Dull Boy (19 page)

“The point is camaraderie. Teamwork. Proving that we have a purpose, that we can do more than just cause trouble. Will you at least think about it?”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t think about it. Just don’t get your hopes up.” She glances over her shoulder to survey the damage: the messes that have built up while she’s been talking to me. Two well-dressed women around my grandma’s age creak up from their table, leaving behind a mountain of muffin crumbs. Catherine swears under her breath and sets her attitude to
stun
.

I buy another juice and sit down to watch her. Even hunched over a broom, or angrily scrubbing frosting off a tabletop, she’s as fluid as water. Every motion seems effortless. But it’s like watching a dancer in a trap. A tiger in a cramped cage.

When I force myself
not
to fly, it’s like a part of me is paralyzed: my body can’t move the way it’s meant to. Catherine’s the most graceful person I’ve ever seen—but she’s always skulking around, forced to hide what she can really do.

I want to see her in action again. I feel like, how could that not make her feel better than she does right now?

 

TWO DAYS LATER
I’m patrolling after school, eyes peeled for vandals, wishing I wasn’t alone—or that I at least had an intact cell phone so I could harass my friends and try to get one of them to join me. I’m contemplating using a skuzzy pay phone when two mango-scented hands cover my eyes. A warm body bumps me from behind.

“Surprise.” In another moment she’s in front of me: the dark-haired Victoria’s Secret-looking girl from the antiques store. Cherchette’s . . . assistant? She points to the ice-blue Aston Martin a short way behind us, creeping along at five miles an hour. “Time to go for a ride.” She grabs my hand, treating me to a lush, full-lipped smile. “It’s not optional.”

Leilani escorts me to the passenger’s side and practically shoves me in. Cherchette’s platinum hair is hanging loose on either side of her face. She’s wearing dark, wrap-around sunglasses and her head is tilted away from me. The whole atmosphere is weird, uncomfortable. I can’t bring myself to say hello, or even to ask where we’re going. Classical music plays on the radio. The digital readout identifies it as Sibelius.

We drive through the neighborhood slowly, steadily. Passersby gawk at the car, but Cherchette doesn’t speed up; she sticks to the exact speed limit until we reach a long stretch of road: a rural sort of highway that doesn’t get a ton of traffic. I’m pretty sure it leads to Catherine’s house, and the connection makes me shiver. But I don’t bring it up. Cherchette’s never mentioned Catherine, and vice versa. As far as I know, they don’t know about each other—and as ambivalent as I am about Cherchette’s recruitment scheme, I’d like it to stay that way.

Cherchette crunches to a stop on the gravel shoulder. “Would you like to drive?”

I roll my head to one side, staring out the window at an empty field, waiting for Leilani to answer. Then I realize she’s asking
me
. “I don’t have a license.”

“I’m not a police officer.” Cherchette smiles—oddly, because she’s only turned toward me partway. “You can drive a bit. Like when you are a child and your parents give you a sip of wine. Just a taste.”

Yeahhh . . . my mom was about as likely to give me alcohol as my dad was to kick me in the face. In other words: not gonna happen. Besides, my mom doesn’t drink anything that’s supposed to relax you. For her, it’s coffee all the way.

“Would you feel better if I instructed you?”

“Um.” I take a second to think about this. If we get pulled over because I’m weaving all over the place, I’m in deep trouble. But if I drive slowly, and I’m careful, it’ll probably be okay. How many chances am I going to have to get behind the wheel of a car like this?

“Yes,” I say. “Yeah. I definitely want to.” I unfasten my seat belt and clamber out of the car to switch sides with Cherchette. She’s moving slowly, one pale hand keeping her hair close to her face, but the wind picks up and lifts it at the crown, revealing a fresh set of stitches at her hairline: tiny Xs caked with dried blood. She smiles awkwardly and smoothes her hair down as we pass each other. My eyes drift to the ground-up stones at my feet.

Once we’re buckled in, Cherchette gives me an improvised driving lesson, most of which is unnecessary. It’s actually
not
that hard to drive in a straight line. After a few moments of adjustment, I’m rolling down the road like James Bond in my Aston Martin, getting comfortable in my leather throne, easing up on the steering wheel. I could get used to this.

“You like it?” Cherchette says.

“Yeah, it’s awesome.”

“Go faster, then. No need to drive like a senior citizen.”

I press the pedal down carefully, watching the speedometer creep higher as Cherchette urges me on. Past seventy, eighty . . . and then I start to get nervous. It feels too good when the car speeds up. Like flying. I could never fly this fast.

“What are you afraid of?” Cherchette says when I start to slow down.

She spins the volume dial on the radio. An orchestra booms from the speakers and the gas pedal sinks under my weight, soft as butter—to hell with finesse. It’s like the music is the soundtrack for this moment, and I need to live up to it. Speed equals euphoria.

The road is straight with the occasional slight curve—easy. Traffic is so minimal it’s easy to forget that we’re not alone. But when a pickup truck heads toward us from the opposite direction, I instinctively hit the brake. Slowing down, until—

Suddenly the road shines like glass. Sunlight glints off the newly icy street, and before I can react, the car starts to spin out. I swear and slam on the brakes, jerking the steering wheel to send us spinning sideways into a ditch. Dual air bags erupt. Low tree branches scrape the windows. Leilani gasps, almost hyperventilating in the backseat.

“Variables,” Cherchette says. “That’s what you should be afraid of.” She sighs pleasantly and bats at a deflating air bag. “You can’t plan for them. What you need is to be properly prepared for them.”

“How the hell was I supposed to be prepared for that?” I’m struggling to get my breathing under control. Struggling not to scream at her.

