Britney's
innocuous words shouldn't have caused my mind to immediately sink
back to the terror I'd felt this morning, but they did.

For a moment I couldn't focus on what Britney
was saying, my heartbeat had become completely erratic from the
surge of adrenaline flooding my body as it futilely tried to escape
the nameless things that'd been snapping at my heels.

"...out in the south end of Zions. It was
Mark Childs and Lessi Arnolds. The bodies were a couple of days old
by the time search and rescue found them, but it was pretty obvious
they'd been mauled by something."

I opened my mouth to interrupt, but my vocal
chords weren't working. Now that she'd finally broached the
subject, Britney was unstoppable. "It had to have been a mountain
lion, there isn't anything else around here that's both aggressive
and big enough to kill people, but neither of them had been gnawed
on at all, which was strange enough by itself. Everyone refusing to
talk about it would've been enough to make it X-files weird, but
when the coroner threw such a fit, it entered a class of its
own."

Britney looked around again to make sure
nobody was in hearing range, and then leaned in even closer. "He
said the wounds weren't made by anything in the cat family. He
wrote up a whole paper on how the teeth marks were made by some
kind of new, previously undiscovered predator."

The chills were back, and they'd redoubled in
intensity. It was like the howl from my dream was echoing through
my soul. "Did he say what it was like? The predator I mean."

Britney nodded slowly, "Yeah, he thought it
was somehow related to a wolf, but bigger and stronger, with claws
like something out of a slasher movie. He was causing such a stir
in St. George they finally fired him. They said he was
sensationalizing the attack to get his fifteen minutes of fame.
Daddy tried to get access to the bodies, to provide a second
opinion even though that isn't his real area of expertise, but they
blocked him cold. He thinks they were worried about scaring away
the tourists. They had to make the accident go away, to save the
local economy."

My hands had gone cold despite the oppressive
heat, just now hitting its full stride for the day. You didn't hang
around the fringe without running into plenty of people who were
conspiracy theorists. Discussing UFO's, Illuminati, and X-files had
been like air and water for some of the people I'd known back in
Minneapolis. I'd never given their wild theories a second thought
before, but what Britney was describing sounded like a pretty
convincing attempt at a cover up.

I looked up as I realized Britney had fallen
silent, only to realize with a start that a pair of tears were
trickling down her face.

"Mark and Lessi were the only ones to really
open up when I moved in. Their great grandparents were some of the
first people to settle down here. They used to tell me all kinds of
crazy stories. After they were killed nobody would really talk to
me. Everyone was polite, but it was like I was shut out, like they
blamed me for what happened."

Britney paused for a second; then shuddered.
"I was supposed to have been with them."

I felt my shoulders suddenly relax as
everything started to make sense. There'd been an attack of course.
There may have even been a bit of a cover up by local, or regional,
authorities, but Britney's father was probably right in assuming
the motivation had been protecting the tourist industry.

That was all straightforward, but even that
wasn't as obvious as the fact that Britney was suffering from some
kind of survivor's guilt. She felt like she was somehow to blame
for not dying with her friends, and was reading all kinds of
motivations into people's behavior that weren't even there. That
would've been spooky enough, but then I'd turned around, linked all
of it to a freak nightmare and been convinced the world was about
to end. Silly.

I did my best to comfort Britney after that,
but was more than a little relieved when lunch finally ended. That
of course made me feel heartless and guilty in turn, but I was
still too fragile to deal with her issues. When it's all you can do
to get through the day yourself, it's impossible to be a pillar of
strength for someone else.

History was a complete waste of time, I
hadn't even made it through the reading assignment, and I still got
a perfect score on the pop quiz.

Physics was surprisingly full. Apparently
Alec was the only hard-core party animal in the class. I was still
feeling weird from Britney's story, so unlike the rest of my
classmates, who seemed genuinely intrigued by the assignment, I
just pretended to leaf through a reference book all hour.

Spanish was as bad as history. Mrs. Tiggs
turned on one of the Spanish TV channels within thirty seconds of
class starting. Towards the end of the hour I finally started to
come back out of my funk, so I put the last few minutes to good use
reviewing vocabulary for the quiz on Tuesday.

I felt a momentary surge of relief when class
ended, but the feeling evaporated when I remembered I had to go to
math tutoring.