“I encouraged you to drive faster precisely to see if you would do it. It’s your own responsibility to make wise decisions. You could have killed someone just now.”

“Christ,” Leilani mutters. “Feel free to leave me out of your test next time.”

“A car is a weapon,” Cherchette continues. “And
you
are a weapon, Avery. Equally deadly. The difference is that drivers are required to be licensed. There are rules, and potential drivers must practice with an experienced adult. It’s foolish to learn to drive on your own; no one does that, dear. Shouldn’t you take your training as seriously as the average person seeking a driver’s license?”

My heart’s still racing from the near collision. My muscles are locked in the past, braced for impact, adrenaline saturating my blood like poison. I don’t know what to say to her. It was dumb of her to egg me on like that, but I’m the one who listened.

“My offer still stands, you know,” Cherchette says. “I could make you into something remarkable. More special than you already are.”

I knead my forehead in frustration—I can’t believe I’m about to ask this. “If I took you up on that . . . what would it mean for me? Would I have to leave home forever? Would I be able to see my parents?”

“Why don’t I let you speak with Leilani about that? She can tell you better than I can.”

I climb out and push the banged-up Aston Martin out of the ditch, tempted to walk home and leave this screwed-up scene behind. But I can’t; I need to know what else is out there. Because Cherchette might be a little crazy, but she’s not lying when she says I’m a weapon. Dangerous, deadly, and totally irresponsible.

C
herchette drives us out of town, to a novelty ice-cream place with picnic tables out front and a giant plastic cow on the roof. The last time I was here was in elementary school, after a big baseball game—the whole team went to celebrate. It’s weird to be here now. Everything seems smaller.

“So what can I tell you?” Leilani asks, when we sit down at one of the picnic tables. Her hands are folded, pert and businesslike.

The sun sinks into me, chasing away the chill. It’s a warm spring day, but we’re the only customers outside. “Why’d you do it? What made you leave home and . . . your friends and everything? Was it fear?”

Leilani digs into her sundae, tips the spoon so the hot fudge oozes back down. “Not fear. Need. I needed my life to make sense, and without Cherchette, it didn’t.

“I’m a shape-shifter. You know that, don’t you? Well, can you imagine what it’s like for me when
my
power is out of control? I don’t have to worry about hurting anyone, exactly . . . but it’s much harder to hide. I used to look at myself in the mirror a lot—you know, pouting, posing. I guess I was a little in love with myself. I wanted to know what everyone else saw. If one expression was more flattering than another. And then . . .

“One day there was a shift. My features blurred—and then they were back. Only I wasn’t myself. One eye was lopsided. My nose had twisted, like I was staring into a fun-house mirror. And then I blurred again, but it was like my skin was melting this time, like wax molding itself into a different shape. My face was in flux and I couldn’t control it; I didn’t know what was happening.

“I broke the mirror. I covered my face with my hands, but it was even worse then—because I could
feel
the changes as they occurred. How could I be hallucinating if I could feel my face reshaping itself?

“I finally flipped. I went into the bathroom with a paring knife, ready to slice the excess skin off my nose, force my left cheekbone to go back to the right size. I was prepared to completely mangle myself, take my eye out so I wouldn’t have to look anymore. Just thinking about that time makes me shaky. Like I could go back to that again.” Her lips tremble as she tries to laugh it off. She slides a perfectly manicured nail along the edge of her eyelid. Pauses.

“Right. I know I sound crazy—but that was honestly how I felt. My mother came into the bathroom then; I must have been hysterical, holding the knife up to my face like that. I don’t even think I could see myself anymore at that point; I couldn’t focus on anything. She took the knife away from me and I told her my face kept changing, that I needed it to go back to normal; I had to fix things before school tomorrow. I would just cut off the bad parts. I asked her if she would help me. If she wouldn’t let me do it myself, would she help me . . .”

“Damn,” I say. “I can’t even imagine how horrible that must have been. It’s scary just listening to you talk about it.”

Leilani shivers. “I know. My parents took me to a therapist, who diagnosed me with body dysmorphic disorder, which is where you perceive things as being wrong with your appearance, completely irrationally, to the point where you become so obsessive about it that you can’t function. They put me on medication, which drove my emotions up and down and backward and only made things worse.

“And in a way I suppose I was lucky that my power had a kind of defense mechanism, where it didn’t manifest in front of people. But at the time I wanted it to so badly, because everyone thought I was crazy and
I
thought I was crazy, and I needed someone to witness it and tell me I wasn’t. Someone who could explain it to me. And that’s when I was fortunate enough to meet Cherchette.”

“So you really did need her,” I say.

“More than anything. I honestly think I’d be dead without her. I don’t think I could have gone on that way, not understanding what was happening. But she explained and she told me about ‘powers,’ that there were others like us, and that my features were changing because I was a shape-shifter. That it would be an asset if I could take control of it. I could become anyone I wanted, anonymous or famous. An impostor or myself.

“She taught me how to focus so I wasn’t so anxious, fluctuating all the time. And then we worked on more productive shifting—changes that would be
my
choice. She’s a funny motivator.” Leilani smirks, twisting her hair around her fingers. “Once she took me on a whirlwind tour of all these designer clothing stores and wouldn’t let me buy anything; she told me it was pointless, because I could shift into something couture if I wanted to. She’s a doll. I love that woman more than I love my own mother.”

“Wow. That’s, um, a seriously good endorsement. So . . . you left home, though. What do your parents think? Do they know about you?”

“No. I couldn’t tell them. They already thought I was out of my mind—you think telling them I had superpowers was going to change anything? I wasn’t able to
show
them, at that point. And, after talking to Cherchette, I wasn’t sure it would be best for them to know.”

“So you ran away and they have no idea what happened to you? Isn’t that kind of harsh?”