I grabbed my math book, and met an equally
morose Britney at her locker. There are only so many times one
person can say something sucks, and expect the other person to
agree with them. Britney quickly used up her allotment of
complaints, and then subsided into silence as she led the way to an
out of the way corner of the old school.

I'd noticed Britney liked to position herself
so she was closest to the middle of the hall. Admittedly, dodging
all the people trying to get into their lockers wasn't much fun,
but I suspected her real motivation was a desire to ensure she
could see and be seen, which was much more easily accomplished by
relegating me to the outside position.

Normally I'd have just viewed her theatrics
with amusement, but it'd been a long day and I wasn't in the mood.
If I'd known for sure where we were heading, I'd have considered
cutting her off, even with all of the probable fall out, but I
didn't. Instead I just sighed, followed her around a corner, and
collided with six plus feet of muscled goodness packaged in a white
polo shirt that looked worryingly familiar.

Brandon caught me as I rebounded from him,
easily stopping my momentum before I could stumble into a locker.
"We'd better be careful; I'm starting to sense a trend."

I wanted to say something equally witty, but
his shirt did wonderful, probably illegal things to his gray eyes,
and his perfectly straight teeth were parted in a friendly grin
that couldn't possibly be meant for me.

I managed a feeble grin before the silence
stretched too far towards becoming uncomfortable, but it was a
pathetic attempt. Brandon gently released my shoulders and detoured
around me with a grace that should have looked unnatural on a boy,
but which somehow exuded more masculinity than any four boys I'd
known back home.

Britney shot me an envious look and then
turned and stalked through an open doorway. I should have been
worried I was upsetting my only 'friend'. Failing that, I should at
least be mad she was being so unreasonable, but my racing heart
seemed to brush those feelings away. Other than a persistent,
imaginary tingling along my shoulders I was strangely numb inside
as I followed her into the tutoring room.

There were more kids inside than I'd
expected, enough that a normal room would've felt crowded, but this
wasn't a normal room. Someone had knocked down a wall or two,
creating a space that was strangely welcoming, despite obviously
being meant for academic pursuits. A large number of rectangular
tables were scattered about the room, situated so that the two
people sitting at them would feel relatively isolated.

As I continued my survey, I realized that
there was only ever one pile of books at any given table, and in
the few instances in which two people were sitting at a table, one
of the individuals was obviously explaining something to the other
one.

Most of the kids looked fairly run of the
mill. There was even the expected contingent of jocks, obviously
there just because a coach or parent had delivered some kind of
ultimatum. Britney predictably headed over and staked out a table
as close as she could get to a group of girls who were probably
cheerleaders.

Clustered around the other end of the room
were the more studious kids, the kind who were generally pretty
smart, but for whatever reason were struggling with math. I wasn't
surprised to see a kind of a no-man's land between the two ends of
the spectrum. I was startled to see that the middle ground was
inhabited by an attractive girl a year or two younger than me.

Left to my own devices, I would've normally
picked a table over on the nerd end of the room, but I found myself
relating more to the girl stuck in the middle. She looked up and
met my gaze for just a second before ducking back down and
concentrating on her homework. Shy, obviously, and not popular.
There'd been the hint of a smile on her face, possibly constrained
by fear of how her overture might be received.

Obviously a complete social reject just like
me. It was nice to finally meet a kindred spirit. Britney's clingy
neediness was nearly as bad as the icy indifference or borderline
hostility all of the rest of the students displayed. Except for
Brandon, but I couldn't quite bring myself to trust him. A boy that
cute wasn't nice to a girl like me unless he wanted something from
her.

Mrs. Campbell walked over while I was casing
the room. She still looked stern, but her face had relaxed
slightly. She even smiled as she handed me a green, laminated card.
"You'll need to pick out an empty table, we don't let students
share here. Also I'd recommend choosing one somewhat distant from
Ms. Samuels, she doesn't need any more distractions than she
already has. When you have a question, or need help from one of the
tutors flip the card over to the red side and place it on your
desk."

I nodded and headed over to a table near the
girl, one where I could watch her without her seeing me. I wasn't
going to fall all over myself to become her friend or anything, but
I figured it was worth observing her for a little bit. If she
really was cool then we might strike up a friendship at some point.
If she wasn't, then the sooner I could confirm that fact the better
off I'd be.